Radio Times
type: channel
link: https://www.radiotimes.com
date: 2024-11-27T12:22:39.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: Julianne Moore: Suburbicon's 50s themes of intolerance and fear are all too relevant today
items: Christian Bale hopes new film The Promise will raise awareness of the Armenian genocide
items: Michelle Williams on Manchester by the Sea, a Dawson's Creek reunion and why kids should come first
items: The real story of race and romance in A United Kingdom
items: The day Meryl Streep became the world's worst singer - with a little help from Hugh Grant
items: Ellen Page: 'I felt a moral imperative to come out as gay'
items: Michael Caine on the challenges of Youth and why his wife is the only reason he's still alive
items: Is Brie Larson the next big thing?
items: Amy Poehler on how she learned to make people laugh after 9/11
items: Pierce Brosnan on why losing his first wife helped shape his latest role
items: Alec Baldwin on yoga, running for office and the end of 30 Rock

Julianne Moore: Suburbicon's 50s themes of intolerance and fear are all too relevant today
type: item
date: 2017-11-24T09:00:05.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: “These are difficult times. But in a way it’s an opportunity because it’s a chance to speak about it, to change our behaviour,” she says
encoded: Julianne Moore feels that it’s time to speak out: on racism, President Trump and the sexual abuse of women in her industry. “I think it takes awareness and vigilance and activism,” she says. “We have to keep moving forward and we have to keep talking about it.” Moore isn’t one to keep quiet. She is one of the biggest Hollywood voices to have spoken out following the Harvey Weinstein scandal, tweeting that director James Toback, who was accused of sexual harassment by more than 30 women in an LA Times article, approached her in the 1980s and asked her – twice – to audition for him in his apartment. “These are difficult times. But in a way it’s an opportunity because it’s a chance to speak about it, to change our behaviour,” she adds. Kingsman: the Golden Circle review – “Elton John is the standout” Julianne Moore’s acclaimed performance carries Still Alice “beyond TV-movie blandness” Oscars 2015: Julianne Moore wins best actress In her new film, Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney and co-starring Matt Damon, she addresses another issue close to her heart, the racist underbelly of white-picket-fence American suburbia. It’s set in the 1950s and based around a real event in Levittown, Pennsylvania, where a black family were harassed and threatened by their white neighbours in an effort to force them out of town. As Moore points out, not much has changed in the intervening years. “This film was written years ago and shot a year ago but it’s still so relevant. History repeats itself, unfortunately,” says Moore. “We shot this movie last fall and the riots in Charlottesville hadn’t happened yet. When they did, I couldn’t believe it.” In Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year, Heather Heyer, a 32-year old legal assistant, was killed when a man drove a car into a group of anti-racism protesters. They had gathered to oppose a Unite the Right March, which attracted neo-Nazis and white supremacists. “A lot of this had to do with Trump’s issues on immigration. It was all…

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Christian Bale hopes new film The Promise will raise awareness of the Armenian genocide
type: item
date: 2017-04-28T12:55:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: "It's tragic that so many were killed and people don't know"
encoded: Christian Bale has a serious addiction. “I’m always at war with myself, ” he confesses. “I’m like, ‘I’m quitting, I’m never going to do it again’ and then I’m like ‘Oh my God, I love it, I can’t wait to go back.’” He’s toyed with giving up acting for good. “It’s the highs and lows of it, the disappointments that come hand-in-hand with something you are passionate about. “I don’t always enjoy it but I am addicted and sometimes you need to get away.” But what would he do instead? “I don’t really know. Spend time with the kids and just be with my family. That’s what I love to do when I’m not working.” He knows, though, that it won’t happen. He’s hooked and he’ll keep going back for more as long as there are scripts like The Promise, an epic love story set against the backdrop of the Armenian genocide. “I am embarrassed to say – but I suspect that it’s the same for many people – that I had not heard of the Armenian genocide,” he admits. “It’s tragic that so many were killed and people don’t know. I hope in some way this film will change that.” He first read the screenplay in 2014 and was struck by how contemporary it felt. At the time, he reflects, “the Yazidis were trapped on the mountains in Iraq with IS surrounding them. The correlation was remarkable.” By the time they had started filming last year, the terrible events in Syria were dominating the news. “We were seeing the so-called deportations, which were really death marches, on TV. It’s terribly sad to say that the film couldn't be more relevant now with the refugee crisis." Back in 1915, the then Ottoman government systematically forced ethnic Armenians from their homes and into the Syrian desert. More than one and a half million Armenians were killed but modern-day Turkey has refused to acknowledge the genocide and over a number of years has successfully stopped several attempts by Hollywood to depict the events. In the 30s MGM scrapped plans to adapt The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a bestseller about the genocid…

