My Cultural Life - Expect the Unexpected

What's Up?

The 'in thing' for the last twenty years or so has been social conditioning; subtly preparing us for the next shit thing to happen or the next major shift in how we're supposed to think. The current racism problem in this country is down, largely, to social conditioning from the media, mainly, but it's always going to be some form of media that stokes the lies that stir up the anger.

Social conditioning has also prepared us for increases in prices, despite evidence to suggest that our prices have gone up considerably more than other European country's prices; we keep getting the Ukraine war, the Iran war, Covid and any other reason why we're paying more money than the French (or any other Western European country) for almost everything. [I have a couple of friends who live in France and both seem aghast at what we're paying for things they pay a fraction for].

The latest example of social conditioning is this advert, starring kids, telling us to save water, when we should be having adverts telling us to rebel against water companies, who flood our waterways with ours and our neighbours shit while paying their shareholders record dividends. Or rallying against all these data centres that are going to make water scarce because AI needs it (and gas) more than we do.

I mean, are you not offended when you see TV adverts telling you to save water, when we see water companies literally shitting and stamping in it while ensuring their shareholders get paid money, even though they then go to the government and say 'we haven't got enough money to fix things, we need to increase prices!' How can they give shareholders record dividends if they have failed to fix all the problems they've systematically created and then ignored for 45 years?

We should be getting angry about this snow job, not conserving water just to have the piss taken out of us because CEOs of water companies think we're all fucking stupid (and the reason they do is because we just lie back and take it up the arse from them, usually with sewage as lube)...

Disclaimer

Oh, by the way. For TV shows that are ongoing I try to avoid any spoilers; for old TV shows that we're finally watching, there might be spoilers, but, hey, the review is of an old show so... For movies, if it's a new film then I will avoid spoilers; if the film is over two years old then not so much.

The First of May

The latest Ryan Reynolds movie has arrived and that usually means an entertaining couple of hours with little to think about and Mayday is very much that, or at least it is on face value. It's a strange thing, having Kenneth Branagh playing a hard man ex-KGB agent with a USA fixation, kicking Soviet arse while keeping a wounded behind enemy lines US Naval airman out of the hands of his former bosses. I mean Branagh is 65 and a thesp, so he must have enjoyed the role and he certainly looked like he was. Reynolds, on the other hand, apart from the occasional moment when he was pure Ryan Reynolds, seemed a little muted; he was almost the straight man to his distinguished co-star. In the end this is a relatively straightforward buddy movie with a few snipes thrown in about the US government and its forces - which Ryan probably doesn't have a problem with being that he's Canadian. It was entertaining, yet didn't really feel like it was much at all. 6/10

Man of What Exactly?

Perhaps the wife and I have a form of collective dementia, this is because we watched Superman Returns on the 2nd May 2022, that's less than four and a half years ago and it felt less familiar on Sunday night than it appeared to be in 2022 (16 years after we'd first watched it). What I will say is that like my review of it, in a proto version of this column, is that it's a direct sequel to the much-maligned Superman IV - The Quest for Peace. I will also say that in the alleged five years that passed between the aftermath of that final Christopher Reeve outing and this solitary Brandon Routh 'cameo' is that Lois Lane managed to have a baby - spoiler alert; it's Superman's - and got about 25 years younger than Margot Kidder looked. Kate Bosworth was quite awful as Lois, whereas Routh was actually quite respectful of Reeves and, as I've said before, Kevin Spacey was excellent as Gene Hackman, I mean, Lex Luthor. 

I really didn't remember much about this at all; the saving the airplane scene and a couple of little bits later in the film, but generally it was like watching a movie I'd seen a lot of trailers of. Supes is back after going in search of Krypton; Lois has moved on and is living with Perry White's nephew and the moment Clark returns shit starts happening that requires him to act. Luthor has managed to con a wealthy widow out of her fortune and, here's the thing, there's a lot in this that had variations in the most recent Superman film. Luthor finding the Fortress of Solitude and using what he finds against his sworn enemy; unleashing something that threatens to tear Metropolis in half; the general tip of the hat to the original films. it was like James Gunn saw Superman Returns and thought, "I can make that again but better." This really is a curate's egg of a superhero film. 6/10

Dragon's Teeth

There's a review on Goodreads that slightly confounds me. It essentially gives Peter Straub's horror novel Floating Dragon two stars, and likens it to a Stephen King novel that was written FOUR years after this and calls this derivative. This is possibly the scariest novel I've ever read; it is unrelenting; it is Straub's magnum opus - even if many people will say his Ghost Story is his greatest work. This is maybe the fourth time I have read this book and I always find new things, and, probably more importantly, due to age, more understanding of things. There is, after all, a 15 year-old, two 30-somethings and a 76 year old in this - the heroes - and all of them get their day in the sun, so to speak. Floating Dragon is an epic story of an evil that has plagued a town in Connecticut for several hundreds of years, but is at its worst every 100 or so; usually when all of descendants of the town's founding fathers are assembled. This time the last of their lines are all back in Hampstead, at the same time as a secret chemical agent has accidentally been released into the atmosphere, which settles over the town - whether by accident or by design. 

What follows is one nightmare after another, as the chemical DRG and the spirit of the town's worst nightmare - Gideon Winter - go about their nefarious ways. The chemical is changing the people; killing some, distorting others and probably all of them are suffering the worst LSD type existences you could imagine; while the spirit of a man originally killed by the founding fathers of the town, has resurrected himself inside a man beyond repute, who is systematically butchering women across the town. I used the term 'unrelenting' and that is what it is; there is no middle eight, no interludes or easing off; the town of Hampstead and its surrounding suburbs are bombarded with horror upon horror, to the point you have to pinch yourself that this was written in 1982 and not more recently, when there is a pressing need for films and fiction to have as much overload as possible. It is probably one of my three favourite novels of all time and there are more ideas in this novel than there are in almost all of Stephen King's oeuvre. If you ever see this book in a second hand bookstore - buy it; if you like horror stories, you will not be disappointed by any of it.

Splattered

Normal programming was restored in episode four of Lanterns, as Hal and John returned to their mission to find the Manhunter that is being protected by many of the residents of Rushville, because it has provided health and wealth to the town. It's certainly an interesting scenario, with all manner of people wanting this ancient alien renegade dead, but a lot of people prepared to put their lives on the line to protect it. Both Hal and his 'trainee' have encounters that you maybe didn't see coming and there's a very graphic scene with a cow. The issue though is the rapidly deteriorating relationship between the bitter and twisted Jordan and the driven Stewart. The Guardians have a clear idea, what is strange is the roundabout way they're going about it.

Vicious

I've seen a lot of Shane Meadows movies, but I'd never seen Dead Man's Shoes, starring Paddy Considine as a former army NCO returning to his home town to exact revenge on people who were nasty to his brother - Toby Kebbel. This is a short and extremely visceral film that has Meadows trademarks writ large all over it. Obviously a low budget feature, it follows a group of low life scumbags as they drink and take drugs in a run down council estate, somewhere in the North Midlands, and then find themselves falling onto the radar of Considine's Richard. This is a film that pulls no punches and has no compromises at all. 7/10

The Cliffhanger Quarter

I started to review this season of Chad Powers last week and got two episodes into a six part series. I mentioned that it seemed to have forgotten it was a comedy and I now see that this was deliberate. In fact, this has been a superbly dramatic second season, packed with jeopardy, some almost gentle comedy and one episode that was so LOL I thought I was going to have an aneurysm (that's episode four). The story of a failed football star making a comeback disguised as a hillbilly redneck was crazy in it's opening season and in many ways was even crazier this time around as Chad not only had to keep his identity safe, he became the focus of a lunatic he helped create, in Jerry, the reserve quarterback. This has been one of the best shows I've seen all year, I mean, even if you don't understand the game it has been quite astoundingly good. I had a feeling it might conclude, but what happens is we're set up for an even more disturbing third season as Chad's secret is now known by someone you didn't expect. This has been excellent TV.

