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	X-Men - The Last Stand (Widescreen Edition)
	"Better Than The First Two..."	2009-10-19
Although, lets be honest, it couldn't have been any worse now, could it? But let's not focus on the negative. Here's why it's a better film: - It has a better plot - It actually puts the mutants through some pain for a change (after two films of seeing them dance rings around humanity, they, like the characters from the truly awful The Complete Matrix Trilogy (The Matrix/ The Matrix Reloaded/ The Matrix Revolutions) [HD DVD], never really seemed to be in any great peril. Not so with this film. A weapon that can definitively rob them of their mutant natures levels the playing field). - It injects some moral ambiguity into the plot; you can tell that Ian McKellen (himself a legendary gay activist in the UK) relishes the chance to explore the concept of a cure for a condition (read 'orientation') that can mold one's identity whilst simultaneously making them a societal outcast in some quarters. Kudos to McKellen's performance - I actually found myself rooting for Magneto's brotherwood to prevail. Brett Ratner clearly feels less affection for the characters than Bryan Singer and in this case, that's no bad thing. I don't mind a director loving his characters as long he's not prepared to let that get in the way of the plot - something that Singer always did. I'll be honest, I wrote off the X-Men films after seeing the first two, but this one actually caused me to go out and hire X-Men Origins: Wolverine the night after I saw this on television. Also major props to Ellen Page. She really is a talented young thing. Its not the greatest film ever made, but it is a road-sign to better things. Now can we have some proper "Sentinels" in number four, please?
	X-Men 3 - The Last Stand [Blu-ray]
	"Better Than The First Two..."	2009-10-19
Although, lets be honest, it couldn't have been any worse now, could it? But let's not focus on the negative. Here's why it's a better film: - It has a better plot - It actually puts the mutants through some pain for a change (after two films of seeing them dance rings around humanity, they, like the characters from the truly awful The Complete Matrix Trilogy (The Matrix/ The Matrix Reloaded/ The Matrix Revolutions) [HD DVD], never really seemed to be in any great peril. Not so with this film. A weapon that can definitively rob them of their mutant natures levels the playing field). - It injects some moral ambiguity into the plot; you can tell that Ian McKellen (himself a legendary gay activist in the UK) relishes the chance to explore the concept of a cure for a condition (read 'orientation') that can mold one's identity whilst simultaneously making them a societal outcast in some quarters. Kudos to McKellen's performance - I actually found myself rooting for Magneto's brotherwood to prevail. Brett Ratner clearly feels less affection for the characters than Bryan Singer and in this case, that's no bad thing. I don't mind a director loving his characters as long he's not prepared to let that get in the way of the plot - something that Singer always did. I'll be honest, I wrote off the X-Men films after seeing the first two, but this one actually caused me to go out and hire X-Men Origins: Wolverine the night after I saw this on television. Also major props to Ellen Page. She really is a talented young thing. Its not the greatest film ever made, but it is a road-sign to better things. Now can we have some proper "Sentinels" in number four, please?
	Edge of Darkness
	"Where The Black Flowers Bloom..."	2009-10-15
Craigmills, Yorkshire, 1985: Ronald Craven (Bob Peck) is a detective with the West Yorkshire constabulary tasked with investigating allegations of corruption and ballot rigging within the infrastructure of the local miner's union. A widower who lives with his student activist daughter, Emma (Joanne Whalley), Craven finds himself confronted with the unthinkable when a shotgun-wielding assailant confronts him on the front lawn of his remote home and Emma is apparently 'accidentally' killed in the resultant carnage. A police manhunt is launched and as the grief-stricken Craven begins to make inquiries of his own, he inadvertently finds himself involved in a conspiracy that stretches from the corridors of Westminster to the stygian depths of 'Northmoor', a remote Nuclear waste storage facility on the Yorkshire dales, and which will take him far beyond the edge of darkness and into the hinterland where big business, corrupt government and state sanctioned execution walk hand in veiled hand. Make no bones about it, for a large swathe of the UK population, myself included, "Edge Of Darkness" is 'the' finest drama ever broadcast on British television and still the benchmark against which all others must be measured. Originally broadcast in the winter of 1985 at the height of the special relationship between Reagan and Thatcher, the Labour party's most militant incarnation, renewed violence in Northern Ireland, and at a time when the British public's dissatisfaction with the Conservative government's ruthless economic policies and relentless courting of multinational business interests had resulted in wide-spread suspicion and cynicism of the establishment, the series was a smash-hit ratings winner which was repeated almost immediately, swept the BAFTA awards (British Emmys) and made a house-hold name out of the late, lamented Bob Peck. Veteran screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin's script, for my money, remains the most complex, nuanced, eloquent and haunting examination of a decent man caught up in the serpentine machinations of corporate power and closed government ever written. To label this series as merely a thriller alone is both erroneous and incorrect. It transcends the genre, incorporating elements of the political thriller, ghost story, vendetta movie, spy drama, western, film noir and magic realist literature, mythological fable, ecological treatise (James Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis" as set forth in his book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, was clearly an influence), and all points in-between. Performances are, frankly, stunning. Bob Peck's turn as the stoic, slowly unraveling Ronald Craven is, to this day, one the finest pieces of screen acting that I have ever seen. You will never see a finer or more subtle depiction of a man who has been eviscerated by grief. His uncomprehending, hollow, dead-eyed stare will haunt you forever and the primal scream of sorrow and frustration which he gives rise to during his second confrontation with the man who killed his daughter is still one of the most chilling moments in television history. Matching Peck pound for pound is Texan actor Joe Don Baker, whose turn as the jovial, ambiguous CIA agent, Darius Jedburgh, provides some of the most memorable moments in the series: the revisionist "show-down and soliloquy" which occurs when Jedburgh confronts one of the series' principal antagonists at a conference in Gleneagles, Scotland, towards the close of the story, is still discussed in reverent tones in British drama and screen-writing circles to this day. Both actors are ably supported by a brilliant cast which features a smorgasbord of British acting talent including Ian McNeice, Zoe Wanamaker, Charles Kay, John Woodvine and Jack Watson. Apparently a big-screen remake of this series, featuring Mel Gibson, is currently in the offing. I can say, with absolutely no doubt in my mind, that it will never match the peerless brilliance and depth of the original. It is impossible to do justice to the complexity, elegance and eloquence of "Edge Of Darkness" in words - all I can recommend is that you rent or buy it, find a night when you are free and able to give yourself to it entirely, and truly enjoy the best of British. And if you, like I, find yourself haunted by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen's haunting theme tune, "Obituary", you can find a superbly chilling live rendition of it on the live Clapton album, 24 Nights.
