It’s nearly 40 years since Francis Ford Coppola’s version of The Great Gatsby, starring Robert Redford. The first was a silent version in 1926, not long after its first publication. I finally read the Great American Novel last year – and didn’t think it was that great. There are other claimants to the title, but [...]
Rev is being adapted for the States and has already been given the green light for a third series, but such are the career trajectories of its leading players (Olivia Colman seems everywhere at the moment) that it will have to wait until 2014 to reach the screen. Meanwhile, the Series 2 DVD should keep [...]
How many original rock and roll artists (from the ’50s) can you name, who are still making valid contributions to music? Dion is just such an artist. He was Grammy-nominated for his acoustic blues album Bronx in Blue, just two releases ago, and that was well-deserved. After another acoustic outing, he has returned to electric [...]
2012 had some great films but – unless Life of Pi (released on deadline day) lives up to the hype – nothing that’s likely to be a hot favourite for an Oscar®. We began the year with the contrast between The Iron Lady (about Margaret Thatcher) and The Lady (about Aung San Suu Kyi), though [...]
Television at Christmas is arguably the best it is all year, with church services televised, the nativity story retold and brilliant drama to relax with. Each year the stations cram their best programmes into the days between 25 December and New Year, and this year is no exception. Take a break from the cooking and [...]
Looking for a family movie to review for Christmas, I chose Rise of the Guardians (dir. Peter Ramsey, cert. PG), based on William Joyce’s book series The Guardians of Childhood. I’m afraid I discounted Nativity Two: Danger in the Manger as the original was so naff, but I can report that I was on my [...]
Sightseers (cert. 15) takes Mike Leigh’s 1976 TV play Nuts in May, and channels the anger of its protagonist Keith into violent mayhem to rival Natural Born Killers. Tina (Alice Lowe) lives at home with her possessive mother and relishes the chance to escape with new boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram). Lowe and Oram wrote the [...]
This documentary of the photographer-to-the-stars and film-maker Anton Corbijn has its share of celebrities, but they are kept firmly in place and the real fascination is the human effect on Corbijn of a father who never quite approved of his craft. It opens with an exhibition of the work that made his name: striking monochrome [...]
The Sapphires (cert. PG, dir. Wayne Blair) were four Australian Aboriginal sisters spotted by impresario Dave (Chris O’Dowd) singing Country and Western songs and transformed into a Soul/Tamla style group. They sang to troops in Vietnam, and became stars. The film is adapted from a 2004 stage musical by Tony Briggs, whose mother and aunt [...]
Fifty years on, James Bond is still beating the baddies. In Skyfall (cert. 12A), Bond (Daniel Craig) gets shot, feels his age (not quite keeping pace with the timescale of the series) and gets to grips with one of the best Bond villains yet. Javier Bardem plays the mysterious Raoul Silva, and all the effort [...]
