Donnie Darko (2001) : Arrow Video Edition (2016)

Donnie Darko (2001)

Dir. Richard Kelly

I'm one of the people who consider Donnie Darko to be a modern classic. But did we really need another edition of it? The film had been previously released and re-released a number of times on disc, even distributed free to thousands of people in a UK daily newspaper years ago.

After having watched the new edition, my short answer is a sincere yes, we did need it. The picture quality on the previous discs was always less than perfect, and when played back on modern equipment it looked even worse.

The Arrow Films remaster was supervised and approved by Dir. Richard Kelly and DD's cinematographer, Steven Poster. It's sourced from the original camera negatives, scanned at 4K (encoded at 1080p to fit on the disc), and includes both the Theatrical Cut (113 mins) and the Director's Cut (133 mins) of the film. Visually it's a little darker overall than the US Blu put out by 20th Century Fox, but it's not as soft and the film grain is lovingly retained.

The Illustrated Man (1951)

The Illustrated Man (1951)

Author: Ray Bradbury  |  Page Count: 294

'...[P]erhaps ten minutes elapsed while the first terror died and a metallic calm took its place. Space began to weave its strange voices in and out, in a great dark loom, crossing, recrossing, making a final pattern.'

Perhaps because of the 1969 filmed version of the same name — or perhaps in spite of it, if like me you don't consider it to be a very good adaptation — the book is one of Ray Bradbury's more well-known anthologies.

The sixteen stories that are included weren't written specifically for the collection, but were gathered together with a newly penned bridge narrative that explains how each individual tale is represented as an inking on the human canvas that is the illustrated man.*

While they take place across many different times and locales, thematically most of them have a connecting cynical edge, something that the master fantasist is more proficient at than people often give him credit for. It's a theme that complements the temperament of the titular man, a drifter who feels that the pictures on his skin have a weight that burdens his soul.

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987)

Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987)

Dirs. Donald G. Jackson / R. J. Kizer

The 'Hell' of the title refers to Sam Hell, an independent man in a post-war world run by women. The war left the majority of the population sterile, but not Sam. He's not filled with blanks. Sam has the highest damn spermatozoa count on record! So he's tasked with seeking out fertile women and, calling upon his record-breaking potency, impregnating them... for his country, of course. Good work if you can get it. Except, it's not, because it means venturing into the dusty wasteland.

Roddy Piper does what Roddy Piper did best (other than rowdy wrestling, I guess), which is be the downtrodden hero in a world that's gone to shit. He may not have been a natural actor, but Roddy was a natural entertainer in his own unique way.

Children of the Stones (1977)

Children of the Stones (1977)

Dir. Peter Graham Scott | 7 episodes, approx 28 mins each.

Young Matthew Brake (Peter Demin) and his astrophysicist father, Adam (Gareth Thomas), arrive in Milbury, an English village built inside a megalithic stone circle. Adam's there to examine the stones, as his job dictates. Matthew begins to carry out his own investigation into the townspeople, who resemble something from a pagan Village of the Damned.

Prior to my most recent viewing of the Children of the Stones series it had been over twenty years since I'd last seen it. It had scared the living hell out of me as a kid, and while watching the opening credits again it was clear that it was going to give me a dose of the wiggins as an adult. It sure did. It's uncomfortably eerie, and bleeds atmosphere from every twist and turn. It's like Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man (1973) for children, as wrong as that sounds.

Masters of the Universe: Icons of Evil (2003)

MotU: Icons of Evil: Beast Man (2003)

Author: Robert Kirkman | Illustrator: Tony Moore | Page Count: 39

"Roaarr!"

A quartet of one-shot comics revealing a little of what four of Skeletor's most well-known henchmen got up to prior to becoming a full-time butt of his jibes; I really do mean a little, because there's not a lot of story herein.

The Beast Man issue kicks off with a splash page setting the tone. Thereafter we follow an unnamed blue-skinned magician as he sets out to find the orange furry.

I liked Tony Moore's depiction of Beast Man, he was colourful but fierce and lively, and his facial expressions gave him a kind of personality, one that made his limited intelligence seem somewhat endearing. The angles chosen were also interesting, bringing a sense of spirited energy to Kirkman's deathly-flat writing. Many of the panels had little or no dialogue, but when the writing is as poor as it is here, then it's probably for the best.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season 5 (1991-92)

Star Trek: TNG: Season 5 (1991-92)

26 episodes, approx 44 minutes each.

Amid the twenty-fourth century problems tackled by the Enterprise crew (e.g. coolant leaks, transporter malfunctions, stubborn settlers on other planets, etc) are a large number of issues and moral dilemmas that affect people of all eras, meaning the show continued to be both universal and timeless in its topics.

One of the issues successfully tackled was an exploration of gender and attraction that the science fiction genre is well-equipped to deal with.

It's perhaps a coincidence, but more than any of the preceding seasons there are episodes centred around or featuring children: there's a birth, an orphan, an imaginary friend, more than one single parent story, and an episode in which Picard has to deal with a trio of kids all by himself. The later isn't a particularly memorable episode in itself, but it highlights how funny the Captain (i.e. Patrick Stewart) could be when he was allowed to step down from the pedestal of seriousness. Speaking of Picard, he gets a stylish new coat that no one else in the crew gets - ahh, the perks of captaincy!