So apparently it was cancelled due to a clerical error in regards to a tax write-off. Suck it up DC. Learn & move forward. The first episode was terrific. The original comic was quite fantastical. On the printed page that's fine, but on screen it can seem ridiculous. Imagine Wolverine running around on his yellow outfit. Would look pretty stupid. So I didn't care they stripped a lot of the more outrageous comic book stuff to go for a more realistic tone. The first episode was so good. Much better than I had even hoped for, so such a shame we will only get one 10 episode season. Loved the unique setting, the cinematography was more akin to a feature film, the practical effects were outstanding & the whole vibe was hella atmospheric. Great stuff.
Reviews
8 Reviews
What were they thinking?
30 October 2017
Warning: Spoilers
So the Duffer Brothers said they wanted to "experiment". Um. Maybe save that for a short film. The show pretty much went from a workable drama with relatable characters to an episode filled with cartoonish misfits and was so tonally different from the other 16 episodes that it was basically an extreme misfire. And the acting was terrible. Oh, kind a getting bored of the poor scriptwriter's tool of emphasising a character's traits by their constant smoking. Okay, anxious (Joyce), rebellious (Billy/Mick) and emotional pain relieving device (Hopper). And setting it in a large city took so much away from the charm. It just felt like a totally different show, like a poor man's X-Men with mostly powerless mutants. The only thing that I got out of that entire episode is that Eleven isn't vengeful enough to kill unlike her 'sister'. She still has good in her despite what she's been through. Terrible episode.
The Inheritance
(I) (2011)
inherit some talent, please...
22 June 2011
I downloaded & watched this because it had Keith David in it & it looked like it was an African-American horror film. Yes. Both correct, but both tragically bad attempts.
Keith...wtf And you co-produced this? Man, what were you thinking. Snorefest. Poor character development, pathetic continuity, molasses styled pacing. It takes over 20mins before someone even bothers to pick up a script.
And seriously, could they not even afford a second camera. Watch carefully, no don't even carefully watch, just look at the screen & see glaringly the lack of 'cinematography'. The one camera & badly placed one at that, screams at the viewer for attention. Boring...
Okay, granted that the snow bound Minnesota setting was not a clichéd location for the cast & they tried to give some historical slant to the proceedings. But major fail on all accounts. It had no real bearing on the ..er plot.
And did they have to stereotype them, despite them being uppity black folk, by having them smoke weed. C'mon. Was that to give them cred for the potential audience despite them all being rich greedy w@nkers.
And the white couple. what was the point of them & especially their only lines of dialogue at the beginning that just happened to imply racist attitudes. Amazingly transparent writing.
and white folk act pretty damn stupid in horror films, but the staggeringly inept action in the woods was shameful.
Def By Temptation stands as the best in this genre.
Keith...wtf And you co-produced this? Man, what were you thinking. Snorefest. Poor character development, pathetic continuity, molasses styled pacing. It takes over 20mins before someone even bothers to pick up a script.
And seriously, could they not even afford a second camera. Watch carefully, no don't even carefully watch, just look at the screen & see glaringly the lack of 'cinematography'. The one camera & badly placed one at that, screams at the viewer for attention. Boring...
Okay, granted that the snow bound Minnesota setting was not a clichéd location for the cast & they tried to give some historical slant to the proceedings. But major fail on all accounts. It had no real bearing on the ..er plot.
And did they have to stereotype them, despite them being uppity black folk, by having them smoke weed. C'mon. Was that to give them cred for the potential audience despite them all being rich greedy w@nkers.
And the white couple. what was the point of them & especially their only lines of dialogue at the beginning that just happened to imply racist attitudes. Amazingly transparent writing.
and white folk act pretty damn stupid in horror films, but the staggeringly inept action in the woods was shameful.
Def By Temptation stands as the best in this genre.
Road Kill
(2010)
dire
4 October 2010
What a piece of crap. Absolute rubbish. Extremely bad acting, stupid premise, inane script, full of plot holes, characters are all w@nkers, no suspense, no explanations, no nothing. The cinematography was at least decent & the South Aus locations were nice to look at, but really why even bother. that's about it. Who read this script & thought that an evil Cerberus hood ornament was enough to sustain the 90mins. Incredibly inept & whats even worse is that it was pretty monotonous as well. I support Aussie films, but this was an embarrassment. I really don't understand how this even had SAFC money input. Criminal. Not even worth a download.
