Page 1 of What I watched this week (w/e April 29th)

On DVD:

MST3K The Movie - Although there`s no Joel, the treatment meted out to `This Island Earth` is so scathingly brilliant that you don`t miss the original line-up so much as the comments are so quick and funny. :)

The Hitcher - Rutger Hauer is tremendous as John Ryder, the hitch-hiker, whose terrifying pursuit of the young Jim Halsey is wonderfully played as the identity of Ryder swings one way and the other until `that` scene with the truck cab. I haven`t seen the remake but I doubt it`s a patch on this. :)

Q: The Winged Serpent - The dialogue and SFX leave a lot to be desired but the story and acting are solid. A fine B-movie. :¦

Arrested Development Series One - I`d never seen this until Whoot kindly lent it to me; the constant recapping takes some getting used to but the script and delivery are first class and the character dynamics work really well. :D

The Critic - As above, I had never seen this until Whoot lent it to me and I first assumed it was a spin-off from `The Simpsons` with Jay Sherman forming his own show from his guest appearance in the episode `A Star is Burns`. It`s a clever show though not consistently funny enough to achieve the same status as other animated series. :)

An Inconvenient Truth - A worthy winner of the Best Documentary Oscar; Al Gore is funny, lucid, intelligent and passionate about the subject of climate change - it makes the mind boggle as to how so many Americans thought Bush would make a better President than him. The idea of a feature-length Powerpoint presentation is an unpalatable one so it is wisely broken up with other footage and interviews. Compelling and thought-provoking, this is the sort of film that will change behaviour and should be seen by as wide an audience as possible. :D

Point Break - Extremely entertaining and well directed by Kathryn Bigelow, I hadn`t seen this for over ten years and only got round to buying it on DVD thanks to `Hot Fuzz`! :)

Curse of the Golden Flower - The most mainstream of Yimou Zhang`s films is also his weakest. It looks terrific with an amazing colour palette, terrific costumes and set design and cast of thousands but, in the end, it`s really nothing more than a glorified soap opera and not a patch on the likes of `Hero` or `House of Flying Daggers`. :¦

Robot Chicken Episodes 11-20 - More quick-fire funny nonsense. :)

Raise the Titanic - Site review to follow shortly.

Keith Allen`s Tourette De France - Site review to follow shortly.


Cinema

The Reaping - With a little bit of `The Omen`, a dash of `The Wicker Man`, a pinch of `Rosemary`s Baby` and a liberal sprinkling of `Stigmata`, there is very little original or fresh left and the result is a film that I felt I`d seen many times before. :(


Television

Cricket World Cup - The two one-sided semi-finals produced the final I expected and, as with the entire tournament, the ICC f***ed-up royally. There is no point in a rain affected 38 over a side game to decide the best ODI team in the world. The officials and therefore the players had no idea what was going on and whether the game could have been spread over two days so Sri Lanka were left chasing a mystery target in the dark and rain. With the murder of Bob Woolmer already casting a cloud over the tournament, this was the finale that summed up the whole 49 days.

Friday Fight Night - So it`s clear, the future of the heavyweight division is set to weight drain himself and challenge for the world cruiserweight title. Whilst I admire David Haye`s ambition to be a two-weight world champion and take on the big boys whilst a world champion, the dropping of 17 lbs of muscle will do him no favours and will weaken him when he takes on Mormeck.

Hello David. Nice to meet a fellow fan of MST3K which is hilarious fun with a classic Sci Fi movie thrown in. Beautiful color even to a totally color blind person like myself. I have This Island Earth on DVD so as to keep my Buddy Ebsen fan membership in good standing. BTW, I can see that the colors look great although I wouldn`t want a quiz on what colors they are.


On DVD I`ve watched Sweeney Todd, The Proposition, Wasabi, One Eyed Jacks, Sexy Beast 3 times, 6 episodes of Firefly from the Box Set, 8 episodes of Danger Man from the Box Set and Ronin. I`ll try and review some of what might not be that well known but for brevity purposes I`ll not get long winded I hope.

I love Westerns but the first viewing of The Proposition was not as good as I expected. I think this movie set in the Australian outback had beautiful scenery of the stark surroundings but not a lot else going for it. Not to be harsh it wasn`t a bad film just didn`t work for me.

Wasabi is a light action comedy starring Jean Reno as the action hero. A woman he loved years in the past in Japan dies leaving him close to $200 million of Japanese mob money in her will and a daughter he didn`t know about not in the will of course. Let`s just say wait until it`s in the bargain bin or possibly put the money on a good horse at the racetrack.

