Review added to Vinyl Album by George Slv:
Fats Domino - Fats Domino Sings Million Record Hits (1960)

This amounts to a Volume 2 of his hits, almost. It has some great hits from 1959, some fair hits. Then it's one of those head-scratchers about what the executives were thinking.
A1, A2, A5, B1, B6 did not chart but four of these were flip sides of hits, which are not included: Rose Mary (1953), Wait And See, Valley Of Tears, and The Big Beat.
So it's only moderately interesting. By the way the stereo LP has only mono songs.
"Million Record Hits" is a blatantly deceptive title. Actually there's not a single gold record on this. But two of the missing hits were gold.
Volume 1 would be Fats Domino Swings. Volume 3 is the one titled (also deceptively) Million Sellers.

Review added to Cinema by zabadak:
Apollo 13 (1995)Rated 8/10

A labour of love for Mr. Hanks, this - check out his TV series From The Earth To The Moon - you can bet he talked to the real-life protagonists at length! :happy:

It has a feeling of accuracy (I'm not as au fait with the story as I would like, even though I remember it happening) so I applaud everyone for that.

Of course, it is (or should be!) no spoiler alert to say that it all works out in the end. This removes a great deal of the peril while watching but there was a great deal of anxiety, worldwide, while the events unfolded! This is well portrayed here.

Review added to TV by HelBic:
Fireball XL5 (1962 - 1963) (1962)Rated 10/10

My favourite show as a child - I watched these all the first time they were aired, VHS and recorders didn't exist so it's great to see there are some that are available on YouTube.

Review added to TV by HelBic:
Supercar (1961 - 1962) (1961)Rated 9/10

As a kid, I watched all of this series and was devastated when it ended but.... it was replaced by Fireball X L 5 so that was even better.

I've revisited Fireball on YouTube - time to see if Supercar made it too!

Review added to Cinema by zabadak:
The Mask Of Zorro (1998)Rated 8/10

Is it possible to have your swash buckled (or your buckle swashed) on dry land? If so, this is the film to do it!

Such great casting, with such charismatic leads, can only mean movie heaven!

I don't know how close it stuck to the original story but I have to say I don't care!

Must watch it again next time it comes to my tellybox!

:happy:

Review added to Cinema by zabadak:
Avengers Assemble (2012)Rated 9/10

Ah now, this may divide punters on here!

Of course, on the one hand, this is just a callous cash-in on the Superhero Movie trend. On the other, it's an entertaining slice of hokum, using state-of-the-art 3D tech.

My tent is firmly in the latter camp!

The mem and I totally loved it! The afore-mentioned 3D effects were state of the art and I can genuinely say my breath was taken away, especially in the closing sequences!

Yes, an effects-driven film but what a great one! :happy:

Review added to Vinyl Album by Lee Wrecker:
MC 5 - Back In The USA (2013)

This is a very good repress of MC 5's 1970 album (linked below) overseen by the people at Rhino. The remastering on this is fantastic and while it somehow manages to add some oomph to the original mix by making the bass and drums more audible it still manages to sound like the same album only better. If you're not familiar with this one, the mix was often criticised for being a bit thin or having too much treble. Well, somehow this remaster manages to maintain the full blown treble in the guitar attack and lift the bass and drums in the mix.
It makes me think that Iggy Pop should have perhaps handed over Raw Power to Rhino rather than remix it himself and turn it into sludge in the process. I'm using Raw Power as a comparison because the Bowie mix was considered to have the same problem of too much treble in the mix.
This re-issue of Back In The USA manages to improve the sound all round and keep the integrity of the artwork on the original album with excellent attention to detail. In recent years Rhino have started to set the standard when it comes to re-issues of quality back catalogue records. This is a good example of how it should be done.

Review added to TV by George Slv:
S.H.E. (1980) (1980)

Review
Some reviews from old Movie Guide books. Reviews are dropped from later editions for minor films.

Leonard Maltin 1993:
James Bondish derring-do involving a woman superspy who crosses swords with a suave playboy head of an international crime ring. (S*H*E stands for security hazards expert.) Script by Bond veteran Richard Maibaum. Average.

