Danny Boyle

It may seem early days yet, but the British movie hit of 1995 has already arrived. And it's fair to say it's quite unlike any other British film you've seen. "Shallow Grave," a low-budget thriller that cost just $1.55 million, had the sort of opening weekend recently filmmakers only dream about. With a limited release on 23 screens in England and Scotland, it grossed $235,600. At four of the eight London theaters in which it opened, "Shallow Grave" broke house records.

Entering the Downtown Independent near Little Tokyo on Thursday for the National Theatre Live's broadcast of director Danny Boyle's stage production of "Frankenstein," I found it impossible to leave behind the unfolding series of catastrophes in Japan that has the world collectively holding its breath. The current crisis follows us everywhere. With the hard-to-fathom images of flattened towns, the protracted suspense over radiation levels and the frustration of not being able to do more than donate to relief organizations, it's no wonder there's a growing hunger for deeper reflection on this multipronged calamity, in which natural disasters have set off an unnatural one. Journalism bombards us with passing information; artists call our attention to enduring truths.

Before they joined forces on "127 Hours," director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy had collaborated on just one movie ? but what a film that was. "Slumdog Millionaire" not only swept 2009's Academy Awards but also gave Boyle (who won for best director) and Beaufoy (who won for adapted screenplay) the commercial momentum and creative freedom to make, as they call it, "an action movie in which the hero doesn't move. " The pair's adaptation of hiker Aron Ralston's memoir of how he cut off his own forearm to escape a climbing accident is considered a lock for a best picture nomination, and star James Franco (who plays Ralston)

The premise Twenty-seven-year-old Aron Ralston ( James Franco) is a mechanical engineer and thrill-seeker. He is in Utah's Blue John Canyon when he falls down a narrow canyon, and his arm is pinned by a large chalkstone boulder. He watches as his fingers turn blue and gray from insufficient blood flow (ischemia). Though he doesn't appear to be in pain, he is unable to free himself. He has very little food and water, and finally, as he grows dehydrated, he drinks his own urine.

Danny Boyle wasn't yet done with the Taj Mahal, but the Taj Mahal was done with him. The British director needed to grab a few more shots inside the Indian landmark for his new movie "Slumdog Millionaire," a drama about the remarkable life story of an orphan from Mumbai's slums. Yet the production was no longer welcome. "The people who were helping us there," Boyle says, "didn't help us." Some directors would have moved on and made do with what they had in the can.

Having first bounded onto the international filmmaking scene with the twisted money-mystery "Shallow Grave" and the drug-soaked excitement of the epoch-defining "Trainspotting," British director Danny Boyle has subsequently continued to leap from genre to genre, style to style. As a follow-up to his terrifyingly scabby, digital-video horror film "28 Days Later," a surprise hit, he has reemerged with the sweetly endearing, kid-friendly "Millions."

As the distinctions between studio and independent productions have blurred, so have the lines separating filmmakers whose work belongs in the art house from those bound for the multiplex. From film to film, some directors move from one budget size to another, while others prefer to genre-hop to escape the styles of their previous work.

Entering the Downtown Independent near Little Tokyo on Thursday for the National Theatre Live's broadcast of director Danny Boyle's stage production of "Frankenstein," I found it impossible to leave behind the unfolding series of catastrophes in Japan that has the world collectively holding its breath. The current crisis follows us everywhere. With the hard-to-fathom images of flattened towns, the protracted suspense over radiation levels and the frustration of not being able to do more than donate to relief organizations, it's no wonder there's a growing hunger for deeper reflection on this multipronged calamity, in which natural disasters have set off an unnatural one. Journalism bombards us with passing information; artists call our attention to enduring truths.

"Trainspotting" is such an effective film that lots of people can't sit through it. A savagely funny adaptation of Irvine Welsh's novel chronicling the squalid lives of a circle of Scottish heroin addicts, the film is acknowledged even by those who find it creepy as having a defiantly new look and moving with an energy most Hollywood films only dream of.

Actor Ewan McGregor and director Danny Boyle, the De Niro/Scorsese of the new British cinema, don't consider each other close friends, but you'd never know it. Sitting in an endless hotel suite high over Manhattan, they rhapsodize about the hotel's beds, tap their cigarette ashes into beer caps and reminisce about the previous night's bowling in Greenwich Village. This is not to say that they--along with their partners, producer Andrew MacDonald and screenwriter John Hodge--are warm and fuzzy.

