Modern Culture - Summer of Gloves

This will have some spoilers in it - probably most of these spoilers will apply to old films, but I give away massive plot points in the first review - directly below this. I do it not to spoil your enjoyment, but more to save you wasting your time on a load of wank ...

Minimal Secrecy 

You have got to be kidding me? A 31 minute episode? 

31 fucking minutes? 

At least something happened, but I think my patience is beginning to wear thin. In the wake of really enjoying the Guardians* film, I went into this thinking at least the last three parts of this dreary fucking slog might find its mojo and something might happen; instead we got a resurrection, a not so big reveal (which everyone knew before it was revealed), another possible death/red herring and an attempt on the President by the Skrulls - all very 'exciting' in a pedestrian, geriatric way with about as much intrigue as a two piece jigsaw.

The bulk of the special effects appear to have gone on de-aging Nick Fury and his Skrull wife (for flashbacks), although we did have Gravik show his octopus arms (which in the comic would have been Reed Richards' stretching ability) and Ben Mendelsohn turn back into a Skrull as he (maybe) dies.

This is just a shit show - both in terms of enjoyment and in terms of a logical plot. This is made by Americans! Don't they ever watch the HUGE entourage of SPADS, military and civilian enforcers that follow a US President wherever he goes? Are they not aware that not even a fucking drone could get within a mile of a Presidential cavalcade let alone an army of Skrulls in helicopters, packing missiles and rocket launchers? 

Oh and if Rhodey is a Skrull, where is the original Rhodey? Don Cheadle has signed on to star in Armor Wars sometime in 2026, so presumably the real Rhodey is being held hostage by the Skrulls otherwise... Maybe Maria Hill isn't really dead? Plus, considering he was well and truly fucked up  and needed an exo-skeleton to walk a few years ago, he seems to get around well enough with no one noticing. At what point did the Skrulls nick his identity and did they do their research? Yes, this is a shit show full of plot holes.

Maybe this has been a Fury plot right from the start, goading people into all kinds of assumptions before bouncing back as the Nick Fury everyone remembers. I mean, that's what I'd do instead of this turgid load of rat shit they're pumping out as prime Disney fayre. At the moment it's doing a really good job of driving a spike through the heart of the MCU's television produce; which has already been reduced to two series a year; this is so crap that it might spell the end of a lot of things and I kind of hope it does.

*Ever since the Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 trailer came out I was desperately hoping for a good film, especially as I'm not a fan of the franchise, but something needed to drag Marvel out of its doldrums. It's now been nearly a week and I can't emphasise enough what a fucking brilliant film GotGv3 is. It has everything; absolutely everything (apart from the death of a major character) and I cannot get over how much the film has stuck with me all week. 

Bad Vampire

It's been a few years since we watched 30 Days of Night, but as the content on the Flash Drive of Doom has got to the point where we need to be drunk to even contemplate some of the stuff on there, or the wife has zero interest in watching, we decided to give it another airing and, yet again, we were surprised at how much we didn't remember. This may come as a shock, but I can almost understand why some of you will see a film twice inside a couple of weeks and then again a few months later. I think we forget how much we forget.

As an example and I'm sure I've used this analogy just recently, I asked the wife to tell me what Quantumania is about and she was struggling to be anything more precise than vague. However, that's by the by, because this adaptation of a Steve Niles comic from the early 2000s is the kind of film where you'll not remember some things because there's so much going on considering it's spread out over 30 days. The vampires are led by the menacing Danny Huston (son of film director John) and his band of ravenous and merciless bloodsuckers who take prime advantage of the unique darkness the town experiences - the 30 days of night in the middle of winter.

Except, just to throw a spanner in the works, Barrow, where the film is set, or Utqiagvik, as it is known more commonly and in Inuit, does not suffer 30 days of perpetual night, it suffers from 66 days of Polar Night, with six hours of civil twilight decreasing to three hours in December - it doesn't actually get dark during these hours, it's like it's 10.30 at night in parts of Scotland during the summer. So technically the title of the film is a misnomer and so is the idea that they're entombed in darkness for so long, but hey, they have to make a film and this one is a nasty, violent and ultimately tragic story. It is a cracking film and if you've never seen it and like a good vampire film then look no further.

Control Freak

Inside the last six months I have discovered that one of the wife's and my heroes was a bit of a bigoted racist and regardless of his wonderful surreal humour, watching old Spike Milligan programmes is a bit embarrassing and awkward.

