Tony Black on Matt Damon’s return as Jason Bourne in the post-Snowden world… Nobody thought Jason Bourne was gone forever. Not even when Tony Gilroy’s misjudged The Bourne Legacy attempted to relaunch the franchise, sans Bourne himself, did people truly believe we’d seen the last of probably the greatest cinematic super spy of the modern […]
The Magnificent Remake: How and Why Remade Movies Succeed and Fail
Tony Black on remakes, and how and why they success and fail… Harking back to the days of big stars headlining even bigger films, The Magnificent Seven trailer exploded online this week showcasing the always A-list Denzel Washington alongside, among others, Hollywood’s newest megastar Chris Pratt, in a remake of the legendary 1960’s Yul Brynner […]
Game of Thrones: A Hard Won Battle in Two Short, Final Seasons
Tony Black on talk that Game of Thrones may only run for a further two truncated seasons… On the eve of Game of Thrones returning, HBO and its show runners have been quite vocal about the show’s future this week, recently suggesting there will be no spin-offs or prequels to the series for the time […]
Avatar: The Franchise That Keeps on Spawning
Tony Black on James Cameron’s ever-expanding Avatar series… James Cameron just won’t let this go, will he? Having spent the last decade almost in development and finally pre-production on a sequel to Avatar, his 2009 3D science-fiction epic which remains the most lucrative film ever made (only second even to Gone With the Wind, adjusted for […]
Blu-ray Review – It Happened One Night (1934)
It Happened One Night, 1934. Directed by Frank Capra. Starring Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Kerns and Jameson Thomas. SYNOPSIS: Ellen ‘Ellie’ Andrews, a spoiled heiress, runs away to elope with her handsome pilot fiancee. Along the way, she meets down on his luck reporter Peter Warne, and realises maybe her future isn’t […]
Star Trek Beyond… Anyone Who Cares?
Tony Black discusses Star Trek Beyond, and whether anyone really cares… If you took a straw poll of the general population, how many of them would know there was a new Star Trek movie dropping this summer? The chances are not nearly as many as there should be. Star Trek Beyond, the third movie of […]
Game of Thrones: How It May Be Played in Season Six
Tony Black looks forward to what we might expect from Game of Thrones season six… Game of Thrones is about to do something unprecedented and remarkable, something no previous television show has ever accomplished in quite the same way: it’s upcoming sixth season, which drops on April 24th in the US and 25th in the […]
Star Trek on TV: The Undiscovered Future
Tony Black on the possibilities for Bryan Fuller’s new Star Trek TV series… Quietly stealing the thunder of Justin Lin’s upcoming Star Trek Beyond, it’s the freshly announced rebirth of Star Trek on the small screen which has triggered a wave of excitement inside and outside of Star Trek fandom since the news dropped in November […]
Indiana Jones and the Future of the Franchise
Tony Black on Indiana Jones and the future of the franchise… Ask almost anyone what they thought of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the 2008 long-gestated sequel known forever and a day simply as ‘Indy IV’, and you’ll probably get much the same answer. “Awful!” “Rotten!” “Should never have made it!” […]
TV Review – The Night Manager
The Night Manager Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Debicki, Olivia Colman, Tom Hollander, David Harewood and Hugh Laurie. SYNOPSIS: Night manager of a wealthy hotel in Cairo, charming ex-Special Forces veteran Jonathan Pine is unable to prevent the murder of a woman connected to the secret arms dealings of British philanthropist Richard Roper, a man Pine […]
