|
 |
| Who writes the film reviews? |
|
|
|
|
The Radio Times Film reviews have been written by our team of expert reviewers. The members of the team have a wide variety of experience in the field of cinema and film, from writing books on various film-related subjects to reviewing films for magazines and newspapers.
Andrew Collins is RT's film editor. A regular film critic on Simon Mayo's show on Radio 5 Live and on BBC News and a writer about films for the Observer, Guardian website and Word, he also appears regularly on Radio 4's The Film Programme and Front Row, having hosted Back Row for two and half years. He is a former editor of Empire magazine, and presented ITV's late-night review show Collins & Maconie's Movie Club with Stuart Maconie.
Here are the names and brief biographies for each of our writers:
Omar Ahmed has devoted his entire career exclusively to Bollywood cinema. He started writing for Metro Newspapers, and since has contributed features articles, reviews and interviews to a number of publications including Radio Times, BBC Online, Total Film, Empire and The Evening Mail. Omar is frequently heard on BBC Radio talking about Bollywood news stories and has recently submitted a feature film script to a leading Bollywood producer. Omar also set up www.keepshilpain.com, the official Shilpa Shetty website (still live), which saw her win Celebrity Big Brother and turned her into a global superstar.
David Aldridge is a former crime reporter who decided he preferred screen violence to the real thing. He has spent the past 30 years watching square and rectangular screens. A former editor of Film Review magazine, he is currently presenter of a weekly film and DVD phone-in for BBC Radio Five Live, and a regular contributor to Radio Times and other entertainment magazines.
Jeremy Aspinall is a Radio Times staff writer.
Keith Bailey is the creator of The Unknown Movies (www.unknownmovies.com), a web site devoted to the cataloguing and reviewing of movies that have received little or no coverage elsewhere. Engaged in freelance writing and IT work, he resides in Victoria, Canada.
Lucy Barrick is a Radio Times staff writer.
Brian Baxter has devoted his career exclusively to cinema - first as a teacher, then a journalist and BFI press officer and programmer for the NFT and London Film Festival. He was subsequently Editor Films for BBC television and has lectured extensively, including tours in New Zealand and Japan. Baxter is an advisor to the Berlin Film Festival and a regular contributor to The Guardian.
Ronald Bergan has lectured on literature, theatre and film. A regular contributor to The Guardian, his numerous books on the cinema, include biographies of the Coen Brothers, Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir, Dustin Hoffman. Anthony Perkins, Francis Coppola and Katharine Hepburn, as well as The United Artist Story and The Great Theatres of London.
Joanna Berry began her career as a film journalist at the age of 18. She has contributed to magazines and newspapers including Empire, Eve, Maxim, Daily Express, Sight and Sound and The Guardian, and is the author of The Ultimate DVD Easter Egg Guide.
Mark Braxton is a Radio Times staff writer.
Maj Canton is the author of the definitive Complete Reference Guide to Movies and Miniseries Made for TV and Cable 1984-1994 and a second volume covering the years 1994-99. She started her career as a TV comedy writer and is now an independent producer, having completed two TV movies for ABC. She lives in Los Angeles with her two VCRs.
Jason Caro was formerly film editor at What's On In London. A devotee of sci-fi, fantasy and thrillers, he is a regular contributor to Radio Times, Film Review and Ultimate DVD, as well as several specialist science-fiction magazines.
John Carroll is a Radio Times freelance writer.
Gill Crawford is a Radio Times staff writer.
Geoff Ellis is a Radio Times staff writer.
Angie Errigo studied film and journalism at San Francisco State University between rock concerts and seeing movies. After stints as a rock journalist and film publicist in London she joined Empire magazine as a launch consultant and remains a contributing editor. She has written for numerous national newspapers and magazines. A Sony Award winning broadcaster, she is currently a regular on the BBC Radio 2 Arts Programme and the World Service. Errigo is also on the jury for the Evening Standard British Film Awards.
Allen Eyles is a film historian who has written career studies of such stars as Humphrey Bogart, Rex Harrison, James Stewart and John Wayne, and is at work on a two-volume history of the Odeon cinema circuit. He founded the historical magazine Focus on Film, was a former editor of Films and Filming, and currently edits Picture House. The BFI has published the second volume of his history of the Odean Cinema circuit - the first volume was published in 2002.
Kilmeny Fane-Saunders, a Canadian, worked as a journalist in the Far East and North America before arriving in England and joining Radio Times in 1987. A career break from the magazine was cut short when she returned to translate the Radio Times's archive of film reviews into a database, doubling the number of entries in just two years. Fane-Saunders was the editor of the Radio Times Guide to Films (2000-07), working from a restored Quaker meeting house in the North Yorkshire moors.
Leslie Felperin is a film critic for Variety and former film editor of The Big Issue. She regularly contributes feature articles and reviews to various publications including The Independent, Empire, Heat, Uncut and Sight and Sound, the last of which employed her as deputy editor from 1994-2000. From 2000-2003, she was the editor of the film-trade magazine Moving Pictures. Born in the US, she has been living in the UK since 1983. Before becoming a full-time journalist, she taught film studies and English at several universities in the UK. Before that, she waitressed and worked in a bookstore.
