the shawshank redemption | the m0vie blog

60. The Shawshank Redemption (#1)

Posted on January 6, 2018 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney and this week with special guest Charlene Lydon, 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, with the occasional bonus episode along with them.

This time, Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption.

Convicted of murdering his wife, Andy Dufresne is sentenced to two life sentences in Shawshank Penitentiary. A harsh and unforgiving prison, Andy struggles to hold on to hope as the years go by.

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

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: charlene lydon, fear, film, hope, institutionalisation, Movie, redemption, stephen king, structure, the shawshank redemption | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Green Mile

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Darren

I never really responded to The Shawshank Redemption. I’ll go into why exactly if I ever get around to writing a review of it, but perhaps the fact that I never really embraced the film as strongly as most film fans (or even just, y’know, people) is the reason that I am somewhat fonder of The Green Mile than most. The Green Mile is admittedly as guilty as Frank Darabont’s early Stephen King adaptation set in a prison when it comes to emotional manipulation of its audience (look at us humanise the prison guards by having the three of them tackle a mouse in a borderline comedic fashion!), but I find it a lot more honest about its inherent darkness than that tale of redemption in Shawshank.

No, it's not a halo, but it's pretty close...

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: barry pepper, david morse, doug hutchinson, film, frank darabont, green mile, james cromwell, michael clarke duncan, Movie, non-review review, review, sam rockwell, stephen king, the green mile, the shawshank redemption, tom hanks | Leave a comment »

Who Lies About Seeing Dirty Dancing?

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Darren

This was an interesting piece of news last week – a large number of us lie about the films we’ve seen, as demonstrated by a survey in the UK. Basically, a large number of us pretend to have seen movies which we haven’t in order to avoid appearing ‘uncultured’. There was a fair bit of focus on the fact that the most lied about film is The Godfather, but it seems to have gone unnoticed that the second most lied about film is Dirty Dancing. Even keeping Patrick Swayze’s recent death in mind (which probably happened after the survey was complete), why would you lie about Dirty Dancing? It takes a stuck-up film snob to judge you for not watching The Godfather or The Shawshank Redemption, two indisputable classics, but who in their right mind would complain that you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Dirty Dancing?

The time of your life, indeed...

Filed under: Movies | Tagged: dirty dancing, film, lying, Movies, the godfather, the shawshank redemption | 1 Comment »

Non-Review Review: The Shawshank Redemption at the Gaiety

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Darren

We caught The Shawshank Redemption as it was winding up in The Gaiety last weekend. I’ll come clean and admit that I am not as in love with the movie as most, but I did like it. I feel the same way about the stage adaptation – which got a standing ovation from our crowd. I was less convinced – I don’t particularly love it, I don’t particularly hate it. My opinion sits somewhere in the middle.

Reg. E. Cathey never thought that OZ would have prepared him for this...

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Filed under: Theatre | Tagged: dublin, play, reg e cathey, the gaiety, the shawshank redemption, the shawshank redemption play, Theatre, theatre review | Leave a comment »

King of the World: Thoughts on Stephen King and Popular Culture

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Darren

How does Stephen King do it? He manages to churn out an astonishingly prolific back catalogue, but maintains a reasonably high quality. As with all authors, he soars above and he dips below, but – taken on average – he is a very strong writer than manages to churn out up to four books a year. How does the man do it?

It's good to be the King...

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Filed under: Movies | Tagged: books, danse macabre, dark tower, fiction, film adaptations, horror, it, literature, pop culture, stephen king, the green mile, the shawshank redemption, the shining | 3 Comments »

Non-Review Review: The Mist

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Darren

Our recording of the 24 season finale failed last night. We’re hoping that Sky will put the two-hour episode up on Anytime, like they did with Lost. It’s not all bad though, figuring we’d prepared the snacks and beverages, we decided to see what was on to watch. We settled on The Mist, a small-scale horror movie based on the Stepehn King novella. Our random selection of films from Anytime has never been particularly lucky, so were we impressed with our choice of horror film?