Ralph Fiennes Has ‘No Information’ On New James Bond Film

THE GLOBAL DISPATCH

By Brandon Jones

December 30, 2013

Bond 24 is moving forward with few to no details. Even star Ralph Fiennes has no idea what his character M will be doing or dates for production to begin.

He told the New York Daily News: “I know nothing, I’ve not been told anything.”

Ignorance is bliss, but will aggravate fans.

“I have no information, no dates, no sense of the journey of my character at all! I don’t!”

Fiennes starred as Gareth Mallory in Skyfall and was promoted to M, replacing Judi Dench when she was killed in the film.

The actor has said previously it wasn’t a secret that he would be taking over the part, leading to a larger role in Bond 24.

READ MORE HERE: http://www.theglobaldispatch.com/ralph-fiennes-has-no-information-on-new-james-bond-film-10735/

Dame Judi Dench picks up doctorate from Sterling University (EXPRESS)

DAME JUDI DENCH added doctorate to her long list of accolades on Wednesday (26Jun13) when she was honoured for her contribution to film at Scotland's Stirling University.

Published: Thu, June 27, 2013

The Oscar winner opened the school's research and training unit named after writer Iris Murdoch, who she played in Iris, in 2003 and she returned a decade later to pick up a doctorate.

Accepting her latest honour, Dench told students and university staff, "When I formally opened the Iris Murdoch Building over a decade ago, I was delighted to see a public building which could provide an exemplar for dementia-friendly design. Coming back to the university, it is so encouraging to see the myriad of ways the Dementia Services Development Centre and its staff have informed practice and made a positive difference to people's lives.

READ MORE: http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbiz/410778/Dame-Judi-Dench-picks-up-doctorate-from-Sterling-University

Judi Dench: Peter and Alice, Noel Coward Theatre, review (TELEGRAPH)

Peter and Alice, starring Skyfall's Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw, is a moving theatrical chamber piece which couldn't be further removed from the Bond blockbuster, says Charles Spencer.

By Charles Spencer7:00AM GMT 26 Mar 2013

If you had to imagine a work that was the complete antithesis of the brilliant Bond blockbuster, Skyfall, it might resemble Peter and Alice, a moving, 90-minute theatrical chamber piece about childhood, growing up and the pressure of literary immortality.

Yet it has been written by John Logan, one of the scriptwriters on Skyfall, and stars Judi Dench and Ben Whishaw who play M and Q in 007’s latest adventure.

They both give beautiful, heart-catching performances in this haunting play that sounds profound notes of loss and grief.

The piece was inspired by a small footnote in literary history. In 1932, Alice Liddell Hargreaves, who was the model for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, met Peter Llewellyn Davies, one of five brothers into whose lives JM Barrie insinuated himself, and who inspired Peter Pan. Barrie wrote that he created the young boy who never grew up “by rubbing the five of you violently together, as savages with two sticks produce a flame” but it was Peter who bore the name of the character that was to haunt and trouble him throughout his unhappy life.

The play shows Peter and Alice meeting in the dusty backroom of a bookshop where Alice is to open an exhibition celebrating Carroll’s centenary. Peter is there because he is a publisher and hopes to get a book out of her. At first Alice, now 80, is haughty. “You’re presumptuous,” she tells Peter, and no actress is more capable of suggesting withering disdain in just two words than Dame Judi. But Peter perseveres and they talk about the way their lives have been marked and to different extents marred by the writers and the books that trapped them in immortal youth.

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9952907/Peter-and-Alice-Noel-Coward-Theatre-review.html

Dame Judi Dench has been named Britain's greatest actor, ahead of figures such as Lord Olivier and Sir John Mills. (INDEPENDENT)

The 78-year-old Oscar winner, who played M for the last time in the James Bond series last year, triumphed in the poll which put women on top, with Dame Maggie Smith finishing second.

Nostalgia magazine Best Of British, which polled its readers, found broadcaster Sir David Attenborough to be the greatest living British man, with scientist Stephen Hawking in second spot.

The top living British woman was the Queen while Baroness Thatcher took the runner-up position.

READ MORE: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/dame-judi-dench-trounces-laurence-olivier-to-be-name-britains-best-actor-8517113.html

Dame Judi Dench: Why the sky won’t fall in on a living legend (YORKSHIRE POST)

Dame Judi Dench and director Sam Mendes (right) on the set of the James Bond film Skyfall.

Published on Friday 15 February 2013 09:53

She’s a dame, an Oscar winner, she’s one of our truly great actors and has achieved the status of National Treasure. Film critic Tony Earnshaw talks to Yorkshire’s own Judi Dench.

