My Cultural Life - Possibly Interesting-ish

What's Up? 

It would appear that having a provocative title for weekly blog does not increase viewing figures. In fact, while last week's blog was one of the shortest I've written for a while, it was also the least looked at over a one week period than anything on this particular blog that I can ever recall. Sensational titles do not immediately bring people to the table... Hence this week's title...

In other 'news', am I the only person to have noticed that Donald Trump has never been far from news headlines since January? It's like the Orange Shitler doesn't like it when people aren't talking about him. We've known for many years that he's a narcissistic, attention-seeking, massively 'little' wanker, but he's really excelling himself at the moment. This contradictory piece of human garbage goes a day or two without the world talking about him, so he imposes more tariffs or, worse still, goes on a foreign jolly, agrees with the powers that be there only for him to return to the White House and say the exact opposite. I mean, talk about playing to your audience. The fact the USA is complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians is probably something that in many years time will shine a very unfavourable light on this 'little' wanker; not that he'd care, even if he lived to be 120 he'd still view criticism of him and his decisions as people talking about HIM rather than anyone else. My God has there ever been such an odious, oleaginous lump of walking human excrement as this twat?

Meanwhile, it's August. Fuck me, how did that happen? There's a new Cardiacs album arriving next month. I missed the announcement but have now caught up. It's a poignant and slightly sad release because Tim Smith has been dead for a while now and this album has been sitting around half finished since 2007. I'm quietly hopeful that it will fill a void, but equally I'm worried that it might not be what I want or expected.

On the television front, there's uproar about the BBC's decision to show the final series of Masterchef, with Greg Wallace and John Torode, despite both of them being sacked for saying naughty things... Maybe it's my age, but we've been gradually moving in two directions in this country - a large percentage that is embracing hatred, racism and dissent and another large percentage who are literally getting their knickers in a twist by men of a certain age who might have said something sexist or inappropriate at some point in their long careers. No wonder the gammons get so wound up. We've got politicians allowing a genocide for fear of upsetting a few Jewish Nazis, while the press goes on an uproariously lunatic campaign to have anyone who might have said something now regarded as bad to be sacked and never work again. I mean, did Wallace and Torode rape a bus load of children? Did they go on some kind of rampage insulting any minority they could possibly think of? Did they starve children to death? No. Apparently Wallace was a bit of a sexist twat who took his celebrity status a bit too literally and Torode may have made a racial slur - apparently according to some on-line sources he was sacked for asking a member of his production team if they fancied going for a 'Chinky' after work - I mean, that's a fucking death sentence right there!.

Now, we have people who were on the show demanding they're edited out of it and TV unions saying the series has to be shelved because, you know, some bad language in need of some diversity sign posts. Fuck the rest of the contestants and the person who won it; yeah they can be asked back to have another go under two new whiter-than-white presenters, but what if they lose and get kicked off the show; or heaven forbid, what happens if they win and the BBC gets accused to cheating or fixing the outcome? I appreciate that we have to watch what we say if we're in a position of being in front of the public, but isn't it getting a little stupid now? We don't have presenters who have their own personalities and quirks now - just look at how Gary Lineker was hounded out of the BBC for having an opinion - we have scripted automatons who are so fucking neutral they're all as bland as Gethin Jones - a man who needs a broomstick shoved up his arse just to animate him.

Anyhow... here's some reviews.

Staggering!

I don't really rate Mike Flanagan. I think he's a shlock director and lacks true ability unlike many of his peers. So I went into The Life of Chuck with few expectations and the feeling that I would be disappointed. How wrong could I be? What a staggeringly brilliant movie this is. I was blown away by it. It is truly one of the best Stephen King adaptations I have ever seen - up there with Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and a handful of others. What makes it even crazier is I have the book of novellas this is from, but I have only read the title story and none of the others.

Tom Hiddleston plays the eponymous Chuck in a story that starts at the end and works its way back to the beginning. We see very little of Hiddleston in the first part; his (2nd) section, which showcases his fantastic ability to dance before a brief flash forward in the third and longest part. This third part was about when he was a child, living through far too much trauma and tragedy that any young man should endure. As the film goes on you start seeing repetitions, similar characters, the same stories told differently and instead of grating on you it makes you desperate to know more; to find out why this story is the way it is. There's some great support from Karen Gillan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hamill, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly and Jacob Tremblay, but it's Hiddleston who steals this film by doing almost nothing in it apart from a dance. It is one of the best films I have seen this year, possibly the best. It's a peaceful film going at 100mph with a tiny bit of King hidden away in it. I can't recommend it enough. 10/10

Jesus Wept

Something was going on, down the road from where I lived, for many years. We - me and my peers, many of my elders and a bunch of others - all knew that the Jesus Fellowship, out of Bugbrooke in rural Northants, was as dodgy as fuck and even more so when they became known as the Jesus Army, but probably our worst nightmares would never have prepared us for what unfolded in the documentary Inside the Jesus Army - available on iPlayer. It is equal parts horror story and tragedy. it tells the story of Noel Stanton, the man who broke away from the Baptist church and formed his own cult, which eventually included rape, molestation, possible deaths and a culture that put men at the forefront and destroyed families, friends and lives. All of this took place less than 20 miles from where I lived. I had a good friend who was part of this Christian Fellowship, but I always suspected he was only really there because his wife had a desire to be oppressed by fucking weird men. My friend died in 2010, so it would have been interesting to know what he would have said about this programme which was jaw-droppingly scary and will probably, one day, inspire a very nasty horror film.

The Bad Place

The biggest problem with The Institute is the way the TV adaptation looks like it's played fast and loose with the book. Now I know this is something I need to accept because adaptations are never going to please anyone who has read the source material and enjoyed it. This has a bunch of things that are annoying, but most I can live with but the geography, the actual time frame and the needless changing of the story seem incongruent and unnecessary. We've reached the halfway point of this eight-parter and something needs to start happening because the book was something of a rollercoaster despite it taking place over a much longer time period. The TV show looks like they didn't have the money to actually employ a full cast; whereas in the book The Institute was very much a government sponsored thing and there were a lot of staff, the TV show has DOGE written all over it. Plus by the midway point of the book, Joe Freeman's Luke had pretty much managed to escape and was on the run from a lot of very determined and ruthless government agents. With the geography of the dynamics of the story having been changed then the quarter of the book with Luke on the run can literally be written off in half an episode.

The other thing that's becoming annoying is that we're now essentially on episode four (of eight) and it's been the same old same old every part. Yes there's some tension between the wafer thin staff and everyone is terrified - the staff almost more than the inmates - but nothing has happened. I want something to happen because I am quite enjoying it, but my fear is that they're going to cram the second half of the book into the last two episodes and that would be a catastrophe.