Fish Nor Fowl

The last half decent film McG has made is also probably the last half decent film that Kevin Costner also made. The thing about 3 Days to Kill is there's a really good film in there struggling to get out. The main problem is that it's trying hard to be a comedy and it didn't really need to be one. it could have had some humour in it, but it tried too hard to be something it clearly wasn't and that spoiled what could have been a solid movie. Costner plays a CIA op who is diagnosed with cancer and has about three months to live. He decides to try and reconnect with his daughter - who lives in Paris - but is waylaid by the woman who was lead on his last CIA job, who wants him for another - final - job and dangles an experimental drug that can prolong his life in front of him as bait/incentive. The action is excellent, but the tone of much of the film is just terribly off key. Hailee Steinfeld plays Costner's daughter and she's okay in this, if a little too scripted and a stereotypically teenage film character. 6/10

Awkward

Having a New Year's Eve episode at the start of September felt a little out of place, but that was the least cringeworthy thing about this week's Ted Lasso. This was a three-pronged affair, with Ted and his ex-wife having NYE in the local pub; Beard and the ladies' team having NYE on a boat moored in the Thames, hosted by Tracey Ulman's utterly annoying character and Rebecca, Keeley and Roy reunited with Jamie Tartt at the launch of his new vodka, which ended with Roy buggering up his knee and being rushed to hospital where his new girlfriend came to his aid. This was an episode where something awkward happened in every prong. I know there are people out there who like this, but it's not very good, it makes some 70s sitcoms seem sophisticated and I'm getting a vibe that suggests this might not be the end of this series at the conclusion of these eight parts. However, if that's the case, it might be the end for me (unless there's a Roy Kent spin-off and even then I'm not absolutely convinced).

Dem Bones

This doesn't have spoilers in it, but I am going to give you my hypothesis based on the opening episode, so if you're going to watch this you might want to skip this review, but I will tell you that by the end of the opening episode you will be thinking exactly what I'm thinking because there's little or no subtlety...

The last time we saw Patrick Brammall in a TV show it was Evil, where he played the lead's often estranged husband. He has since appeared in Colin From Accounts, which I'm told is wonderful TV. We decided to give Last Seen a go; it sounded like it was our cup of tea; the story of a former police officer turned dispatcher whose daughter was abducted 11 years ago, who is informed that the remains of a three-year-old child has been unearthed by a landslide. The rest of the episode watches him slide off the rails and introduces us to a subplot, which seems to be as obvious as the nose on anyone's face. By the end of the opening episode you have worked out that the remains of the child discovered are not going to be Brammall's daughter because she is obviously living with a couple out in the Boonies. The interesting thing here is that the child's remains had Brammall's daughters clothes left near them, in a plastic bag, so they would not deteriorate and, presumably, would point at the clothes and the bones belonging to the missing girl. I think this is the series in a nutshell; quite how it's going to go on for another five episodes is the mystery for me.

Yes, it wasn't bad for an Australian TV show (it did come out on Apple TV+) and I don't mean that as an insult to Aussie TV, honest, but while it was a relatively harrowing opening part, the sledgehammer revelations at the end of the episode makes this a tough one to call. We have the second part to watch, but I got the impression the wife wasn't that enamoured with this and if that's the case I kind of understand why. However, if I've already worked out what is going on then that might be exactly what the makers hoped for and have a massive twist waiting in the wings... I'm just not sure I care enough about it to hang around to find out.

The Return of Bat Bane

The third and final part of Christopher Nolan's Batman Trilogy is bloated and overlong. There's so much unnecessary stuff in it he could have trimmed almost an hour off of it and it would still have been a little on the long side. In many ways it's really anti-climatically dull, with things in it that felt forced - Catwoman, the faux Robin and the killer twist at the end. Bane - interestingly played by Tom Hardy - after coming across as an unstoppable force, was despatched a bit too easily and the entire denouement felt badly plotted almost from the start. You've got 3000 police officers stuck underground, unable to get out; yes, they were given food, but where did they shit? What did they wear? Did they spend months in the same clothes? How come none of them had beards? Why did Batman still insist on talking gruffly when the only people he was talking to were people who knew he was Bruce Wayne and if Joseph Gordon Levitt could work out Wayne was Batman from a brief encounter with him when he was a kid, how come no one else did? In many ways it was worse than the first part because any promise this had went in the same place as the Gotham PD's poo. 6/10

Kosmic?

It's been 13 years since the last proper Stellardrone album; that was Light Years and it's still one of my favourite albums of all time. Stellardrone is a Lithuanian guy called Edgaras and he's released a shedload of stuff since the mid noughties and all of it is free. It's essentially space ambient music and his albums all seem to have a space-y theme, although not one track has any vocals. His long-awaited eighth album arrived a few weeks ago and, not counting the Between the Rings EP in 2017, I started to think there would never be another release from the man. Kosmos starts with one of the best tracks the guy has ever recorded; a slow start ramps up to several BIG crescendos and leaves you elated at the opening and expecting something remarkable. However, that's where the problems start, because the rest of the album is almost disappointing; it kinds of blurs into each other and there's nothing that reaches out and grabs you quite like the opener - Transcendence - does. It's not bad, but it's also not awesome. I've had it on constant rotation since its release, but it kind of disappears into the background a bit too much. I mean, I listen to Stellardrone because it is euphoric space ambient music and it's excellent background noise, but Kosmos just feels like my expectation has been left wanting. 13 years is a long time to wait for the follow up to one of my favourite albums to be just a bit average and given my age and the frequency he now puts music out, I doubt I'll see another release in my lifetime. 7/10 (reluctantly)

The Tragedy of Tarzan

It has been over 35 years since we last watched Greystoke, the Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes and while there's a lot to unpack with it, it still is essentially a sad and tragic film; not least because it was Ralph Richardson's final movie. The first thing is despite some incredibly questionable animals in this - such as a jaguar (native of South America) and flamingos (in the jungle) - it is a stunning looking thing (mainly filmed in Cameroon) and 42 years after its release it still looks extremely good. The next thing is how utterly preposterous it is, yet, because the film is treated like a piece of high art, some of the slightly ludicrous moments are fully accepted because this isn't a cheap movie. 

I expect if it was made today Andy Serkis would play all the apes, there would be a loin cloth almost from the point John Clayton II first appears - there is a lot of pre-teen tackle on show at times - and they'd probably cast an English speaking lead with a lot more muscles than Christopher Lambert. The thing is it's a really great film and it's so desperately sad - everything John loves is wrenched away from him and in the end he chooses to return to the wild, leaving his friend - Ian Holm - and his fiancée - Andi McDowell - because there's nothing in Edwardian Britain he wants. The special effects were state of the art in the early 1980s and while they look a bit dated and like men in chimp suits now, back in 1984 we looked at this film in awe. I've always had a soft spot for this and, of course, Lambert went on from this to make the wonderfully camp and outrageous Highlander. 8/10

What's Up Next?

Slow Horses is back, but I won't be reviewing it for at least six weeks, because we like to binge watch it. We're going to start on season two of Ludwig (despite many saying it's lost its mojo) and there's more Lanterns, Lasso and I think there's another old favourite returning as well.

I have managed to find a bunch of films to add to the Mystery Stick, although a couple of them may well be there for a while before I can bring myself to watch them.

I'm sure I will have something to moan or whinge about. 

I also expect the world to still be here - just.

My Cultural Life - Twinsets and Green Pearls

What's Up? 

* Here's a concept you might have never spent any time contemplating. We all know what life is, don't we? We are all alive. Plants, insects, animals, fungi - the planet is a haven for life. Yet, have we never considered the planet itself is alive? Is the idea that an entire planet being a sentient being something we can't comprehend? If the earth brings life, could it be that the earth is life?

Yeah, I know, this sounds like a load of hippy bullshit. It's life, man, but not as we know it kind of thing. But what if it is? What if our planet is alive and suddenly it's own version of white blood cells are saying 'I've had enough of this shit' and is starting to fight back?

