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Star Trek: DS9's nod to Tos episode "The Deadly Years" showcased a deep connection to the original series' canon and continuity. Writer Ronald D. Moore's love for Tos influenced many DS9 episodes, with references like Hyronalin connecting the two series. The use of Hyronalin in DS9 showcased medical continuity with Tos, with similar treatments also appearing in Tng and Voyager.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine contained a deep-cut Star Trek: The Original Series Easter egg from the episode "The Deadly Years", but it ended up having a deeper meaning. In Tos season 2, episode 12, an Enterprise away team is exposed to fatal radiation that triggers rapid aging. With scenes of the Star Trek: Tos cast in old man make-up, and the countdown clock tension, "The Deadly Years" became a beloved Tos episode. As Star Trek: DS9 was packed full of major and minor references to Tos canon, a nod...

Doctor Bashir's genetic augmentation twist in DS9 season 5 opened new possibilities for character development and storytelling. Celeste Chan Wolfe's input helped address a plothole and gave meaning to Bashir's deliberate error in an earlier episode. The Wolfe couple's involvement in Andromeda explored themes of creating life, paralleling the deep questions raised in Star Trek.

Celeste Chan Wolfe, wife of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine writer Robert Hewitt Wolfe, was inadvertently responsible for the revelation that Doctor Julian Bashir (Alexander Siddig) was an Augment. DS9 season 5, episode 16, "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?" contained the game-changing twist that Bashir had undergone illegal genetic augmentation surgery when he was a child. The Federation's ban on genetic augmentation was implemented to prevent the birth of another tyrant like Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban). However, Bashir's augmentations proved that not every genetic superman was a tyrant-in-waiting.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's revelations about Doctor...

Terence Davies, who passed away in October 2023, was one of the finest British directors of the last four decades. He made several touching autobiographical films, like Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, and the phenomenal Liverpool documentary Of Time and the City. His films are also deeply connected to literature: several were adapted from classic novels, while two of them are biopics of writers.

Terence Davies, who passed away in October, was one of the leading British writers and directors of the last four decades. Beginning with his debut trilogy of shorts in 1983, Davies crafted a distinctive and deeply personal body of work that frequently explores themes of memory and identity. One of his most notable projects is Distant Voices, Still Lives, a poignant and visually stunning exploration of family dynamics. Another gem in his filmography is The Long Day Closes, a beautifully nostalgic journey into the director's childhood.

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Anthology Film Archives

The films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening, while a Jean Cocteau program runs in Essential Cinema.

Film Forum

Michael Powell’s career-killing masterwork Peeping Tom plays in a long-overdue restoration, while Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil continues; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade; Kirikou and the Sorceress plays this Sunday.

Museum of the Moving Image

Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing this weekend with the Before trilogy on 35mm and Feast of the Epiphany; prints of They Live and Holiday show this weekend.

Roxy Cinema

The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square plays on Sunday, while The Long Day Closes and Dogtooth show on 35mm; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.

IFC Center

Distant Voices, Still Lives continues its run while Ocean’s Twelve,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.

Film Forum

Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil begins playing in a 4K restoration; “Hitchcock’s ’50s” runs through arguably the director’s greatest decade. the Farewell My Concubine restoration continues while Summer Stock plays on 35mm this Sunday.

Anthology Film Archives

Paul Vecchiali’s classic-in-waiting The Strangler is playing in a new restoration, while the films of Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project are screening.

Roxy Cinema

The Josh Safdie-presented The Gods of Times Square begins a run, while The Untouchables and The Mission show on 35mm.

IFC Center

Distant Voices, Still Lives begins a run while The Exorcist, Battle Royale, Desperado, and a print of A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 play on 35mm; Oldboy screens in a new restoration.

Museum of the Moving Image

Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run,...

From Distant Voices, Still Lives to Benediction, the lyrical work of the late director was suffused with the ‘ecstasy’ of cinema – and his fraught Liverpool childhood

