My Cultural Life - Journey to the Centre of Man

What's Up?

I'm beginning to feel human again and have pulled myself out of a funk that was going on too long. I'm getting slightly better sleep and walking upstairs doesn't feel like one of the trials of Heracles. Once I get my sleep sorted, I have this feeling I might start to feel proper human again, but the cautious person I am, I wouldn't bet the farm on that... Everything still feels like hard work, even if I've stopped hating everything.

I even managed to do a Quiz Night yesterday evening and we were finished by 10pm. It was one of the better ones as well, despite me taking about ten minutes to walk the 50 odd metres from door to door. I was a bundle of agoraphobia last night, but once I walked through it I had an almost normal night. What helped was another team won it, it was a really close thing and my gamble of having a more modern music round didn't backfire; in fact, as the wife pointed out, we had higher than usual scores on it.

The next few weeks are going to be a challenge for me, mainly because the wife is working a lot, sometimes five days in a week and I have to take responsibility for all the things I used to have responsibility for. I'm also at the hospital on Tuesday, to either close a potential pathway or to open it up and all the shit that brings with it...

Anyhow:

The Oddity

Jesus wept. Why didn't somebody warn me how bloody dull and boring this movie is. I expected a Christopher Nolan film to be... eclectic, but this was just long, laborious and fucking hard work. I suppose I don't really know what I expected, but I expected something that would keep me interested in it; this lost me after about 40 minutes, when I realised there was over two more hours to go and I wondered how that was going to happen. In a film that starred just about everybody, I would have hoped for something a bit more riveting; something that gripped my attention and made me realise what a great spectacle I was watching. Instead, I kept looking at the run time as it crept slowly towards the two hour and 50 odd minute mark...

The story of Odysseus and his extremely long winded journey back from the Trojan Wars stars Matt Damon, with a bunch of other actors all talking in their finest Brooklyn accents. There was outrage apparently about Lupita Nyong'o  playing Helen of Troy, why wasn't there outrage about everybody having American accents? As Odysseus and co travelled from one island, running into trouble and running away again, to another, where the same thing happened for two hours, he finally gets back to Ithaca where his dog finally dies and he takes on 500 of his wife's suitors with a bow and arrow and not much else. That's three hours of my life I'm never getting back. 5/10

Heart Breaking?

This kind of film is either mawkish or excellent, Heart of the Beast is the latter as Brad Pitt and a German Shepherd spend over an hour and a half trying to rescue themselves from the harsh Alaskan wilderness. Pitt's James has a heart attack while flying him and his army veteran dog out of a camping break in the middle of nowhere, where he has a brief encounter with JK Simmons. The man and his dog come up against the expected opponents - a bear, some wolves, ravines and mountains - there is little dialogue and Pitt doesn't need to act very much, but when he does it's superb. This is a movie that made my wife blub like a baby and there is no canine death - but that doesn't give the story away, because it's far more complex than you might think (and you find out in the opening 10 seconds the dog survives). 8/10

Bee Movie

What an absolute joy The Rivals of Amziah King was. I'm not sure how you'd best describe it though - one half is a joyous shit-kicking celebration of life and the other a cold calculated revenge thriller - of sorts. It starts with an impromptu gig at an Alabama chicken restaurant and twists and turns its way to the end, when some ice cold but delicious justice is served. Amziah King - Matthew McConaughey - is a widower, former foster carer, musician and beekeeper with a philosophy to abide by; he's just a thoroughly decent bloke. He's roped into helping local law enforcement track down the source of some stolen honey and this sets off a thing of confusing, hilarious, beauty. It's more like a road movie where the opening scenes are almost forgotten as this strangely wonderful film meanders from musical set piece to another. Amziah is in a band and they're very very good; his honey is prized and he has huge respect from everyone and then debutant actor Angelina Looking Glass comes back into his life. She plays Kateri who lived with Amziah and his wife - as foster parents - for a few years when she was pre-teen. There is a clear bond between these two and her arrival changes things for Amziah.

Then someone gets scalped, there's a hilarious three minute 'interlude' with a blind woman, a couple more stunning folk rock numbers, performed in kitchens and hardly ever on a stage, the honey heist almost forgotten... Then there's a seismic shift in the story and almost accidentally we're back circling round the honey thefts that we'd almost all forgotten about. There are some genuine LOL moments in the first half of this film, the humour is very dark and surreal and it fits in perfectly. I was totally carried away by this odd rambling thing and then the tone shifts like a cold shower and it becomes about The Rivals of Amziah King. Maybe it's because I'm beginning to feel human again, but this movie really got me and stuck with me - I was still thinking about it as I prepared this to go live. I was totally taken in by this film from the opening and it's on my short list for film of the year. 10/10

Maudlin Bollocks

500 Miles has been done before, most recently as Dead Man's Shoes by Shane Meadows and if that is a spoiler then thank yourself because you now don't have to watch this film. You get about halfway through it before the penny drops; there are a couple of hints early on, but it sticks with the Sixth Sense idea and execution right up until there's no longer any way of disguising it. One of the two kids running away to Ireland to live with their grandad is the kid from that Seven kingdoms nonsense by JRR Martin; Bill Nighy's in it, doing a good job as an Irishman - which begs the question why wasn't there outrage at a man from Caterham in Norfolk playing an Irishman when there's an entire island of them sitting next door to us? Maisie Williams is also in it as an Irish busker and you start to wonder if there was any Irishman harmed in the making of this movie, or even seen? 3/10

A Conclusion

About 20 minutes into the finale of VisionQuest and I suddenly had a minor panic attack; I didn't know what to say about this episode in my review. There appeared to be an ending; some stuff happens, people have more facial hair than themselves, Paladin might be a good guy, AIs can be seen and heard. The villain was in it, but I'm not sure why or what he did or how the resolution happened, but it did and then there was a post credit scene that suggested Wanda isn't dead and Doc Doom had recruited her and I don't really care any more. I didn't enjoy this, I'm going to not enjoy the film that comes out on December 17th. It all seems so pointless. Executive people read the script for this and still gave it the green light? Fuck. 

