“In all her dramatic iterations, Patty Hearst stands for an American purity that was always illusory but remains hallowed, that successive generations have set out to wrest back from the forces of complication.”
“In my hatred for the Bond franchise, I feel I may have done a disservice to its star. I have always had a tendency to discount Sean Connery as an exquisitely sculpted statue, capable of filling out a tuxedo very nicely but little else.”
“Quatermass is an eccentric antihero who presages Doctor Who in his singular disregard for established mores and the niceties of procedure…”
“‘The Magic Christian’ cries out to be re-visited. For all the cultural specificity of the novel and film, Grand remains a strikingly modern figure.”
“In Fassbinder’s conception of West Germany following its chaotic autumn, terror takes on the tenor of performance art; like addicts lusting after a fix, the groupuscule seeks ennobling sensation; they must be satiated by “Something symbolic…”
“The demise of the conspiracy thriller pointed to a broader shift; it signalled the rise of a new credulity, a willingness to re-engage with the idea of America in spite of its reality.”
“There is a danger and dynamism to 20s cinema which was gradually eradicated by the standardisation of production processes.”
“The Hancock persona tapped into a uniquely British strain of malaise, which manifests itself in a fractious fatalism, a dread of impotence which finds its expression in outlandish displays of petulance, pettiness and pomposity.”
Vague Visages Short Stories #15: Only the Names Have Been Changed by D.M. Palmer (Sheffield, UK)
“Lorre brought to his strangers the psychological wounds carried by the exile.”