sci-fi
X-Men: First ClassTuesday, 31 May 2011![]() If there's one thing Hollywood hates more than people bootlegging its latest blockbusters on mobile phones, it's letting a lucrative franchise go to waste. Thus, after the initial three X-Men films and 2009's Wolverine spin-off, you are invited to... Read more... |
Attack the BlockThursday, 12 May 2011![]() Several years ago the film career of Simon Pegg was launched by Shaun of the Dead, a comic tribute to the low-budget killer-zombie flick. Pegg has long since moved on to bigger, if not always better, things. Without him the film’s producers have... Read more... |
2001: A Space Odyssey with live score, Philharmonia, de Ridder, Royal Festival HallThursday, 07 April 2011![]() Imagine a special two-hour-plus resurrection of that wannabe extravaganza Stars in Their Eyes. "So, young maestro André de Ridder, who are you going to give us?" "Well, in addition to showing my special flair for contemporary music in Ligeti, I'm... Read more... |
DVD: The Man Who Fell to EarthThursday, 31 March 2011![]() It was bonkers then and it’s bonkers now. Nic Roeg’s space-power-environment fantasy was really only about David Bowie in the lead. In one respect, he didn’t disappoint. Caught between mid-1970s creative cul-de-sac and bodily burn-out, he resembled... Read more... |
Source CodeWednesday, 30 March 2011![]() With his debut film, Moon, Duncan Jones demonstrated that a sci-fi movie doesn't have to depend for its success on fleets of warring spacecraft or flesh-eating alien monstrosities. He's done it again with Source Code, a cool and clever thriller in... Read more... |
Outcasts, BBC OneMonday, 14 February 2011![]() I only needed to see the trailer of this new eight-part science-fiction series for the words “Battlestar” and “Galactica” to spring depressingly to mind: the neutral colourlessness of everything, the characters looking meaningfully into the middle... Read more... |
PAULSunday, 13 February 2011![]() Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have come a long way from Spaced, the Channel 4 sitcom Pegg created with Jessica Hynes (then Stevenson). When it was canned after two series in 1999 and 2001, Spaced - a very funny and edgy comedy about a group of assorted... Read more... |
Never Let Me GoThursday, 10 February 2011![]() “The problem is that you’ve been told and not told.” While Ishiguro and his discerning fans would never indulge in anything so crass as hype, there have been whisperings in North London wine bars, over the coffee-morning brews of Home Counties... Read more... |
No Ordinary Family, UKTV WatchWednesday, 12 January 2011![]() The idea of the suburban superhero isn't exactly a road not taken in the annals of TV history. We've had Heroes, Misfits, and even Ardal O'Hanlon as Thermoman in My Hero, not to mention generationally recurring stuff like Bewitched and The Bionic... Read more... |
The Walking Dead: Series Finale, FXSaturday, 11 December 2010![]() Now that The Walking Dead has been nominated for a Writers Guild of America award for Best New Series, executive producer Frank Darabont and his team must be ruing the fact that series one comprised only six episodes. A 13-part second season will... Read more... |
The Event, Channel 4Saturday, 23 October 2010![]() Don’t you hate it when you have weeks like the ones poor Sean Walker, played by mini-Tom Cruise Jason Ritter, has been having? You go on a relaxing Caribbean cruise with your bride-to-be Leila (Sarah Roemer), you get friendly with another couple,... Read more... |
Edgar Allan Poe: Love, Death and Women, BBC FourThursday, 21 October 2010![]() The recurrent image in this somewhat staid documentary is a monochrome photograph of Poe’s moon of a face with its panda-like eye sockets. Occasionally the camera moves in for a close-up on those eyes - perhaps hoping they’ll reveal something that... Read more... |
