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David Mitchell leads new BBC crime drama Ludwig, and the trailer for the show has landed. Anna Maxwell Martin co-stars.

David Mitchell has become a familiar face in UK comedy, whether trying to discern who’s telling the truth in Would I Lie To You? or as the uptight Mark Corrigan alongside long time comedy partner Robert Webb in Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain’s Peep Show.

He also took on the role of William Shakespeare in Ben Elton’s sitcom Upstart Crow, and reprised the role for a stage adaptation that opened in 2020 and then again when the play was restaged in 2022

Just as Alan Davies took a left turn from stand-up comedy to drama in David Renwick’s superb Jonathan Creek, Mitchell is now moving into the realm of crime drama to play the title role in six part BBC series Ludwig.

The synopsis reads as follows:

When...

BBC One and BBC iPlayer will debut the crime comedy-drama series Ludwig in the autumn, starring David Mitchell as the reclusive puzzle-setter John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor. The ‘case-of-the-week’ format sees Mitchell’s character navigating a dual life when his identical twin brother, James, goes missing, forcing him to assume his brother’s identity. In his quest to find […]

First Look Images From David Mitchell’s BBC One Detective Series Ludwig...

Taking place August 7-17, the official selection for the 77th Locarno Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring a stellar-looking slate of highly anticipated films. Highlights include Hong Sangsoo’s second feature of the year, By the Stream, starring Kim Minhee, Kwon Haehyo, and Cho Yunhee; Ramon Zürcher’s The Sparrow in the Chimney, Wang Bing’s second part of his Youth trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), as well as new films by Radu Jude, Bertrand Mandico, Courtney Stephens, Ben Rivers, Gürcan Keltek, Denis Côté, Kevin Jerome Everson, Fabrice Du Welz (featuring Abel Ferrara!), and many more. Also of particular note is the world premiere of Tarsem Singh’s restored cut of The Fall, which features a slightly different edit as he recently noted.

Giona A. Nazzaro, Artistic Director of the Locarno Film Festival said, “We are very excited and happy with our selection for Locarno’s 77th edition, which we believe...

UK network ITV has posted Q1 revenues down 7%, as its studios division felt the impact of last year’s Hollywood labor strikes.

The commercial broadcaster’s total revenue was £887M ($1.1B), compared with £952M in 2023, with a recovery in the ad market offset by a 16% dip at ITV Studios.

The Media and Entertainment unit that houses its main network was up 2% at £505M, according to a trading update this morning. Earnings weren’t broken out.

Total revenue at ITV Studios, which makes the likes of Love Island and Mr Bates Vs the Post Office were £382M, down on the £457M in the same period last year.

According to ITV, this was “due to the phasing of deliveries which are heavily weighted to H2 and the expected impact from both the 2023 U.S. writers and actors strikes and the weaker demand from free-to-air broadcasters in Europe who have been holding back...

U.K. broadcaster ITV has reported mixed financial fortunes for the first quarter of 2024.

Its advertising revenue growth of 3%, with the second quarter expected to be up around 12%, is offset by the downturn in revenues from ITV Studios. Total revenue was down 7% to £887 million ($1.10 billion), between January and March, compared to £952 million ($1.18 billion) during the same period in 2023.

Within that total, ITV Studios revenues were down by 16% to £382 million (2023: £457 million), “due to the phasing of deliveries which are heavily weighted to H2 and the expected impact from both the 2023 U.S. writers and actors strikes and the weaker demand from free-to-air broadcasters in Europe who have been holding back spend until they see more certainty in the advertising market,” the broadcaster said.

During the quarter ITV Studios delivered “The Reluctant Traveller” for Apple TV+, “The Red King” for Alibi, “The Gathering” for Channel 4 and “I’m A Celebrity…...

FromSoftware has been making soulslike games for a very long time. Games like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring have become a part of very serious discussion amongst fans right now. It all started when the director of Stellar Blade announced that development on its boss rush mode was well underway. It’s a very recent game made by a very small new studio, and fans wonder what’s stopping Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team from doing the same.