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Michelle Williams on Manchester by the Sea, a Dawson's Creek reunion and why kids should come first
type: item
date: 2017-01-13T06:00:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
subject: TV
subject: Interview
description: Michelle Williams’s number one role is being a mother – but she’s picked up three Oscar nominations for the others
encoded: "If I were a man, I would have been arrested for stalking,” Michelle Williams laughs. “I hung outside schools, I watched moms walk their kids in and I observed their details – how many piercings they had in their ears, if they wore silver or gold, how high their boots were, what their hair looked like, how many kids they had, what their kids looked like, what they sounded like, what their accents were. I really stalked them!” Before the schools of small-town Massachusetts issue a restraining order, however, she clarifies it was all in the name of research for her new role in Manchester by the Sea. View oEmbed on the source website In recent years, Williams has turned down many roles, often ones that would involve a long spell away from her apartment in Brooklyn, where she lives with her 11-year-old daughter, Matilda, and their five-year-old spaniel, Lucky. But when Williams goes to work, it’s worth the wait. She’s already earned three Academy Award nominations – for Brokeback Mountain, Blue Valentine and My Week with Marilyn – and could easily collect a fourth for her heartbreaking role as Randi, a working-class mother who is in a happy relationship with Lee (Casey Affleck) before tragedy shatters their marriage. Directed by Kenneth Lonergan – his first film since the universally acclaimed Margaret five years ago – Manchester by the Sea (in cinemas from Friday 13 January) is a painfully real study of loss and grief. A role that one would think she didn’t need to research that much, having experienced more than her fair share of both. Her daughter Matilda’s father was the Australian actor Heath Ledger. They met on the set of Brokeback Mountain in 2004 and had a three-year relationship, which ended in 2007. After he died, in 2008, from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs, she stopped working for more than a year. Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams at the 78th Academy Awards in 2006 “If I say no to a role I don’t think about it. I forget it and move on. Any de…

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The real story of race and romance in A United Kingdom
type: item
date: 2016-11-25T10:11:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
subject: TV
description: Selma star David Oyelowo talks about the shocking real-life events behind the movie
encoded: When David Oyelowo first read the story of Seretse Khama and Ruth Williams, he became obsessed with turning it into a film. Seretse and Ruth fell in love in London in 1947: he was black, she was white; he was an Oxford student and heir to an African throne, she was a typist. Together, they defied the might of three countries, and changed the course of a nation. View oEmbed on the source website After they married, Seretse brought his young wife back to Bechuanaland, then a British protectorate, now Botswana, to take up their roles as king and queen. But neighbouring South Africa, on the verge of introducing apartheid, feared that the couple would undermine their race laws, and threatened to ban the export of minerals and gold to Britain unless they were forced apart. Shamefully, that’s exactly what Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s Labour government tried to do, by exiling Seretse from his own country. Oyelowo, born in Oxford to Nigerian parents, came to fame in Spooks, before Hollywood and a role as Martin Luther King in Selma beckoned. View oEmbed on the source website Now, seven years after reading Susan Williams’s Colour Bar, he’s starring in the film of the book. “When you think about these two people, who simply fell in love and then had the weight of three different countries bearing down on them, the pressure they were under must have been almost unbearable,” he says. “But actually the best relationships thrive under pressure. They only grew closer and that, to me, shows that they were destined to be together.” Seretse and Williams in 1950 At the film’s premiere, Marcus ter Haar, the deputy managing director of the Okavango Diamond Company in Botswana, struggled to keep his emotions in check. For the grandson of Seretse and Ruth, the nephew of Botswana’s current president, and consultant on the film, seeing their story on screen was overwhelming. “The beauty of the film is the romance, politics and intrigue, but also that it truthfully tells a story that is ve…

