“Sea Devil!”
“Land Parasite!”
Well, to be fair, Legend of the Sea Devils is at least a worthy sequel to Warriors of the Deep.
The Sea Devil you know.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: Chris Chibnall, doctor who, jodie whittaker, memory, nostalgia, Sea Devils, The Sea Devils, yasmin khan, yaz | 17 Comments »
I’m thrilled to be launching movie reviews on The Escapist. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be joining a set of contributors in adding these reviews to the channel. For the moment, I’m honoured to contribute a three-minute film review of The Northman, which is in theatres in the U.K. and Ireland now and in the United States next week.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: escapist, films, Movies, robert eggers, the escapist, the northman, Valhalla | Leave a comment »
Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guests Jason Coyle and Aoife Martin, The 250 is a weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturdays at 6pm GMT.
So this week, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The unthinkable has happened. At the height of the Cold War, American bombers have been ordered to enter Russian airspace and deploy their ordinance at the order of General Jack D. Ripper. The President of the United States scrambles to stop the crisis from escalating further, but the situation becomes even bleaker when it is revealed that the Russians have just deployed a failsafe that could wipe out all life on Earth in case of a potential American attack. Powers on both sides of the Iron Curtain find themselves racing against time, with the fate of the world in their hands.
At time of recording, it was ranked 67th on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.
Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: america, bomb, Cold War, death, george c. scott, imdb, impotence, masculinity, mega-death, nazis, nuclear annihilation, nuclear bomb, patton, peter sellers, podcast, Russia, sexuality, Soviet Union, stanley kubrick, The 250, violence | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the season finale of Severance last week, it seemed like an opportunity to take a look at one of the most interesting new shows on television.
Severance is a science-fiction show build around the fictional concept of “severance”, a medical procedure that allows a person to completely separate their professional and personal selves. However, beneath this high concept, Severance plays as a metaphor for a lot of the current anxieties about the work/life balance, and the intrusion of private enterprise into personal lifestyles.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: apple tv, capitalism, in the frame, severance, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The seventh episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
One of the big problems with modern Star Trek has been the extent to which the franchise finds itself caught between the past and the future, between a nostalgic impluse that pulls it back to the plotting that defined the franchise’s long history and something more ambitious that pushes it towards prestige television. The recent shows have never quite managed to square that particular circle, and this problem comes to the fore as Picard tries to delve inside the head of its protagonist.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: franchise, mad men, picard, prestige television, sopranos, star trek, star trek: picard, Television, the next generation | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Moon Knight, which is streaming weekly on Disney+. The third episode of the show released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
Moon Knight very obviously wants to evoke a particular sort of old-fashioned romantic globe-trotting adventure, like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone or even The Mummy. It is arguably part of a recent attempted revival of the subgenre, including Jungle Cruise and Lost City of D. However, the show’s attempts to tap into this sort of classic odd couple romance demonstrates the limits of the weird insistent sexlessness that define so many modern blockbuster stories. Moon Knight manages the seemingly impossible, in that it makes Oscar Isaac seem sexless.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: chemistry, moon knight, moon knightcaps, Oscar Isaac, romance, sex, sexuality, Television, the escapist | Leave a comment »
We’re thrilled to be launching a fortnightly companion piece to In the Frame at The Escapist. The video will typically launch every second Monday, and be released on the magazine’s YouTube channel. This is kinda cool, because we’re helping relaunch the magazine’s film content – so if you can throw a subscription our way, it would mean a lot.
With the release Moon Knight, it seemed like a good opportunity to talk about the show. In particular, how Moon Knight offers an interesting approach to the long-standing “villain problem” facing Marvel Studios.
Filed under: Television | Tagged: escapist, Marvel Studios, mcu, moon knight, Oscar Isaac, the escapist, villain problem, villains | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. With the looming release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at Sam Raimi’s first superhero movie: Darkman.
Darkman is notable because it belongs to a wave of early nineties superhero movies that were heavily influenced by the pulp heroes of the thirties and forties: Batman, Dick Tracy, The Rocketeer, The Shadow, The Mask, The Phantom. This is a fascinating and often overlooked trend in the history of what would become the biggest genre in Hollywood. It’s interesting to look at these movies collectively, to place in the wave of a broader cultural nostalgia for the pop culture of the era.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: batman, Darkman, dick tracy, escapist, sam raimi, the escapist, the mask, the phantom, the rocketeer, the shadow, tim burton | Leave a comment »
I published a new In the Frame piece at The Escapist this evening. With the release of the recently remastered Director’s Edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the first feature film in the Star Trek franchise.
The Motion Picture is often derided by its critics as “the Motionless Picture”, reflecting the film’s slow pacing and simplistic plot in contrast to its more relaxed runtime. These criticisms are entirely valid, but they also ignore one of the central appeals of The Motion Picture. Just two years after George Lucas welcomed viewers to “a galaxy far, far away” with Star Wars, The Motion Picture made the Star Trek universe truly tactile and tangible. The film is perhaps best understood as an experience rather than a narrative, a window into the franchise’s fictional universe.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: On Second Thought | Tagged: in the frame, Robert Wise, special effects, star trek, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, the escapist | Leave a comment »
I published a new piece at The Escapist this evening. We’re doing a series of recaps and reviews of Star Trek: Picard, which is streaming weekly on Paramount+. The sixth episode of the second season released this week, and it seemed like a good opportunity to take a look at the series.
One of the interesting aspects of the second season of Star Trek: Picard has been the way in which it has been drawing more overtly from classic Star Trek tropes, with the season taking a number of cues from Star Trek: First Contact. However, the season has drawn most overtly from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. What is interesting about this is that the show understands that The Voyage Home isn’t just about time travelers from an imaginary future, but about fugitives from television.
You can read the piece here, or click the picture below.
Filed under: Star Trek | Tagged: future, hope, idealism, Mental Health, picard, star trek, star trek iv the voyage home, star trek: picard, Television, time travel, utopianism, Voyage Home | Leave a comment »
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