Review: Stephen King's Fairy Tale

 

Here's a weird one. Half way through this book I'd already written most of my review and it involved being transported back to a time when reading Stephen King books allowed me to escape much easier. This is because the start of this book and all the way until the hero sets foot in Empis is 100% bona fide Stephen King; everything from the precise settings to the introductory details about different characters, King has never failed to give his characters individual, almost unique, voices and this is no exception... Except, maybe it is?

We learn everything about our hero, Charlie, that is necessary; we know enough about Mr Bowditch to stifle any doubts; but Charlie's dad and some of the other supporting characters were simply cyphers, the story could have happened without them. His former drunk single parent might have been the main reason that drove Charlie forward but he was going to do it any way. Charlie was doing everything for either the dog, Radar or Mr Bowditch or his dad or the princess, but really he was doing it for himself. He was clear at pointing this out a number of times when the narrative called for him to remind people about what a shit he was when he was younger and how this is all penance.

However, it's a cracking story for 200 pages until the first mystery starts to unravel, from then on it's a book in search of a lost groove. The moment Charlie sets foot on the steps to Empis it becomes exactly what it says on the cover and we're introduced to yet another of Stephen King's worlds within worlds, a trope that I have to say is becoming a little tired now. We had it with Rose Madder and Lisey's Story, we had it with eight Dark Tower books, in collaborations, as short stories - the King multiverse dabbles in other worlds all the time and the two best: Insomnia and From a Buick 8 were more than enough. So many of these kind of King books seem to follow the same pattern and Fairy Tale could almost have been a tale from the Eyes of the Dragon world or an adventure Jack Sawyer might have had ... and I'd rather be praising it for originality than deciding what box I'm filing it away in.

There were some red herrings thrown in, either that or it was just bad writing, but an example is the character of Chris near the beginning, who was initially written like he was going to be a thorn in Charlie's side again, yet apart from a couple of comparisons towards the end of the book Chris Polley's only contribution was to get massively fucked up by our hero. 

There are a couple of interesting things happening in the capital city of Empis, but the main villain is too vague, his vessel hardly in it and supporting cast were cannon fodder; there was a few obligatory things that seem to happen in many King novels, that would be labelled 'wishful thinking' and a 75 year old dog, not that that has often cropped up in King's stories, apart from a 50 year old mouse that once had been crushed under the heel of a prison guard boot... You might start to see why I can't recall the last original King book; even some of the ones I've enjoyed are in some way or another a derivative of a previous work or idea, and, of course, the idea behind Fairy Tale is there are stories in it that reflect famous fairy tales, so reusing old ideas is almost at the heart of the entire book.

That's where it falls down because once we get into the 'anything goes' stage, it doesn't. We return to another common theme in King's books - imprisonment and captivity. It's almost like he got Robin Furth to compile a list of his most used stereotypes so he could make sure they were included. When Radar escaped the city but Charlie was captured, I spent the next 200 pages wondering what the dog was getting up to and how much more I would have enjoyed that to this relentless boredom of prison and the coming of the new Messiah (except he kept reminding people that he was really just a naughty boy). 

The finale sort of came and went in a blur, I think I'd been desensitised and was in need of logic, but I thought the book petered out a little and even while the epilogue had a feeling of relative finality about it, if King was 40 years younger you just know this would be his next Dark Tower. I don't like to say things like this but given his age and his desire to do some different things, I'm sort of resigned to the fact that I may well have read my last good Stephen King book, the same way I know I'll never hear new [insert name] music or see new artwork by [insert favourite artist].

Like a good football match analogy, this was a book of two halves - a compelling and chewy opening premise is laid, but when the characters come out for the second half they'd lost the plot and it all went a bit wrong and silly. It felt like it was written with TV or a film in mind, books shouldn't be written that way.

3/10

Pop Culture - I Want My Icons Dead or Alive

Included in this blog are spoilers designed to spoil your entertainment if you've not seen a designated show or program. Please be aware of this before you continue to read.

The Grand Bore

I laughed, out loud, at least a dozen times in the opening ten minutes, but from that point on the shortcomings of one of the greatest three-way bromances of modern times became more than obvious and by the end I was hoping for a quick and painless 'divorce'.

I am, of course, talking about The Grand Tour: Eurocrash the latest instalment in the adventures of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May; three aging men with a reputation for being cocks. Since the three departed Top Gear almost a decade ago now, they've been working on the law of diminishing returns; a pandemic and Clarkson's propensity to open his mouth and insult half the country, while the other half cheers him on. The truth is the spark that made this trio hasn't gone out but it's dimming and unlikely to come back to life, at least not on this evidence.

Eurocrash suffers from no real cohesion. There isn't really a theme here; just three men in unlikely cars travelling through lesser known parts of Europe and going through the same motions they've tended to go through for the last 20 years. It didn't have the same feel as road trips of the past have, in fact because of James May's ridiculous choice of vehicle, a large part of the one hour and three quarters programme featured Hammond and Clarkson having fun while May - usually the most entertaining one - tried to fix whatever car he was driving; it didn't make for the usual camaraderie we're used to and the episode petered out a little, which was an achievement as it had a low bar to begin with.

The three return to Africa for the 3rd instalment of this series, which might be the last one they do. I hope they go out with a bang because, together, they can barely muster a whimper at the moment.

Tom Walker Calling

Podcasts! I'm not a huge fan; it's an attention thing. I struggle with the radio at times. However, the chance of hearing more of Jonathan Pie meant I went in search on BBC Sounds, with a degree of trepidation. Pie on the BBC? I mean, I'm pleased, but he's a bit lefty and swears like a man who had only been taught four letter words.

Call Jonathan Pie is a 10-part 'sitcom' in that it would probably work as a TV program with a bit of tweaking. The premise is Pie - a 'news journalist' - filling in for a late night Radio 5 phone in and makes such an impression he's offered the full time gig. Then from Podcast #2 on it takes on a different phone-in subject every episode and usually in rather spectacular fashion something goes wrong.

The best bits are when Pie is 'on air' rather than the sometimes tortuous scenes between Pie, his producer, Jules, and Sam, an Asian sound engineer and someone who suffers from some insecurity problems (although the rest of the cast improve as the show gets into its stride). The 'debates' with the callers are hilarious at times and are designed to show us the worst kind of people are usually the ones who phone in with opinions. 

