For Black History Month this year, I tried something new and set myself a challenge: writing a Facebook post a day about a Black actor or actress. Some of the performers I chose were familiar; some were people whose work I’d just begun to explore. I had no idea what the response would be like […]
Free Bird: ‘Christopher Strong’ (1933)
The curiously-titled Christopher Strong is really all about Lady Cynthia Darrington, an aviator and aristocrat with a hankering for danger, a cavalier disregard for convention and quirky fashion sense. Katharine Hepburn plays Cynthia. Of course I had to see it. The film opens in London at a scavenger hunt for the well-heeled. Female contestants are […]
Pilgrims’ Progress: ‘A Canterbury Tale’ (1944)
This post is part of The World War II Blogathon, hosted by Cinema Essentials and Maddy Loves Her Classic Films. See the other posts here. In A Canterbury Tale, Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a Land Girl doing her bit in wartime Kent, goes for a walk on the Old Road pilgrims once travelled to Canterbury. […]
Out of the Frying Pan: ‘The Hot Rock’ (1972)
Part of my ‘New York State of Mind’ series. “I’ve heard of the habitual criminal of course, but I never dreamed I’d become involved in the habitual crime.” So speaks one of the droller denizens of The Hot Rock, Peter Yates’ winding caper film, in which a gang of thieves find themselves stealing the same […]
Neverland and Back: ‘Hook’ (1991)
All little boys grow up, except one. Steven Spielberg’s Hook asks what would happen if the world’s most famous eternal child not only became a man, but a husband and father too. The answer is an intriguing, if not always satisfying foray into the Peter Pan mythos. Peter Banning (Robin Williams) is a middle-aged, workaholic […]
Cutlasses and Kilts: ‘The Master of Ballantrae’ (1953)
The Jacobite rising of 1745 was a disaster for much of Highland Scotland that led to the weakening of the traditional clan system and the Act of Proscription, which outlawed wearing the kilt, except as a soldier or officer in the British Army. The Master of Ballantrae, loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel of […]
La Grande Fête: ‘The Young Girls of Rochefort’ (1967)
This post is part of the Vive la France! Blogathon, hosted by Lady Eve’s Reel Life and Silver Screen Modes. See the other posts here. Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort or The Young Girls of Rochefort is the essence of euphoria. A carnival of colour and sound, it looks at the world through a […]
Fancy Free: ‘Top Hat’ (1935)
This post is part of the TCM Summer Under the Stars Blogathon, hosted by Journeys in Classic Film and Musings of a Classic Film Addict. See the other posts here. Top Hat opens on two pairs of dancing feet. The man wears a tailcoat; the woman an evening gown. As they twirl across the screen, […]
Far Out: ‘The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension’ (1984)
This post is part of the Jeff Goldblum Blogathon, hosted by Realweemidget Reviews and Emma K Wall Explains It All. See the other posts here. Faced with an indecipherable plot, I am occasionally tempted to cry, “It’s not rocket science!” In The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, it really is—and brain surgery […]
Crooked House: ‘Gaslight’ (1940)
This post is part of the 6th Annual Rule Britannia Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts. See the other posts here. In Gaslight, objects have a peculiar habit of going missing. A picture, a pocket-watch, a brooch—all seem to disappear into the bowels of the house and reappear where they ought not to be. […]
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