silent movies
Paul Merton's Birth of Hollywood, BBC TwoFriday, 27 May 2011
Paul Merton started his three-part series on the origins of the American film industry with a deliberately clichéd shot, greeting us while standing with the Hollywood sign in view. But he quickly whizzed over to New York City, the true location of... Read more... |
DVD: City Girl (1930)Monday, 11 April 2011
I’ll confess it straightaway: I’m biased about this picture (as it surely would have been known in 1930) – wholly, shoutily in favour of it. I watched it last September at the Cambridge Film Festival on a big screen in Emmanuel College, with two... Read more... |
DVD: The Flying Scotsman (1929)Tuesday, 01 March 2011
It is, of course, a masterpiece - not Castleton Knight’s primitive 1929 British talkie, but Sir Nigel Gresley’s LNER Class A3 4472 Flying Scotsman, which iconic steam locomotive is currently being refurbished for commissioned runs in the spring. It... Read more... |
The Boy With Tape On His Face, TouringSunday, 24 October 2010
The mistake was probably that I hadn’t tanked up beforehand. Clues were there. Soho Theatre is over a pub. 9.45pm start. Who’s going to turn up in those circumstances completely sober? Who would be mad enough to turn up in Soho at 9.45pm stone-cold... Read more... |
DVD: The Kid/ The Great DictatorSaturday, 15 May 2010
There was a celebrated two-word come-on to 1930s movie-goers. “Garbo Laughs!” was a poster strapline calculated to seduce fans of the mournful Swedish star to Ninotchka, in which her character had an unwonted fit of the giggles. Audiences were... Read more... |
Paul Merton's Weird and Wonderful World of Early Cinema, BBC FourMonday, 29 March 2010
The first cinema was two-thirds empty. A hundred seats had been laid out by the Lumière brothers in a Parisian salon, but only 33 of them were occupied. The small audience saw a film in which a crowd, mostly women in long dresses but also a large... Read more... |
See 200 films in nine days...Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Now in its ninth year, London's East End Film Festival today announced its programme at a reception at the heart of its manor, at the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane. The Festival kicks off on 22 April with a preview screening of Barney Platts-... Read more... |
Interview: Alex Hogg of Minima on scoring The Cabinet of Dr CaligariThursday, 18 March 2010
Before Shutter Island - long, long before - there was The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. First released in 1920, Robert Wiene's hallucinogenic film descends, like that of Martin Scorsese who cites it as a major influence, into the creepy shadowlands... Read more... |
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