I have to admit with the pressures of life I don’t get much time to watch as many films or as much TV as I’d like to, and like Sturgeon’s law states 90% of most things are cack. As one gets older, our tastes are sharper and it takes a truly great work to get me excited.
TV
With TV most concepts such as Lost, Flash Forward or 24 have been good at the start but soon they tail off as my attention is lost. There have been 2 exceptions –
BATTLESTAR GALACTICA – the re-imagined series
We’ll I got the complete DVD Boxset from Jon Jordan in a trade and have watched the mini-series, all 4 seasons, the movie RAZOR and THE PLAN. I have to state that Battlestar Galactica has it all, amazing existential writing that probes the nature of reality; great acting all-round; combat style filming, and basically for me, this is the greatest TV series I have watched. Not one duff episode, exceptional entertainment.
SPOOKS / MI5 [US title]
With Series 8 on UK TV, it just gets better and better with scripts that raise anxiety, featuring topical stories, brutal and compassionate in equal measures. Lead writer Neil Cross [‘Burial’] raises the stakes making each episode focus on morality and doing the right thing. Each episode has such high production values that they are like mini-movies
Film – DISTRICT 9
The one film that had me reeling when I left the cinema was this South African oddity about a refugee spaceship landing near Jo’Burg. Part political allegory and reflection on Apartheid and part SF action adventure, it has it all. Cerebral, intense with a streak of black humour to pepper the proceedings.
Ali Karim – is Assistant Editor at Shots eZine, a contributing editor at January Magazine & The Rap Sheet and writes for Crimespree magazine, Deadly Pleasures and Mystery Readers International and is an associate member of both The Crime Writers Association [CWA] and International Thriller Writers [ITW]. Karim contributed to ‘Dissecting Hannibal Lecter’ ed. Benjamin Szumskyj [McFarland Press] a critical examination of the works of Thomas Harris, as well as The Greenwood Encyclopedia of British Crime Fiction [ed. Barry Forshaw]. Karim has contributed to ITW’s 100 Thriller Novels due out in 2010.
