An Irish famine revenge thriller with a star cast of character actors. Seems wholly relevant today. For, without such stories, how will we remember why the “Irish Border” remains a political issue.
Read morePeterloo
REFORM, UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, EQUAL REPRESENTATION and LOVE were some of the banners carried by peaceful demonstrators into Manchester on August 16th, 1819. A panicked official unleashed mounted troops onto the crowd, killing 13 men, four women and a child, and seriously injuring nearly 700 others. The horrors of a suppressed democracy -and a timely, brutal…
Read moreMy Friend the Rapist, My Friend the Survivor
Each year I join the pre-selection committee of the Monte Carlo TV Festival Golden Nymph Awards. I truly love this experience because it exposes me to a whole bunch of top flight global television that I maybe wouldn’t otherwise get to see, and my life is definitely richer for it. Over time, it’s been interesting…
Read moreStranger than Fiction
Stranger than Fiction was playing on tv this morning while I was getting ready for work, and I could hardly drag myself away. I’d forgotten how much I really loved this sweet, whimsical, absurdist tale of a buttoned-up and completely anal IRS agent (Ferrell) who begins hearing a prim, British, female voice in his head,…
Read moreCreative Serbia: The Future is Creative
As a white South African, I know how negative perceptions of a place and its people are perpetuated through media stereotypes; how often do the hitmen and warlords and drug dealers and psychotics and gangsters in Hollywood movies and video games and tv shows speak with Serbian (or South African) accents? Often, that’s how often….
Read moreThree Billboards Makes America Great Again
“Three Billboards” is polished and impressive “small film” about a grieving mother and her escalating attempts to humiliate a small-town police chief into solving the murder of her teenage daughter. Frances McDormand plays the mom, Mildred Hayes, and the billboards in Ebbing are the site of her campaign. I enjoyed the film, especially Mildred’s rude…
Read moreChris Evans
I could not let the weekend begin without Captain America’s beard and hair. You’re welcome.
Read moreCall Me By Your Name
I grew up, in part, on the edge of a small village in Spain. My teenage years were leisurely and sun-dappled, our dinners alfresco, our conversations multi-lingual. We moved as a small pack of foreign kids – Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Italian – reconvening every summer to flirt, swim, sunbathe, and dance in utterly uncool…
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