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Zeuss101
1. Aliens (1986, 1992)
2. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991, 1993)
3. LOTR Trilogy (2001 - 2004)
4. Gladiator (2000, 2005)
5. Jurassic Park (1993)
6. Road House (1989)
7. The Green Mile (1999)
8. Alien (1979, 2003)
9. Total Recall (1990)
10. The Terminator (1984)
Favourite Actor: Bill Paxton / Arnold Schwarzenegger / Michael Biehn / John Rhys-Davies
Favourite Director: James Cameron
Favourite Book : The Lord Of The Rings
Favourite TV series: Sliders (1995 - 2000) / The Simpsons (1989 - ) / 24 (2001 - ) / Lost (2004 - ) / Doctor Who (2005 - )
Reviews
Timeshift: Rover: The Long Goodbye (2007)
Very one sided
Rover: The Long Goodbye is a documentary charting the rise and fall of one of the UK's most famous car brands. Rather than focus in detail on the many companies which owned the name from the original Rover Car Company through British Leyland to Rover Group and finally MG Rover and cover the history and politics involved, the film instead covers Rover as a brand and it's application on various different and questionably suitable cars.
I find this to be a very short sighted and bias approach, because the documentary tends to focus on all the negative points of Rover's history, and it's use on low quality cars like the Tata Indica, while ignoring much of the good work achieved by the car makers behind it. No mention is made of the K-Series engine, or the best selling Rover of all time, the R8 200/400 series co-developed with Honda. Multiple exaggerated clips are used from Top Gear, a program presented by a man infamous for his hatred for his own domestic car maker. It is in this respect that I find The Long Goodbye fails, because it focuses completely on the shortcomings but ignores the good work which was achieved by the British firm. Perhaps this is to be expected from a documentary of this kind, but I think a fairer and more neutral assessment would have been more appropriate.
Films like this are only serving to perpetuate the already high level of disregard for our own domestic car makers in the UK. A documentary which acknowledged the successes of the firm as well as it's short comings would have been a much better film. The one part of this I did agree with was the statement that all the people who are mourning the loss of Rover only have themselves to blame for not buying them. You would never see the French destroying their own car industry, so why did it happen here? Since when has the British national hobby been destroying our own heritage?
The Animals of Farthing Wood (1993)
The best children's series of all time.
The Animals of Farthing Wood is an animated children's series following the journey of a group of animals as they leave their original habitat due to it being destroyed by man, and travel to the safety of a nature reserve. Three series' of the show were produced, the first showing the journey, and the latter two focusing on the animals lives after arriving in White Deer Park.
Rather than using comedy and humour to attract the attention of it's audience, AoFW uses its strong storyline and characters, the two things for which the show is best remembered and still far above any children's show even today.
During the series multiple main characters are killed off, often in violent ways, and because they were so well written and voiced, the deaths were even more emotional. Anyone I talk to about this show today remembers the moment the Hedgehogs were run over even if they can't recall anything else, and remember it as something which when they watched as a small child made them cry a lot.
I applaud the storyline for being as realistic as possible and not hiding the grim realities of nature, like so many other kids shows. Animals of Farthing Wood taught children about the difficulties faced by animals in their struggle to survive, such as the numerous threats posed by man and nature, two things which claimed many lives across the series. Even the basic premise of the show was a result of mankind destroying the animals home.
This is probably why this show is so well remembered and popular today, because it told it like it is and had a brilliant narrative, actually teaching children something important about animal cruelty and nature. I can only guess at the number of children who watched this or read the book and were deeply affected by it, but I know I was one of them.
I liked the first series the most. The great journey to White Deer Park was the most varied and entertaining, and the part of the show which most people remember. Series 2 was also good, but it tried to include too many characters, and so some of the originals such as Mole ended up getting neglected. Series 3, with it's different animation style, weaker story, and only a handful of original cast was the worst of the 3, however was still watchable, and ended well.
I hope some day this is released on DVD and constantly re-run on TV, as children today should have the privilege of seeing this pure classic, and experiencing the happiness and sorrow that came with it, as I and so many others did.
No other children's show has this much emotional and cognitive impact.
