Reviews

Hopes were cautiously high for this one. Bernhard Cornwell's writing is always good and well researched, so the basis for an exciting and realistic production was there. Still, something has gone horribly wrong with the adaptation and direction, resulting in a truly bland and boring couple of episodes (this is written after seeing the first two episodes).

The bits are there: invasion, battles, intrigues, betrayals, hate and revenge. The poor script, bad direction and rather poor production values manage to screw it up into a dreary, boring mess anyway.

Sadly, what could have been good turns out to be nothing but a cheap and inept attempt to cash in on the current Game of Thrones frenzy. Sure, it also takes place in a time past, but it lacks all that makes GoT good: the writing, the direction, the acting and the production values.

4 out of 10 is if anything generous.

As a big fan of Stephen Colbert, I was really looking forward to the new Late Show. Expectations were that this very funny, clever and likable man would give us something new in the late night format. I was hoping for new and creative, but would have settled for just good and entertaining.

The first night did not deliver any of that. Colbert came across as a bit too hyper, rushed and nervous. The Trump section was not particularly funny - many other TV comedians have done a much better job with that material. The interviews were bland and forgettable - miles form the brilliance Colbert regularly displayed on The Colbert Report.

The premiere show was, if anything, bland and mediocre. Perhaps no worse than what Fallon, Kimmel or Conan serve up, but far from Carson or Leno.

Perhaps he is just better when he can be political and satirical.

Perhaps he needs to put on a fake persona to unleash his talent.

Perhaps he has lost it, and his best work is behind him.

Perhaps he is being held back by the network.

Perhaps he will adjust to his new role, and get better with time.

I really hope for the latter. He has been great in the past, and has shown that he has the ability to be so much more than what we were shown tonight.

At the moment, things are looking bleak for late night comedy entertainment:

• The Colbert Report is gone

• Jon Stewart is gone, and from all I have seen of Trevor Noah, I have no hope for the new Daily Show. Noah just is not funny.

• Fallon is weak, well below Leno as an entertainer.

• Conan was never very good.

• Kimmel. Meh.

• Corden is a awful. He has done good work in the UK, and actually can be funny. I mention this, since one would never believe it from watching his current late night disaster.

So, what's left?

Bill Maher once a week. Edit: Forgot John Oliver. His show is OK. Also weekly.

If you have access to Australian TV, Charlie Pickering's show is quite good.

Cheers

A Brilliant Young Mind

A brilliant young mind. Yup.

A brilliant film. Certainly not.

More accurate descriptors than "brilliant" would be: slow, boring, clichéd, shallow, ham-fisted and somewhat pretentious - 30 minutes of mediocre content painfully stretched into almost two hours. The stretching tools are the usual ones from the pretentious hack tool-kit, including "empty stares into whatever" and endless retrospectives.

You could definitely make a wonderful film with the premise of an autistic child going to the IMO. One could imagine such a film, full of insight and warmth. One could, but this film was not that film. Guess my obvious disappointment comes from being misled by the IMDb ratings in conjunction with the promising premise.

That just about sums it up. We could mention the acting, which is OK. Not bad, not stellar - just actors doing their job quite well. For some reason, critics, wannabe intellectuals and other semi-imbeciles believe that portraying "tormented souls" represents the pinnacle of "acting", that it is somehow more difficult or worthier. Nonsense!

Much more fascinating than the actual film is why so many reviewers give this rather mediocre low budget effort 10 or 9 stars, i.e. rating this as one of the best films ever made. For crying out loud!

Presumably, the reviewers fall into three broad categories:

1. Members of the production team and/or their friends and family.

2. Aspiring intellectuals, who need to display (to themselves or others) how they are able to "get it". Yup, this amazing ability of seeing something in nothing is indeed impressive... Newsflash: them nifty clothes the emperor is wearing - take another look. To spell it out: it may be a promising premise, it may be an important, or interesting, topic, it may look all "deep and stuff", but it ain't a good movie.

3. People who like the film since they feel it accurately portrays autism. Frankly, this appears to apply to many of the reviews in this case. Having an autistic brother and a close friend with Asperger's, I sort-of get this reason for liking the film, but seriously, is accurately portraying something enough to qualify as a masterpiece of film making?

I could elaborate, but I'm off to make a very accurate portrayal of paint drying. To make this epic even masterpiecier, it will include several retrospectives of sanding and priming, some unbelievably slow panning and some of the emptiest staring into the abyss ever captured on film.

Rating: this could be classified as a solid 4 to 5 star film, i.e. a bit below average (god knows there is some truly awful crap out there). I give it two stars to balance the ludicrous notion that this might be one of the all-time masterpieces of film making.

