I've decided I don't like Steve McQueen much - this one at any rate - obviously no problem with the real Steve McQueen at all. Hunger is not a film I've managed to finish, and Shame not one I'm likely to revisit often (though Carey Mulligan is great). And this is so relentless it's off-putting. Look, I know we're not supposed to enjoy a film about slavery in 1841 (in some ways, the film doesn't go far enough) but it is a merciless slog designed to provoke indignant wrath. It's like Schindler's List - a film you feel obliged to watch. Even the reasonably nice characters (Benedict Cumberbatch) aren't, and Michael Fassbender especially seems to relish playing a Class A cunt.
It all came about because Q said that Lupita Nyong'o was the first black woman to win an Oscar - not true actually - it was Hattie McDaniel - though it was the first time a black director won. Also didn't recognise Alfre Woodard as the lady who offers him tea and has risen out of cotton picking.
Naturally, in true life, Solomon didn't get justice for what had happened to him.
I deeply regretted suggesting it, though creatively, Hans Zimmer contributes some interesting music and there's no problem with Sean Bobbitt's photography nor Joe Walker's editing.
Sunday, 11 February 2018
Paper Moon (1973 Peter Bogdanovich)
An absolute delight which was remarkably overlooked at the Oscars - although Tatum won for her debut, neither Peter as writer or director nor Laszlo Kovacs were even nominated - the pin sharp deep focus high contrast photography is stunning and the screen play is beautifully visual.
Tomorrow Is Forever (1945 Irving Pichel)
Written by Lenore Coffee and Gwen Bristow, film has a slightly stodgy beginning but moves into emotional gear when Orson Welles enters the home of his former wife Claudette Colbert (she doesn't recognise him) and gets mixed up in the moral question as to whether her (and his) son should join the RAF.
Welles is great (he has a magnificent sad presence) and Natalie Wood as his adopted daughter has no trouble with the German lines she has to speak. Colbert doesn't seem to age at all, which is quite funny. Unmistakably scored by Max Steiner, who excels in a tense dinner scene (he loves his timpani).
With George Brent, Lucile Watson, Richard Long, Ian Wolfe. Shot by Ted Tetzlaff for RKO.
Welles is great (he has a magnificent sad presence) and Natalie Wood as his adopted daughter has no trouble with the German lines she has to speak. Colbert doesn't seem to age at all, which is quite funny. Unmistakably scored by Max Steiner, who excels in a tense dinner scene (he loves his timpani).
With George Brent, Lucile Watson, Richard Long, Ian Wolfe. Shot by Ted Tetzlaff for RKO.
Saturday, 10 February 2018
Seven Psychopaths (2012 Martin McDonagh & scr)
I underestimated this film the last time we saw it - it's constantly commenting on itself, upending criticisms which you (I) might make, and has a dark heart - My Lai, for example.
It's a very subtle work despite big gory belly laughs.
Sam Rockwell is just great (he won the Golden Globe for Four Billboards and is also up for the Oscar/BAFTA) - though so is Colin Farrell. And so is Woody Harrelson. With Christopher Walken, Abbie Cornish, Harry Dean Stanton, Gabourey Sidibe, Zeljko Ivanek, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Bonny (the dog, definitely credit-worthy).
"Get your hands up."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to."
Shot by Ben Davis in Panavision and scored by Carter Burwell.
It's a very subtle work despite big gory belly laughs.
Sam Rockwell is just great (he won the Golden Globe for Four Billboards and is also up for the Oscar/BAFTA) - though so is Colin Farrell. And so is Woody Harrelson. With Christopher Walken, Abbie Cornish, Harry Dean Stanton, Gabourey Sidibe, Zeljko Ivanek, Tom Waits, Olga Kurylenko and Bonny (the dog, definitely credit-worthy).
"Get your hands up."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't want to."
Shot by Ben Davis in Panavision and scored by Carter Burwell.
