Author: Sean W. Fallon

Mental Health and 2017 Television

Mental Health and 2017 Television

Posted by | Dec 14, 2017 | |

Early in 2017, after years of knowing something wasn’t right with me, I found myself sat in a therapist’s office with a diagnosis of depression with suicidal ideation. Now, that sounds more dramatic than it is, especially that second part. It doesn’t mean I tried anything, and in all honesty, I probably never would have, but when I was asked if my depression had ever become so bad that I had considered it, I answered honestly, “Yes.” For the rest of the year, I spent time with my therapist and practised self-care as much as I could. I tried...

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Why You Should Be Watching Star Wars Rebels

Why You Should Be Watching Star Wars Rebels

Posted by | Dec 12, 2017 |

Star Wars Rebels is a sequel to The Clone Wars, a show I’ve raved about previously. Next year will see the end of the show as it wraps up after four seasons. Much like The Clone Wars, if you’re a fan of Star Wars you need to be watching it,and now, during the mid-season break, is the perfect time to catch up in time to see how the adventure ends. If you’ve never heard of the show, the story revolves around the crew of the Ghost, a smuggling ship that gradually becomes more and more embroiled with the Rebel...

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Debuts: Ridley Scott – The Duellists

Debuts: Ridley Scott – The Duellists

Posted by | Nov 30, 2017 | |

The Filmmaker Before Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down, Ridley Scott worked in television as a set designer for BBC shows like Z Cars and Out of the Unknown. He was very almost the man given the job of designing the Daleks for a brand-new science fiction show called Doctor Who but a scheduling conflict got in the way. He eventually rose through the ranks and began directing episodes of BBC shows including the comedy, Adam Adamant Lives! Scott’s most notable work from this early period is actually a commercial for bread. In 1973 he directed an...

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What if Justice League had been made in the past?

What if Justice League had been made in the past?

Posted by | Nov 14, 2017 | |

Justice League is a long-gestating prospect and a movie that a decade ago no one ever expected to get made. Now we’re a few weeks away from seeing the League on the big screen and watching characters like Aquaman and Cyborg finally kick ass in the cinema. This got us thinking about what this movie would have looked like if it had been made in the past fifty years, so we gazed into our crystal ball (with some help from DC superfan Miles A. Harris) and found some AE coverage from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s to see...

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The Running Man at 30: Arnie vs. Fake News

The Running Man at 30: Arnie vs. Fake News

Posted by | Nov 13, 2017 | |

On paper, The Running Man is a difficult thing to explain. The plot is simple and familiar: humans hunting other humans. The added twist in The Running Man is that the whole thing is filmed and broadcast as the most popular TV show in the country. The harder elements to comprehend are with the people involved in this movie. At the top, Arnold Schwarzenegger is easy to explain, and this is his kind of bread and butter movie: one-liners, gets the girl, “I’ll be back,” defies the odds, shows off his absurd strength, etc. But below Arnold, the creative...

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Small Screen Horror: Black Mirror

Small Screen Horror: Black Mirror

Posted by | Oct 31, 2017 |

Charlie Brooker was scaring us in the U.K. long before he created  Black Mirror. Both in his column for The Guardian and on the TV shows Screenwipe and How TV Ruined Your Life, he regularly argued that the world was on fire and that rather than putting out the flames, we were burying our heads in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and documentaries about the world’s fattest family. Dead Set, one of his forays into fictional satire, was a zombie mini-series set in the Big Brother house with prima donna celebrities, arsehole producers, and airhead reality TV ‘stars’...

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Small Screen Horror: The Good Place

Small Screen Horror: The Good Place

Posted by | Oct 30, 2017 |

You’re probably wondering how a show made by Michael Schur (Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and starring Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars, House of Lies) and Ted Danson (Cheers, Becker) has found its way into our small screen horror selection. If you’ve only seen promos for The Good Place you might be thinking we’ve got our shows mixed up and we’re not referring to the colourful afterlife switcheroo show you’ve seen advertised or that has just appeared on your Netflix under TV comedies. But if you’re wondering why The Good Place, a half-hour sitcom airing on NBC, is actually existential...

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Lost Legends: Tobe Hooper

Lost Legends: Tobe Hooper

Posted by | Oct 26, 2017 |

For our final Lost Legend, we turn to Tobe Hooper, a wonderful horror voice who passed away in 2017. Hooper will be forever remembered for writing and directing The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a horror movie to which a whole genre of horror movies owes its thanks. Following Massacre, Hooper had varying degrees of success with indies and studio pictures, but everything he made was infused with the Hooper DNA meaning that it would be fun, well-made, and with a whole heap of gross stuff to look at. Eaten Alive (1976) Overview: In the rural East Texas, a man kills...