The Ended Ones

I managed to persuade the wife to allow us to watch the second half of what is the final season of The Sandman. I'm a little disappointed that it should end because of Neil Gaiman - but I refer you to my points in the preamble. I feel that it could have gone three seasons and perhaps fleshed it out a little more; but like Gary Glitter's greatest hits and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Jimmy Savile, The Sandman will become something of a pariah and many fans of the comics and subsequent TV shows will never admit to having been avid followers. These final parts loosely adapt the last 12 issues of the comic after whizzing through other bits of the story in the first six parts. I liked this; I think it's adult fantasy for erudite people and it's... um... connections have deprived us of something that might have been special.

However, before I leave this for the last time, I should mention the 12th episode - the epilogue if you will. A sort of adaptation of the comic mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living; it felt like it should have been earlier in the series, or maybe just a standalone rather than tail-ending the events in The Sandman. Death - Kirby Howell-Baptiste - gets a day off every 100 years (which is convenient) and this time she opts to spend it with Colin Morgan's Sexton, a man so despondent with the world that he is about to kill himself after driving his girlfriend away with all his doom and gloom and lack of optimism. It's an odd mirror reflection of the very first episode and how Death's brother was trapped for 100 years in the realm of man; so I suppose it works as a fitting bookend, while having an allegorical significance. It was considerably brighter and lighter than the series it comes from, which, of course, is the irony of Death; she's a really lovely person and has a positive effect on those around her. 

The Presents

Joel Edgerton's directorial debut was with the 2015 thriller The Gift, where he also played Gordo, a man who might have been a friend of Simon - Jason Bateman - when they were at High School, or was he really? The two reacquaint themselves when they bump into each other in a shop in LA, where Simon and his wife Robyn - Rebecca Hall - have returned for his new job. Then a series of gifts are left on Simon's doorstep; first a bottle of wine, then some koi carp and it gets to the stage where Gordo is always turning up and always while Simon is out at work. It all seems a bit creepy stalkerish, but it also feels like a set-up. Simon comes across as a bit of a brat; someone who has little or no time for your average guy and there is some kind of a secret about his 'friendship' with Gordo that never seems to be touched on. I was wondering how they could make a 100 minute film out of this, especially after 30 minutes when it seemed to be accelerating fast to an ending, but instead it goes off in some directions I didn't expect and you probably won't either. It's an entertaining feature and deals with some troubling themes. 7/10

Not That One

What on earth made me think that watching the 2006 British comedy horror film Severance would be a good idea? Except, apart from the serious shortcomings in the story; a plot you could drive a bus through and the unnecessary female nudity and male sexism, it isn't actually that bad a film. It's not a good film, but it does have its merits. It stars Laura Harris (best known for her part as Daisy in Dead Like Me) as the token actor from the other side of the pond, along with Tim McInnerny, Babou Ceesay and the [really] excellent Danny Dyer, as a bunch of people who work for an arms dealer who go for a weekend retreat in the outback of Hungary for a team building exercise. Except something goes horribly wrong and it turns into a fight for survival against a bunch of unknown assailants. A bit like Assault on Precinct 13 but set in Hungarian woods rather than an LA police station and with considerably less charm. The thing is there are some genuinely funny bits and the gore is over the top enough to be funny. It's still only worth a 5/10 though.

Up in Flames

Watching Smoke has made me want to listen to the podcast called Firebug, the thing that inspired this TV series. Considering this is a true story I'm amazed that something like this happened at all - an arson investigator who is brilliant at his job and also an arsonist, a narcissist, a control freak, a sociopath and extremely clever, but maybe not clever enough. After solving the chip fat fire 'killer' case, Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) is a local celebrity, much to the chagrin of the team of cops investigating him; but it gives them a back door way to possibly track him and find the evidence they need to convict him and this seventh episode is focused on that. The team coerce a local literary agent into the investigation and things look on the up, but because of Dave's intelligence and paranoid leanings it all falls apart. I have to be honest, I was struggling to work out how this could be a nine-part series, despite some fantastic standalone episodes in the opening half, but now I'm wondering how it's only going to be nine parts, because I could honestly watch this for another two months. How does it have such a low score on IMDB (6.4)? Perhaps people reviewing it cannot believe its based on a true story, because frankly it's absolutely bonkers TV and perhaps people can't believe something like this actually happened.

A Band Aid For Africa

I was there in 1985. Not actually at Wembley, but sitting at home with some mates, lots of beer and drugs and we watched Live Aid on the warmest day of the year. Of course, we'd already lived through BandAid and the culturally inappropriate Do They Know It's Christmas song (but we didn't know that at the time) and by the time Live Aid came around the impossible was possible... The BBC documentary Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World sent shivers down my spine, despite the fact I never bought any of the singles, didn't pledge any cash and thought that pop stars should not be doing the work that governments' should be doing, especially Thatcher's one. The opening programme about the making of the Christmas single and the bringing together of Britain and Ireland's top pop stars was a nostalgia fest; we spent most of the show going "He's dead. She's dead." The second part was equally as much about the people no longer with us, but also about something staggering that had never been done before. We've still got the rest to watch, but these two opening episodes were the ones that defined everything that was to come, whether it was Comic Relief or any other 'Aid' that happened.

Live Aid has two unwavering memories for me. U2 who on the day I thought stole the show and the wonderful, much-missed genius of David Bowie, whose performance of Heroes still fucks me up and how the music world's biggest star decided to give up one of his songs to show a video of dying babies instead. The overriding thing about Band Aid and Live Aid was how a pretty washed up Irish rock star managed to get the most of the industry's biggest stars to be involved and looking back at it how some of the world's biggest stars didn't get involved in it - either because they weren't asked or they thought they were too big for it. The other takeaway from this is while the famine in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s was a natural disaster, it was rooted in the bad government that had aligned itself to the late era Soviet Union and how this perversely mirrors what is happening in Gaza with a rogue nation being backed by a country that is slipping quickly into fascism. If nothing else, this documentary should kick start the collective consciousness of people who think we live in a fair and free world. In the 1980s we had a Cold War, there was the threat of nuclear war and the gap between the rich and the poor was beginning to widen at an exponential rate - and fuck all has changed, just the people in charge.

We, as a human race, should be ashamed of ourselves that we have allowed things like this to happen again through inaction and cruelty.

What's Up Next?

We have 28 Years Later to watch; we've had it a few days but we want to watch Days and Weeks first, just to set the mood.

