Permutation City Blog

This film is great fun but also an impressive piece of technicial work. Live action and animation are blended seamlessly with cartoon characters moving real world objects and vice versa. Anyway, it's all about a cartoon rabbit who is wanted for murder and the private eye who, unwillingly, helps him. Along the way you get to see all your favourite old cartoon characters performing normal cartoon violence.

This is an enjoyable movie with good voice acting from the stars and technically impressive puppetry which is well animated. Unfortunately it must be compared to The Nightmare Before Christmas which is by far the superior film. It seems there is only room for one animated Tim Burton film with talking skeletons in my life.

Some films stand out from the crowd and Akira is one of these. Its animation shows fantastic attention to detail and its soundtrack roars along with the motorcycles. While the plot might not actually makes sense it is stylish and mysterious. Watch out for the psychics, the film gives a powerful sense of how dangerous their abilities really are.

Red Dwarf has been round for a long time. During eight series it's had time to re-invent itself more than once. On the whole it's been good with many memorable episodes. The first two series are particularly fine. Back then they didn't have any money just a good script and some funny actors. For me series six was the last with anything interesting in it, don't bother after that.

Nothing to do with science-fiction or fantasy but definitely worth a mention. On first viewing I didn't like this show. I was wrong, it's hilarious. Bernard Black is the owner of a bookshop who hates customers and takes it out on well meaning assistant Manny. (That's a quick summary of most episodes.) If you like Bill Bailey or Spaced then give this a watch. First and second series are excellent although the third series is a bit of a let down, it has its moments but not many.

Although this sit-com is set in the real world it's so packed with science-fiction and film references it's surprising they can fit a plot in at all. A really enjoyable show which went on to inspire the hit movie Shaun of the Dead. I'd also recommend the DVD commentry which is filled with interesting facts about the series production.