Roderick Heath

For the Allan Fish Film Festival, amidst the absurd hype and controversy for Christopher Nolan's upcoming take, I look at the only other major movie version of The Odyssey, and muse on the poem's larger imprint on pop culture. Read it at Film Freedonia... filmfreedonia.com/2026/06/07/uly…

@richardmantool Nope.

@Roderick_Heath Are the “extended cut” and “director’s cut” different?

My review of Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, director's cut, from 2020 has proven one of the more popular things I've written, and, well, time's ripe: filmfreedonia.com/2020/09/01/tro…

Viewing: Steven Spielberg's Disclosure Day. Particularly delighted this proved, for the most part, less Close Encounters 2 than Minority Report 2.

Man, Glen Hansard and Kaminsky? Cannot compute.

Sometimes I click on the trending list even though I know I'm going to regret it.

@HairOCronenberg He certainly has a lot of technical skill and knows how to create mood. But by the end I thought he has no idea yet how to sort good ideas from bad.

@Roderick_Heath I’m at least intruiged in what kind of project he tackles next, even if BR ultimately didn’t cross the finish line— something I cannot say about Curry Barker.

Viewing: Kane Parson's Backrooms. This left me ... whelmed. Starts well, trickles out to nothing. Unsurprised to see Osgood Perkins' name attached - very much an extension of his style of empty portent.

@PatPadua That said his translation didn't click with me. Too fussy and a bit prissy compared to Rouse's Iliad, which finally hooked me on Ancient Greek lit.

@PatPadua I have it, one of the Wordsworth Classics editions they used to sell cheap at train stations here - used to be a big table of them in Sydney's Central Station. Shit, I'm getting nostalgic.

Let me know when they dig up TE Lawrence and he gives his opinion on Nolan's Odyssey.

Viewing: Craig Gillespie's Supergirl. Yeah, this didn't work; Gillespie had no touch for this sort of thing; editing, staging, design all wrong. Still, Alcock was a strong lead and the climax sufficiently rousing.

...Vale Bill *sniff*

Never forget the people Hollywood loves and appreciates most: people who have made recently profitable movies.

@MarkVanHook3 In most ways I preferred Wakanda Forever. At least Shuri had a character arc.

The first Black Panther isn’t very good either

In recent memorials for Sam Neill I haven't seen anyone mention this - his documentary on New Zealand film for the Century of Cinema series: youtube.com/watch?v=ovtj1B…

Dear god did I wish peak Chuck Russell had made those It movies from a few years back...

...Vale Chuck Russell, a director who at his best combined blockbuster verve with genre attitude. In memoriam, my look at The Blob: thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-bl…

Well, it might have cost me the last of my youth, sanity, money, talent, and life illusions. It might be unpublishably long. It might be a work in a dying art form in a post-literate world and about to be supplanted by AI plagiarism software. But I have finished my new book.

Viewing: Jon Favreau's The Mandalorian And Grogu. I, err ... liked this? Straightforward to a fault and not an idea in its head, but gets the Republic serial pace and structure. Grogu ideal cutaway fodder.

I wish I could say I was getting excited for Doomsday but frankly every trailer for it's been soul-crushingly bad.