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Searching undeterred: The Gift @ParkTheatre

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I recently had a few parcels go missing from where I live. The first parcel disappeared without a trace. The second parcel's contents were removed, and the box was left alone in the lobby. It's one of the things that you have to put up with living in central London. Apart from complaining to the delivery company and filing a police report, it crossed my mind to think about what would happen if I sent myself something rather unpleasant for a future parcel thief to open up. Well, Dave Florez's new work, The Gift, is in this line of thinking, except that the lead receives an anonymous gift of a turd in the mail rather than sending it to himself. It is lovingly gift-wrapped in a cake box from a posh north London bakery. It's a fascinating and hilarious three-hander currently playing at Park Theatre .  Colin (Nicholas Burns) is a little obsessive at the best of times. He doesn't let things drop quickly and is obsessed with the details behind anything and everythi...

Movie: Superman Returns


Ok it isn't a photo of mine, but there has been a bit of chatter on cyberspace about the rather phallic looking Florida peninsula that is prominently on display. I'm not so sure about that, but the religious overtones of the poster as well give you an idea about the film as well (which has also been dubbed as "the Passion of the Clark").

But anyway is Superman Returns a good film? Well after seeing an IMAX presentation of it, I thought it was great fun and had an interesting story to kickstart a new series of films. Of course seeing it in IMAX means that you feel like you are in the film at points, and it is loud, very loud at times. The latter is a good thing as it drowned out my exclamations of "Jezusfuckingchrist!" when it was all getting a bit too much (so the family audiences around me were none the wiser).

Being a bit of a devotee to the first two Superman films I could appreciate many of the in-jokes to the film, such as when Lex Luthor steals Kryptonite it was labelled as being found in Addis Ababa in 1978 (the year of the first film and a direct reference within it). The first two films were such great fun in the post-Watergate era. This movie with its relentless religious overtones must suggest something about the era we are living in now. Of course with Brandon Routh in a rather spiffy new costume, some pretty impressive effects and that familiar rousing score, there were plenty of distractions to avoid the religious analogies, even for a Sunday… Comic book stories seem to take themselves a bit too seriously for pop culture anyway so I guess you have to put up with this with your summer escapism...

There was an additional feature of the IMAX presentation that I was unaware of and that was four sequences were in 3D. 3D IMAX is a really dumb thing and you have to put glasses on which suck outs the colour and gives a false depth of field to everything. I don't quite understand the point of this but it no doubt contributed to the reason why the punters were flocking to see it in IMAX, given the screenings today were all sold out. As there were only four scenes you had to rummage for your specs when the icon of Clark's glasses flashed green at the bottom of the screen and then take them off when they flashed red. Oh well, I guess even blockbuster summer films have gotta have a gimmick…

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