Kenneth Branagh: Masterpiece Mystery, Wallander, Series III, final episode, 'BEFORE THE FROST' SUNDAY

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Kenneth Branagh: WALLANDER - THE DOGS OF RIGA On Masterpiece Mystery

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Kenneth Branagh talks about Wallander

Swedish cop Kurt Wallander returns with a fragile new hope, the same old demons, and a murder investigation that takes him far from home...and to the very heart of it. Kenneth Branagh stars in Wallander, Series III, An Event in Autumn, Sunday, Sept. 9, 2012, at 9pm ET/CT on MASTERPIECE Mystery!

 

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Branagh injects humanity into ‘Wallander III’ on PBS By Katherine Tulich / Special to The Washington Post (THE BULLETIN)

By Katherine Tulich

“Masterpiece Mystery:

Wallander III" Sept. 9, 16 and 23, 9 p.m., PBS

In the first episode of the new Wallander series, Kenneth Branagh made sure he wrote the word “smile" on his script. “I figured it was the one opportunity in three films that I get to do it, so I better remember how to move my muscles upwards," the actor says with a laugh as he mugs a strained smile.

For anyone familiar with the Swedish noir detective from Henning Mankell’s moody and contemplative crime thrillers, the central character Kurt Wallander does very little smiling. A solitary figure with a dogged and singular determination, the seemingly perennially depressed small-town cop solves grisly crimes in a grimly beautiful Swedish countryside. Through nine books, he has become a beloved figure, and while there have been Swedish film and TV interpretations of Mankell’s books, it’s British actor Branagh who has memorably imprinted the character worldwide through a limited television series, the third of which premiers Sept. 9 as part of Masterpiece Mystery on PBS stations.

“There is great affection towards the character," says Branagh as he sips a cup of hot English breakfast tea on a balcony overlooking the pool at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles after a long day of interviews. “There is no machismo swagger about him.. He has this open-wound quality, and he takes all of these crimes personally. He has a sense of quiet but intense moral outrage. He’s appalled and surprised when people commit these terrible acts of cruelty, and he has an empathy for the victim that is almost dangerous to him."


READ MORE: http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120902/NEWS0107/209020357/

Kenneth Branagh Talks WALLANDER Season 3, JACK RYAN, His Desire to Make an IMAX 3D Shakespeare Film and More by Christina Radish (COLLIDER)

Actor Kenneth Branagh returns as Inspector Kurt Wallander, the moody Swedish detective created by mystery writer Henning Mankell, for three new 90-minute Wallander stories on Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS, starting September 9th.  In Season 3, the depressed but fascinating cop tries to improve his disposition, while contending with torture killings, dashed romance, homicidal do-gooders and a resentful grown-up daughter.

During this recent exclusive interview with Collider, Kenneth Branagh talked about what he thinks makes Kurt Wallander one of the most popular detectives in the world, what fans can expect from this third series of movies, how having a woman in his life and some colleague changes at work affect the character, and that he’s hoping to do a fourth series of three films next year.  He also talked about the new Jack Ryan film – an origin story that allows the audience to understand how Jack Ryan (played by Chris Pine) develops into a CIA analyst – which he is both directing and playing the villain in, said that he expects to shoot from the beginning of September until Christmas, and that he thinks it’s unlikely he will shoot in either IMAX or 3D, but that he would like to do an IMAX 3D Shakespeare film.


Collider:  What do you think it is that’s made Kurt Wallander one of the most popular and fascinating detectives in the world?

KENNETH BRANAGH:  (Author) Henning Mankell told me that when he gave Wallander diabetes in the books, the sales went up.  People enjoy, somehow, this precarious thrill at seeing someone who is so raw in their dealings with life and, in his particular case, the job that he does and its extremity, in terms of its darkness, and the unrelenting nature of his preoccupation.  He’s very dogged in the pursuit of a crime.  He’s very compulsive and obsessive about that.  He doesn’t let it go.

READ THE REST OF THE INTERVIEW HERE: http://collider.com/kenneth-branagh-wallander-jack-ryan-interview/188653/

Kenneth Branagh: A scene from Wallander, coming in September 9 to Masterpiece Mystery

Watch A Scene from Wallander: An Event in Autumn on PBS. See more from Masterpiece.