This week I finally got to see the 2005 film The Life and Death of Peter Sellers with Geoffrey Rush, Charlize Theron and a host of other well known British and American actors. Sellers was a hero of my dad's and all three of his sons were brought up on a diet of the Goon Show and his films. I knew that he suffered from some mental health issues - that became clear when we watched the Milligan documentary earlier this year - but I thought he was like his old friend Spike and suffered from being bi-polar. It seems that while Spike's problems were obvious, Peter's were extremely complex and he never looked for any help - whereas Milligan often did.

What this biopic does, in no uncertain terms, is spell out what an egotistical monster the man was. How, mainly because of his mother, he became so self-obsessed and detached from real life that even by the early 1960s it was clear the only thing he really loved was himself and that was balanced with a healthy dose of hating himself. Sellers was a control freak, self-absorbed and treated almost everyone else in his life - including his children - like they were lowly scum. It seems that only Harry Secombe and Spike could take him to a place where he could be a human being.

The film was quite stunning, with fabulous recreations of his greatest cinematic moments, but it was also tragic, shocking and paints the kind of picture of a man who would never have been as popular if he'd been born 50 years later, even if he was a comic genius, because if such a monstrous man was let loose in entertainment now there'd be more scandal than the most scandalous could manage.

A lot was overlooked and much of the controversy in his later life got brushed over (apparently because of legal wrangles that disappeared when his 4th wife died), but Rush was extraordinary as Sellers and while it was a great film it was in no way a celebration of the life of a genius; more of a look at the life of an 8-year-old who never grew up.

Extraordinarily Dull

This might seem like TV barrel scraping, but we've been fans of Sandi Toksvig's Extraordinary Escapes since it first began a few years ago. Essentially the QI presenter takes a girl friend to a fabulous set of country retreats where they bond, chat and get to know where they are. It's a sort of all girl version of Mortimer and Whitehouse's fishing shenanigans but without the fishing (although that has happened in previous series and happens again in this one)

This third series kicked off with Eddie 'Suzie' Izzard joining our convivial host in the south of Ireland, followed it up with Judi Love in the Lake District, with the third episode set in Wales with Roisin Conaty. We opted to miss the fourth part with Rosy Jones because neither of us have any fondness for the disabled comedian, finding her difficult to understand and not particularly funny given most of her jokes are about women she fancies; while it concludes with the marvellous Doon MacKichan.

It has to be said that it has become really dull TV despite the fabulousness of the houses Sandi takes her friends to. Once you've had a couple of seasons of Toksvig asking her mates (old or new) the same boring questions and they go through the usual rigmarole of deciding bedrooms and cooking half-sized meals minus vegetables or other accompaniments, or try some local craft or something historically 'interesting' it actually becomes really boring. They always appear to go in the autumn so the weather is often unpleasant or cold and while we absolutely love watching travelogues and UK countryside programmes, this lost its sheen quickly with this third series 

Plus ça Change

Bridget Christie's All4 comedy series The Change is unusual, probably unique and undoubtedly an interesting idea. There's an element of over-exaggeration but I suppose it has to be there otherwise you wouldn't have a comedy show about the "female equivalent of a midlife crisis".

Linda has just turned 50 and has done everything, including invite the guests, at her surprise party dominated by her husband - Omid Djalili - who is getting all the credit. At the party, Linda tries to talk to her own sister who gets bored halfway through and wanders off and her kids are so uninterested they bailed out as quickly as possible because their mum is the loudest swallower in the world! Plus, she's just hit the menopause and everything has gone hormone crazy.

So she brushes off her old Triumph motorcycle and heads off to the Forest of Dean to try and locate a time capsule she placed in a tree about 40 years earlier. It's funny, but also acerbic and cruel; there's an element of confusion about it probably to highlight what all women go through at some point with the hormones in their body and the way it turns against them.

It's an unusual comedy, full of surreal moments and bonkers characters - none of which sound remotely like they're from the Forest of Dean (and a bit too much emphasis on Gloucestershire when the predominant accent there is a mix between West Midlands and East Wales) - and they're made up of predominantly women of a certain age and the rage and confusion they carry.  It's at times an awkward watch, despite being easy on the eye. 

Flamin' Eck

Out of the blue, we took a gamble on a film called Flamin' Hot - the story of how super hot and spicy Doritos were invented in a Mexican-dominated production plant in California and the story of the man who had the balls to challenge the white corporate structure of the USA and become a Mexican hero.

