My Cultural Life - What Are We Missing?

What's Up?

Power to the people!!

What a quaint and utterly ineffective idea that is in 2025. People have no power. Protestors are likely to get more jail time than someone trying to 'rid the country of foreigners' with fire. Protestors are as demonised as Muslims, Europeans and socialists...

The crazy thing is more and more people are voting for politicians who want to steal away the rights people have fought for over the last hundred years or so; many in the belief that their own rights will not be affected, just those of people they don't like or want. Supporters of Trump, Farage, Orban, Meloni, etc don't mind that their civil liberties are being removed just so long as someone else is worse off than them. It's a race to the bottom. These people aren't optimistic about the future, they just want as many people to suffer as possible while allowing politicians to strip mine assets, line the pockets of their rich overlords and concentrate on making sure caring about others is as bad as fiddling with kids. Don't be 'woke' it's a sign of weakness. How can you possibly care about someone you don't know? Get back under your rock and shut the fuck up, you fucking woke socialist pansy. 

In 2025 there are more people frothing at the mouth about Disney casting a brown person in a role that once was the 'property' of a white person than they are about Israel starting fights with almost everyone. Maybe that's because Israel is picking on brown Muslims and white people shouldn't care about that. I mean, we don't really care about our own brown people so why care about others?

I wonder if others - and you lot who read this - are aware of how shit life has become. The threat of war; the normalisation of billionaires; the lack of hope. We sit down to the news and we're fed a stream of horror stories, which many of us are simply immune to and those of us who are horrified have this feeling of uselessness. Governments don't act in our names or beliefs; we elect people to carry on butt fucking us; some parties with lube, most of them with sand or salt. Everything has been 'capitalised', everything has to make a profit or it's not worth having. If people miss out on something - tough. Then there's the bi-products of all of this; such as attacking people we once respected because it's not just about me me me in their eyes. Doctors, nurses and schoolteachers are verbally and physically abused and again there's this normalisation arising from it. Why should people get pay rises; we should shoot strikers, sink boats in the channel... Has anyone looked at X in the last year or so? It's scary. It's so full of hatred, rage and discrimination, but distilled and bottled like it's some rare essence - actual pure evil (that again has been normalised). 

Soon, people like me and some of you will have to watch what we say, or write or comment about on social media. Tolerance will become a crime, hatred will be rewarded. This is 2025 and everything I've written above isn't just an old man moaning. That's the most frightening thing.

Waylaid on Mars

We have seen John Carter before but apart from some scenes, which vaguely rang bells, it was very much like watching a new [Disney] film. The critics hated it, it bombed at the box office, Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins were exceptionally wooden and yet I know a few people who rate this quite highly. I wouldn't go as far as that, but I would suggest it isn't as bad as everyone thinks. It has many problems, but the bones of the story isn't one of them. There are some stilted plot points along with some contrived elements, but these only really surface when you sit down and analyse the film... I remembered John Carter from his Warlord of Mars days, as a Marvel comic in the 1970s, when the MCG (as they were known then) picked up some contracts from Edgar Rice Burroughs properties, Toho and Mattel. It wasn't a comic I was blown away by, but they were written by Marv Wolfman - who lived in Tarzana, the name of which was adapted from Tarzan - another ERB property - and where the author spent his final days. I've been to Tarzana (and to Marv's old house) and because it was dark I can't tell you much about it at all.

Essentially, John Carter, ex-Confederate Captain, is a gold prospector who stumbles across a cave full of the stuff, which turns out to be a portal for ancient Martian mystics to travel to and from Mars. Carter accidentally ends up on Barsoom (Mars) and after learning to walk again - because of the atmosphere and pressure - he ends up being captured by native Martians called the Tharks, where he becomes an honorary member of their tribe. Meanwhile the last free city of Mars - Helium - is about to be conquered by a warlord who is being guided by the same ancient mystics Carter came across and the Virginian gets involved in a rebellion and a revolution to save Deja Thoris, the Princess of Mars. The special effects are pretty good, in places, and very silly in others. Kitsch isn't a leading man, hasn't got the physique and can't act for toffee, but he doesn't stop the movie from rattling along at a cracking pace. In the end it was an agreeable way to spend a wet and damp Saturday night. 6/10

