You don’t really hold out much hope for a flopped prequel you picked up from a bargain bin. And it was one that has a troubled history at that. Two very different versions of the movie were made after the studio decided that there was not nearly enough action in the first.… Read the rest
Unlike Spiderman 3 – which I had seen the day before – Pirates 3 lives up to its predecessors. But before I start singing its praises, I should get the negatives out of the way. First of all, it suffers from the same delusion most blockbusters do: it thinks that you can never get enough of frantic action and things blowing up real good.… Read the rest
Set ’em up, knock ’em down. In Severance, a group of colleagues from an English weapons manufacturing company head to a far off, woody region for a teambuilding exercise and naturally get stranded there. Then one-by-one they start to get offed in horrible ways, for reasons I won’t spoil here.… Read the rest
Spiderman – with Extra Cheese. The story: Parker, Osborn and Watson work through their issues with each other while Sandman and Venom get on their case.
I had heard a lot of bad things about Spiderman 3, but still I could not conceive that the same people who made the good first Spiderman movie and the great second one, could make a really mediocre film.… Read the rest
Never let it be said that I am not right on the ball when it comes to my knowledge of comics. It is only slightly over a decade after publication that I read some of Kurt Busiek’s legendary Astro City stories.… Read the rest
It is one of the basic kids’ fantasies: things coming to life when no one is watching, except – in this case – one bewildered bystander. And the idea of a museum where the exhibits suddenly become animated, is an interesting one – if not a new one.… Read the rest
With much bombast, 300 tells the story of Leonidas of Sparta, who defends his city from the invading Persian forces, led by the evil boo-hiss Xerxes. Like Sin City, the look of the film is heavily based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller, the master of stylised grit.… Read the rest
Ah, so there’s this guy who sells his soul to the Devil and ends up riding around on a motorbike with a flaming skull for a head, you say? Sounds a bit daft, no? Apparently not to Nicolas Cage who had been hell-bent (*snigger*) on portraying one of Marvel’s more conceptually challenged heroes for quite some time.… Read the rest
Only a small percentage of communication is done through words. Most meaning is transmitted by the way we say things – inflection, tone – and through body language. Unfortunately, this body talk is a lot more open to interpretation, on both the sending and the receiving side and can get confusing if people come from different cultures.… Read the rest
Working in a bookstore, you regularly come across books that make you raise a quizzical eyebrow. We’re not only talking about vague or flaky books here – like the dubious, but very successful conspiracy book about reptiles secretly taking over the earth – but also morally suspect material.… Read the rest
