Pop Culture - The Return of Entertainment

The spoilers are right here and right now, so be aware because they will spoil things for you like moist air spoils fresh bread...

A Right Herbert

Denis Villeneuve makes great films. Arrival is one of the best movies I've seen in the last ten years (although I wasn't enamoured by the Bladerunner sequel) and Dune, Part One is BIG. I mean it's absolutely HUGE. It's a spectacle, an event, an epic like we hadn't seen before.

In many ways, if you compare this film to David Lynch's flawed adaptation from 40 years ago you can see how the human race has advanced, even in our lifetimes. This is a Mozart concerto compared to a Brotherhood of Man album; it's caviar compared to cheesy Wotsits - the two films might pretty much tell the same story but there is no comparison, and yet both films had all star casts and famous people in small roles and followed the book as best they could, given that Frank Herbert's books are largely unfilmable. This, second viewing, was a Saturday night event (as the next part will be a Sunday night event) and considering it was almost two and a half hours long, it pretty much whizzed by. Yet, in many ways, very little happens and there's actually a number of questions that hopefully will be answered in Part Two, but most definitely weren't in this one.

Why does House Atreides bother the Emperor so much that he wants to get rid of them? Is it because the Harkonens are now richer than him and this is a political move to ensure he curries favour with the bald psychopaths? If that's the case, why take Arrakis away from them in the first place? You see, as many people will attest from these blogs, I like to work with logic. A story has to be logical, there has to be some kind of internal logic at play otherwise I struggle with it, so there doesn't appear to be a reason why House Atreides has been sacrificed, unless, of course, it was a move by the people I like to call the Benny Degenerates. If this is literally a long game to get Paul - son of Leto - to eventually become emperor, then surely we could have been sent a clearer message? That aside, I can just about excuse the other plot holes until I've seen the second instalment and this logic plot hole I've highlighted might be explained as well. 

This is, as I said, an epic. The Atreides are given the spice world and replace the bonkers Harkonens; Duke Leto wants a better relationship with the indigenous Fremen, while his wife is grooming their son and heir to be something altogether different - a male Bene Gesserit, possibly for even bigger things. The agreement to leave Paul and his mother Jessica alone to live is something the Harkonens have no interest in, but they survive the slaughter and get away to join the Fremen in the desert and that is essentially the film. Other stuff happens, but it's all essentially ... not padding, but fleshing out. Paul not only has Bene Gesserit powers, he also is regarded as the Messiah and he scares people. You wonder why because Timothee Chalamet is a weedy little fucker, but that's maybe part of his charm and power.

Part Two is scheduled for tomorrow. I really can't wait. After weeks of largely sifting through shit to find some nuggets, it was great to watch a film - albeit with some plot holes - that didn't treat me like an illiterate twat... 

Another Right Herbert

The first thing about Dune, Part Two you notice is that it starts literally a couple of minutes after Part One ended. Paul, his mum and the Fremen are taking the body of Jamis back to their settlement and are attacked by a squad of Harkonen psychos. Once they've been despatched - and frankly if the Harkonens can hover and float about in their war suits you wonder why they bother with 'foot' soldiers - the film settles into essentially 90 minutes of 'How Paul becomes a Fremen'.

Like the first part, a lot of time passes with little happening but that's fine because this is still an epic story and epic stories deserve to have time taken over them. What we do discover is why the Atreides were sacrificed and that Paul is just one of the Bene Gesserit's myriad of schemes; some put in place in case others don't work. They are the real driving force behind this story and I imagine the other stories in the Dune Universe. But the real thing in the first 90 minutes is how Paul Atreides becomes Paul Muadib Usal, honorary Fremen and would be Messiah. How he conquers lots of obstacles and learns to be a desert man. However, one thing puzzled me (and the wife) and was never explained - how do you get off of a sandworm after you've taken a ride on it. It was never shown and given how huge, destructive and dangerous they are, getting off of one, especially when you can place special compartments on their backs to keep vulnerable people in, is never shown and that bugged me.

What I will say is - and stop now if you haven't seen this and intend to - while it concludes many things, it clearly sets us up for Dune Messiah or Part Three, because it ends with conclusions but also with beginnings and unfinished parts - such as the birth of 'The Abomination,' the fight with the other Houses and whatever happens to Chani. It is a cracking film, but it's also a bit like The Empire Strikes Back (except in this case it's the Empire Gets Royally Butt Fucked). It's not an ending, just a stopping off point. I don't think this duology, which will eventually become a trilogy, will ever be anyone's favourite film series, but it is quality filmmaking with a great cast of actors and a story that is both as old as the hills but also refreshing and bold. Denis Villeneuve is apparently going to adapt Arthur C Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama as his next project - that is also something decidedly weird and believed to be difficult to film.

