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Only half an hour to go! Well, it's been a pretty eventful year, both on a personal level and in terms of the wider world. I'm not going to bore you by doing a round-up of everything of note...

Posted at 11:30 PM in General

Wednesday, December 1, 2010: SPLICE (Canada/France/USA, 2009) 8/10 Wednesday, December 8, 2010: IN THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH (Italy/Spain, 1970) 4/10 Friday, December 17, 2010: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON (USA, 2010) 7/10 Wednesday, December 22, 2010: THE MIST...

Posted at 11:26 PM in Cinema

Saturday, December 18, 2010: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (BD, Region ABC, UK) Monday, December 20, 2010: THE MIST (BD, Region B, UK) [Christmas present - thanks, Lee!] Saturday, December 25, 2010: SALT (BD, Region ABC, UK) [Christmas present] Saturday,...

Posted at 11:22 PM in Blu-ray

The film: Despite its unashamedly derivative nature and a largely pointless romantic subplot, I really enjoyed WHIP IT, Drew Barrymore's directorial debut. With Ellen Page in the lead role and Fox Searchlight as the studio behind it, it's tempting to...

Posted at 6:44 PM in BD Impressions

#1025: ATTACK ON LENINGRAD (BD, Metrodome, Region ABC, UK) #1026: BEAN: THE ULTIMATE DISASTER MOVIE (BD, Universal, Region ABC, UK) Picked these up today during my lunch break. The first was a blind buy (I had a £10 HMV...

Posted at 7:12 PM in Blu-ray

And now my Christmas BDs, sorted in order of image quality, from best to worst (based on a fairly quick initial examination). Warner Home Video: excelling at mediocrity since 2006....

Posted at 4:15 PM in Blu-ray

Plus money and Jelly Bellies....

Posted at 3:15 PM in General

Saw this emblazoned on the side of a bus, as part of an advertisement for THE DEATH AND LIFE OF CHARLIE ST. CLOUD: Contains moderate language and a car crash Yeah, for real. Merry Christmas, everybody!...

Posted at 11:08 PM in Cinema

The Movie Matters podcast returns for its final episode of 2010. Co-hosts Lee Howard and Michael Mackenzie exchange Christmas presents, tackling Frank Darabont's THE MIST and Roman Polanski's THE GHOST (a.k.a. THE GHOST WRITER). We also discuss upcoming Blu-ray and...

Posted at 4:47 PM in Podcast

Lee and myself are planning on recording a special Christmas episode of our Movie Matters podcast tomorrow. We'd like to be able to do a regular "listeners' questions" feature along the lines of the "Do you find horror movies scary?"...

Posted at 5:45 PM in Podcast

The film: David Cronenberg is a director whose work I have to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy. I find his films to be very cold and misanthropic, and while I sometimes suspect that Sturgeon's Law applies...

Posted at 4:06 PM in BD Impressions

As mentioned in my previous post, a couple of days ago I enabled the TypePad AntiSpam spam protection system. It actually comes installed by default on recent Movable Type builds and only requires that you apply for a free API...

Posted at 12:37 PM in Web

I'm trying a different spam-blocking system at the moment (TypePad AntiSpam). Can I ask people to reply to this post (with anything - doesn't matter what) so I can ensure it's working properly and not just junking everything?...

Posted at 1:06 AM in Web

The Film: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is the best DreamWorks animated feature I've seen to date... which would put it a notch or two below the worst of Pixar's output. In my opinion, whereas even Pixar's lesser movies have...

Posted at 4:40 PM in BD Impressions

#1018: THE MIST (BD, Momentum, Region B, UK) An early Christmas present from my good friend Lee. All will become clear when we release Episode 4 of the Movie Matters podcast....

Posted at 10:46 PM in Blu-ray

#1017: THE SOUND OF MUSIC (BD, 20th Century Fox, Region ABC, UK) Picked this up for a song (sorry!), primarily on account of its sumptuous transfer, but also because I haven't seen the film since I was a kid...

Posted at 10:06 PM in Blu-ray

The film: Released in 1985 after almost a decade since the last Asterix film (legal issues, naturally), ASTÉRIX ET LA SURPRISE DE CÉSAR (Asterix and Ceasar's Surprise, released in English as ASTERIX VS. CAESAR) is the first of three films...

Posted at 12:50 PM in BD Impressions

One of the downsides of writing a thesis on the giallo is that it's hard to watch any of the films themselves without ending up in full-on analytical mode, picking the films apart instead of enjoying them in their own...

Posted at 12:51 PM in Cinema

The Movie Matters podcast returns with a special themed episode focussing on the "video nasties" phenomenon. In the third instalment, co-hosts Lee Howard and Michael Mackenzie examine Jake West's new documentary VIDEO NASTIES: MORAL PANIC, CENSORSHIP & VIDEOTAPE, and then...

Posted at 6:28 PM in Podcast

I turned down the opportunity to see SPLICE during the Glasgow FrightFest at the GFT back in February - a decision I now regret, as this turned out to be a pleasant surprise for me and by far the most...

Posted at 1:16 AM in BD Impressions

For the last several years, most of my TV recordings have come courtesy of the Freecom DVB-T USB stick I picked up for somewhere in the region of £15. Back then, the only television being broadcast via antenna in the...

Posted at 5:13 PM in Television

Hold on a minute... THIS one is considered the red-headed stepchild of the ALIEN series? Granted, after the jumbled mess of ALIEN 3 it wouldn't take much to create a more coherent film, but I actually found myself enjoying ALIEN:...

Posted at 4:10 PM in BD Impressions

One of those cases where the tortuous production history is a lot more interesting than the resultant film. ALIEN 3 is, to put it bluntly, a mess, and a lot of the time it's not even an entertaining mess. Taking...

Posted at 2:08 PM in BD Impressions

...that a measly bit of snow is capable of bringing this country to a standstill? I was meant to be going on relief to a smaller library that's a little less straightforward to get to than my normal branch (a...

Posted at 2:37 PM in General