Film on Stages & Screens

British television show "Number 10" got personal with Disraeli and Gladstone

Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

William Ewart Gladstone ranked second, third or fourth on all five of the lists of the best prime ministers in UK history that are cataloged on Wikipedia, which includes lists compiled by The Times of London and four prominent historians. But as I noted in a blog post last year, Gladstone has never been the subject of a movie, unlike Winston Churchill, who ranks first on all of the lists, and Benjamin Disraeli, who ranks considerably lower. There is however one filmed representation of Gladstone, a fifty-minute episode of a 1983 ITV television series called “Number 10,” named for the home of the Prime Minister at Number 10 Downing Street. This month I managed to find a copy of an NTSC DVD of the series, which I’d struggled to find when I wrote that article. The show presents a character study of seven prime ministers that is unmatched by anything comparable on American television.

Why Aren't There More Toni Morrison Film Adaptations?

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The New York Times on March 11 of this year ran a story titled “Netflix is gobbling up world literature. What could go wrong?” The sub-headline read, “The streamer keeps mounting lavish adaptations of beloved novels – and making them all feel like just more Netflix.” That headline made me wonder: With that flood of novel adaptations underway, why hasn’t there been more than one film or TV adaptation of a novel by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison? She has been called “one of the greatest authors in American history,” and “one of the world’s most celebrated and controversial modern authors,” among many other plaudits. As a blogger about stage and screen who has also read every one of Morrison’s 12 novels, I can personally attest the novels are highly cinematic, well-suited to cinema. And since 2020, there has been a push for more dramatic works by African-American and minority authors. So what gives?

As Hollywood Flounders, Many Movie Theaters Fill Seats With Old Pictures

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

President Trump’s renewed promise today to execute a 100-percent tariff on film production outside the United States is a symptom of a desperate state of affairs in the film industry. The stream of grim headlines coming out of Hollywood this year shows why. “Production in Hollywood plunges to historic lows as nearly half of US projects move abroad,” read one headline in August from Senal News. The story reports that Hollywood production jobs are down by 92,000 from 2022. And it’s not just a question of local production. Box office receipts are suffering too. “The 2025 box office is off to a terrible start . Is the problem supply or demand?” read the LA Times on March 25. The story says the problem is supply. There are fewer movies in theaters, fewer movies being made, and fewer people attending the movies that are in theaters. But you wouldn’t know it from the crowds at screenings of classic films at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago. On August 14, I attended the third in a string of sold-out 70 mm screenings of a four-hour, 60-year-old sand marathon, David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia, in the large 750-seat main theater at the Music Box. It was a Tuesday night, and the film started at 6 p.m. and ended after 10 p.m. But the house was packed with viewers young and old and in-between. This was not an isolated incident. All over Chicagoland, movie theaters are quietly making bank screening old movies as new movie production in Hollywood sputters. Classic cinema screenings have become one of the industry’s few bright spots.

Why Aren't There Any Movies Starring British Prime Minister William Gladstone?

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Why hasn’t William Gladstone, a towering figure in British politics who was prime minister four times in the 19th Century, been the central character of any film biopics? Why has he been the starring role in only one even remotely significant play, Hugh Ross Williamson’s short-lived 1937 show Mr. Gladstone, which never made it out of London? Why has his arch-rival in British politics, Benjamin Disraeli, been the subject of so many plays and films when by contrast he was only prime minister twice and usually ranks lower in the lists of the best prime ministers in Britain’s history?

Fellini Gets Another Look After Critics Knock Him Down Several Pegs

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This year the legendary film director Federico Fellini is getting his first box office test since his movies 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita plummeted in the famous 2022 Sight and Sound ranking of the best 250 films of all time, probably thanks to a reckoning on the treatment of women provoked by the “#MeToo” movement. Fellini’s most acclaimed film, 8 1/2, went from #7 in the 2012 poll to #31 in the 2022 ranking. La Dolce Vita, meanwhile, went from #36 to #60. Why Fellini’s standing dropped almost certainly has more to do with the controversies surrounding the “#MeToo” movement than it does with a new aesthetic appraisal of his work.