	Edge of Darkness
	"Where The Black Flowers Bloom..."	2009-10-15
Craigmills, Yorkshire, 1985: Ronald Craven (Bob Peck) is a detective with the West Yorkshire constabulary tasked with investigating allegations of corruption and ballot rigging within the infrastructure of the local miner's union. A widower who lives with his student activist daughter, Emma (Joanne Whalley), Craven finds himself confronted with the unthinkable when a shotgun-wielding assailant confronts him on the front lawn of his remote home and Emma is apparently 'accidentally' killed in the resultant carnage. A police manhunt is launched and as the grief-stricken Craven begins to make inquiries of his own, he inadvertently finds himself involved in a conspiracy that stretches from the corridors of Westminster to the stygian depths of 'Northmoor', a remote Nuclear waste storage facility on the Yorkshire dales, and which will take him far beyond the edge of darkness and into the hinterland where big business, corrupt government and state sanctioned execution walk hand in veiled hand. Make no bones about it, for a large swathe of the UK population, myself included, "Edge Of Darkness" is 'the' finest drama ever broadcast on British television and still the benchmark against which all others must be measured. Originally broadcast in the winter of 1985 at the height of the special relationship between Reagan and Thatcher, the Labour party's most militant incarnation, renewed violence in Northern Ireland, and at a time when the British public's dissatisfaction with the Conservative government's ruthless economic policies and relentless courting of multinational business interests had resulted in wide-spread suspicion and cynicism of the establishment, the series was a smash-hit ratings winner which was repeated almost immediately, swept the BAFTA awards (British Emmys) and made a house-hold name out of the late, lamented Bob Peck. Veteran screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin's script, for my money, remains the most complex, nuanced, eloquent and haunting examination of a decent man caught up in the serpentine machinations of corporate power and closed government ever written. To label this series as merely a thriller alone is both erroneous and incorrect. It transcends the genre, incorporating elements of the political thriller, ghost story, vendetta movie, spy drama, western, film noir and magic realist literature, mythological fable, ecological treatise (James Lovelock's "Gaia Hypothesis" as set forth in his book, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, was clearly an influence), and all points in-between. Performances are, frankly, stunning. Bob Peck's turn as the stoic, slowly unraveling Ronald Craven is, to this day, one the finest pieces of screen acting that I have ever seen. You will never see a finer or more subtle depiction of a man who has been eviscerated by grief. His uncomprehending, hollow, dead-eyed stare will haunt you forever and the primal scream of sorrow and frustration which he gives rise to during his second confrontation with the man who killed his daughter is still one of the most chilling moments in television history. Matching Peck pound for pound is Texan actor Joe Don Baker, whose turn as the jovial, ambiguous CIA agent, Darius Jedburgh, provides some of the most memorable moments in the series: the revisionist "show-down and soliloquy" which occurs when Jedburgh confronts one of the series' principal antagonists at a conference in Gleneagles, Scotland, towards the close of the story, is still discussed in reverent tones in British drama and screen-writing circles to this day. Both actors are ably supported by a brilliant cast which features a smorgasbord of British acting talent including Ian McNeice, Zoe Wanamaker, Charles Kay, John Woodvine and Jack Watson. Apparently a big-screen remake of this series, featuring Mel Gibson, is currently in the offing. I can say, with absolutely no doubt in my mind, that it will never match the peerless brilliance and depth of the original. It is impossible to do justice to the complexity, elegance and eloquence of "Edge Of Darkness" in words - all I can recommend is that you rent or buy it, find a night when you are free and able to give yourself to it entirely, and truly enjoy the best of British. And if you, like I, find yourself haunted by Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen's haunting theme tune, "Obituary", you can find a superbly chilling live rendition of it on the live Clapton album, 24 Nights.
	The French Connection
	"The Dangers Of Picking Your Feet In Poughkeepsie..."	2009-10-13
Back in the days before the Oscars were hijacked by politically correct pressure groups who were only interested in rewarding boring films that promoted their tedious agendas and concerns, there were a few years in the seventies when they actually rewarded films that were well-written, well-shot and well-acted pieces of drama which, more importantly, said something valuable about the human condition regardless of how unseemly, politically incorrect or unfashionable such statements or observations might have been. William Friedkin's "The French Connection" was such a film. Friedkin freely adapted the exploits of Eddie "Popeye" Egan and Sonny Grosso - two New York cops who, through a mixture of tenacity, intellect and plain old-fashioned hard work, managed to bust a highly lucrative narcotics pipeline that was flooding the boroughs of New York with Heroin - into a superlative example of the police thriller and a masterclass in film-making. The film itself is essentially a police procedural in which NYC Narcotics detectives Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) initially become aware of a new player on the drugs scene after noticing something amiss whilst drinking in a bar, and then track their way back along the chain of dealers, traffickers and money-men to the source, Gallic Narcotics trafficker and former Marseilles Longshoreman, Alain "Frog One" Charnier (Fernando Rey) - who is gearing up to import a vast shipment of smack into the US. What sets Friedkin's film apart from the numerous scores of predecessors and imitators was it's absolute commitment to reality: Hackman's Doyle is a hard-bitten, unflinching, bully of an obsessive who is only too happy to beat a suspect up in an alleyway if it will get him one step closer to the object of his quest and it is his increasing obsession with collaring the elusive "Frog One" that eventually becomes the focus of the film; the final devastating moments illustrating to both his shocked partner and the audience just how far along the path of darkness he is prepared to go in order to make his collar. Neither Friedkin nor Hackman shy away from depicting what "Popeye" Doyle 'is' and I cannot imagine that a major studio in this day and age would release a film featuring the plentiful depictions of Afro-Americans being systematically harassed by the Police that appear in this film. Similarly, Friedkin's commitment to almost Verite-style location shooting manages to capture New York in all of it's recession-blighted early seventies dilapidation. It looks like the last place on the Earth that you'd want to make your home and is the stark antithesis of the kind of whimsically nostalgic portrayal of the city recently screen in the terrible, execrable US remake of "Life On Mars". In terms of acting, Hackman and Scheider have never been better than they are in this film and make possibly the most realistic cop duo to ever grace the screen. The respect, tolerance, weariness and latent antagonism of two men who have spent a considerable amount of time watching each other's backs is there for all to see. In opposition to many of today's so-called screen actors, they 'show', they don't 'tell'. "The French Connection" is a brilliant film that quite rightly garnered 'best director' and 'best actor' Oscars for Friedkin and Hackman respectively in 1972. If you have any interest in cinema, consider it a must-see and pick up this lavish two-disc edition package.
	Transformers (Two-Disc Special Edition) [HD DVD]
	"Words Fail Me..."	2009-10-07
This is a monumentally bad film on all levels. How bad? Well, I recently caught it on free-to-air and still felt ripped off. It runs for about for nine thousand years (or felt like it did), exemplifies everything that is bad about modern American cinema, and manages to make a pitched battle between giant robots in the middle of Los Angeles as interesting as queuing in a chemist to buy suppositories. Its loud, its stupid, its obnoxious and I suspect the script may have been written by a group of Macaques encouraged to draw on the walls using their own faeces. Also, whilst the robots may have been voiced by the guys who played them in the original cartoon series (in a nod to the fanboys), they still sounded like they were voicing bad action movie trailers with. Every. Single. Line. Acting? There is none. Shia Labeouf portrays an alarmed, sweaty vole and Megan Fox makes a very convincing showroom dummy - though it must be said, neither of them were acting at any point. Avoid this film like the plague. Its an insult to art, intelligence and human dignity. As a friend of mine rather flippantly observed after having seen it, "It runs for 144 minutes, the seizures last for about half an hour after that, and the shame of having sat through it will stay with you for a lifetime." Its only now that I realise that he wasn't joking.
	Transformers (Two-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray]
	"Words Fail Me..."	2009-10-07
This is a monumentally bad film on all levels. How bad? Well, I recently caught it on free-to-air and still felt ripped off. It runs for about for nine thousand years (or felt like it did), exemplifies everything that is bad about modern American cinema, and manages to make a pitched battle between giant robots in the middle of Los Angeles as interesting as queuing in a chemist to buy suppositories. Its loud, its stupid, its obnoxious and I suspect the script may have been written by a group of Macaques encouraged to draw on the walls using their own faeces. Also, whilst the robots may have been voiced by the guys who played them in the original cartoon series (in a nod to the fanboys), they still sounded like they were voicing bad action movie trailers with. Every. Single. Line. Acting? There is none. Shia Labeouf portrays an alarmed, sweaty vole and Megan Fox makes a very convincing showroom dummy - though it must be said, neither of them were acting at any point. Avoid this film like the plague. Its an insult to art, intelligence and human dignity. As a friend of mine rather flippantly observed after having seen it, "It runs for 144 minutes, the seizures last for about half an hour after that, and the shame of having sat through it will stay with you for a lifetime." Its only now that I realise that he wasn't joking.
