Pandora’s Box: Louise Brooks simply exists. In Pandora’s Box Lulu brings down all who fall for her … Brooks completes her seduction with a devastating smile of erotic triumph … This is the ultimate quality of a screen goddess. ibid.
Since the invention of cinema over a century ago, Shakespeare’s plays have often been adapted for the big screen. But it took fifty years for his work to turn into a truly cinematic experience. Arena: All the World’s a Screen, BBC 2016
Olivier 1948: Hamlet: the first British production to win the Oscar for Best Picture. In the same year across the Atlantic the precocious actor and director Orson Welles made a dark savage version of Macbeth: ‘a big critical failure.’ ibid. Welles
More than 400 silent films were adapted from Shakespeare. ibid.
Dietrich has sex but no positive gender. Her masculinity appeals to women and her sexuality to men. Kenneth Tynan
Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy. Roland Barthes
There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich. There is only Louise Brooks. Henri Langlois
The Hollywood epic had it all ... The list of ingredients grew longer and longer. Epic! A Cast of Thousands! BBC 2012
The glory days of big cinema were the ’50s and ’60s. This was the age of Cleopatra and Ben Hur. ibid.
The Ten Commandments of Big Film Making: 10) Thou shalt pick the biggest stories – the epic story is larger than life. The setting of choice was the ancient world. ibid.
The story of Quo Vadis, the first big epic of the age, had it all. ibid.
9) Thou shalt employ a cast of thousands ... Crowds don’t come much bigger than the mass exodus in Cecil B DeMille’s 1956 version of the Ten Commandments. ibid.
One actor has become synonymous with the genre – Charlton Heston. ibid.
8) Thou shalt make it in widescreen ... The Robe (1953) was a winner for Twentieth Century Fox. ibid.
7) Thou shalt build sets larger than life. ibid.
6) Remember to keep it long ... very very long. ibid.
5) Thou shalt create the most lavish costumes. ibid.
Trailer for Cleopatra 1963: Never before has a spectacle been more carefully, lavishly, stunningly produced. ibid.
4) Thou shalt make it loud. ibid.
3) Thou shalt blow the budget. ibid.
None had a bigger budget than Cleopatra at an estimated cost of £44,000,000 ... Twentieth Century Fox threw good money after bad, but this was the tipping point. Cleopatra nearly bankrupted its studio. ibid.
2) Thou shalt go forth and multiply (and develop an international style.
1) Thou shalt covet the latest technology. ibid.
11th commandment: thou shalt keep it real. ibid.
[Luis] Bunuel’s career spanned six decades. His innovative film making created some of the most original and shocking images ever put to film. Discovering Bunuel, Sky Arts 2013
L’Age d’Or (1930) – this time the focus is much more on attacking the Church. ibid.
L’Age d’Or – the film was banned for fifty years. ibid.
Land Without Bread (1933). ibid.
Bunuel moved to Hollywood but he struggled to find work to support his family. He began to feel isolated. ibid.
Los Olvidados (The Forgotten) 1950. ibid.
It was in his more personal Mexican films that Bunuel would tackle religion more directly. ibid.
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1964). ibid.
What enchanted place was this that filled my head with dreams, sometimes nightmares? Cricklewood Studios, I discovered, was a film studio in North London which for almost a hundred years was at the forefront of the British film industry. The Cricklewood Greats, BBC 2012
Florrie took to the stage with an act of her own ... Audiences took to Florrie ... In the 1930s she made 141 films in 8 years. ibid.
The movie was Dr Worm and it heralded the explosion of British horror movies. ibid.
Acton Films ... These films would demand every ounce of Lionel’s [Crisp] classical training. ibid.
Her name was Jenny Driscoll. And she had something about her. ibid.
The Thumbs Up crowd didn’t want her around any more. ibid.
In September 1980 Jenny Driscoll put her head in the oven and killed herself. ibid.
The [Terry Gilliam] film was Professor Hypochondria’s Magical Odyssey which Gilliam began working on after abandoning Dr Insane’s Instanitary Insanitorium as too commercial. ibid.
