My Cultural Life - Running Hot and Cold

What's Been Up? 

* William Orbit died in July. His family kept it quiet from the press until the first week of August. Like so many of my musical heroes, he had done little of note for quite some time. His 2022 album - The Painter - wasn't bad, but as an artist he peaked in the mid 1990s and as a producer his time was between the late 1990s and early 200s, when he produced the likes of Madonna, Blur, All Saints and a few others, all with thunderous success. He released a number of albums after his Strange Cargo peak and each one had echoes of his former brilliance, but nothing will ever top Hinterland, one of the most played CDs in my collection. I often say it's an album that perfectly sums up my life - but don't ask my how or why...

* With the heatwave over and the threat of some rain on the horizon, it has been, even here in south west Scotland, a memorable summer, especially after what was a forgettable spring. There are signs that we might be in for an encore before the end of August, with the Met Office suggesting that the last week in August and maybe the first week in September might see us have another spell of warm/hot and dry weather and, of course, we'll then enter the autumn and winter months where we'll have unprecedented rainfall, replenishing the rivers and reservoirs before we probably rinse and repeat next year.

* My faith in dentists has all but disappeared. I've never trusted them and despite being a good patient for the last nine years, I have run out of patience with them and I will attend my check up in January but refuse any work that's recommended unless I believe I need it. My experience with them over the summer has been horrendous and I haven't enjoyed the good weather as much as I should because of problems with that early summer extraction and subsequent infections and revisits - which they had the audacity to charge me for despite it having been their fault. It seems to me that becoming a dentist is a sure fire way of making a shit load of money...

* I've been shit on by birds THREE times this summer, that's almost more times than I've been shit on by birds in the last 50 years. Apparently it's supposed to be good luck, but given that I haven't seen any good luck anywhere that's one old wives tale I think was created by a dryly humorous old wife...

* I know I appear to be having a thing about Facebook at the moment, but I figured I'd share something with you. I run a couple of things on the social media platform; a page for my football team (with 23,000+ followers) and a group for wild mushroom foraging (with just over 6,000 members). Last week (well most weeks actually), I was offered the chance of setting the controls to automatically allow comments to be deleted without being published if they contained certain words. At first this sounded innocuous but then something happened that made it sound quite insidious...

I got suckered into buying some mullein extract from a company called Origin Drops, which claimed, in lots of places, that the extract of the verbascum flower was a reliever for COPD. They made a lot of claims, which seemed to be backed up by lots of unconfirmed sources. I took the plunge, ended up with a couple of bottles of bright green sugar syrup that was fit for fuck all. So when I saw an advert pop up on Facebook for them, I looked at the thousands of positive comments* and didn't see one single negative one, so I left my own comment. It involved the word 'scam' and almost as soon as I hit enter, the page refreshed and I no longer was allowed to post on the page, my comment had been deleted and I was effectively banned.

A couple of days later, friends of mine opted to share that bloody 'a 17 year old won this motor home but is too young to claim the prize, so like and share this to stand a chance of winning it yourself' bullshit, scam and phishing post. I went onto the - newly created - page and told people it was a scam and instantly I was ejected from the page and I couldn't find it again; I had been blocked from it. So I went back into my own pages and looked again at this new feature Facebook was pushing and it essentially said that I could block anyone who says anything I didn't like - it could block people alerting others as to whether I was a scammer! This is the same company that doesn't want regulation of their platform; a company that is happy to allow children to be influenced and corrupted by hideous and malevolent content and now have made it easier for nefarious, illegal and harmful content creators to block anyone calling it out for what it is...

* I spent ten minutes looking at a bunch of the positive comments made by people on this page and every single one of them looked fake; many had only been in existence for less than a year, most had no information or history of people posting, 50% of them had their profiles blocked (a sure sign they're actually bots) and none of them had any interaction with whatever friends they have. Elaborate scams backed up with fake IDs designed to make you think they are genuine. Facebook is dangerous, don't let anyone try to make you think otherwise.