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The day Meryl Streep became the world's worst singer - with a little help from Hugh Grant
type: item
date: 2016-05-07T07:58:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: The Oscar-winning actress stars as the infamous amateur soprano in Florence Foster Jenkins
encoded: In the evening of 25 October 1944, a music legend was born. Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy New York socialite who believed herself a soprano worthy of playing a packed Carnegie Hall, took to the stage. She held (and paid for) the concert in honour of the servicemen returning home from the war and tickets sold out in hours, with guests including Cole Porter and soprano Lily Pons. Next morning, the reviews weren’t quite what she expected, however. The critic from the New York Post described the evening as “One of the weirdest mass jokes New York has ever seen”, adding: “She can sing anything but notes.” Florence wasn’t just bad – she was truly terrible. But instead of being ridiculed, her awful arias became the stuff of legend. Her recordings (also self-funded), one of which was called The Glory of the Human Voice, became a cult joke. David Bowie was apparently a big fan. Now, her operatic ambition is being celebrated by Stephen Frears (The Queen), with triple Oscar winner Meryl Streep as Florence and Hugh Grant her partner and manager, St Clair Bayfield. Streep, who has a good voice (watch Mamma Mia!), prepared with vocal coach Arthur Levy. “I went to him twice a week, and broke his spirit,” the actress smiles. “I knew we had something when the accompanist, who played like this [does a serious face], would giggle periodically. “I feel like I’m a B, B+ singer – I’m very well aware of my limitations. Much as I would have liked to be a good singer after I began studying opera as a child, I gave it up very early and sort of ruined my voice with smoking, drinking and debauchery,” she laughs. Luckily, that only went to help and not hinder her performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HszfdNS0JSc Grant knew that his co-star had captured the awfulness of Florence’s voice – once described as a “cacophony of squawks and screeches” – at the first script read-through. “All read-throughs are tense,” he explains. “But this one was a highly wrought occasion. I was thinking a…

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Ellen Page: 'I felt a moral imperative to come out as gay'
type: item
date: 2016-02-18T11:09:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: The young actress and star of new film Freeheld says she wants to challenge the assumption that you can't be gay and successful in Hollywood
encoded: Ellen Page chose a very public forum to tell the world what her close friends and family already knew. At the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference in Las Vegas in 2014, the 28-year-old actor announced she was gay. “I am tired of hiding and I am tired of lying by omission,” she told hundreds of delegates. It was a brave move for an actress who has starred in blockbuster mainstream films like X-Men: Days of Future Past and Inception. But for Page, coming out was a defining moment. Within months of making her announcement she started work on Freeheld, the true story of Laurel Hester, a gay police woman, and Stacie Andree, her younger lover, who helped pave the way for legalised same-sex marriage in the United States. Knowing she was about to portray Stacie partly informed Page’s decision to come out. “It was at a time when I was thinking about it. I was just done with feeling the way I had been feeling, which was not good, to say it simply,” she says. View oEmbed on the source website “I was like, ‘You cannot be a closeted actor and make this movie.’ It’s that simple. People like Laurel and Stacie are the true, courageous people, who in a time of unimaginable difficulty and sadness inadvertently became activists. And when you hear a story like that, or you see a documentary like God Loves Uganda [not yet shown in the UK] or you’re witnessing what is happening in Russia – you watch those things and you’re like, ‘Ellen, just say you’re gay.’ It started to feel like a moral imperative to come out.” She admits that she did fear going public might harm her career. “I went from being an anonymous to not an anonymous person at the age of 20,” she says, referring to her role in 2007’s Juno, a critical and box-office hit. “At that point, I was in a relationship with a woman and very much in love but I was still figuring out my own identity. And no one is overtly saying it, but I think there is an idea in Hollywood – and this is why there aren’t more out gay people …

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Michael Caine on the challenges of Youth and why his wife is the only reason he's still alive
type: item
date: 2016-01-29T15:53:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: At 82, the Alfie actor is still going strong — but he says it's marriage that saved his life...
encoded: There are times when being Sir Michael Caine must be a little surreal. "A couple of years ago," the acting legend laughs, "someone sent me a birthday card and on it was a picture of me and it said, 'You're only supposed to blow the candles out,’” referring, of course, to his famous line “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” in The Italian Job, which rocketed him to international stardom in the 60s. “And you know those GPS systems,” he continues, “where you have the maps in the car and they tell you to turn left or right or whatever. Well, there’s one with my voice on it. But it’s not me; it’s an impressionist. I wish I could get paid for it – I’d be a multimillionaire!” Thanks to a career that spans more than six decades and includes two Oscars and three Golden Globes and, of course, a knighthood in 2000, he must surely be one already. Not bad for the proudly working class son of a Billingsgate fish porter. He’s 82 now, still going strong, with no immediate plans to retire, unlike the character in his latest movie, Youth (in cinemas from Friday 29 January). He plays classical music composer Fred Ballinger, who is on holiday at a luxury Swiss spa with one of his oldest pals, film director Mick Boyle (Harvey Keitel). Mick is struggling to finish a troublesome screenplay and Fred is resisting attempts to coax him out of retirement for a special concert. View oEmbed on the source website “As I’ve got older,” Caine explains, “what is attractive to me is to play parts that push me as an actor, which means playing someone who is farther and farther away from who I really am, and I feel I’ve done this with Youth. “I’m from a very working class background and for me to play a classical music composer and conductor, in terms of class and accent, was one of the hardest things I’ve done and I think I’ve carried it off. “I connected with Fred because we are both 82, but he’s completely apathetic about his work and has an unhappy family life, whereas I’m complete…

