Category Archives: motion pictures

6 Christmas Films

Posted on by Steve Higgins

By the time you are reading this, Christmas and New Year will all be over. We’ll be fed up of turkey and sprouts and thinking about taking down the Christmas decorations. So before Christmas becomes a distant memory here’s a quick look at 6 Christmas films that were all shown, with perhaps just one exception, over the last few weeks.

It’s a Wonderful Life

It’s always surprised me that this film was apparently a box office flop but gained success in later life through numerous television showings. The film is a Christmas fantasy drama directed by Frank Capra and it’s about George Bailey, a small town business manager played by James Stewart who has ambitions to travel the world but due to various circumstances, never leaves the small town of Bedford Falls.

When George is first about to leave Bedford Falls he is shocked to find that his father has died. His father was the manager of the Bailey Building and Loan company and the company is about to be swallowed up by the town’s richest man, Mr Potter. George gives an impassioned speech to the assembled boardroom and they decide to keep the company going only if George stays on as manager. George of course stays on and all his dreams of travel seem to melt away. He supports his younger brother through college and employs his eccentric uncle Billy but on Christmas Eve 1945 everything goes wrong and George contemplates suicide. His guardian Angel arrives to help and decides to let George see what his life would be like if he had never been born.

The film tells the story in flashback as Clarence, the trainee angel, is shown what has happened to George and the secret of this film is, I think, the fact that despite the fantasy premise of the story everyone plays their parts as if they were in a serious drama. The result is that the drama and emotion of the situation rise to the surface and we are left with a vibrant and dramatic piece of cinema. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye.

A Christmas Carol

A Christmas Carol was published over a hundred and seventy years ago. It’s a wonderful story by that master storyteller Charles Dickens. Within six days the entire print run of 6,000 copies had sold out and within six weeks theatre adaptations had hit London’s theatres. In many ways the book is Dickens’ defining vision of a Victorian Christmas.

There are a whole lot of film and TV versions of a Christmas Carol, 73 in all according to a BBC news item I saw a while ago but the definitive version is the one with Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge. That film was released in 1951 and called Scrooge after the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, who was played by that comedy master Alastair Sim. Various other familiar names appear in the cast such as Michael Hodern, Kathleen Harrison, George Cole, Jack Warner and Mervyn Johns.

Scrooge did well at the box office in the UK but gained popularity in later life through television.

One thing that I find rather annoying is that some years ago I picked up Scrooge on DVD only to find that it was a very poor quality version. Recently the film was remastered and the version shown on the BBC in 2024 had an image quality much superior to my copy. I think it might be time to clear that old DVD out and buy a new remastered version. Then again, films are shown and reshown on TV so many times, do I really need a DVD?

Home Alone

Home Alone is one of those films that has slipped into the TV cultural canon whether you personally asked for it or not, and yes, I get why; it’s engineered to delight kids while adults half-watch with a glass of something festive. Macaulay Culkin’s cherubic menace is undeniably effective, and the slapstick booby-trap ballet has a cartoonish precision that is likeable. Still, once the sugar rush fades, it’s hard not to notice how thin the whole thing is; a single joke stretched to feature length, padded out with shrieking villains and a weirdly sentimental shrug at the end. It’s not that Home Alone is bad, it’s just a film you accept as part of the holiday furniture, even if you’d never choose to sit on it for too long.

Die Hard

Around this time of year there are so many posts on social media about whether or not Die Hard is really a Christmas film. Well, we always like a good action film on the box at Christmas, don’t we?

Die Hard is set in the Nakatomi Tower in Los Angeles which is taken over by terrorists during the staff Christmas party. Bruce Willis plays New York cop John McClane who sorts out the bad guys with a smile on his face most of the time, unlike in the later follow up films where his face wears nothing but a grimace.

There’s a lot of shooting and blowing up stuff but I’ve always liked it. Like they say, it’s not Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off the Nakatomi tower!

Love Actually

I know some people love it, but this film has just never really done it for me.

The story follows the lives of eight different couples in the weeks leading up to Christmas, all slightly intertwined in a very cheesy way.

It’s got a great cast and I do actually like one or two of the stories but Hugh Grant as the Prime Minister? No, I’m just not having it. And as for the story about the guy who is best man at the wedding and actually secretly fancies the bride, well that’s just plain weird. The centrepiece of the film is probably the moment when Emma Thompson opens a Christmas present from hubby Alan Rickman in the sure knowledge that it’s a necklace that she knows he has bought but then finds its only a CD which means of course that he has bought the necklace for someone else. It’s a sad moment but to be honest, what happened after that I don’t really know, I was probably flicking through my emails towards the end of the film.

Overall, I’d give Love Actually 2 out of 5 stars and I know it’s a firm favourite with some people, just not me.

White Christmas

Time to finish off with what must surely be the ultimate Christmas film, at least it certainly is for me. I’m not sure how youngsters would view it these days but for me it just brings back memories of childhood Christmases in Manchester. I can just see myself now, lying on the rug in front of the fire. My father reading the newspaper but still watching the film and crooning along with Bing Crosby. My mother making tea and my brother and Bob, our dog, both wanting my place by the fire. Eventually I’d get up to drink tea or eat Christmas cake and my brother would nip into my spot and then Bob would usually squeeze in between him and the fire. Bob would adopt a thoughtful look and gaze into the coals until my mother would tell him off and drag him away. When she would go back to the kitchen Bob would slip back into his spot and resume station.

To get back to the film, Bing Crosby is joined by Danny Kaye and the two are theatrical producers and performers and they take off to Vermont following two girls that they have become romantically attached to. Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Allen are the girls in question and together they find that the hotel where they are staying is run by Danny and Bing’s wartime general. They decide to put on a show to help his ailing business and they all sing some wonderful songs, all penned by Irving Berlin.

Talking of Berlin. My dad always used to listen to White Christmas and inform me and my brother that the writer was that famous songwriter Ivan Berlin! No dad, it’s Irving, we would all say but he wouldn’t believe us. Did he know it was really Irving or was he just having fun?

What is your favourite Christmas film?

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Another Film Connections Post

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s only the end of November as I write this but in January, Liz and I will be off to Lanzarote once again to escape the cold and wintry UK. I do love the laid back (and warm) atmosphere in Lanzarote and as usual I’ll be taking a stack of books to keep me occupied while I laze about on my sun lounger in-between dips in the pool.

The other day I popped on the TV to find one of the James Bond films showing. It was Casino Royale, the film version of the very first book in the Bond series and I thought about popping my copy of the book into our suitcase with an idea of re-reading the entire series of James Bond novels. Of course knowing me I’d probably leave the book over there and that would be my tidy collection of Ian Fleming 007 novels ruined.

Fleming did a lot of his writing in a small house he owned in Jamacia which happened to be not far from another house which Noël Coward used to own. Back in WWII, Coward had the idea of making a film about the Royal Navy and so he wrote a screenplay for a film titled ‘In Which we Serve.’ It was the story of a ship. The ship is engaged in battle and is sunk and as the survivors hang on to lifeboats and debris, their thoughts meander over their past lives and the story of the ship is told in flashbacks.

It’s a very good film inspired by the story of an actual ship, HMS Kelly, which was commanded by Lord Mountbatten and Coward was justifiably proud of the finished result. He stars as the captain of the ship and along the way there are various notable British stars, some of them making their film debuts. Coward realised he needed someone to help him with the technical aspects of the film so he asked film editor David Lean to help him direct the film. Lean was happy to do so. Coward asked what sort of a credit would he want and Lean answered that he felt the film should be credited as being directed by Noël Coward and David Lean. Coward wasn’t sure about this but he agreed and the filming began with Coward dealing with the actors and Lean dealing with everything else. Lean mentioned in an interview that Coward soon got bored with directing and pretty much left the whole thing to David.

