Stan and Ollie is a 2018 biographical comedy-drama film by Jon S. Baird, written by Jeff Pope. Based on the later years of comedy doppelganger Laurel Hardy, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly play Laurel and Oliver, respectively.
The film premiered on October 21 at the closing of BFI London Film Festival on November 21, 2018. Following the premiere of The End of the Tour at the BFI LFF 2018, the film received consistently positive reviews from critics. The film premiered at the 2018 British Film Festival (BFF) Closing Gala at Cineworld Leicester Square on September 21, 2018.
In 1996, Rolling Stone author David Lipsky spent five days interviewing the celebrated novelist and essayist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel, who you may never have seen). The film is based on the 2010 book The Course of How You End Up Becoming Yourself by the same author. But it wasn’t just depression that hung over Wallace that plagued him and in 2008 Lipsky’s use of the material became the basis for his book. The book won a national magazine award for the story that led to it.
Featuring Jason Segel as Rolling Stone writers David Lipsky and Jesse Eisenberg, we follow Segel as they interview Wallace in Infinite Jest: The Book Tour. Segel, in particular, is terrific in portraying Wallace as a rounded and heartbreaking character.
It’s wonderful to see a film about intimacy, love and hope having its UK premiere at the LFF, says Lee. The film blows through thanks to its short running time and good speed, but it is impressive to convey that it feels more like it could have ended at least in the final cut. Coupled with well-coordinated performances by Segel and Eisenberg, The End of the Tour is an entertaining and inspiring introspection at its best, combining cerebral thoughtfulness, rich character chemistry and genuine human warmth.
It is one of the best explorations of a specific dynamic cultural giant in cinema about a reporter who fantasizes about becoming as big as his subject in the same field one day. It is not a biography of the man, let alone a celebration of his work or worldview. Whether this proves to be a breach of contract or a bonus or non-factor for the viewer depends on how he wants it.
It’s one of those festivals with lots of bonuses, where smaller releases can keep up with Hollywood’s big boys without getting so much attention. For those who have never shown in this country, it is worth checking out the Leaf programme, watching some of the film reviews and taking some risks.
This year’s BFI London Film Festival had a closing gala, with writer and director Francis Lees presenting the long-awaited sequel to Gods Own Country. The film brought down the curtain on October 18 with simultaneous screenings in cinemas around the UK and a virtual introduction by the cast.
Playwright Donald Margulies’ Dinner with Friends adapts David Lipsky’s book Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (Lipsky, Five Days on the Road), which Wallace filmed in 1996 when he finished his promotional tour for Infinite Jest. The artist Clio Barnard switches from shooting for the late playwright Andrea Dunbar with Rita Sue Bob to a rather ordinary documentary. The film mixes interviews with Dunbar’s family and friends, sees lip-syncing actors behind the scenes while his plays are performed on the playwright’s estate, and live television footage of Dunbar in the 1980s, creating a fascinating and inventive game of fact, fiction and reminiscences.
Lipsky is the co-writer of Rolling Stone, convincing his editor to authorize an outrageous profile of a writer in the shadow of the film’s Wallace. The 34-year-old’s autographs and other appearances in the Midwest are sensational if uncomfortable. Lipsky is not of Wallace’s intellectual level, but he is smart, a good listener, excellent at keeping topics open, and his demeanor is anything but presumptuous. In this way, they conduct what he calls “the best conversation I’ve ever had.”.
The way in which Sam Tusker wants to take his story into his own hands, which turns out to be a gradual offer of servitude to the freedom he wants to offer others, is marked by pressure and pull.
The cinematography by Raoul Coutards and the music by George Delerues enhance the beauty and the penetration. Small revelations emerge in the course of the film – Tusker, for example, makes Sam his future companion for a month – and employs a deft hand of direction to linger at every moment, each line of dialogue building a layer of narrative around a deeply rooted sense of history between them. It is only natural that the lightness and calm, grounded emotion of the characters soften the clichéd edges of the films and that some dialogue and narrative threads feel a little predictable.
Antonioni’s masterpiece in the middle of his career, his first colour film in color, tells the story of Giuliana (Monica Vitti), a young woman in a psychological and emotional crisis who begins an affair. The Red Desert is a world fable, a fantasy, a fantasy, a hallucination. It is a breathtaking film by a great Italian author, a deserved winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1965 and a highlight of post-war European cinema.
Riz Ahmed plays a young British-Pakistani rapper who just completed a small but successful solo tour. He landed a spot as the opening act for a famous artist on his upcoming world tour.
He begins a new tour, but when he returns to his family home in London, he ends up in hospital and his career plans for the immediate future are in jeopardy. Before sailing to Ireland to continue the tour, Stan admits that no matter what the film is, they will continue to work on it. Surprised, he asks if he knows the truth, and Oliver says they do.