… or, as we Irish say, on holliers…
Right, I’m off to Cork for the week. I realise the schedule has been a bit all over the place of late, and I apologise. Hopefully when I’m back the week after next, I’ll get things back on track. In the meantime, there will be fresh reviews daily. See you all the week after next!
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: Cork, irish | 3 Comments »
Mister Morel, I watched Taken, I knew Taken, Taken was a film of mine. Mister Morel, this is no Taken.
No can do, apparently...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: action, arts, bond, from paris with love, From Russia With Love, john travolta, jonathan rhys-myers, luc besson, monty python, Movies, non-review review, paris, pierre mortel, review, Roger Moore, sean connery, spies | 4 Comments »
I kinda sorta almost want to see Piranha 3D. Not because I think it will be good, you see, but because I genuinely want some cheap, visceral 3D action. After all, what’s the point of 3D if it’s simply adding several layours to your 2D watching experience. I realise this makes me sound like an uncultured slob (which, let’s face it, if the glove fits…) but I really want to see a tacky exploitative bit of 3D cinema where things fly out of the screen at me a make me jump out of my seat. It’s not a feeling I’m particularly proud of, but it’s there. Anyway, James Cameron seems to hate me, and people like me. When asked about Piranha 3D, he offered this snippet:
I tend almost never to throw other films under the bus, but that is exactly an example of what we should not be doing in 3-D. Because it just cheapens the medium and reminds you of the bad 3-D horror films from the 70s and 80s, like Friday the 13th 3-D. When movies got to the bottom of the barrel of their creativity and at the last gasp of their financial lifespan, they did a 3-D version to get the last few drops of blood out of the turnip. And that’s not what’s happening now with 3-D. It is a renaissance—right now the biggest and the best films are being made in 3-D. Martin Scorsese is making a film in 3-D. Disney’s biggest film of the year — Tron: Legacy — is coming out in 3-D. So it’s a whole new ballgame.
Okay, I can’t quite argue with that, but it still seems a little bit harsh.
From the looks of it, what James Cameron wants to do to Piranha 3D...
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: avatar, Boxcar Bertha, Christopher Nolan, film, francis ford coppola, james cameron, leap year, Movies, piranha, piranha 3d | 5 Comments »
Are you manly? I mean really manly? In a way, Executive Decision is kinda what I was hoping for when I heard about The Expendables. It’s not an excellent movie, or even an exceptional one – in fact, it can be cynically described as “Die Hard on a plane” – but it’s a perfectly serviceable action movie that gets bonus points for never trying to be anything more than what it is. There’s not tangential romantic plot or half-hearted attempts at characterisation: the movie is all business. And that business is attempting to give its audience testosterone poisoning.
Not quite plane sailing ahead...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: action, Andreas Katsulas, animation, Armand Assante, arts, B.D. Wong, die hard, Executive Decision, films, Halle Berry, J.T. Walsh, Joe Morton, john leguizamo, Kurt Russell, Middle East, Movie, Movies, non-review review, oceanic, oceanic airlines, oliver platt, president, review, reviews, steven segal, tom clancy | 2 Comments »
Jurassic Park is one of the “big” blockbusters which defined the nineties. It’s easily recognisable and has thoroughly entrenched itself deep in popular culture – along with Independence Day or Terminator 2. Also, like the two aforementioned films, it’s actually quite good. Of course, coming from director Stephen Spielberg, the man who invented blockbuster cinema with Jaws, can’t hurt.
I call him "Rex"...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, dinosaurs, film, films, Ian Malcolm, Independence Day, jeff goldblum, jurassic park, jurassicpark, laura dern, michael crichton, Movies, non-review review, review, richard attenborough, sam neill, samuel l. jackson, Special effect, stephen spielberg, wayne knight | 7 Comments »
I love The Player. I really do. When I was in college, I used to organise movie screenings – we’d show The Player once a year and it would always pack out. It was just one of those films that everybody had heard nothing but good things about, but never got a chance to see. Indeed, I would go so far as to say The Player, with all its wacky fourth-wall meta-ness, is my favourite Robert Altman film.
