Howard Swains - author - page 2 - The Slovak Spectator

Howard Swains

Howard Swains is a freelance journalist based between London and New York. He is a freelance contributor and sub-editor at The Guardian and Observer, the former Deputy Sport Editor of Times Online, and is a former gambling columnist for The Times.He has written about film, travel, sport, technology and gambling for numerous publications and websites, including Wired.co.uk, The New York Sun, The New York Post and The Racing Post. He also wrote the 2008 edition of Spectacular Slovakia for the Slovak Spectator.He holds an MA in English from St Andrews University (1997) and an MS in journalism from Columbia Journalism School (2007).

List of author's articles, page 2

The Time Traveler’s Wife

Director: Robert SchwenteStarring: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana

Howard Swains

This Is It

Director: Kenny OrtegaStarring: Michael Jackson

Howard Swains

London Film Festival

THE 53rd London Film Festival concluded last week and, as ever, it was a terrific feast packed both with blockbusters and modest curios to suit all tastes, giving us an early indication of some of the releases to look out for in the coming year.

Howard Swains

Book review

The Death of Bunny MunroBy Nick Cave

Howard Swains

Book review

Inherent Vice

Howard Swains

Slovakia qualifies for its first-ever World Cup

NO ONE ever said it was going to be easy, but after putting their exasperated supporters through 180 minutes of agony in the past week, Slovakia's footballers left it until late on a snowy Wednesday night in Poland to finally book their place at next summer’s World Cup finals in South Africa.

Howard Swains

Away We Go

Director: Sam Mendes

Howard Swains

Slovakia head to World Cup after victory in Poland

Move over Juraj Jánošík, Slovakia has a new hero. His name is Seweryn Gancarczyk, and although he is Polish by birth, tonight he is the toast of the neighbours to the south after his own goal in the third minute of Slovakia's final qualifying game for World Cup 2010 decided this match - and this long campaign - in Slovakia's favour.

Howard Swains

Weiss regrets Saturday's disappointment, but Slovakia eye second chance

The flags have been folded away and the face-paint washed clean — but on Wednesday it might all make its way out again.

Howard Swains

Film review: District 9

Director: Neill Blomkamp; Starring: Sharlto Copley ; FOR its opening half an hour, Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is a bleakly realistic and shamefully familiar tale of organised prejudice and man’s intolerance of minorities. It depicts in startling documentary footage, interspersed with eye-witness and expert testimony, the government-sponsored dissolution of a fetid ghetto on the outskirts of Johannesburg, a vast shanty town of shacks and tents and squalor housing more than a million displaced creatures.

Howard Swains

Slovenia ruin Slovakia's party as attention turns to Poland

SLOVAKIA will need that second chance after all. Requiring only a draw at home to Slovenia this evening to confirm their place as winners of Group 3 and qualify for next year's World Cup, Vladimir Weiss's men were instead defeated by two second-half goals from a spirited visiting side, who kept their own dreams alive of a South African summer. Slovakia will now head to Poland on Wednesday, in all probability needing to win to book their place at the World Cup finals for the first time in their history.

Howard Swains

The adventures of a Slovak police commander

A COUPLE of weeks ago, the literary editor of London’s Independent newspaper, Boyd Tonkin, wrote a column discussing Simon Mawer’s novel The Glass Room, which charts the history of the former Czechoslovakia through the occupants of a house in Brno. Tonkin was optimistic that the critically acclaimed book might shine a light on the art and literature of the surrounding countries, all but ignored by the English-speaking world.

Howard Swains

Film review

Director: Darren AronofskyStarring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood; More than a year after its premiere at the 2008 Venice Film Festival, and seven months since its star was controversially overlooked for an Oscar, Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler finally hits Slovak cinemas this week, a welcome extension to the life of a movie about human frailty and the ravages of time.

Howard Swains

The Double Life Is Twice As Good – Jonathan Ames

THE WORK of Jonathan Ames is among the ultimate guilty pleasures. His subject matter often veers deep into the underground—deviancy, alcoholism and perversion—yet the vigour and audacity of his writing elevates him close to high literature. Through three novels and three collections of newspaper columns, Ames has laid bare a soul full of contradictions: he is tortured, fallible and instinctively depraved, but also urbane and achingly affectionate.

Howard Swains

Film review

Inglourious Basterds

Howard Swains

Inglorious Basterds

RATHER like George W. Bush entering the White House, or anyone texting an ex while drunk, the consequences of Quentin Tarantino dabbling in Holocaust issues were always going to be disastrous; we didn’t need to see them to know that. Yet Inglourious Basterds, playing now in Bratislava, makes us voyeurs to a peculiar abomination. This film is what happens when no one intervenes to halt a plainly misguided concept, and it is every bit as insensitive as we might have feared.

Howard Swains

The Maintenance of Headway

Howard Swains

Drag Me To Hell

Director: Sam RaimiStarring: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, Lorna Raver, Dileep Rao

Howard Swains

Books reviewed

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell & The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich; DISHEARTENED and impoverished journalists should take encouragement from Malcolm Gladwell and Ben Mezrich. Walk into an airport bookshop and their work glares out from the shelves alongside the behemoths of the fiction bestseller lists. Furthermore Gladwell’s The Tipping Point introduced a new idiom to common parlance (much like Joseph Heller’s Catch-22), while Hollywood snapped up Mezrich’s casino-busting Bringing Down The House, put Kevin Spacey in the lead and millions of dollars in the writer’s bank account.

Howard Swains

Brüno

Brüno Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Gustaf HammarstenDirector: Larry Charles. The British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has taken approximately 10 years and precisely three comedy personas to complete a journey from the late-night television schedules to the dizzy heights of the Hollywood A-list. Originally seen on the not-so-mean streets of suburban London in the designer shell suits of Ali G, Baron Cohen these days inhabits the mangled Austrian accent and perilously-tailored silver lamé of Brüno, whose big-screen debut "Brüno" opens in Bratislava this week.

Howard Swains

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