There's the penultimate Smoke and a brand new series of the fabulous Wednesday. The Institution might start moving in the right direction and I'm sure there's going to be other stuff appearing that I've forgotten about.

As always what I watch you will read about, or skim over because even if I try my hardest to avoid spoilers, I can't help but drop a few.

My Cultural Life - The Eleven Foot Long Penis

What the F...?

Twice last weekend I was left feeling bemused about British society. The first was the amount of exposure a couple obviously having an affair were given because they were caught on camera at a Coldplay concert. I mean, what the actual fuck? Are we back in the 1970s when the News of the World would have exposes about vicars sleeping with members of their congregation or an MP had been caught with their pants down? Who actually cares that two people are having an affair apart from their respective spouses? Why are newspapers and social media giving this any air? Why do people give oxygen to this abomination of supposed news? If nothing else, the meme industry has been allowed to essentially seriously damage two peoples lives (four or more actually) for the entertainment of a cruel audience and more clicks ...

… I was watching Sky Sports' coverage of the 153rd Open Championship and at one point on Saturday afternoon, one of the golfers holed a pitch shot for an eagle and Sir Nick Faldo said, "Bloody hell!" Which, to be fair was a lot less 'offensive' than what I exclaimed when watching it. However, before the words had barely left England's most successful golfer's mouth, two - TWO - of his commentator colleagues had apologised for Sir Nick's 'bad' language. I mean, what the fuck again? Perhaps people shouldn't watch Simon Reeve's shows because we have 'bloody hell' guessing games at however many he's going to say per programme. Since when was 'bloody hell' even regarded as a mildly - I'm loathe to use the word in this context - offensive exclamation able to be said by six-year-olds when they see something that warrants an exclamation?

No wonder gammons and the anti-PC brigade have such a field day about 'political correctness gone mad' because we live in a world where we can be arrested for campaigning against the slaughter of children in Palestine, but we have nonsense like people having affairs or 'swearing' dominating our news or TV coverage like the Tories used bad news days to drop shit policies that would affect the least well off. It's just a fucking nonsense!

What's Not Up?

Summer eh? The following blog is going to be short. I could have just not bothered this week and doubled up next, but I like routine. This week has been busy - Saturday, Monday, Thursday and Friday were all busy evenings and my free time has been seriously curtailed. I'm sure a quick one will suffice.

I did another pub quiz last night at The Wigtown Ploughman and it was another big night for the pub. I sometimes wish I lived in a place with more pubs that might be interested in a pub quiz. I do enjoy doing them and I haven't felt as comfortable 'publicly speaking' since my days of running X-Men panels at the UK comic convention. I could quite happily do one a week because it gives me something of a purpose and I have been writing questions for quizzes since the early 1990s, when I stumbled on a 'job' on Usenet, of all places. This was probably around 1994, because I was living in Wellingborough, but the shop had shut down, I saw an advert on one of UseNet forums asking for people to write questions for an unnamed quiz show in Europe. It was as vague AF. But this was in a more innocent time and would you believe it, it turned out to be absolutely 100% genuine. I submitted 100 sample questions in the five subjects I'd highlighted in an earlier email, for them to assess my ability and if I was successful I'd not only get assignments, I'd get paid £50 for the original 100. 

This meant I would get 50p per question, so 200 would be £100. I gave them my address, no bank details were asked for and about three months later, I got a cheque for £50. A couple of days later, I got an email from someone whose name has long since been lost with the request to produce X number of questions about geography, films, comics, general knowledge and one other. These had to be written in three different question formats (1:1, 1:2 and 1:4 which is a question and the number of multiple choice answers) and be submitted by the end of the month. This went on for nearly two years, I was earning between £100 and £500 a month from a production company I didn't know, for a quiz show (or shows) I also had no idea about and being sent a cheque, as regular as clockwork, for simply writing questions. It was bizarre but also a fantastic bonus, however, it abruptly stopped. I didn't hear from them again. I don't know why; I don't even think I've wondered why.

Imagine what it must have been like, 30 years ago, trying to write quiz questions? But think about it this way; every single quiz question is really three questions worded differently. Anyhow, reviews and shit... 

Not Amateurish

What if you were a relatively high level code breaker for the CIA - a desk jockey - who suddenly is propelled into the real world of espionage and spy killing spy? This is the premise of the excellent The Amateur, a film starring Rami Malik - the aforementioned desk jockey - who faced with the unthinkable decides that his bosses aren't doing enough to satisfy his needs so he takes it into his own hands. This is a clever, Bond-like, action flick with some excellent performances, brilliant set pieces and an almost believable idea - apart from the fact Malik plays an amateur and amateurs probably get eaten alive in this environment. This is also a movie that again reinforces my belief that you are some kind of stupid to want to live in a rogue state country like the USA. The important thing is this is a cracking movie that has you on the edge of your seat all the way through and even keeps you guessing right up until the title sequence runs. it is inventive and never sags; plus it puts the best modern Bond villain actor into a position where he gets to swap roles and be the hero. This gets a solid recommendation because it's my film of the week! 9/10 

The Film That Wasn't Really There

We delved back into the world of the Coen Brothers again, this time to watch The Man Who Wasn't There for the second time, although it's been over 20 years since we originally saw it and no memory of it remained. It's a curate's egg of a movie; a typical Coen Brothers comedy of errors where the meandering garden path is really made up of Karmic plot twists and turns. Billy Bob Thornton plays a barber who chain smokes and doesn't talk much, even if he's narrating the story. He meets a man with a plan to become rich through dry cleaning and decides to blackmail the boss of his wife, who he knows she is having an affair with. It is once these things are set into motion that the movie takes a strange journey, one that at times feels a little uncomfortable without ever seeming to be anything but darkly humorous. Frances McDormand, James Gandolfini and, a young, Scarlett Johansson also star in a film that looks fantastic but ultimately fails to be better than it looks. 5/10

Witches Brew

The trouble I had to go through just to get a watchable copy of Beautiful Creatures left me with an overwhelming hope that it was worth it. Sadly it wasn't. This is an overwrought, tonally awkward fantasy movie with no rounded characters, a lot of exposition and felt like it would have made a better eight-part mini-series. Apparently the source material is a very entertaining book, but the movie felt a little half-baked. There were under developed characters, cameos from others who offered little to the story apart from simply being there and while Alden Ehrenreich does a good job with his character of Ethan Wate, the rest of the cast struggle to tell a story that anyone would give a shit about. There's a kind of Romeo & Juliet vibe going on, but not really. Alice Englert, who plays Ethan's doomed love Lena, struggles a little with the acting part of her job, her accent wavering from deep south to south Australia more often than you'd think the director would be happy with. Of the supporting cast Emma Thompson does a good job - but doesn't she always? - while Jeremy Irons phones in another mediocre display, which he does whenever he's not playing an English aristocrat. Even the fabulous Emmy Rossum is a confusing, slightly wasted character in a film that probably needed to come with an explanatory manual. 4/10

