Pop Culture - The Horror of it All

The random nature of my relationship with spoilers indicates you should consider treading carefully on a story by story basis, if not then this acts as a warning.

Dance with the Devil

As an experiment in replicating 1970s television, Late Night with the Devil was almost perfect. You would have thought that you were watching footage of an actual TV show from 1977; however if you think you were watching an actual recording of live 1977 television I'm not so sure.

You see, the problem with this film is it's too much like it was a made for TV movie actually made in 1977 with a very small budget and with a couple of exceptions it could very well have been on telly and not scared anyone. It's not exactly a horror film more like an experiment in recreating the past with a supernatural twist and while it is almost faultless it forgot to be anything other than just a very good recreation of what late night 1970s TV was really like. It wasn't scary and in many respects it wasn't very good either. That's not to say it wasn't excellently done and David Dastmalchian is without a doubt a very good actor; it was so authentic it felt cheesy. It is a found footage film incorporating an entire episode of a fictional late night talk show called Night Owls, but by the end it just feels like one of those Movie of the Week things that once proliferated on network TV. There were some unsettling moments in it, but like I said it seemed to spend so much effort and time actually looking and feeling like a 1970s US TV show that it forgot to be what it was advertised as.

With A God By Your Side

We watched the true crime drama Under the Banner of Heaven having heard good things about it. It's a 2022 seven-part mini-series based on true events that took place in Utah in the 1980s. Be sure not to Google the 'Lafferty family' or 'true crime' until you've watched it all otherwise you'll spoil it for yourself... Like I did. 

This is a series with a remarkable ratio of British, Irish and Australian actors in it considering it was about an event in the USA (although it was made in Canada); one wonders if US actors have gotten too expensive to make TV with any more?

We watched the first episode, really to see if it might be something to float our boats, and I came away with the indefatigable feeling that the Church of the Latter Day Saints or Mormons are really some of the craziest religious people on the planet. I mean, Muslims get targeted for their apparent extremism, but the LDS are essentially right wing Christian fundamentalists and as barking mad as the most extreme versions of Zionists - imagine some the very weird Likud politicians and then insert Jesus. No wonder people think Mormons are a weird Christian cult. Therefore it's fitting that this is a TV series about the weirdness of Mormonism and how they think they're perfectly normal when they're all barking mad and capable of committing heinous acts.

A Mormon wife and mother - from Idaho rather than Utah - is found brutally murdered and her child decapitated at their home on the outskirts of Salt Lake City; her husband is the prime suspect, especially as he's found covered in blood, but if it was as cut and dried case as it seems it wouldn't have spawned books, TV programmes and a film focusing on the initial main suspect's utterly bonkers family and how they went from slightly bonkers devoutly religious zealots to completely full-on Charlie Manson mode. If this is a true reflection of the Church of the LDS then all I can think is that Mormon women all seem to be in fear for their lives from what is essentially a massively misogynistic religion  advocating a Patriarchy (but, to be fair, aren't most religions just a way to use an imaginary god to keep women oppressed?). It's also the bizarre story of how a god-fearing family rebelled against the taxation system and went homicidally mad as a consequence. No, seriously, it is.

Pardon My Sexism

The Guardian might be a favourite target for my general ire and why shouldn't it? This gaslighting neo-fascist 'newspaper' that indeed does do some extremely valuable investigative journalism is also a middle class rag that prides itself in telling us how we should think and is big on spoilers. It seems to get a kick out of that and being deliberately contrary; if it can slag off something it will and then when it discovers it's on the wrong side of pubic opinion it will 'correct' itself.

