Britain's Toy Car Wars

Hotter Wheels

Britain's Toy Car Wars -
The War of Wheels Between
Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox
by Giles Chapman
The History Press
ISBN 9780750997133

I bought this book, Britain's Toy Car Wars - The War of Wheels Between Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox, for a friend for his birthday last year and, when it arrived and I hid the bright, shiny covers within, probably equally garish coloured wrapping paper, I realised that this tome was also something I should read myself. And so another friend furnished me with one as a birthday present this year and, I have to say that it’s a remarkable book which I thoroughly enjoyed. My one caveat being the penultimate chapter which I’ll get onto in a minute.

So this traces the history of the three car toy giants Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox from the origins of Dinky in the early 1930s to their unfortunate demise and selling off to foreign companies in the very early 1980s. So lots of things I never knew in here are revealed to me for the first time... starting with the birth of Frank Hornby on 18th May 1863. This gentleman was responsible first for inventing the once much loved childrens’ (and adults’) construction toy Meccano, before further extending his arm into Hornby train sets, another iconic and long running toy. And then, just two years before his death in 1936, he started up die cast giant Dinky Toys. That’s a pretty good CV but the book also tells the history of both Corgi and, of course, Lesney’s Matchbox company... started by two school friends from George Spicer school in Enfield (where I used to go to school) in the 1920s, who remained friends after serving in the Second World War in their respective fields, eventually starting up Matchbox in the basement of a derelict pub.

This book is basically a rise and fall type affair, highlighting the various manufacturers’ rival schemes and the inventive features they put on their cars (both in terms of things like opening doors, more stable and useful wheels and also things like advertising livery put on as decals etc) plus their race to get new cars licensed and approved for sale to the public.

This invaluable treasure reveals such interesting points as the early materials suffering from metal fatigue due to impurities created by things like factory workers throwing their shiny cigarette wrappers into the molten metal, how the die cast factories were switched to making ‘grim tools of war’ and how the three companies fared against each other in various deals and situation, straight from the mouths of people who used to work for the big three companies. Not to mention how they tried to see off new rivals and imitators like the popular American company Hot Wheels and the long struggles which found them, in the words of the title of chapter 11, ‘Fighting Back Against Star Wars and Teenage Indifference’.

Surprisingly absent for the majority of the book are the various properties licensed from TV and movies... which apparently started, unbranded, when Lesney made a much loved and popular die-cast puppet of Muffin The Mule. That is, until a special chapter, the one I mentioned earlier, about such things. And, for my money, this exciting aspect of the cars is not given nearly as much detail or coverage as I would have liked. The first die cast car licensed from TV was apparently made by a company called Budgie, based on Gerry Anderson’s Supercar. It was unsuccessful. But then, Corgi renewed one of their cars with a figure of The Saint and a decal of the stickman logo, which sold them a lot more units than just the normal version. They eventually figured things out and licensed their famous Aston Martin DB5 with the special features to belatedly tie in to the popular Bond movie Goldfinger and, even with 36 trucks waiting to take the Bond toys to the shops, couldn’t keep up with demand of the millions of units they sold in such a short time as they launched. A sales arc unmatched until their Batmobile from the Adam West Batman TV show the following year outsold even that.

But having this chapter after the self explanatory chapter entitled ‘Sad Endings as Britain’s Little Wheels Come Off’ seems a bit of an add on, to be honest... I’d rather it was all included in the running history of the companies but, hey, it’s a small criticism of a great book.

The writer, who is obviously a collector, trader and reseller of the toys himself, finishes this handsome tome with a round up of his own take on collecting these things and gives some facts and figures about how much things sell for today. So if you’re wondering what to look out for as an investment, there’s some interesting stuff to be gleaned from this final chapter.

And that’s me done with Britain's Toy Car Wars - The War of Wheels Between Dinky, Corgi and Matchbox... a true gem of a book and worth more than it’s weight in red hot, molten metal poured into a steel mould. Definitely a welcome and valuable addition to the book shelf, for sure. 