Mountainous

The six-part murder mystery set in Yosemite National Park, Untamed is interesting but suffers from being a bit maudlin and retrospective. It's not just a murder mystery - albeit a particularly gruesome and unusual one - it's about grief, relationships with the past and also about loneliness and misanthropy. Eric Bana plays Kyle Turner, who works inside the park but is essentially a US marshal by any other name. This brings him into countless confrontations, which he seems to be the least bothered about. Fellow Antipodean Sam Neil plays Paul Souter, the head ranger and old friend of Bana's, and there are a number of other supporting cast who appear to be there to pad the story out rather than add to it. However, Lily Santiago plays Naya, is quite good as a former LA cop who has swapped the city for the wide open spaces; she's assigned by the park to 'assist' Turner - a thankless task given his disdain and bad attitude towards just about any other human being. It's a good mini-series, especially when the two officers start to track their suspect and begin to link it to a disappearance from six years earlier, but it's not ... it doesn't... It needed to be something different or maybe something more.  

In The Running

It's been 27 years since Mike Nichols' Primary Colors came out. That's 27 years I managed to avoid watching this loosely based story of Bill Clinton's run for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting this is a bad movie, it's just not very good with horrendous tonal swings throughout. Is it a screwball comedy? Is it a tragicomedy? A drama or a melodrama? It follows the appointment of a new campaign manager for Jack Stanton's political race for the White House, played by Britain's Adrian Lester, and how he turns a ragtag bunch of enthusiastic amateurs into a proper campaign team, while fending off all the bad/unsavoury publicity Stanton - John Travolta - has following him around like a bad smell. Emma Thompson (another Brit and another film this week) plays his long-suffering 'Hilary', who at first refuses to believe her husband is a philanderer and then parks it behind her to help him win the nomination. There are some good turns by Billy Bob Thornton (again), Maura Tierney, Alison Janney (again) and Tony Shalhoub (yet again), but ultimately this feels a little too much like a comical satire than a plausible movie idea. The ideas felt dated as did the appearance of the film. It's a difficult movie to like. 4/10

The Best Treatment

The wife is sure we'd seen this movie before. Despite nothing ringing any bells, she thinks we watched it, thought, 'What the fuck?' and promptly forgot we ever watched it and moved on with our lives. She might be right, not because You Were Never Really There is a WTF kind of movie. It's a violent Art House film that's hard to follow. It's sparse in its story telling; it doesn't really explain what's going on, but you kind of get the gist (with the aid of IMDB) and Joachim Phoenix is his usual dependable self as an army veteran (?) with a troubled history who tracks down missing girls and rescues/retrieves them with brutal and deadly force. He is the paedophile's nightmare, however when he's 'employed' by a US senator and things go horribly wrong, it becomes a battle for survival and a puzzle to really understand what the actual fuck is going on and why. Talk about minimalist; this tells a story but nothing is explained and you pretty much have to work it out for yourself and then you realise that it's a really nasty story that makes you feel uncomfortable. 4/10

What's Up Next?

Much to the wife's bemusement, episodes #7-11 of The Sandman are now available to watch. I think I said she was beginning to find it a bit slow and laborious. It's also going to be nearly August, already, so I expect there will be little that's new or interesting.

Obviously, the FDoD needs replenishing, as there are now fewer than 15 films on it and most of them are not exactly banging on our doors to be watched - the same applies to the Hard Drive of Doom, which has plenty of recorded films off the TV. If the weather stays nice I can think of better things to do, but that's not something you want to rely on. I've had a recommendation from my vet which I'm going to investigate.

As always, what I see is what you get.

The Internet - A 'My Cultural Life' Special

 The Case Against...

The Internet. I've been saying for a number of years that it will be the root cause of the downfall of society, probably humanity in general. It makes me wonder if those people - baby boomers specifically - who are often seen in the comments section of any webpage or social media platform calling for a return to simpler times, say, the 1970s, are really subconsciously asking for the internet to be shut down. I know, it's a stretch, but perhaps what they want is NOT to have the ability to share their beliefs with the rest of the world. Perhaps deep within the subconscious of the hateful there is a germ of decency desperately fighting to try to be more tolerant? Probably not, maybe once upon a time reasonable people may not have been so easily swayed by nonsense they see on-line, but not now. The internet is 'marketed' as both something utterly fantastic and fantastically dangerous and for many people it is as addictive as, say heroin, which I've been told is utterly fantastic and fantastically dangerous. 

I've been on various stages of the internet's social media evolution throughout the 35 years I've had access to it. AOL, Usenet, Yahoogroups, MySpace, Friends Reunited and then Facebook, Twitter and the places that are both social media and blatantly self-indulgent - Tumblr, DeviantArt, Instagram etc. However, if you go back to the beginning, a place like Usenet, which quickly became some kind of crazy, anarchistic, world within a world kind of place, also attracted people who once upon a time rarely voiced their opinions, disdain, anger, prejudices outside of their own houses, who now had a place where they could actually speak their twisted minds. The scary thing about Usenet, which is why they started to self-police the place, was the minority crazies weren't such a small percentage. In fact, there were a lot of likeminded arseholes and those now ancient feeling 'net neologisms such as Flame Wars, Trolls and Newbies were created to categorise things, to label them as a warning/excuse to other users. Usenet quickly became a haven for hatred, discrimination and prejudice. Basically, if you called someone a cunt and they called you a fucking cunt back there was no AI moderator deleting your comment and giving you a warning or suspending you [what do you mean there isn't really one of those now?].

I saw it in the mid 1990s, not just on Usenet, but AOL and then Yahoogroups - as long as you agreed to the flimsiest of rules you could create a forum that could talk theoretically about recruiting paedophiles to carry out suicide bombings in primary schools and the chances of you being discovered were slightly less than you waking up tomorrow with £1billion under your pillow. The thing is, this is no different now. On Facebook you can create private groups that literally only exist in Meta's databases and the chances of someone human ever looking at these with any intent is about the same chance as Usenet. You can't find these things in searches. Your best mate might belong to a Neo-Nazi Terrorist Cell and you wouldn't know it from his Facebook activity. I know people who are on Facebook all the time, but rarely are they on their own timeline; they're off in a group engaging in the same way as 21st Century Usenet clones Discord and Reddit are. The thing is Facebook Groups are much easier to control, especially if you want to keep things between a small group of trusted 'colleagues'. 

