Ribbon of Memes

It's been over a century and a quarter since the first moving picture was committed to celluloid - the "ribbon of dreams", as Orson Welles mellifluously intoned.

And so, welcome, one and all, to Ribbon of Memes, a new podcast in which Roger Bell_West and Nick Marsh supply grateful listeners hot takes about films considered masterpieces by critics or filmgoers in general.

The rules: we choose one "masterpiece" from every year from the earliest days of cinema to our dreadful modern dystopia. Do we agree these films are classics? Are we entertained? Did we even understand what the film was trying to say? The questions are endless!*

We start in 1973 (for reasons explained in the first podcast) and progress vaguely chronologically (unless we think of another film that makes an interesting comparison to the one we have just seen, or are otherwise distracted by shiny new things).

Yes, that's right, we decided that what the world really needed was two more uninformed middle-aged white guys telling the world about media largely produced by similar people. Find out whether we were right or not herein!

*Actually, no, that's most of them.

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Where Navarone Dares 08 August 2026

We're back in the Second World War, in that genre of films that gradually shifted from near-documentary to fantasy. This time we're more at the fantasy end, with two films of Alistair MacLean's books, 1961's The Guns of Navarone and 1968's Where Eagles Dare.

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Tags: war

  1. Posted by J Michael Cule at 02:42pm on 08 August 2026

    I would recommend a view of both ICE STATION ZEBRA and THE SATAN BUG as being MacLean in his high espionage mode and played with gusto by some very competent actors.

    I would agree with the recommendation of HMS ULYSSESS: it's written from real experience and the ending cannot be described as happy. The only other MacLean I recall reading was THE SATAN BUG which is just about identical to the film other than being set in England rather than the US.

    I would echo any praiee of Michael Horden. For me his Television KING LEAR for Jonanthan Miller at the BBC was one of the great performances of the part, far surpassing Olivier in my opinion, because Horden managed to be both a clown and a tragedian at once, making you gasp with laughter which feeling the pathos of the collapsing mind.

    I'd also recommend his performances in A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM and THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE: he lovers may be ridiculous but it's full of grand old British actors playing the supporting cast.

  2. Posted by Shim at 10:11pm on 08 August 2026

    Annoyingly I hit submit before adding my email, so this second attempt has probably lost something.

    I read the novels exhaustively in my youth, but I think I've only seen the film of Eagles, and that once.

    I think the novel of Eagles does a better job of presenting the double-crossing aspects without getting confusing. If nothing else, you can reread! It was written well to keep things ambiguous and maintain suspicion over just about everybody. That seems harder to do in a film, particularly with actors known for playing goodies.

    It sounds Navarone changes quite a few things, starting by renaming the navigator Andrew Stevens as Roy Franklin and making him the commander. I don't recall anything about Andrea hating Mallory, or Brown being a ruthless knife-fighter either, but it's possible I forgot that. It's probably 20 years since I last read them. I am pretty confident that the book handles Stevens/Franklin's decline better, and his death in particular - he makes a lengthy last stand to allow the others to escape.

    Adding female characters is always tricky with war films but it sounds like they did a reasonable job - although I have mixed feelings about the traitor becoming a double-crossing seductress.

    I did read the sequel too, Force 10 from Navarone, and was disappointed. The way the new characters are killed off while the older ones happened to survive felt contrived, though that is the tendency when writing sequels. To some extent it being a sequel to the film may explain why it felt lacklustre to me.

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