input: Gwoemul (The Host) - Due to pollution in the Han river a mutated beast goes on the rampage. The youngest member of the Park family is snatched by the beast, and it is up to the rest of her family to find her, before she becomes the beast's latest meal.

Firstly, I love monster movies: Mutated bears, over-sized alligators, packs of ravening Komodo dragons, the whole lot. Creature features are my favourite kind of Horror film. So, I really wanted to like The Host, but it wasn't to be.

There were three major problems with it:

The first can be seen with a quick look at it's IMDb page

Genre: Action / Comedy / Drama / Fantasy / Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller

Too many damned genres. It took itself too seriously to be a comedy, and yet was too light hearted to have any real message (though it did seem to be trying to make some kind of statement. Anti-pollution, anti-American or anti-government). The drama was misplaced and mixed in a confusing mish-mash with all the other styles.

Secondly, after the initial monster attack nothing happens for almost the entire film. The central family wander about looking for one of their own while the governments of Korea and America, apparently, do nothing. And that's it, they just wander about, occasionally hitting one another, presumably for a bit of comedy relief. This lack of action made my attention wander, and apparently it did the same for the director, as whole plot threads go unresolved (a mystery plague invented by the evil Americans is completely forgotten about, and is never resolved).

And lastly, the film is clumsily political. It paints the Americans as being stupid and evil, but gives us no American characters with any more depth than a cartoon villain. The opening scene has the most obvious stupid American vs wise Korean moment. With a Korean morgue assistant asking his boss, the coroner, not to pour chemicals into the Han river. The American coroner all but cackles maniacally as he orders the assistant to carry on. As well as being racist, it's lazy film-making and there is no excuse for that.

On the plus side, the monster is good, kind of a mix of The Relic and Deep Rising. Some of the movement effects are quite cool, and the initial monster chase through the park is a lot of fun. There are also some nice shots in the film. Some of which remind me, strangely, of the way Firefly was filmed (shuddering cameras, out of focus shots etc).There is also a nice scene at the end, where the hero and a little boy he has saved are sitting in the family's mobile food stall. It's night-time and snow is falling, the street-lamp is giving out a cold light, but the food stall has a warm glow coming from it.

Overall, I was really disappointed by this film. I'd been looking forward to a decent creature flick, and instead I get some pseudo-political,horror-comedy lite. Looking at the comments on IMDb I can't help but think that if this had been a US production it would have been slated. Just 'cause it's a foreign flick doesn't mean it's any good. There have been some great movies out of Korea in recent years (The vengeance trilogy and Brotherhood, for example), but this certainly isn't one of them.

For once I'm in favour of a remake. Tighten up the directing, improve the scripting and this could have been a nice film. As it is, it's not worth a couple of hours of anyone's time.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: It's been a while since I've watched this movie, and the series, but now I'm refreshing my memory! This was a very funny movie based on the classic series! Johnny Knoxville and Seann William Scott were hilarious together. Bo and Luke Duke help Uncle Jesse run Moonshine in the General Lee. When Boss Hogg forces the Dukes off their farm, Bo and Luke sneak around Hogg's local construction site and find samples of coal. They soon realize that Boss Hogg is gonna strip-mine Hazzard County, unless the Dukes can stop him, with the help of their beautiful cousin, Daisy. My only two problems with the movie was that Burt Reynolds wasn't right for the part of Boss Hogg, and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane was way too serious. Other than that, I highly recommend THE DUKES OF HAZZARD!!!

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input: A must see for anyone who loves photography. stunning and breathtaking,leaves you in ore. seen it twice once in a cinema and now on DVD. it holds up well on DVD but on the big screen this was something else.

Took my two daughters to see this and they loved it, my oldest cried at the end.but she was the one who wanted to see it again tonight when she saw it at the video shop. its simple telling of a child's love for nature and in particular a fox is told well. in some ways it reminded me of the bear in its telling a story not documentary formate. which works for children very well. not being preached to is very important, you make your own mind up.

But the star of this film is the cinematographers, how did they do what they did. amazing just amazing.

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input: In fact, Marc Blitzstein's off-Broadway adaptation of "Threepenny" was not so "bowdlerised" as is generally believed.

(I have a special interest in "Threepenny"; my dad was part of the first full production in the US; U of Illlinois Theatre Guild did it around the end of WW2. HJitler had been so nearly successful in suppressing the play that they had to reconstruct the script and score from recordings in two different languages {neither English}, a German prompter's script and similar sources.) Blitzstein's adaptation -- not a "translation" -- which had the full approval of Lotte Lenya -- was a lot closer to the original than generally believed.

The problem is that the version thereof that most people know is the MGM cast recording (recently available on Polygram on CD)(which includes Beatrice Arthur {as Lucy, the "big complete girl", and can't i see her hands on hips and shoulders thrown back on that line -- Bea was a major babe in the 50's}, Paul Dooley and John Astin) was heavily censored by Mike Curb, head of MGM Records -- i mean, 17 (i think it was) "Goddamn"s got cut to just "damn".

(At one time, MGM also offered a 2-LP set of the *entire* play, doubtless as heavily censored.)

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negative