Charlton Heston | the m0vie blog

84. Touch of Evil (#241)

Posted on October 6, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and this week with special guests Charlene Lydon and Grace Duffy, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil.

A murder in a small border town stokes local tensions, as Ramon Miguel Vargas finds himself drawn into an investigation overseen by Police Captain Hank Quinlan. As Quinlan pursues his lines of inquiry, Vargas quickly comes to realise that his would-be partner is not what he appears to be.

At time of recording, it was ranked the 241st best movie of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: borders, charlene lydon, Charlton Heston, corruption, grace duffy, imdb, justice, Mexico, orson welles, podcast, reefer madness, rio grande, the oc, violence | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Omega Man

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Darren

The Omega Man remains, perhaps, the most high-profile adaptation of Richard Matheson’s genre-busting vampire sci-fi survivalist novel, I Am Legend. Of course, the film has little resemblance to Matheson’s truly iconic piece of literature, save for the basic premise. Charleton Heston is Robert Neville, the last man alive in a world of monsters. While I Am Legend is a bold and thought-provoking exploration of the implications of that idea, The Omega Man seems to have no loftier goal than simply telling an entertaining apocalyptic yarn. There’s nothing wrong with that, but – much like Robert Neville himself – The Omega Man is haunted by the ghost of what could have been.

Goodbye to all of that…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Anthony Zerbe, art, arts, Audio, austin powers, bbc, Boris Sagal, Charlton Heston, Consumer Electronics, doctor, film, Heston, I Am Legend (film), Jon Pertwee, los angeles, Movie, music, Neville, non-review review, Omega Man, Omega Seamaster, review, richard matheson, Robert Neville, Rosalind Cash, Shopping, Third Doctor, Woodstock | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Darren

Why would have thought that a monkey rebellion could be the stuff of great tragedy? That, in a Simian revolt, we may yet see the best and the worst of ourselves reflected back? The leading monkey of the piece is named for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, but its to the credit of Rise of the Planet of the Apes that it evokes a wonderfully powerful observation repeated many times throughout both history and fiction, perhaps best articulated by Ghandi, “We are the architects of our future, not its victims.” I think we’ve come a long way in how we use computer-generated imagery in cinema, and I would suggest that Rise of the Planet of the Apes stands as something of a signpost. For the CGI Caesar stands as one of the most tragic and compelling protagonists of the year, in a film that manages to cut to the heart of a franchise in the way that decades of sequels and prequels and a remake could only dream of. It’s undoubtedly the best film to include the words “Planet” and “Apes”in the title since Charleton Heston had a mental breakdown on a beach.