Plot
What Maisie Knew is a contemporary New York City revisioning of the Henry James novel by the same name. It revolves around unwitting 7-year-old Maisie, caught in the middle of a custody battle between her mother Susanna, an aging rock star, and her father, Beale, a major art dealer.
Keywords: art-dealer, bartender, based-on-novel, character-name-in-title, custody-battle, divorce, nanny, new-york-city, rock-star, three-word-title
Plot
The second film in Terence Davies's autobiographical series ('Trilogy', 'The Long Day Closes') is an impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool, based on Davies's own family. The first part, 'Distant Voices', opens with grown siblings Eileen (Angela Walsh), Maisie (Lorraine Ashbourne) and Tony (Dean Williams), and their mother (Freda Dowie) arranged in mourning clothes before the photograph of their smiling father (Pete Postlethwaite). Soon after, the family poses in a similar tableau, but for a happier occasion - Eileen's wedding. While relatives sing at her reception, Eileen hysterically grieves for her dad, and recalls happy times of her youth. Tony and Maisie's memories, however, are more troubled. Davies intermingles and contrasts scenes like the family peacefully lighting candles in church with the brutal man beating his wife and terrorizing his young children. In 'Still Lives', set (and filmed) two years later, the siblings are settled in life, but not all happily. For Eileen, relief from her drab existence comes only when singing at the pub. With his skillfully composed frames and evocative use of music in place of dialogue, Davies creates a lovely, affecting photo album of a troubled family wrestling with the complexity of love.
Keywords: 1940s, 1950s, abuse, abused-wife, abusive-father, abusive-husband, anthology, bar, battered-wife, battered-woman
George Raft: The biggest hicks in the world came from where I gew up.::Mack 'Killer' Gray: What are you talking about? Where?::George Raft: Broadway.
Wingy: You're a good actor; an artist.::George Raft: If you'd told me that ten years ago, I'd have agreed with you.
Steve Crandall: So that's what you've got. Talent, huh?
Steve Crandall: Every day's your birthday if you're a good friend of mine.
George Raft: I always wanted to try a guy your size.
Plot
Dick Heldar, a London artist, is gradually losing his sight. He struggles to complete his masterpiece, the portrait of Bessie Broke, a cockney girl, before his eyesight fails him.
Keywords: based-on-novel, blindness, painting
Only Rudyard Kipling could write such a romance! Only Ronald Colman could play such a role!
Rudyard Kipling's great romance of Dick Heldar, artist, adventurer, gentleman unafraid, gloriously re-created by the world's most distinguished cast!
Dick Heldar: Painting is seeing, then remembering better than you saw.
Maisie Ravier is a popular fictional character, the star of ten films and a radio show. She was played by Ann Sothern.
After a string of films that failed to attract an audience, Sothern left RKO Radio Pictures and was signed to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, making her first film for MGM in 1939. In a role originally intended for Jean Harlow, Sothern was cast in Maisie as brassy Brooklyn burlesque dancer Mary Anastasia O'Connor, who also goes by the stage name Maisie Ravier.
After years of trying, Sothern had her first real success, and a string of "Maisie" comedy sequels followed, beginning with Congo Maisie (1940) and continuing until Undercover Maisie (1947) in which Maisie infiltrates a gang of con men headed by a phony swami. Reviewing Swing Shift Maisie (1943), Time praised Sothern and described her as "one of the smartest comediennes in the business".
On November 24, 1941, Sothern appeared in the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of Maisie Was a Lady, and the popularity of the film series led to her own radio program, The Adventures of Maisie, broadcast on CBS Radio from 1945 to 1947, on the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1952 and in syndication from 1949 to 1953.
Maisie Williams (born 15 April 1997) is a British actress.
Her first role was that of Arya Stark, a tomboyish young girl from a noble family, in the 2011 HBO fantasy TV series Game of Thrones. In the adult-themed drama Williams was the first child actor called upon to film their character killing, in episode eight of the first season. She received acclaim for her performance with Zap2it calling her "wonderfully feisty" and the Telegraph "fantastic".
Williams continued to garner praise in the second season of Game of Thrones. HBO submitted her for consideration as Outstanding Supporting Actress in the 2012 Primetime Emmy Awards.
Williams is to appear as Loren Caleigh in the BBC's The Secret of Crickley Hall TV drama and in an as-yet unnamed role in Bold Films' 124 Degrees movie.
Alexander Johan Hjalmar Skarsgård (Swedish pronunciation: [ˈskɑːʂɡoːɖ]; born August 25, 1976) is a Swedish actor. He is best known for his roles as vampire Eric Northman on the HBO series True Blood, Meekus in Zoolander and Brad Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.
Skarsgård was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He is the son of Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård and his first wife, My, a physician. He has six younger siblings: Gustaf, Sam, Bill, Eija and Valter Skarsgård, and a half-brother, Ossian. Gustaf, Bill, and Valter are also actors.
A director friend of his father gave Skarsgård his first film role when he was seven years old. He played Kalle Nubb in Åke och hans värld (Åke and His World). In 1989, the lead role in the Swedish television production Hunden som log (The Dog That Smiled) made him famous in Sweden at the age of thirteen. Uncomfortable with being recognized, he quit acting for the next seven years.
At age 19, he applied to do his national service. He served in the Swedish military for 18 months, in a unit that dealt with anti-sabotage and anti-terrorism in the Stockholm archipelago. After completing his service in 1996 he left Sweden and attended Leeds Metropolitan University in England for six months. He enrolled to study English but admits he did not study much and "had a blast" instead.
Stephen Dorff (born July 29, 1973) is an American actor, best known for portraying Stuart Sutcliffe in Backbeat, Johnny Marco in Sofia Coppola's Somewhere, and for his roles in Blade, Cecil B. DeMented and Space Truckers.
Dorff was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Nancy and Steve Dorff, who is a composer and music producer. He has described himself as "half Jewish" (on his father's side). He was raised in Los Angeles, where his father worked, and began acting as a child, appearing in commercials for Kraft and Mattel. Dorff attended several private schools, and was expelled from five of them.
Dorff started acting in the late 1980s, landing only minor roles at first. He guest appeared in television programs such as Diff'rent Strokes, Blossom, Roseanne, Married With Children. He appeared in the television movies In Love and War, I Know My First Name is Steven and What a Dummy. Dorff's first major film role was in The Gate (1987), a horror film about a boy who, along with a friend, discovers a hole in his back garden that is a gateway to Hell. In 1992 he starred in The Power of One opposite Sir John Gielgud and Daniel Craig.
Natalie Dormer (born 11 February 1982) is an English actress. She is best known for her roles as Victoria in Casanova, as the ill-fated queen Anne Boleyn in the Showtime series The Tudors, and as Margaery Tyrell in the 2011 HBO fantasy TV series Game of Thrones.
Dormer was born in Reading, Berkshire, and attended Chiltern Edge Secondary School, before moving to Reading Blue Coat School, an independent boys' school that admits girls in the sixth form. She grew up with her stepfather, mother, sister Samantha, and brother Mark. She suffered from bullying problems during her childhood, and it is something that "still to this day she can't place why". At school, Natalie was head-girl, a straight-A student, vice-captain of the school netball team, and she also got to travel the globe with her school's public speaking team.
During her school years, she trained in dance at the Allenova School of Dancing. She describes herself as the "academic hopeful" of the family, and was offered a place to study history at Cambridge, but, having misread a question in her A Level History exam, did not achieve the A Grade she needed to attend. She decided she would audition for drama schools, and decided to train at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.