By Joseph Viney
Following on directly from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009), the second film in the trilogy of adaptations of Steig Larsson’s best-selling juggernaut Millennium tries to recapture the magic of the first film. Unfortunately, The Girl Who Played With Fire has many apparent short falls that will only serve to leave audiences distinctly unfulfilled. However, the appetite for the imminent third part of the trilogy will have not been affected whatsoever.
By Marty Mulrooney
12 (Twelve) is a British martial arts movie directed by Chee Keong Cheung. Originally released in 2007 as Underground, it tells the story of twelve fighters from a variety of backgrounds, all competing in an illegal fighting tournament for a prize of £500,000. Low budget but made with professional input (the fight scenes were apparently put together by renowned fight choreographer David Forman, who has worked on such films as Clash Of The Titans and Batman Begins), 12 (Twelve) also features a wide range of British martial artists/actors, giving it slightly more pedigree, on paper at least, than your average shot-on-a-shoestring-budget action flick.
Filed under Film
By John Fanning (Guest Writer)
Tamara Drewe, based on Posy Simmonds’ Guardian comic strip and graphic novel of the same name, is the latest in what looks to be an interminable line of films making the jump from glossy page to screen. It’s not your usual adaptation though: this one may as well have been called “A Romp in the Country”. With a plot loosely derived from Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd, Stephen Frears’ (High Fidelity, The Queen) latest offering is a bourgeois bonkfest.
Filed under Film
By Elena Cresci
Geekdom has expected big things from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Adapted from the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O’Malley, the film is director Edgar Wright’s first outing on the big screen without his Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz co-conspirators, and oh my, what an outing it is. Wright is the master of making the ordinary extraordinary. In much the same way as the characters of Spaced’s lives were given dramatic treatment befitting the big screen, Scott Pilgrim’s precious little life is treated with all the gusto, pizzazz and point systems of beloved old-school videogames. Simon Pegg even tweeted that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is ‘the closest thing you will ever see to a third series of Spaced’.
Martin Mulrooney
Guest/Previous
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