Tag: history
The White Crow
Friday, July 26th, 2019 Film Reviews,Rudolf Nureyev (1938-93) was not only one of the most celebrated ballet dancers of all time, but an icon of popular culture in the 1960s. His defection at Paris’s Le Bourget airport in June, 1961, at the height of the Cold War, was a major embarrassment for Soviet authorities who had sent the Mariinsky Ballet […]
Apollo 11
Thursday, July 18th, 2019 Film Reviews,Where were you when Neil Armstrong left that first, famous footprint on the Moon? It’s a question that need not concern a good number of readers as it’s been precisely 50 years since the lunar landing. I was around, but too young to appreciate the momentous nature of the event. My class was herded into […]
The Third Wife
Thursday, July 11th, 2019 Film Reviews,My first option this week was Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, which arrived with glowing plaudits as an American high-school comedy that was supposedly fresh, original and funny. That sounded about as likely as the platypus but it was something I needed to see with my own eyes. Alas, I must have gone to a different movie […]
Peterloo
Friday, May 10th, 2019 Film Reviews,Rise, like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you: Ye are many – they are few! Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy, thought by many to be the greatest political poem ever written, was inspired by one, singular event. In the […]
Mary Queen of Scots
Thursday, January 24th, 2019 Film Reviews,Remember the Monty Python sketch: “Yoo are Mary Queen of Scots?” “I am” Crash, bang wallop! Well there’s plenty of bang in Josie Rourke’s new bio pic, but nothing to laugh about. There have been so many movies about the cousins and rival queens, Mary and Elizabeth, that I could spend this entire column listing […]
The Favourite
Friday, January 4th, 2019 Film Reviews,Queen Anne furniture is distinguished by its lightness and elegance – one might even say ‘timeless elegance’, as it looks as fresh today as it did at the dawn of the 18th century. Queen Anne, who ruled from 1702-1714, was no match for the chairs and cabinets that bear her name. Obese, gouty, wracked by […]
Vice
Thursday, December 20th, 2018 Film Reviews,Dick Cheney will forever be known as the man who put the “vice” into “Vice President”. While the Trump administration continues to sink into a legal quagmire we can look back at Cheney and marvel at how he ever got away with it. His continuing prosperity, indeed his very existence, suggests that his contract with […]
The Death of Stalin
Friday, March 30th, 2018 Film Reviews,It’s conservatively estimated that 20 million people were murdered during Joseph Stalin’s reign.“So why were they all killed?” asks Simon Sebag Montefiore, in his devastating book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. Nadezhda Mandelstam, who lost her poet husband, Osip, gave a succinct answer: “for nothing”. Montefiore suggests that under Stalin the supreme offence […]
Mary Magdalene
Friday, March 23rd, 2018 Film Reviews,Of all the figures in the New Testament, Mary Magdalene has been the most misunderstood. This is partly because early commentators found it hard to distinguish between Mary of Magdala, Mary of Bethany, and the ‘sinful’ woman in the Gospel of St. Luke, who anoints Jesus’s feet in Simon’s house and dries them with her […]
The Post
Friday, January 12th, 2018 Film Reviews,Steven Spielberg is to the cinema as Volvo is to the world of automobiles. Everyone recognises that a Volvo is an excellent, well-made car. It’s safe, reliable, high quality… but it will never get your pulse racing. With Spielberg we can be confident that each new feature will be a quality product. He’s too experienced, […]