A journal of cinema, television and the arts
Written & edited by Steve Exeter
Inspired by the New York Daily Inquirer from Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane.
Editor’s pick
Long before Blue Moon, I had become interested in what happens to songwriting partnerships once their period of effortless alignment has passed. Mike Leigh’s Topsy-Turvy remains one of the most perceptive explorations of that dynamic, concerned less with the triumphs of Gilbert and Sullivan than with the strain of having to…
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Sister Wives understands something many films about repression miss: the most dangerous thing in a closed system isn’t rebellion, it’s tenderness. Set inside a fundamentalist polygamous marriage, the film follows Kaidence…
I went into Song Sung Blue already inclined to like it. I was something of a musical magpie from an early, impressionable age, discovering Neil Diamond through my father’s record collection; his…
On my recent rewatch of Hello, Dolly! I was struck by how much more alive and charming it feels than its reputation suggests. For years it has been filed away…
I turned 18 the year that Peter Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover was released, I saw its opening at the Lumiere Cinema in London and it blew me away. …
It's uncertain whether Joel and Ethan Coen set out to make their most commercially successful film in a 30 year career by electing to remake the classic John Wayne Western…
I hadn’t planned to write about actors specifically, as my intent was to focus on certain key films and directors. However, as this is also a personal journal it should…