Jun 12, 2014 | chART
By BRUCE DENNILL This is a book about books, and also about a love of books – hell, an all-abiding passion for the things. In the course of prescribing literature, perspectives and themes meant to help readers come to terms with, ignore, solve or, yes, cure any...
Jun 7, 2014 | chART
By ALAN SWERDLOW Maleficent / Directed by Robert Stromberg / PG What is this current obsession with revisiting comic book and cartoon figures from the past? There is something vaguely recidivist about the notion, or, at the very least, egoistically...
May 29, 2014 | chART
By ALAN SWERDLOW The Railway Man / Directed by Jonathan Teplitzy / 16V At one point in The Railway Man, Colin Firth, portraying one Eric Lomax (on whose memoir this film is based) says very emphatically, “I am not a train spotter, I am a railway...
May 29, 2014 | chART
By ALAN SWERDLOW A Million Ways To Die In The West / Directed by Seth MacFarlane / 16SLVD I have absolutely no doubt that a number of very serious academic analyses have been written about why contemporary American humour is so rooted both in the toilet...
May 29, 2014 | chART
By ALAN SWERDLOW Under The Skin / Directed by Jonathan Glazer / 16NSVL I was going to use the phrase “strong meat” in analysing Jonathan Glazer’s cinematic adaptation of Michael Faber’s sci-fi novel, and then thought better of it. Strong meat would be...
May 27, 2014 | chART
by BRUCE DENNILL Steven Curtis Chapman is a clean-cut, spectacle-wearing sort of guy, a standout good egg even in the Christian music industry in which he works. In some circles, this gets him the sort of reputation – dependable, safe, slightly geeky – that...
