Latest news with #LawrenceOsborne
Irish Independent
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
First look at Colin Farrell-led ‘Ballad of a Small Player' released by Netflix
Farrell is set to star in Ballad of a Small Player, a psychological thriller telling the story of a gambler on the run. The film is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by British author Lawrence Osborne, published in 2014. Ballad of a Small Player is directed by German filmmaker Edward Berger, the Oscar-winning director behind the 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front and last year's hit papal drama Conclave. The film has been written for the screen by Rowan Joffe, whose previous work includes 28 Weeks Later and The American. Farrell plays the main character of the story, Lord Doyle, a high-stakes gambler who flees for Macau in China, where he is lying low. The Dubliner is joined by fellow cast members Fala Chen, Deanie Ip, Alex Jennings and Tilda Swinton. "When his past and his debts start to catch up with him, Doyle encounters a kindred spirit who might just hold the key to his salvation,' the Netflix description of the film reads. Ballad of a Small Player
Spectator
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Spectator
The satisfaction of making wine the hard way
You can learn a lot about a winemaker by tasting his wine. In The Accidental Connoisseur, Lawrence Osborne wrote of one wine that smelt of 'simmering insanity', reflecting the angry Italian who made it. I didn't have quite such an extreme reaction to Peter Hahn's Clos de la Meslerie Vouvray, but I did deduce that he was idealistic, determined, romantic, perhaps a little dogmatic, and given to certain esoteric beliefs. Having now read his book Angels in the Cellar, I can say that my deductions were mostly right. Hahn is an American whose career as an investment banker came to an end when he suffered a breakdown in the back of a London taxi. He decided to give up the rat race and bought a neglected Vouvray domaine, where he moved with his family to live la belle vie. So far, so conventional. In some parts of France you can't throw a grape without hitting a burnout Anglophone tycoon turned gentleman farmer. Hahn, however, decided to do things the hard way, from pruning the vines to making the wine as much as possible by hand. He and his French wife Juliette sometimes take this to extremes: rather than a modern wine press, they use a century-old wood and cast iron one that needs painstaking loading and cleaning out with pitchforks. Here's a man who likes the ancient ways: even when hosting a raclette party, he spurns the modern electric cheese heater for a candle-powered device. The book takes the form of an almanac outlining the seasonal work at the domaine, starting in winter and finishing with the vendage in the autumn.
