Category Archives: Treasure

Dune (1984)

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Dune was supposed to be “The Next Big Thing”, a film to financially rival the Star Wars trilogy based on a book that rivaled The Lord of The Rings for how much it changed the landscape of the genre and how many copies it shifted. Directed and written by the arthouse newcomer David Lynch (his third movie as director), helmed by legendary producer Raffaella De Laurentiis (daughter and student of the also-legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis), it had a budget of around $40 million, a soundtrack by Toto with the main theme by Brian Eno, a cast of renowned part-actors, and a run time of over two hours. It had the author’s blessing, the studio backing, and the fan bases’ eager anticipation. It was going to start a new dynasty of cinema epics, launch a thousand toys and tie-ins, and print money beyond the backer’s wildest dreams!
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Dead Pixels Season One

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Two things are needed to make a good sitcom – a solid set of characters to either laugh at – or with – and a comprehensible reason for them all to be in a situation to let the jokes flow through. This is something that Dead Pixels manages to get very right, especially on the people-front as it has an intentionally minimal cast to work with.
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Love, Death & Robots Season 1

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Anthologies are, by their very nature, a mixed bag, but Love, Death & Robots often feels like it’s an utterly random hodgepodge of stories and tones thrown together with no cohesive themes. To give you an idea, the first half opens with a solid 18-rated, by-the-numbers gore, and pseudo-sexy cyberpunk then skips to a charming little comedy about three robots taking a tour through the post-apocalypse, follows up with the way too long and far too exploitative Naked Woman Running In Terror sequence. It’s then on to a charming story of space farmers defending a homestead with mechs, tries to be serious with an 80s inspired Vampires vs Cats, hits another high note with a highly evocative social comedy about hyper-intelligent Yogurt and tails off with the double act of The Opening Of Aliens: Let’s Have Sex In Space, and Steampunk: Mystic Asia With Rich Europeans Being Terrible.
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Doom Patrol Season One, Episode One

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DC Universe launches its second home-produced TV series with 15 episodes of the long-standing, but a relatively unknown, group of characters known as the Doom Patrol. Started in the 60s, by writers Arnold Drake, Bob Haney, and artist Bruno Premiani, showrunner Jeremy Carver has stuck with the various comic series’ concept of having “The World’s Strangest Heroes” being a tale of trauma and alienation. Rather than the questions of moral right or wrong asked by its predecessor, Titans, the opening episode focuses on introducing each character to the audience through a series of heavy punches to the heart, face, and soul. What could have been a simple run-through of “the gathering of the forces of good” is an assortment of kicks to the groin, executed so as to leave no joy unsullied and no heart sting unrazored.
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Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

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It is easy to argue that Alita: Battle Angel has had the most “Production Hell” baggage to deal with of any major sci-fi movie of the last five years. Originally started as a project in 2000 by 20th Century Fox, five years after the comic had been a smash in Japan and relative obscurity outside of the global anime/manga scene, it had James Cameron as its producer since 2003. Finally shot under the direction of Robert Rodriguez under great secrecy at the end of 2016, the first trailers declaring a July 2018 release were circulated in December 2017, only to then have the movie go quiet till it resurfaced mid-2018 with a heavily de-mangafied look for Alita and a release date of the “dump month” of February 2019. So, has Cameron finally produced something well inside his wheelhouse that could only be justified as $200 million “passion project”? Well, maybe. But they’ve produced a charming little emotional ride and a fully realised world, regardless of what the box office says.
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