There are films I long to see and know I never will: Michael Powell’s Prospero; Orson Welles’ Heart of Darkness; Martin Scorsese’s Gershwin; Max Opühl’s The Duchess of Langeais. Film history is haunted by the spectres of unmade movies, films which for whatever reason—cast reshuffles, vagaries of financing—never saw the light of a projection booth. […]
Adventures in Time and Space: ‘Dr. Who and the Daleks’ (1965) and ‘Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.’ (1966)
At 5:16 PM on 23 November 1963, a new science fiction show premiered on the BBC. What started out as a mild curiosity in a junkyard has grown into the world’s longest-running science fiction series, a grand adventure spanning over 50 years across television, radio, comics, videogames and novels (plus a marvellous, fan-made stop-motion animation series). […]
Love and Other Drugs: ‘Burton and Taylor’ (2013)
In the final scene of Burton and Taylor, the BBC’s recent television film about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the pair share a mournful tête-a-tête in Taylor’s dressing room. “We’re addicts Elizabeth, you and I,” he says. “Love is not a drug,” she counters, wearily. “Isn’t it? I don’t know,” he replies. Burton and Taylor […]