It's a feel good story that focuses on something I don't see very often, the racist side of the USA towards Hispanics. It's usually always about black discrimination, but in many ways Mexicans were treated even worse and the USA's insatiable appetite for being racist has never been more clearly spelt out. It's not the best film in the world, but it has a heart and tells a story that probably needs to be told - other nationalities are as good as the USA, maybe better because they have the ability to embrace multiculturalism.

Probably the best known person in the film is Dennis Haysbert, who is instrumental in the rise of Jesse Garcia's Richard, a reformed criminal with a penchant for innovation. It was directed by Eva Longoria and just made me feel good after watching it. Tony Shalhoub is excellent as the head of Pepsi who is sold on his janitor's ideas.

All Pain No Gain

We finally got around to watching Adam Kay's horrific NHS dramedy This is Going to Hurt and what makes it even more horrible is that the first episode is set in 2006 when Dr Adam Kay is acting up as a registrar in his hospital while trying to survive on hardly any food and about four hours of sleep a week. Imagine what his life would be like now after 13 years of Tory destruction and a pandemic?

This should be mandatory television for EVERYBODY. This was the NHS in 2006 and it hasn't got any better; it's probably got worse. It is horrendous television, but comical in a nasty way, but without being deliberately nasty. Literally everybody in this show is tired, irritable and horrid and it's not their faults.

Obviously it's autobiographical, but it's also incredibly balanced and there's literally no holds barred. For someone as squeamish as I am, I watched through my fingers a couple of times - because there was just so much blood. Explicit isn't a word you associate with BBC dramas, but this has almost everything in it and Ben Whishaw is his usual brilliant self playing the harassed doctor turned writer, but in many ways it's Ambika Mod as Shruti who steals the show as the junior doctor on a tragic trajectory..

Trailer Corner

The final Blue Beetle trailer dropped this week and... it's Spider-Man mashed up with Iron Man. I said it before and this latest slew of clips just confirms it even more. DC has thought: Iron Man worked. Spider-Man worked. If we at the DCEU had a mixture of both and enough humour and pathos it will work to. Yes?

Maybe. But, you know, man in super suit ends up fighting guy in slightly better super suit and has to use his ingenuity and family ties to beat him and save the world. It sounds pretty much like a variation a well trodden theme. This could be a fun film but it needs to do something extraordinary not to seem like just another derivative.

In other general Hollywood news: the writers strike has escalated into the writers and actors strike, so remember - in about a year's time there'll be fuck all on TV or at the cinema for about twice as long as this strike continues. It will be like Covid without the illness.

George Clarke's Over Budget Wankers?

I've mentioned genial Geordie George Clarke before in my columns; he's a bit of a guilty 'passion' but more so for the wife now than me as I only watch his programmes to see how many times he can say 'amazing' and how much over budget the people he has on the show go.

I am firmly of the opinion that half of the guests on this show don't really want George's architectural expertise they just want to be on the telly. The other half want to get a gallon into a half pint glass: "Oh we want a house that twice the size and really nicely decorated. We have £600 and possibly more if we sell one of the children's kidneys." Except if they actually said that I might be inclined to pay more attention to the show.

This isn't Clarke's actual Amazing Spaces show, just one of many he has with his name attached that requires suspending some belief. People renovating, improving or repurposing houses, flats etc is a popular thing, but it's also becoming increasingly elitist and that is often reflected in the people George is trying to help. I want to see Geordie George do a programme where he's helping people with fuck all budget turn their hovel into something that looks like a house or flat without going over budget or paying the overspend himself because he fucked up with his quotes.

Next Time...

Before anything else, why the title? Summer of Gloves? Was I stuck? No, in fact, almost all of the things listed have had a glove or gloves involved somewhere along the way, from Bridget Christie's motorcycle gloves to Ben Whishaw's surgical ones to the ones all the humans had to wear in the vampire in the dead of winter film, there's an awful lot of hand coverings...

Anyhow, what's next? Secret Invasion needs to continue the upward improvement trend otherwise it's as dead in the water as initial viewing figures are suggesting. It seems in some cases the MCU 'spy' thriller is the least interesting of this week's reviews and anything else that is watched or comes on TV is going to be more preferable. We're considering watching the bulk of the Mission Impossible films again, because, you know, memory; however we're likely to miss the first couple as we've seen them recently. As for anything else? Who can say?