December 2010
9 posts
6 tags
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) review
As Thomas Wolfe famously wrote, “you can’t go home again,” and at least three splendidly sad middle-aged experiences prove this axiom: visiting your childhood home (it’ll seem so much smaller and shabbier than you remember it), meeting the girl you had a crush on in high school (she won’t have aged well, trust me), and watching a film you haven’t seen for 25 or...
4 tags
Tron: Legacy (2010) review
Most of the time, I willingly “suspend my disbelief” when watching a film. That’s not the same as putting my brain on hold (I may do that on occasion as well, but it’s a different matter altogether). Give me something to hold on to, toss me a sop, a crumb, anything to show the filmmakers don’t hold me, the audience, in contempt. Tron: Legacy doesn’t insult...
2 tags
Black Swan (2010) review
I really must stop allowing myself to read pre-release hype (or reviews of films I haven’t yet seen, for that matter). My pleasure in watching a fine film has—on occasion—been subtly diminished by its failure to live up to the anticipation I’d felt. Black Swan is really quite good, a legitimate contender for the 2011 Oscars in numerous categories, I’d wager,...
2 tags
Rabbit Hole (2010) review
I’m usually reluctant to watch “dramas”—that is, films about people, their lives and their emotions. Give me action, externalised conflict, extraordinary events, I say! Yet once in a great while, I give in and lo and behold, I’m touched and impressed. Rabbit Hole proved to be one of those occasions: I wasn’t sure I was interested in a drama about a husband...
4 tags
The BBC's "A Ghost Story for Christmas" part four
On 23 December 2005, the BBC broadcast “A View from a Hill,” the first in a new series of “A Ghost Story for Christmas” programmes. Choosing to forget the last two entries in the 1970s series—which had not, unlike the first six telefilms, been repeated—the new version returned to the basic “A Ghost Story for Christmas” roots with an adaptation...
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The BBC's "A Ghost Story for Christmas" part three
After five years (1971-75) of telefilm adaptations of ghost stories by M.R. James, in year six the BBC’s annual “A Ghost Story for Christmas” moved on to another British writer, Charles Dickens, though director Lawrence Gordon Clark continued to helm the series. ”The Signalman” premiered on 22 December 1976, and proved so popular that it has been rebroadcast...
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The BBC's "A Ghost Story for Christmas" part two
The first two M.R. James adaptations for the “A Ghost Story for Christmas” were rather traditional ghost stories, but the next three —especially entries 4 and 5—cross over into true horror, complete with “monsters.”
“Lost Hearts” was first aired on Christmas night, 1973. The story almost seems to be a parody of the gothic novel form, substituting...
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The BBC's "A Ghost Story for Christmas" part one
Christmastime may not seem a particularly apt season for ghost stories, but then again, one of the most famous and familiar and frequently-referenced Christmas tales is Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” which has a stellar cast of phantoms. The UK has a tradition of telling supernatural tales during the holidays, and the BBC established its own variant of this tradition in...
4 tags
Never Let Me Go (2010) review
Every film is made with its own particular audience in mind: some aim for widespread popularity, others are created for a special group, large or small. Whether a film finds its intended audience, or is stumbled upon by another, unexpected one, or is cast into the void, unseen and unheeded, is as much a matter of chance as it is calculation.
The producers of Never Let Me Go certainly realised...
