streetsofla

I was rather shocked by the amount of people on this page who gave this film a bad review. Sure Oliver Stone rams his `The Media creates heroes of killers' message right home with such a brutal and blatant force it hurts, but there's more to this than just it's deeper message. It's a film of style, and great style at that. He use's his trademark of crossing different films stocks, cutting from Technicolor to stark black and white and overlaying sound tracks all over the place, but here he goes for all out extremeness. Never before has a film looked like this, or even sounded like this. He crams so much into our faces in 5 minutes of this film than other directors have managed to do in their entire careers. And he does it so much style and confidence that one can't help but be impressed. Maybe this is Stone's greatest achievement, pushing together everything the nineties stood for into 2 frantic and hectic hours, before slamming it's audience back to ground with unrelenting force, maybe not. But still it beats the unforgivable waste which is `Any Given Sunday'.

Never before have I seen such a film which builds up the tension like this. Peckenpah slowly builds it up for over an hour before Hoffman is pushed too far and all Hell breaks loose. By the end of the film the audience has been forced through an orgy of violence, tension and, of course, rape. It's a shame that when people think of this film the only thing which comes to mind is the rape scene. This sequence, which is the reason why it's still banned in the U.K, is completely irrelevant. Having read the book, which is very good by the way, there is no scene equivalent in it, to the rape in `Straw Dogs'. Personally I can see no point to it, and it should have been cut. But even with it, Peckenpah has made a thrilling masterpiece which is un-like any of his other work. It cleverly combines elements taken from the western genre, suspense films, thrillers and the gothic horror genre. I just can't wait for the day it makes it's U.K debut on home video.

Ghostwatch is possibly the best programme the BBC ever screened, and without doubt, their most controversial. As I'm sure your all aware that the programme concerns Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith and Craig Charles investigating `The Most Haunted House in Britain'. The programme is set up as a live broadcast with Michael Parkinson and Mike Smith in the studio and Craig Charles and Sarah Greene at the Haunted house. The writer, Stephen Volk, cleverly builds up the tension, for about an hour, before unleashing all hell. Possessions, noises coming from the walls, strange marks appearing on the carpets, strange ghostly images appearing in mirrors and amongst the crew and just about every other form of subtle yet deeply unnerving effect is used. I, like thousands of others, was lead to believe this was all real. I had seen the T.V ads and read some stuff in the papers and, to me, it all seemed like it was going to be a factual programme about ghosts and ghouls. The BBC quickly banned the programme after it's one-and-only showing and never repeated it or made it available to buy. I have spent 9 years trying to find his programme and only recently I managed to lay my hands on a copy. Watching it again it still scared me and after all this time it still retains all it's impact. Which is a shame that it will never be shown again.