My Cultural Life - It Is the Summer, After All...

What's Been Up? 

* Dynamic Car Parking charges... What the actual fuck? In a world where almost everything costs money, private firms are now coming up with even more ingenious ways to screw more money out of us. Everywhere you look people are talking about the ongoing cost of living crisis, where everything is hugely more expensive than it was six years ago, so instead of businesses thinking they can make some things cheaper to encourage more people to use them, they're just making it worse for everyone else. Town and City centres have been destroyed in recent years through a number of things from rates to business parks to people buying on line, so how about we charge people even more money for wanting to park in these places during 'peak' times... But don't despair, if you want to use these car parks in the dead of night, it will be considerably cheaper... FFS. 

* It would be really nice if journalists, when speaking to opposition politicians, would ask these people what they would do instead, rather than just allowing them to tell us how bad a certain thing is without offering us the alternative they would suggest. When Andy Burnham scrapped VAT on electricity bills, Reform and Conservative MPs (and spokespeople) complained incessantly, claiming it only amounted to about £55 a year. No one asked them what they would have done that would have been better and none of the MPs offered their own solutions. Are we not getting fed up with opposition politicians complaining about things but never offering their own remedies?

* I've been preparing for this month's quiz - which takes place the day before this blog goes live - at The Merse, which is literally a stone's throw from my front door. I know a few people who have given the old quizmaster game a go and they always seem to marvel at the time and effort that goes into a quiz with approx 100 questions. I'm usually about three months ahead of myself, which gives me time to tweak rounds, change questions and make sure I'm 100% happy with what I'm putting out, especially after last month's quiz had a round on the World Cup and I'm never doing another round on that ever again...

The thing is, sometimes a question's answer changes and sometimes the answer is simply not the one you've got written down. This month was supposed to have a question: how many varieties of seagull are there in the UK? Now, even before I get to an answer, this is question fraught with problems - everything from 'seagulls don't actually exist' to 'is that indigenous gulls or does it include visitors during the summer?' The point was, I had an answer of 11, because when I wrote the question - about five years ago for a different quiz - that was the answer Google gave me. Half a decade later and the answer I'm getting is completely different - DuckDuckGo says 6, Bing says 7, Google no longer has a definitive answer. It is no longer a viable quiz question and therefore had to be replaced.

* Facebook no longer really works for me. Almost none of the adblockers work on it now and the ones that do strip out things I'd like to see as well. These adblockers all slow down the browsing and I presume have detrimental effects on the feeds in general - such as slow typing, slow browsing and slow everything else. I've tried it with other browsers and even without adblockers, it's become huge and unwieldy. The other observation is that barring a few people, it's no longer a social platform but a promotional thing; people sharing stuff they're going to or doing and re-sharing stuff from their feeds, which is often duplicated by other friends who are on the same pages. I heard a rumour that MySpace is attempting to make a comeback and while it seems like one of those futile gestures, I was wondering if it could bring back that sense of belonging and camaraderie, of being in touch with friends and seeing how they are rather than what they're doing or promoting. I think the problem is social media no longer feels social, especially now it's used as a tool.

Bad Wishes

The premise of Obsession felt contrived, especially in the execution of the opening 15 minutes, but once the film starts in earnest it becomes a clever exercise in filmmaking and pushing your capabilities of comprehending the concept presented to the limit. This is a movie that is both challenging and clever, but I'm intrigued about why it has had such a great reception, with many calling it one of the best horror movies of the last couple of decades. I suppose that is because, while it has supernatural elements, it's about human obsessions from small, barely noticeable ones, to secret desires that maybe only exist in ones head and become all too scary when they become reality.

This is about a shy and withdrawn young man who pines over one of his female friends but can't bring himself to ask her out because of his fear of rejection. So he turns to a magical solution that backfires spectacularly, turning the object of his desire into a monster capable of the most heinous acts. It is extremely well framed; it's a lesson in making a feature film with as little as possible; with a couple of notable exceptions, I doubt this had more than a few special effects in it, but the girl with the obsession - Inde Navarrette - is quite remarkable and will go onto great things. The object of her obsession - Michael Johnston - is suitably nerdy and feeble and grows quite annoying to begin with until you realise that that's part of the movie's charm. It's a quality movie that is both excellent and difficult to watch. Oddly enough it deserves an 8 but I feel I can only give it a 7/10.

The Last Bowman

Some things are best left alone. One of those things is the Huge Ackman film The Death of Robin Hood. This is a movie that is on for just over two hours and most of that is as boring as a wet Sunday afternoon in January. It tries to be a realistic look at a man whose myth is far nicer than the man himself. Robin Hood is portrayed as a brigand, a murderer, a thief and a man with little or no honour, who killed the innocent in brutal and cruel ways and is now facing his own death. To be fair, it starts reasonably well, but soon stumbles around in a mumbled frenzy of what the fuck is going on. Anyhow, Robin is mistaken for Little John who is on the hitlist of a vengeful family and after being stabbed and bashed about is dumped on a remote island to be looked after by a nun called Brigid, played by Jodie Comer. Some stuff happens in a long drawn out way, but nothing that acts as a way of keeping you awake and then it ends with the title. 4/10 ish...

Dragon Seeds

I suppose something had to happen. After six weeks - well five, because the season opener at least had some stuff happen - something else actually happened. All the dithering about, the wandering aimlessly through forests and swamps, the pointless subplots with nowhere to go, this week we not only had an absolute feast of dragons, we also learned of deception, double crossings, mothers killing their children and how sowing the seeds of insurgency will finally pay off. The problem is I'm not sure I actually give a fuck. I don't know if I can put up with another season of uninteresting barely mad Targaryens trying to get one over another part of their family. This week really was an episode full of 'I didn't see that coming' yet I was glad when the hour had elapsed...

Brazen Hussy 

After last week's opening three episode volley of Furious, this week's solitary episode was one full of possible leads and unusual situations. The three main female leads in this - the serial killer, the junior FBI agent and her cynical and acerbic boss are all fucking bonkers in one way or another, but I'm beginning to think that the serial killer - Lola Petticrew - is the least insane one. She at least is pursuing a course of action and has a brazen but well executed modus operandi; Alice Black - Emmy Rossum - is deeply disturbed and seems to love the thrill of abusive relationships, while her boss, Nora Washington - Quincy Tyler Bernstein - is both a high functioning alcoholic and trying desperately to cover up something she was ordered to do 14 years earlier. There's far more to this than it first appeared and after the unexpected ending, one wonders where one of the lead women is going to go come the next episode...

