Fifty years ago today, humanity first set foot on the moon. TCM has been celebrating with a month-long sci-fi festival, beginning with George Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon: one of the first science-fiction films ever made and over a century later, still one of the best. Alongside the robots, metropolises and things from another […]
No People Like Show People: ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan’ (1984)
Part of my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. Since he first appeared on screen in 1955, Kermit the Frog has had a prolific career. Discovered playing banjo in the swamp, Kermit (created and voiced by Jim Henson) has been a reporter on Sesame Street, the long-suffering MC and stage manager of the Muppet Theatre, the […]
Cat’s-paw: ‘My Cousin Rachel’ (1952)
This post is part of The Calls of Cornwall: The Daphne du Maurier blogathon, hosted by Pale Writer. See the other posts here. Poor Philip Ashley. He falls in love, suddenly and irrevocably, with a woman beyond compare. He makes no secret of his devotion, defends his lady’s honour, worships her beauty and grace, and […]
Boiling Point: Thoughts on ‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)
Back after a brief hiatus: my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. When it was released in July 1989, Do the Right Thing was a grenade thrown from the front line: the system isn’t working; America is a pressure cooker, not a melting pot. Spike Lee’s film, about two days in the life of a […]
Love and Larceny: ‘Jewel Robbery’ (1932)
Jewel Robbery is like a lattice of spun sugar: intricate, elegant, beautiful to look at and delicious when devoured. It’s morning in Vienna and a high-end jeweller’s is opening its doors. The grill goes up, the safe opens and reverent hands extract dozens of necklaces and bracelets, the camera closing in to caress each glistening […]
Unmade Movies: ‘The Blind Man’ and ‘The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula’
There are films I long to see and know I never will: Michael Powell’s Prospero; Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness; Martin Scorsese’s Gershwin; Max Opühl’s The Duchess of Langeais. Film history is haunted by the spectres of unmade movies, films which for whatever reason—cast reshuffles, vagaries of financing—never saw the light of a projection booth. […]
The World of W. Somerset Maugham: ‘Quartet’ (1948), ‘Trio’ (1950) and ‘Encore’ (1951)
“In my twenties the critics said I was brutal, in my thirties they said I was flippant, in my forties they said I was cynical, in my fifties they said I was incompetent and then in my sixties they said I was superficial.” So speaks W. Somerset Maugham in his wry introduction to Quartet, an […]
Five Riffs on ‘Paris Blues’ (1961)
Paul Newman has been TCM’s star of the month this May; presumably because the programmers knew just how many of his films I hadn’t seen and decided to make me happy. On my must-watch list, Paris Blues, a film I’ve longed to see, if only to further appreciate the origins of this gif: Directed by […]
The Circus is a Wacky World: ‘Inside Daisy Clover’ (1965)
Inside Daisy Clover has urgent news to impart: Hollywood is full of phoneys. Beneath its sparkling veneer, Tinseltown is a snake pit filled with sycophants and fiends who pay millions for your smile, while also stealing your soul. This revelation isn’t particularly shocking, or much of a revelation, but the film repeats it endlessly and […]
Lonely Town: ‘The Crowd’ (1928)
Here’s the second instalment in my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. The Crowd is about a man who moves to a big city and waits for his life to get started, without realising that his life has become waiting. So desperate is he to stand out from the crowd, he never considers there might […]
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