David Lean went on to have a long career as a film director and made a number of huge epics. One of them was a controversial film called Bridge over the River Kwai. This was about British prisoners of war who were forced in very inhumane conditions to build a railway through the Burmese jungle. Alec Guinness plays the senior British officer who feels that building the bridge will restore British morale and undertakes to build it to the very highest standards.

One of the prisoners decides to escape and with a great deal of luck he makes it to the British lines. He is then approached by another officer played by Jack Hawkins and asked to return to the jungle and help blow the bridge up. Many veterans of the war in Asia were very unhappy about the film as the true horror of the cruelty and deprivations unleashed against the POWs was not properly depicted.

Alec Guinness and William Holden were the stars of the film and third on the billing was Jack Hawkins. Hawkins was one of the leading  stars of British cinema in the 1950s. During the war Hawkins served in the army and when he returned to civilian life in 1946, he was soon acting on the stage. With a pregnant wife he became concerned about his future and so accepted an offer to become a contract star for Alexander Korda. He really became a star after a performance in Angels One Five, a film about an RAF station in the war. Another hit was Mandy where he played a sympathetic teacher of deaf children.

In 1953 he starred as a naval captain in The Cruel Sea. The film starts off at the beginning of World War 2 when the Jack Hawkins character is at the builder’s yard helping with the fixing up of his new escort ship, Compass Rose. His officers begin to arrive, many of whom are easily recognisable as stalwarts of the 40’s and 50’s British film industry: Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliot and Stanley Baker and later in the film Virginia McKenna appears as an officer in the WRNS.

The cast and characters are therefore introduced and then the ship goes off to war, protecting the many convoys of merchant ships, bringing the supplies so desperately needed by Britain. It’s one of the great war films of all time.

Two of my personal favourite films starring Hawkins were The Intruder, a great film in which Hawkins plays a former military officer who discovers a past member of his old tank regiment robbing his flat. He determines to find the man again and the story is told in flashback as he interviews a group of his former officers and men.

The other was The Long Arm in which we see how Scotland Yard worked back in 1956. Card files, books of fingerprints and albums containing mugshots, all of which had to be laboriously checked by hand. Some great detective work finally manages to nail the villain.

Hawkins was the epitome of the trustworthy British authority figure. In his obituary one writer wrote that Hawkins ‘exemplified for many cinemagoers the stiff upper lip tradition prevalent in post war British films. His craggy looks and authoritative bearing were used to good effect whatever branch of the services he represented.’

Hawkins himself was a three pack a day smoker and later became ill with throat cancer. In 1966 his entire larynx was removed however he was still able to appear in films with his dialogue dubbed by either Charles Gray or Robert Rietti. In the film Young Winston, he has hardly any dialogue at all.

Jack Hawkins died on the 18th July 1973. He was only 62 years old.

As I mentioned, Charles Gray was one of the actors who dubbed dialogue for Hawkins in later life. It must have been a difficult task because Hawkins has one of the most memorable voices in British cinema. Who was Charles Gray? Well you might not remember the name but Gray played one of cinema’s most notorious villains, Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the 007 film Diamonds Are Forever.

Charles Gray (Picture courtesy James Bond Movie Encyclopedia)

Diamonds Are Forever was the follow up film to On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In that film George Lazenby had taken over the role of 007 from Sean Connery. Personally, I thought he was a great Bond but George himself was not popular with the producers. After the shoot was over he had grown his hair long and was sporting a beard. The producers wanted someone who could promote the 007 image even in their private life. Later Lazenby’s agent began to feel that the Bond franchise was finished and Lazenby decided against making another Bond film. What could the producers do? Well their knee jerk reaction was to offer Connery a large sum of money to return to the role. Connery agreed to play Bond one more time, banked a huge amount of money and pretty much appeared to sleep walk through the film.

Charles Gray played Blofeld who has taken over a huge empire run by the mysterious millionaire Willard Whyte and he plans to create a powerful laser using diamonds.

Who was the author of Diamonds Are Forever? None other than Ian Fleming of course, bringing our connections full circle.

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The Richard Burton Centenary

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week I’ve noticed quite a few items about Richard Burton on the BBC iPlayer. I wasn’t sure why at first but it turns out that this year, 2025, is the centenary of Burton’s birth. He was born Richard Jenkins on November 10th 1925.

Why did he change his name to Burton? Well one answer on the iPlayer was given in a wonderful film called Mr Burton. Harry Lawtey plays the young Burton and Toby Jones plays his mentor, Philip Burton. Burton came from a poor mining family in Pontrhydyfen in Wales. He had thoughts of becoming a teacher but things were not working in his favour. His mother died when he was young and his father was an alcoholic. Richard went to live with his sister and her husband but financial circumstances forced him to leave school and take up a job in the local Co-op. Enter teacher Philip Burton who urged Richard to rejoin school after promising to help with his finances.

The return to school caused some resentment from his brother in law and so with the consent of his father, Richard became Philip Burton’s legal ward and just aged eighteen, changed his surname on 26 November 1943 to Burton by means of a deed poll. Richard joined the Air Cadets and was able, with Burton’s help, to study at Oxford after applying for a six month RAF scholarship.

Philip Burton made Richard work on his voice and gradually the wonderful speaking voice we are familiar with today began to appear.

Mr Burton was an excellent film and full marks go to Harry Lawtey for his portrayal. In the early part of the film I did wonder how this youthful boy with the very Welsh accent could progress to the young confident actor but Harry’s performance and the way his own voice echoes that of the real Richard Burton was outstanding.

Another programme on iPlayer was a made for TV film called Burton and Taylor and it’s about, as if you hadn’t already guessed, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Back in 1983 when this film is set, Burton and Taylor were probably the most famous celebrity couple in the world. The only other couple of a similar status that I can think of are Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, a couple from a completely different era. Let me see who else comes to mind; Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Posh and Becks. Hardly in the same class are they?

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor met on the set of the film Cleopatra in 1961, a movie that went down in history as one of the most expensive ever made. Taylor didn’t want to make the picture so decided to ask for a ridiculous amount of money, confident that 20th Century Fox would never pay it. However, pay it they did and the troubled movie went into production.

The Burton/Taylor TV film focusses on the later years of the pair when they had been married and divorced twice and for some reason decided to star together in a stage revival of Noël Coward’s witty play, Private Lives.

In the film, Taylor is played by Helena Bonham-Carter and Burton by Dominic West. West doesn’t really look much like Burton but captures his voice and persona well. Bonham-Carter as Liz Taylor does look surprisingly like the original and together they make a good reproduction of the famous couple.

The writer seems to believe, and whether it is true or not I don’t claim to know, that Liz Taylor engineered the theatre production of Private Lives as a way of bringing her and Burton back together again. As I mentioned earlier, they had already been married and divorced twice and the movie revealed that Liz clearly still had feelings towards Burton. On the first day of rehearsals she is surprised that Burton will not be lunching with her but spending time with his new girlfriend, Sally. Burton in turn is shocked that on the first read through it is clear that Taylor has not previously read the play. Burton of course knows it off by heart. He is the consummate professional actor and Taylor the consummate professional movie star. During the run when Taylor calls in sick, the production is halted rather than carry on with an understudy, as it becomes clear from the public reaction that the audience are not interested in the play without superstar Liz.

Burton and Taylor were clearly in love but love must have been difficult in the face of their superstar status, just as it was for Fairbanks and Pickford. I can imagine Burton’s upbringing in a mining community and Taylor, having been a star since childhood, were not personalities that could bend much for the other.

The film is interesting, enjoyable and gives the viewer a fascinating peek into the private lives of these two superstars of the past.

The Richard Burton Diaries edited by Chris Williams

Some years ago I read Melvyn Bragg’s biography of Richard Burton and that book was based partly on these diaries which have now been published and are available to everyone.

There is a lot I like about this book and a lot that I don’t like. I tend to prefer paperbacks but I bought this one from the internet and it’s a big heavy hardback and as I took the book to France to read on holiday it became a little more battered every day.