Ship of Fools?

So... one of the televisual highlights of the last couple of years was the German/Netflix production called Dark. It was almost perfect even if it had subtitles and got very very weird in the final series. The people responsible for this work of pure unadulterated genius were also responsible for the TV series 1899 about mysterious goings on aboard a steam ship that finds its deserted 'sister' ship somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.

Unfortunately, instead of being a quality follow up series it becomes this week's first flop. We managed two episodes of the eight, but it was so bloated and uninteresting we decided to give up. The thing about Dark was it made sense even if it was dealing with some weird time travel business. Not once in the first two series did we stop and think 'WTF' - I mean, we did, but in a good way. 1899 was just strange with an assortment of characters none of which were particularly likeable and while I'm sure it would have made sense in the end (despite being cancelled, I was informed that the eighth part has an 'explanation' of sorts), I just wasn't interested in it. It was boring; very boring and felt like it was being weird for weird's sake. It's a shame, I was expecting something like Dark but instead got something like ITV's Passenger.

Sweetness

[heh heh] The Guardian currently rates Kate Winslett's The Regime as 'quality TV, guaranteed to make you laugh - 4 stars'. IMDB currently has a 6.1 rating for it. I know which one I believe. That said, the same newspaper gave the new Colin Farrell TV series Sugar a two-star rating and found lots wrong with it and complained about an apparent plot twist halfway through the series of which we've only got access to the first two - which I think is a bit shitty, a bit spoilery. It's literally a review that says 'we liked it but halfway through there's a plot twist we didn't like so we now think it's shit. You're going to have to wait for it because you're just the paying public.' I think that's a fucking dereliction of reviewing duties. How dare that abysmal pseudo-right wing newspaper talk about something that happens in an episode we won't see for at last three weeks. It's pseudo-spoiling; it's trying to come across as better than people watching on a weekly basis - we know what happens and we don't like it, but you plebs are going to have to wait to find out what, ner ner, ner, ner ner. Fuck the Guardian and anyone who thinks it's a good newspaper...

As opening episodes go these were absolute corkers. It was everything you want from a mystery thriller. Just enough story, intrigue and hints of what's to come. A good introduction to the main character and his people and a nice juicy missing person's case that is obviously not going to be straightforward or easily solvable. Sugar is the kind of thing I expect from Apple TV; there's an element of class about it that won't even be spoilt if the plot twist halfway through is that John Sugar is an alien or a transsexual dolphin. This is well made entertaining, intriguing TV and we definitely need more of it.

John returns to Hollywood from a relatively straightforward case in Tokyo and takes on a new job without his 'boss' knowing, or more importantly, she did know she just didn't want him to take the case on - he needs a holiday. It's about the missing granddaughter of a famous Hollywood producer and John is a huge film buff and this is something that's right up his street. We quickly discover that he's also not your average PI; there's a Holmesian logic about his actions and the questions he asks and the things he looks for. He's also an incredibly nice man; he's a polyglot, nice to dogs and everyone who meets him is pretty much blown away by his charming arresting personality. He also has a problem, but what that problem is more than likely is what the plot twist is going to be (and why I'm erring towards extra terrestrial as the moment). I liked the first two episodes; I expect we've found something weekly that's finally going to fill some of the void left by all those other Apple TV shows we were banging on about until last January when TV became shit again.

Episode three, which like two, was about 30 minutes long and felt as though it needed to be longer was just as entertaining, but some of John Sugar's mystic was being unravelled. He's either a spy (or an alien working undercover) because he's a member of a polyglot society that are charged with watching rather than getting involved and Ruby is likely to be his handler. It feels slightly unnecessary in the context of the detective aspect of the series and could be what the Guardian was banging on about. My gut feeling is while whatever secrets John is hiding and part of might be important to his character development, it's Olivia's disappearance and the myriad of stories emerging from this that is holding my interest, because that's what drew me in originally. There is definitely something going on with the Siegel family and Sugar is beginning to realise why Ruby didn't want him to get involved with this case because it appears to be more than just a single can of worms. Intriguing stuff, even if John's subplot feels misplaced.

