March | 2012 | the m0vie blog

Equus at the Mill, Dundrum (Review)

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Darren

London Classic Theatre have brought Sir Peter Shaffer’s classic 1973 play to the Mill Theatre in Dundrum, and I had the pleasure of attending on Friday night. I must admit that it was my first time to see Equus, although I couldn’t help but be aware of the headline-grabbing aspects of the play. I wonder exactly how much work Daniel Radcliffe has done to popularise the play, using a West End run as an attempt to divorce himself from his most iconic role, and the media revelling at the details of the show. While I was impressed with what London Classic Theatrebrought to the stage, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by the play itself.

Easy rider...

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Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: arts, Cruelty to animals, daniel radcliffe, dundrum, england, Equus, horse, Hyundai Equus, London, london theatre company, malcolm james, Performing Arts, Peter Schaffer, Peter Shaffer, plays, the mill (theatre), Theatre | Leave a comment »

A Month on the BBC Global iPlayer…

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Darren

Thanks to the wonderful folk at the BBC, I’ve been given a month’s subscription to the BBC Global iPlayer to try out the service. The BBC is probably the best national broadcaster in the world, and the international standard for original drama. There’s a reason that so much talent (whether in front or behind the camera) developed there. So the app handily streams BBC content to my iPhone to enjoy at my leisure. It seems perfect for the traveller on the go.

Over the next month, I’m going to be using it, reviewing some content and trying to appraise the service. If you have anything on the BBC you’d like to point me to, feel free to leave a comment below. Any suggestions will be appreciated. I’m looking forward to tucking into a rick library of shows I missed the first time around. I’ll be back at the end of the month with a more in-depth review of the service, and with my own findings. I’m already ready to tuck into Wallander and Sherlock.

Thanks again to the great sports at the BBC for giving me access.

Filed under: Television | Tagged: Australia, bbc, BBC iPlayer, Handhelds, IPad, iphone, IPod Touch, Smartphones | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: 21 Jump Street

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Darren

The review was embargoed until the 5th March 2012.

The obvious point of comparison to Jonah Hill’s big-screen adaptation of 21 Jump Street is the Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson version of Starsky & Hutch. After all, both take classic cult television shows and recycle them for modern audiences, taking dramatic plot devices that seem hilarious and goofy in hindsight and playing them as straight comedy. There is, however, one very crucial difference between that adaptation of a seventies cop show and this adaptation of an eighties cop show: 21 Jump Street works. Mostly.

White knights...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 21 Jump Street, 21 Jump Street (film), 21 Jump Street (movie), arts, ben stiller, Channing Tatum, Darren, Dave Franco, film, johnny depp, jonah hill, Michael Bacall, Movie, Owen Wilson, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, review, starsky and hutch | 14 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Darren

While Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters might get a little bit too crazy and twisty in its final third, but it’s a brilliantly dark Norwegian thriller/comedy, headlined with considerable style by Aksel Hennie as corporate recruitment expert Roger Brown, a sleazy yuppie living well beyond his means to keep his wife in the style two which she has become accustomed. As the movie puts Brown through a sequence of painful and humiliating encounters, it is consistently entertaining, managing to walk the fine line between making sure we dislike Roger enough to be amused by his misfortune, but invested enough that we want to see the little (“1.68 metres”) bugger manage to escape the movie relatively intact.

Got milk?

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Aksel Hennie, arts, Brown, film, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Harry Hole, jameson dublin international film festival, Jo Nesbø, Morten Tyldum, Movie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, non-review review, review, Roger, Roger Brown, Stieg Larsson, United States, Yellow Bird | 4 Comments »

Garth Ennis’ Run on Punisher MAX – Born (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, this month we’re going to take a look at Northern Irish writer Garth Ennis’ run on that iconic Marvel anti-hero, The Punisher. Check back every Friday and Wednesday for a review of a particular section.

There are comic book characters that are so closely tied to one particular writer that you pity anybody trying to write them. The X-Men have Chris Claremont (although I do love Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run), Daredevil has Frank Miller (although he also has Brian Michael Bendis and Ed Brubaker), Hulk has Peter David and (I firmly believe) Green Lantern has Geoff Johns. Somehow, through some fluke, occasionally comic book characters manage to stumble across a writer who fundamentally understands them. I’d argue that this is the benefit of having these characters survive in print – none of these runs were by the original authors. Anyway, to get to the point, the Punisher has Garth Ennis.

The last Castle...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: america, brian michael bendis, captain america, Comics, ed brubaker, Frank Castle, frank miller, Garth Ennis, mark millar, marvel, marvel max, max, punisher, punisher max, punisher max: born, punisher: born, retrospective, review, Vietnam War, war | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Project X

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

Project X is a mess, but it’s a high-octane and energetic mess, with an incredible youthful exuberance and a desire to throw anything it can at the wall to see if it sticks. Though it starts out a bit slow, it accelerates pretty quickly, with the film managing to hold itself together as the party on-screen starts to fall apart. The best way to describe Project X might be to define it as Superbad‘s hyper-active, less focused, more crass, more direct and less sweet younger brother. It lacks the heart that defined that other recent coming-of-age teenage comedy, but it more than makes up for its relative shallowness with an enthusiasm that’s infectious and hard to resist.

Razing the roof...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: art, Arts and Entertainment, Australia, business, comedy, Disc jockey, Document review, film, House Party, Movie, Nima Nourizadeh, non-review review, Project X, Protagonist, review, Shopping, Superbad, Thomas Mann, Todd Phillips | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Courage (Wymyk)

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012.

Courage is a fascinating little Polish film, with an interesting dramatic hook. Director Greg Zglinski offers a searing portrait of masculinity and impotence in the twenty-first century, where ever moment and action and decision seems to be documented for future use – our private failures of judgment ultimately become public spectacles, and in this era of globalisation and instant media connections, it’s impossible to escape the consequences of one bad split-second decision. While Zglinski’s film might overstay even its relatively short runtime, it does raise some interesting and challenging ideas about heroism in the twenty-first century.

Oh, brother!

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Academy Award, Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Agnieszka Holland, art, arts, Cinema of Poland, Courage, dublin, Europa, film, Filmmaking, Florida, Fred, In the Sewers of Lvov: A Heroic Story of Survival from the Holocaust, Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012, Jerzy, Jews, Movie, Movies, non-review review, politics, review, United States | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Baraka

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Darren

This film was seen as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2012. It will be getting a 20th anniversary re-release this year.

Released in 1992, it’s easy to consider Baraka as something of a spiritual successor to Koyaanisqatsi, a film which gave birth to an entire subgenre of non-narrative feature films designed to offer us insight into the working of our planet. It’s a natural comparison, as director Ron Ficke served as director of photography on that monumental film, and he clearly owes a debt to Godfrey Reggio’s masterpiece. However, I think there’s a substantive difference between how the two directors approach their subject matter, and the end result. While Reggio offers a more fascinating study of large-scale systems, Fricke manages a strange intimacy amidst his vast scale – there’s something considerably more human to Baraka, and I think that comfortably sets the movie apart. It looks as good as it did on initial release twenty years ago, and it still packs as much punch – even if it never looks quite as sharp as its sequel, Samsara.