Moving on to the text and I see a lot of the big events in Burton’s life are missing as sometimes he stops writing for days and even months at a time. We don’t hear about the making of Cleopatra and his meeting and affair with Elizabeth Taylor but he does mention some of those events in retrospect.

The book starts with his schoolboy diaries which are rather like mine, brief and to the point. Later, the main diary starts in 1965 when Burton begins to write in more detail. He tells us of his immense love for Taylor and how he has given up womanising to be faithful to her but sometimes I get the feeling he isn’t being totally honest, after all Liz has free access to his diary and she frequently jots down her own comments too. Burton was rumoured to have had an affair with Genevieve Bujold during the filming of Anne of a Thousand Days but of course, gives no mention of that in his journal.

He does talk a lot about food and having lunch in places like Paris and Rome. He enjoys having money and delights in spending it on jewels for Liz, a new private jet plane and a yacht which he thinks might actually save him money as he can stay on the yacht rather than use hotels. Even so, he continues to use hotels. At one point he considers buying a barge, modernising it and touring the canals of France.

He doesn’t seem to enjoy his acting and in fact rather looks down on it as a profession, although unlike an actor like Brando who had similar thoughts, he did take pride in what he did, learning his part and his lines whereas Brando couldn’t even be bothered to learn the script for the film of Superman despite his million dollar fee.

Surprisingly there is also quite a lot of professional jealousy in the text, for instance he gives Robert Shaw a bit of a slagging off for his performance as Henry VIII in A Man for all Seasons which I thought was rather good, better or at least the equal of Burton’s Henry VIII in Anne of a Thousand Days.

A screengrab from the BBC iPlayer

Burton drinks a lot and frequently argues with Liz, sometimes he is banished to the spare bedroom and usually he regrets his drunken words and wonders why he did what he did or said what he said.

He was though a man who loved reading, devouring anything from the classics to detective novels. He even had ambitions of being a writer himself. His entries are peppered with quotations from authors and poets and of course Shakespeare.

I was really looking forward to reading this book but after the first few pages I thought it a little uninteresting. As the narrative moved from 1968 into 1970, Burton seemed to be putting more effort into his journalling and consequently it became more enjoyable to read. Later large gaps appear in the diaries and he doesn’t appear to have written anything about his breakup with Liz Taylor. The entries become less frequent and to be honest, I ended up skipping quite a few pages.

Verdict: A book that promised a lot but failed to deliver.

Still with the BBC iPlayer, there’s a great documentary about Burton titled Richard Burton: Wild Genius which is rather good and perhaps unlike the above post gives a good overall look at the great actor’s life. Burton died on 5 August 1984 at his home in Céligny, Switzerland, aged only 58. He was buried at the Old Cemetery in Céligny and his widow Sally placed a copy of Dylan Thomas’ collected poems in his coffin.

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Ridley Scott in 4 Films

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Ridley Scott was born in South Shields, England, in 1937. He studied at West Hartlepool College of Art and later at London’s Royal College of Art, where he first began experimenting with film. While there, he contributed to the school’s magazine ARK and made a short film, Boy and Bicycle (1962), featuring his younger brother, Tony Scott.

After graduating, Scott joined the BBC as a set designer and director, working on popular series such as Z Cars and The Troubleshooters. His time in television taught him the mechanics of production and in 1968, he left the BBC to establish Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), a commercial production company. Over the next decade, he directed hundreds of adverts, developing a style of lighting, atmosphere and composition, qualities that made his transition to cinema with The Duellists (1977) both natural and visually striking.

Scott is a prolific film maker and has created some classic films. I have to say there are many of Scott’s films that I haven’t seen so in this post I’ve focussed on four particular films that I have seen and enjoyed.

Alien

Alien is a really different kind of sci-fi film. It’s not Star Trek or Star Wars and it’s not littered with sci-fi terminology. It’s a very slow burning earthy film about a spacecraft on its way back to earth with a payload of something, I’m not sure what. On the way back home, the crew are awakened from hibernation to find that the ship’s sensors have detected a beacon which maybe some sort of SOS and the company regulations state this must be investigated. Next thing we’re down on a hostile planet and one crew member has been hit in the face by some kind of creature which has attached itself to his face. Later it falls off and all is ok except that something is growing inside the crewman which bursts out of his chest in a horrible spectacular scene and suddenly, an alien creature is onboard.

It is all done really well and one by one the crew fall victim to this creature in the dark confined spaces of the ship. It’s sci-fi mixed with horror and the only survivor turns out to be Ripley played by Sigourney Weaver. Ripley is a sort of female John McClane, the Bruce Willis character from the Die Hard films. Weaver creates a really memorable character which was revived in various sequels but the real core of the film and the scene everyone remembers is probably that gruesome scene when the alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest. Apparently, Ridley Scott didn’t tell the actors what was about to happen so the shocked faces on the actors are all really authentic.

Some years later, Scott decided to revisit the franchise with two prequel films. Both were dismal in my opinion but it makes me wonder why was Alien so good and Prometheus and Alien Covenant so bad? The effects in those two latter films were good but perhaps the actors weren’t as good as Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt and Ian Holm and the other crew members in the original, or is the classic chest buster scene so burned into cinematic lore that it can’t be topped?

The Martian

The Martian is surprisingly similar to that old film Robinson Crusoe on Mars in many ways. The crew of a Mars mission is on the surface when a major dust storm threatens to topple over their space vehicle. The crew decide to abort the mission and take off but one crew member is hit by debris and presumed dead and they leave him behind. Later, Mark Watney played by Matt Damon, awakes from unconsciousness in the desert and makes his way back to the martian base camp. The bio-data telemetry from his space suit had been damaged and so made mission control assume that he was dead. Now the martian base camp is pretty basic and although it has computer stations and food and water and so on, there is no communication to earth. The next mission is not due for four years so Watney must find a way to survive until then on the camp’s meagre supplies.

He decides to make part of the camp into an area where he can plant some potatoes and hopefully produce more food. Just like in Crusoe, Mark Watney keeps us interested in what is happening by recording his thoughts in a video diary. Not only that but back on earth, observatories notice the activity taking place on Mars and realise he is still alive.

Still unable to communicate with earth the marooned astronaut decides to dig up an old space probe, drag it back to base, plug it into a power cable and use it for communication. I won’t ruin everything for you by telling you the whole story but again, if you like sci-fi and perhaps even if you don’t, this is such a well made and enjoyable film and is well worth watching. The visual look of the film is great and the director manages to keep the viewer interested despite the fact that for much of the time there is only Matt Damon up there on the screen.

External scenes of Mars were filmed in Wadi Rum in Jordan and NASA decided to collaborate with the producers as they saw the film as promoting real space exploration. The author of the book which the film was based on was Andy Weir who tried to be as scientifically accurate as possible, researching orbital mechanics and the planet Mars as well as botany, all elements which interested Ridley Scott.

A Good Year

One of the great things about Ridley Scott is that not only is he a prolific film maker, he doesn’t just stick to one particular genre. The first time I saw this particular film I would never have guessed that it was a Ridley Scott film. It’s based on a book by Peter Mayle who wrote the wonderful A Year in Provence. Scott had wanted to make a film in Provence as he owned a house in the area. Peter Mayle was approached to write a screenplay but he declined but decided to write a novel and for Scott to buy the film rights and have a screenplay written based on the book. The screenplay was written by Marc Klein and both the book and the film incorporated some of Ridley Scott’s own ideas. The basic story is about a London stockbroker who inherits a property in France belonging to his late uncle. The stockbroker, Max, played by Russell Crowe, goes back to France and after a while begins to fall for the old place again. A gorgeous local waitress plays a large part in his feelings too. His late uncle is played by Albert Finney and his scenes are all shown in flashback.

