News

Tony Sokol Jan 11, 2019

Paul McCartney knows how tough it is to do live animation, his never-before-seen The Bruce McMouse Show will finally hit the big screen.

The Beatles were one of the first bands to be associated with cartoons. From the Beatles TV Cartoons kids woke up to in the sixties to Yellow Submarine, which woke everyone to the psychedelic possibilities of big screen, the musicians were at the forefront of sound and vision. Three of the four Beatles appeared on The Simpsons. Ringo Starr narrated Harry Nilsson's The Point and even appeared on The Power Puff Girls. Paul McCartney’s semi-animated The Bruce McMouse Show will get a special one-night-only theatrical release on January 21, according to Rolling Stone. The film, which has never been publicly screened “tells the story of how Paul McCartney and Wings came to meet the inimitable impresario Bruce McMouse.” Screenings will be held in 11 theaters across the U.

Paul McCartney’s never-before-seen film, The Bruce McMouse Show, will play in select theaters around the world January 21st. The fabled project is a concert film crossed with an animated feature that centers around McCartney and Wings meeting Bruce McMouse, an animated mouse impresario. A teaser for the film is available to watch, and screenings will be held in 11 theaters across the U.S. A complete list of participating theaters, as well as ticket information, is available on the Bruce McMouse website.

The Bruce McMouse Show boasts footage from Wings...

Feature Alex Westthorp 28 Mar 2014 - 07:00

In a new series, Alex talks us through the film roles of the actors who've played the Doctor. First up, William Hartnell and Jon Pertwee...

We know them best as the twelve very different incarnations of the Doctor. But all the actors who've been the star of Doctor Who, being such good all-rounders in the first place, have also had film careers. Admittedly, some CVs are more impressive than others, but this retrospective attempts to pick out some of the many worthwhile films which have starred, featured or seen a fleeting cameo by the actors who would become (or had been) the Doctor.

William Hartnell was, above all else, a film star. He is by far the most prolific film actor of the main twelve to play the Time Lord. With over 70 films to his name, summarising Hartnell's film career is difficult at best.

A hoot of a Disney caper starring Derek Nimmo as British agent Lord Southmere, who conceals a top-secret microfilm containing a secret formula in a dinosaur skeleton at London's Natural History Museum. However, he's only just ahead of a pursuing Chinese gang. When he realises they're onto him, he instructs his resourceful former nanny Hettie (Helen Hayes) to retrieve the film...

Prolific comedy actor who worked with Peter Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan and Hattie Jacques

The stony-faced, beaky comedy actor Graham Stark, who has died aged 91, is best remembered for his appearances alongside Peter Sellers, notably in the Pink Panther movies. His familiar face and voice, on television and radio, were part of the essential furniture in the sitting room of our popular culture for more than half a century. A stalwart in the national postwar comedy boom led by Sellers, Tony Hancock, Spike Milligan, Dick Emery, Eric Sykes and Benny Hill, he worked with them all in a sort of unofficial supporting repertory company that also included Hattie Jacques, Deryck Guyler, Patricia Hayes and Arthur Mullard. He was also a man of surprising and various parts: child actor, trained dancer, film-maker, occasional writer, and dedicated and critically acclaimed photographer.

Like Gypsy Rose Lee, he had a resourceful and determined...

A hoot of a Disney caper starring Derek Nimmo as British agent Lord Southmere, who conceals a top-secret microfilm containing a secret formula in a dinosaur skeleton at London's Natural History Museum. However, he's only just ahead of a pursuing Chinese gang. When he realises they're onto him, he instructs his resourceful former nanny Hettie (Helen Hayes) to retrieve the film...

The distinctive and beguiling Irish actor David Kelly, who has died aged 82, was as familiar a face in British television sitcoms as he was on the stage in Dublin, where he was particularly associated with the Gate theatre. But he was perhaps best known in recent years for playing Grandpa Joe in Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), an engaging performance that was honoured with a lifetime achievement award from the Irish Film and Television Academy; Johnny Depp, who played Willy Wonka, paid a touching tribute on a video link from Hollywood to Dublin.

Kelly was a tall and flamboyant figure who was often cast as a comic, eccentric Irishman, notably as Albert Riddle, an incompetent, one-armed dish-washer in the late 1970s British sitcom Robin's Nest; he...

Classic British comedy Go To Blazes is out on DVD on January 30th from Studio Canal. Featuring an all-star cast: Maggie Smith, Robert Morley, Dennis Price, Dave King, Derek Nimmo, Thora Hird and Will Hay, the DVD release marks the film’s 50th Anniversary, and for this occasion, it will also be screened at the British Film Institute in the London Comedy Film Festival on January 29th.

Studio Canal have given us three DVDs of Go To Blazes to giveaway to you, our readers. All you have to do to win one is answer this simple question:

Go To Blazes stars Thora Hird, but in what classic British BBC televison series did she appear? Was it:

a) Songs of Praise

b) Points of View

c) Last of the Summer WIne

Email your answer and address to competition@blogomatic3000.com with Blazes in the subject line. An email entry counts as One entry into the competition.

Co-writer of TV sitcoms On the Buses and The Rag Trade

At the height of his writing partnership with Ronald Chesney, Ronald Wolfe, who has died aged 89 after a fall, enjoyed huge success with the sitcom On the Buses; its bawdy humour was panned by the critics but lapped up by the viewing public. Originally turned down by the BBC, the idea for a comedy based around the antics of a driver and conductor giving their inspector the runaround at the Luxton Bus Company appealed to Frank Muir, head of entertainment at the newly launched ITV company London Weekend Television.

Reg Varney played Stan Butler, at the wheel of the No 11, and Bob Grant was his lothario conductor, Jack. The pair made life hell for the miserable Inspector Blake (Stephen Lewis). Blakey's "Get that bus out" and "I 'ate you, Butler" were two of the most frequent lines that flowed...