Films @ Dave’s Info Cafe

The western as a genre was dead until 1989 but was revived by, of all things, a made for TV mini series directed by an Englishman. That series was Lonesome Dove, a four part drama, that rekindled an American love for the western. It was made for the small screen but it had epic ambitions [...]

John Ford’s westerns have influenced so many directors throughout the world so it was not so much of a surprise when “westerns” started being made outside the Hollywood system. The most famous mutation of the traditional western was the spaghetti western. These were films made largely in Europe (Spain being the most believable location to [...]

Westerns have been around since the  era of silent film. They have been the staple of early cinema and early TV. I can remember watching many western series on the box during the sixties such as Wagon Train, Gunsmoke, Rawhide and many more. But the western started to become more of an art form in [...]

One of my great passions in movies is to watch epic films. You know the ones – grand scale, sweeping visuals and action and heroic stories. A good epic film needs the big screen to fit in the cast of thousands and the panoramic view of the action. There have been many epics made over [...]

I’m on a roll now. The Song Remains The Same just started me thinking again about pop music films again. It’s funny how one thing leads to another. I’d almost forgotten about probably the greatest film about popular music and culture. And it was made by a bone fide film maker with a host of [...]

I thought I just had to write this piece after having watched The Song Remains The Same on television last night. You probably realise by now that one of my areas of interest is films or movies about popular music and culture. When I saw that this was on the TV last night the closet Led [...]

1999 was one of my favourite years. I studied film and the cinema for a year at John Leggott sixth form college in Scunthorpe and ended up with an “A” Level in Film Studies. For years I had avidly watched movies at the cinema and on the television and more recently on video. I had even [...]

Why is it that you don’t see any decent films about pop music any more? In the sixties and seventies there were films like Woodstock, Monterey Pop, The Kids Are Alright and numerous other commercial films covering either pop music events or the rock lifestyle. I suppose the easy answer is that we are in [...]

It is quite common now to see graphic violence in films. You can even watch it on prime time television in the UK – just sit through a few episodes of Rome. We are used to going to the cinema now and seeing buckets of blood and gore, limbs and heads being hacked or sawed [...]

I’ve just been taken back to my childhood this afternoon. “The 300 Spartans” has been shown on ITV1. A friend and I saw this at one of the cinemas in Scunthorpe (my home town) when I was 11 during a wonderful and formative time in my life. I guess this latest TV showing is tied [...]