Tom Birchenough
tom.birchenough
- Bio
- Tom has been based in Moscow since 1991, from where he has written for a range of publications. He has contributed to Variety since 1993, and was for many years the film critic for the main English-language publication in Russia, The Moscow Times. He has been associate producer on a number of television documentaries on Russian subjects.
Articles by Tom Birchenough
The Man Who Shot Beautiful Women, BBC Four
Monday, 20 May 2013
You can only marvel at the family intrigues that virtually closed down the legacy of photographer Erwin Blumenfeld in the years following his death in 1969. "Destroy, destruct, separate, divide,” was... Read more... |
The Liability
Saturday, 18 May 2013
The title says it all. Whatever John Wrathall’s script for The Liability might have promised is resoundingly undelivered in Craig Viveiros’s direction, and that’s despite the presence of Tim Roth in... Read more... |
The Stoker
Friday, 17 May 2013
Where there’s a stoker there must be a furnace, and this being Russian director Alexei Balabanov’s latest story from St Petersburg’s gangster 1990s, as well as heating some snow-bound Soviet... Read more... |
DVD: White Tiger
Tuesday, 07 May 2013
Russian director Karen Shakhnazarov has three decades of memorable film-making behind him, but remains much less known than he should be, at least in the English-speaking world: his edgy perestroika-... Read more... |
Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, Sky Arts 1
Sunday, 05 May 2013
Early on in Dangerous Edge: A Life of Graham Greene, John le Carré remembers Greene telling him that childhood provides “the bank balance of the writer”. Greene remained in credit on that inspiration... Read more... |
The Genius of Marie Curie, BBC Two
Saturday, 04 May 2013
Marie Curie must rank right up there among the world’s achievers of greatness. She certainly wasn’t one of those who had it “thrust upon ’em”. In fact, fate stacked the odds against her achieving the... Read more... |
The South Bank Show: Tim Minchin, Sky Arts 1
Friday, 19 April 2013
The new South Bank Show has glided into its second season with a seemingly effortless profile of multi-hyphenate Tim Minchin. In case we’ve forgotten what exactly we admire him for these days – so... Read more... |
We Went to War
Thursday, 28 March 2013
In his 1970 television documentary for Granada, I Was a Soldier, British filmmaker Michael Grigsby was one of the first to look into the experience of US soldiers returning home from Vietnam. “... Read more... |
Mr Selfridge, Series Finale, ITV
Monday, 11 March 2013
Watching Mr Selfridge has been like one of those whirlwind tours with the refrain, “It’s Tuesday, so it must be Rome”. Episodes have been defined by the drop-in appearances of Blériot and his... Read more... |
Beyond the Hills
Monday, 11 March 2013
The Romanian New Wave continues producing cinema with a visceral power that’s hard to match anywhere in Europe, though to say it was alive and well would hit the wrong note, given the bleakness of... Read more... |
Heritage! The Battle to Save Britain's Past, BBC Four
Friday, 08 March 2013
He may have been lampooned in his lifetime as the man who kept a pet wasp, but Britain owes much to John Lubbock, the Victorian MP whose legislation gave the country its first bank holiday. His... Read more... |
DVD: Living Apart Together
Monday, 04 March 2013
The spirit of Glasgow has never been better caught on screen than in two movies local director Charlie Gormley made in the Eighties. His Heavenly Pursuits from 1986, starring Tom Conti and Helen... Read more... |
DVD: Battle of Warsaw
Friday, 01 March 2013
Veteran director Jerzy Hoffman is a chronicler of Polish history on the widest possible scale - still going strong, he turned 80 just after the 2011 3D release of Battle of Warsaw. His 1999 film With... Read more... |
Death in Paradise, Series Finale, BBC One
Wednesday, 27 February 2013
So, Death in Paradise has harrumphed its way to another series finale. DI Richard Poole (Ben Miller) was in a grumpier mood than usual by its closing episode, contending with Fidel’s distraction as... Read more... |
Alex Polizzi - The Fixer, BBC Two
Wednesday, 20 February 2013
The arts are in a bit of a state just now. Okay, we all knew that. The money that was there in the past - and where it was coming from - just isn’t the same any more. Finding a new way of doing... Read more... |
Lore
Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Brilliantly played by Saskia Rosendahl, the eponymous teenage heroine of Lore (full name, Hannelore) faces a demanding double journey: both the physical slog through end-of-war Germany, a country... Read more... |
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