Premiered on September 9. (To put that into perspective, VE Day was 8 May and VJ Day was celebrated here 15 August.) I was thirteen when I first saw it on 19 May 1977. In his massively unhelpful book 'Forever Ealing', George Perry not only tells the stories in the wrong order, but completely fails to report how the film was received by the public.
John Baines wrote The Haunted Mirror - it was his first screen credit. He went on to help write the 1949 Blue Lagoon adaptation.
What of the kid, Tommy? (Brian Andrews.) Not so much the actor, the character. He must have been deeply traumatized by that night. Surely his later story would be worth telling?
I'd watch Forbidden Plant again. We should really have watched this first, along with The Thing From Another World. Maybe next year.
Who? Dominic Sessa plays Anthony Bourdain... Oh... The Holdovers. Duh.
To his immense credit, he tells the girl (Emilia Jones, from Coda - duh) the truth before sleeping with her. In fact now I come to think of it, that's probably the turning point. He goes from bullshitting his first interview to actually underselling himself in the last.
Has that rather prickly screenplay credit of Todd Bartels & Lou Howe, Matt Johnson & Matthew Miller. Look, here it is, along with that girl who hasn't noticed him:
Antonio Banderas plays the chef. With Leo Woodall, from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, One Day and The White Lotus. Plus Stavros Halkias, Monica Raymund, Rich Sommer (Mad Men), Dagmara Domynczyk.
Michael Bauman photographed it, Curt Lobb and Robert Upchurch edited.
I mean, yeah.
Ur, we're in the Arctic Circle, on Norwegian territory, where British and Russian militaries are not allowed to engage. But they have. And this time Rose Leslie is sent into the thick of it whilst Suranne Jones ferrets around in London.
It's like one of my dull midweek rice dishes - it fills you up, but you have the feeling you'd rather have eaten something else.
It is entirely lacking in humour. And you don't really care about anyone in it. Also not sure I'm a Suranne Jones fan any more.
The landscapes look great, but are they real or was the whole thing made in Scotland with CGI pretties added on? This gives the inside info (a six day shoot in Svalbard to catch the 'plates' on which everything else was then placed), and includes such great insider language as 'we could stabilize and rework things without ever running out of pixels'.
Also I kept getting the feeling that all these people from different nations were all Scottish. (They're not.) Gary Lewis, Dominic Mafham, Jeppe Beck Laursen, Naomi Yang, Tornike Gogrichiani, Eric Godon (craggy Russian, In Bruges).
We've seen Steven Miller before, in Dept Q. and Shetland and Silent Witness. He has that same sad look at Timothy Bottoms.
Thank you.
The novel was written by the Telegraph's Money editor Charlotte Gifford and was published under the name Charlotte Langley. It was optioned for TV before it had even been published. It was at first a thriller; the misogyny angle was secondary. Then when it was adapted for TV, Megan Gallagher heightened it by adding the real text messages that had been found on (now fired) police officers' phones. Accordingly, and unlike The Morning Show, the issues don't overbalance the storyline.
Good cast all round: Michelle Keegan, Douglas Booth, Ian Hart, Nathan Mensah (his first appearance - one to watch), Nigel Boyle (the IT guy), Joe Armstrong, Matilda Freeman as the murdered girl. Gavin Spokes and Josh Bolt are the vile detectives and Ceallach Spellman has to watch out if he's not going the same way. It was directed by Bex Rycroft and Claire Tailyour (three each).
6 x 45 for Quay Productions on ITV. It was Wendy's birthday and we were going to watch 'something sweet'. We tried various unsatisfactory things, then landed on this and were hooked - watched it all in one go.
Samuel Bottomley (The Teacher) and Lara Ricote have just graduated and moved from Leeds to London when he confesses he's had a one night fling; and as they can't afford to move out must remain locked together, as it were.
Enter John Thompson, Charly Clive, Assa Kinoute, Michael Workeye, Jack Shep and Nathan Foad.
6 x 25 minutes for Channel 4.
Ends very openly - some might say, annoyingly so.
Begins well at an International Arms Bazaar, which sounds more fun than it looks. Bond has to steal a jet fighter to stop a nuclear explosion. Then in a rather chilling scene, a British destroyer is attacked and sunk and the survivors executed. This is all the work of evil media tycoon Jonathan Pryce.
