Mamma Mia 2: Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan and Cher, Plus everything we know so far...

Glamour

Mamma Mia 2 is currently filming in the UK and in Croatia, and we are pretty damn excited.

Ten years after the first film’s release, Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan and Colin Firth all confirmed that they'd be regrouping for the sequel, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again.

via GIPHY


Interestingly, Lily James will also be in the movie. The 28-year-old actress will be playing a younger version of Meryl Streep's character Donna Sheridan. Her love interest will be new actor, Josh Dylan. Rumour has it, Josh plays a younger version of Bill, a Swedish sailor who could possibly be the father of Sophie (Amanda Seyfried).


http://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/mamma-mia-2-movie-news

Kenneth Branagh Says 'Cinderella' (with Lily James and Sophie McShera of Downton Abbey) is 'Not About a Man Rescuing a Woman' (Q&A)

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
by Alex Ritman 2/5/2015 10:00pm PST

Cinderella’s rags-to-riches fairy tale is not the sort of project many might expect to be helmed by someone with the more Shakespearean skill set of Kenneth Branagh, recently seen flitting between Norse gods (Thor), Chris Pine-fronted Tom Clancy actioners (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit) and Swedish TV dramas (Wallander). But 64 years after Walt Disney’s animated version of the tale won the Berlinale’s very first audience award in 1951, Branagh, 54, is about to unveil the world premiere of his live-action retelling, with Downton Abbey’s Lily James in the title role and Cate Blanchett doing her best wicked stepmother.

THR caught up with the five-time Oscar-nominated actor-director, who lives with his film art director wife just outside London, to find out how a filmmaker noted more for his Henry V and Hamlet has taken on Cinderella and her ugly stepsisters.

Was making Cinderella something of a departure for you?

The fairy tale element was a surprise to me in that, although I’ve read them and enjoyed them, I didn’t ever think this was a subject I was likely to make a film about. But when you go back to the original source material, you become aware of how all-pervasive this Cinderella myth is. How many times do you read about “the Cinderella story,” the story of the underdog, the story of the ordinary human being, often subjected to cruelty and ignorance and neglect, who somehow triumphs?

How much did you deviate from the original Disney cartoon?

The animation actually took a number of liberties with the original story, which of course has been told and retold across every type of culture, with different names and even different types of cruelty. There are some in which the stepsisters cut their toes off in order to force their feet into the slipper. What we put front and center was a level of reality and psychological truth in the performances that would be surprising in the context of a fairy tale.

Did you feel much pressure when dealing with one of Disney’s prized characters?

Anybody who goes into the Disney world and takes on one of these live-action versions of an animated classic is always up against that kind of ancestry. But my entire filmmaking career and indeed my entire career has been in and around classics. Probably 90 percent of the stuff I make has inevitably been done before. … Whether it’s playing Hamlet, which has been on the go for 400 years, or pieces from the cinematic world that also have been essayed before, I feel released by that. What I think it confirms when people come back to the stories again is not that they’re tired, but that the themes and the stories and the character are ageless, and that they have a different kind of resonance for each passing generation.


READ MORE HERE: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cinderella-trailer-watch-a-very-750238

Downton Abbey: Behind the scenes of series 5 On location at Highclere Castle for the filming of Downton Abbey

THE TELEGRAPH
By Chloe Fox9:15AM BST 13 Sep 2014



In her temporary tent outside Highclere Castle in Berkshire, Lisa Heathcote, the home economics adviser on Downton Abbey, is peeling countless quail eggs to be served at the cocktail party – a reception being thrown by Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), the Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire – that is being filmed inside the house.

Things are going well. The sun is out. Everyone is happy. And then there is a problem. The ice in the cocktail glasses is making too much noise. Is there perhaps any rubber ice that they could use instead?

Inside the Victorian castle the atmosphere is hushed. Candlelight, shimmering beads and elegant grandeur are the order of the day. Above the murmur of polite, cocktail-party conversation, a familiar booming voice announces the arrival of each new guest.

