The house of Lords disapproved of the ‘fairness’ principle from Oxley v Hiscock and held that the general rule should be that ‘equity should follow the law’ so in most cases where the legal title is jointly owned the beneficial interests should be split equally unless there were exceptional circumstances. What were the exceptional circumstances…

There are two elements to consent: whether the victim consented, and whether the defendant believes the victim has consented. The prosecution must prove that the victim did not consent and that the defendant did not believe in his consent: R v Donovan [1934] The general rule is that consent can only be available as a…

What happened to films made in  Hollywood when America joined the war? Which actors were conscripted? How did America’s participation in the war affect relations with Germany? Read on to find out. 1941 After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, the U.S.A were involved in the war against Germany, and soon directors made films…

What happened to films made in  Hollywood when America joined the war? Which actors were conscripted? How did America’s participation in the war affect relations with Germany? Read on to find out. 1941 After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941, the U.S.A were involved in the war against Germany, and soon directors made films…

Harry walked in to the bar in and asked for a drink. The day was hot and he was glad to be in here rather than out there. It was a small, empty town on the border of the Czech republic that Harry had found himself in. God knows how he had ended up there…

The first cigarettes I smoked were Dunhill King Size. They came in a dark red box with gold edges. They were strong, at least 10mg of tar. I liked the fact that they had the signature of Alfred Dunhill on the back, the same Dunhill who founded the Dunhill fashion brand. a pack of twenty…

Take a look at these pictures. It may be the last time you ever see them. After the theft of several priceless artworks from the Kunsthal museum, investigators have announced that the paintings may have been burnt by the suspect’s mother to prevent her son being found with the paintings in his possession. From the…

You only need to know two things about Juno Temple. Number 1: she’s really hot. Number 2: she does nude scenes in virtually every film she’s in. See below for the proof… an topless in Kaboom (Greg Araki) I love this photo of her      

The magic: by the end of the fifties Brando had already made several films that defined the art of screen acting. A Streetcar Named Desire (51), inventing the screen rebel (The Wild One), and giving the screen’s most famous improvised dialogue performance in On The Waterfront: ‘I coulda been a contender. I coulda had class.’…

Blind Date, Sarah Northan. Charing Cross Theatre May 30th 2013   I used to love dating shows. Blind Date was my favourite TV dating programme. I watched it, glued to the television every Saturday evening from 1991 to approximately 1996. Unfortunately this new play by Sarah Northan has nothing in common with Cilla Black except…

Here’s a list of the most interesting films i have seen over the past ten years. I have only included films actually released during this time as I consider the reputation of most ‘classic’ films to be above the need for reiteration. Citizen Dog (Thailand) Some have called this film the Thai Amelie but its much…

It  was a long, slow decline that took Veronica Lake from the 40 spy thrillers she made with Alan Ladd, to Flesh Feast (1970). But that was how it often was for stars of that era, on the top for a few years before retiring, only to return when very old for the money (it’s…

This week’s been going in so many different directions, its hard to know where to begin. I just started a new job at a school in Haringey. As a teaching assistant. I think I get on with the kids ok. But its hard to keep discipline. I get so stressed when I see even a…

Theatre review Smack Family Robinson at The Rose, Kingston It’s  bizarre going to the theatre and watching a play that feels very much like a sitcom you’d find on Channel 4, specifically something close to the council estate drama Shameless. This is the first revival of Richard Bean’s first play since the astonishingly successful One…

Originally posted on Watch this and Chill: so it’s been a month since I left the leafy Surrey ghetto for the mean streets of London nd I wanted to write a bit about how its been going, Why London? I moved out of my rented house in Cobham because I felt like my life was…

Right. That’s it. I’ve reached breaking point. If I have to hear one more conversation about a great TV series from America that is the best thing since the first loaf was sliced and  I shall be forced to, well, I’m not sure. But put  it this way.I ‘d be very happy if each and…

1. American Hustle: David O. Russell Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper Why? After the knockout success of Silver Linings, I’m  thrilled that O Russel is making another film with Jennifer Lawrence and De Niro. What’s the story? Set in 1970’s, its about a true-life con-artist forced to…

Paris Hilton – released as One Night In Paris Many thought this would be the end of Paris Hilton. What, really? If anything it made her more famous.  Paris was the Kim Kardashian of the mid 2000s, starring in The Simple Life reality show with Nicole Ritchie.  One Night In Paris showcases Paris’s amazing body.…

Let’s look at the evidence: Mia Farrow  was married to Frank Sinatra for two years. She drove the singer mad, Dean Martin pointed out that he had Scotch that was older than her, she was 19, Sinatra was 48. Her role in Rosemary’s Baby encapsulates her elfin grace, showing her being consumed by something growing…

