Modern Culture - Magical Mystery Tour

Spoilers here, spoilers there, but not spoilers everywhere...

Big Cat Hunt

If ever an actor was typecast it's Elijah Wood. I mean, once a hobbit always a hobbit, right? Forget the fact he starred in the rather cool late-90s sci-fi movie The Faculty or that he plays a weird nerd in Yellowjackets or a role in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and even the fabulous Wilfred, where he was the only person to see his neighbour's dog as a man in a dog suit; Wood will always be Frodo Baggins and that's a real shame. He's 43 now and his entire career is summed up by the bloody Lord of the Rings films and that seems unfair... However, he does play Strawn Wise - a magician who could have been a huge star once upon a time but missed out because his best ideas were stolen by David Blaine - in the truly wonderful load of nonsense called Bookworm, and while he is excellent in this film, he plays second fiddle to someone else - just like he did in so many of his most famous roles and that seems unfair as well...

First fiddle in Bookworm is the outstanding Nell Fisher who plays Mildred. She is his 11-year-old daughter who he has never met before when he turns up to look after her, after her mother is electrocuted by a faulty toaster. He has flown all the way from the States to New Zealand to babysit while his former [brief] girlfriend recovers from her electrification and she absolutely takes advantage of this, the way any hyper-intelligent kid would. What follows is a voyage of discovery for both father and daughter as they go in search of the mythical Canterbury Panther - a big cat believed to live in the outback of south Island. It is a magical film in many ways; it's funny, touching, gentle, silly and not really what you'd think it was if you just acted on the description alone. Fisher is truly brilliant and has a huge future ahead of her, (the New Zealand accent is fake, she's from London) and Wood, yet again, proves he will do anything to ensure people stop thinking of him as Frodo. There's a slightly bizarre section in the middle with Michael Smiley that ordinarily would feel out of place, but it kind of works here. This is a real treat and you should watch it.

Precursor

The idea of Billy Crystal in a psychological horror drama series sounds a little like Al Pacino in an erotic thriller [see last week], yet unlike that Pacino film this works like butter on toast. Before is strange, disturbing, unsettling and intriguing; if that isn't a good reason to give it a try then I don't really know what is. Crystal plays Eli Adler, a celebrated child psychologist who is still recovering from the suicide of his wife of many years. He thinks he's losing his mind as the ghost of his wife haunts his dreams and some of his waking life; she has conversations with him and makes observations about the way he is living. He's on the verge of giving up his work and retiring. Then one morning he finds a small boy scratching something on the panel next to his front door, but before he can find out what the child is doing he runs away, leaving Eli slightly perplexed. The next night the boy crawls through Eli's dog flap and wakes him up before running home.

He is then contacted by child services asking if he would be interested in taking on the case of a troubled boy who has been through four foster homes and is having trouble adjusting to life in general and, guess what? The boy only turns out to be the one who has been visiting him. So far so weird. Except that isn't just it, the boy called Noah is violent and mute, rarely speaking and is obviously having some kind of psychotic episodes. He sees water acting in strange ways and when he does speak it's in a 17th century Dutch dialect, which sometimes he reacts to and sometimes he looks bewildered when Eli speaks it to him. Crystal retains some of his trademark humour, but this time it's more a defence mechanism than anything else and the story in general is, as I said, unsettling and most definitely creepy. The opening two parts successfully drew us in and the third part moved the story along really well. There's some hints about things in the latest instalment, such as what really happened to Eli's dead wife. Hopefully it remains at this level as it continues through to its outcome.

Who's Waddling Now?

Many questions are answered in this week's thrilling instalment of The Penguin, as Oz (Colin Farrell) asserts his influences all over Gotham with the distribution of the mushroom juice called Bliss. The story has moved on a few months and the overarching thing is how Oz is modelling himself as a modern Robin Hood; creating wealth and paying the locals good money for their loyalty. The thing is, for all of his narcissistic tendencies, Oz Cobb seems to be a loyal man who looks after the people he cares about; this is one of the things that makes this series so good - the juxtaposition of the lead character, is he a nasty villain or a man of principles? Meanwhile, Sofia and Salvatore Maroni have teamed up but they're nothing now that Cobb has destroyed both families; they have little or no influence, so the Penguin is moving into and taking over turf that used to be theirs. All they can do is put the frighteners on the new guys in town, but Oz has built up something very loyal in the neighbourhood, so breaking his business or flushing him out into the public is almost impossible. This game of back and forth is not winning for either side. Vic does something he never thought he would do and Oz's mother slowly sinks into a dementia that is quick and debilitating. Watching how good this series is makes you wonder if Marvel wishes they could do TV shows as well as this. We get Agatha All Along with its camp feel and comicbook witches, while DC has allowed a comicbook Sopranos to be created - this could be the one of the TV highlights of the year.