Wondrous Story

Whatever happened to Curtis Hanson? (He died in 2016 is the simple answer) The film director and writer was responsible for some groundbreaking and original movies, such as LA Confidential, 8 Mile and The River Wild. He wasn't prolific but like so many distinguished film directors (and writers) his output was nearly always quality. I never knew Hanson directed The Wonder Boys, in fact, I hadn't even thought about this film since its release in 2000, when Barry Norman gushed about how good a film it was. I never found myself in the same sphere as this movie and it could well have completely passed me by has it not been for a slip of the finger when looking at IMDB. So because of that, we settled down to watch it as our Sunday night treat. Oh and what an absolute treat it was...

Having no idea what it was about (because sometimes that's the best way to watch a film) we were captivated by it from almost the opening scenes. With a stellar cast including Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand, Rip Torn, Katie Holmes and Robert Downey Jr, it told the story of Grady Tripp, a writer and professor at a Pittsburgh university who is juggling work, his new book, his wife who has just left him, his editor, the affair he's having with the university's chancellor and the advances of a young student, over a 72 hour period. It reminded me of the screwball comedies of the 40s and 50s, which usually starred Cary Grant. It was funny, strange and goes off in a direction - or directions - probably no one expected. It involved some of the following - an odd student who no one likes; a dead dog, a bag of weed, an unfinished novel, a transvestite, a pimp, a jacket and a set of interconnected circumstances that are relentless in their delivery. It's one of those films where if I started to explain what went on I would end up writing a novel about it and the way everything that happened had something to do with something else that was also going on. It could have been a jumbled mess, but it's held together by Grady's commentary. The thing is to tell you about the plot is a really difficult thing to do because many of the events that take place - out of context - would simply sound bizarre.

It absolutely speeds along, almost like the drug-fuelled farce it is, but ultimately it's about a period of time where the main protagonist finds redemption after a series of misadventures. Apart from the fire hydrant, this is a faultless comedy. If you haven't seen it, track it down - they simply don't make films like this anymore; but perhaps this was the last great movie of its kind. 9/10

A Fan Theory

Is DC/Warner Brothers about to usurp Marvel with a Multiverse idea that no one saw coming? The reason I ask this is because if you look at the new Superman film, in some kind of context, it makes little or no sense... Allow me to chuck my idea at you and see if any of it sticks (because the actual film will be out in a few weeks, so all this might end up being moot). The things that are bugging me about this relaunched DC Superhero Universe don't seem to have been picked up by anyone else. The discussion appears to be whether or not James Gunn can pull off something special and whether it will kickstart a new DC Cinematic Universe. However, I'm not sure it fits into that category. I think we might be seeing something altogether different...

What are the key factors in the upcoming film that make zero sense in terms of DC superhero history in films? This film has a living Jonathan Kent in it. It has Krypto the Super Dog. There's a Guy Gardner, a Mr Terrific, a Hawkgirl, a Metamorpho, an outrageously nasty Lex Luthor and a number of other characters we've never seen before. Could we be dipping into another Earth? Not the one that Henry Cavill's Superman exists? Not the one where Michael Keaton has been Bruce Wayne? Not the one where Ben Affleck's Batman is Superman's mate? Not the one where Jason Momoa is a truly fucking awful Aquaman? Where Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman is someone else entirely? Are we seeing DC steal a march on Marvel and take back their original idea? Marvel's Multiverse ramblings have been dull and boring and have suffered from one really fanboy problem - that Multiverse that they've struggled to get any excitement for over the last five or six years isn't even their idea. It was DC Comics' idea in the 1980s (and then subsequent sequels). 

