Pop Culture - Animal Magnetism

There might be some spoilers in this so please be aware...

Dinosaur 65

If all you want from a film is an injured man and a child struggling across a hostile terrain attempting to out run dinosaurs and a massive asteroid then 65 is, without doubt, the film for you. 

However, if you're wondering how Adam Driver can make films that get nominated for Oscars and then star in something as trite and frivolous as Jurassic Park meets ... Actually, I'm not quite sure because Driver's character isn't really like anything else, then join the club. Personally, I struggle with him as an actor, if he has been cast as Reed Richards I worry an awful lot and he reminds me a little of Adrien Brody except Brody is a better actor, has a better agent and does action films much betterer.

65 is a little over 90 minutes and fills a void, like rice crackers but with less substance.

All Sweetness with Teeth

I suppose the best way to describe Sweet Tooth is to call it a surreal modern apocalyptic fantasy with elements of black comedy, a childlike charm and a nastiness lying under the surface that, thankfully, isn't explored to its fullest extent.

I wasn't really sure about it to start and I'm not convinced the wife is a fan, but it is an unusual story with an awful amount of sweetness in a truly horrible and prejudiced world. In many ways the under story here is the most disturbing; it starts out with a pandemic that has catastrophic effects on the world, killing as many as 50%, maybe more, of the people on the planet. At the same time as the disease takes hold, most of mankind's children begin being born as animal hybrids from birds to bulls to pigs and in Gus's case - our main character - a deer.

However, these Disney-like babies are not fawned [ahem] over, they are systematically annihilated and when they're not being killed with extreme prejudice, they're being dissected to find out if a) they caused the devastating pandemic and b) if they hold the cure? Yet, don't think these hybrids are the only ones persecuted; unlike our own recent pandemic, the one in Sweet Tooth causes far more panic. Suburban streets are littered with the burned out shells of homes, as we discover that if anyone shows signs of the disease they are locked in their houses and set fire to... It might all be cute Disney-like characters but the hate, destruction and violence runs deep.

In the middle of this is Nonzo Anozie as Jeppard, a former nasty bastard who used to hunt hybrids and burn the infected; he's also an ex-footballer, built like a shit-house rat and has had a change of heart. He ends up with Gus, or Sweet Tooth as he calls him, even though he tries very hard to lose him and eventually we start to get a kind of modern adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, as Gus and Jep try to find the Reserve, a safe place for hybrids, unaware that even this haven is about to fall to the desperate dregs of mankind. They are joined by Bear - a teenage hybrid-sympathiser, while being pursued by the General, the show's 'comedy' evil bastard. The series really has a surreal feel to it and the weird juxtaposition of cutesy Disneyfied animal kids and violent nasty people jars, but not in a bad way.

While it's clear from about the sixth part that this is a set up for a second series more than a complete tale (tail?) things start happening from that point to at least make season one more than just a road trip - not that I've not enjoyed that. The woman who runs the Preserve - a safe haven for hybrids - is targeted by the aforementioned General and the child this woman has adopted as her own is in fact the sibling of one of Gus's companions Bear. Gus may well be the reason for the entire plague and he is clearly the first of all these hybrid children. I expect season two will give up some clues and offer some answers. We'll start watching that next week.

Noo Yoik Tales

It's been 21 years since Martin Scorcese's multi-award-winning Gangs of New York came out and we finally got around to watching it. It just never appealed and as the years went by it appealed even less.

That said, it's not a bad film - obviously - but so much of it seemed facile, fleeting and unnecessary; it's nearly three hours long and could easily have been less than two and it feels remarkably dated despite probably having aged quite well. It was really just a film about Daniel Day Lewis's Bill the Butcher - the leader of a native gang with aspirations to enter into politics and public control - and the son of his biggest rival - Leonardo Di Caprio - who infiltrates Bill's operation with the intention of eventually killing him and gaining revenge.

The first two hours of this film flew by; it was quite a riveting story, but the last 45 minutes feel wrong; it almost feels like a different film. I don't know if it was cut for TV (it was shown very late at night, so I doubt it) or simply a poor ending, but in the end I didn't feel as though I had watched an early 21st century classic, I felt as though I watched something run out of steam.

Mad Quacks

I'd heard about Shrinking but I didn't think it would appeal, so I put it firmly on the backburner. Then I read a couple of reviews and I thought, okay, we'll give it a try and boy, the first episode was absolutely fantastic (and yet another winner for AppleTV). 

Jason Segel is excellent as the psychiatrist having a total mid-life meltdown, for reasons that we learn later in the first episode in a jaw dropping scene that completely wrong foots you, mainly because it's done so well that you don't think it's going to have that kind of Fucking Hell moment.

Jimmy decides it's time to turn therapy into self-help and starts off by telling one of his patients that she needs to leave her abusive husband and start afresh somewhere else. When she does exactly this and it works you think he might be onto something, but of course it all goes tits up by the end. 

The rest of the series follows a similar theme, with Jimmy trying to shake things up for his patients while also trying to get himself out of the mental mess he'd got himself into over the previous 12 months. I have to say that I haven't laughed as much at a TV series in ages; I think Ted Lasso is funny, but this is way ahead in terms of LOLs. Much of that might be down to the fact that most of the characters are, in their own way, absolutely insane and some of those seeking therapy aren't. Oh and Harrison Ford is a remarkably funny man.