Idiot's Savant

What happens when you have a cleaning woman with an incredibly high IQ that makes her think on the same level as Sherlock Holmes? She becomes a consultant detective for the police department, of course. That's the premise for Kaitlin Olson's new TV show High Potential about a genius who accidentally solves a puzzling crime.

I'm not really familiar with this Olson's work, but on the recommendation (I think) of a friend, I gave this a watch... Now, I think it was recommended because the person who told me about it wondered if I would have the same feelings about it as he did; that, of course, might be the antithesis of a recommendation; he might have hated it, but I suspect he wouldn't have mentioned it if that was the case... Anyhow, it was like so many of these genius-helps-the-police shows it paints cops as precious idiots and the protagonist has to be quirky or have secrets in her past that need exploring. It's formulaic and reminds me of TV shows before a point in the past, where they all were 22 or 23 episodes in a season and it felt like it was filmed in a cheap format that made it look especially for TV. The pilot is reasonable, but despite plausible reasons why someone so clever as Olson's character - Morgan Gillory - is as she is, it just feels a bit contrived. What is also quite staggering is the fact that Olson is 50 next year; she's obviously not playing someone batting half a century, but if you look closely, she's done up to the nines (meow). We're probably not going to give it another episode. Oddly enough, it turns out my mate (the fabulous Martin Shipp in case anyone was wondering) wasn't recommending it, he was telling me that it was so bad he was enjoying it. I'm not going to see enough of it to enjoy not liking it. This is one you can chalk off to being Very Low Potential...

Bob and Paul Again

The reason I'm returning to Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is because in the 6th part - Perch fishing on the Great Ouse in Bedford - 1) This was one of the best episodes of this now long running show and 2) I discovered something about it which I had an inkling about a few weeks back - it's filmed well over a year in advance. This 2024 series was actually filmed during the late spring and summer of 2023. This only came to light when Bob, in a butchers in Bedford was buying some tripe for his and Paul's dinner (that didn't go down well) and on the label it said it had a best before date of September 12, 2023. Anyhow, this was the third time they've been searching for perch - a fish I often caught when I used to fish - and the third time they didn't get a big one (oo-er, missus). It was, however, very funny, poignant and the weather and scenery was glorious. They were in Turvey and the surrounding area - a place I knew very well once; it was nice seeing it in all its glory on a wonderful early September day when temperatures were very high; I sometimes miss the countryside of Northants and Beds, not the weather so much now; too hot and humid.

WTAF?

It's not often I watch something and am completely baffled by it. It's the first thing I've watched of Ryan Murphy's since the first season of American Horror Story and before that Nip/Tuck. I'm not as enthused by his stuff as others and wouldn't call myself knowledgeable about his style or substance, but whatever of his I have seen I've never seen anything quite like Grotesquerie. 

It starts horrifically, with a crime scene that is so horrible that many police officers at the scene are throwing their guts up and ratchets up the gore from that point on. We're talking a serial killer who is using his crimes as a canvas, painting dreadful pictures. By the time we get to the end of the second part the death toll is borderline extraordinary, with a scene depicting the last supper but with murdered homeless people. In the centre of this is Niecy Nash-Betts as Detective Lois Tryon, an alcoholic with a husband in hospital in a coma that he looks unlikely to wake up from. She also has a daughter as home, played by Raven Goodwin, who is morbidly obese and is a compulsive eater - she is massive and is proud of her weight and size. There's also something else going on with her, it involves the nurse responsible for her husband's care - played by Leslie Manville, this is an entirely different level of weird and fucked up and something I feel would drag into an essay if I tried to even start explaining. Suffice it to say, the nurse is infatuated with Lois's comatose husband and clearly has a serious problem with his wife...

