Hollywood
Woman of a thousand voices
‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be……
Speech therapy
Oslo opened in the spring of 2016 at a modest venue in New York. It moved to Broadway and this…
Ivory towers
Great novels rarely make great movies, but for half a century one director has been showing all the others how…
Let there be light
If you’ve never heard the John Wilson Orchestra, it’s time to experience pure happiness. Buy their 2016 live album Gershwin…
Punchlines and punches
Regular filmgoers must be losing count of the Rabelaisian revelries they’ve been invited to of late. You may recognise the…
‘Do black movies really not sell?’
Don Cheadle talks to Jasper Rees about the long, hard road to bringing Miles Davis’s life to the big screen
Sins of the fathers
Damian Thompson admires a Chilean film about paedophile priests which, unlike Spotlight, dares to explore social and psychological complexities
Ticket to ride
The latest film from the Coen brothers is a comedy set during the ‘golden age’ of Hollywood and in some…
The Mann who knew everyone
Thomas Mann, despite strong homosexual emotions, had six children. The two eldest, Erika and Klaus, born in 1905 and 1906…
Tawdry tales of Tinseltown
This collection of Hollywood tittle-tattle is moderately interesting, unpleasantly salacious and largely unsourced, says Philip Hensher
Northern lights
Opera North continues to be the most reliable, inspiring, resourceful and enterprising opera company in the United Kingdom, and all…
Is this a golden age of protest?
Are we living in a golden age of protest? A bunch of aggrieved citizens only has to raise a murmur…
The Oscars have a disgracefully racist record
In 2017 it will be exactly 50 years since a dapper Sidney Poitier announced to Rod Steiger, in the excellent…
Homage to awesome Welles on his centenary
One day in May 1948 in the Frascati hills southeast of Rome, Orson Welles took his new secretary, Rita Ribolla,…
Darth Vader is dirty and it’s not just me that thinks so
Star Wars taught Hollywood how to make children’s films for adults, says Tanya Gold
Tricycle’s Ben Hur is magnificent in its superficiality – a masterpiece of nothing
It’s the target that makes the satire as well as the satirist. Is the subject powerful, active, relevant and menacing?…
How Technicolor came to dominate cinema
Peter Hoskin celebrates Technicolor’s 100th birthday
N.M. Gwynne’s diary: Old names worth dropping
As I get older (and my 74th birthday is now close), I get deeper and deeper into nostalgia. I do…
Messy genius
Orson Welles would have been 100 this month. When he died in 1985, aged 70, the wonder was that he…
I, Bette Davis
It was called Frankly Speaking and by golly it was. The great screen actress Bette Davis was being interviewed by…
The actor-commentariat
I’ve never been terribly keen on actors. I prefer hairdressers and accountants. And teachers and builders and lawyers. I may…
High life
As I was flipping through some television garbage trying to induce sleep, I came upon an old western starring Kirk…
Back to the future
How Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, made 33 years ago, foresaw the way we live today, by William Cook
It was beauty killed the beast
At the time of his death in 1932 Edgar Wallace had published some 200 books, 25 plays, 45 collections of…
Great Brittain
Jasper Rees talks to Shirley Williams about the forthcoming screen portrayal of her mother
