This is particularly true for the makers of Earth To Echo, whose film is an unashamed homage to those beloved classics. It tells the story of three friends spending their final night together before leaving town. Having received mysterious signals on their mobile phones, and seeking one last adventure together, they get more than they bargained for when they find Echo, a small alien robot who needs their help if he is to find his way home....
As a big fan of the original film (and almost everything else in the 80s), I had to ask him how he felt about tackling such a sacred property, informing him that there were a lot of worried people out there. Before I could finish my question he was very keen to defend what he was doing and give us an idea of the direction he is taking with it, so here is his response: Obviously it’s inspired by it, but the new MTV Teen Wolf takes out a totally different slant, taking more of the slant of The Lost Boys, so to speak....
4.2 The Eye Of the many things going on in the show, the least interesting to me has to be the story of Lexi, played as an adult by Scarlett Byrne (Pansy Parkinson of Harry Potter fame). I know it’s going to get more interesting, but to see Lourdes become the manipulative fanatic so soon after being the alien pawn seems a bit much. Lourdes doesn’t seem to get a break....
3.5 The House Of Special Purpose Firstly, and most obviously, it’s the device through which Ray and Nikki, though mainly Nikki, seek to further their revenge against Emmit. Their sex tape plan is the pinnacle of the episode’s dichotomy. Its power lies in the ‘truth’ of the tape; it matters because it is real, indeed only because it is real. The figures have to be genuinely doing it for the video to count (sex tapes, like terrorist videos and ransom demands are among those items of media that can be ‘authenticated’)....
2.2 We All Fall Down Fear The Walking Dead is a familiar format to anyone who has seen the original series. A group of survivors go from place to place looking for somewhere to settle down for a little bit, avoiding dangers both undead and living in the process. However, where The Walking Dead dropped us right into the post-apocalypse, Fear The Walking Dead is taking things from a different perspective....
Since its lauded Broadway premiere 33 years ago, a film production seemed increasingly inevitable after Paramount acquired the rights back in 1987, with then producer Eddie Murphy also gunning for co-star status, after searching for a suitable vehicle in which to take on a more serious film role. Wilson’s non-negotiable and vocal insistence for an African-American director to helm the substantial venture resulted in several fruitless attempts at filming with the project subsequently lingering in developmental limbo....
Blue Sky Studio’s feature-length adaptation has, naturally, taken a great deal longer. The project was first announced in 2011 and originally scheduled for a spring, then summer release this year. (It’s finally opening this month against Star Wars: The Last Jedi, just as its previous non-Ice Age film, The Peanuts Movie, opened against The Force Awakens.) We meet our hero as a bull-calf living at the Casa del Toro compound, where matadors come to select adult bulls for the ring....
The first film I saw in 2017 was director Juan Antonio Bayona’s adaptation of Patrick Ness’ novel, A Monster Calls. A film for which Ness wrote the screenplay himself, and a film that proved to take some beating. Nothing hit me in quite the same way. In the case of A Monster Calls, the human at the heart of this story is Conor O’Malley, a 12-year old boy played (terrifically) by Lewis MacDougall....
FLCL Alternative: Episode 1 A subtitled version of this episode already aired on Adult Swim’s website on April Fools’ Day and I reviewed it at the time, but things have changed since then. We’re now in a post-FLCL Progressive world and that series helped me realize what I wanted and, especially, what I did not want from new FLCL. In short, FLCL Progressive completely sucked. I’m halfway through a rewatch of it and have only found more to hate....
It’s filmed in black and white. It is. Arch. As. Fuck. Its main characters are New York-based graduates who say things like ‘Do you know what Virginia Woolf book this reminds me of?’ in a heightened, loud version of kookiness that really, really made me want to shave every single one of them bald. And then, six movies into the film festival, something marvellous happened. A character who was being a dick was treated like they were being a dick....
3.5 Amber 31422 Amber 31422 takes place entirely in the alternate universe, where Olivia, having been convinced she’s from that dimension, is starting to guess that maybe she’s been manipulated to think that. As such, Peter only appears as a figment of her subconscious, continually prodding her in the right direction, while helping her solve a mystery to prove his credentials. The conundrum in question revolves around the weird amber chemical that is used to plug holes in the fabric of space and time in the altiverse, which can trap people in its matrix....
4.10 Forced Perspective What I liked about it was the ending wasn’t a happy one, despite how much of the script went into connecting the viewer to the girl, well played by Alexis Raich, an actress who once played a young Piper in Charmed. There are far too many TV shows out there where everybody resolves their problems and goes off to a new life at the end of the show....
3.4 And Now His Watch Is Ended When it comes to playing the Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister said that you either win or you die. As we have seen throughout the show’s history, some have played the game very well indeed (like the Small Council, who have served multiple kings during their time) and others have played the game with disastrous results (Ned Stark, Robert and Renly Baratheon, Jon Arryn)....
HBO puts a lot of thought and effort into how it presents its programmes. When you buy something from HBO, they will have spared no expense in making it the best possible viewing experience for the person who bothers to buy physical media. I’m the sort of person who likes having physical copies of the things I want to watch on hand, just in case the internet goes out or my various streaming services drop the thing I want to watch, but HBO sees fit to reward the purchasing of discs by presenting those discs in the best possible way with the best possible special features....
There was no formal family event this week; nobody was proposing, marrying or in labour. There was a get-together, of course, but it was just a curry night in Essex followed by a proposed round of golf that looked like it would never happen given the quantity of booze consumed the night before. No frills. The ordering of the curry was perhaps the funniest scene of any comedy this year....
This week, we’re handing this page over to Clancy75, who approached us, wanting to talk about post-natal depression. We think she’s wonderful, and she’s written us the following… When you have a baby, you are supposed to be overwhelmed with love, that’s what they tell you. Even the magazines that tell you to not worry if you don’t, and that baby blues are completely normal, keep it in small, embarrassed print....
This week, I want to talk about a book that’s well worth seeking out. But I want to contextualise why. One of my children has a disability. They’re an avid reader, and one day, they put a copy of Wonder on my desk. Naturally, I didn’t get near it for a few weeks, until they casually asked if I’d had a chance to read it. I picked it up, and started reading....
If subsequent Godzilla films portrayed the beast as an increasingly affable Toho mascot, wrestling a procession of other colossal kaiju to the ground as the world looked on in admiration, then Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla film entirely failed to evoke either the nightmare chill of Honda’s original creation or the charm of the legion sequels which followed. 16 years on, and British director Gareth Edwards brings his own American version of Godzilla to the screen....
Gotham Season 3, Episode 16 You can see the shape of Gotham Season 3B in “These Delicate and Dark Obsessions,” but it’s not enough to know that all of these storylines might end up someplace pretty cool. In this filler of an episode, they’re just kind of predictable, with the audience one step ahead of the game every step of the way. Let’s break down the three major storylines of the night....
5.19 Taming Of The Wu After a few weeks of careful manoeuvring around some of the show’s key storylines, Taming Of The Wu finally throws that caution to the wind as our heroes find themselves increasingly shrouded in danger. Forgoing the regular Wesen of the Week procedural, the show this week at last focuses on the imminent threat from Black Claw, with some of our favourite characters unaware of how much jeopardy they’re in....