Add to the Sister Megan Duval, played by Micaela Diamond. Remember Carol Kane in Taxi? Latka's wife, the one with the weird voice? Well Sister Duval looks like her and sounds like a bible-thumping psychologist. She turns up at the police station seeking Lois to try and get the scoop on the killings for the Catholic paper she writes for - this in itself is weird enough, but when Louis starts to confide in her and then pulls her into the actual case it gets even stranger. Admittedly, there's more than a fleeting suggestion that the murders might be religious in theme, possibly even Satanic, so getting the sister involved is maybe not a silly idea and by the end of the second episode there's a good case for having someone of the cloth involved because it is taking its toll on all the police officers. 

Then episodes three and four come along and I'm not sure if the wheels have fallen off or we're watching it from inside someone's nightmare. What was a relatively bonkers first two parts, gets absolutely insane with these two - we're introduced to Sister Duval's boss, a hip and trendy local priest who flagellates himself and talks in a way you've never heard a Catholic priest talk. Lois meets a hunky young hospital nurse, who helps her out and obviously, like the priest, goes on our list of potential suspects. While this is happening a fifth murder scene is uncovered and this in many ways is the worst one - body parts sewn together with the head of a goat; this series pulls no punches. One thing that does feel like padding is the amount of flashbacks to when Lois's husband was not in a coma; I'm wondering if this has some bearing on the story rather than just fleshing out Lois's character, but is it? I'm formulating a theory about this and the husband is key to that. 

Then episode five happens and - in line with my theory - you really get the sense that this is Lois's nightmare and we're living it. There's a burning sink hole, a geologist, a motel from hell - complete with unexplained brazen madness - and a sixth murder is uncovered and seriously, whoever thought up this series has some issues because the murders are getting more vile and nasty. This is just a really strange show; the wife described it as 'A Twin Peaks for the 21st century' and she might be right, except Twin peaks was never this fucked up and nasty. There's more to like in this than dislike. I have some reservations, but in general, we whizzed through the first half in a couple of evenings. There'll be a conclusion of this review (and series) next week!

Pee-cup

The makers of Teacup can fuck right off and then when they've fucked off, they can fuck the fuck off some more. What a bunch of worthless shits they all are and what an absolute massive heap of shit this series was. I have wasted four fucking hours on this stinking bag of tripe. Teacup? Copout more like. It was clear after a while that this was going to end up as an ongoing series, but we had persevered with the final two parts because you never know, something might have fucking happened or even concluded. Some explanation might have been forthcoming. Some fucking sense might have been made of this bag of putrid rats intestines. But no, instead we had another hour of nothing; another hour of character development; another hour of wishing to fuck I'd watched something I knew was going to be a load of shit rather than sticking with this vomit. What happened, I don't hear you ask? Well absolutely fuck all really. They killed off the two characters who were having an affair with each other; thus proving that philanderers are going to die horribly. The rest of the wankers inhabiting this area of Georgia drank the psychedelic kool aid and wandered away from the farm only to meet more alien assassins and then some cool dudes in a souped-up car who basically did what Doc Brown did at the end of Back to the Future and said 'We have more to do!' This was as stinky as the worst arseholes in the world; arseholes encrusted with the stinkiest shit imaginable. I hope the makers of this dog wank die horrible deaths. Cunts.

Agatha All Rubbish No Class

My Thursday night consisted of the final parts of Teacup (see previous review) and the final two parts of Agatha All Along. I feel I could have taken a razorblade to my privates and had a more enjoyable evening. If this is the future of television then someone stuff a bomb up my arse with a short fuse...