This film's main contribution must be that it constitutes irrefutable evidence against creationist notions of an intelligent designer of mankind. A truly intelligent designer would not just have provided us with eyelids to avoid watching this kind of rubbish, he would have given us earlids as well to protect our brains against the utterly inane and imbecille dialogue. Fortunately, we have legs, so at least one can walk away from what must be one of the worst movies ever made. It has NO redeeming features. It is not even bad in such a way as to be amusing or entertaining. It is just plain BAD. Inane, idiotic, imbecille, illogical, inconsistent...

In short: this film simply does not work. It fails to engage and involve on every level. There is not a hint of character development, and the one-dimensional characters are little more than generic transporters of a weak and diluted plot.

It is almost impossible not to compare with the book when trying to understand why this movie fails so badly. The book may not be great literature, and it also suffers from a weak plot and poor character development (though nowhere near as badly as the film), but it still manages to be exactly what it sets out to be: page turning entertainment. The book is highly readable entertainment whereas the movie is, for lack of a better word, boring. Fast paced, but nonetheless boring.

We've seen it before: a fast paced story with lots of physical activity does not equal real action. On some level, we need to understand the characters and what drives them in order to get involved with the action. Furthermore, we need to be able to follow the story, and the action must make sense in this story, and carry it somewhere. Who hasn't already seen lots of fights, car chases and explosions? On their own, they are nothing new or exciting. It is only when we understand who is fighting/chasing whom, and why, that the action becomes meaningful and interesting. Story action is so much more than just elaborate stunts and CGI. It is about producing curiosity, dispensing information, character development and providing surprise. In Angels & Demons, we get none of that. We get to watch Tom Hanks jumping from one clue and its conclusion to the next at breathtaking speed, but it produces as much excitement as having last years lotto numbers read out at double speed.

There is a huge difference between a fast paced STORY and just fast pace...

In essence, watching Angels & Demons is similar to watching someone you don't know play a computer game.

Spare yourself the experience and save the money.

An awful waste of 1 hour and 35 minutes. Don't do this to yourself, unless you really enjoy pretentious melodramas with little or no story.

According to the producers, and IMDb, this is a "Drama/Romance/Thriller". Make no mistake - it is not romance, and most certainly not a thriller.

"Like watching paint dry" is an old saying, and probably as meaningless a way of spending time as watching "Incendiary". Still, many of us are likely never to have sat down for an hour and a half to watch paint dry, whereas we have all seen the clichées and the pretentious rubbish which makes up this utterly awful movie. We've seen it all before, though fortunately rarely in such a mindblowingly slooow pace and without virtually any story or message behind it.

I is usually a bad sign when, 20 minutes into a film, still nothing has happened, and the information conveyed would easily fit into less than a minute. In this case, it is indeed fully indicative of what's to come: more of the same.

The story as such can be told in it's entirety in a few sentences and scenes, which in fact it also is - the remainder of the of the movie just consists of endless, clichéd retrospectives, soul searching dialogs, marathon shots of facial expressions, you name it...

Some have criticized the plausibility and credibility of the storyline, very often a problem with today's movies, but that's hardly where this movie falls down - it's in the fact that the story could easily have been told in ten minutes. It would still have been pointless, un-interesting and without meaning or message, but at least it would have been over quickly...

To give this film an "Awful" rating might seem overly harsh, but to me this is truly one of the worst movies, not to mention greatest disappointments ever. I hardly ever walk out of movies, but this time I needed real will power to remain in my seat.

After the excellent "Casino Royale", my hopes were high that the follow-up would at the very least offer good action entertainment. On might argue that the new interpretation of Bond in Casino Royale was more Bourne than Bond, but irrespective of that it was a solid piece of action craftsmanship with a decent plot.

In contrast, "Quantum of Solace", is a horrifically inept attempt at creating "action" through music-video-style editing. The entire movie is chopped into 15 to 60 frame cuts (each one to two seconds, a new camera angle). A highly annoying practice that greatly distracts you from following the plot (had there been one of any merit). Even the dialog scenes suffer from these continuous cuts. Try this: while watching the movie, count "one, two, three..." for every scene. See how often, if ever, you get past two. To add insult to injury, the action scenes have been shot with a number of shaking hand cams that, in conjunction with the constant cuts, produce a complete visual mess.

The shooting and editing ruin this film to such an extent that script, plot, dialog and character development hardly matter. Just as well since all are remarkably poor. Never have Bond characters been more one-dimensional and wooden, feeling more like computer game characters than real people.

Quantum of Solace is a sad example of form over substance, and very bad form over virtually no substance in this particular case.

Maybe Marc Foster was trying to do something "new" for the sake of being different. Maybe he thinks that a multitude of fast cuts and shaky shots equals "action". He's wrong.

What he has created can best be described as a 106 minute long MTV Video of a computer game.

What a shame!