Restaurant Confidential

Anthony Bourdain's formative years in a bistro are told in this dull and quite boring historical biopic, Tony, which paints a picture of a privileged wanker, bullshitting his way through life until he has to do something to carry on doing something else. I liked Bourdain; I thought he was funny, erudite and just bad boy enough to carry it off - whatever he was doing. If this is how he started life then it doesn't surprise me but it's not very exciting and the shock horror of him being a nice guy after all kind of ruins it a little. It wasn't pants. 5/10

What's Up Next?

I have no idea. Not a jot. I feel out of the loop and like my viewing habits are about to get a shake up. I'm struggling with regulars now - if you understand that sentence. Staples of the Hall house for years are not greeted with the love and admiration once seen. The problem is newer stuff has an even shorter shelf life...

While I'm on the subject of staples, a newer one has been the Searching for [insert country and host] shows, except Stanley Tucci's is like a fine champagne vineyard and Eva Longoria's is more like a sweaty burger bar with a cackling woman and enough meat to keep a butcher happy. Its become a bit easy to ridicule now, Ms Longoria is about as easy to read as a mirror - you know when she likes something and you definitely know when she doesn't - there are so many tells you'd think your were at an archery convention.

The thing is I'm not sure I want to watch another series of Eva ramming meat into her face. I don't imagine it will benefit from a break either, given we didn't watch HIGNFY for over 10 years, dropped back in last week and it's still exactly the same slightly right of centre borderline satire with some surreal bits of Paul Merton. It has grown hairs on and gone bald.

Next week will happen. It always does...

My Cultural Life - Human Interference

What's Up?

Post-viral fatigue, that's what's up. When I first heard about it, I was sceptical, but considering I was suffering from it that scepticism didn't last long. PVF can affect anyone, not just people with underlying health conditions, and the worst things about it are the fact it can last considerably longer than the influenza that caused it and there's also the general feeling of hopelessness it gives you.

I have been 'ill' since October 11th, when I said to the wife I thought I was coming down with a cold. By the 13th it was clear it wasn't a cold because whenever I get one my appetite increases; this time I went off food very quickly and I felt about 100 times worse than any cold virus I'd ever had. I had the flu once before, the year I started going out with the wife, so about 43 years ago and it floored me for two weeks. This time it lasted just as long, but my compromised immune system meant I was probably a prime candidate for PVF and trust me when I say that having fatigue when you have COPD is possibly one of the worst combinations you could possibly imagine.

One of the biggest problems with PVF is the general attitude of others; there's that borderline disbelief you get and as someone who has suffered with back problems for most of my adult life, having something you can't see rarely gets any sympathy from anyone (apart from people in a similar boat). What has made it worse is that I'm 64 and have had a piss poor year of health already, probably as a result of a sleep disorder that is only now coming to light. It looks like I have something called tachypnoea, which is related to sleep apnoea, and it means I have spent months of 2026 not getting good sleep, because of breathing problems. This compromised an already struggling immune system and led to a number of problems and infections throughout the year that were treated independently of the root problem.

So, I was already borderline exhausted before I got PVF and I have mentioned at different times over the last few years that I have an anxiety problem and these have simply exacerbated this. Ordinarily, 2026 would have ranked as a brilliant year - good weather, positive things happening and lots of things achieved, however the health issues have meant there have been times when death seemed a preferable option than trying to get through the shit that every day seemed to bring. There is no cure for PVF apart from time and gradually trying to push myself to getting back to normal. Even if the sleep issues are solved, there's no guarantee the PVF will disappear - it can take a year to go away, which fills me with all kinds of dread. I've also lost almost 20lbs since the start of October, losing weight this way is not a good thing.

There have also been a couple of other things which just feel like there's been a conspiracy of bad luck plaguing me. For the first time since I've lived in Scotland, I didn't get a flu jab when it was due - no reason for this has been given, but I get it at the end of the this month. The same with COVID - I've had my vaccine every year since 2020, but not this year - it's like I disappeared off the NHS Scotland database, despite being high risk and the recipient of countless vaccines in previous years. 

The wife has been an absolute trooper, but she has her work and life that I do not like impinging on and can't expect her to be able to be there for me all the time. It's been tough month and it's scary to think it might last a lot longer...

Monty Python's The Thing

We went into Zach Creggar's Resident Evil with limited expectations. It has a good IMDB rating and several reputable review pages rate it very highly. I know very little about the video game and have seen the original Resident Evil movie, but a long time ago and can only remember the laser room sequence and nothing else (apart from the awful Milla Jovovich and her quite useless director husband, who seems to love making bad films based on video games). What we got was a movie that started off quite serious and quickly descended into a comedy horror; one which wasn't exactly funny, but was slightly amusing. It is essentially a riff on John Carpenter's The Thing and while that isn't a bad thing, it's also lacking in originality. The thing [ahem] is, while I don't rate this as high as IMDB, it wasn't that bad; the main protagonist - Austin Abrams - does a good job of replicating what your average Joe would do when faced with this kind of madness and there's some nice nods to first person shooters and the special effects are considerably better than many recent films. I was a little disappointed by the ending, it either sets it up for a sequel (let's hope not) or ends on a note you didn't want. 7/10

Eva Loves Her Meat

Mentioned last week, we've been filling in the gaps in our viewing by watching - on iPlayer - Eva Longoria - Searching for [insert country here] and these are companion shows to the original Stanley Tucci - Searching For Italy, which oozes class, while Ms Longoria's seem like an ode to meat. As vegetarians, this puts most everything grown in the ground as a long distant cameo. Eva is an amiable host who throws herself into her job with gusto, but unlike Stanley Tucci's show, which is like a fine wine, this is more like a Hen Night with emphasis on getting as much cheap booze into your 40 minutes as possible. It's a little like they felt they had to cram in too much rather than appreciating what they had in front of them. Next up is France and the prospect of Eva trying even more cuts of meat and different mammals over a grill...