Road House 2: Last Call (2006)
Road House. So bad, it's good. Road House 2. So bad, I want to rip some throats out.
The original Road House was a classic cheesy 80s movie, which although it didn't have anywhere near award worthy writing or acting, was a very enjoyable and popular film, largely due to the presence of star Patrick Swayze and the great supporting cast, along with some excellent fight scenes and eye candy.
16 years later, and MGM / Sony attempts to re-create the magic which left us all quoting one liners and reciting the three rules of bouncing... with a movie which quotes all the original's best one liners and recites the three rules.
Were this an amateur fan made film, it would be seen as a loving homage to one of the most popular of Swayze's movies. As a professionally made film, it falls flat on it's face right into the DVD Bargin Bin, with its continual reuse of lines and plot from the original movie becoming more of an annoying sign of lack of originality rather than cool references to the original.
Having said that, with new lines such as "I'm gonna kill you just like I killed your father" no wonder the screenwriters decided to rehash much of the original script.
I knew this was never going to be anything special, being a Straight to DVD Sequel, but I had at least hoped that there might be a couple of new ideas and fresh things included to live up to the Road House name, but what you get is simply just a 2006 remake of the same film, with a little narcotics added in.
Were I the director, I'd have removed all references to the first film so as not to tarnish the original and it's characters. As it is, we got Patrick Swayze's character now supposed to be dead (killed off screen in a lame way by Jake Busey) and his brother and son now the main characters, who strangely enough have completely different surnames.
My favourite part was that Dalton's 'son' drove the same car his father did, a genuinely cool homage, although it was later ruined by having the car meet its end EXACTLY the same way as its predecessor did. That's a good example of how this film goes too far in including sequences and ideas from the '89 movie.
Also of course who can forget the legendary moment where Wild Bill promises to kill Shane "just like I killed your father" and then proceeds to attempt to dispatch him in a completely different manner. Amazing writing there. I see Schaech is listed as co-screenwriter. Stick to acting, or preferably, nothing.
Overall though, this is an OK film if there's nothing else to watch and you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half, or if you haven't seen the first Road House, but hardcore fans of Swayze's classic will be totally disappointed almost to the point of feeling insulting at how much of a rip off this movie is of the first. As someone once suggested as an alternative subtitle for this film, "Even Jeff Healy is glad he won't be seeing this one!" Stick to the original Road House and relive the good old Swayze days!
Sliders (1995)
So much potential, destroyed by talentless hacks
An amazing Sci-Fi show that should have had the success it deserved instead of being buried by lame writing and casting.
Sliders focused on a group of 4 people who discovered a way to 'slide' between parallel worlds. Unfortionatley, they got lost in the inter-dimension, and were consigned to wandering between the many parallel universes in the hope of someday finding their way home.
When Tracy Torme' and Robert K. Weiss created this show in 1995, they had truly made something special. Unfortionately FOX decided to completely ruin it.
They began by airing the episodes out of sequence in the first 2 seasons, meaning that there could be no continuity between episodes, so whenever an extra character slid with the Sliders they were never seen again (with one poor exception). In the 3rd season David "Peckerhead" Peckinpah (a man with less talent than a dog turd) became an Executive Producer and many episodes became movie rip-offs instead of 'what if' concepts where parallel worlds had alternate histories to our own. The amazing John Rhys-Davies was then fired mid season 3 and replaced with Kari Wuhrer, a terrible actress who played a terrible character.
FOX allowed the Sci-Fi channel to take over the show for its 4th and 5th seasons. They put David Peckinpah completely in charge of the show, and he buried it by having ape-men called Kromaggs take over the Sliders' home world and by rewriting the backstory of the lead character completely. The premise was changed from finding home to fighting ape-men. In the last season, only one of the original Sliders remained.
When the show finished, it was without any resolution to many of its story arcs or the final episode's cliffhanger.
I feel Tracy Torme's pain. No one could have imagined that they would create a show as brilliant as Sliders, only to see it totally destroyed before their eyes.
Sliders had so much potential, but it was ruined by talentless hacks like 'Peckerhead'.
The first two seasons and the first part of season 3 are really all that are worth watching unfortunately.