Alice Englert (“Ginger and Rosa”)

Why You May Know Her: Chances are you don’t, unless you’re an avid fan of all things Jane Campion (who happens to be her mother). Her only credit prior to Sally Potter’s coming-of-age tale “Ginger and Rosa” is her mother’s short film “The Water Diary.”

What Toronto Could Mean For Her: A ton. Appearing as one of two leads opposite Elle Fanning in “Ginger and Rosa,” Englert is said to give an impressive debut performance in a film that left Telluride audiences in tears. Co-starring Annette Bening, Christina Hendricks and Alessandro Nivola, “Ginger and Rosa” centers on two girls coming of age during the 1960s in London. Fanning’s already an established commodity, paving the way for Englert to startle audiences as a fresh new face.

What’s Next: The New Zealand beauty already has three films currently in post-production: the supernatural drama “Beautiful Creatures,” starring Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson; “In Fear”; and Roland Joffe’s love story “Singularity,” starring Josh Hartnett.

Source: Indiewire

While Sally Potter’s ‘Ginger and Rosa’ featuring Elle Fanning and Alice, will have its world premiere in Toronto on Friday 7, September. The movie is also in competition for the 56th BFI London Film Festival (10-20 October 2012) and invited to the New York Film Festival in October.

Just 13 during the shoot, Elle Fanning exhibits an amazing range in Sally Potter’s sharply observed tale of growing up amid the turmoil of nuclear threat and familial discord.

Elle Fanning is simply extraordinary as a budding teen in 1962 London who takes the whole weight of the world on her small shoulders in Ginger & Rosa, Sally Potter’s sharply observed tale of growing up amid the turmoil the nuclear threat and familial discord. The film’s small scale is more than compensated for by its insights into adolescent awareness, the passions stoked by global causes and the moral hypocrisy of the ideologically righteous. Marketing efforts would best be centered on Fanning’s breakthrough performance, which will attract sufficient attention to push the film into decent-sized specialized theatrical release.

Although the central character here, Ginger, is a few years younger and the focus is far more political, the setting, time frame and older-man/underaged-girl dynamic from a female point of view run parallel to the core concerns of An Education. Potter’s film is more blunt, tough-minded and raw, marked by ban-the-bomb protests rather than outings to posh boites and getaways to barren seashores instead of Paris.

But the moral and sexual queasiness is similar, as best friends Ginger (Fanning), an intellectually inquiring blue-eyed redhead, and the darker, more sensually curious Rosa (Alice Englert), break away from adverse domestic climates to explore the big bad world. And bad it looks, particularly to Ginger, whose pacifist writer father Roland (Nivola) has made her ultra-sensitive to the real threats of the nuclear build-up in the months preceding the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The precociously attractive girls divide their time between sorties on which Rosa finds guys to fool around with while Ginger sits by and, at the latter’s prodding, attendance at political organizing meetings and anti-nuke marches of the Bertrand Russell period. Ginger’s dad couldn’t be prouder of her — “That’s my girl. You’re an activist,” Roland beam — although acrimony between him and wife Nat (Christina Hendricks) is so bad he moves out, with Ginger soon to follow.

(more…)

I’ve just found an adorable photo of ‘Beautiful Creatures’ cast on the set of the movie when they were filming in New Orleans. Thanks to Tiffany Boone (Savannah Snow) who shared this picture. You can see Alden Ehrenreich, Zoey Deutch, Tiffany Boone and our lovely Alice.

GALLERY LINKS
movies > beautiful creatures (2013) > on set

I’ve added in the gallery a new ‘Beautiful Creatures’ still featuring Alice and her co-star Alden Ehrenreich. They look adorable!

GALLERY LINKS
movies > beautiful creatures (2013) > stills

Alice was with her mom Jane Campion at the Cockatoo Island Film Festival in Australia on August 23, 2012.

GALLERY LINKS
public appearances > from 2012 > cockatoo island film festival

As we know, ‘Ginger and Rosa’ starring Alice Englert, Elle Fanning and Christina Hendricks will be presented at The Toronto International Film Festival. We now have a schedule and some informations about the movie.

Friday September 7
Visa Screening Room (Elgin)
9:00 PM

Sunday September 9
Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 6
12:00 PM

Friday September 14
TIFF Bell Lightbox 1
9:45 PM

PROGRAMMER’S NOTE

From the beginning of her prolific, multidisciplinary career, writer-director Sally Potter has been an avowed provocateur. Iconoclastic and sensual, her films straddle the divide between narrative cinema and the avant-garde. Ginger and Rosa can be seen as Potter’s return to the era during which her politics and aesthetics took shape. Like her heroines, both born on the day that the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima and coming of age during the first stirrings of the sexual revolution in early 1960s London, Potter was of the postwar generation that welcomed radical social upheaval. Ginger and Rosa plunges us into that heady moment when change seemed just around the corner — but also offers a sobering look at the toll that this radical age took on the lives of its young idealists.

