Category Archive: FILM
Vale Gene Wilder
Jerome Silberman (Gene Wilder) (11 June 1933 to 29 August 2016) He was a great understated comedy star, a master of timing and amplified understatement. Best moments: as a very overheated Dr Frankenstein (make sure you pronounce that correctly) in Young Frankenstein; a great 2nd banana in Blazing Saddles, a superb put-upon pie in The Producers (“I fell on my keys”) and Rhinoceros, and an agreeable leading man in The Silver Streak, as well as in good work in many other films and TV productions [check out his great work as Bernard in the late 60s Death of a Salesman, or…
Continue Reading →Arthur Hiller Streaks Up and Away
Arthur Hiller (13 November 1923 to 17 August 2016) was a journeyman director, an old pro, product of the later Golden Age, who could, from time to time, rise above his material. Obviously, we will pass over the bulk of his films, which were from hunger. We make no shot at him for this – after all, only the folks at The Varnished Culture are completely disinterested, But we honour Arthur for his staunch work down the years, and particularly The Americanization of Emily (1964), Popi (1969), The Hospital (1971), Plaza Suite (1971), The Man in the Glass Booth (1975), The Silver Streak (1976),…
Continue Reading →Absolutely Fabulous
(The Movie) (Dir. Mandie Fletcher, 2016) ♥ We love Absolutely Fabulous, The TV show with its shrill and frabjous Carve-up of the naff world of fashion; The celebrity swim-through, the sterile passion Bubbling away in a Bollinger glass, Emptied like life and sadly come to pass. But as for the film, we rate it Poor, Great moments, yes: Patsy walks into a door And Edina sings her ‘road-walking’ song But the laughs aren’t sustained for very long. The walk-ons wholly fail to satisfy And Patsy’s Bowie disguise refuses to fly. We’re given a gloss on tired old themes And the plot design is showing its…
Continue Reading →Werther
(by Jules Massenet, 1892) Royal Opera House, London, June 2016 Werther loves Charlotte but she is affianced to Albert and a sense of duty. Werther understands the score; she must do her duty. He will (so he threatens) vanish, violently. But will he, a poet not a marksman, manage to blow himself away? Well, we liked this production. It is a slight piece of work, modern, situational rather than plot-driven, and it can glow only if the doomed non-couple have the requisite conviction. In this production, they did. Massenet’s adaptation of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), his animalistic Sturm und Drang…
Continue Reading →Remembering Peter
Peter O’Toole (2 August 1932 to 14 December 2013) Peter was one of the great British drunks of stage and screen (he was born to play Jeffrey Bernard), with enough star power to bedazzle even the full moon in Connemara. We remember him on his birthday with affection (but not complete admiration – see below). He is terrific in Becket (1964) as Henry II, with fellow legendary drunk Richard Burton; and his off-the-wall, ecstatic approach ignites The Ruling Class (1972), (where he plays a man playing, in turn, Jesus and Jack the Ripper). He is superb as megalomaniac film director Eli Cross in The Stunt…
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