Then we're introduced to Bond's remote control BMW and all credibility flies out of the window. There's a scene with this in a car park which is just interminable, with all these bad guys popping out of the woodwork everywhere, and that's the hallmark of the film as it goes along. There's a later chase scene involving a motorbike and pursuing Range Rovers which just never seem to stop coming. The last twenty minutes are endless shoot-outs and explosions that go on and on and are just so boring.
I'm not quite sure what the media tycoon has to gain in bringing about an Anglo-Chinese war, either. Bruce Feirstein is the writer.
Notable for its gallery of great British supporting actors including Judi Dench, Colin Salmon and Samantha Bond, but also encompassing Geoffrey Palmer, Julian Fellowes, Julian Rhind-Tutt (what?? where??), Michael Byrne, Pip Torrens, Hugh Bonneville, and Jason Watkins!
Bond's birds are Michelle Yeoh and Teri Hatcher (Desperate Housewives), with Ricky Jay and Gotz Otto as bad guys. Bond is Pierce Brosnan.
Photographed by Robert Elswit, edited by Michel Arcand and Dominique Fortin, music by David Arnold. Cheryl Crowe wrote and sang the theme tune, which is one of the best things about it.
The first was released in the US in January, the second in March. In Mike Figgis's film he plays a unredeemable corrupt cop who is happy to stoop to murder. I'm not quite sure what he thought he was doing at the end, which loses the plot finally. Andy Garcia though turns almost as psycho as he. Laurie Melcalfe helps investigate. Features a number of big haired women including Nancy Travis (Garcia's wife) and Annabella Sciorra.
Over-edited to the point of madness. And so lacking in the original's slow and brilliant build-up.
Some nice touches, e.g. where she's fallen out of the window and he's at the window - a flip of the ending of the original.
But really... no.
Did I know there was also a 2007 version by someone called Rob Zombie, that apparently gives Michael Myers more back story? It has reviews.
Of course Ted will go back to Richmond to train the girls' team. Of course he will take his son with him.
The way he gets his young supermarket colleague to stop stealing cigarettes is inspired indeed.
Will Tanya Reynolds stay on as assistant coach? Of course she will! (We know her from Sex Ed, Emma., Fanny Lye Deliver'd, The Other Bennet Sister). Will Roy and Keeley get back together? Of course they fucking will! (Despite presence of Laura Haddock.)
Tracey Ullman is a crazy sponsor.
I loved the All the President's Men episode (who's buying up the club shares?) And Roy's 'speech' and he and Keeley. And Rebecca having to instantly improvise being an American secretary.
The twins' Irish duet is surely a highlight.
Meet the Indian lawyer firm family: dad Sanjeev Bhaskar, high achieving daughter Ritu Arya and her soon-to-be Danny Ashok, gay brother Arian Nik, eldest daughter and mum Aysha Kala and her husband Tom Forbes. Mix in one night stand and new associate partner Dimitri Leonidas and mysterious rival lawyer Shalini Peris. Debbie Rush good as super-efficient PA; Mawaan Rizwan as Nik's 'friend'.
Yes, it's all quite entertaining. Arya sure does blow hot and cold with Dimitri. (He's a model of restraint.) Shalini is somewhat hostile when you consider her part in it all. Sanjeev is annoyingly Machiavellian and controlling.
Some good sub-stories include marriage guidance celebs Lenny Henry and Jane Horrocks, whose planned divorce is going to blow up their brand, or a weasel who wants to steal his fiancée's business and internet profile. (She's Jameela Jamil, from The Good Place.)
I must say, in the final of the six episodes, there's an awful lot of nothing going on in the wedding scene... until the last bombshells that Q tells me is going to set Season 2 going.
Graham Norton's novel is about a father with dementia (Douglas Henshall) whose wife has left him, and her name must never be mentioned again by his two kids, who grow up to be Jenny Walser and Lewis Cope. The father has a partner (Amy Nuttall) who discovers a grisly secret in his freezer, then involving her mum Denise Welch. Meanwhile the son's partner, who's a copper (Shane Zaza) is trying to manage a surrogate birth. Of course experienced watchers suspect that it's too obvious for the freezer-body to be the wife... it must be more complex than that. And as usual it then gets into "Is it him?" "Is it her?"
