Film
The Floating Cinema
It is possibly the only cinema in the UK equipped with life jackets and buoyancy aids – and it is in the vanguard of the cultural events that will surround …
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Films on Fridges
It is Britain's coolest new pop-up cinema and the only one inspired by a load of rubbish.Films on Fridges is …
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van damme interview
this is my interview with jean claude van damme, published in the guardian 23 jan
It begins, as all Jean Claude van Damme films should, with a brutal and bloody brawl. Fists flailing and kicks flying, Van Damme marshals machine guns and knives, hand grenades and revolvers, dodges bullets and …
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man on wire
this is from my piece in this week’s Spectator
It was one small step, but for Philippe Petit it was to be a giant leap into immortality. The date was 7 August 1974, the location New York City and the 24-year-old Frenchman was standing on the top of one of …
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boot boys
this is from today’s article in G2
I was a teenager during the 1980s, uninterested in football and suspicious of the ferocious tribal loyalty it inspired. The football ground in my hometown, Luton, was located in the heart of the Asian community and on Saturday afternoons our parents would warn …
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Father to a nation, stranger to his son
Mahatma Gandhi once confessed that the greatest regret of his life was that there were two people he had not been able to convince. One was Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whose demand for a separate homeland for Muslims led to the partition of India and Pakistan in August 1947 and the …
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Bollywood’s Bleeding
A group of teenagers, en route to attend a rock concert, lose their way when their car runs out of fuel in the dead of night. They find themselves in an unfamiliar rural backwater where they are confronted by flesh-eating zombies and a psychotic cannibalistic killer dressed in a sheet. …
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dedicated followers of facism
In the summer of 1983, when I was 12 years old, I would see them with their shaved heads and bovver boots, combat jackets and inky tattoos, hanging around by the underpass I had to walk through on my way to secondary school. Should anyone who was black or Asian …
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cultural exchange
The Indian film industry turns out 800 or so movies each year, most of which are formulaic fare following the usual conventions, with melodramatic plotlines involving star-crossed young lovers battling protesting parents, improbable coincidences, impromptu song-and-dance routines and the inevitable happy ending. Namastey, London is not entirely free of these …
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the power behind the throne
her award-winning portrayal of the monarch, Helen Mirren might be British cinema’s latest Queen of Hearts, but Christine Langan is arguably the power behind the throne. Langan co-produced The Queen when she was at Granada, where she was also responsible for the acclaimed Channel 4 drama The Deal. When we …
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