When certain people aren't utilising social media for their own nefarious purposes, they could be posting memes which are sowing the seeds of hate and mistrust. Stoking the fires of a population that has been inundated with bad news for the last 25 years. 9/11 was probably the era when the internet exploded with conspiracy theorists, web pages that 'challenged' our beliefs, and, of course, social media, which allowed a small group of powerful sociopaths the opportunity to make a lot of money and somehow stay above and beyond the reach of the law. How massive internet companies have managed to exist above the law is a great mystery and more importantly how they've managed to shape the way we think as a direct result? Because of the internet, we live in a world where people who care about other people or the planet are considered 'terrorist hippies' but people attacking police who are preventing them from lynching asylum seekers housed in an Essex hotel are just expressing their unhappiness. You might not need the internet to start a riot, but it helps swell the numbers. 9/11 created internet extremism, before that it was still just a growing cult, honing its skills for a time when more people were on line.

So far we know that the internet has encouraged and provided a space to breed malcontent through misinformation and it's only going to get worse. Capitalism has been on the rocks for some time; the pandemic was a godsend in many ways because the internet became even more important; it became the thing it always wanted to be - the world's primary source of information, news and entertainment. It gave capitalism a shot in the arm and this time the best way to keep the momentum going was to divide and conquer. What is the single most important/terrifying thing the internet has achieved over the last 35 years? Division and subdivision. Social media hasn't necessarily contributed to the individual's unpleasant beliefs, but it is a place that allows an individual to express those beliefs with little or no challenge to them, but many will agree with it. However, you might agree with a post about pensions and someone you know who is diametrically opposite you in their political beliefs also believes in it and sometimes a shared belief is all you need to make friends on the internet - which is a good thing. But you have divisions and if, at some point, you disagree with something that could easily be the end of that friendship. It happens with old friends as well, almost as often; age and experience change individuals - what was once liberal is easily swayed towards conservative. 

Often we see old friends lives being played out on Facebook (or not, as the case may be) and we forget that once upon a time we used to speak on the phone, or meet at the pub, or have some actual close contact with a person. Messenger, WhatsApp, SnapChat, TikTok or old fashioned SMS texting replaced the need to actually be in the presence of a person to talk to them about whatever you wanted to. Yes, loads of people still Facetime with people, but they're not in the pub or on holiday or just hanging, are they? If we're not divided politically we're divided physically. But even if we spend time with people, the phone is always prominent and it's usually going to be some message or notification about something going on somewhere else that distracts us. The internet has changed the way many of us communicate in general. It's probably why pubs are in decline, because you can have a beer at home and have five of your mates on your computer screen with you and basically have a virtual hang.

So, the Internet has created a place where people will hate each other because it's everyone else's fault they're so unhappy. It's also a really dangerous place to rely on for everything else. Forget social media and it's changing of our socio norms, the world of on-line criminality should put the fear of god into any one; whether you're a piece of racist vermin or a women-hating teenage virgin - the internet is not safe for you any more than it is for anyone else! We have entrusted banks to basically move our money from the closest branch to an on-line world where there are cyber attacks every day! I might be wrong here, but I don't recall there being a bank robbery every fucking day! I don't remember hackers being able to know everything about us by the number of Green Shield Stamps we accrued. There are Ransomware attacks that we never hear about because the victims have just paid the ransom because it's too risky not to.  

Let's not forget that the internet created Bitcoins and that's an absolute bizarre minefield in itself. I spent about an hour once trying to work out how cryptocurrencies work and I was just more confused after than I was going in. I didn't even understand half the 'terminology' so trying to comprehend how it works is just so concerning because I know stupid people who have 'invested' in it. The word 'scam' often enters my deeply paranoid brain when talking about bitcoin, but in reality scams are everywhere. The amount of spam I see daily - and I have more blockers on my computer than I have underpants - is phenomenal, so god knows what friends of mine with as much internet tech savvy as my dog are seeing? Some scams are just so obvious, but we live in a world where some people have so little to make them happy that they think that sharing a post about a motorhome being given away will, this time, be real. It's going to take a lot to change the way we depend on something that makes us so vulnerable. Our money simply isn't safe; our personal data isn't safe. Your children aren't safe. Tell me again what is actually good about the internet...

Yes, it is a wonderful resource. It's great as a retailer. As a source of entertainment. Storage capabilities and ease of use remove our dependence on physical computers and hard drives. The list of positives is long and totally useful. But allowing humans to interact with each other in a world that has been gradually getting much worse to live in is going to be the death of us. It won't do the death and destruction but it will 'televise' and propagate it. Everybody loves a funny meme; to be part of something 'woke' that has helped friends, local needs or charities is good. Being in an on-line community that has allowed you to make friends you would never have made is fantastic. The internet has been so unbelievably positive for me and many others, but it has also changed us. We are addicted to it and your children are either going to adapt and change it or they will be consumed by it. I think of the people who I will lose touch with if Facebook and other social media pages were switched off and, with the greatest respect to many of my on line friends, those I want to stay in touch with I have their phone numbers and I just love an actual chinwag with old friends. I don't do it enough - neither do you. We don't have times for the real world because we're consumed by a little screen that makes us unhappy. Maybe the world needs the thing that probably kickstarted this entire merry-go-round, maybe it needs its friends being reunited IRL.  

The internet really has become something we can't live with but can't live without. It is the monosodium glutamate of the soul. The Fear Of Missing Out [FOMO] has become the single most damaging aspect of a person's life - especially if their only outside contact is via a social media app. We can literally order a coffee via the net, as well as our food, our entertainment, our potential sex partners and future spouses. The only thing the internet can't give is a personal service - it can't serve you in a pub; it can't replicate the need for food and drink; it can't actually give you an orgasm, it just facilitates it. Everything is on-line. Your school reports, your health history, your buying habits, your peccadillos, your likes and dislikes. The internet is effectively a huge benign Big Brother with the capabilities of allowing someone with the right skills to ruin your life.   

The internet is a very bad thing when you weigh the pros against the cons. If you took away peoples ability to interact with each other it wouldn't be the same, but it would be safer and would prevent the spreading of hate and false information. If you could ensure the security of a person's life or finances it would be a fabulous tool and would help retailing rather than kill it off. The problem it is in the hands of sociopaths with a money-at-all-costs fixation and ultimately that screws all of us. The people who run the internet simply don't care about its users, if they did it wouldn't already be a disgusting and unsafe place. Maybe we need to switch it off to give future generations a chance?

