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Hamlet
Hamlet
1609 | Play, Drama
9
8.0 (2 Ratings)
Show Rating
I was lucky enough to see the version that had Sir Patrick Stewart and David Tennant in lead roles, live at Stratford. Sir Patrick was quite difficult to hear at times but David, especially when he got to 'mad Hamlet', stole the stage with his energy. The actor that played Polonius (sorry can't remember who it was) was also excellent.
  
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Chris Parnell recommended Dune (1984) in Movies (curated)

 
Dune (1984)
Dune (1984)
1984 | Sci-Fi

"Dune, directed by David Lynch. I just love that movie. It’s so weird. It’s such a great combination of the book that Frank Herbert wrote, and then David Lynch’s sort of take on that and spin on that. It’s so otherworldly, but you know, so human obviously. I love Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart; it’s an amazing cast. I love science fiction, and it’s just so weird in so many ways. It’s so different than any other science fiction film that I know. I saw it (in the theater), I can’t even remember how old I was. I was a teenager maybe. But I remember when you went in to see it, they gave you a one-page glossary of terms used in the movie, because I guess they felt like that was going to be necessary for you to get what was going on. Of course, you get in there, it’s kind of hard to read this in the dark. But I enjoyed it. And I kind of rediscovered it. Later on at some point I watched it and I was like, “Oh my God, this really is so good.” I mean, there’s a few cheesy aspects to it, but it’s just awesome to me."

Source
  
Compliance (2012)
Compliance (2012)
2012 | Documentary, Drama, Mystery
Old Movie Revisited: Compliance. This one is a based on true events situation as well... Remember awhile back when some moronic genius called a fast food restaurant and convinced the manager that they were a cop and accused an employee of stealing some cash, and had the employee strip searched by the super smart manager? Well yea, its based on that. It was a good movie considering its subject matter, and it really makes you wonder how fucking stupid these people were to believe that a police officer would instruct you to do any of the things the prank caller told them to do! At first I thought the film embellished the events quite a bit, but according to a few sites I checked out, it was all true. Strip searching, body cavity search, spanking, even performing sex acts, no this isn't Fifty Shades of Grey... And the worse part is the only suspect they ever had, David R. Stewart, was acquitted of all charges... Crazy! So check it out for a perfect example of ultimate stupidity of stupid people! Filmbufftim on FB
  
Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart
Every Picture Tells a Story by Rod Stewart
1971 | Rock
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"There is certainly a rasp to my voice [LAUGHS]. It's not quite as bad as Bonnie Tyler's but it is raspy. Rod Stewart wasn't a big influence on me as a singer though. I don't really sound like anybody. In the same way that Ozzy doesn't sound like anybody or Alice Cooper doesn't sound like anybody. You get these boyband singers now that are all very similar. Even in the old days, you could swap round some of the Motown singers and you wouldn't really know the difference. Singer wise, I loved Mark Bolan; Noddy Holder; David Bowie; Alex Harvey; Russell Mael; Steve Harley; Brian Ferry; Sammy Hagar; Phil Lynott. All that lot go into a bucket but I still don't sound like any of them [LAUGHS]. Mutt Lange was a huge influence on my singing: he can play anything, do anything. He was pushing and pushing. I remember the first time I ever met Lou Gram from Foreigner. He said: 'tell me, did Mutt make you feel like you couldn't sing either?' and this was fucking Lou Gram, right? He'd make you do it again and again. He would push and push until you'd be right on the edge of losing it. Sometimes that worked and sometimes you felt like your spirit was being destroyed. Physically, you're going into spaces in your head and your chest cavity that you've never been. But he would've done it with anybody: look what he did with Brian Johnson, he put him through the bloody ringer with Back In Black but look what he got out of it. And that's why I don't complain. Rod Stewart was the first album I ever bought with my pocket money. The version of 'I'm Losing You' is just genius but my 'in' to that record, as it were, was 'Maggie May' because it was all over the radio at the time. It was rock but it was pop rock: it's not been influential in terms of how we sound but I absolutely love it."