What if James Gunn's revamp of the DC Universe is actually a kickstarter for a cinematic Crisis on Infinite Earths? It's definitely an idea to think about. This Superman might be a new look at an old idea, but this has things that are incongruous to Superman films of the past - Clark's alive dad being the most jarring. There has never been a super dog and apart from Ryan Reynolds' Green Lantern flop there has never been a Green Lantern in the DCEU. In fact other super beings have been few and far between, apart from in The Flash. We've heard that Momoa is coming back, but this time as Lobo (far better casting); there's also got to be a reason why DC continued releasing all those shit films. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we haven't seen the last of Henry Cavill, especially as he said four days before he was replaced as Superman that he was looking forward to carrying on in the role. Or the fact that one of Gunn's proposed future films is OMAC - which would tie into DC's Infinite Crisis comic series. I'm probably wrong, but part of me wants to be right.

Pensioner Abuse

A decision I found strange was casting 79-year-old John Lithgow as Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter TV series, which is expected to run 10 years. That means the American veteran actor will be pushing 90 if he sees out the distance. However, in The Rule of Jenny Pen he seems much more sprightly than his co-star Geoffrey Rush, who is six years his junior. This is a movie about abuse of elderly and infirmed people and the fact those with a duty of care to protect them are often uninterested and ignorant of what goes on... Except, this isn't some kind of documentary or socially right-on film, this is a psychological horror story that suggests for large parts of it that Lithgow's psychopathic cruelty dispenser might be something more than just a sadist and a bully. Rush's judge has a stroke while sentencing a child abuser in court and finds himself, because of circumstances, in a rehabilitation centre/home that he treats with some disdain. He's targeted by Lithgow's Dave Crealey, who might have worked at the home for over 60 years and possesses a strange doll that is always with him. People die, are tortured and systematically abused and he gets away with it because the staff simply aren't listening. The film's problem is it's really boring and a little dull. The acting is okay - for a New Zealand movie - but it just seems to drag on and feels a little voyeuristic. 5/10 

Up in Smoke

Cheech and Chong's Last Movie is an entertaining documentary looking at the lives of Richard 'Cheech' Marin (the Mexican one) and Tommy Chong (the Canadian/Chinese one) and how they, for a while, became one of the biggest acts on the planet with what was then extremely iffy material. Cheech and Chong were the first and best stoner comedians; able to make jokes about something that was extremely illegal in the USA at the height of their fame. Reuniting the pair to be in a documentary was inspired - Chong is 87, Marin 79 and both of them, considering the amount both smoked, are in fine fettle. As they told their life stories, via interviews and old film footage was funny and nostalgic, reminding me of an age when I'd sit and listen to Big Bambu or watch one of their stoner comedies with plenty of my own weed knocking about.  

The weird thing about this film is how, from about the 70 minute mark you start to see that the dynamic between the two was maybe not as egalitarian as Tommy wanted you to believe it was. I first noticed it during clips of an interview they did with Playboy that was filmed; Chong did most of the talking, Cheech did lots of eating and drinking and when he did speak it was like an addendum. Then you start to notice the way Tommy talks about himself in the first person; how he likes to be in charge; how he was the director, the main script writer, the reason for the two of them being so successful, yet, like all good narcissists managed to make it sound like the double act was just that, when it was clear that despite being the actual comedian, Cheech Marin was the poorer of the duo both in the money they made and the credit they were due. There is a point towards the end of the film where the two talk about the slightly acrimonious split they had and one has to wonder if it was deliberately filmed the way it was or if there really is still some resentment from Cheech - who, it has to be said has gone onto a far more successful career as a solo performer. I'm sure there are places where I can find more out about this, but at the moment I'm just glad I watched the documentary... however, it lacked a couple of things - real humour and a sense of honesty. 6.5/10 

The Return of the Living Dead

There is always one huge elephant in the room when you start watching a TV show that first aired on the SyFy Channel. That is the fact that this TV station has a history for putting shit in their schedules. The station that actually first showed Resident Alien and then dropped it because it was shit (only for it to be picked up by some other stupid fucker). However, despite all the warning signs, the alarm bells and the fear that it might just be another series with quirky characters, plinky-plonky incidental music and actors you've only ever seen as extras in mid-budget films, we watched the first episode of Revival and didn't vomit all over the carpet. It suffers from the same problem other SyFy Channel programmes have since I first started watching the station in the 1990s - Amdramitis; but it was also just about watchable. It tells the story of a small town, presumably near the Canadian border given the thickness of some of the accents, where everyone who has died since a specific date has come back to life and the fallout it causes. There's also a mystery involving a dead horse and the Sheriff's family, consisting of two daughters - one a deputy, the other a student - and a grandson. I'm not expecting to make it to the end of the first season, but we'll definitely give it a few more weeks before calling it a night.

