Still Alive..

I took a risk and waited a week before making it 667 for the decade, the lack of any good films on TV over Christmas didn't help. The lack of good films on TV at all is becoming a huge problem as we are creating a generation of film fans that will think that the American Pie Trilogy is the height of film brilliance. When I was a kid growing up my film education came from three places, BBC1's Friday night Hammer Horror double bills, channel 4's Kung Fu and Godzilla seasons and the granddaddy of all TV movie shows BBC2's Moviedrome. If it wasn't for these I wouldn't know about Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Bruce Lee, the 'good' Jackie Chan, Cronenberg, Romero and many more. There is nothing like this on terrestrial TV anymore and the world is worse off because of it.

Enough ranting onto the reviews

Mean Creek

Film number 667, the story has been done a million times but I still enjoyed it. Avoid the trailer as it gives the story of the first 75 minutes of the film away and as the film is only 85 minutes long, so it doesn't leave any surprises. Worth a rent. Thumbs up

End of the Century - The Story of the Ramones

I like the ramones but knew very little about their history so this was a very interesting documentary, with interesting titbits about members alledgedly turning tricks to feed there heroin habit and the fact that despite being a huge influence on hundreds of bands and being successful elsewhere in the world they never really broke America which is a shame. Thumbs Up

New DVD's

Hard Target - Holy Shit a semi decent Van Damme flick, very chessy but John Woo's action is good and the disc was cheap

Before Sunset - Sequel to Before Sunrise, Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke talk bullshit for another 90 minutes, brilliant

John Hughes boxset- Contains Weird Science, Sixteen candles and the breakfast club, 80's brilliance plus you get to see Emilio Estevez pretending to be stoned

TimeCode - Shot in real time the screen is split into four separate sections telling different stories that slowly intertwine the sound being brought up and down on the segment we should watch, sounds messed up but works really well

New CD's

Metallica - S&M - Metallica and the San Francisco philharmonic orchestra perform Metallica hits, beautiful genius

Jose Gonzalez - Veneer - Really beautiful acoustic folk album, contains the song from the Sony bravio ad which is my favorite ad at the minute, check it out

The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland - only had a chance to listen through once, some really strange stuff and some really good stuff on it, I think I'll grow to love it

Arcade Fire - Funeral - Whoever kept these guys quiet needs to step forward now so I can slap you, just a fantastic album that I would have got into sooner if the only people raving about it had not have been the ones that raved about bands that turned out to be shit