The shipyard painter, political activist and razor-sharp cartoonist Bob Starrett has just written a new book The Way I See It on his eventful life and times. Below we reprint one of his stories and review an essential read
LIKE I say, I get around. Sometimes, though, I even surprise myself.
ENO's production of La Boheme is a triumph,
STONED? They must have been - that's the only thing that can account for this cinematic calamity about the life of Brian Jones by first-time director Stephen Woolley, latterly known for producing films like Michael Collins and Back Beat.
JEFF SAWTELL awards five stars to a political thriller that rails against big business and glorifies those who fight for humanity.
OBVIOUSLY inspired by Pauline Kael's description of most thrillers, this parody of the film-noir genre proves not so much kiss kiss, bang bang, as bang, bang, kiss, kiss and a whole lotta laughter in between.
THIS miserable motel in the honeymoon capital of the world has more tears than could possibly fall over the precipice of its famous falls. At one moment, a man beseeches another man pondering the drop into the deep to "jump."
MY heart sank at the prospect of a 130-minute long chick flick about squabbling sisters. Happily, I was proved wrong.
ONCE, there were blacks exploited in movies, then there were blaxploitation movies and now, it seems, we have the emergence of exploitation movies designed to cash in on designer blackness.
Titled after the mission statement of Lyndon B Johnson, "to win hearts and minds," Peter Davis's 1974 documentary was an attempt to illustrate the pain in the hearts and minds of those US Vietnam veterans who suffered because of their government's attempt to bomb the Vietnamese "back to the stone age."
JEFF SAWTELL delves into Terry Gilliam's enchanted fairytale realm of folklore that doesn't quite live up to expectations.
Written and directed by Cameron Crowe (Vanilla Sky, Almost Famous), this is one of those cloying, life-affirming rites of passage movies which makes you feel as if you've been sucking through a colostomy bag.
MURDERBALL provides a powerful portrait of both the positive and negative aspects of male machismo, supporting the notion that sport can act as a catalyst - changing lives, as well as destroying them