Flavours of the Month: September/October 2025...

Expensive slop, gore-soaked punch-ups, and cool-but-frustrating indie vibes are just some of what's been setting the tone of my September/October 2025...

Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...

Tales of Times Square: The Tapes (podcast)...

Recently I came across a new podcast called Tales of Times Square: The Tapes, which details the sleazy world of New York's old Broadway before the Disneyfication of the area occurred in the 1990s. The podcast takes the form of old cassette tape interviews with various figures from the era, from big time adult stars to well-known denizens - colourful characters and behind-the-scenes raconteurs - all of whom were interviewed for Josh Alan Friedman's superb book Tales of Times Square (available from all good stockists - I highly recommend reading it).

Punctuated by music, reminiscences, and background details from Friedman himself - along with some new tales that were never published in the book (on account of the statute of limitations, you can't help but wonder) - each episode is a brisk and fascinating detour to a version of New York's theatre district that once was. The release schedule seems to be weekly on Wednesday/Thursday. Find more info on the podcast HERE.

Double Bill Mini Reviews: Bosses and Fighters...

Horrible Bosses 2:
What's it about?
Nick, Kurt, and Dale - the bumbling trio of boss-hating worker drones from the first movie - have all quit their jobs and set out on their own, establishing a business making 'Shower Buddys'. Naturally, they get screwed over by a horrible boss and things quickly spiral out of control as they seek to get their own back.
Who would I recognise in it?
Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Chris Pine, Christoph Waltz, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey, Jonathan Banks, Keegan-Michael Key.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Fairly solid plotting (relatively speaking) is left swinging in the wind thanks to a lack of jokes. After a slow start a few chuckles creep in, but all-too-often they rely on the 'bumbling and shouty trio' schtick that worked well in a lesser dose in the first movie. Here the same buffoonery takes centre stage at the expense of more interesting gags and starts to become grating at worst, and at best the dim-witted actions of Dale and Kurt in particular display chronic stupidity that's too stupid even for this movie's sense of logic. Jason Bateman was refreshingly candid about the film on a recent appearance on Marc Maron's WTF Podcast - everybody got paid, they had a good time, and they tried to improve upon a dodgy script. It's not a total disaster - there is an amount of fun to be had - but after the enjoyable silliness of the first movie, this sequel comes as a general disappointment. Alright.

Click "READ MORE" below for a rockin' rockumentary...

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Nasties, Grudges, and Battles...

Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide Part 2:
What's it about?
Jake West's follow-up documentary to 2010's examination of the 'video nasties' era in British film history. This time the fall out is covered, including such appalling events as the Hungerford massacre and the sadistic murder of James Bulger being linked to Rambo II and Childs Play 3 respectively. Other topics of discussion include the restriction of VHS cover art, former BBFC Director General James Ferman's fall from power, and the underground trading market which specialised in movies that were banned in the UK.
Who would I recognise in it?
Various commentators who appeared in the first part.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
"Draconian Days" is a fascinating companion piece to 2010's "Moral Panic, Censorship, and Videotape" and, much like its predecessor, has an awful lot of important things to say about freedom of speech, artistic expression, and censorship. We may not see sights like that of schlocky horror movies seized by the police being burned on pyres, but censorship today is still prevalent - albeit in far more insidious ways. Then it was about shielding the eyes of children from fake exploding heads, today it's the chilling aggression of social media when it comes to issues of political correctness. What hasn't changed is how some people claim offence on the behalf of others, how some people spit righteous fury without seeing - or allowing others to see - what is apparently causing offence, and how the vocal opinion of an outraged minority can (perhaps unjustly) shift the line in the sand. Both parts are extremely important documentaries and point out how, regardless of political hue, our entire political establishment were gunning for these movies. Funny then that these same flicks can now be found on shelves all across the nation, available to all (who are old enough to purchase them) and there hasn't been a mass corruption of society at large ... who'd have thunk it, eh?! Great.

Click "READ MORE" below for old bruisers and young warriors...

"The Racket" at the Portsmouth International Film Festival...

"The Racket" (on which I was Editor and Script Consultant) is appearing at the 2014 Portsmouth International Film Festival 2014 (9th to 11th July) and it has received two nominations!

Best War Film & Best Editing in a Documentary Short

View the full list of nominations here.

Find out more information about The Racket here.

Racket & Writing...

Good news! "The Racket" has received two nominations from the St. Tropez International Film Festival!

Best Director of a Documentary & Best Producer of a Documentary Film.

Follow this LINK to visit their website and see the 2014 nominations list.

Click "READ MORE" below for an update on the novelisation of "Sleb"...

"The Racket" (2014)

"The Racket", is an independent documentary short film on which I worked as editor, sound designer, and script consultant.

