Now the good news is, 'Beauty and the Beast' is nowhere near as bad as the Twilight films, but it DOES bear a striking visual resemblance to those teen shlock movies. There are porn films who look better and have better plots (seriously). Do watch it if you can – and merry Christmas.Come on Disney: what were you thinking?! You've got one of the most beloved films in your entire catalogue the first animated film ever that was nominated for a best picture Oscar - and you give the new version of that film to the director of 'Twilight' parts 3 and 4? Has anyone of your executives even seen Bill Condon's 'Twilight' films or did you just look at all the money they made during their opening weekend? Just so you know: those films are atrocious. I hope it will make people laugh and happy, and help to bring happiness and support into thousands of lives in the bargain. Beauty is beautiful, The Beast is beastly and one lucky viewer will win a brand new electric car. Our show is very Christmassy indeed, the cast are funny and informal, and the costumes and props are genuinely atrocious.
HMATE57 BEAUTY AND A BEAT TV
My memories of Christmas are completely intertwined with the TV we watched – from White Christmas on cold afternoons when I was young to the glorious specials of Morecambe and Wise, The Royle Family, Only Fools and Horses, Gavin & Stacey and the sublime finale of The Office. Of all times of year, Christmas is the one where I’ve always most loved the contribution TV makes. I hope this show will serve the double purpose of actually changing people’s lives, while also being in the great tradition of family Christmas TV. It definitely feels like it’s going to be a strange Christmas for everyone. The same magic brew that has kept me passionate about Comic Relief for 35 years will be in evidence again: comedians make stuff, the public enjoys watching it, and then they give – and that money magically finds its way into projects that work with people with the toughest of lives, home and abroad. Some of the key issues we deal with in the UK have rocketed: hunger and poverty has never been more intense mental health has clearly been hard hit by all the complexities of the pandemic domestic violence has surged. It has been a tough year for charities and some depend on Comic Relief for their survival at the moment. Pam Ferris’s harpsichord costume was beyond our budget, so she made it herself.Īnd why did all the cast subject themselves to this particular torture? Well, that’s the serious bit. Well, that was the plan – the witch’s nose was delivered to the flat downstairs from Celia Imrie by mistake, and the couple who lived there had gone out for the day. All the cast record themselves on computers we sent to their homes, and the computers arrived with some random props – Beast’s head, treasure chest, broadsword, witch’s green nose. This year, Beauty is Lily James, who actually played Cinderella in the Disney film of the story. The previous one was Cinderella, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Cinderella, and in the one hour of its broadcast last Christmas, it raised just under £900,000 in an extraordinary surge of generosity from the British public. This is the second Zoom pantomime we have done for Comic Relief. I eventually went to bed at 12 noon, a broken husk of a man… By 7pm in London, as (spoiler) Beauty was agreeing to marry her Beast, I was flagging badly.
By 1pm, they broke for lunch – so I took an early breakfast. They first pushed “Record” at 11am, which was 3am my time.
It started at 9am in the UK – 1am in Los Angeles, where I am currently working. I was sitting in on the recording of Beauty & The Beast – the Comic Relief Zoom pantomime for BBC Two this year.