Ricky Gervais is back for a second year to host the Globes and says he's going to push the comedy a little further this time, that he'll just look around the room and spot someone to target. What might that mean for you? "Black Swan" director Darren Aronofsky: "There will be a lot of ballet jokes. Last night, Letterman made fun of the film. I think he said, 'If you don't want to celebrate Christmas, you can go see two Jewish girls make out.' " "Animal Kingdom" actress Jacki Weaver: "He's right up my alley, the British ironic humor.

Before they joined forces on "127 Hours," director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy had collaborated on just one movie ? but what a film that was. "Slumdog Millionaire" not only swept 2009's Academy Awards but also gave Boyle (who won for best director) and Beaufoy (who won for adapted screenplay) the commercial momentum and creative freedom to make, as they call it, "an action movie in which the hero doesn't move. " The pair's adaptation of hiker Aron Ralston's memoir of how he cut off his own forearm to escape a climbing accident is considered a lock for a best picture nomination, and star James Franco (who plays Ralston)

"The chat show scene, which Simon wrote. It's funny ? and it comes after [Ralston's] lowest possible moment, which is when he dreams of his escape in the storm. He wanted to go and say something to the girl, but he's speechless. And then he wakes up, and realizes he's still in the canyon and it's four days in. It can't get any worse. And yet, narrative wise, it has to get worse. It has to decline even further. And how can you do that, and not send everybody out of the theater? Simon wrote this scene ?

Usually, two names under a screen credit for cinematography means either the first person was fired or (gulp) died. But for "127 Hours," about real-life mountain climber Aron Ralston's grueling experience trapped in a Utah canyon, director Danny Boyle deliberately sought to use two cinematographers simultaneously: his Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire" cameraman Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak, who shot Boyle's "28 Weeks Later. " If one man was filming star James Franco, the other would be shooting a flashback scene or landscape shot, and vice versa.

The slow-open, word-of-mouth strategy is paying off for "127 Hours," the Danny Boyle-directed feature based on the experience of Aron Ralston, the hiker who had to amputate his own arm to save himself when he literally got caught, as the title of his book noted, between a rock and a hard place. Starring James Franco as Ralston, "127 Hours" played in 22 theaters last weekend and took in $453,104 and had a healthy theater average of $20,596. Overall, it has made $826,093. It opened last weekend in New York and Los Angeles and over this weekend it made its debut in several additional major markets including Boston and San Francisco.

There is such a tangible life force pulsing through "127 Hours" that it is almost impossible not to be drawn down into Blue John Canyon alongside its star, James Franco, for the real-life ordeal of Aron Ralston, a solo hiker trapped in a remote area of Utah's Canyonlands National Park. Once there, with the hiker's right arm hopelessly pinned by an 800-pound boulder, director Danny Boyle wrings you out completely with a film so emotionally and intellectually involving that when the horrific last resort finally arrives, it leaves some moviegoers in a faint.

' Fresh off his best picture Oscar triumph, "Slumdog Millionaire" director Danny Boyle has signed a three-year deal with Fox Searchlight, which will co-finance and co-distribute the British filmmaker's future films. The director already has identified a possible initial production under the first-look deal, a drama about Aron Ralston, the American mountain climber who amputated part of his arm when it was pinned in a 2003 backcountry hiking accident. Boyle's long relationship with the studio includes "28 Days Later," "Millions" and "Sunshine."

This 1995 movie directed by "Trainspotting's" Danny Boyle, it is a nasty little joke but, by the time it ends, you may feel like the joke is on you. David (Christopher Eccleston), Juliet (Kerry Fox) and Alex (Ewan McGregor, pictured), who share a cavernous apartment in central Scotland, are looking for a roommate. In the course of their roomie search they end up with a fresh corpse in their flat (KCOP early Monday at 3:30 a.m.).

Two at the Telluride Film Festival, three at the Toronto International Film Festival and one at the Mill Valley Film Festival. If that were a list of trophies for the new movie "127 Hours," which opens Friday, the filmmakers would be overjoyed. In fact, it's a partial tally of people who have collapsed during early screenings of the movie about a real-life hiker who amputated his forearm after a falling boulder pinned his hand in a remote canyon. "I started to feel like I was going to throw up," said Courtney Phelps, who was watching "127 Hours" at a recent Producers Guild of America screening in Hollywood and grew ill just as the amputation scene ended.

Danny Boyle could barely be heard over the low-flying helicopter. "It's like 'Apocalypse Now,'" he yelled as he fastened his helmet and tightened a climbing harness around his waist, preparing to descend into a narrow canyon. The British director had brought his moviemaking team to this remote locale just outside Canyonlands National Park to film several key scenes in "127 Hours," Boyle's first feature since 2008's " Slumdog Millionaire. " Every supply ? sleeping bags, tents, toilets, cameras, makeup, forks, beef jerky ?