The Stark Film

Iron Man 3 might have more Iron Men than you can shake a stick at, but it is essentially a Tony Stark movie. I've never been a fan of this third outing for Marvel's #1 hero, but if you overlook the slightly naff story and some dodgy dialogue, it isn't as bad as you might think. Shane Black isn't a good director, he makes some crap features, but this almost works despite it feeling like a poor idea executed badly. RDJ, as usual, is great as the pompous and irreverent Tony Stark, while Gwyneth Paltrow is finally given a more substantive role as Pepper Potts, even if it's a little cheesy towards the end. Essentially it's the story of a nerd turned psycho - Guy Pierce - who hatches a number of plans to elevate himself into the upper echelons Stark's world. I've always had a problem with Ben Kingsley's Trevor Slattery and this debut for him makes most of his other appearances all the more problematic. The film however feels at times like it doesn't know what it wants to be. 7/10 

The Black Godfather

Based on a true story, American Gangster is long, very dark (in film quality as well as subject matter) and not at all riveting. Denzel Washington plays the eloquent drug dealer surpassing all his rivals, as he brings heroin in from the Far East and cuts out the middle man. Russell Crowe plays the cop charged with stopping him and it felt like it could have done with being a lot shorter. It's a Ridley Scott movie, so there is an element of quality about it, I just struggled to stay invested in it. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't as good as everyone seems to think - IMHO. 6/10

Top of the World

I like a good biopic and Tenzing is a bloody excellent one. Telling the life story of Tenzing Norgay, the Tibetan/Nepalese sherpa turned mountain climber, who along with Edmund Hillary were the first people to ever climb Mount Everest, on May 29, 1953 (which was my Dad's 23rd birthday). It starts off rather dourly, with a very antiseptic look at Tenzing's early years and his brief meeting with Mallory, who was the inspiration for many to try and tackle Chomolungma. Starring Genden Phuntsok as Tenzing and Tom Hiddlestone as Hillary, it tells the story of their friendship and the drive to be the first to achieve something special. It is a gobsmacking movie, with awesome special effects and will leave you gasping for breath at the scale of their achievement. It really is an adaptation that leaves you breathless... 9/10

Something Happens

Oh FFS, there I was thinking we'd have the final two parts of VisionQuest and the thing would be over and done with, especially as we've had two episodes a week for the last three weeks. But no, we just had the one and while it was actually the most entertaining so far, it was also still just a confusing mess of trying to tie everything Vision together while adding to an already crowded and difficult to follow storyline. It really isn't helped by the introduction of a bunch of new characters - some necessary to the Vision's origin, to be fair, but others just not needed at this late stage. 

Xtra Extra

QI XL is back and now it's up to X we're probably homing in on the final few series, which isn't a bad thing really as, like other shows, this is probably beginning to outlive its welcome. The opener featured Sheila Hancock, who is 93, didn't really understand the show, made some points that probably most viewers have thought over the last 20 years and, of course, won it, even if she didn't - the audience did. Gyles Brandreth was a guest, which is always as painful as having Rosie Jones on it and where once there was guffaws galore, this felt a little restrained and safe.

My Hero

About seven years ago, I wouldn't have known who Kevin Sinfield was if he'd bitten me on the arse. I wasn't a fan of rugby league, I knew nothing about the Leeds Rhinos captain and the only person I'd ever heard of who had Motor Neurone Disease was Stephen Hawking. Then some bloke called Rob Burrows was diagnosed with MND and it became a news story; Sinfield's mate and fellow Leeds player was in his 30s, he had a young family and was unlikely to live very long. MND was something no one talked about despite it being a cruel, vicious disease. Gradually over the space of a few years, as Burrows' health deteriorated there was more about Kev Sinfield on TV. Why? Because he was fundraising for the disease and bringing it into the spotlight. The more I saw, the more I was drawn to this man and his efforts to do whatever he could to make money to research a treatment. His love for his friend was staggering - he'd run marathon after marathon; campaign tirelessly and be there, with his team of athletes bringing Rob Burrows plight to the nation.

About a year before Rob died, I saw Kev do something that choked me up. As he was completing another fundraising marathon, he stopped, picked his friend up and carried him over the finishing line, in his arms; the sentimental old fool I was becoming just welled up and blubbed at this and when Rob died, this guy who I never knew and had no idea existed suddenly became this extremely important person, but it was his friend Kevin Sinfield that really had a profound effect on me. I remember talking with my lost friend George about what a fucking hero Sinfield was and every time I heard about Kev doing something else, it filled me with some weird sense of pride and love - this was one of the most selfless and wonderful people to have ever walked this earth. He got knighted this year for his work for MND - amongst other things - and to echo Prince William, I don't think there has ever been anyone who deserved this accolade more. I watched the tribute - available on iPlayer - to him and spent about 25 of the 28 minutes trying to stop myself from bursting into tears. Sir Kevin Sinfield is a genuine hero, someone I believe shows the rest of us what is possible. Thank You, Sir Kev is a fabulous tribute to a fantastic man, who makes being a hero look easy. You should watch it, with many tissues...

Black Ball

Biopics seem to be the way forward with some of our viewing. Our second of the week was again an excellent story, albeit a little homogenised. 42 is the story of Jacky Robinson, major league baseball's first professional black player, at a time when discrimination was still as ubiquitous as a sunrise. Chadwick Boseman played Robinson and was excellent, but a special mention needs to go to Harrison Ford, who played Branch Rickey - the owner of the New York Dodgers - who decided it was time for black ballplayers to step into the big (white) leagues. usually Ford just plays himself, but here he had to act and he was excellent as the man who made this film possible. The thing that let this down was while the N word was used in abundance, it was devoid of bad language, sex and violence, which I expect was prevalent at the time. It did a good job of reminding us what a vile hateful racist country the USA is, but that there are many people who don't see colour, but human beings. It was an excellent film. 8/10

Hope Poo

The thing about the Korean film Hope (Hopeu) is that it's a bit like watching a monster movie crossed with Laurel and Hardy. The opening hour is pretty relentless, although the monster isn't seen for half of it, just the destruction it leaves in its wake. The acting is pretty indicative of what you'd expect if your crummy little seaside town was invaded by something unknown and destructive, but the interactions between the locals makes it tough viewing. This is an alien invasion movie and apparently the aliens were played by actors including Michael Fassbinder and Alicia Vikander, but were they? I mean, you have no way of knowing and they don't speak English. The thing is once you get past the first hour it slows right down for almost an hour before livening up in the last 45 minutes. It is, as stated, relentless, the special effects are pretty good, but it's simply not a good film. 5/10

