The spoilers await within...
The finale of Everyone Else Burns wasn't what I expected. It felt like four mildly amusing sitcom episodes sandwiched between an awkward debut and a tragi-comic finale. At the end of part five you're hoping that the reason the things are happening 'off camera' is because there's going to be a happier outcome than is being let on, The reality is the final part leaves you feeling that this series was really all about being part of a looney religious order and that no one is ever truly happy when that's the case.
The conclusion left me with a real desire to see a happier, more fairer, ending. It felt a little bit like a comedy that morphed into a drama, even Simon Bird came across as less bonkers compared to others. The 'big shock' wasn't that much of a shock, while the neighbour needs to be used more in any second series.
***
Clarkson's Farm was, without a doubt, one of the televisual highlights of 2021. That was because it was about farming rather than an aged buffoon best known for being a bore. I have a guilty secret; despite thinking Clarkson is a monumental twat, I also quite like him and he did a fantastic job of highlighting the fact that, by and large, our farmers are undervalued, and that is something that needs to be known by the ignorant and who better to tell them than one of their patrons.
Obviously, Kaleb - his assistant - has become a star and the assortment of comedy and serious supporting cast has made the Farm entertaining TV with a hint of unexpected jeopardy. Yes, Clarkson is going to be a twat, but this time it's usually to make a point - such as the slagging off of Brexit in episode two. Season two is about cows, wanting a restaurant and more bureaucracy that will have the former Top Gear presenter frothing at the mouth.
The problem? This is a prime candidate for second season syndrome. The pranks and set ups have to be bigger and believable, the buffoonery needs to be plausible and it needs to deal with issues that weren't looked at in the first series and, of course, if they weren't looked at it was because they're not interesting. Plus there's the more recent elephant in the room, one that Jezza can't seem to avoid - the comments about Prince Harry's wife, which have somewhat plummeted his stock and already led to the end of The Grand Tour and question marks over his WWTBAM future. This isn't going to be anything like a redemption arc for him even if he delivers a baby calf with his teeth while simultaneously dying of cancer, Clarkson is going the same way as Ron Atkinson and Angus Deayton - off our screens forever.
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The decision the other day to switch Mystery Men off after 20 minutes seems to have allowed us a get out of crap free pass. Nearly 25 years after watching American Werewolf in Paris and remembering we didn't like it, we started to watch it again tonight and switched off after 20 minutes. Everything about it was an affront to the original John Landis film - and even that's dated somewhat badly.
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Instead of a crap old werewolf film, we opted for Christian Bale's The Pale Blue Eye, a mystery thriller set around West Point in 1830. A grizzled detective is summoned to the army academy after an act of horrendous mutilation is carried out on a cadet who appears to have committed suicide.
Bale deduces that what actually has happened is a murder, but finds the code of silence among the cadets difficult to break through. He manages to enlist the aid of a cadet who is treated as something of an outcast - one Edgar Alan Poe, who himself proves to be a fine detective in his own right.
I'm not going to say it's a riveting film; I found myself struggling to keep up with it at first, but I don't know if that was because it simply wasn't very good or if it was because it was a British film with very few actual proper American actors in it, which I found distracting and slightly off-putting (because there was hardly an American accent in it apart from Poe); even Gillian Anderson, who is American via Hampstead sounded more Blighty than Yankee. It's full of twists and turns and a few gruesome coincidences, but it lacked atmosphere.
Would I recommend it? Probably not - it's a bit of a warm bland wank of a film.
***
The fifth instalment of The Last of Us finally had something happen; it also threw another curve ball at us. The problem is I'm losing the will to live with it. It's nine parts and I'll give it until the end but I doubt I'll be coming back for season two if this is anything to go by...
I feel there's an emperor's new clothes thing going on here and that I've not got the memo that's telling me I have to fawn and gush about this as much as possible. I do not think the acting is better than The Walking Dead and I don't think this is something a little more sophisticated than TWD and I'm not buying that this is a series as much about the growing relationship between Joel and Ellie as it is about killing zomboids. It's obviously had a little more money thrown at it and the CGI is excellent. I mean, this is a HBO product, it has to be brilliant; doesn't it?