	The Filth and the Fury - A Sex Pistols Film
	"The Band That Broke The Laws Of Physics..."	2009-10-06
"What you've seen in any documentary about any band before or since is how great and wonderful everything is. Its not the truth of it; its hell, its hard, its horrible, its enjoyable to a small degree, but if you know what you're doing it for, you'll tolerate all that. Because the work, at the end of the day, is what matters. We managed to offend all the people we were f***ing fed up with" Thus intones one Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon) over a credit sequence which emulates the opening of the legendary film version of Oliver's "Richard III" - and Lydon knows of which he speaks because as the teenage front-man of "The Sex Pistols", probably the singularly most reviled and misunderstood band of all time, he certainly had it harder than most. To my mind, there's no two ways about it - "The Sex Pistols" are THE band that broke a fundamental law of physics by literally creating something out of the nothing of economic, social and cultural poverty that was England in the mid-seventies. And in this film, which remains probably the best music documentary ever made (and my personal favourite of all time), you get to hear, in their own words, how they charted a notorious course from being four disparate, penniless teenagers hanging around a rubber-ware shop on the King's Road to being banned from playing in the UK and pursued around the US by the CIA and FBI because they were considered such a threat to the establishment. Listening to Lydon, Cook, Jones, Matlock and Vicious (in absentia) recounting their tale in silhouette over a wealth of material cobbled together from the films "DOA" and "The Great Rock And Rock Swindle", as well as hours of never before seen archive footage, gives you a devastatingly honest insight into not only the times and circumstances that formed them, but also the morass of scumbags, groupies, hangers-on and imbeciles that populate the gristle-mill of the music industry to this day. One gets the impression that Julien Temple, who previously directed the Malcolm MacLaren propaganda exercise, "The Great Rock And Roll Swindle", is almost undertaking an act of atonement with this film and he wisely chooses to forego overt directorial flourishes in favour of just letting the parties involved speak for themselves. Alternately hysterically funny, genuinely touching and occasionally chilling (Vicious' final words to camera are haunting), as a film it is never anything less than fascinating. And as strange as it may sound, I personally find it to be one of the most energizing and positive pieces of cinema that I've ever seen. I watch my copy regularly and would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone despairing at the state of their lives - because if four council estate kids with nothing but a shed-load of anger (which really `is' an energy, when properly channeled) can change the world in their own shambolic way, then you can learn a lot from their example, whatever your age.
	Lost in Translation [HD DVD]
	"Missing The Words But Deciphering The Meaning..."	2009-09-29
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) arrives in Tokyo nursing killer jetlag and an ever-widening gulf between his personal aspirations and his professional obligations, as well as a marriage succumbing to the laws of entropy; A middle-aged actor of some repute and former stardom, he checks into a luxurious Japanese hotel and girds his loins in order to get through a three day stint starring in a Whiskey commercial for which he is being paid an obscene amount of money. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) haunts the corridors of the same hotel, as well as the streets of Tokyo, while her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), is off photographing obscenely hip bands around Japan for a magazine spread. Recently married, lacking a palpable direction in life and recently transposed to L.A. from New York, Charlotte feels like the proverbial lost soul. Bob and Charlotte, strangers in a strange land, notice each other, meet and strike up an unlikely acquaintance and this beautifully shot and languidly paced film leaves it up to the audience to decide what really happens next. Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" is hands-down one of my favourite films of all time. Its about insomnia; jetlag; bad lounge bands; not knowing which dish on the menu is which; drunken nights in karaoke bars with people who have just become your new best friends; strange new cultures; unconsummated passions; the beauty of solitary moments; waking up in a strange new place; the ambiguity of human relationships; the frisson of recognition when you first realise the connection with a kindred spirit and the utter banality of most Hollywood films. It is slowly paced, beautifully crafted, touching in parts, hypnotic in others and is occasionally wince-inducingly funny. It also boasts a gorgeous soundtrack featuring the likes of Air, Squarepusher, and Mount Sims. It is also unequivocally 'not' just a "mid-life crisis" movie. Or if it is, it's the "mid-life crisis" movie that the world deserves. Its a film that will soothe the soul, lighten the burden, lull you to sleep and leave you wanting to breathe the crisp morning air after a drunken night on the town.
	Lost In Translation (Full Screen Edition)
	"Missing The Words But Deciphering The Meaning..."	2009-09-29
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) arrives in Tokyo nursing killer jetlag and an ever-widening gulf between his personal aspirations and his professional obligations, as well as a marriage succumbing to the laws of entropy; A middle-aged actor of some repute and former stardom, he checks into a luxurious Japanese hotel and girds his loins in order to get through a three day stint starring in a Whiskey commercial for which he is being paid an obscene amount of money. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) haunts the corridors of the same hotel, as well as the streets of Tokyo, while her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), is off photographing obscenely hip bands around Japan for a magazine spread. Recently married, lacking a palpable direction in life and recently transposed to L.A. from New York, Charlotte feels like the proverbial lost soul. Bob and Charlotte, strangers in a strange land, notice each other, meet and strike up an unlikely acquaintance and this beautifully shot and languidly paced film leaves it up to the audience to decide what really happens next. Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" is hands-down one of my favourite films of all time. Its about insomnia; jetlag; bad lounge bands; not knowing which dish on the menu is which; drunken nights in karaoke bars with people who have just become your new best friends; strange new cultures; unconsummated passions; the beauty of solitary moments; waking up in a strange new place; the ambiguity of human relationships; the frisson of recognition when you first realise the connection with a kindred spirit and the utter banality of most Hollywood films. It is slowly paced, beautifully crafted, touching in parts, hypnotic in others and is occasionally wince-inducingly funny. It also boasts a gorgeous soundtrack featuring the likes of Air, Squarepusher, and Mount Sims. It is also unequivocally 'not' just a "mid-life crisis" movie. Or if it is, it's the "mid-life crisis" movie that the world deserves. Its a film that will soothe the soul, lighten the burden, lull you to sleep and leave you wanting to breathe the crisp morning air after a drunken night on the town.
	Lost In Translation (Widescreen Edition)
	"Missing The Words But Deciphering The Meaning..."	2009-09-29
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) arrives in Tokyo nursing killer jetlag and an ever-widening gulf between his personal aspirations and his professional obligations, as well as a marriage succumbing to the laws of entropy; A middle-aged actor of some repute and former stardom, he checks into a luxurious Japanese hotel and girds his loins in order to get through a three day stint starring in a Whiskey commercial for which he is being paid an obscene amount of money. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) haunts the corridors of the same hotel, as well as the streets of Tokyo, while her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), is off photographing obscenely hip bands around Japan for a magazine spread. Recently married, lacking a palpable direction in life and recently transposed to L.A. from New York, Charlotte feels like the proverbial lost soul. Bob and Charlotte, strangers in a strange land, notice each other, meet and strike up an unlikely acquaintance and this beautifully shot and languidly paced film leaves it up to the audience to decide what really happens next. Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" is hands-down one of my favourite films of all time. Its about insomnia; jetlag; bad lounge bands; not knowing which dish on the menu is which; drunken nights in karaoke bars with people who have just become your new best friends; strange new cultures; unconsummated passions; the beauty of solitary moments; waking up in a strange new place; the ambiguity of human relationships; the frisson of recognition when you first realise the connection with a kindred spirit and the utter banality of most Hollywood films. It is slowly paced, beautifully crafted, touching in parts, hypnotic in others and is occasionally wince-inducingly funny. It also boasts a gorgeous soundtrack featuring the likes of Air, Squarepusher, and Mount Sims. It is also unequivocally 'not' just a "mid-life crisis" movie. Or if it is, it's the "mid-life crisis" movie that the world deserves. Its a film that will soothe the soul, lighten the burden, lull you to sleep and leave you wanting to breathe the crisp morning air after a drunken night on the town.