Simulants Need Stimulants

It might be nearly ten years since its release and about eight years since I last saw it, but Bladerunner 2049 is still a glacially dull movie with a simple storyline drawn out to well over 150 minutes. The problem I have is I thought the original Bladerunner was a load of arty farty nonsense and I never understood the adoration it got from people, so the sequel was always going to be hard work for me and even on second watch I was stifling yawns and hoping that something was going to happen to lift me out of my torpor. Ryan Gosling is the latest version of simulant tasked with offing an escaped earlier version, farming grubs in rural dystopian California, when he stumbles upon a much deeper story that involves an earlier version simulant having given birth to a synthetic baby in an act that would change everything. What follows is just a load of pfaffing about that seemed to go on for ever. Harrison Ford reprised his role as Rick Deckard and seemed crossed between bored and bewildered and it has that wanker Jared Leto in it. 5/10

Spider-Something

Spider-Man: Brand New Day took almost $1billion in its opening weekend and is on course to be one of the best financial returns in cinematic history. This, of course, has superhero movie buffs claiming that superhero films are coming back into fashion and with Avengers Doomsday heading towards us at Christmas, a new Batman film being made and another Superman movie due in 2027, this could be the renaissance superhero cinema needs... except, it probably isn't. It's very easy to say when an iconic movie franchise such as Spider-Man scores big at the box office, but it's the lesser known comicbook characters who really show us the situation. Take Supergirl as an example; it bombed big time at the box office and while people can point fingers and blame this person or that demographic, Supergirl isn't Superman and basically people don't know the brand - it's vanilla flavoured Coca-Cola, not the Real Thing...

The thing is, even poor Spider-Man films do well at the cinema. Andrew Garfield's two movies weren't very good and the second one is the smallest grossing of all the Spidey films, but it was still higher than lots of recent high profile features. The most recent Fantastic Four movie did okay in its opening week or so, but was lucky to recoup costs and didn't make as much money as Disney would have liked. Thunderbolts* was critically liked and financially poleaxed. Deadpool might be phenomenal success for a late 20th century creation, but your average Joe likes the concept and despite 2024's team up with Wolverine being a huge financial success, it was also a heap of shit in terms of story - a kind of superhero version of Scary Movie and another example of the law of diminishing returns. 

The question that's going to be asked at Christmas is: Will Avengers Doomsday be a success because it's a) an Avengers film, b) has Steve Rogers in it, or c) because it is a big event film with lots of mainly meh characters? What will be the feelings if Avengers Doomsday isn't as successful as Disney hoped? Will it simply be a parade of the same old same old, without anyone really caring what happens to long extinct franchise characters and B list Marvel heroes? Endgame has been done, surely this is just a reprise?

Spider-Something 2002

This is how my Wednesday night panned out. I'd been reluctant about watching a film called The Sheep Detectives but relented because of the good rating on IMDB. The movie was on for 72 seconds before I turned it off. We then decided to watch the Tim Burton remake of Dumbo because it had always intrigued me. We lasted four minutes and 12 seconds before I turned it off. Two of the few films left on the FDoD - aka Mystery Stick - banished to the never to be seen pile of movies. There are now fewer than 20 films left on that flash drive and another dozen on the set top box. There's a crisis looming...

So, we decided to watch Sam Raimi's first Spider-Man from 2002 again and I have to say that while it was relatively as close to the original comics origin of the Webslinger as you could wish for, it is a wildly uneven feature, ranging from quite brilliant at times to laughably silly in others and I'm here to pin point the ups and downs of this 24 year old first Spidey film... Tobey Maguire - if ever there was an actor who struggled with the concept of acting it's this guy. For much of Spider-Man he's about as dopey as a pothead and as slow as a sloth; he makes a good Peter Parker visually, but his range is almost non-existent. Kirsten Dunst - doesn't suit being a redhead; looks as though she has gum disease and her Mary Jane, it seems, has had more pricks in her than a second hand dart board. James Franco as Harry Osborn is as thick as mince and not at all like Harry in the comics, whereas Willem Dafoe, as his father Norman, is to the Green Goblin what the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were to serious drama; over the top, overblown and overwrought.

Elisabeth Harris as Aunt May was about as authentic as you could possibly imagine and she was a high point in the movie, while JK Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson was so perfect you can see why they brought him back in recent Spidey films. These two bits of casting and some of the Spider-Man special effects were excellent, but in general, the movie was just a melodramatic soap opera of bad scripting, poor plotting and laughable set pieces. It was all over the place almost all the time; it lurched from excellent moments to ridiculous ones without missing a beat and I'm not surprised that Tobey Maguire has done little of note since these films. 5/10

Oh Dear...

The thing that made Ted Lasso a good show wasn't really anything but the football, which was out of fantasyland and was written and conceived like the person writing it had been vaguely explained what football was and then asked to write a thesis on it. However, for three seasons, it was fun and it put a smile on peoples faces and when it finished it should have stayed finished. However, someone managed to persuade the band to get back together and the opening episode of season four was like having dog shit rubbed into your face. It was fucking awful and it didn't matter where you put your face it still stunk to high heaven. Ted is now the assistant manager of a supermarket - like that would ever happen, even in the States. He's still the same homespun, semi-hick, cod-philosopher he's always been and in the opening episode he's joined in Missouri by Hannah Waddington, Jeremy Swift and Juno Temple, as they've come halfway round the world to tempt Ted back into football management as the head coach of the new AFC Richmond women's team. It was 41 minutes of dreadful television and bad jokes with some sermonising thrown in for good measure, but at the very least, Juno Temple managed to get through it without showing her tits.