Columnist Barbara Ellen derides veteran Hollywood film producer Carol Baum for genuinely asking about Sydney Sweeney, “Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?” Which I feel is a valid question for an 81 year old woman to ask, although I think Sweeney is 'hot' because of her 36DD chest and her ability to flaunt it, and to be fair why shouldn't she? They belong to her and if she wants to use them she wouldn't be the first or the last to do so and as she's from a very conservative right wing American family it will be considered her right to get her tits out - whereas if she was from a downtrodden 'lefty' family she'd be the target of all kinds of slurs and abuse. The thing is Sweeney might appeal to a younger generation and middle aged men might like ogling at her, but Baum is not wrong; she's not very pretty (not her fault coupled with a 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder', disclaimer) and I think she really can't act. I've seen her in about four things now and my overriding feeling is she has two acting positions - dim and vacuous. She can be either or both at the same time, but she doesn't have a range, so to speak. Even in Reality, which wasn't a bad movie, she played a dim ex-service woman caught selling secrets and she was the least interesting thing in a very stagey film - a movie where she didn't use any of her 'obvious' talents. 

I think the Guardian columnist is wrong for castigating someone for asking what she thought was a valid question, which, ironically, after asking this question to an audience of prominently young people and discussing it for a length of time, concluded that she [Baum] would probably hire Sweeney. The thing about Ellen's column is she tries to make it a far bigger issue; suggesting that the producer's comments and age play into the hands of misogynistic exploitative men by showing how much older women's opinions have been honed by a time when men influenced the thoughts of women and she's absolutely categorically wrong to even think such a question. Yet, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and Baum's question is justified, especially if there are others who feel the same way. She was not doing anything other than asking a valid question, although maybe not mentioning that Sweeney has a face like a slapped arse (my words not Baum's) might have made it less contentious. In my world view asking if Sweeney can act is a valid question, but I suppose you're not allowed to have opinions that might offend someone anymore. I'm not being mean, misogynistic, cruel or [insert whatever pejorative you can think of] if I don't think she can act as an expression of an opinion...

Oh and while I'm on the Guardian (I do look at it every day so I only have myself to blame for looking at the bits I know I'm going to have a contrary opinion. This weekend's edition has a BIG interview with Jeremy Clarkson about his new series of Clarkson's Farm drops next week and will, obviously, feature in next week's droppings and while it does a reasonable job of painting Clarkson as something of a changed man since becoming the poster boy for the ills of farming in the UK, it doesn't forget that the Guardian has history with the paper for some proper hatchet jobs such as Lucy Mangan's original review of season one of Clarkson's Farm and obviously hadn't watched anything more than a couple of on-line trailers. She gave it one star and spent the review telling everyone what a middle class right wing tool the Yorkshireman is and getting large chunks of the review wrong. It led to them having someone else re-review the series when everyone with a TV set and access to Amazon who read that review were wondering what whacky drugs Ms Mangan was on. So this BIG interview is about the huge success the show is and not about the stunts that litter it every season, which, to be fair are at least stunts that might have something positive come from them. It's a gateway piece for the inevitable three star review next Thursday (maybe even chance a two just so the reviews department can feel smug again).

Fucking Foxy Arse Country Bag

Excuse my language but I was paraphrasing Wicked Little Letters, a film about a notorious scandal which hit the Sussex town of Littlehampton in 1918. It stars the brilliant Jessie Buckley and the equally effulgent Olivia Coleman and just to show you how obsessed I am, the Guardian hated it, but no one else does and that meant it went to the top of my must see list. It is an excellent feature marred by an element that I need to look at...

I'm going to cause some more controversy; not only could I be a sexist for the piece above about Sydney Sweeney, but I suppose I'm now a racist for wondering why a historical film - based on a true story - with a couple of books written about it, has more black and Asian characters in it than the whole of Sussex probably had in its county in 1918. Please don't get me wrong, but the policewoman who did most of the investigating is suddenly now Asian; the main protagonist's husband has been transformed into a black boyfriend, the judge in the case is a black African when the first black magistrate didn't serve until 1962 and the first black judge wasn't until 1978. There was also a number of Asian children, another black police officer and various black people in the pub. I have absolutely no problem with diversity, but this is a historical account and most of the film is absolutely as accurate as it happened, so why the need to pad out the film with characters who wouldn't have been in Littlehampton in 1918? I detest the expression 'PC gone mad' but this is why that expression is used; this is why we have gammons being wankers about race in this country when we have historically accurate movies that are changed to satisfy diversity requirements. It shouldn't happen and in many ways it spoiled a cracking little film because someone somewhere thought the film needed to have more diversity. Who would have had a problem if there hadn't been other races depicted in this? I don't have a problem with a black Little Mermaid or Juliet because these are fiction, but to put them in something factual to meet a criteria is mindbogglingly provocative. It's like we're rewriting our racially nasty past and hoping people don't think that the UK was once (and still is) a very racist place that treats non-white people with contempt.