The Man in the Moon (1991 Robert Mulligan)
Jenny Wingfield's original story has 13 year old Reese Witherspoon (terrific in her debut) falling for neighbour Jason London - unfortunately her sister Emily Warfield has the same inclination. It's 1950s Elvis fuelled Americana - the only bad weather is at dramatically appropriate times. Vehicles have convincingly distressed detail. Other actors are Sam Waterston, Tess Harper, Gail Strickland and Bentley Mitchum (son of Chris and grandson of Robert) as the arsehole date.
Mulligan - director of Mockingbird and Summer of '42 - has a good feel for such material.
Mulligan - director of Mockingbird and Summer of '42 - has a good feel for such material.
The Dressmaker (2015 Jocelyn Moorhouse)
The problem I had with this is that the opening is played like a broad farce (I always feel uncomfortable in such situations) so that the ensuing emotional events feel out of sorts... I would have played it much straighter (a modern western like Hud) and it all would have hung together better. Kate Winslet and Judy Davis are of course fine.
Written by Rosalie Ham, P.J. Hogan and Jocelyn Moorhouse. With Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Julia Blake etc. Shot by Donald McAlpine. Not sure spaghetti / western references help or not. Dresses are striking (Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson). A confused film, that says hello to itself as it's leaving.
Written by Rosalie Ham, P.J. Hogan and Jocelyn Moorhouse. With Liam Hemsworth, Hugo Weaving, Julia Blake etc. Shot by Donald McAlpine. Not sure spaghetti / western references help or not. Dresses are striking (Marion Boyce and Margot Wilson). A confused film, that says hello to itself as it's leaving.
Friday, 9 February 2018
Half Nelson (2006 Ryan Fleck)
It's been a while - reviewed here. Fleck and Anna Boden wrote the film (and she edited the picture as well - a quite unusual combination unless you're a Coen, Allen or Soderbergh). Something really different, a socially conscious, honest, unpredictable story of ... friendship ... which manages also to offer up an intriguing history lesson throughout.
Q. How did you first get together creatively? Was it romantically or through work?
Anna Boden: We were dating first, and I was doing a documentary short for a film class and I just kind of asked him to help me out and hold the microphone, basically. But then he had all these suggestions, about how to edit the film. He started directing everything…..
Ryan Fleck: And I didn’t need you at some point, it was my movie.
Anna Boden: We ended up co-directing that and we liked working together.
Ryan Fleck: I had done some theatre, and I had more of a fiction film background and Anna had been more involved in documentaries, so I worked a little bit more with the actors in Half Nelson and stole the director credit while she was sleeping.
They also made It's Kind of a Funny Story and Mississippi Grind and Sugar (Dominican baseball player recruited to US) and some TV stuff including episodes of The Affair.
Doesn't go where you think it will go - e.g. in great scene between Gosling and Anthony Mackie - in fact arguably it doesn't go anywhere... Gosling and 17 year old Shareeka Epps are fabulous:
Anna Boden: I think that his relationship with Shareeka, his friendship with her, was a very important basis for his character’s friendship with her in the film. They’re still close, and by the time we started shooting they had really formed a friendship and she maybe had a little bit of a crush on him too.
Unlike our previous film it's often in close up.
Q. How did you first get together creatively? Was it romantically or through work?
Anna Boden: We were dating first, and I was doing a documentary short for a film class and I just kind of asked him to help me out and hold the microphone, basically. But then he had all these suggestions, about how to edit the film. He started directing everything…..
Ryan Fleck: And I didn’t need you at some point, it was my movie.
Anna Boden: We ended up co-directing that and we liked working together.
Ryan Fleck: I had done some theatre, and I had more of a fiction film background and Anna had been more involved in documentaries, so I worked a little bit more with the actors in Half Nelson and stole the director credit while she was sleeping.
They also made It's Kind of a Funny Story and Mississippi Grind and Sugar (Dominican baseball player recruited to US) and some TV stuff including episodes of The Affair.
