December 14th, 2005 James
Being a film that I’ve read all the books for, although this was years ago and I can only remember bits of it, it did give me an idea of what to expect. I was utterly blown away with this film, in fact if it wasn’t for the mandatory intermission halfway through the film, it even managed to make me forget that I was watching it in the twilight zone that is Scarborough’s Futurist cinema. I did almost explode when the intermission came on, but I won’t dwell on it as this film deserves a proper review.
I thought this film was absolutely spot on. For me, it created a fully believable and fantastic fantasy world, with a range of interesting, quirky and sometimes downright evil characters, some with superbly chosen voice actors. You could almost feel the initial wonder and surprise of a child stumbling upon a fantastic new world. This film made me want to find the story that I was writing and continue with it (Yeah, that’s right I was writing a story!). The film also sported with what I thought was a stunning soundtrack by Harry Greggson-Williams, my apparently 3rd favourite artist, according to Last.fm. The children’s acting wasn’t too shabby and certainly wasn’t as bad as the acting in the early Harry Potter films! The only thing with the acting and the portrayal of the children is that with the exception of one, they were just too nice!
All in all, I can’t emphasise enough how good this film was. It came so close to being better than Return of the King (my favourite film) for me. In a way it’s almost dissapointing that I’ll never like a film as much as RotK, but when I have thoughts like that I think it’s probably best to forget about them and watch RotK again.
The Chronicles of Narnia receives the coveted 5/5 starfish. Go watch it, and if you can help it, somewhere other than Scarborough!
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October 28th, 2005 James
Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story Being based on Family Guy you should know what you’re in for. If you don’t, Family Guy is possibly the most un-politically correct series on T.V. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, well perhaps it is in some places, but generally it’s a piss-take on anything and everything. And it works! The movie is pretty hilarious, with its no holds barred humour from the outset. Almost always films that go straight to video, in my opinion are a laughable waste of time. However, I can guess the reasons for this going straight to video, being an uproar if it was in the cinemas and a likely chance of it not even being shown in cinemas. However, depending on your taste of humour and your views on the series, I’d say this is worth a shot.
3.5 starfish.
The Corpse Bride The Burton/Depp combination is back again. The Corpse Bride Uses the same animation techniques as the Nightmare Before Christmas, not to mention the same Director, this film has a whole host of celebrity goodness doing the voice acting. Christopher Lee is superb as the sort of evil looking priest (What? You expected him to be a goodie character?!), Johnny Depp plays a strange shrinking-violet and hilariously clumsy lead, which makes a change from his latest roles. You’ll also be priveleged -gets coat- to hear that Joanna Lumley also lends her posh accent.
I thoroughly recommend this film, in fact even if it is different to The Nightmare Before Christmas, I probably prefer this one. On a tangent, I always seem to see the same sort of artistic curly shapes in Tim Burton films, can’t really explain it.
4 Starfish
Oh! And the Corpse Bride is quite hot and before you condemn me for saying that, I know she’s made out of plastic, not real AND corpsified, thankfully I wasn’t the first to suggest it 
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October 17th, 2005 James
Serenity Wow! What a film! Tom, Geffy and I went off to York to see it last Wednesday.
If you’re a fan of Firefly, then you’ve probably already seen it, but heck, go watch it again! I like looking forward to a film for a while, looking at the trailers with baited anticipation and not being let down by the film when I actually see it. OK, so it’s not gonna win any Oscars, but as far as film enjoyment goes, it’s great.
For those people in the dark at this point, Firefly is a series created by Joss Whedon (Who made a little series called Buffy). Yeah it was cut at its high point, in its very first series, with many questions gone unanswered, but there’s no need to turn away laughing because you agree with fat cat TV execs! They wanted something that was as popular and universal as Buffy, but like many hyped up releases, they felt they had to cut it to prevent losses. After the series was cut there was already a large fan following who expressed their displeasure and signed a large petition to get it back. Unfortunately, it was no good until now. This film was all about the fans. Whedon probably wouldn’t have made it if there hadn’t been so many fans that were so supportive, though it was his dream to make it (Take that, Buffy! Umm not too much because you do kick vampire ass and you’re pretty hot!). Anyway you can see the same director flair that you saw in Buffy in Firefly and Serenity, the sort of unseriousness and joke-making in the face of almost certain disaster. Imagine that and a sort of cross sci-fi western in space. Forget Star Wars(for a second and then re-realise that it’s amazing), this is about real people with similar non-perfect situations that you can relate to. My advice is that if you’re not familiar with Firefly or Serenity, certainly take the risk of watching an episode of Firefly, preferrably the pilot episode. They’re shown a fair bit on the Sci-Fi channel, you can buy the DVD, or I guess I could turn a blind eye to ‘alternative’ methods of obtaining the series, so long as you at least try it! If you like, then Serenity is a must! “Special” thanks to Tom for introducing me to Firefly and buying me the DVD boxed set.
A stunning 4 starfish out of 5!
Wallace and Gromit, having seen the 2 previous short films I’m pretty familiar and knew what to expect, but was still pleasantly surprised with the quality of animation and use of humour. It’s really a shame that not more animators will take the plasticine-like animation on seriously as this film shows what can be done with it. Yeah, it’s probably not going to do very well in the states, I guess some of the humour could be called typically British.
I’m going to have to chop a starfish for this rating (but that’s ok, their legs grow back!)
3.5 starfish out of 5!
Oh and I could do a whole review on Scarborough’s ‘lovely’ Hollywood Plaza cinema, but I’ll save you all from my moaning about it. But it really is terrible.
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