This isn't Pie's news casts, which are concise and focused, with a half hour format there's going to be a lot of obviously scripted stuff. The other key thing is some episodes are genuinely filled with LOLs, while others are absolutely just sharp edged commentary that make you angry - not at Pie but at the injustice he does such a great job of showing up.

The Knights That Go...

It has been over 30 years since we last watched John Boorman's Excalibur. It was one of the wife's favourite films - although she did reassess that last night. It's an epic story adapted in a strange style pinpointing the key events in the life of Arthur, Merlin and the rest of the round table gang.

The problem in 2023 is there's a wee bit of The Jabberwocky about it. Not in the content - that's almost reminiscent of Monty Python and the Holy Grail - but the general odd - surreal - feel, like there's a raging camp comedy fighting its way out of a serious movie. It's all very earnest and typically 1980s, with lots of non-indigenous snakes popping up all over the place - in the 1930s film makers liked to use armadillos in films because not everyone knew what they were and would be weirded out by them. However, much of the last 30 minutes is stylised weirdness and becomes more existential than actual. It goes off on one before regrouping for the finale (which had elements of Monty Python in that as well) that legend has it had to be reshot several times because the cameras used could not pick out the foreground detail against the dark background ultimately giving the cameraman a breakdown. 

The wife still thinks it's a good film, but she feels it has dated and her tastes have changed. I thought it was overwrought and anachronistically wrong, but Nicol Williamson as Merlin is something of a revelation. It's like he decided to play the role as a schizophrenic, with him changing his voice mid sentence sometimes - is he English, Irish, Yorkshire, southerner, Welsh? I think he was told to play the role scattershot to give people the impression the wizard was from everywhere (and nowhere, baby). I'm glad I won't have to watch it again, it drags on far too long.

In the Meadows

We're both big fans of Shane Meadows and literally everything I've seen of his has had some impact on me. He is a great British dramatist and can do no wrong...

Except The Gallows Pole's first episode was a little overlong and didn't appear to do much more than introduce a bunch of characters all down on their luck - so far so This is England, except without the intrigue or interest. It's set in the mid 18th century, the north is being ravaged by the Industrial Revolution and rural communities are dying - literally. Michael Socha's David returns from a mysterious seven years away in Birmingham, almost dies, gets better and sets about helping the community bury his dead father. And that's about it. I'm sure stuff will happen in part two - as there are only three parts - but this meandered around and had a lead female actor who JUST SHOUTED ALL THE TIME!

Episode two at least gave us a premise and a story to work with, despite the shouting, but in many ways very little happened in the second part either, just more groundwork and scene-setting. It was with the final part when things happened and at a pace and almost too much was crammed into it and there was still time to have a twist in the tale, especially when you realise what the title of the episode actually means.

It was ... entertaining. Nowhere near the best thing Meadows has done but it was refreshing, had some disturbing imagery in it and was genuinely touching and funny in equal parts. Not for everyone, but enough for me.

Il Profumo d'Italia

We've started watching Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy on the iPlayer and there's an element of 'shit, why didn't we watch this when it came out' because it's a delightful series with Tucci showing just what a likeable man he is and because of his love of food and cooking he's the perfect host - and his parents are Italian, so he speaka da language [apologies for the borderline racism].

Italy looks like a fantastic place and it's been a wish of ours to travel there after watching other culinary and arts programmes about the place. Tucci paints this picture while his team fill in the gaps with everything that is bellissimo about Italy, making it a definite for the bucket list - all I need is the money and a passport.

Season one concluded in Sicily and left us feeling like this would be a region we'd avoid if we ever found our way there. The Sicilians eat a lot of strange things - raw donkey probably being the fucking weirdest - and lots of pointless looking fish, usually chopped, ground or partially filleted. That said, I'm glad Italy has 20 provinces as that presumably means there will be a third series, but it would have been better if Italy had 30 or 40 provinces. Maybe he can just do them all again but go to different cities?

The Aye Player

As promised, despite the growing length of this week's instalment, here's an initial list of things you should seek out on iPlayer that originated from BBC Scotland and may never have made it to the rest of the UK.

Grand Tour of Scottish Lochs/Lakes/Rivers/Islands is an umbrella title for numerous series of Paul Murton travelling around Scotland looking at the history and the landscape of different regions of the country, usually with lochs or rivers as the reason for him being there. It's an affable and amiable ramble through history and geography and Murton is a entertaining and erudite host.

Iain Robertson Rambles isn't the same as the above but with a different person... Robertson is one of those actors you'll see and recognise but won't remember his name or where you last saw him - he is currently in River City, the Glaswegian equivalent of Eastenders - which we don't watch. There have been three lots of his rambles - the Southern Upland Way, the West Highland Way and the Hebridean Way, but there might be another one but we've yet to find it. It's a man walking along famous routes with a camera, sometimes followed by a drone and recently with his dog, Molly the Collie. It's like a slightly different version of relaxing TV - you relax while Robertson rambles.

Now, this next one isn't currently available on iPlayer, which I don't understand, but you can see clips of it on You Tube or on the Beluga Lagoon website, at least until it finds its way back to iPlayer, but Roaming in the Wild sounds just like the last two programmes, but it isn't, although much of all three programmes is about how beautiful Scotland is. Roaming is a little on the surreal side as it follows  wildlife cameraman and folk musician Andrew O'Donnell and his pal Mark Taylor as they navigate parts of Scotland using different modes of transport - all man-powered. The music is fantastic as well. The one I'd recommend the most is series 1 episode 3, where the boys ride a tandem across the northern coastline of Scotland. 

Crazy For You

The 2010 remake of George Romero's The Crazies was an altogether slower and bleaker version, which almost ignores those infected by a leakage of a dodgy biological weapon in favour of a depiction of the US Army that is all too familiar in dystopian dramas. There also wasn't that much that was crazy about it.

It's essentially a 28 Days Later type of film with less oomph and everybody's a little crazy and those infected can be a little more crazy or absolutely batshit crazy. Timothy Olyphant is almost believable as the sheriff losing control of his town and fighting to save his own life and Radha Mitchell as his doctor wife who is quick to realise how bad things are going to be.

