Epinions Recent Reviews for Barbelith

"Pre-dinner conversational gambits: A repository of wit.", by H. Lecter MD

Tue, 6 Feb 2001 19:53:08 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Let's start with what the press-pack said, shall we? That'll get a lot of the basics out of the way swiftly without me having to rehash it all. Then I can cut to the chase.

Press pack

_________

"Ten years later, he is still her...

"I didn't do it - America,Teenager" or Brits aren't all bad.

Tue, 7 Nov 2000 21:08:13 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Hollywood history has had its villains, and they seem to come in blocks. At the end of the forties (with strands oozing all the way up until the present day), these villains were from Nazi Germany. In the fifties, these villains were the Red Menace of...

A ground-breaking, astonishing piece that you should NOT SEE

Sun, 5 Nov 2000 22:22:09 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - PRELUDE TO THE DREAM:

Picture the scene - a man in his late twenties arrives in New York after a trans-Atlantic flight from London, having had almost no sleep whatsoever and knowing that he has to find some way of getting some energy back...

"Why Woo Cruise?" or "A Gentleman's Guide to Bad Cinema"

Sat, 27 May 2000 06:02:09 GMT

rating: 2/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - REVIEW BY SYLLOGISM:

A) On the first film:

1) PROPOSITION: Brain De Palma makes bad films more often than he makes good films.

2) PROPOSITION: Mission Impossible was a Brian De Palma film.

3) THUS: Mission Impossible was...

How I came to love "Le Monde" or Sci-Fi Hi-Fi Surf-Rock Supernova

Sun, 23 Jan 2000 10:17:05 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - It took me a while to fall for the charms of the Pixies, but when I fell I fell hard. I had just missed the release of Trompe Le Monde when I'd got to University but knew nothing about it, nor indeed indie rock generally.

Of my main groups of...

Look - I have only seen one episode. It was good. Very very good. This means nothing. The rest of it could suck. A lot.

Sun, 16 Jan 2000 13:37:28 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Confession One: Tom's Obsession With American Teen Culture

Let's start at the beginning. I am 27. I have a degree and did three years of postgrad work in the Classics before I decided it wasn't for me. I work as a journalist. I have had things...

Star Wars For Grown-Ups - or How Teenage Space-Opera Can Become A Moving Tragedy...

Sun, 16 Jan 2000 12:02:50 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Let's get this straight. There are, in fact, only three Star Wars films at the present time. If we are comfortable getting rid of the extraneous related material of the Star Wars franchise, then Phantom Menace must (I am afraid) be relegated to the same...

He Put The Spirit Into Dance Music, or Can My Honey Come Back Sometime?

Sun, 16 Jan 2000 11:31:48 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - In the middle of 1999, all over the semi alternative radio stations in the UK was this song called "Honey" - it was irresistably catchy - a wonderful loop of a lyric, with an energy building behind it each time. I heard it over and over again,...

"Oh the Catholic Irony!" or "What a Pity Dogma Isn't As Cool As Chasing Amy"

Sun, 9 Jan 2000 09:28:47 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - [Disclaimer: I don't know whether or not this matters, but I am a confirmed atheist of ten years standing, raised in the UK in a loosely Church of England Protestant fashion which involved me going to Church three times a year. I have no particular axe...

In a cinema with my brother, why is noone else laughing...?

Wed, 29 Dec 1999 20:40:10 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - There are two kinds of people in this world - the first kind start their journey to work with grim determination, while the other are thinking how cool it would be if they could fly there, or burst through the windows of their bosses office with their...

Is love enough? Or why an affecting, low-key little drama makes me think about Good and Bad parents.

Sat, 11 Dec 1999 09:36:29 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - The plot: Eva is a young girl. Her Mother (Mary Jo) flies from failed abusive relationship to failed abusive relationship, getting by on her essential decency and ability to get on with people. Every time Mary Jo splits up with a partner they pick up...

Whatever you do don't read this review: I have absolutely no bloody idea what I think about this film.

Wed, 1 Dec 1999 19:26:26 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Before I even start I should say that I am completely unable to write a review of Fight Club that even vaguely resembles the intellectual turmoil in my head about it. It is simultaneously wonderful and ridiculous, savage and naive, a revolutionary and a...