John Ferguson has edited video and DVD magazines in the UK and Australia, most recently serving as editor of the Melbourne-based Screen Print. He is now based in New Zealand where he is setting up a new online DVD publication. He has worked in video publishing since 1987 and is a former editor of Video Home Entertainment magazine. He also spent a year at the London office of Billboard and has freelanced for both the Daily Mail and Daily Express. His association with Radio Times goes back to 1991.
Dick Fiddy is a freelance writer/researcher and was the creator/writer of Channel 4's archive specials The A-Z of TV and 1001 Nights of TV. He is a TV consultant for the BFI, working as a member of the programming team at the National Film Theatre and specialising in the areas of film comedy and television. He is the contributing editor on the Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy.
Narinder Flora is a Radio Times staff writer.
Tom Folley is a Radio Times staff writer.
Peter Freedman is a freelance writer.
Ian Freer is the Assistant Editor of Empire. Joining the magazine in 1998, he has interviewed the world's greatest film directors (Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Woody Allen) and has talked about film on everything from Radio 4 to Newsround. He is also the author of The Complete Spielberg and the editor of The Empire Movie Guide and the Empire Movie Miscellany. His next book, Movie Makers, will be published in 2009.
Sloan Freer is a freelance film critic and arts journalist, with a passion for the weird and wonderful. She started her career in 1991, covering film for regional press and BBC radio, before re-locating to London to edit magazines for the video industry. Her subsequent roles have included digital TV editor at The Observer and contributor to publications such as Total Film, Metro, Bizarre, Q, Kerrang! and First.
Rupert Frost is a Radio Times staff writer.
Nick Funnell is a Radio Times staff writer.
John Gammon is a writer and journalist, whose interests are bad movies, not so bad movies, and second-hand book collecting. By day he is deputy editor of Business Traveller magazine.
Sue George is a Radio Times staff writer.
Kieran Grant
Scott Hamilton
Lorien Haynes is celebrity editor at eve magazine and a freelance film journalist who reviews and interviews for The Observer, Elle, Red, Little White Lies and Woman's Hour, You and Yours, The Green Room and GMTV. A part-time actress, she has also written a screen adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskill's North and South, and was shortlisted for the LWT Drama Awards for her drama pilot W11.
Sue Heal
Jamie Healy is a Radio Times staff writer.
Chris Holland
Stephen Hughes is the producer of Radio 4's Film Programme, having also been a producer of its predecessor, Back Row. Between the ages of 13 and 17 he reviewed over a thousand films. The reviews are still in his mum's cupboard.
Tom Hutchinson, who sadly died in August 2005, worked as a film critic for Radio Times for a decade, along with The Sunday Telegraph, Now! magazine and the Mail on Sunday. He presented the BBC Radio 2 programme Starsound Extra and a film-programme series for Southern Television, and was a producer for Yorkshire Television. He wrote scripts for director J Lee Thompson and was publicity director for Harry Saltzman's Battle of Britain. He also wrote several books, including one on Marilyn Monroe – whom he met and kissed! – and memoirs of his friendship with Rod Steiger. His love affair with the cinema was passionate; he was secretary of the Film Section of the Critics' Circle for a number of years.
Trevor Johnston is a freelance film journalist, who also writes for Time Out, Sight & Sound and the Irish Film Institute, and has previously contributed to The Times, The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman (weekly film critic 1997-2000) and The List (film editor 1985-1991). A graduate in Screenplay Development from the National Film and Television School, he also works as a screenplay consultant for various production companies and the UK Film Council, and writes a regular script analysis web-column for film development organisation The Script Factory.
Alan Jones has reviewed fantasy, horror and sci-fi movies for Radio Times since 1995 and is also London correspondent for the American magazine Cinefantastique. He has researched and written numerous programmes for television, including two Film Four documentaries on the Italian horror directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento. He also reviews films regularly on TV and radio.
Robyn Karney is a former critic and interviewer for Empire magazine. She was editor-in-chief of The Chronicle of the Cinema, supervising and contributing editor of Who's Who in Hollywood, editor of the Octopus series of studio histories, including The Hollywood Musical, and of Ronald Bergan's biographies of Jean Renoir and Sergei Eisenstein. Her own books include The Foreign Film Guide with Ronald Bergan, A Star Danced: the Life of Audrey Hepburn and A Singular Man: Burt Lancaster.
Karen Krizanovich is a philosopher by training who grew to love European cinema as a teen at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory's film club. As an undergraduate, she was active in the University of Madison, Wisconsin's various film societies. She has written about film for Cosmopolitan, Sight & Sound, Empire and The Sunday Times, and has talked about film on TV and radio shows such as CNN and Radio Four's The Today Programme. A contributor to various films books and guides, a member of the Critics' Circle and the UK Production Guild, she's produced short films and worked on several features. She's stopped attending Cannes after almost ten years of taking the wrong shoes, but is a regular at film festivals in Bangkok and Berlin.
