December 2009 Archives

In the distant future, paraplegic ex-Marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) travels with a team of scientists to Earth's outpost on faraway alien planet Pandora. There, Sully is given the chance to walk again via the use of an 'avatar', a body created via a mixture of human DNA and that of the Na'vi, Pandora's indigenous race of blue humanoids.

Max (Max Records), an adolescent boy with a restless imagination, runs away from home after his mother, a stressed single parent, snaps at him when he disrupts her evening with her new boyfriend. Eager to leave the real world behind, Max sails to a faraway land of giant furry monsters that immediately take him in and accept him as their fun-loving King.

Earlier in the year David Twohy, who directed Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick said that there were some ideas floating around for a third instalment of the Riddick series.

Recently the Riddick camp seem to be going through the motions of pre-production , with the official Facebook page saying: "The Riddick team is in New Zealand location scouting already... that's exciting".

The final ten of what are, in my opinion, the greatest films from the last ten years, again in no particular order.

This film was completed two years ago, but only gets its release this week. Not because of audiences craving for a new viral pandemic film, but more I think to do with the films protagonist Chris Pine. His recent fame in the recently revamped Star Trek franchise can only help 'carry' this film and its prospects.

It's hard to choose just twenty films from a decade so full of great work.

We've had one of the best blockbusters of all time in the shape of 'The Dark Knight', groundbreaking animation with 'Finding Nemo' and, the best war movie of the '00s, Iraq war thriller 'The Hurt Locker.'

One of my personal highlights of Leeds International Film Festival was the screening of forgotten 1985 animated film Angel's Egg.

Superhero movies of late have been, shall we say, not brilliant. 'The Fantastic Four', 'Wolverine' and 'Superman Returns' were all examples of a host of bland, child-friendly comic book flicks that were released over the past few years.

Teen favourite 'New Moon' has been on general release for a couple of weeks now. I'm not one to judge it - I haven't seen the film and I did enjoy 'Twilight' - but I'll admit that reviews like this one have put me off slightly.

Few people knew the influential director Stanley Kubrick more than his Personal Assistant, Anthony Frewin. In a relationship that lasted over thirty years, Frewin understood the inner workings of a director who aimed for technical perfection in every film production he was involved in.