Modern Culture: The End?

Whatever spoilers there are will be for things you shouldn't watch...

Kraven the Wanker

Here's the thing, had this not been a 'comicbook' film it might have been quite enjoyable, but then when you have to factor in the acting, the script, the special effects and the absolute load of horse wank it ended up being and nothing can save this film - and Sony's much-derided Spider-less-verse - from the fate all of it deserves. Why do they make these films? Or more importantly why do they allow these films to be made so badly? My plan was to watch the first 20 minutes and then wax lyrically about what an absolute steaming pile of lion shit it was, but like a bad car crash I watched it until the end, relishing every bad scene, poor bits of dialogue and hackneyed attempt to make it a worthy addition to the 'super' genre. Yeah, that's two hours of my life I'll never see again, but I've got the lurgy and I've been too unwell to moan about it. So much didn't make sense; I presume Sony employ people to watch the unreleased version and if they do how come no one spotted the two or three HUNDRED continuity and story errors. Huge swathes of this made no sense at all; the dialogue was, seemingly, written by an 8-year-old... Actually, that's a terrible insult to most 8-year-olds. For the love of God, no more, please. 

Time's Wonky Arrow

Our decision to watch old films when we could have been watching less old films continued with a visit to Gregory Hoblit's Frequency, his film after Fallen, which we watched a few months ago. This stars Denis Quaid and Jim Caviezel as father and son talking to each other across time via CB radio during massive solar storms over New York state. It's proper timey-wimey stuff with Caviezel first saving his father's life and then getting him to investigate a serial killer, unawares that everything the two do across time has a knock on effect - the Butterfly Effect - which takes place in real time. It's a great concept let down by implausible things happening that should not happen and wouldn't necessarily result in where the film's direction goes. It's a good film that is spoiled a little by the ending and even more by the ending's epilogue, which is about as optimistic and wishful thinking as you can imagine.

A bit of weird knowledge. Hoblit rose to fame working with Steven Bochco, first on over 100 episodes of Hill Street Blues and then 37 episodes of NYPD Blue - during an early scene in this film, much attention was focused on the TV, which was playing an episode of Hill Street with Mick Belcher.

Earth Blah Blah Blah

We were treated to two parts of Earth Abides before Christmas and the final part a couple of days before New Year. It suggests to me that they were trying to get it over and done with before 2025. The thing is this is US TV and those decisions will have been made months ago, so it probably just felt like that. This week more of the same happened. Ish survives his run in with a mountain lion - but we don't know how - and another three years whizz past. This little commune has been together best part of 20 years when they get invaded by their first bunch of dodgy people, led by Charlie, a charismatic wanker who bullies his way into getting what he wants and is followed by either sycophants or cowards. Stuff happens that forces the community into making tough decisions and with one episode to go I'm wondering if the future of mankind, after a pandemic, is to survive as long as it can without falling victim to itself or whatever lies in wait... 

The conclusion to this well made but ultimately flawed series finds tragedy and a way forward for those who survive the second coming of the flu. This was spoiled by an absolute lack of jeopardy but as I said to the wife, it's probably what would happen. It really has been the dullest, but in places extremely fascinating, TV show I've watched in a while...

Law and Order

I wanted our Christmas Night movie to be something to remember; something that has a good set of reviews and looks like a wise choice. It was clearly going to be the Jude Law and Nicholas Hoult white supremacist film The Order. Everything about it looked right - good cast, historical drama that's based on a true story and... The Guardian really liked it. I suppose I should end the year slipping back into old habits and taking that newspaper's recommendations as anything other than a warning to avoid. This was remarkably dull; even the 'exciting' bits were just meh. It tries to paint a picture that Neo-Nazis are humans as well, while simultaneously saying good people do stupid racist things. It just felt like a long anti-climax that looked good but was really difficult to like.

La Zzzz

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing Christmas 2024 was languid and snooze inducing. The boys went to France and I got the impression that it probably wasn't the best idea they've ever had. They caught some fish, talked about stuff and proved that maybe, sometimes, this is a TV show that has sometimes run its course. Half the show was without the dog Ted, he turned up and it became all about Ted. It's like sometimes they just haven't got much to make a show from and the amount of time spent on the - admittedly - very large carp suggested to me that there was a struggle to film enough useable material. More an addendum than a special. 

Dune and Dusted

The sixth and final episode of season one of Dune Prophecy came and went. Nothing was resolved; people died and everything was set up nicely for season two, which I won't be bothering with.

Dull and Dustier

What might have been the final part of James May and the Dull Men arrived just after Christmas and it was... dull. Not a lot was dealt with apart from chocolate and macaroni, which apparently has potential.

Who's Sorry Now

We didn't watch Doctor Who on Christmas Day, we watched it on Boxing Day and we weren't really looking forward to it. It's often when you least expect something to be any good that exceeds expectations and this might not have made a huge amount of sense - and old leaky eyes managed to cry yet again - but it was quite a lovely and quirky little tale of anger, loneliness and bringing a little bit of Joy to the World. I didn't know who Nichola Coughlin was, but I was impressed with the hotel receptionist - Stephanie de Whalley - and her undying love for the Doctor - a well worn path that never fails to be one of Doctor Who's most endearing traits. I enjoyed this. Like I said it struggled to make sense and there seemed to be some senseless deaths, but it was more than I expected and therefore more than we deserved.