About the film:
Written to mark the centenary of the First World War, exposes the immense profits made during the war -- a war that claimed 20 million lives yet created 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires, in America alone. Adapted from the speeches and writings of Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated soldier in US history, The Racket combines Butler's intense respect for the ordinary soldier with critical dissent against the growing corporatism he believed to be corrupting the ideals he'd willingly die to protect.

Watch the trailer:

Currently working on "The Racket"...

Over this dingy, dark, winter period, one of the projects I'm currently working on is editing a new documentary called "The Racket". It's kind of a tie-in to this year's 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, but looking at the conflict - arguably the first war to be fought on an industrial scale - from a financial and political perspective. While good men were fighting on the battlefields, who was enabling (and paying for) this endeavour behind the scenes? "The Racket" explores this topic.

Check out the official website HERE, and watch a portion of the film.

Triple Bill Mini Musings: December 2013...

Cloud Atlas:
What's it about?
Centuries-spanning sci-fi epic from The Wachowski siblings and Tom Tykwer that's pretty damn hard to summarise.
Who would I recognise in it?
Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Keith David, Ben Wishaw, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon, and more.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Covering numerous intertwining stories that cross centuries, cultures, nations, genders, sexualities, race, and more, this near-three-hour venture is a tough sell from the get-go. However, the sprawling story is chopped up into constantly changing bite-size chunks, so you're always getting a new piece of information, and a different setting at regular intervals. Themes of imprisonment (physical, mental, or social), slavery, and good-versus-evil bind the disparate tales together, all of which feature the same group of actors in different guises. Actors swap gender, race, and colour, just to make things a little trickier, but at the same time surprisingly more cohesive than you'd initially think. Told across various points in history (slavery-era 19th century, pre-WW2, the 1970s, the present day, futuristic Neo-Seoul, a strange post-apocalypse, and then even further into the future), it's a heavy load at first, but the constant drip-feed of answers and questions keeps the film fresh and the pace moving forward. It certainly won't be to everyone's tastes, and while I was dubious at the start of the film, by the end I was won-over. It's strange, it's out-there, it's complex, but it's a smart and commendable piece of filmmaking that can't manage to reach the dizzying heights of The Matrix, but easily swats away the overblown funk of Speed Racer. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for Compliance, and Seduce & Abandoned...

Flavours of the Month: November 2013...

LOOKS:

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Blu-Ray/DVD) - an exhaustive seven hour documentary on the entire Friday the 13th franchise. It's a shame that an early stab at covering the series ("His Name Was Jason", by some of the same people) recurs so frequently here - pre-existing interview footage is used liberally. However, even if you're familiar with HNWJ, you're in for a real treat (particularly with fresh interviews and rare clips). Based on the exceedingly excellent book of the same name by Peter M. Bracke.

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes & flavours for my November 2013...

Quadruple Bill Mini Musings: Figures, Rims, Weeds, and Videos...

Dick Figures The Movie:
What's it about?
Feature-length action-fest version of the online animation series about bumbling stick figures Red and Blue and their various cohorts. Pink's birthday is coming up and Blue wants to be the best boyfriend ever, so he needs to get her a great present and so, if he returns a special sword to The Racoon, he'll receive the ideal gift ... but booze-and-boob-obsessed so-called best buddy Red is coming along for the ride. All hell promptly breaks loose.
Who would I recognise in it?
Everyone you're familiar with from the original web series.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Fans of the web show will be in hog's heaven. Epic action, impressive animation, laugh-out-loud silliness (from the gross to the utterly random), endlessly inventive asides, and a brisk pace make this well worth checking out. It's available to view on YouTube (in 12 parts), or to buy through services like iTunes, and coming soon on DVD/Blu-Ray. Scattergun, lewd, crude, hyperactive - but all in the best way. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for giant-sized fights, a pot-fuelled Xmas, and nasty videos...

Triple Bill Mini Musings: Arse-kicking, Exploitation & Exploration...

Taken 2:
What's it about?
Revenge-fuelled sequel to the original Liam Neeson arse-kicker about a man with a particular set of skills suffering the consequences of his rampage of violence from the first movie, which was all predicated on rescuing his daughter from traffickers.
Who would I recognise in it?
Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Jansen, Rade Serbedzija, Jon Gries, Leland Orser.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
I'd heard some pretty bad things about it so I went in expecting the worst, but was pleasantly surprised in general. It's definitely not as good as the original, which was a surprisingly good and rather brutal action flick filled with memorable moments, but the sequel isn't a huge let down either. That said, with the filmmakers aiming for a PG-13 release in the states (which was further trimmed for a piss-weak 12A in the UK), it all feels like a soft scoop version of what came before - necks and bones are broken soundlessly, blood has been digitally removed or desaturated, and the extremely dark and sinister undertones of the original are mostly absent. There's a harder cut that was released on home video, but annoyingly the version shown on Sky Movies was the watered down cut of the flick. Director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3, and Colombiana, both of which were lacklustre affairs) has put out a good-looking movie, even if the fight scenes become a tad jumbled with shaky cam fast cuts, but it's a hard act to follow the original film's Pierre Morel (District 13). See it in the uncut form, and expect a drop in quality, and without the spine-tingling moments of the original, and you'll see a serviceable follow-up - not great, not awful. Alright.

