Various Sources – 29th November, 2011

REG was one of the celebrity guests at Stella McCartney’s Mayfair store to watch the annual switching on of the Christmas lights.

Other guests included Sir Bob Geldof, Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Moss, Alexa Chung, Sir Peter Blake and Pam Hogg.

Jennifer Saunders was the MC for the event, launching into her famous Ab-Fab character, Edina Monsoon, and making a speech in which she made reference to last seeing Paul McCartney “in a cupboard in Berlin in the Sixties”, as well as noting the fact that “there were plenty of old models there, including Kate Moss” who, in Edina’s opinion, was clearly past her best.

Edina then introduced a special mystery guest, Emma Bunton of the Spice Girls — although she initially got her name wrong and called her “Baby Bunton” from Girls Aloud. Emma then hit the switch to light up the store.

There was traditional Christmas fare, such as mince pies, Christmas cookies, Charbonnel and Walker chocolates.

Dame Kelly Holmes, Sharleen Spiteri, Helen Lederer (who also used to be in Absolutely Fabulous) and Mariella Frostrup were also at the event.

Above photo by Dave M. Benett (Getty Images)

The video below is courtesy of GayTimes.co.uk.

Chatsworth Communications – 22nd November, 2011

Reputation. A film with Richard E. Grant

Starring: Richard E. Grant
Directed by Jamie Thraves
Principal photography: Catherine Derry
Sound: Jonathan Mitchell
Music: Nick Etwell
Editor: Jeremy Fox
Produced by Chatsworth

Cult actor Richard E. Grant is starring in a film for Chatsworth, themed on the importance of reputation and protecting it.

Called simply ‘Reputation’, the film was directed by award winning director, Jamie Thraves, known for his work with Radiohead and Blur and was shot in London and features the actor musing on the value of reputation and its value.

Grant, who shot to fame with his career-defining role in Withnail and I shot the film for Chatsworth fresh from filming The Iron Lady with Meryl Streep, where he plays Michael Hestletine and which has already garnered critical acclaim and talk of Oscar glory. Chatsworth Communications is rebranding and repositioning to focus on reputation management, following growth in the core business and the team including expansion into digital and social media with the opening of a new studio and creative hub in London.

“We wanted to explore the concept of reputation and the equity in a good name but with humour and intelligence,” said Nick Murray-Leslie, CEO, Chatsworth.

“Richard was amazing to work with and we were very lucky to have a director of Jamie’s calibre driving the creative process.”

“The importance of reputation and the need to protect it at all costs is the one strand which unifies our work and is the service we deliver to our clients.

“We specialise in digital and video work for our clients to help tell their stories and explain what they are all about, but we seem to be the first PR company to use the technique to explain our own offering. PR companies are notoriously bad at their own marketing and communicating visually what they do. No agency worth its salt would recommend to a client that using pages of text and navigation is a effective way to communicate their offering, so why do so many do it themselves so often. The PR industry must evolve to stay relevant and that means communicating the value we add more effectively. That means marrying our strategic thinking with arresting and engaging presentation.”

Chatsworth was founded by former Huntsworth and Barclays comms director Nick Murray-Leslie in 2005.

TheGuardian.co.uk – 22nd November, 2011

My favourite film: Readers’ comments – week four

We’re picking out your finest responses to our My favourite film series, for which Guardian writers have selected the movies they go back to time and again.

Here’s a roundup of how you responded in week four, when the selections were Withnail & I, Rushmore, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, Backbeat and In Bruges

“You can’t ruin a film by quoting it,” said magicman of Withnail & I, the pic that opened the fourth week of our series on our writers’ favourite films. But, by God, you can try. A full half of the 447 comments that joined Tim Jonze in raising a glass to Bruce Robinson’s ragtag comedy reproduced Withnail’s wisdom to the letter. Withnail and Marwood fled the city for an accidental holiday again. Uncle Monty made his intentions forcefully clear once more. Camberwell carrots were rolled, fights were weasled out of. Something’s flesh remained. It all happened here, many times over.

There was a mini backlash (“I almost never mention to anyone that it’s in my top five favourite films of all time,” said stpauli. “Simply because I can’t bear to hear people endlessly parroting quotes from it at me and thus ruining it”), there were anecdotes about quotes (both stars – Richard E Grant and Paul McGann – have had lines yelled at them while out walking the remote countryside apparently) and some of you got savvy. “He’s not the Messiah,” said Lushattic. “He’s a … oh wait”, which made us chuckle. In the same vein, bobskiT was Spartacus, RogerBlank was blowing the bloody doors off and Nufced started govoreeting real horrorshow.

