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.