I suppose the ultimate solution to an contained outbreak is to nuke it out of existence so the conclusion of the film wasn't shocking, but it was brutal and probably what would happen; the epilogue is just unnervingly bleak. The problem is this is a boring film with not enough Crazies or menace from them and too much fascist allegory. It needed to be 20 minutes shorter (which would have made it about 80 minutes) or have a different script.

Trailer Trash

This week's big trailer is Marvel/Sony's Kraven the Hunter and there's almost three minutes of it - that's about two minutes more than any MCU trailers and unlike MCU trailers that tease, twist and obfuscate what is really going to happen, this seemed to tell the entire story in less than the time it takes the trailer to conclude.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson appears to want to be as many superheroes as he can - he's already been Kick-Ass and Quicksilver, now it's the turn of hero/anti-hero and Spider-Man foe Kraven the Hunter. In this film he will dial in his performance (you can work that out from the three minutes of excruciating agony the trailer turns out to be) and apart from a nod to some spiders, I imagine the links this will have to Spider-Man will be so tenuous it will make the watcher groan with incredulity.

Sony need to stop this or Disney needs to buy Sony out.

Skrull & Cross Bones

The MCU's Secret Invasion is here, but has all the hype been worth it? Well... I'm not sure. Yes, the opening episode was intriguing, it set the scene very nicely for a paranoia riddled thriller, but is it the saviour of the MCU after recent set backs? I dunno.

The show starts with what appears to be Martin Freeman's CIA operative meeting with a undercover agent who believes a rogue element of Skrulls are attempting to take over the world by wiping out the human race, except you know almost from the start that this isn't 'our' Everett Ross even if it looks like he isn't - they tried the double switch and it didn't work. That spoiler aside, no real surprises in the opening just the return of Talos and Maria Hill, a sense of genuine confusion and a shock ending.

We then move to Nick Fury returning to Earth, after spending a long time in orbit on the space station that has never really been given much more than a cursory mention before as to why. This is sort of addressed by suggesting he's never been the same since the snap/blip/Thanos business and has been hiding himself away and all fairness to the script writers and Fury he pretty much agrees with this prognosis, but has returned at the request of his friend Talos to sort out a situation that he started, which now appears to be getting out of hand.

There's a lot of exposition here and a lot of reliance on perhaps the viewer not only remembering all the Skrull information from Captain Marvel but also extrapolating from Talos's last appearance in the second MCU Spider-Man film and other snippets that might have been dropped over the last couple of years [none that I can remember]. 

Essentially, if you weren't aware that Talos had a wife (now dead with little explanation) and a daughter (who may or may not belong to the rebel alliance of Skrulls intent on reclaiming the Earth as their new homeworld) and that some of the Skrulls were peacefully relocated here in the 1990s (at the end of the Captain Marvel film) or that Fury and Talos are great friends, you might get a tad confused. There's a lot happening now and going on in the past; it's not stopping to give newbies a refresher course and this is probably where it will fall flat; it already can't standalone. Even if they try to explain all the backstory over the next five weeks; for the uninitiated it's a very confusing beginning and, of course, there are shapeshifting lizard people...

Was it good to see Olivia Coleman in a Marvel thing? I don't know; she is a bit of a one note actor when she plays posh or powerful people and it felt a little like it was Olivia Coleman guest starring - if you know what I mean? I'm also puzzled by something, but hey, this is a common problem not fixed with TV - I've been under the impression from what I've read about the new Captain America film that Harrison Ford wasn't only playing Thunderbolt Ross (replacing William Hurt) but was also going to be the president; if that's the case I expect Dermot Mulroney's President Ritson to be a victim in this six-part series.

Everyone: Did you like it?
Me: I wanted to. It felt like a serious - adult - Marvel project, but there was also this feeling that I'm going to waste the next six weeks hoping for some kind of conclusion and I'm going to feel cheated. Nothing is self-contained at Marvel now; not even that dreadful Moon Knight series and as a result you just know this will end up setting up another film - the critics are suggesting Marvels because Fury is in that, but when this is set is unknown. If it happens before Secret Invasion then the continuity is screwed because Fury admits he hasn't been back to Earth since the snap and he clearly is seen on Kamala Khan's doorstep in the trailer and if it happens after this series then we know that Fury wins and doesn't die and is taking a more active role in things. But do you know something; if I can't watch something without constantly reference other films and TV shows then I think I've lost the will to continue watching TV.
Everyone: Yeah, but did you like it?
Me: Well apart from spotting the impostor in the opening scene, wondering what part of Moscow looks like Northeast London or the city and trying to work out who was what and why, I'd have to say: not really. Jackson as Fury is fine; he's a natural for the character (even if I have massive problems with the continuity of the character and his different appearance to how he was originally portrayed), Ben Mendelsohn is - as usual - excellent and you suspect that if someone else major is going to die in this series it will probably be him, heroically and for peace. My jury's out at the moment; ask me again in next week's column.

The Bear is BACK!!!

One of the best TV series of the last decade is back; the astounding Jeremy Allen White returns as the Michelin starred chef now reopening his own place in downtown Chicago on the site of the family deli/sandwich shop. Series one was quite brilliant, especially the last couple of episodes which took TV filming to new levels of astonishment. So what's season two got to offer?

Carmy, Sydney and Sugar have decided to turn the Original Beef into a fine dining restaurant and the fact they haven't got enough money to do it is immaterial. Richie is again going through his latest existential crisis, while Tina can't get her head around the fact she has gone from hating Sydney's shadow to being her sous chef. It's fast, frenetic and full of life; it carried on literally from where it finished; the same pace, the same feel, the same vibe - it's just visceral TV at its best. I'm so happy it's back.

Next Time...

Just when you think everything's shutting down for the summer, you get inundated with TV and stuff to watch. More Secret Invasion, The Bear and season two of Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy; all I need it a new series of For All Mankind and a [redacted] from [redacted] until my [redacted] explodes.

Modern Culture - I Didn't See That Coming

Spoilers involved somewhere in the following words, tread carefully... 

