Category Archives: motion pictures

5 British Rom-Coms

Posted on by Steve Higgins

My original idea for this post was to write about 90s British films but then I realised some of those 90’s films were actually from the 2000’s. I then changed tack to a blog about films written by Richard Curtis but that meant cutting out a few films that I really wanted to include. Then I thought what about films with Hugh Grant? Great but although many of the films below feature Hugh, I’ve got a personal favourite in which he doesn’t star. That of course has led to the final incarnation of this post, 5 British Rom-Coms.

4 Weddings and a Funeral 1994

I’ve always rather loved this film. In a way I tend to think of it as a sort of modern Ealing Comedy, or at least the sort of film that Ealing would be making were they still in business. The only difficulty in that respect is the rather liberal use of the ‘f’ word that the film can really do without. In the USA, or so I have read, the version screened over there has the ‘f’ word substituted by the slightly less alarming word bugger.

The plot is pretty simple. It’s about a group of friends who only seem to meet regularly at weddings. At the first wedding Charles, played by Hugh Grant, meets Carrie and falls for her only to find she is about to return to the USA. Happily he meets her again at another wedding and, sadly for Charles, he meets her again at yet another wedding, this time one in which she is the bride.

The happiness of constant weddings is shattered by the death of one of Charles’ friends but this being a rom-com, things all work out in the end. Carrie is played by Andie McDowell and the supporting actors who appear at each wedding are all well known to fans of British film and TV.

Four Weddings and a Funeral is the movie that brought fame to writer Richard Curtis and actor Hugh Grant, as the announcer mentioned last time I saw this film on the television. Strangely, he didn’t mention Mike Newell, who directed the film. Funny how the credit from a successful film doesn’t always get spread equally around.

Notting Hill 1999

Written again by Richard Curtis and starring Hugh Grant, Grant this time plays William Thacker, the owner of a bookshop in London’s Notting Hill. One afternoon at the bookshop, Hollywood film star Anna Scott played by Julia Roberts comes into the shop to browse. Not long afterwards William accidentally walks into her and spills takeaway drinks all over her. He invites her back to his place just across the road where she cleans herself up.

On another occasion the two go out for a date but William’s oddball flatmate Spike played by Rhys Ifans, happens to mention the film star’s presence to his mates at the pub and the flat is soon swamped by reporters. Anna is not amused and the two fall out and seem to go their separate ways.

There is a really lovely sequence here in which William walks along the Portabello Road and the scene transforms into winter, then autumn and finally summer showing the passage of time in a really unique way. Later, the two manage to sort things out just before Anna leaves for the USA.

Over on Wikipedia it was interesting to find that according to a 2018 interview High Grant gave to GQ magazine, the idea came to Richard Curtis after one of his friends became involved with an unnamed ‘big star’. The film was shot on location in Notting Hill and the blue door to William Thacker’s place in the film was actually a property owned by Richard Curtis.

Julia Roberts was the producer’s only choice for Anna Scott although personally, just like Andie McDowell in 4 weddings, I’ve never found her remotely attractive.

The film won a Brit Award for its soundtrack.

Sliding Doors 1998

This was a film written and directed by Peter Howitt. Howitt is probably best known for playing the part of Joey Boswell in the TV comedy series Bread. This is a really super film which is about a girl, Helen Quilley, who gets fired from her PR job. Helen, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, heads off for home. She goes to the tube station but is only seconds too late and misses her train. The film then rewinds a few minutes and when it replays, Helen manages to catch the train. The film then sets off in two separate directions with two differing storylines. In one she arrives home to find her boyfriend in bed with another woman. In the second she arrives home later and the boyfriend manages to cover up his two timing activities.

The film was made in 1998 but still looks fresh and contemporary. The only jarring things -from a 2026 point of view- are people still smoking in pubs and offices filled with huge computer monitors. It’s a lovely film and one I tend to watch quite a lot on DVD.

Bridget Jones Diary 2001

This film was based on the book by Helen Fielding and had a script written by Fielding, Andrew Davies and once again, Richard Curtis. American actress Renee Zellweger played Bridget with a very impressive British accent with her love interests played by Hugh Grant and Colin Firth.

