First Renoir's Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932) which is the earliest of his films available from Lovefilm. The film stars Michel Simon as Boudu, a tramp whom bookseller Lestingois saves from drowning and adopts into his household; there the anarchic Boudu causes great disturbance before he wins the lottery; having married the maid the whole household embarks on a boating trip, …
Category: movies
On The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Powell and Pressburger's Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, with which I have opened my PandP retrospective, is my favourite film. I do not make this claim lightly or easily. and recognise that there are times when I would advance the claims of other contenders for this title. It is, however, the only contender which is also, …
October Movies
Continuing my Godard viewing I come to his second film Le Petit Soldat (1960 but not released until 1963) starring Michel Subor and Anna Karina. The reason for the three-year delay between the making and release of the film was due to the fact that the French Government banned it because of its sensitive political content. Subor plays …
Trollope – Short Stories – City and Country
On the renamed Trollope 19thC Studies list (see right for link) we have embarked on a year long project of reading the complete Short Stories. We have read some 13 stories so far and the main - and very obvious - conclusions I would draw are... That the quality of the stories varies wildly; some are little …
Continue reading Trollope – Short Stories – City and Country
September Miscellany
There is not that much for me to write about this month as much of it was spent in the grip of Depression (although I manage to find a topic!) ; this does however give a chance for a brief discussion of some topics which rarely get aired, first among them video games, my favourite …
Very Very Late August Miscellany
I have not written about the big D., my mood or what has been happening in my life for some months now. I was just preparing to do so at the very end of August and was ready to comment on how excellent July and August had been - the best August since my 'mood records' began …
Three August Movies
The Cat's Meow (2001) directed by Peter Bogdanovich tells a story about the events which occurred in November 1924 during a cruise on William Randolph Hearst's yacht The Oneida. The official version of events is that Thomas Ince, silent film producer/mogul and 'father of the Western', one of the guests on the cruise, died of …
Some Notes on La Regle du Jeu
How does one start to talk about a masterpiece like Renoir's La Regle du Jeu? What can possibly be said which has not been said before and better? The answer probably lies, as with other masterpieces in discussing wiser people's thoughts in the hopes of clarifying one's own. A few notes are all that should …
July Miscellany (2009)
I re-read, with more concentration, Caryl Churchill's Fen (1983). It is a remarkable piece of work mainly concerned with the lives of a number of women in a Fen village. There are a couple of male characters - Mr Tewson, the landowner, and Frank, for whom one of the women, Val, is leaving her husband and …
Some July Movies
A separate blog for four movies watched already in July. The reason for this sudden increase in movie-watching is the near disappearance of any interesting new material on television on British television during the summer months (combined of course with a 'good spell' Depression wise). Although my movie reviews would normally form part of the Monthly …
Moving Toyshop 