Please Stop (part 5)

There are only 12 episodes in this final series. If the remaining seven are of the same quality as the fifth one then if I kill myself now will someone ensure that I don't come back from the dead with weird teeth?

Reality [Redacted] 

Reality isn't a description or a state of mind, it's the name of the young girl accused of being an NSA whistleblower by the FBI. It's an odd film because it is literally based on the transcripts of the FBI's arrest of Reality Winner and there's a slightly surreal feel about the entire thing, especially when [redacted] bits are phased out of the film like interference.

In many ways it's a dramatized documentary with Josh Hamilton (who once played a weaselly and nasty bureaucrat in later seasons of TWD) as the lead FBI agent, obviously playing it all a bit like a nervous Columbo and Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner is brilliant who still doesn't really understand the mess she's in, but because she's ex-military she accepts the harsh scrutiny she's put under, but then things start to go wrong...

It's a cold, stark and harsh film that plays out like a stage play. The acting is... detached, but that might be down to the fact it's all transcript - there isn't a single word uttered in this film that wasn't documented or redacted previously. I'm not sure this film has a scriptwriter. 

Did I enjoy it? I was happy it was only about 80 minutes long, but that might be more down to the fact that the USA is really just a fascist state with bright colours and balloons.

It's All Going Terribly Wrong

Someone suggested I was joking about the Captain America 4 name change because of antisemitism - I wasn't. Interestingly, it appears that some of the people originally announced to appear in this film are no longer being mentioned, while a bunch of new characters have been 'introduced'. I expect this film will be an absolute mess.

Deadpool 3 has been moved almost a year up the schedules and takes the release date originally planned for the Cap film, that now is moved to the Thunderbolts release date and that film is delayed until at least November 2024. Instead of cancelling The Kang Dynasty Marvel are simply putting it back to the summer of 2025 and the follow up Avengers film back a further year. The rate we're going, the much-heralded Fantastic Four film should debut around 2032.

Tenoch Heurta - the Mexican actor who played Namor in the impressively dull Wank Ada Forever - has been accused of sexual assault by a Spanish saxophonist, she described Heurta as 'violent and [a] sexual predator'. I'm guessing someone somewhere in MCU headquarters is holding their head in their hands and wondering what the hell is going on. 

A new book called Burn it Down has been released that exposes a lot of things Kevin Feige and Disney execs will not want people to see or will go a long way to denying. One of the key elements has been the lack of autonomy for writers, with Marvel/Disney insisting that an 'executive' was in the writing rooms and has final say over what would happen. This goes hand in hand with some of the things Chris Hemsworth hinted at and suggests that all the issues Marvel has had since the end of Phase 4 are down to management and not writers.

Genetix

We remembered watching Splice back in 2009 when it first came out and I specifically thought it wasn't the film I expected it to be. You get the impression it's going to be a little like the late 90s monster thriller Relic - but that's Del Torro's involvement - with a bit of action and thrills thrown in. What you actually get is a Cronenberg-esque homage to Frankenstein with characters called Clive and Elsa and more of a psycho-sexual drama than a monster movie. It isn't the film you expect to see based on what you know about it going in; this is far more uncomfortable.

It stars Adrien Brody - renowned for as many weird films as potential Oscar winners - as a geneticist trying to create a farming chemical to save the future of the company he works for. His partner and fellow scientist is Elsa, played by Sarah Polley (most recently seen by us in Zach Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead), who maybe manipulates things to go her way without thinking through the consequences. They create a human/animal hybrid that soon takes on a life [lives?] of its own and that's when it stops being a sci-fi film and becomes a cross between a body horror and a good old fashioned horror film. There are a lot of flaws in it and sometimes the narrative feels unconnected, like different parts of the film were written by different writers who only had a vague idea of what the previous scene was about. 

It was strange, quite compelling and also a little disturbing, especially considering this was made 13 years ago and science has moved on apace since then. Again, the special effects were quite excellent (if a little flawed in places) and it begs the question - why are the special effects in modern movies so poor compared to 10, 15 or even 20 years ago?

The Blah of Blah

I used to listen to the James O'Brien LBC radio show religiously for over five years, but I stopped about four years ago when I grew tired of his relentless attacks on the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. No, this isn't about politics specifically, but I decided to tune in again in the days after Boris Johnson resigned his seat in parliament.

The reason I gave up on JoB wasn't because of his attacks on the Labour leader, it was his refusal to have a debate about it. He had his opinion/belief about the politician and he wasn't going to have his belief challenged by people who might be allowed to make a proper argument. To me, the refusal to explain why you are not prepared to debate something reduced his stature to me alarmingly; he sounded like the modern day equivalent of Lord Haw Haw.

I'd been listening to my first JoB in five years and actually remember thinking that it hasn't changed at all really when, almost deliberately, a caller mentioned something that really appealed to me, the press's involvement in allowing Boris Johnson carte blanche in a discussion about how the ex-PM got where he got. O'Brien agreed with him, then the caller said, 'They did the same in reverse with Jeremy Corbyn' and suddenly it was like someone had shoved a live wire up his arse. It was an unpleasant radio experience and whatever the caller did to try to back up his claims, O'Brien was adamantly sticking to his character assassination and kept banging on about how unelectable he was, when the caller mentioned 2017 when Corbyn cut the Tory majority to needing a deal with another party and polled almost 40% of the country - higher than Blair ever achieved, and how from that moment on the media relentlessly attacked Corbyn on a daily basis to ensure that never happened again and O'Brien accused him of living in an alternate reality and went to a break.

I accept Corbyn would never have been PM, but it seems the media is so scared of policies that aren't neo-liberal in origin and beneficial to the rich they'll go to great lengths to rewrite history, carefully erasing things in the past that are incongruous with present history. I won't be listening to LBC again, probably ever.

Oh FFS

Dear Tube of You, sometimes I might be looking at something out of pure curiosity or even accidentally  and given that I switched it off after 30 seconds doesn't mean I am now a life long fan of that thing and now want nothing but suggestions related to that thing. Thank you, a disgruntled user x

A Sucker For Punishment

We've been slowly working our way through the Zach Snyder filmography over the last six months and tonight it was the turn of Sucker Punch. 

