Shoot the Glass

What intrigued me most about High Noon was the story I had heard about how John Wayne and Howard Hawks both hated it, and went on to make Rio Bravo as a right-wing response to it. Apparently, Wayne saw it as an allegory for blacklisting, which he himself had actively supported. In an interview, he [...]

The Apartment won a whole slew of Oscars in 1961, not least of which was the Best Picture gong. I had never seen it and didn’t really know what to expect. I have enjoyed many of Wilder’s movies before (both Stalag 17 and Sunset Blvd. are among my favourites), but he always manages to surprise [...]

Not having seen this has, for many years, been my biggest embarrassment. Truth is, I have seen bits of it, but the universe seems to conspire against me, always coming up with some devilish scheme to stop me completing it. Therefore, I was delighted when I finally made time to see it, and managed to [...]

Before Peter Jackson made his remake of this beloved classic, I only knew what most people know about King Kong: he’s a great big ape who captures a beautiful woman on a remote island, gets captured himself and subsequently taken back to New York, where he eventually dies falling from the Empire State Building.
So let’s [...]

Musicals have always been a bit hit and miss with me. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. I don’t know why I waited to long to see this — I’ve owned the DVD for probably five years now.
As with most musicals, the story is secondary, and that is the case here too. In fact, the [...]