I have to say I didn’t like this film the first time I saw it. I thought the flashback scenes were confusing because I didn’t realise they were flashbacks at first. I didn’t like Russell Crowe and thought he was miscast. I feel the role was more something perhaps Hugh Grant could have played effortlessly. Over time though I’ve warmed to this film and now it is one of my absolute favourites.

Gladiator

This is a film which really revived the kind of classic epics that Hollywood and directors like David Lean used to make. It’s a really fabulous film with these huge set pieces set in the Roman arena, beautifully photographed and acted. It concerns Russell Crowe as a Roman general, Maximus Decimus Meridius who Marcus Aurelius decides to nominate as his successor as emperor of Rome. Unfortunately, Marcus dies at the hand of his son, Commodus who quite fancies being emperor himself. Commodus has Maximus arrested and sentenced to death but Maximus fights off his executioners and escapes. He returns home to find his family murdered. Various events then see Maximus become enslaved and later a gladiator determined to seek revenge.

One of the main characters was played by Oliver Reed who died during the production. During a break from filming in Valletta, Reed had encountered a group of Royal Navy sailors and challenged them to a drinking match. He suffered a heart attack in the bar and died in an ambulance en route to the hospital.

His role had not been completely filmed and so a body double was used in some shots and in one scene Reed’s face was digitally inserted into the film. I have Gladiator on DVD so I thought I’d give it a watch just to refresh my memory. Gladiator was just as good as I remembered and the secret of the film, for me at any rate, is that even though this is a great epic in the same tradition as David Lean’s later films, at its core is a very human story about a man betrayed who longs to be reunited with his murdered family which makes his death a sort of victory.

Other Films

I could of course have mentioned many other classic Ridley Scott films. Thelma and Louise is one I have seen. I always thought it was a good film, nothing less and nothing more but watching a TV show on Sky Arts not long ago the reviewers thought it was a work of genius. It was certainly new in that it was a road movie featuring two women rather than two men. Blade Runner is another classic sci-fi drama directed by Scott and I look forward to the day I see it listed on my TV schedule.

Scott directed Hannibal, the follow up to Silence of the Lambs which I thought was a little gruesome and so apparently did Jodie Foster who declined to reprise her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling.

All the Money in the World was a pretty good film which was about the kidnapping of J Paul Getty’s grandson and his refusal to cough up a multi million pound ransom. Interestingly Kevin Spacey played Getty but after allegations of sexual misconduct Scott cut Spacey from the film and asked Christopher Plummer to play Getty,  calling for some last minute refilming of parts of the film.

I was hoping to see Ridley Scott’s Napoleon at the cinema but these days films seem to have such a short cinema showing. It doesn’t seem to be streaming anywhere so I’ll just have to look out for the DVD.

What are your favourite Ridley Scott films?

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F1, The Crown and Watching the Box on Holiday

Posted on by Steve Higgins

My original title for this post was Watching the Box in France. That however seemed to give the impression that this post was about French TV which it isn’t. Liz and I don’t normally watch much television on holiday, we are far more interested in swimming, going out for meals and barbecuing. On this holiday however, the weather was a little mixed and on quite a few evenings we settled down in the lounge of our rented house and decided to pop the TV on.

Just to backtrack a little, we rented this same house back in May and usually, the only time I put the TV on is to watch F1 racing. May is the usual month in the calendar for the Monaco grand prix, one of my favourite races of the year. There is actually plenty of talk recently about cancelling the race as nowadays, the F1 cars are faster and much bigger and so there is very little room left to overtake.

Back in the 1960s, cars were much smaller, in fact in those days there were three cars on the front row of the starting grid, the cars lining up in 3-2-3 formation. Fast forward to the present day and F1 cars and their aerodynamic fins and wings have spread out hoping to grab that extra bit of air in order to generate more downforce and push themselves down to the track so they can corner ever faster.

Many people have called for the race to be cancelled as bigger cars combined with a narrow track makes it virtually impossible to overtake which reduces the racing to just a procession of high speed cars and of course whoever is on pole position is pretty much guaranteed a win. Push that to one side and I must tell you that I happen to love the Monaco grand prix, I love the track, I love the exotic names of the corners: Saint Devote, Mirabeau and Rascasse. I love the run down to the Casino Square, the dash into the tunnel and the following tight chicane, the prize giving, the boats in the harbour, the glamour; in short, I love it all.

Back in May then I was disappointed to find that the Skybox in this lovely house did not seem to be working. I switched it on and off, rebooted it, checked the connections but all to no avail. I was forced to watch the 8 minute highlights on YouTube and quite frankly, I was gutted. OK back in England our own trusty Skybox had recorded the race but by then I knew the outcome, I knew the winners and the excitement had all been lost.

Anyway, we came here once again in September and I was looking forward to watching the Italian Grand Prix, another of my favourite races. The TV worked ok but the skybox was no more, lying abandoned and disconnected on one side. A new TV set up had been sorted with the TV connected to the internet. I quickly ascertained that in France, F1 was available on Canal+. Yes, Canal was there, ok so far. I clicked on the channel only to find that a subscription was required. I would have to pay and subscribe to Canal to watch the racing!

My inner tightwad kicked in and declined to open up my wallet so once again I had to make do with the 8 mins of YouTube highlights. Oh well, we didn’t come on holiday to watch TV but even so, I was disappointed.

The other thing we noticed on one rainy evening was that Netflix was available. Now just recently when Liz renewed her Sky package, some negotiation was involved and to sweeten the deal, Sky threw in a Netflix subscription. I have to say I haven’t looked at Netflix much but I always assumed it was just an ordinary channel like BBC1 for instance, in that there was a schedule and certain programmes were broadcast at certain times. Not so, Netflix is more like YouTube, you can watch programmes on demand but what to watch, that is the question.

Liz wanted to watch The Crown which I can’t say I was really interested in at first but after a while I realised what a really excellent production it is. The actors are really good especially the portrayals of the Queen, Princess Margaret and Winston Churchill.

The younger Queen was played by Claire Foy and Princess Margaret by Vanessa Kirkby and Margaret’s situation as the Queen’s sister was explored in a few episodes. Her love affair with Peter Townsend was doomed because Townsend was a divorcee. The Queen was advised to ask Margaret to wait until she was 25 and then she could marry. When the time came the Queen’s advisors brought up more issues and then ultimately the two lovers had to separate which of course didn’t help the sisterly relationship between the Queen and Margaret. Margaret actually could have married Townsend but that would have meant giving up her royal status so it seems to me that perhaps being a royal meant more to her than being with Peter Townsend.

Prince Philip courtesy creative commons

Before watching The Crown I had no idea of the background of Prince Philip. I always assumed he was English and a member of some family which was eligible to marry into the royals. In actual fact he was Greek and aged only eighteen months old he and his family were exiled from their homeland which left him with a lifetime fear of revolution and anything that might threaten the royal family.

His and Charles’ school days at Gordonstoun were really well done especially the interplay and flashbacks between Philip’s and his son Charles’ time there. Philip apparently loved it but Charles hated it.

A real stand out story was the one about the retirement of Churchill which was cleverly linked to the famous, or infamous painting of a portrait of Churchill by Graham Sutherland. Churchill, played by John Lithgow, was coming up to his 80th birthday and various people wanted him to retire but he was adamant that he would carry on. Churchill had various sittings for the painting with the artist and Churchill himself was an amateur painter of some merit. The two, one a professional and the other an amateur, tried to examine each other through their works. Churchill was hugely disappointed with the result which portrayed him as a very old man and came to see at last, according to The Crown anyway, that the time had come for him to retire and hand over the leadership of the country to Anthony Eden. Everything was beautifully done.

The other thing about The Crown was even the quick cutaway and establishing shots of cars driving up to the Palace or through London in the 50s and 60s, were expertly done. I’m sure there was an element of special effects involved especially in scenes of crowds in London but even so, everything looked so good.

