Posts Tagged ‘police’
Author: James
Center does not hold
Former enfant terrible Oliver Stone would appear to have re-embraced the American Way but World Trade Center (2006), while graced with powerful performances and a life-affirming core narrative, suffers from biased perspectives and a sluggish middle section.
Accusations of mean-spiritedness may follow – after all, Oliver Stone’s film is based on one of the very few stories of hope to come out of 9/11, that horrifying day seven years ago, when two New York Port Authority police officers were trapped under the rubble of the World Trade Center. But the remarkable story of Sergeant John McLoughlin (Nicholas Cage) and rookie Will Jimen (Michael Peña), who were two of only 20 people eventually pulled alive from the wreckage, has been blurred by Stone’s apparent desire to apologise for the anti-US tone of his previous work, such as Salvador (1986) and JFK (1991).
Author: James
Road to hell
It would appear that the mud really does stick. Returning from the 2006 Berlinale Film Festival, at which The Road to Guantánamo won the Silver Bear award, two of the actors (Rizwan Ahmed and Farhad Harun) and two of the ex-detainees were temporarily detained and interrogated by UK police. According to BBC News, a Brit bobby asked Ahmed if he intended to make any more political films. The Thought Police are closing in…
Author: Colin
A policeman’s lot is quite a gruesome one
Another slab of in-your-face comic genius from Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and many of the usual suspects from Spaced.
The story – somewhat light though it may be in parts – is simple. A big-city cop gets injured and is shipped off to some backwater town to play out his days until retirement. Nick Angel (Pegg) has an impressive arrest record and a keen eye for laws being broken. It is only fitting, therefore, that his partner should be a bumbling country copper with a distinct preference for Cornetto ice cream over any actual police work.
Author: James
Copper-bottomed comedy
Messrs Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright are fast becoming the benchmark for what it means to be funny – comic actor and writer Pegg first paired up with writer/director Wright for the sensational Spaced sit-com, and they have subsequently worked together on the marvellous ‘not with a bang but a belly-laugh’ zombie pastiche, Shaun of the Dead (2004).
- Colin: Mike: the Matrix was utter toss. Don’t go there. Anyhow, I’m right with you on Aliens –...
- Colin: James: Why not do ten more and see if you can avoid putting the god-awful travesty that is Independence Day in...
- CD: The Day the Earth Stood Still (it’s about an alien who is Jesus…but better than ET) Soylent Green...
- James: Hello Chris, and welcome to Picturenose!
Many thanks for your comment – I thought, in fact, that... - James: Colin, good points, both on Westworld (which should really have been included, I know, I know) and otters.