Articles by Neil Rosen
It’s an accepted truism that a remake is never an improvement on the original so I went to the 2016 version of the The Magnificent Seven with some considerable trepidation. The original John Sturges version starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Horst Buchholz and [...]
Hollywood tales
Spotted today on the website of The Guardian, this article by Nell Frizzell on the podcaster Karina Longworth who specialises in amassing tales of the Hollywood golden era – see here – THE [...]
All the Way
There has been quite a shift in film making from the big studios to film companies producing blockbusters to HBO. Talking to someone in the industry, it is a question of finance. It can cost a fortune to land a box office star, add in a massive marketing budget and the film company is hoping [...]
Burt Kwouk
I was saddened to learn of the death of Burt Kwouk aged 86. His career began in the fifties with Hancock’s Half Hour and he was always in work typecast as the Oriental. He could do humour as in the Pink Panther movies or sinister as in Tenko and Goldfinger with equal capability. As with many [...]
Eye in the Sky
If Bastille Day left me without any after taste of thought, you could not say the same with Eye in the Sky a film that was troubling in the issues it raised. In brief a combined US, British and Kenyan military operation has to evaluate whether a drone missile should destroy a house inNarobi [...]
Bastille Day
If you like high octane action films where you suspend belief on the plot this is for you. Idris Elba plays a one man army (Briar) in Paris believing a pickpocket is not a terrorist. Young French Canadian actress Charlotte le Bon will not commit the bombing of right wing political headquarters [...]
Films on the Riviera
Bob Tickler asked me to recommend films set on the Riviera to remind him of his recent successful trip there. I came up with To Catch a Thief the 1955 Alfred Hitchcock directed movie starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and the more recent Dirty Rotten Scoundrels with Michael Caine and Steve Martin. [...]
The Big Short
The Big Short came highly recommended but by those who worked in and understood the financial world. For those like me who do neither it’s all somewhat confusing. As I understand it, or more accurately as Bob Tickler helpfully explained, American high risk mortgages called sub prime carried [...]
‘Ave yer got a light, boy?’
In the 21st Century the movie and theatre industries – indeed the arts generally – have to deal with all sorts of issues that never troubled the likes of Will Shakespeare. Think of the legislation, rules and received ‘good practice’ on animal cruelty and welfare (‘No [...]
Casablanca
One of the tenets of the arts section of the Rust is that if something is popular then that that does not follow it’s of poor quality. Thus Melanie Gay advocates Daphne du Maurier as novelist, Alice Mansfield, the painters Ted Seago and Ken Howard, who are not esteemed by the critics but [...]