Paris-Manhattan

Alice Taglioni in Paris-Manhattan

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 24 May Peter Minuit buys Manhattan, 1626 On this day in 1626, the German-born Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan off native Americans for 60 guilders (somewhere around $1,000 at 2013 prices). He had been sent to the New World the previous year by the Dutch West India Company to research possible new products to trade, and had taken over as governor general of the New Netherland colony. The tribe he bought the island off had little concept of anyone having a right to ownership of water or air and, being nomadic, their notion of the territorial right to land … Read more

26 September 2013-09-23

Gabriel Basso, Moises Arias and Nick Robinson in The Kings of Summer

Out in the UK This Week The Kings of Summer (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD) An immensely smart coming of age film pitched somewhere between Stand By Me and Superbad (ie dark undertow, with jokes). And it’s entirely on the side of the kids, whose decision to go off and live in the woods, leaving their sarcastic, obnoxious, bullying, superior parents clueless as to where they’ve gone, is never presented as the callow act of peeved teenagers. Out in the woods, our junior heroes build a rudimentary house, set about sourcing food (sometimes from supermarket bins), grow wispy beards. Meanwhile the film sets about building a dreamy, trippy, sunny song of summer and innocence, … Read more