crime
Accused, Series Two, BBC OneWednesday, 29 August 2012![]() Jimmy McGovern’s one-man mission to boost the quota of Scousers seen on the small screen continues in “Stephen’s Story” – the latest bout of button-pushing misery otherwise known as Accused. Seventeen-year-old Stephen Cartwright’s beloved Irish... Read more... |
Cockneys vs ZombiesTuesday, 28 August 2012![]() If you hate zombies and East End gangster movies, Cockneys vs Zombies will wreck those prejudices. Expect to have them turned topsy-turvy by this pocket-sized dynamo of horror comedy. Visually, it gets the simple things right straightaway... Read more... |
Murder, BBC TwoMonday, 27 August 2012![]() “I have done stuff,” says Stefan. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve done this." He has been arrested driving the car of a woman killed a short time earlier. Although an instant suspect, it’s soon clear his story and that of the victim’s sister don’t tally... Read more... |
Good Cop: From Page to ScreenMonday, 27 August 2012![]() On Thursday the BBC will screen the opening episode of the television drama Good Cop. I finished writing it back in August 2010, and on the strength of that story and ideas for a total of four episodes, the series was green-lit in February 2011. We... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Grace Kelly, Dial M for MurderSunday, 26 August 2012![]() Aside from the platinum hair and the porcelain beauty, there is no identikit Hitchcock blonde. She can be an ice-hearted femme fatale or a traumatised hysteric, or she can be Grace Kelly, a peachy embodiment of femininity whom the director enjoyed... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Farley Granger and Robert Walker, Strangers on a TrainTuesday, 21 August 2012![]() Some actors build their characters from the feet up. In fact, it’s a theatrical commonplace to think that shoes can hold the key to a character's psychology. Hitchcock takes the idea and applies it to the opening sequence of Strangers on a Train,... Read more... |
JackpotWednesday, 08 August 2012![]() It’s a standard dilemma in film. What to do with the body? In this case, the answer can be seen coming but when it does, it isn’t one that could have occurred outside the world created for the otherwise all too generic Jackpot.Although based on a... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Kim Novak, VertigoSaturday, 04 August 2012![]() In Vertigo Kim Novak plays two women who are really just one. First Madeleine, a supernatural siren, a woman apparently possessed by her tragedienne great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes. However, it’s a performance within a performance and she’s merely... Read more... |
theartsdesk Olympics: Suspense and Sensuality in Ozon’s Swimming PoolFriday, 03 August 2012![]() As a director François Ozon perpetually confounds, with a string of diverse films to his name (the intense 5X2 and the gambolling Potiche to name but two) and this effort from 2002 is characteristically capricious - is it crisp, contemplative drama... Read more... |
The Dark Knight RisesFriday, 20 July 2012![]() 2012 has so far brought us a couple of notable surprises from the oft-maligned world of comic book adaptations: first came Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble with its boisterous banter and then there was depth and pathos from Andrew Garfield in the... Read more... |
DVD: Once Upon a Time in AnatoliaFriday, 06 July 2012![]() It's over an hour before we see a woman in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. And even then, she arrives slowly, appearing at first more of a heavenly human smudge than a fully formed figure. But moments later she is filling the... Read more... |
King of Devil’s IslandThursday, 28 June 2012![]() Although tinged throughout with blue, the Norwegian drama King of Devil’s Island is so grim it might as well be grey. Basing it on real events pitches the film as a cautionary tale, but the message is hard to determine. Everything shies away from... Read more... |
