All posts by Sarah Slade

About Sarah Slade

Learning designer based in London.

We’ve seen it in the movies…

Film

MostlyFilm is slowing down during August.We’ve got a few pieces to publish, but we’re not following a schedule because…it’s the holidays, maaan.

However, if you’re lost for something to read on the beach, though, why not take a wander through our archives?

We’ve had a busy few months so far, starting the year trying not to jump on the La La Land Backlash wagon and eventually agreeing that it was a lovely film, but NOT JAZZ.  We don’t just cover the big releases though. In February our writers recommended another round of obscure cinematic gems that they didn’t think got enough love.

We marked International Women’s Day this year with two posts on women who defined a decade, starting with Lillian Gish and ending with a scion of a Hollywood dynasty.  In April we got lost on the way to the Odeon Leicester Square and ended up watching the West End revival of 42nd Street instead.

May and June saw us watching the UK release of American Gods and valiantly attempting to ignore the General Election and the looming chaos of Brexit. Ron Swanson braved the crowds to report back from this year’s Cannes Film Festival.  We’ve also attended the Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna and the Manchester International Festival. 

So that’s us for the first half of the year. We’re still planning out the months up to Christmas, but the only thing I can guarantee is that it will be fascinating, annoying, deeply geeky and mostly about film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Quiet Passion

biopics, Directors, Film, , ,

Terence Davies’ biographical film about Emily Dickinson, starring Sex and The City’s Cynthia Nixon as the reclusive American poet, was released on DVD earlier this month. Sarah Slade sees how the truth has been slanted.

I first found Emily Dickinson thanks to my English teacher, a very proper Southern Baptist from Alabama, who thought Cleopatra was no better than she should be and that we should be studying Dickinson’s poetry instead of Hardy’s. She was half right.

Continue reading A Quiet Passion →

A Change in the Weather

Film, New Releases, , , , ,

Sarah Slade finds a chilly charm in the latest Jon Sanders collaboration. 

Films that play with reality and perception tends toward the spooky end of the cinematic spectrum. Not so with A Change in the Weather. In fact, it’s hard to find a premise more cosily middle-class and…actorly…than the one offered here: a group of performers spends a week in a French gite and things get a bit sticky on the relationship front. It’s got Radio 4 written all over it.

Continue reading A Change in the Weather →

Editor’s Inbox

Film, Future Releases,

New MostlyFilm editors are initiated into the Siblingity of MostlyFilm Eds in a short, non-surgical ceremony where the old editor hands over the Gimlet Eye and passwords before skipping off to the Field of No Fucks Left To Give. In my month or so in the editor’s rather cheap plastic chair, I’ve discovered a glitch in the Gimlet Eye and the email password opens a whole new world of delicious nonsense to play with. From upcoming releases to bizarre ideas for tie-ins, this is a round-up of things that we wouldn’t normally get around to talking about, but we thought you might like to know.

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Destination Unknown

Documentary, Film, History, , ,

An elderly man plays with the remains of a fence, then walks across a scrubby heath.

“There were no trees here,” he says, looking at a path weaving through the bushes. “Nothing.” He regards the nothing for a moment, then tells of the last time he saw his family at the Kraków-Plaszów forced labour camp, in 1942.  The camp featured in Schindler’s List. 

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Stormy Weather

Classic Films, Musicals, , ,

Sarah Slade considers if Stormy Weather has weathered the storm.

stormy-weather

There is a school of thought that maintains that musicals of the Hollywood Golden Age were at the forefront of social commentary. Look at Carousel, with its depiction of domestic violence, single parenthood and walking on through the wind and the rain. Or Oklahoma in the light of Judd’s mental illness. Let’s skip over the message behind Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and look at Showboat, which has actual people of colour singing songs about rivers and takes a sideways look the trials of being mixed-race in the Deep South.

Continue reading Stormy Weather →