Other than that, it's a story about a woman who starts getting hateful letters with foul and abusive language in them and all fingers point at the Irish girl who lives next door who has a fine line in swearing and being anything but a model Edwardian young lady. On the receipt of the 19th letter, the police get involved and the Irish woman is arrested and from this point on it's about finding out who really wrote the letters because it clearly isn't the foulmouthed Rose Gooding. This is a film about police incompetence, bigotry and above all else mental illness, but it's also extremely funny with a number of LOL moments and a fantastic script that takes a turn for the dramatic about two thirds of the way through as the letters and the contents begin to have unsavoury effects and consequences. When it becomes clear who the culprit is you spend much of the rest of the movie thinking this person will realise the pain they are causing but it just gets worse to the point where you realise they either have a serious mental health problem or they're just plain evil. Jessie Buckley is absolutely wonderful in it and Liv Coleman, yet again, proves why she's probably Britain's finest character actor at the moment. Ignore what the Guardian says and watch this cracking film and enjoy every minute.

Trailer Trash

There's this Tube of You channel, which the name of completely escapes me because I clicked on the Please Do Not Ever Play This Fucking Channel Again option and I don't know if there's a history of what you never want to see again stored somewhere, but I suspect when I hide something on the Tube of You it stays gone. Anyhow, there's this Tube of You channel that absolutely is choc-a-bloc full of 'Our concept trailer' videos that are literally the equivalents to unrequited love letters or fan-wank deceptions by dangerously sad individuals who you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley even if you were the one carrying the samurai sword. 

Fan-wank deception is massive, I mean MASSIVE... except it might not be because these sites might get thousands of people tuning into their I could make trailers too so give me a job efforts but other things gets millions of hits, so I suspect 'our concept trailer' doesn't do anything for many apart from to make people groan about it being 'another bloody load of fan-wank'. Trailers are the art of deception; you can make an Albanian film about a goat-beetroot sex fetish look good with the right trailer maker then you can do it with anything. Sorry, I'm waffling because I want to get you to understand that [fan wank] fake trailer sites that sell themselves as *new* trailers and then happen to mention 'our new concept trailer' which will have absolutely nothing to do with the actual film. The people who do them are massive cunts! The most obvious way to detect them is they feature nothing but extant clips or images, there's nothing in a fake video that isn't already in a video! The people who do these kind of things should fall victim to a filmmaking accident or something!

So, Ryan Reynolds releases a teaser for the trailer that is going to be released 24 hours after this video and what it is essentially, is a piss-take of a fan-wank deception with just one bit of footage that is new. It does, however, have a narration by Deadpool aka Reynolds, which, naturally, authenticates it immediately and I've just written three paragraphs to tell you that while it's a funny joke, the New Trailer Monday Deadpool and Wolverine trailer is just a prick tease; it's amusing but it isn't a trailer for the movie that's scheduled for release towards the end of July, it's a trailer for the trailer, which will have been released the next time I update this blog...