Source
  
Star Trek Generations (1994)
Star Trek Generations (1994)
1994 | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
This was the movie that formally handed the baton from the ‘old crew’ to the TNG crew. It seems to be viewed by many as one of “the bad ones” (in the pretty consistent ‘good film-bad film’ flip-flop). But for me it’s one of my personal favourites, neatly blending the old and the new in a novel and inventive way. It includes the death of an icon (“Oh My” – great trivia question!) and the most spectacular demise of the Enterprise put onto film.

Patrick Stewart adds his usual RSC gravitas, and the scenes between him and Shatner are great fun. As Commander Data getting a dose of feelings from his ’emotion chip’, Brent Spiner is also great. The rest of the TNG crew get a mixed amount of air time, with the lovely Marina Sirtis putting in a great performance – particularly during the crash scene – but with Gates McFadden getting little other than an early bath!

The movie’s not without its issues though. Some the scenes – particularly one in ‘stellar cartography – could do with a lot of tightening up. This was director David Carson’s feature debut, after some previous Trek TV experience, and a more experienced movie director might have achieved an even better outcome.
  
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Awix (3310 KP) rated Dune (1984) in Movies

Jul 21, 2021  
Dune (1984)
Dune (1984)
1984 | Sci-Fi
David Lynch's crack at the famous novel buckles under the weight of the sheer amount of exposition the director feels compelled to include; it's not even especially good exposition as the story remains sluggish and bafflingly impenetrable (even if you've read the book). A young man is caught up in the power-politics of a galactic empire and rises to become a superhuman, messianic figure - not that any of this would be at all clear without the voice-overs which keep explaining what's actually going on; scenes themselves are usually windy affairs with characters talking bafflegab about Gom Jabbars, the Water of Life, the Shai-Halud, the weirding way, and the Kwisatz Haderach. All that's wrong with the film is summed up by the fact the final line is someone declaring 'He is the Kwisatz Haderach!' when it is still unclear why this is important and what it even means.

Fine actors like Patrick Stewart, Max von Sydow and Sian Phillips stand around doing their best with the material; some lavish sets and interesting costumes, and the music is rousing and imperious; you always know when something important is happening even if you don't really understand what it is or what it signifies. But it's all basically form without content on a lavish scale; a relatively simple story drowns in background details.
  
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)
2010 | Drama, Romance, Sci-Fi
The beautiful people of Forks, Washington, are back in the latest installment of the Twilight saga. This time around there’s a little bit more story and a lot more action. Still, not nearly enough of either to make this movie compelling for anyone but diehard fans. Oh, I’m sorry..Twi-hard fans.

Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) and Bella Swann (Kirsten Stewart) are reunited and still very much in love, to the brokenhearted dismay of Jacob Black (Tayor Lautner). As Edward and Bella prepare for graduation and contemplate marriage, Victoria, a vengeful vampire now played by Brice Howard, is creating an army to destroy Bella and the Cullen family. Because of this, the Cullen and the werewolves form an uneasy alliance to keep Bella from harm. Bella finds herself struggling with her desire to be with Edward and have him “change” her and her feelings for Jacob. Not your typical teenage angst, but in Bella’s world of vampires and werewolves, these are actually the least of her worries.

Directed by David Slade, of Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, Eclipse at least makes attempts to flesh out the supporting characters, which helped keep the movie interesting because, honestly, if it just focused on the love triangle of Edward, Bella and Jacob, it would have felt interminably slower. While Pattinson, Stewart and Lautner play tortured, awkward and earnest well, they play it too much. Thank goodness for Chief Swan, portrayed with perfect unease by Billy Burke and the stories of Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) and the first Quileute werewolves.

