Abbreviations

November 28, 2000

- "Beowulf" on US TV!

HBO premieres the animated "Beowulf" on December 12 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern time.

"Beowulf" (U.K., Christmas Films and Right Angle, 1998, 25 mins.)
Joseph Fiennes (voice of Beowulf), Derek Jacobi (Narrator), Timothy West (Hrothgar), Anna Marshall (Queen Wealtheow)

Derek Jacobi narrates an animated version of the 8th-century hearthside tale of the young hero Beowulf (Fiennes), whose journey to help his father's old friend Hrothgar (West) brings him into conflict with the terrifying swamp monster Grendel and Grendel's mother, and a fearsome treasure-hoarding dragon.

- Joe in a book:

This book called "Hothouse" by Rolling Stone (editor) and David Wild (Introduction) features pictures of actors, musicians, etc., and Joe is one of them, with the photo featured by "Life" magazine earlier on.

November 24, 2000

- Hot Date!:

The December Tatler issue is their Little Black Book edition, where they list the 200 hottest dates in the UK, and Joe is among their choices, again! Here's what it says:

"Joseph Fiennes 30s
Actor Joseph is remarkably laid-back. He's a Chelsea supporter, quite blokeish, loves Scotch whiskey and once went on a Buddhist retreat in Canada."

November 22, 2000

- EATG news:

Upcomingmovies reports that the December 22 release date for LA and NY is in question again. "The latest word is that the 12/22 dates look to have indeed been pulled."

November 15, 2000

- Hello! magazine (issue 638, cover date 21 November 2000 - Paula Yates on the cover) has a little article about the prisoners' cushions, as follows:

Celebrity cushions in aid of charity

Stars from the worlds of show business, sport and politics have been busy putting their artistic skills to the test, all in the name of charity.

A host of celebrities were asked to provide drawings and ideas for personalised cushion covers. These were then translated into embroidery and made into cushions by prison inmates, who also added their own personal touches to the finished products.

Among those who contributed their designs were Onegin director Martha Fiennes and her Shakespeare in Love brother, Joseph. "Joe came round last night," said Martha, "and we did this on the computer with *his* hands. *His* idea, of course..."

Both the sketches and the resulting cushions are to be auctioned by Sotheby's on Thursday, November 16 at Knepp Castle, West Sussex. Proceeds from the sale will go to the charity Fine Cell Work, which aims to improve opportunities for prison inmates.

Picture caption says:
Brothers Ralph and Joseph Fiennes also donated designs - Ralph's was a sketch of Jonah and the Whale (left) and Joseph's a computer design of his hands (pictured below)

Part of Ralph's pic is shown - just a hand-drawn sketch with the colours written in . It's nothing like an actual pattern (it would be interesting to know who converted the sketches into patterns for stitching) but the whale looks very ferocious. An interesting choice. Joseph's hands are just - hands. They are held up, palms out, thumbs almost touching. Red on a blue background with the words "come on then..." in the middle of the picture.

November 14, 2000

- From The Scotsman - United Kingdom; Nov 10, 2000

Cushioning the harsh reality of life behind bars

IT SEEMS an unlikely alliance to take the world of soft furnishings by storm, but a creation by the former supermodel Jerry Hall and a team of convicts is expected to be the focus of attention at a charity auction next week.

Ms Hall is one of a host of celebrities who have seen their designs for cushion covers brought to life by the dainty needlework of prisoners at nine jails across the country. The results are to be auctioned next week to raise money for a charity that helps the rehabilitation of offenders.

Photographer David Bailey, jazz legend George Melly, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox and actor Joseph Fiennes have also made contributions.

All 39 cushions, each of which bears the embroidered signature of its celebrity designer, will be auctioned on Thursday at Knepp Castle in Sussex and they will be on display at Sotheby's in London on Monday and Tuesday.

Event organiser Katy Emck, of the prison charity Fine Cell Work, said: "We are expecting a lot of interest in this project and are hoping to raise around Pounds 15,000. The money will be used to continue our charity, which gives prisoners the opportunity to save some cash while they are in prison by working.

"The work they produce, which includes quilts, rugs, needlepoint cushions and other items are then sold on to shops and some of Britain's top interior designers."