Thieves Like Us

Had Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead been half as good as the prequel, Army of Thieves then we'd be talking about a quality zombie movie rather than an absolute heap of steaming shite. This is a heist comedy and it pretty much hits the right notes for most of the film. Yes, there's an element of corniness about it, but not from where you might expect.

This is about 'Ludwig Deter' the safecracker from Snyder's Las Vegas set Zombie faeces and how he became a safecracker, when he was just simple Sebastian Schlencht-Wöhnert - a bank teller and part time opener of locks. He gets recruited by Nathalie Emmanuel's Gwen, who is part of a team of international thieves and these include Guz Khan, Ruby O Fee and a massive twat wannabe Huge Ackman clone played by someone called Stuart Martin. You can imagine the two women as part of an international heist team, but the men... not so much. They want to crack the three most difficult safes in the world - or to be more precise, three of the four most difficult safes, all named after Wagner's Ring Cycle and posing a huge risk for Sebastian and his new team of bad guys, especially when the buffoons from Interpol get on the scene. What follows is an entertaining and really likeable romp that doesn't have the happy ending you would hope for, but anyone who's seen Army of the Dead will understand why - that film really wasn't as good as it could be, while this, directed by Matthias Schweighöfer (the guy who plays Sebastian/Ludwig) is good and is worth watching as long as you ignore the epilogue if you haven't seen Snyder's really bad zombie flick.

Retro Apocalypse

Right... I'm not sure how I'm going to do this because when you get entire series dropping in one lump (and then have a what's going to happen segment at the end of the first episode), it's difficult to review. We're not going to watch this in the allotted span of a week's blog [it's late Thursday night as I write this] so I either write this as a few episodes this week and the rest next week - by which time anyone wanting to watch the entire series will have binge watched it or given up entirely - or I come up with a different approach... So I decided to try something a little bit different. It might work, it probably won't. This could all have been edited out by the time this goes live on Saturday. Who can say?

Fallout - season one, episode one: The End: I remember when the first Fallout computer game came out in 1997. A friend of mine - who later became someone I really didn't like being in the same room with - was mega excited about it and that just about concludes my knowledge of the game. I remember watching him play it a couple of times, but I was probably stoned and therefore unlikely to remember anything. The guys in the big metal suits seemed to ring a bell, but even that might be some kind of subliminal thing where I'd seen their picture somewhere and just assimilated it, like I do with all the knowledge that makes me good at pub quizzes. The thing is, while the rest of the world - Gen Zs and Millennials mainly - have been wetting themselves about the new Fallout TV series, it's largely gone over my head. I've seen a few of the trailers and thought it looked both interesting and expensively made, so if it had a good story as well, we might be onto a winner. Episode one - The End - was just over an hour in length and does a good job of setting us up for what to expect, or at least it does enough to make me retain some interest.

It starts in the 1950s with a former famous cowboy actor working children's birthday parties - because he was probably a bit of a pinko liberal (from what one of the parents said) in a world that looked similar to 'our' 1950s, but with technological advancements that looked very out of place. There's a threat of a nuclear war but everyone is just trying to enjoy a kid's birthday party; that is until a nuke goes off in the city, followed by a number of other nukes - we're in a war and given the amount of nukes going off, one that isn't going to have a happy ending for many. Fast forward 218 years and the world is a desolate and broken place and inside one of the many underground 'cities' are the people of Vault 33 and the daughter of their leader - Lucy - who is trying to find a husband who isn't related to her so that breeding can take place without genetic problems. She's paired up with someone from Vault 32 and a wedding is arranged and all will be good in Lucy's life. That is until her brother notices that the 'guests' from Vault 32 are all dishevelled and smell, then chaos ensues. Lots of death and blood and the people from Vault 32 aren't from there at all; they are in fact raiders from the outside world. The chief raider sort of knows Lucy and her father, who she kidnaps and we're introduced to our first mystery.

Meanwhile, there's this Brotherhood of Steel, protectors of the USA (or what's left of it). Guys in big metal suits, with their own squires - all very knights of the round table kind of thing. The squires are chosen from people who do all the shit jobs as training to become squires and eventually become 'knights' - among these is Maximus, who gets a job as a squire because his mate, who was to become a squire, gets seriously injured in what looks to be a sabotage - was it Maximus who did it or someone else?