Spidey & the Four Evil Emus

This week never intended to be a Spider-Man week. In fact, when I originally wrote the piece about the latest Spider-Man film's success at the box office, it wasn't even a standalone piece, but part of my opening What's Been Up. Then we watched the first of Sam Raimi's films and we followed it up with the second, to finish off this shorter week's viewing. The first thing you notice about Spider-Man 2 is that it's a slightly better movie than the previous one. Yes, there's still more holes in the plot than there ends up being in Spidey's costume by the end of the film and the script is as inconsistent as an inconsistent thing, but it looks better, the special effects have improved and apart from the utterly pointless stuff that doesn't appear to add anything but extra time to the feature, it's arguably more entertaining and less Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - even if the corruption of Harry Osborn is the most contrived thing ever to feature in a superhero movie. This film also has the greatest single line ever uttered in a Spider-Man movie; it just happens to be the last line of the thing, but it still sends shivers up my spine whenever the woefully poor Kirsten Dunst utters it (oh, and she was shagging yet another person who isn't Peter in this one as well, if you're keeping score). It's marginally better than the first, so it's a 6/10.

What's Up Next?

Next time will be the season finale of Sugar, as I miss it this week because of a quiz. It will also be the finale of the Dragon show, which I don't think we'll bother watching again. Furious will be in full swing and hopefully Ted Lasso will focus on what it used to be good at rather than the dog shit the first episode was.

The third and final Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie will be watched; you know the one that everyone hated that has a version of Venom in it and other stuff. With fewer than 18 films on the FDoD - which I'm renaming the Mystery Stick because it's more accurate - and none of them leaping out at us, we might have to watch some old TV or figure out if there are any films of the last 10 years that we wouldn't mind watching again. I am currently reading my sixth book of the summer, so I am having other cultural highlights rather than moving picture ones. That said, we have The Last House to watch, which might be our Saturday night entertainment... But might not given the woeful IMDB score it currently has (5.7).

I might fill the following space with a 'review' of my second solo quiz night or I might just write 'whatever' and finish on a low point...

Actually, my second quiz at The Merse - our local Wigtown venue for anything you fancy - was another huge success and it makes me so happy to see loads of people turning up for my quiz, despite it no longer being in a pub. Everybody seems to have a great time, there's lots of laughter and every time I do one I get massive anxiety, but I don't really know why. The wife helps me even though she'd love to be doing the quiz herself and I feel as though I'm giving something back to the community - a community that has welcomed us totally over the last 9 years. I do a lot of work to ensure that my quizzes are as much fun as possible (all based on the work of the maestro called Phil Hollis) and I regard everyone who turns up as good friends. 

Whatever. 

My Cultural Life - All Manner of Super Heroes

What's Been Up? 

I'm lucky, really. I know, predominantly, very nice human beings. Tolerant, accepting people with a lot of love in their hearts. But they seem to be a rare thing now, because the world is made up of cunts; albeit in varying degrees... 

Over the last couple of years, I've been thoroughly disgusted by human beings who disrespect, exploit and rip off other humans, especially weak and vulnerable people, who are seen as easy targets to make money from. I mean, how bad is that? The problem is many decent human beings have begun to turn a blind eye to the awful percentage of humanity, because they can't be arsed, they don't want to get involved, it's too much hassle or they're scared of repercussions and what that does is make more shitty humans.

Opinions, as they say, are like arseholes - everyone has one (some are just stinkier than others), but putting that aside, people - some people - are just monsters; cruel, insensitive and uncaring. Some of these people are quick to call their opposites 'woke' or 'lefties' because they have a shred of humanity, but it's the monsters that prey on those who don't know any better that really boils my piss. Scumbags who exploit those with nothing to lose, be it through scams, physical crime or simply legitimising something through ignorance and greed. The mega rich have turned humanity into something that probably deserves to eradicated, if the rest of life on this wonderful ball of brilliance is going to survive.

The virus that is mankind is at the start of its final journey - let's hope it's a short one...

Super, Girl

First things first - why has this got such a woeful IMDB rating? It's currently on 6.0 and I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't drop lower and that's loosely (and subjectively) based on the fact that Supergirl has been an absolute box office disaster - which is something I also can't understand. It isn't brilliant, but it's a damned sight better than some DC films which have similar ratings. The problem with it is it's just 'not bad' - Milly Alcock is a likeable Supergirl without really tearing the place up as her character struggles to adapt to life away from her bit of Krypton that survived destruction and that's put across reasonably well. The story is lightweight but quite intense at the same time and the band of villains - led by Matthias Schoenaerts - are grungy and bad ass enough to be different from the usual. Jason Momoa's Lobo is pure cartoon character, but pretty much comic book perfect - we've said for about 20 years that he'd be perfect for the role and he was almost there. 

The dog however is CGI and that is a slight concern because unlike his debut in last year's Superman, this time around he looks all AI and while he isn't in this very much, he is the raison d'être for this story - him and a young girl's revenge. Said young girl - Ruthye, played by Eve Ridley - struggles with acting a little and while she has her moments, it's a stretch to be convinced she can make it to the final few minutes without having been disembowelled by something. Yet, I liked it more than I probably should have and I think it's a solid 7/10 rather than a weak 6/10 which the rest of the world reckons. It was also strangely good to see David Corenswet reprising his Superman.  

Four's Fantastic

An usual thing happened on my second viewing of The Fantastic Four: First Steps, I realised that it was a much better film than I originally believed it to be. Maybe it was that the rewatch allowed me to actually take more in than the first time, but many of my quibbles with it were pretty much unfounded. At almost two hours it did feel as though it could have done with a little more development; maybe more of Ben Grimm and the relationship with the-not-Alicia-Masters-character - all possibly solved by the 40 minutes that allegedly ended up on the cutting room floor - but in general it flowed and held together far better than I initially thought it did. That in itself is unusual, because recently the second viewings of MCU films have led to even more disappointment, but this really worked, possibly because of the familiarity - I might have been watching the same film, but I knew who I was watching.

Obviously there are problems and that's pretty much Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby and Joe Quinn - none of them are the characters they played, but who's to say that in the future there might be incarnations of the FF a little more suited to the comicbooks. Ebon Moss-Bachrach on the other hand was perfect as Ben Grimm, there just wasn't enough of him and the beard felt a strange addition in the latter half of the movie. It was nice to see all of the team being scientists rather than just Reed and the best thing about the entire feature was its look. The faux 1960s earth was astounding and simply blew me away and everything from the monstrous Galactus to FF rocket ship was superbly rendered. I think I gave this a 6 last time around, but it definitely deserves an 8/10 now. It's a film that needs to be viewed again and reappraised.

