Hey guys! I’m back again for a final deep dive into my favourite television series. Check this out for easter eggs, observations, and my general gushing over how great this series is.
Continue reading “Small Details: Better Call Saul Season 6, Part 2”Minimalist Moments: Fantastic Mr Fox
Wes Anderson’s filmography is chock full of classic soundtracks, and the director often uses sound to convey mood in a scene rather than spoken dialogue. A few great examples include Elliot Smith’s Needle in the Hay in The Royal Tenenbaums, Sigur Ros’ Staralfur in Steve Zissou and the Life Aquatic and The Who’s ‘A Quick One While He’s Away’ in Rushmore. While I might get round to analysing some of those examples in future editions of this series, for now I’ll be focusing on Anderson’s finest animated caper (Isle of Dogs was entertaining, but it wasn’t in the same league as this).
Continue reading “Minimalist Moments: Fantastic Mr Fox”The Millennium Trilogy: Extended Editions
Three films. Nearly nine hours in one sitting. Was it worth it? Yes. People gave Hornet’s Nest a lot of flack because of its slower pacing, but I still think it stands up well. Larsson’s books were largely responsible for introducing me to crime noir and a teenager, and the high quality of his prose is reflected in these three adaptations. Read on for some rough commentary notes for Dragon Tattoo (and some very rough ramblings for the other two, by which point I’d lost the energy for taking detailed, coherent notes).
Continue reading “The Millennium Trilogy: Extended Editions”Review: Nope
The Western is a chameleonic beast. While the genre started off on the page with penny dreadfuls, it quickly expanded to the silver screen with the John Ford and Sergio Leone classics that have come to define its most popular examples today. Yet the genre has expanded far beyond the confines of deserts, sixguns and cowboys. Take a quick glance at the Wikipedia page for the Western and you’ll find a grand total of 29 sub-genres, including the Greek Western, the Ramen Western, and the Weird Western. The author Will Wright, in Sixguns and Society, summarises these archetypal narratives as ‘a lone stranger who ides into a troubled town and cleans it up, winning the respect of the townsfolk and the love of the schoolmarm’.
Continue reading “Review: Nope”Review: The Sandman
With 75 issues to condense, adapting Neil Gaiman’s revered dark fantasy series was never going to be easy. Numerous attempts to bring the author’s lavish dreamscapes to life in film have been aborted, including a Warner Bros project with Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached. As Gaiman (who, thankfully, was directly involved in the show’s development) has noted, the silver screen doesn’t provide viewers with the necessary breadth to stage his material, which follows the trials of the anthropomorphic Dream/Morpheus as he is accidentally captured by occultist Roderick Burgess, played with sardonic brilliance by Charles Dance (it’s pretty difficult to imagine Dance playing a wholesome character after Game of Thrones, and he certainly doesn’t break the mould here). Escaping after 100 years, Dream wreaks revenge on his captors then seeks out the stolen items (a ruby, helm and a pouch of sand) that provide him with his full powers.
Continue reading “Review: The Sandman”