Shift Up tirelessly worked on Stellar Blade despite people trying to discourage them from making this game. Now that it’s a success, developers have decided to give their fans some bonuses for supporting the game. But fans wonder if FromSoftware should have done this too.

Stellar Blade is getting a boss rush mode; fans suggest soulslike games should do the same.

A still from Stellar Blade

From the very first game in their library,...

David Mitchell leads new BBC crime drama Ludwig, and the first details of the show have landed.

David Mitchell has become a familiar face in UK comedy, whether trying to discern who’s telling the truth in Would I Lie To You? or as the uptight Mark Corrigan alongside long time comedy partner Robert Webb in Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain’s Peep Show.

He also took on the role of William Shakespeare in Ben Elton’s sitcom Upstart Crow, and reprised the role for a stage adaptation that opened in 2020 and then again when the play was restaged in 2022

Just as Alan Davies took a left turn from stand-up comedy to drama in David Renwick’s superb Jonathan Creek, Mitchell is now moving into the realm of crime drama to play the title role in six part BBC series Ludwig.

The synopsis reads as follows:

When John ‘Ludwig’ Taylor’s (David Mitchell) identical twin,...

Exclusive: The Outlaws producer Big Talk Studios is developing its first TV thriller, a high-stakes series about a drug-smuggling submarine.

Big Talk boss Kenton Allen described Vulture as a cross between Below Deck and Narcos.

Penned by BAFTA-nominated Cyberbully writer David Lobatto, the series, which is being developed in association with ITV Studios, follows the crew on-board a ‘narco-sub’ on its way to deliver a $200 million payload of base cocaine to the Albanian mob. After a perilous journey across the Atlantic, the sub is ambushed by a rival cartel. Following a narrow escape with their cargo intact, but with a severely damaged submarine, the crew find themselves marooned in the middle of the Adriatic Sea.

Allen, who is EPing alongside Luke Alkin, called Vulture a “highly dynamic, action-packed series that we know will cut through in this very crowded market and thrill audiences around the world with this ultimate culture-clash high stakes drama.

David Mitchell is returning to the BBC for genre-bending detective comedy Ludwig, which features on a five-strong comedy slate alongside Hulu co-production Dinosaur and a show from The Duchess star Michelle de Swarte.

Unveiling his first major comedy slate at this afternoon’s BBC Comedy Festival in Cardiff, the corporation’s Comedy Director Jon Petrie said the shows reflect “the depth and range of our offerings which champion British creativity.”

The slate is led by Ludwig, Peep Show star Mitchell’s first BBC project since Upstart Crow, which follows the eponymous protagonist as he takes on the identity of his brother, Dci James Taylor, who has disappeared off the face of the earth. Mitchell’s Ludwig lives in quiet solitude, designing puzzles for a living under his nom-de-plume, and he struggles to adapt to being a twin who happens to be a successful Dci leading Cambridge’s busy inner-city major crimes team.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.REMEMBERINGInauguration of the Pleasure Dome.Kenneth Anger has died at the age of 96, as reported this morning by his gallery. "Anger forged a body of work as dazzlingly poetic in its unique visual intensity as it is narratively innovative," wrote Maximilian Le Cain of the pioneering avant-gardist (and devoted occultist) for Senses of Cinema. "Anger’s films are cinematic manifestations of his occult practices. As such, they are highly symbolical, either featuring characters directly portraying gods, forces and demons or else finding an appropriate embodiment for them in the iconography of contemporary pop culture."The Austrian actor Helmut Berger died last week aged 78. He was best known as Luchino Visconti’s muse, unforgettable in The Damned (1969), Ludwig (1973), and Conversation Piece (1974). Among his additional...

Austrian actor Helmut Berger, the groundbreaking star of European cinematic masterpieces such as Luchino Visconti’s “The Damned” and Vittorio De Sica’s “Garden of the Finzi-Continis,” has died at the age of 78. Berger died at home in Austria from natural causes.

In one of European cinema’s most storied and creative periods, the 60s and 70s, Berger boldly established his place in the pantheon of Continental stars via a handful of films directed by Visconti, his one-time romantic partner. “The Damned,” “Ludwig” and “Conversation Piece” were all crafted with standout roles for Berger and the films were hugely successful both at the arthouse box office and with critics and awards groups.