The Great Gatsby is one of the most intangible books I’ve ever read. The words slip through your mind like sand running through your fingers. It’s one of those books that is hard to follow because the story is ungraspable, it seems to escape understanding, the closer we get to it the more it eludes…

‘I’ve always loved dating shows,’ announces Eva Langoria (executive producer of Ready For Love), ‘but lets be honest, they don’t work too well at matching people.’ I’ve enjoyed my fair share of dating shows too, but my tastes run to cheesy early nineties shows that I watched in my childhood, Blind Date being one of…

Don Draper is back! This time its 1967, the hair is longer and there’s more facial hair. I thought that Peggy Olsen had got a new boyfriend but it was the same guy, just hiding behind the weight of colossal sideburns and a beard. Don Draper read Dante’s Inferno whilst on holiday in Hawaii with…

Alice GB/SWITZERLAND/WEST GERMANY 1988 Most films about Lewis Carrol’s classic are frankly dull, i.e. Tim Burton’s recent interpretation. This film gets closer to other films in capturing the curious atmosphere of the original story, by using live actors and animation, it has surrealist overtones and the puppets by director Svankmajer are like the sock puppets you…

Ahead of tomorrow’s release of Spring Breakers, a recap of some of the best films in the genre. When Ferris Bueller spent a day off school in John Hughes eighties classic Ferris Bueller’s day off, the worst behaviour on display was the crashing of one of the parent’s sports cars. Ferris and his friends spent the…

  From the way celebs are written about in the media, you’d imagine that most famous people had committed crimes that would put them in the same category as dictators of small african countries or Russian oligarchs, yet most celebrities are no more guilty than the rest of us, yet are endlessly reminded of their…

So there’s me, Fred, and two Norwegian girls that we met on holiday. The girls are a lot younger than us, maybe 19. we’re touring the South of France together. So what are you doing around here, I ask Christina (blonde) ‘studying for exams’ she tells me. That sounds interesting, I tell her. it’s not…

I was born in 1982, the same year as Britney Spears and Prince William. I’m sure there are many more celebrities born in the same year, I’m just listing the two I can remember. People say I look a bit like Prince William, but I’m not sure. Princess Diana died in my fifteenth year… I…

Now for a story from one of my favourite periods in history: perhaps no other period contains so much poltical change in such a short period of time. For one brief, none too long era, a process of enlightenment was spreading, the nexus of politics and entertainment. It was a glorious time: people called it…

1. A Star Is Born, 1954. (Remake of A Star Is Born, 1937) George Cukor took the original idea (young star is created by her creator, and becomes more successful as he becomes obsolete) and made it the saddest film in history, and a showcase for the powerhouse performance of Judy Garland, as well as…

There is a scene towards the end of Side Effects of such powerful sensuality that I regret not being able to describe further, for revealing too much about where the film is heading, nevertheless, it has enough twists and turns to make even the most eagle-eyed viewer question what they have seen. Steven Soderburgh has…

Photo-realism is very hard to achieve these days, as nearly everyone is used to having their picture taken, but it used to be different. Look at these photos below: they are as real a depiction of the suffering and deprivation of the American depression as one is ever likely to see. They are also some…

Picnic at Hanging Rock could be given credit as being the first work of Australian cinema. It showed for the first time the process of leaving the English Empire, and the mysterious enigma of the Australian past, the Aboriginal dreamtime and the vast wilderness of the outback. What we see and what we seem are…

Recently it occurred to me that there are few films that are made about black boxers. When We Were Kings doesn’t really count because it is a documentary. One film that tells the story of the world’s greatest prizefighter, until Ali, is The Great white Hope. Jack Johnson (1878-1946) was the unbdisputed champion, but he was…

Vanity Fair, February 2013 From Elle December 2012

Those who saw last year’s The Help may be wondering if it showed the full picture of the racism of the Southern states before equal rights for blacks. One incident stands out as being  the most unimaginably extreme example of the racist attitudes towards blacks in the fifties. A young man named Emmet Till was…

You have to hand it to the Academy of Motion Pictures. When it comes to self-aggrandisement they are world leaders. Among the options available for best picture in what was the most varied list in years, they went for a film that was about a film, albeit one that was only a front for a…

Actor Charles McGraw (1914-1980) has one of the most bizarre and unusual deaths of any actor I have come across, slipping and falling through a glass shower door. The accident occurred at his home in Studio City, California. He was 66. McGraw became famous after starring in the noir film ‘The Narrow Margin‘ – playing…

Pistorious is currently on bail, charged with murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. What actually happened? Here is what we know: shots were fired at his home, at 3am, Steenkamp was dead when the ambulance arrived after Pistorious had unsuccessfully tried to revive her. He made a call saying he had shot his girlfriend. witnesses…

