The Foreign Desk
The Dambusters remake has gone back into its hangar, says Peter Jackson
Earlier this year, Sir David Frost announced to much fanfare that he was to executive-produce a remake of the classic WW2 movie Dambusters, in conjunction with the Director, Producer and all round film mogul Peter Jackson.
A full-scale replica of a Lancaster bomber was built. Stephen Fry was brought in to write the script, and many [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 10 November 2009 at 2:28 am
Beaten and tortured in Delhi – one journalist’s shocking story
It was at a July 4 party at the US Embassy in Delhi this summer when I met Joel Elliott, a young award-winning American journalist who had just arrived in the city. He was young and friendly and was doing his best to manage with the power-cuts and the stinking heat of the Indian summer. [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 9 November 2009 at 10:40 am
Large lattes in Islamabad
Just back from ten days in Pakistan and clearing out the accumulated detritus in my wallet, I came across two "loyalty cards" from a coffee shop in the capital Islamabad. One was completed, the other was half way to redeeming a free cup of coffee – a reflection of the fact that I spent a [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 3 November 2009 at 5:06 am
Behold! The staggering hypocrisy of Michael Moore
Mr Michael Moore is a very great documentary maker; possibly the best that Hollywood has ever seen. His Oscar-winning ability to weave heart-rending anecdote into a multi-layered narrative is enhanced, to my mind, by a truly admirable concern for the common man. He stands for fairness; for political and social justice. His films, without exception, [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 28 October 2009 at 5:16 am
Oscar winning director angrily quits the Church of Scientology
Whichever way you look at it, the past few weeks have been tricky for the Church of Scientology’s normally-smooth PR machine.
First, a trial in the Bahamas reignited public controversy over celebrity member John Travolta’s late son Jett, whose death was connected to autism – a psychological condition that the Church claims doesn’t actually exist.
Then hatchet-merchant [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 26 October 2009 at 4:29 am
Miracle in Benares: Last night a store manager saved my life
As you can probably imagine in these days of online interconnectivity, a journalist without their laptop is about as much use as soldier without their gun or a pastry chef without their butter – pretty much useless. So last week when I was in the sacred Indian city of Varanasi reporting on the remarkable, centuries-old [...]
By Andrew Buncombe | The Foreign Desk | Friday, 23 October 2009 at 5:48 am
How Rupert Murdoch’s Fox tries to silence its critics
If you fancy a jaw-dropping insight into the paranoid excesses of both the Hollywood PR machine and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, try reading this account of journalist John Ortved’s dealings with the channel behind The Simpsons.
A few years back, Mr Ortved wrote about the hit cartoon series for Vanity Fair. More recently, he authorised an unauthorised history of [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Thursday, 15 October 2009 at 3:46 am
Michael Jackson’s new song turns out to be… old
Another day, another distasteful attempt to extract cash from Michael Jackson’s death ends in the hands of lawyers.
Not 24 hours after they released his new, final single “This is it,” the late singer’s estate has been forced to admit that the song isn’t actually new. And it wasn’t entirely Jackson’s work either.
Instead,the track was co-written with the [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Tuesday, 13 October 2009 at 2:26 am
Polanski’s prosecutor claims he “lied” in HBO documentary
It’s an article of faith among the collection of Hollywood liberals and French people lobbying for the release of Roman Polanski (above) that the film director only skipped the USA prior to sentencing in his 1977 child sex abuse trial because he had been the victim of a horiffic mistrial.
Central to their argument is a [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Wednesday, 30 September 2009 at 11:07 pm
The latest Bruce Willis flop shows why Disney’s boss got fired
The weekend's US box office figures provide a very topical illustration of the harsh financial realities that lay behind the recent cloak-and-dagger sacking of Disney’s studio head Dick Cook (above left).
Making $15m, the Bruce Willis sci-fi film Surrogates came in at second place in the charts, failing to take the top spot from the digital animation [...]
By Guy Adams | The Foreign Desk | Monday, 28 September 2009 at 3:19 am
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