Alex Beattie
Website URL: http://crash-burn.com
The subversion of genres and their tropes is something many filmmakers attempt. Commendable as such efforts might be it’s incredibly difficult to get right. Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the Woods was remarkable in its gumption, throwing knowing winks and nods at horror fans and thumbing his nose at the lazy, insipid torture porn that has come to dominate the oft maligned genre. Thankfully, newcomer Richard Bates Jr’s pitch black suburban body horror Excision, whilst not thematically or stylistically similar to Cabin is another fine example of an original, refreshing take on the genre that titillates and surprises in equal measure.
No sooner has US movie giant Netflix arrived in the UK and pissed all over Amazon’s LoveFilm scented bonfire than veritable broadcasting behemoth Sky enters the fray with the launch of the much vaunted NOW TV.
"The Legend Ends" says the marketing for The Dark Knight Rises, so to celebrate the conclusion of Christopher Nolan's superb trilogy, we at LITM are bringing you a whole Batcave's worth of features on the caped crusader and his fight against Gotham's underworld...
“Riddle me this, riddle me that, who’s afraid of the big, black bat?”
The premise of one man’s enigmatic hunt for one of nature’s most elusive beasts is a well-worn one. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick immediately springs to mind and there are evident shades of Ahab in Willem Dafoe’s Martin David, the focussed and determined protagonist of Daniel Nettheim’s adaptation of Julia Leigh’s 1999 novel The Hunter.
Of his directorial debut Ill Manors, rapper and wannabe auteur Ben Drew aka Plan B said he was making a "British Godfather". Well, despite an evident interest in interweaving narratives, Drew’s picture bears little relation to Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece. Sweeping epic this most certainly isn’t.