When there was action, it was fast and furious and and when there was humor it was usually when Jacob was around, but I’m sure there were a couple of funny lines that were missed because of the collective sighs and moans the predominantly female audience emitted every time Jacob graced the screen in all his shirtless splendor. A slowly paced tale that picks up speed towards the end, Eclipse is definitely easier to watch than the previous two movies. While no true Twi-hard will care what critics say about the movie, if you’re on the fence about watching this movie, stay on it, especially if you haven’t read the series or watched the previoius two.
  
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Adam Ant recommended New York Dolls by New York Dolls in Music (curated)

 
New York Dolls by New York Dolls
New York Dolls by New York Dolls
1973 | Punk
8.3 (3 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I saw the New York Dolls support Rod Stewart when he was in The Faces. That was at Wembley Empire Pool. It was the Dolls, the Pink Fairies and the Faces. I was there to see the Faces, and when the Dolls came on you've never seen a room empty so fast. Everybody just headed for the bar. David Johansen had a top hat on and Arthur Kane had some pink patent thigh-length boots and was being propped up at the back. They did a 15-minute version of 'Frankenstein', and that was good enough for me. I hadn't seen anything like it before. I gather Steve Jones was there as well – a few people were there who would go on to form groups. They were these five tough New York kids and dressed like that, it was so provocative, so over the top. They went on The Old Grey Whistle Test and Whisperin' Bob Harris said, ""I want nothing to do with this lot behind me."" I lived in Chelsea in this flat with an American writer and I woke up in the middle of the night once and went in his room and Johnny Thunders was there. He asked me if I had a guitar and showed me a few chords. He was quite a nice bloke. That was when I was first starting out, in '77. He'd been over with the Heartbreakers doing the Anarchy tour with the Pistols. But to wake up and see him sitting there was bizarre. He'd had his hair cut by then. He always looked really smart. I loved the whole look of the New York Dolls. They had a real influence on me. They looked good wearing make-up, but there was no doubt that they were blokes. It was like, ""Come on then, come and do something about it!"" To walk around like that in the 1970s anywhere in America you were risking your life. Tracks like 'Personality Crisis' – I think Malcolm [McLaren] lifted that wholesale for the Pistols, the rhythm section and the guitar sound, the heaviness, the weight of the rock & roll sound they made. That was a big influence on Malcolm. What you saw was what you got with the Dolls. I last saw Johnny Thunders at Dingwalls in Camden. I bought him a brandy. He was sitting there scowling. He was quite a dangerous person. When I was with him once, some girl came up to bug him or say something and he did that thing like in that James Cagney film – he just put his hand on her and pushed her away. He was a real tough nut. A real rotter."

Source
  
The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
The Girl in the Spider's Web (2018)
2018 | Crime, Drama, Thriller
Would the last straight woman in Stockholm turn off the lights?
You’ve gotta love a Scandi-thriller. Well, that was until last year’s hopeless Michael Fassbender vehicle “The Snowman” which devalued the currency better than Brexit has done to the pound! The mother of them all though was the original “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy (in Swedish) in 2009. Although subject to a wholly unnecessary English remake two year’s later by David Fincher (with Mara Rooney and Daniel Craig) it was Noomi Rapace who struck the perfect note as the original anarchic and damaged Lisbeth Salander: a punk wielding a baseball bat like an alien-thing possessed (pun well and truly intended!).

Now though we have “A New Dragon Tattoo Story” (as the film’s subtitle clumsily declares) based on the book by David Lagercrantz, who took over the literary franchise after the untimely death of Stieg Larsson. Picking up the reins as Salander is that most British of actresses Claire Foy…. which seems an odd choice, but one which – after you get past the rather odd accent – she just about pulls off.

The Plot
Lizbeth Salendar (Claire Foy) has an interesting hobby. She is a vigilante, like a lesbian Batman, stalking the streets of Stockholm putting wrongs right where abusive boyfriends/husbands are concerned.

