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News that Twickenham Studios is to close reminds me of other now-vanished studios. At the time of its construction, close to the start of the 20th century, Twickenham was the largest studio in the UK. It made films like ‘Call of the Sea’, and steadily produced forgotten films like ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Rembrandt’, [...] When I was a kid I was incredibly influenced by the American mindset. It wasn’t that I saw many Hollywood movies – I saw a few, but largely grew up with English comedies starring annoying idiots like Charlie Drake and Norman Wisdom, who seemed to have a new film out every week. Rather it was American [...] For your delectation we present the billionaire Charles Koch, a key financier of the Heartland Institute, which apparently works to undermine the established science on climate change. The institute has built a reputation over the years for providing a forum for climate change deniers. It hosts lavish conferences of climate science doubters at expensive hotels in [...] The Tate Modern’s latest exhibition is arranged so that you can progress through the decades of Yayoi Kusama’s life, which have taken her from rural Japan to the New York art scene to contemporary Tokyo, in a career in which she has continuously re-invented her style. Her art encompasses an astonishing variety of media, including [...] I missed Richard Oyoade’s debut film when it came out because it got shouted down by the bigger movies around it. My loss, because it’s a quiet gem, probably the first film to be made about the unfashionable subject of steadfastness. It’s about 16 year-old Oliver Tate, his parents (Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor) his [...] Hey, the Superbowl ad was the closest we’ll ever get to a sequel. It didn’t make me want to buy the car, it made me want to see the film again. The polka dot-obsessed red-headed octogenerian artist Yayoi Kusama has a new exhibition at the Tate Modern, and it looks utterly bonkers. Love this installation and can’t wait to see the rest. Films recounting recent history run the risk of being prosaic, like ‘The Iron Lady’, which never lives up to its first scene, or manipulative, like the appalling ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’, which uses 9/11 as a whimsical healing exercise that’s determined to jerk tears with tinkly piano and cute kiddy drawings. Somewhere between these [...] ‘The Day Off’ (see previous post) occupies a key position in the history of British comedy. Written by Galton & Simpson, who changed the face of TV humour by writing about the working class poor with more realism and pathos than anyone had previously attempted, they created the script at a high point in their [...] Last night I went to the National Film Theatre to see Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s missing Tony Hancock film ‘The Day Off’ performed live on stage, and found myself – as an incredible piece of luck would have it – sitting next to my comedy heroes, now in their eighties, who were interviewed after [...] |
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