The King's Speech: The making of a very British smash hit

The King's Speech has captured the imagination of cinema audiences around the world. But it almost never happened. Here, its key players reveal the story behind a movie phenomenon 'I actually used my voice very badly for a while,' said Colin Firth who plays King George VI

The King’s Speech has swept all before it to become a critically acclaimed, worldwide box-office success. The story of an unconventional Australian therapist, Lionel Logue, who teaches the painfully shy King George VI to overcome a crippling speech impediment and lead his country into World War II, has been nominated for 14 Baftas and 12 Oscars.

With exclusive interviews with lead star Colin Firth, the producers and back-room staff, together with candid onset photography and the set designer’s beautifully detailed paintings, Live lets the movie team speak for itself about the making of the film of the year.

The story began in April 2008, when, soon after British producer Iain Canning set up new film company See-Saw Films, a play by writer (and childhood stammerer) David Seidler arrived in his office. It had been sent to him by valued contact and Bedlam Productions chief Gareth Unwin; he had a hunch that it could be adapted for the screen. Canning agreed on a joint production – and that Colin Firth was perfect to play the Duke of York.

In August 2009, with director Tom Hooper and a cast also now including Helena Bonham Carter, the team looked for funding – but the timing, just after the financial crisis, could hardly have been worse...

Woody Allen movie to open Cannes Film Festival

Director Woody Allen's new romantic comedy Midnight in Paris is to open the Cannes Film Festival in May, organisers have announced.

Shot in the French capital last year, it features a cameo from France's first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

Festival director Thierry Fremaux called the movie "a wonderful love letter to Paris".

US actor Robert De Niro will chair the jury at the event, which runs from 11 to 22 May in the south of France.

The international cast of Midnight in Paris includes Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates and France's Marion Cotillard.

According to Cannes organisers, it will open in French cinemas on the same day it is screened at the festival so "audiences can experience live the entire programme of the opening night".

"It's a film in which Woody Allen takes a deeper look at the issues raised in his last films - our relationship with history, art, pleasure and life," Mr Fremaux continued.

The director's previous work, the London-based You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, screened out of competition at last year's festival.

Sanctum

The Avatar director is merely executive ­producer of this ­cliched underground adventure, drably directed by Australian Alister Grierson.

Never have I seen 3D used so poorly. There are no breathtaking panoramas, and most of the film is shot in near-darkness.

A gruff old potholer (Richard Roxburgh), his stroppy son (Rhys Wakefield, pictured), a cocky capitalist (Ioan Gruffudd) and various ­disposable members of the cast are marooned deep beneath the earth’s crust when a cyclone hits, blocking their exit. The only way to go is down.

That goes for the script and performances, too, making Sanctum reminiscent of The Cave, a forgettable film of 2005 in which second-rate actors fell, drowned or killed each other one by one, until the least ­annoying one was left.

This follows exactly the same format, but by the end it may be you who are screaming to be let out of the dark.

The Fighter

The Fighter is two movies for the price of one. The first is a real-life Rocky, as lovable lug Micky Ward (Mark ­Wahlberg) starts out as a ­dim-­witted loser but becomes a champ thanks to his ­marginally brighter ­girlfriend — that’s the usually sweet Amy Adams, ­valiantly playing against type as a foul-mouthed working-class barmaid with tattoos and denim hot pants.

It’s also a shouty, working-class family drama — think ­EastEnders, with more smoking, gallons of hair lacquer and enough ­leopard-skin on the women to clothe a tribe of Zulu warriors.

In order for Micky to triumph as an individual in the ring, he first has to take on his spectacularly dysfunctional family outside it — notably seven tough sisters, all seemingly unmarried, jobless and spoiling for a fight, his ­ferocious manager-mother (Melissa Leo) and his unreliable trainer-brother Dicky (Christian Bale).

Of these characters, the most colourful is Dicky, a one-time championship contender who sent Sugar Ray Leonard to the canvas and became a local legend.

Unfortunately, failure has gone to his head and he’s become an emaciated, wild-eyed ­crack addict who’s not much use to himself, let alone his brother.

Dicky’s being followed around by a camera crew, who he thinks are interested in him because he’s planning a ­comeback but actually want to record the decline and fall of a drug addict.

Bale steals the movie with a mesmerisingly goofy ­performance. It could easily be dismissed as a brazen attempt to win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, except that we get a glimpse of the real Dicky during the end credits, and he’s just as much of a show-off.

Rabbit Hole

The performance of the week turns out to be in Rabbit Hole, a gruelling, wordy drama about a couple (Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman) ­suffering after the accidental death of their four-year-old son.

Sensitively directed by John Cameron Mitchell, it looks like an opened-out stage play, and it is. Although it’s sad, it avoids ­miserabilism, because it is leavened by touches of humour and a refusal to wallow. The reason to see it is Kidman. She’s wonderfully transparent, subtle and honest. This is an astonishing performance, rightly Oscar-nominated.

But though the play won a Pulitzer prize, the film will ­struggle to find an audience.

Harry Potter franchise to get outstanding Bafta award

The Harry Potter films will receive an outstanding British contribution to cinema prize at this year's Bafta awards, organisers have announced.

Potter author JK Rowling and producer David Heyman will receive the award on behalf of the franchise.

The films have "highlighted the expertise within the British craft and technical industries", Bafta said

The 2011 Bafta Film Awards will be held at London's Royal Opera House on 13 February.

Starting in 2001 with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the seven films released so far have made more than $5.4 billion worldwide.

An eighth and final instalment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, will be released in July.

Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, 21, said he had "loved every minute of making these films".

"To me the real heroes are the crew and the huge team of craftsmen that have made all eight of them possible," he went on.

"This award is a testament to their incredible work."

Radcliffe's sentiments were echoed by co-star Emma Watson, who said it was "a huge honour".

"Thank you so much Bafta for this amazing award," added Rupert Grint, who plays Ron Weasley opposite Radcliffe's Harry and Watson's Hermione Granger.

To date, the Potter movies have received seven Oscar nominations and 28 Bafta nominations.

'Cogan's Trade' could be great with or without Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt will star for director Andrew Dominik in a film version of George V. Higgins' super novel, "Cogan's Trade." That's got to be good news of some kind for Higgins fans. During my first professional job in journalism, at Boston magazine, I had the pleasure to interview and once or twice edit Higgins, the lawyer turned fiction-writer whose debut book, "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," is a perfect novel about imperfect crimes. Like Hammett in his day, Higgins (who died in 1999) brought American writing closer to crime as Americans actually lived it in the streets -- meaning, in Higgins' case, the saloons, dives and alleyways of Boston. He also transformed the art of hardboiled storytelling, developing plot and character almost entirely through dialogue. Higgins fans would go around for weeks repeating lines like, "This life's hard...but it's harder if you're stupid."

"Cogan's Trade" (which I reviewed for the Boston Phoenix in 1974) is Higgins at his pinnacle. It's the taut, mordant tale of an enforcer bent on restoring gangland equilibrium after the stick-up of a high-stakes card game that was supposed to be shielded by the Mob. A movie version would at least bring the book back into print. And Pitt has shown the acting chops to play a member of Higgins' Beantown rogue's gallery. My fear is that director Andrew Dominik will art it up and ruin it the way he did Ron Hansen's "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." (That's Pitt as James, above). But even a failed film of "Cogan's Trade" could be worthwhile if it sparks a Higgins print revival.