With Christmas imminent, you may be wondering what to buy for your loved ones (or even, let’s face it, for yourself). Movies on DVD or BluRay can be useful, and there have been a fair few very fine films released over the last year. I’m not one of those people particularly bothered about masses of … Continue reading Movies for Christmas… or any time
When the news broke a few days ago that ECM, the illustrious and proudly independent Munich-based music label founded by Manfred Eicher in 1969, was making its remarkable back catalogue available to major streaming services, a film critic friend sent me a piece in the New York Times which singled out 21 ‘essential’ ECM albums. Knowing … Continue reading Now Streaming… The Musical Treasure Trove of ECM
The following piece – an introduction to the work of Ingmar Bergman – was written for the website of the Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, which last November mounted a brief season of his films. But this slightly amended version might serve equally as a taster for the current, comprehensive Bergman retrospective playing at London's BFI Southbank … Continue reading A Matter of Death and Life: the Films of Ingmar Bergman
notes and observations by Geoff Andrew 