Biography

Film critic.

Famous for his many books about the cinema, including "A Biographical Dictionary Of The Cinema", which has gone through many editions since the 1970s, and "Have You Seen...?", a survey of 1,000 key films in cinema history.

Curator of the 60 Years of Berlinale retrospective "Play It Again...!" in 2010.

He was a close friend of the Irish film-maker Kieran Hickey.

In addition to being a prominent film critic, he has written several novels, some of which are movie-related.

The overwhelming drive in the mainstream film business now is to make blockbuster animated films, preferably ones that can be cloned - repeated, reheated and sold in packs of two or three or six, like fizzy drinks.

[on "Ben-Hur", 1959]: "Ben-Hur" is 212 minutes long.The rare passages of excitement, like the chariot race, are delivered by second-unit directors Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt. If only they had been given the whole project. You have to sit down and breathe deeply, because it is my duty to tell you that "Ben-Hur" won Best Picture - defeating "Anatomy Of A Murder".

[on current Hollywood directors] Mostly born in the 1940s, they are of an age still to be our great directors, but they have yielded to a generation of new kids who do what the money demands. You see, we don't have great directors anymore. The computer makes our movies. Its efficient anonymity is the new style.

[on "West Side Story" (1961)]: Natalie Wood was Maria and she was beautiful, but she stank of film star instead of city girl. Richard Beymer was Tony and he was a lump. Rita Moreno was great in the dancing - "America" - but she did not sing either. The result is 155 minutes of a pedestrian epic musical. I just wonder what Minnelli could have done in 100 minutes on very stylized sets, with wild kids.

The cinema comes to life in the dark - like Dracula.