An interesting episode concerned Lord Altrincham who was concerned enough to put forward a little criticism of her Majesty when she seemed to brand the workers at a car factory ‘ordinary’ instead of praising their work. He said himself that he didn’t blame the Queen but those who were writing her speeches and he added; “The personality conveyed by the utterances which are put into her mouth is that of a priggish schoolgirl, captain of the hockey team, a prefect and a recent candidate for Confirmation.”

In the show, Lord Altrincham is invited to the palace to meet the Queen’s secretary, however when he arrives, he finds himself face to face with the Queen.

I doubt that ever actually happened but if it did then full marks to the Queen for meeting criticism head on. Many of the Lord’s recommendations, such as making a Christmas TV broadcast, were accepted by the monarch and surely must have helped her feel not as remote from her people as she had up till then. Another broadcast which was dramatised was the one made by the Duke of Windsor when he abdicated. The Duke flips in and out of the story. The Queen Mother detested him as he had forced the mantle of kingship onto her husband when he was ill-prepared for it. Prince Charles however, did strike up a sort of friendship with the Duke. I should imagine that a former King and a future one would have much in common although how much was fiction and how much was accurate, I don’t know. Charles was played by Josh O’Connor extremely well and the Duke in his later incarnation by Derek Jacobi.

Our last evenings in our gite at Parçay-les-Pins were made all the more enjoyable by this splendid series which I’m sure everyone has watched ages ago but for me, a latecomer to Netflix, is very new.

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Favourite Directors: (Part 5) Billy Wilder

Posted on by Steve Higgins

One of my favourite stories about Billy Wilder goes like this. One day, late in his career, he arrived at a Hollywood studio to pitch a new idea to a producer. The producer turned out to be a young man who clearly didn’t know much about classic cinema. He told Billy that he wasn’t familiar with his work and could he perhaps run through a few of his films for him.
Billy looked at the man and said, “Fine, after you . . .”

I’m betting that whatever this guy had produced it couldn’t compare with Billy’s dazzling line-up of classic films.

Billy Wilder was born in 1906 in Sucha Beskidzka, a town now in Poland but then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Billy was born Samuel but his mother had been to America and seen Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. She enjoyed it so much she decided to nickname her son Billy. The family later moved to Vienna, where his father Max tried his hand at various business ventures, including being part-owner of a hotel-restaurant.

The young Wilder developed a taste for sharp observation early on. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Vienna and was very keen on jazz. His articles about bandleader Paul Whiteman led to an invitation to follow the band to Berlin and Billy decided to stay on as a freelance reporter. Berlin in the 1920s was alive with ideas, cabaret, and cinema and Wilder soaked it all in. He began to mingle with people from the German film industry and soon moved into screenwriting.

Wilder received screen credit for 13 films produced in Germany between 1929 and 1933, but his promising career in Berlin was cut short. In 1933, the Nazis came to power. That year his father died and Wilder arranged for him to be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Berlin. With Hitler consolidating power and Jews being targeted, Wilder realised he had no future in Germany. After the Reichstag fire, he fled to Paris. There, he continued screenwriting and even co-directed his first film, Mauvaise Graine (1934). Shortly afterwards, he sold a script to Columbia Studios in Hollywood, and with that invitation he sailed for America.

Breaking into Hollywood

Wilder’s early days in Hollywood weren’t easy. His English was poor and he shared an apartment with fellow émigré Peter Lorre and made ends meet by hustling for work.

What Wilder did have though, was persistence and wit. He began writing screenplays with Charles Brackett, a more established writer with fluent English. The Wilder-Brackett partnership became one of the most productive in Hollywood, blending Brackett’s sophistication with Wilder’s bite. Together they worked on hits such as Ninotchka (1939), a satirical comedy famously marketed with the tagline: “Garbo Laughs!”

That success cemented Wilder’s reputation and he began to move from writing into directing. He felt screenwriters were too often mistreated by directors and the only way to protect his work was to get behind the camera himself.

Wilder the Director

Wilder’s breakthrough as a director came with Double Indemnity (1944), a dark tale of lust, greed and murder. Co-written with Raymond Chandler, the film became a defining example of film noir. Wilder used shadows, venetian blinds and Los Angeles locations to give the story a hard-edged realism. It was controversial at the time—Barbara Stanwyck plotting insurance fraud and murder was considered scandalous—but it became a critical and commercial success.

From there, the hits kept coming. Wilder had an uncanny ability to move between genres: crime thrillers, social dramas, romantic comedies and biting satires. His motto was “If you’re going to tell the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.”

In The Lost Weekend (1945), Wilder tackled alcoholism with unflinching honesty. The film, starring Ray Milland, was one of the first Hollywood movies to show addiction as a serious disease rather than a comic weakness. It won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.

Then came Sunset Boulevard (1950), perhaps Wilder’s masterpiece and my personal favourite of Wilder’s films. The film begins with a dead man floating in a swimming pool, narrating his own murder—a narrative device that was bold, even shocking at the time. Gloria Swanson’s portrayal of fading silent film star Norma Desmond gave us one of cinema’s most haunting lines. Writer Joe Gillis played by William Holden is trying to get away from two guys who want to repossess his car. To evade them he drives into what he thinks is an abandoned mansion. He is surprised to find it occupied by the once famous silent film star Norma Desmond played by Gloria Swanson. He recognises her and comments “You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.” Norma replies, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.” The movie was both a scathing satire of Hollywood and a deeply human tragedy. It’s also interesting from a lot of angles; we see the famous Schwab’s drug store, once a Hollywood icon but now gone. Director Cecil B DeMille plays himself and when we see Joe and Norma spending an evening watching her old films, they are actually Gloria Swanson’s old films and one was directed by none other than Erich Von Stroheim who plays Norma’s butler and former husband.

Comedy with an Edge

Although Wilder made some of the darkest films in Hollywood, he was equally skilled at comedy. In fact, many of his comedies remain among the most beloved of all time. Some Like It Hot (1959) paired Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as musicians on the run, disguising themselves as women in an all-female band. Add Marilyn Monroe to the mix and you had comedy gold. The film was outrageous for its time and famously ends with Joe E. Brown’s immortal line, “Nobody’s perfect.”

Marilyn tested both Wilder and her co stars as she was notoriously late and struggled with her lines. One infamous scene required 47 takes and all Monroe had to say was ‘it’s me, Sugar’. Wilder wasn’t happy because Marilyn wanted to change scenes and dialogue which he didn’t want to do. The final result though was a classic comedy.

The film’s closing line, “Well, nobody’s perfect”, is ranked 78th on The Hollywood Reporter list of Hollywood’s 100 Favourite Movie Lines and Wilder’s tombstone pays homage to the line with the inscription, “I’m a writer, but then, nobody’s perfect”.

Two years later, Wilder directed The Apartment (1960), a film that managed to be both romantic and cynical. Jack Lemmon plays an office worker who lets his bosses use his apartment for their affairs, only to fall for Shirley MacLaine’s elevator operator. The film mixes laughter with melancholy, revealing Wilder’s genius for blending tones. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.

Wilder also directed Sabrina (1954), with Audrey Hepburn caught between Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, and The Seven Year Itch (1955), which gave us the iconic image of Monroe’s skirt billowing over a subway grate. He seemed to have a knack for capturing cultural moments while keeping his characters grounded and relatable.

Wilder’s Style and Legacy

What made Billy Wilder so special? Partly it was his range. Few directors could move from the bleak cynicism of Ace in the Hole (1951), a savage attack on media exploitation, to the screwball energy of Some Like It Hot. He didn’t stick to one style or genre; instead, he reshaped them.

His dialogue sparkled with wit, but underneath there was always truth. Wilder had an outsider’s eye—he never forgot that he was an immigrant looking at America with both fascination and scepticism. His characters often chase the American dream but collide with its hypocrisies and disappointments.

Wilder also had a reputation for precision. He was meticulous with scripts, often refusing improvisation. “You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning,” he once said, “but dreams don’t last long.” His films carried that same bittersweet edge.