The only way out was to sell the studio. The dream was over. ibid.
Growing up in Brooklyn to his life as a standup comic to his obsessive compulsive career as a filmmaker who still in his mid-seventies insists on making at least one film a year … He’s funny, frank and forthcoming. Imagine … Woody Allen: A Documentary I, BBC 2013
‘I’ll prostitute myself any way I have to to survive this catastrophe.’ ibid. Woody
‘We all know the same truth and our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.’ ibid. Woody
I was just expressing a healthy sexual curiosity. ibid. Woody
Worst Films: Worst Accent: English. David Walliams’ Awfully Good Moving Moments 2011
1) Mary Poppins: Appalling Accents: Ladies and Gentlemen, the godfather of awful accents: Dick van Dyke. ibid.
2) My Fair Lady: Audrey Hepburn went one stage further and tried to murder it to death. ibid.
3) Ocean’s 11: Don Cheadle finally managed to murder the cockney accent. ibid.
Top 5 Arnie Puns: 5) Last Action Hero: ‘You want to be a farmer. Here is a couple of acres.’ 4) Commando: ‘Let off some Steam, Bennett.’ 3) Commando: ‘He is dead tired.’ 2) Eraser: ‘You Are Luggage.’ 1) Total Recall: ‘Consider that a divorce.’ ibid.
Worst FX: Shark Attack ... The Mummy Returns ... Digby ... Robocop ... Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade ... Escape from LA ... Superman ... Puma Man (The Worse Use of a Wire) ... Megaforce. ibid.
Top 5 Most Unconvincing Villains: 5) X-Men’s Toad; 4) Superman IV sissy Nuclearman; 3) Spiderman’s Goblin; 2) Mr Freeze – Arnie – Batman and Robin – ‘The Iceman Cometh’ [What an ice-hole!]; 1) They Saved Hitler’s Brain – Hitler’s brain in a jar. ibid.
Bad Bond Moments: For Your Eyes Only – Man in mobility scooter picked up by Bond in helicopter – ‘I’ll buy you a delicatessen. In stainless steel.’ ibid.
Ghastly Sex: Showgirls [flailing sex in swimming pool]; Bride of Chucky [plastic sex]; Planet Terror; Howard the Duck [bestiality]; The Return of the Swamp Thing [sex with swamp man]; Crank II; Shoot em Up [terrorists in the bedroom]; Damage [flailing sex]. ibid.
Top 5 Baffling Movie Monsters: 5) 1969 B Movie Mighty Gorga; 4) One Million B.C.; 3) Creature From The Haunted Sea; 2) Godmonster of the Indian Flats; 1) The Giant Spider Invasion 1975. ibid.
Mortifying Deaths: Shoot em Up ... Jaws ... Deep Blue Sea ... Lake Placid II ... Anaconda ... The Quick and the Dead ... The Haunting ... Meet Joe Black ... Won Ton Ton. ibid.
Lessons In Love: Zardoz ... Beverley Hills Cop III ... The Big Hit [stuffing a chicken] ... City of Angels ... Pretty Woman ... Chatterbox: ‘My vagina can talk.’ ibid.
Wretched Action: Transporter II [Jason Statham and the jet-ski Lady Flop Manoeuvre ... Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [nuclear explosion and man in fridge] ... Gymkata [conveniently placed gym bars in back allies] ... Collision Course ... Mindbender ... Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus [shark attacks plane]. ibid.
Top 5 Hilarious Indian Action Scenes: Alluda Majaka [horse slides under lorry]; 4) Alluda Majaka [leaping tractors]; 3) Magadheera!; 2) Chandramukhi; 1) Vijayendra Varma. ibid.
Bad Fight Clubs: Conan the Destroyer ... Undefeatable ... Zombie Flesheaters ... DOA: Dead or Alive ... Out for a Kill ... Lovely but Deadly ... Superbabies: Baby Geniuses II ... Two Crippled Heroes. ibid.