Albert Finney

Around. And around. And around. Forget about the blistering just-before-summer heat. Who cares about the fading light of late afternoon rapidly descending into early evening? All is quiet as what appears to be a paunchy, rumpled over-the-hill Southern suburbanite does the major stunt of "Rich in Love," the latest small movie from the "Driving Miss Daisy" team of producers Richard and Lili Zanuck and director Bruce Beresford, which opens Friday.

Joyce Redman, a two-time Oscar-nominated Irish-born actress whose erotically charged dinner-eating scene opposite Albert Finney was a highlight of the bawdy 1963 British film comedy "Tom Jones," has died. She was 96. Redman died Thursday in Kent, England after a short battle with pneumonia, said her son, actor Crispin Redman. A veteran of the London and Broadway stage, Redman received her first Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for "Tom Jones," which starred Finney as the incorrigible 18th century English title character who has a series of amorous adventures.

It's exactly 40 years since Albert Finney, one of Britain's greatest actors, made his debut as a leading man on film. In Karel Reisz's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," he played a young factory worker from the North of England, desperately trying to throw off the shackles of his lowly upbringing, whatever the cost to those around him. The role made the broodingly handsome Finney a star and a working-class hero here.

British actress Sue Johnston, one of the stars of the new "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation "My Uncle Silas," likens the heartwarming comedy-drama to "putting on very comfortable slippers. You sit down and enjoy it and let the warmth run over you." "It's very undemanding and light and touching and quite moving and amusing," says director Philip Saville ("The Buccaneers"). "It almost has nothing to do with what is going on today."

Full of bawdy lyricism and rough-hewn wit, this 1992 Irish pastorale, set in 1957 and revolving around the interactions of a small town and a troupe of traveling players led by Aidan Quinn (pictured), is writer Shane ("My Left Foot") Connaughton's salute to his provincial roots. Directed on location by Gillies MacKinnon, it's rich and charming--and stolen entirely by Albert Finney as the tormented town cop, burning for the woman (Robin Wright) who won't have him (ABC early Monday at 12:05

This 1994 release is a high-class tear-jerker, Albert Finney (pictured) is Andrew Crocker-Harris, the classics professor at a posh British boys' school. Its core relationship is not the professor's sour marriage to a younger woman (Greta Scacchi, pictured) but rather between Crocker-Harris and Taplow (Ben Silverstone), a student who--realizing what a hated reputation his teacher has with his classmates--warms up to him anyway (Cinemax early Tuesday at 5:15 a.m.).

Alan Pakula's "Orphans" (Mann Plaza Friday) is a tender, often beautifully acted film about violence and male bonding. The movie may play on the cliches of machismo, but there's a sweetness about it, a twisted, nervous delicacy, like a vein throbbing beneath bruised skin. It's suffused with Pakula's humane sensibility; it undermines the fantasies rather than indulging them. Pakula's source is Lyle Kessler's stage play--adapted by Kessler himself.

When Erin Brockovich entered his life, Harold Bollema was going through stressful times. He had been forced to leave his 80-acre dairy farm in Hinkley, a rural hamlet near the California desert community of Barstow, where Pacific Gas & Electric Co. operates a pumping station for natural gas that runs along a pipeline from the Texas Panhandle to the San Francisco Bay Area.

It's exactly 40 years since Albert Finney, one of Britain's greatest actors, made his debut as a leading man on film. In Karel Reisz's "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," he played a young factory worker from the North of England, desperately trying to throw off the shackles of his lowly upbringing, whatever the cost to those around him. The role made the broodingly handsome Finney a star and a working-class hero here.

When Erin Brockovich entered his life, Harold Bollema was going through stressful times. He had been forced to leave his 80-acre dairy farm in Hinkley, a rural hamlet near the California desert community of Barstow, where Pacific Gas & Electric Co. operates a pumping station for natural gas that runs along a pipeline from the Texas Panhandle to the San Francisco Bay Area.

Since making his remarkable starring debut in the 1960 British classic "Saturday Night and Sunday Monday," Albert Finney has been incapable of giving a bad performance. The 63-year-old British actor became an international superstar as the sexy rogue in the 1963 Oscar winner "Tom Jones," for which he received his first Oscar nomination.

Full of bawdy lyricism and rough-hewn wit, this 1992 Irish pastorale, set in 1957 and revolving around the interactions of a small town and a troupe of traveling players led by Aidan Quinn (pictured), is writer Shane ("My Left Foot") Connaughton's salute to his provincial roots. Directed on location by Gillies MacKinnon, it's rich and charming--and stolen entirely by Albert Finney as the tormented town cop, burning for the woman (Robin Wright) who won't have him (ABC early Monday at 12:05

This 1994 release is a high-class tear-jerker, Albert Finney (pictured) is Andrew Crocker-Harris, the classics professor at a posh British boys' school. Its core relationship is not the professor's sour marriage to a younger woman (Greta Scacchi, pictured) but rather between Crocker-Harris and Taplow (Ben Silverstone), a student who--realizing what a hated reputation his teacher has with his classmates--warms up to him anyway (Cinemax early Tuesday at 5:15 a.m.).

British actress Sue Johnston, one of the stars of the new "Masterpiece Theatre" presentation "My Uncle Silas," likens the heartwarming comedy-drama to "putting on very comfortable slippers. You sit down and enjoy it and let the warmth run over you." "It's very undemanding and light and touching and quite moving and amusing," says director Philip Saville ("The Buccaneers"). "It almost has nothing to do with what is going on today."

"A Man of No Importance" takes us to an early '60s Dublin neighborhood, where a jolly bus conductor, Alfie (Albert Finney) entertains his riders, regulars all, with impassioned recitations from his favorite author, Oscar Wilde.

"A Man of No Importance" takes us to an early '60s Dublin neighborhood, where a jolly bus conductor, Alfie (Albert Finney) entertains his riders, regulars all, with impassioned recitations from his favorite author, Oscar Wilde.

Around. And around. And around. Forget about the blistering just-before-summer heat. Who cares about the fading light of late afternoon rapidly descending into early evening? All is quiet as what appears to be a paunchy, rumpled over-the-hill Southern suburbanite does the major stunt of "Rich in Love," the latest small movie from the "Driving Miss Daisy" team of producers Richard and Lili Zanuck and director Bruce Beresford, which opens Friday.