**I discovered shortly after watching the above that there's a good chance that whatever happens in the forthcoming two Avengers movies, we're probably not going to see a massive reboot of the MCU. This is because Disney has just announced the actor who is going to replace Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther (originally introduced in the FF comic) and that there will be a Black Panther 3 in 2028 and this bit of news is going to make - for me - the upcoming blockbusters slightly less important in the knowledge that, unless, the next Black Panther film is going to be set in a new reality, then what's the point of all of this if we're just going to carry on with substandard shite from Disney? Oh and don't get me started on Ghost Rider...

Bleurgh!

Much of the later part of the week before last and the first few days of this week just gone, I've been recovering from a chest infection - one of the worst I've had in a few years. It was a secondary infection caused by the tooth extraction I previously mentioned in this blog. So, while I was pumping myself full of antibiotics, not feeling hungry and trying to escape feeling like shite, I watched a lot of daytime TV, which was as bad as you might expect. However that reached its nadir on Saturday, when I wasn't well enough to do anything but sit in front of the TV and suffer the first weekend without wall-to-wall sport for weeks. I mean, you'd think that would be a good thing for someone who has moaned incessantly about sport for most of the summer...

What started as a day of loads of episodes of A Place in the Sun and Escape to the Country reached a really low point with Night at the Museum, a film that I remembered watching 20 years ago but probably didn't realise just how fucking awful it truly was. I mean, what a truly fucking awful movie it is; something even kids would be embarrassed about watching. I know it's a kids' fantasy film about a night watchmen who becomes a wax works wrangler during the night, but wow... in 2006 this was something of a box office smash - it spawned two sequels - and all I can think is that there must have been a collective mass hallucination of people thinking this was quality entertainment. Dick Van Dyke, who was 80 when it was made, must hide whenever this appears on TV near his home...

A History of Butling

As regular readers will know, I like to watch films every now and then that remind me what a shit country the USA is, especially the general injustice of the place. Our Saturday night film was a biopic called The Butler - the story of a man who worked for eight US Presidents over nearly 35 years, most of that time during the civil rights protests. Forrest Whitaker played Cecil Gaines [real name: Eugene Allen] who came from a poor [read: modern slavery] background and ended up serving some of the great heads of various states. This was an absolute star studded cast with so many A list actors I'm not going to bother listing them, but it was also insightful, distressing and showed us how within most of our lifetimes the USA is a racist, hate filled white supremacist country - still. It was a very good film even if it leaves a sour taste in ones mouth, especially towards a number of US Presidents. 7/10

Drags On

In this week's thrilling episode of House of the Dragon, someone throws up, someone gets killed with arrows, someone else gets stabbed in the ear and some dragons say hello to each other. Join me next week for more exciting something or other.

Rough Nasty Sex

I'm a big fan of Emmy Rossum, ever since her days on the superior Shameless (US) and she's finally back in a vehicle that fits her acting talents. She plays new FBI agent Alice Black in the new serial killer series from Hulu called Furious. After quitting the NYPD to join the FBI, Black is stuck between two stools - disliked by her former colleagues for why she quit the force and regarded suspiciously by her new colleagues because she used to be a cop. She has a lot of history with domestic violence and crimes against women and when an apparent suicide suddenly shows signs of possibly being a murder, she's dragged back into working with her old department while trying to persuade her new bosses that she's the right person for the job. The opening few episodes are raw, very sexual and pull no punches; also in this is Scoot McNary as her former partner and Quincy Tyler Bernstein as her (extremely acerbic) new boss - this is highly promising and totally gripping. 

Up the Kremlin

The third season of Jack Ryan, which we have just finished, was... I dunno... overlong? Slightly incongruous? It's also quite strange, because it takes place in the Jack Ryan Universe where actual heads of states have been replaced by others and the world is similar yet different. In this case it was a Russia versus the USA via the Czech Republic and unlike the first two series this went on and on and on. The first two series were set in the Middle East and South America; they had lots of Arabic and Spanish speaking actors which gave it an authenticity, with this third series all the actors, bar a couple, were not Russian and it even had James Cosmo - a Scottish actor - playing a former KGB agent. With everyone speaking English - some with Russian accents - whenever anyone didn't speak English it felt a bit weird.

This time around Jack has to prevent a war between the Russians and the USA being orchestrated by a bunch of rogue agents intent on resurrecting the old Soviet Union by starting WW3 and it could have been six episodes (instead of eight) and still felt a bit long. As well as john Krasinski reprising his role as Ryan, Wendell Pierce was back as Jim Greer (and they conveniently forgot that he's converted to Islam) and Michael Kelly as Mike November. It really felt like the series lost its way a little here, especially given how Ryan had saved the USA's bacon twice before, but the new head of the CIA was quick to chuck him under a bus this time around. By the end of it I was glad it had finished and the final season (due to be watched in the next week or so) had better be a doozy.

Pure Noise

The star-studded cast of Tony Scott's True Romance makes you think you're walking into one helluva blockbuster. The film, based on a script by Quentin Tarantino, is a brash, violent and sexy portrayal of the USA in the early 1990s, but it has a really very weak plot and one that is more Cohen Brothers than Reservoir Dogs. Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette are two young lovers thrown together by fate (and his boss's desire to get him laid) who then go on a comicbook road trip to try and sell a suitcase full of pure cocaine that they just happen to have fall in their laps. This has them pursued by the mob, fall foul of LA cops and get themselves into a deal with a dodgy film producer. I suppose back in 1993, when this movie was made, it was seen as cutting edge and quite a big thing, but 33 years later it feels far too comic and contrived. I seem to recall not being too impressed with it back in the early 1990s when I saw it originally and I feel even less impressed now. 5/10

Sweet Little Mystery

In an extended penultimate episode, the main subject of this series of Sugar comes to a resolution, which means next week the nagging subplot is finally addressed as John finds out why the senator (whose son was a serial killer) has been doing the things he does with certain people. To be honest, this has been a subplot that has been pretty thin on content in a show that tells excellent stories with the minimum of fuss - and details. The story of the Brothers Moon, which has been the main thread for the last seven weeks, is concluded in a satisfactory but potentially counterproductive way for our extra-terrestrial private investigator (who seems to have more money than God), but it's a clever set up and has a very Vince Gilligan-styled conclusion. Colin Farrell continues to ooze charm and the scenes with Laura Donnelly hint at a couple of things - either she's going to be around for season three or, as I suspect, she's got something to do with the subplot that's going to conclude next week. It's currently the best thing on TV and next week it ends for at least another year, which is a shame. 