Last month, British cinema lost one of its greatest and most distinctive screen poets. From an astonishing trilogy of early short films (Children; Madonna and Child; Death and Transfiguration – all available on BFI Player) to his final feature, Benediction (2021), Terence Davies seamlessly blended personal recollections with wider universal truths. His subjects ranged from autobiographically inspired portraits of postwar working-class life in Liverpool to sweeping literary adaptations and intimate portraits of real-life authors, most remarkably the American poet Emily Dickinson, brilliantly played by Cynthia Nixon in A Quiet Passion, 2016. Yet each of his films felt deeply, distinctly personal. No wonder Jack Lowden, who played Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction, told me that after immersing himself in his subject’s diaries in preparation for the role, he...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.The Deep Blue Sea.REMEMBERINGTerence Davies has died, aged 77. Michael Koresky, who wrote a monograph on Davies in 2014, penned a beautiful Sight & Sound obituary, in which he wrote that “no one made movies like Davies, who precisely sculpted out of a subjective past, creating films that glided on waves of contemplation and observation, inviting viewers to join him in the burnished darkness of a past about which he felt complex, contradictory feelings.” Last year, Dan Schindel wrote for Notebook about the role of poetry in Benediction (2022), and in 2012, Michael Guillen interviewed Davies about The Deep Blue Sea (2011). "The problem with film is that it's always in the eternal present,” says Davies. “But it's closest, I think, to music. You don't have to be a musician to follow a symphonic argument. If you love the music,...

Gillian Anderson paid tribute to Terence Davies, the British filmmaker who directed one of her most acclaimed performances for “The House of Mirth,” crediting him with giving her “my first ‘proper’ film job.” Davies died on Oct. 7 at the age of 77 following a short illness.

“The House of Mirth,” an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name, saw Anderson portray Lily Bart, a tragic socialite whose quest for love and financial security leads her to ruin. Davies wrote the script, in addition to directing the film.

The role came to Anderson at a time when she was best known for portraying FBI Special Agent Dana Scully in the paranormal series “The X-Files.” The film provided an opportunity for the actor to showcase her range with a meaty role in a period piece. It was also good news for Davies, with “The House of Mirth” representing a significant...

“All his major works feel as fresh and relevant as when they were made.”

Leading festival heads and UK industry figures have been paying fulsome tribute to Terence Davies, one of the titans of UK cinema who died at the weekend aged 77.

British Film Institute (BFI) chief executive Ben Roberts said that Davies was an inspirational figure to him. He discovered Davies’ work when he was 17 years old and saw a clip of The Long Day Closes on the BBC Film show presented by Barry Norman.

“I was just immediately mesmerised by it. There was something about how his films...

BFI’s Ben Roberts and Cannes head Thierry Fremaux among those to praise Davies, who died aged 77 this weekend.

Leading festival heads and UK industry figures have been paying fulsome tribute to Terence Davies, one of the titans of UK cinema who died at the weekend aged 77.

British Film Institute (BFI) chief executive Ben Roberts said that Davies was an inspirational figure to him. He discovered Davies’ work when he was 17 years old and saw a clip of The Long Day Closes on the BBC Film show presented by Barry Norman.

“I was just immediately mesmerised by it. There was...

Terence Davies, the accomplished and thoughtful director behind such films as Distant Voices, Still Lives, The House Of Mirth and, most recently, Benediction, about World War II poet Siegfried Sassoon, had died. Davies, who began his career making autobiographical short films but switched to literary adaptations and dramas, which nevertheless kept an emotionally affecting through line. Dying at home after a short illness, Davies was 77.

Born in Liverpool to a large Catholic family (which informed much of his early film work), Davies spent a decade as a clerk before attending Coventry Drama School, and starting to make short films. He followed that up with the National Film School. His three initial shorts are Children, Madonna And Child and Death And Transfiguration all tackled autobiographical stories of emotion and religion.

When he started making feature films, his first two efforts, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes were also inspired by his life,...

Terence Davies in New York to talk about A Quiet Passion Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze Writer and director Terence Davies has died at the age of 77.

The Liverpudlian director, whose films included Distant Voices, Still Lives and Benediction died peacefully at home after a short illness, it was announced on his Instagram page.

He may not have been Britain's most prolific director - with just nine full-length features across his 50-year career - but the films he made were beautifully crafted and emotionally resonant, often featuring autobiographical elements about growing up in working-class Liverpool. They also frequently had an elegiac element.

In his best known early work Distant Voices, Still Lives, he crafts an evocative portrait of family life in his home city that drew heavily on his own, which is as much about the nature of memory as the events that occur in a household run by the volatile hand of its patriarch,...

The revered director and lyrical chronicler of working-class life in Distant Voices, Still Lives, died peacefully at home after a short illness

• Peter Bradshaw appreciation

• A life in pictures

Terence Davies, the film-maker regularly hailed by critics as among Britain’s greatest, has died aged 77.