Dead Meat
(2004)
What a total piece of crap...
1 September 2008
If a film like Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead', which was made on a paltry budget, can still be effective 40 years later, how on earth could anyone even remotely think this is even a 1% decent flick. It's 100% ineptitude in my opinion. To say anything else would be criminal. And yes, I watch loads of sh#t from drivel to Lake Dead to excellent ones like REC. This was closer to Lake Dead than I would've liked.
What was the Irish Film Board thinking? The script must've totaled about 3 pages.
I don't care that they had no budget or that the 'gore' effects were cheap looking, or that the actors were painfully bad & extremely non-emotive. None of that matters to me. I love low budget films. But the least it can be is to be entertaining. It failed miserably. Did any of the people involved sit in on the editing to even try & salvage it. Just watch the end credits & see how the cast & crews names appear twice. To extend the length past the actual 74mins of the film itself.
Just look at Peter Jackson's 2 debut film Bad Taste. Even then you could see that he was a born filmmaker. I see no evidence with the director work with this film, It added nothing to the canon of zombie films.
I've read the other comments that seem to rate this from average to above average & I am spellbound by them. Were they watching a 10 minute edit of the film? Oh the editing. Yes. Good point. Where was the editor? Scenes that should have made a point within 1min took 10 minutes to play out. There was no sense of dread, atmosphere, fun, nothing. I thought it being Irish it might have been a different & maybe even a ridiculous take on the genre, but alas, it was as bad as any straight to video release that 100's of Americans make each year. The Aussie film 'Undead' had no budget, but at least it had some style & verve. This was so frigging dull.
And you can stop with the usual 'let's see you make a film' comments. Boring & predictable. I did the filmmakers a service by watching the damn thing. They failed to deliver. I am making a few comment. Simple as that. I could squish a pimple & get more sense of drama, gore, thrills from that than I received from this film.
What was the Irish Film Board thinking? The script must've totaled about 3 pages.
I don't care that they had no budget or that the 'gore' effects were cheap looking, or that the actors were painfully bad & extremely non-emotive. None of that matters to me. I love low budget films. But the least it can be is to be entertaining. It failed miserably. Did any of the people involved sit in on the editing to even try & salvage it. Just watch the end credits & see how the cast & crews names appear twice. To extend the length past the actual 74mins of the film itself.
Just look at Peter Jackson's 2 debut film Bad Taste. Even then you could see that he was a born filmmaker. I see no evidence with the director work with this film, It added nothing to the canon of zombie films.
I've read the other comments that seem to rate this from average to above average & I am spellbound by them. Were they watching a 10 minute edit of the film? Oh the editing. Yes. Good point. Where was the editor? Scenes that should have made a point within 1min took 10 minutes to play out. There was no sense of dread, atmosphere, fun, nothing. I thought it being Irish it might have been a different & maybe even a ridiculous take on the genre, but alas, it was as bad as any straight to video release that 100's of Americans make each year. The Aussie film 'Undead' had no budget, but at least it had some style & verve. This was so frigging dull.
And you can stop with the usual 'let's see you make a film' comments. Boring & predictable. I did the filmmakers a service by watching the damn thing. They failed to deliver. I am making a few comment. Simple as that. I could squish a pimple & get more sense of drama, gore, thrills from that than I received from this film.
Ek Ajnabee
(2005)
You have got to be joking. Cinematic terrorism.
15 October 2006
Absolute dire rubbish. Notwithstanding the 'Man on Fire' comparisons (or any John Woo similarities), cause that's nothing new to Bollywood, it was directed by a hack & maybe put together by people with skills, but severely lacking any talent. Derivative, uninspired, clichéd, predictable, unconnected & ultimately rather boring.
The fight scenes were choreographed by a puppet, filmed by a brick & edited by a epileptic. Slow-mo, blurry, freeze-frame, action-less action. Rubbish.
And how pathetic that you could actually see one bad dudes stuck on moustache as clear as day. In glorious widescreen, it looked like someone had glued half a hair net on his head.
...but absolutely worst of all was the incredibly annoying & persistent soundtrack. Every single moment of screen time that wasn't a specific scene with dialogue was filled with the crappiest most dated Indian versions of late 90s Eurobeat. It was non-friggin-stop. It never let up. The soundtrack must be at least 2hrs 10mins of music alone. People slag off many Hollywood films for being too MTV-like. Well this was like MTV editing on PCP. The one lame "song" that came on after the intermission was made up of 1/2 second edits that has seriously taken the cake for how not to use scissors in an editing room. Inept at the nth degree.