What's Up Next?

We've started the final Jack Ryan series and while I'll get into more details next week, it has really been a TV series that basks in the law of diminishing returns (and bad continuity). Sugar concludes; the Dragon show continues to 'thrill and amaze' and we have Furious to take our minds off what we're going to be missing.

The FDoD's content gets smaller and smaller and we have noticed that about 25% of the films we have to watch are all in the region of three hours plus. However, next Friday is my second solo quiz, plus we have a house guest with us until Tuesday, so it might be a bit thin on the ground. The unexpected fourth season of Ted Lasso returns and I'm sure there will be something else that has slipped my mind. But, as usual, whatever..

My Cultural Life - Things to Come

What's Been Up? 

* I managed to go through the entire world cup without watching a single game. I did watch the last ten minutes of the final, last Sunday and was pleased to see Spain beat FIFA - against all the odds. I know a lot of my friends watch this spectacle of excess every time it's on, but it simply leaves me cold. That said, I have no real interest in international football, especially in the current world climate - we need to bury jingoism not praise it.

* I've been to the dentist - actually I went last Thursday (that's the Thursday before the last by the time you read this blog). I've always had a healthy cynical belief about dentists only really being interested in screwing money out of their 'customers' and given the last but one time I went, my dentist was promoting a new Colgate toothpaste to me (I'm not shitting you), this belief hasn't changed. I had to have (another) tooth out; this one was next to the last one I had out and it appears that all the damage that was caused to this new ex-tooth was done when the ex-tooth next to it was removed in 2025. It was cracked, right across and was the result of a trauma caused by the previous extraction. When I said to the dentist that it was probably all his fault, he laughed, thinking I was joking. 

Then a week later, I had to return because the extraction had left so much detritus that it got an infection and that infection caused all kinds of unexpected and unpleasant knock-on effects. I really don't trust dentists at all... 

* I've mentioned Andy Burnham before in these pages but now he is PM and has been for five whole days by the time this goes live. I'm writing this on the day he takes the reins of #10, so I expect to edit it by Saturday, regaling you with right wing headlines declaring him to be the antichrist or worse than Jeremy Corbyn. The thing is, ironically the Daily Mail had a headline last week declaring that Burnham wanted to take the UK back to the 1970s, which felt a little strange really given that most gammony right wing supporters are all hankering for the UK to be taken back to the 1970s (when most of them were young and only remembered the summer of 1976 and idolising Jimmy Savile). Many Gammons will see that headline as an endorsement, surely?

* I've read three books in the last three weeks. I'm not bothering to review them because they're all over 10 years old and probably have limited curb appeal. The thing is some people might not like this current spell of warm [hot] sunny weather, but I love sitting in the garden reading. Subsequently, I look like I've just returned from a package holiday in Torremolinos from 1977, having slathered coconut oil all over my pasty English skin for maximum burn. I was looking at myself in the mirror, after a bath the other night, and realised that while I think I look healthier, it's a pretty subjective thing in 2026. I don't see anyone younger than about 40 with tans now - at least not natural suntans - in fact, the other day I saw a young woman walking down the street and she was so white I could barely look at her without being blinded by the glare... 

* What is it about the return of the mullet? Possibly one of the most misguided fashion styles of the 1980s seems to have made something of a comeback, as I see more young people sporting possibly the worst hairstyle other than the combover. What amazes me is that parents are letting their kids have this horrid cut despite having witnessed first hand what an awful fashion decision it was first time around. Perhaps these parents are just evil... and if they are, how cool is that?  

* I heard a 'joke' the other day. Some guy who is very overweight was asked if he'd considered doing exercise and he replied, "I'm a master of Piechi." 🤣 

* The summer will come to an abrupt end if people continue to bandy the D word around, because of the lack of rain. We all know by now that once the D word is mentioned the floodgates will open and that will be the end of summer, even with a month and a half of it to go. Haven't we learned from the past 50 years that whenever the word that rhymes with OUT is mentioned, the weather changes and the heavens open? [The forecast is for rain today - the day this blog goes live]

* Many entitled and privileged Americans think there's nothing wrong with cheating. We saw it with the World Cup and most recently with the Open Golf championship, when fat cat golfer Bryson DeChambeau threatened the R&A with a phone call to Donald Trump if they didn't remove the two shot penalty they placed on him for trampling down long grass to give himself a better swing at a shot during the open. Fortunately, the head of the R&A allegedly told Mr Whiny that he can call Jesus for all he cared, he was not getting away with cheating...

Trailer Trash

You know something has to be very important for this semi-regular section of My Cultural Life to be the lead story/review and I suppose the first proper trailer for Avengers: Doomsday fits that bill perfectly. Now, freely available to watch wherever you get your previews, I saw this on the Tube of You on Monday night. I wasn't expecting it and I really didn't know what to expect. It starts with RDjr talking as Doc Doom and his Latverian accent is pretty dodgy and the way he's talking suggests that something I've considered might be coming true [Essentially, I believe he will dupe the heroes into helping him and they will come up against another group of heroes, probably assembled by Loki to stop him]. Then the narration switches to Thor - being the most senior Avenger left knocking around. He talks about a threat so great it's essentially scaring the shit out of him and how the remaining heroes have to stand fast and be ready for the fight ahead of them...

There is then a montage of various superheroes fighting each other - Gambit v Shang-Chi; Yelena vs Mystique; then the meeting of different sets of heroes, such as the Wakandans, the FF and Thunderbolts, a sneak peak of Loki and then Thor versus Doom and Thor doesn't look like he's got a hope; he hits him with everything and Doom just stands there and takes it. The narration continues with the God of Thunder concluding it by suggesting what they really need is a miracle... And then this two minute trailer delivers the sucker punch; the scene that will have any fan of good MCU films forgetting all the bollocks that went before; the return of Steve Rogers and to prove he's the real deal Mjolnir races to him like a love sick puppy. It's really the only scene they need to show; no one cares anything about anyone else, they just care about the real Captain America being back and ready to kick some Dr Doom arse!

