LOUIS THEROUX: SAVILE. (2016) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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LOUIS THEROUX: SAVILE. (2016) STARRING LOUIS THEROUX.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I watched this seventy-five-minute documentary on Netflix at the weekend and found it fascinating. It’s a kind of a follow-up, if you like, to the film made by investigative journalist and broadcaster Louis Theroux in 2000, WHEN LOUIS MET JIMMY, only now the pair aren’t on chummy, palsy-walsy first name terms any more. Oh no.

Now, Louis refers to the disgraced DJ and broadcaster only by his surname, and talks openly about how he was ‘taken in’ by the consummate liar and performer that was the former BBC star Jimmy Savile. As he- Savile- had been dogged by rumours of paedophilia even during his lifetime, Louis did bring the subject up lightly with him in the 2000 film, only to be told categorically by the ‘celebrity’ that the rumours were untrue.

Savile’s reputation lies in ruins today after…

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A STAR IS BORN. (2018) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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A STAR IS BORN. (2018) BASED ON THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT (1937) BY WILLIAM A. WELLMAN, DOROTHY PARKER, ROBERT CARSON AND ALAN CAMPBELL. ALSO BASED ON THE 1954 AND 1976 SCREENPLAYS OF THE SAME NAME.
DIRECTED BY BRADLEY COOPER.
STARRING LADY GAGA, BRADLEY COOPER, SAM ELLIOTT, RAFI GAVRON AND DAVE CHAPELLE.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This romantic musical drama is a fuckin’ brilliant and gripping film, despite the fact that every second fuckin’ word in it is the fuckin’ ‘F’ word. Still, who am I to fuckin’ complain? I’m not a fuckin’ rock star. The music is out of this word, the love story is all too believable and the acting is top-notch.

I’ve previously watched and enjoyed the 1954 version of the film starring Judy Garland and James Mason, but I actually think this modern re-make is better, and I hardly ever say that about any film, ever. That’s…

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THE THORN BIRDS: THE MISSING YEARS. (1996) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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THE THORN BIRDS: THE MISSING YEARS. (A 1996 CBS MINI-SERIES.) DIRECTED BY KEVIN JAMES DOBSON. BASED ON THE BOOK BY COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH. STARRING RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, AMANDA DONOHUE AND MAXIMILIAN SCHELL.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This made-for-television mini-series supposedly fills in the gaps left by the original mini-series, the phenomenally successful THORN BIRDS. In the original show, Meggie Cleary and the long-time love of her life, the handsome Fr. Ralph de Bricassart- yes, he’s a priest!- make love for the first time. Then, the action rather frustratingly cuts to ‘nineteen years later’ in the plot, when Meggie has two grown-up children; a daughter, Justine, by her husband Luke, and a son, Dane, by her beloved Fr. Ralph.

In THE MISSING YEARS, we start off when Dane is about ten and Justine a year or two older. Meggie left her he-man husband, sheep-shearer and cane-cutter extraordinaire Luke O’Neill, before Dane…

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THE THORN BIRDS: MINI-SERIES. (1983) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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THE THORN BIRDS. (1983) DIRECTED BY DARYL DUKE. BASED ON THE 1977 BOOK BY COLLEEN MCCULLOUGH. THEME MUSIC BY HENRY MANCINI.
STARRING RICHARD CHAMBERLAIN, RACHEL WARD, BARBARA STANWYCK, JEAN SIMMONS, BRYAN BROWN, CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, RICHARD KILEY, MARE WINNINGHAM, PHILIP ANGLIM AND KEN HOWARD.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I absolutely loved this sprawling mini-series set in the Australian outback, on a massive old ranch called Drogheda built by originally Irish settlers. In Ireland, we would pronounce this word as, phonetically, ‘Droh-hedda,’ but the characters in the film make the ‘g’ hard and pronounce it as ‘Drog-eeda,’ a sound painful to the genuinely Irish ear, lol. You’d think they’d have consulted an actual Irish person regarding the pronunciation of this very Irish word, but how-and-ever…

On the one hand, it’s the story of the Irish Cleary family, headed by Paddy, who come to live on Drogheda in the early 1920s as…

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GHISLAINE MAXWELL: EPSTEIN’S SHADOW. (2021) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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GHISLAINE MAXWELL: EPSTEIN’S SHADOW. (2021) A DOCUMENTARY DIRECTED BY BARBARA SHEARER.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Wow. This story has it all. Tragic beginnings in Hitler’s Holocaust, two ridiculously wealthy and powerful self-made men dying in questionable circumstances, and the dramatic fall from grace of the beautiful, well-connected socialite who had been the right-hand woman to each of the two. I was glued to this utterly gripping ‘true crime’ documentary from start to finish.

