It’s definitely the beginning of the end. When the final Harry potter book came out, fans like me felt sad that this enjoyable adventure with beloved characters was coming to a close. Now, the same is happening on the big screen. It doesn’t help the melancholy that this movie opens with scenes of Hermione casting…
Category: Fantasy
TV: Red Light, Green Light (Fall 2010)
I wanted to do a TV: Red Light, Green Light post for this TV season to think through all the shows that are up in the air in terms of whether I will keep watching them. This fall season has not been great on TV. New shows are not catching on and even long-running shows…
Let Me In – Movie Review
Cloverfield director Matt Reeves’s Let Me In (a remake of Swedish film Let The Right One In) tells the coming-of-age story of a withdrawn young boy, neglected by his mother and bullied by his peers. The boy’s name is Owen and he makes a connection with an equally reserved young girl who moves in next…
Fall TV 2010 – Returning Drama
If you’ve read my blog, you know that even though I’m posting about returning dramas, you’re not going to read about House or Mad Men or Grey’s Anatomy. My tastes tend towards genre shows, though I do watch the occasional melodramedy… Desperate Housewives … Let’s get that one out of the way first. Even after…
Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole – Movie Review
Can they really produce an epic fantasy featuring owls? I was amazed that the answer is a resounding Yes. There were so many things that turned me off watching this movie (and I think a lot of people are in the same prejudicial boat). First, the title is ridiculously impossible to say without quizzical looks:…
Movie #43: Bedtime Stories
It seems a bit harsh to criticize a sweet little kids movie like Bedtime Stories when all it’s trying to do is put a little artificial sweetness out in the world. Adam Sandler plays Skeeter, a (you guessed it) man-child, who was raised in a hotel by his father the owner (cameo by Jonathan Pryce)….
Movie #41: The Orphanage
Guillermo Del Toro is becoming one of my favourite directors (and there’s an opening now that Shyamalan has moved to my bad books). I loved Hellboy II and Pan’s Labyrinth. While his 2007 film The Orphanage has more in common with his earlier ghost story, The Devil’s Backbone, than his more recent works, there’s no…
Movie #40: Under The Mountain
I can’t believe that people on the internet found Under The Mountain imaginative and fresh. It was a lame fantasy/horror adventure for tweens is what it was. Generally, I go for those kinds of Harry Potter, Golden Compass, even Lemony Snickett kind of movies, but this one was beyond-blah. Essentially, after the death of their…
Movie #32: Ponyo
One of the qualities you can find abundant in films by Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki is imagination, not just in story-telling, but visually as well. While Ponyo is clearly inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”, it is still full of fresh wonder and enchantment. Sosuke is a 5-year-old boy living in a…
Alvin's Adventures in Pop Culture 