The Truth is Out There

If Steven Spielberg's alien films were to be thought of as a trilogy, then Disclosure Day would be a conclusion to a series that started with Close Encounters and then ET. The thing is - and I'm not sure if it's a problem or not - this doesn't really take off until the last 25 minutes, when it becomes a proper Spielberg movie. Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt are the conduits to give the world the truth about aliens - abducted as children and given unique abilities to ensure the day when all is revealed will be done without histrionics or panic. The thing is, it might be me but I felt the actual plot and story needed a little more grounding; some credibility and development. It was like we were supposed to identify with the different factions and accept the situation and possibly fill in our own blanks. The other thing is I don't want that and this struggled to paint as good a premise to become engaged with as it could have done. By being confusing and unexplained, it lost its impact and the second hour of the film felt like it needed more, other than the clock watching that happens around the 60 minute mark.

Colin Firth plays the head of a dodgy - privately owned - company called Wardex, who control anything alien rather than, in this instance, the US government, who it appears cannot be trusted. O'Connor's Daniel worked for Wardex but 'quit' taking loads and loads of incriminating data. Blunt's Margaret is a TV weatherperson, who hasn't been able to settle in one place since an event happened to her when she was eight and now starts exhibiting strange abilities. Colman Domingo is the 'rebel' pulling all the strings to ensure that Disclosure Day happens and while it's an energetic chase film with some sci-fi overtones, it felt slightly half-baked in places; undercooked you could say and lacking in some of the depth it needed to be able to flesh out the characters who needed to be fuller and more rounded. It's entertaining enough, but I can see why it has such a relatively low score on IMDB (6.6). I enjoyed it, but it lacked something. 7/10

The Good AI

I apologise, but this is going to be a bit of an essay... Gareth Edwards - the film director, not the rugby player - is a man of two extremes; he either makes really good films or really bad ones. His good films include Star Wars: Rogue One (which many believe wasn't his film at all, but was another director brought in to repair a film he made badly) and my favourite movie of the 21st century Monsters (also a proper Marmite film). His not so good films include Godzilla (which is much maligned, but is actually not that bad apart from the unnecessary bollocks in it and the fact you barely see the monster) and Jurassic World: Rebirth which is a bit shit. Then there's The Creator which is utterly superb and regarded by many critics as his best work.

In a present day that is scared to death of AI and the grim future that's being spoken about it, The Creator really is not a movie that should win many friends, but with its position of painting the USA as a horrible warmongering country prepared to slaughter innocents to make people think that a mistake its top scientists made can be attributed to AI and its suggestion that AI and everything that comes from it is a good thing, it really takes a different view of the future and what a quite brilliantly rendered future it shows us. This is a film that looks utterly awe-inspiring and has a story that transcends humanity. It's a love story on different levels, but it's littered with evil characters, misguided fools and secretive subtexts. 

John David Washington plays Joshua - an undercover army spy sent to infiltrate an AI base and uncover the identity of Nirmata or The Creator. Gemma Chan plays his pregnant wife, a woman with a secret who may or may not have been killed by the US in a raid that goes horribly wrong at the start of the movie; Allison Janney plays Colonel Howell, a truly evil, almost plastic faced, commander prepared to kill anyone and anything in her way and Ken Watanabe is Harun, the self-styled leader of the Asian resistance and AI simulant. However, the film's real star is Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie - the Creator's greatest weapon - an AI child who will grow into becoming the saviour of both man and robotkind. This is an extraordinary piece of work that is better the second time around; it draws you in almost from the start and is an amazing bit of cinema. 10/10

Hi-Speed Lunacy

Bullet Train reminded me a little of a Guy Ritchie movie, except it was considerably zanier and slicker than anything Madonna's ex-husband has ever managed. It was another 'second viewing' feature and although we'd only seen it less than four years ago, much of it felt new to us. Brad Pitt plays a kind of bag man, employed to retrieve a briefcase from said Bullet Train in Japan; he's standing in for another 'employee' and that's where the problems start and also end. This is a frenetic film with a host of guest stars and in many ways is an Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Brian Tyree-Henry vehicle, as they have far more lines and arguably more screen time than Pitt. The brief premise I gave you is really not even a fraction of it, because the train is inhabited by a vast array of assassins and people linked to a man called the White Death (Michael Shannon), who all have their stories and parts to play. It's great fun and the perfect thing to watch if you didn't want to watch the World Cup final (which this year was Spain versus FIFA). 8/10

Dragon Apocalypse

In this week's exhilarating episode of House of the Dragon, no one is winning. Stay tuned for another thrilling review next week!

Train Wrecked

Peter Dinklage - remember him? Tyrion Lannister from the series about dragons that didn't have that many dragons in it but was far more entertaining than the thing I reviewed directly above. Back before Game of Thrones, he starred in an indie film called The Station Agent about a man who worked in a toy train store who inherits a Station House in a quiet corner of New Jersey. It's just Finn's kind of place - in the middle of nowhere with no one to disturb him or remind him that he's a dwarf. Except the first day he arrives he meets Joe (Bobby Cannavale) who runs a hot dog van, inexplicably parked near his new slightly dilapidated and isolated home. On the same day he is almost run over - twice - by Olivia (Patricia Clarkson) who is separated from her husband and grieving about the death of her young son. He also meets a young school girl and the local librarian (Michelle Williams) and all of them, annoyingly, want to be his friend.  

This is a slowly paced comedy drama about friendship, loneliness, grief and discovery. It was an excellent snapshot of life the first time we watched it (about 20 years ago now) and pretty much still is now, even if it now seems a little too brief and slightly superficial. It has some genuine funny moments, some very tender ones and you really warm to the way Finn slowly allows people into his life. 8/10

Back in the USSR

We slowly made our way through the first season of Star City and while it's bleak and full of women's hairy armpits, it's also quite gripping. While the Soviet space centre gears up for trying to establish a base on the moon - in 1970 - Rhys Ifans's character is secretly planning a trip to Venus - which is a concept I can't quite get my head around given this is the Soviet Union and the KGB knows everything about everyone, including when people take a shit, so they're going to know if someone sends a rocket ship into space on a two year mission. There's also a snapshot of what life in the USSR was really like - and it was never pleasant. What this series also does is introduce us to Sergey Nikolov, the man who was to play an important part in For All Mankind and was responsible for the downfall of Margot, even if it wasn't his fault. This is a great show with a great build up and a tense finale that will have you wanting more.