Bridget works in publicity for a publishing company. She is 32 and worried about her weight and confides all her worries as well as her fantasies to her diary. At her mother’s Christmas party, she meets barrister Mark Darcy, a neighbour from her childhood, who she finds arrogant and rude. At work she flirts a lot with her boss Daniel Cleaver played by Grant and begins an affair with him only to find that he is a serial cheater.

Who will Bridget end up with, the slimy but nice Daniel or the boring but nice Mark? One of the film’s highlights is a drunken street fight between Daniel and Mark which plays out pretty much how two upper/middle class twits would be expected to behave.

Three sequels were made to the film, the last one was Mad About the Boy in 2025 but personally, I think the original was the best.

About a Boy 2002

This is still a rom-com but considerably darker than the other films on this list. Hugh Grant plays someone slightly different to his usual film persona. Will Freeman is a young man in his 30s who lives a rather aimless life. He does not go out to work, instead he has ample funds because of regular royalties due from a popular tune which was written by his late father. His one aim in life is to meet women and he happens to come across a young mother and feels that young single parent females would be good for him because they are mostly on the lookout for a new man. To achieve this aim he joins a group for single parents where he is the only man and after spinning a yarn about being deserted by the mother of his only child, ‘Ned’, he feels warmed by the sympathy vote of the whole group and quickly gets involved with an attractive young mother called Suzie.

Through various circumstances, this leads him to meet Marcus, the son of one of Suzie’s friends and the two begin a friendship of sorts which begins to bring a new meaning to Will’s life.

Overall, the film is perhaps a little slow and rather dark in a way but still a great film based on a book by Nick Hornby.

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5 Crime Fighting Duos

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Crime Fighting Duos? What’s that about you might be thinking? Well I thought I’d write about TV investigative couples so let’s go back to the 1960s and start with one of my favourite TV pairings, Steed and Mrs Peel.

Steed and Emma

Steed and Emma featured in The Avengers, no, not the Marvel comic book heroes but the TV sci-fi/espionage series. John Steed and Emma Peel were two secret agents working for an unnamed agency in a very quirky version of 1960s England. The series was first broadcast in 1961 and starred Patrick Macnee and Ian Hendry. Macnee played the debonair John Steed and when Ian Hendry left after the first series, Steed became the focus of the show with his new assistant Cathy Gale played by Honor Blackman.

Honor Blackman became a TV star with her portrayal of Cathy Gale as a leather wearing judo expert. She and Macnee even recorded a hit single together called ‘Kinky Boots’ which became a minor hit.

When Honor left to become a Bond girl in the film Goldfinger the TV production had something of a makeover. The series was sold to the US TV network ABC and moved from videotape to 35mm film. A new character was added, Mrs Emma Peel. The producers chose actress Elizabeth Shepherd to play the part. Shepherd shot the pilot film episode and part of the next one, but the producers decided to drop her, feeling she was not right for the role. With a two-million-dollar deal with the US network ABC hanging in the balance, they began searching for a new Emma Peel and chose unknown actress Diana Rigg.

Diana Rigg was perfect for the new crime fighter/agent Mrs Peel and wowed TV audiences with her intelligence, her judo and karate skills, her avant-garde fashion sense and her witty banter with Steed.

Diana Rigg became famous as Mrs Peel and played the part until 1967 when, like Honor Blackman before her, she left the to become a Bond girl in ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’. Patrick Macnee continued to play the bowler hatted John Steed and Linda Thorson was recruited to star as Steed’s partner. The series was rebooted in the 1970s as The New Avengers starring Macnee with Joanna Lumley and Gareth Hunt as his new colleagues.

Steed and Mrs Peel are surely the most fondly remembered characters in the series. My favourite episode is one called The House That Jack Built which was about a mad inventor who is fired from a company run by Mrs Peel’s father. He builds an electronically operated house in which to trap and kill Mrs Peel. She eventually escapes just as Steed arrives to save her!

A film version was made with Ralph Fiennes and Uma Thurman in 1998 but it was a resounding flop.