As usual with these things, it's riven with plot holes and implausibilities. For example, why didn't the wife just leave home for six months (rather than twenty years), then come back and say "It didn't work out with the brother-in-law"? And how does she suddenly have enough money to buy the family home? And how come the copper knows all about the surrogate mother's boyfriend but his other half doesn't? And when the latter does reveal it, why didn't the copper say "Yeah, I know - it's all fine"? Maybe these things have only arisen because of the TV adaptation and weren't problems in Graham's novel.
It was quite entertaining and watchable, though in a way the dark underlying story of child abuse didn't really work with the rest of it. Also with Kevin Whately, James Baxter (Walser's very married boyfriend), Nancy Sadsad.
Another playful Atticus Pund murder mystery with most of the cast giving two performances (one in the novel being told, one in the present) - some of which are better than others. Lesley Manville and Tim McMullan are the editor / fiction detective. With Harry Lloyd, Rupert Penry-Jones, Mark Bonnar (somewhat overacting as American), Phoenix Laroche, Zubin Varla, Amelia Bullmore, Claire Rushbrook, Danny Sapani (DI), Anneika Rose (frustratingly hostile DS). Actually filmed in Corfu, and in Dublin and London.
Some of it is a bit tiring to watch with it jumping all over the place, but those jumps are very artfully pulled off.
How come they were allowed to make a film in colour in 1943? Because this is a massive ad for the US Navy.
Somewhat reluctantly, Tyrone Power gets posted to submarine command under experienced Dana Andrews. Of course they are soon buddies. But unfortunately Power has met-cute and fallen for Anne Baxter, not knowing she's Andrews' girlfriend.
An exciting and colourful action scene shot by Leon Shamroy winds things up.
It was written by Jo Swerling from a W.R. Burnett story and made by Fox.
Supporting cast: James Gleason, Dame Mae Whitty, Harry Morgan, and Ben Carter, who sadly died in 1946 from diphtheria, having been a successful talent agent for African-American actors.
Dan in Real Life is a real sweet film as widower Carrell meet-cutes Juliette Binoche in a bookshop and falls head over heels immediately... but she's his brother's girlfriend. It's expertly cut by Sarah Flack, who also did many films for Sophia Coppola including Lost In Translation and more recently Priscilla, as well as The Limey.
Hedges catches family interactions well - note how when Carrell first arrives at the parents' home he encounters all the various other members of the family in one continuous take.
Also when he tells Binoche about his wife a single droplet of water drips down the window pane, like a tear. I don't know if that was deliberate or a lucky mistake but it's fabulous.
Photographed by Laurence Sher.
Hedges made The Same Storm in lockdown, a to-camera piece made using everyday technology. It's on YouTube.
Carrell is funny as a gambling addict who bets Billie Jean King $100k he can beat her at tennis. In the meantime she embarks on an affair with her hairdresser. Emma Stone, Andrea Riseborough, Alan Cumming. Bill Pullman (Sleepless in Seattle, Igby Goes Down), Natalie Morales, Austin Stowell (husband).
This is also expertly edited by an invisible woman, Pamela Martin, who cut Little Miss Sunshine and Ruby Sparks for Dayton and Faris, as well as Youth in Revolt, Hitchcock, Seberg and King Richard. It was photographed by Linus Sandgren and designed by Judy Becker.
Made me think I'd love to see the Men's and Women's England football teams play against each other.
This time, I listened to it all. It's a sound work of art.
Did wonder - that opening shot that prowls around the apartments - looks like it starts outside but clearly ends up inside. Crane? Must watch again. Oh - I will - at Christmas!
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| The set design was based on buildings in Christopher Street in The Village |
Q was finding the way Kelly was kissing Stewart annoying!
One For Sorrow. Helen Jenkins. Taxidermy video installation and murder. Refreshingly unknown casts in these later films. We meet Hathaway's father, Nicholas Jones.
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| Hathaway with parting gift from Innocent |
Magnum Opus. Chris Murray. Absolutely bananas. If you removed all the sect / alchemy nonsense there's a decent plot underneath. Occupation: 'Professional alchemist'. What?? Maybe the worst one of all? Also I was convinced Honeysuckle Weeks was the culprit but I'd got mixed up with a Silent Witness or some other thing she was in.
What Lies Tangled. Nick Hicks-Beach. Bombs and knot theory. Some lovely filming and editing of slow magnesium / bomb blasts. The explosion to waltz sequence is great - we watched it twice = editor Jamie McCoan, director David Drury, cinematographer James Friend. David Warner, Zoe Tapper, Ian Puleston-Davies. Lewis doesn't want to go to New Zealand but Hathaway talks him into it. Ahh!
Cued this amusing interaction:
"What am I going to do without my brother?"
Q: "Go to prison."
Not sure they kicked off Entry Wounds that well, really. Lewis has retired but rejoins the team the same day Innocent calls him without telling anyone, thus both Hathaway and Hobson are miffed. Hathaway hasn't resigned after all - not explained - but has taken the Camino de Santiago then not gone into the final Cathedral - the detective in Lewis would surely want to puzzle this out.
Angela Griffin is the new DS who Hathaway hasn't exactly welcomed, but by the end of The Lions of Nemea they are all sharing pizza together Chez the Lewises.
The first story involves a farm, a surgeon, animal activists and a shooting in the woods with some ingenuity regarding the origin of the lethal bullets. The second is also ingenious in the way Hathaway works out that a newly discovered Euripides is a fake. The identity of the killer is quite a surprise, from Noel Farragher & Nicholas Hicks-Beach, from an idea by Tahsin Guner. Hathaway has a sort of flirty interest in possible suspect Andrea Lowe.
My acute (and cute) co-pilot informs me that Griffin has been directing episodes of Blue Lights - good for her!
Lewis / Whately writes his capital D funny - the curved bit first, then the straight line.
Beyond Good and Evil. Robbie's alarmed when cop killer Alec Newman is released. Griffin is almost killed but James rescues her with a bag of pork scratchings. Yes - this is nuts. If her husband had been injured the first thing you'd do is call his mobile. Then when you get to his weirdly deserted place of work, you'd expect to find your injured husband outside or at least somewhere accessible, not in the catacombs. And how would your assailant know you'd go to the catacombs?
Down Among the Fearful by Simon Block and Catherine Tregenna. A psychic is murdered who is then discovered not to be a psychic at all. Catherine Steadman, Tuppence Middleton, Stukey, Beatie Edney, Dominic Mafham, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Lesley Vickerage.
The moment when Hathaway thinks he may have been stabbed in the neck with poison is Fox's finest hour. It really shakes him up, actually, and he starts to think about quitting. Fox was making noises about leaving the series, perhaps partly why he's not in the end much.
The Ramblin' Boy by Lucy Gannon had Fox off in Croatia renovating a school - he is called into play when a missing body at a funeral parlour turns into a drugs investigation. Peter Davidson is good as a nasty character, Lia Williams is off her rocker and annoying, Tom Brooke, Taron Egerton. This is a good one.
But the 'ah' moment comes when Lewis takes Hobson's hand...
And then there's another 'ah' moment when new DC Babou Cesay reveals his connection to Lewis which we thought we remembered from an earlier episode.
And in the season wrap up Intelligent Design a man released from prison is murdered. Hathaway feels himself responsible for the suicide of a young man and decides to resign. Lewis is thinking of packing it all in as well. I wonder if they left it like that in case it was the end for Whately and Fox? Fox was published in 2012 saying that he and Whately had decided to stop to prevent the series becoming 'a bit samey'.
Stephen Churchett both wrote the story and is the murdered man; Helen Jenkins wrote the screenplay. It links to an older crime. Miranda Raison (also in Spooks and HBO series Warrior) is trying to cure Alzheimer's, Edward Fox is a professor.
One of those 'locked room' films that I'm particularly not keen on, like Abigail's Party and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe. Seth Rogan and Olivia Wilde aren't getting on; their neighbours Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton come over and reveal themselves to be swingers. An adaptation of a film by Cesc Gay The People Upstairs / Sentimental from 2020. We didn't like it at all, reminded me of another film we couldn't watch, Carnage. Not at all funny.
We liked Booksmart but were similarly underwhelmed by Don't Worry Darling.
