Monthly Archives: October 2015

TV Movies and a Serious Case of Deja Vu!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

children-403582_1920I don’t know about you but there are certain things I hang on to in life. One of those things are my diaries. The other day, looking through my schoolboy diary from 1973 I noticed that one entry mentions that I watched a film called The Inspector with Stephen Boyd. It was a movie made in 1962 and it’s about a jewish girl trying to get into Palestine. It’s not a classic movie but I’ve always liked Stephen Boyd and he was rather good in movies like Fantastic Voyage where a mini submarine and her crew were shrunk to minute size and then injected into a man’s body. Have you ever seen The Inspector? I doubt very much if you have, in fact I can’t remember ever seeing that movie again on TV. There are plenty of movies I have seen, some of them over and over though, here are a few of them;

The Great Escape. Ok I love it, I really do but I know the script off by heart I’ve seen it that many times!

Great Expectations. David Lean’s cinematic version of Dicken’s novel. Great movie but I’m fed up of seeing it on Film 4!

The Man In The Iron Mask! Seen this so many times with Richard Chamberlain and Patrick McGoohan and of course it was re made in 1998 with Leonardo Di Caprio but what about showing the 1952 version with Louis Hayward? Now that is a movie I’d love to see again.

Goldfinger, or any of the Bond films. As much as I love James Bond 007, most of the films, especially the older ones, I have seen again and again so I need a break from them. Strangely, I have a few of my favourite Bonds on DVD. I don’t think I ever watch them but I’m so familiar with the Bonds that if I come home from work and one is on TV and I’ve missed the first thirty minutes – well, it doesn’t matter!

So who is it at the BBC or Channel 4 or Sky who decides what films we can see and why is it that some are shown over and over and some only get aired rarely? What happens in the world of the TV scheduler? I really hope those guys are reading this blog because there are movies out there I want to see and a whole bunch of ones, like those above that I am fed up of seeing! Anway, here are a few recommendations for any TV schedulers reading!

CBubblesCharlie Bubbles. This is a great film penned by northern writer Shelagh Delaney and it’s about a (surprise) northern writer played by Albert Finney who journeys back up north from London to see his son. It’s a well observed and fascinating film and for a northerner like me it’s great to see the Manchester of the 1960’s up there on the movie screen. Writer Shelagh Delaney shot to fame in the sixties when she wrote her play ‘A Taste Of Honey’ and had it accepted and performed by Joan Littlewood’s theatre workshop. There’s a rather telling line in the movie when a waiter played by Joe Gladwin, (an actor familiar to UK TV audiences of the 70’s), asks Charlie, played by Finney, “are you still working or do you just do the writing?” Somehow I can imagine that line came from Delaney’s personal experience! Interestingly, this movie marked Albert Finney’s debut as a director. Have you seen the movie? I don’t think you have unless maybe you’ve sourced the DVD version.

In my large but slightly redundant VHS video box I’ve a copy of a wonderful film starring Alec Guinness called ‘Last Holiday’. Guinness plays a pleasant mild mannered salesman called George Bird who has no friends or family and finds out he only has a few weeks to live.

He decides to spend the time he has left by going to a rather posh residential hotel where the residents find him a sort of enigma. His star rises here as he becomes involved with the residents and staff and people start to wonder about him. Who is he? Is he rich? Lucrative job offers come his way as well as love but only one person knows his secret, a member of staff that he confides in.

In the end Mr Bird finds out he was wrongly diagnosed but the film ends on a sad note when he is killed in a car crash. Penned by author J.B.Priestley, it’s another wonderful British picture full of excellent performances with a whiff of sadness and poignancy about it. Have you seen it on TV? Well, not recently because the last time I have noticed it broadcast was in the 1980’s when I taped it with my trusty VHS video recorder. What happens to classic movies like this and why are they rarely seen on British TV? I wish I knew but I’d love to see this movie again.

