Hollywood vs. Fascism | Silver Screenings
Stories about fighting fascists always make for fascinating movies.Look at the legendary Casablanca (1942), for instance, or the low-key but surprisingly tense The Mortal Storm (1940). Like many Hollywood war … Continue reading
La Critique de L’École des femmes | Micheline’s Blog
L’École des femmes is a five-act play written at a relatively early date after Molière’s return to Paris. Molière had fled Paris after his first troupe, l’Illustre Théâtre, faced bankruptcy. … Continue reading
Actor and comedian John Sessions dies aged 67 | Television & radio | The Guardian
The actor and comedian John Sessions has died at the age of 67. Sessions, best known for appearing on television shows including Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Have I Got … Continue reading
Alfre Woodard: ‘We want all those with a stake in the death row business to see this film’ | Film | The Guardian
The focus of Black Lives Matter protests has inevitably fallen on the most visible injustice – instances of police brutality. More systemic racial disparities in the American penal system are … Continue reading
Key Largo (1948) – Waldina
Seventy-two years ago today, the film Key Largo Premiered. A Bogie and Bacall pairing that solidified the legend… Army veteran Frank McCloud (Humphrey Bogart) arrives at the Hotel Largo in … Continue reading
‘This is the best moment of my life,’ he said, lying in the bath: Ian Holm remembered | Film | The Guardian
That sense of emotional ruthlessness was what made him such a brilliant Lear Richard Eyre Ian Holm was, as it was so often said, the actor’s actor. Not because … Continue reading
Martin Scorsese in lockdown: an auteur’s eye view of house arrest | Film | The Guardian
Martin Scorsese’s Zoom call to the world is a marvellous coup for Mary Beard’s BBC Lockdown Culture special: a personal short film shot on his smartphone – sometimes artlessly in … Continue reading
My sister died of coronavirus. She needed care, but her life was not disposable | Rory Kinnear | Opinion | The Guardian
‘No one could describe Karina as weak: she did not have it coming, she was no more disposable than anyone else. Her death was not inevitable, does not ease our … Continue reading
Pedro Almodóvar Describes Life in Quarantine
Read Pedro Almodóvar’s Essay on Living Through Spain Lockdown and What He’s Watching in Quarantine:: ‘The good thing about not having a timetable during the confinement is that rushing disappears.’ … Continue reading
Enemy at the Gates
Every now and then a film stands out from the crowd. One, in particular, is the 2001 production of Enemy at the Gates, directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud… Source: Enemy at … Continue reading
The Sinatra Movie Some Blamed for JFK’s Death
In the 1950s, Frank Sinatra starred in Suddenly, a movie that happens to depict a plot against the President. John Baron paces in a living room full of hostages, gun in … Continue reading
The History of Race, Performance, and Drag Intersect in a Rare Photo of Thomas Dilward
TODAY IN BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, the southwest corner of Court Street and Remsen Street is home to a vitamin store, a law office, and a pizzeria. But in September 1862, during … Continue reading
How Do You Solve a Problem Like ‘Emma’?
There’s a moment toward the end of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” when the heroine goes to a picnic and is horrified to discover that she is not as wonderful as she … Continue reading
Langston Hughes’s Ardent Public Fan Letter to the Young Nina Simone
On February 8, 1949, a week after his forty-eighth birthday, the poet, novelist, activist, and playwright Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901–May 22, 1967) traveled to Asheville to speak at the Allen … Continue reading
Bud Flanagan’s Spitalfields
My Sabbatical is Over! I’m back. However, posts will not be as frequent as during the old days. Also, I’ve decided not to allow your beautiful comments partly because of … Continue reading
One great film noir for every year (1940-59) | BFI
Well, okay, I meant to post this in November last year. But I didn’t! To celebrate #Noirvember and the return to cinemas of The Big Heat and In a Lonely … Continue reading
A Life in Focus: Peter Cushing, the actor who personified the horror genre | The Independent
The Independent revisits the life of a notable figure. This week: Peter Cushing, from Friday 12 August 1994 Peter Cushing was one of the handful of actors who defined the horror … Continue reading
JULY 29, 1887: NAUGHTY NOMADS AND SINGING SOTS – Wretched Richard’s Almanac
Born in 1887, Sigmund Romberg moved to the United States in 1909 and, after a short resume builder in a pencil factory (as a sharpener?), found work as a pianist. … Continue reading
O’Gorman Brothers
Joe O’Gorman the Irish Comedian was born in Dublin on May 24th, 1863. Attaining a local reputation as a dancer and singer he resolved to try his luck in England … Continue reading
Lyn Gardner: Don’t be ashamed of day job | you can be waiter and artist
“Please don’t feel ashamed of having a day job to support your dream of working in the arts. A lot of people feel that if you aren’t a full-time artist … Continue reading
A Guide to Theater Etiquette the New York Way
I couldn’t have put it better myself! I am a dyed-in-the-ethically-sourced-sustainable-cashmere coastal lefty elitist. I am strenuously inclusionary and empathetic to a fault. I apologize to inanimate objects when I … Continue reading
‘F**k the critics’ – remembering the pithy advice of agent Peggy Ramsay
For hot young playwrights in the 1960s and 1970s, the most sought-after agent was Peggy Ramsay. In her prime, her client list included Joe Orton, Alan Ayckbourn, David Hare, Christopher … Continue reading
Critics, judge me for my work in Derry Girls and on the stage, not on my body | Nicola Coughlan | Opinion | The Guardian
As an actor, your body is a gift. I can use mine to play neurotic Clare Devlin in Channel 4’s Derry Girls, or a tough-edged courtesan in 18th-century London in … Continue reading
War, love and weirdness: A Matter of Life and Death – 70 years on | Film | The Guardian
I’m sure I’ve posted about this film before but I make no apologies for re-blogging The Guardian’s article as I love the tale to pieces! The opening scenes of A … Continue reading
Lyn Gardner: Every playwright – even Alan Bennett – needs a champion
Peter Hall was once at a party where a woman collared him and said: “What would poor Samuel Beckett’s career have been like if Waiting for Godot hadn’t landed on … Continue reading
From Game of Thrones to The Crown: the woman who turns actors into stars | News | The Guardian
Earlier this year, the casting director Nina Gold sat at the back of the stalls of the Criterion theatre in the West End and watched a group of students from … Continue reading
Think William Shakespeare couldn’t come up with those plays, sceptics?
The Shakespeare authorship question has raised its head again, with Mark Rylance voicing his doubts about the ‘man from Stratford’ on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, coinciding with a four-day … Continue reading
Women are being excluded from the stage. It’s time for quotas | Julia Pascal | Opinion | The Guardian
It’s a century after some British women were allowed to vote, and a statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett is being unveiled in Parliament Square, so why is women’s presence … Continue reading
The Long Read: The Leas Pavilion
In 2007 The Radnor Estate sold to Churchgate Developers for £3.2m a lease of 150 years on the Leas Pavilion and surrounding land. Planning Permission is due to lapse on the … Continue reading
Anti-Semitism in Handel’s ‘Messiah’? | A R T L▼R K
The first production of Handel’s Messiah in Dublin in 1742 was also notable for the breakthrough performance of the contralto Susannah Cibber, who consequently became one of the biggest and … Continue reading
Rogues & Vagabonds 