Saltburn
"every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
(Directed by Emerald Fennell, 2023) Why would any middle or working class young person accept an invitation to their aristocratic University chum’s stately pile? Every movie-goer knows that the guest will have the wrong clothes, the butler will despise them, something bad will happen and lives will be Changed Forever. There is of course the very slight chance that the young person will end-up filthy rich as a result of their visit. Perhaps that’s why they keep turning-up on foot at the magnificent iron gates, having somehow missed the serf who was sent to the station to meet them. We’ve…
Continue Reading →Raw
A film by Lumin Sports, produced by Henry Jones, shot by Henry Jones and Jack Shephard (November 2023) The Great and the Good (plus your correspondent) gathered at Glenelg Football Club on 8 November to view an advance screening of this short, brilliantly produced, and exhilarating view of the 2023 finals campaign, viewed from within the inner sanctum. Lumin ( https://luminsports.com/ ) is an expert qualitative data company, specialising in enhancing sporting analysis and performance. It’s flagship visualisation platform, “Arc, was launched in early 2019 as a way for technical and non-technical decision-makers in professional sporting teams to interpret complex athlete…
Continue Reading →The Lesson
Director, Alice Troughton; Screenwriter, Alex MacKeith (2023) ‘The Lesson’ should be good. It has lots of literary talk, Richard E Grant demonstrating his special scenery-chewing skills, Julie Deply mooching about, a big moody house with a pond. Note the pond. Grant is J M Sinclair, a famous novelist of the bad-tempered, autocratic variety. Julie Deply is Helene, his long-suffering wife who has some art curator job which is glamorous and doesn’t require any work, so she mooches about. Their needs and those of their miserable, lazy but talented son Bertie (Stephen McMillan) are tended to by the butler/cook and all…
Continue Reading →Barrie Kosky’s Das Rheingold
(Palace Nova, October 2023) Reviewed by Philippa Thomas Barrie Kosky’s Das Rheingold worked superbly in the live screened London Royal Opera performance seen by some lucky Adelaide Wagner lovers at our Palace Nova Prospect cinema this month. The screening included a short explanatory interview with Kosky and conductor Antonio Pappano, where Kosky explained that his own planned Ring cycle deals with “recognisable human beings with all their flaws” within a context of “the unexplained“. His stress is on the origins from Greek tragedy rather than Norse mythology. Many opera critics have reviewed this production positively – both Pappano’s conducting and…
Continue Reading →The Following Events Are Based On a Pack of Lies
(Foxtel Go. Binge) (2023) Creators: Ginny Skinner, Penelope Skinner; Directed by Robbie McKillop and Nicole Charles. The name and set-up of this sleek five-part ITV series leave the viewer suspecting a twist at the end. So that the reader will not be disappointed, we will tell you that the twist never comes. The narrative is pretty straightforward, if not always credible. But that’s ok. This is bite-sized entertainment of the fairly predictable, non-demanding type, with fairy-tale themes. While pushing her bike around Oxford wearing a peculiar, self-designed red cape, our heroine, middle-aged sad-sack Alice Newman (Rebekah Staton) spots her Big…
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