arts | the m0vie blog

Absolute Planetary, Vol. 2 (Review)

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Darren

With Wildstorm being officially folded into the relaunched DCU (the “DCnU”), I thought I might take a look at some of the more successful and popular Wildstorm titles that the company produced. In particular, Planetary, the which will apparently inspire Paul Cornell’s Stormwatch – easily one of my more anticipated titles of the relaunch.

“We keep the world strange because that’s the way it’s suppose to be.”

– Elijah Snow outlines Planetary‘s mission

I really do love Warren Ellis’ Planetary, a love letter to pulp fiction in all its forms, about a team of crack pop culture archeologists, tracking down and preserving many of the weird and wonderful fictional specimens that we see all too rarely these days, from cowboy vigilantes to kung-fu epics. There’s a genuine love poured into the series by Ellis and his artistic collaborator, John Cassaday, as the pair celebrate some of the truly wonderful fiction of the twentieth century, as we brace ourselves for the twenty-first.

Little drummer boy...

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Absolute Planetary, alan moore, arts, comic book reviews, comic books, dc comics, Elijah Snow, Ellis, Garth Ennis, grant morrison, IPad, john cassaday, Paul Cornell, Planetary, randall dowling, review, the four, warren ellis, wildstorm | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Too Big To Fail

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Darren

I’ll admit to being quite impressed with the work HBO have done of late. I’m not so much talking about their production of some of the finest drama on television, but instead talking about the fantastic job they’ve done in bringing original drama to life inside the format of television movies. There was a time that television movies were mocked and frowned upon, something of a guilty pleasure rather than an artform to take seriously, but HBO has done a rather sterling job of late, producing films like The Special Relationship, which I thought might have supported even a small-scale theatrical run. Too Big To Fail is just as good, if not slightly better – focusing on the United States financial collapse of 2008, it brings together an all-star cast under a fantastic director to offer a movie that is far more interesting and compelling than any drama based on number crunching really ought to be.

Bringing the Hurt...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, Curtis Hanson, hbo, Henry Paulson, Lehman Brothers, Lehmann Brothers, non-review review, paul giamatti, review, Too big to fail, United States | Leave a comment »

Man of Valour at the Absolut Dublin Fringe (Review)

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Darren

If you see one show at the Dublin Fringe, see Man of Valour. If you see two shows, see Man of Valour twice. If you see three shows… well, maybe you should see something else the third time, for variety’s sake. Man of Valour is easily one of the most energetic and exciting pieces of theatre I’ve seen all year, with superb direction and a fantastically impressive leading man, it really feels like the lovechild of a one-man show with a big-budget action movie.

A man-ic performance...

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Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: absolut dublin fringe, absolut fringe, arts, dublin, Paul Reid, Performing Arts, samuel beckett theatre, the corn exhange, Theatre | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Run Lola Run

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Darren

I really do have a great deal of affection for Run Lola Run, as a highly energetic and stylishly executed piece of cinema. It’s hard to think of a movie that can match the sheer intensity of the assault that the opening few moments make upon your senses, as the images flash across the screen, the heavy dance soundtrack kicks to life, and the camera dances and cuts like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a shame that the movie can’t really maintain that wonderful pace for the rest of its runtime, but perhaps it’s too much to ask for an eighty-minute sprint.

Betting it all on red...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, film, Filmmaking, games, Movie, Movies, non-review review, review, Run Lola Run, Sepp Herberger, Tom Tykwer | 2 Comments »

The “Meta” Mystery Approach…

Posted on September 13, 2011 by Darren

I’ve always been fascinated by mysteries in fiction. That said, I will concede I’ve never really been particularly good at picking up on the hints within the work itself designed to point towards a particular perpetrator. I haven’t necessarily got the skills to pick up on what tiny little detail mentioned in dialogue or the tiniest little action that supports a particular conclusion – it’s just not how my mind works. Instead, perhaps as a direct result of watching far too many movies, I find it more relevent to look at factors outside the fictional world where the mystery is set in order to reach a conclusion – I’m more likely to identify the culprit by reference to the film itself than the clues on hand.

