I was fathernapped
Someone couldn’t seriously have called the police and told them I was a threat to my children
Hollywood
Tuesday
Wednesday
John Cena’s car-crash Taiwan apology
‘You can’t CCP me’
Tuesday
How COVID-19 killed Hollywood
The pandemic has sped up the decline of glitzy award ceremonies
Monday
Sundance memories
Robert Redford’s film festival goes virtual
Wednesday
Here’s looking at you, Kid
One hundred years on from the seminal Chaplin flick
Tuesday
No, Meghan Markle isn’t going to be president
The more people see her, the less they like
Monday
Terry O’Neill: ‘Hollywood is lonely’
He was one of Britain’s greatest portrait photographers, possibly the greatest
Wednesday
Hollywood’s transrace hypocrisy
The Academy Awards are making America look stupid in front of the entire world
Tuesday
Olivia de Havilland’s Red Scare
She was not an anti-communist in spite of being a liberal, she was an anti-communist because she was a liberal
Monday
Where can patriotic Americans find America?
It is hard to identify safe spaces for those of us on the American right
Thursday
It’s OK everyone, actors are ‘taking responsibility’
Let’s all be grateful to these very rich, very famous people
Friday
Harry and Meghan represent the triumph of celebrity over royalty
We treat the royal family like Hollywood stars but get offended if they behave like them
Tuesday
Hollywood parrots the Chinese Communist party line
For almost a decade, American cinema has rolled over and had its fluffy belly tickled by grim-faced CCP censors
Monday
Hollywood loves a remake, but do we?
Once more, with feeling
Thursday
‘Steer clear of that cave boy, James Dean, and grease ball, Elvis Presley’
Lucky bastard. Such are the words that come constantly to mind while you’re reading Clancy Sigal’s two volumes of posthumously published autobiography. Blacklisted as a (self-confessedly lousy) actor for refusing to name names in the McCarthy era, working as the agent for the likes of Peter Lorre, Rod Steiger and — sigh — Barbara Stanwyck in 1950s Hollywood and freelancing on Fleet Street in countercultural London (including reviewing films for The Spectator), Sigal was at the centre of every piece of action going. Should Black Sunset and The London Lover ever be gathered into a single volume (perhaps taking Sigal’s earlier memoir, Going Away, along for the ride), ‘Been there,
Wednesday
How Hollywood lost its shine
Reading the lip-smacking reports of the latest troubled celebrity relationships (Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux definitely high and dry, Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne allegedly on the rocks) I couldn’t help musing that stars – and more specifically, the place they occupy in our mass psychological landscape – have very much changed since the first mass-market celebrities emerged. The film stars of the fledgling Hollywood truly were worshipped as higher beings; a tribe of Pathan Indians opened fire on a cinema when they were denied entry to a Greta Garbo film while women committed suicide when Valentino died. Their marriages were regarded as heavenly unions; their romantic sunderings as tragedies.
Thursday
In praise of French women
I spent the better part of two sunny days indoors writing about authenticity for a Greek magazine, a strange subject in view of how inauthentic politics are in that Brussels-run south-eastern outpost dotted with islands. Mind you, what is taking place in the West makes Greek politics seem ideal by comparison. The witch hunt is on and it’s as phoney as the one that burnt those poor women in Salem long ago. Thank God for the French actress who injected some badly needed truths into Hollywood’s bullshit. Catherine Deneuve signed an open letter published in Le Monde attacking the wave of ‘puritanism’ sparked by the allegations against Harvey and co. It was
Thursday
If Annette Bening isn’t Oscar-nominated, I’ll eat my hat and also yours
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool is plainly wonderful, and stars Annette Bening, who is plainly wonderful, as Gloria Grahame, a one-time Hollywood movie star who in later life hits on hard times — ‘a big name in black and white. Not doing too well in colour,’ comments her landlady at one point — and embarks on a romance with a young English actor who is 30 years her junior. It is based on a true memoir. It is a love story, told tenderly, bravely, smartly, movingly. And believably. Older women, it seems, can be interesting, complicated, vital, attractive and sexual. Who knew? (But don’t spread the word, or they’ll