Too Many Kooks

To spoil or not to spoil, that is the question? I wasted my entire Wednesday evening watching the first four episodes of the ten-part TV series, of which I am not going to watch the other six parts. I'm sure the missing parts may well end up being the best TV show I've never watched, but I'm getting too old to persevere with something I was bored with after 45 minutes, but after three hours I was just praying for it to end. The Crowded Room has a good IMDB rating. It has a pretty good cast including Tom Holland, Amanda Seyfried, the fantastic Emmy Rossum and Jeremy Isaacs, but if you'd asked me halfway through the fourth episode what it was about I think I would have been utterly clueless. All I did know was it was as boring as fuck and nothing seemed to happen apart from Tom Holland's Danny Sullivan getting himself into a number of scrapes he could have avoided. 

It turns out this is based on the non-fiction book The Minds of Billy Milligan - an account of the first person ever to be acquitted of a crime after being diagnosed with what we call a multiple personality disorder and we got our first clue about this with the conclusion of the fourth part. However, I'd given up the will to live by then and the story that was stutteringly unfolding in front of us felt so far-fetched and riddled with bollocks. From what I've ascertained since watching those four episodes is that Danny goes on to commit a number of quite horrible crimes, which he was eventually acquitted because of dissociative identity disorder - having a split personality. The series follows the psychiatrist as she slowly peels away the layers of personalities to uncover the truth - a truth that Danny is never aware of because his other 'selves' did it. The problem I had was the longer it went on the more I lost interest.

Obfuscation

It sometimes amuses and amazes me that I can continually find movies I've never seen before, especially ones I've known the existence of for well over a decade. With this particular film, it has been on TV a few times (as has its sequel), yet for some strange reason it (and they) have never really appealed to me and I don't understand why. On Thursday night, I watched Now You See Me and wondered why I'd never been tempted. You see, it's probably one of the biggest movies of the 21st century I have never watched; it ranks very high on IMDB and it has among others Mark Ruffalo and Isla Fisher in it. It also has Woody Harrelson, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Dave Franco, plus a few more well known faces; it is almost an event movie. Yet, here I was watching it for the first time and wondering why? It is quite brilliant. Now, there's a scene right near the beginning of this where Jesse Eisenberg (he's pretty much the star) is explaining to a young lady he's bamboozling with a magic trick that she is paying too much attention to the trick and not enough to what is going on around the trick and sure enough when the reveal happens it surprises the viewer as much as it does the actress being surprised. This is quintessentially the heart of this magical heist movie; you are led by the nose through the entire thing until you start to question everything that happens and almost everyone involved. You don't watch the film, you watch the action and even if you didn't do that you probably wouldn't see the twist at the end that's coming - the more you see the easier it is to fool you. I'm still not quite sure what I watched or how it was done, unless it was just special effects to make it look like fabulous magic tricks. What I will reveal though is if you haven't seen it you should, because it will blow your mind at times and have you shaking your head at others - in a mixture of disbelief and amazement. It's an absolutely stonking film that will leave you wondering just why they did everything they did. 9/10

The Missing

Another film that I missed when it came out that has finally made it to a TV near me is the Ben Affleck directed Gone Baby Gone, which tells the story of two private investigators who are brought in to work side by side with the police after a four year old girl goes missing. Casey Affleck and Michele Monaghan play the two private eyes who are also romantically involved, while Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris play the veteran cops investigating the case from the right side of the law. It isn't an easy film to watch and not because of the subject matter but because of the thick Bostonian accents, the mumbling and the fact that it's just extremely difficult to follow the narrative. That's not to say it isn't a good film, it's just a bit strange as far as the pacing goes and the way it unfolds. Eventually everything comes to light, thanks to Affleck, but is it a happy ending or is it tragic? Are the victims really victims and are the guilty really criminals? It might seem strange asking these questions in a film about the disappearance of a child but these questions are what your brain will be debating. 6/10 because it was tough to follow.

