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Neat, Sweet... Petite
This week I have been watching The Addams Family, the original 1964 TV series which is, largely, available via dailymotion. Mostly this is for the first time as I have only the vaguest recollection of the odd episode from my childhood. Britain’s ITV picked it up briefly, ran some on Saturday mornings but then gave up on it. It was broadcast a good ( Read more... ) -
Giddy up! New Thoughts on Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Warning - Contains spoilers!!
Looking at Hitchcock’s Vertigo again there are a number of things which leave me wondering whether or not the whole thing is really a dream. I am aware that some other critics have noticed the dream-like quality of the film and that it uses surrealist forms but not gone so far as to suggest that it is itself a dream ( Read more... ) -
Chinese Roulette
Some idle musings on Chinesisches Roulette (Chinese Roulette) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976, not so much with spoilers as with the assumption that you've already seen this film. Probably ages ago. If not, watch it here:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGcLHEUjOtA)
( Read more... ) -
Follow the Money (as ever)
I have been listening to Anton Lesser on the radio this week (best known these days as Qyburn from Game of Thrones) reading Hillary Mantel’s concluding book in her trilogy about Henry VIII’s chamberlain Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror and the Light. It is exceptionally good, of course. What can you say? It encouraged me, though, to read up on some of ( Read more... ) -
To Steal (the Crown of) a King
“It is harder for the spider to catch a fly than it is for the fly to catch a horse.”
(One of Thomas Banaček’s ‘old Polish proverbs’)
Of course, I always prefer to spell the name of this 1970s TV detective 'Banaček', even though no-one ever does in the show. For all the fuss that is made about his being Polish in the series itself, what with those ( Read more... ) -
The Ultimate Wind-Up
Reassessing Anthony Burgess and his Clockwork Oranges
THE ULTIMATE WIND-UP:
Reassessing Anthony Burgess and his Clockwork Oranges
There is a powerful mythic element in the novel. The story of A Clockwork Orange essentially stems from a mediæval Nordic legend, the basis of Ingmar Bergman’s film The Virgin Spring in 1960, two years before Burgess’s ( Read more... ) -
Trouble in Mind
Met up with a very good friend after work to see The Trouble with Harry. We concluded this was an odd addition to the Hitchcock season at the BFI. I’d never seen it before. It doesn’t get shown that much. Hitch fans don’t rate it, I learned. It is unlike most of his other films.
I’d sort of known vaguely that it was about a body, but had always ( Read more... ) -
Killing Joke
I was wondering what to say about this new film that has caused such a rumpus. I was a little unsure about how wise it might be to talk about it out loud on public transport, and wondered which euphemism to use. It was when I thought of referring to it as "The Entertainment" that it all clicked into place. As a friend of mine put it: "this is a ( Read more... ) -
Stay Hungry
Let’s look at what we know. We have the feeling that this is meant to be a future America, yet the state is called Panem. Not, you notice, PanAm, or ‘all America’ but Panem - the Latin word for ‘Bread’ as in Juvenal’s phrase ‘panem et circenses’ - ‘bread and circuses.’ This tells us where we are, politically - although Suzanne Collins does make ( Read more... ) -
We won't be meeting again on the slow train
This is the very last entry on this site from me. From now on I will post only here. I have resisted all the messing about Livejournal has endured at the hands of its various owners, but, as I warned a while back, it is the childish immaturity of some of my fellow users that finally drives me to quit it ( Read more... )