There is something wonderfully cheeky about building an entire musical around a man who has already spent decades building musicals around himself.Created by musical comedy duo Flo & Joan, One Man Musical takes aim at one of British theatre’s most famous figures, presenting a lightly fictionalised version of Andrew Lloyd Webber finally deciding that the greatest story he has yet to tell is his own. What follows is part affectionate parody, part character assassination and part celebration of…

Blaugust is an annual blogging festival in August where the goal is to write a blog post every day of the month. A short Saturday break from my Python series to talk about Saoirse Ronan. She's quickly become one of my favourite actors and after my first Saoirse Ronan Appreciation Week in May, I decided to do another one this week. Five more days, five more wonderful movies. From historical to artistic and from intense to joyful, there's a lot going on in these five movies. Monday: How I Live…

Acting is one of the few professions where rejection is not an occasional setback but an expected part of the job description. Actors are asked to walk into rooms, perform confidence, absorb judgement and then return the next day to do it all again. An Ode to the Casting Director, written and performed by Sophie Fisher, understands that strange ecosystem intimately. Drawing on her own experiences, Fisher takes the audience through auditions, self-tapes, workshops, disastrous relationships,…

Not every Fringe day needs to begin with a bang.Sometimes the ideal morning show is something gentler: a production that eases you into the festival rather than demanding emotional devastation before coffee has properly taken effect. The Wreck proves exactly that kind of companion. Charming, quirky and quietly inventive, Buzzcut Productions’ latest live-cinema work drifts into view like an object carried ashore on the tide, bringing with it fragments of family history, faded memories and the…

1968 war, dir. Brian G. Hutton, Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood: IMDb. The captured general has to be got out of the impregnable fortress. Or does he?

I'm flying back to Paros in two days, but this time with all the family and their partners.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues (1993)

I’m really looking forward to this. Also, there is a lot going on in this teaser trailer!

Elisa Giudici reporting from Locarno David Lynch has consolidated his status as one of cinema's greatest auteurs and geniuses to such an extent that it is easy to forget just how much fighting against compromise every step of his career required, even after winning the Palme d’Or for Wild at Heart or revolutionizing TV history with Twin Peaks. At the Locarno Film Festival, his Icelandic producer and lifelong friend Sigurjón "Joni" Sighvatsson was presented with the Raimondo Rezzonico Award for…

MIA MIA is a small coffee shop in Kuramae. Its specialty seems to be in being a place where you are guaranteed to have a friendly chat, whether with one of the baristas or one of the other customers around you. So it’s a great place to hang out if you are in need of some social interaction. MIA MIA is owned by an Australian named Vaughan and so there’s also some Aussie paraphernalia scattered around the store. As well as espresso-based coffees, they also serve Australian meat pies and Anzac…

Als ich letzte Tage wieder mein äußerst professionelles Fotostudio enterte, dachte ich: das könnte ich doch auch mal zeigen. Also… Trommelwirbel… here it is:Na, wer ist denn da jetzt verwundert oder gar enttäuscht? ^^Seit Jahren nutze ich einen Küchenwagen vom Möbelschweden, dessen Rollen ganz furchtbar quietschen, wenn ich ihn aus der Gruschelkammer rausschiebe. Seit Jahren will ich ihn

Manchmal schaffe ich es erst kurz vor Schluss in eine Ausstellung. So war es auch bei F.C. Gundlach. You’ll Never Watch Alone im Bucerius Kunst Forum. Nur wenige Tage vor dem Ende habe ich die Fotoausstellung in Hamburg besucht – und bin dabei nicht nur einem der bedeutendsten deutschen Modefotografen begegnet, sondern auch meiner Namensgeberin Romy Schneider. Die F.C. Gundlach-Ausstellung in Hamburg zeigt weit mehr als nur bekannte Modefotografien. Sie widmet sich ebenso seinen Vorbildern und…

Tedde Moore, who played teacher Miss Shields in A Christmas Story (1983), died on August 5, 2026, at the age of 79. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2009.Tedde Moore was born on April 11, 1947, in Toronto. Her father was actor Mavor Moore. Her mother was Darwina Faessler Moore. She attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and graduated in 1967. Not long after graduating she went back to Canada and appeared opposite Christopher Walken in the Stratford Festival production…

Follows the Minions in 1920s Hollywood as they search for frightening creatures for their monster movie, partner with a green creature, and must save the planet after unleashing monsters. It’s zany, it’s funny, FILLED with cameos and references, making this a great watch for kids from age 3 to 103. The story is not something in particular, after all it’s a light kids’ movie, but it does entertain and even made me spit popcorns laughing. Speaking of popcorns, it gets five. It was a treat…

Edinburgh International Film Festival is on — I went to two press shows, both films starring John Hannah. What a versatile actor he is — he can play an amnesiac gangster or a talking seal. Nothing in between, though, just those two. I jest. This was not only a John Hannah double bill, but a […]

Easily the best show I've seen at the Fringe. For plot-related reasons, a television company asks a literary genius to create a "pro-weapons sitcom". It is a fast paced mix of the sitcoms 2012 and Episodes. The jokes come at a steady pace - some attack with the furiousity of bullets, others the the subtlety of a knife in the night. All four of the cast are spectacular. Turning the sometimes-stock characters into powerful avatars. The amoral Zuckerbergian horror of data driven decision making is…