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Is Brie Larson the next big thing?
type: item
date: 2016-01-22T11:10:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Movies
subject: News
description: She spent a month locked inside for her latest role in Room. If anyone deserves an Oscar, it's surely Brie
encoded: At the age of six, Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers (now Brie Larson, her Swedish great grandmother’s surname because her birth name is “hard to pronounce”) told her mother she was going to be an actor. “My mom was doing the washing up and I said, ‘Mom, I know what my dharma is: I’m supposed to be an actor,’ ” Larson recalls. “My mom was like, ‘Whoa, where did you learn the word dharma?’ She thought I was just repeating something off the TV.” Twenty years later, Larson could be about to become the hottest actress in Hollywood following what critics are calling “a career-making performance” in Room (in cinemas from Friday 15 January). She has already received a Golden Globe nomination, and an Oscar nod looks likely to follow. View oEmbed on the source website Room is based on the bestselling novel by Emma Donoghue that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize back in 2010. The story was inspired by the case of Austrian man Josef Fritzl who imprisoned one of his daughters in a basement dungeon for 24 years, where she bore him seven children. In the film, Larson plays Ma who was kidnapped by a man she calls “Old Nick” (Sean Bridgers) seven years earlier. She is being held in an 11ft by 11ft garden shed with her son, Jack (played by Jacob Tremblay), now five years old, who was born during her captivity.He knows nothing of the outside world, or of the terrible ordeal that his mother has suffered. It’s a riveting thriller buy Larson takes exception to the idea that Room is a harrowing watch; she insists it is an uplifting film about the mother/son bond. "For me, it's a love story. It's about love, freedom and perseverance," she says. But the lengths she went to in order to prepare for the role certainly sound harrowing in themselves. “I wanted to fully understand what it was like for Ma to be in ‘the room’ for so, so long. To simulate that, I stayed at home for a month and only left to go to the gym. I had very little connection to the outside world and I stayed out of the sun…

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Amy Poehler on how she learned to make people laugh after 9/11
type: item
date: 2015-07-24T15:00:00.000Z
subject: Comedy
subject: Movies
subject: News
subject: TV
description: From Saturday Night Live to Pixar's Inside Out, the comedian's star continues to rise
encoded: Up until recently, Amy Poehler was – as described by a fellow comedian – “the funniest person nobody knows”. She may still not be that well known here, but make no mistake, she is one of the most powerful women in the entertainment business. Her stint on Saturday Night Live, alongside her friend Tina Fey, as well as her role in Parks and Recreation (which returns for a new series on Monday 27 July on Dave), have turned this teacher’s daughter from the Boston suburbs into a star. For the past two years, Poehler and Fey have hosted the Golden Globes to rapturous applause. At 43, Poehler still has the air of a lottery winner, who, rather charmingly, can’t quite believe her luck. “My career has been an interesting one,” she reflects. “It’s been like a slow and steady race. Every step has seen me figuring out where to go next.” She’s acknowledged as one of a number of American comedians who have pushed the boundaries, with a razor- sharp satirical wit that takes in everything from politics (she does a deadly Hillary Clinton impression) to how men react to pregnant women. She writes, directs and produces her own shows (including the sitcom Welcome to Sweden and several episodes of Parks), is a successful author and, of course, acts, too. Her latest role is in Pixar’s animated adventure Inside Out, voicing the character Joy, one of the inner emotions ruling the behaviour of an 11-year-old girl named Riley. View oEmbed on the source website When I suggest that Poehler is forging a new path for female comedy, she protests, saying, “I think that would be presumptuous. But I do feel I’m in a ‘straddle’ generation. I see the younger generation and I’m lucky enough to work with them, and I’m also very respectful and in debt to the generation that came before, who had harder obstacles to overcome than I did.” Poehler grew up in a happy home where banter over dinner with her brother Greg (who co-writes Welcome to Sweden) was part of family life. “There was an expectation to keep u…