The Liverpool-born director, perhaps best known for his semi-autobiographical study of working-class family life Distant Voices, Still Lives, starring Pete Postlethwaite, was working on a new project at the time of his illness and only two years ago released Benediction, starring Jack Lowden in the role of the war poet Siegfried Sassoon.

Filmmaker died after a short illness, according to his family.

Acclaimed UK filmmaker Terence Davies died today (October 7) aged 77 after a short illness, according to a social media post from his family.

Davies’ best known works include autobiographical films Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992); and literary adaptations The House Of Mirth (2000) with Gillian Anderson, which won the Bafta for best British film; and The Deep Blue Sea (2011) with Rachel Weisz.

His other projects include documentary Of Time And City, which premiered at Cannes in 2008, and A Quiet Passion (2015), based on the life of Emily Dickinson.

His...

British director Terence Davies has died at the age of 77 after a short illness, his family announced in a post on his Instagram page. He was known for films including “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” “The House of Mirth,” and “A Quiet Passion.”

News of his death was shared on his official Instagram account.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Terence Davies, who died peacefully at home after a short illness, today on 7th October 2023,” the post reads.

The Liverpool native first broke onto the scene with a trio of short films called “The Terence Davies Trilogy,” which won numerous awards. His feature-length debut was 1988’s “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” an autobiographical film about a working class family in Liverpool.

His 2000 adaptation of “The House of Mirth” won acclaim, as did his 2011 film “The Deep Blue Sea” starring Rachel Weisz.

His last film was 2021’s “Benediction,...

Terence Davies, the critically beloved British writer-director who had his international art-house breakthrough with two deeply autobiographical films set in his native Liverpool, England, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes, has died. He was 77.

Davies’ official Instagram account confirmed the news Saturday morning, noting that the filmmaker died peacefully at home after a short illness.

Much of Davies’ work is infused with personal emotional experience, reflecting in subtle ways on growing up as a gay, Catholic man in Liverpool in the 1950s and ’60s. The filmmaker directly addressed his childhood in his 2008 feature documentary, Of Time and the City.

Premiering to great acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival that year, the doc recalled both Davies’ own family life and that of the city, using archival footage, his own commentary voiceover, classical music tracks, film clips and excerpts from poetry and literature in an assemblage by turns caustically funny and melancholy,...

Terence Davies, the director of The Long Day Closes and Distant Voices, Still Lives, has died at 77, according to his official social media pages.

Davies died at his home after what was described as a short illness.

Davies directed several films that were considered among the best of the craft in his lifetime. They ranged from The Deep Blue Sea starring Rachel Weisz, to his debut feature, Distant Voices, a look at hs own working-class British upbringing.

His works included acclaim for films like A Quiet Passion, starring Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, and the Edith Wharton adaptation, House of Mirth, featuring Gillian Anderson.

At the center of his films was his discomfort with being gay, and the ennui of life.

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A post shared by Terence Davies (@terencedaviesofficial)...

Terence Davies, the British filmmaker known for “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” “The Deep Blue Sea” and “The Long Day Closes,” has died. He was 77.

The news of Davies’ death was shared on his official Instagram page: “It is with deep sadness that we announce the death of Terence Davies, who died peacefully at home after a short illness, today on 7th October 2023.”

Davies was admired for his period films as well as his early autobiographical trilogy about growing up in Liverpool.

“Being in the past makes me feel safe because I understand that world,” he told the Guardian in 2022.

Though his films were widely recognized for their sensitive depictions of gay life, Catholicism and other frequent themes, they didn’t amass a huge number of awards, which he considered in his typically philosophical way. “It would have been nice to be acknowledged by Bafta. Again, there’s also part of...

Terence Davies, the Liverpool-born director of autobiographical memory pieces like “The Long Day Closes” and “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” has died. He was 77. The English filmmaker passed away peacefully in his home after a short illness on October 7, as confirmed on his official social media pages.

Davies directed several masterpieces in his lifetime, from the sorrowful “The Deep Blue Sea” starring Rachel Weisz as an eternally unhappy seeker of love to his debut feature “Distant Voices,” built on his own closeted working-class British upbringing. You could even say the same about his last film, “Benediction,” starring Jack Lowden as the queer poet Siegfried Sassoon, wrapped around by a coterie of Bright Young Things. He received great acclaim for films like “A Quiet Passion,” starring Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive poet Emily Dickinson, as well as the Edith Wharton adaptation “House of Mirth,” led by Gillian Anderson. Serious actors loved working with him,...

