Goggleboxed

The Anderson Tapes is an excellent heist film directed by Sidney Lumet. Sean Connery stars as a recently released thief who decides to rob his girlfriends swanky apartment block, some great performances and an early appearance from Chris Walken along with a tight snappy script make this one fine film. And another nail in the coffin of the Sean-can't-act argument. Be warned the Quincy Jones soundtrack veers from pretty good to ruddy awful.


Wolverine next, well I'm calling it that as it's proper name is stupid and frankly the film is pretty stupid too. The action is ok I guess but the plot is dumb,the script is perfunctory and it tries to cram heaps of characters in regardless of common sense - ho hum. Liev Schrieber and Danny Huston were good though and Jackman does his usual.

The Offence - another Lumet-directed Sean Connery film - is another classic and IMO criminally underrated. This, however, is a much darker, more intense film than The Anderson Tapes to say the least. Connery plays, brilliantly, a burnt out police detective who murders a suspect in a child molestation case played by Ian Bannen. The film is peppered with flashbacks and some disturbing imagery as he descends into his own memories. I can't think of another film of such quality with two Scotsmen in the leading roles apart from maybe The Hill ( also directed by Lumet )

Garundia

You can count on Brooker - this weeks Screen Burn has an on-the-money repost to Murdoch Jnr's nasty little rant recently performed in my very own city. This creepy looking git should just feck off.

And talking of Newscorp there's a nice bit on the WSJ (via Huffpo) slagging off Facebook - even though its probably motivated by the Orwellian Newscorp owning rival site Myspace the whole Facebook thing is getting very tiresome - I'm even getting bored of Scrabble.

Couch + TVersity = Lazy Sunday

Not Forgotten - a twisty psychological thriller about a child kidnapping was ok, certainly better than it's made-for-TV productions values would suggest. There's some kind of vodou-esque cult shenanigans which was somewhat interesting but I can't say I'd go out my way to watch it as the script is patchy and some of the acting a bit ropey - The Mentalist aka Simon Baker was not terrible though he should be worried about the caliber of work coming his way.

A Midnight Clear was much better - a WW2 drama about a gaggle of soldiers sent to man an outpost near some equally disaffected German troops. Beautifully shot and with some strong performances from the roundly excellent cast. It's not a particularly original film but it's "war is stupid" message is hammered home effectively.

And finally The Terminal Man a nice little scifi from the 70's thats quite prescient. Based on a Michael Crichton novel it's about a computer genius who gets experimental brain surgery for his blackouts which seem to cause uncontrollable acts of violence. George Segal is surprisingly good as the guy who gets his noggin opened - even in that funny wig.

Bit of this bit of that

Avoid Angel of Death - a dumb action film which gives other dumb action movies a bad name, the action is fine but the script is terrible and acting even worse.

Nice little post on BoingBoing about the recently announced policy of cutting off file sharers here in the UK. Turns out their figure of 7 million filesharers is based on a sample of 136 peeps - oh dear they really should try and do their homework better. Time to join the Pirate Party ? oh well at least some artists have some sense.


Mmm and I've been thinking that the whole crop circle thing was pretty much explained away as hoaxes some time ago but there's an interesting article on Dangerous Minds about some historical precedents for the phenomenon.

Sweet science

Great post on the New Scientist about a few sciencey problems. Think my fave is The Bloop or maybe the Nocebo effect.

Non-English language Sci-Fi

I've been rooting around for some foreign language sci-fi lately after becoming tired of the usual Hollywood guff and thought I'd publish a little list of the films worth a look. Not necessarily the best, just the ones that spring to mind.

1) Stalker/Solaris - two classics adaptations from Tarkovsky, you've probably already seen them.


2)Timecrimes - great Spanish time travel film, modest budget but a cracking story.


3)Dante 01 - French Sci-fi from Caro - gets terrible reviews but I enjoyed it.


4)Delicatessen/City of Lost Children - two by Caro & Jeunet, I think COLC is the best of the 2


5)The Host - great Korean monster movie


6)Save The Green Planet - demented Korean scifi, unusual I'd say


7)Fantastic Planet - strange haunting animation from France, better than Time Masters.


8)Sex Mission - Funny Polish scifi about two dudes cryogenically frozen


9)Wings of Honneamise - could have filled the list with anime but chose this classic of hard scifi


10)The Dark Hour - Spanish film, poor reviews but I thought it was great, oh well.

Iran

Peculiar little loon Ahmadi is going to give a speech at the UN in September, what a shocker. I'm sure he'll be in fighting form given how badly he's damaged his country's standing since the election. Expect the usual rants about meddling foreign powers and, fingers crossed, more of his barmy accusations of Little Satan against the UK.

Shame there will be no-one there to make him answer for this or this.

Have been watching

Well we burnt our way through seasons 2 & 3 of 30 Rock real fast - great show but I wasn't so keen on the endless celebrity cameos in the third season, smacks of desperation a little. Despite the plethora of famous faces it's still one of the funniest sitcoms on TV and well worth the time.



This weekend also saw us finish off The Inbetweeners - a C4 sitcom about some nerdy, horny lads at high school. This is a very funny show but some of the bits are so excruciating it can be tough to watch at times. It's crude and juvenile so don't watch if you're easily offended.

Finally managed to watch Ponyo on The Cliff, the latest film from Studio Ghibli, and it was fantastic, a real return to form for Miyazaki and co. Aimed at younger kids, like My Neighbour Totoro, this little fable of a magical fish who wants to be a girl is beautifully drawn and has some stunningly exuberant sea scapes throughout. Miyazaki's films wear his heart on his sleeves and it's an utterly charming film and one I plan to watch again.