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Film

Ask my agent/Netflix

I am a bit late on this French series spoofing a film star agency. It’s now become so popular that actual film stars appear as supposed clients of the agency. The first episode featured that excellent film actress Cecile de France. After being offered a leading part in a Quentin  Tarantino movie [...]

February 13, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Dig/Netflix

This adaptation of John Preston’s novel based on Sutton Hoo has rightly received critical acclaim. It stars Ranulf Fiennes as Basil Brown the excavator commissioned by widow Edith Pretty (Carey Mulligan) to investigate mounds on her land. He unearths a ship used to bury a Saxon King. The theme is [...]

February 2, 2021 // 0 Comments

THE WESTERNS

From, time to time we feature “Lists” of people, performers, plays, movies, sports teams … well, just anything you can make a list of and discuss/debate. Here’s one I spotted today, chosen by Graeme Ross, on the website of  – THE INDEPENDENT [...]

February 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

Blithe Spirit (1945)

It was a mix of incompetence and coincidence that led to me watching this week the DVD of David Lean’s 1945 production of the Noel Coward play Blithe Spirit recently again released as a film. I fancied listening to some of the songs composed and sung by The Master. I recall my parents stack of [...]

January 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

The gay issue

There has been quite a debate over the wholly gay casting of Russell Davies’ latest offering It’s A Sin. On the Radio 4 show Start The Week presented by Andrew Marr on Mondays Russell Davies defended the casting on the grounds that there was unfair prejudice to gay parts. There should be, [...]

January 20, 2021 // 0 Comments

Francois Ozon

After early Truffaut I have moved onto another French director Francois Ozon who typifies why I like French films so much. I downloaded from Amazon Prime two of his films, Swimming Pool (2003) and 8 Femmes (2002). The story of the Swimming Pool is of successful crime writer Sarah Morton. It begins [...]

January 16, 2021 // 0 Comments

400 Blows/1959

After rather binging on Hollywood, it’s time for a change and what better to revisit than the French New Wave cinema of the late 1950s? Quartre Cents Coups  (400 Blows) was Franois Truffaut’s directorial debut aged 27 and is rightly revered as a classic. The story is of 14 year old Antone [...]

January 13, 2021 // 0 Comments

Woke frustration

One aspect of contemporary arts which consistently irritates me is the random woke application. A good example of this was a programme I saw recently on Channel Four entitled The 100 Greatest Musicals. I enjoy such programmes for the clips from the musicals and input from film historians and [...]

January 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

David Gresham

Yesterday I watched a recording of the film Shadowlands – the true story of C.S.Lewis’s late marriage to a Jewish American divorcee Joy Gresham. Joy’s son Daniel featured in the film but not her second son David. David was in fact at Cambridge at the same time as me. He attached himself [...]

January 8, 2021 // 0 Comments

Girl with a Pearl Earring (the film)

I was underwhelmed by the film of the book. Speaking to resident Rust film critic Neil Rosen he asserted that this is quite normal and the only improvement of a film on a book was in his view The Godfather Part 1.  The warning signs are in the credits if  “based on the novel” appears and [...]

January 7, 2021 // 0 Comments

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