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Watch part two
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| Uberto Pasolini, the director of Machan and the producer of The Full Monty joins Amanda |
In 1996, Uberto Pasolini produced one of Britain's biggest ever international exports: The Full Monty. The film, about six unemployed steel workers in Sheffield who form a male striptease act, met surprising global success and made actor Robert Carlyle into a household name.
Flash-forward a decade and Pasolini makes his directorial debut with Machan.
Based on a true story, Machan follows a group of desperate Sri Lankan slum dwellers living on the margins of society. With their spirits at an all-time low, the chance discovery of a handball tournament in Bavaria appears to them like a present from the gods. Even if none of them knows what handball is, a bogus application to the tournament is submitted and soon a mismatched collection of friends and colleagues, creditors and policemen, join together in the unlikely Sri Lanka National Handball Team.
It is a hilarious, heart-warming comedy that transcends language and culture.
Uberto Pasolini joins Amanda Palmer and The Fabulous Picture Show audience to discuss his first foray into directing and how a newspaper story he read in Australia about the unofficial Sri Lankan handball team stuck in his mind so much that he had to make a film about it.
Valhalla Rising
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| Valhalla Rising, the 'BC' version of Winding Refn's Pusher trilogy |
We go on set of Valhalla Rising, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, the Danish filmmaker behind the much-esteemed Pusher trilogy.
Before filming began, Winding Refn described Valhalla Rising, a Viking epic, as "Pusher BC", an early Scandinavian equivalent of his gritty Pusher esthetic.
But when he started filming on the windswept Scottish Highlands, he became overwhelmed by the brute force of nature. With the help of his state-of-the-art Red digital camera, he decided to make some substantial changes in his creative approach – including shooting the entire film in slow-motion!
FPS looks at Winding Refn's career to date and asks him just what the heck is going on up there in Scotland.
Tilda Swinton
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| Tilda Swinton in Julia, a film by Eric Zonca |
Tilda Swinton is one of the most enigmatic and spell-binding actresses that Britain has produced.
As an art house veteran and often cited as filmmaker Derek Jarman's muse, her earlier work pushed away celebrity and recognition for interesting characters and brilliant scripts.
That reputation was solidified with the release of Orlando, Sally Potter's meditative essay on love, power, and politics. Playing Virginia Woolf's aristocrat granted three centuries of life, the striking Swinton embodied both male and female identities.
In the 15 years since, Swinton has moved fluidly between daring independent and quality mainstream films, where she usually plays larger-than-life mythic characters: the head of a futuristic corporation in Vanilla Sky, the White Witch Jadis in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, and a corrupt Angel Gabriel in Constantine.
And with her role as a working-class wife in Tim Roth's War Zone, and as a conflicted mother in the excellent thriller The Deep End (for which she received a Golden Globe nomination), Swinton demonstrated her talent for realistic psychological nuance as well.
She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as an obsessively ambitious corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton. This year she stars in three films: the Coen Brothers' Burn After Reading, David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Eric Zonca's Julia.
Amanda Palmer joins Tilda to discuss her role in Julia, where she plays an alcoholic on the decline who tries to extort money, using a young boy as bait.
Man on Wire
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| James Marsh's Man on Wire features Philippe Petit, the famous tightrope walker |
Man on Wire takes a look at tightrope walker Philippe Petit's daring, but illegal, high-wire routine performed between New York City's World Trade Center's twin towers in 1974, what some consider, "the artistic crime of the century."
FPS speaks to Petit about his post-9-11 feelings regarding those towers, and to director James Marsh about his inspired decision to fashion his documentary in the style of a '50s crime caper.
This episode of The Fabulous Picture Show will be broadcast at the following times GMT:
Saturday, December 13: 0830, 2230; Sunday, December 14: 0630, 1930; Monday, December 15: 0300; Tuesday, December 16: 1430; Wednesday, December 17: 0130, 1230, 1900; Thursday, December 18: 0330, 1400, 2330; Friday, December 19: 0730.
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