Posts by Paul Stump | Picturenose

DVD Movie Review: Annie Hall (1977)

Feb

2013

Woody becomes Allen It was one of the proudest days of my life when a family friend told me, in my teens, that I looked ‘a bit like’ Woody Allen, as well as having a similar sense of humour. Well, I was a fan anyway, albeit of what were accurately and deathlessly dubbed the cineast’s ...

DVD Movie Review: Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon) (1956)

Jan

2013

The balloon goes up ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ L.P. Hartley’s observation is one of the most over- and ill-used in literature. Your reviewer hopes this critique of Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 fantasy featurette will be an exception.

Tribute: Norman Wisdom 1

Oct

2010

A very British star Paul Stump examines other sides of the late Norman Wisdom than the clown of popular cliché. It’s hard to imagine anything less apt to open a tribute to the recently deceased king of British film comedy, Norman Wisdom, than any reference whatsoever to Richard Wagner – as I hope the following ...

Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

May

2008

The best of British This is getting silly. Revisiting this film on St George’s Day was a curious inversion of time and space. Wait a minute here…the English/British aren’t supposed to be that good at anything any more, declinism fuelled by lack of funding in the NHS and public services, the Millennium Dome, the scandalous ...

The Ladykillers (1955) 4

Apr

2008

Killing joke One of the cinematic sensations of the 21st century is that the Tom Hanks-led remake of this emblematic Ealing comedy, with Alec Guinness the mastermind of a brilliantly surreal blag featuring a gang disguised as chamber musicians, did not make fans of the original throw themselves under a train. Could there be a ...

Some Like It Hot (1959) 5

Apr

2008

Damn hot! A critic knows a masterpiece when it drives him or her to distraction in shovelling out a new angle with each new appraisal. With an auteur like Billy Wilder at the helm, one’s pencil is going to be bitten and licked to the quick. The hook for the studio here was, firstly, Tony ...

Carry on Cabby (1963) 10

Apr

2008

Fancy a ride? (Fnarr, fnarr) The news of the imminent demise of the FX4 London black cab has been knee-jerkingly interpreted as another assault on ‘good old’ Britishness, a Fine Fare plastic bag of a nation’s fictitious and flawed autobiographical memory, formed of such relics as the Blitz, roast beef and Yorkshire pud, 1966 etc. ...

Battleship Potemkin (1925) 2

Mar

2008

Myth-building “Myth,” the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss wrote, “is language.” Insofar as that language develops exponentially over time, so do components of a story, and can be individualized as ‘mythemes’. But, what Levi-Strauss only hints at, is that at the kernel of myth is – however murkily, and however mediated – a truth. It becomes ...

Withnail & I (1987) 8

Feb

2008

Best times, worst times, best lines Has a movie ever consigned so many catchphrases to posterity? ‘We’ve gone on holiday by mistake! Are you the farmer? Course he’s the fucking farmer, Withnail!’ This writer distrusts cults and sensations, and even more those loved by students (don’t get me started on The Smiths, for example). But ...

Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain (2001)

Feb

2008

Amazing Amélie Pre-Iraq II, Time magazine ran a cover story rationalizing the ‘freedom fries’ line – WHY FRANCE IS DIFFERENT. Interestingly, the cover star was Audrey Tautou, which was a pic ed’s nice take on softening the editorial frog-bashing. This was indicative of the unarguable fact that nobody could quite rationalize – beyond Tautou’s indescribable ...

The Apartment (1960) 6

Feb

2008

Bad day at the office? Thank your luckies you’re not CC Baxter, Jack Lemmon’s resentfully downtrodden clerk in an NYC corporation, who has become so cowed by the predations of his boss and the insecurity of his position he allows his superiors use of his flat to have it off with their mistresses. He’s 9 ...

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