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: arts, Character (arts), Crime fiction, csi, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, fiction, film, mysteries, mystery | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Three Days of the Condor

Posted on September 8, 2011 by Darren

Reflecting the political climate of the time, the seventies produced any number of high-quality conspiracy thrillers. I think what helps Three Days of the Condor stand above most of the rest is a great leading performance from Robert Redford at the height of his charisma, confident direction from Sydney Pollack and a rather clever central premise that feels interesting in its own right, rather than just a vehicle to create a palpable sense of paranoia.

Branching out...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, California Condor, faye dunaway, paramount pictures, Pinnacles National Monument, Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, Sydney Pollack, Three Days of the Condor, thrillers, Watergate Scandal | Leave a comment »

The Absolute Authority, Vol. 1 (Review)

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Darren

With Wildstorm being officially folded into the relaunched DCU (the “DCnU”), I thought I might take a look at some of the more successful and popular Wildstorm titles that the company produced. In particular, The Authority, the superhero saga that spun out of Stormwatch – a series that is getting its own post-relaunch book written by Paul Cornell, easily one of my more anticipated titles.

It’s really hard to grasp how much of a revolution Warren Ellis’ run on The Authority was, in hindsight. Sure, the writer had been playing with the idea of a more “real world” superhero team (at least in political and philosophical terms) since his original run on Stormwatch, but it was with The Authority that Ellis and Hitch managed to effectively lay out the design of superhero comics in the twenty-first century. It’s no coincidence that both halves of the creative team behind The Ultimates cut their teeth on the title (albeit at different times).

Was I the only one thinking of Gene Hunt everytime I read the word "superbastards"? "You are surrounded by armed superbastards!"

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: absolute authority, Apollo, arts, Authority, comic, comic books, Comics, jack kirby, Outer Dark, Paul Cornell, Robert McKee, stan lee, stormwatch, stormwatch (comics), Story arc, the authority, the authority (comics), warren ellis, wildstorm | 2 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Supernova

Posted on September 7, 2011 by Darren

I’m going to be honest. I like B-movies. I have a soft-spot for a nice cheesy bit of entertainment that doesn’t demand to be taken seriously, and I can forgive a movie some bad acting or dodgy special effects, if the core ingredients are at least marginally interesting. Hell, I actually honestly enjoyed Event Horizon, something not too many other people will confess to. However, watching Supernova, a surprisingly lame rip-off that comes from a handful of directors (including Francis Ford Coppola), I found myself struggling to find anything to remotely enjoy. Instead, I spent most of its relatively short runtime counting down the seconds until it was over.

Guess which one of these gives the least mechanical performance...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, film, francis ford coppola, James Spader, Movie, non-review review, Peter Facinelli, review, Special effect, Supernova, Tom & Jerry, White dwarf | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: 9

Posted on September 1, 2011 by Darren

9 looks absolutely lovely, with a heavily stylised computer-generated style that seems intended to evoke the macabre stop-motion style of films like The Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride, along with more traditional and conventional animation. However, as magical as the production on the animated feature might be, the movie – somewhat ironically given the way things work out – lacks soul.

A rag-tag bunch...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: 9 (film), arts, christopher plummer, Corpse Bride, Crispin Glover, dolls, elijah wood, john c. reilly, Nightmare Before Christmas, non-review review, review, Shane Acker | 5 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Kill List

Posted on August 31, 2011 by Darren

A special thanks to the guys over at movies.ie for sneaking us into an advanced preview screening.

Being charitable, Kill List is a complete mess of a film. It has a decent concept, and a solid middle section. However, these are surrounded by an incredibly boring opening half-hour and a monumentally stupid and non-sensical ending. It’s a shame, because one gets the sense that there’s a very clever, very entertaining movie to be found if one can dig deep enough, but it’s very hard to like a film that is so decidedly uneven and feels like an especially random video nasty.