It's About the Game

The penultimate episode of this season of Welcome to Wrexham focused on the football rather than the human interest. It kicks off with a slightly shocking tale of a travelling fan experiencing cardiac arrest at a crucial away game against Wycombe Wanderers but dedicates most of the episode with the battle for second place in League One, especially as everyone has given up chasing Birmingham. It's weird, really, because this felt like a treading water type of episode rather than the one that leads up to yet another record-breaking milestone for the Welsh club. There was a reunion and a visit from Ryan, but it was all about the men's and women's teams and how their seasons were culminating and, oddly enough, it was the least entertaining so far...

And Then It's Gone 

A good friend of mine (and many of the people who read this as well) suggested that Murderbot is a great show to sit down with a cup of tea and a biscuit. The thing is I could easily manage the biscuit, I'm just not sure the tea would cool down enough for me to drink it. This week, which continues on from last, is really about trying to get the hippy scientists to understand that while Sec Unit might have blown the nasty woman's head off, she was likely to have killed them all and the sec unit was actually doing them a favour. The problem is they're now all scared of him despite their own lives being in imminent danger from a threat they don't know or understand. You kind of wish they'd just all die because they do themselves no favours and Gurathin's insistence that sec unit is bad/evil is starting to look more like the ranting of a fool than a man with tech implants to make him clever. This show will never be long enough and I wonder if some tech savvy person will simply cut all the action bits into a 2½ hour film...

What's Up Next?

The Bear is back next week so provided the end of the world doesn't happen one of the best things on TV returns. Nothing else really matters (but there are some finales and some penultimate episodes of stuff). 

Oh and this year, the longest day, was also one of the warmest and felt like summer, which made a nice change. It's all down hill from here (and summer might have ended looking at the long range forecasts).

My Cultural Life - Death and Taxes

What's Up?

I've said for as long as I've been interested in world politics that Israel will start World War 3. I've always been absolutely sure about this, to the point that I would have had a bet on it. It seems that these paranoid Nazi-aping bunch of psychopaths have taken the world one step closer to all out war.

It isn't enough that these wannabe Nazis have bombed Gaza back to the stone age and have been targeting children - the next generation of Israel haters - they have been flexing their USA backed muscle in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Now they choose to pick on one of the most volatile regimes in the world. Yes, Iran can't afford to have a war, but that means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

In 2010, I wrote a blog that forecast that by the time WW3 is over, Israel may well be a smouldering nuclear hole in the ground, allowing whoever is left to play the victim card again. The fact they continue to use the victim card as the main reason for all of their aggression towards just about everyone who doesn't think them wiping a race off the face of the planet is a good thing is no longer justification to allow this rogue nation to put the rest of the world at risk. Israel not only needs to be stopped, it needs to be muzzled and zero air time should be afforded to their bonkers supporters. The world sees them for what they are even if the media refuse to acknowledge this.

Best Thing on Netflix (Maybe TV)

Based on the novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen and following a brilliant but damaged cop leading a team of misfits in solving cold cases in Edinburgh, Dept Q has, without a doubt, been the best new TV series I have watched this year. It reminded me of Slow Horses but with more violence, nastiness and sex. It is a mixture of slightly comedic, bizarrely baffling and fucking excellent story telling. I know I've been banging on about this for the last couple of columns, but this really is the real deal. Matthew Goode - who I wasn't really familiar with - is superb as Carl Morck, leading his team including Akram - Alexev Manvelov - a former Syrian secret policeman, Rose Byrne as the equally mentally-troubled DC Rose Dickson and Jamie Sives as Morck's paraplegic partner. The entire series follows their investigation of a missing barrister, believed to be dead. The original investigation seemed botched and left a paper trail that suggested malpractice by every position from the original investigating team to the Lord Advocate (Crown Prosecutor played by Mark Bonner). There is also the running subplot about the shooting that paralysed Morck's partner, put him in hospital and killed a young police officer - this doesn't get fully resolved, so expect this to expand in the inevitable season two. This is stunning television; what the box was invented for. While I don't usually score TV shows, this gets a solid 11/10.  

