As usual lately, there’s no time to go into too much detail, but Rupert Wyatt’s glossy sci-fi yarn is technically spotless, well-acted by all (including Andy Serkis in the virtual monkey suit, James Franco as the sympathetic human, and a near-unrecogniseable Tom Felton playing another sadistic bully. Read more…
Now available for pre-order is a side-by-side compilation of works by avant-garde composer Penderecki – probably best known for Threnody‘s inclusion in The Shining and The Children of Men – and Jonny Greenwood (yes, that bloke from Radiohead, who also did the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood).
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Funny, but I tend to get the opposite of that – he’d be banging on about it through the romantic meal, while I’m trying to watch TV, etc.
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No time to type today, so I’ll just link you to a very fine song by Australian blues-jazz singer Lanie Lane. There’s something about her that makes me think she should be on a David Lynch soundtrack.
This makes me feel so incredibly old. It’s not that it’s aping the 80s – we were aping the 80s back in the 90s, after all. Nope, it’s that it goes to such lengths to pretend to be from that unseemly decade, in all its mixtape-and-batwing-sleeves glory.
I figured a film about a teen assassin starring Saoirse Ronan, Eric Bana and Cate Blanchett was a pretty safe bet, but there are just too many credulity-stretching head-scratching moments for Hanna to be any good.
Another painfully obvious choice. There are a few curveballs later in the list, trust me.
You have to remember that rock music pretty much sounded like this
What’s with the floppy hair? Hmm. OK, so RE6 has been given a 20 November release date, which might give me enough time to play one through five. What? I haven’t played any of the Resident Evil games? In my defence, I’ve started to, but I just can’t get on with the mechanics. Read more…
This might surprise you, but I don’t really read fantasy fiction. You might have gleaned otherwise from the slew of Terry Pratchett and JK Rowling books on my shelf, but those are two of the most widely-read authors in Britain. I’m not much of a reader lately, but my go-to fare is more of the Michael Crichton variety. I enjoy clean, efficient, unobtrusive prose – which also explains the few Stephen King books that share that shelf.
So that’s the real reason for the Greg Keyes novels, which came recommended from a friend. When I heard he was writing the Elder Scrolls spin-off books, I instantly understood why he’d been chosen, since his world and Bethesda’s are so similar as to seem interchangeable. What they share is a mundane sense of the magical – its presence is as low-key and matter-of-fact as the sci-fi in Battlestar Galactica. What’s kept in the foreground is the real drama of a highly-charged political situation, and the carnage of its graphically-described battle scenes. In that, it’s closer to one of the many dramatisations of the Tudor royals than your usual Elves-and-sorcery nonsense. Read more…
This hilarious spoof news broadcast was among the items I bought with my Christmas money. What’s truly frightening is that only the fashion dates it – television is just as banal and irritating nearly 20 years on. Created by comedians Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci, it started out as a radio show called On The Hour before being adapted for television.
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