Oh yeah, spoilers ahead...
There's not much to talk about TV at this time of the year unless you want to waffle on about the World Cup (which I will) or hope that something turns up on TV or at the cinema that is worth the effort. That said, I managed to find some things to write about, even if most of it has made me feel slightly queasy and make me want to burn my eyes out with phosphorus exposed to air.
Black Adam has to be one of the best examples of a mix of offensive and contradictory - if such a beast actually existed before this latest DC/Shazam spin-off. Before I even get into criticising this film, there's a point in it when the Justice Society turn up in the Wakanda-esque Arab kingdom of Kahndaq to stop and apprehend Black Adam because, presumably, the USA thinks he's too powerful to exist. This just smacks of US imperialism and shows what a thoroughly horrible and morally shit character Amanda Waller is, either in films, TV or originally comics. This is even pointed out by female lead Sarah Shahi when the JSA turn up and start destroying her city to stop a character who is, initially, saving her city from dodgy invaders. It's just offensive and regardless of how potentially nasty Adam might be you immediately want the four members of the JSA to die horrible deaths like most of the Intergang members suffered, but for some strange reason Adam is unable to destroy the heroes as easily as the villains.
Then there's the fact that it's essentially a sort of Shazam with some dark tweaks and gets even more Wakanda with the introduction of Eternium - a fabulous rare element that yadda yadda yadda... It's Vibranium with Arabs and an anti-hero who is like a cross between Superman, Flash and Batman, but black and Arab and 5000 years old and misunderstood etc etc etc...
It's a film let down by poor everything apart from Dwayne Johnson, who is playing a silent but deadly version of Dwayne Johnson. It's an alright film given how shite most DC films are, but it's a very poor film given how good Shazam was. Shazam is pretty much how most DC films should be, even if Mark Strong is starting to be typecast as a DC villain, whether he's bald or red and bald or just bad (as in evil).
The problem with this film is it's so morally all over the place that you're with the guy who wants to kill people and I'm loathe to admit this but revenge seems to be a fitting reason for wiping out an evil king and his minions; fuck this altruistic US superhero bullshit; whatever Black Adam's secret is, frying wankers is a far more effective method than simply telling them off.
DC continues to have far more misses than hits and even with the imminent arrival of James Gunn as their films' showrunner, I can't see there ever being a consistency that is admired from afar. Whatever I think of Marvel films, DC makes movies to make as much money as they can for the least amount of thought, until they stop that's all she wrote.
One last thing: at the end of the credits there's reference to Jack Kirby's Fourth World and I can't understand why. What was in Black Adam that had anything to do with Kirby's short foray into the DC Universe? I couldn't find anything when I googled it, but to be honest I didn't look very hard because I didn't really care, but if someone knows, please let me know!
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Okay, I can't resist talking about the finale, the final ever episode of The Walking Dead, subtitled Happy Ever After, which is a lie as is the words final, last ever and ending. This bloated corpse of a TV series didn't promise us resolution, it promised us the last episode of this specific part of the expanding franchise suffering from the law of diminishing returns. Some long lasting cast members died; there was some maudlin music and there was some conclusions that felt like they'd been shoehorned in to make it easy for some people to call it a day and jump off the horse and find some other shite to become engaged with.
What we got in the extended finale was the ending to the story of season 11 with an epilogue tagged onto the end which felt more like an extended advert for the three new spin-off series and for the fast descending back into shite Fear the Walking Dead. We had the preview to Rick & Michonne, which is basically Andy Lincoln's sadness at leaving the franchise in the first place and not becoming the A-list star he thought he would; where as Danai Gurira is quickly becoming a top actress, so why she's getting involved in this is beyond my understanding.
Then there's Daryl Dixon, the adventures of Daryl (but not Carol, because she didn't want to spend 9 months a year in Europe filming the series, which begs the question why they're filming it in Europe - is it cheaper? Does Daryl find a plane, a 747 maybe, a decides to see how the rest of the world is fairing?) The fact that Daryl is a one-note character whose one responsibility was to look after Judith after her dad and step mum fucked off and doesn't do a good job at that suggests this is a series that will need some strong supporting characters.
Then there's Dead City (or is it Cities, I can't remember and can't be arsed to check), which appears to be a Negan and Maggie spin-off series. Now there's a match made in hell if ever there was one. Negan is actually quite a decent character albeit one who has gone from megalomaniac psychopath to anti-hero with a heart and Maggie hates him because Negan turned her husband's head into an ashtray. A Negan spin-off I could almost get behind, but this is a stretch too far.
Plus there's the return of Madison to Fear. For those of you that give a shit, Madison was the main protagonist in the first three series of this spin-off. She was a woefully dull character who should have died multiple times but somehow didn't until she was 'killed off' - but we never saw the body. Now, just as her only surviving child is infected with the zombie virus, she's back with Morgan in tow tracking down dodgy child stealing armageddonists and subsequently making Fear once again the most want-to-be-missed show on AMC.