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Kenneth Branagh: Wallander is Midsomer Murders with a dose of Swedish misery TV review: Wallander's The Fifth Woman, with all its grey skies and relentless scowls, was a nudge back to reality after all the pomp and circumstance of the Olympics. (METRO)

By Keith Watson - 13th August, 2012

An elderly poet impaled on fence spikes, followed by the disappearance of a flower collector – it sounds like the typical ingredients of a Midsomer Murder cock-and-bull tale. But where the country folk treat savage murder with a sardonic twist of the lips, over in Sweden it gets the full-on misery treatment.

No apologies for returning to Wallander (BBC4), the only viable alternative to ball-chucking, pike positions and ribbon rippling this weekend. The only gold Rolf Lassgård (the original TV version of Henning Mankell’s detective) would nab is in the Walrus Lookalike competition.

He grumps his way through cases like a bear with a sore toe – and he was just what was needed after the adrenaline spikes and heart-rate roller coasters that have turned my sofa into a sweaty wreck these past two weeks.


Read more:http://www.metro.co.uk/tv/reviews/908142-wallander-is-midsomer-murders-with-a-dose-of-swedish-misery

Sir Ken's Swede success: Despite being the star of hit TV detective series Wallander, just-knighted Kenneth Branagh insists he's still plain Ken By RICHARD BARBER PUBLISHED: 18:00 EST, 28 June 2012 | UPDATED: 16:31 EST, 29 June 2012 (MAIL ON LINE)

You have to wonder what the dour Swedish TV detective Kurt Wallander would make of it all. A knighthood for Kenneth Branagh?

The very thought of the honour, which was announced earlier this month, is enough to bring on one of Wallander’s deep, brooding pauses.

He’d settle back in his iconic leather chair and stare into the Baltic sunset while the machinery of his mind – as trusty and as plodding as his Volvo – cranked into action and analysed every possible permutation of response.


Branagh, 51, who has played Wallander for four years, thinks he knows precisely what his alter ego’s reaction would be. His face lights up in a distinctly un-Wallanderish smile. ‘Of course, the Swedes have a royal family of their own,’ he says, ‘but Kurt’s pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool republican, so I don’t think he’d have any truck with titles.’


The reaction of the author of the best-selling Wallander stories, the avowedly left-wing Henning Mankell, is much the same as his creation’s would be, says Branagh. ‘But he’s got a terrific sense of humour so he’s been very funny about it, which is exactly what I’d have expected. He’s been ribbing me about it ever since the news came out. Fair game, as far as I’m concerned.’

Mankell, 64, chooses his words as carefully as Wallander would. ‘The Swedish people are very happy for him,’ he says diplomatically. ‘Their view seems to be, “You may beat us at soccer but we’re partly responsible for Branagh’s knighthood.” He’s very well liked and they approve of the way he plays Wallander.’





Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2166409/Sir-Kens-Swede-success-Despite-star-hit-TV-detective-series-Wallander-just-knighted-Kenneth-Branagh-insists-hes-plain-Ken.html#ixzz1zEjcH2ny

Sir Kenneth Branagh's struggle with 'bleak' Wallander Share By WENN.com (HOLLYWOOD)

The director/actor plays police Inspector Kurt Wallander in the hit crime drama, adapted from the Swedish novelist Henning Mankell's books.

The upcoming third season follows Branagh's character as he investigates the deaths of young prostitutes, and the Brit admits he felt the need to talk to Mankell before shooting the difficult scenes.

He says, "I wanted to know how he was when he was writing this sort of stuff for months on end. He said he had to stop writing some books because it got too much. I asked if people thought he went too far sometimes - because the next episode is fairly extreme.

"But he said nothing he has written goes anywhere near the extremes of his research in terms of human trafficking, paedophilia and the appalling things people do...


READ MORE: http://www.hollywood.com/news/Sir_Kenneth_Branaghs_struggle_with_bleak_Wallander/31703593

Kenneth Branagh: wallowing in Wallander Vicky Frost guardian.co.uk, (GUARDIAN)

Bruised and brooding … Branagh on the Wallander set. Photograph: Laurence Cendrowicz/Left Bank

Kenneth Branagh used to find playing Wallander so grim, he went to flower shows to cheer himself up. Vicky Frost joins the newly knighted actor in Sweden to talk about the latest series – and his plans to write a drama about his Belfast childhood during the Troubles

You don't often see Kurt Wallander smiling. Frowning, yes; considering something deeply, yes; worrying away at a problem, yes – but not smiling, let alone grinning. Yet, as I watch the Swedish detective climb out of his Volvo and carry in his shopping, he is looking positively contented. Kenneth Branagh, playing the Swede, is delighted I have arrived on set in time to witness such a moment. "It's very rare!" he says after the scene has been shot. "I had to write the smile on my script so I would remember it."