Napoleon and Illya

Robert Vaughn and David McCallum played two secret agents working for UNCLE (the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement) who try to foil the evil organisation THRUSH. (What that stood for I’ve never known.) Vaughn starred as Napoleon Solo and McCallum played Russian born Illya Kuryakin. UNCLE headquarters was in New York, accessed through a fake dry-cleaning store. Inside UNCLE HQ was a very hi-tech environment with steel corridors and sliding doors.

Head of UNCLE was Mr Waverly played by Leo G Carroll who every week gave his two agents their assignments and off they went into the world, armed with an array of secret gadgets like explosives hidden in their shoes and a communicator built into a pen. ‘Open channel D’ was something regular viewers like me would hear every week as well as the wonderful theme music by Jerry Goldsmith.

David McCallum had a big fan following especially with the ladies but Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo was my favourite.

Starsky and Hutch

I used to watch this show many years ago and to be honest, I liked it but I was never a firm fan. Starsky and Hutch were two California plain clothes cops played by Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul. They drove around Bay City, a fictional California town in a Ford Gran Torino in bright red with a white vector flash down the sides. Looking up the series on Wikipedia, I see that Paul Glaser actually hated the car, pointing out that a bright red car with a distinctive paint job was not the best idea for a pair of undercover cops. Oh well, the car was pretty popular with viewers and especially with a certain type of late seventies boy racers. (You know the type, young guys who painted or stuck white flashes on the sides of their souped up old bangers and tried to burn you off at traffic lights).

To sum up then, Starsky and Hutch is about two somewhat scruffy wisecracking cops, tearing around the city in a bright red car like they’ve got somewhere very important to be, even if half the time they’re just chasing some dodgy lead or getting into trouble. The whole vibe is full on ’70s; big collars and big flairs but then again, it was made in the mid 70s so you can’t get more 70s than that.

Starsky and Hutch was remade as a not particularly serious big screen film in 2004 starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Glaser and Soul made a brief appearance at the end of the picture but I can’t help thinking the film might have worked out better if things were the other way round and Stiller and Wilson were the ones who only appeared at the end.

Randall and Hopkirk

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is one of those offbeat late 60s TV shows where the premise sounds completely ridiculous and yet somehow works perfectly: two private detectives, but one is a ghost. Marty Hopkirk gets run over and killed in episode one but returns as a ghost to help Jeff Randall solve his murder. After that, Marty decides to stay on and help out with other cases too. On one side you’ve got a fairly standard detective story unfolding, the next minute poor Jeff Randall is trying to explain clues that only he can see because his dead partner Marty Hopkirk is hovering nearby in an unmistakable white suit but invisible to anyone except Jeff. It’s quirky, a bit spooky, very tongue in cheek and exactly the sort of inventive television that the late sixties seemed to produce with effortless confidence.

In later years the show was rebooted with comedy duo Reeves and Mortimer. Personally, I’ve always found the 60s version starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope with Annette Andre as Marty’s widow to be far superior.

Mulder and Scully

Mulder and Scully are the two FBI agents at the centre of the X Files, secret FBI files profiling unexplained and unsolved mysteries. Fox Mulder is convinced of the existence of the paranormal while Dana Scully is a practical scientist assigned to take a technical and analytic view of Mulder’s work.

The two argue and debate their way through various bizarre cases. One minute it’s some weird creature lurking in the woods, the next it’s shadowy government plots and secret labs. Somehow, despite all the paranoia and eerie moments, there’s a lot of dry humour and a really strong partnership between them that makes the whole thing strangely cosy to watch, even when the lights are off and the theme music is giving you goosebumps.

In my absolute favourite episode, the pair are monitoring a secret installation in area 51 and are confronted by government officers when a flying saucer flies overhead. When it passes over, it’s energy or radiation morphs Mulder’s mind into the mind of one of the area 51 staff and his mind into Mulder’s body. The other guy, the area 51 guy is quite happy at this incredible transformation. He and his wife are not getting on and suddenly finding himself in the body of a single man is clearly ok with him. Mulder on the other hand has to convince Scully that this incredible incident has actually happened.