Steven Scheuer 1990:
Slick production values, exotic location shooting, and the beautiful Cornelia Sharpe as a sexy female James Bond-type are the draws here. S*H*E (Securities Hazards Expert) is hot on the trail of international blackmailers who plan to jeopardize the world's oil supply if their demands aren't met. 2/4

Martin and Porter 2003:
This average made-for-TV spy-action thriller has one twist .. a female James Bond. Beautiful Cornelia Sharpe is S.H.E. (Security Hazards Expert). She pursues Robert Lansing, the US syndicate boss, throughout Europe. Omar Sharif makes an appearance as a wine baron. 3/5

Richard Maibaum, James Bond writer, wrote a big-time screenplay but the result was weak.
The entire film is available at Youtube at the moment but beware the shape is all wrong.

Review added to Cinema by zabadak:
La La Land (2016)Rated 10/10

Absolutely chuffin' brilliant! :thumbsup:

This got me at "Hello" (which wasn't how it started but anyway...)! Right from the opening dance number to the closing (dare I say unexpected?) scene, this is a very clever re-energising (I hate the word "rebooting", 21st Century foxes!) of the whole musical genre - expect more to follow!

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are just superb, along with the supporting cast. Even John Legend, who we did not know was in it!

See it before the songs appear in The Voice UK! :happy:

Review added to Cinema by Magic Marmalade:
Dressed To Kill (1980)Rated 7/10

Saw this on Film4 last night...

... Unfortunately, it;s one of those you can saw next to nothing about plot wise, without spoiling the frequent and pivotal plot twists.

It is billed as "Hittchvock-ian" (shiver - I hate when those kind of words are used, they tend to be code for: prepare to be disappointed), and it is, in the feel of the story, and the "suspense" bit, but that's about as far as it goes, as there are more "modern" themes running through this, and a generous helping of Brian De Palma stylisation - he tends to have a very particular brand of photography, and character stereotypes he uses - But he actually uses this aspect to his advantage, by confounding those expectations that he sets up.

Basically, it's about a woman, frustrated in her marriage who encounters a serial killer (Blimey, I can;t even say any more than that!), framed by lashings of beautifully, and artistically shot and directed soft porn - again, a De Palma trait (Think of the opening scenes of Carrie.)

But while it may seem a little ridiculous at the outset, if this is not you're thing, it does draw you in if you let it go, and just keep watching... and I think, if you do, you will conclude, like me, that it's a pretty great film all round.

(If a little dated in some respects)

Review added to CD Album by Magic Marmalade:
Radiohead - The King Of Limbs (2011)

Half a great Radiohead album.

...and half a mediocre one.

Radiohead are perhaps the only band for me, who get me excited with a new release, as I genuinely don't know what I'm going to get with each new offering.

From the more grungy, indie-ish beginnings of Pablo Honey, they knocked it completely out of the park with The Bends, then made a very ambitious "concept" style album in OK computer...

(which I don't think personally is a patch on The Bends, but, well, you know, popular opinion says different)

...And they could have just settled into repetition of a then established winning formula, as many bands do... But instead, they completely knocked people (including me) sideways with the double tap of Kid A, and Amnesiac, which all but shed all previous notions of what to expect from their music, by being very commercially daring, and experimental, using squeaks, squggles, and other assorted syntho-tronica to create various abstract sounds, impressionistic music, and often more minimal affairs.

This side-stepping continued with a comparatively underwhelming release of Hail To The Thief, which actually has proven to be a real grower, piece by piece, over time, so as to be as good an album in it's own right as any of their others for me; And finally, thinking that anything approaching a more conventionally melodic sound and structure was a thing of Radiohead's past, they released In Rainbows, which is perhaps, song for song, their strongest collection of songs since The Bends (Albeit that Videotape, at the end of that one, is a complete dirge, that even a Radiohead fan like me finds pretty much unlistenable shit).

