Jonathan Pryce

Quote:
Through its wildly comic, furiously creative, and intensely moving façade, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil ponders a future made to sustain a draconian past molded by inequality. In this dystopia, the rich, having long knelt at the alter of radical capitalistic tyranny, spend their days having their flesh stretched, sliced, and injected with ultraviolet potions, while the working class types, files, signs, and stamps its way through pointless paperwork. Overrun by communicative ducts, coated wires, cement and metals, and magnified, miniature computer screens, the future conjured up by Gilliam averts the familiar prophecy of an anaesthetized, plastic world overrun by rampantly advancing technology. Indeed, men, who see advancing technology as an affront to their fiscal station and take the pecuniary gain of the morbid, perverse 1% as their modus operandi, unmistakably run the future of Gilliam’s film. New technology is expensive; paper is cheap.Read More »

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Adapted by Sluizer from a screenplay written by Jim Barton, the film offers up an offbeat twist on a well-tread story — something akin to Knife in the Water meets The Hills Have Eyes, with the latter’s flesh-eating mutants replaced by a mournful loner who’s part-Native American (the “dark blood” of the title) and altogether horny and weird.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘Public television’s “Mystery!” series has acquired a three-part romp through amorality that, right up to its overly pat ending, is bound to fascinate devoted viewers. “Praying Mantis,” which begins tonight at 9 on WNET/Channel 13, has been adapted quite skillfully by Philip Mackie from a novel by the French writer Hubert Monteilhet. So despite the preponderance of British accents, the flavor of the nasty machinations is strictly Gallic.Read More »

“A writer displays a troubling streak of opportunism in his personal and professional lives in this British drama. As the Falkland Islands war rages, journalist and aspiring historical writer James Penfield (Jonathan Pryce) is working on a book that will examine the 1965 Suez crisis in a manner compatible with the current political climate. James is also pursuing Susan Barrington (Charlie Dore), a documentary filmmaker whose mother Ann (Rosemary Harris) is a noted expert on the Suez crisis and an outspoken leftist. While James has assured his publisher that his book will take a conservative view, he tells Susan and Ann that he’s a socialist and that his book will reflect that position as he attempts to glean information from them.Read More »

Quote:
Carrington is the true story of the tragic relationship between the English painter Dora Carrington and writer, Lytton Strachey. Between the First World War and the early 1930’s, they experimented with a way of life beyond the conventional standards of their time, a life which broke all the taboos of society of their desire to live as freely and honestly as they could. They acknowledged openly what most of us are aware of but still reluctant to discuss: that a great many differences can exist between spiritual love and physical desire.Read More »

SYNOPSIS
Brazil constitutes Terry Gilliam’s enormously ambitious follow-up to his 1981 Time Bandits. It also represents the second installment in a trilogy of Gilliam films on imagination versus reality, that began with Bandits and ended in 1989 with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. To create this wild, visually audacious satire, Gilliam combines dystopian elements from Orwell, Huxley and Kafka (plus a central character who mirrors Walter Mitty) with his own trademark, Monty Python-esque, jet black British humor and his gift for extraordinary visual invention. The results are thoroughly unprecedented in the cinema.Read More »

Anger rages in Philip as he awaits the publication of his second novel. He feels pushed out of his adopted home city by the constant crowds and noise, a deteriorating relationship with his photographer girlfriend Ashley, and his own indifference to promoting the novel. When Philip’s idol Ike Zimmerman offers his isolated summer home as a refuge, he finally gets the peace and quiet to focus on his favorite subject: himself. Read More »