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Showing posts from December 29, 2019

Review: Network

A film concerning the various personalities at a fictional American TV station that is currently struggling in 4 th position in the ratings. Ambitious programming executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) is looking for something to pop the ratings, even considering a TV series centring around the current spate of revolutionary kidnappings and bank robberies, ala the Patty Hearst incident. Meanwhile, veteran news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is coming unglued, with his pronouncement live on the air of a promise to commit suicide on the next night’s broadcast almost going by completely unnoticed by the busy inhabitants of the newsroom at the time. A ratings-driven light bulb goes off in Christensen’s head, and ruthless newly appointed station honcho Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall) reluctantly goes along with the idea of appointing Christensen in charge of the news division. She goes about spot-lighting the clearly unhinged Beale in his own hourly spot ranting and raving about w

Review: Aquaman

Pretty much a mixture of “Green Lantern” and “Clash of Titans” , as Jason Momoa stars as Arthur Curry, AKA Aquaman, the son of a lighthouse keeper (Temuera Morrison) who hooked up with an Atlantean queen named Atlanna (Nicole Kidman, making like Daryl Hannah in “Splash” ). It is through his mother’s genes that Arthur gains special abilities in swimming, breathing underwater and being the Dr. Doolittle of the ocean. The gist of the film has Arthur/Aquaman doing battle with the vengeful son of a pirate (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) trying to hijack a ship, before venturing to Atlantis to claim his birthright and deal with his power-hungry twit of a half-brother Orm (Patrick Wilson) who wants to gather all of the undersea kingdoms together to wage a war above water. Amber Heard (with unflattering red hair- sorry, it only works on animated mermaids) plays Mera, who urges Arthur/Aquaman to come to Atlantis. Willem Dafoe plays Arthur/Aquaman’s mentor Vulko, whilst a red-bearded Dolph Lundgren