It would be wrong to assume that Judi Dench, dame of the theatre, film industry darling and – cough, cough – national treasure, treats movies as secondary to theatre or that she sees them in some way as a lesser form of the day job.

She takes the work seriously. Herself she takes far less seriously. This despite the seven Olivier awards (a record), 11 BAFTAs, two Golden Globes, a Tony and an Oscar, the latter for playing one of her many single-minded monarchs.


And she can still be taken by surprise. When the phone rang at her home in Surrey and the voice on the other end of the line announced it was Clint Eastwood, she thought it was a mischievous pal pulling her leg.

The call was genuine, the offer to play J Edgar Hoover’s mother very real. That was how Cleopatra came to be working with Dirty Harry. Even now Dench pinches herself, recalling the experience of acting for Eastwood as “a bit terrifying”. She has admitted to being star-struck.

She is refreshingly free of ego, as most truly great people are. And at 78 refreshingly free of any hang-ups about retirement. She’ll work ’til she drops – in movies, on TV or on the stage.


Thus it was that in the same year as she made her seventh appearance as ‘M’ in a James Bond film she popped up as a bag lady in arch farceur Ray Cooney’s film of his own ’80s hit Run for Your Wife.

Judi Dench likes to work. And it matters not to her if the role is a meaty one in the world’s longest-running iconic franchise or a cameo amongst 150 others in an old-fashioned comedy with an old friend at the helm.

READ MORE: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/lifestyle/the-arts/cinema/dame-judi-dench-why-the-sky-won-t-fall-in-on-a-living-legend-1-5412834

Judi Dench: it was 'thrilling' to shoot a gun for Bond films She is a national treasure revered for her tireless commitment to stage and cinema. (TELEGRAPH)

By Ben Bryant11:02AM GMT 10 Feb 2013

Yet 78-year-old Dame Judi Dench has revealed an unlikely penchant for a different kind of shoot.

The Skyfall actress, who has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Baftas this evening, said it was "thrilling" to fire a gun as part of her training for the role of M in the James Bond films.

Speaking on the Andrew Marr show, she told of her invitation to Shed 19 in Buckinghamshire's Pinewood Studios, which is normally used for training stunt professionals.

She told interviewer Sophie Raworth: "I got into Shed 19. And Shed 19's where you learn to shoot a gun.
"You get in to hold a ... you know ... and you start firing at things. It's thrilling. It's thrilling because it's pretend."

Judi Dench also revealed her reaction to the news of the demise of her character in Skyfall.


She said: "I was told that very, very early on so I could get rid of the kind of peeved face and start smiling and nodding and saying, yes of course."

"I didn't feel peeved at all. Mind you, when I come to do the next one I shall hang around trying to put the boot into Ralph Fiennes."

Judi Dench also said that her last role in the Bond films was an emotional experience.

She said: "I think I was emotional when they actually said 'cut!', and they said that’s it, thanks very much.
"I think I was quite emotional then and we all had a drink and a big cake and everything – that was the emotional bit."


READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/9860494/Judi-Dench-it-was-thrilling-to-shoot-a-gun-for-Bond-films.html

SPOILER ALERT: Dame Judi Dench creates stylish 007 souvenir by turning brass bullets from final Skyfall scene in to cufflinks PUBLISHED: 08:01 EST, 15 January 2013 | UPDATED: 08:01 EST, 15 January 2013 (MAIL ON LINE)

After shooting her final James Bond scenes as M in Skyfall Dame Judi Dench kept the casings of the four bullets she fired and had them turned into cufflinks as Christmas presents

IT was the moment she finally got out from behind her London desk and in amongst the action – and it cost James Bond’s M, played by Dame Judi Dench, her life.

The matriarchal MI6 spy chief went out in a blaze of glory in her dramatic last ever scenes for the blockbuster franchise, fatally injured in a gunfight with Javier Bardem’s flamboyant villain and his henchmen in the latest Bond outing, Skyfall.

But while clearly emotional at bowing out of the series, the acting dame was clearly thrilled that she got to fire off a few shots at the baddies before she went down, the only time throughout her seven-film tenure as M she got to show her credentials in the field.

She gave one pair to her 15-year-old grandson, Sammy, and another to her daughter Finty’s boyfriend for Christmas.

Designer jeweler Roger Elliott, 63, gold-plated the cartridges and studded their tips with rubies.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2262728/SPOILER-ALERT-Dame-Judi-Dench-creates-stylish-007-souvenir-turning-brass-bullets-final-Skyfall-scene-cufflinks.html#ixzz2I3dEXEWm 
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Dame Judi Dench: Skyfall Oscar omission 'a pity' (BBC NEWS)

Dame Judi, who plays spy chief M, told BBC Radio 4 it was a "great pity" the movie did not feature in the best film, director or acting categories.

