Submission Deadline: 23rd April 2016

Send Articles To: [email protected]

Hey everyone, it’s Tony Cogan from Coogs Reviews here, bringing back a long overdue feature. It has been 3 years since the last edition of The Director’s Chair, it’s about time for a comeback. With me at the helm, the choices of directors are not always going to be the biggest names, I am going to use this feature to bring attention to some directors who are doing incredible work, but are not getting anywhere near as much attention as they deserve, along with including some of the more prominent directors out there, for a bit of balance.

For the return of this feature, considering that this coming month is going to be the 400th Anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, I wanted to choose a director best known for their work adapting the works of the Bard. For this, I couldn’t think of a better director to choose than Kenneth Branagh. Branagh is one of those directors who’s bombastic style fits perfectly with the works of Shakespeare, along with other blockbuster fare such as Thor, and has a great talent for casting, many of his films boasting all star casts, especially his Shakespeare adaptations, with his penchant for colourblind casting bringing some great actors to the forefront (even if he has earned the ire of racists, such as when he cast Idris Elba in Thor). For those who are not familiar with his whole filmography, here are the films you can do pieces on:

• Henry V (1989)
• Dead Again (1991)
• Peter’s Friends (1992)
• Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
• A Midwinter’s Tale (1995)
• Hamlet (1996)
• Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)
• As You Like It (2006)
• The Magic Flute (2006)
• Sleuth (2007)
• Thor (2011)
• Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)
• Cinderella (2015)

The rules for this feature are that you can do any post you want on Branagh. Reviews, podcasts, videos, art, it’s all fair game, and it does not have to be written for this feature, any old piece done on Branagh or any of his films can be included. All I ask is that you include a score with the piece when you send it to me so that a LAMB average score for Branagh can be created. All links are to be sent to [email protected] by 23rd April at the latest, the post going up on 24th April, any post that is not sent to this address will not be included in the final post, and there is not limit to how many posts you can submit.

With all that guff out of the way, the only thing left to say is that I hope you enjoy looking through Branagh’s films and that this is the start of a long renewal of this feature.