Click "READ MORE" below for more mini movie musings...

Double Bill Mini Musings: Theories and Deliveries...

Room 237:
What's it about?
Documentary considering some of the deeper meanings behind Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"; a mixture of the downright bizarre and improbable, to the decidedly convincing, that can be just as intriguing as it can be frustrating.
Who would I recognise in it?
Nobody beyond the film clips - not even the interviewees are shown on-camera.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Like conspiracy theories, Room 237 is polarising. Made of up firmly held ideas by those who 'discovered'/'created' them, it can go from providing convincing arguments about the background portrayal of the slaughter of Native Americans, the 'number 7 theory', and the Holocaust (including the number 42), to proffering absolutely far-reaching bullshit theories based on phantom shreds of nothing. The idea that "Room No. 237" equals "Moon Room" and that (without offering any evidence whatsoever) "237" was the stage number where Kubrick 'faked the moon landings' induce grandiose eye-rolls. Other readings are less grand, but lack conviction (the Minotaur theory, for one) - even with Kubrick's microscopic attention to detail, you doubt that there is any actual deeper meaning behind a couple of posters on a wall in one single room. That feels too small-scale to be believable - but on the other hand there are theories based on large-scale, up-front ideas (such as the aforementioned issue of the Holocaust, or even more specifically the Native Americans).

Click "READ MORE" below for more out-there theories, and a movie about bicycling...

"Nightmare Factory" - the KNB Effects Documentary...

I was watching the round-up of Fright Fest the 13th (a UK horror film festival that reached its thirteenth anniversary this year) on The Horror Channel, and amidst the films glimpsed at was a documentary about the talented folks over at KNB Effects - the go-to-guys for practical make-up effects, whose fingerprints are all over all of the best gore and creature effects of the last twenty years - titled Nightmare Factory (written & directed by Donna Davies) From their humble beginnings on Evil Dead II, the documentary covers what brought these guys together to bring frightful sights to the silver screen, and for any horror nerd (such as myself), this will surely be a must-watch when it is released.

In the meantime, have a glimpse at some clips - I for one am chomping at the bit to get my mits on this documentary. A visit to KNB Effects would be my personal equivalent of Charlie going to the Chocolate Factory.

Nightmare Factory trailer from Ruby Tree Films on Vimeo.

Click "READ MORE" below to view a few clips from the documentary...

Trailer Fest: "I Know That Voice"...

John DiMaggio - better known as the voice of Bender from Futurama, and Marcus Fenix from the Gears of War franchise, to the masses - is currently working on a new documentary called "I Know That Voice", which is all about the amazing voice talent behind some of our favourite shows (and, increasingly-so nowadays, videogames) from decades past to the present day. It looks ruddy good if you ask me, and this is a definite must-see in my opinion - I can't wait to see it!



The doc was brought to my attention when listening to the latest episode of Rob 'Pinky from Pinky & The Brain' Paulsen's excellent podcast "Talkin' Toons", which brings members of the voice acting community in to discuss their life and work, and is a merry old time indeed.

You can also listen to more DiMaggio (with Billy 'Fry from Futurama' West) on the latest Nerdist podcast too - check that out here.

"Gaia: Greek Goddess of Earth" wins award!

"Gaia: Greek Goddess of Earth" - an alternate version of one of the films found in the "Gaia & Genesis" Environmental Ethics DVD - has won an Australasian Best Environmental Film Award. From a field of 85 entrants, our film (Joe Jenkins of Ethics Online wrote the script and directed, while I was in charge of the camera work and editing) was chosen as the winner by the Australian Film Critics Association.

It screened last night (May 12th 2012) at the Campfire Film Festival in Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia. The film is also in general competition at the festival, and is one of the finalists.

Many thanks to Campfire for this award!

Double Bill Mini Musings: Racers & Hoodies...

Senna:
There's not much that I could say about this excellent, involving and gripping Bafta-winning documentary about one of the greatest F1 drivers in history, that you haven't already heard. Indeed, it does work (very well in fact) for those without prior knowledge or interest in F1 racing, it does have a great rivalry at the heart of it between the eponymous racer and his main competitor Alain Prost, and it manages to sweep you up in the sheer thrill of speed with choice cuts of driver's seat footage which is frankly terrifyingly fast. What's more it lays bare some of the political maneuvering at the heart of the F1 world - points and strategy versus sheer heart and determination, obediance to the suits versus defending your dream.