Like Sugar

Some websites are talking about how the season finale of Sugar sets it up for the next series, but I don't think it does. I think it might be the end of the coolest guy on television, in one of the craziest TV shows ever to land on this odd planet of ours. Yes, there's some dangling plot threads, but hey... life; to continue would probably mean more sci-fi and this is a show that keeps its extra-terrestrial roots parked - usually - at the back of the viewing room. In an episode that starts off as an epilogue to the previous seven, something I've been forecasting happens and suddenly this noirish homage to Hollywood with its hardboiled detective stories becomes the one thing it has tried very hard to not be over its 16 episodes - it finally becomes a science fiction story. I'm quite torn, because this finale tied everything up from the start of season one to the end of season two, everything was given a chance and some air to breath and we learned about the mysteries that seemed to be unexplained throughout this strange, compelling and wonderfully shot TV show.

Sugar has effectively been about John trying to find out what happened to his sister, Djen; it's always been the underlying reason this show exists, whether he was tracking down a serial killer or exposing high level corruption from the police all the way up to high office, the thing that has been driving John has been why his friend might have possibly killed Djen - the sister we only ever saw in alien form. The thing I didn't expect was that it would all tie together, especially as the second season ended the way the first one started, with Colin Farrell talking to James Cromwell, except this time the latter knows more about John than he did at the start. I really liked this season finale, because while there is some open ended things in it, it also felt like the perfect place to stop; to leave John Sugar with his mysteries solved - for now - with his dog back in his life and in the knowledge that his superpower is being a really nice man. I think I might miss this series more than I realise and unlike other shows, if it does come back I won't be disappointed. That's the mark of something truly special. 

Oh My Good God...

Last week, I said we might watch The Last House despite a 5.7 rating on IMDB. By the time we watched it on Sunday night - less than two days after the last blog went live - it had dropped to 5.5, so I didn't tell the wife we were about to watch a heap of shit. The thing is it started reasonably weirdly and felt like it might be something a bit different, but then the levels of far fetched came and then the preposterously absurd until we were introduced to the creatures and... I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me explain...

Wagner Moura and Greta Lee play parents to two kids; he's unemployed and their house is falling down. An unexpected storm arrives and the rain appears to cement everyone into their houses; the doors don't open, windows don't break and even drilling holes in walls and doors soon get plugged up by the water - there is no explanation for this. No one can escape; they are all locked in. People stuck outside can't get in etc etc etc. After a while, as the food runs out people start to die, but the family in The Last House have a DVD of Annie to watch, grow hydroponic tomatoes, eat their dog and manage to survive for FIVE FUCKING YEARS while the rest of the world gets on without humans. Oh and there appears to be a monster outside who hadn't bothered showing up for the first few years, but now appears to be menacing the remaining living humans. There's elements of Cthulhu at work, even a suggestion this might be a cosmic horror, but in the end, these horrid sea creatures (for that is what they were) just needed a human to show an act of kindness towards them and they packed up, went back to sea and were never seen again, ever. The end. Jesus wept salt water... 3/10

Unjustified

With a dwindling amount of movies on the Mystery Stick, I spent Sunday morning trawling IMDB for TV series rated higher than 8.0 that we had never watched, in the hope of finding something - a kernel of sweetcorn in the vast arrays of shite - that we could watch. and with a rating of 8.6 and some pretty good reviews, we settled on the 2010 series Justified with Timothy Olyphant as a US Marshal. With that kind of rating it looked nailed on to be a winner, but there was an element of reservation, especially as The Guardian rated it extremely highly. By the time we finished the pilot episode we'd seen enough. It felt almost ridiculous that a TV series from 2010 can feel dated, but this did. The acting was very good ol' boy redneck with a hint of tongue in cheek and long before the end of the opening episode I was thinking there was no way we are going to watch one season, let along six and a sequel, so we're not.  

King of Tales

This summer has been one for doing a lot of reading. I usually read between two and four books during the summer, mainly because I like sitting in the garden reading - I like the light. This summer I've read five novels already and am about to embark on the sixth. All but one of them have been Stephen King novels; the reason for this was I decided in the spring that I should read the King books I've never read, plus the latest one, which ended up being the most disappointing of the five. They were: Never Flinch - the latest Holly Gibney crime thriller; Mr Mercedes, Finders Keepers and End of Watch - the three Bill Hodges stories, which introduced Holly Gibney - the slightly autistic private detective with a nose for the weird and Billy Summers - King's take on the life of a hitman and the overriding theme behind these five books are that none of them appear to be supernatural, although the last in the Bill Hodges trilogy is and there's a chapter in Billy Summers that places it squarely in the King Universe.

