Fury
Fury, ladies and gentlemen, is a war film. Of this there can be no doubt. Some heavy spoilers ahead though, I would argue, nothing you can’t see coming from the opening few scenes… Hard-bitten Brad Pitt steers a tank-crew of dehumanised veterans plus one raw recruit through a World War II shitty, gritty, and horrible […]
Recent TV
Recently watched, that is… Vikings Season 2 It’s as if a set of TV Executives sat down with the express purpose of making a show Joe Abercrombie would really like, and they largely succeeded. Love, hate, violence and pagan strangeness abound as Scandinavia’s shiftiest opportunist, Ragnar Lothbrok, becomes embroiled not only in Viking blood-feuds but Saxon politics. […]
Breaking Bad
Phew. I have, of course, entirely missed the boat on this, as ever, and no doubt it’s all been said already and the Sauron’s eye of popular culture moved on to fresh pastures. But I just saw the final episode of Breaking Bad last night, and felt the need to muse a little on this […]
The Walking Dead Season 3
I like the fundamentals of the Walking Dead a lot (zombies and extreme cynicism, what’s not to like?) but found the 2nd season, though enjoyable, not without its considerable flaws, chiefly some annoying characters, some treading of water, and a lot of attempts to squeeze drama from extreme stupid. I’m pleased to say they cut […]
2013 in Review
Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday to Me. Happy Birthday dear MEEEE-EEEEE. Three cheers, anyone? Yes, indeed, another year has flowed beneath the bridge at ever-increasing speed and I am 39 today. It’s round about 12 years since I started writing The Blade Itself back in 2001. Some 9 years since I signed my first […]
The Hobbit – The Desolation of Smaug
Well, overall a pretty entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the cinema, and a good deal better than An Unexpected Journey, I would say, which I found pretty disappointing about this time last year. This second two and a half hour instalment has some great sequences, some good performances and a stupendous Smaug, but follows […]
Recent TV
Long time since I went over my telly watching, particularly considering how much telly I watch. What have we seen of late? The Killing Season 3: Hmmmm. The first season of this Danish procedural was great, the second pretty good, with the obsessive personality of Sarah Lund, the central character, always the backbone. But it […]
Only God Forgives
Nicloas Winding Refn sure is an interesting director, and one I very much admire. He really does like to teeter on the knife edge between profundity and pretentiousness, though. Valhalla Rising, in spite of the never-knowingly-overchiselled Mads Mikkelsen, I found a frustrating mixture of fascinating and wilfully obscure to the point of utter tedium. But […]
The Walking Dead Series 2
Yeah, I know I’m way behind, but so it goes. Don’t spoiler me, people. Enjoyed this quite a lot, actually, though not without its weaknesses. I’d heard it was rather a limited/small scale/disappointing season and, yeah, they did use smaller locations and tread water quite a bit, but it still delivered on the basic premise […]
Friday Night Lights
If you’d told me a couple of years back that a series about a High School Football team in a Texas small town would have become one of my favourite TV series of all time, right up there alongside stuff like The Wire, Deadwood, the Shield, Breaking Bad and the first two seasons of Battlestar […]
