Mindless Mass Murder and… Man of Steel (201
Mindless Mass Murder and… Man of Steel (2013) Contains Some Spoilers There is a scene in Season Three of the brilliant HBO show Game of Thrones where Daenerys Stormborn has played a strategic blinder in order to become the owner of several thousand of the Unsullied, an elite core of trained warrior-slaves. Having done so she immediately grants them their freedom, before giving them the offer to fight for her as free men. ...
Not Such a Hungarian Rhapsody: Dead Man Down (2013)
Not Such a Hungarian Rhapsody: Dead Man Down (2013) One of the biggest mysteries about this American feature debut from Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the original Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, is just how it attracted so much fine acting talent. I haven’t seen that film, so maybe it just made him hard to resist. I can’t think of what else it could be; but I wonder what they made of the finished product when they all sat down...
Receiving Celebrity Communion: Antiviral (2012)
Receiving Celebrity Communion: Antiviral (2012) “Horror, as a sub-genre of literature, has been around at least since 1764 and The Castle of Otranto, notwithstanding that I like to think the first manifestation of it was in the earliest written record, the recounting of Gilgamesh cutting trail with Grendel, which has been the high-water mark for mind-numbing horror until Britney Spears came along.” —-Harlan Ellison I really...
Revisiting ‘Salem’s Lot…
Revisiting ‘Salem’s Lot… Back in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties the release of a new book from Stephen King was something of an event for me. It would have been on a par with a new movie from Sam Peckinpah or David Cronenberg. Yet as the sheer weight of his output grew to include such diverse forms as cinema, television and even comic books, I drifted away whilst still managing to pretty much keep up with what he was doing....
The Invasion Already Happened: Dark Skies (2013)
The Invasion Already Happened: Dark Skies (2013) I honestly don’t understand the overwhelmingly negative response to writer/director Scott Stewarts’ entry into the ‘alien abduction’ genre. What makes Dark Skies so interesting for me is that not only does Stewart create a sympathetic and realistic family but, along with the very familiar staple ingredients of this kind of horror/S.F. film, he roots his plot in two particular...
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