Author: Simon Andrews

Since its much-publicized release on Friday, demand for the debut season of ‘Luke Cage’ has proven so great that Netflix has experienced no small amount of difficulty in delivering episodes of the show to their subscribers, suffering from some rather embarrassing high-profile server failures. So, does the third entry in their planned ‘Defenders’ project live up to all the hype? Well, the answer is ‘Yes’. And to a certain extent ‘No’… Given the ever-expanding nature of the MCU, reviewing Marvel’s newly released material is becoming a very difficult task. It’s a bit like trying to be objective about the latest James Bond…

Bloody Marvel. There we all are. Lying on our backs having binged ourselves senseless on the recently released ‘Luke Cage’, and they’ve already started releasing teasers online about ‘Iron Fist’. The swines…. But, of course, this is Marvel. Why give everyone all the information they need, when you can drop the bare minimum, sit back, and benefit from limitless amounts of free hype as the fan-forums go wild with speculation and crazy theories? A 15 second video, which dropped today, shows an incense burner sat in the middle of the screen. The smoke slowly forms the ‘Iron Fist’ dragon logo,…

If there’s one thing that Marvel enjoy, its fueling a bit of rampant fan speculation. Sure, they telegraph well in advance what the movies are going to be called and when they’re slated for a release, and then the well-orchestrated dance between the studio and the fans begins. Yep, Marvel have already told you which of their heroes are going to headline each individual feature. But who will the Big Bad villain be? Which cameos from other future Marvel characters can we expect? Will there be hero team-ups and crossovers? JUST WHERE IS THIS ALL GOING????? Thus begins the slow…

Marvel’s hype-machine is now cranked right up to ‘Eleventy-Stupid’ in order to promote the upcoming ‘Doctor Strange’ movie, and with the internet fit to burst under the crushing weight of rumors/fantasies and fan speculation concerning the anticipated line-up for ‘Infinity War’, you could be forgiven for having forgotten all about the planned third entry in the solo ‘Thor’ Saga. Scheduled for a release on 27th October 2017, filming is currently well underway and Marvel Supremo Kevin Feige has teased fans that this movie will be integral in the cueing up of future series mega-blockbuster ‘Infinity War’, meaning audiences will be…

Up until recently, Marvel’s telly output had been largely seen as a poor alternative to their big cinematic offerings. Whilst constantly referencing the big events that were happening over in the MCU, the major movie characters seem to have been historically banned from crossing over onto the small screen due to political infighting between the two warring arms of Marvel Entertainment. This has led to the TV shows struggling to win over audiences, seen as employing inferior special effects and creaky scripts that failed to hold up over the course of lengthy seasons. But this year has seen Marvel massively…

When he first rocked up way back in 2009 with his big-screen debut ‘District 9’, the world immediately fell in love with Neill Blomkamp. Expanding on an original short film he had previously made in 2005 titled ‘Alive in Joburg’, the new kid on the block managed to craft something completely compelling and fresh which would go on to recoup more than seven times its budget. Which is no mean feat in the modern film industry. Blomkamp provided viewers with a gritty and bleak vision of how a ‘First Contact’ scenario might play out in his homeland, and the…

In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s election season, and a particularly nasty one at that. Now, it’s a given that when the Republicans and Democrats are out on the campaign trail, that there’s gonna be trash talking. A LOT OF TRASH TALKING. But it feels like there’s something in the air this year. Something more inflammatory than usual, and we’ve witnessed scenes unprecedented in their levels of outright hatred. Counterbalanced by their unusually high levels of stupid… And amidst this angry, stupid, angry exchange, as Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton continue to circle each other like a pair of fading,…

There’s no denying how much of a cultural impact ‘The Blair Witch’ had when it landed in cinemas back in 1999. There had never been anything remotely like it. The movie was a massive shot of adrenaline in the arm of the horror industry, and kick-started a whole wave of both imitation and innovation in the genre. But was it any good? Really? Even at the time of its release, despite heaps of critical praise, a significant percentage of audiences walked out of their screenings ridiculing the film, with the final scene a particular point of irritation. The movie had…

To say that Judge Joseph Dredd has made a few enemies in his time is a bit of an understatement. Ever since his 1977 debut, 2000 AD’s most famous son has had to witness his beloved Mega-City One repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt thanks to the efforts of a colorful gallery of recurring villains and wrongdoers. And if the last 39 years have proven anything, it’s that you don’t last long when you go head to head with Joe Dredd. Obvious SPOILERS follow!  Writer and Dredd creator John Wagner recently teased in a podcast that this year he was intending to kill…

For the modern film industry, the concept of ‘success’ can be a damnably hard thing to define or quantify. It’s not enough to make a film that everybody raves about anymore. At the same time, it’s also not enough to make a movie that produces bucketloads of cash. The last decade of high-quality cinematic output has raised the benchmark for ‘success’ to near unattainable levels. In order to please a studio and guarantee future work, it seems filmmakers are required to generate a completely profitable and longstanding franchise that instantly attains an overnight cult following. Which is easy, right? Its…