Hollywood
DVD: The Last of Robin HoodTuesday, 22 December 2015
Errol Flynn’s final affair was with an initially 15-year-old girl 33 years his junior, procured minutes after he spied her walk through the studio gates. “You know who he is?” his man for such matters asks. “The most selfish man in the world” and “a... Read more... |
OlliOlli 2: Welcome to OlliwoodFriday, 06 March 2015
Skateboarding, in games and in movies, has always been presented as quite a laidback sport. This couldn't be further from that idea – it's a "twitch" arcade stick-and-button mangler that adeptly balances risk and reward and will wring hardened... Read more... |
Guys and DollsWednesday, 17 December 2014
This newly-restored version of one of MGM's most hallowed musicals is making the seasonal rounds with a run at the BFI and selected cinemas around the country. Directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz in 1955, the piece drips with period charm, while its... Read more... |
Speed-the-Plow, Playhouse TheatreFriday, 03 October 2014
To do Mamet’s work justice, you must be able to deliver dialogue with the speed, skill and breathtaking bravura confidence of Usain Bolt. In Lindsay Posner’s much-hyped but frustratingly sluggish revival at the Playhouse Theatre, only one of three... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Moscow: Blood brothers on filmSunday, 06 July 2014
“We are not politicians – we are artists.” It’s the familiar cry of creatives all around the world, but it came with an added, rather surprising accent when uttered by Moscow International Film Festival (MIFF) president Nikita Mikhalkov at the event... Read more... |
Timeshift - How to Be Sherlock Holmes, BBC Four / Sherlock, BBC OneSunday, 12 January 2014
As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. The... Read more... |
Secret Voices of Hollywood, BBC FourMonday, 30 September 2013
They called Rita Moreno the triple threat – she could dance, act and sing. But even her spirited performance as Anita in West Side Story could not satisfy United Artists: the doomy low notes of "A Boy Like That" were considered out of her range, and... Read more... |
Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies, BBC FourFriday, 13 September 2013
BBC Four’s new series Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies is shocking. The overwhelming majority of arts-based TV consists of programmes consigning specialist knowledge/presenters to the sidelines in favour of dumbed-down, easily... Read more... |
Imagine... Woody Allen: A Documentary, BBC OneWednesday, 24 July 2013
You might wonder if anybody really deserves three and a half hours of TV biography, but after the first half of Robert Weide's immense survey of Woody Allen, the nebbish messiah, I was pawing the carpet in anticipation of part two. Documentaries don... Read more... |
CleopatraMonday, 08 July 2013
If Mae West was once described as a plumber’s idea of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor, clad in gold and covered in real diamonds, is Hollywood’s ideal in Cleopatra (1963). Sumptuously restored to 2K DCPs and rereleased on the big screen, Taylor’s beauty... Read more... |
DVD: TabuTuesday, 25 June 2013
With its story of youthful love entrapped by fate, Tabu relishes the glorious primal energy of the South Seas, which was where German director FW Murnau, best known now for his expressionist Nosferatu, but then recently established in Hollywood and... Read more... |
Thatcher: We are an impersonatorTuesday, 09 April 2013
Mrs Thatcher famously presided over a huge rise in unemployment, but down the years she kept a large sorority of impersonators (and one male one) off the dole. She was lucky with her mimics, who included some of the great actresses of the age, and... Read more... |