...And so it was that the latest one: A Moon Shaped Poo, was such a crushing disappointment to me... as I'd come to expect jagged edges, surprises, and other challenging parts in keeping with the Radiohead M.O. - But instead, they bottled it I think, and instead, delivered a "safe" album, of very average, paint by numbers Radiohead formula sludge... of course, your average fan may say its' very pleasant, and tuneful and all, but with the final capitulation of including an old song: True Love Waits indicating to me that they have finally run out of steam, and ideas, I have opted, after listening, not to buy that one...

Which caused me to go back to the one album missing form my previous Radiohead career review (Hooray, he got there eventually! :)...

The King Of Limbs.

...Which is quite an odd Radiohead experience, in that they open with perhaps one of their most experimental, and challenging listens: Bloom. A collection of random sounds, scrapes, and stumbling drum patterns, which creates a kind of surreal, trippy, abstract soundscape, and which would not have been out of place on Kid A.

Lovely so far!

but then, it's about turn for three of perhaps their most boring and mediocre tunes in a row.

Which, for anyone who is not a Radiohead fan, would have had them turning off at least by the second of those, after having had their brain pulled about a bit by the opening track.

And that's a shame, because the second half is Radiohead at their most brilliant, with four tunes in a row that could stand alongside any of the best songs they have done before:

Lotus Flower, Codex, The sublime: Give Up The Ghost, and The great: Separator are pure Thom Yorkery, Radiohead brilliance.

So Tend to listen to Bloom either by itself, or with tracks from Kid A and Amnesiac, the second half as a kind of mini-album, and skip the three in between.

And as for A Moon Shaped Poo... sorry lads... try harder. Or give up the ghost.

Review added to Cinema by Dr Doom:
Symptoms (1974)Rated 7/10

Beautifully shot and with great acting, especially the unnerving Angela Pleasence who inherited all her father Donald's air of understated menace.

A modern horror fan may find this film a little boring. It's very slow paced but I found the English countryside calm made the shocks all the more shocking. The soundtrack/effects are great too. Nothing like a good old creaky door to add terror to proceedings.

I'm still not convinced so much damage can be done with such a modest knife though. It looks more like it should be used for peeling potatoes!

Review added to CD Album by Magic Marmalade:
Pepe Romero - Flamenco! (1995)

This is the kind of CD that gets me up in the morning for a day's bin diggin'!

All the elements are here that make for a truly thrilling find for me, and has me almost dancing and yelping like a schoolboy with an ice cream when I come across something like this...

It's an early German press of a "Living Presence" (one of my hot buttons along with certain Catalogue prefixes for classical: ASD, SAX, SXL etc., and RCA's: "Living Stereo"), it has an acoustic guitar on it's cover - I don't know why, I am just supernaturally drawn to images of them of covers - And it has impossibly intricate and accomplished music by a certified genius of his/ her particular instrument.

- It's like having all your balls lined up in the lottery (or otherwise :) -

And this absolutely delivers the kind of mind bending brilliance that I hoped it would... there's like a dozen different melodic elements from different strings of one single guitar all going on at the same time - How the hell does he do it?!! - and it all rolls with liquid precision from the delicate and subtle passages to the eruptions of impassioned chord whacks, and chops, and other assorted punctuation and exclamations.

This is not Flamenco for the Spanish tourist industry, but raised to be the equal of any classical works and soloists therein you might name... it's art.

And this "Living Presence" German press brings it all out beautifully (I hope I find some more of these CDs, they really live up to the billing), with weight, detail, and yes... presence.

So if it's a top notch piece of ten fingered fury, and mesmerising guitar sorcery of the flamenco variety you are after... this must be your first stop.

...I think the title is the review itself:

Flamenco!

(YouTube Video)

Review added to Cinema by zabadak:
Love At First Bite (1979)Rated 8/10

Children of the night! Shut up!

Oh yes, love at first view for me!

This is hilarious! George Hamilton plays the Lon Chaney-isms to perfection and Susan St. James is a willing victim, knowing full well what Drac is and what he wants, and doing it very cutely.

An entirely knowing film, made all the more affecting by the clever, sympathetic performances from the two leads (plus Richard Benjamin, always VFM!).

The bizarre plot Needs to be read to be (un)believed! :happy: