David Cronenberg is one of those directors whom I find perennially interesting, yet I find it hard to love most of his films. My favourites of his are The Dead Zone and Videodrome, with The Fly and A History Of Violence not far behind. Scanners pre-dates all of those, but shares his icy Canadian sensibility,…
M*A*S*H
I have a hard time remembering Robert Altman’s 1970 movie M*A*S*H as the subsequent very long-running TV series sticks in my memory more powerfully. I do remember seeing the movie after the TV show had been around for years, and I had difficulty adjusting to its much harder edge, and Altman’s signature episodic style. Donald…
The Conversation
“He’d kill US if he had the chance….” This I remember was the pivotal line in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 paranoid procedural thriller The Conversation. Inspired by Antonioni’s earlier arthouse thriller Blowup, Coppola cast Gene Hackman as a lonely, obsessive bugging expert, whose recordings indicate a potential murder. But it’s when he plays the tape…
Pennies From Heaven
This is a French version of the poster, with great artwork by the prolific American artist Bob Peak. I must admit, I’ve never seen the Americanised movie version, starring Steve Martin. Pennies From Heaven started life as a BBC series, written by the provocative British playwright Dennis Potter, and was an early lead role that…
The Cotton Club
Here’s a shout-out for Francis Ford Coppola’s OTHER great gangster movie, 1984’s Harlem-set The Cotton Club. Coppola took the job because he needed the money, having bankrupted himself making One From The Heart. Its production was an expensive shambles, spread over 5 years, it lost a ton of money, and one of its financial backers…
The Great Escape
The Great Escape used to be on British TV pretty much EVERY Christmas afternoon. That’s how I remember it. The film is a heavily fictionalised account of a real mass escape from a POW camp. It’s undoubtedly one of the all-time classic war movies. Rarely if ever has such a fantastic cast been assembled, and…
Manhattan
Its not very fashionable to plug Woody Allen these days, for entirely understandable reasons. (Quite apart from most of his recent efforts being awful). But its worth remembering back in the day he did deliver a number of classics, not least 1979’s Manhattan. Its a romantic comedy, but also a love letter to Allen’s beloved…
Arsenic And Old Lace
This was one of the oldest posters I had until I sold it last year: an original 1948 first release Belgian poster for Frank Capra’s classic black comedy Arsenic And Old Lace. This 1944 movie was based on a very successful Broadway play, and features everyone’s favourite leading man, the one and only Cary Grant….
Gallery
Click on the IMAGES below to view the blog post for each item, or see my LATEST POSTS here. Some items are FOR SALE. Click here for details.