The finale of TWD is my jumping off point. There won't be any more mentions of the franchise from me; if you care about it watch it, just don't expect me to slag it off eloquently any longer...
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Eleven years ago, the BBC had a six-part historical drama called Desperate Romantics, the wife watched it and recently recorded the repeats off BBC4 for a bit of nostalgic viewing. I decided to watch it - for the first time - and I can only say if you get the chance watch it as well. It's quality TV with Aiden Turner playing pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti - a thoroughly cuntish human being if ever there was one. It's a cracking series and proves one thing I doubted for a long time, Rafe Spall can actually act and Turner might be an absolute heartthrob but he's at his best when he plays thoroughly rakish bastards.
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Which brings me nicely to the World Cup in Qatar...
Yeah, I know, I write about football elsewhere but this isn't really about the football more about the politics - which I also write about elsewhere - and the general feeling that we're witnessing the afterbirth of the coupling of the most corrupt organisation in the world - FIFA - and one of the nastiest quasi-Conservative Muslim countries also in the same world - Qatar. A place that is essentially a modern front for Saudi Arabia, a country that makes North Korea seem like an adventure park with clowns.
Speaking of the Saudis, just after they caused a seismic shock by beating one of the pre-tournament favourites Argentina (who got the competition when led by a well dodgy military junta back in the 70s), they beheaded 17 prisoners - in three days, as opposed to the seven people a week the country usually executes. Qatar might also execute people but they have balloons and colourful things to make you think that homosexuality and women's rights actually are allowed to exist and aren't punishable by death. If ever there was part of the planet that was morally shot to pieces it's this part of the Middle East and before you start saying shit like 'When in Rome...' or 'It's their culture, innit?' If England and Wales weren't playing there the criticism of this country would probably be widespread, even among the gammons who are trying to justify it because...you know... football.
Everything about the competition was guaranteed to not be right once we passed the point of no return and it couldn't be held somewhere else. For all the Qataris promises, anyone with half a brain knew that once the tournament was underway anyone who isn't heterosexual was going to be in fear of their lives and anyone who doesn't have a penis is going to feel as though they've been transported back in time to a bygone age where women were third class citizens after slugs and sofas.
I don't care if England do well because this is an abhorrent spectacle, which incidentally cost £191billion more than the last World Cup, which at £9 billion was the most expensive and was held in Russia, which had already annexed Crimea by this time and Putin was already being heralded as the latest dictator en vogue. If FIFA doesn't stand for how to be so transparently corrupt and only interested in swelling its coffers with filthy cash then I need someone to tell me what good they actually do, because Giovanni Infantino's rant just before the tournament had no less than ELEVEN factually inaccurate lies in it as he berated the West for being far worse than the Middle East. If ever a man deserved to be beheaded by the Saudis it's this bald cunt.
One of the things that has annoyed me about gammons is their feeble attempts at justifying the barbaric culture of these extreme Muslim states. I have absolutely no problem with Muslims; I'd defend them more than Christians - who I've had experience of being truly nasty people - but the particular brands of Islam that these Middle East countries follow is the same kind that the gammons would be frothing at the mouths about if it happened in Bradford. The double standards of British arseholes is crazy, but hey, the UK press is still trying to convince everyone that people going on strike are worse than paedophiles, while conveniently ignoring the fact that the bosses of these 'private' companies wallow in massive amounts of cash they probably don't need. But, you know, people struggling are far worse than arseholes with yachts.
The same gammons who defend Arabs owning their football clubs and indulging in sports washing are quick to morally judge the LGBTQ+ community, therefore basically showing us what kind of people they truly are; but we need to remember is these are the same idiots and arseholes who resort to whataboutery whenever they're faced with a moral dilemma that they shouldn't even have an opinion on. However, the other side of the coin has people outraged by this World Cup using the same tactic about the European clubs backdown regarding the One Love armband; conveniently pointing out that the country where the England kit is manufactured pays its workers less than £1 a day, because, you know, pointing out some other fucking wrong thing in the world makes the original wrong thing less wrong.
The bottom line is FIFA should disband or be abolished, replaced by a non-corrupt World Football Federation with extremely tight rules that disallows lobbying, backhanders and blatant examples of rich cunts benefitting from allowing morally dubious countries from having a competition that shouldn't be subject to the amount of justified criticism the last two have been.
One of the worst things about this anathema is the TV stations' belief that everyone wants to watch it therefore meaning the rest of television is old repeats and crap reality bollocks. Personally, it simply highlights to me what a crap world we live in and how it's unlikely to get any better.
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