	Lost in Translation
	"Missing The Words But Deciphering The Meaning..."	2009-09-29
Bob Harris (Bill Murray) arrives in Tokyo nursing killer jetlag and an ever-widening gulf between his personal aspirations and his professional obligations, as well as a marriage succumbing to the laws of entropy; A middle-aged actor of some repute and former stardom, he checks into a luxurious Japanese hotel and girds his loins in order to get through a three day stint starring in a Whiskey commercial for which he is being paid an obscene amount of money. Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) haunts the corridors of the same hotel, as well as the streets of Tokyo, while her husband, John (Giovanni Ribisi), is off photographing obscenely hip bands around Japan for a magazine spread. Recently married, lacking a palpable direction in life and recently transposed to L.A. from New York, Charlotte feels like the proverbial lost soul. Bob and Charlotte, strangers in a strange land, notice each other, meet and strike up an unlikely acquaintance and this beautifully shot and languidly paced film leaves it up to the audience to decide what really happens next. Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" is hands-down one of my favourite films of all time. Its about insomnia; jetlag; bad lounge bands; not knowing which dish on the menu is which; drunken nights in karaoke bars with people who have just become your new best friends; strange new cultures; unconsummated passions; the beauty of solitary moments; waking up in a strange new place; the ambiguity of human relationships; the frisson of recognition when you first realise the connection with a kindred spirit and the utter banality of most Hollywood films. It is slowly paced, beautifully crafted, touching in parts, hypnotic in others and is occasionally wince-inducingly funny. It also boasts a gorgeous soundtrack featuring the likes of Air, Squarepusher, and Mount Sims. It is also unequivocally 'not' just a "mid-life crisis" movie. Or if it is, it's the "mid-life crisis" movie that the world deserves. Its a film that will soothe the soul, lighten the burden, lull you to sleep and leave you wanting to breathe the crisp morning air after a drunken night on the town.
	Small Is Beautiful : Economics as if People Mattered
	"Revelatory..."	2009-09-24
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was a German émigré to the UK and the US who, after a long and auspicious career as an academic, economist and advisor to numerous institutions, including the national coal board, found himself increasingly troubled by the short-comings of western economics and the implications of the continued adoption of the edict that dictates that increased profit, expansion and consumption was the only way forward for the human species. Schumacher's contention was essentially that the planet Earth is a closed system and that infinite expansion within a closed system is an impossibility. Accordingly, he quite sensibly saw the continued exploitation of Earth's irreplaceable natural resources for economic purposes as a suicidal proposition. As a Christian and an economist, Schumacher felt that economics as a discipline had, like a tumour, metastasised and expanded far outside of what should have been it's legitimate area of concern; a development which he saw as detrimental to the environment, human dignity, and the continued existence of the human species. "Small Is Beautiful: A Study Of Economics As If People Mattered" , published in 1973, is nothing less than this extraordinary man's attempt to analyse the state of affairs as it was then (and is now), redress the balance and to offer several alternative propositions to the school of economic thinking which dictates that "increased profit is best" and that "more is better". There are so many important ideas in this book that I will never be able to do justice to them with this review. Suffice it to say, Schumacher's theories on "appropriate" and "intermediate" technology, the developing world, corporate structure, taxation and quantitive versus qualitative economics are so important that I think it should be taught within school curriculums the world over and made compulsory reading for world leaders before they take office. It may yet turn out to be the most important book on economic theory ever written.
	Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered : 25 Years Later...With Commentaries
	"Revelatory..."	2009-09-24
Ernst Friedrich Schumacher was a German émigré to the UK and the US who, after a long and auspicious career as an academic, economist and advisor to numerous institutions, including the national coal board, found himself increasingly troubled by the short-comings of western economics and the implications of the continued adoption of the edict that dictates that increased profit, expansion and consumption was the only way forward for the human species. Schumacher's contention was essentially that the planet Earth is a closed system and that infinite expansion within a closed system is an impossibility. Accordingly, he quite sensibly saw the continued exploitation of Earth's irreplaceable natural resources for economic purposes as a suicidal proposition. As a Christian and an economist, Schumacher felt that economics as a discipline had, like a tumour, metastasised and expanded far outside of what should have been it's legitimate area of concern; a development which he saw as detrimental to the environment, human dignity, and the continued existence of the human species. "Small Is Beautiful: A Study Of Economics As If People Mattered" , published in 1973, is nothing less than this extraordinary man's attempt to analyse the state of affairs as it was then (and is now), redress the balance and to offer several alternative propositions to the school of economic thinking which dictates that "increased profit is best" and that "more is better". There are so many important ideas in this book that I will never be able to do justice to them with this review. Suffice it to say, Schumacher's theories on "appropriate" and "intermediate" technology, the developing world, corporate structure, taxation and quantitive versus qualitative economics are so important that I think it should be taught within school curriculums the world over and made compulsory reading for world leaders before they take office. It may yet turn out to be the most important book on economic theory ever written.
	The Fourth Protocol
	"Breaking Protocol..."	2009-09-24
The Mid Eighties: Deep within the Soviet Union, star of the "illegals" directorate, Major Valerie Petrofsky (Pierce Brosnan), is seconded to take part in a secret mission under the auspice of hard-line KGB chief, Gevorshin (Alan North). The nature of the mission is so potentially incendiary that it has already resulted in the execution of the mission planners who provided research and background... Meanwhile, in London, unorthodox MI5 agent, John Preston (Michael Caine), finds himself between a rock and a hard place following the abdication and replacement of his former superior, Bernard Hemmings (Michael Gough), by the bureaucratic acting deputy, Harcourt-Smith (Julian Glover). A man devoted to his duty, his son and his country, Preston doggedly pursues a mole leaking classified documents from within the secret service and, as a result of his unorthodox methods, unwittingly finds himself in a position in which he uncovers the truth behind Petrofsky's terrifying mission.... Containing something to the order of only twenty gunshots, one car chase and no CGI at all, John Mackenzie's film of Frederick Forsyth's "The Fourth Protocol" is a cold war thriller of the type that they just don't make any more...and mores the pity. Attempting to adapt Forsyth's brilliant, labyrinthine tale of plot and counter-plot for the screen was always going to be virtually impossible, but this film, while treating the viewer to a somewhat truncated version of the novel, remains true to it's feeling and vision. No doubt, this can be attributed to the intelligence of the screenplay (which was written by Forsyth himself and "Manchurian Candidate" screenplay alumnus, George Axelrod), John MacKenzie's muscular, spare direction and a stellar cast which boasts such luminaries as Sir Ian Richardson, Ray McAnally, Ned Beatty, Anton Rogers and Joanna Cassidy. This is a film which is carried by it's actors and they do so superbly; the scene in which the late, great Sir Ian Richardson's serpentine peer of the realm confronts Anton Rogers' petulant civil servant is one of the greatest scenes of understated menace ever committed to celluloid in my humble opinion. Likewise, a young Brosnan gives a superb turn as the coldly calculating Petrofsky (one only wishes that he'd only been allowed to express this kind of ruthlessness during his tenure as Bond) and Caine subtly subverts and reinterprets his "Harry Palmer" persona during his performance as Brosnan's harried, human nemesis. An espionage tale for those who prefer plot over pyrotechnics, "The Fourth Protocol" remains one of my all time favourite big-screen spy dramas. Watch it and, if you're anything like me, you'll find yourself whistling the menacing Leitmotifs from Lalo Schifrin's memorable score for days afterwards.
