DVD(s) of the Week: Electic Boogaloo, Trainwreck, Cinderella

Right, time for another quick catch-up round. This time it driven more by the fact that these are three movies that I don't really have a lot to say about, but for completeness, here they are. They're all fine; they've all got merit, but at the same time they each in their own way won't be to everyone's taste, and perhaps are lacking that extra but that would take them over the line. So without further ado, lets get into it. 

DVD of the Week: What We Do in the Shadows

Ah, Vampires, you just can't seem to keep them down. We still seem to be in the midst of a never-ending zombie-apocalypse, but Vampires have been with us a lot longer, and show no signs of going away. Yes, they've been (mostly) turned from blood-hungry predators to slightly creepy ideal boyfreind material, but that mutability is in many ways a strength, and certainly the more sympathetic, tragic vampire had given us some good stuff as well as the bad. There is also enough breadth of material that I'm surprised there isn't more spoofery around. Certainly there has been a couple of pretty terrible attempts at it, but it's taken a long time for me to finally find on I really, really liked. And that honour goes to indie New Zealand mockumentary, What We Do In the Shadows. 

Documentary Review: Going Clear

Literary Science Fiction fandom has long had a slightly wry and embarrased relationship with the Church of Scientology. After all, it's found L Ron Hubbard cut his teeth as a writer for the pulps, and when I was growing up it wasn't uncommon to find his books on the shelves of the local library's SF&F section. I even read a load of them - and yes, even then I knew they were pretty terrible. At University, the SF&F Society got a steady stream of leaflets and so on from them, although we never really worked out if some previous members are registered with them for real or for a joke. But certainly in the circles we moved in, it was a joke, and its still slightly strange to me that out  in the real world Scientology is a serious, and slightly sinister thing. The Church has a reputation for being extremely litigious and aggressive and controlling, and it's this side of the church that new documentary Going Clear aims to address. 

Book Review: So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Having watched (and reviewed) Frank recently, I've been on a bit of a roll with Jon Ronson. He's one of those writers that always seems to be sitting on my "oh, I must read that" list, someone who documents the stranger corners of the world in an open and deceptively free-roaming style. I first came across him with The Men Who Stare at Goats, which even got turned into a film you can file under "OK, Mostly" but never managed to quite capture the essence of the book. Then the really interesting and unexpected The Psychopath Test, another book of wandering around and meeting strange, interesting and occasionally terrifying people. This time, Ronson is drawn to look at the idea of Public Shaming, especially around the Brave New World of Social Media. 

DVD(s) of the Week: Documentary Catch-Up

The feature-length documentary can be a bit of an unsung hero of cinema. There are some that hit big - last years Blackfish, which we've still not seen yet as a recent example - but certainly in the local cinemas near us they rarely get shown so they're a bit of a staple of our DVD rental list, just to keep up. And there are some great ones out there - not just the iconolastic, Micheal Moore-style polemics, but also the thoughtful, intelligent investigations or discussions about subjects that benefit from a decompressed running time and that little bit of extra prestige that the format seems to bring. We've caught up on a couple over the last few weeks, so it makes sense to review them together.