October | 2009 | the m0vie blog

Battlestar Galactica – The Miniseries

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Darren

I recently picked up Battlestar Galactica on bluray, the complete series boxset, including every episode and special. I’d wandered in and out of the series over the years (mainly due to the fact that I was at college during its run) and when this package was released I decided that it might well be worth my time to pick up the whole kit and kaboodle on watch it through from beginning to end. So, for the first time, I watched the 2003 miniseries which had served as launching pad for the series. While I’m not entirely happy with the bluray itself, I am very satisfied with the programme.

Guess who’s coming to dinner?

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: adama, battlestar, battlestar galactica, Battlestar Galactica miniseries, Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries, bluray, BSG, cylons, review | 15 Comments »

Batman: Gothic (Review)

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Darren

Legends of the Dark Knight was an interesting concept – tell self-contained stories using different creative teams set at various points during Batman’s crime-fighting career. As such, those stories would make the title easy to pick up, without tying it excessively to continuity. It’s a simple and an interesting premise, and it did produce all manner of intriguing Batman stories. Grant Morrison’s Gothicis perhaps one of the most intriguing of those stories, taking the character well outside what readers might have expected.

It’s all upside down…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman: gothic, Bruce, comic, dark knight, dark knight returns, dc comics, frank miller, gotham city, gothic, gothic horror, grant morrison, Grantmorrison, horror, klaus janson, legends of the dark knight, morrison, mr. whisper, review, the legends of the dark knight | 3 Comments »

Absolute Batman: The Dark Knight (Returns) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on October 3, 2009 by Darren

The Absolute Edition also collects The Dark Knight Strikes Again. Miller’s belated sequel is worthy of discussion on its own terms, and I plan to revisit it at some point. For the moment, however, here is the review of the original Dark Knight Returns.

It’s really quite difficult to discuss The Dark Knight Returns today. Part of the reason is because of the massive influence that Frank Miller’s Batman epilogue had on the medium, and part of it is because Miller himself has done a fairly efficient job at deconstructing his own definitive Batman work in stories like The Dark Knight Strikes Again and All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder. It’s impossible to approach Miller’s work here entirely divorced from either reality, and the result is a rather strange and dramatic legacy for one of the most iconic Batman stories ever told. It remains fairly essential reading for anybody even remotely interested in the Caped Crusader, the superhero genre or even the medium as a whole. It’s a classic, albeit one that is sometimes quite difficult to pin down.

Lightning strikes…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: absolute dark knight, absolute edition, alan moore, All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder, arts, batman, bruce wayne, Christopher Nolan, comic books, dark knight returns, dark knight strikes again, dc comics, dkr, dksa, frank miller, gotham, graphic novel, neil gaiman, review, the absolute dark knight, The Dark Knight, the dark knight returns, the dark knight strikes again, watchmen | 7 Comments »

Toy Story 3D x 2

Posted on October 2, 2009 by Darren

Hey, Disney, wassup? Seriously. I know I live in Ireland and that ripping off people is the norm, but c’mon? Everywhere else seems to be receiving Toy Story 3D as a double feature including Toy Story and Toy Story 2 in a four-hour epic? Instead, I have to fork out €10 twice to see two movies I’ve already seen and I can’t even make a decent weekend afternoon of it. We’re getting the first Toy Story rendered in 3D today, but we have to wait until Christmas for the second one.

Buzz isn't the only person the joke is on...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: back-to-back, double feature, films, Movies, pixar, toy story, toy story 2, toy story 3, toy story 3d | Leave a comment »

The UK/US Broadcasting Models…

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Darren

It’s interesting to look at television, and look how the format of what is being broadcast has changed in the past few years and how it varies from place to place – I’m not talking about the revolution in content that has been slowly happening since the eighties, merely the way in which that format is presented. Television in the UK and Ireland isn’t normally broadcast in the same fashion as it is in the USA. Here shows generally run week-in, week-out for thirteen weeks rather than running twenty-four weeks spread from September to June. We don’t have shows that take breaks between episodes – the next episode is generally always next week. So when Sky recently announced that it had a spate of new shows returning this and next week, I was a little intrigued.

House will be making house calls even sooner...

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Filed under: Television | Leave a comment »

The Leading Man Swap-Out…

Posted on October 1, 2009 by Darren

I live in the same house as my gran (I reckon I’m young enough that it’s still cute rather than creepy), and last week a new boxset of her pet obsession – CSI – arrived in the door. Since she’s in bed shortly after I get home from work, the two of us have been watching episodes of the ninth season of the seminal forensic “drama” (it’s more science-fiction or fantasy, but let’s not quibble). It’s the season that sees former hot young actor of the eighties, William Peterson, replaced by former hot young actor of the nineties, Laurence Fishburne. I’ll admit I haven’t yet watched every episode, but it’s surprising how much I’m not missing the lead who coaxed the show through nearly a decade of airtime. Has CSI seemingly acheived the impossible? Has it successfully swapped out an established leading man?