Take 2026 as a snapshot - the warmest year on record; natural disasters - earthquakes; wild fires, tsunamis, landslides, droughts, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, El Nino and any other natural disaster you can think of. It's the like the planet has decided it's time to issue some warnings. It's just a shame it can't target its victims, but I don't think it works that way or it would have rained down all kinds of shit on the White House this year, rather than allowing the world's biggest orange shit stain to bully his way across the world like some petulant moronic child ape.

I've believed for a long time that humans are a virus that are no longer controllable. There is nothing more dangerous than an angry virus and humans are becoming increasingly angry - the problem is they haven't got a clue who they should be angry at therefore they're picking on each other rather than the things they should be...

* It appears that the Clacton Fuhrer's days could be numbered. Despite a lot of people caring about corrupt politicians but not caring about Farage, who is far more corrupt than most, the latest news to come out about accepting money from journalists posing as foreign donors could be the end, or the beginning of it, at least. Nigel can bleat all he wants about the establishment trying to stitch him up, but when he stitches himself up... well, he can blame whoever he wants, but he's not going to escape this scrutiny and could even end up in court, maybe even prison. That would be a glorious day in British history. 

* In other actual TV news, I learned that the BBC is bringing back Top Gear and that Amazon are resurrecting The Grand Tour. This got a reaction from me that was akin to a large yawn. Whatever peoples thoughts on Clarkson, May and Hammond, they kind of broke the mold for this kind of thing and while the last team on Top Gear looked as though they might capture some of that three middle aged lads on a jolly feel, tragedy struck and we really should have seen the back of car shows after that. But now we have two; the BBC's looks a bit meh, while Amazon's three replacements for the original trio look anodyne and a bit weird. It gets a big thumbs down from me, I'd rather watch ancient Top Gears than this imitation bollocks.

Disclaimer

Oh, by the way. For TV shows that are ongoing I try to avoid any spoilers; for old TV shows that we're finally watching, there might be spoilers, but, hey, the review is of an old show so... For movies, if it's a new film then I will avoid spoilers; if the film is over two years old then not so much.

The Piranha Brothers

For many, Ron and Reg Kray were legends, which is probably why the biopic of their lives was called Legend. These East end gangsters were both heroes and villains in the 1960s and for a while got away with murder. The wife grew up in the East End of London and the Krays were feared and loved in equal measure. I had never seen this film and now wonder why that was, because it was quite excellent and also quite scary. Tom Hardy, who played both of the brothers, could easily have been two different actors, the way he portrays the men so effortlessly differently - Reg, the clever and charming brains behind the outfit and Ron, the gay psychopath, a mixture of innocence and slaughter. This movie essentially follows the 18 month period between them taking over the London crime scene leading up to the point where everything fell apart and both men ended up in prison for separate murders. It's bizarrely quite funny and reminded me - at times - of the Monty Python Doug and Dinsdale episode, which was basically a parody of the Krays. 1960s London was brought vividly back to life and the film is most definitely worth trying to track down. 9/10

Twin Puzzles

Someone asked me if I'd watched Ludwig, to which I replied, "No." They said, "Oh, it's very good." And several weeks passed, the second series started and, of course, we are running out of things to watch. So we watched the opening episode straight after the Kray film, so we went from one pair of twins to another in the space of an evening. What did I think? Well, I laughed on several occasions; it's good to see Anna Maxwell Martin not playing an old hag or a psychopath and while the premise is a little bit of a stretch - given that even identical twins start to look different as they grow older - we saw enough to add it to the Watchlist...

As we've moved steadily through the first season all week, I have to say that in general it's been entertaining, if absolutely nothing like real life or how a team of police officers would work. The comedy elements have dwindled and the inaccuracies increased and I'm reconsidering my position of Anna Maxwell Martin... I think there's a psychopath in every role she plays, which is a concern because that means she might just be a psychopath in real life, or something like that...

The Pianist

So by Sunday night, I'd watched two films in two days and both of them were bloody excellent. That's not a bad average considering I've been moaning about not having anything to watch. Both movies, the one about the Kray twins and this one had been watched by the wife and I didn't bother, thus proving the wife has considerably better taste in stuff than I do. The latter, Green Book starring Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali is based on the true story of an Italian American 'playa' who gets the job as chauffeur and PA to a world famous black pianist, in 1962, who decided to undertake a tour of the USA, especially the southern States, where blacks were still being treated lower than snake shit. It is an absolutely superb movie that makes you laugh, makes you realise that the USA is fundamentally a reasonable place inhabited by a bunch of white supremacist arseholes, who just happen to be in power and it gives you a feeling that friendships can be made in the most unlikely of settings. It's an absolute cracker of a movie. 10/10

Fearless

Despite the series only having been on two weeks, the latest episode of Lanterns was all about John Stewart; effectively his origin story and apart from a late cameo by Hal Jordan, the closest thing to the Green Lanterns was Laura Linney as one of the Guardians from Oa. This was how John was effectively picked and then trained by his parents to be a future protector of Earth, which we kind of know might not even be the case given that we're presuming Hal is dead in 2026 (the final scene of episode one) and that Guy Gardner is the current GL (the Superman film and the Peacemaker series two). However, despite seemingly out of place in the continuity of this series, it was an interesting and intelligent way of explaining more about the man being trained by Hal Jordan and why he ticks. What it had to do with a story we've barely scratched the surface of... I'm not so sure.

Peeved, More Like

Tough one this... How do you review the finale of Furious without giving stuff away that might spoil it for others who haven't seen it yet or might watch it in the future? The honest answer is - you can't. Mainly because any hint or suggestion of what happens will spoil it in some way. I mean, I can't even tell you what I thought of it because that would mean making a definite call about how I felt at the end and that alone would suggest things that might spoil it. Part of me wants to say that it had a satisfactory ending, because that's ambiguous enough, but if I said it had an unsatisfactory ending that is far less ambiguous. The thing is it had an ending, but I'm not even convinced that it's the end and not just a set up for a second series - which has been confirmed. Emmy Rossum was great. Scoot McNary was also excellent. Quincy Tyler Bernstein was outstanding. The fact there's a second series is almost disappointing. I've said enough...

Bad Moustache Movie

The wife recorded two of the three Christopher Nolan Batman movies off the TV in the last week and we watched the first - Batman Begins - on Tuesday night. It's only been about five years since we last watched it and like Spider-Man, Batman is a comic character I've never really been too enamoured by. This trilogy, regarded by many as three of the best superhero films ever made, is going to be interesting to watch again, especially as I felt the opening salvo now feels slightly dated and a little corny - which, I suspect, was deliberate. This is also a very English film, with just a handful of actors from the USA and most of the scenes filmed in the UK. I seem to have an ongoing problem with films set in the USA populated by British actors - is it a cost thing? A geography thing? Laziness? Anyhow, I thought this was okay, nothing special and a little cheesy, if I want to be honest. I never rated Christian Bale as Batman and the premise - to do with hallucinogenic drugs, microwave machines and other nonsensical gubbins - seemed both adventurous and a bit daft. Plus, almost everyone in this movie had terrible facial hair, that looked about as fake as Gotham did. I'm going against the grain here when I say I only rate this a 6/10. 