Satan's in the details - or why Halloween's teenage thighs straddle Puritanism and Paganism

Mon, 22 Nov 1999 19:39:52 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - They said it in "Scream" so it must be true - you have to be a virgin to survive one of these films... But we're getting ahead of ourselves.

The plot is beyond simple. It is, unsurprisingly, Halloween. In the first ten minutes with...

Escaping the Cube: how an independent film with a tiny budget and one set broke free from genre conventions.

Sun, 7 Nov 1999 22:24:52 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Don't look for an answer - this film isn't about answers - it isn't about back-story, evil aliens, conspiracies or good guys/bad guys. The whole premise is basically an excuse - a way put a bunch of characters under pressure and watch what happens. And...

Kevin Smith's most sophisticated and elegant film

Sun, 7 Nov 1999 10:46:14 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - So Clerks was entertaining and quirky with a dollop of tastelessness, Mallrats was tasteless with (large) dollop of entertainment and quirkiness. Both of them are entertaining and worth watching. But then neither of them were based on examining and...

Fall in love with My Sweetheart, The Drunk...

Mon, 1 Nov 1999 22:01:11 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Jeff Buckley died tragically a few years ago and left us with one completed album ("Grace") and a couple of partial ones, the best of which were assembled and released as "Sketches...".

I once tried to get a friend to...

Smells like propoganda by the House for Un-American Activities. Highly unpalatable.

Mon, 1 Nov 1999 21:17:30 GMT

rating: 1/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - I have to get something off my chest. I don't think Forrest Gump is badly acted, badly paced or even particularly badly written. Instead I think it has been put together with great skill, and manages to be affecting in quite a sophisticated manner.
...

Understanding the Anti-Hero - a monologue on Natural Born Killers (try to stay awake now....)

Sun, 31 Oct 1999 14:39:57 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Have you seen Bonnie and Clyde? Have you seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show? Have you read Euripides' Bacchae? Have you seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls?

Bizarrely, all these works have one thing in common - transgressive individuals who...

Our Love is God, or Why I Wish I Were Christian Slater...

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 18:23:18 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - The film that started my slow and steady movement into fully corporately sponsored faux-rebellion is as wonderful today as it was a thousand years ago in my youth.

Westerburg High School is full of the standard arrangement of student cliques...

A haven for monied liberal intelligensia, Hampstead's only major flaw is the price of living there

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 17:46:41 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Hampstead is expensive. That's the first thing you have to know before coming here. It's not too bad as a visitor or tourist, but it's a killer if you live here. Just to give you a guide to the prices - a small one bedroom flat with no garden around here...

Yahoo! Mail: Practical online e-mail without the glamour

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 12:23:26 GMT

rating: 3/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Yahoo! e-mail works perfectly 99% of the time. It is seldom unavailable. It has a few really useful features. I haven't been horribly let down by it yet.

And yet it is SO unexciting. It may seem churlish to be irritable with this kind of free...

A great album, which has dated more than much of his work

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 10:51:46 GMT

rating: 4/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - Bowie is responsible for so much. He made Tin Machine, invented New Romanticism and said the Lord's Prayer at Live Aid. But it hasn't all been bad!

In fact pretty much everything Bowie produced before 1980 is a classic, and Ziggy Stardust is...

I've been converted!

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 10:31:56 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - I must have spent ten years sneering at dance music. At least. When I was a kid, the dance music that I heard was trashy uncool stuff with no spine or passion. There was no sense of menace - just a kind of faux-hedonism that never really convinced me. I...

La Resistance Lives On!

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 09:38:53 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - It's not often a cartoon TV series makes a successful transition to the big screen - even less often when it looks like it took about a week to animate it. But then, its not often that a TV series is horribly constrained from being as offensive as it...

It's a classic - live with it

Sat, 30 Oct 1999 09:11:53 GMT

rating: 5/5 by: Epinions Author Barbelith - I used to have a theory. Having gone through a "Rocky" phase in my teenage years, I had decided that the only adults who liked The Rocky Horror Picture Show were straight men with bad sex lives, gay men who wanted to be straight men with bad...