Flavours of the Month: September 2013...

LOOKS:

The Newsroom Season 2 - I rather enjoy watching this quick-witted TV news drama, even if some of the characters leave me cold and every single protagonist talks in the same fast-lipped, quick-fire come-back style. There's just something about it that keeps me watching and keeps me entertained.

Back to the Future Trilogy (Blu-Ray) - I've got them taped of the telly, I've got the 3-disc DVD boxset, and now I've got the 3-disc BluRay boxset. The films look stunning and the new special features are a treat. One thing though - whoever put the discs together needs a slap - there's so many screens of bullshit before you even get to the menu, and then when you finally do get to it, there's these awful button sound effects which re-appear, even when you've turned them off, when you re-insert the disc. Every. Single. Time. Pages of bullshit ... you can cumulatively feel minutes of your life wasting away ... some discs are very good about getting you where you want to be very quickly, while others are very happy to repeatedly waste your time (non-skip-able warnings and endless trailer-reels are particular affronts to viewing pleasure). Aside from that it's Back to the Future, so what's not to love?!

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes and flavours of my September 2013...

YouTube Finds: September 2013 Edition...

Posting has been a bit slow this month what with finishing up a new DVD project, putting finishing touches to another screenplay, and a little game you might have heard of by the name of GTA V, so here's some videos that I've particularly enjoyed in recent weeks on YouTube.

Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Edgar Wright, and Steve Jones on All Star Celebrity Bowling:


"Cargo":

A superb zombie short film, which is also perhaps the saddest and most poignant zombie film ever made.

Click "READ MORE" below for many more YouTube Finds...

Double Bill Mini Musings: Iron Men & Iron Bars...

Iron Man 3
What's it about?
If you don't know about Iron Man by now, then where have you been? Tony Stark/Iron Man comes unstuck when international terrorist The Mandarin starts causing global chaos while the 'extremis' biological development only makes things worse.
Who would I recognise in it?
Robert Downey Jr, Gweneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, James Badge Dale, William Sadler, Paul Bettany, Miguel Ferrer.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Better than the second, not as good as the first. In spite of few plot holes and story jumps, the script is breezy and sassy enough to make this a hell of a fun ride. Director and Co-Writer Shane Black works his sardonic magic - a summer blockbuster that's set at Christmas, a precocious kid side-kick, innumerable withering put-downs, and an audience-splitting 180 degree blindsiding reveal, all make this a thoroughly enjoyable time. Some might gripe that 'there's not enough Iron Man in it', but there's plenty of iron-fisted mayhem come the finale. Focusing more on Tony Stark this time around makes things more personal and ties up some loose character ends - Iron Man 3 is, after all, the beginning of 'Marvel Phase II' after the billion-dollar juggernaut that was The Avengers. Much better that they play with the formula somewhat rather than just stick rigidly to the same old tricks we've seen before. Good.

Click "READ MORE" below for sleazy reform...

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.

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