Doesn't go where you think it will go - e.g. in great scene between Gosling and Anthony Mackie - in fact arguably it doesn't go anywhere... Gosling and 17 year old Shareeka Epps are fabulous:
Anna Boden: I think that his relationship with Shareeka, his friendship with her, was a very important basis for his character’s friendship with her in the film. They’re still close, and by the time we started shooting they had really formed a friendship and she maybe had a little bit of a crush on him too.
Unlike our previous film it's often in close up.
The Talk of the Town (1942 George Stevens & prod)
Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman were Oscar nominated for their adaptation of Sidney Buchman's Oscar-nominated story (in itself a quite unusual occurrence?) which tackles the theme of justice and the law by pitching escaped suspect Cary Grant against sober law professor Ronald Colman - and throwing in a dose of Jean Arthur between them for good measure. Meanwhile the police and corrupt officials are on their tails..
Neither Colman nor Arthur are quite my favourite actors and yet there's something most watchable about the three of them, e.g. in fireside conversation:
The two men have taken to each other instantly in talky but engaging film, thoughtful, humorous and gripping.
Nominated for Best Picture, Ted Tetzlaff's photography, Friedrich Hollander's music, Otto Meyer's editing and the interior design.
I have to say, however, that 'Dilg' is an absurd name and so is 'Brightcap' - the latter supposedly a reference to a shrewd thinker, but just made me think to myself throughout 'Get a nightcap for Brightcap'.
Quite simply filmed and reserving the close-ups for maximum impact (though in one, Colman's manservant Rex Ingram seems to shed a tear over Colman shaving, which is frankly odd).
With Edgar Buchanan (attorney on their side), Glenda Farrell, Charles Dingle (corrupt official), Leonid Kinskey (Polish butcher), Tom Tyler, Don Beddoe.
While we were watching it our Cary Grant-loving neighbour gave birth to her first child, which we though most appropriate.
Neither Colman nor Arthur are quite my favourite actors and yet there's something most watchable about the three of them, e.g. in fireside conversation:
The two men have taken to each other instantly in talky but engaging film, thoughtful, humorous and gripping.
Nominated for Best Picture, Ted Tetzlaff's photography, Friedrich Hollander's music, Otto Meyer's editing and the interior design.
I have to say, however, that 'Dilg' is an absurd name and so is 'Brightcap' - the latter supposedly a reference to a shrewd thinker, but just made me think to myself throughout 'Get a nightcap for Brightcap'.
Quite simply filmed and reserving the close-ups for maximum impact (though in one, Colman's manservant Rex Ingram seems to shed a tear over Colman shaving, which is frankly odd).
With Edgar Buchanan (attorney on their side), Glenda Farrell, Charles Dingle (corrupt official), Leonid Kinskey (Polish butcher), Tom Tyler, Don Beddoe.
While we were watching it our Cary Grant-loving neighbour gave birth to her first child, which we though most appropriate.
Thursday, 8 February 2018
Catch and Release (2006 Susannah Grant & scr)
Reviewed here. There's also a triple repeat where Olyphant escorts Garner from the bar. That bed scene is amazing - you can't keep up with how many overlaps there are, and it seems they are coming in and out...
We don't know anything about anyone at the beginning (a funeral) which is quite cool. And we don't see the deceased in flashback. John Lindley shot it.
Grant has since developed A Gifted Man for TV 2011-12, Members Only 2015 TV movie, The 5th Wave (alien attacks, 2016), Confirmation (topical sounding TV movie about sex allegation in politics) and - in pre-production - another TV series, about teenage rape claim, Unbelievable.
It's nothing amazing - but a perfectly well told, well acted, interesting, amusing piece, perhaps lacking in a bit of depth.. I dunno, but it's a once every four years film, and that tells you something...
We don't know anything about anyone at the beginning (a funeral) which is quite cool. And we don't see the deceased in flashback. John Lindley shot it.
Grant has since developed A Gifted Man for TV 2011-12, Members Only 2015 TV movie, The 5th Wave (alien attacks, 2016), Confirmation (topical sounding TV movie about sex allegation in politics) and - in pre-production - another TV series, about teenage rape claim, Unbelievable.