Pygmalion Movie Poster

Pygmalion. You’ve probably seen the movie ‘My Fair Lady’ with Rex Harrison as Professor Higgins and Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle but I’d be surprised if you’ve seen this, the original, non-musical version, on TV. Leslie Howard plays Higgins and Wendy Hiller plays Eliza. Hiller is much more believable as Eliza, no disrespect to Audrey Hepburn and Howard is a bright, eccentric Higgins. I’ve never seen this version on TV at all, in fact I picked up the movie on one those free newspaper DVDs. What is interesting from researching the film on the internet is that a controversial (at the time) line was included in the film: Eliza saying ‘Not Bloody Likely!’ This made Wendy Hiller the first person ever to swear in a British film. Dear me, how times change!

Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Sounds a bit mad doesn’t it, a sort of 1950’s B picture. In fact this was shot in colour in 1964 and starred an actor called Paul Mantee who appears in many US TV series of the 1970’s and 1980’s. It pretty much follows the original story of Robinson Crusoe only it’s about an astronaut who crash lands on Mars. He thinks he’s had it but finds that certain rocks contain oxygen which is released when they are heated so he is able to replenish his oxygen supplies. He even finds an alien ‘Friday’ on Mars who has escaped from an alien slave camp. Sounds a little far-fetched I know but it was actually a pretty good movie. I remember watching it on TV on a cold weekday afternoon in the early eighties and it certainly warmed me up. Since then I have never seen it on British TV but it’s well worth a search on e-bay for the DVD version. The day they show it again on TV I’ll be parked up on my favourite armchair ready to enjoy! Come on TV schedulers, get your act together!

Which movies would you like to see on the small screen?

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Sunday Lunch with My Arch Enemy.

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I published this post some time ago but sadly, my arch enemy passed away a few days ago on the 22nd October. He wasn’t really my arch enemy just a lovely old man who liked to engage in some cheerful banter. Sunday lunch will sadly never be the same again. RIP Harry.

quotescover-JPG-20Sunday afternoon and my arch enemy is about to arrive. Zoe, Liz’s daughter has picked him up and I can hear them at the front door. I’ve lit the coal fire and done a quick tidy up and Zoe is showing him through. In the hallway he asks “Is the Mad Monk in?”

That’s me by the way, the Mad Monk.

“Bloody hell Zoe,” I say. “I had that door locked to keep the riff raff out!”

“Stephen,” he says using my Sunday name as he comes into the lounge. “We don’t mind slumming it with the riff-raff. Anyway, how lovely to see you!”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Harry,” I reply.

Harry is just approaching ninety years of age and all his faculties are in order although his memory is perhaps not as good as it used to be.

“Take a seat Harry,” I say. “What can I get you? A glass of water? Lemonade? A cup of tea perhaps?”

Harry turns to Zoe, a fake look of disdain on his face.

“Pillock!” he murmurs.

Liz brings him a glass of French sherry..

“That’s more like it,” he says.

The women go off into the kitchen to sort the dinner and Harry and I chat about various things. Once Liz and Zoe come back though, we resume battle.

“Harry went for a brain operation the other day,” I announce, matter of factly. “It was free but they charged him £2000 search fees.”

“Dear me, I wish you’d try some new jokes Stephen,” comments Harry. “If you had a brain you’d be dangerous,”

Over seventy five years ago when war broke out Harry decided the army wasn’t for him so he went on a wireless operators course in Preston then signed up in the merchant navy as a ‘sparks’.

His first voyage took him down through the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and Iraq. One day while his ship was being refuelled he went for a walk and he heard a voice call his name. He turned to find one of his old schoolmates hailing him. Frank and Harry went to school together, both went to sea and bumped into each other in Basra, along the Shatt-Al-Arab river,  a place Harry called the ‘arsehole of the world.’

Harry had no money on him but his friend Frank treated him to a meal and a few beers and they didn’t see each other again until Harry’s fiftieth birthday, many years later.

“That doesn’t surprise me Harry,” I say. “That poor fella, having to pay for everything. No wonder he didn’t want to see you again.”

“Stephen. What you don’t realise is how hurtful insinuations like that are to a sensitive man like me.”

“I’ve not noticed your sensitive side Harry.”

“Well, you will in a minute if you don’t top my wine up, garcon!”

The wine is topped up and Liz calls for a ‘skivvy’ to help in the kitchen.