Channelling Seth Brundle 

Despite The Dark Knight being the highest rated superhero film on IMDB, I have always struggled with it. Yes, it's heaps better than the first in the series, but where almost everybody thinks the sun shone out of Heath Ledger's arse, I thought he was simply adequate. His Joker was psychotic enough, but lacked the insanely hysterical traits that we've all associated with the Clown Prince of Crime - especially if you were a fan of his in the comics. That said, I didn't like Jack Nicholson's version and let's not even go near Jared Leto, for a number of reasons. I thought Cesar Romero was quite good, he just wasn't psychopathic enough. Anyhow, the second of Christopher Nolan's Bat Trilogy is the best of the three (and it's at least an American film this time around), but I think that's a pretty low bar. I also think this is overlong and slightly contrived, but we've already discovered I have a general problem with Batman as a whole. I also don't really think Christian Bale is suitable to be Bruce Wayne and his constant American Jaysun Stayfum impersonation begins to grate after a while; he must have had a sore throat for weeks after making these films. 7/10

Sports Night 1

Half way through this, alleged, finale season of Ted Lasso and while I know people really like this show, there are bad comedy series made in the 1970s that are funnier and more realistic than this and I know the point of this is to be less than realistic, with its larger than life characters, but, you know, it wouldn't hurt it to try to be something else at times. This week's episode was the least comedic of the five so far - even if three of those five have been woefully short of actual laughs. This was more pseudo dramatic than anything else, even Roy Kent felt a little too serious. Juno Temple edges closer to getting her tits out and is also becoming really quite annoying and Ted was almost the best thing in this.

Sports Night 2

Maybe comedy shows based around sport are not supposed to be funny, or don't have to be funny once they've established themselves. From out of nowhere, the second season of Chad Powers dropped - all six parts - and we managed to watch two of them before the end of the watching week was curtailed by Friday night's quiz. The first series, which was full of laughs has now taken on a few extra layers - a potential love story; a bit of a drama and everything has got a bit serious and intense. That said, compared to Ted Lasso this is a quality series even if you have no idea how American Football actually works. Glen Powell is the former great player who screws up and then uses his father's make-up kit to transform himself into simple hick ball player Chad Powers and he's really good as both dim-witted Chad and his failed alter ego Russ. The opening episode was about a make-up disaster and the second about how things begin to fall apart for reasons other than a man pretending to be someone else. It's still good stuff and the rest will follow next week.

What's Up Next?

I presented (?) my third Quiz Night at The Merse - Wigtown's old church hall turned into an entertainment venue - and as ever the turn out pretty much blew me away. It was a good night and I've committed to another 6 months.

The coming week will see the return of more regular TV watches and I'm building up a new list of movies to watch, many of which we have seen before, but, why not?

The rest, they say, is undetermined. Ciao. 

My Cultural Life - The Questions We Need Answering

What Been Up? 

A friend of mine posted something up on their Facebook page the other day that made me realise that perhaps we're going about trying to stop racism the wrong way. We must know now that there's no point in trying to reason with arseholes; I've been wanging on about belief politics for a decade now and it's not like peoples beliefs have wavered. If Joe Wanker thinks migrants and brown people are stealing their jobs then all the sensible arguments under the sun isn't going to change that belief. If a racist is a racist then they are racist - simples.

However, while it might be difficult to try and persuade anti-Muslim zealots and economic migrant haters that the country isn't being sold out to Allah and his gang rape buddies, there is something you can do, even if it has to be done on line, for fear of having some kind of bad confrontation...

If we're allowing Muslims to overthrow the country and introduce whatever faction of their laws, then obviously we're in danger of being turfed out of our own country, facing the same hurdles as all these refugees? I mean, if we really are being overrun by brown and black people, stealing our jobs and raping our women and children then it won't be long before all these 'ragheads' are sticking us in dinghies and pushing us towards Calais, isn't it? What would we do then? How would we cope? What would we expect of our new French hosts? Will they be accommodating because you know, we're neighbours and helped them in the war, or will they just turn the boats around and send us back to Quran hell - like what Reform will do?

What would the newly displaced gammons think of that? How would they cope without busting several blood vessels and having aneurysms? I mean, even if that doesn't happen, we're still getting all these evil brown people coming here and stealing jobs, phones, TVs, council housing, hotels, doctors appointments, in fact anything that our poor entitled Brits need is being stolen from under our noses while the political parties ignore it (well, all of them apart from good ol' Nige, who is one of us).

I mean, what if we could fulfil the wishes of the racists and get rid of every foreign person who has come here in the last 200 years and stolen what is rightfully ours? How would that work exactly? Well, I usually write my own copy, but here is something I copied and pasted - see what you think?

What if white racists' dreams came true and all the overseas workers they accuse of "coming over here and taking our jobs" suddenly left the UK? "Our jobs", as they saw them, would suddenly become available to them: 325,000 in the NHS and 235,000 in the wider healthcare sector. [Plus about 700,000 'other' jobs that your average white bloke doesn't want to do.]

Imagine the queues of racists, clad in the flag of St George, jostling to apply for minimum-wage jobs that involve wiping other people's arses, cutting elderly men's toenails, emptying overflowing bedpans, comforting dementia patients, changing the nappies of the doubly incontinent, showing infinite patience to those recovering from strokes, changing stoma bags, fitting catheters, taking blood, spoon-feeding the incapable, and doing a hundred other things that most of us would run a mile from if we had the chance.

Because all those tasks would still need doing, around the clock, with all the people who'd been happy to do that no longer there to do it. And when the racists referred to "our jobs", no doubt they included the brain surgeons, the neurologists, the cardio-vascular specialists, the senior registrars, the theatre nurses, the crash teams and all the rest who save the lives of others on a daily basis, regardless of the skin colour, ethnicity or beliefs of the patient in front of them.

With all those medical-school places suddenly vacated, would those racists turn up with their strings of A* grades and be prepared to spend five or six years training to be doctors, including those unenviable days in the dissecting rooms learning anatomy in the most hands-on way possible? [Or working 72 hour shifts and still be treated like scumbags?]

How many of them would be willing to devote even more years of intensive and rigorous study to replace the brain surgeons and other world-class professionals that make the NHS as great as it is?

Or would what the racists had regarded as "our jobs" suddenly become jobs that they want "other people" to do because they're either not up to it academically themselves (imagine!) or never wanted to do those jobs in the first place?

This is the way forward. When someone tells you that 'our jobs are being stolen by foreigners' ask them who is going to do these jobs if there were no more foreigners? Ask them if they would be happy for some feckless teenager to wipe their mother's arse, especially if they didn't want to do it, when there are kind-hearted brown people out there who will do it with good grace and a smile on their face? Are they happy to pay even more money for their fruit and veg because all farmers can get is wankers who don't treat your food with the respect you want it to be treated with and demand more money? Are these racists happy that lots of things won't get done because there's no one who wants to do them? Cleaning toilets. Sweeping streets. Mopping up sick. 

What about going to the convenience store at 10pm at night? How many English people are going to want to stay open all hours to ensure you get your vape refill or four cans of Tenants? How about your Chinese takeaway or your Chicken Tikka Masala? Who's going to cook them? These are all the questions you need to ask these fucking slopeheads, who want so many things but have no idea what happens when they finally achieve it. 

And when they start getting angry at you for putting obstacles in their white supremacist way, just point out that all you're doing is asking them who is going to do all those jobs - the way they want them to be done - when all those black, brown and foreign people have been sent back to where they came from? You're not being funny, you genuinely need to know and if these people have a solution, then what's the answer?

Yelena's Story

In many ways, Thunderbolts* is probably the best MCU film of the last seven years; it's probably better than the FF film that followed it. The reason for this is because of the neat way it ties lots of past and future things together and I apologise in advance, because I'm going to spend some time exploring these things. First off, this is a Black Widow movie; Yelena Belova, who replaced her sister Natasha as the MCU's new Black Widow, is possibly one of the best new heroes introduced post Endgame and Florence Pugh has grown into the part to become almost as important as Scarlett Johansson. Given the 'history' of Sentry and the desire by the MCU to introduce this character into its pantheon of heroes - originally introduced around the turn of the century as the most powerful hero on Earth (and friend of the savage Hulk). As something that is immensely powerful and on a par with the strongest of original Avengers, it was always going to require someone to act as a calming influence on 'Bob'; Natasha was Bruce Banner's and Yelena is Bob's. This is the first important factor in this film because it establishes parallels.

We know Sentry is going to play a part in Doomsday and like Captain Marvel was introduced - almost as a deus ex machina character between Infinity Wars and Endgame, Sentry has been introduced in a similar fashion. The Thunderbolts* is a vehicle; it isn't really about the New Avengers, it's about Bob and the fact he offers a powerful defence against Dr Doom and also a problem; a hero who is also quite capable of being corrupted and used as a weapon against heroes. I think this is why he was introduced when he was, because, frankly, there wasn't really any point in introducing him the way they did and concluding the story the way they did if he wasn't going to play a part in the future.

Now, there are some other parallels that need to be taken into consideration - links to the past and ones to the future - Yelena fighting Yelena and we know from trailers, the same thing happens in Doomsday, albeit with Mystique. We know that this team will be meeting the Fantastic Four when they arrive; the post credit scene 14 months after the final scene of the main film is pretty much going to be the opening sequence of Doomsday. Thunderbolts* is vitally essential to what is going to happen next and with all of that out of the way, you have to appreciate this movie for being so good. It might have bombed at the box office, but the critics and those who watched it knew they were seeing something special. In many ways this doesn't really follow the pattern of any previous MCU film; it's almost like a series of set pieces leading us the the post credit scene, but it's done in such a clever way it not only feels like a very good feature, it is one of the best. I don't think the story is important, it's what they're all moving towards and who they are becoming and that might be why it bombed at the box office; it is a means to an end and a very clever one at that. This is so much better than the people who didn't go to the cinema to see it realised, because it's about the two important heroes in Doomsday - Yelena and Bob, the rest, even Bucky, are just collateral. 8/10

Life's A Lottery

The general feeling you get from Jerry and Marge Go Large is what an average movie it is. It feels as though it should be more than it is and while it's a very pleasant, even heart-warming, tale of two retirees working out how to win at the lottery, it felt slight and literally like it was based on a newspaper article - which, apparently it was. Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening play Jerry and Marge; he's a retired production line manager and a bit of a maths genius, she's his long suffering wife, because Jerry is better with numbers than he is with people. They don't have a huge amount of money to see them through retirement, so he takes a gamble on the lottery, because he's managed to work out that there's a flaw in it. They then go out of their way to rope in and help as many people in their small town as possible to rejuvenate it. Along the way, some arseholes from Harvard try and get in their way and the Boston Globe starts to write an article about them. The lottery stops the game they're winning - the end. 5/10

Not This Week's Recommendations

I was thinking that perhaps instead of doing individual sub stories about things we've watched that we gave up on, maybe I should just list them all in one place; so that's what I'm going to trial this week...

* Watch the Skies (or UFO Sweden as it was originally called) is a film quite famous for being originally in Swedish but was run through an AI simulation which converted all the Swedish into English while changing the mouth movements of the actors to fit with the new language. We gave it 20 minutes, decided it felt like we were watching one of those Children's Film Foundation movies from the 1970s. It was made in 2022, but the AI'd version was released in 2024, when I downloaded it the IMDB rating was 6.6, but since it has been more widely seen over the last few months, it's now down to 6.2. It feels like it deserves to be lower.

* Pineapple Express is a movie I managed to go 18 years without watching and when I finally decided that perhaps it was time to see if I was right to avoid it, I absolutely was - 100%. This is an 'old fashioned' stoner 'comedy' with Seth Rogan and James Franco. We managed about 18 minutes of it before we turned it off.

* Margo's Got Money Troubles is a TV show about a student who falls pregnant and ends up having money troubles. It's obviously set in the USA because, you know, you can be made bankrupt for just having a baby. It was all right; we managed an entire episode, but there wasn't really anything that reached out a shook us and it was a bit rude as well...

The Ick Factor

I mentioned the fact that Furious had a real ick feel to it a few weeks ago, but I never saw this coming. This is a really unsettling and awkward TV show; it deals with subjects that I'm not really sure I want TV drama shows to deal with, despite the need for them to do so. What makes this so... nasty... is how it's playing out and who is complicit and the levels at which they are involved. There's also a number of secrets to be revealed in next week's finale. Alice discovers her own nasty side and stuff happens that you really didn't see coming, especially as she has Catherine in her clutches a second time and facilitates something totally unexpected. Plus, just how is Nora's boss involved in this and has he done something stupid by trying to coerce Danny? This is exhilaratingly good television while not being at all enjoyable.

Hal Zero Percent

Last week I mentioned how I had a soft spot for the Green Lantern comics of the 1960s and 70s; the reason for this, apart from some excellent artwork, was its propensity to be very strange, weird even. Because the Green Lantern Corps were all aliens, there had to be something not of earth about them and therefore it often went in directions you would never have guessed, especially for a DC comic. Lanterns kind of taps into that without ever really having that 'way out there' feel, in fact, episode two feels almost like it was trying too hard to be funny. Last week it was all about angst and anger, this week, despite some strong signals and the introduction of a couple of very serious subplots, there seemed to be an emphasis on the surreal and the, dare I say it, silly. From the unusual banter between Hal and the sheriff to the fact the ring needs to be recharged (something it always needed but feels a little archaic in the 21st century). My biggest gripe with this episode was the fact it felt, at times, like it was treading some water and this early in the series that feels a bit worrying.

Super Fly Guy

I've pretty much run out of superhero movies to watch. The decision to sit through Superman again, only a year after it first came out, was not a bad one. It is an entertaining film, the problem - as you can guess, because there's always 'a problem' - is it is a movie that actually feels like the extended season finale of a TV series you didn't know was on and can't find the missing parts. Kicking off a new DC universe with a story that involves characters you're familiar with and a bunch of other characters you don't really know - unless you're a comics fan - is a bold move and James Gunn's reboot of the Man of Steel is great fun but terribly disjointed; there's this element of expectation from the director that people watching the film are going to get it and fill in all the necessary blanks.

There are a lot of tips of the hat to the original Superman movies; Lex Luthor - played excellently by Nicholas Hoult - is a psychotic (and bald) version of Gene Hackman and there's even a Ms Teschmacher. There's an underlying comedic feel that fits in nicely with Christopher Reeve's Big Red and while Mrs Maisel is okay as Lois Lane, there's something a little too grubby about her. Ed Gethegi as Mr Terrific is... well... terrific. I don't know the character but he's a welcome addition. I just felt that making Ma and Pa Kent a couple of hicks didn't work; Wendell Pierce, who was in Thunderbolts* also appeared, this time as Perry White and while I really like the movie I just see faults, in the lazy storytelling, problems on the horizon, the need to fill in blanks and that's never a great way to kick off a franchise. 7/10

The Hit List

The discovery there's a second season of The Terminal List is slightly confusing, given that the entire story was wrapped up by the end of the eight parts, but it doesn't surprise me. This was an entertaining exercise in ramping up the body count with loads of people dying in every episode bar the sixth, when you expect loads of people to die and no one does. This was about a Navy Seal gaining revenge for the deaths of his platoon and his family at the hands of a chain of interrelated people leading all the way to the top and it used a number of ingenious ways of achieving this. It dragged at times; Chris Pratt isn't the world's greatest actor and I guessed the twist after three episodes, but it was still entertaining and while I doubt I'll watch the spin-off series that came out last year, I might watch the sequel in October. 

Female Bonding

I dunno... I can't even call Ted Lasso a Marmite show because it isn't. It's just that sometimes it's just a load of old shite and this week was one of those weeks. Except, not all of this week's episode was; the bits with Roy Kent were, as usual, extremely good and I'm amazed he hasn't been given his own TV show because he's the funniest thing about this and all the other series. Lasso is a conduit where others are allowed to show their worth; it's like a perverse sporting Ally McBeal, in that the most annoying thing about that series was the title character and everyone else was great. This week was all about team bonding, a pub quiz, an annoying cameo from Tracey Ulman and Juno Temple squeezing into even smaller and tighter clothes. Someone I know described this show as 'having an angry wank' and while I don't know what that means at all, I totally get it...