It's nothing amazing - but a perfectly well told, well acted, interesting, amusing piece, perhaps lacking in a bit of depth.. I dunno, but it's a once every four years film, and that tells you something...
Wednesday, 7 February 2018
This Is Where I Leave You (2014 Shawn Levy)
Where had this little gem been hiding? (I found it in Oxfam.) Jonathan Tropper is a novelist in the family / relationships genre (the source novel was published in 2009) and his TV work e.g. Banshee seems more action-oriented, but this is a realistic feeling, funny family comedy. To celebrate the death of their father, mum Jane Fonda holds a seven day shiva in which kids Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Cory Stoll and Adam Driver are forced to attend, along with sundry other parties (Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton). With Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schwarz and Rose Byrne. Driver has the energy of a puppy.
Good writing."I missed him when he was alive."
"You love each other, that's so much harder than having a baby."
It's heavily edited rather than letting scenes flow, but overall it's a big tick.
Good writing."I missed him when he was alive."
"You love each other, that's so much harder than having a baby."
It's heavily edited rather than letting scenes flow, but overall it's a big tick.
Holiday (1938 George Cukor)
Cary Grant is marrying into 'one of the sixty families' through Doris Nolan. Father Henry Kolker disapproves, brother Lew Ayres (good) is a drunk, other sister Katharine Hepburn (fab) is a kook. Grant's surrogate mum and dad are the sweet Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon. And Henry Daniell.
Source play (Philip Barry) evident, adaptation by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, and though long scenes can be static and talky, acting is great and many funny scenes - acrobatics of Grant and Hepburn amazing, as is the way he walks into the cabin right at the end - Grant can do things like this amazingly well.
Made at Columbia. Photographed by Franz Planer. The UCLA 'restored' version is very grainy.
Source play (Philip Barry) evident, adaptation by Donald Ogden Stewart and Sidney Buchman, and though long scenes can be static and talky, acting is great and many funny scenes - acrobatics of Grant and Hepburn amazing, as is the way he walks into the cabin right at the end - Grant can do things like this amazingly well.
Made at Columbia. Photographed by Franz Planer. The UCLA 'restored' version is very grainy.
Tuesday, 6 February 2018
A Good Year (2006 Ridley Scott)
Marc Kelin's decent script is an adaptation of Peter Mayle's 2004 novel - Mayle being a former advertising colleague and neighbour of Scott. (He also wrote 'A Year in Provence' and died in January.)
Russell Crowe's accent has something of the pantomime to it, but he is surrounded by a stellar cast of Brits - Archie Punjabi, Tom Hollander, Rafe Spall, Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland and Close To The Enemy), Albert Finney, Kenneth Cranham and (fleetingly) Daniel Mays. In France there's Dider Bourdon, Isabelle Candelier, Marion Cotillard and Abbie Cornish.
Not sure scorpions would come into a first floor window (though if this is in Mayle's book, I guess he would know), nor about the over-emphatically blue colour palette of London, but enjoyable in the way the past keeps resurfacing and in the secret of the wine... Didn't recognise any of the clips shown in the montage against Trenet's 'Boum' - mainly French I guess, perhaps put together for the film?
Photographed by Philippe le Sourd in Panavision.
Interesting song choices in soundtrack too.
Russell Crowe's accent has something of the pantomime to it, but he is surrounded by a stellar cast of Brits - Archie Punjabi, Tom Hollander, Rafe Spall, Freddie Highmore (Finding Neverland and Close To The Enemy), Albert Finney, Kenneth Cranham and (fleetingly) Daniel Mays. In France there's Dider Bourdon, Isabelle Candelier, Marion Cotillard and Abbie Cornish.
Not sure scorpions would come into a first floor window (though if this is in Mayle's book, I guess he would know), nor about the over-emphatically blue colour palette of London, but enjoyable in the way the past keeps resurfacing and in the secret of the wine... Didn't recognise any of the clips shown in the montage against Trenet's 'Boum' - mainly French I guess, perhaps put together for the film?
Photographed by Philippe le Sourd in Panavision.
Interesting song choices in soundtrack too.
