Author: Rob Williams
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Classic Movie Rewatch – Raiders Of The Lost Ark after 40 years
What links a toilet cistern, fingering a cheese casserole, a Honda Civic rolling down a gravel path, whacking a pile of leather jackets with a baseball bat, and R2-D2? They’re all sound effects used during the production of Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The toilet cistern is the sound of the lid of the Ark of…
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Best of British Biographies – Ian McKellen
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Who’s the last actor to create a character written by Shakespeare? By that I mean who was the last person to get a part written by Shakespeare and be the first one to actually perform it. Edward Alleyn? David Garrick? William Kempe? You might be surprised to hear that it is none other than Magneto/Gandalf…
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30th Birthday Rewatch – Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves (1991)
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As an Englishman, you might think that I’d have the story of Robin Hood engraved upon my heart. The sad fact is that, while I can vaguely remember some details of the history of England going back to the Roman Invasion of 55BC led by Gaius Julius Caesar, I don’t remember any facts about Robin…
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Indie Movie Review – Skinwalker
Skinwalker starts off by telling us that we are in the Arizona High Country in 1883. Two grizzled chaps, Benny (Nathaniel Burns) and Hugo (Robert Conway), are creeping through the woods, rifles drawn, looking like they’re out hunting — when they happen across what appears to be a body on a wooden trellis. One of…
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Documentary Review – The Year Earth Changed
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“March 2020. Overnight, our lives are put on pause. But, as we stop, remarkable things start to change in the natural world.” The Year Earth Changed opens with the venerable tones of David Attenborough, which reassure you this is going to be fascinating, entertaining, and educational three-quarters of an hour. Apple got together with the…
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Indie Documentary Review – The Dark Hobby
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in DocumentaryI’ve been a keeper of fish in the past. I’ve kept goldfish in bowls and ponds, and I’ve kept tropical fish in increasingly large tanks as my Aspergerish tendencies meant that I got deeper and deeper into the hobby. I never got as far as keeping marine tropical fish but, were it not for a…
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The Giant James Bond Rewatch – For Your Eyes Only (1981)
I don’t think it is any secret that, in my ever so humble opinion, Roger Moore was the worst Bond ever. Hell’s teeth, I even think Woody Allen and Daliah Lavi made a better fist of the job. But I know that there are fans of the Moore-era, as will be seen when my editor…
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The Giant James Bond Rewatch – Dr. No (1962)
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Looking back, it’s almost impossible to imagine that Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman didn’t know that, with Dr. No, they were establishing a film franchise to become the second longest-running in the world. At fifty-nine years the only thing that’s outlasted it is Godzilla, which began in 1954 and is still going. When you…
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Indie Movie Review – A Ghost Waits
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My name is Rob, and I’m a cinema addict. When the world was open I was retired and had Infinity cards both for RunPee and for my local cinema; I’d peaked at seeing three films in a day and going four or five days a week. Then it all closed down. However, I was luckier…
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Indie Movie Review – Painkiller
Cards on the table time… there’s a lot about Painkiller that I have difficulty in relating to. Not that I can’t believe it, I’ve heard enough of the US medical system to know it’s, well, quite different to every other Western country. There are some situations which could happen over here in the UK, but there…