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1922 is Slow Creeping Horror

1922 is Slow Creeping Horror

Posted by | Oct 25, 2017 | , |

Overview: A farmer decides to murder his wife to gain her inheritance. Netflix; 2017; rated TV-MA; 101 mins Intimate King: It’s been a great year for King adaptations. It, Gerald’s Game, and, now, 1922 are a great showcase for how King’s horror can be transported to the screen. Moreso than any of those previously listed films, 1922 is not a big, grand horror movie. It is made up of small, slow moments that show the cost upon a person’s conscience and well-being of doing a terrible deed. The movie begins with Wilfred James, played by Thomas Jane, sitting in...

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The Cinema Joes Podcast Talks Blade Runners and Belated Sequels (ft. Sean Fallon)

The Cinema Joes Podcast Talks Blade Runners and Belated Sequels (ft. Sean Fallon)

Posted by | Oct 24, 2017 | |

Our own Sean Fallon guested on episode 10 of The Cinema Joes Podcast. Cinema Joes is a show where three average Joes talk about movies with the occasional special guest. For episode 10 they talked about Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, which formed a jumping off point to talk about belated sequels and revivals of franchises long thought completed.  There are definite differences of opinion about the Blade Runners and a lot to say about sequels and how a filmmaker can stay original while following another filmmaker’s work. The podcast is available on iTunes here and can be...

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Lost Legends: William Castle

Lost Legends: William Castle

Posted by | Oct 19, 2017 |

Though we didn’t lose him as recently as Craven, Romero, or Hooper, there has never been a director and horror maestro quite like the likes of William Castle. He died in 1977 after a career spanning five decades and dozens of movies. He is best-known for his gimmicks like putting buzzers in theatre seats, parking hearses outside the cinema doors, or giving film-goers certificates for $1000 life insurance policies lest they die of fright. Castle was a true showman and we have not yet to see his like again. House on Haunted Hill (1959) Overview: A group of strangers...

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 Lost Legends: George A. Romero

 Lost Legends: George A. Romero

Posted by | Oct 12, 2017 | ,

In our second week of Lost Legends, we’re turning our attention to the King of the Zombies himself, George A. Romero. As tempting as it would be to focus solely on his work with the undead, I’ve instead opted to look at some of his other horror work (and Dawn of the Dead because if there’s an excuse to watch Dawn of the Dead I’m taking it.)  The Crazies (1973) Overview: A small town becomes infected with a virus that sends its citizens crazy. Focus: A novel aspect of this film is how little it focuses upon the infected. After...

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Lost Legends: Wes Craven

Lost Legends: Wes Craven

Posted by | Oct 5, 2017 | |

For this year’s Halloween celebrations, Audiences Everywhere is looking back on some of the horror icons who are no longer with us and looking at some of their most famous/infamous movies. For the first week, we’re looking back at Wes Craven, a true master of the genre who made some of the most iconic horror movies of the past forty years. Don’t forget to take to Twitter for your chance to win all of these films. The Last House on the Left (1972) Overview: Two teens are captured and tortured by a gang of criminals who then take refuge in...

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Small Screen Horror: Ash vs Evil Dead

Small Screen Horror: Ash vs Evil Dead

Posted by | Oct 4, 2017 |

There are not many long-running heroes in horror, and scores of recurring villains; masked men who seemingly can’t be killed and can’t get enough blood to sate them. Occasionally horror heroes like Laurie Strode or Nancy Myers reappear, but the baddies are there for every step of the franchise. That is not the case with Ash Williams. Ash has been front and centre in nearly every iteration of The Evil Dead franchise (he even appears after the credits of the 2013 remake). The Evil Dead series isn’t the story of the titular villainous deceased, but instead it is the...

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Christopher Nolan’s Long Infatuation with Time

Christopher Nolan’s Long Infatuation with Time

Posted by | Sep 28, 2017 | |

2017’s Dunkirk is something of a departure for director Christopher Nolan. His previous movies have all had mainly been set in cityscapes and focused upon technology, both real and imaginary. Dunkirk is a sparse, experimental movie set in elemental spaces: on a beach, on the water, and in the air. However, other than metropolises and theoretical devices, Nolan’s movies have another recurring motif, which is his fascination with and manipulation of time. Looking at his filmography it’s clear that Nolan is enamoured with time and how bendy it is, how intangible, and the ways in which it can be...

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