Oh for heaven's sake, I'd forgotten just what a complete load of old bollocks this film was. A mixture of the unpleasant and unsavoury wrapped up in typical Snyder visuals - it looked fantastic, but it was like watching a Duran Duran video directed by David Lynch on cheap crack. This has very few redeemable features about it; sleazy, violent, salacious, exploitative and illogical and they're just the positives. Fortunately we were spared anything more than vague titillation as this film could have been 'highly questionable' had it had any sex or nudity in it, but here the film showed admirable restraint.

It starts off a bit silly and just hurtles along making no sense at all as it throws zombies, orcs, robots and monsters at a group of imaginary heroines fighting for their freedom against the oppressive regime of the nut house they just happen to be locked up in that doubles up as a night club cum brothel or does it? Who cares? No one; it's shit. Snyder made a toilet film and threw up the suggestion that he might just be a little perverted. Move on; nothing to see here.

Faulty Faculty

Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty is essentially a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing mashed up and remixed with a bit of Terminator thrown in for good measure. It's also not dated very well, probably because it's now 25 years old and special effects weren't up to scratch then. What this film is really is a bit of a who's who of would be famous actors and some people we've long forgotten.

The people who would haunt us for the next 20 years plus include Josh Hartnett, Elijah Wood, Bebe Neuwirth, Salma Hayek, Famke Jansson, Laura Harris, Jon Stewart and Usher. Plus the likes of Robert Patrick (who had a couple of moments of renaissance), Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall and Danny Masterson (now convicted of rape) - this was a road map of the future, but in reality it's not a very good film, purely and simply because it acknowledges the films it's paying homage to guarantee it any critical success. Still, it's another old film off of the Flash Drive of Doom.

A Lot of Grunting and Numbers

Due to the lack of TV, we watched another Snyder film. 300 on a hot sweaty night seemed appropriate and in the 17 years since we last saw the film one thing is clear, it's certainly a Zack Snyder film without a doubt. This is almost a forerunner to every film he made after 2017 in that it looks like it was filmed through some filter that makes everything seem gritty, muscular and a bit grubby.

What a film it is though; absolutely jam-packed full of bare chests, growling and testosterone oozing from everybody's pores like absinthe at a French orgy. It's got lots of stylised violence, quite a bit of flesh on show and has David Wenham doing what David Wenham does best - soliloquise in a deeply heroic English voice. It is an absolute load of pants, full of bollocks - literal and metaphorical.

It's essentially a reverse-Gladiator with a [vague] Scotsman doing his best Spartan impersonation (which is better than a naturalised Aussie from New York playing a Scotsman) - Sparta is a region of Greece so this is like Russell Crowe playing Zeus or Anthony Hopkins playing Odin. Given that Wenham is Antipodean, Fassbender's a mix of German and Irish and this film really is a bit of a league of every nation except Greece, but that last sentence feels like filler because I've run out of anything to say about this film apart from RAHHHHHHH!!!!

Please Stop (part 6)

Look, I just watch them. I don't know when they're going to be on. This is the mid season break all the same and it featured actors working from a 'script' in a post-apocalyptic setting. Morgan's lost it [again], Maddison saves the day [again], Mo is turning back into a normal child and Padre needs ending quickly so they can cram a few more nutty dictatorships in before it all ends.

Ich Bin Dein Mensch

Who knew that Dan Stevens could speak such excellent German? 

I'm coming to the conclusion that the former Downton Abbey star doesn't really do bad films as most of what I've seen him in I've thoroughly enjoyed and no more so than this fabulous little German-language comedy about the human condition, which is fully explored in a story about a woman test driving a humanoid robot who ticks all of her 'desire' boxes. The problem is Alma - played by Maren Eggert - has no intention of doing anything as ... wrong ... as falling for an automaton, regardless how lifelike he might be.

I suppose in many ways given this is a romantic comedy and most romantic comedies have happy endings you can guess what's going to happen almost from the opening scene, it's just the journey that is most amusing and poignant. There are a few laugh out loud moments in this, not something one usually associates with German films and while 'Tom' is a bit too perfect, I think that's the point - if you're going to be offered the person of your dreams they're going to be almost unrealistically fabulous. There's also a very amusing short scene where Alma asks Tom why he has a British accent, even though he is speaking in German. This film will show up on Film4 again soon, it's worth watching if you don't mind subtitles.

Next time...

Just when you think TV's going to dry up like a perimenopausal woman, it's time for Sam Jackson and the Secret Invasion; I'm going to try and do a round-up of stuff you can watch on iPlayer that originated in Scotland and might not have found it's way down south (or might not have been watched by any Scottish readers). And pretty much whatever turns up between now and then. Summer's just about over. 

Dead Weather

I love this time of the year. I'd stick my neck out and say that May and June are my favourite months of the year, especially when the weather is nice. We've had almost three consecutive weeks of nice weather - sunny skies and temperatures hovering between 19 and 21 degrees. I got a tan and I've had shorts on for most of that time. 

However, with Saturday the 10th of June came the arrival of not so nice weather. Many would call it glorious and frankly we have to put up with enough cold, wet and windy days to make a few days of stinky hot weather worth the effort to stick with. I'm no longer a fan of it though, although I'm of the opinion that I've never really been a huge fan, even in the days when I'd willingly lay on a sun lounger and absorb UV like some sentient solar panel. The problem is the weekend is just the start of it, we have at least another week of temperatures above 25° with high humidity; that's a bit scary.

I should point out that in June 2018, Galloway experienced some fantastic weather, with the temperature over parts of the Machars reaching almost 32° but the thing about that was the lack of humidity. There is photographic evidence of me swimming in the Solway Firth on the hottest day of the year. It wasn't the most pleasant thing I've ever done but it was exhilarating and I'm glad I did it as I can't see myself doing it ever again (but more for health reasons than because I'm a wuss).

The thing is, I'm doing something. When the temperature gets so hot it's unpleasant simply walking in it then you're going to struggle to find something that occupies your time that doesn't involved subjecting yourself to it. However, I think I need to explain something about Galloway first and how acclimatisation has changed the way my body reacts to temperatures...