Monday, 5 February 2018
Home Again (2017 Hallie Myers-Shyer & scr)
Daughter of Nancy Myers (who produced) and Charles Shyer (House Calls, Goin' South, Private Benjamin, the Alfie remake), this is her debut and we thoroughly enjoyed this comedy which operates within its own cosy Hollywood fantasy existence of beautifully designed houses. (In fact the 1929 Spanish-style hacienda in Brentwood "is like a character in the film,” says production designer Ellen J. Brill. “That’s what happens in Nancy Meyers movies.” See here.) It also trades on the popular theme of films and film-makers (it's a bit disappointing that not more of the family connection to the genius director is made).
Pico Alexander, John Rudnitsky and Nat Wolff are the film-makers who encounter Reese Witherspoon and her mother Candice Bergen. (It's a great moment when the boys relish the feel of the sheets. And when they realise whose house they are in.) Lola Flanery and Eden Grace Redfield are the girls and Michael Sheen the estranged father. With Lake Bell as an arsehole client, P.J. Byrne (agent).
Much to its credit, it doesn't end quite where you expect it to, either. Moves along briskly and is funny. Shot by Dean Cundey (now 70) and featuring an interesting soundtrack of oldies including vintage Yes.
.
Pico Alexander, John Rudnitsky and Nat Wolff are the film-makers who encounter Reese Witherspoon and her mother Candice Bergen. (It's a great moment when the boys relish the feel of the sheets. And when they realise whose house they are in.) Lola Flanery and Eden Grace Redfield are the girls and Michael Sheen the estranged father. With Lake Bell as an arsehole client, P.J. Byrne (agent).
Much to its credit, it doesn't end quite where you expect it to, either. Moves along briskly and is funny. Shot by Dean Cundey (now 70) and featuring an interesting soundtrack of oldies including vintage Yes.
Sunday, 4 February 2018
Den Skaldede Frisør (The Bald Hairdresser) / Love Is All You Need (2012 Susanne Bier)
Crap UK release name. Trine Dyrholm is delightful as a truly beautiful and good person who attracts lonely widower Pierce Brosnan, who is himself plagued by the unwanted attentions of his dead wife's sister (Paprika Steen). Whilst this is going on, Trine's daughter (Molly Blixt Egelind) and Pierce's son (Sebastian Jessen) try to get married. Meanwhile Trine's husband Kim Bodnia (from the Bridge) is a shit. Susane and Anders Thomas Jensen (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, In China They Eat Dogs, In a Better World and the new The Dark Tower) wrote it.
Trine's the star of Nico, 1988, The Legacy (three seasons), many things, as well as in Bier's 2010 In a Better World (aka Hævnen = Revenge).
Filmed in and around Sant'Angelo Salerno and Sorrento.
Trine's the star of Nico, 1988, The Legacy (three seasons), many things, as well as in Bier's 2010 In a Better World (aka Hævnen = Revenge).
Filmed in and around Sant'Angelo Salerno and Sorrento.
Engrenages / Spiral - Season 6 (2017 Created by Alexandra Clert)
Writers: Anne Landois, Anne Rambach.
Great writing - Gilou steals the gold ingot. Tells Laure. She comes out with a worse plan. "I fucked up and now you're making it worse."
They miss the suspect's movements because they are fighting in the back of the van.
The forensics expert who is doing Juge Roban a favour, and she ends up making his dreaded biopsy appointment for him.
Laure (Caroline Proust) tries to connect with her baby, but chickens out. At least she seems happy, finally, with Gilou (Thierry Godard), but Tintin (Fred Bianconi) finds out something dodgy, and quits (he also loses his family - in a very tense episode, his son goes missing). Meanwhile the Juge (Phillipe Duclos) is having health problems.. Oh yeah, a cop is dismembered.
It doesn't go where you think - Gilou being caught on film by the baddy, or the fact that the Juge helps cover up a fellow's gay activities, who then doesn't help him at all in return. Plus - poor Joséphine (Audrey Fleurot) - in prison? Cue season 7 (filming had already begun).
