On paper, The Room is a soapy drama about a well-to-do guy – Johnny, played by Wiseau – whose life is ruined by his two-timing wife, Lisa. In practice, the film looks like something beamed in from another dimension: nobody in their right minds would have cast Wiseau – tall, pale, with lank black hair like a fading stadium rocker’s – as a wealthy San Francisco banker. No other filmmaker would write lines like the infamous “I did not hit her!...
Based on a book found in almost every home in the late sixties, William Friedkin adaptation of William Peter Blatty’s novel is iconic, and every offshoot it influences is bound by principle to invite comparisons. Projects like this should come under microscopic scrutiny, and the series largely covered its tracks. Some of them in Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining. They even threw in a slasher film entry episode....
While across the pond, zombies are allegedly the new vampires, closer to home, it seems ghosts are the supernatural successors to the navel gazing undead, as BBC Three’s latest original drama, The Fades, kicked into life. Admittedly, that bar was set five years ago, and clearly the show has clearly undergone some fine-tuning since then – angsty teens versus the world of the supernatural is so mid-90s, and died with the demise of one Buffy Summers....
1.18 All Star Team-Up When The Flash introduced time travel earlier in the season, one of the main (if not the only) complaints was that the occurrence negated some of the events in what will most likely go down as the best episode of the season. While the audience got to enjoy it, of course, the fact that the scene between Wells and Cisco in Out Of Time was more or less not canon after Barry relived the day was a mild annoyance, so you can imagine my delight in discovering that the characters are capable, with the right stimulus, of remembering those scenes in the present timeline....
2.11 Freedom True to form, The Following‘s villains are always looking for a big, flashy, bloody way to get attention for themselves, and this week’s episode is no different. Given that Joe’s kill squads have been roaming New York stabbing people, it’s not too much of a surprise when the cult of Carroll—the original cult, not the Korban cult—starts to gain some steam from a pop culture standpoint, with news reports mentioning sales of Carroll shirts, masks, and other memorabilia to a growing collection of teenagers and fascinated members of the public....
Every tube car, street corner and airport lounge saw a sea of nose-deep bibliophiles eagerly consuming Hakwins’ source novel which eventually amassed sales of 11 million worldwide. Rattling along the idyllic outskirts of middle class suburbia (on the Metro North Line), anguished divorcee Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt) silently sups from a vodka filled beaker whilst vigilantly gazing at the white picket houses of her former neighbourhood during the twice daily Manhattan commute (the locale of the film switching from London to New York)....
1.10 Night Before the Red Centre, Offred tells us that she didn’t think it was possible to see terror in someone’s eyes for longer than a passing moment. She certainly didn’t think it was possible for a look of “utter, unutterable” terror to sustain for days, weeks and months. Before The Handmaid’s Tale, I didn’t think TV drama could sustain a sense of dread for longer than an episode. I certainly didn’t conceive of one being able to keep it up for an entire season....
In slow motion black-and-white, I see a lone man in a leopard skin robe dancing around a boxing ring clouded by smoke. The stirring strings of the intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana sweep over the scene and the opening titles appear on the right of the screen. That’s a majestic way to open a motion picture. Ignoring the fact that I’ve these small hands (what Jake LaMotta would call “little girl hands”), if we hold Martin Scorsese’s masterful biopic to the light and look at it as a whole you realise that, yes, this is a very powerful film....
That menace – a ‘terrorista’ according to the Mexicans – had weapons of mass destruction, a touch of sophisticated thespian camp and hordes of unquestioning henchmen hellbent on destroying America. The man’s name: Malkovich. President Grant calls upon scarred and haunted bounty hunter Jonah Hex to deal with the man who wants to mark the country’s 100th anniversary by firing devastating orange balls at Washington D.C. Poor show, Turnbull. Hex prefers to be self-employed and no one wants your Ironclad of Annihilation interrupting the 4th of July fireworks show....
Unsurprisingly, then, I enjoyed Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest motion picture. It’s a sweet film, flows nicely and delivers the glorious visuals that Ghibli does best. It’s also easily the most child-friendly flick the Japanese director has made yet, which increases its all-round accessibility and appeal to a greater audience beyond anime geeks. Ponyo has that sense of purity and I’d recommend it to parents looking to give their kids something with more soul than Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel....