Who would want to kill this producer? Answers on the back of a postcard...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: cameos, celebrities, classic, classics, executives, film making, fred ward, hollywood, long shots, movie-making, Movies, murder, non-review review, references, review, robert altman, studios, the player, tim robbins | 3 Comments »
Geoff Johns is pretty much on top of the world. He’s a renowned comic book writer, who has got to work on all his favourite childhood properties – in many cases making them as popular as they’ve been in decades. He’s in charge of DC’s multimedia approach – he’s the guy in charge of the movies and television shows based around the iconic properties. Without his work on the character, next year’s Green Lantern movie wouldn’t be happening. And yet he had to begin somewhere. Although it doesn’t represent his earliest work in comics by a long stretch, in 2000 he took over as writer on The Flash. Despite a string of solid work behind him – and a really successful run for Mark Waid on the title – it was this creative pairing which would arguably propel both writer and character into the spotlight like never before. A decade later, Johns has returned to the book which made him famous, so I think it’s time to begin a trip down memory lane.
Wally's going to have to think fast...
Filed under: Comics | Tagged: birth right, blood will run, captain cold, comic books, Comics, dc, dc comics, geoff johns, iron heights, review, the fastest man alive, the flash, the rogues, wally west, wonderland | Leave a comment »
Earlier this week I reviewed Wednesday Comics, a rather spanking anthology from DC Comics. I kinda figured, however, it might be worth my while to break out some of those fifteen stories on their own (but not all of them) and discuss them, as it’s easy to lose sight of a particular writer/artist’s work in an anthology. And hey! It’s Neil Gaiman!
Good old Metamorpho. If ever there was a cult DC property, good old Rex Mason would be in the running. He isn’t exactly the highest profile name in the DCU – he’s not even B- or C-List (which makes it hilarious when this script introduces us to “the Metamorpho Fans of America”, followers of “the most popular comic book in America”, and he even has his own TV show). But those who know him love him and his basic concept – he “can transform himself into 94 elements!” – is wonderfully hokey. Hokey enough, perhaps, that he seems a perfect fit for the conscious throwbacks of Wednesday Comics. Indeed, that this was the character writer Neil Gaiman and artist Michael Allred chose to work on shouldn’t really be a surprise, nor should the fact that it’s one of the very few strips in the collection which boldly experiments with the format.
That shark needs a fast food chain...
Filed under: Comics | Tagged: comic books, dc comics, element girl, metamorpho, michael allred, neil gaiman, rex mason, splash pages, wednesday comics | Leave a comment »
I’ll admit that I did not like James Cameron’s Avatar as much as most. It was a slight disturbing racial fantasy played with Disney-esque simplicity and some truly incredible special effects. Such is life. It’s inevitable that my opinion diverges from the mainstream from time-to-time. I mean, everyone’s should at one point or another, right? Still, I can’t be the only person who thinks that re-releasing Avatar into the cinema smacks of cynicism – particularly with eight minutes of restored footage (that’s less that 5% of the total runtime). The movie is already the most successful movie ever made. At what point does enough become enough?
This movie has wings...
Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, avatar, avatar re-release, avatar rerelease, avatar: special edition, dark knight, DVD, film, george lucas, james cameron, Movies, re-release, special edition | 4 Comments »
The Siege has the benefit of becoming a lot more relevent in the past couple of years. Exploring the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities on New York City by Islamic extremists, the film isn’t exact a subtle exploration of the relationship between liberty and security – instead preferring to offer two-dimensional strawmen instead of characters or legitimate viewpoints. Still, despite its heavy-handedness, it does have some interesting insights into the world after it has been shaken to its core.
Washington under Siege...
Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: america, annette benning, bruce willis, denzel washington, extremism, film, islam extremism, Movie, non-review review, politics, review, september 11th, subtext, terrorism, the siege | Leave a comment »
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