From Scratch - an eight part mini-series on Netflix from 2022 All right, let’s start with a spoiler alert - this eight part series turns out to be a ‘disease of the week’ story - a rare cancer in this case. Enter only if you enjoy the throbbing and sobbing that comes with lovers separated …
MISHA AND THE WOLVES
Misha and the Wolves is a remarkable 2021 documentary (now on Netflix) directed by Sam Hobkinson. It’s about Misha Defonseca, the author of Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years (1997), a book that made Defonseca a bestselling author and was the basis for a major French movie. Defonseca grew up in Brussels during the …
CUNK ON EARTH
Cunk on Earth BBC MINI SERIES 2020 Move over Dumb and Dumber! Philomena Cunk has arrived, bearing gifts of silliness that will really get the old lungs wheezing from a surfeit of mirth and merriment. ‘Cunk on Earth’ is a ‘mockumentary’ in five episodes that follows the rise of civilization on Earth from cave dwellers …
THE KNIVES OUT MYSTERIES
Knives Out (2019) is a murder mystery in the best traditions of the genre. The movie won an academy award for best film script and the award was well justified - it’s a classy production with a strong cast and has a story that Agatha Christie would have killed for. Harlan Thrombey (played by Christopher …
THE GHIT THAT JUST KEEPS GIVING
Ronald Rump, former Grand High Imperial Twitterbug (GHIT) and former Prez of ‘Murica, has his sights set on reclaiming all his former titles: GHIT, Prez and ‘World’s Greatest Comedian’ (WGC) with millions of his adoring acolytes pouring money into his 2024 re-election campaign. Rump kicked off his WGC comedy routine by being indicted on felony …
TÁR – THE MOVIE
Tár, a 2020 film written, directed and produced by Todd Field, is already celebrated by many critics. It’s one of those ‘art’ movies that you’ll either love or think the two hours and thirty-eight minutes spent watching it would have been better used to watch paint dry. At the beginning of the movie Lydia Tár …
GHOST DREAMS BY MATTHEW HUGHES
Ghost Dreams by Matthew Hughes, PS publishing 2022 - Stan Winkelman, career burglar from a long family line of light-fingered criminals, is nearing the end of his career and thinking about retirement on a tropical island. His wife has been dead for a long time, having left him the sole care-giver of Jeannie, a now …
ROALD DAHL’S CHILDREN’S MOVIES
By the time Roald Dahl died in late 1990, there were already a few films based on his children’s works, none of which he liked. The most famous of these was the 1971 Mel Stuart version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. Despite the commercial success of the movie, Dahl was disappointed that Gene Wilder …
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS FROM A DAHL’S EYE VIEW
Roald Dahl would have loved the attention he’s been getting lately - while alive he courted controversy and was often inspired to tweak people's sensibilities with outlandish statements. On the other hand, given how carefully he crafted his work, he probably would have had apoplexy over the intention of his publisher to create new editions …
Continue reading POLITICAL CORRECTNESS FROM A DAHL’S EYE VIEW
A YEAR LATER – PART THREE
A YEAR LATER - PART THREE I’ve always considered myself government wary and, acknowledging history’s horrible examples, more of a pragmatist than a military hawk. I confess that I also never imagined a world entering the 21st Century with some idiot in charge of a major world nuclear power invading an independent country and …
Richard's Left Bank 