The Book Of Mormon review

The Book Of Mormon, Trey Parker and Matt Stone's broadway behemoth, arrives in London under the stormcloud of controvery which follows the SouthPark creators wherever they go. The show's depiction of a poverty-striken Ugandan village being saved by two white missionaries has drawn the wrath of its left-leaning attendees, while conservative voices have risen in characteristic fury to denounce the mocking of white religious righteousness.

  

Review: Sightseers

FILM REVIEW 
   

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.

SIGHTSEERS

Dir: Ben Wheatley

Stars: Alice Lowe, Steve Oram, Eileen Davies, Richard Glover

Running Time: 88 mins
  

In a year where Great Britain has been celebrated by its Queen's jubilee, a successful Olympics and the fiftieth anniversary of its greatest cinematic icon, there's something gleefully appropriate about the year's final show of national identity tearing the pomposity and circumstance down into the mud. Brits often cite self-deprecation as a shared characteristic, and Sightseers is a movie which delights in pettiness rather than pagentry, a nation of grumblers as frustrated by manners, history and the countryside as they are in love with them.

In America, social rebellion has been given a glamourous veneer by such movies as Natural Born Killers or Bonnie And Clyde, perpetuating a myth of the heroic outlaw originating in the tales of the Old West. Britain has its romantic ideals too, but places as much value in subverting as championing them: in a year where Judi Dench's recital of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses' provided a moment of unashamedly thrilling patriotism, Ben Wheatley's use of Blake's 'Jersualem' over a man beating a fellow rambler to death following an argument about dog excrement becomes all the more perfect.

 

Call Of Duty: Black Ops II launch event report (via Hit-Reset)

Last night, I attended the London launch party for Call Of Duty: Black Ops II. You can read my full report over at Hit-Reset, which includes impressions of the game's multiplayer modes in addition to INSIDER GOSSIP on why rapper Professor Green is a distinctly ungallant loser, the career change Olympic gymnast Louis Smith would consider if offered £50k a year by Chris Kamara, and what craziness adorned the loo walls. All that and more in this week's Hello Magazine!

Sorry, I meant at the link below. Easy mistake to make.

Read the full report here

Regular blog updates to end

Out of the gate, thanks to everyone who read the blog during my Countdown To 007 feature. A new Bond movie is always a matter of enormous excitement for me and it's wonderful being able to share that passion with fellow fans. A particular shout out to Silent Hunter, who was commenting every step of the way!

Unfortunately it's a little bittersweet, as Skyfall's release was decided a short while back as the finishing line for my regularly updating the blog. (Hence the recent lack of television coverage). I've been writing here as often as possible for the past year and a half and have enjoyed some proud moments along the way - particularly the serialised publication of my full length action thriller, Dead Drop - but changing circumstances mean the time commitment required has become too great to continue for the foreseeable future. I'll still update every now and again with links to noteworthy work produced for other sites, but anything exclusive is going to be thin on the ground. Everything will stay where it is, meaning the blog will effectively become an archive for my work from here on out.

I'd like to offer my gratitude to all the blog's visitors since the first post in April 2011. It has been great fun to write and hopefully just as enjoyable to read. I'll miss being part of the conversation when Breaking Bad concludes next year (and Mad Men the year after), as getting reader feedback on my previous analyses was always a pleasure. Yes, even you, spam. Well, maybe not. My Twitter and Facebook accounts will stay open should anyone wish to get in touch or need a freelance entertainment writer for hire, but as far as the blog goes for now, it's so long, and thanks for all the fish. Follow the jump for a selection of my favourite articles and features.

  

Retrospective: Ran (1985)

[An earlier version of this article was originally published on Flixist]

Ahead of an announcement tomorrow on this blog's future, I thought now would be a good time to pay tribute to a masterpiece of world cinema, a movie both intensely personal to its director and grander in scope than any before or since. For me, as a teenager sitting down to watch it on a cheap television in a boarding school common room reeking of various substances I didn't want to think about, it opened my eyes and mind to the majestic heights cinema could achieve under the limitless artistry of an old man looking through his camera at a world so much darker than he remembered it from his youth.

That man was Akira Kurosawa. His movie, his magnum opus, is Ran.

 

Movies: Skyfall review

FILM REVIEW 
   

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.

