Articles on Film and Television
“What are we holding onto, Sam?” Sam: “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.” – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Morality at the Movies
Double Indemnity and Chinatown The movie mogul Sam Goldwyn rightly growled through his cigar to a screenwriter, “If you want to send a message use a telegram.” Didacticism in storytelling is always a disaster
The Mission and Man for All Seasons – Two Films by Robert Bolt
The Clash of Secular and Sacred Stalin famously asked how many battalions had the Pope. Today, with the Catholic faithful numbering over a billion, the answer might be, “Not battalions but billions.” In every
The Cinema and the Cave
As I enter a darkened cinema I'm often reminded of Plato's myth of the cave. There people sat chained in darkness watching the shadow images of the real world shimmer across the wall before
Reconciliation Re-Visited
If there is any literary film adaptation worth adding to one’s library it is the Granada TV version of Brideshead Revisited. It really is the most perfect screen adaptation of any novel ever. The
A Glorious Bastard
The Witness of Alec Guiness In Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing the illegitimate Don John plots to spoil the happiness and prosperity of all. His skullduggery springs from the brooding dark moods, resentment and
Nietzsche, Napoleon and Narcissism
“I’m better than everybody else” is the disturbing theme underlying Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope. Dostoevsky developed the same idea in Crime and Punishment as did George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman. Rooted