While all this is going on we're reintroduced to the cowboy from the opening scenes, now referred to as The Ghoul, because he's over 200 years old, has no nose and is being kept alive with some substance and woken up every now and then so the guy who is keeping him in this state can do something that isn't clearly explained. The Ghoul is taking on the same job that the Knights are - searching for someone who has escaped 'The Enclave' - which we know nothing about as yet - and is valuable.

This is where we're at with the first part. Introductions and mysteries, which I suspect will be explained as we move further into the realms of this new post-apocalyptic world. Was it good? Well, it wasn't bad. It pushed enough buttons for us to be looking forward to the next episodes. I kind of think it's a shame that it couldn't have been released like an old fashioned TV series, but box sets and streaming is taking over the world and I'm an old cunt with no input or say in the matter. Episodes two and three will follow this.

Season one, episode two: The Target: Something I've touched on in the past is how I'm not really a fan of Mad Max - the idea of post apocalyptic slapstick has never really pushed any of my buttons and with the second episode of Fallout we got introduced to the population of the world outside of the Vaults and there was this lack of credibility about them. 

As with the first episode, we're following Lucy, Maximus and the Ghoul, but this starts off about Michael Emerson's Wilzig - the guy who worked for the Enclave who has defected from there with his dog and is carrying some 'secret' that could change the world. He has a bounty on his head which the Ghoul, the Knight called Titus and the woman who kidnapped Lucy's father want, but before the end of the episode, Titus is dead and the 'town' called Filly has been pretty much levelled by the Ghoul and Maximus, who has taken on Titus's armour. This was a violent episode that explained a little more about the way of the rest of the world and how Lucy is like a fish out of water. Oddly enough, it's she who ends up having to rescue Wilzig and he gives her some excellent advice.

This was also the first signs of a slight ... I dunno, disillusionment? Bewilderment? Possible lack of interest? The aforementioned Mad Max style of natives coupled with a distinct effort for this to be as much a black comedy as a post apocalyptic thriller grated on me a little. The comedy doesn't push any buttons with me and we're not really learning enough about our playing field for me to be caring about any of the players. The seeds of concern were planted by the end of this episode.

Season one, episode three: The Beginning: Except, it wasn't really the beginning. We had some flashbacks to when Coop (later to become the Ghoul) was a famous cowboy actor with his black wife and mixed race daughter in a USA that hated communists but clearly was not as racist as it really is; the main thing was more travelling towards the ultimate destination which Lucy is hoping will mean the release of her father - in what, I have to be honest is a very altruistic and slightly insane concept given what she's faced since she left Vault 33.

This was, I'm sorry to say, more of the same, although thankfully fewer moments with the people who inhabit the place. There is an encounter with a Gulper - a mutated fish thing with human fingers for teeth, who has stolen Wilzig's head and the Ghoul loses the stuff that keeps him alive and instead of trying to track down Wilzig's head - which is inside the Gulper but with enough time to retrieve it before it is digested - decides to take Lucy somewhere else. Maximus turns up and with the help of his new squire beats the creature by what appears to be pulling its insides out through its mouth. By the time we finished the third episode I could see the wife's eyes were beginning to glaze over and I could tell she was thinking that we were watching yet another TV series that she wasn't going to want to stick with.

We're almost halfway through and I expect next weeks blog will be more akin to a general review of the last five parts rather than this breakdown. This isn't going to be for all tastes and spending so much time on it here feels like an overindulgence for something I'm not sold on.

Next Time...

Probably the conclusion of Fallout and the next episode of Sugar will dominate the TV part, we might dip into Baby Reindeer. On the film front there have been a number of new releases this week and virtually all of them have been discarded through lack of interest; we might give Wicked Little Letters a try - especially as the Guardian hated it - and I've added a few movies we saw in 2020 and 2021 to the Flash Drive of Doom given our collective shit memories for what happens in films.

It has been a better week for televisual entertainment, but I can't help feel that I'm no longer easily pleased (if I ever was) and probably much harder to please, especially as I'm too quick to find fault in things, even if it's deserved. You know, nothing beats a simple story well made with good actors and a solid script. You don't need to be as complicated as a Rubik's cube to entertain and having a simple story isn't a sign of weakness. 

I'm not the kind of person who TV or film is made for nowadays, the same as I'm not who phones and the internet are aimed at either. This is something that will become more apparent as time passes. We shall see, I suppose, won't we?