A review of the 1928 classic film “The Passion Of Joan Of Arc”
July 13th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This story of the most French of characters, the defender and patron saint of the nation – Joan had been canonised just eight years earlier – was in fact directed by a Dane, Carl Theodor Dreyer, as a black & white production with no sound. Indeed the French had problems with it: the Archbishop of Paris demanded several excisions and French Government censors made further changes.
This classic work was almost lost to history: the original negative was destroyed by a fire, a second negative was lost to another fire, and a print of the original version was only finally discovered in 1981.
A restored version became available in 2015 and, ten years later, I saw that version on the screen at the British Film Institute with a live piano accompaniment. At the end, the audience applauded.
The film is an astonishing work of great power. It is based on a transcript of the 1431 trial of 19-year old peasant girl Joan who claimed to have had visions inspiring her to oppose English domination of her country. The French ecclesiastical authorities were not ready to accept that such a lowly figure was in communication with the divine and the English occupying force saw her as a insurrectionist. She stood no chance and was burned alive at the stake.
Much of the film consists of close ups of faces, often from below or above, most notably the tearful visage of Joan herself, portrayed movingly by Renée Falconetti, a theatre actress making her first (and essentially last) film appearance. The work is full of memorable imagery: crosses, birds, shadows, smoke, and over and over again those faces. Truly, a classic.
Posted in Cultural issues, History | Comments (0)
A review of the new blockbuster movie “Jurassic World Rebirth”
July 6th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
After a trio of “Jurassic Park” movies (1993, 1997, 2001) and a trio of “Jurassic World” films (2015, 2018, 2022), I’m not sure that we really needed a seventh episode in the franchise, but it seems that dinosaurs are ever-popular and ever-profitable and this latest adventure has a few things going for it. The special effects get better and better and this time we have a host of monsters thanks to the setting on an island where a previous research facility had to be abandoned after various experimental life forms didn’t work out. As well as plenty of thrills and spills and the occasional gore, there’s some humour and a hint of romance.
Two familiar creators are back: David Koepp who wrote the first two films plus this one and Steven Spielberg, director of the first two instalments and executive producer of all the others. But, we have a new director, Gareth Edwards who directed “Godzilla”, and – for the first time in a sequel in the franchise – all the actors are newcomers to the series and we have some real stars with some witty lines, notably Mahershala Ali as captain of the boat and leader of the team plus Scarlett Johansson as a covert operative and Lara Croft type character. It’s all good fun and rather entertaining, but I think its time for the franchise to become extinct.
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A review of the new blockbuster movie “F1”
June 28th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
This thrilling movie is the most authentic and immersive presentation of motor car racing that you’ll have every seen. You should view it on largest screen that you can and I was fortunate enough to see it in IMAX on the biggest screen in Britain.
If the ‘sitting in the seat’ view, while you hurl around at amazing speeds with a thumping soundtrack, seems familiar, then that’s no coincidence: the director is Joseph Kosinki, the theme music is from Hans Zimmer, and one of the producers is Jerry Bruckheimer, all of whom performed the same roles on the wonderful “Top Gun: Maverick”.
The storyline is pretty formulaic: an old timer with a passion for risk, dubbed “the greatest that never was” (Brad Pitt) is recruited by a long-time friend (Javier Bardem) to tutor a talented but inexperienced rookie (Damson Iris) and, along the way, an attractive technical director (Kerry Condon) provides both winning talent and love interest. These are very watchable stars with Pitt especially perfectly cast.
Racing superstar Lewis Hamilton is co-producer and many other drivers and personalities of the sport make brief appearances. Partly shot during real Grand Prix races around the world, everything visible feels so real, even if the narrative could have come from a comic.
As someone who knows nothing about Formula One, I was struck by the incredible amount of technology in the cars and the supporting infrastructure and by the physicality of the training regime and the actual driving.
My friend Tim, who was with me, knows a great deal about the sport and he attested to its verisimilitude and recognised many of the cameo characters. The film is entertainment on a grand scale and a huge success.
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The people of Iran do not deserve this bombing or this regime
June 23rd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
I don’t know if Iran was on the point of producing a nuclear weapon. I don’t know if the American and Israeli bombing raids have completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear programme. I don’t know if regime change is likely or what the alternative would look like.
What I do know is that, in the 6,000-year history of Persia/Iran, the one serious attempt at liberalism – the revolution of 1905-1911 with its short-lived experiment with a form of democracy – failed because of internal conflict, while America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 orchestrated the 1953 coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh which sabotaged a genuine attempt at creating a democratic nation.
What I do know is that, time and time again, in the last two decades, it has been alleged – usually by Israel – that Iran was on the verge of obtaining an atomic bomb presenting an existential threat to the Jewish nation. Over the last two decades, I’ve blogged many times about Iran and, as long ago as 2007, I wrote a piece about the possibility of an imminent raid on Iran by Israel. The nuclear assessment was wrong time and time again; is it really correct now?
What I do know is that most people in Iran do not support the present Islamic regime and that they are welcoming of foreigners and keen to establish better relations with the West. To experience their hospitality, their food, their poetry, their architecture is to appreciate that the Iranians deserve so much better. I know because I travelled around Iran in 2009.
Posted in World current affairs | Comments (0)
A review of the novel “Precipice” by Robert Harris
June 22nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Can you imagine a sitting British Prime Minister – on his second marriage and father to seven children – taking time off from affairs of state, on the edge of the greatest war the world had ever seen, to write these words to a society woman some half his age: “thinking & remembering & longing & hoping: and all thoughts & memories & longings & hopes centre around & in one person”?
This was 61 year old Liberal PM Herbert Asquith writing to 26 year old Venetia Stanley in late 1914 and early 1915 in a correspondence that involved several letters a day every single day (at the time, there were 12 daily deliveries in London). He eventually burnt all her letters but she kept all of his and some 560 still survive.
It is around this utterly astonishing correspondence that Harris has created the latest of his 16 bestselling novels (this is the tenth that I’ve consumed), quoting Asquith’s actual words and imagining those of Stanley. The author is an excellent storyteller and this is one of his most absorbing novels yet. As always, his research is deep and his narrative compelling, even when – as is so often the case with his historical novels – we know the outcome.
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A review of the new film “Ballerina”
June 22nd, 2025 by Roger Darlington
If you liked the John Wick action movies – and I loved all the four (so far) films in the franchises – then you’ll definitely want to see this satisfying spin-off, set in a time period between the third and fourth adventures and containing a cameo role from Keanu Reeves as the unbeatable assassin.
This time we have a female lead, Cuban/Spanish actress Ana de Armas (remember her from “No Time To Die”?) as Eve Macarro, a member of a school of assassins fronted by a Russian ballet company – hence the title. Also, we have a new director: Len Wiseman. New locations include the Czech capital Prague and the Austrian village Hallstatt.
But the non-stop action – mainly martial arts combat – is again front and centre and this time the armoury includes grenades and flamethrowers. Expect lots of violence and a massive body count.
Posted in Cultural issues | Comments (0)
It’s time that I came to terms with AI
June 16th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
Like many men in now their 70s, I came late to computing – and I would probably have come even later if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was asked to become Head of Research when the Communication Workers Union (CWU) was created in 1995. This made me head of a team of young researchers, all of whom were comfortable working with PCs and gradually so did I.
On the other hand, I was a quick adopter of the web. I created a personal site in 1999 and it’s still going. And I was quick to use social media: I started a blog in 2003 and it’s still running. I’ve been a long-term user of Facebook and post something almost everyday.
However, I’ve been slow to take on board artificial intelligence (AI). I guess it’s because I retired fully from the work of work seven years ago. So I don’t feel that I really need to use AI. On the other hand, as AI becomes ever more ubiquitous, I feel that I really need to understand it better.
