Month: March 2019

50 Great Films to Mumble About

/ Tony / 20 Comments

Ok, so back at the end of 2018 I put together a list of 50 Great Reads having been inspired by A Thousand Mistakes’ own list. I also pointed out that I doubted I’d be able to put together a list of 50 Great Films as he had done.

Turns out I could. Once again; this isn’t my saying ‘these are the best’ – it’s more ‘these are my favourites’ and ‘I could watch these time and time again’.  Looking at it laid out after compiling I’m not-really surprised by how many De Niro outings there are on here. There was a time he was untouchable. A couple of directors that don’t have MS as their initials get a few multiple listings but I reckon it’s a fairly rounded list that crosses genres and spans 70 years from 1946 – 2016.

So, in no order, except alphabetical:

Almost Famous (2000) Director: Cameron Crowe Starring: Kate Hudson, Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup
Amelie (2001) Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet Starring: Audrey Tautou, Matthieu Kassovitz, Jamel Debbouze
Back to the Future (1985) Director: Robert Zemeckis Starring: Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson
The Big Lebowski(1998) Directors: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi
Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) Director: Danny Boon Starring: Danny Boon, Kad Merad
Black Cat, White Cat (1998) Director: Emir Kusturica Starring: Bajram Severdzan, Srdjan ‘Zika’ Todorovic, Branka Katic
Blade Runner (1982) Director: Ridley Scott Starring: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) Director: George Roy Hill Starring: Paul Newman, Robert Redford
Casino (1995) Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Director: Steven Spielberg Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon
Cool Hand Luke (1967) Director: Stuart Rosenberg Starring: Paul Newman, George Kennedy, Strother Martin
The Darjeeling Limited (2007) Director: Wes Anderson Starring: Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman
Das Boot (1981) Director: Wolfgang Peterson Starring,Jürgen Prochnow, Herbert Grönemeyer
The Deer Hunter(1978) Director: Michael Cimino Starring: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep
Dr Strangelove (1964) Director: Stanley Kubrick Starring: Peter Sellers, George C Scott
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Director: Michel Gondry Starring: Kate Winslet, Jim Carey
For A Few Dollars More (1965) Director: Sergio Leone Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef
Forest Gump (1994) Director: Robert Zemeckis Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise
Ghost In The Shell (1995) Director: Mamoru Oshii Starring (Voice Cast): Atsuko Tanaka,
Akio Ōtsuka
The Godfather Pt 2 (1974) Director: Francis Ford Coppola Starring: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1965) Director: Sergio Leone Starring: Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef, Eli Wallach
Goodfellas (1990) Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
The Great Beauty (2013) Director: Paolo Sorrentino Starring: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) Director: Wes Anderson Starring: Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham
Groundhog Day (1993) Director: Harold Ramis Starring: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell
High Fidelity (2000) Director: Stephen Frears Starring: John Cussack, Iben Hjejle, Jack Black
Hot Fuzz (2007) Director: Edgar Wright Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
How to Steal a Million (1966) Director: William Wyler Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Peter O’Toole
The Intouchables (2011) Directors: Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano Starring: François Cluzet
Omar Sy
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) Director: Frank Capra Starring: James Steward, Donna Reed
LA Confidential (1997) Director: Curtis Hanson Starring: Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, Kevin Spacey, Kim Basinger
The Last Emperor (1987) Director: Bernardo Bertolucci Starring: John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O’Toole
Life is a Miracle (2004) Director:Emir Kusturica Starring: Slavko Štimac, Nataša Šolak
Life of Brian (1979) Director: Terry Jones Starring: John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Terry Gillam, Michael Palin, Terry Jones
The Long Good Friday (1981) Director: John Mackenzie Starring: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren,
Miller’s Crossing (1990) Directors: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen Starring: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro
Mona Lisa (1986) Director: Neil Jordan Starring: Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane
Once Upon a Time in America (1984) Director: Sergio Leone Starring: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci
The Pianist (2002) Director: Roman Polanski Starring: Adrian Brody
Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) Director: John Hughes Starring: John Candy, Steve Martin
Ponyo (2008) Director: Hayao Miyazaki Starring (Voice Cast): Yuria Nara, Hiroki Doi
Raging Bull (1981) Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci
Rain Man (1988) Director: Barry Levinson Starring: Tom Cruise, Dustin Hoffman, Valeria Golino
Saving Private Ryan (1998) Director: Steven Spielberg Starring: Tom Hanks, Edward Burns, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon
Shaun of the Dead (2004) Director: Edgar Wright Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Subway (1985) Director: Luc Besson Starring: Christopher Lambert, Isabelle Adjani
Tales from the Golden Age (2009) Directors: Cristian Mungiu, Ioana Uricaru, Hanno Höfer, Constantin Popescu Starring: Diana Cavallioti, Vlad Ivanov, Alexandru Potocean
Taxi Driver (1976) Director: Martin Scorsese Starring: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybil Shephard, Harvey Keitel
Torn Curtain (1966) Director: Alfred Hitchcock Starring: Paul Newman, Julie Andrews
Your Name  (2016) Director: Makoto Shinkai Starring (Voice Cast): Ryunosuke Kamiki
Mone Kamishiraishi, Ryo Narita, Aoi Yūki

