trailer break: ‘Another Year’
Oh dear. Mike Leigh’s new film looks like a multi-hankie weepie. Can’t wait.
question of the day: What are the most frightening episodes of ‘Doctor Who’?
I found a lot of the gothic Tom Baker stories pretty frightening: “The Seeds of Doom” was pretty creepy, with its body-conscious horror (the villain gets transformed into an alien plant). I still find something really unsettling about the immortals in the Peter Davison story “Enlightenment”: though they look entirely human, they have an eerie kind of calm about them that makes them feel way more alien than most of the guys in rubber suits have ever been.
a few thoughts on ‘The Walking Dead’: “Days Gone Bye”
So, I’m not really seeing so much that’s new in this The Walking Dead thing yet. Except that it’s pretty gory not only for TV but also for some zombie movies I’ve see. Seems to be lots of lingering on head shots and blood spurting out in slow motion. Monty Python’s Sam Peckinpah would be proud.
cinematic roots of: ‘Jackass 3D’
In Jackass 3D, morons with death wishes led by Johnny Knoxville engage in highly dangerous stunts for your amusement. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
cinematic roots of: ‘Paranormal Activity 2’
In Paranormal Activity 2, more regular folks in an ordinary suburban house are haunted by supernatural visitors while some cheap camcorders spy on it all for your entertainment. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
a few thoughts on ‘Caprica’: “False Labor”
I want to say that I understand why no one was watching Caprica: it’s a tough, complicated downer of a drama about people who are merely trying to figure out how to cope with a tough, complicated world. But so what? Must everything on our TVs be escapist?
my reads: ‘Farthing’ by Jo Walton
If George Orwell and Dorothy L. Sayers collaborated on a novel, it might read like Farthing, which opens with the murder of an aristocrat at an English country house party in the late 1940s… except it’s an alternate England in which the course of World War II went rather differently.
are you gonna watch AMC’s new ‘The Walking Dead’ tonight?
It doesn’t look very terribly different from most of the zombie movies we’ve seen, but I’m hoping that as a weekly drama, that means it will have to focus much more on character than films usually have time for. Perhaps this will be the first zombie apocalypse soap opera…
the FlickFilosopher forum is up
You asked for a way to talk amongst yourselves more formally, so here it is: FlickFilosopher: The Forum! Yes, with an official exclamation point and everything. But there are a few catches…
cinematic roots of: ‘Red’
In Red, retired super secret agents including Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, and Morgan Freeman come out of retirement — unofficially — to investigate a nasty coverup at the highest levels of government of a terrible crime. This flick sprang from (among other films)…
