While the movie hasn’t premiered yet (it’ll first be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in October), there are already many who think this could be a strong awards contender. That’s partly because of a good cast and an incredible based on a true story plot.
Here’s the synopsis: ‘From the production team that brought us The King’s Speech comes Lion: the incredible true story of Saroo Brierley and his 25-year odyssey. Precocious five-year-old Saroo Khan is always up for an adventure. Eager to help his older brother Guddu with any odd job that will provide their family with much-needed money, Saroo follows Guddu everywhere he goes. One night the two boys are separated on a train platform in their native Madhya Pradesh, and Saroo winds up nearly a thousand miles away in Calcutta. Homeless in a strange city where he doesn’t speak the language, Saroo gets by on his street smarts until he is taken in by a government orphanage. When an Australian couple adopts him, he is taken to live with them in Hobart, Tasmania. It’s not until Saroo leaves that island as a young Australian man that he begins to wonder what became of his first home and the family he so adored. Ingeniously using satellite images from Google Earth, he finds a lead to follow up on. But the search for Saroo’s past threatens to overwhelm his present, and he finds himself further adrift than he ever imagined possible.’
Dev Patel plays the grown-up Saroo, with the likes of Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, and David Wenham also starring. It’ll be getting an Oscar friendly US release at the end of the year, and should arrive in the UK shortly afterwards. [Read more…]
Genius has been in the works for a long time – Colin Firth first attached himself to it back in 2012 – but it’s only now that it’s in the can and the first trailer for the movie has arrived. While a movie about a book editor doesn’t sound that interesting, as it’s about a man who helped the likes of Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald get published, it’s certainly got potential.
Shortly after the 2009 Argentinian movie The Secret in Their Eyes won the Best Foreign Language Oscar there was a lot of talk on making an English-language version. It’s taken a while but now it’s on its way, with Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead role, alongside Julia Roberts and Nicole Kidman.
Reviews were rather mixed for Werner Herzog’s Queen of the Desert at its first festival screenings, but the trailer suggests it will at least look good. And if you’ve ever wanted to see Robert Pattinson as Lawrence Of Arabia, this is your chance.
Nicole Kidman is set to reunite with her Rabbit Hole director, John Cameron Mitchell for How To Talk To Girls At Parties. Mitchell is going back behind the camera after a turn in the Broadway production of Hedwig & The Angry Inch, the show he created in the 1990s and which helped make his name.
Newsroom and Slumdog Millionaire star Dev Patel has landed a new movie role, as 
Last summer there was surprise when after Colin Firth had been due to voice Paddington in the live-action/CGI movie about famous bear, he stepped out and Ben Whishaw came in. It means that while we’ve had trailer and teasers, were haven’t heard from Paddington himself – until now, that is.
Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth have been spending a lot of time together recently, as they played husband and wife in The Railway Man, and now they’ve re-teamed for the psychological thriller Before I Go To Sleep.