Jean Boht, the beloved star of long-running BBC sitcom “Bread” (1986-1991) died on Sept. 12. She was 91.

Boht’s family issued a statement on social media, saying: “It is with overwhelming sadness that we must announce that Jean Boht passed away yesterday Tuesday 12 September. Jean had been battling Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease with the indefatigable spirit for which she was both beloved and renowned.” She was a resident at Denville Hall, the home for members of the theatrical profession.

Boht’s husband Carl Davis, the BAFTA-winning composer of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” died in August.

Boht trained at the Liverpool Playhouse and embarked on a career as a theater actor. Her television credits include “Softly, Softly” (1971), “Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em” (1978), “Grange Hill” (1978), “Last of the Summer Wine” (1978), “Boys from the Blackstuff” (1982), “Scully” (1984) and “Juliet Bravo” (1981-83). In 1993, Boht was one of the stars in “Brighton Belles,” the British remake of hit U.

Whether or not you agree with Quentin Tarantino’s unsparing assertion that “’80s cinema is, along with the ’50s, the worst era in Hollywood history,” there’s a curiously undeniable truth to his follow-up statement: “Matched only by now! Matched only by the current era.” Revisiting the defining movies of the ’80s from our current perspective at the height of Barbenheimer summer, two things become abundantly clear.

The first is that modern Hollywood would probably need a Barbenheimer every month in order to equal the creative output of a studio system that used to be capable of releasing “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” on the same night as if it were just another Friday. The second is that, in a wide variety of different ways both negative and not, the ’80s provide a perfect match for the movies of our current moment — if not the current moment itself.

Perhaps that...

The Locarno Film Festival’s Locarno Pro initiative dedicated to pics in post is set to look at films from the U.K. that are in their final stage of production for its upcoming 76th edition.

Locarno’s First Look focus on indie U.K. film segues from the fest having developed a close rapport with the British industry over the decades, spanning from Mike Leigh’s 1972 Golden Leopard winner “Bleak Moments” to Terence Davies’s “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” which scooped the pard in 1998, and the more recent launches last year of Andrew Legge’s “Lola” and Charlotte Colbert’s “She Will.”

Locarno’s First Look initiative, in partnership with the British Film Institute (BFI), will run August 4-6. Six selected U.K. films that are currently in post-production will be unveiled, providing their producers an opportunity to pitch them to international industry professionals attending the festival. The U.

It's always something of an event when a new Terence Davies film is released. Despite being one of Britain's most exciting and innovative filmmakers, releasing films with exceptional sparsity — his feature-length debut, "Distant Voices, Still Lives" came out in the late eighties, and he's only made a handful of films since. The director's earliest films are notably intimate and autobiographical, but in the latter stages of his career, Davies has deliberately distanced himself from, well, himself. After 2016's "A Quiet Passion," Davies returns with "Benediction," his second biopic in a row of a poet, this time focusing on fascinating World War One poet Siegfried Sassoon (Jack...

The post Benediction Review: Bold, Visionary Cinema That Lingers appeared first on /Film.

The war poet’s life provides rich material for director Terence Davies to explore his preoccupations with sexuality, religion and the search for redemption

Terence Davies, the writer-director behind such modern classics as Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes and more recently Sunset Song, has long been one of the great poets of British cinema. It’s perhaps unsurprising therefore that his films have occasionally focused on the lives of poets: Emily Dickinson in 2016’s A Quiet Passion, and now Siegfried Sassoon in Benediction. Davies’s portrait of Dickinson was a heartfelt paean to a creative talent who went largely unrecognised in her own lifetime. His account of Sassoon’s tribulations is more unforgiving, confronting us with a contradictory character locked in his own private hell – keenly attuned to the horrors of war, yet seemingly unable to change either himself or the world around him, whether through art or action.

As his Siegfried Sassoon biopic is released, the director opens up about his ill-fated straight romance, being snubbed by Bafta and how it felt to sleep in the bed where his father died

The door of Terence Davies’s 18th-century cottage is ajar when I arrive, the afternoon sun spilling into the hallway from the village green. Davies’ burly manager, John, shows me in, but the first glimpse I get of the man himself is in oils on the living room wall: a large portrait, painted by a neighbour, shows the bespectacled director of Distant Voices, Still Lives looking ivory-haired, pink-faced and pensive. It is likely that he popped out of the womb that way, and that his first words took the form of rhapsodies about Bruckner or the Shipping Forecast. He is 76 now but has given the impression of being old since the day he was born.

