Vengeance is mine, saith the Sith, whith thoundth like Violet Elizabeth Bott. No such luck. Instead, it’s George Lucas, with what he insists is the final film in the Star Wars sextet. My guess is the first film in the new Star Wars septet will be opening circa 2008. Anyway, Revenge of the Sith is,
The Mills family, according to David Thomson, has ‘crowded us out with insipid, tennis-club talent’, which is a cruel verdict, but hard to disagree with. When the gals tried being naughty, you felt embarrassed and sorry for them. Juliet Mills’s skinnydipping in Billy Wilder’s Avanti! (1972) is the only topless scene I’ve ever wished would
Until James Bond came along in the Sixties, the most successful movie series to date had been the Road pictures with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour. Sahara seems to be an ill-advised attempt to merge the two into one almighty eternal franchise. It eventually winds up with our hero and the gal running
The Flight of the Phoenix rises from the ashes. Remember the original? James Stewart, Richard Attenborough, Ernest Borgnine, Peter Finch, Ian Bannen, Ronald Fraser, Hardy Kr
New Hampshire ‘It is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.’ Idealism is the new realism. Or as one of my disaffected conservative neighbours summed up the Bush speech: ‘Great.
In John Buchan’s The Three Hostages, Dr Greenslade explains his theory of successful thriller writing to Richard Hannay: ‘Let us take three things a long way apart,’ he says, ‘an old blind woman spinning in the Western Highlands, a barn in a Norwegian saeter, and a little curiosity shop in North London kept by a
The first thing to be said is that, if you object to swearing, copious fecal matter and vigorously inventive explicit sex between consenting and non-consenting puppets, then Team America: World Police is not for you. The climactic address to the UN, a paean to ‘pussies’, ‘dicks’ and ‘assholes’ and the interaction between the three as
I always like it when some fellow has a kid late in life and two centuries later you wind up talking to some l’il ol’ lady whose gram’pa was in the War of 1812 — the long slender thread of a personal connection to history. That’s how National Treasure begins: it’s 1974 and Christopher Plummer
Whatever their faults, says Mark Steyn, America’s Christian fundamentalists are a lot smarter than Eutopian secularists New Hampshire As in previous years, Planned Parenthood has been selling greetings cards for abortion proponents filled with seasonal cheer to send to each other: ‘Choice On Earth’, they proclaim. I can just about understand being a proponent of
America is a conservative country, says Mark Steyn. John Kerry was defeated by the President’s determination to expand liberty abroad and promote opportunity at home New Hampshire Thank you, Lady Antonia Fraser! In 2000, Clark County, Ohio went to Al Gore. This time round, after the local citizenry were targeted by the Guardian to be
‘He is sedated,’ said Bill Clinton’s heart surgeon on Tuesday. ‘But he is arousable.’ I’ve never doubted it. That seems as appropriate a thought as any with which to consider the state of the new war three years on. Like former President Clinton, much of the West is sedated. But is it arousable? On the
New Hampshire Everyone wants to know what the key demographic will be in this election. In 1996, it was ‘soccer moms’; in 1994, ‘angry white men’. For Campaign ’04, the columnist Michelle Malkin has been touting the concept of ‘security moms’ — gun-owning women whom 9/11 shook out of their Gen-X stupor. I’d say ‘security
New Hampshire ‘Let freedom reign!’ scribbled President Bush in the corner of the briefest of hand-written notes from his national security adviser: ‘Mr President, ‘Iraq is sovereign. Letter was passed from Bremer at 10.26 a.m. Iraq time — Condi.’ And that was it. No ostrich feathers, no Princess Alexandra, no tea on the lawn at
Mark Steyn says the so-called realists are wrong about the war on terror, and suggests that ‘creative disruption’ is the best way to deal with Saudi Arabia New Hampshire Here’s a headline from Tuesday’s Glasgow Herald: ‘Saudi Security Forces “Allowed the Killers to Escape”’. Hold that thought for a moment. For two-and-three-quarter years now, there’s
Mark Steyn says that the US President’s ‘transformational’ response to Muslim fundamentalism can save the Old World; European ‘managerialism’ can’t New Hampshire Last July, speaking to the United States Congress, the only assembly on the planet in which he’s still assured of a warm reception, Tony Blair remarked: ‘As Britain knows, all predominant power seems
New Hampshire A little over a month ago, in the Wall Street Journal, I wrote that Governor Howard Dean looked ‘like Bruce Banner just before he turns into the Incredible Hulk, as if his head’s about to explode out of his shirt collar’. On Monday night, Dean, a front-runner in the polls only a week
New Hampshire Timing is everything. Leafing through our issue of two weeks ago, I feel it would be kindest to draw a veil over page 26 (‘Correlli Barnett says that the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq serve as object lessons in how not to conduct an anti-terrorist campaign’) but that guy buried away on page
New Hampshire In California, Muslim community leaders have applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano to change the name of its football team from the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitive Lions. Meanwhile, 20 miles up the road in Irvine, the Muslim Football League’s New Year tournament will bring together
Mark Steyn says the CIA scandal is important not because it put an agent’s life at risk — it didn’t — but because it shows that US Intelligence is either obstructive or inept New Hampshire America now has its own version of l’affaire Gilligan. As in Britain, the story involves journalists, and sources, and the
New Hampshire It’s the poll that’s got ’em all hot: Wesley K. Clark: 49 per cent; George W. Bush: 46 per cent. CNN and USA Today conducted it, and on air this week, listening to her ‘senior political analyst’ declare that ‘President Bush is sinking’, Judy Woodruff looked as if she wanted to do her