The X Files was first shown in the late 1990’s and ran until 2002 spanning 9 seasons. The series returned in 2016 and then again in 2018. Plans are afoot, or so I have read, for another revival with new actors.

Remember, the truth is out there.

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5 Screen Portrayals of Real People

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I did a post on this subject a while ago and I thought it’s time for a follow up post. My original highlighted 8 screen portrayals but this time I thought I’d focus on just 5.

Glenn Miller

The Glenn Miller Story was a film that I first saw on TV back in the 1960’s. Sadly, as much as I loved it then, when I see it these days it is a little disappointing. James Stewart was far too old to play Glenn Miller, at least in my view.

June Alyson played Glenn’s wife and she elevated the use of the word ‘annoying’ to a new level with her constant beginning or ending of a phrase with ‘Honestly!’ I imagine the scriptwriter was fairly pleased with himself, coming up with a cute bit of business like that. Wrong! If I had been Glenn Miller and June Alyson my wife, I would have been sorely tempted to employ some appropriately placed Gaffer tape to remedy that situation.

One odd moment in the film comes when Glenn comes home from work and his wife takes him upstairs and says, ‘look what just arrived’ and guess what had arrived: two children who seemed to have arrived in time honoured fashion via the unseen stork. Of course, they may have been adopted, I really don’t know because it wasn’t really explained very well but it was a little bit like one of those moments in old episodes of Blue Peter, the children’s TV show, where Valerie Singleton or John Noakes would say, ‘and here’s one I made earlier!’

I must have mentioned in previous posts about how I used to have a cassette tape recorder and how many times I used to drag my poor brother into performing the skits and plays I used to write. One time we did a skit on the Glenn Miller story and there was me in my best American accent drawling, James Stewart style, ‘that sound, that certain sound, I need to find that certain sound and I’m gonna keep on looking till I find it.’ Throw in my brother blowing a fart down a cardboard tube and cue me as James Stewart: ‘That sound, that certain sound: That’s it! I’ve found it!’

I feel a little mean trashing a film I’ve always loved but it’s like a lot of things that I used to love years ago, they don’t always hold up when you see them again years later. James Stewart was, as I mentioned earlier, a little too old to play Miller and to be honest, Stewart just played Miller like he played every other character in every other film he was ever in.

The Glenn Miller Story pops up on TV every now and again and despite me not appreciating various elements of the film, I still love the music and it’s nice to see the guest stars in the film, people like Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa the fabulous drummer, bandleader Ben Pollack and the Modernaires, a vocal group who worked with Miller’s band as well as many others.

David Frost and Richard Nixon

In the film Frost/Nixon, Michael Sheen plays the part of David Frost and Frank Langella portrays Nixon. Sheen is perfect as Frost and Langella is pretty good too as Nixon. The film is about Nixon in his later years as he seeks to defend his legacy as President of the USA. Back then, Frost was a jet setting TV interviewer and personality and he sets up a deal to make a series of interviews with Nixon. Unable to find financial backing, Frost is forced to broker the deal with money from various backers and is worried that the project will fail financially.

Frost’s team are worried about something different; they feel that Frost is not serious enough to actually challenge Nixon about his actions as President and are concerned that the broadcasts will actually vindicate Nixon of any wrongdoing during Watergate.

In the final interview though, Frost manages to pressure Nixon into making the famous admission that he acted illegally when he famously says “when the President does it, that means it’s not illegal!”

I’ve always been fascinated by Nixon and Watergate and for me this was a wonderful film. I love the moment when Nixon, just as he and Frost are about to go on air, turns to Frost and asks “did you do any fornicating last night?”

Douglas Bader

Kenneth Moore played the part of World War II flying ace Douglas Bader in the film Reach For The Sky. Bader was a famous figure from the battle of Britain who rose to the rank of Group Captain despite losing both his legs in a flying accident in 1931.

His story was told in the 1956 film which was based on a biography of Bader by author Paul Brickhill.

The film is one of those that I first saw as a child and like The Glenn Miller Story, I’m not sure if it really works today. Moore plays a good part as Bader. As a young cadet he and his colleagues are told not to do low level aerobatics as it is too dangerous. Bader however disregards this after a passing remark from a civilian pilot. He takes off, gives the civilians something of a show but his wing tags the ground and his plane flips over and crashes. Doctors have no choice but to amputate his legs, one below the knee and one above.