“The Damned”

Berger was nominated for a Golden Globe for “The Damned,” which was also nominated for a Best Screenplay Oscar in 1970. No less an authority than the late German filmmaking maestro Rainer Werner Fassbinder called it “perhaps the greatest film,...

Helmut Berger, the Austrian actor and regular Luchino Visconti collaborator who become one of the most recognizable faces of European arthouse cinema in the 1960s, has died at the age of 78. The news was announced by the actor’s agent, who wrote that he died “peacefully but nevertheless unexpectedly” on his management company’s website.

Born in Austria in 1944, Berger moved to Rome and began pursuing an acting career after expressing disinterest in following his parents into the hospitality industry. He initially found work as an extra before meeting Visconti in 1964. The “Rocco and His Brothers” director gave Berger a small part in his 1967 film “The Witches,” an omnibus film also directed by the likes of Vittorio De Sica and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Berger and Visconti began a professional and romantic relationship that would go on to shape the European cinema landscape of the subsequent decade.

Berger’s most significant...

It’s been three decades since Ringo Starr founded his All Starr supergroup and took the stage with some of rock and roll’s biggest luminaries, creating an exceptional legacy of performances of some of the greatest hits of all time culled from Starr’s extraordinary catalog as a solo artist and as Beatle, as well as the All Starr Band members’ substantive songbook.

In celebration of this milestone, and just in time for the holiday season, a new limited-edition retrospective hardcover book titled “Ringo Rocks: 30 Years Of The All Starrs,” will be sold online exclusively beginning Wednesday, December 16 at juliensauctions.com.

This not to be missed commemorative photo memoir features some never-before-seen photos of the All Starr Band’s 30 record-setting years in the spotlight and life on the road, compiled by Henry Diltz and Jill Jarrett (who have followed Ringo Starr’s All Starr career since 1989), as well as...

Above: French poster for Ossessione (1943). Artist: Boris Grinsson.To commemorate the complete retrospective of the films of Luchino Visconti starting today at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center, I decided to choose my favorite poster for each film in Visconti’s titanic body of work (including the three portmanteau films to which he contributed episodes). For many of his films the range of posters are an embarrassment of riches ranging from tempestuous Italian romanticism and beautifully executed French realism to stark German stylization and wry Polish surrealism. Although I think that Italian romanticism certainly suits Visconti best of all in terms of really representing his work—Averardo Ciriello’s stirring portrait of storm-lashed fishermen for La terra trema being a case in point—it is the more gnomic Polish films that I seem to have gravitated to most. There are eight Polish posters here and what is remarkable is...

Canadian and American arthouse film fans rejoice! The UK's Arrow Films is expanding their Academy high-brow imprint to North America next March with an impressive slate of films that are sure to please. Among the first releases are Walerian Borowczyk's Story of Sin, Elio Petri's Property Is No Longer A Theft, Jasper Sharp's festival hit The Creeping Garden, Luchino Visconti's Ludwig, and Giuseppe Tornatore's Academy Award-winning paean to the glory of the moving image, Cinema Paradiso. Each of these films is a must-own, and of the lot, four are new releases for Arrow, with only Cinema Paradiso having seen a release in the UK. Arrow's unending assault on pocketbooks worldwide continues, but what sweet oblivion it will be.  Check out the details for each release...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Complete list of winners and nominees of the 2014 Grammy Awards, held in Los Angeles at the Staples Center on Sunday February 8. Winners will be updated as they're announced during the telecast and pre-telecast. Record Of The Year “Fancy,” Iggy Azalea Featuring Charli Xcx “Chandelier,” Sia **Winner** “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” Sam Smith “Shake It Off,” Taylor Swift “All About That Bass,” Meghan Trainor Album Of The Year **Winner** “Morning Phase,” Beck “Beyoncé,” Beyoncé “X,” Ed Sheeran “In The Lonely Hour,” Sam Smith “Girl,” Pharrell Williams Song Of The Year “All About That Bass,” Kevin Kadish & Meghan Trainor, songwriters (Meghan Trainor) “Chandelier,” Sia Furler & Jesse Shatkin, songwriters (Sia) “Shake It Off,” Max Martin, Shellback & Taylor Swift, songwriters (Taylor Swift) **Winner** “Stay With Me (Darkchild Version),” James Napier, William Phillips & Sam Smith, songwriters (Sam Smith) “Take Me To Church,” Andrew Hozier-Byrne, songwriter (Hozier) Best New Artist Iggy Azalea Bastille Brandy Clark...

