The new banner is from 'The Damned United', a film I reviewed when it was released back in April 2009 and absolutely loved. I watched it again a few nights ago ... and I still absolutely love it. Michael Sheen nails Brian Clough and there are a cluster of bravura supporting performances from Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent, Colm Meaney and Stephen Grah...
Thursday, 29 March 2012
Wednesday, 28 March 2012
Dirk Bogarde - matinee idol, fearless character actor, memoirist, novelist, artist and all-round enigma - would have been 91 today.One of my favourite actors from any era of film history, I have written about Bogarde repeatedly on The Agitation of the Mind. Here's hoping the likes of 'Providence' and 'Despair' get the long-awaited DVD treatment and his peerless work can once again grace the pages of this blog.In the meantime, here's a large raised...
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Sean Connery: milkman, truck driver, coffin polisher, bodybuilder, actor. Oh yeah, and the definitive James Bond. Although he’d been a jobbing actor for a decade before he was cast as 007, his only lead role had been in the fey musical ‘Darby O’Gill and the Little People’. A son of Edinburgh, his trademark Scots burr would remain in place throughout his career, whether he was playing an Irish-American cop, a Russian submarine commander or an English...
Saturday, 24 March 2012
Tuesday, 20 March 2012
The last time I posted anything of political import on these pages, there was widespread rioting across the UK. I cannot understand why there isn’t rioting today, why people in their millions aren’t converging on Whitehall, armed with whatever was to hand, and demanding David Cameron’s resignation – if not his head on a plate. And maybe just cutting out the niceties and hanging Andrew Lansley from the nearest available lamp-post. On 5 July 1948, England’s National Health Service – the NHS – came into being. Its architect was Labour politician...
Sunday, 18 March 2012
When, last year, I reviewed Guy Ritchie’s earlier crime caper ‘Snatch’, I drew this unlikely comparision: “the closest I can come to describing the plotting and overall aesthetic is like a P.G. Wodehouse novel. Except with guns. And swearing. Your average Wodehouse novel consists of a foppish toff, a meddling aunt, a potential fiancée, a big social event and the always lurking potential for cringing embarrassment at same. The machinations of a handful...
Thursday, 15 March 2012
In a moment of surreal clarity, it occurred to me as the end credits rolled that ‘Splice’ is basically ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ but with psycho-sexual overtones, monstrous angels and off-the-scale exponential evolutionary development. Both films take playing-God scientists as their protagonists; said protagonists take their work home with them in an absolutely literal sense; their work develops very quickly into something they can no longer...
Monday, 12 March 2012
Posted as part of an intermittent series of espionage-related cinema leading up to the release of the new James Bond film ‘Skyfall’ later this yearI’d had it on good authority that ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ was a POS. Despite this, I neglected to delete it from my rental list. So when it turned up last week, my rationale was something like this: aww, hell, it stars George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey, and at a pinch I...
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Wednesday, 7 March 2012
Sunday, 4 March 2012
It’s James Ellroy’s 64th birthday today. Here’s the demon dog of crime fiction on being knows at “the guy who wrote ‘L.A. Confidential’.” This quote also contains advice on the etiquette of talking to little old ladies.‘L.A. Confidential’, the movie, is the best thing that happened to me in my career that I had absolutely nothing to do with. It was a fluke—and a wonderful one—and it is never going to happen again, a movie of that quality. Here’s...
Saturday, 3 March 2012
That project I was working on? The one that's been preventing me from updating Agitation as much as I'd like? The one I was hoping to have done by the end of February?Still working on it.Normal service should be resumed shortly. In the meantime, here's some mini reviews in Rupert Bear-style rhyming couplets. Bit of a sci-fi theme going on.I, ROBOTDecent enough, but from the director of 'Dark City'It should have been harsher; more noirish; less pretty.SUPER 8An homage so blatant you could easily confuse itWith the 70s films of the man who produced...
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