The wife always used to be amazed by how women in Newcastle could wander around on the coldest of winter nights with barely a stitch of clothing on, but we soon had an answer to that when we'd lived here for a couple of years. You acclimatise to the temperature and very quickly. This is going to seem strange, but when I lived in Northampton 6° was, as they say up here, 'kin Baltic, but 6° in Scotland is almost going out without a hat on weather now. If we get winter temps between 8 and 10° I will have my hat with me but unless it's really windy I won't wear it, the same can be said when the temp is below freezing - if it's bright, sunny and no wind you can almost get away with an autumn jacket, not that I'd want to try that now. The point is 25° used to be pleasant down south, but it's like 30° up here, so imagine what the temps in excess of 40° last year would have been like? Up here people think 18° is 'just about right,' so 40° would kill them, myself included.

I can be a great procrastinator at the best of times, the irony is when the weather is too hot I want to do stuff that takes my mind off of the heat (and my breathing). Usually that might involve watching football, but the domestic football season is over until the middle of August and I'm not a huge watcher of summer sport, I even find golf difficult to 'get into' since it's become a chore to try and watch it. So I usually read a book or two, but I've done that already and I could read something else, nothing in my extensive collection tickles my fancy and neither do anything I'm yet to own. I even thought about reading some of the few remaining comics I have, but I got bored with that very quickly and suddenly started to worry when a casual search for the specific edition I had been reading informed me that it is worth in excess of £500.

Obviously television tends to be full of repeats and sport this time of the year, there isn't a huge amount of films coming out and we don't have an easily-accessible family-friendly pub any longer so you can't even drink yourself into oblivion. I've tried diving down Tube of You rabbit holes, that used to be so easy to do when the weather wasn't hot, but now seem to be full of stuff I've seen or things I have no interest in. I mean, I watched a 30 second clip of Brett Goldstein talking about Roy Kent and now I'm inundated on a daily basis with ted Lasso recommendations. I suppose I could pass my time by clicking Do Not Recommend and hoping the Tube of You takes notice of me. 

I have been listening to music again, probably for the first time in over a year. It was ... disappointing, or at least that's what I started to feel about music. The last three or four years have seen very few things I've raved about and I started to think that music had finally left me behind. Within the space of a month, two albums came out that blew me away - Fantasy by M83 and United Wire by North Atlantic Oscillation - the problem is while it has reignited my love of music, I'm not playing anything else but these two albums. It's almost an OCD in it's persistence. Therefore I'm not seeing music as a reliever of my boredom.

I've recently found Radio UK on the internet, this allows me access to just about every digital radio station available and while I have been immersing myself in talk radio again of late, it's all a bit dull. It feels like it's going through the motions and I haven't found a music station that can hit an average of better than 1 in every 5 records I might not mind. Radio isn't my hot weather salvation.

The stupid thing is that the last eight months have largely been lost, either through illness, recuperation or having something prevent me from doing as much as I used to. I'm writing more blogs, but even that feels like a copout - surely I should be writing something worthwhile? The wife has been doing loads in the garden and I'm not being much help and the irony is had the weather not been as hot I probably still wouldn't have been doing much more than sitting in my office writing a blog about how bored I am in the weather...

Pop Culture - In the Company of Crap

MAY CONTAIN NUTS AND SPOILERS

Peak Barry

The midway point of the final series of Barry doesn't have Barry in it until the final 10 seconds. What this brief appearance does is set up the entire series at a specific point in time with a cliffhanger and then BAM!!!

The following episode and rest of the series is set about eight years later with Barry and Sally living a new life in very rural Utah or Montana - somewhere with no trees, lots of plains and farms - and they have a son called John, who might be showing signs he's a bit of a psychopath or he just might be having his life fucked up by these two weird parents who don't seem happy about anything. Barry and Sally have also discovered religion.

There's suddenly a distinctly Better Call Saul feel about it and despite some actual LOL moments it stopped being a proper comedy at the end of season two and is now just a spectacular car crash in slow motion.

The conclusion wasn't as satisfying as I thought it would be. It was, in many ways, a horrible ending because Barry ends up being a hero because Jean Cousinea's ego lets him down. Fuches played a bit of a blinder and this comedy of errors ended up a tragic fable about karma being a real bitch.

Never Mind the 80s

Neil Jordan's The Company of Wolves begins like one of those Tales of the Unexpected shows and doesn't really make a lot of sense from that point on. It also should have been called The Company of Alsatians as wolves were thin on the ground. The director was most definitely going for the surreal in this film, but in the end it was more like a mash-up of Talk Talk's Life's What You Make It video and Terry Jones's Jabberwocky. There's also a bit of the soft porn film about it, despite there being no sex and little nudity; I suppose it's the way it's filmed; the salacious way some of the characters act towards the young heroine/protagonist; if anything this makes it more 'creepy' than the theme it's trying to convey.

It's played out as a dream within a fairy tale inside a dream but it also tries to be clever and make it like the end is really the beginning and the wolves the young girl has been dreaming about are everywhere and always threatening. 

It is really a lot of 80s pop video stylised bollocks with a fine turn from Angela Lansbury in a film where she wasn't yet 60 playing a very old woman. I remember the film when it came out; all the hype about it having been made on a massive soundstage and only the opening scene was filmed outside. 40 years later that staged feel runs deep as you fight hard to stop yourself from falling asleep.

The 'wolves' were just shaggy German Shepherds who all looked like they needed a brush and a cuddle.

Wobbly Like a Fox

Michael J Fox has been 'out' about his Parkinson's Disease since the late 1990s and in the 25 years since he announced it his condition has undoubtedly become, tragically, much worse and this excellent documentary tells his story.

Still: A Michael J Fox Movie is a personalised autobiography of the star's life from embryo to living with a disease that will kill him [and one of my best friends] and you think it's going to be a bit corny but it's actually ingeniously done with old footage of him cleverly cut and edited to reflect what was happening in his life.

Fox is a desperately unlucky man who deals with this shit like a true pro. There are bits of this you can laugh at - he wouldn't mind - even if you feel you shouldn't; it's because he wants you to see it; to see how it affects him yet he lives with it; to see how it really is. You also see how we've lost a rare talent and how it's really fucked him up but he soldiers on. It's worth watching.