"I'm very, very sorry that nothing has been recognised," she told Eddie Mair.

"That's a great pity. I thought Sam Mendes directed it absolutely beautifully. It was a terrific film.

Skyfall featured five times in the 2013 nominations list, announced in Los Angeles on Thursday.

But most of the nods were for the film's production, including cinematography, sound editing and sound mixing.

The film also scooped a nomination for its theme song, sung by Adele, which went to number two in the UK singles chart in October.

Asked by the PM programme if she thought there was a bias against Bond movies when it came to awards, Dame Judi said she "hoped not".

"There may be. I don't know. I hope not. I just think that all round it was really wonderfully directed and presented and filmed and lit and shot," she said.

"But I've got a Bafta nomination and that's terrific.

"I think it's good luck if you get an Oscar nomination and bad luck if you don't."

READ MORE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20976116

Bafta 2013: Dame Judi Dench finally recognised for James Bond role Veteran British actress Dame Judi Dench has finally been recognised by the Bafta awards for her role as M in James Bond, as Skyfall receives eight nominations this year. (TELEGRAPH)

By Hannah Furness9:14AM GMT 09 Jan 2013

Dame Judi Dench has been nominated as best supporting actress for her role as M in James Bond, receiving one of the eight nominations for Skyfall announced at a ceremony this morning.

It is the first time she has been recognized by Bafta for playing M, and comes as she finally finishes her 17 year stint in the role. Skyfall will be her final appearance in the James Bond franchise.

Her nomination is one of eight received by the film this year, including Outstanding British Film and Cinematography.

Javier Bardem was announced as a contender for best supporting actor, with potential accolades also including prizes for original music, editing, production design and sound.


Casino Royale has previously received nine nominations; a record high.

This year, Skyfall was narrowly pipped to the most nominations by Lincoln, which received ten, Les Miserables and Life of Pi which both received nine.

The award for best film will come from a short list of Argo, Les Miserables, Life of Pi, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty.

Judi Dench was first recognised by Bafta in1966 as "most promising newcomer", and has gone on to receive and impressive 26 nominations.

She has already won ten times, including best leading actress for Iris and Mrs Brown.

READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/baftas/9789811/Bafta-2013-Dame-Judi-Dench-finally-recognised-for-James-Bond-role.html

Happy Birthday, Judi Dench!

Judi Dench

Dame Judith Olivia "Judi" Dench, CH, DBE, FRSA is an English film, stage and television actress. Dench made her professional debut in 1957 with the Old Vic Company. 

Born: December 9, 1934 (age 78), York

Height: 5' 1" (1.55 m)

Spouse: Michael Williams (m. 1971–2001)

Children: Finty Williams

Awards: Academy Award for Actress in a Supporting Role, More

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGm5ZesvzWo

Rapper gives Dame Judi fresh 'cool' DAVID MICHAEL (STUFF.CO.NZ)

Judi Dench's 15-year-old grandson recently told her that ''Dench'' has been popularised as an expression by London rapper Lethal Bizzle. It means ''cool'', as in ''stay Dench''.

Delighted by the news, she asked her family to give her items of Dench-emblazoned merchandise for Christmas.

At 77 and today nursing a cough that adds a raspy edge to her clipped voice, Dench seems an unlikely hip-hop icon. But there was a time when a film career seemed just as far-fetched.

Sitting in a London hotel room, wearing a sparkly top and jewelled necklace, she is every inch the movie star. But success in Hollywood came late, kicking off after she appeared in her first James Bond film, GoldenEye (1995). Seventeen years on, she is an indispensable part of the Bond franchise.

As M, the head of MI6 and James Bond's boss, she is the longest-serving current cast member. Skyfall, which opens in Australia on Thursday, is her seventh film in the role.

Her character - Dench describes her as ''a woman holding a power job in a man's world'' - has long been an underplayed aspect of the films.

The part was crying to be fleshed out, especially given the actor playing her managed to win an Oscar with just eight minutes' screen time in Shakespeare in Love.

In Skyfall, M finally takes a more central position in the story.

READ MORE: http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/7964049/Rapper-gives-Dame-Judi-fresh-cool

Judi Dench opens up about new romance: 'It's very nice' Published Thursday, Oct 18 2012, 2:26pm EDT | By Sam Rigby (DIGITAL SPY)

Dame Judi Dench has opened up about her relationship with British conservationist David Mills.

The Skyfall star was widowed in 2001 after the death of her husband Michael Williams. The couple were married for 30 years before Williams lost his battle against lung cancer


Dench first sparked rumors of a romance with Mills last year but has now confirmed the reports.

The 77-year-old told Yours: "When you've been widowed a long time it's very, very nice to have the company of somebody.

