Refracted Input

Clare O’Farrell’s blog on books, TV, films, Michel Foucault, universities etc. etc.

This post was updated 24 April 2014 My rating: ***** Note: Simon Coward’s comprehensive, but now defunct, Ace of Wands website (available in the Wayback machine internet archive) and Andrew Pixley’s copious viewing notes which accompany the 2007 Network DVD release have been invaluable in providing background information and quotations for this review. This British …

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My rating: ***** Spoiler alert imdb link This wonderful and underrated science fiction film was directed by Vincenzo Natali who directed the earlier better known Cube. The original title for the film was Company Man but was renamed Cypher when the film-makers found there was another film of the same name. Cypher means a person …

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My rating: ***** See my other post reflecting at more length on Sapphire and Steel Sapphire and Steel is my favourite science fiction series and I have watched quite a few. Starring the blond duo Joanna Lumley and David McCallum, it was broadcast in Britain from 1979 to 1982 and then, like the characters at …

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My rating: ***** Imdb link Fan site Beware! This is a bit more of a ramble than usual! I borrowed the DVDs of this 10 hour Hallmark TV series released in 2000 with very low expectations. The cover notes were not enticing and suggested a somewhat tedious ‘family’ fantasy series. However I was pleasantly surprised …

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Spoiler alert My rating: *** Imdb link Another collection of science fiction clichés, but enjoyable nonetheless. We have the usual group of scientists isolated in an Antarctic lab with an alien presence plus the requisite romance between two warring scientists who had previously fallen out but are forced together again by circumstances. Gabriel Byrne plays …

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My rating: *** Imdb link A film from the pen of Neil Gaiman set in an amusingly modernised fairytale world. What really made this film for me, however, was the performance of Robert de Niro as a cross-dressing pirate. All bluster, walk the plank and aaargh me hearties to the exterior world, in the privacy …

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