The narrative then shows Bader’s determination to walk using his metal legs. Despite this however he is discharged from the RAF.

When the war breaks out though, the air force is desperate for pilots and Bader is able to return to the cockpit. Even so, he still displays something of a cavalier attitude, dumping his admin in a rubbish bin and once again performing low level flying, this time to convince his junior pilots that he knows how to fly.

I remember reading something about Bader years ago which was not complimentary at all so I decided to ask Google what the real Bader was like. The results that came back were not good. He clearly wasn’t anything like Kenneth Moore and many of his contemporaries found him abrasive and unpleasant and he was known to be harsh, particularly towards non officers.

I read once, and I think it was in racing driver Graham Hill’s autobiography, Hill tells the story of playing golf with Bader and just as Hill was about to take his shot, Bader started knocking his pipe on his metal legs!

He was however a courageous man and fought bravely for his country, in fact he was shot down and imprisoned in a POW camp which is shown at the end of Reach For the Sky.

Despite his disability Bader still managed various escapes and ended up finishing the war in Colditz Castle.

Winston Churchill

A while ago I stayed up late watching the film Darkest Hour which is about Winston Churchill and the beginning of his Prime Ministership in World War II. It paints a rather bleak picture of Winston’s premiership, with the Conservative party apparently holding back from supporting him and a growing clique actually wanting to replace him with Lord Halifax. When France fell to the Nazis, Halifax wanted to explore peace talks with Hitler which Churchill was violently opposed to. I’m not sure how true to life the film was and although I can imagine not everyone was 100% behind Churchill, I found some of this film a little hard to believe. There was a vote of no confidence in the Commons in 1942 although Churchill won this by a resounding 475 votes to 25. In the film, Conservatives still will not support Churchill in the Commons until outgoing premier Neville Chamberlain signalled them to do so by placing a white handkerchief on his knee. By then Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement were totally discredited so would he really have had such sway over his fellow MPs? I doubt it.

The film shows Churchill in various situations, in bed and in the bath, all the time dictating to his secretaries. We see him with his cigars and brandy, as well as in the House of Commons giving those famous speeches which united the country in those dark times. Gary Oldman played the part of Churchill and aided by some impressive make up he gave a really excellent performance.

I suppose actors playing the part of real people have a choice; either to try, to a certain extent, to impersonate the real person or like James Stewart and Kenneth Moore, just to represent the idea of the person in their own way. I like all the portrayals I talk about above but I think my favourite was Michael Sheen’s version of David Frost.

Do you have a favourite?

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Netflix and Me

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’m 69 years old and I come from a generation (the so-called baby boomers generation) that expects certain things. One of those is that for the most part, television is free. I say for the most part because of course one has to buy an actual TV set, set up an aerial and pay for a TV licence. Apart from those minor things TV is comparatively free.

Tv programmes of course cost money, quite a lot of money in fact. Back in the 1990s when I was fresh from a video production course and hoping to actually get a job in the TV industry (I never did) I was told an hour of television costs £100,000. What it costs nowadays is anyone’s guess but then again, it’s so easy to make a TV show in 2026. One of my favourite programmes is Canal Boat Diaries, an entirely self-shot show which has graduated from YouTube onto the BBC and can be seen quite regularly on the U-Yesterday channel. Does that mean an hour of TV is worth more or less than that 90’s figure of £100,000?

There was once a time when I could settle back and watch all the current F1 races live for free but sadly, those pesky money-making F1 managers combined forces with their like-minded TV producers and decided they could make a little extra dosh by setting up the Sky F1 Channel and charging people to watch live F1. No thanks. I’ll carry on putting up with the Channel Four highlights until I either get bored with F1 or win the lottery.

Perhaps it’s then a little mean of me to sit back and expect free television. Times move on and instead of the two or even three channels I remember from my youth, today we have hundreds of channels. Even so, there are many evenings when I scroll through my channel listings only to find nothing worth watching.

