Mention an American remake of a cult classic and chances are you’ll be met with despair, moans of anguish and an extravaganza of eye-rolling. Fans of Asian horror know more than most the terror of being greeted by a badly written and poorly acted copy imitating a much loved original. Lately however, American studios have turned their sights to northern Europe and the influx of Scandinavian films and television shows that are ripe for the picking. From the Swedish ‘Låt den rätte komma in’ came the 2010 ‘Let Me In’. Lisbeth Salander, the infamous girl with the dragon tattoo, is being transformed at this very moment into an American duplicate. Even the 2009 ‘Brothers’ with Toby Maguire and Jake Glyllenhaal is based on a Danish original.
BY ROMANO MULLIN Continue reading
The People and Planet Green League have placed Queen’s University Belfast in 53rd position amongst UK universities, with a score of 33 out of 70 for their environmental management and performance. Although Queen’s has placed similarly as in academic university guides, Oxford and Cambridge score much lower, coming in 103rd and 68th respectively. In contrast, University of Ulster is in the top 20, placing 19th with a score of 41.5 and receiving a first class award.
On May 28th, activists protested across the UK against the dismantling of the National Health Service, and, more broadly, against cuts to public spending, the unfairness of which I don’t have to go into here. 
Picture the re-imagining of an old fashioned samurai film by one of the best directors in Japanese cinema to date. Director Takashi Miike is best known for his hyper violent films ‘Audition’, ‘Three Extremes’ and of course ‘Ichi the Killer’. Constantly behind the camera working on projects, Miike is one of the most famous and productive directors in modern Japanese cinema, yet most of his work goes unseen by audiences outside of East Asia. It’s a crying shame that only his most violent work makes its way across the globe and seeing as we Westerns haven’t heard his name mentioned since 2004, it’s about time he hit it big with his take on the classic samurai feature.
What is a crisis? Perhaps it is a time of great difficulty or a period of instability. The definition of what actually constitutes ‘a crisis’ is open to interpretation and often context-dependent. However, what is certain is that the corruption scandal that has hit FIFA has left this all-powerful organisation in the midst of a major crisis.