One Eyed Jacks has an interesting history. A Western starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and veterans Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson it is one of 3 films MB produced from his own production company he had briefly. Marlon Brando and Karl Malden are best friends and bank robbers. Trapped by the Mexican police on a hill, Malden betrays Brando by promising to go get fresh horses and then not going back after a fruitful bank robbery. A story of betrayal and payback the film had beautiful color on other formats but my bargain bin copy lacked the sharpness and the film is a bit overlong. To a Brando fan like myself these things don`t matter and IMHO was his best Western.

Firefly was a great combination of Sci Fi and Western themes shown on tv as a series. Starring a largely unknown name cast actor Nathan Filion leads his crew on heist jobs in the spaceship Firefly, a small outdated beauty of a ship. I loved this show but when the movie Serenity came out and two of the cast members meet their demise in it I knew this show was history. There had been talk of reviving it before the film but that turned out to be wishful thinking. I would recommend a viewing though if possible as it is funny and enjoyable entertainment.

Danger Man aka Secret Agent Man was an early 60s show starring Patrick McGoohan of the old Prisoner tv series. Agent John Drake (McGoohan) goes on secret agent missions and although a 007 type doesn`t carry a gun nor get close to beautiful women. He uses his considerable wits to succeed and survive. This was a hugely popular series in the U.K. and U.S.A. as was the Prisoner. Word has it that Patrick McGoohan was considered for the original James Bond, but McGoohan wasn`t keen on the role. Although the show is a bit dated Patrick McGoohan and Danger Man are two of my favorites.

Ronin is just an all time great action film so I urge every action fan to research it.

Lastly on tv this week I viewed reruns of Life on Mars, Murphy`s Law and Vincent. I could watch a fresh episode of Life on Mars and Vincent every week if possible as these two are superb series. I`ve seen a fresh episode of 24. Is it me or is 24 getting a tad redundant? I have 3 seasons on Box Sets so perhaps I`ve seen a few too many episodes.

Best Regards

Lawrence


*Movies are the great escape from it all*

This is England - Good movie, but not as groundbreaking as say an Alan Clarke movie.

I read that the director wanted this to be certified a 15, so all the teenagers can learn how bad racism is, which IMO won't change their views, what is more likely to happen is that if they get it on DVD, they`ll play the racist attacks to their best mates and consider them the best bits of the film, where as if you was watching an Alan Clarke movie say like Scum, there are no best bits.

floyd

This item was edited on Wednesday, 2nd May 2007, 09:43

Quote:
Arrested Development Series One - I`d never seen this until Whoot kindly lent it to me; the constant recapping takes some getting used to but the script and delivery are first class and the character dynamics work really well.

Glad you like it, it get`s much better in series 2 and 3 (although it gets really surreal at times) shame 3 is only a half season though. I`m still living in hope of a film coming out.



My DVD collection

I am glad you enjoyed that Dave, I can`t say the same for Pervert!, which I couldn`t really stand to watch more than ten minutes of it. Still, I did enjoy the title sequence.

The Shield: Series 1. Excellent stuff, with a good storyline, characters, and all that.. Having watched the whole thing in two days, I can`t believe that I have never seen a single episode of it before. T`was good.

Tsotsi. South African city of god.. or so I think it said on the box. Very good. Increasingly I find myself enjoying foreign films more than the usual and American and British fare.

Ultraviolent - the latest one. Rubbish.

White Noise. Micheal Keaton spooktacular that made no sense to me whatsoever. If anyone can explain who and what was going on, then please let me know.

The Long Good Friday. Is this the best British film ever made? Yeah. It is.

Godzilla - the original one, and still the best.

The Big Lebowski... Good stuff.

The Jeremy Kyle show. Hear that? That`s the noise of the gene-pool barrel being scraped.

Predator - Everybody knows that this is good

Car Booty.. Hardly and cars. NO BOOTY

Dang. I watched loads of s*** this week. Loads.

floyd, I think the racist violence in This Is England is really shocking. I also think Shane Meadows is an absolutley top director, and that this film is one of the best I`ve seen for yonks.

It`s shocking to a none racist person, but for someone with ignorant views on people of ethnic origin, then they would regard those shocking scenes as the best bits, where as an Alan Clarke movie, no matter what side of the fence you are on, you still are repulsed or shocked by the images.

floyd