There was a moment long ago when an entire movie genre was constructed out of the idea that viewers in dreary European cinemas, in dreary post-war days, could achieve a vicarious kind of tourism by being wowed by colourful scenes from overseas. These were neither comedies nor dramas, but featured elements of both, and in terms of plot, not much was required.

The Pure Children of Kellogg's tickle the cereal and the famers ride motorbikes into the mountains to complete the harvest. A short film by PB.

Critics and studio officials alike have suggested that the reason the film Morituri failed to be a smash in 1965 was due to the fact that nobody understood the title, although I would beg to differ. If this had been the case after all, we’d have seen low, low audiences at Avatar, Quo Vadis, etc.

Later in his strange life, Marlon Brando hooked up with Johnny Depp and there are some amusing stories out there about the pair of them, which are all pretty much gossip, and which generally involve the older statesman giving the young buck good advice.

Cinema reached such a pitch in the 1950s that innovation became an end in itself.  There is something special about the innovations in technology such as Cinemascope. Just seeing these credits roll, you can’t help but imagine yourself back into one of the cinemas and imagine the thrill of seeing everything so large, colourful and wide. The Robe was the first film to use the Cinemascope lens, as designed by the president of 20^thCentury Fox, and it was used between 1953, when The Robe was released, to 1967, when superior technologies took over.  It was wide, baby, wide.

The Thirteenth Floor (1999) starring Armin-Mueller Stahl is a science fiction crime thriller — what Victor Eaves might call a ‘tech noir’ — directed by Josef Rusnak.  It’s part based on the novel Simulacron-3 (1964) by Daniel F. Galouye — part based because Simulacron-3 because Simulacron-3  is an early effort at describing virtual reality, something that had become vastly sophisticated by 1999 — that was the year of The Matrix after all.  Armin Mueller-Stahl plays the inventor of the Virtual Reality system as well as character within it, alternating between a confidant patriarchal charm and a more confused and bumbling artisanal type.  He is much better placed here than he would have been in The Matrix.

Acknowledging the work of Scottish film critic Victor Eaves:

Godard's haters rub it in and run away, in this article concerning Michel Hazanavicius' film "Redoubtable":

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/film/redoubtable/

Stanley Kubrick didn't cram all the conspiracy theories into The Shining. Victor Eaves on The Lolita Code:

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/film/the-message-at-the-heart-of-lolita/

David Hare visits with friends and writers and hears their opinions on the barrier in "Wall":

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/film/over-the-wall/

The documentary "Meeting Jim"about a key character in the story of the Edinburgh Festival gets lost in plodding self-importance, feels Victor Eaves:

https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/film/meeting-jim/

David Hare believes Netflix and Amazon have ushered in another golden age for screen writers. Forever Now, reports our critic at large.

 https://www.productmagazine.co.uk/film/forever-now/