When the poignant, defiantly hopeful sound of Smalltown Boy by Bronski Beat kicked in early on in writer-director Aitch Alberto's Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe, I settled deep down into my seat at TIFF, strongly suspecting that given that music choice I was going to love the rest of the film.... Continue Reading →
One of most poignant, moving sequences in Everybody's Talking About Jamie, the screen adaptation of the hit West End musical now streaming globally on Amazon Prime Video, features a bittersweet, rousing new song, This Was Me, written specifically for the film by Dan Gillespie Sells with lyrics by Tom MacRae, the original show's co-creators. As... Continue Reading →
It’s been a strange year, we all know it. Some of us found out we were brilliant bread bakers, others discovered they had a fitness fanatic within them, and some just hid under the covers and waited for the world to stop being a really scary place. Jack Holden however decided to sit down and... Continue Reading →
The music that they constantly play, it says nothing to me about my life, sang Morrissey on The Smiths song Panic, released in 1986, a year before the band broke up. Lyrics that no doubt spoke to a teenaged Stephen Kijak growing up in small town Massachusetts and that certainly resonate with the dedicated fan... Continue Reading →
Actor Lydia West was already on Digital Spy's 30 Black British stars of tomorrow list and Grazia's 2021 Hotlist before last month's record-breaking UK launch of Russell T. Davies' 1980s London set drama It's A Sin on Channel 4 and its digital platform All4, where it has racked up over 16 million views and counting.... Continue Reading →
As writer Russell T. Davies' (Queer As Folk) new 1980s London set drama series It's A Sin opens we're briskly introduced to five young characters, with a skilful immediacy that's instantly involving. Small town boy, 18 year-old Ritchie (Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander), is leaving the sleepy conservative seclusion of the Isle of Wight... Continue Reading →
Despite its relatively short running time of just 53 minutes, or perhaps because of it, director Ben Anthony's made-for-television documentary Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which premiered at NewFest, manages to cover a lot of ground. In fact a parallel emerges of a prolific artist with an intense creative drive, and the film's style which,... Continue Reading →
A couple of years ago, I went with a group to see Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Despite the thuddingly bad writing, we’d giddily wonder what ABBA song the filmmakers would shoehorn into the next musical number. I remember my pal Dennis seeing those platform soles stepping out of a helicopter and loudly exclaiming,... Continue Reading →
Laurie Lynd’s feature length documentary Killing Patient Zero is a compelling, detailed exploration of how a French Canadian flight attendant, Gaëtan Dugas, came to be branded by the media as ‘Patient Zero’ and was widely blamed for the initial spread of AIDS among gay men in the USA. Based on Richard A. McKay's book Patient... Continue Reading →