My Cultural Life - Grim and Gritty

What's Up?

Fed up with me being all serious and shit in this opening segment? Then fear not, this week levity is far more important. The world is a shit place and we have no control over it. It is full of idiots - literally and the internet and social media are full of people whose self-importance knows no bounds. The sad thing about people, especially on social media, is many of them believe the entire world is reading their posts or comments. They have a lack of awareness and therefore think they are the centre of the universe, rather than simply the centre of their own universe.

The thing is, it's summer, we're having weather that is erring on the side of good rather than the usual damp, dreary and cool we seem to get lumbered with most years and where I live is so much better than where you live because while we had 29 degrees here last Saturday, it was better than what you had. I write this on Sunday night - the last blog went live about 30 hours ago - and it is still 25 degrees in my bedroom, the fan's on and tomorrow it won't be a heatwave any longer. I used to love heat, but yesterday I sat out in it for about 25 minutes and ended up feeling quite shitty, so today I went and stood in the sea (because it's right on my doorstep and because I can).

Wimbledon's over. The Club World Cup has finished (and Chelsea fans will, yet again, be really annoying). There's more cricket and golf to come and in Scotland the fucking football season has started, while Chelsea (them again) have literally only just kicked the last ball of last season - in fact Scottish football started 48 hours before last season officially finished and the qualifying rounds for the coming season's European competitions have also already started. It's like there's never any break from anything any more. Once upon a time, for two years in every four, you could at least look forward to most of June and all of July before football dominated everything. Like politics, misinformation and the threat of something awful happening, football never stops.

So fuck it, let's talk about something positive for a change...

Um... Er... 

Harrowing

Mystic River - a Clint Eastwood film - is about the murder of a 19 year old girl - Emmy Rossum, who was actually just 16 when she made this - and the fallout from the investigation handled by local cops Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishbourne. It is one of the most harrowing movies I have ever seen as the girl's father - local organised crime boss Sean Penn struggles to cope and decides to take the law into his own hands. One of the chief suspects is Dave Boyle - Tim Robbins - a friend of both Penn and Bacon's characters from 30 years earlier. He is a disturbed man who was the victim of a paedophile when the boys were playing street hockey as kids. This is a superb film which leaves you guessing for most of it and then when it becomes clear who probably committed the murder it lurches into a dark and twisted place that you could always see coming but hoped wouldn't. I completely understand why this has such a high rating on IMDB and I'm amazed it's taken us 22 years to finally watch it. It's worth a 9/10 but... it will leave you with questions.

No Time For Bollocks

I want to say that all James Bond films should be like No Time To Die but it wouldn't be much of a franchise if that was the case. Where did this come from? What a cracking film it was despite being a 007 thriller and yet it felt more like a classic Bond movie than the previous four - what with its bad humour, funky gadgets and exotic locations. The thing was for a 2½ hour feature it absolutely pelted along. Rami Malik was a deranged and ludicrously insane Bond villain; most of the gang from the previous four Bond films popped in, some of them died and I'm still reeling - yes, actually shocked - about the ending. I mean, really? I never saw that coming and it's been four years since it was released and six years since it was made and I never knew that that happened. I'm not even sure I agreed with it, but wow what a way to finish this part of the franchise. Basically, an even worse bastard than Blofeld takes it upon himself to steal a weapon, designed by the Brits, and wipes out Spectre and then targets just about everybody who is anybody. This is a seriously good film; the best Bond movie of the lot and an absolute 9/10.

Party Hard

The one thing that comes across when watching Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People is what a difficult watch it is. It really is a tough movie to like and I didn't really feel any affinity with any of the characters - except maybe Paddy Considine's Rob Gretton. Steve Coogan started off sounding like Tony Wilson very accurately, but as the movie dragged on his accent became more Jimmy Savile and less mercurial Mancunian. Despite this being essentially a biopic, which even featured the late Wilson in a cameo role, this film wasn't particularly flattering towards Wilson, or for that matter most of the people in it (although if Peter Hook's general reaction to the slide of Joy Division's Ian Curtis is anything like the truth I can see why the rest of New Order want nothing to do with him any more). There is an interesting story told here but in a slightly obnoxious way and Winterbottom's trademark of letting his characters break the fourth wall is actually the most grating thing about this talented director's work. It's a film I'm glad I've finally seen, but my lack of real interest in the Madchester scene of the 80s and 90s meant that a lot of the characters portrayed in it came over as complete cunts. 5/10

Kidnapped?

I'm going to try and do something different with The Institute. The reason became clear for me when I was reviewing Murderbot over the last ten weeks. I don't think it was helpful and I think I would have rather watched it all and then reviewed it, but with weekly series that is more difficult than, say, with a box set type series. I also want to try something different with this because I am familiar with the source material so I know - generally - where this is going. So, despite the long intro, what are my thoughts on the opening episodes? Well, it's funny really because the book is quite up front about certain things, whereas the series seems to want to try and breeze over things or be a little enigmatic, probably for more dramatic effect. The Institute is suitably creepy and the people who run the place are coming across as nasty and sadistic as they did in the book. Ben Barnes' Tim, the former cop who seems to be running away from something in his past isn't bad considering I have a problem with his general acting ability - he was the least believable thing in The Punisher series. It's going to be an interesting ride to see if they stick to the book as they've changed one key thing already - the geography of things. Yes the Institute is in Maine, but Tim was half a country away and a lot of the book was Luke - the young protagonist - and his journey to find the man who would be his saviour. I'll return to this further down the line.

Lost Hope

I know I often ask this question and if I had an/some American readers perhaps they'd try to answer it for me, but why would anyone in their right mind want to live in the USA? I mean, it's a fantastic country spoiled by about 50% of the people and why would anyone trust a police officer? We often hear complaints about British cops, but in the USA you often wonder what their officers do on a daily basis - other than pick on non-white people or women and eat donuts? The reason I'm back on this again is because we watched Lost Girls, a true crime drama about a woman whose daughter goes missing that eventually leads to the uncovering of a huge number of human remains, all belonging to women, yet the local police force seemed to want to spend its time bad mouthing the grieving rather than finding a killer. This is [another] harrowing and ultimately unsatisfying story that will have you wondering what the police actually do in the USA, because they're obviously not solving crimes. Amy Ryan plays the mother of a sex worker who literally has to threaten the Long Island police into doing their job and then has to continue harassing them even when a number of female remains are discovered near a gated community. This isn't a pleasant movie, but it is very well made and just leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth as you watch a re-enactment of police incompetence at its most useless. it's on Netflix and I'm giving it 7.5/10. It would have got more if not for the fact that it's an incomplete story - but that's no one fault bar the US police.

