The Varnished Culture's Thumbnail Reviews
Regularly added bite-sized reviews about Literature, Art, Music & Film.
Voltaire said the secret of being boring is to say everything.
We do not wish to say everything or see everything; life, though long is too short for that.
We hope you take these little syntheses in the spirit of shared enthusiasm.
Accident
(dir. Joseph Losey) (1967)
Harold Pinter scripted from the novel by Nicholas Mosley: Dirk Bogarde covets his pupil’s girlfriend but lacks the courage to close in. Meanwhile his academic pal is already on the case. Everyone deserves censure and they know it. Moody, slow, richly complex, misanthropic and not-to-be-missed.
“Shall we go back now?”
Argo
(dir. Ben Affleck) (2012)
Competent, over-praised and ultimately futile defence of the Carter administration.
‘Argo f*** yourselves…’
Withnail & I
(dir. B. Robinson) (1985)
Perfect homage to the strange death of swinging London. Withnail, I and Uncle Monty et al emblematize La Bruyere’s epigram that self-indulgence and severity towards others is the same vice.
Seat of M. de la Touche (Sleddale Hall by John Darch)
Looking up from our slim volume of Nigel’s poems, its pages stained with buttery tears from crumpets, we see the sky is beginning to bruise…home lads! To Vim under the sink and one bar on. (Look for more killer (and accurate) quotes from the film here).
Vivian & I available at Amazon.com] [Trivia note: the writer director has put out a book, claiming to have solved the Jack the Ripper case. We’ve not read it, and the case is a little cold, but does Jeff Woad have an alibi?] [Further trivia note: we read with interest in “the Australian” 24/3/17, that Bob Odenkirk, in Sydney to promote a new series of Better Call Saul, when asked who was his favourite anti-hero, answered “I love Withnail & I. Does Withnail count?”] Continue Reading →
The Young Poisoner’s Handbook
(dir. Ben Ross) (1995)
O dear, what can the matter be?
1950s Britain never looked so dystopian and between his grotesque family and idiot prison psychiatrists, you find yourself wanting young Graham to keep getting away with it. Of course, with silly, smug, progressive psychiatrists like Dr Ziegler to let him loose and call him cured, he’s a shoe-in!
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