“Valar Dohaeris” – Season 3, Episode 1 After questing to find a series for both my boyfriend and I to watch, we finally settled on Game of Thrones – because medieval fantasies are always a good to place to meet in the middle, right? Though originally sceptical after some low-budget attempts at scary dead dolls … Continue reading
From French novel to West End and Broadway musical, Les Misérables has now journeyed onto British film. Set during the French revolution Les Mis tells the story of a peasant, named Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman), who serves a 19 year sentence as a slave after stealing a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving child. … Continue reading
The last Tarantino to hit our screens was 2009’s Inglourious Basterds, a Nazi-killing drama set in occupied France during the Second World War. I’ve still not got over how awesome I thought it was… In Tarantino’s new spaghetti Western, Django Unchained, the Germans switch sides from the baddies to the goodies. Dr Schultz (Christoph Waltz), … Continue reading
5. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry Dir. Alison Klayman (2012, USA) If there was one film that wanted to grab you by the shoulders and give you a shake of reality, it was Ali Klayman’s debut socio-political documentary, Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. Capturing on film the life and struggles of China’s most globally recognised dissident, the … Continue reading
One of the golden rules of watching a book-to-film adaptation, as everyone knows, is to not compare. The film should be judged as a separate entity and a piece of art in its own right. In the same vein of thought, comparing prequel and sequel films is an equally muddy trap which leads to nothing … Continue reading
Having relocated to the north-east coast of Taiwan only a matter of weeks ago, my partner and I ventured out to the cinemas of Taiwan for the first time. With some shoddy directions we stumbled down a dead-end road where five Taiwanese children were out playing on the street. After giggling at our white faces, … Continue reading
Embarking on a long-haul plane journey to Taiwan means only one thing: in-flight films! Lagging behind the rest of the arty crowd, I was gagging to see this year’s Palme d’Or competitor Holy Motors. Smudging reality and fantasy, Carax’s famed poetic-style shines through in this metamorphosis based symphony. The film centres on Oscar (Denis Lavant) … Continue reading
Finally trundled into my lame local Vue to see Skyfall this evening, which was long-winded and tense. I was also disappointed that the sky didn’t literally shatter and fall in. That aside, I nearly orgasmed at the trailer reel for the winter cinema season: The Hobbit (13th December) !!! Life of Pi (14th December) Django … Continue reading
Having professed my love of home-grown British film at any relevant – or irrelevant – given moment, labelled myself as a ‘Shane Meadows fan-girl’ and babbled on outrageously about This is England in my uni dissertation, I feel predisposed to celebrating the 10-year existence of Warp Films. Since producing their first feature, Meadows’ Dead Man’s … Continue reading
Pivoting around that old archetypal ‘Mrs Robinson’ gem, Ozon’s In the House is a transgressive landslide of characters’ perverse desires and latent fantasies – or should that be the other way round? Germain (Fabrice Luchini), a failed novelist who finds himself teaching creative writing, becomes enraptured with the soap-opera style story of his sixteen year-old … Continue reading
Stranger on Film 