When I'm faced with challenges in my life, I am somewhat heartened by something I learned as a child, that an oyster has to be irritated by a grain of sand in order to eventually make a pearl. That knowledge always made the load I was carrying seem less significant, and helped me to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. Cinematically speaking, at least in the fine age of silent movies, one of the most…

This is definitely my favourite Charlie Chaplin outing for the “Tramp” as he alights at the circus and discovers that he has quite a penchant for entertaining the crowds. Of course, we only discover this after a few mishaps with the police who think he’s a vagrant trained by “Fagin” lead him to the big top where his antics cause ructions of laughter. The boss of this enterprise knows he’s onto a winner, but not to a…