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| Michael Haneke: I may collaborate with Michel Houellebecq The Austrian director of The White Ribbon reveals that he and the controversial French author have discussed working togetherBoth are savage pessimists. Both have redefined the limits of their respective art forms. Both have expressed their admiration for the other. But it's only now that the possibility of their working together has been confirmed.In London to promote his new film, The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke revealed to guardian.co.uk/film that he and the controversial author Michel Houellebecq had discussed mutual projects."I've read every book of Houlellebecq's and wondered myself whether we could perhaps work together," he said. "We have considered it and talked about it, but he's got so much to do and I've got so much to do, so we haven't got very far yet."Houellebecq has long been interested in transferring his work to the cinema. His novel, Atomised, was adapted for the big screen in 2006, while his self-directed film of his most recent novel, The Possibility of an Island, met with critical derision last year. The latter includes a lengthy discussion of Haneke's merits as film-maker.In an interview to promote Hidden in 2005, Haneke acknowledged the novelist's appreciation of his work and said that, to some extent, he concurred with Houellebecq's take on him as a moralist. Last year, Haneke drew further parallels between them, calling Houellebecq "an author who is both tender and furious at the same time. A bit like me." For good measure, the pair also share the same agent.The White Ribbon, which is released in the UK today, won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival earlier this year. A tale of random violence set in small-town Germany on the eve of the first world war, responses to the film have been warm, but discussion of the director's intention more mixed.This is something for which Haneke abdicates responsibility. "Everyone should have their own interpretation," he said. "Whether it matches my intentions when I made the film is not important. A large audience in a cinema will all see a different film. A book exists in the same number of versions as there are readers."Michael HanekeMichel HouellebecqCatherine Shoardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Cheever: A Life by Blake Bailey A funny, astute and clear-eyed biography of John Cheever impresses Blake Morrison"I have no biography," John Cheever once wrote. "I came from nowhere and I don't know where I'm going." Like many of his claims, it's one to be treated with suspicion. He knew exactly where he came from – an old and illustrious Yankee family, with a weakness for drink and profligacy. He'd a strong sense of where he was going, too – Mount Parnassus, or the American fiction writer's equivalent. As to biography, few writers' lives have been so painstakingly documented: he did it himself, in his incomparable journals; his daughter Susan and son Ben have written extensively about him; and now comes this 800-page biography.Cheever grew up in a world of elegance and finery (an 11-bedroom 19th-century house, black-tie dances, a Buick sedan) but when his father's lucrative shoe business collapsed, things fell apart. His mother opened a gift shop to keep the family afloat, but to John, a precocious snob, the vulgarity of that was hard to forgive. Meanwhile his father became a miserable drunk. Never a sporty child, John turned to writing to give "fitness and shape" to the unhappiness at home. He sold his first story at the age of 18.After that early breakthrough, his 20s proved more of a struggle. He divided his time between New York, Boston and the writers' resort at Yaddo, occasionally selling stories, but unable to write the novel he felt he had in him. Not that frustrations at the desk inhibited his hedonism away from it. He learned how to drink properly – 12 manhattans at a single sitting – and enjoyed a range of sexual partners, both male and female. With the women, he was brisk and functional (sometimes he didn't even remove his shoes), whereas men inspired longing and shame: "Every comely man, every bank clerk and delivery boy, was aimed at my life like a loaded pistol." He wanted marriage, family, a socially acceptable sanctuary for his cock.The sanctuary came through Mary Winternitz, whose family had intellectual and social cachet. They'd barely married in 1941 when Cheever joined the army. But he was spared a four-year absence, or worse, by being transferred to a writing job in the Signal Corps before his regiment was sent to Utah Beach. Demobbed, he continued not writing his novel. To outsiders he seemed a success, a man whose stories were regularly published in the New Yorker. But in his own eyes he was a failure. The critical acclaim for JD Salinger, and commercial success of his friend Irwin Shaw, filled him with envy – as, later, did Saul Bellow, John Updike and Joseph Heller (whose Something Happened he read a few pages of, then threw out of the window because he liked it so much).By the mid-50s, he was immersed in a world he reckoned to despise but would never leave: middle class, suburban, and with rollicking but unliterary neighbours, such as the man who could hurdle a sofa without spilling a drop of his cocktail. As Cheever himself put it, he was like a spy who'd insinuated himself among the enemy and then forgotten his mission. At home he was a tyrant, nagging his daughter about her weight, bullying his sons to play ball games so as to stop them becoming effeminate, and berating his wife for taking a teaching job and neglecting the housework. Family meals were a shark tank, and the success of his first novel, The Wapshot Chronicle, when it finally appeared in 1957, did little to appease his self-loathing. The working day was sometimes over, and the first drink taken, by 10.30am. His only exercise was to take bracing swims in