Flavours of the Month: February 2012...

LOOKS:

Seinfeld - known of it for quite some time, but only just got around to it on Sky Atlantic. The first season (a mere five episodes) was fairly ropey - let's be honest - but now a few episodes into the second season, you can see they really addressed the problems that were initially there and something good-that-became-great is growing.

Top Gear - series 18 to be specific.

Vietnam: Lost Films - discovered this pretty darn good documentary series via Sky Anytime. It's good to get a bit of actual history on the Vietnam war ... everything I really knew of it was from war movies beforehand.

The Walking Dead - the second half of season two is underway and it's continuing to kick all kinds of arse. We Brits are five days behind the Americans though, so there's always that tense period of waiting where you do everything you can to avoid any spoilers.

Married With Children - I used to watch this show religiously in my teenage years when they were repeating it on the Paramount Comedy Channel (as it was then known), but they stopped airing them during season 6. Then several years ago I got into the box sets, but got distracted after season 4 - so I've finally gone back to the trials and tribulations of Al Bundy with season 5 ... just six more seasons to go, then!

The Oscars 2012 - decidedly better than last year's cringey outing by bringing Billy Crystal back (a touch of class, professionalism, and a few cheeky sideswipes at the assembled rich & famous giving each other prizes). No real surprises (aside from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo getting Best Editing, the team from which won last year for The Social Network), but The Oscars has been rather predictable for years now once you've spotted the 'big film for that year'. Perhaps they should breathe a bit of life into the panel - which is apparently mostly made up of white men aged over 60.


SOUNDS:

Michael Giacchino "Letting Go" - as heard in J.J. Abram's excellent Super 8.

The Nerdist - been catching up on some of their back catalogue of podcasts.

Anamanaguchi "Jetpack Blues/Sunset Hues" - as used as the theme tune for The Nerdist podcast.

Alabama 3 "Woke Up This Morning" - moving into season 5 of The Sopranos, this track has become a bit more popular on my play list this month.


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Bulletstorm - bought for a few quid, and lasting longer than I'd expected it to, this first person shooter that makes you 'kill with skill' isn't amazing, but it's a good bit of fun nonetheless. From the folks behind Painkiller, it's no surprise that there's an old school feel to this shooter, but in a world where every other shooter is trying to be Modern Warfare, it's a refreshing harking back to the old days.

The Good, The Bad & The Multiplex by Mark Kermode - typically acerbic and entertaining, Kermode rants and raves his way through "What's wrong with modern movies" (including the likes of unstaffed projection booths, factory-like multiplexes, and yet another stab at convincing a cynical audience that 3D is the future).

Horror movie memory lane...

During my formative years I became the massive horror fan that I am today, and as I've written about before, this period of my life struck right in my early-teens just when the British Board of Film Classification was undergoing a change of leadership and policy direction - the year was 1999 and all of a sudden a whole host of previously cut and/or banned horror movies were being unleashed onto the British public for the first time in years (in some cases decades). I came to see many of the big name classics of the genre via our local video rental store, or through fudgy dubbed copies on VHS from friends who had in-turn dubbed them from the same video rental store.

During this time - February 1999 to be exact - I devoured with wide-eyed fervour Channel 4's "Censored" weekend, when I got to see Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 (aka Zombie Flesh Eaters here in the UK) and Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant for the very first time. The former was at the time still cut (by 23 seconds - 4 seconds from the eye gouging, and 19 seconds from the devouring of the same victim's body by a gathering of flesh-hungry zombies) and the latter was in a strange situation ... it was passed uncut theatrically, but on home video suffered from trims to one scene of drug taking.

Anyway, I happened to stumble upon some of the introductions for that Censored weekend by UK film critic Mark Kermode (my personal film critic of choice) on YouTube - check them out below (that theme music has been firmly and fondly lodged in my head for 13 years now).







Around about this time there was also a Film Four "Extreme Cinema" channel, so here's a couple of bonus introductions from there...

Braindead (aka Dead Alive) and A Clockwork Orange.