I don’t know if I’m doing Solomon Kane any favors by discussing its common ancestry; connecting the film to a gene pool that contains Van Helsing and Season of the Witch brands it with a very specific set of very low expectations. In fact, I may be damning Solomon Kane with faint praise when I say that it happens to be several cuts above both of those disasters. Thus, I have to rely on my readers’ trust in me as a critic when I say that Michael J. Bassett’s cinematic rendition of Robert E. Howard’s Puritanical anti-hero really is an earnest and pretty damn entertaining vision of Gothic pulp heroics. It…
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Lionsgate to Release British All-Star Adaptation of 'Great Expectations'
The film world loves sure loves its adaptations of famous literary works doesn’t it? After all, as Mark Twain once said, classics are what everybody wants to have read but nobody wants to read…or something like that. Titles like Treasure Island, Jane Eyre, A Christmas Carol have seemingly been done to death, and now Great Expectations (another Charles Dickens novel btw) is getting close to its 20th retelling. So if you’ve missed out on the novel or 17 previous iterations, in this classic story young orphan Pip is given a chance to rise from his humble beginnings thanks to a mysterious benefactor. Moving through London’s class ridden world as a gentleman,…
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Sweet Trailer…'Ironclad'
Here we have the official trailer for a film we head about years ago it seems…no wait that was for Purefoy’s other Medeval film Solomon Kane. Anyway, set shots and trailers for Ironclad have been hitting recently but this seems to be one of the better ones…though, isn’t that the case for Brititsh trailers?:P Sure looks like Medieval films are getting their resurgence, or perhaps renaissance is the better word. Now that Gladiators, Spartans and the like have nearly run their course, jolly old English era films are again looking to be a hot item. Last year we had Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood which was met with mostly mixed reviews (I kind of liked it). Now…