Posted in British Film, Directors, Stars, Style, War films on May 22nd, 2008 1 Comment »
The 26th of May is something of a red-letter day in the DVD release calendar. Whether this is because of a conjunction of the planets in the far-distant heavens or some sinister international conspiracy of art-house DVD labels, I don’t know. But whatever the reason, there’s a whole bunch of films released that day which […]
Posted in British Film, Directors on May 9th, 2008 2 Comments »
It’s perhaps a wee bit early to be talking about the best DVD of the year but if there’s a better release than the BFI’s splendid Land of Promise this year, I’ll be a very happy little chap indeed. As I’m sure you’re aware, it gathers together many British documentaries made between 1930 and 1950, […]
Posted in Directors, Hollywood, Stars on Apr 7th, 2008 No Comments »
As Daniel Day Lewis collected his Oscar last month, there was one name absent from his roll call of thank-yous. Not a major omission by any standards, but maybe it would have been appropriate for the newly anointed Best Actor to acknowledge the spectre that hovers above There Will Be Blood, the film for which […]
Posted in Directors, Hollywood, The Future of Film, Westerns on Mar 25th, 2008 1 Comment »
Oh goodie! The western is back! As Peter Wild notes in his interesting article in this month’s Moviemail catalogue, there’s something of a revival in cowboys. 3.10 to Yuma, Seraphim Falls, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford are all set in the old west; The Proposition might be Australian but is […]
Posted in Auteurs, Directors, Hollywood, Writers on Mar 13th, 2008 1 Comment »
So the writers won. The dispute between the Screen Writers Guild and the studios, in which the scribes downed tools for the first time in twenty years has been resolved. Even though the ‘schmucks with Underwoods’ (as Jack Warner called the people that provided his scripts for him) didn’t get everything they wanted, they won […]
Posted in British Film, Directors, Stars, Style on Mar 4th, 2008 No Comments »
Given that relations between Britain and Russia hover somewhere distantly below freezing point at the moment, I wonder how the Russians received Eastern Promises. It’s fair to say that this (ostensibly British) thriller doesn’t show its Russian villains in an entirely positive light. I wouldn’t want to be the projectionist who shows it to Vladimir […]
Posted in Directors, Hollywood, Lists, Stars, The Future of Film on Feb 27th, 2008 No Comments »
Hi, glad you could make it. Take your seats. The fight’s about to start. In the red corner, there’s Mark ‘Lethal’ Lawson. He wrote a piece for The Guardian recently, saying how future generations will regard ours as a golden age of movies, comparable to the 1940s and the 1970s. He cited things like No […]
Posted in British Film, Directors on Feb 4th, 2008 No Comments »
I was recently tasked with reviewing a new box set which gathers up the thrillers Alfred Hitchcock made in the 1930s, and which also throws in a few of his silents for good measure. This wasn’t difficult, as I’m extremely fond of this period in the master’s career. He would make objectively ‘better’ films but […]
Posted in Books, Directors, Editors on Jan 23rd, 2008 3 Comments »
If I turn my head slightly and look over my shoulder, from where I’m sitting I can see four tottering piles of books, stacked higgledy-piggledy on top of crowded shelves. These heaps sway alarmingly; every time I pass I hold my breath and think pure thoughts to avoid a collapse. This is my library of […]
Posted in Directors, Hollywood, Stars, Style on Dec 11th, 2007 No Comments »
I’ve been thinking a lot about ‘style’ recently, not least because I’ve just re-watched six of the seven films Josef von Sternberg made with Marlene Dietrich. As you might have read in my previous post, they’ve overwhelmed me somewhat: you don’t write posts that long unless you’re besotted.
Sad to say, I’m not finished yet. That […]