Oh FFS

Yes. I know. I said I would never watch another episode of Resident Alien. After a very enjoyable first season, this show fell off a cliff with season two and was so bad in season three that I only stuck with it because I'd been assured it was going to end. However, it ended with a cliffhanger and the promise of season fucking four... So why am I talking about it now? Well, I saw a Tube of You video and read an online review that both said the show had got its mojo back. That season four seemed to return to the roots that made season one so calamitously hilarious and interesting. So against my better judgement I procured a copy of season four, episode one and put it on; this is what I thought... 

Shit. It was shit. Great dollops of stinky shit. As shitty a thing as ever came out of any arse ever. How the fucking hell did this heap of shit ever get to four fucking seasons? Everyone has lost weight in it. It's like the cast were told, "Sorry there's no more free food from the catering truck, you can buy your own food you fat fucks." When I say everyone has lost weight, that's everyone apart from Sarah Tomko who has taken all the weight lost by the rest of the cast and shoved it up her own arse, which is now bigger than the show itself. No more. There will be no more of this, ever. FFS, the standard of TV comedy Sci-Fi has slipped down a sewerage canal and is now wallowing in really old shit. Just fuck off and never darken my television ever again. Fuck off!!

The Incompetent Farmer

The finale of Clarkson's Farm was remarkable. Jeremy opened his pub, now called The Farmer's Dog, and it really shouldn't have been open for at least two weeks. Thousands of people turned up and nothing worked; the beer packed up; the food ran out; the toilets broke down; it absolutely pissed down with rain - which also impacted on his farming activities in a most depressing way and, of course, it finished before Clarkson discovered he needed heart surgery or he would die. Oh, yeah, some of his staff quit, the two ladies organising the pub quit on the third morning it was open and I ask the question again, how can someone go into something like this without doing his homework or realising he was making a massive error not waiting until everything worked? Oddly enough, at one point, when Jeremy discovered his durum wheat harvest was a complete write off and was literally worthless, he turned to the camera and said, 'People think Amazon are paying for this, but they're not. This comes out of my pocket. £25,000 out of my wallet because we can't sell anything we've grown.' You want to feel sorry for him, but he's extremely rich and plays the system to suit him, so if the pub doesn't work and he has to shut it down by the next series, I'm not going to feel sorry for him. This is a great farming programme that does more for the industry than Countryfile has ever done; running a pub isn't helping highlight any problems because most new pubs aren't fucking stupid enough to do it like Jeremy did. I'm still looking forward to season five because of what we've discovered has happened since this finished filming.

How Did I Miss That?

The great Mel Brooks will be 99 on June 28th. he has outlived pretty much all of his friends and loved ones. He is still remarkably able, or at least he was during 2023 when they made Imagine... Mel Brooks Unwrapped, the latest (and last) in what became a series of interviews with the American auteur over about 45 years. Brooks was just 97 when it was made and I wondered how old Alan Yentob, who had first interviewed him since 1982, was and the wife said, "He died about two weeks ago." I was gobsmacked. I think I keep up with current events, but I clearly missed the death of the 78-year-old former head of BBC2 and it really shocked me and seemed to prove my opening line about Brooks outliving everyone. About 60 years ago or so, Brooks and his lifelong friend Carl Reiner performed a skit called the 2000 Year Old Man and I'm beginning to wonder if the man born Melvin Kaminsky is going to outlast us all. Two years ago when this wonderful and funny show was made, he was still zooming around like a man half his age and capable of making me, you, Yentob, Alan the cameraman and everyone else laugh. It was great to watch this show, which was put on as a tribute to Yentob. I'm still reeling from the fact the man died at the end of May and I never knew about it. I wouldn't say I was a fan of his work, but he never did anything I couldn't respect. Totally shocked.