Cutting class to engage in passionate discussions about politics, gender, sex, religion and hairstyles, Ginger (Elle Fanning) and Rosa (Alice Englert) seem to be inseparable companions. But their friendship falters when Rosa falls under the spell of Ginger’s father, Roland (Alessandro Nivola), a charismatic freethinker. Ginger assuages her sense of betrayal by involving herself in the antinuclear movement as the Cuban Missile Crisis seizes the world in the grip of nuclear anxiety. The obliteration of her home life and treasured camaraderie is mirrored in the threat of total annihilation. In both cases, the personal and the global, the world doesn’t end. But nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Potter strikes a perfect balance with her two central characters, making Ginger and Rosa at once emblems of Cold War youth and precisely defined individuals in their own right. Fanning, already so impressive in Somewhere and Super 8, conveys an entire inner world of conflicting emotions with the subtlest of gestures, while up-and-coming New Zealander Englert gives what is sure to be a breakout performance. Both young stars receive considerable help from a top-notch supporting cast, including Nivola, Annette Bening and Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks. Despite the very different paths their lives end up taking, both Ginger and Rosa speak to us of what it means to be young, alert to the world, and susceptible to all the riches and pitfalls it has to offer.

Source: TIFF

The Hollywood Reporter visits the set of the forthcoming YA adaptation by writer-director Richard LaGravenese, who enlists heavyweight acting talent to give his film gravitas.

There’s nothing quite like an urban (or in the case of Louisiana, rural) legend to spice up a visit to the set of a film.

Strapped into a van headed to the Louisiana plantation where Beautiful Creatures is shooting, our driver insists there’s another antebellum location on the outskirts of Baton Rouge that people visit in order to experience odd visions, creepy sounds, and even a ghost or two. Meanwhile, Richard LaGravenese’s adaptation of the best-selling novel by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl promises a different sort of supernatural phenomena – witchcraft – albeit the sort that’s enhanced by movie magic.

LaGravenese is best known as the screenwriter of such films as The Fisher King and The Bridges of Madison County, but he made his directorial debut with the 1998 film Living Out Loud, and has since carved a niche for himself as a reliable purveyor of sensitive, women-centered stories. Although it’s yet unclear if the filmmaker will shift the source material’s focus to its female protagonist, Duchaness, LaGravenese has enlisted a talented ensemble to bring the story to life, which focuses on the burgeoning relationship between the mysterious Lena Duchaness, who is a newcomer to the fictional Southern town of Gatlin, South Carolina, and a restless local teenager named Ethan Wate.
Alice Englert plays Duchaness and Alden Ehrenreich Wate, while Emmy Rossum, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Viola Davis and Margo Martindale play key roles as elders who have a vested interest in seeing how young Lena comes of age. Playing a bit like a gender-reversed version of Twilight, or a True Blood for the teenage set, the film features forbidden romance, fantastical scenarios, and of course, plenty of sociocultural subtext.

While such an assembly of talent both in front of and behind the camera would otherwise be enchanting enough, the set itself – a gorgeous, moss-drenched plantation that’s been carefully aged by the production team – creates a fantastical landscape that combines actual locations with expert set design. Meanwhile, a phalanx of grips and technicians descend upon an adjacent maze of odd-shaped hedges, which conceal the site of a future grand ball where LaGravenese is talking with his cast.

How much the film will follow in the footsteps of successful Young Adult franchises like Twilight and The Hunger Games remains to be seen, but its heavyweight cast and crew suggests that the material will be taken seriously — no matter how outlandish the topiaries look.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

We thought Alice first appearance was in ‘The Water Diary’ by her mother Jane Campion, but in fact, Alice appeared in Paula Maling’s short film ‘Listen’ in 2001. It’s a young and cute Alice we found here. I’ll try to add screencaptures tomorrow!
edit: I’ve added HQ screencaptures in the gallery.

GALLERY LINKS
movies > listen (2001) > screen captures

Another ‘Behind The Scenes’ video of ‘Beautiful Creatures’ with MTV News featuring Emmy Rossum who talks about her character Ridley Duchannes. We can see a scene where Alice appears alongside her co-stars Alden Ehrenreich or even Jeremy Irons. Enjoy!

Source: MTV News

GALLERY LINKS
movies > beautiful creatures (2013) > behind the scenes – mtv news