In the past week I have seen three exemplary film restorations courtesy of the BFI London Film Festival. Last Sunday offered a luminous, luscious print of Kiss Me Kate, 1953, in 3D; on Friday the Archive Gala screening more
Tomorrow night Sky Arts premieres our new film for The Hot Ticket strand, Ai Weiwei at the RA. We have already produced Matthew Bourne's The Car Man as a Hot Ticket and next week we are recording another major more
Long ago and far away I was a ten-year-old trainspotter. I would stand on the station footbridge at Whitstable noting down the numbers of the recently introduced electric trains that passed beneath me. Then I would run home to underline with scrupulous more
I'm not quite committing yet to (a) posting regularly, or (b) returning to a regular Sunday links, but here are some pieces that I have appreciated over the past week or so: • The movies of my youth: Italo Calvino more
To BFI Southbank for the first screening in a short season marking the 60th anniversary of the ITV network that went on air on 22 September 1955. To celebrate the network's 21st birthday, back in 1976, Thames Television put more
Perhaps you've noticed that this blog has been sadly neglected over past months. I have kept meaning to return to it but I have been doing so much other writing across the summer that somehow there has never quite been more
We have been on holiday in France, staying in an ancient manor house on the outskirts of the village of Montredon-Labessonié. Tucked away in the countryside between Albi and Castres, Montredon-Labessonié has a church, a bar and a recently more
• Listen up: Nick Pinkerton for Artforum on Japan Speaks Out!: Early Japanese Talkies at New York's Museum of Modern Art, including (above) The Neighbor's Wife and Mine, 1931, directed by Heinosuke Gosho. • Orson Welles and more
I've had a wonderful birthday week in France, and now I'm back with all sorts of new challenges to face. Here's a selection of three things for today, before - inspired a bit by my birthday blog - I start more
Today is my 60th birthday. I was born 60 years ago today. No-one, of course, believes that they will ever be 60. I do not believe I am 60 years old. But perhaps writing this short blog post will help more