Formed in April 1997 by Lady Anne Tree, Fine Cell Work raises money to help pay off any debts which may have pushed inmates towards a life of crime. In the past, prestigious interior design shops such as Colefax & Fowler and Jane Churchill of London have bought the prisoners' work and it has proved popular with their clients.

November 11, 2000, Saturday
SECTION: Features
HEADLINE: Light fingers make fine work
BYLINE: Emma Mahony

Sotheby's is to auction embroidery by some of Britain's most dangerous criminals. Emma Mahony reports

IT'S an unlikely marriage: London's most fashionable interior designers and Britain's most wanted criminals. Names such as Jane Churchill, Colefax & Fowler and Victoria Waymouth Interiors of Chelsea being closely linked to Les the lifer and Mary from HMP Holloway. And yet, as marriages go, there is everything to suggest this is a happy one.

The charity behind the union is Fine Cell Work, an organisation dedicated to teaching embroidery and quilt-making in prison. Mailbags aside, there is a history of needlepoint inside British prisons - the first prison sewing circle was set up in Wormwood Scrubs in 1819 by the Victorian penal reformer Elizabeth Fry.

The designs they are working on have been donated from right across the artistic and music world with contributions from Mick Jagger, Doris Lessing, Louis de Bernieres, Emma Thompson, Oliver Sacks, Ronnie Wood and Joseph and Ralph Fiennes.

Film-maker Martha Fiennes, sister of Joseph and Ralph, has contributed an unusual design, although perhaps not suitable for the men's prisons. "I thought of a woman lying on a sofa naked," says Fiennes. "And I loved the idea of putting it through a computer so it became digitalised and looked like a photograph." The result is a series of five cushions that will be auctioned separately but make up the full-length nude. Fiennes herself has put in an order from the catalogue for some of Sandy Jones's giant spotted cushions (from Pounds 75), in applique.

When: Thursday 16 November 2000. The auction evening event starts at 6.30pm, with the auction at 8pm.

Where: Knepp Castle, near West Grinstead, West Sussex.

Tickets are available from Katy Emck at Fine Cell Work, 368 Russell Court, Woburn Place, London WC1H 0LL.
Telephone: 020 7278 3195.
Email: enquiries@finecellwork.co.uk

Tickets for the evening event cost £25, with champagne and an exhibition of Fine Cell Work pieces. The cushions are expected to fetch between £100 and £1500. Celebrity cushion charity auction

You can view the cushions in advance, either in Sotheby's saleroom (34-35 New Bond Street, London W1) on Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 November, 10am-4pm, and at Knepp Castle on the day of the sale (Thursday 16 November), 10am-4pm. You can leave commission bids if you cannot attend the sale.

Shakespeare Fiennes Stars in Marlowe Epic

13 November 2000

Film star Joseph Fiennes, who played the bard in the blockbuster Shakespeare in Love, returns to the stage next year to play the title role in one of the greatest dramas by Shakespeare's contemporary rival, Christopher Marlowe. The new production of Edward II, directed by Michael Grandage, opens at Sheffield's Sheffield's Crucible Theatre on 13 March, following previews from 8 March, and continues to 31 March 2001.

Considered Marlowe's most accomplished play, Edward II, written in 1592, tells the epic story of the homosexual king who was defeated and eventually murdered by power-hungry barons.

Fiennes plays the title role. Although best known for his film work, Fiennes (younger brother of fellow actor Ralph Fiennes) has worked extensively on stage. In 1998, he starred in the Royal Court premiere of Nick Grosso's acclaimed Real Classy Affair, alongside Nick Moran (of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels fame). Fiennes' other stage credits include A Month in the Country (Albery Theatre), The Woman in Black (Fortune) and numerous RSC productions.

In addition to the Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love, Fiennes' other film credits include starring roles in Elizabeth and Martha Meet Frank, Daniel and Laurence, as well as the upcoming Stalingrad battle epic Enemy at the Gates. It is rumoured that Fiennes turned down the starring role in Roman Polanski's next film, The Pianist, in order to perform in Sheffield.

Michael Grandage directed Marlowe's The Jew of Malta at the Almeida in 1999. His other recent stage credits include Good, starring Charles Dance at the Donmar Warehouse, and this year's revival of Passion Play, which opened at the Donmar before transferring to the West End's Comedy Theatre.

