The final set of Facebook posts celebrating Black History Month. Day 22: Diahann Carroll Diahann Carroll refused to let herself be limited by others’ expectations. The first African American woman to win a Tony, she also broke ground by starring in ‘Julia’, the first television series to focus on the life of a Black professional […]
Celebrating Black History Month: Part Three
The penultimate batch of Facebook posts. Day 15: Juano Hernandez Born in Puerto Rico, of Puerto Rican and Brazilian heritage, Juano Hernandez took a roundabout route to acting. He worked as a sailor and moved to Rio de Janeiro, where he joined a circus and became an acrobat. After that he became a professional boxer, […]
Celebrating Black History Month: Part Two
Here’s another batch of Facebook posts I wrote for Black History Month, all from week two. Day 10: Paul Robeson A true Renaissance man, Paul Robeson was an actor, singer, athlete, lawyer, author and linguist, as well as the blueprint for African American performers who wanted to combine art and activism.
Screen Escapes: A Year of Pandemic Viewing
It’s been one year since the coronavirus pandemic began: a year of lockdowns, social distancing, mounting anxiety and masks. I’ve watched a lot of films since last March (I don’t think I’m alone in that), but looking back I realize many of them weren’t new to me. As reality edged uncomfortably close to fiction, I […]
Celebrating Black History Month: Part One
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 […]
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