By the end of his career, Wilder had won six Oscars and left behind a body of work that filmmakers still study. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he reportedly quipped: “I’m a writer, but then nobody’s perfect.

The Final Word

Billy Wilder died in 2002 at the age of 95. He had outlived most of his contemporaries and watched Hollywood change beyond recognition. Yet his films remain fresh. Watch Sunset Boulevard today, or Some Like It Hot; both are hugely entertaining.

So, when that young producer asked Wilder to list his films, he was showing his ignorance of a screen legend. His legacy speaks louder than any pitch meeting. And the truth is, even if “nobody’s perfect,” Billy Wilder came pretty close.

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The Film of the Book: James Bond 007 (Part 2)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This is part 2 of a post about the books and films in the James Bond franchise. It’s recently been announced that Steven Knight, the writer who created the TV series Peaky Blinders, has been engaged to write the next film in the James Bond spy series. Bond appeared to die in the last 007 epic No Time To Die which, certainly for me, wasn’t a particularly great film. I honestly think that the producers have got the character mixed up a little with either Ethan Hunt from the Mission Impossible series, Bruce Willis from the Die Hard franchise or perhaps Jack Bauer from 24. Bond isn’t a rogue agent. He isn’t a maverick cop or spy either. He’s a former naval intelligence officer and a serving officer of the secret intelligence service who is trained to follow orders and use his initiative in certain situations. In order to get back to the original James Bond it’s time to look at the source material, namely the books by Ian Fleming, and see how they compare to the films.

Goldfinger

Goldfinger is probably one of the best books in the Bond series and only the second 007 book that I ever read. (I’ll tell you about the first one later). I was at school at the time and for one of our assignments in English, we were asked to bring in a book which contained a really good description of a character. I chose Goldfinger as in it, Ian Fleming describes Goldfinger as a man who appeared to have been made using bits of other peoples’ bodies. This must have been in the mid-1960s and although the character of James Bond was pretty well known, the films had not begun to permeate down to the television screen.

The book is in three parts, based on a quote from Goldfinger who tells Bond of a saying he learned in Chicago. ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action’. In a similar situation to that in Moonraker, Bond is asked to take a close look at Goldfinger by an acquaintance from the first book Casino Royale. The man reckons that Goldfinger is cheating him at cards and asks Bond if he can see how this is being done. M tasks Bond to meet with Goldfinger who is suspected of gold smuggling. Eventually, Bond is captured by Goldfinger who correctly surmises that ‘enemy action’ has begun. Later Bond is taken to the USA where he learns of Goldfinger’s plan to rob Fort Knox.

The film version was hugely popular and to a certain extent became a sort of template for future Bond films.

For Your Eyes Only

Not one of my favourite Bond books, this was a collection of short stories and some of the titles, but not the plots, were used in some of the later Bond films.

Thunderball

This is an interesting story and the resulting film has perhaps become the quintessential Bond film even more so than Goldfinger. The story is about a criminal underworld organisation (SPECTRE) that steals an aircraft with nuclear weapons and holds the west to ransom threatening to explode the bombs.

Prior to Thunderball, Fleming had been working on a screenplay with two others and when the project fell through, Fleming decided to use the material in his new novel. Later, Kevin McClory and Jack Whittingham, his two erstwhile writing partners, sued Fleming and won rights to certain elements of the story. This enabled them to years later produce the film Never Say Never Again with Sean Connery returning to the role of James Bond.

The book is well put together and as usual I found it a hugely enjoyable read. Fleming once again manages to inject the story with elements of his own life. Bond’s visit to a health clinic was inspired by Fleming’s own similar visit. In the book, Bond’s health record is revealed including details of his large intake of alcohol and cigarettes.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service

In this book the secret service find that Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, is trying to assume the identity of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville. Bond poses as Sir Hilary Bray of the College of Arms in order to meet with Blofeld. Interestingly, Sir Hilary gives Bond a quick resumé of Bond’s family history including the Bond family motto ‘the world is not enough’ which was used by the film producers for the title of a later 007 film unrelated to Fleming’s books.

While taking a break from the search for Blofeld, Bond meets Tracy, the daughter of Marc-Ange Draco, the head of the French criminal organisation the union corse. Draco offers Bond a million pounds to marry his troubled daughter but Bond declines although he agrees to meet with her again. Later she proves instrumental in helping Bond escape from Blofeld.

In the film, George Lazenby became the new 007, sadly only lasting for one film after taking advice from his agent who felt the days of the Bond films were over. Former Avengers girl Diana Rigg portrayed Tracy. She and Bond fall for each other and are married but sadly, Blofeld takes revenge and she is murdered. Personally, I’ve always felt that this film was one of the best in the 007 film series.

You Only Live Twice

This book follows on from the previous one and we find James Bond depressed and disillusioned with his job after the death of Tracy. M considers sacking Bond but instead sends him on a diplomatic mission to meet the head of the Japanese secret service. The British want access to Russian documents which the Japanese are currently decoding. The Japanese decide to offer this information to Bond if he will assassinate a British resident who has created a garden of death, a garden full of poisonous plants which are attracting many Japanese citizens who want to commit suicide. Bond realises that this man is Blofeld and decides to keep this quiet until after he has killed him.

At the end of the book Blofeld is dead but Bond, who has been masquerading as a Japanese fisherman, is badly hurt and suffering from amnesia. The Japanese woman who has been pretending to be his wife decides to hide Bond in order for him to stay with her. At the end of the book, Bond reads something about Russia which triggers a memory and decides he has to go there.

The only real similarity of the film to the book was that the film was also set in Japan.

The Man with the Golden Gun

This was the last novel in the Bond series and the first Bond book I ever read. It’s a rather disappointing read as Fleming had died before completing his revision of the manuscript.

The novel opens up with Bond reappearing after going missing after his last mission. In fact he has been brainwashed by the Russians into murdering the head of the secret service. His attempt fails but Bond is deprogrammed and M decides to test Bond by sending him after a notorious hitman, Francisco Scaramanga, who has eliminated numerous British agents.

Fleming’s writing process was to create a first draft and then edit and add in more detail with a second draft. Fleming had told friends that James Bond was becoming harder to write and he wanted The Man with the Golden Gun to be his last. He also wanted to finish on a high and was concerned that the book wasn’t good enough for a grand finale. He had told his editor that he had thought about spending another year back at Goldeneye in Jamacia working on the book. Sadly, he suffered a heart attack on the morning of 12th August 1964 and died.

The film version starred Roger Moore playing his usual lacklustre and slightly camp 007 but a memorable screen villain was Ian Fleming’s cousin, Christopher Lee starring as Scaramanga. Britt Ekland joined the ranks of the Bond Girls by playing Mary Goodnight, Bond’s secretary.

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10 Classic TV Ads

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Don’t you just hate TV adverts? I certainly do. There are those times when a TV advert comes in useful I suppose. Perhaps when you are watching a good film and you need to make a cup of tea or pop to the toilet. These days in the hi tech world of TV, most people are able to pause live TV and do those things anyway. I wouldn’t mind if the TV adverts were actually worth watching but these days of course they aren’t. Anyway, here are 6 classic TV ads of yesteryear that I think are rather good. Here we go . .

1.

This is an advert for Strongbow cider featuring Johnny Vaughn, who you might remember as fronting the Channel 4 breakfast show many years ago, and Jerry Hall. Jerry was an American model and was once upon a time involved with Bryan Ferry and then Mick Jagger. It’s a fun advert that has always made me laugh.

2.

A particular favourite of mine is the Ford Puma advert from 1997 featuring Steve McQueen. McQueen of course passed away from cancer in 1969 so how did he feature in the ad? Well, filmmakers shot footage of the Ford Puma in modern San Francisco and digitally inserted McQueen into the driving seat using footage from his 1968 film Bullitt. The result was a stylish short TV ad recreating a scene from the original feature film.