My first le Carré, and his writing is as good as his reputation. I rarely read thrillers but decided to see what all his fuss was about. I’ve seen the film of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and was in too summery a mood for a grim depressing cold war trudge, so I picked up this grim depressing african trudge. Actually apart from the grim story of exploitation of africa’s destitute by multinational Big Pharma it was a good romp rather than a trudge. The story is about the murder of a british…

With the big July releases finally starting to lose a little steam, it's starting to look like a proper August at the movies, with summer-y looking things that the studios didn't feel confident opening on big weekends, things that could bridge the summer fun/fall prestige seasons, and three separate anniversary re-releases. The End of Oak Street looks like it could be big, with its high concept

Worth watching for the quaint-yet-eerie morphing and other early-digital FX. And the information about the human face through history and across cultures, the physiology of facial expressions, how we interpret them and judge people by them, the pseudo-science of physiognomy (cf phrenology), etc is really interesting. Presented by Laurie AndersonDirected by Nichola Bruce and Michael CoulsonWritten by Nichola Bruce, Michael Coulson, Laurie AndersonSpecial Effects by Christopher Tucker

Ensemble OrQuesta’s production of Dido and Aeneas celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. The opera (seen as Henry Purcell’s “only true opera”) follows the titular Dido as she struggles with her love for Aeneas, eventually falling victim to the a spirit’s vengeance as Aeneas is convinced to leave Carthage for Italy – his unwitting betrayal sealing her fate. Directed by Marcio da Silva (who also co-stars as Aeneas), the music is performed by Ensemble OrQuesta Baroque and also welcomes…

Jessica Nlabu and Shannon Kurlander in Beige at Riverside Studios. Photo: Rebecca Tozzoli Clozza Beige is a powerful play but not an easy one to describe. Joy (Jessica Nlabu) is instructed in how to be and behave. Initially, it feels like an audition or interview conducted by a sharp-suited, stiletto-wearing Shannon Kurlander. But as the play progresses, Kurlander starts to feel more like the personified voice of a general ‘society’ or a toxic mentor. She imposes societal expectations on Joy,…

After I finished the project of my last post I still had a giant collection of processed bird color data from BirdColorBase where every way I sliced it revealed new and mind-blowing birds. The minimal treatment I gave in that post just wasn’t enough. I had to dig in more. I set out to find the brightest, most brilliant, most colorful birds. I’m not going to make you wade through an essay’s worth of math and discussion before I show you my top 40. Here it is. Orange-breasted Bunting Andean…

M’s speech to Bond in GoldenEye has to go down as one of the great monologues in the Bond movies. Pierce Brosnan was the new Bond, and we had a female M in Judi Dench, which people weren’t so sure about, but this one scene likely laid every concern to rest.I especially love it when Bond says “point taken,” thinking that would defuse the situation, but M just goes right on to tell him how she’d be perfectly happy to “send a man out to die.” And this was after she uttered the famous phrase,…

It's Been Some YearsWay back in 2011, I wrote about awesome scenes in two movies that were otherwise terrible. Six years passed, and in 2017, I discussed two movies that contain fantastic scenes, even if the flicks are otherwise merely passable. Four years later, I touched upon three movies that were, "Good," but did have one extra great scene. At the end of that post, I joked that in another four or five years I would possibly make a post talking about strangely bad scenes in movies that are,…

I recently watched Pompeii: Out of Time (2026) hosted by Tom Hiddleston, and it’s left me

William Petersen as Will Graham in Manhunter (1986) Vitals William Petersen as Will Graham, tortured FBI criminal profiler Across the United States, Fall 1986 Film: Manhunter Release Date: August 15, 1986 Director: Michael Mann Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood WARNING! Spoilers ahead! Background While the Oscar-winning The Silence of the Lambs is a deservedly great movie that brought Thomas Harris’ fictional killer psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter to widespread public attention, the cannibalistic…

My favorite movie of all-time is the 1990 adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac starring Gérard Depardieu. From the moment my best friend sat me down and showed me the film, it went straight to the top. I became obsessed with the original play and its various translations, the fantastic Steve Martin version “Roxanne,” and even saw a brilliant rendition in New York with Peter Dinklage playing Cyrano. For those who haven’t seen any of these, a very brief synopsis: the titular Cyrano is everything…

Wo, no matter what anyone says; a movie called If You Go Down in the Woods Today is not going to end well, even if you try to style it as a comedy. But don't take my word for it; that's the target of John's essay this week at Cult TV Blog. Last month, the Hadley household finished up the four-season run of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on DVD; this week, at Silver Scenes, the Metzingers look at the movie that started it all. Irwin Allen's epic starred Walter Pidgeon as Admiral Nelson (shh;…

Some musicals arrive at the Fringe as artistic experiments. Others arrive looking as though they already know exactly where the merchandise stand should go. Disenchanted! falls firmly into the latter category. Its commercial ambitions are obvious from the outset, taking a familiar collection of fairy-tale princesses, turning them loose on their own narratives and inviting them to settle a few scores with the stories that made them famous. Having enjoyed success Off-Broadway and internationally,…