Name: Nick Barrett
Weblog: radio.weblogs.com/0120356
Articles: 37
First Published: Sunday, August 10, 2003
Last Published: Friday, August 13, 2004
Currently listing articles 37-1:
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'Spider': a web worth the shivers— Controversial Cronenberg does it again in a film which is far more than a creepy movie, but this one needed seeing twice before the grim
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'Strange Days': Hard-wired sparks in dark times— Nine years ago, an ambitious sci-fi chiller left audiences largely unmoved and critics divided. Could this have had more to do with its unwelcome messages
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'Les Choristes': music, with class— A modest masterpiece has swept the French off their feet. When such musical gifts go international, you may find yourselves in for an unexpected treat.
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'Effendi': justice in the balance— Jon Courtenay Grimwood's second Arabesk goes into the SF and Crime categories only by default. It should really be in the scalpel drawer along with
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'The Butterfly Effect': on badly burnt wings and a prayer— A long and winding trail of fiction about memory, time and mind over matter features some intriguing diversions, but ends up being too senselessly earnest
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'Sarac'h' brings the world to Brittany— To label an album "world music" is often idleness, a lack of precision. But when Breton singer Denez Prigent comes up with near-miracles like 'Sarac'h',
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'We': an old masterpiece with a post-modern message— A friend lent me a missing link between H.G. Wells and Orwell's '1984'. Yevgeny Zamyatin's short but seminal 1921 trip into science fiction proved to
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In 'Permanence', Schroeder sounds the interstellar 'all change'— A woman's bid to retain her salvage claim to a huge, abandoned, space craft grows into a major novel of interstellar rivalry, abundant in intriguing
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'Blueberry': a Western on acid with spirit— One of the most original 'Westerns' you're ever likely to see is the first big French film of the year, impossible to pigeon-hole and, by
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'Decipher': far out, too much (and grippingly good)!— Stel Pavlou's first novel rivets the attention, draws on two of the oldest and most widespread myths known to humanity, and chucks scientists, the military
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'The Joy of Letting Women Down': too good for mere words— "Have you ever wondered why the womaniser is never short of willing women?" Natalie d'Arbeloff makes a much better and funnier job of one of
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'Avalon': mortal reality hits a "fave list"— The Ishii-Itô teamwork so stunned me on first viewing of a bleak sci-fi allegory, it was hard to say whether 'Avalon' was virtuoso nonsense or
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'Revelation Space': admirable intro to a tough 'opera'— Alastair Reynolds recently published the closing act of a major new hard SF trilogy which shook down old notions of threats to intelligent life just
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Movie Review: In the Cut: Sex, Mess, Blood and Thin Ice— Meg Ryan, now showing (all) east of the Atlantic, makes a brave effort to save Jane Campion's 'erotic thriller' from falling right through its cracks,
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'Master and Commander': great acting and perfect helmsmanship— Peter Weir's maritime adventure finally sweeps across the Atlantic, where the intense drama of clashes both onboard and in the chase round the Horn fills
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That 'Ring' and Jackson: reflections on mastery— What struck me most, now we've seen it all, was the depth and breadth of vision and commitment that makes Jackson's personal view of the
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Protected copy? The butter, the 'bread' & the greed— "...cette anomalie restreint son utilisation et constitue un vice caché au sens de l'Article 1641 du Code civil." A French High Court ruling slaps the record
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'The Telling': a fine excuse to blow a belated kiss— While catching up on a recent fable still doesn't mean I've devoured all that's available from Ursula Le Guin's genial and fertile mind, it's reason
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'Rice and Salt': Robinson's antidote to blind supremacy— While no political treatise, the monumental novel published by Kim Stanley Robinson last year offers many rich insights into today's world — by taking Europe
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Natural 'intelligence' and designer revolutions: 'constructal theory'— A new grasp of the 'intelligence' shaping nature has led Romanian-born mechanical engineering professor Adrian Bejan to bring a revolution to the human 'art' of
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'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen': such a waste!— If not for Sean Connery and a few of the better special effects, this spectacular exercise in fantasy rates low at the "bof!" end of
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'Misspent Youth': a missed opportunity— Peter Hamilton's brief but radical departure from intergalactics to a near future on one planet turns rejuvenation treatment and family life upside down. It may
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'Eater': small cast, vast imagination— Physicist and prolific author Gregory Benford brings many a new twist to the theme of 'first contact' with a very alien intelligence in a novel
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'Underworld': an impressively disappointing confrontation— Pitting vampires against werewolves with high-tech weapons, trendy atmospherics, dollops of gore and mayhem for a soundtrack is an enjoyable idea, undone by grievous holes
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'Pashazade: The First Arabesk': heat, handled with flair— Before he swaps a Seattle prison for the seething snake-pit of Iskandryia, ZeeZee has no idea that he was fathered by a man of prominence
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The 'Two Towers' and those who thought different: one European perspective— When the attacks came, I was as dismayed and aghast as everybody else in the newsroom, watching the tragedy unfold. But yesterday, while most in
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'Probability Sun': bending the chances of survival— You'd think human beings could leave World in peace, after all the trouble they caused last time.
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Software protection can kill creative talent— French writer and musician Daniel Ichbiah would like to see artists rally in protest at software protection techniques which today threaten the long-term future of
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'Probability Moon': an alien artefact to alter the odds?— Hard science fiction at its best. The science is essential to the fiction, but Kress gets the key points across without slowing the pace of
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'Gridlinked': warning — works fast, potentially addictive— Any book which begins with a space travel engineer saying the equivalent of "Beam me up, Mr Scott" and unintentionally blowing up a planet on
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The apple and the crossbow bolt— An initial response from Apple Computer to a rant here was so icy that it came as welcome relief in the heatwave. The (almost) surprising
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Small world, monstrous blow: in memoriam Sergio Vieira de Mello— "He didn't bullshit we journalists and it was people he cared about, the ordinary people," Sonia tells me. The killing of Sergio Vieira de Mello
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'Pirates of the Caribbean': perfect nonsense— The likes of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' have been rare indeed since the days...
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'Johnny English': a cross-Channel bof!— It's mainly diehard Rowan Atkinson fans who'll lap up a bid to unshake the 'Mr Bean' image in a spoof spy thriller which starts out
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Enchantment in the kingdom of the cats ('The Cat Returns')— The Miyazaki magic shines through in this humorous screen-poem for small children and all cat-lovers by Hiroyuki Morita, a new Ghibli studio name to watch.
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Three bad Apples in five: it's 'gloves off' with Stevie wonder-boy— Why, in the name of all the gods they worship in Cupertino, should buying a very expensive new Mac be like playing a non-fatal game
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Mastery of 'Equilibrium'— The price humanity pays for peace in writer-director Kurt Wimmer's aseptic utopia, Libria, is the daily dropping of Prozium, an emotional sedative. Those who refuse to
All BC Articles