Which brings us nicely to the actual trailer, or perhaps I should say the actual fucking trailer because to my knowledge there has never been a MCU trailer with the F word in it, so there's five in this one. What's the film going to be about? I don't know, but it appears to involve Wade recruiting a Wolverine from the multiverse for a job for the TVA with bits at the beginning and then further bits at the end. Much is hinted at about Marvel and Disney's wholesome image and how this film will break some moulds, but it's not singing for me; there's nothing in it that makes me think there's a winning formula outside of Deadpool's smart mouth and the swearing in the trailer suggests this could be some obfuscation covering up faults we're yet to uncover. The final cocaine scene with Lesley Uggams is a very funny joke.

Monkey See, Do and He Wrote the Script

I remember when The Green Knight came out and that newspaper claimed it was one of the best films of the year, more erudite reviewers than me waxed lyrically about its imagery and I sat through two hours of the most pompous boredom, trying to find something positive to say. It dawned on me after about ten minutes of Monkey Man that Dev Patel might be on an evil streak and I was inadvertently walking into its trap.

I'm not suggesting Monkey Man isn't a good film, because some of the choreographed violence is outstanding. It was like a ballet with knives, fists, feet and anything else that can be turned into an instrument of pain, but when it wasn't being frenetic energy, this movie didn't have much else going for it. It was lacking in a story I can recall and it was only a couple of hours ago that I watched it. It was vaguely about gaining revenge for a mother who was brutally murdered and to stop the exploitation of certain transsexual women in parts of India, but it was really about creating some kind epic ode to the beauty of fighting. It was also about allegory - or at least I hope so because some of the scenes were a bit odd - and honour. It doesn't overdo it with words and it's a very dark - as in film rather than tone - it's the kind of film I'd probably need to see again but it isn't the kind I'd go out of my way to watch again. Moving on...

Snowed In

There's a lot of movies out at the moment that mimic the era they are filming so that it looks as though it was made at this point rather than just have good stage managers. The film at the top of this blog is a perfect example and most definitely The Holdovers, which could have been made in the 1971 it is set in. I don't know if trying to replicate an era by the way you make a film is an actual thing but Downtown Owl is most definitely an 80s set film trying to look like it was made in the 1980s.

I'm struggling to give you much on this because it doesn't appear to have much of a story to tell. It's described as retelling the events leading up to an extraordinary weather event - the worst blizzard in Minnesota's history - but it seems to be about a supply teacher - Lily Rabe - who gets a temporary job at Owl High School, goes out with another female teacher every single night until they've been out with everyone who is likely to buy them drinks and when the locals stop doing this it appears to be down to the supply teacher's not sleeping around. She does have a soft spot for one guy and the rest of the film is essentially about her pursuit of this person. It has some other characters in it, who may have some bearing on the story but equally might not; these include Ed Harris and Vanessa Hudgens. It was really boring and I fell asleep twice during it.

Sweet Little Mystery

Quite a bit happened in this week's Sugar and yet it still felt short, like it needed another 15 minutes. What is becoming clear is that David Siegel is involved in the disappearance of his half-sister and he's not terribly convinced she's still alive. The thing is while this week's instalment was most definitely about Olivia, most of it wasn't. It had clever plotting and structure and it had the bits that are odd; just what are Sugar's 'people' doing and what is it about their 'methods' that have changed and why and why is there such an element of the detached whenever any of them appear on screen without Sugar? There's a rumour circulating on Reddit suggesting this was originally touted as a sci-fi series and I'm pretty sure I said after the first episodes dropped I thought he was an alien. I'm sticking with that.

Next Time:

I could have mentioned - above - that we watched the first episode of season two of Them, but I figured I wouldn't bother telling you why we didn't bother after 20 minutes and switched it off and watched a Pointless instead. I will mention we have Dead Boy Detectives but I'm going to stay on the fence about this based on some things I've heard. Episode six of Sugar is when the jaw-dropping twist happens and why are we finding this out right now, I hope it doesn't spoil things or the makers have an even more novel way of explaining it away.

I'm glad about the return of The Big Door Prize which I think was a real find and we have a clutch of episodes to binge on, while the Flash Drive of Doom is down to 16 films it might be time for more outside than inside for a while. There's also going to be some things that are more important than TV.