Wednesday 30 April 2014

Flavours of the Month: April 2014...

LOOKS:

Lost Season 6 - and so ends the return trip to the island. The final season did feel a bit over-long, and certain elements didn't tie-up quite as well as they should have, but ultimately I was still impressed by how the show ended.

The Trip To Italy - a second series of the delightfully entertaining comedy starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as slightly askew versions of themselves. It's a welcome return, although a subplot about infidelity does, to me at least, sit a little uneasily with the generally jovial tone of the show. We'll see how that particular thread plays out over the remaining episodes.

South Park Season 10, 11, and 12

Mad Men Season 7
- the final season, annoyingly split over two years. The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad are more my kind of thing, but even still, I'm a big fan of this show. Three episodes deep - so far so good. A year-long mid-season break is going to be a pain though, just like with the final season of BB.

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Friday 11 April 2014

Pentuple Bill Mini Musings: CGI, Nonsense, Monsters, Knock Offs, and Hauntings...

World War Z:
What's it about?
Big budget adaptation (in-name-only, pretty much) of Max Brooks' celebrated zombie novel.
Who would I recognise in it?
Brad Pitt, Mireille Enos, James Badge Dale, Matthew Fox, Fana Mokoena, David Morse, Peter Capaldi.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
I went into watching this flick (in its "extended" form) with my expectations at rock bottom after months of negative press and information and trailers in the lead-up to the initial release. Likewise with very mixed reviews coming from fellow zombie fans, I was preparing myself for an out-right calamity. Fortunately, it wasn't quite that bad - however, it was still a massively compromised hodge-podge of CGI, gargantuan plot holes, and leaps in logic that crumble what semblance of a narrative there is. Effectively a series of increasingly large-scale set pieces, the film rushes to establish a 'family dynamic' to give Brad Pitt's Gerry something to fight for. Sadly, the film never earns the right to our emotions as it swiftly goes about throwing as much money at the screen as possible. The scale is impressive, but the running, jumping, screeching, twitching, 'zombies' look awful - it's CGI overload and groan-inducing "I Am Legend" style nonsense all-the-way. The 'ant hill' and 'fluid group dynamics' are just naff gimmicks as the CGI 'zombies' defy physical logic and the abilities of the human body.

Click "READ MORE" below for more WWZ, horrors inside the home, Nazi monsters, knock-off Star Wars action, and spooky houses...