On the occasion of La La Land, I wrote a piece for Globe Film about the history of dance as narrative scene on screen. You can read it here. (Go ahead, I’ll wait.) As a bonus, here’s my annotated, clips-filled guide to a few of the classic 1930s (and golden age of MGM’s Freed Unit)…
Foodism, design and lifestyle in 1960s espionage fantasies
A glossy emphasis on design and lifestyle (those killer bespoke and tailored suits, for one thing) permeates the new throwback international espionage movies like Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service and Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. To contextualize why these trappings were essential to the genre, I rewound to the 1960s and had a rummage around shows like The…