mike newell

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: Fuhgeddaboudit!

The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

Remember when Johnny Depp and Al Pacino were still pretty good guarantees for a good film? Mege certainly did, and in last Friday’s Six Damn Fine Degrees post he took us back to 1997 and to Mike Newell’s Donnie Brasco.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #33: Donnie Brasco

Mege2 Comments

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

It has been a little forgotten, hasn’t it, that little gangster flick called Donnie Brasco (1997)? It hasn’t anything as iconic to offer as The Godfather‘s ascent to power or The Godfather: Part II‘s empty shell of a mob boss, although it does have Al Pacino at its center, too. It’s not a Scorsese-style hellride that could make us like or at least weirdly admire the hard men of organized crime we are supposed to condemn outside of a movie theater.

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Princely update

MattLeave a comment

In case anyone’s interested, Rock Paper Shotgun has a “Wot I Think” on Prince of Persia. They say much of what I think about the game, putting it much more succinctly. I guess that’s why they are professional games journalists who get paid for this sort of thing, and I’m a lowly fan with a big mouth.

Also, after seven games and two reboots, the Prince of Persia series gets a movie  version, which will make any film afficionado rejoice. Or regurgitate. It’s one of the two. In any case, it’s got proper actors and even a director who’s made good films – which is more than most video game movies can say for themselves. It even features good ol’ Satipo:

You throw me the idol and I throw you the whip... as soon as I stop screaming, that is.

Could this be an actual video game movie that is worth the admission? Or will we be wishing afterwards that we could use the Sands of Time to rewind the previous two hours?