	The Dirt : Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band
	"Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory..."	2009-09-17
First off, let me lay my cards on the table - I'm not a Motley Crue fan and although I've heard a smattering of their songs and what I have heard I don't remember much of apart from the chorus of "Girls, Girls, Girls". This is no reflection on the band, you understand - its just that they apparently didn't get as much media exposure in the country of my birth as they did in the US. What I am, however, is as much of a fan as anyone else of that scaborous 'warts and all' genre of 'faction' known as the rock biography and in that regard, "The Dirt" delivers in spades. Chronicling the rise to fame and spectacular implosion of the original line-up of Motley Crue through interviews conducted by Neil Strauss with the various members of the band (Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee), we are treated to alternating viewpoints on different (and sometimes the same) events and in some instances its almost impossible to discern which version of events is the closest to the truth or, indeed, whether any of them are remotely related to anything like reality given the bad blood, wounded egos and voluminous substance abuse involved. The dysfunctional rock band has become something of a cliché in the last forty years and in MC's case, it has almost been elevated to an art-form; the group is so full of contradictory personalities, barely suppressed anger and festering animosity that one wonders how they ever managed to spend ten minutes in the same room together, let alone persevere long enough to forge a career and release albums. If two words sum the band up, they would be "conflict" and "addiction". Conflict with each other, with themselves, and with everyone and everything else and addiction to their very own personal hells: For Sixx, it's nihilism and Heroin; Mars' drugs of choice are despair and alcohol; Neil's personal poisons are women and fast cars, and Lee's seems to be a schmorgasboard of all of the above. Suffice it to say, if the copious amounts of drug abuse related here are not attempts at self-mythologising then it's a miracle that any of the band are still alive today. I don't think I've read a book that features as many drug overdoses, encounters with unwashed groupies, car crashes or spousal abuse as this one. People expecting a laugh-a-minute tale of John-Belushi-in-"Animal House" style high-jinks will no doubt be shocked by the depths to which Nikki Sixx sank during his love affair with the needle. Even without their sundry addictions it seems that, with the exception of Mick Mars, who I developed a sympathy and grudging respect for, the majority of the band are not really very nice people. I enjoy a tale of debauchery as much as the next man, but the passage in which they describe picking up a homeless, mentally disturbed girl from the streets of LA, having sex with her, and then sending her back out onto the streets with her clothes in tatters and tears streaming down her cheeks was nothing less than repugnant. A shocking, compelling insight into minds deluded by their own talent and the accolades of others, "The Dirt" may well be one of the greatest rock biographies ever written and is highly recommended as a cautionary tale of how not to go about enjoying success.
	Public Image Ltd. - Flowers Of Romance
	"Darkness And Dissonance"	2009-09-16
Even now, some twenty eight years after it's release, trying to do justice to "The Flowers Of Romance" in words is an exercise in futility. That is to say that numerous words can be used to describe it - funereal, pummeling, bleak, abstract, hypnotic, industrial, unnerving, angular, jagged, brutal - but none of them can really do justice to it as a listening experience. In terms of content, it can only be described as music in the loosest possible terms and that it must certainly qualify as one of the most uncommercial albums ever released by a major record label. To say that it polarizes opinion amongst audiences is an understatement akin to that of describing the sinking of the Titanic as "a minor boating accident" - Lydon and co. were allegedly bottled off of the stage numerous times whilst touring its release by fans bemoaning the loss of Jah Wobble and clinging to the more conventionally musical wreckage of the spectacular disaster that was the Sex Pistols, and, to this day, it would be fair to say that the majority of the population at large would, if forced to sit through a playing of the album in it's entirety, label it as "unlistenable crap". Its not though. Its abstract, its uncompromising, its ambiguous and whilst its true that it's creation probably was driven by a lacking knowledge of musical composition more than anything else, in it's own uniquely nihilistic and typically Lydonian way it's musical naivete turns out to be its greatest asset. Driven by Keith Levene's apocalyptic drumming, Lydon's tortured semi-ironic caterwauling and an omnipresent bed of droning synths, electronic effects, detuned basses and badly played guitars, `FOR' opens up a uniquely personal vista of hellish experience. It not only walks where angels fear to tread, it pauses there to light a cigarette and gaze lazily in through dirty tenement windows at the eldritch horrors and emaciated Munchian figures that dwell within. In places it sounds like a `pestmasse' for a dying mediaeval city ("Phenagen"), the scariest horror film soundtrack ever written ("Under The House" and "Hymie's Him" - the latter of which was originally written for the film, Wolfen), a human soul succumbing to the seductive necessities of bleak indifference and futile optimism ("Banging The Door", "Go Back" and the title track) and the biggest joke that you've ever heard ("St Francis Massacre" - I generally skip this one and end the album with "Go Back") Few soundscapes have ever attained the nightmarishly compulsive disquiet of this album. The only two that I can think of that have ever come close are Skinny Puppy's Mind: The Perpetual Intercourse and the soundtrack for David Lynch's Eraserhead I'm not going to suggest that you buy before you try - with an album as uncompromisingly uncommercial as this, to do so could invariably lead to dissatisfaction, but I will suggest that you give it a listen to see if you can relate to the singular tone and timbre of this dark diamond in the rough.
	Maxx, The
	"Skewering The White, Soft, Squishy, Razor-Toothed Heart Of Darkness..."	2009-08-21
Sam Kieth and Bill Messner-Loebs' "The Maxx" is one of the most criminally underrated and under-appreciated comic books of all time and at it's best - which is most of the time - its as good as anything that Alan Moore has ever written. There. I've said it. And I mean every word. A lot of the reasons for this lack of appreciation can be ascribed to the fact that it has always been mistakenly labeled as "that super-hero book that got made into an MTV series". But it's not a super-hero book. Not at all. What it 'is' is a deeply clever and quite staggeringly poignant deconstruction of the notion of identity, sanity, self and motive and an examination of how all of the above can be destroyed and re-molded by trauma. Without going into too much, "The Maxx" principally concerns the trials and travails of two characters: The first is "The Maxx" - he's a homeless guy who sleeps in a cardboard box in an alley in an indeterminate American city, wears a skin-tight superhero suit and mask, and believes that he can slip back and forth between our world and bizarre parallel dimension which resembles the African Savanna and which he has christened "The Outback". He's capable of quite astonishing violence and is too frightened to take his mask off in case he discovers that he has the head of a Rabbit. It is quite obvious, very early on, that Maxx is not a well boy. Not at all. The second character is "Julie Winters" - Julie is a free-lance social worker who dresses like a hooker and is probably the closest thing that Maxx has to a friend. She bails him out when he's in trouble and occasionally allows him to sleep on her sofa. But there's more going on with Julie than meets the eye. When Maxx slips into "The Outback" he's convinced that she's the "Leopard Queen" and that she must be protected. And with the sudden appearance of the demonic "Mister Gone", and his army of tiny razor-toothed "ISZes", on the streets of their dystopian cityscape, Julie would appear to need a lot of protecting. That's if Maxx isn't hallucinating all of this. He does that sometimes. And finds himself slipping into cartoons on the television in Julie's apartment as well. Confused? You will be. But you want to read the book anyway. Trust me. Ignore the fact that Kieth's artwork looks a bit like it should feature Turtles with a grounding in the martial arts and a pizza fixation, and ignore whatever preconceptions you may already have about this book - because they're wrong. This is once in a life-time stuff and it really is very clever. Now go and get your hands on volume one, read it, digest it, get hooked, get the rest of the series and watch out for those pesky Crabbits.