“That’s a good word for you Stephen, skivvy. Off you go and if you do a good job there might be a tip in it for you!”

Atlantic convoys during World War 2 were a lifeline for the UK. Bringing in food and supplies and munitions as we fought alone against the Nazis after the fall of France. U boats were a deadly menace to our ships and Harry told me once how he lay on his bunk shivering with fear during an attack. If a ship went down there was no one to help. Other ships couldn’t stop for survivors as they too might be torpedoed. After a while though Harry told me you just got used to the threat and got on with your job. He told me of trips to the Middle East taking tanks and equipment for the Middle Eastern campaigns. A trip from Argentina to the UK with a cargo of rice. A visit to Rio and a trip to New York.

We eat our Sunday dinner with little let up in the banter. Later when it’s time to go Harry turns to Liz and says, “Lovely meal darling.” Then with a wink he says, “pity about the company though.”

So, let me finish Harry with the toast that you so often give to me,

“May your shadow never grow less.”

Why I love Casablanca (and why you should too!)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

casablancalead1After a hard shift at work, it’s nice to go home, pour yourself a drink and settle down by the TV to watch something while you unwind. Now despite these days of multiple TV channels it’s not always easy to find something worth watching. I remember the days when there were only three channels but strangely, even though we have have undergone the digital revolution and have cable and satellite channels, sometimes we find ourselves clicking the remote vainly in search of something that is even remotely interesting. Happily, over there in the DVD cupboard, I have plenty of things I enjoy watching. One of those is my much watched DVD of Casablanca, the classic Hollywood movie. I can watch it time after time and there is so much to enjoy in the movie; the wonderful Humphrey Bogart, The suave Paul Henreid, the rotund Sydney Greenstreet, the villainous Conrad Veidt, the slimy Peter Lorre and my favourite character in the film, Claude Rains, not to mention the lovely Ingrid Bergman.

Casablanca was only Bergman’s fifth Hollywood movie. She had been brought over from Sweden by producer David O Selznik to star in the English language version of Intermezzo, a successful Swedish film. She spoke no English but learned quickly. Ingrid expected to make the movie and then return to her career in Sweden, so much so that her husband did not even come to Hollywood with her. However, Ingrid made more movies in Hollywood, then came Casablanca; a movie that was a product of the Hollywood studio system. It was filmed at the Warner Brothers studios in Burbank with one location shoot, a short sequence at Van Nuys airport. Shot in 1942, Casablanca made Ingrid a star and remains probably her best known role. Released in the USA at the end of 1942 and internationally in 1943, the film won three Oscars. Its reputation has grown over time, eventually becoming known as one of the all-time classic motion pictures. Berman herself once commented that the film had a life of its own. The great performances, the memorable lines and the film’s music all contributed to the public affection for the movie. There’s a great sequence in When Harry Met Sally, where Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal discuss the ending and Sally, the Meg Ryan character, asserts that Ingrid Bergman would rather leave with Henreid and be the first lady of Czechoslovakia than stay with a man who runs a bar in Casablanca.

I’ve always liked Claude Rains and I like the way it becomes apparent that his character is not a Nazi or even a Nazi sympathiser, but someone who is something of a rascal, who uses his position for his own ends but also someone who chooses his own friends and his own path, as he does at the end of the movie. My favourite sequence is where he closes down Rick’s bar at the request of Conrad Veidt’s Nazi officer. Humphrey Bogart complains, “How can you close me up? On what grounds?” Rains replies, “Rick, I’m shocked to learn there is gambling on the premises!”

Just then the croupier arrives with some money, “Sir, your winnings!”

Ingrid Bergman became a great Hollywood star and perhaps was associated too much in the eyes of the public with her role of Joan of Arc, because when she fell from Grace, she fell big style.

Bergman was fascinated with the work of Italian director Roberto Rossellini and in 1949 she wrote to him expressing a wish to work in one of his pictures. He cast her in his film ‘Stromboli’ and during the production Bergman fell in love with him, had an affair and became pregnant with his son. This led to a huge scandal in the USA and a divorce and custody battle with her Swedish husband Petter Lindstrom. She eventually married Rossellini and had more children including future actress Isabella Rossellini. She was never reconciled with her former husband but Hollywood welcomed her back in 1956 when she starred in the movie Anastasia for which she won an Oscar.

