Movie Review: Ghostbusters

I've been a bit lax on updating here in the last few weeks, as I'm running to an exam and that's eating a fair bit of my spare time. Hopefully once that's done - and the frantic summer holiday scheduling is over with - things will settle back to normal. I am, of course, still consuming a fair bit of culture, and this weekend I took the Teenager to the cinema for the first time in what seemed like ages, to go see Ghostbusters. Now, I'm a huge fan of Ghostbusters '84, which came out when I was 11, but it's also a film with a good many "of it's time" flaws and a dissapointing sequel, so it's probably no great surprise that the Remake Train eventually reached that stop. This time, they've handed it off to Paul Feig, swapped a cast of male ensemble comedians for a cast of female ensemble comedians, and raised the ire of some of the darker cesspools of the internet. On this latter point I will only say - if this film is part of your "childhood" then you're my age, right? So grow the fuck up. Right, onto the review. 

TV Review: Penny Dreadful, Series 3

So farewell then, Penny Dreadful. Like your characters themselves, you were glorious to look at, often deeply flawed, occasionally mesmerically wonderful and always, always, mad as a box of frogs.  Showtime/Sky's batty period drama has now finished at the end of it's third series, apparently at the behest of it's creator, rounding off some it's long-running characters in typically over-the-top fashion. After ending it's second season by sending it's cast off on wildly different arcs, and trying to establish some sort of wider mythology, this series focuses back a little, understandably, on the shows core, and makes a game effort to tie it all up neatly. But does it?