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

My Kingdom
For An Ape

Kingdom Of The
Planet Of The Apes
Directed by Wes Ball
USA 2024
20th Century Fox
UK Theatrical Print

Well I certainly wasn’t expecting Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes to be any good. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the previous trilogy and pretty much most of the original movies (I even liked the Tim Burton version to some extent) but after War Of The Planet Of The Apes (reviewed here) I couldn’t see where else they had left to go with it. Turns out I was wrong though... they did have a bunch of ideas worth exploring and I thought the new film was absolutely fabulous. Not sure why the critics are grumbling that it’s too slow, to be honest.

This one is set ‘many generations’ after the previous film, except for a brief prologue where you see Caeser’s funeral... about 300 years later, in fact. The hero of this one is a young, teenage ape named Noa who, although he’s played by Owen Teague rather than Andy Sirkis this time around, does bear a striking resemblance to the lead ape of the last three movies. I think it’s the director’s visual shorthand to say that this new legacy hero is part of the same bloodline, without having to tackle that issue in this film (although, I suspect possibly in a future film it may come to light?).

In this one, Noa’s clan are all falconers and the film starts off with Noa and his two friends on an expedition to climb and steal three eagle eggs so they can attend the village bonding ritual the next day. After an accidental intervention by a seemingly bright human, played by Freya Allan and initially named Nova (after the human female in the original 1968 movie, reviewed here), Noa has to leave the village at night to try and get another one, or miss out for a year. But then he discovers a group of masked apes who are from another, much more aggressive clan, headed up by an ape called Proxima Caeser.

These apes slaughter some of the villagers, kill his father, enslave the rest of the villagers (taking them back to Caeser’s own encampment) and then leave Noa for dead. When he awakes the next morning, he clearly has a mission to set his fellow clan members free so, for a while, the movie becomes a road movie with him, a knowledgable orangutan he finds on the way and, eventually, Nova... who turns out to really be called Mae.

Then things really start to happen and when they finally arrive at the ‘kingdom’ of Proxima Caeser, it’s clear he has a more sinister motive for his actions and is much more aware of what the humans were on the planet some 300 years or so before. He even has his own talking human, played by William H. Macy. But that’s as much as I want to give away here because, it’s definitely worth a look and has an ending that sets up the next two films. Although, while some critics don’t see it as a stand alone film at all, I’d disagree... the ultimate set up for the next one is really just established properly right at the end of the picture, in a series of epilogue sequences. I think it works just fine as a stand alone movie, for sure. But, yeah, I hope it does well because, I would like to see where they take the next chapter in the saga, after what happens at the end here. I can’t help but think that Mae will end up being the natural antagonist of the apes by the time of the third movie down the line.

And it’s wonderfully put together, looks nice, is well acted and has remarkable special effects again. I never find myself questioning the reality of the apes in these later films, for sure. And there are also a heck of a lot of nods to the original 1968 movie in this. And that also goes for the music too. While composer John Paesano starts the film off in a very similar musical landscape as Michael Giacchino’s score for the previous movie, as the visual echoes of the 1968 movie start to stack up, the composer goes into the same territory as Jerry Goldsmith, bringing his orchestrations and snatches of his compositions when the crucified ‘scarecrows’ are seen for instance. Or in a very similar scene to the hunt in the 1968 classic, actually having a do over of Goldsmith’s famous accompanying action cue. I don’t know if this was the original intention though because, well, I did also detect a bit of ‘temp trackitus’ in the film... because when Noa first enter’s Proxima Caeser’s kingdom, the music seems to exactly replicate a very specific part of Goldsmith’s score for The Mummy too so... not sure why that happened unless it was part of the musical temp track, I suspect.

However, it certainly doesn’t hurt the movie and I would love to listen to this score away from the movie.  A shame then that Disney don’t seem to have issued it on a proper CD, once again giving us a first film in a franchise now owned by Disney to be the first in that franchise not to have an actual CD score release. It’s such a shame that this isn’t available on a proper format, for sure.

That being said, I think Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes is a solidly put together film which, asides from the echoes and retreads, does have some nice ideas and which I think lovers of the franchise will want to jump in and explore alongside with the director and writers. I’ll definitely be revisiting this one again when it comes out on Blu Ray.