That brings me to Netflix. Not so long ago 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.

Some time ago 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.

Before watching The Crown, I had no idea of the background of Prince Phillip. 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 was 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 and the two, both of whom were artists, tried to examine the other through their works. Churchill was hugely disappointed at the result 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.

Another episode dramatised was the broadcast made by the Duke of Windsor when he abdicated. The Duke flips in and out of various episodes. 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.

I thoroughly enjoyed this splendid series which I’m sure everyone has watched ages ago but for me, a latecomer to Netflix, is very new.

We watched The Crown last year while staying in the Loire valley even though we don’t normally watch much TV on holiday. This year in Lanzarote, we spent many an evening watching Emily in Paris, another Netflix show. I’d found it by searching on the internet for good TV shows to watch on Netflix and Emily came up so we thought we’d give it a go.

The series was created by producer Darren Star who was also the producer of Sex and the City and in some ways Emily in Paris is very similar to the early Sex and the City seasons. Emily was produced for the Paramount TV channel but made its way over to Netflix. It’s a light comedy show about a young girl, Emily, who is asked to move from Chicago to work in the Paris office of a marketing firm. The comedy comes about from highlighting the cultural differences between the USA and France and although the last season, season 5 was a little tame, the previous 4 seasons were excellent.

At the heart of the show is a love story. Emily falls for a young chef who has an apartment on the floor below her Paris flat. He falls for her too but he is engaged to another girl who befriends Emily. Later Emily gets involved with an British banker but then he falls for Emily’s other friend and then the chef’s girlfriend has a lesbian affair. See what I mean about Sex and the City?

According to Wikipedia, the show did get some criticism for stereotyping the French in general and Parisians in particular but for me I thought the depiction of the French was really quite good. Even though I speak only a little French, one of the things that is difficult for an Englishman in France is the speed at which the French speak. It’s not too bad in the Loire but especially noticeable in subtitled French films and TV shows.

What else have I watched on Netflix? Well, I did watch the film version of The Thursday Murder Club as I mentioned in another post a few weeks ago. Other than that, I haven’t watched much else. Netflix is a little overwhelming for me, I much prefer my TV in the old-fashioned way, regular broadcast times like they have on the traditional terrestrial channels.

Still, if Netflix is the TV of the future, I suppose I’d better get used to it!

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8 Random Films: Can you Guess the Connection?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’ve done a few of these posts where I connect one film to another through either the actors or directors or other random things. This week I’m going to talk about two groups of four films and see if you the reader can guess what links them together. I’m hoping this might be a bit of a challenge, even for the most ardent film fans but anyway, here we go.

Top Hat

Top Hat was a film produced in 1935 and starred Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. It is one the great song and dance musicals of all time. The premise of the film is just Astaire following the girl of his dreams, Ginger Rogers, across Europe but the story is just background to the wonderful songs of Irving Berlin. Two stand out favourites are Cheek to Cheek and Top Hat, White Tie and Tails. The film was directed by Mike Sandrich who also directed 5 of Rogers’ and Astaire’s films.

Together Astaire and Rogers made 5 films together but the most successful was Top Hat.

Red River

One of my favourite westerns, Red River stars John Wayne and Montgomery Clift who have to drive a shed load of cattle from Texas to Missouri. There’s a great moment when Wayne says to Clift ‘Take ‘em to Missouri Matt!’ and the cattle drive begins. The film was produced and directed by Howard Hawks way back in 1948. Taking a quick look on Wikipedia, it was interesting to find that there were various versions of the film but the original theatrical cut was reassembled by Janus films in 2014 for the DVD release.

Singin’ In the Rain

This is another film classic, perhaps even the ultimate Hollywood musical. Released in 1952 it is set in the 1920s and stars Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O’Connor. The film has some hugely famous scenes, like that unforgettable opening number where Gene Kelly splashes through puddles and sings the title song. It’s also got a super fun storyline about the transition from silent films to “talkies”. The film was directed and choreographed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donan.

