At the British Library (the institution which kindly helps me keep body and soul together) we regularly make promotional videos. They are snappy little numbers, designed to show what a bright, inviting and relevant place the Library is. The editing is brisk, the graphics float informatively over the screen, and the music is toe-tapping. YetRead More
After television and books, here’s my review of the year in film. As someone who only saw two new films in a cinema this year, it still feels a bit of a cheat to be talking about enjoying film in any other way, but aside from attending a film festival (just the one in 2015)Read More
As part of my Picturegoing survey of eyewitness accounts of going to see pictures, I have been reproducing what is among the best pieces of sustained writing on the process of cinemagoing, the ‘Continuous Performance’ essays written by Dorothy Richardson for the film journal Close Up. Dorothy Richardson (1873-1957) was a British novelist, a pioneerRead More
It may be hard to say for certain, but I don’t know that there has ever been a better title for a book than Too Naked for the Nazis. It’s the title of a biography by Alan Stafford of the legendary variety trio Wilson, Keppel and Betty, and derives from an apparently genuine reaction byRead More
Well, no sooner had I written that there was no website good or bad devoted to the films of the Lumière brothers, then someone quite coincidentally tells me of one – and it is superb. Catalogue Lumière is exactly what it says, a catalogue of the films made by the Lumières between 1895 and 1905.Read More
Most honest histories are untidy; early film history especially so. The first years of cinema were a complex field in which the different elements that would make up the medium were ‘invented’ at different stages, in which the many participants engaged in its creation held widely different understandings of just what the medium meant, andRead More
Lucifer (2014), directed by the Belgian filmmaker Gust van den Berghe, is a remarkable work of art. Loosely based on the 1654 Dutch play of the same title by Joost van den Vondel, it tells of the visitation of the Devil to a present-day Mexican village, bringing sin and sorrow in his wake, leading toRead More
All we ever do is tell stories to one another. Back in 1999 Sight and Sound magazine published a plot summary for the Blair Witch Project, as it does for all films released theatrically in the UK. Such plot summaries give the plain details of the plot of the film, as a matter of record,Read More
The opening sequence of Shooting Stars is a hesitant but nevertheless ambitious crane shot swooping over an active film studio. The location is the Stoll Film Company studios, Cricklewood, and through this opening vista the self-reflexive theme is introduced. This is a film about the process of making a film. It is constructed as aRead More
As previously noted, I am republishing a number of old posts from blogs that I have previously managed that are now defunct and/or difficult to find. I’m republishing them with the date adjusted to the date on which they were originally posted, so that gradually this site will build up to be a single sourceRead More