Annihilation came with great credentials. It’s jam-packed with great actors; it’s based on a brilliant, award-winning novel by Jeff VanderMeer; and it is directed by Alex Garland, the mastermind behind indie breakout Ex Machina. And yet, despite being arguably beautiful, this movie fails on multiple levels. Incoherent, implausible, and often downright embarrassing, it verges on self-parody.
What’s frustrating about Annihilation is that the acting is superb, and the concept design is mostly gorgeous. Immersed in the film’s macabre, trippy landscapes, it’s easy to get lost in the imagery and forget that the plot has fallen to pieces until about halfway through the story.
]]>https://briefnews.eu/annihilation-is-a-gorgeous-movie-that-went-terribly-wrong/feed/02018 Genesis G80 Sport RWD Test: A Solid Step, but Not Terribly Sporty
https://briefnews.eu/2018-genesis-g80-sport-rwd-test-a-solid-step-but-not-terribly-sporty/
https://briefnews.eu/2018-genesis-g80-sport-rwd-test-a-solid-step-but-not-terribly-sporty/#respondSat, 11 Nov 2017 22:20:51 +0000http://briefnews.eu/2018-genesis-g80-sport-rwd-test-a-solid-step-but-not-terribly-sporty/
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Like the 1976 Genesis album A Trick of the Tail, the British band’s first studio record fronted by Phil Collins,the 2018 Genesis G80 Sport signals a subtle but noteworthy change to the Korean luxury brand’s ethos. Charged with injecting a dose of dynamism and style into the G80 mid-size luxury sedan, the Sport aims to challenge the likes of the BMW 540i and the Cadillac CTS V-Sport. READ MORE ››
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https://briefnews.eu/2018-genesis-g80-sport-rwd-test-a-solid-step-but-not-terribly-sporty/feed/0Is Doctor Who Backlash Terribly Timey-Whiny? Did Thrones Cameo Distract? Five-0 Recruits Felon? And More TV Qs
https://briefnews.eu/is-doctor-who-backlash-terribly-timey-whiny-did-thrones-cameo-distract-five-0-recruits-felon-and-more-tv-qs/
https://briefnews.eu/is-doctor-who-backlash-terribly-timey-whiny-did-thrones-cameo-distract-five-0-recruits-felon-and-more-tv-qs/#respondFri, 21 Jul 2017 16:28:41 +0000http://briefnews.eu/is-doctor-who-backlash-terribly-timey-whiny-did-thrones-cameo-distract-five-0-recruits-felon-and-more-tv-qs/We’ve got questions, and you’ve (maybe) got answers! With another week of TV gone by, we’re lobbing queries left and right about shows including Orphan Black, Game of Thrones, The Fosters and Hawaii Five-0!
1 |Orphan Black fans, are you missing Felix something fierce? Isn’t it weird that he’s been off-screen for so many episodes during the show’s final run?
2 | Does Once Upon a Time‘s “new Cinderella” sort of scream, “We realized we had no good fairy tale characters left to make Henry’s baby mama”?
3 | With the brutal assaults on Miriam, Grandma Horne and Becky, was this week’s Twin Peaks especially Violence Against Women-y, to the point of being repulsive?
4 | Did Ed Sheeran’s Game of Thrones cameo yank you right out of the magic of Westeros? And didn’t Sam’s big discovery that Dragonstone sits on a mountain of dragonglass feel like a too-easy solution to the looming White Walker problem?
5 |Doctor Who fans, did the mixed reaction to Jodie Whittaker’s casting as the first female Doctor turn you off from ever reading another Internet comments section again?
6 |Was the most disturbing thing in The Strain‘s season premiere how horribly chipper the PSA spokesperson was?
7 | Is American Ninja Warrior‘s new Rail Runner obstacle, while fun and challenging, a bit imperfectly designed? On top of all else, should one really have to worry about the handlebars going crooked?
8 | When did Casual‘s Valerie become so self-absorbed? And at what point is she going to lay down the law with teenage daughter Laura? Last but not least, don’t you wish the Powers That Be would have shown us more of Leia and Leon’s relationship before the big proposal?
8 | Can the World of Dance directors please stop going for close-ups during the massive and intricate Swing Latino-type group numbers that are best appreciated in full view?
9 |Fosters fans, what’s your theory about how Stef and the new neighbor know each other?
10 |How can the Five-0 team recruit Adam, a convicted felon/former Yakuza boss? (With a magical pardon from the governor?)
12 | Have Salvation‘s Liam and Jillian eclipsed Coca-Cola’s beach stand kids as this summer’s sweetest summer romance?
