Change Your Image
andyonabike
Reviews
House M.D. (2004)
Entertaining, but a failure
I have watched each episode and each series of this show and thoroughly enjoyed each. Bur ultimately this show is a failure.
One preview of this show claimed that Dr. House was a brilliant diagnostician who single-handledly solved the most difficult medical cases and save countless lives.
My impression of the series in anything but.
Sure there were enormously complex and obscure medical cases solved but these more often came down to a process of elimination, mostly involving House's staff, rather than himself.. And often blind , and often hopelessly contrived, luck.
House came across to me as someone who should have been fired and descended into a drug addled obscurity, long before this actually occurred in the series.
Yet he is somehow made into a hero. A typical failure of this genre.
A Country Practice (1981)
Much loved in its day, in hindsight a whitewash
I grew up watching and loving this series when it aired in the 1980's. It was a great series with a who's who cast of Australian actors and performers.
As a product of its time there was probably little thought given to diversity. Going through the list of probably over a thousand acting credits it is hard to find a non-white and non-anglo/european actor or indeed character.
From my memories of watching this show I can't remember any aboriginal actors or characters either. There probably were some bit-parts.
Friends has often been criticised for its lack of diversity but this Australian production ranks alongside and not in a positive way.
Collateral Beauty (2016)
I didn't understand the title, but I'm glad I watched
I just saw this movie on late night Television. I didn't intend to watch it right through as there was another movie on another channel starting a little bit later, that I wanted to watch. So I was really just killing time (unintended pun). But it completely drew me in despite the strange incongruity of the plot.
I saw early on that the three metaphoric characters , Love, Death and Time were reflections of the supressed pain and/or life circumstances of the three business partners and that each of these three would be profoundly affected by those reflections and would come to face their own fears.
I did not see the ending coming at all.
This was the second time that a Will Smith movie made me cry. The other was Seven Pounds which I immediately rewatched.
All the performances were brilliant.
I can't wait to watch this movie again, and again, and again.
The Hunger Games (2012)
A History Lesson
The basic premise of this movie is that a decadent society, supremely ruled by one man, forces two children from each exploited and harshly controlled district to battle to the death in an arena for the entertainment of the rich and privileged capitol residents. They battle in an arena where animals and other environmental/climatic conditions can be altered to ensure the action is continuous and dramatic.
The movie itself is well made. The acting performances are good and the visual effects and music are excellent. I haven't read the books but movie adaptations rarely match the standards of books so I'm sure this would be true in this case.
So what is the history lesson embedded in this film? If you think that this society could never exist think again. It has, or at least it did exist about 2000 years ago.
The ROMAN EMPIRE had many similarities to the society depicted in the hunger games.
A gloriously rich and decadent capitol, Rome - Check. A supreme leader or Caesar - Check. A rich upper class of citizens in Rome - Check. Outlying settlements exploited for their resources and brutally controlled - Check. Poor exploited workers in those outlying settlements - Check. Gladiators forced to battle to the death for the entertainment of Rome's elite - Check. Brutal weapons used to make each death particularly dramatic and gory - Check. An arena or Coliseum where the battles take place - Check. Lions on chains to introduce other hazardous and dramatic twists to the action - Check.
Perhaps this movie could be used in the school history curriculum.