3.

An old TV advert I always used to enjoy involved an old guy trying to trace a copy of a secondhand book; Fly Fishing by J R Hartley. He eventually finds a copy and the book seller asks his name. “J R Hartley” he replies. What were they advertising? Yellow Pages! Strangely enough some bright spark – actually author Michael Russell – produced a spoof book; Fly Fishing by J R Hartley which became a best seller and prompted two additional sequels.

4.

Probably the funniest classic TV ads are the ones with Leonard Rossiter and Joan Collins which are promotions for Cinzano. They actually made 10 TV commercials between 1978 and 1983 which all ended with a glass of Cinzano getting spilled all over Joan.

Rossiter had a successful theatre career but is best remembered for his portrayal of the seedy landlord Rigsby in TV’s Rising Damp, still shown regularly on UK TV. Joan Collins has had a long career in TV and films including a spell in the USA starring in the TV series Dynasty. This year, 2025, she is due to portray Wallis Simpson in a new film production. Leonard Rossiter died in 1984 aged 57.

5.

A great advertising series were those for Boddingtons beer. I used to love a pint of ‘Boddies’ as we used to call it but then the brewery was taken over by another company (Whitbread, I think) and the Boddingtons bitter they produced was really not like the original Boddingtons at all. Anyway, back in the 1990s a series of adverts were produced starring Melanie Sykes speaking in a broad Manchester accent.

6.

My particular favourite Boddingtons ad was this one that starts off in Venice but ends up somewhere in Manchester.

7.

Bolton comedian Peter Kaye featured in a series of ads for John Smiths beer. Can’t say I was that keen, then or now, on John Smiths beer but the adverts were good.

8.

A great favourite for many people were the puppet ‘aliens’ used in an advert for Smash which was a powdered version of mashed potatoes. You just added liquid I presume but personally, I’m happy peeling and boiling my potatoes to make mash just as I have always done.

9.

In 2018 Elton John featured in a Christmas commercial for top end store John Lewis. According to Wikipedia there is a regular Christmas ad for the store every year. I’ve clearly missed the others but I always thought the Elton John one was pretty special.

10.

I’m going to finish with this one advertising another beer, this time Heineken. Bryan Pringle plays a sort of latter day Professor Higgins trying to teach a very well spoken lady, the exotically named Sylvestra le Touzel, to speak cockney. Bryan Pringle featured in a number of films and numerous sitcoms from the 70s to the 90s. He died in 2002.

What were your favourite TV ads?

Those were my 10 TV ads but just before I go to press I thought I’d add one final one. I know I said earlier that modern ads are just not as good these days but I recently spotted this one in which Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal were asked to recreate that famous scene from When Harry met Sally. (I’ll have what she’s having!)

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4 Bad Films (But I Like Them Anyway)

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I am a great film fan as regular readers will know, particularly classic films. I do occasionally watch a film at the cinema but generally I reckon I am really your regular couch potato type of guy who tends to watch films in the comfort of home with a large cup of tea and perhaps a corned beef sandwich nearby.

Most people will have the experience of settling down to watch something good on the TV only to find that the film you have waited for is in fact, a load of old cobblers. What can you do but flip through the channels and try and find something else to watch. The big problem there is if you are watching during the evening, most films start at 9pm so if you have to flip over twenty minutes into a dud film, you’ll have missed the first twenty minutes of the good film that started over on some other channel.

Yes, it can be a hard life for us dedicated couch potatoes, that’s why I like to have a good DVD on standby to rescue the evening if things go sadly wrong.

According to Wikipedia: globally, film production varies significantly by country and year, but in 2023, China produced nearly 780 feature films, while the UK saw 207 films go into production, and the US and Canada saw 569 movies released.

To be honest, looking at those figures it’s hard to understand why a bad film actually gets made. Look at the process a bad film has to go through. Someone has an idea for a film, then they either write a screenplay or pay someone to write one. The screenplay comes to the attention of a producer and he says something like “I bet Brad Pitt would be good in the lead, and, what about Jennifer Anniston for the female lead”.

Scripts are sent out, a budget is raised, directors, cameramen, sound people, set designers and all manner of people come on board. The film is made and released. The critics go to see it and think, wow, this film stinks. Nobody comes to see it and a few weeks later it’s suddenly on Sky cinema with someone hired to write a whole lot of (lying) complimentary stuff about it to make you watch it.

People do watch it, realise it’s bad and twenty minutes later they change channel and are now watching a re-run of Star Trek that was made in 1968. Why didn’t someone way back down the line say ‘hang on, this is rubbish, let’s scrap it and film something else?’

Of course, one man’s Oscar winner is another man’s straight to DVD seriously bad film.

Here’s the crazy thing though, sometimes those bad films are so bad that you actually like them. Anyway, for this week’s blogging entertainment, I thought I’d list a few examples of rubbish films that I kind of enjoy.

Uncle Buck.

Uncle Buck is a complete load of old tosh but I just seem to be drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Never seen it? Really? OK it’s a sort of variant on the film Home Alone and in fact one of the characters is played by that kid from the Home Alone films, Macauley Culkin.

In this film a couple have to leave home because the wife’s father has had a heart attack. Who can they get to babysit the three kids? No one is available so the no-good bum of a brother-in-law is roped in, you guessed it, Uncle Buck.

Uncle Buck is played by the late John Candy and he has to contend with kids he doesn’t even know including, as well as young Mr Culkin, two screen sisters, one of them a teenage girl with a big attitude problem. She is completely embarrassed by her uncouth uncle and his smoke screen producing old banger automobile and even though the film is just a notch above rubbish, it’s actually quite fun in parts.

Buck sorts out ‘Bug’, the teenage girl’s cheating boyfriend and in doing so finally makes friends with his teenage niece. Uncle Buck is a great film to watch when you’re tired and not really paying attention and I always get the feeling it was written by a sort of committee of writers. (Probably the same committee that wrote Home Alone and Three Men and a Baby and so on.)

The thing about Uncle Buck is that the star, John Candy is actually pretty funny (in parts) and there are some actual funny elements to the film. Believe it not, even though I once hated this film, I’m beginning to warm to it.

Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves

There have been numerous film versions of the Robin Hood legend and for me the stand out one is the Errol Flynn version with Errol as Robin, Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian and Basil Rathbone playing the villain. In this rather dire version made in 1991, Kevin Costner plays the legendary English hero with an accent that would not be out of place on the streets of New York.

Costner, as the noble Robin of Loxley, returns from the crusades to find that his father (not a bad performance by British favourite Brian Blessed) has been hung and his home laid to ruin by the Sheriff of Nottingham, played in a villainous but slightly camp way by Alan Rickman, whose performance was universally praised. Robin was accompanied by Azeem, a Muslim who feels he has to repay Robin for saving his life.

The film featured the hit single Everything I Do, I Do it For You sung by Bryan Adams and also had a small cameo from Sean Connery playing King John. The exteriors were shot in the UK and one particular location was at Sycamore Gap, just by Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. The tree used in the sequence became known as the Robin Hood tree which featured in the news in 2023 when it was cut down by vandals.

The film does start out fairly seriously with Robin escaping from capture in the holy lands and then making his way back to England. Alan Rickman’s performance later in the film gives the story a lighter sort of tone and although I’ve always preferred other versions of the Robin Hood legend, over the years I’ve actually begun to like this one.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

So what have we here? A young American lad (Matthew Broderick) decides to have a day off school by pretending to be sick. He calls over his hypochondriac friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and gets him to call their school with the fake news that his girlfriend’s grandmother has died so she (Mia Sara) can also get a day off and the three decide to have a little fun by going out in Cameron’s father’s beloved Ferrari.

The headmaster of the school (the Principal as the Americans call them) knows something is up and is determined to catch Ferris in the act of truancy.

The whole thing is a load of old rubbish but like the other two films mentioned above, it has somehow wormed its way into my affections.