Censorship

I was reading the comments on a politics story on the Guardian webpage. One comment said, "These people are asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression not illegal immigrants." and the first rely to it was, "There isn't a war in Albania." And as I was looking at the page, it refreshed and the reply had been 'moderated' or in common vernacular, it had been deleted or censored.

Now, I don't know about you but while 'There isn't a war in Albania' could be construed as a mildly questionable epithet, it is actually a fact that goes hand in hand with the other fact that the majority of people attempting to gain access to the UK illegally are actually Albanians. Illegal immigrants should never be confused with asylum seekers - the majority of Albanians who come to the UK are economic migrants and this isn't me being racist, this comes from a friend of mine who is Albanian and runs a shop in Northampton - he came here in 2010 as an economic migrant, when we encouraged it. 

The point here is the Guardian has moderators who control too much of the narrative. They are there to prevent insults, aggression and off topic discussions; they are not there to decide what is right for the rest of the people reading to see, especially if it abides by their own community standards. This is censorship, but from a purportedly 'lefty' newspaper? 

Let's get one thing perfectly clear - The Guardian is a centre right leaning newspaper and has been since centre right leaning Katharine Viner took over from Allan Rusbridger as editor in chief. She's a very dangerous woman because she employs people not just to police our opinions but to also drive the narrative the way the newspaper wants it driven.

A former employer of mine once said, 'we report on the news, we don't make it.'

Speed Waves

First reviews of The Flash are in and none of them are good. I'll say it again; once upon a time this looked like it might be a good film then it looked like it might be rubbish. Now, reading some of the reviews, it just furthers the end of the superhero film even quicker than expected. 

DC might end James Gunn's career rather than him rejuvenating theirs even if he had little or nothing to do with this.

Ice Cold in Siberia?

The 2010 film from classic director Peter Weir, The Way Back, had a great cast including Mark Strong, Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan and Colin Farrell and told a true story of derring-do. It was about a group of prisoners in Siberia, all wrongfully imprisoned by the Soviets, who decide to escape, despite the thousands of kilometres between them and any possible freedom.

It's an entertaining, if slightly tragic film - as only four survive and only three make it to their final destination - but it's also a bit lifeless, like it was going through the motions. It had no real soul and felt like it was made with no real emotion or admiration for what these men endured to be free. In fact, given they travelled across Siberia, detoured to Mongolia and China, crossed the Gobi Desert and the Himalayas - over 4000km - to get to India, the film ended up being a little boring and pretty much the worst thing they faced on their travels, despite there being a war going on around them, was a lack of water and the cold.

It's not a bad film, it's just also not a very good one either, it was even lacking in Weir's trademark soft focus shots. It's a bleak and stark film with excellent cinematography; a potentially good story that turns out to be surprisingly boring and relatively uneventful. 

Thor's a Bit Sore, Spidey's too Tired

Chris Hemsworth has made his final Thor film and burned his bridges on the way out. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the Australian said he felt sorry for the fans about the mess Love & Thunder ended up, saying they were just having a good time and lost sight of the goal.

It does suggest what the hell Kevin Feige and his Disney/MCU execs were doing allowing this awful film to be released without the appropriate feedback and there have been suggestions that one of the execs recently fired was the one responsible for handpicking test screen audiences, which suggests something slightly fraudulent.

Hemsworth's contract is now over; he has made the further three movies he signed up for and he is contractually obligated to appear in The Avengers: The Kang Dynasty but in what capacity is unknown. 

Meanwhile Tom Holland has announced he's taking a break from making films, probably until the autumn of 2024. This will probably have little effect on the proposed Spider-Man 4 film, but the timing of the announcement just felt like another actor distancing themselves from the franchise.

Oh and Captain America: New World Order has had a controversial name change to Captain America: Brave New World after accusations of anti-Semitism, I kid you not...

The fall of the superhero film continues apace.

Please Stop Now 

It appears the bizarre scheduling of the episodes - some get priority early views on AMC+ - has meant this is a skip week and therefore this week's TV and film review has a brighter, happier feel. Back to shambling misery next week, yay!

Next Time...

Who can say? There might not even be a next time until the actual next time. 

Pop Culture - Conclusions and Stuff

This week there probably will be a few more spoilers than I've been recently including...

Yellow Peril

The audience reaction to the second series of Yellowjackets was almost unanimous in its dislike of it. I've read a lot of reviews and literally none of them have praised it the way series one was. It really could end up being a one-season wonder because it needs to desperately up its game if it wants me and many others to stick with series three, when it happens.

This season, which was cut from nine to eight episodes, has struggled to maintain the impossibly high standards set in series one and one could argue that the creators shot their bolts in that and had little in reserve for this year. While the past stayed remarkably enthralling, despite the elephant in the room having been devoured, the present lost all of its focus and flopped around aimlessly in an exercise that felt more like needing to introduce new adult characters than move the story along.

The odd thing was in a series of strange juxtapositions, the boring present had a tumultuous event happen that lifted it above the very silly premise that caused it - the death of a major character by her best friend's hand - while in the past, which has been the main reason for sticking with it, things suddenly got a bit silly. That era ended in a cliffhanger, while in the present you have to wonder where this is going to go now because there doesn't appear to be much reason - apart from a funeral - to keep them all together until whatever they think lived and controlled them in the Wilderness comes back and asks them for more.

It's got a bit bollocks, to be honest. You could have made this current season just two episodes long and it would have struggled to include the plot without some filler. The introduction of Elijah Wood's character was possibly the tipping point, when the show jumped into a trebuchet and was catapulted over an ocean therefore jumping thousands of sharks. Actually, the show has been shit for the entire series; it's like the creators didn't think beyond their first season despite telling people they had a five season story. It has been renewed for a third season; it's yet another one I'm questioning whether I want to stick with, and I'm erring towards Juliette Lewis' decision to get out while she could.

Farther Ted

For starters, before I even get onto the final episode of this show, I want to mention how fucking cowardly and shit the newspaper The Guardian has become over recent years, especially with its coverage of film and TV. It's often deliberately contrary to popular opinion - almost as though it wanted to generate more comments than the thing it was reviewing. With it's 'review' of the final ever Ted Lasso they allowed a hater to have carte blanche and she tried to rip Ted a new A hole. She failed and the newspaper failed, yet again in it's attempt to look cutting edge or radical.

