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Lincoln – Steven Spielberg. The past is another place….

Tweet    Lincoln – Steven Spielberg “The past is another country. They do things differently there.” L P Hartley’s now almost proverbial opening lines of The Go-Between constantly resonated in the back of my mind throughout this powerful, accomplished, superbly acted film. With typical authority and characteristically meticulous attention to detail, Spielberg assembles to great […]

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Stephen Daldry (A mystery examined)

Tweet    Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Stephen Daldry (A mystery examined) I don’t want to bang on about this film as I know that would be counter-productive. However having now seen it for a second time I do recommend that if you haven’t seen it, do not be put off of by the […]

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – John Madden. A masterclass in film-acting

Tweet      The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – JohnMadden If I were an artist I would want to paint her; I wish I were a better poet that she might read one of my poems; and if my life-long ambition, which will not now be fulfilled, to Direct a movie came true – I […]

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Stephen Daldry Slated because not understood

Tweet      Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close – Stephen Daldry   Danny Leigh on Film 2012 about 11 year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), central character of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (ELIC): “gratingly precocious..hyper-verbal….bag of neuroses….a monster…etc”. Philip French (Guardian) on the same film: “reveals itself as a hollow, calculated, manipulative film. It uses the events of 9/11 […]

Hugo (3D) – Scorcese’s dazzling FOF (Front Of Frame) technical tour de force

Tweet         Technical        Entertainment Hugo (3D) – Martin Scorcese A technical tour de force. It is fascinating to see major Directors of regular 2D films grappling with the possibilities and limitations of 3D stereoscopic filming. Fast on the heels of Spielberg’s performance capture 3D Tin Tin we have Scorcese taking a radically […]

Tintin Movie – 5 Star Technical: 2 Star Entertainment

Tweet      Technical   Entertainment   The Adventures of Tintin – Steven Spielberg and the use of 3D and Performance Capture – Essay/Review Spielberg: at last the Directorial penny drops on the use of 3D. What David Yates made innovative use of in the final Harry Potter film, Spielberg exploits rigorously throughout his Tintin movie to make it the […]

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 and 3D

Tweet        Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 and 3D – David Yates   The best use of the 3D process I have seen in a film so far.  If 3D is to be more than just the short-lived gimmick it was when it was first used commercially in movies in the […]

Oranges, sunshine, Australia, deportation, abuse

Tweet Oranges and Sunshine – Jim Loach Hypocrisy is the besetting vice of the English. Many of our greatest writers, like George Eliot and Dickens knew this and created some of the squirmyest hypocrites in fiction: from the Rev Edward Casaubon and Nicholas Bulstrode in Middlemarch to David Copperfield’s Uriah Heep. Fans of Austen could […]

More Grit than True

Tweet The American West as myth is far more powerful than its historical reality. The period of American history that has spawned thousands of films, TV series and books lasted less than 40 years at the end of the 19th century. If the reality of the pioneering spirit of the early settlers runs deep in […]

Elegaic, thoughtful, moving and provoking

Tweet Never Let Me Go – Mark Romanek Ilie Nastase, after he had been overwhelmed by an impossibly young Bjorn Borg (20) in the 1976 Wimbledon final, was asked why he had lost. Ruefully Nastase replied, “We’re all playing tennis out there – I don’t know what he’s playing.” Carey Mulligan’s fellow actors could be […]