Dark Knight Rises

Does this promise Batman meets Inception?

1. Saw the new Batman movie and thought that it was long but good. However , thought that the main villain in the poster, his voice sounded silly and most of the words he spoke were inaudible and sometimes only just about guessable. Very glad that when the film ended, it ended and there wasn't some idiotic extra scene to wait for after the credits.
2. One girl sitting in row in front kept moving her head around and she had a little hair bun at the back that kept getting in the way of the screen, luckily she was short and by half way through she sat back properly.
3. The Inception-esque ending was quite nice.
4. Appreciated how this movie may have annoyed a good many people, but as the end of a trilogy, it has put the film director higher up than before into the group of directors whose work interests this writer the most and usually Christopher Nolan's interviews look as if they try their hardest not to really be that interesting, and quite often disappointing.  Perhaps appreciation can be given to the conservative Britishness floating around this last movie and maybe the mentality behind the many crass decisions made to make up the film's twisting story possibly because this writer here is not giving too much concern for the comic book fans or any one really expecting to see Catwoman or Robin as the characters they're supposed to be, and the way the main villain in the posters really seemed to vanish into nothingness once he was beaten in a fight and the truth was revealed about him was well appreciated, which gave a wonderful feeling about how the main setup seemed all for nothing. The nothingness seemed to be the bigger thrill, along with the possibility that maybe the Bain having a voice machine or whatever which didn't enable one to make out most of his words probably really showed that he didn't have much of importance to say anyway, most of it could be overlooked or just forgotten.
5. Read in an interview today that the end of the movie was inspired by a dream that Chris Nolan had and this, well, makes sense for this writer because the ending was dreamlike 
6. Cillian's character is supposedly the same one as in the previous Batman films but  it really didn't have much to do with the same character. Some people might have been annoyed that he wasn't playing the same character as he did in Inception. 
7. This year there haven't been much in a way of highly ratable films for me so this one gets the prize for this year in terms of the last several months. Amused about how the Bane character once Batman had his last fight with him appeared to disappear into nowhere, and by the way that it had Catwoman and Robin but only just vaguely because they didn't really fit into Nolan's vision very well. It felt as if Nolan was twiddling around with his Inception ideas in the movie. Glad to see that his trilogy is over. Don't think that it would be easy to sit through that movie again any time soon.

The Amazing Spider-Man

Remembers seeing the new Spiderman movie today,  actually enjoyed it although the lizard man wasn't quite the way he thought it should be after the comic books , cartoon and action doll from thirty five years ago and many of the scenes of the Lizard Man and Spiderman looked very CGI-ish, but really one can't expect too much in today's mainstream cinema and well he has not heard of the director before and if he never heard of the director's name again, it probably wouldn't be bothersome too much,  hardly likely to wonder whatever happened to Marc Webb the film director if he never makes another film but those words could well be eaten in good time. The fact  this review could easily have been written before having seen the movie and not have a different word about it afterwards. 

Enjoyed the main actor Andrew Garfield as Spiderman,  thought that this actor was very good ever since his performance in the movie Never Let Me Go, which is one of the films that is loved here most of all because of its British values. The actor has dual nationality as American and British and can play both in cinema without causing some concern about which side of the Atlantic he thinks he's on.

Then there was Rhys Ifans as the villain of the movie, it was great to see him, a thought occurred that he was great in the TV film "Not Only But Always" as Peter Cook which was about the life of the late Peter Cook and Dudley Moore the British comedians. He was the best person that they could ever have got to play Peter Cook the legendary comedian but Rhys Ifan's acting talents seemed immensely underused in this Spiderman film and it doesn't seem likely that he's ever going to pretend to be a 21st century Peter Cook in these big buck movies for those of us slightly weary of these bloated American offerings.

All in all it was great lightweight entertainment! This writer wont be buying the DVD when it comes out, then he hasn't bought any of the Spiderman films on DVD. He watches them once on the cinema, enjoys them, that's about it and there's really very little else for him to want to watch in them but is happy to cast his mind back to scenes of Doc Ock's tentacles coming alive in Spiderman 2 , and he thought that they were probably the most monstrous things in cinema for at least a couple of decades

Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter

1. Just went to see Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter and was not disappointed at all. Possibly the only way to make the movie a better version of what it was is to have Liam Neeson dub the voice of the older version of Abraham Lincoln since the actor looked enough like a young Liam Neeson. 
2. Obviously the young actor will have to star in Taken 0
3. All very bewildering 
4. On the poster it should read " Benjamin Walker as Liam Neeson as Abraham Lincoln" or even "Benjamin Walker as Abraham Lincoln as Liam Neeson"
5. Sat there expecting the actor to make a slip with his character's surname but he never introduced himself as Abraham Neeson even once!  
6. Liked the director earlier films quite a lot so I thought it would be an interesting film for me 
7. There isn't a lot about this movie in the magazines. It isn't as if it has any big stars in it such as Liam Neeson 
8. It's actually a wonderful sort of movie, I'm not an expert in the American Civil War but it's very nice in terms of its period detail, the camera work is quite painterly. Timur almost seems to make his action movies into art movies. It's an odd movie. 
9. The director's previous film was Wanted which had big names such Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie and Terence Stamp, but this one didn't have such big names 
10. well, this Lincoln film probably was basically a smaller production, and the director produced with Tim Burton who perhaps makes quite individual movies even if his films are not the most watchable 
11. Tim Burton has made films in the past which I have been able to watch but not anymore, but his sets and costumes are very lavish. The last Tim Burton movie watched was Sweeney Todd, there were some great Dante Ferretti designed sets, but I spent my time trying to see past this person standing in most of the shots whose first name was Johnny. The thoughts that came most of the time was, "I wish they'd get this Johnny person out of the shot", and  also wasn't too happy when they had some person when some actor with "Baron" somewhere in his name was hogging the screen either but he died fairly quickly in the film so that wasn't so bad

Kiss of the Spiderwoman

Wmm remembers that while he was on the bus home today, he took notice of the woman sitting nearby who had dark stockings on , with the lower part of one leg crossed over the upper part of the other, in his minds eye he perceived that the leg began to grow longer and longer and soon was wrapped around his neck while the other leg also soon grew longer and longer and also wrapped itself around Wmm's head and neck and the woman suddenly grew more and more legs that all wrapped themselves around Wmm as if she were a giant spider of some sort .

