Hollywood
Where can patriotic Americans find America?
If we’ve confirmed anything in 2020, it is that liberal-progressives really do control the major influencers in America. This puts…
Drive-in cinemas are back – but for how long?
Tanya Gold on the rise and fall of drive-in cinema
From bashful teenager to supermodel: Susanna Moore’s fairytale memoir
There’s a kind of writing about LA that I am a sucker for. Gossipy, lyrical, with a surface of affectless…
The unstoppable rise of television-rewatch podcasts
Talking Sopranos — a new weekly podcast which launched this month— is another example of a seemingly unstoppable sub-genre occupying…
Movie-makers should look to the Athenians before cashing in on this crisis
Covid-19 has not yet reached its peak but already the moguls of the small screen are plotting how to monetise,…
The director that everyone loved to hate: David Thomson interviews Peter Bogdanovich
David Thomson talks to the director about Buster Keaton, falling out of favour with Hollywood, and his mentor Orson Welles
Even the Oscars after-parties have lost their shine
Reading about the Oscars this week, I couldn’t help thinking back to a time when they actually meant something. When…
Alfred Dreyfus is being erased all over again
In London to promote a book, I received an invitation to a secret screening of An Officer and a Spy,…
Ricky Gervais has given Hollywood the thrashing it richly deserves
Finally, Hollywood has received the thrashing it so richly deserves. The self-satisfied movie elites have been called out — to…
Joan Collins: why I love London taxi drivers
Percy and I have seen quite a few movies recently and enjoyed many of them, which is rare. But the…
The best Terminator film since the first: Terminator Six reviewed
The first Terminator film, which came out in 1984, was a high-concept sci-fi serial killer thriller. You can just imagine…
DiCaprio and Pitt are transfixing: Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood reviewed
Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is a sprawling tale set in Hollywood in 1969, against…
How film fell for caliphs and slave girls
Most of Hollywood’s Arabian Nights fantasies are, of course, unadulterated tosh. The Middle East, wrote the American film critic William…
The invisible man behind Hollywood’s greatest films
What do the following filmmakers have in common: Victor Fleming, John Ford, Henry Hathaway, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Ernst Lubitsch,…
All About Eve was all about bitching – off-screen as well as on
In 1950, Bette Davis had a string of recent flops behind her. She was 41, married to an embarrassing twerp…
What a relief we can finally admit Jimmy Porter was a pain in the neck
Gary Raymond must have been wondering if it was the end of a promising career — curtains. He was starring…
Joan Collins: My own transgender moment
I recently returned from several months in Los Angeles working on one of the most popular US TV shows. American…
‘Darmstadt taught me how to compose’: Ennio Morricone interviewed
Ennio Morricone’s staff wish it to be known that he does not write soundtracks. ‘Maestro Morricone writes “Film Music” NOT…
Happy Little Bluebirds, by Louise Levene, reviewed
In 1940, the British Security Coordination sent an agent with an assistant to a Hollywood film studio to help promote…
Women can now make dull formulaic franchise films too! Hurrah! Ocean’s 8 reviewed
Ocean’s 8 is the all-female spin-off of the all-male Ocean’s trilogy and it’s a sop, with a third act that…
‘Steer clear of that cave boy, James Dean, and grease ball, Elvis Presley’
Lucky bastard. Such are the words that come constantly to mind while you’re reading Clancy Sigal’s two volumes of posthumously…
From buck dancing to Happy Feet: a short history of tap
Fire up YouTube on the iPad, tap in ‘tap’, then wave goodbye to the rest of your day: clip after…
Taki: My #MeToo moment
#MeToo! It happened right here, in Gstaad, last week. A man in his mid-fifties, about six foot tall and 165lb,…
Joan Collins: Want to know why all the Oscar films are boring? I’ll tell you
I’ve been meaning to write a Spectator diary since the summer but as a Gemini with Aries rising I find…
Taki: In praise of French women
I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject…