The tragedy of Senna's death at Imola in 1994 is handled with poise; an appropriate amount of impending inevitability is afforded to the haunting footage of Senna's last corners speeding by, the deadly precise crash itself, and the words of the F1 Doctor and friend of Senna describing the man's final breath. Truly great documentaries open a niche world (be they small or even relatively large) to the masses, allowing laymen to appreciate the events depicted on screen with the same sense of involvement as the impassioned followers of the subject at hand. Senna most certainly achieves that goal.

More Brains! A Return to the Living Dead - The Definitive Return of the Living Dead Documentary (Bill Philputt, 2011)

Dan O'Bannon's 1980s horror comedy The Return of the Living Dead is a hell of a fun ride. So resilient is it, and important to the pop culture of zombies, that the standard go-to rendition of a zombie (e.g. as represented in The Simpson's) is that of lurching, half-rotted, risen-freshly-from-the-grave monsters who scream out for "braaaiiins". Featuring a punk rock soundtrack and a fresh, young cast (adorned in various counter-culture outfits), Return of the Living Dead mixed grisly practical gore effects with sly humour - but, crucially, the jokes never came at the expense of the ensuing chaos.

While the sequels haven't exactly proved to be legendary, the original has really stuck around as a fan favourite. Part 2 over-egged the comedy at the expense of the horror with a weak script (although it did do well in that it brought back Thom Matthews and James Karen, and had some pretty nifty special effects at times). Part 3 - under the direction of splatter-meister Brian Yuzna - re-upped the horror quotient and made for a fun time. Then, unfortunately, came the exceptionally ill-judged fourth and fifth instalments (Necropolis, and Rave To The Grave) ... the less said about those, the better.

 

Now more than a quarter-of-a-century old, the original Return of the Living Dead has warranted a full-on documentary from Michael Perez Entertainment - who have previously presented us with a doc on the A Nightmare On Elm Street series titled Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (although, personally, I'm yet to see that one). Make no mistake, if you're a fan of this movie, then More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead, is an absolute must-own.

Bringing in all the surviving key players from the cast and crew, the doc meticulously pours over every facet of the production from concept to production, and ultimately exhibition. The interviews are frank, honest, and at times hilarious - more of which can be garnered from a series of deleted scenes (one of which is an eyebrow-raising tale of visiting real-life crematoriums), and a credit-roll gag reel - suffice to say, everything you would want to know about the movie is here.

What's more, this is no cheap production, corners haven't been cut or anything rushed. The presentation, from Carl Ramsey's cover art to the interviews themselves (featuring lovely background set design), is done with care and a great deal of attention, making this as equally visually impressive as it is illuminating. However, it's not all talking heads - behind-the-scenes video (captured in the days long before DVD, when such footage was rarely shot or preserved) crops up throughout, as well as hundreds of photographs revealing all from between-takes moments, to concept art, and the development of the special effects.

As if the main documentary, which runs for two whole hours, wasn't enough, we fans are treated to a further two hours of extra features. 50 minutes alone is dedicated to parts two and three, pulling in various members of the cast and crew from the respective productions, before we even get to the rest. Deleted scenes, a location tour, music video, trailers, 'ROTLD in 3 Minutes', and most poignantly of all - an in-depth on-camera interview with Writer/Director Dan O'Bannon, who sadly passed away in 2009.

If you haven't been convinced already then check out the trailer - otherwise, what the hell's wrong with you? If you're into this 80s horror black comedy fan favourite then you'll simply have to buy a copy - without a shadow of a doubt, it's well worth your time and money.

For more information, please visit - www.getmorebrains.com

"Just War", tomorrow at Borderlines FF 2011...

Tomorrow (Saturday 26th March) is the screening of Just War at the Borderlines Film Festival 2011 at the Hereford Courtyard theatre.

http://www.borderlinesfilmfestival.co.uk/just-war-pg-screening-and-discussion/2011event

1pm, free entry, the film followed by a discussion chaired by Writer/Director Joe Jenkins.

"Just War" at the Borderlines Film Festival 2011...

As mentioned in a previous post, Just War (on which I served as editor) will be screening at this year's Borderlines Film Festival - and it will be shown on Saturday 26th March at 1pm at The Courtyard in Hereford - entry is free, and after the screening there will be a discussion chaired by director Joe Jenkins.

"Made with much skill, this timely film explains clearly and succinctly the challenges faced by those who have the terrible responsibility of engaging in a war and how those who are engaged should behave." - General Lord Guthrie, Former Head of the British Army