I'm pretty clear on which one is my favourite, that would be the last one. Billy Summers didn't float my boat. I couldn't bring myself to read it in 2021 when it came out; my supernatural snobbery not allowing me to touch it because I didn't think I'd enjoy it; so I was quite surprised when it turned out to be an absolute blockbuster of a tale and one of the best stories I think King has ever written. It goes in strange directions and while the premise is quite light, the execution (if you'll pardon the obvious pun) is perfect. It's an archetypal 'last job' story, which has a number of curveballs thrown in and I devoured it in three days. The Bill Hodges trilogy really is summer reading and the last two books are nothing like the television adaptations - nothing at all like them, so it was like reading something totally new. All three stories are set over a short period of time, the last one literally takes place over a week. Never Flinch was an absolute let down of a story, which even the wife was on the same page as me; it was almost a why bother book...

The sixth book was the concluding part of Philip Pullman's Book of Dust trilogy, which I reviewed in these pages about six or seven weeks ago and was baffling and felt something like an anti-climax. I am about to embark on Sleeping Beauties - another King book, this time written with his son Owen. I've had the books for yonks, but never felt like reading it, but as it is the only thing the near 80-year-old writer has written that I haven't read, I figured I'd better get it out of the way. I'm going to sit down with it today (Monday) and I might finish it by the weekend, despite its 700+ pages. 

Dragon Ballz

The biggest problem with all three seasons of House of the Dragon has been the middle six episodes. Every season has started and ended well, but has been marred by six boring stinkers in between. The season finale was a tour de force of battles, set-ups and double crosses, but ultimately it was all about the next series, because every fucking season end has been about next year. It's why I'm unsure whether I can bear another eight weeks of dull medieval nonsense that doesn't go anywhere until the final season is given the go ahead. This time around some minor characters died; one of the dragon riders goes rogue; Matt Smith almost carks its and the queen has a bad day all round; plus the rebel brothers Targaryen make up and plot for season four. Largely it's just a borefest, but I might have to tune in next year just to see how it will set up, then I can take six weeks off and watch the finale...

Livid

Despite finding Furious great TV there's a couple of things about it. The first is that it is uncomfortable television; it's got an edge to it that gives you a little bit of the ick. The second is how it can always seem to end in a situation where you wonder how they're going to string it out and this fifth part was no exception. Last week we were left wondering how Alice can play any future part in the investigation and this week we were left with her sitting in a room next to the killer and knowing it. Emmy Rossum is a fantastic actress; one of two brilliant break out stars of the old Shameless (US) - the other being Jeremy Allen White - and in this she's playing a blinder. The problem is, without wishing to sound like I'm repeating myself, this is just really uncomfortable because it's dealing with all manner of things that just don't feel like the usual thing you would find in a drama. It's difficult to explain, but the overtly sexual opening couple of episodes have been replaced by the deeply disturbing and unusual. 

Pulverised

When Fox made X-Men Origins: Wolverine did they even bother taking into account the three earlier X-Men films, to the point of were they even aware that much of this movie makes no sense at all? The reason I say this is because there were so many things wrong that it felt like it could well have been part of the current MCU's Multiverse nonsense. Not only did this movie give Wolverine - Huge Ackman - an origin, which seemed incongruous to everything we've ever known about the character, it also introduced other characters that made little or no sense and were substantially different when they reappeared in later films.

Take Wade Wilson for starters. In this he was already a mutant wielding a katana before he was transformed into a Deadpool that didn't resemble any rendition of the character in later films or comic book. Then there was the addition of Remy Labeau or Gambit, who this time around was played by Taylor Kitsch and the least said about him the better. Then there was Scott Summers, who it seems was conveniently unable to see when he was in scenes with Logan, so doesn't remember him when they meet again later in their lives... Then there was Sabretooth, who unlike Logan didn't lose his memory yet manages to forget he's Logan's 'brother' between this film and the first X-Men movie when they met again (or for the first time depending on stuff). There is so much wrong with this film that I could write a thesis on it but the worst thing is the complete lack of any continuity - which, as we know, was never really a thing in the first place with X-Men movies. I suppose the biggest problem I have with this is despite it being pretty much a load of shite, the scattergun approach to writing mutants in the 2000s was never more pronounced than with this. 4/10

