Gender	Male
Location	London, United Kingdom
Introduction	Just retired, writing memoir and movie reviews and star profiles on imdb. I started going to the movies aged 8 in Ireland in 1954, and moved to London in 1964, when 18, just in time for Swinging London. [It certainly did, from seeing Streisand in Funny Girl in 1966, in the front row, to Aretha at her peak, The Doors and Jefferson Airplane all-nighter at the Roundhouse, and 2001 on acid... and meeting a lot of my favourites: Bogarde, Loren, Remick, Heston, Bergman etc.] Commenting here on all kinds of movies from art-house (I am an Antonioni kind of guy) to sword-and-sandal, re-living the 50s and 60s and 70s and going back to the 30s and 40s - but mainly loving the late '50s and early '60s. Into English and international movies as well as those Italian, French, American and others....then there's books, music and everything else. Thanks to imdb pals Daryl and Timshelboy for leading me further into neglected hollywood classics and the more outre international choice items. My IMDb profiles are at: http://www.imdb.com/user/ur7940682/boards/profile/?preview=1
Interests	Movies, books, music, writing, travel, theatre, art, photography, history, cooking, all things Italian, Greece, Scotland, David Hockney, Keith Haring ..... The films of Dirk Bogarde, Sophia Loren, Monica Vitti, Kay Kendall, Susan Hayward, Lee Remick, James Mason, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Robert De Niro, Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, Ingrid Bergman, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Romy Schneider, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Garbo, Antonioni, Visconti, Hitchcock, Wilder, Wyler, Fassbinder, Almodovar, Mankiewicz, Michael Powell, Kazan, Cukor, Minnelli, Hawks, Huston, Ingmar Bergman, David Lean, Josef Von Sternberg, Italian cinema, British cinema '40s-'70s, 30s screwball comedies, 40s noirs, 50s musicals epics westerns dramas, 60s arthouse, 70s new hollywood etc
Favorite movies	Blow-Up - Antonioni / 1966 [though it didn't open in London until March 67] L'Eclisse - Antonioni / 1962 I Know Where I'm Going - Michael Powell / 1945 Black Narcissus - Michael Powell / 1947 The Scarlet Empress - Von Sternberg / 1934 Bringing Up Baby - Howard Hawks / 1938 Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder / 1959 All About Eve - Joseph Mankiewicz / 1950 A Star Is Born - George Cukor / 1954 2001 A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick / 1968 The Bandwagon - Minnelli / 1953 The Leopard - Visconti / 1963 Notorious - Hitchcock / 1946 Rear Window - Hitchcock / 1954 Vertigo - Hitchcock / 1958 North By Northwest - Hitchcock / 1959 Psycho - Hitchcock / 1960 The Birds - Hitchcock / 1953 Umberto D - De Sica / 1952 Au Hasard Balthasar - Bresson / 1966 Double Indemnity - Wilder / 1944 Sunset Boulevard - Wilder / 195 The Quiet Man - Ford / 1952 The Searchers - Ford / 1956 Johnny Guitar - Nick Ray / 1954 - the first film I saw, aged 8 - it was (and is) wonderful. + L'Avventura, The Passenger, Anatomy of A Murder, A Matter of Life and Death, The Women, The Innocents, Barry Lyndon, The Servant, Billy Liar, Chinatown, New York New York, All That Jazz, Nashville, This Happy Breed, Kiss Me Kate, The Misfits, Kinsey, Brokeback Mountain, Lord of the Rings, All About My Mother, Bad Education, Alexander, El Cid, The Girl Can't Help It, A Letter to 3 Wives, The Heiress, The Vikings, etc (as per my IMDB page).
Favorite music	Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, Billie Ray Martin, Joan Armatrading, the Pet Shop Boys, Hot Chip, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Dusty Springfield, early Barbra Streisand, mid-period Madonna, Sade, Nancy Wilson, Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Donny Hathaway, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Massive Attack, Groove Armada, A Man Called Adam, Danny Tenaglia, 80s disco, Eurodisco, soul grooves, Alicia Keyes, Peggy Lee, Pat Metheny, Jaco Pastorius, Miles Davis, Scott Walker, Jimmy Sommerville, Stevie Winwood, George Michael, Eric Clapton, Cream, Beatles, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Human League, 80s electro, jazz, classical, Sondheim, Mozart, opera, Irish folk music etc etc etc
Favorite books	The Talented Mr Ripley and all Patricia Highsmith novels, Edna O'Brien, Muriel Spark, Iris Murdoch, Gore Vidal, The Leopard by Di Lampedusa, E F Benson's Mapp & Lucia books, David Thomson, David Shipman and Pauline Kael movie criticism, Dirk Bogarde's books, Colm Toibin, Patrick Gale, Alan Hollingsworth ('The Spell'), Cavafy's poetry, Isherwood's A Single Man - looking forward to Tom Ford's film of it.