 

Planet Of The Apes at NUTS4R2

Planet Of The Apes 

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes

Planet Of The Apes TV Show (live action) - to be reviewed

Time Of The Apes - to be reviewed

Planet Of The Apes (Tim Burton)

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes  

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

War Of The Planet Of The Apes

Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes

Simians And Serialism - A History and Analysis of 

Jerry Goldsmith’s score to Planet Of The Apes 

 

Doctor Who - Space Babies and The Devil's Chord

Baby’s In Black

Doctor Who
Space Babies
and The Devil's Chord
Airdate: 11th May 2024
BBC 1

Okay so, that wasn’t terrible and... it wasn’t great either. 

The new series of Doctor Who starring Ncuti Gatwa as the ‘fifteenth’ incarnation of everyone’s favourite timelord and Millie Gibson as his new TARDIS companion Ruby Sunday gets underway with, not one but the first two episodes of... I refuse to call it Season 1 just because Disney says so, the same as I refused to call the Christopher Eccleston debut Season 1 when the show returned in 2005... let’s just call it the new series, right?

So, anyway, much as I loved most of Russell T. Davies’ run on the Eccleston and Tennant seasons, I have to say that after last year’s four episodes, I’ve lost a lot of confidence in him and, yeah, I found these two new ones a bit of a mixed bag too. Sometimes verging on brilliance but somehow also giving me a lot of miss to neutralise the hit factor.

The first story, Space Babies, where the Doctor and Millie land on a mostly abandoned but still running baby farm on a space station was actually quite intriguing and, when the lone carer of the children is pretending to be a computer and having her words ‘filtered’ by the nanny persona, the writing is quite clever and witty. But I did feel the whole thing kinda died and was let down by the last fifteen minutes or so. I had to explain to somebody who was watching with me what the ending was because it wasn’t too clear for him and I explained the babies were headed for a planet with a name half taken from a character in The Quatermass Experiment (that would be Victor Caroon).

There were, however, some nice references to the past and some nice touches in reference to the ongoing mystery of Ruby Sunday’s origins and how, after the plot points raised by the ‘timeless child’ story arc at the heart of Jodie Whitaker’s incarnation of The Doctor, there are certain parallels between Ruby and the timelord. The moment where the memory of snow on the day The Doctor sees Ruby being left in a basket by someone in her past leaks into the current adventure and manifests itself in the space station, Tarkovsky-like, was a pretty nice moment. So, yeah, not all bad but, like I said, a terrible wrap up.

Hmm... moving onto The Devil’s Chord then, where the two travellers in time and space go to see The Beatles record their first album (and Cilla Black too) and things aren’t quite the 1963 they were expecting... was also an interesting set up. Although it was pretty noticeable from the outset that neither the BBC or even Disney had stumped up any cash to buy the rights to any of The Beatles songs. I mean... really? The one lone chord from the famous song A Day In The Life they used maybe doesn’t incur a copyright fee, is my guess. However, the story brought out a nice reference when The Doctor informs Ruby that both he and his granddaughter are currently living in another part of London in that time, recalling the first ever episode of the show in 1963 (although he doesn’t mention that he is also, simultaneously there in yet another part of London, if memory serves, in his Sylvester McCoy incarnation).

But the new villain who manifests to The Doctor with a ‘giggle’, recalling The Giggle episode from last year (reviewed by me here), is really over the top and overly campy and, honestly, just not much fun, it seemed to me. And the story was more than a little contradictory in terms of the state of music in the various time zones... why have pop artists recording songs at all if there’s no love of music in the world? Oh, and The Beatles looked nothing like them (I was somehow less confused between them by others in the room) but, I thought the young George Martin looked much more authentic.

But, did anyone notice there was snow again in this episode... and some Christmas. Guess this year’s Christmas special should provide some answers to the mystery of Ruby Sunday then, I reckon.

Also, was I right, despite what the IMDB says, in thinking that actress Susan Twist played different characters in both these episodes, just like she did in last year’s stories? Hmm... there’s always a twist in the end, right? Maybe it will be a twist featuring Susan, The Doctor’s granddaughter, who we last saw in the show in 1964? Methinks Russel T is playing games with the audience again, casting an actress with that name in recurring roles.

Anyway, there was a brilliant metatextual one liner about non-diegetic music in this episode which truly was a touch of brilliance, as was the diegetic piano tune from the pre-credits sequence morphing into the full bodied non-diegetic theme for the titles and then further morphing back into diegetic music at the start of the very next scene. Good stuff.

