Category Archives: MY Writing
My various thoughts/rants depending on the mood I was in when I wrote them!
Foreign Film Review: A Royal Affair
A Royal Affair not only tells an engrossing tale of love, passion, politics and royal intrigue but also manages to elicit your interest in the painful birth pains of modernity in Europe (a subject which is not generally known as a crowd-pleaser) while at the same time giving you an insight into a country that […]
Continue readingNovel Review: Brave New World
Brave New World depicts what the world will be like in the future. It’s 2540 or 632 A.F. i.e. After Ford and the novel depicts what happens to society when Americanisation/Globalisation has reached its zenith. Written in 1932, it’s chilling how prescient the author, Aldous Huxley, seems to be. Brave New World is a world […]
Continue readingFilm Review: One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is one of only 3 films to have ever won the 5 main Academy Awards (the other two being It Happened One Night and Silence of the Lambs); with Jack Nicholson’s performance in the film recently being named the greatest movie performance of all time by Total Film Magazine. […]
Continue readingNovel Review: Great Expectations
If you’ve never read a Dicken’s novel then Great Expectations is an excellent introduction to his world. The novel is written with great wit highlighting Dicken’s hallmark skill of describing people and events with a wonderfully humorous turn of phrase. As with all Dicken’s novels there is a cornucopia of characters exhibiting a wide range […]
Continue readingNovel Review: Animal Farm
In a nutshell Animal Farm is pure genius in its simplicity. As a former student of Russian, I have numerous books on Russian history books sitting on my numerous bookshelves collecting dust. But for a concise and pretty accurate account of what happened to Lenin’s revolution, then Animal Farm is a perfect choice. Orwell dissects […]
Continue readingNovel Review: To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of modern American literature. Simply told, it depicts small town life in racially-charged Alabama during the Great Depression and manages to capture the innocence of childhood whilst dealing with issues of racial prejudice and injustice. The hero of the book, Atticus Finch, is an unassuming man, a widower […]
Continue readingFilm Review: The Third Man
This is one of my favourite films. In it Orson Welles shows what real star quality is by dint of the fact that he’s hardly in the movie yet still manages to dominate it. The film is set in Vienna, a city for which, admittedly, I have a particular soft spot for. But that aside, like […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Mr Smith Goes To Washington
If you’re ever feeling like you’re up against it and in need of some welcome reassurance that it will all work out in the end, then you can do no better than watch either one of Frank Capra’s most famous films, It’s a Wonderful Life or Mr Smith Goes to Washington. (Failing that an enormous […]
Continue readingFilm Review: It Happened One Night
It Happened One Night was made in 1934 and directed by one of my favourite directors, Frank Capra. It stars Clark Gable as a washed up newspaper reporter, Peter Warne and Claudette Colbert as a spoilt and pampered heiress. Neither of the leads were enthralled about making the film, particularly Colbert who insisted before agreeing […]
Continue readingFilm Review: Green Zone
Green Zone is set in Iraq around the time of Bush’s now infamous speech aboard USS Abraham Lincoln where he infamously stated – “In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” As my knowledge of Iraqi politics is probably only equalled in its paucity by my knowledge of quantum physics […]
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