Tagged with film and tv

Me thinks I haven’t done much talking about films recently, so … I watched Appaloosa last night. Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen are steely-eyed lawmen in a tough western town. Renee Zellwegger comes between them. Jeremy Irons and Timothy Spall stretch their accents past the point of complete credibility in support. Good cast. I love […]

Hugely behind the times, of course, but I undertook to say something about this when I saw it, and it really is a very interesting film. I usually try to avoid spoilers, but in this case discussion of the unusual narrative structure will make that impossible. The film, as well as making me think on […]

Following my self-indulgent ramblings on Battlestar Galactica I was advised by various posters to give Firefly a go. I’d heard good things about it in the past, have always been a cautious admirer of Joss Whedon’s approach to TV, and I’d watched the film adapted from the series, Serenity, and found it OK but been […]

Not good. Really, really not good. I liked the first film, quite a lot. I did not like this. At all. It had the feel of one of those tele-movie cash in sequels that have none of the original cast. Except with the original cast. It looked cheap, though it obviously wasn’t. Locations that looked […]

I note that my posts have been getting longer and longer lately, therefore just a quicky. I saw La Vie en Rose the other day, French film about the life of singer Edith Piaf. My wife was going to watch it, I was going to work. I saw the first five minutes, hanging around at […]

What the hell is WRONG with me? I hate EVERYTHING, and here I am being embarrassingly enthusiastic about four things in a row? What have I enjoyed lately, you ask? Why, only the RSC’s production of Shakespeare’s History Cycle at the Roundhouse in London, in chronological order (so Richard II, Henry IV parts 1&2, Henry […]

Finally, I complete my epic trilogy. Of short pieces of TV commentary. And how should one close but with – to my mind – the best thing on TV, The Wire. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that HBO have changed the face of TV drama since the turn of the millenia. Let […]

No, I refer not to some comic book plotline, or indeed to anything genre, but to Ken Burns’ 11 hour masterpiece of documentary film making, The Civil War. (Or The American Civil War, if you happen to be British). I’ll admit I’m not exactly capturing the Zeitgeist with this one – this series is nothing […]

What with the tornado of excitement created by my own releases, reviews, signings, and convention attendances in March, and the tidal wave of resulting reviews, I realise I’ve utterly neglected my important duties as far as slagging off other people’s hard work goes. Time to put that right… I haven’t spoken much about TV before, […]