The Leap Too Far

The overriding problem with Captain America: Brave New World is that it should never have happened. There's nothing wrong with Anthony Mackie, in fact he's the saving grace in this movie, the problem is everyone else and the story. This was a six-part TV series at best, but Marvel/Disney made it, then made it again, then reshot large amounts of it, re-edited it and eventually were left with a steaming mess that ticked no boxes at all. It starts okay, but not really in the same league as any MCU film prior to Infinity War, but then it just spirals out of control and ends up being a heap of shit. Harrison Ford was badly miscast as Thunderbolt Ross, Shira Haas looked like a slightly disabled skinny 14 year old and literally her entire subplot ended on the cutting room floor and Tim Blake Nelson's Leader couldn't have been that clever because he was found out on a number of occasions. Shoehorning in elements from The Eternals and the first (and to date only) MCU Hulk film felt like an exercise in crossing Ts and dotting an I. What's worse is this is yet another recent MCU movie that has felt even worse the second time around. It also has the second worst rating of any MCU feature (5.6) and that rating seems optimistic. 5/10

The Sweet Turns Sour

This week's episode of Sugar begins with a flashback to when John first arrived on Earth and how his first job went horribly and tragically wrong - a lesson in how his people have to avoid becoming 'human'. The problem for him is what he's considering is all too human, especially when everything he's doing - the lengths to protect Ji - may be for nothing as he finally realises who and what he's up against and how he could be helpless to stop it. He doesn't get the required support from his friend in the police force and he's running out of options, but it doesn't stop him from enjoying a night with Charlotte.

What's Coming Up?

We're getting to the point where writing this blog is becoming difficult because of the lack of material. The FDoD has fewer than 20 movies on it now and while there's a bunch of TV to try out, I'm lacking in any real motivation to start some of it. As usual, I'll probably be able to fill a blog with what I watched, but original movie content never seems to be as good as I hope and we drop as many TV shows as we watch. The rest of the summer could involve some barrels and a lot of scraping...

My Cultural Life - Ghosts of the Past

What's Up? 

Christopher Nolan's masterpiece The Odyssey has come in for criticism from the far right for casting Lupita Nyong'o as Helen of Troy; apparently arseholes, um Nazi historians are angry that it's 'historically wrong' to cast a black actor in this role, despite Helen of Troy being a made up character who isn't at all historical. In fact, black casting has been increasingly in the news over the last few years, with white supremacists getting angry about black people playing mermaids, Shakespearean characters, even er... black people. White supremacists don't want black or brown people cluttering up any of their entertainment.

The thing is, I get it, sometimes. I don't get why people [read: arseholes] get annoyed about fictional characters being portrayed by actors of a different colour, because that is simply racism and shouldn't be tolerated. I do, however, take issue with history being... ahem... blackwashed. I also almost take offense at the idea of people casting non-white people in roles where there simply wouldn't be a non-white actor because they're worried about the backlash. This doesn't happen very often, mind, it's not like I rage at the casting of a black actor the way some Reform spokespeople rage about black actors appearing in a large number of adverts on TV. I understand why they say things, I just don't think it's an argument that is worth getting into - mainly because it's difficult to try and make an argument against it without sounding like a racist.

In fact, the only thing I've seen in recent years that annoyed me was the fantastic Wicked Little Letters and the casting of Anjana Vasan as an Indian women police constable in a true story from the 1920s. Not only were there no women police officers then, there most assuredly weren't any Indian ones. It doesn't matter how good Vasan was as Gladys Moss, it simply wasn't historically accurate and I'm sorry, but that spoilt it for me. We rail against the establishment for rewriting history, yet we allow filmmakers to distort the past to appear to be 'woke' and, of course, by appearing to be 'woke' they then get accusations of being woke from people who are racist rather than sticklers for historical accuracy. I could have lived with the changing of Jesse Buckley's character's Irish husband (in real life) into a black West Indian, but having a woman - whatever her race - as a police constable 30 years before the first women police officer was unnecessary and is just an open goal for racists and Reform voters.

When you get actual historical inaccuracies like this, it makes it so much easier for arseholes and racists to attack something like The Odyssey for casting a non-white person in a fictional character's role. I mean, there's even been annoyance about a Bostonian actor playing Odysseus and a bunch of white English and American actors playing Greeks. Also, don't forget that Leonard Bernstein's family were not only happy with Bradley Cooper playing him in a film, they praised his performance, despite the actor not being Jewish or gay, this didn't stop a lot of wankers raging against it... 

Oh For Fuck's Sake...

So, the other week, the wife was at work when a colleague said she'd been to the cinema the night before and seen a film called Backrooms. When she was asked what it was like, she said, "I wouldn't watch it again" and then added, "It had a really crappy ending." Now, I think that is a relative description, because I'm sure someone, somewhere will watch it again and also probably think the ending was great. That same person, or even persons, might think this is a great film and who am I to argue with them. After all, it's all a matter of taste...

Backrooms is about a place - possibly another dimension, or a decaying echo of the past recorded on a different level of consciousness. Or it's just a fucking awful film using a slightly off-kilter direction and sound scape to make the viewer think they are watching something strange, and, boy, is it strange, but not in a good way. Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Clark, the owner of a discount furniture store whose marriage has fallen apart, he's drinking, living in his own store and seeing a Norwegian shrink about his issues. He discovers an interdimensional doorway, in the store's basement, which leads to a never ending series of yellow rooms, each with odd things in them. He's also convinced there are other people there, people or things. Renata Reinsve plays Mary, his psychiatrist who also has had a strange life, which is touched upon. She goes in search of Clark and ends up in this weird yellow world. Very little happens; she's saved from a giant mutant pirate version of Clark by 'scientists' and then doesn't know what is going to happen. The end. That's one hour and 45 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. 2/10

