One of my 1000 recommended films.
I haven't seen this for quite a few years but today (all day) I watched this unique film on the big screen, in the 5 and a half hour Photoplay restoration with score conducted live by Carl Davis with the Philharmonia Orchestra.
The story of how Kevin Brownlow has spent nearly half a century working on restoring this film to as close to Abel Gance's original vision as possible is well known - and…
One of my 1000 recommended films.
Recently I saw the beautiful new print of this film directed by Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise, with music by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and can report that after fifty years it still looks amazing, with vibrant colours, a remarkably rich score, and performances that linger long in the memory.
The doomed romance of the modern Romeo and Juliet, Polish American Tony (Richard Beymer, all teeth and eyelashes and so pretty…
It would have been Paul Newman's 100th birthday this week, and so I decided to rewatch one of his minor films, the one that juggled a romance with his real-life wife Joanne Woodward and a lot of footage from the race track.
It isn't a particularly gripping story - Frank Caupa (Newman) seeks the top spot on the podium and so neglects the wife (Woodward) he'd quickly married . She seeks solace in the arms of his competitor on the…
This recent production of A Midsummer Night's Dream from the Royal Shakespeare Company feels very colourful and shouty, but isn't one of the best versions I have seen.
It's certainly lively and full of invention, and I enjoyed the comedy of Bottom (Mathew Baynton) and Rita Quince (Helen Monks). This is definitely a fantasy aimed at GCSE students who will lap up the cheeky allusions and the nightmarish atmosphere.
This was one of the films on my list of shame, I had been long aware of it but had never got around to seeing it, until now.
I knew the theme was Nilsson's 'Everybody's Talkin'' and that Jon Voight's character was a would-be hustler, and Dustin Hoffman's character was a low-down dirty rat. But that's about it.
The film is nothing like I expected. It has some fantastic moments - the way Voight and Hoffman eyeball each other as…
This was a very hard film to watch. But then hard drug addiction isn't pretty, or sexy, or clever. So we see Al Pacino in only his second film appearance pull cute Kitty Winn into a downward spiral where she whores to score, where they only live for their next hit of smack. There's no redemption, no rehabilitation, no hope for them.
Needle Park is a hotbed of lowlifes, junkies, and the walking dead, those for whom heroin is the…