And talking of the scoring... Murray Gold is definitely back and the music feels somehow a lot better than it has in ages, it has to be said (I believe he also featured in the episode as himself but I didn’t spot him... wasn’t looking out for him, to be honest). But, overall, I have to say that the episode just felt a bit meh, brilliance aside. It didn’t grab me the way I’d hoped but, I do still live in hope that the series will get better, for sure.

Now then, one last thing. Millie Jackson is absolutely incredible and I already love her character and the way she performs it. Ncuti Gatwa... still not sure. Still seems to be way too touchy feely for me and somehow... dunno, can’t quite put my finger on it but, it’s early days and I’m not giving up on him just yet. Don’t quite like the way he’s playing him but he’s still shaping the character, I guess. Not to mention I’m still trying to get used to him... so there’s that.

Time, or the man made illusion of duration that it represents as a metaphorical abstract concept, will tell, I guess. I’ll definitely still be tuning in for next week’s episode, which sees former show runner Steven Moffat returning to writing duties. So we’ll see how that goes soon enough.

Bodies

Four Body Problem

Bodies
8 Episodes
Airdate: 19th October 2023

Warning: Some spoilers attacking you from different parts of history.

Well now, Bodies has an interesting premise, which gripped me straight away... so I should have realised it was based on a comic book (by Si Spencer and not a graphic novel as the opening credits to each episode try to make out) from the DC/Vertigo imprint, almost a decade ago. Now, I haven’t read that original comic yet (don’t worry, it’s now on my hit list) so I can’t tell you if this closely follows the comic book although, it’s such a high level concept that, I suspect it’s not far off... some of the characters may have been tweaked for the show, is my guess.

Okay, so here’s the set up. Four detectives, Alfred Hillinghill (played by Kyle Soller), Charles Whiteman  (played by Jacob Fortune Lloyd... who recently played Buckingham in the French Musketeers movies), Shaharah Hasan (played by Amaka Okafor) and Iris Maplewood (played by Shira Haas) find a dead body in Longharvest Lane in London. The body is naked, has the left eyeball shot out (although there’s no trace of a bullet inside the head when the autopsy is performed) and has a strange kind of symbol, scorched/tattooed onto the wrist.

So far so good but... here goes... Hillinghill lives in the 1890s, Whiteman is living in the 1940s (during The Blitz), Shaharah is living in 2023 (contemporary to when this series was released) and Maplewood lives in the 2050s. Oh... and it’s exactly the same body each one finds, in exactly the same condition... although, when Maplewood is introduced to us at the end of the first episode, the body is still just about alive. And so this starts off as a police procedural of sorts, as we follow each detective simultaneously and, as the ultimately time twisting investigation continues (well, that’s half of it but... four versions of the body, remember? And, no, it’s not clones... it is the same person.), the two characters in 2023 and the 2050s slowly realise that this is not the first time this body has been discovered in Longharvest Lane. Both start to look for clues in the past.

And to say much more really would be even more spoilerish so I’ll refrain and say... like a lot of modern TV shows, it’s not the style of the show or, in this case, the remarkable acting performances of all and sundry that keep you watching... it’s the story which gets its hooks under the skin and pulls you into things.

There’s some nice world building going on too, especially in the 2050s... for example, Maplewood shouldn’t be able to walk but she has a rechargeable device which she plugs into her spine to allow her to walk (and run when required) normally. There’s are also a few surprise betrayals and much manipulation involved as we discover that each of the detectives, from their respective time zones, are being manipulated by a conspiracy group that knows exactly what is going on. And yes, the lack of bullet in the brain of the victim when various autopsies are performed on it from their separate time zones, is explained when you see the eye injury happen... in an absolutely stunning slow motion shot of an eyeball exploding everywhere, as the bullet travels through it... which is the most spectacular ocular injury sequence I’ve seen since Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel released Un Chien Andalou onto an unsuspecting public.

The final solution to the conspiracy and the time manipulation uncovered by this four body problem is also pretty interesting... with a final parting shot of a temporally displaced character and a building decorated with a certain set of initials turning up in the wrong year, for sure... something to haunt the viewer at the end (it’s also a possible continuation point if anyone wanted to make a sequel, I would guess but, I can’t see that happening). There are also some nice visual metaphors and echoes from time to time (literally, from time to time) which make the series worth watching too.

