I first discovered Philip K Dick through the film Blade Runner. I was lucky enough to see it on release in 1982 and as a 14 year old Science Fiction fan I was excited to go and see it. I also felt dangerous going to see the film, at the time U.K film ratings changed, previously Blade Runner would have been a AA, which meant no one under the age of 14 was allowed to see it. The ratings changed and the dropped the AA rating and changed it to…
Vangelis – A Personal Voyage I was sad recently to hear of the passing of Vangelis at the age of 79, being a reclusive and private man it took a few days for the news to come out. I have been enthralled by his music for decades there has barely been a week where I haven’t listened to at least one of his compositions. There are plenty of obituaries published which will tell you of his full life, I thought though as my tribute I would talk about my personal…
There has been a great Disturbance in the Force When I sat in the Cinema in 1978 I along with the rest of the world had never seen anything the like of Star Wars. Two scenes everyone always remembers are the Star Destroyer flying overhead and our first glimpse of Darth Vader. Striding through the smoke and stepping over the bodies has there ever been a better entrance or introduction of a character? No words need to be said because long before you see the details of what he is…
In a similar vain to Frightfest this years Grimmfest went online, I mentioned in my round up of Frightfest that this is the responsible thing to do in a Pandemic and also enabled people like myself and my Wife to be involved. It would be extremely unlikely we would ever be able to attend their physical events so we have been incredibly excited to be involved with the online editions. I do really hope that even when the physical events return that the online versions remain in some form. It…
The Cinema is Dead, Long live the Cinema! I normally avoid topics that are current and involve business models, however I decided considering what I cover in this blog I couldn’t really avoid this subject. A few days ago it was announced that ‘A Time to Die’ the next James Bond film has pushed it’s release from November to April 2021. The majority of other blockbuster films have already been pushed through to next year so this announcement was far later than them. It has now been released that Cineworld…
Sometimes we all just need another world to escape into …… …. Part 2 – Mars In the second part of this article rather than give suggestions on different fictional (and real) worlds to escape to, I thought I would give you an entire planet. The planet in question is Mars, a place which has fascinated mankind for thousands of years. It is second only to Venus in brightness and can be seen with the naked eye from earth. It’s visibility means that man has constantly looked to the red…
Frightfest (also known as London Frightfest) this year decided to do a Digital edition due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation. Just like some other well known festivals they decided to bring their content online in order to continue to engage with everyone. It is a huge achievement that they managed to bring this together both technology wise and with rights issues in such a short period of time. Frightfest started in the year 2000, it was put together by Paul MCavoy, Ian Rattray and Greg Day. In the past 20…
Forty years ago ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ leapt onto our screens, following up on one of the biggest films of all time was not going to be an easy task. Empire managed it by taking a darker tone and by doing so managed to be different, yet keep the essence of what made Star Wars (later to be renamed A New Hope) such a great film. In an early draft of Star Wars George Lucas referred to his story being in the tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs “John Carter of…
I wanted to update the post I released last year for a couple of reasons. I recently released some videos on IGTV and You Tube about films I’d take into quarantine (working through the alphabet). There is a high proportion of DVD’s in those lists. The reasons are very well explained in this original article therefore I wanted to push this up to the fore on the blog so people could see it. It is also very interesting that in the current climate streaming services are getting a lot of…
Sometimes we all just need another world to escape into …. Part 1 I have put together a few of my favourite, but less known worlds to escape to. This is a mixture of film, television, games and books and will be in several parts. In this time when a lot of people are spending more time at home than they are used to I thought a few suggestions may be useful. Some of these suggestions I am considering writing full articles on in the future. Onto my first suggestion…