Johnny Depp has made a surprise appearance at the London Film Festival to give a career honor to horror icon Christopher Lee.
Depp called Lee “a national treasure” and “a genuine artist” as he presented the 91-year-old actor with a British Film Institute Fellowship on Saturday.
He said it had been “a childhood dream come true” to work with Lee. The two actors appeared together in Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow,” ”Dark Shadows” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”
Lee returned the compliment, calling Depp one of the few younger actors “who is truly a star.”
Lee’s 250 movie roles include Dracula in a series of Hammer Films thrillers, Bond villain Scaramanga in “The Man With The Golden Gun,” the founder of Pakistan in “Jinnah” and Saruman in “The Lord of the Rings.”
During a ceremony at London’s Banqueting House, the festival gave its best-picture prize to Polish director Pawel Pawlikowski for “Ida,” the story of a novice nun in 1960s’ Poland.
Pawlikowski, best known for English-language films “Last Resort” and “My Summer of Love,” said he had been warned that “making a film in Poland, in black and white,” with a little-known actress would be a bad career move.
“But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
The first-feature prize went to Anthony Chen’s Singapore family drama “Ilo Ilo,” and screenwriter Jonathan Asser was named best British newcomer for prison drama “Starred Up.”
The documentary trophy went to Paul-Julien Robert’s “My Fathers, My Mother and Me,” a personal portrait of Europe’s largest commune.
The 57th London Film Festival included 235 features, including Paul Greengrass’ hijacking drama “Captain Phillips,” Alfonso Cuaron’s space odyssey “Gravity,” Joel and Ethan Coen’s folk saga “Inside Llewyn Davis” and Steve McQueen’s hard-hitting “12 Years A Slave.”
The 12-day festival ends Sunday with “Saving Mr. Banks,” starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers.
Steven Soderbergh Has A Multi-Faceted “Presence” In His Latest Film
Steven Soderbergh isn't just the director and cinematographer of his latest film. He's also, in a way, its central character.
"Presence" is filmed entirely from the POV of a ghost inside a home a family has just moved into. Soderbergh, who serves as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews (his father's name), essentially performs as the presence, a floating point-of-view that watches as the violence that killed the mysterious ghost threatens to be repeated.
For even the prolific Soderbergh, the film, which opens Friday in theaters, was a unique challenge. He shot "Presence" with a small digital camera while wearing slippers to soften his steps.
The 62-year-old filmmaker recently met a reporter in a midtown Manhattan hotel in between finishing post-production on his other upcoming movie ("Black Bag," a thriller Focus Features will release March 14) and beginning production in a few weeks on his next project, a romantic comedy that he says "feels like a George Cukor movie."
Soderbergh, whose films include "Out of Sight," the "Ocean's 11" movies, "Magic Mike" and "Erin Brockovich," tends to do a lot in small windows of time. "Presence" took 11 days to film.
That dexterous proficiency has made the ever-experimenting Soderbergh one of Hollywood's most widely respected evaluators of the movie business. In a wide-ranging conversation, he discussed why he thinks streaming is the most destructive force the movies have ever faced and why he's "the cockroach of this industry."
Q: You use pseudonyms for yourself as a cinematographer and editor. Were you tempted to credit yourself as an actor for "Presence"?
SODERBERGH: No, but what I did is subtle. For the first and... Read More