Reviews of the Bosch

Pixar’s back! I mean really back! The studio’s been in a bit of a slump the last five years with Cars 2 , Brave , and Monsters University being fairly disappointing, and with a slate of sequels coming it felt like the once most original animation studio had lost its way. Well Inside Out is here to remind us it hasn’t! The film is set in the mind of Riley an eleven year old girl and her anthropomorphic emotions in control of her attitude and mindset. Led by Joy (Amy Poehler) who’s always bright, perky, and optimistic, they’re determined to keep Riley happy. Something that’s not easy when her family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. All of her memories are contained within little colour-coded orbs and special attention is given to the core memories (all joyful of course). But Sadness (Phyllis Smith) seemingly infects one and in the confusion to set it right, she and Joy end up stranded in Riley’s mind leaving only Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader), and Disgust (Mindy Kali...

                Have you heard about the new season of The Apprentice ? The stakes are higher than ever now Donny himself has entered the ring!                 Donald Trump is in the running for President and that is amazing! Finally we’re getting some spice tossed into the salad of presidential candidates (and we needed it after Lincoln Chafee!). At this point the campaign which is still a year away has become one of the most promising in history. You can’t say it’s not going to be fun anymore! The guy who pretty much thought Obama’s re-election was the worst thing to ever happen to America now gets a chance to see if everyone else will get to feel the same about him! He’s going to dominate every debate with his loudness, pointed fingers, and toupee. It’s going to be the best thing since that Marx Brothers reunion where they all died!      ...

               On St. Patrick’s Day I talked about The Guard , how good a film it was, and why it was my favourite Irish movie. Now, though that film is as good as ever, I feel I should talk about the movie that for me has just replaced it!                 I was fascinated by Song of the Sea ever since I started following last years’ Awards season, but never got around to watching it, what with all the other major nominated films I needed to see. Well I missed out, especially considering I just watched a film that was better than almost all of those nominees! Heavily drawing from Irish myth and folklore, Song of the Sea is about a little girl Saoirse who happens to be a Selkie (a Gaelic seal spirit) and her older brother Ben. They don’t get along primarily because Ben associates Saoirse with their mother who disappeared when she was born. Their father has become an a...

Well, it was better than Jurassic Park III ! I think that at least was something we were all hoping to get out of this movie.                 Jurassic World is the third sequel to Steven Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece Jurassic Park , and the first in thirteen years. Somehow despite the events of any of the other films, Jurassic World is open and has been for over a decade. But people have apparently gotten bored with dinosaurs so park owner Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan) has authorized the creation of the genetically modified Indominus Rex. But would you know it, it breaks loose and starts terrorizing people, causing a manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) to bring in velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) along to rescue her nephews who are stranded in the park. There are some nice call-outs to the first film (including an appearance by Dr. Henry Wu), but there are also some parallels which go a lit...

Did you read that Garfield comic on Thursday? Of course you didn’t. You didn’t even know Garfield was still running did you? What ever happened to comic strips? Cartoons running in newspapers in what used to be called the “funny pages” while once a fairly popular art form, are now struggling to be acknowledged as even still existing. In some form or other comic strips have been around for over a century. The form hit its stride in the 40s and 50s when entertainment innovations like television were in their earliest years. Comedy wasn’t as accessible on a regular basis and cartoons even less. So newspapers carrying little episodic and sometimes serialized cartoons daily was a big deal and large numbers of people would read and enjoy them. But damn artistic and technological innovations! Who’d want to read the funnies when they can get their laughs from film, television, and other mediums? People weren’t talking about comic strips anymore so some just ended their run, a number c...

          One of the best, most surprising, and funniest shows of recent years is Community ! Its sharp writing, smart comedy, resonating characters, and unconventional well-executed ideas has set it apart and to some, above most other TV comedies of the past decade. The show about a community college study group brought together by chance who’ve grown as a microcosm unit of necessity and friendship has re-popularized things such as meta humour and parody-homage, sparking a pledge by fans for six-seasons-and-a-movie out of a throwaway joke. While it was never a ratings giant it was the true show for nerds (suck it Big Bang Theory !) and thanks to Yahoo Screen it’s nearly fulfilled that call. But with the sixth and final season coming to an end on Yahoo, it’s a good time to look back on the best of many tremendous episodes. So before we get our finale and (hopefully!) feature film, here are the ten best episodes (subjective of course!) of the mass of greatness ...

                Disney’s Tomorrowland may be the most hyped movie of the year that no one really knew what to expect. It’s not a sequel, remake, or reimagining, rather it’s an original sci-fi concept, a rarity in the modern summer blockbuster season.                 The plot for what little can be revealed without spoiling, concerns a teenage girl Casey Newton (Britt Robertson) a curious and imaginative almost-prodigy who discovers a strange pin that transports her to a utopian futuristic society every time she touches it. Finding out it’s a real place called Tomorrowland she sets out to find it with a younger girl from there, Athena (Raffey Cassidy). They also team up with a former child inventor Frank Walker (George Clooney) who has a connection to Athena and Tomorrowland from his own childhood in the 60’s and believes Casey may be able to save it. There is quite a ...

David Letterman went off the air last night after thirty-five years as a talk show host. And many may not realize it but it is an important shift in television history. From 1982-1993 he hosted the first incarnation of Late Night on NBC developed especially for him as a follow-up to Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show . Since 1993 he has hosted The Late Show on CBS. And yeah his show has been fairly generic as of late but still every so often boasted better writing, interviews, and jokes than the Jimmys for example. And his sense of humour was really terrific especially back in the day. It’s what got him a number of guest-hosting gigs on the Tonight Show before his own started and there his wise-cracking and self-deprecating style developed into something fairly unique. He also like Carson, took risks at his show pulling off various random stunts and comedy bits, idiosyncratic segments some getting him in trouble, like jokingly interrupting another NBC show in the middle of their broadcas...