Right, its confession time. I didn’t have sex in college. Or at university. I’m not proud of the fact. After all that was a big part of me going there in the first place. I hate to think of all the sex I missed by not being at the right parties or hanging with the…

When I was nineteen I spent a summer working at a warehouse. I was a student and away from home for the first time, and I needed money. The guy said I could start the next evening, i was to be stacking the shelves, taking deliveries and looking at the security cameras. It was a…

During the forties there were clear intimations of it in Rope (1948), Victory and The Maltese Falcon. The fifties brought I Vitelloni, Strangers On a Train, Suddenly Last Summer, Serious Charge, and the decade was rounded off with two productions of the life of Oscar Wilde. Cat On A Hot Tin Roof and Spartacus were…

Detectives John M. Laymen, top, and Emmett Jones examine the body of actress Carole Landis in a bathroom (one of four) at her home at 1465 Capri Drive, July 5, 1948. There is something not quite right about this picture. Landis died in July, so why is there is a fur coat doing on the…

Sit down, have a seat. Take of those wet clothes. You look like you could use a rest. It’s been cold hasn’t it? I’m surprised that you found us, we’re so tucked away. Yes, its a big place, its 100 acres beyond those trees. Well, how about a drink? I’ve got some whisky tucked away…

I have been paying close attention to the recent Tom Cruise situation covered by a recent Vanity Fair article. Cruise is one of several A-listers to have joined the ‘religion’. Among the well-known celebrities to have joined are: John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Beck, Nancy Cartwright and Jason Lee. The church had always encouraged celebrities to…

He was great wasn’t he. Watching neighbours was one of the highlights of my childhood. I can still hear the famous theme tune in my head. I used to watch it at 530 before eating my dinner. Sometimes I’d even watch it in the afternoon as well. Good times! In Australia they treat Ian Smith…

When I was six I and a good friend talked to a stranger in town. He bought us ice cream and gave us money. We knew we shouldn’t have done it and that our parents would disapprove but we did it anyway. a similar thing happened on holiday. later we found an abandoned tire in…

“Alfred Hitchcock Presents” The Glass Eye (TV episode 1957) – IMDb.

In 1981 Natalie Wood was on a yacht with her husband Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. They had all been drinking heavily. The evening ended in tragedy when Nalie Wood fell off the boat and drowned. This has long been one of Hollywood’s most mysterious deaths. Why was she arguing with Walken? And why was…

Lets face it, there are some books we will never get around to reading. Here is a list of books I know from the screen adaptations; Pride and Prejudice/Sense and Sensibility/Mansfield Park I haven’t read a single Austen novel. But directors seem to love her work. Every few years there is some kind of modern…

 Rodgers and HartLook at yourself, if you had a sense of humorYou would laugh to beat the bandLook at yourself, do you still believe the rumorThat romance is simply grand? Since you took it right on the chinYou have lost that bright toothpaste grinMy mental state is all a-jumbleI sit around and sadly mumble Fools…

A recent Newsweek article revealed that most obituaries of stars to die of Aids did not mention the disease. In his entire eight-year presidency Ronald Reagan did not mention thhomsexuae condition, as though even to speak of it was to get too close. AIDS was first considered something only caught by drug users and homosexuals.…

One summer I went swimming in the river with my best friend. We left our clothes underneath a railway bridge. They were covered with mud when we got back. One summer I managed to find out where the girl I had a crush on lived. I went to her house and we played old computer…

Although these films were released at a distance of 10 years, and are stylistically radically different, they both in fact go some way towards an in depth study of the American man. In my opinion, they are the closest we have to getting a real look at how men act and think, these two films…

A look back at how J Stuart Blackton invented film animation   amongst the father’s of early cinema are the well known group comprising the Lumiere Brothers, W D Griffith, Erich Von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin. Yet one who is not so well known yet had as great an influence on the development of cinema is…

Every time i put the name of a Hollywood star or famous musician into Google it fills in my search with gay. It doesn’t matter how seemingly straight whoever the person in question might be. It appears that we can’t help but be fascinated by the sexuality of famous people. This week’s famous un-outed but…

I don’t understand why so many people get rid of their Christmas decorations on the first day of the New Year. for one thing, its depressing in January, More importantly, there are 12 days of Christmas, Twelth Night is according to Wikipedia,  the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of…

Having watched BBC four’s tribute to one of early cinema’s biggest stars made me keen to learn more about Clara Bow. Here is what I dug up: Clara was born in poverty in the slums of Brooklyn, her father was a drunk and her mother was in and out of mental asylums. She was extremely…

In all my years of watching films and mad-for tv productions I have never witnessed quite such a wrongheaded and misguided undertaking as BBC 2’s The Girl, a supposedly accurate account of Hitchcock’s warped obsession with actress Tippi Hedren. As Hitch buffs already know, Hedren became Hitchcock’s newest blonde muse in 1963, when Grace Kelly refused his pleas to…