Plutonian Shores

I revisited Black House for the third, maybe even the fourth, time this week. The reason is because in the autumn the final part of this trilogy comes out, years after the death of the great Peter Straub, but promising to have many of his words. The Jack Sawyer story, which started in The Talisman and continued in this excellent but deeply flawed second instalment, probably deserves to be finished and there have been few books I've anticipated with such fierce expectation. King has written many of my favourite books, Straub two of my absolute favourites - Ghost Story and Floating Dragon - and this tale of a supernatural child murderer flitting between existences has the now very dead writer's hand throughout. Sadly, this book also tied into King's flawed and bloated Dark Tower opus and apart from some really sloppy editing at the start, this is probably the only thing that stops this from being a real classic. The Dark Tower ended up being a shit stain on King's oeuvre and if you could take out the thousand or so words that tie this in directly and rework the other related bits, this would be a superb addition to the Talisman's horror adventure. This has great characters, a truly creeping dread and the usual trademark portents of doom to make it a great horror novel. If you can get past the fucking Dark Tower I'd recommend it to anyone...

The Slurry

I don't think I've ever ranked a film 0/10. I think it's because if you decide to rank a film, a 0/10 rating isn't really a rating. I went to see this at the cinema, with my brother, in 1978. Brian De Palma's The Fury was his first movie after making Carrie, which, for all of its faults, was a classic compared to this nonsensical load of rotting intestines. It literally made no sense at all - from the opening scenes in the Middle East when 'terrorists' attacked Kirk Douglas and his son at a holiday resort to the introduction of Amy Irving's telekinetic schoolgirl and the Poundshop Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters institute she somehow ended up in. There was no narrative, no explanation, no reason for the movie to exist as a story; it mixed poor comedy with ridiculous ideas, had lots of running around and lots of words which might have been written in the form of a script, but I'm not sure anyone bothered to read it to see if it made any sense. It had something to do with blood and it also involved a shady government agency, but what they were doing and why they were doing it was never explained. There were some Arabs in it, on a Ferris Wheel and people died, but no one told us why. It was extraordinarily disturbing in a really undisturbing way and at the end I wondered why it had been made, why we watched it and how... It most definitely was a film, but I'm not sure why. 0/10

Careless Whisper

If ever a movie felt like it didn't know what it was then it's The Whisper Man. On the face of it the film is essentially about the reappearance of a serial killer, 30 years behind bars, but it also tries to be something else; maybe a ghost story, maybe a psychological thriller and ultimately it kind of defeats its intentions by never seeming to fit into any category. That's not to say it isn't quite good, the problem with it is the denouement - the ending pretty much stinks the rest of the film out. Robert De Niro plays Pete Miller, a retired cop and the person who put the original Whisper Man behind bars; Adam Scott plays his estranged son, whose own son is the victim of a copycat killer - is this a coincidence or is there something nefarious going on? There are lots of contrived plot points, which may be intentional, but the way it's put together they're not obvious and it comes out feeling slightly half baked. 6/10

I've Waited So Long...

13 years ago I discovered a musician called Edgaras Žakevičius - a Lithuanian who went under the name of Stellardrone. All of his music was free and much of it was simply sublime (he even released an album called Sublime). I have always loved electronica, from Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre to modern techno equivalents, electronic music has always been my go to genre. 

13 years ago Edgaras released Light Years which is quite simply my most played and probably my third favourite album of the 21st century. I don't think I've gone more than a month without playing it and over this summer I've played it like it was a new album again - always on in the background while I potter around doing other things - reading, writing, browsing, it's there washing over me like an old friend...

Nine years ago, Stellardrone released the Between the Rings EP, which was a great teaser, but after that pretty much all fell quiet. There were hints and teasers of a new album, but every year came and went without a sign and even when Edgaras said it was coming, nothing arrived. Then this morning there was an announcement - Kosmos had finally been released on Bandcamp and I was all over it like a rash. The opening track literally moved me to tears - it was big, bold and brash and made up for the years of waiting. I know several of the tracks on the new album, because there have been unpolished versions released sporadically, but that didn't take anything away from it. One hour and 14 minutes of new Stellardrone material for me to play to death over the coming months. The nights might be drawing in and the days will get colder and wetter, but I will have this to keep me warm. 10/10

What's Up Next?

Who can say? Certainly not me as I don't know what I'm doing in three hours. Films and TV, maybe another book review. Something political or maybe something frivolous or humorous. Whatever happens I will be listening to Stellardrone. 😍 

My Cultural Life - Sturm und Drang

 What's Been Up? 

I've never felt the need to be careful with what I say in my blogs. Anyone who knows me knows that I speak my mind; it often gets me into trouble but equally a lot of people are pleased that someone says things that they feel. However, I'm properly torn at the moment, because I want to relay an incident that happened to me the other day, but I'm concerned because it involves someone some people up here in Galloway might know* and I really have been trying very hard not to ruffle too many feathers in my home...

I was somewhere local, walking the dogs, when I engaged in a conversation with someone I've known for almost all the time I've lived here. We might not be called friends, but we have always chatted and our mutual love of dogs has meant there's common ground between us. This person is not heterosexual and I say that not to be provocative, but to compound a point. Several years ago, someone I'd known since I was at school, a friend, expressed extreme opinions of a right wing nature and that pretty much ended that friendship as I was not going to associate with a person with such extreme opinions given they were gay and had invariably suffered from a specific kind of discrimination throughout their life.

I tend to think of people who fall into the LGBT+ category as people who have probably seen some form of hatred, usually by ignorant bigots, aimed at them. I expect if there are any people out there who fall into the LGBT+ category who haven't experienced some form of discrimination or hate speech then they are lucky people. So the last thing I would expect is to meet someone from that demographic who could be so rabidly bigoted about foreigners and equally so dismissive of arguments contrary of their radicalised beliefs, but that is what happened. I listened to someone I've known for almost a decade spew hatred about Muslims, about refugees, about Africans, about anyone they didn't perceive as British. They were careful to say they weren't racist because black, brown and Asian British people who were born here and are patriotic are okay, but it's the raping, murdering, thieving immigrants who get more than our own poor people who should be drowned in the channel, who are responsible for ALL of the UK's ills.

I tried to argue that economic migrants come here because we have unscrupulous employers who would rather pay an illegal migrant £5 an hour to do a job rather than pay ordinary people the living wage, so some of the blame has to be directed at these people. But, apparently, that's been happening for years and isn't the reason. I said that asylum seekers get barely anything from the government, something like £9 a day to live on. But no, they get hotels, mobile phones, cars, free health care, carte blanche to rape and pillage without consequence. I said that the people complaining and vilifying migrants were responsible for this mess by lying about Brexit; that once we were out of the Dublin Agreement we were screwed by the people who told us Brexit would bring us 'are cuntry back'. And I was told that is it was snivelling shits like the new PM who won't make deals with Europe because they want our Christian-based country to be torn apart so that Muslims can take it over. That our king is now a radicalised Islam follower. That Brexit would have worked if the right people had been in control of it. That nowhere is safe to live now because we have rape gangs patrolling the streets targeting our children...

This wasn't just a tirade, this was an almost apoplectic rage rant containing so much anger and hatred and denial that I felt so uncomfortable I wanted to walk away. My wife said, "Why the hell didn't you do what you always do and argue with them? Why didn't you put them right with facts? Why did you stand there and let this person say such vile things?" And I said, I see this person at least once a week, maybe not to talk to, but they are around. They are friends with people I call friends and while our mutual friends might not be born again Nazis, they might have similar thoughts and beliefs. I simply don't want that kind of confrontation, because trying to be reasonable got an even more rabid response. This person isn't interested in the truth, this person has let hatred consume them to the point that they sound like lunatics when they rant... but lunatics who more and more people seem to agree with and what's the point of trying to be some kind of left wing woke King Canute, trying to stop the unstoppable tide of hatred when people are no longer interested in facts?

