My Thumped review of Green Room
How did I forget to blog this? Top contender for movie of the year for me. #link
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Date: May 2016
How did I forget to blog this? Top contender for movie of the year for me. #link
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My 10th hour of interesting sounds for your ears is now streaming on Mixcloud.
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Third-movie syndrome strikes the 'First Class' generation in a bumper-sized movie that's all much ado about nothing. #link
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On Terrence Malick's latest experimental drama. Plus a few words on Hank Williams biopic I Saw The Light. #link
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What an awful, awful film. It doesn't even deserve the effort of an intro. #link
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Well, April went by fast. Too fast to stop and take account, though on review I didn’t achieve that much. I watched a few movies and a bit of wrestling and a lot of anime. I listened to hours of podcasts. I read a whole bunch. I suppose that all adds up to something but right now I couldn’t tell you what.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
What promises to be a high-concept thriller – in which a gang of assassins who employ elaborate Final Destination-style tricks to stage their hits are turned on each other by seemingly trickier forces – doesn’t take long to dissipate into a bland, tension-free surveillance drama that aspires to the paranoiac heights of The Conversation but has to settle for occasional bursts of violence to spike the attention graph.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Now here’s a real treat! Jon Favreau’s take on the Rudyard Kipling tales, as opposed to the boring 1960s Disney cartoon, is a visual feast and an exciting adventure with heart and soul despite being made almost entirely with computers. Shame the kid playing Mowgli is so bad, mind, but that doesn’t detract much from the triumph that is The Jungle Book.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
The title is a misnomer, as in spite of everything the Marvel Cinematic Universe machine will tell you, Captain America: Civil War is not a Captain America movie. It may have the same writer and directors that gave us The Winter Solider, but it’s really a direct sequel in everything but name to the average Avengers: Age of Ultron. Steve Rogers is in it, sure, but no more than any other Avenger. There’s even an argument to be made that the story’s more about Tony Stark than it is about him.
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[The Toxic Avenger](http://letterboxd.com/macdara/film/the-toxic-avenger/):
>It’s The Toxic Avenger! The birth of a franchise that made Troma in the hearts of cult film fans the world over. The film itself is self-aware trash of the highest – or rather, lowest – order, and much smarter than it looks, though probably best enjoyed in a group setting with like-minded genre fiends.
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Long on imagery, short on imagination, Turkish extreme horror Baskin – which pits a dodgy team of cops against a weirdo metaphysical cult in the bowels of an abandoned building – teases Fulci-esque madness amid its references (a dash of Hellraiser, a hint of Martyrs) but rears up when it truly matters, falling on a cop-out climax which only telegraphs that debuting director Can Evrenol didn’t really know how to end it.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Don’t pay so much heed to the critical evisceration: when it’s not being laughably stupid, BvS is far too average to be so calamitously awful.
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Reblogged from my Letterboxd list:
Why can’t Spielberg make movies like this anymore?
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
I can’t get enough of these behind-the-curtain exposes of the politics of US television, and this one comes with the added dimension of being a clash of cultures, in a fashion, between the established but shopworn success story and the edgier underdog getting his due. Granted I think you’d have to be a fan of Conan – or the machinations of late night TV – to get behind the thrust of what Bill Carter has crafted here, but I am so it’s like catnip to me.
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
An initially engrossing report of the tawdry goings-on behind the curtain in the big-time pro wrestling business, Sex, Lies and Headlocks is let down by poor copyediting and shoddy fact-checking that undermines even those stories already widely known to be true (or true-ish, at least). Still, as it’s written with the brisk pace typical of experienced newspaper and magazine hands, it passes as pulpy dirt-dishing entertainment for wrestling fans with a suitable appetite.
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
It seems a bit unfair to review what’s essentially a reference guide to and prospectus for New Japan Pro Wrestling. But it would be just as unfair not to recognise the Voices of Wrestling crew for their tireless, quality work in assembling this multi-purpose yearbook, at once a ‘who’s who’ guide for newbies and a deep-dive nerd-out for hardcore fans.
It’s as exhaustive a report on NJPW as you’re gonna find, even if I think applying statistical analysis to wrestling is a bit much (adopts Kevin Nash voice You know this shit’s fake, right?). It only really loses marks for the formatting: a serif font at a standard size (swapping out to a different book requires resizing the text) would be easier to read.
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Reblogged from my Goodreads list:
Clever wrestling references, now? And not just superficial ones, either? Vaughan and Staples know just what I like.
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So I took a week off as I was feeling tired and uninspired. When that happens I go back to the oldies, and EHR #9 is the result.
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