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ComingSoon.net
Secrets of The Illusionist Set Revealed
Source: Andyman
April 30, 2005
Scooper 'Andyman' is giving ComingSoon.net an exclusive look at the set of writer/director Neil Burger's The Illusionist, a turn-of-the-century drama starring Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel and Rufus Sewell.

Burger's adaptation of the Steven Millhauser short story "Eisenheim the Illusionist" is set in 1900 Vienna. In the film, a streetwise magician (Norton) uses his dark arts to win Princess Sophie (Biel) away from Crown Prince Leopold (Sewell).

The set was built in the historic town of Tabor, Czech Republic.
http://comingsoon.net/news/topnews.php?id=9400

More on "The Illusionist"

BBC updates Shakespeare

Owen Gibson, media correspondent
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
The Guardian

The BBC is hoping to bring Shakespeare alive for a new generation after signing up a string of well-known faces including Rufus Sewell, Stephen Tompkinson and Billie Piper to star in a series of big-budget adaptations of the Bard's plays.

The hour-long dramas, which follow the successful template laid down by transplanting Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to the modern day, will be shown this autumn on BBC1 in prime time as part of a Shakespeare season.

Following a plea from Michael Grade, the BBC's chairman, for more "ambition" in BBC drama, and with an eye on the debate on the future of the licence fee, the corporation hopes to focus attention on its reputation for high-quality original productions rather than ratings winners such as Holby City.

The BBC is remaking The Taming of the Shrew, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream in its first Shakespeare adaptations for 15 years. If they are successful more plays are likely to get the same treatment.

Sewell, who has just finished making The Legend of Zorro with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Antonio Banderas, will star as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew. Shirley Henderson will play Kate, an opposition MP told to find herself a husband to make herself more electable. Twiggy Lawson, the former model, and Tompkinson will also star.

Damian Lewis, the British actor who made his name in the Steven Spielberg mini-series Band of Brothers, will play Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing as the anchor of an early evening regional news show. His co-presenter, former lover and now arch-enemy, Beatrice, will be played by Sarah Parish, who recently appeared in BBC1's Blackpool.

Billie Piper, who also appeared in one of the Canterbury Tales adaptations and later this month will star as Doctor Who's sidekick, Rose, said last week that she had landed the role of Hero in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play, adapted by the screenwriter Peter Bowker, will be set in a holiday park.

James McAvoy, who most recently starred in the Channel 4 comedy drama Shameless, will play Joe Macbeth, an award winning chef, in a version of the play transported from the Scottish Highlands to a high pressure kitchen. Keeley Hawes, star of the BBC1 spy drama Spooks, will play Ella Macbeth.

Shakespeare's plays have been regularly transplanted to modern settings on stage and screen, with mixed results. Baz Luhrmann's 1996 Hollywood version of Romeo and Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was credited with enthusing cinemagoers about Shakespeare and more recently Levi's used dialogue from A Midsummer Night's Dream in a TV ad campaign.

Laura Mackie, the head of the BBC's drama series, said: "There have been modern versions of Shakespeare before but these new interpretations remain true to the originals.

"At the same time, they are a very personal take by each writer - our aspiration is that they work on their own terms for a modern audience."

The adaptations will accompany a Shakespeare season across the BBC's TV channels, radio stations and websites.

They will also link up with the Shakespeare Schools Festival to organise a one-off event on the evening of July 3, when 400 schools will perform abridged versions of the plays in 100 theatres around the country.

thanks, Rai!!