Humphrey Bogart went on to make many classic movies. He died from cancer in 1957 aged 57. He had been a heavy smoker and drinker.

Claude Rains died in 1967. His last film appearances were in ‘Laurence of Arabia‘ and the ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told.’

Conrad Veidt fled the terrors of Nazi Germany in 1933. He was a fervent anti-Nazi donating his personal fortune to the British government to help in the war against Nazi Germany. He died in 1943 of a heart attack aged only 43.

Sydney Greenstreet died in 1954. He was 62 when his movie career began. He made his debut on the stage in 1902.

Hungarian born Peter Lorre was another refugee from Hitler’s Germany. He appeared in the German movie ‘M’ directed by Fritz Lang but fled Germany in 1933. He died in 1964 aged 59.

Paul Henreid came from an aristocratic background and was born in Trieste, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire in 1908. He has many credits to his name as an actor and director. He died in 1992.

The movie was directed by Fritz Lang, another refugee from Europe. Lang had a lifetime of problems with the English language, so much so that David Niven named his book of Hollywood reminiscences after one of his sayings. When he wanted a posse of riderless horses to come into the scene he shouted ‘bring on the empty horses!’

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5 Steps to Creating that Post!

Posted on by Steve Higgins

creatingthatpostOne primary question to ask yourself before you start blogging is this: Why do you want to write a blog and what are you going to write about?

It’s deep in the psyche, this need to communicate and express yourself but bloggers blog for a number of reasons. One is that we have a particular interest or passion that we just have to talk about. It might be a sporting interest or a hobby that we love. It could be a love of poetry or books. If you spend a lot of your free time cycling for instance you might want to indulge your love of this hobby by writing about it and discussing cycling issues or sharing information and tips about cycles. I subscribe to a lot of blogs about my favourite sport, F1 racing, as well as blogs about writing and my favourite movie directors for instance.

Another reason for blogging is to promote a business. There are many photographer blogs on the web, some are from amateurs who want others to see and comment on their work, some are by professionals who are actively promoting themselves and their business.

Authors are frequent bloggers, perhaps because publishing has been turned on it’s head by the internet and the digital revolution. No longer must we writers wait for the publisher to find us, we can get our work out there straight away and build up an internet presence which in turn benefits our self published works. Whether self publishing is a good thing I’m not so sure. I feel that personally I’ve rushed a little too quickly down the self publishing route but the experience has been good for me. I originally thought I had a pretty good manuscript but self publishing showed me very quickly that this wasn’t the case and I had to do a lot of work to update my grammatical errors and sort out problems with page breaks and other bits and pieces. The process I’ve gone through at createspace has been a big learning curve but as a result my manuscript has been well and truly re-hashed and edited. I personally love paperback books but it’s the Kindle version and it’s user friendly instant download facility that, in the case of my book, is much more popular.

Blogging for me is primarily to promote my work but I do love writing and I do love writing my little blog. One good thing about blogging is that it gets the creative juices flowing. It gets you thinking, what can I write about? What can I write about next time? So far the ideas have kept on coming and I’ve got six or seven draft blogs in the pipeline although I have to say two have them have been there so long I think they may be heading for the trash file shortly. Many people ask me how do I do it, how do I come up with a new post every week? Well, good job I don’t have to write a daily blog, I’d be pretty pushed to do that I can tell you! Anyway what I do is this, I keep an eye and an ear out for a blog idea all the time. I read a lot and one of my great loves is trolling round for second hand books so if I’m stuck I’ll write about books or writers. I’ve already done posts about James Hilton and Dylan Thomas, two of my favourite writers, and I recently wrote a second post about my finds in second hand bookshops. If ever I see something on TV that might inspire a blog post, I jot it down in my notebook or even sometimes on my mobile. In my car, which believe it or not, is a prime creative space for me, I have a small hand held tape recorder and I can be seen frequently jabbering into it as I drive to and from work.