Southern Gothic

I was about 30 minutes into The Skeleton Key when I realised that I'd seen it before, but a long time ago. There were things that just rang bells - John Hurt and especially Peter Sarsgaard - who rarely plays the good guy. The main problem I had with this 'Saturday night' movie was it had a lot of promise but fell a little flat as far as the scares were concerned. This was a hoodoo thriller with an enormous twist at the end that, to be fair, I'd forgotten about, but didn't exactly make me think I'd watched anything other than a relatively generic 'ghost' story. Kate Hudson wasn't bad as the girl uncovering wonky doings in an old southern mansion, but I felt she was exploited a little because it was Kate Hudson and getting her baps out was possibly expected. It was okay, but had some massive plot holes and an obvious red herring. 5/10

Ancient Reeves

When we discovered that Holidays in the Danger Zone: Meet the Stans was 23 years old it put so much into perspective. George W was still US President; it was only two years after 9/11 and the people on the first of the two episodes we watched were all talking about the recent fall of the Soviet Union. Oh and Simon Reeve looked like he'd just recently been born... The first of these two 2003 documentaries featured Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, both bleak and unforgiving countries that had much of their soul and culture ripped away by the Soviets, but had grown to be more trusting of Russians than anyone else. I said to the wife, it would be fascinating if Reeves were to revisit these documentaries in the next few years to see how much has changed.  

The second part of this two part look at the Stans features Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and these are two far more scary countries than the first two. In 2003 Uzbekistan was more like the old USSR and there was a real feeling of jeopardy for Reeves and his crew, while Tajikistan, which was one of the poorest countries in the world when this was made, was a contradiction in terms, with a country full of very rich drug barons side by side with people on $5 a month. However, while the Tajiks were poor, they were incredibly hospitable towards the film crew and towards westerners in general, whereas none of the other countries were. It was an interesting look back on a past that probably is no reflection on these four countries in 2026 - but we may never find out.

Triple Bollocks

Oddly enough, most of the reviews I read about Triple Frontier said very much the same thing as I will say about it; it starts very well and then pretty much loses it about halfway in. A group of ex-CIA operatives go on a private mission to rid South America of one of its worst drug barons and steal as much of his money as they can and keeping it for themselves. Starring Oscar Isaac, Ben Affleck, Charlie Hunnam, Pedro Pascal and some other bloke, it literally lost its way and the way it was written, with Affleck's character acting like he was written by two people who didn't know what the other had written. The story was an example of how everything that can go wrong does go wrong and by the end I just couldn't wait for it to finish. 4/10

Dragon Lanced

Yawn... This week's House of the Dragon was on TV on Monday night. There were more dragons in it and some other stuff. It seems to be a race to the bottom: which monarch is worse than the other? While the old regime, or what's left of it, goes around being shits to the poor people of Tumbleton, the new incumbents in Kings' Landing are weeding out insurrection by being horrible to everyone, thus fostering more insurrection, I've no doubt. Basically, if you're not a royal or friends with one you are cannon fodder, unless you are Aegon, who is having to sift through shit and kiss the feet of his underlings to ensure he's not killed for being a cock. Oh and Matt Smith's daughter has undergone a drastic transformation as she tries to keep her wild dragon in check.

Spaceba Comrade

Anna Maxwell Martin has no problem looking her worst for whatever role she's playing. She does vile horrid bitch so well, you wonder if any of her real life friends actually like her, for fear she might knife them or something. In the For All Mankind spin-off series Star City, she plays a Soviet hatchet woman, who is in charge of security and ensuring that sedition doesn't happen and if it does, making sure that whoever does it doesn't do it again. Rhys Ifans plays the head of Star City - the Russian NASA - although he's not allowed to really be in charge and the CCCP don't want anyone knowing who he is or what he's done. This first series seems to be set in 1969, telling the story that was happening in the background of the first season of For All Mankind; it's a little disconcerting because all the Russians have colloquial English/Irish accents, but all the writing is in Russian, but it's suitably bleak and harrowing as we get to know, in the opening episodes, the main players in this alternate history alternative view...

Cartoon Bollocks

While England were being knocked out of the World Cup, we decided to watch the 2024 remake of Road House, the film which originally starred Patrick Swayzee, who was replaced in this by Jake Gyllenhaal - showing just how far this one time A list actor has fallen. I only really wanted to see this because it had the fabulous Jessica Williams in it, but her role was less substantial than you would have thought, given she was the owner of said Road House and Gyllenhaal's employer. The thing is, for the opening hour this wasn't a bad movie; it was most definitely not terribly serious, but it was fun, then Connor McGregor was introduced and it took a significant turn for the worse. It really was comic book stuff, with staged fights, dodgy villains, over the top action sequences and corny dialogue and while it was a far better way of spending the evening - I could have been watching my first full game of the World Cup - I think I would have preferred a visit to the dentist (which I needed). 4/10

Sweets For My Sweet

Just last week I was saying how, for such a short series, they manage to cram so much into Sugar and while this week was no exception, it did feel like this was one of those 'filler' episodes, despite a lot happening. John manages to subvert the crooked cops from what they thought they were doing, while doing some introductory research into the cactus guy who seems to be working with the dodgy senator from the first series and spend an entertaining evening with Charlotte (who I still think is more than just a potential love interest). The interesting thing about Charlotte is she's played by Laura Donnelly and it's quite a remarkable transformation from the woman who made her name in such things as Outlander, The Nevers and Werewolf By Night - it's taken me four and a half episodes to realise this. It's still a classy TV show even if this week felt - oddly - like it was not going anywhere, even if it covered a lot of ground.

What's Up Next?

I suppose this coming week is going to be dominated by what Andy Burnham does in his first week as PM and how many minutes the press are going to give him before they start digging the knives in. Burnham might not be as left wing as some of us would hope for, but he does seem to be a step in the left direction - at the moment. I'm being quite reticent about his anointment as Supreme Leader and hope that he has the balls and the backbone to stand up to the likes of Trump and even the Clacton Fuhrer, who is apparently either neck and neck or behind Count Binface in the polls. Oh we can pray and keep everything that can be crossed crossed. As I said to the wife, anything less than an increased majority is going to be seen as a massive defeat for the Fag Ash Fuhrer and a defeat would be the end of him and likely the end of Reform. I'm betting Kemi is praying for a miracle.

TV has more of the above, while films is a dwindling resource - I still have about 40 to watch, the problem is finding the motivation to watch them, or a willing wife who will put up with some of my choices...

As the heatwave finally wanes and we're faced with a week of actual old skool summer - but still no rain - will I manage to keep my shorts on?