One positive thing happened. Just before we went about our own business, I think this person saw the sheer and utter shock on my face. The fact that I was appalled at what I was hearing, because they made their excuses and continued on their way. It left me mentally exhausted and writing this up 24 hours later, I'm still shocked. It was one of the most unpleasant 20 minutes of my time in Galloway; listening in disbelief to the mad rantings of someone overtaken by hatred and lies; who believes everything the right wing press say and worse. I felt violated and a mixture of very sad and unbelievably angry. Yes, the UK, like many other European countries is struggling on so many levels and I acknowledge that some tough choices will end up being made to appease these nutters. It bothers me considerably that people will always point the finger of blame at mostly innocent people without seeing or understanding why, but we're now living in a period of time where reason is not a way to counter hatred and maybe staying quiet, keeping our heads down and avoiding making these lunatics think we're part of their problem is probably the best way forward at this moment in time... 

* Do not ask me who this person is, I'm not saying.

Green Lights

I know I have a bug up my arse about The Guardian newspaper's reviews (among other things), but over the last 12 months they have stopped the comments sections on these reviews and I wonder if that's because they don't want people making comments like 'How come you're the only people in the world who like this shit?' or "Why do you give bad reviews for things everyone else likes?' Or maybe they just don't want people calling them out and accusing them of making reviews a paid for content part of the paper. You know, production companies pay the paper to write favourable reviews of shit things and the companies that don't pay them get crap reviews? This is just a theory, but there have been so many 'this is great' reviews when clearly they weren't and almost as many 'this is crap' reviews when they're not. I read the extremely negative review of Lanterns on Monday and it really hyped me up for what was likely to be an excellent debut...

Lanterns episode one was cracking TV. I obviously watched something completely different than the Guardian because this was everything I wanted from a superhero TV show. It helps that in the 1970s the only DC comic I had any time for was Green Lantern and Hal Jordan was a hero you could aspire to. This TV show casts Kyle Chandler as Hal and what an inspired bit of casting that is. Aaron Pierre as Jon Stewart is almost as good as the guy who the Guardians of the Universe chose to be Hal's replacement, but this is more than that. Almost from the opening scenes this drew you in and left you wanting more. It also wasn't like a superhero show, more like a neo-western with an extra-terrestrial twist; a kind of post modern Cowboys and Aliens but without Daniel Craig. The Green Lantern and his trainee are drawn to Nebraska where Hal believes aliens have been killed in a mass shooting (in 2016) and they walk into a ready made conspiracy theory where a local landowner and militia leader - Gareth Dillahunt - believes the earth is being primed for an alien invasion and it seems he might be right. Just enough was given away in this opener to make you want to come back for more. This is a great start.

** A Guardian Aside... Last December, I reviewed an indie film called It Ends, I gave it a score of 3/10. IMDB gives it a rating of 5.6, which is slightly better than my rating. The movie is getting a limited theatre run in the USA, Australia and the UK and the good old Guardian reviewed it this week and gave it a 4/5 rating and talked about it like it was some work of Gen-Z genius. 

I feel compelled to point this out to all of you, despite very few of you probably reading this neo-liberal sell-out and fewer giving a shit. The thing is, there an element of comedy in there now. It actually works really well for me - bad review is 90% likely to be a good film; good review, check IMDB and then don't watch. It is so contrary it's funny.

The Road to Armageddon

We watched another movie we thought we'd seen before, but if we had it must have been erased from our memories. The Book of Eli is a post-apocalyptic road movie starring Denzel Washington as a man on a very long mission to take a trusted book out west. He is a man capable of looking after himself in a dangerous Mad Maxian styled landscape in the aftermath of a war that has destroyed humanity and left it in ruins. Along the way he runs into Gary Oldman's Carnegie, a man who is after the book that Eli is transporting. Mila Kunis is the girl that Eli takes under his wing and there are a number of colourful survivors they meet on the way. It's a grim film with an uplifting message of hope and while I don't remember any of it, it was entertaining and not at all preachy despite its biblical implications. 7/10

Trailer Trash

A double bill from the MCU this weekend just gone. First there was a special Avengers: Doomsday trailer, which displaced and proved wrong so many You Tube know-alls and secondly there was a trailer for VisionQuest, the third and final part of a trilogy you never knew existed...

All those ITK [In The Know] Tube of You channels claiming that the twist in Avengers: Doomsday is going to be that Doc Doom isn't the villain in this film will be quietly hoping that the collective memories of people who tuned into their usually bullshit channels will have forgotten what was said. This is because the second trailer for the December blockbuster makes it absolutely clear that Doom is the villain of the piece. The new trail is essentially Sue Richards starting by saying that Victor was a decent man, the cleverest in the room, but some tragedy turned him into a monster. Then we have a bit more of RDJ's dodgy Latverian accent, interspersed with Reed Richards shouting at Doom, asking him if all of this was his doing. There's headshots of various heroes, but this time it's all about Doom (and the Sentinels he raises from the ground). It doesn't have the impact that the trailer from a fortnight ago had, because there's no end cameo from you-know-who and Doom naturally has Tony Stark's eyes. It's not floating my boat as much mainly because I'm struggling to see how a man in grey armour and a green hoodie is going to be the scariest thing Thor has ever faced...

The VisionQuest trailer does look very interesting. It's pretty much taking place inside the new Vision's head, as he seems to be coming to terms with who he is now that Wanda's influence (and power) no longer has any effect on him. This ties into the Agatha All Along series, which loosely continued on from WandaVision and has Paul Bettany reprising his role as Vision and James Spader as Ultron. It's out in October and feels like it could be one of the better series from the Disney/MCU stable.

Back briefly to Avengers: Doomsday, there is a trailer - released by Disneyworld Vacationer (a Tube of You channel) where Huge Ackman - on screen - and Ryan Reynolds - off screen - petition Kevin Feige for a role in the above film. This suggests to me that both of them are indeed going to feature. The other short trailer, also from Disneyworld Vacationer, is Adam Driver announcing that he is going to be Marvel's Mr Sinister (albeit obliquely). There is also a video with other casting decisions for the new X-Men movie, which might be in pre-production - these people include Sadie Sink and Nat O'Connor - I was massively underwhelmed by all of it. The same Tube of You channel also announced a third Incredibles film...

A Fine Tribute

The wife summed it up perfectly, "This is like an Australian Local Hero." I'm not sure the comparison works in terms of story, but the sentiment and gentle comedy in this is comparable to that great 1983 movie. We watched The Dish as a sort of tribute to the great Sam Neill, who died a few weeks ago. It is the story of the space telescope in the town of Parks, in New South Wales, which NASA used to transmit the television footage of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk. It's a quirky but thoroughly wonderful film that tells the story of the three Australian men who man the telescope and the American, from NASA, who joins them to be the vital cog in the wheel, to allow the rest of the world to see probably the greatest achievement of mankind, so far. It is a superb film, full of great humour, a fantastic soundtrack (this was 1969 after all) and if you ever get the chance you should track it down and watch it. 9/10

Men Bad

Well... It took me nine years to get around to reading Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King, but I finally did and here are my thoughts... I had never really wanted to read this book because of the cover blurb. I know that sounds almost trite, but it really didn't sell me. Sometimes the short synopsis on the inside of the dust jacket cover does exactly what it needs to, but this sells it short, in my never humble opinion. What this book is pretty much encapsulates what I love about King - it has an apocalypse (of sorts), it's set in a small town, it has a vast array of characters - all of whom play a significant part in the story and most of all, it's bloody brilliant. It took me about five days to read - it's over 700 pages long - and is about a strange event where mostly all the women of the world fall asleep and are cocooned inside a substance not unlike cobwebs. it is essentially a modern day fantasy novel, but it's considerably more visceral and pulls absolutely no punches. The main thrust of the book is how the males of the species pretty much fall apart in the face of this unknown phenomena and how the fate of the entire world centres around the town of Dooling. I would probably say it's one of the best books - of this nature - I have ever read; it draws you in and never really lets you go. It doesn't really have a happy ending, but equally it doesn't have a bad one either; it has a logical ending, if such a thing is possible with such a fantastical premise. I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who likes this kind of fiction; you really don't know what's going to happen with every page turn.

