Tag: Judi Dench

  • Riddick makes the most haphazard of movie franchises

    Riddick makes the most haphazard of movie franchises

    When even the humblest movies are planned to allow for multiple sequels if at all financially feasible, the Riddick trilogy (and counting?) must be one of the most haphazard of movie franchises. I doubt many would have expected any kind of sequel at all to 2000’s Pitch Black, and yet The Chronicles of Riddick appeared…

  • Sass and Kick Ass: James Bond: Casino Royale

    Sass and Kick Ass: James Bond: Casino Royale

    Paradoxically for one of the freshest James Bond films ever made, Martin Campbell’s Casino Royale (2006) is actually the third adaptation of the character’s debut in Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel. After a largely forgotten 1954 TV movie in which “Jimmy” Bond was awkwardly Americanized, the same premise was parodied in a 1967 farce bearing the…

  • Go behind the scenes of “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter” in Shakespeare in Love

    Go behind the scenes of “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter” in Shakespeare in Love

    This blogger is not ashamed to admit being in love with Shakespeare in Love, and not just for the generous displays of Gwyneth Paltrow’s lovely young bubbies. Full of American actors affecting English accents with varying degrees of outrageousness, it only partly qualifies as Europudding, and is in fact more in the vein of “let’s…