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Magic Marmalade

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3719 Points / Moderator / Joined 30 Jun 2014 /

England / Kent

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Half record collector... half druid... complete unit.

More human than human.

Comments (TV) View All 81 »

Member	Item		Review/Comment
Magic Marmalade 30th Sep 2024		TV V: The Final Battle (1984)	Rated 6/10 Wow, this really lost it's way pretty darn fast! ....Right in front of my eyes in fact. For while the first two parter had a very strong idea at it's core, and felt like a split cinematic movie, in terms of the story, and the quality of the writing, this instantly feels less movie-like, and more tv miniseries / episodic. It feels rushed too, bouncing from scene to scene without much explanation of how it got from one scene to the other. Across the three episodes, you see a valiant attempt to match the orginal story, and take up where it left off, rapidly, and by degrees disintegrate, visibly running out of ideas, and cobbling together stories just to get it along to the finale. By the end, it gives way entirely to the most hokey, cornball hammery you can think of... It almost literally goes back in time from first episode to last in terms of quality of production, until it's virtually a spoof hippie sixties groovy buck rogers Flash Gordon spoof of love-in optimism, replete with rainbows of balloons, groovy cod-funk music, and unaccounted for space magic nonsense. Forgets all the good characters they'd previously put work into building, and summarily disposing of others, losing any interest that marked the original out for special consideration. Promising to begin with, total crap by the end. ✔︎ Helpful Review?
Magic Marmalade 29th Sep 2024		TV V [1983] (1983)	Rated 8/10 I remember this being a real event back in the day, but have not seen it since. So I was pleased to find the DVD sets of both this and The Final Battle in the Charity shop the other day... ...And I've got to say it's even better than I remember it! Imagine Independence Day, but with fully rounded, non cartoonish characters, and depth of story-telling, and rather than a straight up, meat and potatoes alien invasion scenario, like War Of The Worlds, the superficially benign "visitors" have a subtle, fascistic scheme for world domination, with the story focussing on all the interpersonal relationships among the humans experiencing this, and how those character dynamics change when challenged, and what you find you have here is an excellently thought out, brilliantly written analogy for a modern fascist oppression, who's methods are more insidious than a flat out invasion, and who's true motives are far more sinister. Granted, it's very, very eighties in terms of production quality, and the effects have mostly aged pretty badly, but the story is good enough to get over that, and the telling of that story is brilliantly handled. More subtle and nuanced by orders of magnitude than said: Independence Day, as you have human collaborators, as well as Alien, human sympathisers all considered well in the writing. It's just a shame they didn't have the guts back then to go huge with this, and make a three hour, big budget movie of it (which is what this feels like... minus the budget, of course!), if they had, this would have been a landlmark in sci-fi cinema to this day, every bit the equal of the modern iteration of Dune. As it is though, it's still a cracker... and I can't wait to get going on the Final Battle set. ✔︎ Helpful Review?
Magic Marmalade 22nd Jun 2024		TV Jack The Ripper [1988] (1988)	Rated 8/10 Difficult to judge anything to do with such a historically nebulous figure as Jack The Ripper, as theories abound, and "facts" come and go... But outside of "historical documentaries" and the like, it does make for great dramatic material in which to explore theories and hypotheses... ...This, in my opinion, is the best of them - A very engaging, and excellently realised examination of the "facts" of the case, such as was available to the production at the time, and from a particular point of view, or points of view. Certainly required viewing for current or prospective "Ripperologists". (But even if you are not either of these, cracking drama for those who like a mystery / intrigue / "conspiracy theory" watch) 1 person found this review helpful. ✔︎ Helpful Review?
Magic Marmalade 17th Feb 2021		TV Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed (2021)	Probably a lot simpler than you'd imagine Quad... (In terms of construction principle, even though there's still work involved) ... My own theory is simply this: Dig a ditch... Drag and drop stones in it, then pull them upright... Then back fill / bury them with only the tops of these uprights showing level with the surrounding ground... Then drag lintel / capstones onto them until they are in position... ... Then finally, excavate the surrounding earth to new ground level. Other than dragging the stones, any group of people with a bucket and spade, and enough time, can remove the earth. (Certainly easier than hosting 30 ton stones 30 feet in the air with hypothetical, fantastical lifting kit) Al you need is cows, cows, cows :) Now look at Avebury... Measure depth of ditch, and compare with height of great sarsens at Stonehenge.
Magic Marmalade 16th Feb 2021		TV Stonehenge: The Lost Circle Revealed (2021)	Great new research, but honestly, if I see another "reconstruction" of people attempting to move large heavy stones with ropes, I think I'll scream! The Aurochs was an animal related to modern cows, but much larger... and seeing it is estimated that in general, a four legged beasty can pull about one and a half times it's own body weight, I'd like to think that the people who were smart enough at least to build these monuments in the first place were smart enough not to try and lug them with multitudes of men themselves, but use these huge animals instead. 500 men, or a few Aurochs' (?)

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