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 »
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?
A Fish(burne) out of water?
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: casting, csi, ensemble, gil grissom, laurence fishburne, lead actor, new actor, ray langston, Television, the x-files, william peterson | Leave a comment »
Posted on September 30, 2009 by Darren
A look back at a wild September, with some of our more notable articles.
We celebrated the end of this year’s summer season, and it was meh. But seriously, are movies getting too long?
An article looking at whether bloggers are/aren’t/could ever be critics made the front page of WordPress, which brought lots of traffic and, more importantly, a lot of discussion.
Another piece that got people talking was a discussion over the ending of the Usual Suspects wondering if we’re sure we saw what we saw.
And we lamented the passing of another month without and Batman news by looking at whether Two-Face or the Riddler should appear in the next film…
Filed under: Months in Review | Tagged: Months in Review, september | Leave a comment »
Posted on September 30, 2009 by Darren
I make no apologies, I love this movie. Though it might not always hit the perfect notes, it maintains Ben Stiller’s pitch-perfect ability to just throw tonnes of stuff at the wall and if even 30% of the jokes hit, you’re at least grinning for the film’s runtime. He also has a fantastic cast full of the talented and the one-note, all of whom are perfectly chosen for the roles that they play within Stiller’s war comedy. Sure, the film may lose focus a bit, and it has a fairly short attention span, but this means that Stiller isn’t afraid to pull away from a gag that isn’t working.
Jungle Fever
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: apocalypse now, ben stiller, comedy, films, hollywood, jack black, les gorssman, Movies, non-review review, review, robert downey, robert downey jnr., satire, tom cruise, tropic thunder | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 30, 2009 by Darren
I happened upon an interesting article which suggested that today’s blockbusters are far too long. It’s a notion which got me thinking – it’s easy to jump to those sort of conclusions based on the kind of summer we’ve had, but are movies really getting longer and is that a bad thing?
Even bigger and meaner than you could imagine...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: average runtime, cinema, film length, films, movie length, Movies, runtime, two hours | Leave a comment »
Posted on September 30, 2009 by Darren
I considered writing this little piece in a vacuum, leaving the issue the sparked it sitting like an elephant in the room – but there’s really no point avoiding it. I’ve been troubled watching Roman Polanski films ever since I read up and discovered why he had to direct The Ninth Gate from abroad. The knowledge that he had engaged in sexual acts with a thirteen year old girl has been very hard to disassociate from the man in viewing his filmography – oddly enough, it’s harder to disassociate than the grisly facts surrounding the brutal murder of Sharon Tate by the Manson family. I saw The Pianist and his rather lacklustre (Playboy financed) version of Macbeth before I found out about his flight to Europe and his seemingly eternal exile. I was unlucky enough to see Chinatown afterwards, and as great as the film was I couldn’t quite get over what Polanski had done. Am I being a little silly or is it really hard to view the work of film makers in a vacuum?
"Forget it, Jake, it's Polaski..."
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: behind the scenes, chinatown, external factors, films, in a vacuum, Movies, rape, roman polanski, statutory rape | Leave a comment »
Posted on September 29, 2009 by Darren
I am going to just come out and say this. I like Tom Cruise as an actor. I think he’s hugely talented and vastly underrated. I think he suffers from a subset of the Sean Penn Syndrome that affects Christian Bale – his wacky personal life tends to overshadow his on-screen roles, which is a damn shame, given the talent that’s been hinted at repeatedly throughout his career.
A pleasant cruise...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: actor, collateral, films, hollywood, Movies, publicity, rain man, tom cruise, tropic thunder | 4 Comments »
Posted on September 29, 2009 by Darren
Maybe there’s a reason I’ve got ghosts and ghouls on my mind despite the fact that Halloween is approaching and the first Nightmare on Elm Street trailer was just released. I happened to catch The Mummy playing on Sky movies on Sunday night and it was one of those rare films that the family just dropped everything and started watching, despite the fact we’ve seen it before. Ignoring the law of diminishing returns that affected the sequels, The Mummy is solid action-adventure-horror romp that stands equally well as a companion to Raiders of the Lost Ark as it does as a subconscious herald of the coming wave of remade creature features.
Oh, mummy!
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: brendan fraiser, egypt, film, monster movies, Movies, non-review review, rachel weisz, review, stephen sommers, the mummy, universal horror movies, universal monster movies | 1 Comment »
Posted on September 29, 2009 by Darren
This is a movie that ends with a rendition of the classic Bowie pop number Let’s Dance, because it couldn’t fit it anywhere in its linear narrative amid all the time-specific pop and rock tunes. The movie has quite a bit in common with that most financially successful of songs from the Thin White Duke. It’s light, it’s breezy and it’s catchy, with just a hint of some extra darkness that is rarely found among its light and fluff compatriots. It’s also the work of an intensely talented artist (and, indeed, artists) who probably should be doing more innovative and important work, but we almost can’t blame them because it’s so much fun. Almost.
Quite a board walk...
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: bill nighy, british cinema, comedy, emma thompson, kenneth branagh, Movie, music, nick frost, non-review review, philip seymour hoffman, pirate radio, radio, review, rhys ifans, richard curtis, rock, the boat that rocked | Leave a comment »
Posted on September 28, 2009 by Darren
Next month is October, which means Halloween, so I’ll be taking a closer look at the horror genre (both with reviews of movies and my own unique style of commentary), but the success of the new Paranormal Activity on a budget of less than $15,000 (and I thought District 9 was cheap) has got me wondering: why is it that low-key horrors are so scary?
There's been a lot of activity around Paranormal Activity this weekend...
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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: chillers, films, horror, horror movies, Movies, paranormal activity, scary movies, the blair witch project, thrillers | Leave a comment »
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