Tim here. All of the online chatter around the honorary Oscars handed out over the weekend has focused, not unreasonably, on the actors who received awards: Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, and Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award recipient Angelina Jolie. After all, they're famous, and in at least one case wildly iconic and beloved. But going unnoticed in the widespread Lansbury love-in (which, to be entirely clear, I support enthusiastically) is the fourth award recipient on Sunday, Italian costume designer Piero Tosi.

Making this lapse even worse than simple snobbery against below-the-line talent, Tosi has as many Oscar nominations as the other three individuals put together: five total, to Lansbury's three, Jolie's two, and Martin's zero (not even a writing nod!). Since that would apparently make him the most conspicuously overlooked among the honorees, I think it's only respectful and right to give the man his due: and what better way than...

The first big show of the Awards Season happened Saturday night as Hollywood’s A-listers turned out to celebrate 2013 Governors Award honorees Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin, and Piero Tosi. The Governors Awards, along with the Academy Awards, bookends the entire award season annually.

The Academy blogged the event Live for fans during the arrivals and ceremony. You can read it here: http://www.oscars.org/awards/governors/index.html.

Produced by Paula Wagner, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and three Honorary Awards were presented to Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Piero Tosi at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center. Italian costume designer Piero Tosi was also honored, but did not attend the ceremony.

On hand were Mark Wahlberg, Tom Hanks, Idris Elba, Geoffrey Rush, Jim Rash & Nate Faxon, Jonah Hill, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lee Daniels & Ruth E. Carter, Matthew McConaughey, Pharrell Williams, Lupita Nyong’o,...

The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present Honorary Awards to Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and Piero Tosi, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Angelina Jolie. All four awards will be presented at the Academy’s 5th Annual Governors Awards on Saturday, November 16, at the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland Center®.

“The Governors Awards pay tribute to individuals who’ve made indelible contributions in their respective fields,” said Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. “We couldn’t be more excited for this year’s honorees and look forward to bringing their peers and colleagues together to celebrate their extraordinary achievements.”

Lansbury has received three Academy Award® nominations for her supporting performances on film – the first in her 1944 feature debut in “Gaslight,” followed by “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1945) and “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962). Her numerous other credits include “The Long, Hot Summer,” “Blue Hawaii,...

Angelina Jolie, Angela Lansbury, Steve Martin and costume designer Piero Tosi are the year’s first Oscar winners.

Each has been selected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to receive the honorary Governors Awards.

Jolie will receive the The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which is given “to an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry.” In addition to her longtime work with the United Nations and Council on Foreign Relations as an advocate for refugees, she helped raise breast cancer awareness after opening up about her recent preventative double mastectomy,...

DVD Release Date: Dec. 11, 2012

Price: DVD $49.98

Studio: Entertainment One

Helmut Berger and Romy Schneider star in Visconti's 1972 epic Ludwig.

Luchino Visconti: Four Films is a five-disc collection that spotlights a quartet of the great Italian filmmaker’s works that span nearly three decades.

Through an impressive and highly acclaimed canon, Luchino Visconti (Senso, Conversation Piece) contributed significantly to the post-World War II revolution in Italian filmmaking, earned him the title of “Father of Neorealism” in the process.

The collection’s four films include the following:

La Terra Trema (1948): This a haunting film uses the early neorealism format developed by Roberto Rossellini and Vittorio De Sica to trace the doom and disintegration of one Sicilian fishing family. Winner of the International Award for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival, the movie was a New York Times Critic’s Pick when it ran theatrically in 1965,

Bellissima (1951): Anna Magnani...

