Compromise and Conceit
Infernal adventuring…
Category: Movies
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The 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans is a fun movie, with some interesting hat-tips to modern RPG theological theories and excellent monsters; it is, moreover, a vast improvement on the original. Of course it butchers the original greek myth, but who cares about that? Greek myths are there to be fiddled with. This…
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This movie was, frankly, pretty stupid, though quite fun. It’s by Cristopher Nolan who made The Prestige so it should be good, but it was too self-consciously complex, if I bothered to trace the story through all its complex layers I’m pretty sure it would have huge internal holes in it, and most annoyingly the…
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I was a big fan of the movie The Descent, which pits a group of young women cavers against a colony of blind flesh-eating proto-humans in a dark and claustrophobic cave nightmare. This is the kind of movie that you really need to pause regularly, and it combines all of our worst fears – claustrophobia,…
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This semester I’m teaching a course on Global Crime and Public Health as a special lecture series (in fact I should be preparing material now instead of posting here). This course represents a culmination of 15 years’ research experience in the service of a general model of what constitutes a “good” response to the public…
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I’m a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, having read all the stories, including his famous meeting with Harry Flashman, VC, and seen at least part of the classic Brett[1] television series, which is generally acclaimed as the best of the lot. I think Holmes is an important character in the pre-history of both steampunk and…
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This is basically Mamoru Oshii (of Ghost in the Shell fame) does dogfights. Great movie. Didn’t understand anything though. And what’s with the dog?
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According to the Guardian today, at a recent convention Gary Kurtz, the writer of Return of the Jedi, revealed the original plot to the movie, which was that Han Solo would die halfway through in a raid, Princess Leia would have difficulty adapting to her new role as leader, and Luke Skywalker would walk off…
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Based on the Robert E Howard novel of the same name, this movie will probably attract the usual ire of Howard fans, who worry perenially that his work will be mocked in film – a fear I can understand, though I don’t agree with it. In any case, in this situation it doesn’t matter, since…
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It’s as if James Cameron sat down one day 10 years ago and asked himself (as everyone should!), “how can I make a movie that is perfectly designed to please faustusnotes?” and, before he’d even had a chance to put his hand to his forehead, out of the blue came the answer: combine Nausicaa, Last…
Compromise and Conceit 