They're not bits of Paris you recognise, nor want to visit.
Great writing - Gilou steals the gold ingot. Tells Laure. She comes out with a worse plan. "I fucked up and now you're making it worse."
They miss the suspect's movements because they are fighting in the back of the van.
The forensics expert who is doing Juge Roban a favour, and she ends up making his dreaded biopsy appointment for him.
Laure (Caroline Proust) tries to connect with her baby, but chickens out. At least she seems happy, finally, with Gilou (Thierry Godard), but Tintin (Fred Bianconi) finds out something dodgy, and quits (he also loses his family - in a very tense episode, his son goes missing). Meanwhile the Juge (Phillipe Duclos) is having health problems.. Oh yeah, a cop is dismembered.
It doesn't go where you think - Gilou being caught on film by the baddy, or the fact that the Juge helps cover up a fellow's gay activities, who then doesn't help him at all in return. Plus - poor Joséphine (Audrey Fleurot) - in prison? Cue season 7 (filming had already begun).
They're not bits of Paris you recognise, nor want to visit.
L'Atalante (1934 Jean Vigo)
Newly-weds Dita Parlo and Jean Dasté honeymoon on a barge with colourful Michel Simon and the boy Louis Lefebre. They make love, split up, and are reunited. Actors are infectious. Striking photography from Boris Kaufman (and Louis Berger and Jean-Paul Alphen).
Vigo died of tuberculosis after filming, aged 29. 'Only a few days after the first disappointing run ended, Vigo died. His much-loved wife Lydou, lying beside him, got up from the bed and ran down a long corridor to a room at the end of it. Friends caught her as she was about to jump out of the window'* - and that could be a scene from the film, which leaves us with striking scenes underwater and of a marionette, and a persistent and annoying junk pedlar and a gramophone and cats and the city... and ends on a terrific aerial shot of the barge, the 'L'Atalante' of the title.
When you see it it doesn't seem so much, somehow, but its effect is deeper than it seems. Written by Vigo, Albert Riéra and Jean Guinée.
*(Excerpt from Derek Malcolm's 'A Century of Films' (2000)).
Cahiers du Cinema published a Top 100 in 2008. This was number five.
Vigo died of tuberculosis after filming, aged 29. 'Only a few days after the first disappointing run ended, Vigo died. His much-loved wife Lydou, lying beside him, got up from the bed and ran down a long corridor to a room at the end of it. Friends caught her as she was about to jump out of the window'* - and that could be a scene from the film, which leaves us with striking scenes underwater and of a marionette, and a persistent and annoying junk pedlar and a gramophone and cats and the city... and ends on a terrific aerial shot of the barge, the 'L'Atalante' of the title.
When you see it it doesn't seem so much, somehow, but its effect is deeper than it seems. Written by Vigo, Albert Riéra and Jean Guinée.
*(Excerpt from Derek Malcolm's 'A Century of Films' (2000)).
Cahiers du Cinema published a Top 100 in 2008. This was number five.
Saturday, 3 February 2018
The King of Comedy (1982 Martin Scorsese)
Paul D Zimmerman's screenplay could be about the quest to try to make it in the creative business, but is also about celebrity and obsession, and he cleverly cuts between the fantasies of its protagonist Robert de Niro and the actuality of him trying to get discovered by his hero Jerry Lewis. They are both great, as is Sandra Bernhard, though we don't know why she's so nuts. Cleverly, the ending may be irony or just another fantasy, and we don't discover till the end whether Pupkin has any talent or not.
Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker; shot by Fred Shuler, who photographed Arthur and was operator on Manhattan, Annie Hall, Dog Day Afternoon and Taxi Driver.
Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker; shot by Fred Shuler, who photographed Arthur and was operator on Manhattan, Annie Hall, Dog Day Afternoon and Taxi Driver.
A Walk in the Woods (2015 Ken Kwapis)
Based on Bill Bryson's memoir, written by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) and Bill Holderman.