Jim Carter, aka Mr Carson the butler, is the physical embodiment of everything that its estimated global audience of 150 million viewers (100 million of them in China alone) has come to love about Downton Abbey: dignified, reassuring, and not quite knowable.

Downton Abbey is a phenomenon. Not since Brideshead Revisited more than three decades ago has a televised foray into the lives of an aristocratic English family held such sway over its audiences.

When it first aired on ITV, on a Sunday night in September 2010, Downton Abbey – written by Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Robert Altman's Gosford Park – had a consolidated figure of 9.2 million viewers, instantly making it the most successful new drama on any channel.

Here was something that had all the magic ingredients that Sunday night audiences wanted: period escapism, an original storyline – and Dame Maggie Smith. ‘We knew that we had very good scripts and a top-calibre cast,’ the producer Liz Trowbridge says. ‘But we never in our wildest dreams thought that it would be as successful as it has been. Our dream, when we first set out, was to make three series – before, during and after the First World War – to explore the social history of a house and the people who lived in it.

That was all.’ Three series came and went. Ratings remained high. Devotees hung on every plot twist. Would Lady Mary Crawley (Lord Grantham’s eldest daughter, played by Michelle Dockery) end up with her cousin Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens)? Would Lord Grantham kiss the housemaid? Did Bates, Lord Grantham’s loyal valet (Brendan Coyle), murder his wife? And what possessed O’Brien (Lady Cora, Lord Grantham’s wife’s maid, played by Siobhan Finneran) to leave that bar of soap where she did? With the reassuring feel of an adaptation but the content of a soap opera, Downton Abbey was television gold.

So, what can we expect from season five? From spending one day on set, it is frustratingly difficult to glean anything at all (except, perhaps, that there seems to be some tension simmering between Lord and Lady Grantham). Cast and crew, briefed to within an inch of their lives, are tight-lipped.

‘My friends just know not to ask me any more,’ Brendan Coyle says with a smile. ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you,’ says Lily James, who plays the mischievous, fun-loving cousin of the Crawleys, Lady Rose Maclaire.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/downton-abbey/11090761/Downton-Abbey-Behind-the-scenes-of-series-5.html

Former Doctor Who star Matt Smith 'dating Downton Abbey actress Lily James'

EXPRESS
By: Kelby McNally
Published: Sun, June 1, 2014

The actor, who left the hit sci-fi show at Christmas, was spotted with the pretty actress in London earlier this week, after apparently enjoying some one-on-one time with her at this year's Cannes Film Festival.

Dressed casually, the pair looked happy and relaxed in each other's company as they spent the day amongst friend in the capital.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/479625/Doctor-Who-star-Matt-Smith-dating-Downton-Abbey-actress-Lily-James

Downton Abbey Spoiler: Downton Christmas special filmed at Buckingham Palace

MAIL ON LINE
By LUCY CROSSLEY
PUBLISHED: 09:11 EST, 8 December 2013 | UPDATED: 12:05 EST, 8 December 2013

Downton Abbey will dramatise Edward VIII's first love affair with a married woman, five years before he met Wallis Simpson as part of the programme's Christmas special.

The future King's affair with socialite Freda Dudley Ward has been written into a storyline, which sees Downton character Lady Rose presented at Buckingham Palace for her coming out.

During the episode Lady Rose, played by Lily James, is seen dancing in the arms of Prince Edward, who later became Edward VIII before abdicating to marry divorcee Wallis Simpson.

Mrs Dudley Ward had already been married for five years and had two daughters by her husband, Liberal MP William Dudley Ward, who was 16 years older than her. Her husband apparently turned a blind eye to the affair, although the relationship was well-known to aristocrats and politicians.



When the prince met Mrs Simpson, he abruptly severed all ties to his former love. In a call to the Palace in 1934, Mrs Dudley Ward was told by an operator: 'I have orders not to put you through.'

Mr and Mrs Dudley Ward divorced in 1931. Her second marriage to Spanish nobleman the Marques de Casa Maury, who she married in October 1937 also ended in divorce in 1954. She died in 1983, at 88, and never spoke of the affair.