Frances Lass is a film and music journalist, who has contributed to Time Out, Radio Times, Sunday Times, The Times and the Daily Mail.
John Marriott
David McGillivray
Gareth Moses has been working in the film industry as a First Assistant Director and living in Vancouver, Canada since graduating with a degree in Film Studies in the UK. He has always been a lover of all kinds of cinema, but is a particular supporter of the odd: better an interesting failure than a merely competent success.
Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster who has worked extensively in the theatre, radio and television. His novels include The Night Mayor, Anno Dracula, The Quorum, Life's Lottery and An English Ghost Story. His non-fiction books include Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Nightmare Movies and The BFI Companion to Horror. He is a contributing editor to Empire and Sight & Sound and has written for a wide variety of publications.
David Oppedisano is a Radio Times staff writer.
Stella Papamichael began reviewing films for a community newspaper and local radio while studying for her GCSEs. Years later, after a brief and unedifying stint as a script reader, she returned to her roots and spent nearly six years writing for bbc.co.uk/film as well as co-producing the site between 2002 and 2004. She continues to serve as a freelance reporter for the BBC Film Network, talking to the leading lights of the British film industry, as well as contributing to Channel4.com/film, Digital Spy and Radio Times.
David Parkinson has been reviewing for Radio Times since 1995, specialising in foreign-language films and oldies. A contributing editor on Empire – where he compiles the Festivals & Seasons page on Empire Online – he also reviews for the Oxford Times and writes the Ask Parky column for the Guardian Film website. A regular broadcaster on BBC national and local radio, he has also written and edited a number of books, including A History of Film, The Young Oxford Book of Cinema, Mornings in the Dark: The Graham Greene Film Reader, Oxford at the Movies and The Rough Guide to Film Musicals.
Chris Pearson is a Radio Times staff writer.
Brian Pendreigh is a former cinema editor of The Scotsman and currently writes for a wide range of publications in the UK and overseas, including writing regular film-related obituaries for The Times and Herald. He has also been editor of Scottish Screen's FreezeFrame magazine and a contributing editor of Hotdog film magazine, and won the Ainsworth Film Journalist of the Year award in 1995 and 1999. His books include Ewan McGregor (1998), The Legend of the Planet of the Apes (2001) and The Pocket Scottish Movie Book (2002). He is working on his first novel.
Tony Peters is a Radio Times staff writer.
Colin Prior is a Radio Times staff writer.
Richard Rees is a freelance writer.
Anna Richards is a freelance writer.
Sue Robinson is current editor of the Radio Times Guide to Films. She joined the Radio Times film team in 1991 from the British Film Institute, where she was deputy editor of their Film and TV Yearbook and had earlier worked on the British Film and Video Catalogue.
Simon Rose is a former film critic of The Mirror and the author of both The Essential Film Guide and The Classic Film Guide as well as Collins Gems Classic Films. One of his scripts recently won the prestigious Orange Screenwriting Prize.
Jamie Russell is a freelance writer who has contributed to Total Film, Sight & Sound, The London Paper and the BBC Movies website among others. He has written four books, the most recent of which was Book of the Dead: The Complete History of Zombie Cinema.
Jack Seale is a Radio Times staff writer.
Robert Sellers is an established freelance writer who has contributed to Film Review, Hot Dog Magazine and The Independent. He is also the author of a number of film biographies and his latest book is Very Naughty Boys - the Inside Story of HandMade Films.
Tony Sloman is a regular Radio Times film reviewer, but his vast historical film knowledge is most actively deployed in the film industry itself, where he works as a producer, screenwriter, editor and occasionally director. His film credits range from Radio On, Cross of Iron and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the cult TV series The Prisoner. Sloman is also a lecturer and broadcaster, and has recently completed a ten-year period as a governor of the British Film Institute. In addition, he holds a rare life membership of Bafta.
Adam Smith began as chief film reviewer for The Oxford Mail and was deputy editor of Empire magazine between 1997 and 2000 before leaving to become a freelance film journalist. He has written about movies for Q, GQ, FHM, Arena, The Observer and The Independent among others and remains Empire's Senior Features Writer as well as being a regular broadcaster on BBC
Radio 4 and BBC 6 Music. In his spare time he enjoys irritating his fellow critics by explaining at length why Once Upon a Time in America is a better film than The Godfather.
Neil Smith is a Radio Times staff writer.
Rupert Smith is a Radio Times staff writer.
Terry Staunton
Susannah Straughan is a Radio Times staff writer.
Emma Sturgess is a Radio Times staff writer.
Stomp Tokyo is the web name of Chris Holland and Scott Hamilton.
Adrian Turner
Tom Vallance
Claire Webb is a Radio Times staff writer.
Damon Wise is a freelance film journalist and a Contributing Editor with Empire magazine. A regular at international film festivals from Cannes, Venice and Sundance to the one that's going to take place in your back garden tomorrow, he is also the author of Come By Sunday, a biography of the late Diana Dors that still sells very well on EBay.
|
|
|
|
|
|