Nothing particularly surprises or happens when Robert Redford and Nick Nolte embark on the Appalachian trail hike, to the concern of the former's wife Emma Thompson. And we don't really learn a lot about the pair, but there are plenty of amusing and heart-warming episodes, and the most annoying fellow hiker Kristen Schaal. With Mary Steenburgen.
Shot by John Bailey in Panavision and from a few helicopters, and edited by his wife Carol Littleton.
Nothing particularly surprises or happens when Robert Redford and Nick Nolte embark on the Appalachian trail hike, to the concern of the former's wife Emma Thompson. And we don't really learn a lot about the pair, but there are plenty of amusing and heart-warming episodes, and the most annoying fellow hiker Kristen Schaal. With Mary Steenburgen.
Shot by John Bailey in Panavision and from a few helicopters, and edited by his wife Carol Littleton.
Endeavour (2017 Created and written by Russell Lewis)
Fabulous four-part film series where characters are nicely nuanced and beautifully played - particularly by leads Shaun Evans and Roger Allam, but also by Anton Lesser, Sean Rigby, Dakota Blue Richards, James Bradshaw (pathologist) and Abigail Thaw, Caroline O'Neill, Sara Vickers.
'Game' - computers and chess.
'Canticle' - a Mary Whitehouse type affair.
'Lazaretto' - featuring the band Wildwood, their hit 'Jennifer Sometimes' and the underground paper 'The Exciting Times'!
'Harvest' - nuclear power plant and Wicker Man-type goings-on. 'The Other Place' - the TV show that has hooked Win - is fictional.
"Off now!"
Lewis is a man of mystery.
'Game' - computers and chess.
'Canticle' - a Mary Whitehouse type affair.
'Lazaretto' - featuring the band Wildwood, their hit 'Jennifer Sometimes' and the underground paper 'The Exciting Times'!
'Harvest' - nuclear power plant and Wicker Man-type goings-on. 'The Other Place' - the TV show that has hooked Win - is fictional.
"Off now!"
Lewis is a man of mystery.
Thursday, 1 February 2018
Kiri (2017 Euros Lyn)
Have usual bugbears with some of Lyn's direction ("Why did you do that?" I found myself asking here and there) but I do like Jack Thorne's writing. Credits:
Skins (5 episodes)
The Scouting Book For Boys. Ouch! (Can't like them all, I suppose.)
This Is England '86 / '88 / '90.
How I Live Now (additional material)
A Long Way Down
Glue / The Last Panthers (missed those...)
National Treasure
Wonder (co-wrote)
Little girl goes missing, then found dead. Social worker who expedited it is suspended. Who did it? Behaviour of teenager is outrageous. Moment where Lancashire confronts her former wards is striking.. but doesn't really go anywhere with it.
Although we know, the series ends abruptly with absolutely nothing resolved. If that's the intention, I like it, but if it's another fucking 'here comes season 2', then fuck off.
Cast: Sarah Lancashire (great), Lucian Msamati & Andi Osho, Lia Williams & Steven Mackintosh, Wunmi Mosaku, Paapu Esiedu, Finn Bennett, Claire Rushbrook.
4 x 45 mins.
Skins (5 episodes)
The Scouting Book For Boys. Ouch! (Can't like them all, I suppose.)
This Is England '86 / '88 / '90.
How I Live Now (additional material)
A Long Way Down
Glue / The Last Panthers (missed those...)
National Treasure
Wonder (co-wrote)
Little girl goes missing, then found dead. Social worker who expedited it is suspended. Who did it? Behaviour of teenager is outrageous. Moment where Lancashire confronts her former wards is striking.. but doesn't really go anywhere with it.
Although we know, the series ends abruptly with absolutely nothing resolved. If that's the intention, I like it, but if it's another fucking 'here comes season 2', then fuck off.
Cast: Sarah Lancashire (great), Lucian Msamati & Andi Osho, Lia Williams & Steven Mackintosh, Wunmi Mosaku, Paapu Esiedu, Finn Bennett, Claire Rushbrook.
4 x 45 mins.
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