Redmans

Well, after a few years of waiting, finally another fire brigade drama on British television. And this one's set in the north, which makes a change from the usual London-centered action these days. Steel River Blues delivers everything one could expect from a modern UK drama: comedy, action, suspense, more action, and northern accents aplenty. It's nice to see ITV providing some quality material for a change; it would have been no surprise if they'd stuck cameras in a real fire station and marketed it as "Reality Drama".

The basic premise of the show is the same as any other Fire Service program: Dudes in fire station sit around until the bell goes off, then hop into their big red engines and charge off accompanied by appropriate music and sirens. To make it interesting, however, the above-mentioned dudes lead amusing discussions throughout, and it's basically just very well balanced.

If you're hungering after some firefighting action and Fireman Sam isn't fulfilling your needs, this show fills the gap nicely.

Those who claim that this film has a below-average plotline may not have been paying attention. I like a plot with lots of twists, i.e. Is the german dude after revenge? Oh no, he's just a terrorist. Wait, he's stealing the gold. No, he's going to sink the gold. Oops, no, he's taken the gold and killed his boss... and wants to buy a country. You see? That's a plot.

Irons was a master stroke of a continuation from Rickman as the bad guy. As in the first film, however, the Germans babbled and made more grammatical errors than a classroom full of monkeys. But your average Die Hard fan (who doesn't happen to be bilingual) doesn't really mind.

Interesting use of incidental music, contrasting in the classical bits with the calm party music from Die Hard. Anyone notice the "Singing in the Rain" musical quote when John's about to get flooded with water?

An action film (unless, like the Matrix, with religious and philosophical connotations) remains just an action film, but we don't need a dollop of Deuteronomy every time we set foot in the cinema. And this is evidently one of the more intellectual of the bunch. A good 8.5/10

This film had a great concept. And it started off well. And went on... and on... and was quite good, and you thought it was going somewhere. The only problem, as in Bicentennial Man, being that the boy is outliving everyone. And this was bad, unlike in Bicentennial Man, because the boy's sole purpouse was to find the blue fairy. The plot was reasonably distributed along the timeline until (approx quote): "Boy moves in time. Seeks fairy. Uses submarine. Gets frozen in ice for a few thousand years..." WHOA! What? Hold on, he freezes? And then they totally randomly introduce wobbly translucent aliens. It's ridiculous. Talk about writing oneself into a corner...I do that sometimes, but then I go back, and start again at the point it started to get silly. They definitely let is get silly. The only mistake worse than this that Spielberg has made on an ending is the sterotypically cliched finale for Minority Report. A happy ending to end all happies... UMPH! Bad film.