I went to see the new Studio Ghibli release a couple of weeks ago. The Secret World of Arrietty (2010) is based on the Borrowers books by Mary Norton, mostly written in the ’50s. These stories of little people who live in the walls and under the floorboards of houses, “borrowing” unwanted scraps from the […]
An 11-year-old orphan, discovered working in a maharajah’s stables by a cameraman on a scouting trip, represents one of the strangest anomalies in the history of movie-stardom. Osmond Borradaile was in India in preparation for a project based on a story by Rudyard Kipling when he met Selar Shaik and brought him to the attention […]
When you buy more DVDs than you’ll ever have time to watch (one of the hazards of addiction), you end up with large backlogs piled on various shelves, the sight of which tends to nag at you. Sometimes, you can’t help asking yourself why the hell you bought them in the first place, but of […]
I don’t spend a lot of time these days wondering why my personal taste in movies is so often completely out of sync with popular and critical opinion, but every now and then something comes up that makes me pause for a moment. On Friday, I went to see J.J. Abrams’ Super 8, even though […]
British television in the ’60s and ’70s was limited by a lack of money, a fact which resulted in certain distinctive characteristics. Most shows were shot in studio, on videotape, with quite obviously flimsy sets. These limitations forced creators to follow a theatrical, rather than cinematic, model; at their worst, these shows seemed like creaky […]
British TV has always been primarily a writer’s medium; since the ’50s, the biggest stars have tended to be the writers, with writers’ names attached possessively to projects. Television production was often built around writers such as Alan Bennett, Alan Bleasdale and Dennis Potter, who was one of the biggest, with each of his new […]
Better known for his work with George Lucas, Willard Huyck directed a small independent horror movie in 1973 which shows more promise than his career ever fulfilled.
Peter Yates died in London on January 9, aged 81. His two best-known films were Bullitt (1968) and Breaking Away (1979), and that perhaps indicates why he was not as widely known as many of his contemporaries. He directed a wide range of movies in many different genres, and for that reason never established a […]
Although Britain’s Hammer Films was first formed in the 1930s, initially in an attempt to expand a theatre chain into areas of production and distribution, only five films were made before the war – comedies and mysteries. Production resumed after the war with more comedies, mysteries and thrillers. It was 1953 before the company took […]
It was unfortunate that until the very end of his career, the Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku was known in North America mostly for his worst film: The Green Slime. This was an “international” production, shot in Japanese studios with an American and European cast, a very bad script and even worse special effects. But even […]