John Michael Phillips

Movies

Avarice
Austin
A young boy gets lost somewhere in between imagination and reality. His greed threatens to be the end of him as he stumbles upon a creature lurking in his attic.
La Fanciulla Del West
Director
Live from La Scala Sunday 03 February 1991
Gawain and the Green Knight
Director
One Christmas, a knight garbed all in green appears in King Arthur's Court and challenges any knight to hew off his head on the proviso that he be allowed to return the axe stroke afterwards. All of King Arthur's other knights being frightened, Sir Gawain takes up the challenge and hacks off the green knight's head. The green knight then gives Gawain a year to find his home and live a little before the cut is returned.
The Tale of Little Pig Robinson
Writer
Adapted from the Beatrix Potter story tells the story of the pignap of Little Pig Robinson by Captain Barnabus Butcher who fools Robinson into believing he is being taken on a trip to visit the land of the Bong tree; the truth of the matter is more sinister.
Pergolesi: The Brother in Love (La Scala)
Director
Live from La Scala Friday 22 December 1989
The English National Opera Rehearse The Mikado
Director
A chance to see director Jonathan Miller at work on his acclaimed staging of Gilbert and Sullivan's famous comic opera.
The Mikado
Director
Jonathan Miller set his well-known production of The Mikado, staged for the English National Opera, in a British seaside resort of the 1920s. The result, complete with a chorus of gentlemen of Japan as cartoon-like British peers, emphatically underscores the Englishness of the satire. The occasional non sequiturs, like a bunch of gentry dressed for Ascot and singing in Japanese, are loonily fun, and no more absurd than the fantasyland Japan that Gilbert and Sullivan invented. The time frame, though, seems little more than an excuse for a smart black-and-white production design.