At Shore Leave over the weekend I was asked by some friends what I thought about Disney’s Christopher Robin film, which comes out next month. They knew I’m a Winnie-the-Pooh fan, and they were sure I would have an opinion. I’m not sure it was the opinion they expected. Christopher Robin is live action/CGI hybrid, … Continue reading Misgivings on Christopher Robin
Category: Film
Last week the news broke that Fox is working on a film adaptation of Spamalot, the musical by Eric Idle based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’ve wanted a film adaptation of Spamalot for a while now. I wrote on TrekBBS a year ago, “I’d have preferred it ten years ago with the … Continue reading Spamalot: The Movie, Coming Our Way in 2020
Today, Warner Bros.’ Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, an animated film in which a Gilded Age Batman battles Jack the Ripper, is available for download, followed by a DVD and Blu-Ray release a week and a half later. The film made its world debut at the Newseum in Washington, DC on January 12th, and I was … Continue reading Batman: Gotham By Gaslight
As was my Halloween tradition, last night I watched a Dracula movie, specifically Hammer’s Dracula Has Risen from the Dead. The fourth film in Hammer’s Dracula series, and the third that starred Christopher Lee as Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave sees Christopher Lee’s Dracula seek his revenge on a monsignor who had traveled … Continue reading Dracula In Space
On Monday Warner Bros. dropped a new trailer for Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to Blade Runner, starring Ryan Gosling and, reprising his role as Rick Deckard, Harrison Ford. To say that I’m looking forward to this film is an understatement. It’s quite possibly the film I am most anticipating this year, edging out even Justice League. (For … Continue reading Things Were Simpler Then
With Disney’s recent announcement that the fifth Indiana Jones film is due out in July 2020, I decided I should revisit the last Indiana Jones film, 2008’s The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Crystal Skull has a reputation of being a bad film — an over-reliance on CGI effects, a nonsensical story, “nuking the fridge,” … Continue reading Revisiting the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
In the mid-90s I bought an audiobook read by John Hurt. The book was Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I found the cassette one day at Big Lots, along with some others (Ian Fleming’s “The Living Daylights,” read by Anthony Valentine; Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Adventure of the … Continue reading John Hurt, a Reminisence
Last night I watched Love Actually for the first time. I’ve had it on DVD since forever — I bought pre-owned from the EB Games store I managed back in 2005; I still had the price stickers with the date we took it back in trade inside the case — and I’ve never watched it. … Continue reading Love Actually: Watching the Film for the First Time
On Halloween, I usually watch a Dracula movie or two. Sometimes I’ve watched the classic Universal Dracula or one of its sequels. Last year, I watched the first Hammer Dracula film, Horror of Dracula, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. In the run-up to Halloween, I couldn’t decide which one I’d put in the DVD … Continue reading Batman Vs. Dracula
Last year Mark Osborne, the director of Kung Fu Panda, released an animated adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella, The Little Prince. The film had been picked up for distribution in the United States by Paramount for earlier in the year. I had seen Paramount’s trailer for the film, and I was captivated by it. … Continue reading The Little Prince
With Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice out next month, The Atlantic takes a look at Superman’s history and asks whether or not DC Comics and Warner Bros. understand how and why the character works. It’s not a spoiler to say that the article’s conclusion is that sometimes they do, but that mostly they don’t. … Continue reading The Meaning of Superman
Last night after work I went to see The Peanuts Movie, the new CGI animated film based on Charles Schulz’s characters. I had tracked this movie pretty carefully over the last year and a half, from the first trailer to the second, and last month I even read the kids novelization. The Peanuts Movie is … Continue reading The Peanuts Movie