13 | Were you surprised that The Carmichael Show followed up on the Morris storyline? And now that it has in a substantial way, do you think there’s a chance we’ll meet Joe’s other son before — sniff! — the series finale?
14 |Kingdom‘s Christina is going to wind up “adopting” cam girl Kayla, isn’t she?
15 | Are Blood Drive‘s in-faux-mercials more entertaining than the Christoper/Aki half of the storyline? And who besides us was cheering when the show came down hard against the Oxford comma?
16 | Mr. Frakes, where can we buy one? (Seriously.)
17 | Who on Hollywood Game Night thought we needed these “Meet the Stars” interstitials?
18 | Actually, a Timeless/This Is Us crossovercould make sense, right? Like, Kate travels back in time to stop Miguel from murdering her dad with a pick axe?
19 | Is Zoo‘s new Big Bad, Abigail Westbrook, frankly boring you? And is the twist that she is “Jackson’s sister!” not nearly as fascinating as the show would have us believe?
20 |As many have put it, does Serinda Swan’s Marvel’s Inhumans character more read as “Morticia” than “Medusa”?
21 |Late Show viewers, were you let down by Stephen Colbert’s Russia Week? Weren’t you expecting the episodes to consist mostly of footage shot in Russia, rather than one, mayyyybe two segments per night?
Hit the comments with your answers – and any other Qs you care to share!
]]>https://briefnews.eu/is-doctor-who-backlash-terribly-timey-whiny-did-thrones-cameo-distract-five-0-recruits-felon-and-more-tv-qs/feed/0Children In The First World War: A look at how youngsters were so terribly affected
https://briefnews.eu/children-in-the-first-world-war-a-look-at-how-youngsters-were-so-terribly-affected/
https://briefnews.eu/children-in-the-first-world-war-a-look-at-how-youngsters-were-so-terribly-affected/#respondThu, 13 Jul 2017 10:04:37 +0000http://briefnews.eu/children-in-the-first-world-war-a-look-at-how-youngsters-were-so-terribly-affected/
PR
A new book examines the lives of children during the First World War
DOING THEIR BIT
The war brought excitement and fear to Britain’s children with masses of air-raid warnings, drills and food shortages that soon became a part of their everyday lives. Thus, they began to feel like they should “do their bit” towards the war effort and soon were right in the thick of it.
SWEETS
Since Britain imported all its sugar, people were encouraged to do without it and eating sweets was even seen as unpatriotic. Looking for an alternative to sugar, adults offered the dubious treats of chocolate biscuits made from a mix of flour, cocoa, butter, ground rice, sieved boiled potatoes, egg and treacle.
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RATIONS AND ALLOTMENTS
Children were encouraged to cultivate their own vegetables at school and many would have had their own little corner of the school garden. During 1917 the government asked children to collect horse chestnuts for munition making and blackberries for jam for soldiers – for which they were paid 3d (just over 1p) per pound.
Children began to work on the land by helping to bring in the harvest or growing vegetables on allotments either at home or in school.
Because of food shortages and rations, children were often urged to help save food. The Win-The-War Cookery Book declared: “The child who saves bread is a soldier too.” The main idea was not just to encourage children to eat less but to teach them that eating slowly was the best way to preserve their health and conserve food.
RECRUITS
With an increase in demand for recruits, boys, lying about their age, soon joined their fathers, uncles and elder brothers to fight for their country. At that time most people didn’t have birth certificates so it was easy to lie about one’s age.
However, after Private John Condon, aged 14, was killed in the Second Battle of Ypres, in May 1915 – when the Germans used poison gas for the first time – there was clearly a need to organise conscription better.
Therefore, National Registration was introduced in 1916 where adults were issued with identity cards. In this way the flood of underage soldiers was stopped.
PR
A photograph from 1917 shows a class of girls doing their air-raid drill
SCHOOLS
Wartime conditions made the work of schools especially difficult.
Many male teachers had either volunteered or were called up for military service and as the war went on were soon replaced by women or retired men. Food sacrifices had to be made all across the country and in boarding schools too where all sugar in tea, cakes and jam was soon given up.
Many types of war work was done in schools. The girls knitted “comforts” – scarves, socks, balaclava helmets, etc – to send to the troops while some near military camps undertook the mending of uniforms. Others collected jam, chocolate, books and other comforts to be sent.
With the ever-present risk of air raids, drills were regularly held in schools. Pupils were taught to lie under their desk. The threat was real. On June 13, 1917, during the first daylight raid on London, a bomb fell on Upper North Street primary school in Poplar. It killed 18 children, most of them aged between four and six.