Pickett Up

The TV series with good ratings we've never watched list arrived at Joe Pickett, a couple of series about a game warden, played by Michael Dorman, which came recommended. This time it was a show from 2023 which featured on Paramount+ and because I'm a bit of a Dorman fan I had some hopes this would be okay. We managed 25 minutes and to be honest I'm surprised I gave it that long. It started with some bad CGI - which was surprising given it styles itself as a 'modern western' - before descending into a kind of soap opera format inside the next few minutes as Joe discovers his wife is pregnant. The following scene, with Joe, his wife and two existing kids at a kind of car boot sale thing wouldn't have been so bad if his wife didn't already look about six months pregnant, but this was just a couple of days after the opening scene when he stopped a hillbilly from butchering two big deer - which had already been killed. Everything about this screamed 'shite' and we put it out of its misery very quickly, vowing to never return to it again. I've come to the conclusion that ratings for TV shows on IMDB are about as reliable as a Nigel Farage MPs surgery for residents of Clacton...

A Return to Form?

Did you like the footballing analogy I used there? I wouldn't have used it if this week's Ted Lasso hadn't felt like it had rediscovered how to be a half decent comedy show. The problem with last week was it was all wrong, but this week we were back in Richmond and back at the training ground with recognisable characters and a familiar feel to things. This is never going to be a brilliant show, but it can, at least, try and rediscover its instinct for scoring goals... [ahem]... This week Ted is finding his feet again, meeting his new team, reacquainting himself with old friends and making some new ones. There were some LOL moments - which is always a bonus - and I have high hopes the following six or so weeks will not have me reaching (or wretching) for the sick bucket again.

A Massive Wadd, Missus

Hannah Waddingham has been all over my TV this week and that is not some kind of bizarre euphemism. Not only is she back as the chairperson of Richmond FC, she's also the hired assassin Whiptail in the miniseries Ride or Die, the latest TV series on the mystery stick we've decided to give a go to. This time we're halfway through it and while it is a wee bit silly and Waddingham essentially plays herself in everything I've ever seen her in (this and Ted Lasso), she's good value for money and team her up with Octavia Spencer and you have an interesting show about best friends with a twist. One doesn't know the other is a hired assassin despite them having been friends for 25 years. This has some cringe moments, but it's actually good fun and Waddingham is convincing - in a TV show kind of way. It might be a keeper, however we're going to finish it next week, so I might change my mind.

The Pulveriser

The first thing, almost the very first thing, you notice about James Mangold's The Wolverine is the opening sequence has Logan stuck in a makeshift well/prison just outside Nagasaki, despite him also being at the D-Day landings in Europe - with his brother Sabretooth - about a year earlier. Now, it is possible that he might have gone and done a solo mission after helping defeat the Nazis or equally it might have simply been forgotten about so they could do a loose adaptation of the Frank Miller four-part comicbook mini-series based in Japan. I'm going for the forgetting excuse, because, you know, as mentioned above, Wolverine and X-Men continuity is as dependable as my memory. Anyhow, this pits Logan against the Yakuza (after a fashion) and the Yashida family, of which half like him and the other half want him dead.

By and large it is a better film than his first solo outing, but that isn't difficult. The story is relatively slight, despite it's two hour run time and while the Viper is a strange villain, some of her 'achievements' weren't easily explainable and the man Logan saved the life of at Nagasaki turned out to be a bit of a twat; but this was also a film that was a bit all over the place at times. Huge Ackman seemed a little more like Wolverine from the comics - for pretty much the first time - but the cameo from Famke Janson as Jean Grey felt shoehorned in. There's a post-credit scene which sets up X-Men: Days of Future Past but overall it felt a little bit pointless. 6/10 

What's Up Next?

The big thing this coming week surely has to be Lanterns - the Green Lantern reboot. It's less superhero more neo-western, in what seems to be an oblique nod to Sugar - less extra and more terrestrial. I've found a few movies to add to the Mystery Stick (but I'm not too hopeful) and the usual other stuff. We're heading towards autumn and that usually means longer nights with more stuff to fill them - oh and the football season starts properly next Saturday - woo and indeed hoo!

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...