Started in 2008 by Jaime Milner and Ash Blackwell, Wales Comic Con is a definite one off. Over the years I’ve been to a lot of Comic Cons in the UK and USA (yes even The San Diego CC at Golden Hall in 1990, and then in the San Diego convention centre in 1991), so […]
Adapted by Paul Kane (Sherlock and the Servants of Hell, The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy) from Clive Barker’s seminal and much loved Origins novella ‘The Hellbound Heart’. This one story opened up a universe of Hell for initiates, The Hell Priest (Pinhead), the Cenobites, Marchand’s Box, and has so far been the inspiration for […]
Iconic film scores (not including musicals). There are so many. The Godfather (Nino Rota), the ‘Dollars triliogy‘ (Ennio Morricone), Star Wars (John Williams). My own favourites; Blade Runner (Vangelis) and Paris, Texas (Ry Cooder), they are the soul of the film, indelible anthems that must have a perfect fit to the narrative. They swoop, soar and […]
DVD: Save Me (2018) Save Me is a six-part British television drama serial, written by and starring Line of Duty & The Walking Dead’s Lennie James. The series stars James as Nelson ‘Nelly’ Rowe, an alcoholic scumbag, who wriggles out of sticky situations with his charm and whose life is turned upside down when Jody, […]
Blu-ray & DVD: Jungle (2017) In the early 1980s, an Israeli adventurer named Yossi Ghinsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) travels to Paz in Bolivia as a sort of rebellion against his strict dad (told in flashback). There, he meets Marcus Stamm (Joel Jackson), a Swiss school teacher, and Marcus’s friend Kevin Gale (Alex Russell), another traveler and […]
DVD: Lucky (2017) Knowing that Lucky was released just after Harry Dean Stanton’s death makes it all the more poignant. Seeing his hang-dawg face and big puppy eyes, this couldn’t be a more fitting farewell. Unsympathetic, yet mystical, Lucky does a jerky old man walk through life, repeat and fade, scared of death, and coming […]
DVD: Walk With Me (2017) Otherwise known as ‘Shhhhh, be quiet and still’. Opening with new members of the… sect? community? Having their heads shaved you can immediately see that these people are extremely happy to be losing their hair as the massive smiles and look of … peacefulness, is palpable. It’s quite nice to […]
Blu-ray: Breathless (1983) In this remake of Jean Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960), Richard Gere plays Jesse, a thief who seems to have a preternatural knack for stealing classic 1950s convertibles. He’s also annoying. Full of jerky energy, always talking to himself, or gazing at himself in the mirror. But then, despite the beautifully full mouthed […]
DVD: The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) Before #MeToo, Harvey Weinstein’s reveal as a rapist, and Hulu’s 10 part TV series The Handmaid’s Tale starring Elizabeth Moss as Offred, was this 1990 film, directed by Volker Schlöndorff, scripted by Harold Pinter and starring Natasha Richardson (as the handmaid), Faye Dunaway (as Serena Joy), and Robert Duvall (the […]
It’s not surprising how a couple of my American friends thought Jonathan Pie was a ‘real’ newsperson. Slightly ruffled suit, windswept hair, squinting into camera, he does appear to be Mr BBC. One exclaimed her shock at him not being sacked for his ‘Potty mouth’. (Oh such sweet lips that utter platitudes of angry exasperation […]