She is also a hacking machine for rent. And Frans Balder (Stephen Merchant) has a problem. He has invented a software program that allows its user to control every nuclear warhead in the world from a single laptop (cue every other Bond/24/Austin Powers script ever written). But he has had second thoughts and wants it back from its resting place on the server of the NSA’s chief hacker, Ed Needham (Lakeith Stanfield). Balder recruits Salander to recover it, but when things go pear-shaped Salander finds herself on the wrong side of both the law and the encircling terrorist “spiders”.

The Review
Scandi-dramas work best when they exploit the snow; maintain a sexual tension; and go dark, gritty and violent. On the plus side, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web” ticks most of those boxes adequately. Foy’s Salandar is smart, sassy and sexy, outwitting the best of the best, and only once finding her intellectual match. (If you’re a lesbian, Stockholm is most definitely the place to be: there only seemed to be one hetero-female there, and she was an adulteress).

But Salander also has a Bond-like invincibility that unfortunately tests your incredulity at multiple points. Contributing to the excitement is the stunt team, who keep themselves busy with some great car and bike chases.

So, the movie has its moments and is great to look at. But the film ends up a sandwich or two short of a smorgasbord, thanks largely to some totally bonkers plot points and more than a few ridiculous coincidences. There are without doubt an array of well-constructed set pieces here, but they fail to fully connect with any great conviction. An example of a scene that infuriates is a dramatic bathroom fight in a red-lit gloom with identical protagonists that is cut together so furiously you would need a Blu-ray slo-mo to work out what the hell is going on… and then I fear you might fail.

So it’s an A- for the Production Design (Eve Stewart, “The Danish Girl“) and the Cinematography (Pedro Luque, “Don’t Breathe“), but a C- for the director Fede Alvarez (also “Don’t Breathe“).

Avoid the Trailer
I will save my biggest source of wrath though for that major bug-bear of mine: trailers that spoil the plot.

I’ve asked before, but for a film like this, WHO EXACTLY PUTS TOGETHER THE TRAILER? I’d like to think it’s some mindless committee of marketing execs somewhere. Because I HONESTLY CAN’T BELIEVE it would be the director! (If I’m wrong though, I would point my finger at Mr Alvarez and chant “shame, shame, shame”!)

For the trailer that I saw playing in UK cinemas does it’s level best to not only drop in the key spoilers of the plot (including the climactic scene), but also spoils just about every action money-shot in the movie. It’s all so pointless. If you’ve by any chance managed to get to this point without seeing the trailer, then SAVE YOURSELVES and AVOID IT!

(The one attached below by the way is slightly – slightly! – better, including some over-dubbing of a line that I don’t think was in the film. Perhaps they realised their huge mistake and reissued it?)

The Turns
As I mentioned earlier, Claire Foy again extends her range by playing Salander really well. She is the reason to go and see the film.

The Daniel Craig part of Blomkvist is played here by Sverrir Gudnason, who was in “The Circle” (which I saw) and was Borg in “Borg McEnroe” (which I didn’t). Blomkvist really is a lazy ****, since he works for the publication “Millenium” but writes absolutely nothing for years. It must be only because the boss (Vicky Krieps) fancies him that he keeps his job. Gudnason is good enough, but has very little to do in the movie: its the Salander/Foy show. Slightly, but only slightly, more involved is Lakeith Standfield as the US intelligence man.


Given little to do in the plot. Sverrir Gudnason as the incredibly unproductive ‘journalist’ Mikael Blomkvist. (Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment)
Stephen Merchant is an odd casting choice for Balder. Not withstanding that he was brilliant when almost unrecognisable in “Logan“, here he looks far too much like his “Ricky Gervais sidekick” persona to be taken seriously: and it’s not even remotely a comedy (there is only one humorous moment in the film, a nice “clicker” gag in a car park).

Final Thoughts
I had high hopes for this film from the trailer, but I was left disappointed. It’s not classic Scandi-noir like the original “Tattoo”; and it’s not going for the black comedy angle of “Headhunters” (which I saw again last week and loved… again!). It falls into a rather “meh” category. It’s not a bad evening’s watch, but perhaps worth leaving for a DVD/cable showing.