The Shining

This was a film directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the book by Stephen King. King apparently hated the film which is why he went on to produce another version years later. The film stars Jack Nicholson who gives an eerie performance as author Jack Torrance. The plot revolves around the Overlook Hotel which closes during the winter as the location becomes inaccessible due to heavy winter weather. Jack and family are chosen as caretakers to look after the hotel until it reopens in the spring. Throw in a child who ‘shines’, that is to say able to communicate with the spirit world and an evil spirit who apparently takes over Nicholson’s character and you have a pretty terrifying film.

The film was actually shot in the UK at Elstree studios although a second unit did some exterior shots in the USA. At Elstree huge sets were built to represent the interior and exterior of the hotel.

A famous scene involves Jack chopping through a door to reach his wife played by Shelley Duvall. The scene was originally shot with a fake door but Nicholson who was a former firefighter in the national guard chopped through it too quickly and so a thick solid door had to be used.

Kubrick demanded numerous takes of many scenes and Shelley Duvall in particular argued with Kubrick about retakes, dialogue and her acting style.

Ok that’s the first of four films I want to talk about. Any idea of the connection? Let me carry on with a second group of four films and the connection might finally become clear.

The Last Picture Show

Another modern classic. This film was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and is set in a small town in northern Texas in the early 1950s. The film has an ensemble cast but the two main characters are Sonny and Duane played by Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges. The two are teenagers and old friends and various things happen to them. They fall out over a girl called Jacy played by Cybill Shepherd. Ben Johnson plays ‘Sam the Lion’ who owns the bar and cinema in the town. Sam has a mentally disabled son who Sonny has befriended. Various things happen to the pair but towards the end of the film Duane enlists in the army and is due to leave town so the pair decide to visit the town cinema for the very last picture show as the cinema is about to close after Sam’s sudden death.

Crimes and Misdemeanours

This is one of Woody Allen’s darker films. There are many interlocking stories but the central theme involves Judah Rosenthal played by Martin Landau who has an affair with a woman played by Anjelica Huston. The woman -Dolores- is threatening to confront Judah’s wife and Judah, desperate to save his marriage isn’t sure what to do. He asks his brother, a gangster and he recommends violence and even murder. Other stories include a rabbi facing blindness and on a lighter level, Woody plays a documentary film maker who falls for a woman played by Mia Farrow. She in turn is romanced by Alan Alda, playing a TV producer, who Woody’s character despises. It’s one of my favourites of Woody’s films but don’t expect too many laughs.

The Green Mile

Like The Shining, this is another film based on a book by Stephen King. Tom Hanks plays the head of a death row section of an American penitentiary. One of the inmates is John Coffey, a huge black man who appears to have healing powers. He cures Tom Hanks’ bladder infection but the mood in death row is not good after sadistic Percy Wetmore joins the team and deliberately sabotages the execution of another inmate causing the prisoner to die in terrible agony. The warden’s wife is terminally ill and Hanks and his team wonder if John Coffey could cure her.

Twister

Twister is a disaster film made in 1996 which stars Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton as storm chasers. They and their team are trying to get first hand information about tornados and cyclones. The two are separated and are about to divorce but together they are in competition with another group of storm chasers. The special effects are good and I’ve always found it to be a hugely entertaining film.

Ok. That’s my final four films. Are you any the wiser? Do you have the connection yet?

Here’s the answer, the first four films were all featured in the second four films.

In The Last Picture Show the town’s small cinema is about to close down and Duane and Sonny pay a visit to see Red River.

In Crimes and Misdemeanours, Woody Allen’s character Cliff Stern invites Helley Reed played by Mia Farrow to watch Singing in The Rain on his editing machine while they eat a take away curry.

In The Green Mile, the story is told in flashback and Tom Hank’s character Paul, who was cured of the bladder infection is now 108 years old. He watches the film Top Hat and tells the story of John Coffey to his friend Elaine.

In Twister, the team of storm chasers relax and stop at a garage area. By the garage is a drive in theatre and the team enjoy snacks and coffee while the picture is playing. A storm begins to approach and strong winds quickly develop. What film was playing? Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The theatre is destroyed just as Jack is chopping through the door in The Shining’s most famous scene.

They were my film connections for this week. Hope you enjoyed reading and tune in again next Saturday for another post.

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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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