The San Francisco Film Society gave this year’s Founder’s Directing Award to Kenneth Branagh on Wednesday night at the Warfield theater, but on Friday night the actor/director, who’s arguably best known from his popular film adaptations of William Shakespeare’s work, was in the glorious Castro Theatre for an onstage interview with CalShakes director Jonathan Moscone. Branagh’s 1988 noir thriller film Dead Again rounded out the evening.
Moscone started off by reading a litany of headlines & quotes about Branagh from over the years — and pointed out how many times the phrase “renaissance man” has used to describe the Belfast-born blonde, who has directed and acted in numerous stage, film and and TV productions. In addition to directing the Bard’s Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, Love’s Labour’s Lost and As You Like It, he also helmed Dead Again, Swan Song, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, The Magic Flute, Sleuth, and Thor. He co-launched the Renaissance Theater Company in 1987 and has been nominated for five Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards, and has won an Emmy Award and three BAFTA Awards.
He did a lot a relatively young age (Branagh wrote his autobiography at age 28 — the first installment, anyway) and that raised some eyebrows– and possibly prompted some schadenfreude when a rare clunker surfaced. Janet Maslin wrote that of his direction in 1994′s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein that “Frankenstein is a cogent reminder that Mr. Branagh’s reputation as a film maker rests primarily on seductive popularizations of Shakespeare.” Ouch. If you’re going to miss the mark, be as inspired as you can and miss it my miles, otherwise you’re not trying, Branagh countered.
READ MORE: http://blog.sfgate.com/culture/2012/04/29/sfiff-last-friday-kenneth-branagh-interviewed-at-castro-theater/
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