SKYFALL

Dir: Sam Mendes

Stars: Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw

Running Time: 143 mins

This review will be spoiler-free, making it one of the hardest I've ever had to write. Not only because I'm a Bond nerd of unhealthy magnitude, no doubt demonstrated by the Countdown To 007 feature running on this blog for the past nine days, but because many of Skyfall's biggest joys come from its celebration and repositioning of a fifty year cinematic legacy. That's not to suggest there isn't plenty for non-devotees to enjoy as well: these days, Bond follows the trend of the times, and the movie's central set-piece offers a very British take on The Dark Knight's formula for sprawling urban epics, before moving to the remote highlands for a climactic showdown which blends the 'Englishman's home is his castle' ethos of Straw Dogs with a strong nods to Ian Fleming's Spy Who Loved Me novel.

Those calling Skyfall a 'classic' Bond are wide of the mark, however. It is unlike any other entry in the series, driven by theme rather than plot and with a distinct identity to its visuals, soundtrack and direction. The Bond series' deliberate visual uniformity has given it a reputation as a no man's land for technical artists, but Skyfall is very much the amalgamated product of Sam Mendes' character-driven theatrical background, Roger Deakins' stunning use of colour and composition, and Thomas Newman's subtly evocative score. For the first time since the early Connery era, the people behind the camera represent top tier talent operating at the height of their powers, and it shows in every gorgeous frame.

  

Countdown To 007: Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace

This Countdown comes to an end with Daniel Craig's two Bond movies under the microscope ahead of his third outing, Skyfall, released tomorrow in the UK and on November 9th in the US. The actor's powerhouse performance in Casino Royale was undermined by a big stumble in the under-developed, poorly shot Quantum Of Solace, and it will certainly be interesting to see whether the right lessons have been learnt. For all the untidness of the movie as a whole, there's real potential in some of Quantum's individual ideas and while Skyfall won't be taking them up, fingers crossed that future Bonds make the most of them.

My review of Bond's twenty-third outing will be going up tomorrow. Don't miss it.

  

Countdown To 007: The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day

The World Is Not Enough and Die Another Day represent Bond as endurance rather than entertainment: the former has some merits but is undermined by messy pacing and tiresome action sequences, while the latter drags the series to its lowest point to date. A shame, because despite the underwhelming quality of both movies, Pierce Brosnan does some of his best work.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak and I go through the series one by one. The feature ends tomorrow with a look at Daniel Craig's two movies, before finding out on Friday whether his third time will be a charm for him as it was for Sean Connery and Roger Moore.

  

Countdown To 007: Licence To Kill, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies

My Countdown To 007 introduces another new Bond today after Timothy Dalton departs in one of the series' most contentious entries. Licence To Kill is a personal favourite of mine, drawing more inspiration from Fleming than many detractors give it credit for and featuring an outstanding performance from the lead man. When Pierce Brosnan took over six years later, his run in the role was a mixed bag but his opening movie, Goldeneye, was a perfect reintroduction to the character after the series was put on hiatus by legal troubles at parent studio MGM.

These write-ups have been republished from Flixist's ongoing Across The Bond feature, where fellow Bond nerd Matthew Razak (defiantly anti-Dalton) and I go through the series one by one. The feature will look at Brosnan's two remaining movies tomorrow, then Craig's two on Thursday before the Skyfall review on Friday.

  

Movies: Everything Or Nothing - The Untold Story of 007 review

FILM REVIEW 
   

Review Scoring Chart - 10: Masterpiece; 9: Outstanding; 8: Very Good; 7: Good; 6: Above Average; 5: Average; 4: Below Average; 3: Bad; 2: Awful; 1: Reprehensible; 0: Non-Functional.

EVERYTHING OR NOTHING: THE UNTOLD STORY OF 007

Dir: Stevan Riley

Stars: Daniel Craig, Barbara Broccoli, Pierce Brosnan, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton

Running Time: 98 mins
  
Running at a touch over an hour and a half, some might suspect Everything Or Nothing to be a glorified DVD extra given undue prominence and a limited UK release due to 2012 being the character's 50th anniversary year. The unconvincing 'recreation' with which the movie starts, featuring a faceless Bond figure getting dressed in black tie and loading a PPK, doesn't do much to convince otherwise, even with Daniel Craig's voiceover reminding us how the series has proven to its doubters a nasty habit of surviving against the odds. Then it cuts to a gunbarrel sequence where all six Bonds turn to fire at once in what will surely be the nerdgasm moment of the year, and its cinematic validity is proven beyond a doubt.

If anything, it's a surprise the documentary hasn't had greater exposure, given the producer credits for Simon Chinn and John Battsek, two of the most acclaimed figures working in the genre. Whilst largely a collection of talking heads, Everything Or Nothing may not quite be an 'untold story' for most serious fans, but extracts candid confessionals from its stars and for more casual Bond viewers will be a fascinating insight into the turbulent development of the longest running movie series in history.