This is a movie that practically begs you to compare it to things that are a lot better.

The B-movie is something that is quickly falling into irrelevance. With the drop in the cost of producing movies in the digital age, what was previously considered camp trash is now indie, and with it comes a greater measure of respect than previously.

Like Scrooge, we’re a bit at sea about what the future holds for our favourite kinds of nonsense.

‘Seize the Fire’, the second book in the ‘Star Trek: Typhon Pact’ series, features the crew of the U.S.S. Titan commanded by Captain Riker.

Another trailer of interest, this time the teaser for Danny Boyle’s ‘127 Hours’, starring the always-interesting James Franco:

Ouch.
‘127 Hours’ is in cinemas nationwide 5 January 2011.

One late Christmas Ever Ebenezeer Scrooge was visited by three spirits who showed him the past, the present and the Yet To Come. This is like that, but with three reviewers & Shiny’s usual pop culture nonsense. Merry Christmas.

Note: Eddie wrote this in 2006, as part of Shiny Advent, but it got lost in an email thread for four years. So here, at last, it is:
The ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special appears to be establishing itself as a tradition, so ingénues into the world of Who may be surprised to discover that, until [...]

One late Christmas Eve Ebenezeer Scrooge was visited by three spirits who showed him things from the past, the present and the Yet To Come. This is like that, but with three reviewers & Shiny’s usual pop culture nonsense. Merry Christmas.

‘Typhon Pact’ is a 4-book ‘Star Trek’ series revolving around the eponymous government, a nascent rival superpower to the Federation comprised of several of their foes.

The first season of ‘The Walking Dead’ is now over, and with the conclusion of the six-episode series, its time to look back and see how it fared in its freshman run.

Ten very special potential gifts from the wild world of unauthorised fan craft items.

Like most belated sequels to 70s / 80s family blockbusters, ‘Tron: Legacy’ has the weight of history, technology, and nostalgia to live up to and like ‘Star Wars: The Phantom Menace’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’, it is a sequel that doesn’t satisfy fans of the original or new audiences either.

The fundamental story-telling problem with the ‘Star Wars: the Clone Wars’ is that the end is already locked down. It has to end with the characters in place for ‘Revenge of the Sith’.

Alan Rinzler, Hunter S. Thompson’s sometime editor, writes a foreword to this book that asks why Thompson isn’t taken more seriously, why the drugs and excesses of his life have overshadowed his achievements as a writer and journalist?
Rinzler’s foreword never directly refers to the content of writer Will Bingley and artist Anthony Hope-Smith’s graphic biography [...]

You’d be forgiven for not knowing it but Leslie Neilsen was not just a white-haired deliverer of deadpan lines. He was also the romantic lead in one of the most seminal SF films of the 1950s.
‘Forbidden Planet’ is off the scale. It blew its budget retelling Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ as a space exploration story. Morbius [...]

To take you into the weekend, here’s the trailer for ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’, coming to Blu-ray and DVD on 27 December 2010.

More from Grimm Up North 2010: ‘13 Hours’, ‘Slice’, ‘Chop’, ‘Primal’ and ‘We Are What We Are’.

I’m finding it hard to get quite as worked up about the Joss-free ‘Buffy’ remake as many fans of the series are.

Lovecraft’s ‘At The Mountains Of Madness’ gets a classy graphic novel adaptation from writer/artist INJ Culbard.

Day Three of Grimm Up North 2010: Evil in the Time of Heroes, The Pack, and Amer.

Has anyone given Roger Corman these guys’ phone number?

‘Guts’ is an entertaining episode, which lacks the strength of the premiere but concentrates on action.

How can anyone resist a film with the title ‘Dead Hooker in a Trunk’? I certainly couldn’t, and am very pleased I gave in to temptation.

Day Two at the Grimmfest: ‘The Reeds’, ‘Dream Home’ and ‘Alien vs Ninja’.

Day one of Manchester’s ‘Grimmfest’ horror film festival: The Last Man On Earth rescored by Animat, and new Brit-horror ‘Outcast’.

It isn’t just that ‘Burke and Hare’ is bad, although clearly it is.

‘The Walking Dead’ comic has always primarily been about the characters, with the zombies providing a background.

Jackie Chan’s latest martial arts film is a more sombre affair, with a disconcerting subtext.

The competition is now closed.

‘Mysteries of Lisbon’ is a sprawling, gorgeous adaptation of a nineteenth century novel by Camilo Castelo Branco.

A semi-sequel to Rachid’s Bouchareb’s earlier Indigenes (translated as the less inflammatory ‘Days of Glory’) ‘Outside the Law’ is an intelligent and skilfully made film about the politics of rebellion and colonialism and the morality of war.

‘DC Universe Presents’ is the latest UK title to reprint US comics for the UK newsstand, and with one great story and two quite good ones it represents very good value for your three quid.

‘The Peanuts Collection’ is a wonderfully packaged volume that is a must-have for ‘Peanuts’ fans.

Daniele Luchetti’s first feature since ‘My Brother Is An Only Child’ is a low key affair, covering a year in the life of a working class Italian family.

Michael Lewis intended ‘Liar’s Poker’, his seminal 1989 book on his career as a bond trader, to be an exposé.

‘Route Irish’ is the road from Baghdad airport to the city’s ostensibly safe ‘Green Zone’.

Wang Xiaoshuai’s ‘Shanghai Dreams’ was a highlight of 2005’s London Film Festival, arriving on a wave of polite, well-considered hype.

‘Under the Red Hood’ manages the surprising feat of taking a comic book story mired in sprawling continuity and turning it into a highly enjoyable, accessible action thriller.

‘Womb’ is the worst film about clones featuring a scene in an abandoned ship on a windswept beach that I’ve seen this week.

‘Suck’ combines vampires with a rock’n’roll movie, and wears its cheapness on its leather sleeve.

Errol Morris’ droll, hugely enjoyable and often baffling documentary is a feature length profile of Joyce McKinney. Who she?

It’s difficult to imagine how a film screening could go more wrong.

A sensitively played and beautifully shot adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker nominated 2005 novel, ‘Never Let Me Go’ is a harrowing and deeply affecting film.

‘Dollhouse’ was, in case you are part of the vast majority of the population that it entirely passed by, a short lived US TV show.

The formula of Seth MacFarlane’s animated series is straightforward: there’s a family, and the dad also has a set of drinking buddies.

‘Our Friends in the North’ isn’t just first-class drama, it’s a stunning piece of fictive social history that charts the lives of four friends and their extended networks from 1964 until 1995.

If you’re on the southern side of Hadrian’s Wall, you may, but more likely may not, have heard about ITV’s spat with their Caledonian counterparts at STV.

‘Downton Abbey’ is haunted by the past. Not within the drama, but at a meta level.

I had high hopes for ‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’, about which I’d heard good things. I’m afraid, however, that viewing this film was a pretty disappointing and also slightly depressing experience.

‘Good Hair’ is nominally a study of the multimillion dollar black hair industry, but has some deeply resonant things to say about the wider question of race in American society.