The Vikings

I thought I might finish with that classic rubbish film, The Vikings. The Vikings is a 1958 epic produced by Kirk Douglas who also starred in the film. Douglas and Tony Curtis star as Viking half brothers and if my memory serves me right, they don’t actually know they are brothers. They do a lot of raiding and pillaging over in England and it turns out Tony Curtis might be the heir to a Kingdom in England and Kirk Douglas might be the heir to the Viking leadership. To be honest I’ve never been really sure what the score is even after looking up the film on Wikipedia but the finale ends with Kirk Douglas about to bump off Tony Curtis but hesitates for a moment having been told Tony Curtis is actually his half brother and then during that second of hesitation Curtis manages to bump off Kirk, or was it the other way round?

Anyway, the whole film is a mildly entertaining load of old tosh and my brother and I used to watch it as children and try to imitate the rather catching musical theme.

Once again, despite this being a completely dire film, I always tend to watch it for reasons completely unknown to anyone, especially myself.

What bad films do you enjoy?

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8 Fictional Presidents

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Donald Trump, the 47th president of the US, has been in the news quite a lot recently. He’s cutting down on the number of federal employees. He has stopped federal help for electric cars, he’s made it known he wants the USA to take over Gaza and he is also negotiating with Russia to stop the war in the Ukraine. He doesn’t seem to have involved President Zelensky in these talks despite Zelensky being the president of the Ukraine. Trump has even cast doubt on Zelensky’s right to be the president as, because of the war, Ukraine hasn’t held any elections. This is quite rich really as Putin, the leader of Russia, has not only rigged the Russian elections but has changed the law in Russia so he can continue as president and has also allegedly bumped off Alexei Navalny, his major political opponent.

It’s a story that you couldn’t write and that got me thinking about fictional presidents so I thought I’d start with a book I’ve just read here in sunny Lanzarote.

President Duncan

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson has been a good holiday read. A helter skelter fast paced read but moves along quickly and has nicely laid out short chapters to enable me to pause, jump in the pool to cool off and then resume reading.

President Duncan has a lot of problems on his hands. His wife has recently died of cancer and he is suffering from some sort of blood disease. On top of that the Speaker of the House has started hearings regarding rumours that the President spoke to a known terrorist on the phone and even helped him to escape capture.

Not only that but the President agrees to meet an unknown woman who knows a secret password known only to the President and his trusted advisors. She asks the President to meet her colleague at a football game without security and the President agrees and dismisses the Secret Service. Happily the Secret Service are hanging about closely and save the President from an assassin’s bullet but now he has to deal with a threat concerning a computer virus that will shut down every computer in the USA including those that deal with nuclear strikes.

One of the reviews on the back cover was from someone who likened the book to the film Airforce One, and to be honest, I felt the same way, even picturing the President as Harrison Ford, who played the President in that film.

The book was a great holiday read although I did wonder what part Bill Clinton played in the writing process. Did he just provide background to James Patterson or did he contribute towards the storyline too?

Anyway, the book was a great holiday read.

President James Marshall

Clearly I have to follow on with Airforce One, an action packed film starring Harrison Ford as President James Marshall. In this film the President leaves Russia in his aircraft, Airforce One after a joint US/Russian mission to capture a terrorist named General Ivan Radek. Unknown to the President, a group of Radek sympathisers have joined the aircraft posing as journalists. They take over the Airforce One but it looks as though the President has got away in an escape pod. However, the President was unwilling to leave his family behind and he has hidden himself in the cargo hold. The film then unfolds in the manner of a Die Hard film with the President bumping off the terrorists and managing to contact the White House and also to free his colleagues pretty much in the way that Bruce Willis might have done.

Not a great cinema experience but I kind of enjoyed it.

President Jordan Lyman

Seven Days in May was a political thriller released in 1964 and directed by John Frankenheimer. Kirk Douglas plays United States Marine Corps Colonel “Jiggs” Casey who works for Four Star General James Mattoon Scott, a highly-decorated officer played by Burt Lancaster. Jiggs thinks that Scott might be planning a coup to remove the President who has just signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, a deal which is highly unpopular with the military. Jiggs discovers that a military group known as ECOMCON has been assigned to seize radio and television networks. He manages to see the President and convince him of the threat. The President, still somewhat sceptical, organises a small group of staff to investigate.

Interestingly, President Kennedy authorised the producers to film scenes at the White House. He had read the book that the film was based on and as he had dealt with critical members of the military himself, was perhaps worried that the fictional scenario could be a real possibility.

The President was played by Frederic March who was one of the great cinema actors of the 1930s and 40s. He was the original Norman Maine in the first version of A Star is Born made in 1936 and even starred with Greta Garbo in Anna Karenina in 1935.

Presidents Palmer, Taylor and Logan

The TV series 24 first appeared in 2001 on US television. Each episode lasted for an hour and is told in real time with a digital clock on screen updating the viewer. The first series is set on the day of the US presidential primary in California. Jack Bauer, a maverick agent of the CTU Counter Terrorism Unit, is detailed to protect presidential hopeful David Palmer from an assassination attempt. Palmer was played by Dennis Haysbert as a potential black US president.

Season 2 details how Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, must prevent a nuclear bomb from exploding and assist David Palmer, now the US president, in finding the culprits. Jack is assisted by a team of agents at the CTU hi-tech control room who are adept at computer manipulation, taking over feeds from CCTV cameras, hacking into other public computers and researching various information to help Jack.

Allison Taylor is the first female president of the USA. She first appeared in the episode Redemption which was a bridging episode between series 6 and 7 as series 7 was delayed due to a writers’ strike in Hollywood. Taylor was played by actress Cherry Jones and almost seemed to be a precursor to a real life female president. As it happened, Hilary Clinton was defeated at the polls and Donald Trump became the president in 2017. (Personally, I always like President Taylor. She always reminded me a little of Captain Janeway from the TV series Star Trek Voyager.)

President Logan was played by Gregory Itzin and first appeared in season 4. He was the Vice President but was later sworn in as President when the previous President was injured in a terrorist attack. As President, Logan becomes involved in the murder of former President Palmer and is eventually forced to resign. Later, he tries to help President Taylor with a peace treaty with the Russians but again, some dodgy dealings lead him to commit suicide. Some thought the character was inspired by real life President Richard Nixon. Whether that was true or not I’m not sure but Logan was a very tricky President indeed.

I thoroughly enjoyed 24. Jack Bauer was an uncompromising agent who was convinced that the end justified the means and would shoot anyone, threaten anyone, good or bad who got in his way. The series was a very slick hi tech espionage show which combined spies, shoot outs and computer science in an exciting TV series.

Presidents Kane and Kennedy

Shall We Tell the President was a novel by Jeffrey Archer first published in 1977. In the book Edward Kennedy has become the US President and FBI agents become aware of a plot to kill the President.

I read this book many years ago but recently came across this new edition, rewritten by the author himself. In real life Ted Kennedy never made it to the White House, his challenge cut short by the ghost of what happened to Mary Jo Kopechene at Chappaquiddick. In this rewrite then, the author puts his own fictional president, President Kane in charge at the White House.

The FBI learn of a plot to murder the President. A Greek waiter, an illegal immigrant, learns of the plot whilst working as a waiter at a restaurant in Washington DC. He calls the FBI and the two agents assigned to the case report quickly to their superior. Soon, one of the agents and their boss, as well as the informant are dead leaving only one agent who by chance has survived a murder attempt. He has six days to track down the assassins.

The book kept me interested but I can’t say it was a great read and I thought some of the dialogue was a little poor, in particular the FBI agent who kept referring to his new girlfriend constantly as ‘pretty lady’ was a little cringeworthy to say the least. Sorry Mr Archer but I’d have to give this one a five out of ten.

Just off the top of my head without using Google, that’s about all the fictional presidents I can come up with for now. Which was your favourite?

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