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Miracle on 34th Street, a review by Dr. Hasslein

Miracle on 34th Street (1947)




Director: George Seaton
Year: 1947
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Rating: G
Studio: 20th Century Fox

Stars
Maureen O'Hare
John Payne
Edmund Gwenn
Gene Lockhart
Natalie Wood

PlotMy ThoughtsDVD Details
Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Region: 4 PAL (Australia)

Special Features:

• Colourised Version
• Movietone News
• Hollywood Spotlight
• Promotional Short
• Poster Galley

(From Miracle on 34th Street (1947) on December 6th, 2010)

City Rats, a review by Rich

City Rats



Danny Dyer (The Business, Football Factory) and Tamer Hassan (The Business, Layer Cake) return to explosive form in the year's most highly anticipated Brit-flick.
Welcome to the world of the City Rats where eight lives collide in a Pulp Fiction style blend that reveals London's true dark and twisted underbelly.
Dyer and Hassan give career-best performances in their first collaboration since British gangster film The Business.

Very low budget film, and sadly poor quality given the cast involved.
It is very slow, glimpsing a dark and depressing underbelly in London society, with the expected coarse language drinks and drugs associated with Danny Dyer.
There is a sense of intrigue to last the course as the characters lives ponderously intertwine together, but unlike Crash it wasn't worth waitng for.
Overly emotional and self-absorbent, possibly the only high point was a wonderful performance by Susan Lynch as the crippled whore.
 

(From Riches Random Reviews on May 13th, 2009)

My PILOT Marathon, a review by Rich

Danger UXB

Dead Man's Shoes
Newly-promoted Second Lieutentant Brian Ash joins his new regiment only to find that they are assigned to bomb disposal in London. Ash is thrown in at the deep end when he and his men are sent to a bomb site.



When a young Royal Engineer Officer is killed trying to defuse a bomb, he is replaced by raw officer recruit Brian Ash. Ash is shocked to discover that his new unit, the 97th Tunnelling Company, is in fact a hastily formed bomb disposal squad. With the Blitz devastating London every night and making massive demands on Royal Engineers' manpower, he is to take command of 347 Section forthwith. It's not long before he's facing the real thing at close range, with his men looking on from a safe distance, making bets as to whether he'll go the same way as his predecessor...

An enthralling series we never missed on its original showing on TV, and having rewatched its original episode, glad to say the tension, depth of character, and superb writing (upstairs,downstairs creator) have not dated negatively. In fact if you excuse the opening titles and credit rolls it is hard to believe it is 30 years old.
I realise better now it is also historically accurate for this WW2 era, the backdrops are realistic, and the storylines genuinely factual. The acting is spot on, very in-depth and interesting characters from all ranks, and the background storylines behind the bomb disposals are interesting.
Not sure who blindly would get into the series, possibly those interested in history or WW2, or those interested in more modern period costume dramas? For me it is a bit of all of the above, and my nostalgic return to a childhood favourite.
 

(From My PILOT Marathon on September 25th, 2009)