November 10, 2000

- From the Just-for-fun department:

Gwyneth Paltrow tells in an interview with the Telegraph UK:

"Joe Fiennes used to teach me soccer songs, he was such a doll. The Costume guy on Shakespeare In Love would teach me Arsenal songs. I'd sing them for Joe and really rile him up and then let him teach me Chelsea songs."

November 8, 2000

- Article from Total Film, December 2000 edition about EATG:

The talent: Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes, Ed Harris, Rachel Weisz, Ron Perlman, Jean-Jaques Annaud(director)

The plot: Stalingrad, 1942. In not so much a bloodbath as an entire swimming pool bulging with offal, the Nazi assault on the Russian city is haemmoraging casualties. But the sharpest thorn in Germany's weeping wound is legendary sniper Vassili Zaitsev(Law), whose headcount has topped 140. The Reich send their own crack shooter Major Koenig (Harris) to target and eliminate Zaitsev. Cue a crazed shootists' duel through the city ruins.

The buzz: With a gruelling four-month schedule and a $75-million budget, its tempting to tag Enemy At The Gates as the continental Pearl Harbor(there's also a love triangle between Law's gunman, Fiennes' communist politician and Weisz's female sniper). But French helmer Annaund is aiming for grub, grit and, if Weisz is to be believed, shit ("We look gaunt and grey. The make-up trailer was actually called the make-down trailer").

Whether audiences can take another barrage of grunge-chic war flick a la Private Ryan is debatable but kudos to Annaund for casting an on form Law to face-off against the always class Harris. Promising but here's hoping it avoids Assassins-style silliness.

- EATG news:

Upcomingmovies reports that EATG's release date is December 22,2000 (LA/NY-Oscar qualifying run); February 23rd 2001(wide) which looks like they may release it in LA and New York for the Oscars and then release it on a wider distribution later. So EATG could still be in the Oscar run!

- THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (LONDON) November 08, 2000:

JONATHAN Flint, PR at Citigate Dewe Rogerson, had an even tougher time than you did coming into work. Last Sunday a feature film, Killing Me Softly, starring Joseph Fiennes, was being shot outside the agency's London Wall offices, complete with fake traffic jam of cars driven round the block to create the rush-hour effect. "There's a fuel crisis, and weather warnings. Why on earth didn't they just come and film an actual traffic jam during the week?" Flint demands.

November 7, 2000

- Fiennes rejects Polanski's £1m:

TWO thousand hopefuls who auditioned last month in London for the lead in Roman Polanski's next film, The Pianist, will all be disappointed, writes Richard Brooks. The director of Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown has turned to an American professional actor to play the Polish Jew who was kept alive by a sympathetic Nazi officer during the second world war.

Yet even this actor, who will be named by Polanski this week, was not first choice. The controversial director had for months been pursuing Joseph Fiennes.

However, Fiennes, a star of Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth, has rejected a probable £1m to earn about £350 a week playing the lead in Christopher Marlowe's Edward II for two months at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre.

Polanski's search for a lead made headlines when he advertised auditions for "a man aged 23-35, slightly built, dark colouring". Acting experience was not essential, but he needed to be sensitive, vulnerable and charismatic.Though many, mostly from Britain or Europe, queued for hours to be auditioned at a tiny London theatre, all were seen for only seconds and were told they were unlikely to get the lead.

Celestia Fox, The Pianist's casting director, denied it was a publicity stunt.

"Roman had thought he might find the right person, an unknown," she said, adding: "It's possible that a few of those we saw might get some bit part."

The part of Wladyslaw Szpilman, whose war memoirs were published two years ago when he was 87, will occupy almost all the film.

Polanski and Szpilman are both central European Jews, and both escaped the concentration camps, though many members of their families did not. Szpilman, who died last July aged 89, was a pianist in Warsaw before the war. He was saved from Treblinka by a policeman who recognised him from his piano-playing days, and helped by an SS officer, Wilm Hosenfeld, who provided food for him.

November 4, 2000

- Some updates from 4filmmakers.com:

Miramax has climbed on board for Dust, and one of the producers is Robert Redford (so it could be at the Sundance Film Festival next year maybe?)
The KMS cast list shows the following additional names now: Ulrich Thomsen, Helen Grace, Kika Markham, Jason Hughes, Ronan Vibert
Universal Pictures is co-producing Uprising

November 2, 2000

- Empire has recorded the start date for Killing Me Softly. Read about it here:

Empire Article