Ghost of a Past

The last century is over 25 years ago now... The last time we watched Stir of Echoes was 25 years ago and it's not really a film that has aged well. It does paint this romanticised version of Chicago, the same way Shameless US did, where everybody parties in the yard all the time and everyone is friends with someone else. Kevin Bacon plays this borderline-arsehole telephone engineer who after getting hypnotised at a party starts seeing ghosts (just like his son, who didn't need to be hypnotised) and what follows is twisting whodunnit, which despite not having seen it for a quarter of a century we both remembered as soon as the reason for remembering came onto the screen. It's a little creepy, but in reality is feels as though it was an attempt to cash in on The Sixth Sense with a less creepy kid seeing the ghosts this time. It's not a bad film, but age hasn't been kind to it.

It's Only Christmas

The regular series of Only Connect has been replaced by a bunch of specials for this festive period. I know quite a few people who dislike this quiz show because of Victoria Coren-Mitchell rather than for any other reason. I've grown ambivalent about her over the last decade or so, but I do think she's quite amusing, if you like that kind of thing. This year's Christmas specials have been a mix of easy and 'bloody hell, these are supposed to be fun!' Old teams come back; you think you recognise them, but do you or is it just your quiz brain playing tricks on you? I get confused even when I see this year's competitors again because I can't remember them from the last time they appeared...

Shine On 

There's this possible apocryphal story about Stephen King getting excited about Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Dr Sleep until he learned that the studio putting up the money wanted it to not only be an adaptation of the then recent King novel, but also a direct sequel to Stanley Kubrick's divisive The Shining. This meant that Flanagan - a piss poor sell out of a director IMNHO - wrote the screenplay, directed and eventually edited his own version...

Dr Sleep, which stars Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson, isn't a bad film at all, at least until the last 30 minutes when it veers away from the book and into the territory that King hated so much he paid for and co-wrote his own TV adaptation of The Shining (with I believe his oft 90s collaborator Mick Farris). It has to be said that I loathe Kubrick's adaptation about as much as King, so I absolutely detested the last 30 minutes of this film. It literally threw away the last 100 or so pages of King's Dr Sleep novel and made up an ending to make the producers happy. The way it tied the two together, which, strangely, the follow up book doesn't really try to do, ruins a perfectly good story - but only if you've read the books. If you're a fan of the Kubrick film you'll be happy with the many nods back to the 1980 film. It also needs to be pointed out that this was Flanagan's Director's Cut of the film, so it cuts lots of Henry Thomas's mediocre Jack Nicholson impersonation and keeps the appearances of young Danny and his mother to a minimum - almost as if he was publicly apologising to King for fucking up his adaptation.

Don't get me wrong; it's a good film (I recall hating it much more when I saw it in 2019) and the three hour run time absolutely whizzes past. I'm just always going to have a problem with anything that wants to be associated with Kubrick's film. 

Goofy Goonies

I haven't seen The Goonies for probably 40 years. It's a noisy cacophony of a film with a lot of very silly things happening and is without a doubt a kids' movie. I remembered many people in it like Sean Astin, one of the Coreys and, of course, Ke Huy Kwan... But how many of you know or remembered that a young teenage Thanos was in it? Yes, Josh Brolin (son of James) was the hunk member of the team of kids searching for pirate treasure. He hasn't aged well...

Blah Blah Blah

And that is it. As I write this it's a little before noon on New Year's Eve. There's just over 12 hours - of yet another shit year - to go. I came down with a virus on the 28th and have been housebound since, coughing and sneezing and leaving all the dog work to the wife. 

I've also been in a real quandary for the last few weeks. I've even written a blog about it, which seemed like a good idea at the time but still remains half finished and will probably be deleted after I publish this... The thing is, I have to change my lifestyle a little in 2025. Health concerns (nothing serious, touch wood) mean that I need to get out more, find some hobbies and focus on new goals. I've taken up Tai Chi, which has been fun even if my fragile back hates it and I've decided that I'm going to have another go at writing a novel. I should just go back and rewrite one of the many I've 'finished' but this time it isn't about me, it's about... er... me. The process of writing a novel will give me some of the focus I need; the discipline to sit down and work on an idea rather than be waylaid by the internet, on-line golf games and getting angry at wankers on social media.

One of the side lines of this quandary has been what to do with my blogs. They are one of the few things in my life that give me a purpose, the problem I have with them is I think the blog has lost its purpose and has become a bit directionless. I know, how can a weekly TV and Film blog have lost its direction? I don't necessarily watch too much TV, but it does look like it. The blog has become a diary of my cultural life and that is quite sad because most of the culture I have is from the box in the lounge.

I've tried revamping the blog before and ended up going back to the tried and tested format. I want to continue with it, but do the people who read this (and there are quite a few of you) really want to see reviews of 40 year old films? In fact, do they want to see reviews of anything that's older than last year's Christmas presents? Retro reviews are one thing, but I'm not sure I really want to pad out my weekly blogs with my thoughts on a film that came out in 1977, let alone one that came out in 2017, and I'm sure my loyal readers don't either. 

So, next time you might see the same thing or you might see something a little different. I'm torn. I feel like I want to try something different, but what that different is I have no idea.

I will tell you that I'm kind of done with wishing people a Happy New Year because my experience of life, especially over the last 25 years is that it really doesn't get better and even if we have a reasonable year, there's always some shit that happens to take the shine off of it... Apart from the weather, the death of one of my best friends and the fact I'm now nearly 63, 2024 hasn't been very good at all. We live in a divided world and the future is anything but bright... 

So, in 2025 I hope no one you love dies or gets a horrible disease. I hope you remain solvent and don't want for anything. May you and your loved ones have a peaceful, caring and sharing year. You all get the amount of sex that you want and your orgasms are intense and not at all messy.

Now fuck off and do something useful.