Blog Tour: Welcome to The Heady Heights by David F. Ross

/ Tony / 2 Comments

From the PR: “It ’s the year punk rock was born, Concorde entered commercial service and a tiny Romanian gymnast changed the sport forever…

Archie Blunt is a man with big ideas. He just needs a break for them to be realised. In a bizarre brush with the light entertainment business, Archie unwittingly saves the life of the UK’s top showbiz star, Hank ‘Heady’ Hendricks, and immediately seizes the opportunity to aim for the big time. With dreams of becoming a musical impresario, he creates a new singing group called The High Five with five unruly working-class kids from Glasgow’s East End. The plan? Make it to the final of Heady’s Saturday night talent show, where fame and fortune awaits…

But there’s a complication. Archie’s made a fairly major misstep in his pursuit of fame and fortune, and now a trail of irate Glaswegian bookies, corrupt politicians and a determined Scottish WPC are all on his tail…

A hilarious, poignant nod to the elusiveness of stardom, in an age when ‘making it’ was ‘having it all’, Welcome to the Heady Heights is also a dark, laugh-out-loud comedy, a poignant tribute to a bygone age and a delicious drama about desperate men, connected by secrets and lies, by accidents of time and, most of all, the city they live in.”

Four novels in and news of a new David F Ross book is guaranteed to be “yes please!” from me.  Why? Well, first off: he’s bloody funny. Many is the time I’ve had to stifle a laugh while reading one of his previous novels while others either sleep or for fear of being looked at as if I’ve farted in church. Welcome to The Heady Heights is one of the funniest books I’ve read this year, a natural and effortless humour that balances a warm, tender humour with some wickedly dark laughs and is stuffed with some real cracking lines (“Heady Hendricks sucked ma boaby!” had me laughing for a long time). The humour in Welcome to The Heady Heights serves as both pure comedy and relief at some of the novel’s bleaker moments – it’s like a literary “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life”, singing ‘life’s a piece of shit’ as fate kicks you in the scrot’.

Which brings me on to the ‘secondly’ – Mr Ross has a real talent for portraying the bittersweet of life’s underdogs. Those characters like Archie Blunt who know their own limitations, have calmly accepted the blows life has dealt them, but still aims to try and make a break for a better life. It makes reading the Welcome to The Heady Heights a real pleasure and if you’re not rooting for Archie then there’s something wrong with you. David F. Ross peoples his novel with characters that live and breath so vividly within its pages that it makes  Welcome to The Heady Heights a thoroughly engaging and compelling read.

Of course, given that my own record collection (which includes a 45 from the Miraculous Vespas) is once again challenging the confines of practical storage, it would be remiss of me not to point out that one of the delights of reading Ross’ work is the way in which he blends music into his stories. Like Scorsese using soundtracks to place and pace his movies, David F. Ross uses music in his novels to wonderful effect and I’ll admit openly that for the last three of his novels I’ve headed first to the playlist at the back of each to see what’s going to get a spin during the narrative. Ross’ record collection is one I’d like to flick through for sure.

Now, all of these factors alone would make Welcome to The Heady Heights worth reading. What makes it an absolute belter of a book is that David F. Ross takes these elements and marries them to a fucking brilliant story line – the depths and scope of Welcome to The Heady Heights is phenomenal. From the aspirations of Archie Blunt to a ‘holy crap’ plot that takes in a secretive, dark and disturbing society, murder, extortion and crooks both small time and big, Ross spins a story with so many different facets and so many well realised and engrossing narratives that his place as a master storyteller can never be doubted.

My thanks to Karen at Orenda Books for my copy and to Anne Cater for inviting me to take part in this blogtour- reading Welcome to The Heady Heights is well recommended. If I were in the habit of dropping stars there’d be five right here.