Notizie

Landmark painting Le Moulin de la Galette was once owned by man who inspired James Bond's famous villain

A painting that made Vincent van Gogh's name will go on sale this month after almost half a century hidden away in private ownership.

Le Moulin de la Galette depicts a windmill against a sunny sky above Montmartre in Paris. It was first shown in public in Amsterdam, 15 years after Van Gogh's death. Later it was the proud possession of the powerful American industrialist who inspired Ian Fleming to create his arch-villain Auric Goldfinger, the quintessential enemy of James Bond, whose closest companion was a fluffy white cat.

Van Gogh painted the work in April 1887 at a key point in the development of his vibrant, colourful style. During a two-year period, just after he had moved to Paris to live with his brother, Theo, the impoverished painter moved away from...

Actor best known for his role as the rugged and handsome captain in The Onedin Line

James Onedin, the protagonist of the long-running BBC television series The Onedin Line, gained his splendid name from a sea nymph. After the programme's creator, Cyril Abraham, had read about mythological figure Ondine, he transposed the "e", thus making her a man. And what a man: Peter Gilmore, who played Onedin in 91 episodes from 1971 to 1980, had tousled hair, flinty eyes, hollow cheeks, mutton-chop sideburns racing across his cheek, lips pulled severely down, chin thrust indomitably forward to face down the brewing gale. He has died aged 81.

The sea captain did not so much talk as emit salty barks that brooked no demur. In 1972, while filming, Gilmore was buzzed by speedboats from the Royal Naval College. Still in character as Onedin, he yelled irascibly at the tyro sailors: "Taxpayers' money! Where are your guns? What...

New York -- Tom Hooper, the director of intimate character studies like the Oscar-winning "The King's Speech," the HBO miniseries "John Adams" and the TV drama "Longford," would not seem the sort of chap likely to make a sprawling adaptation of a beloved Broadway musical.

"I've always had an epic filmmaker within me clamoring to get out," explains the British director.

That much becomes clear in Hooper's new film, "Les Miserables." From the musical based on Victor Hugo's novel, the film is an enormous, star-studded affair overlaid on a French revolution canvas yet painted with a naturalistic brush.

The film, which has been nominated for four Golden Globes, has returned Hooper to the thick of the Oscar race two years after the Academy Awards' coronation of "The King's Speech." A few months after that film won best picture and best director for Hooper, he was onto "Les Miz," spending the "capital,...

Harold Pinter theatre; Barbican, London

Trevor Nunn began the summer by directing a heavy-handed Kiss Me Kate; he ends it by staging a star-encrusted but tepid Chorus of Disapproval. What a waste. Of Alan Ayckbourn, whose 1984 play has not been taken seriously, and therefore looks unfunny. And of Nunn, who has been innovative (Nicholas Nickleby) and meticulous (his Merchant of Venice was a revelation because of its detail), and who has helped (with Gorky's Summerfolk) to widen the theatrical repertoire but is in danger of looking fusty.

Rob Brydon fans may think his performance alone is enough to justify the price of a ticket. He certainly provides the high points of the evening. As the director of the Pendon Light Operatic Society's amateur production of The Beggar's Opera, Brydon is hangdog and top dog: bullying, cardiganed, down in the dumps, overweening. He unleashes a terrific riff when, while trying out...

Leading light of the British stage once seen as Gielgud's successor

John Neville, who has died aged 86, was a leading light of the Old Vic, the charismatic artistic director of the Nottingham Playhouse in the early 1960s and, after emigrating to Canada in 1972, a renowned leader of that country's theatre, notably at Stratford, Ontario. Tall, handsome and authoritative on the stage, and best known today, perhaps, for his sinister role as the Well-Manicured Man in The X-Files on television – was he on the side of good or evil? – he was often thought of as the natural successor to John Gielgud.

He found huge matinee-idol success early on, in the Gielgud roles of Hamlet and Richard II, though his patrician veneer and noble bearing could be easily discarded, as he showed to devastating effect in 1963, when he played Bill Naughton's Alfie at the Mermaid theatre, the role that became Michael Caine...

Filled with colorful criminals, biting social satire and a brilliant score, The Threepenny Opera opens International City Theatre's 2009 Season at the Long Beach Performing Arts Center. Jules Aaron directs Michael Feingold's translation of the trailblazing musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill that became one of the most influential plays of the 20th Century. Darryl Archibald is musical director and Kay Cole choreographs the five-week run February 20 through March 22; low-priced previews begin February 17. First performed in 1928, Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera was a revolutionary musical theater masterpiece that mocked the bourgeois political movement of pre-Hitler Germany. Brecht's brittle, sardonic tale of beggars, thieves and prostitutes, adapted from the 1728 play The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, was a fierce social and political critique, and Weill's innovative score that fused American jazz with German cabaret captured the ironic tone of the lyrics. Part acid social criticism, part bittersweet romance, the...