weekend watchlist: a timely cure for collective cultural amnesia
Plus drone warfare, murder most genteel, and more. (First published May 7th, 2022, on Substack and Patreon.)
Derek Jacobi
Tolkien movie review: it doesn’t wander, but it’s lost
This infuriatingly reductive biopic of the Hobbit author renders him as stolid and dull, and removes all the mystery and the wonder from creative inspiration. Literal-minded and free of magic.
Casablanca sequel? it’s a thing… (and other adventures in social networking)
Stuff my followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ saw today…
trailer break: ‘A Bunch of Amateurs’
Take a break from work: watch a movie trailer… Oh, great. Every stupid cliché about England, with a few bonuses thrown in, like the little dog piddling on the luggage and the horny landlady. Poor Imelda Staunton. If it’s so gross that Burt Reynolds — age 72 — is kissing that hot young blond chick … more…
to be or not to be: Derek Jacobi as Hamlet
To be or not to be? Is there a third choice somewhere in the middle? I’m astonished to discover that I’m not crazy about this Hamlet, either the production on the whole or Jacobi as the melancholy Dane. Though much of that is a function of the production values of the time and my own … more…
‘Doctor Who’ blogging: “Utopia”
Why am I being tormented so? I was fine. I was comfortable. I was resigned to the fact that I was going to have to live my life here on boring old Earth at the tedious pace of 60 minutes to the hour, seven days to the week, 365 days to the year, ten years to the decade.
Gosford Park (review)
Robert Altman’s latest saga is a sprawling yet intimate upstairs/downstairs murder mystery set at a shooting party at an English manor in 1932, a story much concerned with subtle class warfare and how very nasty very proper people can be. But don’t see it for that. See it for the catty gossip, the cheap rich … more…
