Posted by Chunk in Featured, Film, On Current Release | 0 comments

The great 3D fad

As my little review shows, I loved Avatar; I’m grateful in many ways that it was my first 3D experience (my dad’s had been the Robert Zemeckis motion capture Christmas Carol, I think), and on the whole, I think it’s the future of cinema as a whole once the technology has been perfected for the user end – let’s face it, those glasses serve as something of a barrier for the action, and in many ways took me out of it – then there’s the fact that Avatar was so expensive, and most of it, save the beauty shots, weren’t even in 3D…But it’s prompted quite the reaction from Hollywood, as Avatar rakes in close to 1.4 billion USD after five weeks of release.

Posted by Chunk in Featured, Film, General, On Current Release, TV | 0 comments

The Obligatory 2009 round up: Avatar

Being honest, Christmas wasn’t as big of an entertainment disappointment as some people would have you believe, especially if you happen to be British; We had Eddie Izzard performing really quite well in the BBC remake of the day of the triffids, David Tennant bowed out not so gracefully in what surely has to be the longest goodbye in recent TV history, not to mention Doctor Who history – but was seen again on a good number of BBC stations, reading kids bedtime stories, and the not so light hearted Hamlet. We’ll get to all of that shortly, but I think the big thing, at least for me was the viewing of the awesome, utterly brilliant Avatar.

Posted by Chunk in DVD Review, Featured, Film | 2 comments

Star Trek (2009) DVD Review

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been arguing the finer points of Star Wars, and even been mocked for my love of Star Trek; I should clarify that when I say I like Star Trek, I mean I love Star Trek; first episode I ever watched was The city on the edge of forever, and that was it – I was hooked. It’s the single episode that turned me onto the idea that I might just have a good imagination; as I grew, so did my appetite – I feverishly read as much science fiction and fantasy novels as I possibly could, all the comics I could lay my grubby little hands on, until finally I reach this point in my life…A 32 year old man child with a massive desire to work in media instead of any kind of random, everyday job that a normal man might be happy with. My desire for more, my hunger to use my imagination in a creative way came from Star Trek.

It was in that spirit that I paid to see every Star Trek film from the day I was old enough to do so, watch every series no matter how dire it got, dutifully lapping up every tale Brannon Braga, Ron Moore and Jeri Taylor could come up with.

It was this same love, this same yearning for a decent story that kept me in the theatre during the abject failure that was Star Trek: Nemesis, because I loved Star Trek; I loved the universe in which it resided, even more so than Star Wars or even Flash Gordon or Superman, and I kept hoping for the spark of Brilliance that I had seen so many years ago with Gene Roddenberry, and continued through Deep Space Nine and The Next Generation; the thing is, it never happened. The franchise faltered and got old as it was tirelessly squeezed for every penny it was worth, until even I was finally forced to ask if it was worth prolonging the life of the show – was it better to be left with all the fond memories I have thanks to Star Trek?

Paramount, or more pointedly Viacom, I assumed weren’t all that interested in breathing new life into the franchise, in doing something drastic to a 40 year old drama science fiction show – regardless of how much cash flow it generated. I am happy…No, overjoyed to report that I have never been more wrong in my life, and will gladly do so.

Posted by Chunk in Featured, Film | 0 comments

Fight Club: A look back on a modern classic

What do the following films have in common? Alien 3. Se7en, Fight Club, Panic Room, The Curious case of Benjamin Button. Many will notice that three are films that starred Brad Pitt back in the days when he wasn’t just another pretty boy in Hollywood, but the more eagle eyed amongst you will note that while the three you’ve noticed , along with the latter are collaborative efforts with one of my favourite Directors of all time – David Fincher.

If you’re of a certain age, let’s say 32, you’re around the right age to appreciate and even remember three movies that defined the late nineties and emerging 21^st century – Memento, Se7en…And Fight Club. While Christopher Nolan has certainly done well off the back of a film that by any standards a work of genius and artistic vision, Memento is barely considered to be on a par with Fight Club in any way, shape or form; sure, memento is a film that fucks with your head in a way that only a cult leader could, but Fight Club is a film that fucks with your head in a different way; like its elder brother, Fight Club worms its way into the psyche, makes you think about the context of the story. And then combines it with photography and lighting that few men with relatively little experience could master. Very few people could take a story like Chuck Palahniuk’s and visualise it in such a way that would be gratifying to the base instinct of the unthinking, casual film viewer who just digs the violence, and then equally allow the deeper thinking viewer to be immersed in a world that attempts to communicate the banality and futility of modern living. Fight Club is an expression of nihilism on film in its purest form, an expression of anger on the part of the author towards consumerism and established laws that seek to supress and subjugate as opposed to grant the freedom and liberty that people, at least in theory, would and should enjoy – if only they didn’t think about their meagre existence quite so much. Fight Club is, quite simply, David Fincher and Chuck Palahniuk’s lesson to the masses that ignorance is bliss, and an expression of contempt that we as a people are so accepting of our roles and our fates.