Nevermore 

The first thing I realised about The Raven was that it only had one American actor - John Cusack - and then I discovered it was mainly filmed in Serbia and Hungary. The rest of the cast was made up of British and Irish actors despite the film being set in Baltimore, Maryland in 1840. What it tries to do is fictionalise the last days of Edgar Allen Poe - Cusack - who died after being found raving and rambling on a bench in a park. He was just 40 years old and was a drunk and pretty much destitute, but this movie tries to turn his largely unknown last few days into a gory thriller where he teams up with a Baltimore detective - Luke Evans - to try and unravel the mystery of a serial killer using all of Poe's ideas from his short stories as his modus operandi. I remember being pretty unimpressed with this film when we watched it in 2012, but like many movies a second viewing proved to be far more enjoyable, especially given we didn't remember any of it, at all. Cusack hams it up and ramps up the melodrama, but he's also a class act, so his Poe is both charming and a snivelling shit. The rest of the supporting cast do an adequate job and the story would be great if it was based on anything like fact, but even so it's just about worth 100 minutes of your time, even if parts of it make little or no sense. 6.5/10

Big Flop?

A film written, co-directed, produced and starring Stanley Tucci, about a failing Italian restaurant in New Jersey in the 1950s seems like a guaranteed winner. Tucci is synonymous with Italian food and the film was co-produced by Oliver Platt, who plays the uncle financing The Bear - the brilliant series about a restaurant - and despite this being 30 years old it just seemed like a delightful movie to have discovered and watch. Tucci and Tony Shalhoub play brothers Primo and Secundo, who run the failing business. The bank are closing their line of credit and up the road their good friend Pascal is running a rival restaurant that is literally crawling with customers and he wants the brothers to work for/with him. The brothers are in an awkward situation personally and professionally, but Pascal concocts a plan to get Italian jazz legend Louis Prima to visit the brothers restaurant and help them kickstart the business, except Pascal is a successful businessman and more than capable of being a wolf in sheep's clothing. This is a genuine Indy film of the 90s; probably made on a budget of about $100 and it doesn't know if it's a gentle comedy or a light hearted drama, but it's got enough in it to stick with and while it looks dated, this actually adds to it. 6/10

Light My Fires

The fifth episode of Smoke, for me, needed to go somewhere. After the great opening two episodes, the last two seemed to tread water and go nowhere fast. It felt like we know what the two main characters are and how long it's going to be before both get their comeuppances. However, this part introduced Gudsen's former partner Ezra Esposito - John Leguizamo - who gives Calderon more wood to stoke her suspicious fire (if you'll pardon the puns). It also begins to show the viewer just what a lot of Gudsen's fellow fire people actually think of him and how he views himself. Taron Egerton is great in this series, but he's also playing a complete narcissistic arsehole and it seems that we got the impression that only Calderon thought this, but this is not the case. Then just as things start to get weird and interesting again, we get the second WTF ending of the series so far. I'm not sure if I love this show or if I despise the characters so much I need to find out how they eventually fall.

What's Up Next?

More of the same, plus Untamed, a new six part series about a murder in Yosemite National Park. We haven't gotten around to watching the Dexter reboot yet; the wife wants us to either have it all or most of it before we start wading into that (and given what I said here last week, that suits me fine).

The FDoD is getting low on content again and the Set Top Box Hard Drive has a number of things which are sitting there that I'm just avoiding. I'm going to have a weekend of watching some golf and going to the pub on Saturday night (I've turned down two opportunities this week to do that already) because we're celebrating living in Wigtown eight years today! 

As always...

My Cultural Life - My Word is My Bonds

What's Up?

We live in a country where money is tight - for a large percentage. The current government seems obsessed with targeting the lowest common denominator in terms of cash reserves rather than taxing those who already have enough and yet we also live in a country where literally if someone farts in a library we have a public inquiry about it. These things cost millions (sometimes more) and literally throw good money at something that is all too often as obvious as the nose on your face.

Take the public inquiry into the Southport murders in 2024. It will end up being a witch hunt designed to apportion blame onto the police - for not being more like Minority Report - and probably won't conclude that the reason Axel R did all those awful things is the lack of any government's spending for young marginalised individuals. What this murderer did was abhorrent, no one can deny that, but surely if you want to know why he did it and the reasons that led up to him doing it, then assign some specialist detectives to compile a report, not hold a very public inquiry, costing £millions which could have been spent in areas where radicalisation of our minority youth is most prevalent. Finding money from government to give young people something else to do rather than ignoring the rich in favour of picking on this month's minority du jour is probably the easiest way to help stop radicalisation. I mean, most people get radicalised because they don't feel they're getting enough from the system.

The only public inquiry we need is why we need so many public inquiries when we could just accept the reasons as a dereliction of duty by whatever government is in power to do anything for those who need it the most. But, hey, when there's rich people you can fiscally masturbate for their 'respect', then fuck those with nothing at all. That's how it works, isn't it?

Foster Psycho

It is being heralded as the best horror film of 2025, but to be honest I don't know if I've seen enough horror films in 2025 to compare it. That said, it will probably take some doing to be more disturbing and genuinely creepy as Bring Her Back. What is it with the Australians that they've developed a line in making horror films that are fucked up and leave you wondering about the minds of the people who make them? British stalwart Sally Hawkins is the star of this story about two children (from an abusive family) who are sent to a foster home after the unexpected death of their father and encounter much more than they bargain for. Their already shattered lives are about to become even more bizarre and unpredictable as Laura, the foster carer, swears, allows the kids to get drunk and has her apparent nephew Ollie wandering around the place in just a pair of shorts and a propensity for killing birds and eating them. Billy Barrett, who starred in the awful Apple TV show Invasion plays one of the siblings, the protective big brother to his partially blind step sister and he pretty much sees through Laura's rather psychotic and insane behaviour but because of his own problems it's not like anyone is going to take any notice of him. This is a great film that actually feels like it's a little too long because of the amount of time it dwells on the nasty elements. It could well be the best horror film I've seen for a while, probably since last year's Heretic and Hawkins is totally believable as the bat shit crazy foster mum. 8/10

