Displaying items by tag: Crime

G Frsh is sitting in his recording studio, where he logs nine-to-five days every week like he's a working stiff. He looks low key, no fashion logos or excessive jewellery, just a grey T-shirt, and tracksuit bottoms. The rapper who is now 28, is smart, funny and very smiley. He is the boy from South London who is twisting rap into his own image thereby offering a lifeline to kids, showing hard work pays off.

Some of the groups which most influenced punk rock have had a limited following themselves. Critically reviled at the time, hard-pressed with finances, having just a limited regional following or with a life-span too brief to move onto the worldwide stage, these records influenced my life and many others'. What are yours?

© Words Matteo Sedazzari

Villains is a little gem from 1972, created by Andrew Brown ( co-creator of Manhunt, writer for Armchair Theatre, producer of Prick Up Your Ears, Selling Hitler) aired and commissioned by London Weekend Television.  It is a story about nine criminals who plan and carry out a heist on a bank, it is not ‘the normal’ bank raid, heavies armed with sawn off shot guns screaming at petrified bank tellers to fill the bags and no one will get hurt. No, instead they plan what they believe will be the crime of the century, to tunnel into a bank in London’s EC1 area via a disused ladies toilet over the weekend. With meticulous planning and an array of professionals in their field, the criminals think they will walk away with a windfall that shall set them up for life.  A new life abroad, Spain, Portugal, South America, anywhere other than Old Blighty. 

© Words Matteo Sedazzari
Baker may have left Wales, but was proud of the country of his birth “I’m a Welshman and proud of it. But I’m no nationalist. I think the Welsh nationalists are foolish and misguided people.”   stated Baker in 1969, a comment that could have alienated him.  However in 1970, in his home town  Ferndale, Rhondda, Baker attended the unveiling of a plaque placed on the house in which he was born Albany Street.  It seemed that Ferndale offered solace to Baker, and kept him grounded, as he would return to visit old haunts and catch up with old friends, “Acting can be an artificial business, that’s why I go home when I can to the Rhonda Valley, I do it to be with my own people. They love in a real way, It’s a great leveller. 

© Words - CP Lee

In 1993 a man called Cliff Twemlow passed away. When he died at the age of 55 a whole mini-film industry died with him. But Cliff didn’t only just make films, he wrote the plots, scored the music for them and starred in them too. Oh, and he wrote paperback pulp novels as well. And before he made his own movies he wrote a couple of thousand tunes that were recorded and put out by DeWolfe Music. And he was a night club bouncer.

© Words William Goodchild

Oren Moverman’s follow-up to the Oscar-nominated The Messenger sees the writer/director again not shying away from challenging subjects and the downright bleak.

Dave “Date Rape” Brown (Woody Harrelson) is an unapologetic misanthrope who is happy to dish out merciless beatings. Sometimes he even shoots people. He’s also a member of the Rampart Division of LAPD, which serves the mostly-Hispanic communities of Downtown Los Angeles. The “Date Rape” '

Writer/director Eran Creevy takes a huge leap - from the grungy, micro-budgeted Shifty - to this slick, attractive action flick. Detective Max Lewinsky (James McAvoy) remains hot on the heels of the elusive Jacob Sternwood (Mark Strong) and is given a second chance to take down the master criminal when he is forced to return to London.

                                                                      The Early Years

When critics discuss the movies James Fox starred in during the ’60s and early ’70s, his co-stars often seem to overshadow him. This is somewhat understandable since Fox’s greatest films from that period feature amazing talents from the decade such as actor Dirk Bogarde and musician Mick Jagger, but James Fox is an extremely talented actor who possessed the uncanny ability to brilliantly portray young men of various backgrounds wrestling with their sexual identity and social class as the sexual revolution of the ’60s was still taking shape.

The Hero Myth is marbled throughout all cultures and all ages, it's part of the fabric of human civilisation. There are Freudian, Jungian and other various anthropological links to this myth everywhere from the beginning of recorded history.

In the 20th and 21st centuries nowhere has the classic myth of the superhero who will save us from evil, while making his own painful journey, been more evident than in the comic book

It is one o'clock in the morning, you are restless with eyes wide open and your once familiar and safe bedroom now seems like an unknown place as the shadow of the wardrobe towers over you. Suddenly the silence of the night is broken when you hear a creak on the stairs, it startles you, but you reassure yourself that it's the water pipes, and then hear it again but this time it's louder. Like a scared child you pull the duvet over your head, as the anxiety kicks in, as the creak becomes thunderously loud drawing nearer.....