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Pierce Brosnan on why losing his first wife helped shape his latest role
type: item
date: 2013-04-19T14:45:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: The former 007 actor on "brilliant" Daniel Craig, why Mamma Mia! was scarier than Bond and the poignancy behind new film Love Is All You Need
encoded: In a few weeks’ time, Pierce Brosnan will celebrate his 60th birthday, but he is entering his seventh decade with a self-deprecating blend of good humour and appreciation for life’s blessings. “Growing older just creeps up on you,” he says. “You’re on a movie set and you look around and you suddenly think, ‘S**t, I’m the oldest one here!’ I’ll celebrate with my darling girl and the kids – you give thanks and then on you go. I’ve got a lot of gratitude for the wonderful things in my life.” And he has much to celebrate – a happy marriage, five much adored children and beautiful homes on the ocean in Malibu and Hawaii. He can also look back on a career that took him from theatre here in the UK, via a BBC costume drama (Nancy Astor) and American TV series (Remington Steele) in the 1980s, to playing James Bond in four films between 1995 and 2002, before he stood aside for the latest 007, Daniel Craig. He has no regrets. Craig is a friend and a “brilliant” Bond, he says, and the legacy of his own time in the tuxedo and driving the Aston Martin DB5 is still with him. “Bond is the gift that keeps on giving,” he says. “It was a monumental part of my career – I’ll always be grateful for the opportunity to play Bond and I loved playing him. Really, who wouldn’t? It’s a small group of men who have played him and I’m very proud to be one of them. But once it’s finished you have to look in other directions and you have to move on. Bond allowed me to go forth as an actor and play the characters that I do now.” One such character is Philip, a middle-aged English businessman still grieving after the loss of his wife, in Love Is All You Need, a bittersweet romantic comedy from acclaimed Danish director Susanne Bier that’s released in cinemas on Friday 19 April. It’s a particularly poignant film for Brosnan because there are echoes of his own past in the story. He lost his first wife, Australian actress Cassandra Harris, to ovarian cancer in 1991 when she was just 43. They had a son, …

Alec Baldwin on yoga, running for office and the end of 30 Rock
type: item
date: 2012-11-23T15:52:00.000Z
creator: Martyn Palmer
subject: Comedy
subject: News
subject: TV
description: "In our hearts we could have kept it going for another couple of years. But it all has to end eventually and you have to move on"
encoded: In a few weeks Alec Baldwin is planning to say goodbye to Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and the rest of his pals on the critically acclaimed comedy 30 Rock, pick up a stack of books and head for his boat to contemplate the next chapter of his life. Somewhere off on the horizon might well be a political career (more of which later). But, for now, Baldwin wants to put his feet up and relax. “The TV show is ending and that’s a big change,” he says. “I want to work less and do different things.” Such as? “Well, maybe make films for a little while, but not too often. And I’ve been thinking about going back to school. That’s a big fantasy for me. I’d like to study English literature - something that’s good for my soul.” As he points out, he’s worked virtually non-stop for more than 30 years, and the last seven have been dominated by the rigorous demands of making a primetime TV show. Now, at 54, he wants a rest. On 30 Rock, Baldwin plays the suave Jack Donaghy, the network boss who often makes life hell on comedy sketch show TGS with Tracy Jordan, especially for chief writer Liz Lemon (Fey). The show is fast, funny and occasionally brilliant, and it’s bowing out leaving its fans wanting more. “Everybody is sad that 30 Rock is ending,” he says. “We’re due to finish filming the last series in mid-December and that’s it, it’s over. Gone. We’ve had a lot of success and it’s been like a long distance race at times, with ups and downs - but mostly ups.” “We did season five and it dipped and everybody thought, ‘let’s go home, it sucks.’ But we went back last year and it did well and we all loved it again. In our hearts we could have kept going for another couple of years. But it all has to end eventually and you have to move on.” It is, then, a year of big changes for Baldwin. A few months ago he got married for the second time, to ballroom dancer-turned-yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas, who, at 28, is 26 years his junior. His nine-year first marriage, to the actress Kim Basinger, ended …