Ponce of Dreams

It's been three years since season one and probably the best thing to have done would be to have watched it all again, but unlike some TV shows where this is a requirement, I slipped back into The Sandman's Dreaming quite easily (but that might be because I know the source material). So, is The Guardian right about season two, saying it's shite? Well, the Guardian is rarely on the same page as everyone else when it comes to anything in film and TV reviews. They seem to have a policy by which if there's an allegation made against a creator then you have a moral obligation to dislike any project their name is associated with. Should that make you hate something because of the creator? Should you be morally obliged to dislike any work of anyone who might be a sexual predator (or a murderer or paedophile)? This surely has to be something individuals should make their minds up about something acted, written or played - which is good or important. I'm not sure I can support  that form of indoctrination. This is what this paper's policy seems to be and I have an entire blog's worth of stuff, for another time, maybe. But you see, I saw little difference from season one to season two, apart from the fact that Gaiman is accused of being some kind of perverted monster. It's following the comics almost to the letter - with some artistic licence - and/so there's no drop in quality. It's still sumptuous to look at, it can still be painfully slow at times, doesn't conform to a regular idea of storytelling (he is the lord of dreams. after all) and there seems to be no discernible production change from season one (adored by the Guardian) and season two (despised by it), apart from it gets a bit flabby in the middle which I believed also happened in season one. On the whole if you watched season one then you need to watch season two, if you didn't then unless you intend to watch season one, what are you doing even reading this? The truth is it's good, adult fantasy and we're probably never going to see a conclusion to it because the creator of it is a cunt who wears black and terrorises women.

High Stakes Bollocks

On Sunday 6th July 2025 we sat down and watched a film that began with someone looking at a mobile phone with a message from 6th July 2006. It was strange, almost like it was destined to be. Also on Sunday 6th July 2025, the wife and I did something we have never done in the 42½ years we have been together - we watched a James Bond movie. Casino Royale to be precise; the first Daniel Craig Bond film and the franchise's soft reboot. The reason we watched it was after much debate, because we'd seriously never been interested in them, we decided to give the five most recent Bond films a try based on their reception, IMDB ratings, some of our friends being fans and the simple fact we're running out of things we have never watched. Neither of us went into this with any great expectations; we've never been fans of any of the numerous Bond films, in fact the wife may well never have seen one all the way through until tonight. 

My impression is simple, it was a really quite enjoyable film and had all the hallmarks of a Bond film, but given the Jason Bourne treatment. That is until the last 25 minutes when it went all wobbly and introduced things that had never been seen prior to the last 25 minutes. Yes, the notorious Mr White at the end had been seen at the start of the film and I suppose me, you and everyone else who watched it the first time thought he was working for the Bond villain, in this case Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre, but after nearly two hours of enjoying a largely contemporary Bond movie, the denouement, for me, left a lot to be desired. It made little sense, but does what any good franchise does, sows the seeds for what's to come, but the entire 'epilogue' just felt like another film and therefore left me with no other course but to award this film a 6/10. 

Quantum of Bollocks

Quantum of Solace is essentially Casino Royale Part Two, but with no casino. It literally follows on from the end of Daniel Craig's first outing and therefore focuses on all the things I thought were either left dangling or made little sense. The strange thing is despite having watched the 'first part' just last night, I found this difficult to follow and largely uninspiring. Two Bonds down and I'm waning slightly. This time round it was simply a revenge thriller, despite Bond's protestations. He was after the people who were responsible for Vesper's death and this time it took him to South America and some nonsense about green energy and Bolivia. There were some nods to 007 films of the past and the usual elaborate chases and fight scenes. The thing was I wasn't impressed, found it a bit boring (and at 105 minutes that is not what you'd expect) and bitty, like nothing was ever dwelt on for more than a few seconds. I also thought it felt more... I dunno... Bondy. 5/10

Adele Theme Tune Bollocks

The odd thing about Skyfall - the third Daniel Craig Bond film - is that it makes more sense than the first two films and therefore feels more of a rollicking adventure. I did have some problems with it, but it was good, I suppose, to have almost a proper Bond villain in it, even if Javier Bardem's Raoul Silva was simply a mad gay guy on a revenge mission against M. This was essentially an ex-agent with a bug up his arse about Judi Dench and going hell for leather to have her offed while shoehorning 007 in for good measure. It was grittier than any of the two previous on Craig's list and Bond had a few more bags under his eyes and a world weary look about him and a lot of the logistics were breezed over with techno mumbo jumbo, but like the previous movie, this was again creeping closer to a traditional Bond movie, with the introduction of Q and Moneypenny. It was all right, probably the best of the three we've watched so far. 7/10

Blofeld Bollocks

The fourth Daniel Craig Bond film has the lowest rating on IMDB yet it was the easiest to follow and frankly was the most enjoyable one so far. A lot of that might have been down to knowing the characters and, at last, having a properly identifiable Bond villain, in the shape of Ernst Blofeld, doing what Bond villains do best, but with a far more nasty, borderline psychopathic element. The thing is Spectre is a good action thriller that left me asking possibly the most important questions so far: 1) where does he get all of his suits from and 2) how does he get from country to country so easily? He's either got the most generous expenses account or what we don't see is him breaking into the local equivalent of Top Man (or Burton's) and stealing loads of evening suits, bow ties and Aston Martins. While Blofeld was a good villain and the entire Spectre network was a cool idea, there was a contrived element about it all, especially the torture scene near the end, this felt like Sean Connery in Dr No all over again. Anyhow, this sort of tied all the earlier film together nicely and probably reflected how the world is run better than any fictitious thing you've ever seen before. 7/10.

Unexpected Treasures

After nine weeks of extremely short episodes, a lot of comedy and the hint of something sinister going on. A television series that seemed to get its name from how a security unit viewed itself finally concluded and it was absolutely note perfect. Murderbot has been enjoyable, but those first nine parts do not prepare you for the 33 minute finale, because it is a really wonderful half an hour; one that elevates the entire series into the realms of Apple TV+ classics. What I expected to be a ten minute epilogue turned into something quite sinister and a little unpleasant, but the space hippies - gawd bless 'em - pulled through and each and every one of them were fabulous. Alexander Skarsgård has been a bit monotoned throughout this but has also endeared himself to the viewer as well as his humans and they take on the company to ensure that justice is done. People you think are shits turn out to be heroes and the ending while probably not what many people who watched this would have wanted is absolutely on the button. I hope there's not a second season, not because I wouldn't watch it, but because this was a story that doesn't need expanding on. It takes its time but Murderbot is a real winner and I can't recommend it high enough. 

What's Up Next?

The final Bond film. Yet another series about serial killer Dexter Morgan - I loved this show when it originally came out. I struggled with the reboot from a few years ago and this seems like an idea stretched too far, but we shall see. More Smoke and probably some other things that I've made a mental note about and promptly forgotten. There's still also loads of sport to avoid.

As always...