Rock Stars My Arse 

Part one of Rise of the Rock Star Chef is all about Marco Pierre White, with added bits from Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal. White is an arsehole; a self absorbed, egotistical wanker who is still so hoisted by his own petard that you have to wonder why, because he's fat, going bald and looks like he's on his last legs. This was about his rise from working for the Roux brothers to opening Harveys in Wandsworth and establishing himself as the bad boy of British cuisine. He's an absolute cock. Oddly enough, I expected Ramsay to be the one who comes across as a complete turd, but so far he's been quite self-effacing. The few snippets of Blumenthal we see suggest a man in a worse state - healthwise - than White. It's fascinating viewing and we're doing it the old fashioned way - watching it weekly rather than in one go from iPlayer. I'm hoping that at some point Ramsay kicks White up the arse. 

The Future is Unknown...

We have reached a point in our TV watching lives where we think we might be out of step with the rest of the world. I have noticed over the last few months that television has been drastically outweighed by films and many of those films are second and third viewings. New is not a mark of good for us any longer. New television is proving to be a constant disappointment and I did a wee bit of research and now that there's two months left of 2026, our new movie consumption has dropped by a third - we have literally watched far less in 2026 which could be called 'new' than in 2025 or 2024. However, our new TV is even worse, almost 50% fewer shows than in 2025.

Obviously, the Guardian plays a part in this - as loathe as I am to ever watch anything the newspaper recommends, sometimes it seems to agree with other critics and reviewers, so in the case of Yaga we thought we should give it a try - a high IMDB rating and a four star Guardian review must be something, surely? Except, we got through the first episode and found it to be overly poor. Bad acting, dislikeable characters, a slightly preposterous story and the promise of something supernatural all wrapped up in a shit Canadian production. Just what aren't we seeing? Is TV now so driven by Gen Z and Millennials that anyone over 50 is going to find anything new difficult to like?

We decided to start watching a TV show we had been recommended as long as 18 months ago and given how much we liked the film it was based on, The Gentlemen seemed like a no-brainer. I quite enjoyed it, but I found it annoying, probably because Theo James's character was so forgiving, when he should have been far harder, especially towards his brother. The wife, however, wasn't quite as charitable... She's struggling far more with 'new' TV than I am and I find her a useful yardstick - if she doesn't like something, I probably won't either and this extension of Guy Ritchie's 2019 film felt a little cheap and slightly tawdry and while I will be happy to watch a couple more, that depends on the other half, because I watch very little on my own now.

Watching new drama is fraught with failure and don't get me started on the 40 odd movies that inhabit the aforementioned Mystery Stick and the set top box's hard drive. We look at them almost every night and rarely watch any of them, because when we do we know we're scraping a barrel we scraped a long time ago. While I was ill, we watched fewer TV shows and films than normal and now I'm getting my shit back to normal, we're having the same thing happen, which makes writing this blog more difficult. I'm seriously reaching a point where I'm wondering if the future of this is to retire gracefully and find something else to write about...

What's Up Next?

I'm hoping for a vast improvement in my day-to-day health, to enable me to return to something like a semblance of normality. TV and film will still be there, but I expect the next four weeks are going to be tough, because I have to do things that I can't avoid.

Next week I have a quiz night - the last social evening I had before the flu was the last quiz night - so whatever happens, next week's blog will be shorter than usual. As ever, it will be what it will be...

My Cultural Life - The Dog Days

What's Been Up?

There's an elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about in the places where things should be talked about... The cost of living crisis versus corporations. Every country in the world is knee deep in a cost of living crisis; no one is immune to rampant inflation and costs spiralling out of control. Opposition parties are complaining that governments aren't doing enough without ever saying what they would do and right wing governments - such as Donald Trump's - talk about escalating prices like they're something people simply have to accept.

The thing is all the corporations; all the big businesses; all the rich people are still making obscene profits; they're still paying their shareholders and directors ridiculous bonuses while socially conditioning us to believe there's nothing they can do about it. Wars, fuel costs and people not doing enough are wheeled out almost on a daily basis, but there's not a single journalist asking why all the richest businesses on the planet are getting richer, every month.

We appear to have been conditioned to accept that costs will go up and that businesses will make more money and no one equates the two with a simple question of 'how is this happening and why hasn't someone noticed it'? Everything is increasing in price and people moan at governments for doing too little, but no one says, 'How come Tesco made a record profit this year?' No one asks how come the richest people in the world are substantially richer than they were a year ago. No one asks why prices are going up and profits are going up as well?

Surely it's time for people to say NO to corporations registering massive profits while more and more are being forced into fuel and food poverty. How does that happen without scrutiny? How does that happen, yet the onus and blame is heaped on governments and people when it's clearly not their fault. Oil companies' profits went through the roof over the last 12 months and the price of fuel has also gone through the roof - big business isn't feeling the pinch, big business is using this 'crisis' to increase their wealth. No one asks why BP increased its profits by 35% when surely because of wars they should be making less? The cost of diesel at the pumps is over £2 a litre; there might be less oil about, but the people who own it are screwing us and no one is asking how or why.

No government is going to be able to solve the problems in their countries if there isn't any money and the sad thing is there is plenty of money, it's just being hoarded by owners, directors and shareholders, while average people are being driven into a standard of living not seen since Victorian times. We need to stop these greedy parasites from strip mining assets which they then don't use to help anyone and nothing is being done to stop it.

Glacial Equines

The first thing that struck me when the new season of Slow Horses dropped was how quickly the Guardian dropped it. For five series, the shit newspaper claimed this show to be the best thing since a multiple orgasm, but suddenly the knives were out for it. Was it because the execrable Lenny Rush had somehow been managed to be shoehorned into it? Maybe. After all, you either love or detest the disabled teenager with as much range as a house brick and he offers nothing to anything. In fact, I can't quite work out why he's in this, apart from giving Jackson Lamb the opportunity to be non-PC. However, while Rush's presence isn't a positive, this is classic Slow Horses with the return of many old faces as many of Lamb's old team members suddenly turn up dead and a bunch of coincidences might not be that coincidental.

