1.3 The Poet’s Fire They do horrible things to people who otherwise don’t deserve them, and yet a love triangle between three of the acolytes – Emma, Jacob, and Paul – takes up the bulk of the action again this week. Or it seems like it took up the bulk of the show’s action, anyway. There’s a very interesting idea behind their dynamic, even if the show isn’t fully exploiting it....
It’s also what happens when you let grown ups make films. Adapted by Steven Zaillian and directed by David Fincher, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the kind of thriller that mainstream Hollywood simply doesn’t make. Yet, backed by the confidence that comes with bringing books bought by 65 million people (and counting) to the big screen, Sony appears to have not only recruited compelling film makers, it’s also let them do their job....
The Greatest Showman follows the public ascent and private descent of the self-described inventor of showbusiness P T Barnum (Hugh Jackman). After marrying his childhood sweetheart (Michelle Williams), a woman far above his own station, and creating a modest life in New York City, he gets an idea for the kind of spectacle that would bring together the macabre and the wonderful. To quote this decade’s greatest showman (via Greek mythology) she married an Icarus, and he flew too close to the sun....
Brian Henson’s attempt to bring his family business into R-rated territory could have been great, but instead The Happytime Murders is a pedestrian cum joke stretched to 91-minutes. Common consensus is now that ‘puppets don’t shoot puppets’, and the once pioneering Philips is now forced to work in the seedy parts of a city that treats his kind like second-class citizens. When someone starts picking off members of the ‘Happytime Gang’ – a sitcom not unlike a naughtier Muppet Show – he is forced to investigate what might be a larger conspiracy....
Oh dear, it seems our gang won’t be able to stick together for long. Simon’s parents, with whom he already has a rocky relationship, have broken the news that they’re about up sticks and move from the leisure hive that is suburban London to the climes of Swansea, finally snuffing out the chances of anything happening with his childhood sweetheart, Carli, and ruining what little social life he already has....
Even I must admit to what might be termed a frisson of excitement the other day when I came across a website claiming that the old silent movie had surfaced. I diligently read the longish article from start to finish. It claimed that an 82 year old chicken farmer called Clyde McGuffin (a clue if ever I missed one) had found the film propping up one of his chicken sheds in El Segundo, California....
Douglas has become the figurehead for the hottest new cult in town, Spaceology! Now firmly convinced of his own potency, he brags about attaining a new helicopter through the mystical art of Spacestar Ordering, where he treats the universe like a cosmic Argos by drawing what he wants on a piece of paper, then throwing it over his shoulder. It all starts off very well with an excellent FX-filled sequence of Douglas espousing the virtues of Spaceology....
It’s always hard saying goodbye, and for the longest time it seemed like we’d had the opportunity taken away from us with The IT Crowd; when the fourth series ended in 2010, there was already talk of a fifth. But talk then turned to maybe doing a special instead – or even a movie. And the months turned into years, and we watched as Richard Ayoade and Chris O’Dowd went off and became the sort of actors whose faces end up on the sides of buses to promote their latest Hollywood smash....
Post-Watergate, America pushed out sophisticated ‘secret hush-hush’ thrillers like The Conversation and All The President’s Men and assumed supremacy in the field of conspiracy-themed films. Now emboldened and unstoppable, Hollywood carried on to covertly claim mastery of the schlock-horror film right from underneath Britain’s nose as well. Whilst we humble Brits were busy searching around wondering where all the haunted house movies and Hammer horrors had gone, the USA lifted the entire British film industry and extradited all the best British actors and filmmakers....
This is the permissive period when you can watch Home Alone flicks without it being ‘wrong’. Of course, watching Home Alone, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Muppet Christmas Carol or White Christmas, to name a few, at any other time of the year isn’t strictly verboten. However, I’d still hold that it’s a minor crime – like jaywalking – that raises questions about the offender’s personal character. In fact, it’s worse than reckless road crossing, because at least that has an edgy, living dangerously aspect to it and is an active form of pedestrian rebellion against The Man and all his evil social mores and highway laws....
Well, it appears all ambiguity is out the window. The Earth Queen is most definitely dead, and with that, shit had already gotten real, but this episode? This episode was fucking HARSH. So much happened that at the end of each act, I literally said out loud, “Shit, there’s more?” However, now? Now they have leverage with which Zaheer can bait Korra. I’m still waiting to see what role the Metal Clan will ultimately play in the endgame of this season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something really good....
