Much like Paul Raymond (Steve Coogan), the man it profiles in a strikingly unimaginative linear fashion, Michael Winterbottom’s The Look of Love is curiously devoid of any real emotional centre, and thus any meaningful connection with its audience. It makes sense I suppose if you acknowledge one of the central Continue Reading
Can’t wait to see: “The To Do List”
SNAPSHOT Brandy Klark (Aubrey Plaza) spent her entire high school career as an overachiever. While this has left her set for college intellectually, it means that she missed out on a lot of important “experiences” along the way. As a solution, she comes up with a “to-do list” of Continue Reading
Falling Skies review: “Search and Recover” (season 3, episode 5)
“Search and Recover” confirmed everything I have ever thought about camping in the great outdoors. It’s damp and uncomfortable, you’ll probably have to build a fire, the food will be questionable (frogs anyone?), there’s a high likelihood you’ll injure yourself, and you might get suck with fellow campers that’ll Continue Reading
Movie review: “Dans la Maison (In the House)”
There are no real winners in François Ozon’s adaptation Juan Mayorga’s play The Boy in the Last Row, In the House (Dans la Maison). Neither the student Claude Garcia (Ernst Umhauer), a 16 year old boy from the “wrong side of the tracks” desperately trying to acquire the family he doesn’t Continue Reading
How deep (throated) is your love? The trailer for “Lovelace” debuts
SNAPSHOT The life of one of the most infamous women in early ’70s America gets a dramatization in this offbeat period biopic from co-directors Jeffrey Friedman and Robert Epstein. In the Florida suburbs, circa 1970, Linda Boreman (Amanda Seyfried) is an ordinary and unremarkable young woman who moved back Continue Reading
A long time ago in a play far, far away: William Shakespeare’s “Star Wars”
Hark what tome through yonder rarefied window breaks? Why it’s William Shakespeare’s Star Wars, proof that there if the Bard of Avon had been alive in the 1970s that it would have been he and George Lucas bringing the adventures of Luke, Leia and Han, C3PIO and R2D2 to Continue Reading
The science of being a Muppet
Have you ever wondered what The Muppets would look like as a periodic table that groups all manner of Jim Henson’s much loved creations together? No? Well neither had I. But thank the gods of insanely original imagination that artist Mike Boon (aka Mike BaBoon) had, and did something Continue Reading
3 amazing books coming to a cinema near you* (*popcorn not included) #1
* This post first appeared on writingbar.com.au * It’s the age-old question. Well, a hundred years old at least. Which is better – the book or the movie? (You may take the lid off the can of worms now!) Much like the chicken vs. egg conundrum, this is a Continue Reading
Coming to a TV near you: 5 more promising new season dramas #2 – “Once Upon a Time in Wonderland”, “Gang Related”, “Rake”, “Tomorrow People”, “Intelligence”
It’s that time of the year again! Last year’s TV season is dead and buried, but not of course, forgotten, and a jostling crop of hopefuls is waiting in the wings ready to take their place. The shows were revealed a couple of months back during what is known Continue Reading
My 5 favourite modern TV theme tunes
The untimely, enormously sad death of James Gandolfini a couple of weeks ago while on holiday in Italy, prompted me, by way of a tribute, to repeatedly play “Woke Up This Morning” by the Alabama 3, the devastatingly evocative, haunting theme song to the show that brought him fame Continue Reading