The only decent thing was the little girl. She could at least act & hopefully she will have escaped any emotional damage that might have occurred after she watched the final product...
The most singular worst Bollywood film i've ever attended.
The fight scenes were choreographed by a puppet, filmed by a brick & edited by a epileptic. Slow-mo, blurry, freeze-frame, action-less action. Rubbish.
And how pathetic that you could actually see one bad dudes stuck on moustache as clear as day. In glorious widescreen, it looked like someone had glued half a hair net on his head.
...but absolutely worst of all was the incredibly annoying & persistent soundtrack. Every single moment of screen time that wasn't a specific scene with dialogue was filled with the crappiest most dated Indian versions of late 90s Eurobeat. It was non-friggin-stop. It never let up. The soundtrack must be at least 2hrs 10mins of music alone. People slag off many Hollywood films for being too MTV-like. Well this was like MTV editing on PCP. The one lame "song" that came on after the intermission was made up of 1/2 second edits that has seriously taken the cake for how not to use scissors in an editing room. Inept at the nth degree.
The only decent thing was the little girl. She could at least act & hopefully she will have escaped any emotional damage that might have occurred after she watched the final product...
The most singular worst Bollywood film i've ever attended.
Only Clouds Move the Stars
(1998)
Intelligent & sensitive tale of loss.
17 September 2006
Easily one of the most moving films i've ever seen. It screened here once on SBS television & i've waited for a repeat ever since, but to no avail. I am now annoyed I never taped it, because my search for a DVD release with English subtitles has proved fruitless. Even the Hong Kong version lacked subs. http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.533069/qx/details.htm Its obviously been criminally overlooked, for there's scant English commentary online for it. I think i'll have to request SBS play it again & get a DVD recorder to spring into action if it does appear again.
Probably the most convincing portrayal of people coping with the loss of a family member. Mostly from the point of view of the young girl who won't acknowledge her brothers death & makes stories up to hide her fear of the truth. The scene with her mother's inability to accept her son's death is outstanding.
So far it's been one of my private gems that i've been unable to share with others because of it's unavailability. There won't be many comments here because of its unfair obscurity, so i felt compelled to let the director know that she created one highly impressive directorial debut from her own script & it's a shame there haven't been more films with her name attached.
Probably the most convincing portrayal of people coping with the loss of a family member. Mostly from the point of view of the young girl who won't acknowledge her brothers death & makes stories up to hide her fear of the truth. The scene with her mother's inability to accept her son's death is outstanding.
So far it's been one of my private gems that i've been unable to share with others because of it's unavailability. There won't be many comments here because of its unfair obscurity, so i felt compelled to let the director know that she created one highly impressive directorial debut from her own script & it's a shame there haven't been more films with her name attached.
Matroesjka's
(2005–2008)
1st Episode just aired on Australian TV, SBS.
2 December 2005
Wow!! The first Belgium TV series I've seen & i'm already impressed by the 1st episode. The production standards were indeed high. And the subject matter...Wheewe! Heavy stuff. Now that is what television should do, educate, while entertain (for want of a better word). We always read about the European slave trade with girls vanishing from Eastern European countries & I've seen a few documentaries on the subject, but to see it scripted as a drama is altogether another thing. I must express my ignorance in that i didn't realise that criminals from Belgium were involved, I thought it was mainly a Russian mafia thing.
Very impressed & I'm glad we have a station like SBS that show intelligent programs like this from around the world. I definitely will track down the DVD & lend to friends too lazy to watch it late on Friday nights.
The Danish crime show, Rejseholdet is also screening & is also of high standard. The stories are more realistic & don't necessarily end upbeat like the US shows. More meat & potatoes than fairy floss.
Do these kind of programs ever show on US television?
Fantastic, I just had to vent my approval somewhere... Ha!
Very impressed & I'm glad we have a station like SBS that show intelligent programs like this from around the world. I definitely will track down the DVD & lend to friends too lazy to watch it late on Friday nights.
The Danish crime show, Rejseholdet is also screening & is also of high standard. The stories are more realistic & don't necessarily end upbeat like the US shows. More meat & potatoes than fairy floss.
Do these kind of programs ever show on US television?
Fantastic, I just had to vent my approval somewhere... Ha!
Tell Your Friends