MOVING

I have moved.

Everything you could possibly want from me, and everything you've already seen, can be found here:

http://iamadrainonsociety.wordpress.com

Mamma Mia!

3/5 I mean, it's not good, exactly, is it?

I'm not a one to be especially deterred by social stigma. If anything, I'm more inclined to refuse to follow certain patterns out of sheer bloody mindedness. That being the case, I usually avoid popular films until well after the hype has worn away; I only recently got round to watching Slumdog Millionaire and concluded that the hype was justified after all.

Tiny Furniture

4/5 Not ground-breaking, but funny, charming and not pretentious

Depending on your patience for low-budget films, Tiny Furniture will watch either as a contemporary gem or a pretentious mess. I have read arguments as to the latter and must admit I have not had much patience for them; it seems to me a disease of the decade to ascribe allegations of pretension to any fiction that tries any technique differing from the standard norm.

Triview: Life on Mars (UK) vs Ashes to Ashes

Ashes to Ashes was in trouble the moment the title was first conceived. Like Life on Mars (the UK version), Ashes to Ashes takes its name from a David Bowie song released in the exact year that the series is set and provides the backdrop for that time period. I don’t know that David Bowie was still such a strong influence in the 80s that one of his songs had to be used again, but this choice is indicative of everything that follows in Ashes to Ashes; whereas Life on Mars made sense in context as the title for a police drama about a detective of the 21^st century inexplicably sent back in time to 1973 following a near fatal accident (“It’s like I’ve landed on a different planet”), Ashes to Ashes does not relate to any of this, despite being the exact same story all over again in 1981 with the same cast of hard-hitting, change averse detectives fightin’ crime, retro style.