Game on and right on. The one with the talking parrothead umbrella speaks the truth, which is unsurprising considering that she’s “practically perfect in every way”. Anyway, the point is that life is boring when it’s not a game, but because the Banks kids live in an Edwardian age that predates videogaming, their quest for affection is still a bit drab. If Mary Poppins plugged into the spirit of Scott Pilgrim Vs....
Luckily, as I say, this fear is slight and fleeting, but thanks to the release of 17 Again in cinemas, I’ve found myself visually forced to contemplate the kind of horrendous waking reality that renders eternal sleep a state of eternal bliss. Imagine, if your nerves can stand it, rising in the early morning light, stumbling into the bathroom and looking into the mirror to find that you’ve turned into – horror!...
When they arrive I want to greet them properly and ensure that my behaviour, attitude and actions are all correct. I worry that I’ll get it wrong, though, and commit some pan-galactic faux-pas, cause cosmic offense and potentially start a horrific war that spans the Milky Way. Contact day will be a milestone moment in the universe’s history, and no one wants awkward scenes or unnecessary ill-feeling on what should be a celebration....
Episodes 3.1 & 3.2 So is Detective Inspector Sarah Lund on the case with her usual tunnel vision enthusiasm? Erm, no, she isn’t. Not at first, at least. Asbjørn Juncker has come to Copenhagen police department with youth on his side and an over keenness to impress. Sarah Lund seems to have been assigned as his babysitter so she takes him along when DCI Lennart Brix (yes, he’s back) asks her to get down to the docks....
4.3 Royston Vasey Mon Amour One of the many moving moments in this big fond farewell episode was the reappearance of everyone’s favourite bickering couple, Charlie and Stella. On a date with his boyfriend, Charlie spots his ex-wife enter the Italian restaurant where they’ve had many a dramatic feud. She is now in a wheelchair with a black eye, pushed by her young “toy boy”. An opportunity to be alone reveals how much Charlie continues to care for Stella; he is concerned for her and worried about her home situation....
2.10 Gonna Set Your Flag On Fire After a really weird voiceover recap of where everyone’s loyalties currently lie, Gonna Set Your Flag On Fire gets right down to business readdressing the inter-species politics of New Orleans. That’s always been this show’s main concern when you dig through the family rivalries and love triangles, so it felt good to get back to basics and regroup. But what’s more interesting about the werewolves vs....
The Simpsons: Season 29 Episode 17 The Simpsons season 29 is turning out to be quite musical, as episode 16 blows through “Lisa Gets the Blues.” It begins with an innovative turn on the very opening theme and incorporates the couch gag into the arc. It’s not that lumber jacks are funny, but the band’s chops cut through the treacle. To be fair, Largo is only following the school’s curriculum, which includes breaking any spirit trying to escape from an eternal dystopian present, grammar school....
That is really the only review you need for this week’s episode of The Strain, but I’ll give you more, not to worry Strainers. “Creatures of the Night” was pure action. No talking, no debating the nature of the vampire plague, no doubts, just our heroes, trapped in a Convenience Store, surrounded by a shit ton of angry vamps and by the time the smoke cleared, we were down one protagonist and the show went from a patient zero, spreading the disease kind of thing to a full on I Am Legend, holy shit, they really are everywhere, biblical end of civilization sort of thing....
The Strain Season 4 Episode 9 With one episode left, The Strain has turned into a streamlined horror thriller that feels like any character can meet a horrific fate at any moment. Common wisdom would have had it that the epic Setrakian/Eichhorst confrontation would have been part of the grand finale. But no, the last battle between vampire hunter and strigoi went down a few episodes back clearing the way for the final battle between the Master and humanity....
Russell gets his own flashback, where he is performing a piano piece and is able to move the keys telekinetically. He ends up present day hustling pool, and meeting Piper, a cute babe. Already, I’m getting the feeling Piper is not all that she seems. She’s one of them, proving it by stopping a thrown ball. And then she beats the snot out of both of them. Cara and John’s relationship is getting more tense....