This is a darker and bleaker series, with a noticeable drop in humour and a decidedly serious Gary Oldman almost seeming to be relying on Jack Lowden's River - is this a tide change? As usual, what you think is happening is probably far from the truth, but by the time you get to the final instalment you will wondering how Diana Taverner is going to keep her job, because she's been very naughty indeed. Oh and the shock cliffhanger ending will have you biting your nails until season seven...

So Long, Ted

The latest series of Whitehouse & Mortimer: Gone Fishing has started and it kicked off with a farewell to faithful hound Ted, who died earlier this year. It was a tribute of sorts, but the overriding feeling I had was this show really needs to call it a day. Yes, it's nice to look at, the humour is funny and it's a bit like an old pair of comfy slippers, but it's also grown hairs on and gone bald...

The Iron Spider

I'm not sure I've seen a Spider-Man movie I've really enjoyed and Spider-Man Homecoming is no exception; in fact, I didn't like it, I felt it shoehorned Spidey into the MCU, didn't do Tony Stark any favours and wasn't really a Spider-Man film at all, more like an Iron Man Jr movie. I appreciate there was no appetite for a new reboot and it didn't need more than a fleeting reference to Parker's origin, but I found it trite and frivolous rather than an important addition to the MCU or even Sony's piss poor offerings. Tom Holland is okay as Spidey; Zendaya's MJ is also okay and Jacob Battalan's Ned is just annoying. I've seen this three times now and I simply can't get with the program... 6/10

The End of Days

Ridley Scott's The Dog Stars is a strange thing. It's almost glacial in its pacing, very little happens and yet it's quite compelling given the almost two hour run time. Jacob Elordi plays Hig, a former mechanic turned pilot, surviving in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by a flu virus. He lives with Josh Brolin, a grizzled survivalist with little or no optimism about the future, whereas Hig still believes there is a world left that needs finding. There's a section about two thirds of the way through the film where you wonder what the fuck you've wandered into, but in general it's just a survival story with some decent people and some Mad Max type loonies. The thing is it's actually really quite enjoyable - a kind of post-modern post-apocalyptic movie, one where realism is more important than shocks - that is until the realism becomes a little surreal. I will make one extra point though - Hig's dog - Jasper - is referred to as a he throughout the film, but is clearly a girl dog, why they just didn't call her 'Jess' felt like lazy filmmaking. 7/10

Murray's Mount

There's been a lot of negative vibes about A Course Called Ireland and Bill Murray's apparent attitude problems, but the opening episode was simply a lot of fun. This isn't a golf show, nor is it a celeb travelogue, it's more about Ireland and some people who are there and are playing a bit of golf. Murray is no longer the comic genius we all once remembered him to be, but this is more about the strangeness and charm of Ireland than anything else. The BBC seems to be quite attracted to RTE shows at the moment; perhaps they're cheap TV and the corporation is trying to save money, but it's still entertaining and I think its critics simply haven't got the joke.

Please End Soon!

I thought VisionQuest was a six-part series, so imagine my disappointment when it turns out to be an eight-part series. I'm struggling with this; halfway through what I thought was the final episode I was praying for a swift ending. It's not that it's bad, it's just not very good, it's very technical in a dumbed down way and I'm not sure I understand any of it, really (but that might just be me being awkward and pissy). Stuff might have happened; things might have been said; AIs might have AI'd. There's a third Daredevil season due next year; let's hope that is the last MCU TV show ever...

The Third Wick

It's getting a bit boring now. I mean, no one has opted to try and make these films mildly interesting, have they? John Wick Chapter 3 Parabellum is just over two hours of relentless gun fights and violent ballet. The story - what little there is - follows John trying to stay alive while taking the fight back to the High Council of Assassins. Honestly, why is he even bothering and why are the people trying to kill him? There's a sequence where John opts to rejoin the assassins and then he promptly drops that once he's back in New York. It's just tiresome now and I sincerely hope the - almost three hours of - Chapter 4 has something that makes it more than just lots of dull shoot outs. 5/10

What the Actual...

And the best way to end what has been a 'limited' week's viewing is with something that defies comprehension... The following film has a 5.2 rating on IMDB and I have to ask how it got so high? Monster Hunter is an absolute pile of incomprehensible nonsense which felt like it borrowed elements of a number of films based on a description from a blind goat. Milla Jovovich outdoes herself in a movie that presumably believed it was so good there was going to be a franchise based around it. It's about an army captain and some inter-dimensional dudes fighting monsters with a vague (and I mean super vague) subplot based around a place that might be glitching into our universe. It made no sense; it has no real story; it has characters that feel like they've been borrowed from a anime adventure and it was possibly one of the worst things I have ever witnessed. I'm sure better things have fallen out of my own arse. 2/10

What's Up Next?

There's a new series of Dexter: Resurrection which we might watch weekly or might wait until we have a bunch. VisionQuest hopefully ends and to fill in the blanks, we've been watching Eva Longoria Searching for Mexico, which we have almost finished and deserves a special mention because Eva laughs like a dirty old woman. It's a companion to Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy and apart from the huge quantities of meat that are consumed, it has been fun to watch. There are two more series - Spain and France and I expect these will fill in the extra voids.

I've had a week, since the last blog, of recuperating. The influenza which really fucked me up has gone, but the post-virus fatigue (which is a real thing and quite common for people with chronic illnesses) has pretty much left me feeling like I still have the flu. However, as I type this (Friday night of the penultimate day of October), I'm thinking I might begin to return to some kind of normality next week.

Hopefully, that week ahead will have a better percentage of good, because with a few exceptions, this last week has felt tired, old and crap - a bit like me, but less good looking...

My Cultural Life - Beginnings and Endings

What's Been Up?

I've been really quite ill most of the last two weeks. Got absolutely knocked for six by a nasty influenza virus which has fucked me up since the start of the last week. I've felt so rough I didn't watch anything but shite daytime TV all of the previous week and we've had a guest so a couple of evenings have been conversation-led with some radio. 

