I’ve also added a total of 102 screencaptures of Joseph’s WWI drama The Red Baron to the gallery. Click below to see them:

Gallery Links:
» 13th Annual Capri Hollywood International Film Festival
» ‘The Red Baron’ Screencaptures

Gallery Link:
» ‘Goodbye Bafana’ Screencaptures

Hoskins’ book, Sacrifice, is in talks to be made into a film, and there’s speculation Joe will play the expert in African religions. Joseph has recently visited Shebbear College, where Richard currently works, held a workshop on Shakespeare with its promising drama students (as reported HERE) and discussed the potential of the book as a screenplay.

When asked if he can see Joseph Fiennes playing him in a film, Dr. Hoskins replied,

Yeah I do. He’s a great guy. He’s a really lovely person and he’s got real integrity. He is one of those actors who, pretty much right across the board, has chosen his parts on what he believes in, that he identifies with. He’s not a commercial fellow. Because he loves the story and has really got a grip on it I couldn’t think of anyone better to play me.

Source: This Is Not Devon

IFC Films has acquired US distribution rights to the prison break film “The Escapist,” starring Brian Cox and Joseph Fiennes and directed by tyro helmer Rupert Wyatt.

The film premiered stateside at Sundance in 2008 and will be released in April of this year. Pic has already opened in the U.K., where it received a British Independent Film Award and a BAFTA Scotland award for Cox’s perf.

Source: Variety

• Audio Commentary with Rupert Wyatt and Dominic Cooper
• The Making of The Escapist
• Behind the Scenes
• Theatrical Trailer
• Storyboard Comparison

Amazon UK price: £8.98. Make sure you get your copy!

Source: DVD Times

British journalist Richard Thompsett has written the screenplay. “We are hoping to shoot the film this year in either Lithuania or Malta with a couple of weeks in Zaragoza on location,” adds Max Montalvo, a Spanish based producer with Intervision Partners. “But we’ve been told Radcliffe is not available until 2010 so we might have to wait. Hopefully if Tena says yes, he’ll want to take on the role as well.”

“We are in advanced talks with The Weinstein Company to make the film, as part of a five year deal on a slate of films. I have talked to other studios, but I get on very well with The Weinstein Company. If they agree to take on Agustina we’ll do most of the financing and they’ll distribute it.”

The plan is to turn the film into a franchise with prequels and sequels. A director is yet to be attached to Agustina.

Source: Screen Daily

Gallery Link:
» ‘Agains the Current’ Production Stills

The 25th edition of Sundance, an 11-day event, will take place in Park City, Salt Lake City, Ogden and Sundance, Utah, and is set to run Jan. 15-25.

Source: Los Angeles Times

‘We know all the horrors that surround these stories, and sometimes you can get to the truth more through fiction than through fact,” says Joseph Fiennes, the celebrated British actor best known for his starring role in Shakespeare in Love, who is attending the 24th Haifa International Film Festival to present his latest film, Spring 1941.

The movie, which was made by Israeli director Uri Barabash (Beyond the Walls), is based on an Ida Fink story and tells the story of Artur, a Jewish doctor in Poland (played by Fiennes) who goes into hiding with his wife and family during World War II. They are taken in by a Polish peasant woman and Fiennes’s character becomes involved in a complex romantic relationship with his host.

The question of whether he truly loves the woman or is playing along with her so that she will keep them hidden is left unanswered.

For Fiennes, this ambiguity was one element that drew him to this character: “This is a domestic drama. Like in a lot of Ida Fink stories, the ghosts of the Shoah are there, but the stories deal with very simple and economic moments. She describes it as ‘a scrap of time,’ and here we have a series of conflicts that you and I couldn’t possibly imagine with that level of intensity. I guess what it does is it just takes you by the hand and takes you to a crack in the window and you get to glimpse that scrap of time,” says the actor, who speaks with a quiet intensity and clear diction that makes whatever he says sound like a Shakespeare soliloquy.

BECAUSE OF his own “intellectual curiosity,” Fiennes did visit concentration camps and read historical accounts of the period, but he focused on the small details of the character in order to prepare for the role.

“Artur was a man who was fully integrated into Polish society – he was a doctor, a husband, a father. I looked for the keys to the character in the practical details of how he adjusted to his new life,” says Fiennes.

When in hiding, Artur begins helping on the Polish woman’s farm, and bonds with her as she teaches him basic tasks around her property, such as chopping wood, which at first are very difficult for him.

“Here he is, a brilliant surgeon, but he can’t chop wood. But learning to do it, he’s living life, he’s experiencing life, in the face of pressure that is so intense… Maybe getting in touch with milking a cow, and the practicality and the life-affirming quality of something so banal and simple might give you a burst of life in the face of impending doom,” Fiennes says.

“That’s what I love about the title. It’s ‘spring,’ which is about birth and new life, and ’1941,’ which is synonymous with the horrors we’re familiar with.”

Filming in Poland and getting to know Israeli, Polish and British cast and crew members was an intense experience for Fiennes, as was learning the history in greater depth. “The subject of the Poles at this time is difficult and complex. In the Polish community, some housed Jews and some turned them in. Unlike when you see a Nazi uniform, when you see a Polish character, you don’t know which way things are going to go,” he says.

ALTHOUGH FIENNES is world famous as a film actor, “film is a byproduct of my theater work,” he points out.

He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and has appeared in many West End productions of both classical and contemporary plays. He supported himself as he studied acting, working as a dresser in the theater, “which means washing people’s underpants. Back then, I never dreamt about film.”

Although he loves working in film, he feels that, “Theater is an actor’s medium and film is a director’s medium.”

He combined his love of classical theater and film not long ago when he played Bassiano in Michael Radford’s Merchant of Venice, starring Al Pacino. In order to make the movie work for contemporary audiences, the text was trimmed down, but Fiennes is not a purist in that respect. “Whatever you do, the genius will always come through. You can set it on the moon and have everyone in crazy costumes, or you cut three-quarters of the text, but genius will always win.”

His next project, he hopes, will bring him back to the world of film, but as a director. He wants to make a script he is writing called Street Riders, about black cowboys in tough Philadelphia neighborhoods, which is based on a magazine article he became fascinated with.

This is the actor’s first visit to Israel. He plans to visit Jerusalem and to see as much of the country as he can. “It’s wonderful to come here with the calling card of this film,” says Fiennes.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

Arclight Films has acquired worldwide rights excluding German-speaking Europe and the Czech Republic ahead of AFM to the $23.3m (€18m) German aerial action title The Red Baron.

Matthias Schweighofer, Til Schweiger, Lena Headey and Joseph Fiennes star in the Niama Film tale of the legendary first world war German fighter pilot.

Nikolai Mullerschon wrote and directed the project and Thomas Reisser and Dan Maag produced. The film opened earlier this year in Germany and Arclight is re-cutting it with the producers for the US audience.

“The story of the first legendary flying ace is great material and I believe the film will resonate with a broad international audience,” Arclight chief Gary Hamilton said.

“We are working with the producers to refine certain aspects of the drama and action to ensure that the film has the impact that audiences will expect from this gritty and romantic story of courageous men engaged in aerial combat.”

Arclight will screen the re-cut film for the first time at AFM next month.

Source: Screen Daily