Tim, who talked eloquently about growing up watching the film with his younger brother, saw it all coming. “The most quoted lines became passé,” he said in his review. “We started finding hidden humour lying in the merest twinge of facial expression”. To him Withnail was about ageing and conformity – a slightly sad buddy movie set in a decade “fizzling out, leaving an entire generation with one hell of a comedown”. TheMicroProf agreed: “It has both polythene-bound feet firmly planted in tragedy,” he/she said. “Its themes are centred around loss. Withnail’s loss of dignity, career and, ultimately, friendship. Monty’s lost love. Danny’s lost decade. In the final analysis only Marwood gained, and it is his departure from the culture of loss that provides such a moving climax”. “It’s the pathos that makes the film more than just a quote-fest,” said xtrapnel.

SydneyTaff was a little harsher in his/her analysis. “This film is the quintessence of pretence and contrivance,” they said. “It’s a study in University Humour. The cinematic equivalent of The Young Ones; in jokes, unfunny puns and asides, all the clever things we wished we’d said when we were 20”. Which, to us, encapsulates every decent comedy from Duck Soup to Wayne’s World, but there you go.

DoktorRovindi had “very vague” memories of seeing it. “A mate and me had consumed various chemicals and snuck a bottle of whiskey in,” they said. “Unsurprisingly, our antics, whilst closely resembling the on-screen antics, where deemed OTT and the boys from West End Central hauled us out for swift journey to the cells and a charge of drunk and disorderly”. Let’s hope, despite the moniker, that TheLittleWaster isn’t of the same school. He or she has 153 viewings and counting. We are indeed drifting into the arena of the unwell…

To read about the other films of the week, just click on this link to go to The Guardian website.

The Sydney Morning Herald – 19th November, 2011

By Karl Quinn

Gina Riley sports her unmistakeable Kim pout alongside British co-star Richard E. Grant on the set of The Kath & Kim Filum at Montsalvat.

It’s a beautiful day at Montsalvat, but rain is on the way, so Rick McKenna, executive producer of The Kath & Kim Filum, is juggling things to beat the weather. Trouble is, there’s a lot more things to juggle than in his usual realm, television.

“I’m having to come to terms with the Rubik’s cube of filmmaking,” says McKenna, whose wife, Gina Riley, is at this very moment into her second hour of lying in a bed in the Great Hall – which doubles as a room in a castle in Italy – for a scene in which her character, Kim, says not a word.

“In TV, you can make little decisions without it really affecting anything,” McKenna says. “But the size of the machine here, if you make one small decision you drive everyone bonkers.”

RIGHT: The foxy ladies in the TV series.

But a little craziness is a small price to pay if the foxy ladies from Fountain Gate can successfully leap from small screen to big.

McKenna, Riley and Jane Turner, who plays Kath Day-Knight, are so convinced they can they have put the lion’s share of the money into the movie.

“Is it a gamble?” McKenna asks. “Absolutely. But it’s a considered one.”

The last fresh material from the team was in 2007, but the website still attracts 30,000 unique visitors a month. Among the show’s fans is actor Richard E. Grant, known on set simply as “REG”, who was offered a part after meeting McKenna at the launch of Bill Granger’s restaurant in London.

“I play the page who works for the king of Papilloma, this invented principality on the bottom of Italy,” he says.

Magda Szubanski’s Sharon falls for him. “And the more disdainful and cruel my character is to her, the more she interprets it as a sign of true love. She’s hilarious.”

Is it a class comedy? “In a way I think it is,” Grant says in his most impeccably plummy voice. But, he adds, “the suburban foxy ladies win out, at all costs”.

Filming is due to wrap next week, and the movie should be released in the middle of 2012.

Crave Online – 16th November, 2011

Richard E. Grant’s character “Withnail” from Withnail And I has been named as one of the 10 Worst Film Friends Ever, according to Crave Online. Coming in at number 5, the site states:

It is 1969, and Marwood (Paul McGann) is living in poverty with his friend Withnail (Richard E. Grant). Withnail is noisy, crass, rude, and browbeats Marwood at every possibly opportunity. Withnail fancies himself a free-spirited Bohemian type, but is little more than a foul-mouthed alcoholic. Profanity flows freely out of him, and he seems to have perfected a fashion of cursing that sounds like spitfire poetry. He often has schemes of getting money or finally overcoming his beefs with The Man, but never does anything more than drink and cuss. When Marwood and Withnail move into a country cottage, their friendship begins to stand in stark relief, and the weak-willed Marwood begins to see Withnail for the manipulative sphincter that he is. These two have been friends for so long, neither of them seems to have recognized that their relationship is now one of hateful co-dependence. Few comedies are as dreary and as acidic as Bruce Robinson’s Withnail & I, a film that has a vast cult ready to stand behind it. Not like Withnail would do the same for you.

You can check out the other contenders by clicking on the link at the top of this article.