I still manage to waffle on though...

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.

Just My Imagin-AI-tion

It looks fantastic; it has excellent actors in it; but it's one of the most tonally wrong shows the Disney/MCU has ever released and that's a shame, because if it had swapped out some of the unnecessary Vaudevillian humour for some genuine thoughts on AI it might have felt like a really good and relevant TV show rather than something that isn't really part of a 'trilogy' that has been shoehorned into this reality. VisionQuest should be so much better, but four episodes into this, only, MCU TV show of the year and I can see why the chances of the MCU TV Universe being abandoned are very great. The biggest problem I have is that after four episodes, I don't know why this even exists... James Spader is excellent though.

Yet, How It All Began...

Every fibre of VisionQuest was born in Iron Man. There isn't really anything in the TV series that wasn't introduced in some way by the Marvel Cinematic Universe's almost unbeatable debut feature - watched again, because I wanted to. When you look at this 2008 movie and then compare it to some of the shit that gets pumped out from the Mouse House now, you have to wonder where it all went wrong. What a cracking movie this is, even if it wasn't a superhero film it would blow people away. Oh and how this universe has 'developed' from this humble but totally awesome beginning. It's one of the MCU's top five; it never ages. 9/10

Like a Wick Man

We had a guest; we figured he might like to watch Nobody and 20 minutes into it, he asked, "Have you guys seen any of the John Wick films?" We haven't, why? "This is a John Wick film with different characters. You should watch the John Wick films." We will, but, this Bob Odenkirk one-man-army film is great fun, if a little fluffy around the edges. Quiet, unassuming husband with a dark and secret past finally cracks after years of inactivity leading to him taking on the Russian mob and kicking their arses. At least, that's how I saw it, both times I watched it, until I saw a John Wick film... 7/10

Ideal Homes

I had a existential moment while watching Don't Worry Darling, and that was down to the fact that I realised I had to write a review of it and while I was quite enjoying it, I wasn't inspired by it. I took the piss out of Harry Styles not being a very good actor and was impressed by Florence Pugh's range. I worked out how many people in the film had also been in a MCU movie. I also wondered if The Eternals would ever see a sequel and very much doubted it - as two of the stars of this appeared in that. In the end I concluded that this was a modern updating of The Stepford Wives but with a nostalgic twist. Obviously there was an element of distastefulness about it, as you'd imagine. I simply didn't enjoy it and found it slightly annoying. 5/10

Last Monday Blues

We started by watching Open Range, a 2003 western from Kevin Costner. We gave up on it after an hour because it was really fucking glacial. We moved onto the third episode of Simon Reeve Wilderness, which this week was in the Yukon and was even more dull than the previous episode. Only Connect was a highlight and we finished off our anticlimactically meh evening with a new episode of Pointless, which had so many stupid people on it I now believe this is a dumbed down entertainment show rather than a quiz show. Mondays used to have some interesting stuff to watch, not any more... 

Zealots & Fanatics

It is difficult to believe that The Name of the Rose is 40 years old and if you take out the very 1980s electronic music in the outro it holds up remarkably well. It looks good, the story is compelling and it's full of ugly grotesqueries. Sean Connery plays William of Baskerville in this Umberto Eco adaptation, with a very young Christian Slater as his young apprentice, Adso of Melik. Baskerville arrives at a remote monastery to debate whether Christ owned his own clothes with other religions at the behest of Pope John. This is the backdrop to a murder mystery with many twists and turns involving comedy, lust and stealth poisonings. It's an absolute classic film. 8/10  

And the Point Was?

The Guest is a Dan Stevens vehicle, and it's also the first Dan Stevens film we've seen that we could have dodged. He plays an ex-army 'person' who, for some unknown reason, visits the family of a dead serviceman posing as his friend. Why is never delved into, but 'David' is a one man army kind of guy and the US army are as worried as shit about him. As he offs various people and gets all sinister and weird on people, all I could wonder was what purpose this movie had and by the end, which leaves it open for a sequel that never happened, I wished I'd watched something else... 4/10

Buffeting 

The Plane feels like it should have been much worse, yet it whizzed along and ended up being sort of reasonable. Gerard Butler plays an airline pilot who crash lands his NYE plane onto an island full of really bad men. It's his job to get his passengers to safety and we're in one man army territory again, except he has some help - Mike Colter - and a team of special forces hard men. To be honest, I shouldn't have given it house room, but it was fun in a 'I'm ill and will watch anything' kind of way. 6/10

Enigmas

The Imitation Game is a film I'd never watched, but given the amount of time I've had to kill while being ill... It's a cracking biopic with Buffalo Custardbath as Alan Turing - on the spectrum and very gay - as the main person charged with solving the Enigma code and giving the UK and allies a fighting chance of winning WW2. Keira Knightly is great as his beard, Matthew Goode is underused as Turing's #2 and it is an achievement to make such a compelling movie about a bunch of mathematicians in a room at Bletchley Park. 8/10

Choose Not Bothering

Neither of us had ventured into the sequel waters of T2 Trainspotting, it might be because the original didn't resonate with us like it did others... However, nearly 10 years since its release and rapidly running out of things to watch, we gave it a try and it isn't a patch on the original; in fact it feels like a kind of TV spin-off. There wasn't really anything about this that made you want to care. 5/10

The Wick-er Man

Have you ever seen Nobody? It's essentially John Wick but with better actors. I totally understand why I've never watched any John Wick films, but now I've seen one I know I'm going to end up watching them all... I suppose these are the ultimate one-man army features, as John Wick or Baba Yaga - the Bogeyman - is someone you don't fuck with and if you do fuck with him then you have two hopes and Bob has left the building. Keanu Reeves can't act, but doesn't really have to as his John seeks revenge for the death of his dog and the theft of his beloved Mustang - simple things, but important. This opening film begins to introduce us to the fabulous world of Assassins' Guilds and honour amongst hit men. The opening movie is okay, it's like a violent ballet draped with style. 6/10

