Fair warning: considerable spoilers follow – read after watching.
I’ll start by telling you that I loved Blade Runner 2049. I walked out of the theatre feeling like I had just witnessed one of the great science-fiction films of the past decade, if not in all of film history, as well as one of the best sequels ever made.
Fair warning: considerable spoilers follow – read after watching.
You all know the scene: the nefarious Richmond Valentine (deliciously portrayed by Samuel L Jackson) tests a weapon that causes anyone within its range to lose their minds in a violent rage, choosing a small Kentucky church – the base of operations for a radical right-wing hate group – as the location for his first experiment. Except that Harry Hart, the legendary Kingsman agent known as Galahad (and played by Colin Firth), is also in the church. Violent rage gives way to increasingly violent acts, all set to the increasingly frantic guitar solo from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”, with Hart utilising his spy training to emerge as the sole survivor.
I know this is obvious to anyone who watched an episode, but Masters Of Sex is a show filled with sex. The first season came to a close on SoHo tonight with a rather titillating finale that didn’t quite go as I was expecting. And yes, there was plenty of sex in the finale hour of the season.
The second episode of Sunny Skies – the new local comedy from Mike Smith and Paul Yates, starring Oliver Driver and Tammy Davis as half-brothers thrown together after the death of the dad neither of them knew, and tasked with running the holiday park he owned – aired on Friday night (TV3, 8pm), entertaining throughout and proving that the brilliant first episode wasn’t a fluke; this is the best new local comedy of the season. There is just so much to love about this show.
Last week’s premiere of The Blue Rose – the latest drama from Rachel Lang and James Griffifififififfiin, the team behind Outrageous Fortune – ended abruptly. In fact, it left my spidey senses* tingling, so much so that I held off on reviewing the first episode. It just didn’t feel like the right point at which to review the show.
New, locally produced comedy series Agent Anna debuted last night on One, produced by Rachel Gardner (The Cult) and written by Maxine Fleming (who wrote two first season episodes of Outrageous Fortune), and starring a familiar face in Robyn Malcolm – and I have a few thoughts after the requisite spoiler warning …
A new batch of CD Reviews – this month I take a look at the the latest effort from pop-punksters Paramore; chill out and try not be disappointed by the latest from David Gray; and re-visit the debut by grunge rockers Nirvana. Enjoy!
ARTIST: Paramore
ALBUM: BRAND NEW EYES
RATING: 3.5 out of 5
I’m going to be honest – to start with, I didn’t know if I liked Paramore or not.
ARTIST: Alice in Chains
ALBUM: BLACK GIVES WAY TO BLUE
RATING: 4 out of 5
Generation X readers of this magazine may recall Alice in Chains, the often forgotten or overlooked Seattle-based metal group who emerged around the same time as grunge spearheads Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, though established themselves as different by shunning some of grunges shall-we-say less appealing aspects, and embracing vocal and guitar harmonics as one of the cores of their songwriting.
ARTIST: La Roux
ALBUM: LA ROUX
RATING: 3.5 out of 5
You could be forgiven for thinking that the synth-pop sound had died an honourable death in the early 1990s, following the virtual demise of Neil Tennants’ the Pet Shop Boys and Annie Lennox going into more rock-centric territory with the Eurythmics.
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