Built For Speed – Playlist – Friday 3rd January 2014 THE LIQUOR GIANTS – Happy New Year. PALMS – A supposedly funny thing I’ll never do again. (Aus) KVELERTAK -Bruanne Brenn. METZ– Knife in the water. THE GOOCH PALMS – We get by. (Aus) THE SMITHS – This Charming Man. ARCADEFIRE – Reflektor TODD RUNDGREN – I saw the light.
Read moreOnly a viewer with ice in their veins could fail to be moved by low-budget US indie drama Short Term 12. Based on writer/ director Destin Cretton’s 2008 short film, Short Term 12 is set in a foster care facility for troubled and abused teenagers and focuses on social worker Grace (United States of Tara’s Brie Larsen) who supervises the
Read moreThis week on Built For Speed we take a look at two films designed for slightly different audiences: Disney animated adventure/ comedy Frozen and the emotional story of a mother (played by Dame Judy Dench) searching for a child lost decades ago in the drama Philomena. There’s also some fine music from Australia and overseas including a tribute to David Bowie who turned 67 on
Read morePhilomena, starring Dame Judy Dench and Steve Coogan is an unashamed tear-jerker but an extremely affecting one. The film, based on an article by British journalist and former political spin-doctor Martin Sixsmith, tells of elderly Irish woman, Philomena Lee’s quest to find the son taken from her 50 years earlier. While a teenager in the early 1960’s, Philomena gave birth
Read moreThe first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey was a loud, ugly overlong mess full of ridiculous dwarf sing-a-longs, tedious computer-generated battle sequences and interminable scenes of dwarves traipsing through the forest. It also featured characters suspiciously shoehorned into the story from other sources such as The Lord of the Rings. Lacking subtlety, emotional depth and the simple, pastoral charm of
Read moreAmerican Hustle is an intoxicating mix of 1970’s nostalgia, slow-burn crime drama and comedy that probes themes of deception and identity and constantly asks the question “who’s playing who?” American Hustle is, along with Silver Linings Playbook director David O. Russell’s second film of 2013 and together they reassert him as one of American cinema’s most important contemporary auteurs. Set
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