neighbours' pools.He felt like an imposter – above all in matters of sexual preference. "Mary, Mary, Mary," he wrote in his journal, "how difficult it is to be alone with you, eating your pea soup, when our knowledge of one another has such terrible foundations of deceit." For two decades of marriage he tried to be good by sleeping only with women, among them the film star Hope Lange, who described him as the horniest man she'd ever met. But as relations with Mary became increasingly cold (they'd go for weeks without speaking), his desperation for male lovers became irresistible. The longest-lasting of them was a PhD student and would-be novelist called Max Zimmer, who as a heterosexual from a Mormon background found Cheever's attentions brutal and repulsive at first but who grew to love him and, despite the furtiveness, helped to brighten his last few years.They were years Cheever was lucky to have. He had seemed washed up, a sad old drunk, outshone by the Barths and Barthelmes – every public appearance he made ended in humiliation or a state of undress. But after drying out he wrote arguably his finest novel, Falconer, and won almost every honour going. He still couldn't admit his bisexuality: when his daughter asked him if he'd had any gay experiences, he told her yes, many, "all tremendously gratifying, and all between the ages of nine and 11". He loosened up a bit, nevertheless, and generosity and wit returned. "Do you write with a typewriter or in longhand?" his friend Allan Gurganus asked, jokily, at a reading in Stanford. "I inscribe on stone tablets," Cheever replied.Given how brilliantly Cheever dissected his own life in letters and journals, Blake Bailey's biography could easily have seemed boring and superfluous. Instead, it's lively, funny, informative, astute about the work, unillusioned about the man, and masterly in its use of telling quotes. In fact, it's impossible to imagine how anyone could have done a better job.Blake Morrison's South of the River is published by Vintage.BiographyBlake Morrisonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
'The Futurist' reveals James Cameron's ego, ambition Rebecca Keegan's fascinating biography illustrates that the 'Avatar' director rarely fails to back up his bravado. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Author's year of 'Living Oprah' was more than enough Robyn Okrant followed every piece of advice from the Queen of Talk. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Bafta nominations list 2010 Nominations for the Orange British Academy Film awards, or BaftasBest filmAvatarAn EducationThe Hurt LockerPreciousUp in the AirLeading actorJeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)George Clooney (Up in the Air)Colin Firth (A Single Man)Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)Andy Serkis (Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll)Leading actressCarey Mulligan (An Education)Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones)Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)Audrey Tautou (Coco Before Chanel)Supporting actorAlec Baldwin (It's Complicated)Christian McKay (Me and Orson Welles)Alfred Molina (An Education)Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)Supporting actressAnne-Marie Duff (Nowhere Boy)Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)Mo'Nique (Precious)Kristin Scott Thomas (Nowhere Boy)Outstanding British filmAn EducationFish TankIn the LoopMoonNowhere BoyOutstanding debut by a British writer, director or producerLucy Bailey, Andrew Thompson, Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock, David Pearson (directors, producers – Mugabe And The White African)Eran Creevy (writer/director – Shifty)Stuart Hazeldine (writer/director – Exam)Duncan Jones (director – Moon)Sam Taylor-Wood (director – Nowhere Boy)DirectorJames Cameron (Avatar)Neill Blomkamp (District 9)Lone Scherfig (An Education)Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)Original screenplayThe Hangover (Jon Lucas, Scott Moore)The Hurt Locker (Mark Boal)Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)A Serious Man (Joel Coen, Ethan Coen)Up (Bob Peterson, Pete Docter)Adapted screenplayDistrict 9 (Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell)An Education (Nick Hornby)In the Loop (Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche)Precious (Geoffrey Fletcher)Up in the Air (Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner)Film not in the English languageBroken EmbracesCoco Before ChanelLet the Right One InA ProphetThe White RibbonAnimated filmCoralineFantastic Mr FoxUpMusicAvatar (James Horner)Crazy Heart (T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton)Fantastic Mr Fox (Alexandre Desplat)Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (Chaz Jankel)Up (Michael Giacchino)CinematographyAvatarDistrict 9The Hurt LockerInglourious BasterdsThe RoadEditingAvatarDistrict 9The Hurt LockerInglourious BasterdsUp in the AirProduction designAvatarDistrict 9Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceThe Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusInglourious BasterdsCostume designBright StarCoco Before ChanelAn EducationA Single ManThe Young VictoriaSoundAvatarDistrict 9The Hurt LockerStar TrekUpSpecial visual effectsAvatarDistrict 9Harry Potter and the Half-Blood PrinceThe Hurt LockerStar TrekMakeup & hairCoco Before ChanelAn EducationThe Imaginarium of Doctor ParnassusNineThe Young VictoriaShort animationThe GruffaloThe Happy DucklingMother of ManyShort film14I Do AirJadeMixtapeOff SeasonThe Orange Rising Star Award (voted for by the public, nominations announced earlier this month)Jesse EisenbergNicholas HoultCarey MulliganTahar RahimKristen StewartBaftasJeff BridgesGeorge ClooneyColin FirthAndy SerkisMeryl StreepAlec BaldwinKristin Scott ThomasSam Taylor-WoodJames CameronKathryn BigelowQuentin TarantinoCoen brothersNick HornbyJason Reitmanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |