Archive for July, 2026
A review of the classic 1961 movie “West Side Story”
July 8th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
“West Side Story” was a spectacular theatre musical (when I was in Vienna, I saw a version in German!) and it was an enormous success as a film (when I first saw it at the cinema as a teenager, my girlfriend was repeatedly in tears) that won all but one of its 11 Academy Award […]
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A review of the 1939 classic movie “The Wizard Of Oz”
July 4th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
Rarely can a movie have been so troubled in production but so successful in outcome. The work had 14 writers and four directors; casting was a problem and there were on-set accidents and drunkenness; it was over schedule and over budget. And yet “Oz” was a huge success and, according to the US Library of […]
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The USA is 250 years old today – but how did it start?
July 4th, 2026 by Roger Darlington
In 2000, I went to see the film “The Patriot” starring Mel Gibson and I thought that the American revolution could not possibly have been that simplistic so, on a trip to Washington DC later that year, I bought a book at the National Museum of American History: “A Short History Of The American Revolution” by […]
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