Rising from an armchair,...

One Shot is a series that seeks to find an essence of cinema history in one single image of a movie. On a sunny afternoon in Liverpool a mother sits on the windowsill of a red-brick terraced house, her body perched precariously on the outside of the window as she scrubs the glass. The danger of the moment is felt through the eyes of her children who stare transfixed from the end of the hallway, willing her not to fall with the strength of their gaze. This scene occurs 20 minutes into Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988). By this point we have witnessed the brutal and unpredictable violence of Pete Postlethwaite’s father and we understand the consequences of a household without the love and protection of Freda Dowie’s mother. As the camera takes the perspective of the siblings, moving slowly toward the window, we are met with the...

This is one of the texts featured in the book "Terence Davies: Textur #3" (2021) edited by James Lattimer and Eva Sangiorgi and published by the Vienna International Film Festival to celebrate the work of Terence Davies, whose new film Benediction screens at the festival as part of a full retrospective; he also made this year’s Viennale trailer But Why? Textur is an ongoing publication series that explores the work of filmmakers via less conventional approaches, including fiction, poetry, photography and more sensation-based, subjective or anecdotal forms of writing alongside more traditional film criticism. In Distant Voices, Still Lives, we witness rituals. There are the rituals of violence that leave traces of trauma. There are the rituals of liberation, comfort and community. Those rituals heal. And they involve singing. Cinema will often occupy this place in Terence Davies´ other films. But here, in this first feature, between work and duties, people...

Exclusive: Roadside Attractions has snapped up North American rights to Terence Davies’ well-received TIFF and London Film Festival drama Benediction.

Jack Lowden (Dunkirk) stars as WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon, alongside Peter Capaldi, Geraldine James, Kate Phillips, Gemma Jones, Calam Lynch, Anton Lesser, Jeremy Irvine, Ben Daniels, Lia Williams, Jude Akuwudike, Suzanne Bertish and Simon Russell Beale.

Following its world premiere at TIFF and its berth at San Sebastian where it won the Jury Prize, the film is debuting in the UK tonight at the London Film Festival.

Roadside, which struck the deal with UK sales firm Bankside, plans to release the film theatrically in spring 2022.

Written and directed by acclaimed filmmaker Davies, the biopic explores the turbulent life of WWI poet Sassoon. The writer and soldier was a complex man who survived the horrors of fighting in the First World War and was decorated for his bravery but who became...

From a pair of dreamy memoirs about his formative years, an archival documentary that excavated the city in which those years were spent (“Of Time and the City”), and swooning adaptations of the novels and plays that allowed him to make sense of his own wounded soul (“The Deep Blue Sea”), Liverpudlian auteur Terence Davies has established himself as one of the most achingly personal of master filmmakers; this despite his adamant belief that his personal life is “really boring.”

In a 2017 interview with IndieWire, the ever-confessional ex-Catholic insisted he’s “terrified of the world.” Davies spoke about his bitterness at being gay, conceded he’s “too self-conscious” for sex, and repeated a familiar line that any biography written about him would be a leaflet rather than a book. And yet the Emily Dickinson movie that Davies was there to promote is perhaps the most illuminating evidence that all of his films are ultimately self-portraits.

One of the previous decade’s great cinematic was receiving back-to-back Terence Davies films with Sunset Song and A Quiet Passion. Now it looks like a repeat is in store as the director is prepping another production just after finishing his last. Following a pandemic-related delay, he recently wrapped the Jack Lowden-led biopic Benediction, about World War I poet Siegfried Sassoon, and now has announced plans for what he’ll direct next.

Davies will write and helm an adaptation of Stefan Zweig’s novel The Post Office Girl, published posthumously in 1982. One of Wes Anderson’s inspirations for The Grand Budapest Hotel, the book is set in post-wwi and follows a female post-office clerk who lives outside Vienna. “Stefan Zweig’s novel set in post-war Austria sows the seeds for the rise of fascism, the end of the Empire, and ultimately the Second World War. This is a story...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Audrey (Helena Coan)

Despite her status as one of the most iconic movie stars in history, one can’t help but root for the girl at the center of Audrey, who dreams of nothing more than to find peace and love. The girl is, of course, Audrey Hepburn, a movie star from a time when pictures were made around personas, and a change of hairstyle could easily turn into a global phenomenon. Hepburn’s name conjures visions of diamonds, sophistication, and effortless grace. Perhaps even the girl who had it all if we want to navigate in tropes, but what Helena Coan’s documentary achieves is that it doesn...

