Hollywood
The Seckerson Tapes: Sting InterviewMonday, 12 July 2010
The location is Sting's beachside house in Malibu the morning after the night before: another night, another venue - the Hollywood Bowl - another three-hour Concert of his songs. That's concert with a capital "C" because this time Sting has brought... Read more... |
PredatorsTuesday, 06 July 2010
The original Predator from 1987 is perhaps best remembered for taking Schwarzenegger’s borderline homoerotic body-fetishism to new heights, as he stripped naked to mud-wrestle the titular alien hunter. It was among the more efficient of the big,... Read more... |
HeartbreakerWednesday, 30 June 2010
Oh, how we like to moan when the inevitably grubby world of Hollywood gets its mitts on one or another European "classic". The Birdcage, we're told, wasn't as good as La Cage aux Folles (actually, I preferred it), and the 2001 Tom Cruise vehicle,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Los Angeles: Twilight in Tent CitySunday, 27 June 2010
The Los Angeles Film Festival would seem to have everything going for it. There's the perfect Californian weather, the vast number of stars who live and work in the city, and this year there’s been a glamorous new venue in downtown Los Angeles. The... Read more... |
TetroTuesday, 22 June 2010
Creative rebirth or belated midlife crisis? That is the question that hovers over Francis Ford Coppola’s decision to turn his back on lucrative studio fare in favour of personal pet projects with an arthouse bent. The director of The Godfather... Read more... |
KillersWednesday, 16 June 2010
As cinematic landmarks go, Kutcher Speaks French may not quite be up there with Garbo Talks. But there's a certain pleasure to be had in the opening sequences of the otherwise dismal Killers to find that so quintessential a movie dude can actually... Read more... |
DVD Release: StagecoachTuesday, 15 June 2010
For the second time in four years, John Ford’s Stagecoach - the epochal black-and-white 1939 B-western that made a star of John Wayne and an icon of Monument Valley, and anticipated Ford’s unequalled run of westerns over the next quarter-century and... Read more... |
DVD: Red SunSunday, 13 June 2010
Hollywood westerns and Japanese samurai movies have long been generic companions. Akira Kurosawa borrowed from the films of John Ford for his chambara (a term referring to period drama with swordfighting), while Hollywood borrowed back again by... Read more... |
She's Out of My LeagueWednesday, 02 June 2010
Has modern cinema ever arranged quite so fetishistic an entrance? She’s blonde, she’s beautiful, and needless to say busty - a benign pneumatic deity who, gliding in slo-mo across a crowded screen, induces males of every age and hue to turn and gawp... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Composer Alan MenkenSunday, 16 May 2010
For many years the composer who made his name with Little Shop of Horrors abandoned the theatre to work in Hollywood. He returned to Broadway in 2008 with an enlarged songbook for The Little Mermaid, but it closed within a year. Later came the... Read more... |
DVD: The Kid/ The Great DictatorSaturday, 15 May 2010
There was a celebrated two-word come-on to 1930s movie-goers. “Garbo Laughs!” was a poster strapline calculated to seduce fans of the mournful Swedish star to Ninotchka, in which her character had an unwonted fit of the giggles. Audiences were... Read more... |
Debbie Reynolds - Alive and Fabulous, Apollo TheatreThursday, 29 April 2010
Let me confess immediately: Debbie Reynolds didn't mean a great deal to me beyond Singin' in the Rain, warbling "Tammy" and Being Princess Leia's Mother (and believe me, she gets plenty of comic mileage out of the Carrie Fisher connection... Read more... |