Italian screenwriter who worked with directors such as Visconti and Zeffirelli

The Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d'Amico, who has died aged 96, collaborated on the scripts of more than 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948), William Wyler's Roman Holiday (1953), Mario Monicelli's I Soliti Ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958) and Francesco Rosi's Salvatore Giuliano (1962). She also worked with Michelangelo Antonioni on Le Amiche (The Girlfriends, 1955) and Franco Zeffirelli on Jesus of Nazareth (1977), but she was best known for her creative contribution to the films of Luchino Visconti, including Il Gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963).

She was born Giovanna Cecchi in Rome to a Tuscan painter, Leonetta Pieraccini, and the literary critic Emilio Cecchi, a major figure in 20th-century Italian letters. For a few years in the early 1930s, before the Cinecittà studios were built in Rome, her father had been entrusted by Mussolini's government with...

Lamberto Maggiorani in Vittorio de Sica‘s Bicycle Thieves (aka The Bicycle Thief) Suso Cecchi D’Amico, the only top female screenwriter in the post-war Italian cinema, died today in Rome. She had turned 96 on July 14. According to reports, no cause of death was given. Chiefly among Cecchi D’Amico’s screenwriting contributions — nearly 120 of them — are those for Vittorio de Sica‘s Oscar-winning neo-realist classic Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Cannes Film Festival co-winner Miracle in Milan (1951), and for numerous films directed by Luchino Visconti, among them Bellissima (1951), Senso (1954), Rocco e i suoi fratelli / Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Il Gattopardo / The Leopard (1963), Ludwig (1973), and Conversation Piece (1975). Additionally, Cecchi D’Amico collaborated with a number of other celebrated Italian filmmakers, including Michelangelo Antonioni (Le Amiche / The Girlfriends), Alessandro Blasetti (La fortuna di essere donna / Lucky to Be a Woman), Luigi Zampa (L’onorevole Angelina), [...]...

Claudia Cardinale arrives at the premiere of Luchino Visconti’s Il Gattopardo / The Leopard, which was held at the Palais des Festivals during the 63rd Cannes Film Festival on May 14, 2010. (Photo by Venturelli/WireImage) Adapted by Visconti, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, and Massimo Franciosa, from Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa’s sprawling novel, The Leopard (1963) also featured Alain Delon (you can see part of him in the above photo), Burt Lancaster, Paolo Stoppa, Romolo Valli, Pierre Clémenti, Terence Hill, and Giuliano Gemma. Other Visconti efforts include Ossessione, Senso, Rocco and His Brothers (in which Cardinale has a small role), Sandra (starring Cardinale), Death in Venice, Conversation Piece, Ludwig, and [...]...

Cinecity: Brighton Film Festival, Brighton

Just because it's coastal doesn't mean it's coasting. This year's hard-working festival brings in both local and international work, the latter selection including the latest Miyazaki animation, Ponyo, new Mexican hope I'm Gonna Explode, and Until The Light Takes Us, a documentary on Norwegian black metal. And leading the guests, John Hillcoat attends a screening of his adaptation of The Road – perhaps the film's composer, local boy Nick Cave, might even swing by?

Various venues, Thu to 6 Dec, visit cine-city.co.uk

Phelim O'Neill

Tribute To Romy Schneider, London

On the back of her mesmerising appearance in new documentary Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, eight highlights from Schneider's short but enviable and prolific career, which saw her outgrow her pushy stage mother to become the toast of Austrian cinema. Debuting at 15, Schneider made an indelible impression as the naive Austrian Empress Elisabeth in 1955's Sissi. Also...

• Fresh off his debut on the Croisette, to much acclaim I might add, Korean auteur Ji-woon Kim is on quite a roll. His last two films have done some serious bank both in his native Korea and the international market – and his latest The Good, the Bad, and the Weird is poised to make a huge splash later this year. So it’s no surprise that the filmmaker is being courted by every production house under the sun. StudioCanal and Lion Rock Productions have tapped Kim to direct a remake of Claude Sautet’s 1970s noir classic Max and the Junkmen. The film is the first of a three-picture deal between StudioCanal and the John Woo/Terence Chang shingle Lion Rock intended to mine the former’s vast back catalogue of French and American films for modern remakes. Howard Rodman, a writer who’s credits are wholly unspectacular to say the least,

...