Steveoswheels
Bio
A blog where I share my opinions on pretty much anything, mostly movies, but sometimes the occasional politics and other stuff.
Stories (6/0)
My Viewing this Stevening... 'Jojo Rabbit'
Following the roaring success of Taika Waititi's entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the form of Thor: Ragnarok, his next film was to take on something completely different, yet retain Waititi's familiar comic style; Jojo Rabbit. Adapted from Christine Leunen's book, Caging Skies, the film tells the story of Johannes 'Jojo' Betzler (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10 year-old member of the Hitler Youth who discovers his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in their home. The hiding of this girl forces young Jojo to question his beliefs, all the while dealing with the interventions of his imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler (Waititi).
By Steveoswheels4 years ago in Geeks
My viewing this Stevening... 'Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker'
On December 5th 1995, The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular aired on television. It was an episode created to act as a satire of all the episodes of American sitcoms that existed merely to show a compilation of clips from prior episodes to remind you of what came before. If the show was long-running enough, it would act as a nostalgia trip, reminding you of the good things that came before, but this episode did so in a way that still added something new that didn't make it feel like a clip show, and had it presented as a kind of inception of Simpsons episodes. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker basically served as the Star Wars equivalent of a clip episode, except they decided that The Last Jedi just didn't happen, unless they absolutely had to acknowledge it. Spoilers ahead, by the way.
By Steveoswheels4 years ago in Futurism
My Viewing This Stevening... 'Aladdin' Remake
As with all the Disney remakes, even before the first trailer was released, Disney knew that it would make a hell of a lot of money without making much effort at all, but this idea is certainly no truer than with Aladdin. This was confirmed when the film passed the $1 billion mark at the global box office, and now Disney is already predictably working on a live-action adaptation of the sequel;The Return of Jafar. The sequel rumours are interesting, as those familiar with Disney history will know that the surprise success of the direct-to-video sequel to the animated Aladdin spawned a mass array of direct-to-video sequels of nearly all of Disney's properties. This is very much within the Disney mantra of; "People like them, let's make some more of them," but without any consideration of delivery works of actual quality or originality, and that is the problem with the Aladdin remake.
By Steveoswheels5 years ago in Geeks
My Viewing This Stevening... 'Mary Poppins Returns'
When Mary 'olds your 'and, you feel so grand, your 'art starts beatin' like a big brass band! Never has a film so perfectly and consistently defined my childhood than Mary Poppins. Initially released more than 20 years before I was born, it's one of my earliest memories of watching a film, captivated by the music, the colours of the animated sequence, and the jollity of the overall story. It was, and still is, one of the peaks of every childhood, and will likely remain so for generation after generation. Despite being released in 1964, two years before good old Walt Disney passed away, it is, quite literally, a timeless classic. That is due to, in no small part, the performances of Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, so why even bother trying to make a sequel? Sure, the character of Mary Poppins is derived from a seven-book series by P. L. Travers, but when the original told a story so complete, and so meaningful for many generations, was it really worth revisiting the Poppinsverse? Of course, the sequel more than 50 years after the original was a cynical cash-grab by Disneycorp, but thankfully, the sequel managed to retain the magic and spirit of the original, while introducing something new along the way.
By Steveoswheels5 years ago in Geeks
My Viewing This Stevening... 'The Lion King' Remake
Back when the remake was announced a few years ago, there was instant concern about how Disney would actually manage to capture the sheer greatness that was the original animated classic. Yet another in a long line of Disney "live-action" remakes of its animated classics, just what really could they do differently to establish it as something unique from the first? Well... as it turns out, nothing much, other than the coat of paint.
By Steveoswheels5 years ago in Geeks
'Child's Play': A Remake Better Than The Original
The first Child's Play film was released in 1988, I will have been two years old at the time. I think I may have actually seen the first Child's Play film when I was only about five or six, of course not very age appropriate, but its knife-wielding main character is an image from old school horror that remained fixed in my mind for many years. That film was a massive box office success at the time, and in traditional Hollywood fashion, it spawned a total of six movie sequels, and a TV series. Each sequel was of varying quality, but for the most part, you didn't watch these for storyline quality, you watched them because of the absurdity behind the idea of a serial killing doll. The general conceit of how the Good Guy doll came to be a murderous psychopath was that the soul of an actual murderous psychopath was able to possess the body of one of these dolls in order to escape an attacker. So the idea of a remake of the original, only two years after the sixth film in the original series was released (Cult of Chucky), was both interesting, and worrying, for fans.
By Steveoswheels5 years ago in Horror