Actually, at least Agatha All Along had some semblance of a story and really did tie in with WandaVision and the Doctor Strange film (after a fashion). As my friend Kelvin said, Kathryn Hahn was essentially channelling Missy from Doctor Who and really was a horrid character, going through time massacring witches to keep herself going. The Green Witch or Death (Aubrey Plaza) wanted Agatha to do the dirty on Billy so that she could claim him and stop this unauthorised bollocks, but Agatha doesn't play by the rules, especially when she had a bit of revenge to get from her old lover, in the form of only giving her son Nicky a short life before claiming him. The final two parts started with a conclusion to the first seven episodes and the ninth part was an epilogue with a twist - we got Agatha's origin and just how powerful Billy really was. Agatha died, but has so much power she's now a ghost... yes, I know, I'm spoiling it, but trust me I'm not spoiling anything because this was a load of crap and you'll have been saved from wasting about five hours of your life watching it. Oh and it ends not with a conclusion but with ghostly Agatha and her new mate Billy going in search of Tommy, the missing imaginary brother. Honestly, I would have had more fun covering my testicles in the liquid contents of a toilet duck bottle while looking at them in a mirror...

The MCU Trailer Trash

I don't want you to think I have a problem with race, because I so obviously don't, but the line-up for Marvel's TV shows in 2025 makes me think the demographic has changed and there's a conscious decision to make more superheroes black. Take Ironheart as an example. I don't have a problem with Riri Williams, the main character who first came onto the scene in the second Black Panther movie, yet from what I can gather from the forthcoming series of the same name is that it's going to be a very black culture TV show and I wonder if that possibly alienates a large percentage of the potential audience? However, more than that, is it really needed? Do we need this specific 'black Iron Man' when we've got Don Cheadle's War Machine? The MCU is missing Tony Stark, it needs the Iron Man part of their universe reinstated even if Robert Downey Jr is going to be Doctor Doom (One from an alternate reality that apparently is Tony Stark and not Victor Von Doom). Stark Industries was such a key player in the MCU that even if we can't have Tony Stark his company should be at the forefront of the universe. Ironheart looks like a poor man's rip off and if recent MCU TV shows are anything to go by it will probably end up being a load of shite. But probably not as shite as...

Wonderman... Now this is where I become my curmudgeonly old self and complain that Simon Williams, the template for the Vision in the original Marvel comics, and an atomically powered superhero who is also a B-list film star, is not a man of colour and should never have fucking Trevor Slattery as his wing man. As much as I respect Ben Kingsley, his Slattery character, the 'original' Mandarin in... ahem... Iron Man 3 and then that Shang-Chi bollocks, is annoying and should never have been seen after the post credit scene in the aforementioned film, let alone keep reoccurring. Little can be deduced from the Wonderman snippet/trailer apart from the fact it looks like it might be a comedy, a little like that She-Hulk abomination was. That fills me not so much with dread as a growing determination to give up on MCU TV because, ultimately, it disappoints.

The other snippets teased by Marvel/Disney include a Spider-Man animated TV series that looks bang average; a new series of What If?! which will suffer the same fate as the first two series and not be watched in this household and a four-part Marvel Zombies series, which feels a little like a fucking pointless waste of time and money, I mean zombies were old hat 10 years ago. The comics were dreadful and there's no reason to think an animated TV show is going to be any better... Then there's a Wakanda animated TV show - Eyes of Wakanda (???), which looks as exciting as all the other MCU animated shows; full of piss poor animation and cretinous stories. I suppose Disney has this streaming service so they have to fill it up with something...

The one interesting thing to come from this teaser trailer package is Daredevil: Born Again, which is going to be a nine-episode season with the first part directed by the rather excellent duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, the guys behind Loki and countless weird and wonderful time travel and alternate reality films. Now, I don't know if we're going to find out if this is actually the Netflix DD or an alternate reality MCU one, mainly because he's back in the classic costume he was last seen in for a couple of episodes of that dreadful She-Hulk series. My gut feeling is this is going to be a slightly homogenised version, with less grit and violence and more... MCU bollocks, probably. The reason I say this is because in the blurb to promote it earlier this year, this was said, "[the showrunners] gave the series an episodic structure and lighter tone than the Netflix series." The Kingpin looks slimmer and less menacing, but I suspect that will just be his new exterior now that he's about to become mayor of New York and while I'd like to think this is going to be good, I can't help shake the feeling that the MCU TV universe is a busted flush, chasing viewers instead of building followers. After almost a year off, it seems that Disney has decided to flood the market with six TV shows and three feature films between now and the end of 2025, and I'm wondering if this is going to be a material dump or do they think that superhero fatigue is going to wear off and everyone is going to be sporting new hard-ons about their product? I know which one I'd be betting on...