Ghislaine Maxwell, now aged 59, is the woman in question. Her father, Robert Maxwell, most of whose family died in Auschwitz, was a sort of real-life Citizen Kane, a newspaper/publishing magnate who didn’t get to where he was in life by being a pushover. A polite way of saying that he completely lacked a working moral compass, according to some of the people who’d known him.

Ghislaine, the youngest of his nine children, was his pet…

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SPACED. (1999-2001) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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SPACED. (1999-2001) DIRECTED BY EDGAR WRIGHT. CREATED AND DIRECTED BY SIMON PEGG AND JESSICA STEVENSON. STARRING SIMON PEGG, JESSICA STEVENSON, NICK FROST, MARK HEAP, KATY CARMICHAEL AND JULIA DEAKIN.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a very British sitcom, of both the satirical and surreal kind, about a group of twenty-somethings who have watched a huge amount of television and films and played an enormous number of computer games in their time. Ditto their creators. It’s only just come to my attention, twenty-odd years after its conception, and I’m glad it has.

I really enjoyed it and found it entertaining, except where they were basing storylines on things I hadn’t personally watched and didn’t care for, like ROBOT WARS. Also, believe it or not, I don’t much dig the whole STAR WARS franchise, although I did laugh at the bits where Simon Pegg’s character had been traumatised by the…

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#PromoPost #ThirteenStops by Sandra Harris #BlogTour @SandraAuthor @rararesources

Baker's Not So Secret Blog

I am delighted to share all the information you need on Thirteen Stops by Sandra Harris with you today on Blog Tour.

Thank you to organiser, Rachel Gilby for inviting me to take part

There are thirteen Luas stops between Sandyford and St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin and vice versa. The passengers all hunker down, folded tightly into themselves, eyes fixed on their phones, interminably scrolling, terrified of connecting with each other. Except . . . Except, who’s that good-looking guy in the long dark coat who’s eyeing up selfie queen Laura? Could he end up as one of her terrible choices? Hang on, isn’t he the same guy who was ogling glamorous working-mum-with-a-secret Maroon before? And why is Jamie over there telling his life story to a complete stranger? What’s Fauve hiding in her handbag? It must be the crown jewels or an unexploded bomb at the very…

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Thirteen Stops by Sandra Harris / #SpotlightPost #BlogTour @rararesources @SandraAuthor

B for Bookreview

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There are thirteen Luas stops between Sandyford and St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin and vice versa. The passengers all hunker down, folded tightly into themselves, eyes fixed on their phones, interminably scrolling, terrified of connecting with each other. Except . . . Except, who’s that good-looking guy in the long dark coat who’s eyeing up selfie queen Laura? Could he end up as one of her terrible choices? Hang on, isn’t he the same guy who was ogling glamorous working-mum-with-a-secret Maroon before? And why is Jamie over there telling his life story to a complete stranger? What’s Fauve hiding in her handbag? It must be the crown jewels or an unexploded bomb at the very least, the way she’s hugging it so tightly to herself. And why does Becks from two seats down look out the window so anxiously? Is she worried that Barry could be straying? Alight here…

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ORPHANAGE. (1980) THE SCREENPLAY BOOK BY MICHAEL ARMSTRONG REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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MICHAEL ARMSTRONG: THE SCREENPLAYS.

ORPHANAGE. (1980)

PUBLISHED IN 2021 BY PAPER DRAGON PRODUCTIONS.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Michael Armstrong is creating history by being the first film-maker to publish his entire screenwriting output. With the original uncut screenplays in print for the first time ever and peppered with a mixture of wildly entertaining anecdotes, astounding behind-the-scenes revelations, creative and educational insights and brutal ‘no holds barred’ honesty, these books are guaranteed to provide a completely new kind of reading experience while offering a unique insight into the movie industry. Starting from his first professional screenplay written in 1960 when he was only fifteen and which he subsequently directed in 1968, the books will ultimately encompass a career that has spanned over fifty years. The books will include not only those screenplays which made it onto a cinema screen but, for the first time ever, all those that didn’t- and…

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MIDSOMMAR. (2019) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

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MIDSOMMAR. (2019) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ARI ASTER. STARRING FLORENCE PUGH AND JACK REYNOR.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

If the young American college students in this film had ever seen the 1973 mystery film, The Wicker Man, they would never have done any of the following: travelled to Sweden to stay on some kind of hippy, culty commune at the behest of one of their mates; timed the visit to coincide with a massive once-in-every-ninety-years festival to celebrate the arrival of Mid-summer; allowed themselves to be disorientated and confused as a result of drugs pressed upon them by their so-called Swedish ‘mates’; watched an horrific ceremony involving geronticide- or old people euthanasia- without a murmur of protest or so much as a what the fuck is going on here in this fucked-up fucking place???; had public sex as part of a bizarre fertility ritual and, lastly, they…

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