Oh Spider-Man

Ouch. I'd forgotten what an absolute heap of shit this was. To give it some credit, the opening 10 minutes or so were mildly interesting and then it went downhill very very fast. This is the much maligned Spider-Man 3, a movie that is pretty much despised everywhere on the planet and not just because it has a script and plot that could have been written by a deaf, dumb and blind imbecile but also for the 10 minutes about 90 minutes into it when Peter Parker becomes a really annoying 'hip and trendy dude' because of the symbiote that has attached itself to him. The 'Venom' character was a massive contradiction in terms during its stint hitchhiking around on Peter - was it living in/on him or did it live in his newly blackened costume in the suitcase in his cupboard? What did that even mean and how did it happen? Add to this an occasionally excellent Thomas Haden Church as Flint Marko aka The Sandman and also James Franco as the flip flopping around new Green Goblin and you have a film where MJ probably sleeps with yet another person - other than Peter - and still looks like she hasn't had her gingivitis cured. I think Sam Raimi - who I don't rate as a filmmaker anyhow - tried far too hard to try and make this a brilliant movie but instead turned in a half-baked turd. 2/10 

Musical Youth

We occasionally watch The Hit List on BBC1 on a Saturday and the new series started last Saturday and it was one of those quiz show episodes that blew us away. There were two (out of three) teams - a couple of young girls from Merseyside and a blind guy with his father-in-law - whose musical knowledge was unbelievable. The speed and accuracy of these players was almost faultless and the two girls, who eventually won £9.6K plus a £500 bonus for getting five out of five on the opening round, were phenomenal. They had a musical knowledge of the last 50 years that was mind blowing. It's on iPlayer, you should watch it just to be astounded.

Very Angry

This week's Furious was a mixture of comedy - yes, really - and things falling apart. Alice's boss thinks she's got her own boss trapped in her clever plan, but she doesn't and that ends up putting Alice in serious trouble. Meanwhile, Alice's former partner in the NYPD is getting a break with Alden (the serial killer's disabled fiancé), who has been giving the FBI a bit of a run around, in what is the episode's second comedy section and Alice's former boyfriend has not just gone off the rails, he's catapulted away from them like a shit from a cow and that can only mean one thing and it doesn't end well for him. This episode seemed like it was going to be the end of Catherine and I was suspecting the series would take a different direction for the remaining two parts, but FBI cover-ups and incompetence has now made it considerably more complicated.

Dead Ends

The most interesting thing about the second half of Ride or Die was how it stopped being a slightly frivolous comedy about an assassin and her suburban housewife bestie and become something very dark and twisted with a lot of things happening that firmly placed it in the nasty category. Things happened in the concluding parts that you could see coming a mile off, but some other things happened that really were not expected as Hannah Waddingham's Whiptail finally brought this to something of a conclusion. The thing is it also sets itself up for a sequel with Bill Nighy's Jack now on Interpol's radar and Judith and Deborah on a train surrounded by assassins from other agencies. It was fun at times, but also slightly excruciating at others with some of the humour feeling forced, but overall it was considerably better than either of us expected.

Faaaaark

When Brett Goldstein was in Shrinking he was a bit namby-pamby, but in Ted Lasso he is the absolute dog's bollocks. His Roy Kent is essentially a Rottweiler with a heart of gold and he always makes this show so much better than it is whenever he's in it. The latest instalment is essentially the usual bollocks as Richmond Ladies play their first friendly, in the face of hostility and a lack of belief. There's lot of swearing and crap set ups, but that's part of the charm, having set pieces that would seem quaint in a 1970s sitcom. There's the usual cod philosophy and borderline sexism, but it has found its feet since that woeful season opener.

The Hitman and Him

There are very few Ryan Reynolds films we haven't seen now and most of those we wouldn't touch with a barge pole, however The Hitman's Bodyguard has never fallen onto my radar, mainly because I expected it to be a load of shite and oddly enough it isn't. It is an entertaining buddy movie about an assassin and the man charged with protecting him when Interpol realises they have a dangerous leak in their ranks who might be working for the former Belarussian president - Gary Oldman - who is a very very nasty man. This is one of the better Samuel L Jackson movies of recent years, but this is essentially both Reynolds and Jackson playing characters [read: themselves] we've come to know and love. It switches between serious and silly with ease and is actually a lot of fun. 7/10

The Shitman, Him and Her

Oh my dear God... The original was a semi-serious action film with some laughs in it, this was a full blown comedy with very few funny bits in it. In fact, the funniest scene in the film ended up on the cutting room floor (and that was the reason I ended up watching the films only to be disappointed when the scene I was so impressed with wasn't in the finished product). This reunited Reynolds, Jackson and Salma Hayek in a movie that seemed to forget large swathes of the original, but that wasn't the worst thing; the worst thing was thinking that you could just make a overwhelmingly stupid film because the first one was funny. This was a fucking disgrace and if Ryan Reynolds has a problem with The Proposal why the fuck hasn't he disowned this steaming heap of shit? I'm not going to bother telling you what it was about because it doesn't matter; if you fall into a bath full of excrement, you do not start sifting through it to see what the people who filled the bath ate for their dinner. 2/10

Spewtiny

Oh come on. Seriously? This week's blog is brought to you by the people who do reviews for the Guardian and the fact they're either morons or, as I've already alluded, get paid for their content. I mean this newspaper has to find funding from somewhere, so why not get paid for content and then not say it's being paid... The latest Jaysun Stayfum 'action adventure' (and I use that term loosely) has landed and my favourite newspaper gave it a 3/5 rating, which considering the number of one and two star ratings it gives, is a real hallmark of excellence, at least in the eyes of the people who may or may not have actually watched this dung heap of sweaty arsehole debris. IMDB has it at 5.7 after less than a day of ratings, I expect that will fall hugely over the next week and the reason is because this is an appalling load of tripe. The best thing in it is Stayfum's stubble in a jeopardy-free, incoherent load of dog's cock. He plays a body guard who fails at protecting his boss - Ramon Tikaram - and then gets on a ship to find out who paid for the hit. From this point on it's about as exciting as constipation and as tense as some ancient knickers with slack elastic. It all seems to hinge on people trafficking, but what it really does is showcase the lack of talent available to make half-arsed wank like this. It's not even fun; one-man army films are essentially comedies, this was about as funny as dying of dysentery. 1/10

Conspiracies

We watched the opening two episodes of the Chris Pratt vehicle The Terminal List, from 2023, about a Navy Seal whose entire team is killed in an ambush in Syria and comes back to the USA and gets embroiled in a plot to have him killed, by unknown but hostile members of his own government. Is he suffering from PTSD and imagining it all or is there something trying to stop him from finding the truth? In the opening two episodes, those after Pratt's Reece have already brutally killed his wife, his daughter and his best friend and have successfully made it out to look like Reece is a loose cannon gone off the deep end. This is the latest in our search for TV series we have missed first time around which have good IMDB ratings and this is pretty good so far, if a little badly lit - it's like the cameraman is always in the dark. It is worth sticking with, so far.

What's Up Next?

There's been a lot in this week's blog; more than I thought the week would bring. sadly a lot of it has been worse than the drippings of my arse and my week was rocked by the story I told in the opening section. It's also been fucked about by the return of the chest infection - which may never have gone away - and feeling like shit for half the week, with an ongoing headache that has veered between nasty and full blown migraine. I could do without having a repeat of this week, which has had barely any high points and some of them were ruined by the fucking Guardian newspaper, which I have had a serious bug up my arse about all week.

Next week, I'm hoping I have more to be happy about. We're due a more tolerable return of summer and I'm reading another book; actually rereading one I've read twice already, I'll explain why next week. Until then, try not to kill each other and whatever happens in the next seven days, you're probably going to hear about it.

Up the Spurs!