The Wick-er Man Too

John Wick Chapter Two is longer and explores the world of the Assassins' Guild a little further. John has achieved what he wants, but is dragged back into the world he wants to escape by the man who holds his marker. This has double cross writ large all over it, but we get some international violence, more balletic Gun-Fu, and an extra 40 minutes of run time - oh and a Matrix connection. In many ways it's much better than the original because there's money and a purpose now; I think I'll stagger watching the remaining films a little, this kind of thing hurts your head... 7/10

Friday the 13th

This has to be the most Curate's Eggiest thing to appear on TV all year. A retelling of the old Friday the 13th films, with a relatively feasible explanation thrown in. This is a TV show that is simultaneously excellent and awful.  The very camp Crystal Lake feels like it was made in 1973 (sans gratuitous nudity) with two people who can act and a bunch of extras reading off autocues; yet there's something addictive about it even if it stinks the room out. Linda Cardellini is fabulous as Pam Vorhees, switching from psycho to femme fatale like any good psychopath. There's a bunch of odd subplots, trash acting, an excellent town sheriff who seems to have that Jaws vibe all around him and a mysterious ex-serviceman who might be the only person who knows what's going on. The wife gave up on this, but I've stuck with it. There's a lot of dislike, but also a lot to sink your teeth into... 

Ice Cream

Been wondering when this blog is going to appear? Well, the plan was for Saturday 24th, in the morning, but I opted for a later posting to make sure I actually edited it. So that meant Saturday night's - the third one without a blog - film was either tagged into this or kept for next week. I opted to the former, mainly because we watched Scream (2022), the reboot of the awful horror franchise. It was absolutely shite. People paid money to see this crap?

What's Up Next?

Before anything else, I'd like to recommend The Great House Revival, currently on iPlayer. It's an Irish George Clarke show without George and it's all the better for it. What I liked about it was it backhandedly shows us what we're missing from not being in the EU, especially when it comes to free money...

As I'm still ill I have no idea what's going to happen. The wife has my lurgy now; the last two plus weeks have been shitter than a runny cow's arse. 

The clocks go back - the future is even more fucking dull than it was...

My Cultural Life - Quality Control Buttons

What's Up?

As the Book Festival has now finished and my personal anxiety levels return to where they were two weeks ago (probably a little lower), I've noticed that autumn has also arrived. I mean, how did that happen? I remember discussing with the wife about snowdrops back in January and suddenly we're less than three months away from them again.

Does time speed up? Well, it does as you get older and that's because of one simple thing - familiarity. One year when you are 10 is 1/10th of your life, but one year when you're 60 is just 1/60th of your life. Put it in terms of making the same  one hour journey all the time; where it once felt like an hour - possibly longer - it now whizzes past and you can't believe an hour has gone so quickly. Time is an absolute fucker. no doubt about it.

Brand New Arse?

I have questions. If Spider-Man now works full time as a crime stopper how does he afford to live? Does he now have, as well as sticky hands and feet, a sticky arse? Will we ever find out how Spidey saved Frank Castle on Staten Island? Do we care? In fact, why was the 18-rated Punisher shoe-horned into this, at all? Why did this feel like an extended episode of Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends? How come Bruce Banner now has to inhibit the Hulk - when did that revelation happen? Why has Marvel decided to introduce Jean Grey at this particular point? Why can't Sony make a Spider-Man film that doesn't require a bunch of MCU characters turn up? Why did Zendaya look like she's already had work done? Why did I find Spider-Man: Brand New Day a bit meh? These are the questions I'd like answering...

I know I have issues with Spider-Man, the same way I have them with Batman. Neither character floats my boat, therefore I'm always fighting a tough battle to like them in feature films. However, I don't think it was all Spidey that made me struggle with this; the camera work felt a little 8mm; it felt dark (and not in a moody way) and perhaps the scaled-back-to-just-a-NYC-backdrop required it to have a grittier feel (most of the external scenes were filmed in Glasgow). There's this gnawing feeling that it was too long, too ponderous and too convoluted. Superficiality seemed to dominate this and the only scenes I truly enjoyed were the ones with Peter, Ned and MJ - mainly because I'd had three previous films where they grew up together. I just found this not spectacular enough. The Punisher was homogenised (PG-13 Frank is a bit pants, tbh); Yelena was trivialised (and why the bath scene?); Damage Control was a piss poor villain, even if there were links taking it right back to Homecoming. The roll-call of villains Spidey has put away just added to the sense this was a pointless exercise in trying to do something different yet the same. Spider-Man's mutation problems, the - again - pointless Hulk cameo and the X-Men angle just shat on it from a height for me. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this at all. I might change my mind when I watch it again in a year or so, but at the moment, I think this is almost as weak as the second Tom Holland Spidey film and that was poor. 6/10

Deceptive Title

I've always wondered why The Gentlemen was called The Gentlemen, because it suggests the film is about a bunch of gentlemen and while there are a number of aristocrats in this movie, they are just the fluff around the edges. The story is about a gang of weed suppliers, who just happened to be so wealthy they rubbed shoulders with the 'right kind of people' - they are the Hoi Polloi (which might have been a cleverer title). Except, if you've seen this film, you will know that it's a lot more complicated than that. What it's also is one of Guy Ritchie's best - alongside his Sherlock Holmes double bill with RDJ. Full of delightfully colourful characters, it is a typical Ritchie film, but there's an added surrealism to this, made even weirder by an excellent performance by Hugh Grant, as the seediest of newspaper reporters. Colin Farrell steals the show, while Charlie Hunnam talks in his native dialect and probably normal voice - top quality stuff. 9/10

New Zealand Story

The Taika Waititi film, The Hunt for the Wilderpeople is both hilariously funny and utterly silly. Julian Dennison plays Ricky Baker, a proper little shit who has flopped from one foster family to another until he's down to his last family. Screw up here and the only place left is Juvenile Hall - like prison for homeless kids. He gets placed with Bella (Rima Te Wiata) and her curmudgeonly husband Hec (Sam Neill) and discovers he quite likes it. However, tragedy strikes and Ricky is going to lose his place and so he runs away. Hec finds him, but instead of handing the boy back, the two form a bond and spend six months living off the land and avoiding arrest. There is a villain in this called Paula Hall, which I find quite brilliant and while it is quite ludicrous at times, you will just love it. 8/10

The Green Death

So... after a really intriguing and interesting start, Lanterns fizzled out with a bit of a whimper. It was a strange series and the last three parts have felt like a very long and meandering epilogue to a very undercooked idea. I'm a bit disappointed really because I thought this was going to be so much more and even the 'revelation' in the finale - which, incidentally, wasn't well explained - felt like a 'well, so what?' kind of thing. Will there be a second season? I'm almost loathe to go and look; there's a lot of TV at the moment I'm finding less than inspiring and this has been one of them. Maybe if more had happened...

