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Summit With an estimated $60 million budget,  Rock Dog  might be the most expensive animated movie ever to be financed by a Chinese company, but it's not clear looking at it where much of the money went. Aside from an opening sequence that's hand-drawn and vastly superior to what follows, it's an ugly looking movie that constantly reuses character models so that, for instance, multiple sheep characters look exactly the same, and multiple wolf characters merely appear to have had their proportions adjusted to differentiate them. Maybe it cost that much because it was made in Texas, and features high-profile voice talents like Luke Wilson, Eddie Izzard and Matt Dillon. Or licensing Foo Fighters songs costs just that much. Regardless, it was not money well spent: in China, the movie fell victim to feuding movie theater chains, and it made only around $7.8 million. Like  The Great Wall , this was a movie conceived to appeal to China and Ame...

Game of Thrones season 6, episode 9, Battle of the Bastards   CREDIT:  HBO   O h now, that was VERY impressive. And by “impressive” we mean gruelling, cathartic and upsetting. By the end of the Battle of the Bastards and the Jon Snow v Ramsay Bolton showdown over Winterfell   we felt as if we’d crawled through a freezing quagmire, climbed a wall of cadavers and gasped for breath as a dozen dying men sat on our faces .  Which, oddly enough, is exactly what befell Jon as the grumpy saviour negotiated the grandest mass battle Game of Thrones has yet mounted for our enjoyment/terror/disgust Tormund Giantsbane in Game of Thrones season 6, episode 9, Battle of the Bastards A  cast of hundreds, a budget of millions, flayed men roasting on an open fire – season four’s penultimate episode had it all. Yet spectacle took a backseat to gut-punch drama as poor, sweet Rickon met his untimely demise and questions were raise...