  Everyone knows Cary Grant, debonair English born actor of North By Northwest and The Philadelphia Story. He started his acting career aged 16 in Vaudeville before settlling in Hollywood. His first break was opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus, He then played alongside Mae Venus in She Done Him Wrong. It was ‘The Awful…

Connie Francis has a voice that has been described as sounding like melting honey. And she released some of the most sugary and anodyne songs in the American songbook, pop-rockers like Lipstick on Your Collar and Stupid Cupid were big hits. They were released during the strange period in music between Elvis going to war…

1. The cast.    Bradley Cooper is great as the teacher recently out of mental hospital and trying to get his life back on track. Robert De Niro can really do comedy, as he demonstrated in Meet the Parents. This is his best and most comprehensive performance since Casino. Jacki Weaver was in Russel’s last…

Buster Keaton   my 2003 edition describes Buster keaton thus:   ‘one of America’s great silent clowns, the unsmiling but game little fellow who always comes out on top whatever the odds.’   Indeed, he never smiles in his films and they are all the funnier for that. He trained in vaudeville and made in…

There are many instances of fuck-ups and cover-ups in the days of old Hollywood, many careers derailed or never allowed to take off due to unpreventable lifestyle choices such as, take your pick: alcoholism (William Holden), homosexulaity (rock Hudson) or politics (Jane Fonda)., a good example of one whose luck ran out is provided by…

 A mini biography A celebrated , self-destructive American actor, the brother of Ethel and Lionel Barrymore, and son of leading stage actors Maurice Barrymore and Georgiana Drew Barrymore,  He studied first at the Slade school of Art and worked first as a cartoonist and illustrator before following the family occupation in 1900. An undisciplined actor,…

The first black woman to be nominated for an oscar, Dandridge is the perfect example of someone whose career was held back due to race, and the unfortunate social climate she lived in. as she said herslelf, ‘If I had been white I could take over the world.” Dandridge refused to play roles which called…

Lupe Velez has been quoted as having said: ‘the first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the cheque. Then you look in the basement and see if the house has termites, Its the same with men.’   Her instincts generally served her well. She marries the star of…

Like what you’ve read? Please leave a comment! I want this blog to be the best it can be, the only way that can happen is if people leae constructive feedback saying what they liked and didn’t like. Thank you Robert. 

  Yukio Mishima before his failed coup Yukio Mishima was as Japanese playwright, novelist, actor and film-maker whose life was the subject of the Paul Schrader film Mishima: A Life In four Parts,1985. His novella The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea was filmed by Lewis John Carlino in 1976. Mishima’s childhood was…

The lovely Capuicine (1933-1990)  was a French actress who starred in international films like The Pink Panther. Capucine was briefly married to French film actor Pierre Trabaud. She later met actor William Holden in the early 1960s. They starred in the films The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964). Holden was married to Brenda Marshall, but the two began a two-year affair. After…

i’m not 100% confident that Ladd killed himself but his death was the result of a drink and drugs overdose so I’m including him on here as he is one of the biggest names I have written about. Here is his life: Born in Hot Springs, Alabama, he worked in a variety of jobs, including…

  Leslie was a Hong Kong actor (1956-2003), born in Hong Kong, he was educated in England and studied textiles in Leeds University. His films are: A Better Tomorrow, a Better tomorrow II, Rouge, A Chinese Ghost Story, Once a Thief, days of Being wild, farewell My Concubine, The Bride With White Hair, Between Love…

GEORGE SANDERS This super suave actor played in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent, as well as the frankly dire ‘Falcon’ series of films all made on shoestring budget, but it is his tremendously mercurial role as the supercilious agent in All About Eve for which he is best known. Sanders was immortalised in song…

I’m searching for phrases To sing your praises It’s soon after midnight and my day has just begun from After Midnight, Bob Dylan.

More Famous Film actor suicides Maggie McNamara Capable but short lived actress. Herman Bing Plump, explosive German who was a former assitant to F W Murnau. Ross Alexander  Leading man of the thirties. He was on stage from his teens. Married actresses Aleta Freel and Anne Nagel. Shot himself aged thirty.    Gia Scala  Italian…

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Here are the best bits from the Cover story on B.D.: Why do you have the need to reshape things?  Because that’s the nature of existence. Nothing stays where it is for long. You’v described what you do as a calling. everybody has a calling, don’t they? some have a high calling, some have a…

I prefer old films generally to older films, and I’d rather watch a film that I’ve seen before than risk watching an old one. The situation gets more acute as the number of old films that I want to see diminishes in number, a few Hitchcock’s some Bergman’s and some of the Italian masters Fellini…