Michael Brooke
Michael Brooke
@marbleicehook.bsky.social
Freelance writer, editor and DVD/Blu-ray producer/commentator specialising in British and central/eastern European cinema. Indexes to my regular posts celebrating the latter (9am daily, 9pm most days) can be found at http://www.michaelbrooke.com/bluesky
1.7K followers1.6K following3.7K posts
Michael Brooke reposted
More new work! New 4K restoration from the original camera negative. Ft new commentary by @johnnymains.co.uk & @marbleicehook.bsky.social, plus archival extras, and new booklet essays by @horrornonna.com and @cathode-ray-tube.bsky.social, + new art by @Nat Marsh www.arrowfilms.com/p/4k/soylent...
Michael Brooke reposted
"I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you."
Quote an actor in the wrong film: “Not this time, Gal. Not this time. Not this fucking time. No. No no no no no no no no no! No! No no no no no no no no no no no no no! No! Not this fucking time! No fucking way! No fucking way, no fucking way, no fucking way! You've made me look a right cunt!”
Michael Brooke reposted
This was supposed to be Friday's last Substack post, but I ran into a subtitle-sync problem and had to fix that first. I actually have this as a legitimate DVD, but the Facets edition is so poor that the fact that I preferred to watch a YouTube rip with manually added subtitles tells its own story!
This was Andrzej Wajda's first flop, both commercially and artistically—and aside from it not being a comedy, broadly equivalent to his friend Steven Spielberg's equally ill-fated 1941, both films being about their respective countries' messy, confused, and decidedly involuntary entry into WWII.
Today's contextual piece in my ongoing Andrzej Wajda survey on Substack is my most self-indulgent to date, but now that I've covered all three films in the 1950s War Trilogy I had an excellent excuse to write about the logistical challenges of planning and recording commentaries for them—with clips.
And, as a bonus, I conclude with a clip of how my aborted commentary for 'Man of Marble' might have started; this was back in 2014, and I frankly chickened out—I'd never recorded a commentary before, and making my debut over a dense and intricate two-and-a-half hour epic seemed a tad over-ambitious.
To mark the passing of the great Béla Tarr, I’ve republished my Sight & Sound lead review of his penultimate film on my Substack.
If Ukraine had had fifteen years of security guarantees following the 1994 Budapest Agreement that persuaded them to give up their nuclear weapons, those guarantees would have expired by 2010.
A thing what I wroted. Usual caveat: everything in these BFI listpieces has to be currently in print in English-friendly form, preferably on a UK label, but I reckon I'd have gone for most of these even if I'd had a completely clear run at the entire corpus of Hungarian cinema.
Michael Brooke reposted
Michael Brooke reposted
Not sure how "sophisticated" this supposedly sophisticated publishing scam is when their fake photos haven't even been cropped to hide the watermarks showing that they're fake. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/n...
My latest commentary commission. I was honoured to be asked, and I hope I did these incredible films something vaguely approaching justice—although I can definitely say that I’m as proud of my work here as I’ve been of pretty much anything else I’ve ever done.
The bad news for my compatriots is that the disc is US-only and locked to Region A, but if the latter isn’t a problem I can thoroughly recommend Diabolik, from whom I’ve now bought loads of Deaf Crocodile releases. They aren’t listing it yet, but I imagine it’s imminent.
Does this mean that Donald Trump has seen the error of his former ways and will no longer be grotesquely misrepresenting people several times a day via a combination of selective quotation and flat-out lying? I mean, one would hope so, but...
Michael Brooke reposted
1) She has proof Salt & Vinegar and Cheese & Onion colour swapped 2) Mrs Doubtfire & Rose from Titanic are the worst 3) She has a 3rd, correct, way of putting Jam and Cream on a Scone 4) Arsenal scoring from set pieces is perfectly acceptable and whining about it makes you a loser 5) Han shot first
Well, there’s lovely.
Here's my look at the mesmerizing masterpiece THE DEVIL'S BRIDE from @deafcrocodile.bsky.social featuring my buddy @marbleicehook.bsky.social giving another excellent commentary. This is an exceptional release for one of my favorite recent discoveries. Loved every frame of this. #filmsky #bluray
A thing what I wroted. I'd gladly have made this two or three times longer - it's a phenomenally rich subject - but the BFI has a standard template and word count for these pieces.
@ohsinnerman.bsky.social has probably seen this already, but just in case...
If someone gave me $30bn, I wouldn't become "energised and focused", I'd say "thank you very much", put my feet up and enjoy the rest of my now extremely pampered existence in a state of blissed-out relaxation. (Actually, I'd most likely give 99.999% of it away and live comfortably off the rest.)
The rich must be incentivised; the poor must be disciplined. The political economy of the super-elite in one headline.
Michael Brooke reposted
After watching Michael Brooke's hour-long history of Polish animation on this set last night I now have a better idea of how to pronounce the names of directors that I've been mispronouncing for years. Also a much better idea of the history of Polish animation.
Our 27 shorts of ESSENTIAL POLISH ANIMATION are out now. This collection traces their evolution through 50s breakthroughs to 80s experimentation, displaying the inventive creativity of the medium.
Michael Brooke reposted
Michael Brooke reposted