And I think that’s all I want to say about this intriguing series called Bodies. Definitely worth a watch, I would say and, I wish this one was released on a proper Blu Ray edition so I could show it to people instead of letting it have its fifteen minutes of fame and then wallowing in obscurity for the rest of time. But that’s modern studio thinking for you... the same kind of thinking that is killing the art of the moving image, it seems to me.

The Fall Guy

Blunt Stunt Hunt

The Fall Guy
Directed by David Leitch
USA/Australia/Canada 2024
Universal
UK Theatrical Print

Warning: Some minor spoilers falling from tall buildings.

The Fall Guy is a new movie reboot of an old TV series, which ran for five seasons from the early to mid-1980s, being Lee Majors’ big role after The Six Million Dollar Man got cancelled. And I have to be honest, I nearly passed on this one because, well, I never saw even one episode of the original show, so, I honestly can’t tell you how this new version measures up in comparison to the old and I certainly won’t be able to identify any of the little nods to the show which have undoubtedly been hidden away in this big screen version. Other little nods to certain things, sure but, not the original template show.

However, the trailer looked great and it features two of my favourite ‘movie stars’ in the lead roles, playing versions of characters from that original show... so we have the great Emily Blunt playing Jody Moreno and the all around likeable personality Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers (the original Lee Majors role).

For those unfamiliar with the term ‘fall guy’, it’s an industry nickname for a stuntman, the unsung hero of many an action movie (and more) since the dawn of movie making. This movie version of the property differs, I suspect, from the original by making this movie a romantic comedy drama, with all the stunts and action you’d expect from a film with that kind of title. After breaking his back when a stunt goes wrong, Colt disappears for a year and hides out from everyone, including camera gal Jody who was the love of his life (and vice versa). Due to his completely disappearing, the two are somewhat estranged but he’s conned into returning when the producer of a new film (played brilliantly by Hannah Waddingham), an action movie which is actually the directorial debut of Jody, says that Jody wants him to do the stunts for her new film. A little white lie, seemingly to get the romance back on track but, actually, for other reasons which, I guess most of the audience will see coming about half way through the film.

However, the leading man of the film has gone missing and the producer tasks Colt with tracking him down so he can finish the movie. Which is when the film becomes an action comedy/romantic comedy cross-breed thriller, as Colt tries to find out what’s going on in order to save Jody’s directorial debut.

And it’s a nice enough film, for sure... I think Blunt and Gosling have a lot of chemistry going for them and there’s plenty of action and comedy to keep most people happy, I think. Plus some really, quite nicely surreal sequences... including a unicorn which keeps popping up during a certain period of the movie. There are also some nice nods to things like, in one fight scene there’s a... wait. I want to say blink and you’ll miss it but it’s on the soundtrack so... I dunno, what’s the equivalent of blinking your ears? Yeah, that. Anyway, don’t blink your ears or you’ll miss a nice sound effect during one of the fights where, for a second, maybe two, you get to hear the old ‘bionic’ sound effect from The Six Million Dollar Man again.

There’s also what I think is a huge in-joke for somebody because the film that Jody is directing (and it even has the same tag line as the real one), is Metalstorm. Does anyone remember that? During the 1980s 3D movie phase, hot on the heels of Spacehunter - Adventures In The Forbidden Zone, they had Metalstorm - The Destruction of Jared-Syn (I even have the soundtrack on CD to prove it exists... not sure the subtitle was included in the marketing of the film here in the UK). Goodness knows why they picked on that title... a famous movie... as the title of the film within a film for this one but, maybe one of the key staff worked on that film back in the day?  

Now, there are some bad things in terms of the writing, specifically the story and its twists. There’s absolutely nothing in here you won’t see coming... no surprises at all. Well, okay, maybe the unicorn but, not much else and the unicorn isn’t really a story point (although it’s definitely one of the reasons why the film ‘had me’). So nothing too clever in the story department for sure but, it certainly makes up for it in the dialogue and other various flourishes. So, the film entertained me and, yeah, I guess that’s the main purpose of this one (except maybe to make a very convincing case, if one were needed, that stunt people should get a category at the Oscars). The Fall Guy is an immensely entertaining film and I’ll definitely be picking this one up on Blu Ray to show my folks when it gets a release... a nice little movie, on a blockbuster budget which certainly shows where that money all went.