Second trip to see Prometheus

1. Heading off into the world of central London with the intention of giving Prometheus another shot, second of three.
2. It gets better each time because one has got over the nonsense after the first go at seeing the film and there are always more details to explore. Sure that probably will see it more than three times if it remains on at the Cineworld Trocadero for a couple weeks more
3. Will need another display file any day now to store the interviews collected
4. Trying not to say anything in response to that which might sound like a rant about Lindelof and his so called plots with lots of "fun stuff" like clusters of "Easter eggs
5. Perhaps the film is even better the third time because one could go deeper into the film, even further beyond the need to be interested in the designs of the creatures or the biomechanic sets, the urge to react in any way to seeing the various designs that I wasn't too happy about are just past hurdles, and the limitations of various pieces of dialogue that might have made me wince before fade into the distance, it's easier to walk around the easter eggs as well without walking all over them and getting something similar to very old egg yolk all over the souls of ones shoes and needing to find a place to wipe them clean, it also becomes easier to get beyond the introductions to everything in the movie presented in the media, the odd similarities to the Alien Vs Predator script fade into the distance, the thing to do is to get further into the core of bigger picture which might not be the same core as the little picture's.
6. Probably better too if one doesn't watch the film realising with complete foreknowledge who the android isbut that wouldn't be easy.
7. Ever since having watched the excellent action detective thriller film Vidocq directed by Pitof in 2001 ( Pitof was visual effects supervisor for Alien Resurrection. Vidocq featured a villain who was an alchemist who wore a featureless reflective mask and his lair seems very much to look like it was borrowed from an unused idea for the queens layer in Alien Resurrection, ) thoughts occurred from then on that there ought to be the King alien with a featureless face also because there could be no alien face design better than the one created by Giger, so thought came "let's leave it featureless and somehow it's face within would break through the surface when it attacked" and it seems interesting seeing how the concept work for the deacon went that direction of a but pointed end of the head wasn't part of the idea that this writer had, the need to draw the head became a need to want to draw the head shape as a french curve and start thinking about chaos theory

Cosmopolis

1. Recollections of seeing the movie Cosmopolis today and that it felt like a very long movie maybe an hour longer than it actually was, liked the fact that the couple who sat in front of him walked about about and hour before the end. Thought the film was wonderfully weird in an almost hallucinatory way and it left him feeling fairly deranged afterwards for a little while. 
2. By the beginning of the last scene, was almost on the verge of crying for the movie to end. Can't wait for the DVD!
3. It felt like being trapped in a very bad dream. Liked a lot of the production design as well 
4. Perhaps they should have advertised this as the dark side of "Waking Life"

first impressions from watching Prometheus

1. Having memories of seeing the film Prometheus yesterday evening. Yes they were reasonable enough. Whatever criticisms I have about the movie, Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender's performances managed to hold the movie together well for me. Piles of space jockey suits against a wall didn't do it for me as much as the one huge space jockey biomechanoid remains in a chair designed by Giger. The less said about the new aliens tongue the better. It might have been an idea to show how the characters were coming up with their ideas and theories about what they were dealing with. Still wondering why Noomi's character decided to refer to the alien humanoids as Engineers because it seems a strange title to give them from what we were shown at the beginning.
2. If there was a sequel, it ought to be a movie about people going all that way to retrieve the medpod since it was a rare item rather than visiting the home of the Engineers
3. Be seeing it again at least once pretty soon. Ought to see if there's a way of seeing it at the iMax. I'm surprised that the film wasn't being shown at the Odeon in Leicester Square but instead it was the Empire which is okay, but after the hype, it should have been in London's big Odeon.
4. Wasn't too keen on the CGI used in the disintegration scene of the Engineer at the beginning.
5. Chariots of the Gods was food for thought back in the 60s, a lot of people were finding ideas to be very inspiring back then whether they're to be disprovable or not and whatever there was to be discovered about the writers background in time to come from back then. I'd take that book as a sort of seemingly naive surrealistic item in this day and ag,e but beyond this book I think though that Ridley ought to have been looking for something a bit more developed about the Ancient Astronaut idea. The way they altered the Pakal Votan tomb lid in the future clearing the sky imagery and replacing it with the star system shown ought to have been unforgivable for anyone with an interest in Mayan imagery. At least they ought to have filled the sky up with a different set of details because they Mayans didn't like too many open spaces in their artwork.
6. Wouldn't have minded if they approached the Von Daniken element with a greater tongue in cheek understanding about it.
7. The process of "von Danikenizing" has helped to create some genuine wonders, if one thinks about how Giger managed to transform The Sokar Funerary Barge as seen in the Egyptian Book of the Dead into an alien pilot in a chair i.e. the original Space Jockey. Maybe there are a few other things like that still out there that need to be creatively Von Danikanized but for a movie rather than to be included as another mystery for Von Daniken to puzzle over. However I don't think they got there this time