The zomboids (or 'infected' as the fans of the show like to remind us) finally arrived in what can be described as a big explosion and a degree of threat was shown, but this is essentially going to be a show where the two main stars avoid being bitten in the most hazardous and jeopardous ways. A bit like The Walking Dead then?
It's not the best thing since sliced bread, in fact it's not even an average farmhouse loaf so far. I wanted to like this, probably based on all the positive press it was getting. I feel like lighting a lamp, swinging it back and forth and shouting 'Nothing to see here. Nothing new to see.'
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It was Super bowl weekend so that meant trailers!
First up Flash. In terms of DC, Flash and Wonder Woman are probably the two I've been least interested in. Then DC did a comic called Crisis on Infinite Earths where the Flash is an absolute hero, totally wins over the comic reading public and then dies in probably the most hollow, lonely and unnecessary death ever; a death that to my knowledge still applies. Ezra Miller as Barry Allen is also such a bonkers brilliant idea. The trailer makes it look like it might be the best DC film ever, so it'll probably be shit.
Not released during the Bowl of Super was the second Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 trailer - quite a long one at nearly 2½ minutes - and it achieves something quite rare, it's managed to lower my expectations back down to a yawn. All of the 'hang on a minute' moments in the first trailer all gone as if magically removed from your memory. Obviously, I didn't really want potential bad news reinforcing because that would spoil it; the idea is to clearly make me think someone dies then remove that feeling so that when someone dies - or maybe even some ones - the impact is even greater. It's called the Double Bluff and Stan Lee used to use it quite a bit. Anyhow, the film looks like it could be messy and confusing with more baggage added to the already baggage heavy baggage.
And that was all she wrote. Yes there were other trailers, but nothing that particularly set my world on fire. I should point out that I checked the newspaper the following morning to see what films had been trailed, I didn't watch the Super bowl. I have never watched one; not even Rihanna's sprog would have tempted me.
Have you ever noticed that Super bowl can also be Superb Owl, which sounds like it could be one funky superhero. "Who are you?"
"I'm Superb Owl."
"What do you do?"
"I do what other owls do but superbly."
***
We thought we'd treat ourselves to a comedy and The Change Up looked to be the good choice. Jason Bateman, Ryan Reynolds and a Freaky Friday vibe that should have been a riot. We switched off after 20 minutes. It wasn't funny; it had a lot of cringe in it and Bateman, who is a fine actor, doesn't do Reynolds very well and Reynolds doesn't do anything but himself at all well.
***
ARQ is Groundhog Day meets any anodyne dystopian sci-fi film. It gets straight into the action and the twist in this is that after a while the main protagonist isn't the only one who realises he's in a time loop. I think the idea of the film was to show you how many layers there might be to something because before the end of the third loop you've sussed out that at least one of the characters isn't who they claim to be and by loop seven or eight it's like no one in this building is who they seem to be.
The loop 'starts' with Robbie Amell waking, having a second to compose himself before his door is kicked in by three antagonists. Robbie and his ex, Hannah, are held hostage by a group claiming to be part of the 'rebels' and it seems like a simple robbery, but it isn't quite that.
Our hero, explains to his ex-girlfriend that they're stuck in a loop that starts at 6.16am and finishes at 9.25. This loop is caused by whoever the dead body is in the same room as the ARQ, touching the ARQ at 6.16am, so imagine the paradox created within the time loop when one of the antagonists opts to prevent the guy with the ARQ from dying; this would presumably break the loop as it will never have happened, but the writers haven't thought about that.
Anyhow, what makes it different from other groundhog day type films is that each loop is considerably different from the previous ones by virtue of the fact that half the cast are trying to use the loop to their advantage and while there is a serious paradoxical mistake made - as mentioned - the conclusion of the film is more akin to how I'd imagine a film about a time loop to conclude.
It wasn't very good though.
***
Of all the Stephen King novels, stories and books I possess, there are very few I have never read more than once; in fact, of his work pre-accident, there are only a few books he's written that I've never revisited and The Dark Half is one of them. This was adapted into a feature film in 1993 by George A Romero - Mr Zombie - and stars Tim Hutton as Thaddeus Beaumont and George Stark (his ghostly twin).
