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Non-Review Review: The Big Lebowski

Apparently The Big Lebowski wasn’t anything special when the Coen Brothers drafted it. Just a routine little film with a main character very loosely based on a film producer that they used to know. To this day they’re still a little perplexed at the massive success the film has had, becoming a cult phenomenon and a serious contender for the mantle of “Best Coen Brothers Film”. In a way, that’s almost perfectly suited to the kind of film this is. It’s a lot of hubbub over a film clearly meant to be very small, much like the film itself is a very big story wrapped around a very ‘small’ character, so to speak. It’s always reassuring to know that The Dude abides.

"This is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules."

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Non-Review Review: Taken

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

– Bryan Mills

Let’s face it, if the above quote doesn’t appeal to you then you probably aren’t the audience for this action flick.

It's a little like that. Okay, it's a lot like that.

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Non-Review Review: Julie & Julia

I am quite surprised to admit that I greatly enjoyed Julie & Julia. Probably more than I should have, on careful analysis. The film’s main gimick – juxtaposing Julia Child’s time in France with Julie Powell’s attempt to cook through the gigantic tome which resulted from Child’s time in France – never really comes together, but it manages to work on pure whimsy despite highly predictable subject matter (indeed, the thread running through Julie’s storyline kinda presupposes the end of Julia’s arc – Julie wouldn’t be cooking from her book if she didn’t succeed). It isn’t a masterpiece or a classic, but it’s a very watchable piece of moviemaking.

Can you smell what the blogger's cooking?

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Daredevil by Brian Michael Bendis Omnibus, Vol. I

It took me a while to write this. Because it took me a while to figure out what to say. I honestly believe that the combined Bendis/Brubaker run on Daredevil has been perhaps the single most impressive run on mainstream comics in the past decade. It isn’t post-modern or retrospective, it isn’t flashy or innovative. It’s just a collection of good and clever stories, well told. Some of them reflect the state of the superhero in popular culture, some of them explore the role and function of the media as a supreme court of arbitration, but most of them are just good and clever noir stories. If you are looking to pick up a single collection of comic books, I would recommend this. It’s nominally a superhero story, but at its heart it’s a gritty urban thriller. But that’s enough hyperbole, don’t you think?

Better the devil you know?

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Non-Review Review: Shutter Island

I’ll talk a bit about my more tempered analysis of the film in a moment, but I think it’s only really fair to open with my gut reaction – those few words that escaped my mouth as I turned to my girl friend as the credits started to roll.

“I want to see this again.”

Is your mind the scene of the crime?

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Non-Review Review: Gran Torino

I think it’s fair to say that Hollywood tends lose interest in actors and characters when they pass a certain threshold, age-wise. Perhaps it’s representative of a general societal lack of interest in the elderly, or maybe it’s because old people don’t pay to see movies, but it’s very rare to see an actor hang around past their use by date. So rare, in fact, that people balked when Pixar announced that Up would follow a pensioner. In many ways we’re lucky that Clint Eastwood has held on to his influence in Hollywood, as I imagine any other director or star would have had great difficulty getting a film like Gran Torino made. Yes, the film has a few shortcomings, but it’s a stunning condemnation of the way that America tends to treat the outsiders, be they elderly or immigrants, but also a very effective character piece.

A very grumpy old man...

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Brian K. Vaughan’s Run on Ultimate X-Men – Vol. 5-6 (Hardcover)

Brian K. Vaughan is the accidental Ultimate X-Men author. Originally drafting a single arc to transition between Brian Michael Bendis and a potential arc by David Mack, his entire tenure was overshadowed by the near-constant suggestion that X-Men director Bryan Singer would be hijacking the title for a storyline or two. Neither of these two proposals came to pass, and Vaughan ended up working on the series for nearly two years. Perhaps because of the seemingly temporary nature of his stay – liable to end with any given arc – his run seems to lack overall consistency or direction. That isn’t to criticise his individual stories, which are arguably the best in the entire run of Ultimate X-Men, but an observation about the nature of Vaughan’s tenure.

Mojo is big... in television...

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The Starman Omnibus, Vol. 4

It did take me a while to get into the series, but it’s hard to describe James Robinson’s fantastic superhero saga as anything other than mandatory reading material for anyone with an interest in the genre, its history or its evolution. Starman was the comic book of the nineties, and a fresh look at an already classic concept. Alan Moore picked apart the superhero genre in Watchmen, declaring that the medium was growing creatively bankrupt. Robinson seems intent to prove otherwise. Brick by brick and strand by strand, Robinson has painstakingly given us one of the most interesting and complex creations in the medium. Often exploring and questioning the roots and the clichés of the superhero genre, Robinson is prone to revel in them. If we are interested in the evolution of the genre, Starman is the book for you.

Everything is better with Nazis...

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Battlestar Galactica: Season 4

I don’t want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to hear X-rays, and I — I want to — I want to smell dark matter! Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly because I have to — I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language! But I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me! I’m a machine, and I could know much more, I could experience so much more, but I’m trapped in this absurd body! And why? Because my five creators thought that God wanted it that way!

– John Cavil, No Exit

We could feel a sense of time, as if each moment held its own significance. We began to realise that for our existence to have any value, it must end. To live meaningful lives, we must die and not return. The one human flaw that you spend your life times distressing over – your mortallity – is the one thing which makes you whole.

– Natalie Faust, Guess What’s Coming to Dinner

There’s a moment in the show which perhaps best symbolises the sense of trepidation that I felt in sitting down to watch the final episodes of the show. We had alread witnessed three phenomenal years, so wasn’t it worth getting worried about the endgame? Admiral William Adama sits in a chair beside the dying President Laura Rosalin, his favourite book in hand. He reveals that he’s never finished it. And yet it’s still his favourite book. Because finishing it would be to acknowledge that it was the end – there was nothing afterwards. You had experienced how good it had been, but that was in the past. There is another familiar sense of dread that must be acknowledged: What if the ending doesn’t live up to expectations? What if it disappoints? How can it not?

From the look of it, Giaus was about as confused as I was when he found out how this was going to end...

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Non-Review Review: Bad Boys

Watching Bad Boys is a strange experience. On one hand, it’s a smooth reminder of the odd-couple cop comedies that were the style of the eighties, right down to an angry and exasperated (but ultimately trusting) chief. On the other, it has adopted all the stylistic mannerisms of the big, bold and empty action movies of the nineties. Advertised as an action comedy, it really doesn’t contain enough of either to justify a watch, and many of its stylistic ticks – driven by an inexperienced Michael Bay – have either been surpassed or become so common that they seem trite. Still, there’s a small charm to the film, most of which stems from the chemistry between the two leads and the way the movie seems to consciously revel in bromantic undertones of the genre. In that regard, it’s ahead of its time. And unlike all of its original ahead-of-it-time selling points, the bromantic angle still works. I’m just not sure that enough of the rest of the movie works to justify it. 

I wish I could say the action was explosive...

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