Checkmate

Back in the Covid era, one of the most popular shows on TV/Netflix was The Queen's Gambit, a series we didn't watch and our general ambiguity about Anya Taylor Joy didn't help matters. We ploughed through this 2020 series and it has been extremely entertaining, if a little on the cold side, but when your subject is chess and your main character is basically on the spectrum, then you're going to struggle with emotional impact. The story is about a female chess prodigy, who with her unique brain and tranquilizers manages to work her way up the chess ladder, so by the mid 1960s she's regarded as one of the best players in the USA - but that isn't enough for her as she sets her sights on the USSR. It's a solid mini-series that puts a lot into making chess a sexy game.

Goodbye, Good Riddance

Hopefully, the final episode of Ted Lasso has been and gone. It had a strange finale, one full of sentimental shite and bollocks. I can't fathom why they thought it would be a good idea to bring it back. The finale was like some awful pantomime acted by a bunch of wankers.

We also gave Australian comedy show Gnomes a try and switched it off after 14 minutes. 

Under Pants?

Having a TV show set on Newfoundland is a brave move. It is a unique part of Canada and distinct for its Irish heritage and isolated, backwater, communities. Below is the story of a fishing community being asked to relocate - and being offered a lot of money to do it - and all the while something from the deep has returned and it's not to be sniffed at. This is a strange show; Josh Hartnett is up to scratch as the fisherman with a bleak history who also thinks the community might be on the verge of being terrorised by a giant squid. We'll conclude this six-part series next week.

Against the Grain

Among my friends, I am completely in the minority when it comes to Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear. I totally get it, I should abhor Clarkson. He's the diametric opposite of me in so many ways; I don't even like fast sports cars - I grew out of that when I was 14. Yet, I will defend him - to a degree - and will defend my right to enjoy things he does. The thing is, the wife should be even more vehemently opposed to him, yet she's pretty much the same as me - worse, she even watches his Millionaire shows. I concede that this blog is designed as a critical review page and if something I review doesn't float your boat, you're not going to watch it on my recommendation. I mean, look at my music taste?

However, that doesn't prevent me from talking about things none of you are interested in... If you're reading this and have made it this far its as good a win as I can expect. Therefore, I'm not going to try and convince you to watch anything Clarkson related, because even if you did you wouldn't change your mind. What I will say is it's fairly obvious to me why Top Gear hasn't ever reached the heights it had when the classic trio were at the helm; it's also clear why Amazon's new look Grand Tour needs to develop its own personality or it's simply going to become another failed attempt at catching lightning in a bottle. Top Gear with Clarkson, May and Hammond was unique. It was a version of Last of the Summer Wine disguised as a car programme; as it became this monster hit for the corporation, it became more 'scripted,' stopped being a consumer programme and joined the ranks of mega-successful light entertainment show. It was must see TV for many. Things usually have to have something to be watched by millions, especially back in the Noughties.

Its appeal was far reaching - young people even watched it. The idea of three middle-aged men of various personalities thrown together doing crazy things and thoroughly enjoying it and each others company, is just television gold if you get the chemistry right and this got the chemistry very right. 

This is a short week (as you've probably guessed) as I'm quizzing on Friday, but it's actually been a week of slightly curtailed viewing as well, because we've had things to do and I discovered a new rabbit hole to fall down. I've been watching Classic Top Gear compilation videos on the Tube of You and realising why this particular format will never be repeated. These guys had almost 20 years together; the relationship between presenters matured and became extremely comfortable over that period of time; even the scripted stuff felt genuine, because it has been consistent for so long - Classic Top Gear and the original The Grand Tour worked because of the presenters not because of the format.

There's also the fact that some of the things they got up to were simply very funny and there wasn't really anything you could compare it to. I think that's why it's easy to watch an old episode, even from 20 years ago, and still get something from it and that might be that the three guys you were watching knew a lot of stuff you were learning for the first time. Yes, it was a bit too tonally on the right, but never in an aggressive way and far less than you'd expect - after 2016, they always talked favourably about Europe and how stupid we were to have left it - even Clarkson, more so than the others, really. 

This trio of presenters were the last of the 'bloke-ish' television era and the only reason they were so successful for so long - other than being good TV - was because they were, as mentioned before, unique; there was nothing comparable and imitations simply don't have the ingenuity built in. It was why their road trips, whether they were TV specials or just racing across London on a bike, bus and a boat, we were sold on the idea that these were just 'yer average bloke' having a great time. It's probably why people associate Farage with normal working geezas - but let's not go there...

In other words, I've been watching old Top Gears and I've enjoyed it. Sue me.

What's Up Next?

Oh, the things I could tell you...

VisionQuest arrives on Wednesday, I think. I have a slight wish for something interesting and, hopefully, good. Marvel is a constant source of disappointment for me, now. I'm still slightly in shock at how utterly ambivalent I am about the new Spider-Man film was and the thoughts I had, all the way through, such as 'why is this a load of shit?' or 'It just feels so false.' which suggest I was anything but ambivalent about it. The thing is after the initial shock I just had a moment when I realised it isn't going to get any better, and I've been ambivalent about it ever since. VisionQuest just looks like it might be relevant, so it won't be and I'll be spitting teeth in six weeks or so.

We're going to be finishing stuff this week and there might be other new stuff, it is the season for new stuff. I just recall reading one of these articles on line - a feature about TV coming in the autumn and being underwhelmed when I passed the stuff I was happy about it. You know the drill.