Love Lies Bleeding

The Joy Of Flex

Love Lies Bleeding
Directed by Rose Glass
UK/USA 2024
A24

Well Love Lies Bleeding is a very interesting film, to say the least. Lou, played by Kristen Stewart, manages a gym and has a none too great existence... but it’s love at first sight when Jackie, played by Katy O'Brian, comes to pump up her body in preparation for a body building competition to be held in Vegas. After some steroid injecting foreplay, the two become involved but, when Lou’s sister gets badly beaten by her husband (again), something snaps in Jackie’s brain and she tries to put things right in her own way. And did I mention the owner of both that gym and the gun club where Jackie is currently working as a waitress is also the long standing local villain, who also happens to be Lou’s father... played to the hilt by Ed Harris?

If this sounds like a classic set up for a 1940s/50s film noir then, bingo but, here’s the thing, the film is set in the late 1980s (Die Hard is mentioned as being a popular, recent film) and this has a similar feel to one of those retro-noir movies made in the 1980s for sure. But, the other thing about this movie is... it’s the second feature by writer/director Rose Glass, who had a big hit with her wonderful movie Saint Maud a couple of years ago (reviewed by me here). And this next piece of cinematic artistry is a worthy successor to that debut, although it’s in no way aligned with it tonally and this is a much more playful movie, shot through with a much more blatant sense of black humour.

The film looks beautiful, with a rich colour palette and some beautiful camera angles. Glass is not afraid to adopt a birds eye view shot and then hold it for a period of time when she feels it’s appropriate too... which reminded me of certain shots in Hitchcock’s oeuvre from time to time.

It also has a few surprises up its sleeves too with the director bringing in a couple of well placed, healthy doses of cinematic surrealism to throw into the mix, to wrong foot and certainly surprise the audience from time to time. There’s a wonderful moment during the body building contest when Stewart, who isn’t even in the same city, appears a couple of times and makes a truly spectacular entrance in one scene (in a way that totally is what using CGI in cinema should be about). Sometimes these dalliances with surreal occurrences can be excused as hallucinogenic states creeping up on a character due to persistent steroid abuse and at other times... well, there’s a wonderful denouement with Ed Harris which, admittedly goes the way you think it will in terms of deus ex machina outcomes but, spectacularly not in a way many people would see coming. Like the final shot of Saint Maud, this forces the audience to consider the duality of what they are seeing and to find their own interpretation of just what is going on by this point. Which is a nice gift to the viewer and something you can take away with you after the film is done.

Added to all this we have a fetishistic devotion to the way muscles can be pumped up on a body with a truly heightened sense of sound design and which, itself, is a constant foreshadowing for the scene I mentioned with Ed Harris in the previous paragraph. It’s another interesting element of the film that seems almost a throwback to a couple of decades earlier, when Darren Aronofsky was using fast cut montages with enhanced sound design in films like Pi and Requiem For A Dream.

And... while we’re on the subject of Aranofsky, this film is also scored by the composer for those films, Clint Mansell. And it’s got a very distinctive feel to it... sounding a lot more like his early works in terms of commenting on the atmosphere of a scene in a more vibrant way than some of his later stuff. I think he’s consciously, perhaps, trying to sound like something earlier for the sake of the time period of the film but one scene where I was really surprised was in the first sex scene between Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian, where Mansell’s score almost goes into full on 1980s porn soundtrack mode... at least that’s the way it seemed to me. It was a bit ‘off putting’ at first but when I figured out the way it fits in with the aesthetic of the piece, I kinda got into it.

And what more is there to say. Love Lies Bleeding, the second feature length film from Rose Glass, is something which at first feels very familiar but then evolves into something much more challenging to what your expectations might be, I’m pleased to say. I was really drawn into the quirkiness of the project and coupled with doses of sometimes uncomfortable, lethal paranoia, I really had a good time with this movie. I suspect it will totally divide audiences straight down the middle but, that’s okay... that just means a film has a powerful voice and falls closer to being an auteur piece than most. I’m glad that this kind of refreshing, cinematic surprise is still able to get a mainstream release these days and, yeah, I hope it does really well.