READ MORE HERE:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520228/Downton-Abbey-Christmas-special-Edward-VIIIs-great-love.html

Downton Abbey preview: See episode 2 spoiler pictures as Cora confronts new lady's maid Edna

DAILY MIRROR
By Claire Hodgson
26 September, 2013

We already know that Anna Bates will reach out to Mr Molesley in the second episode of Downton Abbey, but these new images reveal some other nuggets of information.

Cora seems very unhappy about something and it looks as if new lady's maid Edna is the cause. Perhaps she has unearthed a skimpy negligee for her next attempt at seducing Tom Branson?

After last week's snogathon, Edith and her boyfriend Michael Gregson look like they are simultaneously madly in love and trying desperately not to catch a contagious disease from each other, in a rather restrained snap.

Lady Rose appears to be up to no good (again) as well. But we might be mistaking cheekiness for smugness after successfully sorting out all that ghastly recruitment lark.

Or perhaps Rose is looking sprightly because she has met a charming gentleman at the village hall. It looks as if Rose is masquerading as a maid and in a shock twist, the maid's outfit appears to work in attracting a man, with another shot showing the two about to lock lips.





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Helena Bonham Carter to Play Fairy Godmother in Disney's 'Cinderella' (Exclusive) 3:56 PM PDT 6/20/2013 by Borys Kit (HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)

Kenneth Branagh is directing the live-action fantasy, which already has Cate Blanchett playing the role of the wicked stepmother.

Helena Bonham Carter has nabbed the plum role, or perhaps it’s the pumpkin role, of the fairy godmother in Disney’s live-action version of Cinderella.

Kenneth Branagh is directing the movie project, which sees Lily James in the title role, Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother and Game of Thrones' Richard Madden as the prince. Sophie McShera (Downton Abbey) and Holliday Granger (The Borgias) are playing the stepsisters.

The fairy godmother will be getting more screen time in this version than in Disney’s classic animated movie, with the character disguised as an old beggar who watches over Cinderella before revealing herself as the magical being she truly is.

READ MORE:http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/helena-bonham-carter-boards-cinderella-572595

The Borgias' Holliday Grainger Will Ridicule Cinderella In Kenneth Branagh's Adaptation Author: Nick Venable (CINEMA BLEND)

Kenneth) Branagh already has a strong cast lined up for Cinderella, with Downton Abbey’s Lily James in the lead role and Robert Madden as her Prince Charming. As a stepsister, Grainger would be playing the daughter of Cate Blanchett, who will star as the wicked stepmother Lady Tremaine. Something tells me someone equally beautiful is going to nab the other sisterly role. Call me crazy.

I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if Cinderella turned into a period piece, since it seems like Grainger has become the new Keira Knightley in that respect. She currently stars in the 15th century-set, soon-to-wrap-up Showtime drama The Borgias, and will soon star as Bonnie Parker in Lifetime’s upcoming miniseries Bonnie and Clyde. In the past two years, she’s starred in Cary Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre, Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s Bel Ami, Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina and Mike Newell’s Great Expectations. I wonder if she’ll ever appear in a movie with a cellphone in it.

READ MORE: http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Borgias-Holliday-Grainger-Ridicule-Cinderella-Kenneth-Branagh-Adaptation-37987.html

Downton Abbey beats BBC rivals in the ratings as finale fetches 10.7m Glamorous house guest Lady Rose helped period drama Downton Abbey end its third series on a high. (METRO)

The young seductress, played by Lily James, helped the season finale attract  10.7million viewers, beating the BBC’s drama offerings.

Sunday night’s episode was the highest-rating one of the series and also featured US veteran Shirley MacLaine as that ‘dreadful’ American, the heiress Martha Levinson.

She starred alongside Dame Maggie Smith and leading man Hugh Bonneville in the Emmy-winning show.


Read more: http://www.metro.co.uk/tv/917039-downton-abbey-beats-bbc-rivals-in-the-ratings-as-finale-fetches-10-7m