There’s only one major problem with that. All the truffula trees have been chopped down. The one person who has a clue about the fate of the trees is the mysterious hermit-like Once-ler, who lives far outside of town. The Once-ler has quite a tale to tell, and it concerns a strange little orange creature called The Lorax (Danny DeVito), who speaks for the trees. At first, The Lorax and the Once-ler come to an agreement, but soon greed kicks in and the Lorax has no more trees to speak for....
The Magicians Season 2 Episode 5: “Cheat Day” The “cheat day” referred to in the episode title had Quentin’s self-pity reaching new heights as he shunned magic but immediately couldn’t do without it. As Emily Greenstreet, his ex-magician companion and coincidentally the one responsible for Alice’s brother becoming a niffin, says, “No one gives up magic because everything is peachy.” This could have easily been a self-indulgent storyline for Quentin, especially given the fact that he could have used his White Lady wish to help Julia or something useful instead of wasting it on a trip to New York, wallowing in despair, but interestingly enough it was just the mournful interlude the character needed....
Mihram is a hapless, unlucky sort. We first meet him attempting to sell some telephone wire, only to find out the customer had recently been burgled of that same length of cable. Later, he loses money at cards, sells cigarettes at football games, and drinks his worries away. Not exactly the textbook Muslim, he still finds time to spare a few words of prayer, begging for the good fortune of profit, in order to invest in an upstart mobile phone company....
Boxing Day evening has become a strong slot to kick off dark BBC drama, with two excellent Agatha Christie adaptations being shown in recent years that have relished in the kind of misdeeds that suit the post-gift comedown. This year we had a break from the golden era of crime for something contemporary: Jessie Burton’s bestselling novel The Miniaturist, published in 2014, adapted for the screen by John Brownlow. Still firmly in the realm of mystery, this was not about murder, but offered a very intriguing set of puzzles to be solved – although the answer were, perhaps, less suited to the screen than the page....
The Night Of episode 5, “The Season of the Witch” opens with the burnt feet guy giving a lecture on how to be a big lawyer but he’s actually teaching class as a cautionary tale. The kids don’t buy him because they don’t buy the big questions. Everything is personal to them, and nothing is personal in the law. The young woman student’s outrage is a little forced. Someone in everyone’s family gets killed sometime in its history....
Unusually for the venerable Doctor Who spin-off, this adventure finds our core cast of characters drawn to a mysterious antique shop by the mysterious Shopkeeper (Cyril Nri) and his enigmatically named parrot, Captain. Wannabe reporter Rani finds herself in a situation where she’s mistaken as the new lady in waiting for the newly crowned Queen of England, Lady Jane Grey. But this isn’t just any day in the life of the royal court....
Fittingly for an adaptation, Joe Ahearne’s The Secret of Crickley Hall ended with the satisfying catharsis of closing a good book. Answers were provided and characters were laid to rest, but not before the tense third act of Herbert’s ghost story had played merry havoc with the nerves of everyone watching. From the moment Gabe drove away leaving Eve, Loren and Callie alone with the now-unmasked Maurice Stafford (Donald Sumpter), I was horridly transfixed....
Jim Broadbent stars as curmudgeonly divorcee Tony Webster (Jim Broadbent), a reclusive retiree who spends most waking hours tinkering around his pokey vintage camera shop. Tony’s stony social interactions are seemingly limited to a minimal trickling of time-wasting customers (whom he outright dismisses) and his endlessly chipper postman (the recipient of countless hasty door slams). Steadfast ex-wife Margaret (Harriet Walter) and heavily pregnant daughter Susie (Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery) are the only things grounding Tony from a perpetual state of hermitry....
The Simpsons: Season 29 Episode 10 The Simpsons season 29, episode 10, “Haw-Haw Land,” takes Lisa through three defining chapters of love, music and chemistry on her journey to a loneliness she owes all to her community. If that sounds like a parody of Moonlight, the Oscar-winning, rarely watched film, it shouldn’t. But The OT went into overtime after the Panthers/Saints game, it looked for a second like The Simpsons drew Terry Bradshaw with a goatee and that made him look oddly coherent....
