Olivia colman

Monday

The Spectator

This month in culture: November 2024

Here In theaters November 1 What happens when the director, writer and stars of Forrest Gump get together in 2024? A goosebump-inducing story of family, time, space, home and the enduring nature of love. The “Here” in question is taken from the graphic novel by Richard McGuire, which tells the story of a location through generations and eras, transcending time. Director Robert Zemeckis plays on the panel-frames of graphic literature by employing a fixed camera angle throughout the film. AI de-aging technology is used to depict the actors from teenagerhood through their eighties. Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Paul Bettany, Kelly Reilly and Michelle Dockery star.

Culture

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

The new foul-mouthed Great Expectations is as bad as you’d expect

When Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight’s adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol aired on FX in 2019, it was very quickly decided that, whatever it was, it wasn’t Dickens. From Guy Pearce’s foul-mouthed Scrooge to a scene in which Mrs. Cratchit strips and offers Ebenezer sex in exchange for money to buy the medicine she needs for her son Tiny Tim, it was a strange combination of would-be gritty social realism and hysterical prurience. It was not well-received in the United States: Salon’s comment that it was “short on joy and very, very, very long on purgatorial slogging” was typical.

olivia colman great expectations

Monday

Alexander Larman

The Crown will long reign o’er the Emmys

The Emmys last night produced several controversies, as usual. The only person of color to win an acting award was Courtney B. Vance, for Lovecraft County, and there were complaints about predictability and a lack of daring. The dominance of Netflix and other streaming services suggests that the once-mighty HBO and other premium cable providers are now fighting for relevance and survival (although we can expect White Lotus to put up a strong showing next year). But the biggest story came in the regal dominance of The Crown, which swept the field with 11 awards. The fourth season of The Crown attracted both plaudits and controversy.

crown