Films
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Stylish Movies: Elvis (2022)
Baz Luhrmann is a modern day auteur. His films are never less than interesting, they are arresting to look at, filled with bright colours and graphics, over the top characters and incredible use of music, which, when it works (Moulin Rouge) is just awe inspiring, and when it doesn’t so much (The Great Gatsby), you still can’t stop watching anyway. His latest film is his take on the life of Elvis and it is just amazing, already one of the best films of the year, with a star making performance from Austin Butler in the title role, and an almost unrecognisable Tom Hanks playing his hustler, huckster manager Colonel Tom…
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Stylish Films: Downton Abbey – A New Era
Downton Abbey has returned with a second film, and it is every bit as warm and as lovely as the first. Called Downton Abbey – A New Era, it follows the Crawley family and their staff as they enter the 1930s. As with many aristocratic families of the time, the cost of the upkeep of Downton means they have to look for inventive ways to make money, in this case allowing their home to be used as a film set for a silent movie, a movie that soon becomes a talkie thanks to the coming of sound. As this is taking place at Downton, a second story involving a…
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Dream Palaces: Wonderland At Birmingham Museum And Art Gallery
The Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery partially reopened it’s doors yesterday, hosting a series of pop up exhibitions. Amongst the offerings is Wonderland, a collaboration with the Flatpack Festival that is a showcase for Birmingham’s rich and varied cinema history. As an architecture nerd with a serious interest in old cinema’s, this was catnip for me, so I went along to have a closer look. The history of our cinema buildings is a story of modern times. Beginning in the early part of the 20th century, the first cinemas were often buildings converted from something else, old chapels, former vaudeville theatres etc. This period was supplanted by a period of…
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Stylish Films: Seberg
Despite a rather disastrous start to her movie career, Jean Seberg created one incredible role that made her immortal as both an actress, an icon of cool and a style original. Her role as Patricia in the New Wave Classic Breathless (1960) totally reinvented her after the catastrophe of her debut role in Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan, and she became a much loved icon of French Cinema. With her gamine crop, flat shoes and t-shirt, she looked fresh, modern and original. But in the late 1960s her life spiralled out of control when she became associated with the Black Panther movement back in America. This led to her being targeted…
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The Beatles: Get Back, The Rooftop Concert
Cinema is always a treat, a way of seeing what is bright, shiny and new in the world of films. But sometimes it is something more than that, an event that takes you back in time to see a snapshot of another time, another world. On Sunday I took a trip to my favourite cinema, The Light in Walsall, to watch the greatest band of all time on the big screen once more. The experience lasted for little more than an hour, but was something that had to be experienced on the big screen. I am talking about Get Back, the Rooftop Concert, a recording of the last live ‘concert/performance’…