"It doesn't have to be a great, passionate sexual affair but it's nice to have someone who says, 'I'll find your keys for you', or, 'Let's go to the theatre tonight'. Very nice."

READ MORE: http://www.digitalspy.com/celebrity/news/a431767/judi-dench-opens-up-about-new-romance-its-very-nice.html

Daniel Craig 'looks like he could kill a man' says James Bond co-star Dame Judi Dench (THE TELEGRAPH)

Dame Judi, who plays spymaster M in the film franchise, said Craig was "quite intense" and "fantastic at doing action".

She said that while he retained some of the humour essential to the part, he was a "James Bond for today".
"I also think he feels like a Bond who could kill a man," Dame Judi told November's issue of GQ magazine.
"That was a conscious decision, really, in the same way that you don't talk about Bond girls any more, you talk about Bond women. It's moving with the times."

Craig has been seen as a more menacing version of 007 after the clonking double entendres of earlier films exemplified by the eyebrow-arching Roger Moore.


"He’s very focused on set, very focused indeed. And he’s quite intense. But, as I say, quite funny too, so the tension is never so much that it affects another person.

"Of course, Daniel is fantastic at doing action. When I see so many of the stunts he does, I say, 'You can’t have done that!' And he’ll say, “Yes, I did.” He’s very impressive.


READ MORE: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/jamesbond/9577864/Daniel-Craig-looks-like-he-could-kill-a-man-says-James-Bond-co-star-Dame-Judi-Dench.html

Judi Dench: Judi Dench's 'M' character to get killed off in Skyfall (THE TIMES OF INDIA)

Dame Judi Dench, who plays James Bond's boss "M", is said to be leaving the franchise as her character will reportedly be killed in the next 007 movie.

An insider on the set of the spy's 23rd movie 'Skyfall' told website Best For Film about the death of Dench's character. "We've just filmed M's death scene," the Daily Star quoted the source as saying.

"Dame Judi Dench is leaving the franchise," the source said. The veteran actress, 77, has played spy boss M in eight films since her Bond debut in 'Goldeneye' in 1995 opposite Pierce Brosnan.

Read More:  http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/hollywood/news-interviews/Judi-Denchs-M-character-to-get-killed-off-in-Skyfall/articleshow/12557689.cms

Tom Hiddleston Replaces Michael Fassbender in Jim Jarmusch’s Vampire Film, ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (Collider)

by Matt Goldberg Posted:January 30th, 2012 at 8:22 am

Tom Hiddleston

had an awesome 2011 with roles in The Avengers, Midnight in Paris, The Deep Blue Sea, and War Horse. Now he’s replacing the only guy who had a better 2011, Michael Fassbender, in Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive. Jarmusch said back in May that the film is a “‘crypto-vampire love story’, set against the romantic desolation of Detroit and Tangiers.” THR adds that the horror drama is “described as an unusual love story between two vampires who have been in love for centuries.” With Jarmusch at the helm, you may as well toss out any expectations or pre-conceived notions you have regarding a vampire movie.

Read more:  http://collider.com/tom-hiddleston-jim-jarmusch-vampire-movie/141375/

JUDI DENCH

Judi Dench the Magnificent has a race horse.


Source: dailymail.co.uk


Could jump racing's Iron Man - 16-time Grand National winning jump jockey AP McCoy - be planning a career in films when he finally hangs up his saddle?

Well, AP had a chance to get some acting tips this week when he and wife Chanelle had lunch with Dame Judi Dench, one of the biggest names in the British acting professional.

Currently starring in the remake of Jane Eyre, Dench is possibly best known to current cinema-goers as M from the James Bond movies.

Lunch companion: National treasure Dame Judi Dench

The Captain does not know whether AP put himself forward as a potential 007 - you know the sort of thing, dismantle a nuclear warhead, elude SMERSH agents and be back at Fontwell in time to ride in the Bumper - but he understands Dench, no stranger to world famous showbiz names, admitted to being a touch star-struck in the great man's presence.

Dench is a racing fan and an owner with Newmarket trainer Mark Tompkins. She enjoyed great success with 2008 Lincoln Handicap winner Smokey Oakey.

The lunch date at Green's in Mayfair was the result of a winning bid in the charity auction at this year's Betfair Pride of Racing Awards.

The ceremony, which admirably rewards the sport's unsung heroes, is held in aid of the sport's charity Racing Welfare.

Also present at Green's were Brian Agar, Dench's racing manager, and Pam and Peter Deal, owner of McCoy's 1997 Champion Hurdle winner Make A Stand.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/racing/article-2043438/The-Captains-Log-AP-McCoy-lunch-date-M.html#ixzz1ZOMGZk3t