The Ciné O’Clock British and Irish Film Festival in Villeurbanne will be presenting its 28th edition from 31 January to 4 February. There are some great current films, golden oldies and previews of upcoming releases. There are too many fabulous films for us to mention them all, check out the the programme and the teaser … Continue reading “Ciné O’Clock Villeurbanne 2024”
Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple was extremely unusual for having an almost entirely African-American cast. (Alice Walker, whose 1982 novel it is based on, was the first ever African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.) The film is an enduring classic, and the musical-theatre version of the story is now hitting … Continue reading “The Color Purple Returns”
Bristol-based Aardman Animations made their reputation with short films and adverts using plasticine models brought to life with stop-motion animation. In 2000, they released Chicken Run, their first full feature-length film, a gargantuan task and a huge success. Twenty-three years later, they made a sequel! Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget picks up where the … Continue reading “Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget”
Poor Things, adapted into an award-winning film from the novel by Alasdair Gray, imagines a female Frankenstein’s monster who is fundamentally human, and her creator, who much like Dr Frankenstein, is perhaps more monstrous himself. Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous films such as The Lobster and The Favourite were far from mainstream, even if The Favourite won … Continue reading “Poor Things: Frankenstein Revisited”
The new Netflix TV series The Fall of the House of Usher is inspired by the famous Edgar Allan Poe story but in a pretty tangential way. The horror mini-series keeps the Usher twins Roderick and Madeline but far from being the last members of a dying family they are the heads of a family … Continue reading “Edgar Allan Poe 21st Century Reboot”
Gertrude Stein is probably best known for her “salon” in Paris where she nurtured artistic talents as diverse as Matisse and Braque, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and James Joyce. But her experimental, minimalist writing has been highly influential on generations of creatives right up to today, as is shown in the Gertrude Stein and Picasso: … Continue reading “Gertrude Stein Multi-talented”
We were sad to hear of the death of Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt at the age of 95. He had been taking photos for 80 years. The retrospective exhibition he curated himself at the Musée Maillol in Paris last year is currently on show in Lyon, till 17 March. It is a rich record of … Continue reading “Elliott Erwitt: A Life in Photos in Lyon”
The Booker Prize 2023 was awarded to Paul Lynch for his dystopian novel set in his native Ireland, Prophet Song. Chosen from a longlist of 13 and a shortlist of six, Lynch’s is the fifth Irish novel to win the U.K.’s most prestigious literary prize. And it’s the former film critic’s fifth novel. Prophet Song … Continue reading “2023 Booker Prize Goes to an Irish Dystopia”
Posy Simmonds is a British cartoonist and writer. She is best known for her work in the field of comics and graphic novels, particularly her contributions to The Guardian newspaper. She is currently being celebrated at the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information (BPI) at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) in a retrospective exhibition until April 1st, 2024. The … Continue reading “Posy Simmonds: Drawing Literature”
Black Legends is a musical comedy that traces more than a century of African American music along with landmarks in the civil-rights movement and Black American history. We know some of you took classes when it was on last year. It’s back on in Paris until at least the end of January. The musical doesn’t … Continue reading “Black Legends”