It's been 30 years since we last watched the film, which also stars Amy Madigan and Michael Rooker - with hair and playing a good guy. You can see it was made at a time when special effects weren't that special but were creeping into films on an almost weekly basis. In fact, for a Romero film it's almost quite restrained with more inferred gore than you actually see.
In essence it's a bit of a cross between Misery and The Outsider - which was adapted - quite brilliantly - into a 10-part series in 2020 with Jason Bateman and Ben Mendelsohn. There are elements of some other books by King in there, but essentially it's about a writer who 'gives birth' to an alter ego rooted in his absorbed dead twin that then goes round killing everybody related to Thad until he agrees to write another George Stark novel - the pulp novels that have earned Thad all of his money that he no longer wants to write.
It's dated. For a near two hour film there's lots that seem to be overlooked and corners that appear to have been cut for the sake of the film. The story has been changed slightly - but I'm remembering that from the book, which despite having read it over 30 years ago is memorable for the death of a recurring character in many of King's Castle Rock books, who doesn't die in this film.
I suppose the thing that makes this film interesting is it's a Romero film without proper zombies and highlights something very few people tend to observe when talking about this 'legend' of horror cinema - he's actually a really shit director, who seemed to think the art of making a film was to have a camera rolling while people did things in front of it. However, The Dark Half isn't half bad; it has a strong cast and felt like it could have benefited from being longer or even a TV series - but, of course, that happened 28 years later in another story by another director.
***
So, in a strange way the third and final season of Picard is essentially getting the Next Generation team back together, although we only saw three of them in the first episode - with Gates McFadden looking like a 200-year-old woman in a blonde wig. However, in just 45 minutes it did a very good job of excising the memory of Season two from my mind.
It appears to be set a few years after the end of season two with 7 of 9 now Commander whatever her name is working on Ryker's old ship with a captain who seems to be what most Starfleet personal appear to be now - an arsehole. She risks her career to help Jean Luc and Ryker achieve what they want to but we're left with a cliffhanger - Beverley Crusher has another son (We saw Wesley briefly at the end of season two as he is now - a Traveller) and they're being menaced by what looks a little like the Romulan vessel that Eric Bana was driving in the first Star Trek reboot film.
Frankly, this first episode was better than almost everything that went before it and they really should have just got the old gang together and made three series of Star Trek: The Old Generation.
***
And so we return to Clarkson's Farm and the inexplicable position of feeling sorry for the fat old fascist.
Over the space of the days between reviewing the first couple of episodes and finishing it, we have witnessed West Oxford District Council (or the Oxfordshire Nazi Party) essentially wage a personal vendetta against Jezza, even stooping so low as to refuse him planning permission to build an internal farm track and putting traffic cones for 2km either side of Diddly Squat farm. Someone rich and powerful and not a Clarkson fan has been bankrolling this action against the controversial presenter regardless of the harm it's doing to other farms that are relying Clarkson's success to help improve their plights since Brexit fucked them up royally.
What this series does better than anything else is show, quite starkly, the rubbish farms and farmers have to put up with just to supply us with food. They're essentially a service industry that is treated like some idiot cousin because of the impression that all farmers are wealthy. It's clear from this that isn't the case at all and the only reason there is someone fighting for them is because Clarkson is doing it and he has the money and the resources, oh and is bloody minded enough to fight.
The NFU recognise Clarkson's Farm as being ten times more beneficial to educating people about the struggles of farming than Countryfile does on BBC1; so much so it actually won an award. What Amazon have done is highlight what rural Oxfordshire nymbyism is doing to destroy the lives of the people all connected to Clarkson's venture. You see, he's wealthy; he'll be all right, but none of the other people involved will be.
Amazon also confirmed they will not be renewing Clarkson's contract when it runs out in June 2024, so series three of this and another four Grand Tour specials will hit our shores before Jeff Bezos finally sacks the divisive Yorkshireman.
***
Next time: Hopefully more new series - I mean there's more in this edition than I expected - and probably some older films.
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