Recently I switched on the television and an old James Bond movie was showing. Now, I’ve read all of Ian Fleming’s Bond books and seen all the films so that looked to me to be a prime target for a blog. A little research on the internet will tell you that a lot of popular posts will have a number in the title, things like ’10 different ways to promote your blog’ or ’20 ways to get more blog traffic.’ Ok I thought, how about ‘8 Things you didn’t know about James Bond!‘

Now, once you get an idea like that, a factual idea, you need to do a little research. I quickly jotted down the few things I knew about Bond and then researched the rest on the internet. I put together my facts and figures, made sure it all made sense, added a little graphic and there’s the next blog post ready. Of course, if you write something, it stands to reason you will want someone to read it so make sure you promote your posts on Google+, Twitter and Facebook and anywhere else you can think of.  Have a look at the infographic below:

The Creative Processs-2

It’s quite easy to make your own infographic, just as I did on http://www.canva.com

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A Sci-Fi DVD and an Incredible Moment of Self Discovery

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Something incredible happened to me this week: I found out I wasn’t the oddball nerd I thought I was in my youth, or at least I was but I found out there were others like me, I wasn’t alone and the nerdy things I used to do were done by many others!

So what nerdy things did I do? Well, here’s one example. In the seventies, before the age of the video recorder I had a small audio cassette recorder and did all sorts of things with it as a teenager. I wrote a number of comedy plays which my poor brother was roped into and we performed these little comedy sketches to the microphone. I did enjoy making the sound effects. One that comes to mind was my brother being sick which involved him making a retching sound then pouring a bucket of water down the toilet! I also used to record some of my favourite radio and TV programmes. I bought a second hand radio cassette recorder which enabled me to record the top twenty every week (dud records edited out of course) but TV presented another challenge. I would record a show using the microphone placed near to the TV speaker. Trial and error found the correct spot; not too close, not too far away and my family were sworn to silence during the recordings, not that that would stop my brother, or even my dad making some small comment towards the end of the show!

Photo0033So, how did this realisation that I was not alone in my nerdiness – or even a nerd at all- come about?
This realisation came about because of a gift. My brother, I might add, who is not a man known for his giving of gifts, had been given some DVDs that were of no interest to him so he passed them to me. They were BBC DVDs of the long running TV series, Doctor Who. Now I have been a Doctor Who fan for many years. I faintly remember the original Doctor Who, the grumpy bad tempered chap played by William Hartnell. The very first episode of Doctor Who, ‘An Unearthly Child’, is one of the highlights of my DVD collection and interestingly it was broadcast on the 22nd November 1963, the day of the John F Kennedy assassination. Because of the tragedy the BBC re ran the episode the following week which is perhaps why the original has survived. The thing is, back in the 60s when digital recordings and home video were just a gleam in some inventor’s eye, the archives at the BBC were getting a little crammed so what did they decide to do about it? Two things, One; they would wipe the tapes and reuse them for other shows and two, they would simply get rid of them!

Crazy, but of course, the value of these old TV shows was not understood then and many hours of classic TV was lost in this way. Not just Doctor Who but Not Only But Also, the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore shows, Doomwatch, Hancock and many others, all lost.

Anyway, one of the DVDs my brother gave me was ‘the Invasion’ from 1968 with the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton. The Invasion was made up of eight half hour shows and two of the eight had been lost or junked. Now many TV shows of the time, recorded on video were copied onto film by a telecine machine so the tape could be reused and the show broadcast again or sent to other parts of the world for broadcasting on foreign networks such as South Africa, Canada and so on. Many of these telecine recordings survive. Some have even known to have been rescued from tips or skips by BBC employees and even members of the public. Recently a lost episode of Doctor Who was found in Nigeria!

Anyway, here’s the punch line to this whole blog: When the BBC guys decided to reconstruct the missing episodes guess where they got the audio from? From audio recordings made by members of the public! Yes, Doctor Who fans who as youngsters recorded their favourite shows on audio cassettes, just as I did by placing  a microphone by the TV. So there we have it, conclusive proof that I wasn’t a nerd after all, or at least the nerdy activities of my youth were the same nerdy activities that other youngsters were involved in too!

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