“Traveller,” the first major screen credit of “The Crying Games’” Neil Jordan, Canadian Denis Coté’s debut feature “Drifting States” and Arturo Ripstein’s “The Place Without Limits,” a 1977 Mexican LGBTQ movie, are three titles featured in the inaugural lineup of the Locarno Film Festival’s Heritage Online section.

Another, 1954 Egyptian transgender comedy “Miss Hanafi,” underscores the wealth of discoveries offered by Heritage Online, a digital database and screening room collating details of classic film catalogs from all over the world, facilitating the work of buyers, especially VOD platforms in search of rights holders to heritage titles.

Heritage Online fully launches on Saturday with the distribution to its subscribers of a newsletter in which companies detail their offer on the website, plus a panel on heritage film distribution.

Aimed at “establishing a loop between the heritage industry and streaming platforms” by clarifying rights ownership, the site launches with film-by-film details...

Editors’ Note: With full acknowledgment of the big-picture implications of a pandemic that already has claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders, Deadline’s Coping With Covid-19 Crisis series is a forum for those in the entertainment space grappling with myriad consequences of seeing a great industry screech to a halt. The hope is for an exchange of ideas and experiences, and suggestions on how businesses and individuals can best ride out a crisis that doesn’t look like it will abate any time soon. If you have a story, email mike@deadline.com.

Acclaimed Brit filmmaker Terence Davies, known for movies including Distant Voices, Still Lives, The House of Mirth and The Deep Blue Sea, was only three days from start of shoot on passion project Benediction when the film was shut down due to the coronavirus. Writer-director Davies, who is 74, had been in development...

Bankside is launching sales at the Efm on WWI movie Benediction. Jack Lowden (Dunkirk) is attached to star as poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon in writer-director Terence Davies’ upcoming biopic. Shoot is due to get underway in coming months.

Lowden, a recent BAFTA Rising Star nominee, will portray English soldier and poet Sassoon, who was decorated for bravery on the Western Front, and is best remembered for his poems about the First World War, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war.

The long-gestating movie, whose details are being kept under wraps, marks the return of festival favorite Davies, director of movies including A Quiet Passion, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The House Of Mirth. The Brit filmmaker’s last movie A Quiet Passion from 2016 was about American poet Emily Dickinson.

Jack Lowden (Dunkirk) is attached to star as WWI poet Siegfried Sassoon in writer-director Terence Davies’ upcoming biopic Benediction, we have confirmed.

Lowden, a recent BAFTA Rising Star nominee, will portray English soldier and poet Sassoon, who was decorated for bravery on the Western Front, and is best remembered for his poems about the First World War, which brought him public and critical acclaim. Sassoon became a focal point for dissent within the armed forces when he made a lone protest against the continuation of the war.

The long-gestating movie, whose details are being kept under wraps, marks the return of festival favorite Davies, director of movies including A Quiet Passion, Distant Voices, Still Lives and The House Of Mirth. The Brit filmmaker’s last movie A Quiet Passion from 2016 was about American poet Emily Dickinson.

Brit producer Mike Elliott of Emu Films (Dirty God) is producing with shoot due to get underway this year.

Vietnam war epic Apocalypse Now has been named the greatest film of the past 25 years by a panel of 50 British critics and film writers. Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 classic, starring Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen, beat next best Raging Bull, and Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander came in third place. The survey was conducted by Sight and Sound magazine, and was open to all films dating from January 1978 - excluding many favorite movies, including Star Wars. Nick James, editor of Sight and Sound, says, "As film history now spans over 100 years it's almost impossible to compile a list of top films. In this new poll we wanted to free people up from choosing the established classics like Citizen Kane and let them concentrate on recent cinema." A Sight and Sound poll to find the best film of all time in August this year was dominated by films from the first half of the century, with Kane topping the list.

Sight and Sound's greatest films of the past 25 years: 1. Apocalypse Now (1979); .2 Raging Bull (1980); 3. Fanny and Alexander (1982); 4. GoodFellas (1990); 5. Blue Velvet (1986); 6. Do the Right Thing (1989); 7. Blade Runner (1982); 8. Chungking Express (1994); 9. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988); 10. (tie) Once Upon a Time in America (1983), Yi Yi (A One and a Two...) (1999).