Hints and tips:
...Always an unlikely star, young Ray used to perform in a Beatle wig to impress girls in front of his family’s east London home....
...Steve Coogan, sporting a gravelly south London accent, is an unexpected choice for the role, but with starriness well damped-down he exudes decency and a gruff concern....
...everyman mode as a former racer turned car designer charged with making American cars great again and challenging the dominant Italians in the 24-hour endurance race; Christian Bale chews scenery as a gruff...
...He achieved movie stardom as the gruff and terrorising gangster in The Long Good Friday (1980) and delivered an Oscar-nominated, Bafta and Golden Globe-winning variant on that in Mona Lisa (1987)....
...He puts on a gruff, drill sergeant voice – one of many impressions during our interview. “Just how effective was Magnet?” he barks. “Look at that guy!”...
...What I then see is the familiar grizzled beard and frown marks that splay out diagonally like the sun’s rays across his forehead. What I get is a curt nod....
...This is a gruff book, full of the rat-a-tat-tat of manly conversation and fizzing with violence....
...Irving is not a literary establishment figure in the same way as Philip Roth or John Updike, nor a left-field campus doyen such as Kurt Vonnegut or Ray Bradbury....
...The performances have a gruff splendour, the scenery is powerful....
...But even there, thanks to Hopkins, it has charm, gruff comedy and quaint humanity. Twice bidden, twice blithe....
...A ray of sunlight reflected off the camera lens and into the eyes of a mob lookout. Pleasant Avenue quickly filled up with unpleasant men....
International Edition