Jim Henson is a beloved figure the world over for his part in creating The Muppets (for more onthese anarchic creations, see The Muppets Christmas Carol review in Chapter 12) as well aspioneering puppeteering in modern film & TV. He’s an icon of the medium who sadly died before histime at the age of 53.…
The Muppets make everything better. In a world of divisiveness and unease, they remain a shining beacon of joy. To say that A Christmas Carol is a ‘familiar’ story to movie-goers would be an understatement. There have been more than twenty adaptations of the story dating back as early as 1901, and the fact that…
Christmas movies are, if done right, a license to print money. They’re played on a loop on TV for a month at least, they also tend to get a fair bit more slack than other films. Negativity tends to be put aside because: ‘come on, it’s Christmas!’ I myself am guilty of this from time…
Is it a Christmas film? Is it a Halloween film? Well, let me put this argument to bed, it’s both, there the argument is solved. Also, pineapple does go on pizza (if you want it to) and Jaffa Cakes are cakes, not biscuits. Alternatively, why don’t we just forget restricting films to a certain season,…
I actually wrestled with reviewing this when I went to see the show in London last year, but after much thought, I decided that my critical qualifications are stretched to their limits enough when I cover films, and extending it to potentially annoy the theatre world too might just be pushing my luck too far;…
I may have let slip before that I’m a big fan of Les Misérables. I really enjoyed the film when that came around (Russell Crowe and his odd singing notwithstanding), I’ve had and watched every concert version released, went to the West End to see it, I was even in a version several years ago.…
There’s always a risk when returning to a long-dormant franchise of tainting the originals legacy. Yet it seems fashionable now to revisit series thought long-dead in the hopes of attaching a pair of jump leads to its corpse and wringing a few more million dollars from it. It probably sounds from that opening paragraph that…
Why is Ryan Gosling so good at everything? Remember a few years ago, when this film was doing the rounds? Remember the hype around this film that had somehow come out of nowhere and made movie musicals fresh and new again? Remember when Warren Beatty called it out by accident as that year’s Best Picture?…
There might not be a more highly-regarded composer and songwriter in modern Hollywood than Alan Menken. For many people my age, his songs in Disney films were the soundtrack to our childhoods, and the late-80’s revival of Disney’s fortunes owes a lot of its success to Menken’s songwriting. Of course, he didn’t do this alone,…
Well, this is a doozy to kick off a new era isn’t it? Long-time readers of my site will know that I love musicals, I’ve been a part of the theatre since I was a child, and remaining part of it is one of my great life joys; so it will come as a shock…
