Movie News (Empire)
One of the only remakes to get me all excited, most because the original is one of my favourite horror movies in years. With Kick-Ass’ Chloe Moretz starring, this looks promising, even if I remain on the fence about the actor playing the boy…
I didn’t play the first game, mostly down to almost overwhelming negative reviews, despite the fact I actually liked the look of it. I chose to make up for this by buying the sequel, a game that has been received marginally better than its predecessor, but still is blighted by very negative reviews. Which is a shame, because this is an enjoyable, somewhat simplistic but thoroughly engaging shooter, with two shouting, sweary leads that seem to have come out of any half-decent crime thriller of the last twenty or so years. Read the rest of this entry »
Hi people! Just wanted to post my humble appreciation of reaching a rather quite excellent 100,000 visits since I began this blog in April 2007 (!!). Now perhaps this may not sound that many when compared to some of the blogs out there, but I certainly get a real buzz out of every visit I get and especially when I receive comments. I have worked hard to make this blog as appealing and as informative as I can, and although I don’t get to watch as many movies or play as many games as I’d like, I do try to inform anyone who visits if what I do watch / play is worthy of your time. If anyone has come away after reading a review on here and perhaps rushed out to see a movie or buy a game I have recommended, or even avoided something I have said isn’t very good – then that really means a lot to me. Makes it all worthwhile.
Please keep coming back and I promise to keep you all informed on what is worth seeing or playing, and what should be avoided like the plague.
Craig
Not all horror remakes are bad, and some can bring a lot to an old concept, ultimately improving upon it … yet last night I sat down and watched on television the remake of Japanese cult horror The Ring. Ok, it starred Naomi Watts, had a decent director (Gore Verbinski) and was fairly well put together on a technical basis. Much like the original too, the use of a creepy videotape and hallucinations helped build an unnerving atmosphere. Yet then the movie does the unthinkable, and humanizes the character of the evil girl, this time named Samara, by showing footage of her time in a psychiatric hospital, and instead of the horrible vision of a small figure with hair over their face, we see it’s actually just a very troubled child. Naomi Watts over-acts somewhat from the very beginning and frankly her young son is creepier than Samara, which just baffles me. Now looking back at the original ‘Ring’, I recall only glimpses of the girl, Sadako, a flash of a hand with no fingernails, the same creepy atmosphere, but very little humanization – and you never saw her face. This then makes the ending something of horror legend, copied in the remake, much more terrifying as what crawls out of that TV and stands up to scare its victim to death, is not human, but pure evil – and just a close up of a blood-shot eyeball is all the viewer gets. In the remake we see the girl, albiet zombiefied, but still a girl, with a stern pissed off look, and guess what – it’s not scary. Well done remake. You just killed the money shot! Read the rest of this entry »
