14th December, 2018 in Entertainment
It may have become as much a part of Christmas as the turkey and the tree, but It’s a Wonderful Life was deemed ‘not a good film’ when it first came out in 1947, while Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Vertigo was dismissed as ‘not an important film or even major Hitchcock’ in 1958 – o…
17th April, 2018 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment
In late autumn 1968, Dorian Bond was tasked with travelling to Yugoslavia to deliver cigars and film stock to the legendary Hollywood director Orson Welles. The pair soon struck up an unlikely friendship as they travelled across Europe and reminisced about Winston Churchill and F…
6th December, 2017 in Entertainment, Society & Culture
Brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière are credited with developing the first commercially successful movie projection system, paving the way for today’s cinema experience. They pioneered filmmaking techniques in over 1,400 moving pictures, showing everything from a train rushing int…
6th December, 2017 in Entertainment
When Guy Ritchie and Mathew Vaughn decided to make the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels I bet they never envisioned the success that was to come from it. They never thought that it would become one of the most successful British Crime Movies ever, that it would launch the…
6th December, 2017 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment
It is the night of the Oscars, 9 April 1979, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Inimitable master of ceremonies Johnny Carson announces the presenter of the last and most important award category, Best Picture – and the audience is astonishe…
20th January, 2017 in Entertainment, Women in History
Look back at the fashion and film of the 1960s and there is one waif-like, pixie-featured figure that will peer back at you from behind large dark glasses, beneath a wondrous hat and adorned in impeccable clothes. Audrey Hepburn has long since been an international icon of fashio…
29th September, 2016 in Biography & Memoir, Entertainment, Women in History
In 1926, budding actress Carole Lombard was still a teenager, trying to work her way through the Hollywood minefield. She had already been employed by Fox, and hoped it would lead to big things. However, she soon learned that in order to become a star, she would have to do more t…