Hollywood
Tea with Greta Garbo's decorator
Many people write, or at least used to write, fan letters to their film favourites. Usually all they received in…
Want Hollywood's conventional wisdom? Then read Blockbusters
You can learn a lot from this book. Latin America has a smaller economy than Europe. Big companies can spend…
Was Graham Greene right about Shirley Temple?
Shirley Temple, who died last week at the age of 85, was the most successful child film star in history.…
If Philip Seymour Hoffman wasn’t happy, what hope is there for us?
Celebrity deaths have no decorum. From Elvis on his toilet to Whitney face down in her bathtub, their last moments…
Is Hollywood finally waking up to the talents of women? Nah
Is Hollywood finally waking up to the talents of women directors? Peter Hoskin doubts it
Did Hollywood moguls really make a pact with Hitler?
At the recent Austin Film Festival, at every ruminative panel or round-table discussion I attended, I slapped my copy of…
To 'Flufftail' from 'Pinkpaws': The Animals is only good for celebrity-spotting
The correspondence between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy is good for celebrity-spotting but too cloyingly self-absorbed to be of wider interest, says D. J. Taylor
The staircase too scary for Bruce Willis, and other Oscar party stories
From a wedding to an awards ceremony, no self-respecting Los Angeles beano can take place without endless fixtures around the…
Being Blunt
The actress Emily Blunt on coping with fame and not speaking American
Scenes from the Mad Hatter’s tea party
I only ever heard my mother admit twice to fancying other men.
BOOKENDS: The Elephant to Hollywood
The three knights of British cinema have taken disparate routes in their twilight years. Roger Moore jettisoned a hokum career for more worthwhile pursuits as a Unicef ambassador, while Sean Connery settled into his Bahamian golf-resort to champion Scotland’s independence. Michael Caine, however, has added a further veneer to a great body of work.
The Great Escape
Hollywood’s gloss on reality makes Olivia Glazebrook want to weep. Why can’t the Americans learn from the French?
Self-awareness
Will Self loves to go a-wandering; this much we know.
A girl’s best friend
If you wanted to write about Marilyn Monroe, how would you go about it? The pile of biographies, memoirs and novels about poor, sad Marilyn is already teetering.
A certain look
Just as there are people who are their own worst enemies, so there are books that are their own worst reviews.
Pretty boy blue
In his memoir Somebody Down Here Likes Me, Too, the boxer Rocky Graziano, on whom Paul Newman based his performance in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), describes the actor in perfect Runyonese:
Cast a long shadow
Many years ago I invited a young student of mine to see Psycho, a film of which she had never heard, made by a director (Hitchcock) with whose name she was unfamiliar and shot in a format (black-and-white) whose apparent old-fashionedness so mystifed her she wondered aloud why no one thought to complain to the projectionist.
The one that got away
Michael Palin is the meekest, mildest and nicest of the Pythons.
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