productiviteit

SEWELL, Rufus Frederick
Actor; b 29 Oct. 1967; s of late Bill Sewell and of Jo Sewell; m 1999, Yasmin Abdallah (marr. diss.); partner, Amy Gardener; one s. Theatre includes: As You Like It, The Government Inspector, The Seagull, Crucible, Sheffield, 1989; Royal Hunt of the Sun, Comedians, Compass, 1989; Pride and Prejudice, Royal Exchange, Manchester, 1991; Making It Better, Hampstead and Criterion, 1992; Arcadia, NT, 1993; Translations, Plymouth Th., NY, 1995; Rat in the Skull, Duke of York's, 1995; Macbeth, Queen's, 1999; Luther, NT, 2001. Films include: Twenty-One, 1991; Carrington, Victory, 1995; Hamlet, 1997; Dark City, The Woodlanders, At Sachem Farm, Martha Meet Frank Daniel and Laurence, Illuminata, 1998; The Honest Courtesan, In a Savage Land, 1999; Bless the Child, A Knight's Tale, 2001; Extreme Ops, 2003. Television includes: Middlemarch, 1994; Cold Comfort Farm, Henry IV, 1995; Arabian Nights, 2000; She-Creature, 2001; Helen of Troy, 2003; Charles II: The Power and the Passion, 2003.

thanks, Nadine!!

Rufus Sewell's favourite films: A Matter of Life and Death, Being There,
Bedknobs and Broomsticks

The Arvon Foundation and Anthony Minghella host

LOVE LETTERS

Guests will be able to bid on dedicated romantic readings from: Simon Callow, Tara Fitzgerald, Patricia Hodge, Adrian Lester, Angharad Rees, Alan Rickman, Rufus Sewell, Fiona Shaw, Juliet Stevenson and Imogen Stubbs (amongst others, subject to availability)
Date: 10 February, 2005

Love Letters will take place at 7pm on Thursday 10th February 2005 at Middle Temple Hall, Middle Temple Lane, London EC4

Tickets: Ł125

For more information or to book your tickets contact Philip Cowell on 020 7931

7611 or email london

http://www.arvonfoundation.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=6
thanks, Renata!!

Winner Takes All: A Life of Sorts (Robson Books, Ł17.95) - is not a glossy guide to the 1970s quiz show with Jimmy Tarbuck and Geoffrey Wheeler, but the memoirs of the director of Death Wish, Death Wish II, Death Wish III and Won Ton Ton - the Dog that Saved Hollywood. It's easy to be sarcastic about the film career of Michael Winner - particularly if you've ever watched the scene from Dirty Weekend (1993) in which Rufus Sewell looms between a pair of Lia Williams' drying knickers - but this book serves as a useful reminder that before Charles Bronson stormed into his life, he was a perfectly respectable director.

His bedsitland thriller West Eleven (1963) and advertising satire I'll Never Forget What's 'is name (1967) are long overdue for reappraisal, and it's only his status in the culture as a mouthy, self-important gargoyle that's preventing their rediscovery.

The uproariously enjoyable Winner Takes All is written with the same gurgling immodesty familiar from his ads for car insurance, but the author shows that he can be humble when he needs to be, particularly when Marlon Brando or Orson Welles are in the room. His account of his relationship with his mother, a hopeless gambling addict, is the heart of the book. He describes her decision to turn his Bar Mitzvah into a poker party, his attempts to bawl her into having a heart attack, her plan to have him arrested for stealing her jewellery, and the numerous lawsuits they launched against each other.

It'd make a wonderful movie, with Rufus Sewell as Winner and Jenny Seagrove as Mumsy, of course. And in the meantime, Winner's book will serve. One to read by the fire, not throw into it.

thanks, Rai!

Rufus Sewell aboard Zorro Sequel
Source: The Hollywood Reporter, Sunday, July 25, 2004

British actor Rufus Sewell is joining the cast of Columbia Pictures' "The Legend of Zorro." Says The Hollywood Reporter.

Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are reuniting with director Martin Campbell for "The Mask of Zorro" sequel. Sewell portrays Armand, Zorro's rival for the affections of Elena (Zeta-Jones).

July 9,2004
The Evening Standard (London)

BY: SEBASTIAN SHAKESPEARE
Rufus joins the Bushoisie

Is Shepherd's Bush going up in the world? Having weathered the loss of Nigella Lawson, who found the area not to her liking, residents can breathe a sigh of relief with news that dashing actor Rufus Sewell has bought a house in the area. Da Bush, deemed by the cognoscenti to be much cooler and more shabby-chic than Notting Hill, will no doubt suit the Bristol-driving actor and his young family well though I hear trams are soon going to be all the rage.