	The Hidden
	""A Career In The Police Force Didn't Really Prepare You For This, Did It?""	2009-07-31
Across Los Angeles, a small number of people who have been leading previously peaceful, placid lives suddenly begin engaging in orgiastic sprees of armed robbery, murder and grand theft auto. What is driving these previously upstanding citizens to these depths? LA Cop and wildcard Michael Beck (Michael Nouri) is hot on the trail of the first of the perpetrators in question when he finds himself unwittingly partnered with decidedly strait-laced FBI agent, Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle Maclachlan). Their pursuit of the truth behind the explosion of violence rocking the city of Angels will lead them through a wilderness of carnage, destruction and betrayal. Jack Sholder's 'The Hidden' is an enjoyable, well-made piece of late eighties LA/Sci-Fi exploitation which cheerfully mines all manner of conceptual gold from films like The Terminator and The Thing (Collector's Edition) and novels like Robert A. Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS and yet manages to regurgitate them in a form which still manages to feel fresh and entertaining. A lot of the film's appeal can be attributed to Bob Hunt's script (which refuses to insult the intelligence of it's hard-bitten cop characters) and Sholder's direction which is heavily accented towards the humourous and the hyper-kinetic (well, for the eighties anyway. The ADD style of filming and edited favoured by most action directors these days may well make it seem a tad stodgy to younger viewers - but bear in mind that this is a period piece). Michael Nouri is an actor I can't recall seeing in any other film than this one. He makes a perfectly servicable if rather humdrum cop on the edge; a youthful Kyle Maclachlan's turn as an alarmingly fresh-faced FBI agent is a hint at the greater things to come, as is Claudia 'Bablyon 5' Christian's deeply amusing turn as a stripper-turned-shotgun-wielding-psychopath who comes off like 'Ah-nuld' in thigh high boots. There are also 'blink and you'll miss them' cameos from the likes of Rodriguez/Tarantino favourite Danny Trejo and Jack McGee ('Chief Jerry Reilly' from the excellent fire-fighter drama, Rescue Me - The Complete First Season) and a decent turn from exploitation favourite, Clu Gulager (of The Return of the Living Dead fame). By no means a perfect film, it is still a highly entertaining one if you're both familiar and comfortable with the conventions of the late eighties LA/Sci-Fi sub-genre. If you enjoy this, I also recommend that you check out the Tom Selleck vehicle, "Runaway"; the exploitation favourite, "Trancers"; the similar, although decidedly more cheesy, "Dark Angel"; the deeply amusing valley-girls-vs-zombies comedy, "Night of the Comet" and Steve De Jarnatt's genuinely brilliant Nuclear paranoia shocker, "Miracle Mile".
	The Hidden
	""A Career In The Police Force Didn't Really Prepare You For This, Did It?""	2009-07-31
Across Los Angeles, a small number of people who have been leading previously peaceful, placid lives suddenly begin engaging in orgiastic sprees of armed robbery, murder and grand theft auto. What is driving these previously upstanding citizens to these depths? LA Cop and wildcard Michael Beck (Michael Nouri) is hot on the trail of the first of the perpetrators in question when he finds himself unwittingly partnered with decidedly strait-laced FBI agent, Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle Maclachlan). Their pursuit of the truth behind the explosion of violence rocking the city of Angels will lead them through a wilderness of carnage, destruction and betrayal. Jack Sholder's 'The Hidden' is an enjoyable, well-made piece of late eighties LA/Sci-Fi exploitation which cheerfully mines all manner of conceptual gold from films like The Terminator and The Thing (Collector's Edition) and novels like Robert A. Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS and yet manages to regurgitate them in a form which still manages to feel fresh and entertaining. A lot of the film's appeal can be attributed to Bob Hunt's script (which refuses to insult the intelligence of it's hard-bitten cop characters) and Sholder's direction which is heavily accented towards the humourous and the hyper-kinetic (well, for the eighties anyway. The ADD style of filming and edited favoured by most action directors these days may well make it seem a tad stodgy to younger viewers - but bear in mind that this is a period piece). Michael Nouri is an actor I can't recall seeing in any other film than this one. He makes a perfectly servicable if rather humdrum cop on the edge; a youthful Kyle Maclachlan's turn as an alarmingly fresh-faced FBI agent is a hint at the greater things to come, as is Claudia 'Bablyon 5' Christian's deeply amusing turn as a stripper-turned-shotgun-wielding-psychopath who comes off like 'Ah-nuld' in thigh high boots. There are also 'blink and you'll miss them' cameos from the likes of Rodriguez/Tarantino favourite Danny Trejo and Jack McGee ('Chief Jerry Reilly' from the excellent fire-fighter drama, Rescue Me - The Complete First Season) and a decent turn from exploitation favourite, Clu Gulager (of The Return of the Living Dead fame). By no means a perfect film, it is still a highly entertaining one if you're both familiar and comfortable with the conventions of the late eighties LA/Sci-Fi sub-genre. If you enjoy this, I also recommend that you check out the Tom Selleck vehicle, "Runaway"; the exploitation favourite, "Trancers"; the similar, although decidedly more cheesy, "Dark Angel"; the deeply amusing valley-girls-vs-zombies comedy, "Night of the Comet" and Steve De Jarnatt's genuinely brilliant Nuclear paranoia shocker, "Miracle Mile".
	Hidden
	""A Career In The Police Force Didn't Really Prepare You For This, Did It?""	2009-07-31
Across Los Angeles, a small number of people who have been leading previously peaceful, placid lives suddenly begin engaging in orgiastic sprees of armed robbery, murder and grand theft auto. What is driving these previously upstanding citizens to these depths? LA Cop and wildcard Michael Beck (Michael Nouri) is hot on the trail of the first of the perpetrators in question when he finds himself unwittingly partnered with decidedly strait-laced FBI agent, Lloyd Gallagher (Kyle Maclachlan). Their pursuit of the truth behind the explosion of violence rocking the city of Angels will lead them through a wilderness of carnage, destruction and betrayal. Jack Sholder's 'The Hidden' is an enjoyable, well-made piece of late eighties LA/Sci-Fi exploitation which cheerfully mines all manner of conceptual gold from films like The Terminator and The Thing (Collector's Edition) and novels like Robert A. Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS and yet manages to regurgitate them in a form which still manages to feel fresh and entertaining. A lot of the film's appeal can be attributed to Bob Hunt's script (which refuses to insult the intelligence of it's hard-bitten cop characters) and Sholder's direction which is heavily accented towards the humourous and the hyper-kinetic (well, for the eighties anyway. The ADD style of filming and edited favoured by most action directors these days may well make it seem a tad stodgy to younger viewers - but bear in mind that this is a period piece). Michael Nouri is an actor I can't recall seeing in any other film than this one. He makes a perfectly servicable if rather humdrum cop on the edge; a youthful Kyle Maclachlan's turn as an alarmingly fresh-faced FBI agent is a hint at the greater things to come, as is Claudia 'Bablyon 5' Christian's deeply amusing turn as a stripper-turned-shotgun-wielding-psychopath who comes off like 'Ah-nuld' in thigh high boots. There are also 'blink and you'll miss them' cameos from the likes of Rodriguez/Tarantino favourite Danny Trejo and Jack McGee ('Chief Jerry Reilly' from the excellent fire-fighter drama, Rescue Me - The Complete First Season) and a decent turn from exploitation favourite, Clu Gulager (of The Return of the Living Dead fame). By no means a perfect film, it is still a highly entertaining one if you're both familiar and comfortable with the conventions of the late eighties LA/Sci-Fi sub-genre. If you enjoy this, I also recommend that you check out the Tom Selleck vehicle, "Runaway"; the exploitation favourite, "Trancers"; the similar, although decidedly more cheesy, "Dark Angel"; the deeply amusing valley-girls-vs-zombies comedy, "Night of the Comet" and Steve De Jarnatt's genuinely brilliant Nuclear paranoia shocker, "Miracle Mile".
	Sandbaggers Collection Set 1
	"The Greatest Television Series About The Intelligence Services Ever Made..."	2009-07-08
Five stars doesn't do it justice. This is a full ten point five stars out of a possible five. Created by formal naval intelligence officer, Ian Mackintosh, and broadcast on the UK's ITV channel between September 1978 and July 1980, "The Sandbaggers" set a precedent for television spy dramas that, in my opinion at least, has never been surpassed. Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden) is the director of operations (D-OPS) of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (a thinly disguised analogue of "MI6" - the real life security services department given purview to counter threats to national security from outside the UK). Burnside is the head of a team of highly trained covert intelligence officers, nicknamed "Sandbaggers", whose job it is to undertake missions of a politically sensitive nature ranging from securing the successful defection of players from "the other side" through to coercion, rescues and even assassination; to "sandbag" in the colloquial English vernacular has a dual meaning - it means to "stonewall", "hide" or "deceive through the means of deception, obfuscation or omission" and it also means to "shore up the defences" or "protect from harm" - in these capacities the three man team certainly live up to both interpretations of their given title. However, if you think you're in for the usual cod-James-Bond antics, let me assure that this series is a far more complex, adult and subtle examination of what it is to be a spy. The entire onus of this series is on the machinations of the players in the corridors of power rather than on the details of the missions themselves. The detail with which Mackintosh renders the Machiavellian goings on between the foreign office, the cabinet, parliament and domestic and foreign intelligence services, as well as his frankly stunning insight into the hierarchy of the British intelligence community has led many to wonder - myself included - whether we were actually being treated to a privileged insider's view from a man who had actually been a player in John Le Carre's legendary "circus" himself. Mackintosh's mysterious disappearance part way through the writing of the third series have led many to conclude that maybe he let on more than was wise. I recommend the excellent wikipedia entry on this mysterious author for those who are interested in the notion of government conspiracies. Being that this was a television production made in 1978 by a UK television channel (there were only three at the time), the majority of these stories are shot on video tape in studio bound sets with only the odd filmed insert here and there. I implore you not to let the low production values put you off though. Pound for pound, this is one of the most intelligent, well-acted and frankly breath-takingly brilliant series ever to drip out of the cathode ray tube. Roy Marsden is by turns touching, terrifying and tenacious as the steely Neil Burnside - a man so completely devoted to and controlled by his job that he virtually lives in his office on a diet of Coca-Cola (he can't risk being drunk), cigarettes and dossiers. Similarly Ray Lonnen's turn as Willy Caine, the veteran "Sandbagger 1", is a masterclass in quiet understatement. Bar Rupert Everett, Lonnen really is the greatest Bond that we never had. British soap fans should also keep an eye out for a turn by gay activist and current Member of the European Parliament, Michael Cashman, in the second and third series. Two final recommendations for those who are interested: 1) If you possess a multi-region DVD player, I suggest that you save yourself a few dollars and pick up Network's excellent compendium boxed set of all three series on Amazon.co.uk (it will cost you substantially less than buying the three series individually on Amazon.com). After all, who doesn't need to save a few bucks in these cash-strapped times? 2) If you read comic books, and any of the above sounds remotely familiar, a certain Greg Rucka used this series as the template for his brilliant "Queen And Country" comics and novels. By his own admission, Rucka considers "Queen And Country" to be a sequel to this most spectacular of Television dramas.
	Punisher Born (Punisher)
	"Semper Fi..."	2009-02-28
`The Punisher' was created for Marvel comics by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru in 1974, largely as an extremely canny way of cashing in on the zeitgeist of 'vigilante justice' films which were tearing up the US box office in the early seventies. Frank Castle, The Punisher, is a former marine and Vietnam veteran who, after surviving a disastrous mob-hit in Central Park which slaughters his family, begins waging a one man war against New York's criminal underworld. He is organised, ruthless and completely unrepentant in the way that he goes about eradicating his targets. BORN, by Garth Ennis, is an origin story of the kind that Hollywood would never dare bring to the big-screen. It is 1971, and, prior to the tragic events which are to shape his life so irrevocably in New York, Frank Castle is captain of 'Firebase Valley Forge' - a remote American infantry outpost on the Vietnamese/Cambodian border which is falling into dissolution and is under constant threat of destruction or occupation by the Vietcong. Castle, with a ruthlessness that prefigures the terrifying focus of his later life, leads his men through jungle Patrols and skirmishes with the enemy until, faced with a situation which sees the 'Firebase' seemingly overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, he is forced to make a decision, the consequences of which will haunt him long after the final bullet has been fired. Narrated primarily through the eyes of a 'still-green' PFC called Stevie Goodwin, this is an excellent four-issue miniseries which completely redefines our understanding of an archetypal protagonist and which pulls absolutely no punches in its depiction of the meat-grinder that was the Vietnam war. It's some of Garth Ennis' strongest writing on the series and its publication within the MAX imprint allows him to explore its adult themes to the utmost degree. Darick Robertson's splash-pages depicting the aftermath of the battle of Valley Forge are lurid works of Grand Guignol genius which linger in the memory long after the final page has been turned. Highly Recommended reading for both old fans and those who are unfamiliar with the character.
	Punisher: Born HC (Punisher)
	"Semper Fi..."	2009-02-28
`The Punisher' was created for Marvel comics by Gerry Conway, John Romita Sr. and Ross Andru in 1974, largely as an extremely canny way of cashing in on the zeitgeist of 'vigilante justice' films which were tearing up the US box office in the early seventies. Frank Castle, The Punisher, is a former marine and Vietnam veteran who, after surviving a disastrous mob-hit in Central Park which slaughters his family, begins waging a one man war against New York's criminal underworld. He is organised, ruthless and completely unrepentant in the way that he goes about eradicating his targets. BORN, by Garth Ennis, is an origin story of the kind that Hollywood would never dare bring to the big-screen. It is 1971, and, prior to the tragic events which are to shape his life so irrevocably in New York, Frank Castle is captain of 'Firebase Valley Forge' - a remote American infantry outpost on the Vietnamese/Cambodian border which is falling into dissolution and is under constant threat of destruction or occupation by the Vietcong. Castle, with a ruthlessness that prefigures the terrifying focus of his later life, leads his men through jungle Patrols and skirmishes with the enemy until, faced with a situation which sees the 'Firebase' seemingly overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers, he is forced to make a decision, the consequences of which will haunt him long after the final bullet has been fired. Narrated primarily through the eyes of a 'still-green' PFC called Stevie Goodwin, this is an excellent four-issue miniseries which completely redefines our understanding of an archetypal protagonist and which pulls absolutely no punches in its depiction of the meat-grinder that was the Vietnam war. It's some of Garth Ennis' strongest writing on the series and its publication within the MAX imprint allows him to explore its adult themes to the utmost degree. Darick Robertson's splash-pages depicting the aftermath of the battle of Valley Forge are lurid works of Grand Guignol genius which linger in the memory long after the final page has been turned. Highly Recommended reading for both old fans and those who are unfamiliar with the character.
	Nite Owl Dark Roast - (Size 10oz Can)
	"That Sound You Heard..."	2009-02-27
...Was Alan Moore's head exploding with frustration in Northampton. Is there nothing that the shills in Hollywood won't market to try and turn a quick buck? Well, apparently they missed a trick with the 'Schindler's List' commemorative 'Amon Goeth replica sniping rifle' - but that's about it. Absolutely disgraceful.
