Sweeping Strings

Serenity - it's not often that the fan outcry over a show being cancelled after one season leads to a 'wrap-up' movie being greenlit ... but so it proved with Firefly, Joss Whedon's first post-Buffy project. This stays true to the show's spirit whilst taking advantage of the bigger budget available (hiring Chiwetel Ejiofor as the bad guy, for example).

Smithwicks Pale Ale and Lech lager.

Ah, of course. Silly me.

I was enjoying Can You Hear Me? up until the bad-guy 'gods' were dealt with really rather easily so the last 10 minutes of the episode could be spent on a mental health awareness lecture, part of which was the Doctor having nothing to say to Graham about his fears that his cancer may return one day ... our kindly, empathetic, 'never cruel or cowardly' hero has absolutely no words of comfort for her companion? Terrible writing. Orphan 55 was mostly fine up until the climate-change 'soapboxing'. Praxeus made me think of how much better The Green Death was at including eco concerns without losing sight of how it should primarily be an exciting and fun sci-fi adventure.

It's an acronym of the thread title and I think the OF in brackets might be for 'Or Films'. I seem to remember Richard/NOF previously stating his dislike of the Nolan Batmans, so him watching 2 of them again is curious.

I recorded The Square recently from the UK's Film 4 channel, haven't gotten around to watching it yet. I liked the sound of it (the pretension, hypocrisy etc of the contemporary art world surely makes it a ripe satirical target) whilst also wondering about its 2-and-a-half-hour running time ... that's long for a comedy.

Stir Crazy + Coming To America ... one of the leads in the first (Richard Pryor) 'blazed the trail' for the lead in the second (Eddie Murphy), I guess you could say. Suspect both films had more impact in their day, but still a decent amount of chuckles to be gleaned from both.

That bit I put about keeping WB happy; I'd forgotten about the diminished box-office returns, parental backlash against BR containing 'inappropriate content' for their precious little darlings ... and by extension, McDs scrapping their Happy Meal tie-in. Cue Schumacher, Kilmer, Clooney, O'Donnell etc and a move back towards 60s camp.

You'll not find a lot of those in the Tory party.

Batman Returns - can't be too many superhero summer blockbusters that begin with a 'freak' baby in a crib being flung into a river by its parents ... at Christmas. But so it is with this, in which Tim Burton does enough on the expected action and spectacle front to keep the WB 'suits' happy to allow him to indulge his 'gallery of grotesques' approach more than in the first film, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito (possibly having even more fun than Jack Nicholson) as Catwoman and The Penguin, and not forgetting Christopher Walken as crooked Gotham businessman Max Schreck (named after the actor who played Nosferatu in the classic silent vampire movie).

So how come its satirical shows (HIGNFY, Mock The Week, The Mash Report, Frankie Boyle's New World Order to name but four ... and more on the radio channels) are almost completely liberal-left? The Beeb seems to be 'Schrodinger's broadcaster' ... accused both of being a Govt mouthpiece AND of being ran by 'woke' lefties.

Ir's one of those 007 pre-credit sequences that you could show somebody who'd never seen Bond before and they would get the gist totally ... there's action, some stealthy 'spycraft', flippant humour, a hair's-breadth escape, the destruction of a facility and cheerfully outrageous stunts. The only thing he doesn't do is have sex.

Legal issues had kept Bond off-screen for 6 years ... opinion at the time had it that with the end of the Cold War and the advent of political correctness, he was an anachronism with no place in the 90s. GE proved that wrong.

Well ... each to their own I guess but for me Skyfall is easily Craig's best Bond, the best in the series since Goldeneye and one of the series' finest entries overall.

Once Upon A Time In Mexico - more 'south of the border' action funtimes in this Desperado sequel, this time with the addition of the likes of Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe to the cast. As entertaining as the first. Coogan's Bluff - crime drama with Clint Eastwood as an Arizona deputy sheriff sent to New York to bring back a wanted man. Much humour is mined from the clash of Coogan (he walks around in cowboy hat and boots and 'bootlace' tie and in a running gag is continually mistaken for a Texan) with NY's late 60s hippy culture (although it must be said the 'free love' side of it seems to suit him just fine, lol). It's not as action-orientated as the Dirty Harry flicks, but there is a pretty decent bar brawl and an excellent closing motorbike chase.