Slade in Flame review – Midlands glam rockers offer A Hard Day’s Night meets Get Carter

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The 1975 musical satire is a curious amalgam of madcap comedy and Brit realism as the band ride the giddy highs and brutal lows of the 70s music industry Here is Slade’s movie musical satire from 1975, a film with all the pungent historical presence of a pub ashtray, about an imaginary band called Flame which looked and sounded a lot like Slade, fronted by Stoker, played by Noddy Holder. It came out a year after the film’s soundtrack album was released, and now gets a rerelease for its 50-year anniversary. Slade in Flame – which is to say, Flame, starring Slade – is regarded by fans and non-fans alike with enormous affection and regard , and it certainly has a weird, goofy energy: the audio mix sometimes surreally privileging ambient sounds such as doors closing and glasses chinking, with the dialogue way in the background. It’s about an innocent working-class Midlands band getting taken up by creepy adman-type smoothie Robert Seymour, played by Tom Conti, who exploits their raw tale...
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I Know Where I’m Going! review – Powell and Pressburger classic is a pure joy

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The story of a headstrong heroine who knows what she wants, but is waylaid by the elements and an unexpected romance is one of the most lovable films in British cinema history

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1945 classic, rereleased now as part of the BFI’s nationally touring Powell/Pressburger season, has to be one of the most purely lovable films in British cinema history. There is outright joy in that inspired, forthright title. Surely I’m not the only Powell/Pressburger superfan to have screamed halfway through this statement from Emeric Pressburger about his writing practice, in Kevin Macdonald’s biography: “But if I can help it, I never sit down to write the real script until I know where I’m going and I’ve worked out the rhythm and so on beforehand.” Was that deliberate? I can’t tell.

I Know Where I’m Going! is a movie of romance and myth, comedy and whimsy, but fiercely rooted in reality – and geography. And it is very unusual, maybe entirely unique, in that it is set during wartime but the war is entirely absent and irrelevant, even if the hero is often to be seen wearing his Royal Navy uniform.

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