Pixar, which began life as the Graphics Group, part of LucasFilm, back in 1979, producing high end computer imaging hardware, and was once owned by Steve Jobs until sold to Disney in 2006 for $7.4 billion, is generally regarded as the preeminent purveyor of modern computer animation. Films like Toy Continue Reading
Movies
Birthday movie review: Filth
Irvine Welsh, the immeasurably talented author of the 1998 book on which Filth, the story of corrupt Scott copper Bruce Robertson (James McAvoy) who is rapidly lose his already tenuous hold on reality, is based, has quite accurately described this much-delayed movie adaptation as “an ultra-dark, head-fucking film.” It Continue Reading
Not just for birthdays … Pharrell Williams wants you Happy all the time
I come across an extraordinary amount of songs as I graze across the vast new digital musical landscape but rarely does a song make me so euphorically, well, happy as Pharrell Williams new single, appropriately titled “Happy”. It is a joy to listen to, to dance to, to put Continue Reading
Happy birthday to … 5 of my favourite fictional characters (#2)
I am a madly sentimental guy. If it’s an important event like say my birthday (which it is today) or Christmas or a family or friend’s birthday, I will go all out to make sure the day is as perfect as possible with chronic over-catering, balloons, accessories or trees Continue Reading
Kerrrr-mieee! It’s The Muppets Most Wanted new trailer! Wocka wocka wocka
We have a trailer for Muppets Most Wanted and I’ll bet even Statler and Waldorf would approve of it. OK quite likely not but the fact remains that we have a brand spanking shiny new madcap trailer for the next Muppets movie, a movie that I have been looking Continue Reading
Get Frozen … and Get a Horse! (New Mickey Mouse short)
Mickey Mouse is back where he belongs – cheeky, impetuous and with a nice retro 1920s sheen, thanks to a wonderful new short Get a Horse! that will accompany Disney’s new animated film, Frozen. With more than a tilt of the hat to cartoons like Steamboat Willie – try Continue Reading
Movie review: Fruitvale Station
It is hard to walk away from a film like Fruitvale Station, written and directed by Ryan Coogler in a confrontingly realistic docudrama style (which garnered him two major awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival), without being profoundly affected. Detailing the tragic miscarriage of justice which occurred in Continue Reading
Movie review: Mystery Road
Upsetting the status quo is never an easy proposition for anyone but it becomes exponentially more challenging in the suffocatingly intense surrounds of a small town where everybody knows everyone and everything. That’s the situation facing Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson), newly returned from detective school in the “Big Smoke”, Continue Reading
A marvelous massing of movie trailers #6: Noah, Maleficent, Some Velvet Morning, Stalingrad, Charlie Countryman
It’s full speed ahead in cinema-land right now with a tsunami of amazing movies coming our way thanks to the studios’ desperate need to get as many movies out before the end of the year so they qualify for the awards season in early 2014. With all those amazing Continue Reading
Weekend Pop Art #9: Minimalist movie posters for Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, Pulp Fiction
You might have noticed that I have an inordinate fondness for people who take the accepted form of something and turn it, ever so slightly or with envelope-tearing joie de vivre, on its head. Such is the minimalist but exquisitely colourful work of Polish artist Michal Krasnopolski who I discovered Continue Reading