	The Rage and The Pride
	"Requiem For Oriana"	2009-02-27
Oriana Fallaci was a controversial Italian journalist, author, cultural commentator and polemicist up until her death from breast cancer in 2006; a native of Tuscany, she had witnessed her father tortured by Mussolini's black-shirts and had fought in the resistance whilst barely more than a child. As an adult, she traveled extensively in the middle-east and was highly regarded for her reportage of various conflicts and world events, as well as numerous interviews with the likes of the Dalai Lama, Yasser Arafat and Ayatollah Khomeini. Her disgust with what she saw as the corruption of Italian ideals eventually led her to refute her status as a public figure and seek exile in New York. It is the attacks of September 11th on New York city that were to act as the crucible from which 'The Rage And The Pride' was to be forged. Written in the two weeks after the attack, apparently in a period which saw her forego sleep and food, Fallaci's `sermon' (her words) is an excoriating, bilious attack on the ideals of fundamentalist Islam and its insidious infiltration into European life at the hands of politicians, intellectuals and commentators more obsessed with political correctness and their own careers than the protection of their electorate's freedoms and civil rights. Fallaci dubs these politicians, intellectuals and commentators, `Cicadas' and is completely unrepentant in her hatred and disdain for them. However, her absolute hatred is reserved for the adepts of Islam who, she argues, are attempting to engineer a global caliphate by altering the demographic make-up of Europe and the West through mass, state-supported immigration. At least, statistically, demographic projections would seem to bear out her theory - within the next twenty to fifty years, due to an aging indigenous population, low indigenous birth rates, and a fertile immigrant population, countries like Spain, Italy and France stand a very good chance of having a majority Muslim population. However, Fallaci's book is by no means a dispassionate analysis of the situation. If you're looking for that, you'd be better off reading a book like While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within. Be under no illusions, this is not journalism, this is the passionate polemic of a dying, angry woman (Fallaci was well aware that her breast cancer was probably terminal at the time of the book's writing) who has witnessed the spread of fundamentalist Islam throughout the middle-east, and who is disgusted at what she sees as the betrayals of the western ideals of tolerance, feminism, art, love and culture, written in the kind of unapologetic, blunt invective that will have the politically correct apologists running for shelter and crying racism - an erroneous accusation at best, because, as Fallaci points out herself, `Islam is not a race, it is an ideology'. This is an important book, possibly one of the most important books of the early 21st century, because it is unafraid to externalise the thoughts that many in the West are too afraid or consider too unpalatable to be faced. Fallaci herself considered the book to be a 'scream of anger' designed to awaken the world and considered it's message to be so important and so personal that, rather than risk it's message being lost or softened by the translation of a third party, she translated the book from Italian to English herself - thus retaining the unique cadences of her Tuscan upbringing. This does make the book more uniquely personal. As one who is familiar with the delicious quirks, nuances and cadences of the Tuscan female attempting to speak English, I could quite clearly "hear" her voice whilst reading it. I urge you to read it. It is very short - I myself read it in one two hour sitting - and beautifully written. You may not agree with all of Fallaci's opinions, her politics, her choice of words or her polemic, but this is a book that needs to be read due to the questions that it provokes and because it was written by an extremely brave woman who was both sufficiently experienced and uniquely placed to raise them.
	The Boondock Saints [Blu-ray]
	"Shamrocks And Shenanigans (Contains Spoilers)"	2009-02-22
Alternative title - 'Garth Ennis: The Movie'. I thoroughly enjoyed this off-beat indie gem, even though it looked like it had been badly chopped about in places (Willem Dafoe's conversion to the brother's cause in particular seemed a tad too speedy to be convincing and smacked of the dreaded 'studio interference') and the "reconstruction of the murder scene" device was probably used one time more than it needed to be. That said, how can you not love a film which features a gay FBI genius who smacks his sexual conquests for trying to snuggle, murder by flying toilet, Russian mobsters having their arses set on fire, the accidental and gratuitous murder of a cat (wrong, but funny), Billy Connolly as an insane gunman and cameos by Ron Jeremy and Jeanna Fine? It's a pity that director Troy Duffy has apparently royally stuffed up his chances of ever making another movie due to his clashes with the Weinsteins as he'd have made a great 'Punisher' movie given half the chance. Then again that idea is probably redundant as, lets be honest, he sort of did it with this film anyway.
	Moonraker
	"Reach For The Sky, Mr Bond..."	2009-02-22
The third James Bond novel - and the only one to be set solely within the UK - entertained me no end. If you're only familiar with the cinematic incarnations of the character, you've done yourself a major disservice as Fleming's character is far more fascinating than any of his onscreen renderings; he's far more human, fatalistic and vulnerable and frankly all the more interesting for it. In this outing, Bond finds himself drawn into the gravitational field of infamous self-made business magnate and card cheat, Hugo Drax (who is a very different character from the one portrayed by the inscrutable Michel Lonsdale in the film), whose guided 'Moonraker' missile is the talk of austerity England, following the deaths of a number of employees at his rocket plant. From then on we're into a tantalising detective story. The more astute thriller readers amongst you, like I, will probably guess the nature of Drax' plans and identity from the start. That said, the joy of these novels is their execution and this really does not disappoint. Whether he's describing a high stakes card game or a high speed car chase from London to the coast, Fleming is never anything less than a brilliant writer who knows how to tweak a reader's nerve and compel them to turn a page.
	Moonraker
	"Reach For The Sky, Mr Bond..."	2009-02-22
The third James Bond novel - and the only one to be set solely within the UK - entertained me no end. If you're only familiar with the cinematic incarnations of the character, you've done yourself a major disservice as Fleming's character is far more fascinating than any of his onscreen renderings; he's far more human, fatalistic and vulnerable and frankly all the more interesting for it. In this outing, Bond finds himself drawn into the gravitational field of infamous self-made business magnate and card cheat, Hugo Drax (who is a very different character from the one portrayed by the inscrutable Michel Lonsdale in the film), whose guided 'Moonraker' missile is the talk of austerity England, following the deaths of a number of employees at his rocket plant. From then on we're into a tantalising detective story. The more astute thriller readers amongst you, like I, will probably guess the nature of Drax' plans and identity from the start. That said, the joy of these novels is their execution and this really does not disappoint. Whether he's describing a high stakes card game or a high speed car chase from London to the coast, Fleming is never anything less than a brilliant writer who knows how to tweak a reader's nerve and compel them to turn a page.
	Moonraker
	"Reach For The Sky, Mr Bond..."	2009-02-22
The third James Bond novel - and the only one to be set solely within the UK - entertained me no end. If you're only familiar with the cinematic incarnations of the character, you've done yourself a major disservice as Fleming's character is far more fascinating than any of his onscreen renderings; he's far more human, fatalistic and vulnerable and frankly all the more interesting for it. In this outing, Bond finds himself drawn into the gravitational field of infamous self-made business magnate and card cheat, Hugo Drax (who is a very different character from the one portrayed by the inscrutable Michel Lonsdale in the film), whose guided 'Moonraker' missile is the talk of austerity England, following the deaths of a number of employees at his rocket plant. From then on we're into a tantalising detective story. The more astute thriller readers amongst you, like I, will probably guess the nature of Drax' plans and identity from the start. That said, the joy of these novels is their execution and this really does not disappoint. Whether he's describing a high stakes card game or a high speed car chase from London to the coast, Fleming is never anything less than a brilliant writer who knows how to tweak a reader's nerve and compel them to turn a page.