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| Portishead | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Portishead, let's talk about portishead! I have some stuff for the fans: In support of the group's self-titled second album the band have just completed a 10-month world tour. Both the tour and second album were christened with a special live engagement on 24 July, 1997 at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City dubbed "PNYC". The one-night-only performance was an exclusive reworking of the band's tracks from both "Dummy" and "Portishead" and featured a full orchestra and horn section and filmed in front of an intimate audience. PNYC is now to be released as a special live recording capturing that evening on longform video, CD, double vinyl, cassette and special limited edition digipak in slipcase with booklet and ECD element About the show: The Roseland performance marked the first time any of the new songs from Portishead were being performed live and rather than performing on the ballroom stage, Portishead opted for a more informal and, ultimately, more intimate setting. The band and orchestra assembled in the round directly on the ballroom floor surrounded by the audience. Says Utley of the setup, "We wanted to get more people involved in the atmosphere around us. Being in a circle, more people could see what was going on. The musicians could all look at each other and have this intimate thing." "The whole look of it was inspired by this old Gil Evans and Miles Davis film I have at home," explains Adrian Utley of Portishead. "Shots with cameras moving slowly or having to look through cymbals to see Geoff across the room. Not you usual rock n'roll camera work, we wanted it to have a slowed down, drifting across the room feeling." Interspersed among the Roseland footage are documentary scenes of Portishead and the show filmed during the week-long rehearsal and show. The video features sixteen tracks taken from "Dummy" and "Portishead" and in addition a short film "Road Trip" and an exclusive booklet with stills from the show and information on the performers. "Road Trip" directly precedes the Roseland performance and the 10-minute film is accompanied by a soundtrack comprising a mix of Portishead instrumentals spliced together by the group's touring DJ, Andy Smith. "Road Trip" was shown as the introduction to each of the group's live shows on the world tour. The album contains nine tracks recorded live at the roseland show featuring the orchestra and horn section and two tracks drawn selectively from the band's 1997/98 world tour - the reworked Sour Times recorded live at the Warfield, San Francisco on April 1st 1998 and a version of Roads recorded live at the Quart Festival, Kristiansand, Norway on July 3rd 1998. The Digipack CD carries the short film "Road Trip" as an enhanced cd element for your PC and MAC and a special extended booklet carrying stills taken at the Roseland show. The double vinyl package carries the same tracks with a poster included. The performers: Portishead: Beth Gibbons (Voice), Geoff Barrow (Turntables, Drums), Adrian Utley (Guitar, Moog) and Dave Mcdonald (Sound). - The Band: John Baggott (Keyboards), Jim Barr (Bass), Clive Deamer (Drums) And Andy Smith (Turntables). - The Horn Players: Will Gregory, John Cornick, Dave Ford, Andy Hague And Ben Waghorn. - The Orchestra: Nick Ingman, Conductor, Jesse Levy Orchestra Manager. The Performers Are All Accomplished Classical Players Drawn From New York'S Philharmonic And Other Sources. You can always e-mail me for more stuff about portishead, or visit de official site.Check out the link below. | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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Well, about the movies i can tell you that my favourite is "Bram Stoker's Dracula".I have a thing about vampires... What can i say, i have strange tastes... I'm bringing here some stuff about vampire movies soon, so you'll just have to wait! | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Joe and Ralph Fiennes-The super brothers | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Let's pause here for a little lesson in phonetics before continuing: the name's pronounced "rafe fines". Became an instant star Stateside with his mesmerizing American-film debut performance as Amon Goeth, the sadistic and endlessly detestable commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp in Steven Spielberg's epic Holocaust film, Schindler's List (1993). The British stage vet stunned the filmmaker in his audition for the role�Spielberg said of their meeting, "He was absolutely brilliant. After seeing take one, I knew he was Amon. I saw sexual evil. It is all about subtlety: there were moments of kindness that would move across his eyes and then instantly run cold." Fiennes was so credible, so schooled in Goethisms, so physically made over to be the sadist (after all, he gained 28 pounds to play the role) that when Spielberg presented him in full Nazi officer's regalia to an actual Schindler survivor, the woman became visibly terror-stricken and needed to be supported to keep from keeling over. | Born the eldest of his farmer-photographer father and a novelist-travel writer mother's six children, Fiennes studied painting at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. After one year, he switched to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art for a three-year tutelage, earning several impressive castings�in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, and Ring Around the Moon�at London's Open Air Theatre. Fiennes' neophyte stage work gained him an invitation to join Michael Rudman's company at England's National Theatre in 1987, where he continued to turn in magnetic performances in such productions as Six Characters in Search of an Author and Fathers and Sons. Trading ever upwards in the British repertory food chain, Fiennes next joined the prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company for two seasons, beginning in 1989, where he commanded raves for his bravura stagecraft in such staple Shakespeare productions as Much Ado About Nothing, Henry VI, Troilus and Cressida, Love's Labour Lost, and King Lear. By this point, Fiennes had made quite a name for himself in his native country, and was subsequently offered a role in a British TV program, Prime Suspect, in 1991. That same year marked his feature-film debut in Paramount's first European venture, Emily Brontd's Wuthering Heights, in the role of that stock-in-trade tragic lover, Heathcliff. The film unfortunately only saw a limited U.K. release and opened to generally unfavorable reviews, though some good came out of it�Fiennes' styling of Heathcliff as a complex and subtly dangerous figure caught the attention of Spielberg, who just happened to be in the market for an actor evincing those very talents�subtlety, malevolence, and complexity�to portray the self-warring, fractured Goeth. Fiennes snagged several notable critics' awards in addition to a Golden Globe Award and a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination (the gold man for 1993 went instead to Tommy Lee Jones, for The Fugitive) for his work in Schindler's List. In his second Hollywood vehicle, director Robert Redford's Quiz Show, Fiennes played a far more sympathetic character: the morally flawed TV game show savant, Charles Van Doran. Whittled back down to his whippet-thin pre-List physique, Fiennes portrayed a wealthy, debonair WASP with feet of clay, who admits to a congressional committee his culpability in the quiz show-rigging scandal of the '50s. In 1995, Fiennes continued batting a thousand with his return to the stage�this time to the Belsaco Theatre on Broadway�for a title performance in a run of Hamlet. Though the overall production took some critical lumps, Fiennes received nothing but rave reviews, not to mention a Tony Award for Best Actor. Just when we thought we'd found our new Laurence Olivier, or at least our new Kenneth Branagh, Fiennes' next effort�the futuristic, voyeuristic thriller, Strange Days, in which he played a smarmy black-market dealer in virtual-reality discs�opened to lukewarm critical reception. But no matter: it was generally acknowledged that the burgeoning sex symbol of stage and screen had a brilliant future ahead of him. Fiennes' Golden Globe- and Oscar-nominated performance as the title character of a screen adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's best-selling novel The English Patient was proof enough of that. The Academy-approved actor, who now commands a million-dollar salary per film, next returned to the stage�and a weekly paycheck of just a few hundred dollars�to star in a London production of Chekhov's Ivanov, drawing rave reviews for his performance as the tortured titular character. In his next screen outing, he portrayed another tormented soul, the outcast Anglican clergyman protagonist of director Gillian Armstrong's haunting 1997 adaptation of Peter Carey's Booker Prize-winning novel Oscar & Lucinda. Fiennes most recently headlined the 1998 big-screen version of the '60s cult TV classic series The Avengers, portraying natty superspy Jonathan Steed to Uma Thurman's amateur sleuth Emma Peel. Upcoming roles include the title role of Eugene Onegin and a gig voicing the Pharoah Rameses in The Prince of Egypt; he has also been mentioned for roles in Anna Karenina, The Elixir, and The Rationalist. About Joseph: The striking resemblance between Joseph Fiennes and his elder, internationally acclaimed brother Ralph extends beyond the physical: Seems the family gene pool is well stocked with Oscar-worthy acting talent. The evidence can be seen in not one but two holiday features certain to make moviegoers take notice of Fiennes the younger. In November Fiennes co-starred in the sumptuous Elizabeth�which charts the rise to power of England's so-called Virgin Queen�as the callow aristocrat who becomes the embattled monarch's great love. In John Madden's Shakespeare In Love, the handsome young Brit takes center stage as the Bard himself. His character is not the "playwright for the ages" audiences may be expecting to see�a literary genius whose work has endured for centuries. Rather, Fiennes' Will is youthful and robustly romantic, a little-known aspiring playwright employed by a desperate, snaggle-toothed theater owner and struggling with writer's block as he fiddles with a potboiler called Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. Much-needed inspiration arrives in the cross-dressing person of Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow), a winsome lass who soon teaches the young playwright what true tragedy great love can mean. Son of a professional photographer, the stage-trained Joseph isn't the only Fiennes family member laboring in the artistic shadow of his famous older sibling. Sister Marta has just directed Ralph and Liv Tyler in Onegin, a film adaptation of the classic Russian love poem, for which brother Magnus composed the music. Another brother is an archeologist, and another sister, a producer. Only Joe's fraternal twin, Jake, settled on a vocation outside the realms of art and academia�he's a gamekeeper on an English estate. Though starring in a movie that's being heralded as the sleeper of the season (and a potential Best Picture contender to boot) could make anyone a bit giddy, the 28-year-old Fiennes did his best to appear nonchalant at a recent interview with Mr. Showbiz. Looking elegant in a Paul Smith black windowpane suit, pink shirt, and black work boots, he downplayed the significance of his current high profile at the box-office, recalled his earliest experiences with acting, and turned a critical eye on his own outfit, the work of a designer who favors, "a modern twist on the classics. Like Shakespeare In Love, I guess." Right you are, Joe.
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