The really cowardly thing is this 'review' appeared on-line at roughly 2am BST and the comments were closed at 8am BST with less than 300 comments, 99% of which were dismissive and derisory of the reviewer and her complete lack of understanding about what the show is an allegory for and why it is funny, but it's not always supposed to be funny. Guardian journalistas basically often show the rest of the world what entitled twats they are.

So, let's get down to the meat of it. The final episode of Ted Lasso was by and large a load of sentimental old bollocks. There were some laughs, definitely at least one blub and a whole lot of everything that the Guardian review found so dislikeable about the show. Ted didn't die, Beard didn't go back to Kansas with him. The laws of football physics were stretched to breaking point one last time and Roy became Richmond's manager; everybody had a happy ending, except maybe for Ted.

He was back where he wanted to be with his son who he missed and his wife who does seem to be showing positive signs towards her ex-husband. He looks 'happy' teaching U13 football/soccer and it really does need to end here. It was rich in schmaltz, had a pantomime villain and didn't have a fairy tale ending, because Ted Lasso has never done fairy tales. 

It did however leave everyone who Ted touched in a better place because of him and that's what this show was all about, really. I'm not suggesting Ted was some kind of Christ figure, it was clear from his own mental health problems that he was far from that, but the idea of the show was to suggest that one person can have a profound effect on the lives of everyone they touch, if you just open up to it.

It will be missed, but for how long I'm not sure. As a Spurs supporter it was fun supporting AFC Richmond this season...

Shrunk

Episode seven of Shrinking was possibly the biggest LOLs I've had since the vomit episode of Family Guy. A lot happened in 30 minutes, no more so than Segel's Jimmy continuing to do the one thing he's excellent at - annoying people and fucking up.

This show has been a revelation to me in many ways; I get the impression the wife likes it but nowhere near as much as I do, but I think it's the best comedy I've seen in many years (mainly because I don't actually think of Ted Lasso as an out-and-out comedy any more) and that's probably down to the fact that very few people in the show are actually sane; maybe Jimmy's daughter, possibly Sean - the veteran with anger issues - are 'normal' but someone has to be otherwise it would just be a load of people running around shouting and gibbering. For me the stand out actors were Jessica Williams as Gaby, who started off slightly annoying and became utterly surreal and so dirty... And Harrison Ford, who as an 80-year-old playing a 73-year-old with Parkinson's was a revelation and was probably the funniest person in the show based on actual screen time. 

I cannot recommend this enough, it has been one of my favourite shows of 2023.

Oh Cock in Van

Good news! James May dedicated the fourth instalment of his cooking series to vegans and it wasn't rubbish. In fact, he cooked quite a few things in 30 minutes that looked worth giving a go - or at least in a slightly amended way - and he liked what he cooked then ate.

This is an Amazon show so if you get the chance to see it you should give it a go because while May is one of the triumvirate of hated Top Gear presenters because of his association with Jeremy Clarkson, he's very much his own person (as witnessed by the number of arguments you see him have with Clarkson that are not staged because May isn't an actor) and as he's got older he's gotten funnier. There's a distinctly erudite feel to this cooking show, despite it's basic premise. Plus, I don't think this is a gimmick show, you would seriously give some of the things he makes a try.

Recalcitrant Alien

This isn't so much a review as a theory/observation.

We watched Alien Covenant again this week; it's been a few years since we last saw it and with TV drying up faster than an unattended ancient nymphomaniac we need to entertain ourselves somehow, this was probably not what the doctor ordered.

My theory is I think Ridley Scott harboured a real grudge about not being able to direct Aliens so he decided that he would a) try and remake that film as he would have wanted and b) make it a load of bollocks to piss off everybody. I know this film isn't really much like Aliens at all (and very much like Alien) but the point is it's an attempt at an action packed gun-toting recon mission with a load of plot holes and a really stupid disposition. It's not a good film and it features some pointless gratuitous nudity which felt more like it was there to titillate a director in his 80s than add to the film in any way at all.

However, while it's slow, poorly made, has a naff plot and an ending you can see coming long before the film even starts wanking, it's still a masterpiece compared to Prometheus. 

The Last of Baz

We now have the entire final season of Barry to watch and just the fact there's a final - fourth - series must be something of a surprise all round as it didn't really feel as though this bizarre show had anywhere else to go.

For those of you behind the rest of us, thanks to Fuches, Barry has been framed for a murder he did commit and his life has fallen to pieces as he faces the rest of it in prison. Fuches thinks it's really shitty of the authorities to put Barry in the same prison as him, but instead of helping the Feds pin crimes on him, they reconcile while the Chechens and Bolivians agree that after much back and forwards debate that Barry should die.

Meanwhile Sally - Barry's ex - has seen her own life fall apart after she has a meltdown on camera and is now being called 'cunt girl' and this is before people start factoring in the fact she might be sexually involved with either a contract or serial killer and Henry Winkler might inadvertently be giving the man he swore to bring down an alibi or, at least, a case for plausible denial.

This show is also no longer a comedy. It's more like a nightmare that won't stop. A brilliant nightmare, but a nightmare all the same. Quite extraordinary TV.

Bookish

I'm currently reading a book, the first one this year - which sounds terrible. Given that I'm going to be reviewing anything soon enough, I won't review it here as I will probably do a review in about three or four days when I finish it. What I will say is that it's about 650 pages long and I really enjoyed the opening 250 or so, but they weren't the story, just the preamble and that made me realise that this particular author, who I have many books by, is quite brilliant at painting complex landscapes full of interesting characters, but so often it's the journey and not the destination that is best about his books, because so many of his book's endings felt... insignificant, or possibly lacking in actual climax-like vibes.

Please Stop

This week's episode was 43 minutes and 37 seconds long. Geographically it made little or no sense (and yes you did read that correctly but no one will care enough to even ask). It appears they've discovered a cure for zombie bites. Woo and indeed hoo. Please stop now. It's beyond embarrassing.

Next Time...

The summer usually brings very little to get excited about; we're still three weeks from Secret Invasion and with the exception of that programme, I expect the next few Pop Cultures will be old movie round-ups and any old shit I can lever into a 'pop culture' heading.