Mon, January 16, 2017
World War II: 1.5 Million children evacuated to safer countryside locations in just two days. There were no big bombing raids on Britain in the first months of the war, as a result by early 1940 many children had returned home.
Getty Images
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Evacuee children greeting their parents from London
THE SCOUTS
Youth organisations played a great part in the war effort too and Boy Scouts provided patrols to guard the railways and watch the coasts as well as to sound the all-clear as trumpeters.
The Scouts also took on air-raid duties such as aircraft spotting and reporting as well as escorting people to air raid shelters. Each year on Empire Day (May 24) and at Christmas, schoolchildren would collect tobacco and comforts such as footballs, books or dart boards for soldiers and sailors, while Christmas parcels were sent out to the school’s old boys or alumni serving in the forces.
PR
A child’s First World War ration book
PLAYTIME
Popular street games included the timeless hide-and-seek, It (and all its other variations such as bulldog and sticky toffee), skipping, hopscotch, football, cricket, running races, etc.
One popular game was, as ever, “War”. Better-off children might have small uniforms and pop-guns but poorer youngsters crafted caps from newspapers, swords and guns from sticks and the military band was ingeniously made up of old biscuit-tin drums and penny whistles. The only problem was that nobody really wanted to play the Germans.
TOYS
Before the war Germany had been the world’s most important producer of children’s toys, exporting to the rest of Europe and the US. When war began, German goods were shunned, including old favourites such as the famous Steiff Bears.
British-made war-related toys were soon in the shops. Toy soldiers in red coats had long been popular, now they were dressed in khaki, and there were pull-along dreadnought battleships, field guns and howitzers, Maxim machine guns, armoured motor cars, horse-drawn Red Cross wagons and even complete field hospitals.
CLOTHES
By 1917 cloth shortages meant that patched clothes (once only seen on the poor) were now becoming increasingly worn by the middle classes. Standard cloth, which was given by the government for use in clothing for poorer classes, quickly gained a bad reputation.
After just a few washes the fabric became blanketed in little balls of fluff and the dye was notoriously poor as it often turned to a muted shade of dull purple no matter what colour it had started out.
HOLIDAYS
Resorts on the south and east coasts became the primary targets of sea raids so many people went further north, or to the west coast, for a seaside holiday.
Christmas, especially in the early years of the war, became a sober affair and food shortages meant sumptuous festive meals were out of the question.
Despite these hardships, for many children the best Christmas present came in the form of a week’s Christmas leave for dad who would come back just in time for the “Wartime Christmas Pudding” – and finally there’d be something to celebrate.
Extract by AKARSHANA BHATT *To order Children In The First World War by Mike Brown (Amberley, £8.99) with free UK delivery call the Express Bookshop with your card details on 01872 562310. Or send a cheque/ PO made payable to The Express Bookshop to Mike Brown Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk
]]>https://briefnews.eu/children-in-the-first-world-war-a-look-at-how-youngsters-were-so-terribly-affected/feed/0‘Catwoman’ Honest Trailer: A Terribly Written, Ridiculously Acted Pile of Car Barf
https://briefnews.eu/catwoman-honest-trailer-a-terribly-written-ridiculously-acted-pile-of-car-barf/
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This week brings Wonder Woman to theaters, marking the first time that a major female superhero is getting her own film franchise. Sadly, it’s not the first time a female comic book character was given her own movie though, and Honest Trailers has taken a look back at one such disastrous attempt that also hails from Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Comics.
Catwoman is one of the most iconic villains from Batman’s rogues gallery, so how does a movie focusing on the feline vixen without any Dark Knight to scratch turn out? Well, it turns out to be a complete nonsensical nightmare that makes absolutely no sense and is easily the worst thing Halle Berry has done, not just in her career, but her life.
Watch the Catwoman Honest Trailer after the jump.
Even if you’ve never seen the movie, this Honest Trailer gives you an idea of just how ridiculous it is, and how lucky you’ve been to avoid it. Then again, I imagine the laughs you might have from a production such as this are priceless.
It’s sad to think that at one point Warner Bros. Pictures thought this was a smart investment. Not only is a Catwoman movie without any ties to the comic book mythology of the character just an awful idea, but so is making the central character nothing but an excuse to get Halle Berry into a sexy, revealing, completely impractical outfit for no good reason. Sure, Catwoman has been a character sexualized in the comic books over and over again, but this movie makes no attempt to make her anything more than that.