Nerd Quest Alpha

I've discovered a US sitcom that I quite like, the problem is I'm probably going to have to find time to watch it on my own because the wife thought it was 'all right, but a bit too American' which is code for 'I've seen enough!' To be honest with you, it's a bit too nerdy for me, but not like The Big Bang Theory that I've watched a few episodes of and never managed to utter a laugh at. Mythic Quest is much better than that show even if what is being parodied isn't really my thing. As a mate said, it's the perfect nerd show and I get it completely. This is Rob McElhenney's baby, made by Apple TV+ and full of nerds, sexy women and bad language. It pretty much ticks all the boxes for computer game or comic book fans and after watching the first two episodes I really wanted to watch some more, but as I said, the wife put paid to that. It basically follows the story of the people who put out the world's most popular on-line game, a sword and sorcery first person adventure with the focus on the guy who inspired it, his chief programmer, the company's money man, the CEO (who is shit at his job), two  female games testers (who have the hots for each other but don't realise it) and a psychopathic PA who by the end of episode two had just about destroyed the company for trolling one of the most important influencers in the business. It's great fun and if you like this kind of thing I expect you'll be trolling me in a few weeks/months to tell me all the excellent episodes I've missed...

America Decides

Having lost my ability to view the USA as anything other than a fascist state already, Tuesday's Presidential election - which I will watch for a while - really is more than just electing a new President. Let's be clear about this, Trump is probably going to win and if he loses he's still going to claim he won and either way the USA is going to burn because of it. The world is run by right wing borderline fascists - not politicians but media moguls, tech bros and corporate heads are the real power and most of these people are bad for the average person. Take what's happening in the UK at the moment; as most of my friends know, I no longer support the Labour Party, yet I'm starting to feel very sorry for them because they're damned. The recent budget, which is arguably the best budget for the country in nearly 20 years, has been elevated to being worse than Liz and Kwasi's mini budget of a few years ago. You remember, the one that was going to borrow huge amounts of money to ensure rich people made more money, while simultaneously increasing mortgage payments by ridiculous amounts in the middle of a cost of living crisis. These two jokers destroyed the economy, yet Rachel Reeves's attempts to fix the public sector, ensure people have more money and penalise (to a degree) the richest is being heralded as the worst thing ever. This is because politicians - in hock to wealthiest and most powerful - should be punishing the average person. Did Labour not read the memo? The less wealthy are used to being financially raped by the state, if you don't carry on this tradition they start to get altruistic ideas, such as being able to fix things...

In the USA, if Trump wins - and I think he will, because more than 50% of that country's citizens are morons and cretins - the first thing he's going to do is go for his political opponents, you know, the kind of thing Hitler would have done. The second thing will be to pardon all of his friends that are in prison for trying to overthrow the government in January 2021. After this it will be attacks on women, non-white people, migrants and then this abominable wanker will show his true colours and all of the countries that have mocked him will become targets. NATO will cease to exist. The Ukraine will fall. Israel will destroy the Middle East. Mexico will be targeted as a 'bad country' and will suffer and the UK will no longer have a 'special relationship'. Then after three years of fucking up the world he will, at almost 80, declare the end of Presidential elections. He will remain President until he dies and name a successor; the USA will finally become a fascist dictatorship and US States will begin ceding from the Union. Alex Garland's Civil War will become prophetic but by this time the rest of the world will be burning or drowning. I'm not being melodramatic; if Trump wins (and I said, I think he will), every one on the planet will be fucked...

Next Time...

Top of my agenda is to finish Grotesquerie, because it's one of the most fucked up TV shows I've seen in a long time. Before is intriguing and enjoyable and The Penguin is one of the best things on TV, these alone are worth staying in for. We have Shrinking to start and catch up on and we've also got The After Party, The Old Man season two and The Resort (with Cristin Milioti) to watch. There's also going to be something new starting this week - there always is - and therefore films could well take a back seat again. I expected to watch more films this week, but it turned out to be the first thing we watched last Saturday and we haven't seen a film since. We have a shit load of films to watch, but autumns and winters are long and the good TV will dry up in December and not return until January, so I'm not too concerned; three months ago it was all films and hardly any TV.