M. J. Nelson

A Definite Return To Form, 9 Feb 2012

It seems that Woody Allen was simply not at home in London - and Barcelona was only a little better. On the evidence of this movie Paris is clearly his second city after New York. The story is intriguing : Gil (Owen Wilson), a Hollywood scriptwriter, is on holiday in a picture-postcard Paris with his fiancee Inez (Rachel McAdams). He is struggling with his first novel and somewhat distracted when it comes to sightseeing and socialising. Then, alone in a street at midnight he finds himself mysteriously transported back to the Paris of the 1920s where he meets the likes of Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Cole Porter, Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. Enchanted, if bemused, his… Read more

In Pursuit Of Hot News, 31 Jan 2012

This 1987 television film illustrates, not the first time, the difficulty of translating the sharply satirical - and essentially literary - style of Evelyn Waugh into a visual medium. What often lies so effectively on the printed page can lose some impact off it. That said, this is a decent version of Waugh's satire on Fleet Street and the cut-throat competition for 'hot news' (whether true or false) waged by the world's press. Michael Maloney is ideal as the mild-mannered nature columnist William Boot, who is mistakenly sent by the London Daily Beast (proprietor Lord Copper) to cover 'a promising little war' in the ramshackle East African state of Ishmaelia. There is excellent support… Read more

The Dickens It Is !, 20 Jan 2012

As 2012 marks the centenary of the birth of our greatest novelist it seems fitting to pay renewed tribute to what may be the finest ever big screen adaptation of one of his novels : David Lean's 1948 version of Oliver Twist. His film, two years earlier, of Great Expectations, was masterly enough but this one, if anything, surpasses it. From the opening scene, when Oliver's young mother struggles towards the workhouse on the blackest and stormiest of nights, Lean exercises complete control over his material, with one memorable sequence after another. All the darkness and the redeeming light of the novel are wonderfully evoked. Although this is essentially Lean's triumph he owes much to… Read more