1960s
Glyn Môn Hughes
Those of us growing up in the heady days of 1960s Liverpool knew that four local lads were taking the world by storm. Some really grown-up people might even have been to The Cavern and seen the phenomenon in their early days. And yet there was always an enigma in the background: the figure who made it happen but about whom we knew almost nothing.Brian Epstein – pronounced Epsteen – seemed to have it all: wealth, good looks, ability, contacts. He was the gifted businessman who launched several epic popular music careers, not to mention a major music business in Liverpool which continued well Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
"When you're making a movie, it's a movie; if they're still talking about it in 10 years' time it's a film. If they're still talking about it in 50 years' time, it's cinema. But you sure as hell can't start out making cinema." Legendary studio head Ned Tanen knew his business. That we’re talking about Lawrence of Arabia 50 years after its release confirms it as cinema - a word suggesting art taken to genius level, and Lawrence of Arabia is exactly that.In this way, the 50th Anniversary 4K restoration of Lawrence of Arabia is more important now than ever. Because the edited version of the film Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Blue Nile: A Walk Across The Rooftops, HatsGraeme ThomsonThe Blue Nile occupy a unique spot in the musical landscape. Formed in 1980 by Glasgow University graduates Paul Buchanan, Paul Joseph Moore and Robert Bell, four albums in 30 years suggests a certain neurotic creative sensibility which resulted in a pretty slim legacy but served the music well.From their first single – 1981’s “I Love This Life”, included on these expanded reissues – to their last album High, in 2004, a dedicated and deliberate artistic ethos has driven the music. Aesthetically, there is something immensely pleasing Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Ennio Morricone: In ColourKieron TylerThe recent release of Berberian Sound Studio raised the level of interest in Italian film soundtracks. From the moment Ennio Morricone’s compositions for the spaghetti westerns of the Sixties attracted attention, it became obvious that Italy operated to a different metronome than the other filmmaking nations. Morricone will always be a prime interest, not least because he has made so much music, in a bewildering array of styles. This exceptionally good value, neatly packaged clam-shell box collects eight of his soundtracks from 1969-1979 over four discs. Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Hocus-pocus, mumbo-jumbo, black magic.” That about sums up The Devil Rides Out, Hammer’s fantastic adaptation of Denis Wheatley’s devils ‘n’ demons page-turner. If you’d seen it in on its release in July 1968, it would have been billed with Slave Girls, made by Hammer as an opportunity to recycle sets and costumes from One Million Years B.C. There was nothing cut-rate about the deadly serious The Devil Rides Out, a stylish dig into the wild wild world of Satanism.The Devil Rides Out was filmed between 7 August and 29 September 1967. It might have been the Summer of Love, but darkness was in Read more ...
emma.simmonds
The latest film from innovative firebrand Sally Potter is something of a surprise given her back catalogue. Her last feature, Rage (2009) premiered on mobile phones and the internet and comprised a series of to-the-camera monologues; the one before that Yes (2004) was told in iambic pentameter; and, she is of course the maestro behind gender-bending masterpiece Orlando (1992). Ginger & Rosa – a sweet and sour coming-of-age story - by contrast seems pretty conventional, following two teenage girls who have been best friends since their simultaneous birth.It’s London, 1962, and Ginger and Read more ...
theartsdesk
John Carpenter: Halloween II/Halloween IIIKieron TylerPeople celebrate Halloween in different ways, but the arrival of these reissues of the soundtrack music to two John Carpenter horror films is enough to put pumpkins, cut-out bats and capes in the shade. Both are landmarks in using electronic music for cinema, and both are a great, spooky listens. Even when divorced from the imagery.Carpenter had already worked with composer Alan Howarth on the music for Escape From New York (1978) and the pair reunited in 1981 to create a score for Halloween II. Howarth built the new music around Read more ...
graham.rickson
Tony Palmer’s first film was originally slated to be directed by Humphrey Burton. Palmer stepped up at short notice, quickly gaining the confidence of Britten and Peter Pears – neither of whom, it later transpired, really wanted to be filmed at all, until Palmer’s appointment allowed them to have a far greater say in the production. You can sense the director's giddy excitement at being given so much access to a figure he clearly worshipped.Britten’s reputation, musically and personally, took a bit of a dip in the decades following his death in 1976 – allegations about his professional and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Being told that Magical Mystery Tour was a home movie is bit tiring. Self-evidently, The Beatles’ filmic response to the psychedelic experience was not that. They tried, and failed, to hire Shepperton Studios. Known artists like Ivor Cutler and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band were brought on board. Gavrik Losey, then hot from being an assistant director on Modesty Blaise, worked on it. Masses of extras were employed. Although a self-originated vanity project, none of this points to it being a home movie. The negative reception received at the time seems to have skewed the collective consensus. Read more ...
Joe Muggs
A confession: though very fond of the Beatles, I'd never seen their self-directed Magical Mystery Tour before this DVD release. Not that I have anything against psychedelic follies, but I felt like I'd had my fill of this sort of thing a long time ago and had never bothered seeking it out. Consider me chastened; it's a joyous film – yes, it's the result of a bunch of rich young men fooling about with drugs and looks like it, but there's so much warmth, so much colour, so much affection for the textures and quirks of a lost Britain shot through it that it's hard not to love.Two things make it Read more ...
graeme.thomson
The 1989 production at the Tron in Glasgow of Bill Findlay and Martin Bowman’s translation of Les Belles-Soeurs, the 1965 play by Québécois writer Michel Tremblay, has become a landmark event in Scottish theatre. This new co-production between the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company and the National Theatre of Scotland marks a major and very welcome revival of a work which, although initially written to challenge the prevailing cultural constraints of Canada in the 1960s, retains a real contemporary kick.The themes of The Guid Sisters – economic desperation, the politics of language, religion, the Read more ...
theartsdesk
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros: Global A Go-Go, StreetcoreLisa-Marie FerlaAs well as marking the 10th anniversary of Joe Strummer's death, 2012 would also have been the year the legendary Clash frontman turned 60. The reissue of these two albums, recorded with his last band the Mescaleros, is therefore doubly timely.The band's three albums built on the very best of the globe-trotting, more experimental themes that had begun to sneak into The Clash's work before they disbanded in 1985, but did so in a way that kept them vital and accessible to those of us raised on three-chord punk Read more ...