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Arts

Queen Elizabeth and the Spy in the Household/Channel 4

This was a typical Channel 4 documentary- long on revelation, short on evidence for it. The programme made two significant such revelations, namely that the Queen was complicit in the cover up of Anthony Blunt and his immunity from prosecution and, secondly, the spy delivered a hot dossier on the [...]

April 6, 2021 // 0 Comments

This Sporting Life (1963)

The northern kitchen sink celebration continued at the Rosen Multiplex with This Sporting Life which some film historians judge the epitome of the genre, others the end of it. Most agree it was Richard Harris’ best performance as Frank Machin the troubled but brilliant rugby league player. The [...]

April 4, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

My art week started as usual with the Collectors programme on midday at Monday. The presenter Emmeline Hallmark’s background is Christie’s. Their main motivation is sales and for this reason she veers towards the obsequious to a collector who might just entrust his collection for sale by the [...]

April 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

John Mortimer and Rumpole

 As the old Jewish joke goes if John Mortimer was alive today he would be turning in his grave. Why? Rumpole of the Bailey is repeated every Wednesday evening and carries a PC health warning before it is broadcast by Talking Pictures that it might offend some viewers but should be judged by its [...]

April 2, 2021 // 0 Comments

Leslie Howard

My main objection to those who clamour for more gay roles is that it implies that actors cannot do the very thing they do best i.e. assume roles. Many had to act as a way out of their upbringing often quite different to their film image. Sean Connery was no privileged Etonian but an Edinburgh [...]

April 1, 2021 // 0 Comments

V2/Robert Harris

Popular historical fiction writer Robert Harris spent the lockdown researching this novel about the V2 rocket. There are two strands to the narrative. The novel begins with a V2 rocket hitting Warwick Court in London where Kay, a reconnaissance analyst for the RAF, is having an affaire with one of [...]

March 30, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

My best achievement this week was working out what a NFT (non fungible token) is. It’s basically a piece of digital art which you can own by a token but anyone can view. It’s leading exponent Beeple achieved $69m for Yesterday’s in auction the other week. I have 3 main reservations. [...]

March 28, 2021 // 0 Comments

A kind of loving (1962)

The latest film festival at the Rosen Multiplex celebrates Northern British Kitchen sink of the early 1960s. The two best known actors are Albert Finney from Salford who made his name in Saturday Night, Sunday Morning and had a distinguished career in film and television and Tom Courtenay from [...]

March 27, 2021 // 0 Comments

My Rembrandt

This is a Dutch documentary available on Amazon Prime which I watched last night. It’s about the ownership or acquisition of a Rembrandt. Rembrandt never went out of fashion unlike his peer Johannes Vermeer who had to wait 200 years for fame. Similarly Gustav Klimt and Sandro Botticelli would [...]

March 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

Get a life, everybody!

Today I’m coming out of the closet – if that is the appropriate phrase – as a curmudgeonly old fascist git. We hear and read plenty these days about how “woke” the modern world has become (or is it just the Millennials, or even our “Generation X” youngsters as a group, that is being [...]

March 24, 2021 // 0 Comments

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