Gosford Park

Gosford Park is a 2001 British mystery film directed by Robert Altman and written by Julian Fellowes. The film stars an ensemble cast, which includes Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Kristin Scott Thomas, Clive Owen, Emily Watson, Charles Dance, and Michael Gambon. The story follows a party of wealthy Britons and an American and their servants, who gather for a shooting weekend at Gosford Park, an English country house. A murder occurs after a dinner party and the film goes on to present the subsequent investigation into it from the servants' and guests' perspectives.



Development on Gosford Park began in 1999, when Bob Balaban came to Altman and asked if they could develop a film together. Altman suggested a whodunitand asked Fellowes to write the script. The film went into production in March 2001 and began filming at Shepperton Studios with a production budget of $19.8 million. Gosford Park premiered on 7 November 2001 at the London Film Festival. It received a limited release across cinemas in the United States in December 2001, before being widely released in January 2002 by USA Films. It was released in February 2002 in the United Kingdom.

The film was successful at the box office, grossing over $87 million in cinemas worldwide, making it Altman's second most successful film after MASH. It received multiple awards and nominations, including seven Academy Award nominations and nine British Academy Film Awards nominations.

The TV series Downton Abbey was originally planned as a spin-off of Gosford Park, but instead was developed as a stand-alone property inspired by the film, set decades earlier.[3]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gosford_Park

Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey is a British period drama television series created by Julian Fellowes and co-produced by Carnival Films and Masterpiece.[1] It first aired on ITV in the United Kingdom and Ireland on 26 September 2010 and on PBS in the United States on 9 January 2011 as part of the Masterpiece Classic anthology. Four series have been made so far; a fifth is planned for 2014.

The series, set in the fictional Yorkshire country estate of Downton Abbey, depicts the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the post-Edwardian era—with the great events in history having an effect on their lives and on the British social hierarchy. Such events depicted throughout the series include news of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the first series; the outbreak of the First World War, the Spanish influenza pandemic, and the Marconi scandal in the second series; the Interwar period and the formation of the Irish Free State in the third series; and the Teapot Dome scandalin the fourth series.

Downton Abbey has received critical acclaim from television critics and won numerous accolades, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Television Film and a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie. It was recognised by Guinness World Records as the most critically acclaimed English-language television series of 2011. It earned the most nominations of any international television series in the history of the Primetime Emmy Awards, with twenty-seven in total (after two series).[2] It was the most watched television series on both ITV and PBS, and subsequently became the most successful British costume drama series since the 1981 television serial of Brideshead Revisited.[3] By the third series, it had become one of the most widely watched television drama shows in the world.[4]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey