HERO
dir. Zhang Yimou
(There are spoilers a bit, so be warned.)
As a preface, consider The Phantom Menace. Say what you will about it (I actually rather like it but no question, post-Gollum in particular, that Jar Jar Binks was the blown opportunity[…]

On Hellboy

The opening voiceover describes a day 60 years ago when the world was changed – cut to Andrew hoping that the film will take the opportunity – and his hopes crushed as it finishes “FOREVER!”
Epic is still a viable […]

FT Top 100 Films
36: DUEL
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the central reservation…
There is something wonderful about early Spielberg films, and that something is simplicity. Up until 1941 (the film, not the year unless it was t[…]

How to make a nu-Far Eastern Horror movie (based on Phone, and all the other Tartan Asia Extreme movies that keep popping up).
a) Lots of spooky black hair (cf Ring/Phone)
b) Scary evil kid (cf Phone, Ju-on, Ring)
c) Ghosts whose reason for killing p[…]

FT Top 100 Films
37: INTERSTELLA 5555: THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM
SteveM says:
It’s the most ambitious pop cartoon since ‘Yellow Submarine’. But I5555’s appeal may have been dented by a two-and-a-half-year release gap[…]

B-Movies were great weren’t they? Received wisdom suggests that because B-Movies were cheap, throwaway and not studio priorities, this allowed the directors paradoxically more power over their content. B-movies, the darlings of the Cahiers De C[…]

‘Greatest’ ‘Greatest Chatshow Moments’ ‘Moments’
1) The camera was on the presenter from the start but took about a minute to inch slowly forward enough so we could actually see her face properly, revealing it to b[…]

Day of Scooby!!
So I was channel flicking last night when I saw Scooby’s All Star Laffalympics was on Boomerang. Now, this programme has been discussed (along with animalympics of course) quite a lot recently, so I was keen to see how it stood[…]

since his first screenplays, abt the IRA ronan bennett has assiduously mined the “political outlaw” seam, the borderline between fanatical idealism and crime
and the hamburg cell, an unscandalised and non-demonising C4 telefilm abt the […]

Spending time on holiday with my nephew means I get to watch television he cannot fathom and I barely understand. I am not talking about Yu-Gi-Oh! – I mean old episodes of Scooby-Doo (written independently of the Mark S treatise below. The Tao […]