I don't want to give too much away because it's a series worth watching without being spoiled because much of what you'll love about it is the fact it has lots of unresolved issues and you need to find out what those issues are first before you can resolve them in your own head. If I give away the twists it doesn't have the same impact, but I really can't recommend this enough.

Re-Dead by Dawn

Zack Snyder's 2004 remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead is arguably one of the best 'zombie' movies ever made - probably only surpassed by 28 Days Later - which it borrows heavily from. I know that's high praise indeed, especially for a film that had a little too much unnecessary nudity and a surprisingly small amount of OTT gore and violence - although it does push the envelope in ways that no Walking Dead TV show has ever done, despite this film being nearly 20 years old. Could that have had something to do with James Gunn having provided the script?

It takes the idea from the original - evading the zombie apocalypse by holing up in a shopping mall with everything you need - and updates it for the 21st century. It gives the franchise an entirely scary feel because for all the innovative special effects Romero introduced in his 'Dead' films, they were just shuffling, shambling dead people - Snyder's have a serious sense of menace about them and as a result the film is elevated to a much higher level.

What stops it from being a really brilliant film (other than the actually ridiculous and exploitative nudity) was its tendency to try and be funny. It worked a couple of times, but the almost comedic 'interlude' in the film was worth a cringe more than anything.

It's a good film that has dated well. It's not often I'll say that about anything 'zombie'. 

Oh Coq au Vin

Good news! 

James May's back! 

Yes, the most boring and yet funniest of the ancient Top Gear presenters is back with another cooking series for Amazon and this time he's not an amateur in the kitchen any more.

Also back is Nikki his long-suffering kitchen assistant and his interactive production team who are as much a part of the show as James, who is now expertly cooking world food in an often cack-handed looking way. The reason for this is because it's filmed in a suburban kitchen/diner and there are at least 8 people and equipment in there at any one point. I expect it gets very hot in that kitchen.

The best recommendation I can give is a review they were discussing on the first episode; someone left a review of series one which consisted of two words "absolute bollocks" and Five ***** Stars. Except it isn't really bollocks, it's quite amusing, very erudite and May now looks like he's morphing into a Billy Connolly tribute act while channelling his inner Mary Berry.  

Any Old Iron Man

Iron Man: 15 Years Later with Kevin Feige and Jon Favreau is a nice little documentary even though it's produced and made by Marvel and they're bigging up the 15th anniversary of the film that has put them where they are. But it's great fun and it makes you miss Robert Downey Jr. It's on the Tube of You at Marvel's own channel. It's worth 21 minutes of your life.

Hall versus Campbell

I had a Twitter argument with Nicky Campbell that ended with him apologising to me for being 'ratty'. To be fair, I made a good fist of the argument, complaining to Campbell that his 'joke' TV programme - actually a simulcast of his radio show - concentrates far too much on things that aren't news. He, naturally, disagreed but after much interaction, plus interjections from some of his army of followers and a couple of bits of proof from me (links to newspaper articles complaining about it not being TV news and the link to the official BBC complaint about it - more than 500 complaints, he basically backed down after accusing me of being a Daily Express reader.

I still think his radio show belongs on the radio. BBC News has lost another viewer.

Zombie Cheese

This week's Fear happened. I'm actually writing this before I watch it because I expect I won't have much to say.

In reality it was an episode that just had me shouting at the television, 'For fuck's sake just kill them!' How many times in the entire Walking Dead universe history has one of the good guys had a gun pointed at one of the really bad guys and an entire series of pointless bollocks could be solved with just the single pull of a trigger? This week Madison and June have the chance to end Padre once and for all but don't bother and therefore this final season can't finish soon enough.

Beard Theory

The penultimate episode of Ted Lasso was something of a let down compared to last week's. Don't get me wrong, it's one of the best things on TV, but this week it took so many liberties with the actual game of football that it circled me back to the days when I struggled to get past the 'imaginary' version of football that is prevalent in this series.

This week's subplot conclusions involved Jamie, predominantly, but also the conclusion of Nathan's redemption arc and actually meandered around like I thought last week's would until the end when we were left with a cliffhanger that is obviously Ted handing in his notice. We did get a revelation about Coach Beard which like all the other revelations in this series was a mind blower.

My mate Kelvin agreed with my theory last week except he doesn't think Ted will die, Ted will just move back to Kansas to be with his family, while Nathan and Roy will lead Richmond into Europe as Premier League... runner's up. This show has never done sugar coated fairy tale endings and I expect Richmond won't win the league but will win some friends.

Oh and that ending; that last six or seven minutes, it featured four examples of something Ted has never, ever, done in this series and it was a truly WOW moment in a show that does WOW moments so well. Ted came into his own at last, it just took his mom to bring it out of him. This will be missed.

And Next Time...

The conclusions of Yellowjackets and Ted Lasso. Possibly Sweet Tooth season two, a few films, some James May again and the fourth part of the final series of the show I now refer to as Please Stop, which will have more shuffling dead things and laughable story lines. We might make a start on the final season of Barry and might be tempted to give FUBAR a try. Who can say now we have so much choice.