I have read a book on the subject and I will shortly be attending a couple of lectures. But what better way to appreciate AI that to use it? So, this weekend, I downloaded three bots – ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity ai – and I’m going to experiment with them.
Posted in Internet, My life & thoughts, Science & technology | Comments (0)
A review of the new film “The Salt Path”
June 12th, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For Staffordshire couple Raynor and Moth Winn, life suddenly went horribly wrong when they became homeless following a disastrous investment and he was diagnosed with a debilitating and ultimately terminal illness. In an act of sheer desperation, they decide to walk the South West Coast Path, a 630-mile trek around the coastline of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. On the way, Moth finds that exercise and nature are better than medication and Ray discovers that she will do anything for him in what is essentially a very moving love story.
Raynor Winn subsequently turned the experience into a bestselling memoir titled “The Salt Path” which was published in 2018 (two more volumes have now followed) and, seven years later, this screen adaptation covers the first half of that challenge and concludes with an encounter with an eccentric woman that provides the enigmatic title for both book and film: “Yes, you have the look … When it’s touched you, when you let it be , you’ll never be the same again … You’re salted.”
Gillian Anderson as Ray and Jason Isaacs as Moth are excellent and a trio of women – writer Rebecca Lenkiewicz, cinematographer Hélène Louvart and director Marianne Elliott – do their best to turn this astonishing tale of redemption into an engaging film, but the narrative is little more than a series of small moments with no real drama. The film was funded by the BBC and it will definitely have an audience on the small screen, but audiences will not flock to the cinema to view it.
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A review of the classic British film “Darling” (1965)
June 1st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For many, Britain in the sixties was an exciting place, full of love and liberation, Bond and the Beatles. This film, however, presents a dark view (it was even made in black & white) of the upper middle class of the time and it is a biting satire of the vapid and vacuous lifestyles of people in the upper reaches of fashion, business and media. The clipped dialogue, the casual sex, and the amorality of most of the characters often make for uncomfortable viewing.
It’s surprising that the film was made at all: there was no big American name (the lead male roles were filled by Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey), the central female character was played by a newcomer (it was the first leading role for Julie Christie), while none of the characters is likeable and the ending is thoroughly downbeat. No wonder it struggled to acquire the necessary funding.
And yet it won three Academy Awards and five BAFTAs and its reissue in a restored version after 60 years underlines its status as a classic.
I’ve seen the film at the cinema twice: first shortly after its release and then after its restoration. The homophobia of some of the characters in the film is now rather ironic, given that both Bogarde and Harvey played dashing heterosexuals when in the private life they were gay,. When the titular character, beautiful Diana Scott, marries an Italian Prince and Princess Diana finds herself bored with her life and hounded by the media, today one can’t help thinking of another Diana.
Then and now, the work wreaks of hypocrisy and pretence, so a work to admire rather than like.
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A review of the blockbuster movie “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning”
May 31st, 2025 by Roger Darlington
For the eighth time in almost 30 years, Ethan Hunt completes an impossible mission, this time saving the entire global population from death or control by a super version of AI called The Entity. If the basic premise seems familiar, that’s because – in spite of a title change – this movie is narratively a sequel to the last, when we were warned that “The key is only the beginning”.
In the process, actor and co-producer Tom Cruise, who has performed breathtaking stunts in every film taking him into his 60s, and latterly director and co-writer Christopher McQuarrie, who has helmed the last four of the films, have performed their own version of the impossible: making movie after movie in which the plot veers between the incomprehensible and the risible but the action is endlessly – again this is a work of nearly three hours – thrilling and enjoyable.
Whatever you say about Cruise, he is a star and, whatever you say about McQuarrie, the furiously kinetic action, combined with superb cinematography, brilliant cutting and pounding soundtrack, delivers some of the best in absolute entertainment. I’ve seen each film as it was released, whenever possible – as this time – in IMAX, and, for sheer consistency, this has to be a contender for the best action franchise in the history of the cinema. Just don’t ask what it all means and, now I feel, just don’t ask for any more.
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