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Something’s Got to Give (2006)

Somehow I missed this “rom com for wrinklies” when it was released but it came on the radar in the Sky Arts Discovering Frances McDormand programme. The stars are Hollywood royalty Jack Nicholson, playing 63 year-old music mogul and superannuated lothario Harry Seaburn and Diane Keaton [...]

November 8, 2022 // 0 Comments

Getting it right beats how we’d like it to be

As a columnist on the Rust I am sometimes reminded of a conversation that I had eons ago with an elderly relative on the rather broad subject of which pastimes or subjects individuals take up as hobbies, interests and/or life-long obsessions and the reasons why they do. In these days of increased [...]

October 29, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Kreuzer Sonata (2008)

This film, an erotic, psychological thriller directed by Bernard Rose, was released in 2008 but I watched it for the first time last night. It is based on the banned novel of Leo Tolstoy and in brief is about a man consumed with jealousy that his beautiful classical pianist wife is unfaithful. The [...]

October 25, 2022 // 0 Comments

Grand Prix/1966

Sport and cinema do not mix. Quite simply a sport star is not an actor – nor an actor a sportsman or woman. There are exceptions – like Robert de Niro in Raging Bull and Richard Harris in This Sporting Life – but John Huston’s regrettable Escape to Victory with a pot-bellied [...]

October 6, 2022 // 0 Comments

The legend that is Marilyn Monroe

I do not like the word iconic but I cannot think of a better one to describe Marilyn Monroe. She was recently the subject of a podcast on Rest is History by historians Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook. Better was the Discovering series in Sky Arts profiling her. In  her time – the [...]

October 1, 2022 // 0 Comments

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

I had this DVD of this 2018 Mike Powell film lying around in my to-be-watched pile for some time. I was persuaded to watch it as its star Lily James features in the Sky Mobile ad and I like her smile, vivacity and vitality. The film is set in occupied Guernsey. There a book club was formed and the [...]

September 22, 2022 // 0 Comments

Le Mepris (Contempt)/1962

Partly out of respect to the recently passed Jean Luc Godard – and partly as there was little else to do or watch on Sunday afternoon – I took from the French section of my DVD library his Le Mepris starring Michel Piccoli, Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance and Georgia Moll. [...]

September 19, 2022 // 0 Comments

Claude Chabrol and Jean Luc Godard

For me, the two directors that are truly Masters of Suspense are Claude Chabrol and Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol, from the New Wave of the 1950s, was avowedly French whilst Hitchcock, a master of British realism, studied under Fritz Lang at the UFA studio, Britain and Hollywood. Yesterday I watched [...]

September 15, 2022 // 0 Comments

Sense and Sensibility (1995)/director Ang Lee

My comment that Jane Austen is better enjoyed by film than book were tested by this 1995 film directed by the esteemed Korean director Ang  Lee. It had a strong cast of Hugh Grant, Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, Imelda Staunton, Elizabeth Spriggs, Robert Hardy, Harriet Walter, Tom Wilkinson, Alan [...]

September 9, 2022 // 0 Comments

In a Lonely Place

Normally I watch a film from my extensive library, rent it via Amazon, or watch one on Netflix more designed for the young viewer. Occasionally I am drawn by a film on television on one of the movie channels and this occasion was last week’s In a Lonely Place. I was influenced by a strong cast of [...]

September 7, 2022 // 0 Comments

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