Following the 1971 release of Duck, You Sucker, Sergio Leone became fixated on the idea of adapting Harry Grey’s mobster novel The Hoods into an epic movie about organised crime in the United States, a dream that finally emerged after 13 long years as Once Upon a Time in America. The challenges of getting that […]
Following the 1971 release of Duck, You Sucker, Sergio Leone became fixated on the idea of adapting Harry Grey’s mobster novel The Hoods into an epic movie about organised crime in the United States, a dream that finally emerged after 13 long years as
Every Sunday this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: let us set aside the other issues surrounding Pixar’s Cars 2, and think of it as being the latest […]
My short thoughts on Cars 2: it is gorgeous – as gorgeous as any animated movie is likely to be in all of 2011 – and it commits itself to world-building with such an incredibly minute (anal-retentive?) focus on even the teeny-weeniest details that it’s hard not to bow in its direction even though the […]
Nathan Morrow managed to sneak his donation in at the last minute to become the final person to donate to the Carry On Campaign – though he wasn’t the final person to put in a request. His pick is a movie I’ve adored for ages, though I never quite got around to making an excuse […]
When the Walt Disney Company fell under the control of Michael Eisner and company in the 1980s, one of the biggest changes they made to corporate culture – and this is, in hindsight, so utterly self-evident that it hardly bears me saying it – was a new emphasis on movies that would make lots of […]
Maybe there’s a cautionary tale in here someplace, though I can’t quite be certain who would benefit from it. Just seven years ago, beloved French-born music video director Michel Gondry wowed the world with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of those movies that seemingly everybody loves, a tragic and funny and whimsical and […]
A Hard Day’s Night being one of the most profitable movies of the 1960s, it was a matter of necessity that there was going to be a second Beatles feature. It’s to the band’s credit that it was no mere retread, though a retread might have ended up making a bit more sense than Help!, […]
Vampires Suck, according to the MPAA’s notes, has been rated PG-13 for, among other things, crude sexual content. As is typical of that organisation, they’ve gotten it wrong: I disagree in the strongest terms with the implication that this film has anything resembling content. The film is a spoof of the Twilight franchise, written and […]
From among the Video Nasties I hold it a truth that bad movies are good for the soul; but a whole lot of bad movies can kind of get to you after a little while. And while I never expected this all-Video Nasties edition of the summer of blood to reveal much in the way […]
Four years ago, director Michel Hazanavicius and co-writer Jean-François Halin pulled out of mothballs the French pulp icon OSS 117 AKA Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath – a super-spy on the model of Britain’s James Bond, though Jean Bruce’s OSS novels predate Ian Fleming’s 007 novels by four years – and gave him a brand […]
I seem to remember somebody once saying something to the effect of, “The only sin an American can commit is to be unlucky”. It sounds sort of Fitzgeraldian, but I’m almost certain it’s not from Fitzgerald. Hell, maybe I made it up. Anyway, I pity poor Kerry Prior, who indeed committed no greater sin in […]