The low farmhouse behind us is still being warmed by the lazy Swedish sun. This is Wallander's new home: inside are boxes full of his possessions, the detective's now-iconic leather chair, and his father's identical landscape paintings. Outside, the road stretches down to the sea, past four silhouetted trees bent almost double in the Baltic winds that whip across the landscape and cut through clothing.

Branagh is working on An Event in Autumn, based on a short story by Henning Mankell and the first of a trio of new Wallander mysteries about to air on the BBC. Wallander's fresh start in the countryside falls apart when the body of a young woman is found buried at the back of his garden. Then the remains of another young woman are washed up on the shore. Branagh and his wife are big fans of The Killing, and he recounts filming a scene at Copenhagen airport with one of its stars, Søren Malling (Lund's sidekick, Jan, from the first series). "People's faces when they saw us!" he says.

Branagh believes it is the different pacing that attracts British audiences to Scandinavian drama, "the experience of it being as much about images as about words, where part of what you're offering is the opportunity to watch other people thinking and feeling. With Sarah Lund, we spend a lot of time watching her in repose, working it out. The mood of the story, the time of day – in her case, night-time – has a weird, magnetic compulsion."


READ MORE:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2012/jun/17/kenneth-branagh-wallander?newsfeed=true

Kenneth Branagh: Stepping out in Olivier's shoes (THE AGE)

Stuart Husband February 25, 2012

KENNETH Branagh is approaching the status of, if not a British national treasure, then at least an heirloom whose value is appreciating.

A large part of the reason for this is his casting as Kurt Wallander, Henning Mankell's rumpled, melancholy Swedish detective. He's filming his third season of what has been an Australian television summer staple and we're sitting in the house he rents on the Swedish coast during filming, a capacious, onion-domed affair that, he says, as he feeds a wood-burner, used to be a meeting house for alcoholics.

Ystad, the town Wallander calls home, is a few kilometres down the road and Branagh's house looks over the pristine waters of the Baltic; a perfect spot for the ruminative cast of mind that comes with playing Wallander but which, since turning 50 in December, seems also to be Branagh's default setting.

''It's definitely the age where a kind of mental stocktaking kicks in,'' he says, taking a sip of tea. In person, Branagh is slighter than he appears onscreen but his voice has a commanding presence, something he exploits to the full in his new film My Week with Marilyn, an Oscar contender at next week's awards.

In a direct engagement with his past, the one-time new Olivier plays the old Olivier in a comedy that follows the on-set battles between Sir Laurence and Marilyn Monroe (played to the sexy-sassy-vulnerable hilt by Michelle Williams) during the making of the 1957 confection The Prince and the Showgirl.

The film is based on a memoir by Colin Clark who, despite his lowly status on set, became Monroe's confidant as the clash between her method style and Olivier's theatrical technique risked derailing the production. Branagh, all crisp lisp and camp grandstanding, plays it like screwball comedy, while suggesting Olivier's fear of being outmoded by the wave of naturalistic acting of which Monroe was a harbinger.

But did he have concerns about rekindling the Olivier thing? ''I suppose I did but in the end what it came down to was, is it a good part? And will it be fun?'' he says. ''One thing that struck me about the screenplay was that, in our world today, not many people have actually seen a Monroe film. She's just an iconic figure, like Chaplin, that you can summon in three strokes of a pen. And Olivier is even further removed.

''I came into the business 30 years ago, when he was still alive and still the world's greatest actor. My generation was very aware of his work and part of the excitement of doing this was to draw attention to him. The film captures him at a watershed moment; after it wrapped, he went and did John Osborne's The Entertainer at the Royal Court, which transformed him from a stuffed shirt to something renewed and relevant, which he was very keen to be.''

Read further:  http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/stepping-out-in-oliviers-shoes-20120224-1tsks.html