Stuck

It appears that Stick has more in common with Happy Gilmore than the actual game of golf. I'm not ready to give up on this yet, but I fear it might be one more episode and I'll be done with it. I apologise in advance but I'm going to be a bit anal about this third episode of Owen Wilson's golfing comedy: amateur golf competitions follow PGA and USPGA rules, therefore 1) players or caddies are not allowed to use buggies; 2) there is not a gap between the front nine and the back nine - you finish hole #9 and go straight to hole #10, you don't get time to sit around in a shed talking to a woman who just got fired from her job as a barmaid; 3) on course betting is illegal in the USA; 4) Santi and Pryce simply turned up for the tournament; there would have been entry rules and even wildcard entries system, who usually find out about a few days before it starts; 5) never in the history of golf has someone shot a +6 on a front nine, been given a one shot penalty for being late to the tee (+7) and then shot -9 on the back nine to win the tournament with -2: it's improbable at best.

This is Ted Lasso country without a doubt. In the football comedy, the truth was jettisoned to allow the jokes to work and because most of the USA has no idea how 'soccer ball' works, it could appeal to all the ignorant fuckwits while tickling the fancy of people who understood how Association Football worked. I can't imagine there will be that many people out there who would watch Stick if they had no interest in the sport; this is going to appeal mainly to the 10 million people who subscribe to golf channels and watch major tournaments; the crossover appeal is close to zero... Then there's the characters; Owen Wilson's Pryce Cahill is like a kid with a gun, but he's the most consistent thing about this. Maybe it's the mish-mash of oddball characters that is going to make this tick, but I simply can't see past the fact that it plays fast and loose with every aspect of the golf game and I know that makes me a nerd, but I do like my comedies to have an internal logic, which this is struggling to find. 

The fourth episode, which we watched on Wednesday night, confirmed all my fears, but also allowed me to basically put into words the problems I have with this series... Pryce's golfing prodigy Santi (Peter Dager) is a young punk and a twat, I wouldn't say he's totally dislikeable, more like hateable. Pryce's former caddy Mitts (Marc Maron) who is their driver, isn't likeable and seemingly just brings Marc Maron to the show (the man who produced the most listened to podcast in US podcasting history); Santi's mother (Mariana Trevino), who has screwed $100k from Pryce to turn her son into a champion is really unpleasant and unlikeable. Zero, the barmaid who got sacked for having a giant chip on her shoulder is an argumentative bore, is thoroughly horrid and millennial. Meanwhile, Owen Wilson is more of a fucking doormat than suspected, he needs to grow a pair. However, I'm not going to be around to see if he does grow a pair or if this show manages to be better than it currently is; I'm not hopeful and I'm not watching any more.

Unforgettable 

We sat down to watch Immortals, a film with Henry Cavill before he had a nose job and his teeth fixed. It had Mickey Rourke as the bad guy and Luke Whatshisname as Zeus. It looked really dark, moody and quite sumptuous at times, it was unbelievably boring and almost impenetrable at other times. After it finished it was twelve hours before I remembered I hadn't written a review about the film I saw last night that I can't quite remember...

Weird Scenes Inside the Twat's Mind

Oliver Stone's 1991 biopic The Doors is a lot of pretentious bollocks. It might be reasonably accurate, but this overblown art house nonsense - because that's what it wants to be - just paints a picture of a complete narcissistic arsehole and his three gophers. It isn't the story of the Doors, it's the story of Jim Morrison and how though a mixture of drink, drugs and his own ego managed to become one of the Hippie Era's first sex symbols. The rest of the band were just cyphers, characters put in the film but not really in it. Kyle MacLachlan's Ray Manzarek is a wallflower; Frank Whalley's Robbie Krieger is portrayed as someone who only functions when Morrison tells him to and Kevin Dillan's John Densmore is portrayed as argumentative and demonstrative, until the closing scenes when it felt like his history had been revised.

This is a film that exploits women by pretending to be all about the Swingin' Sixties and the Hippie movement, but it simply felt like an excuse for Stone to get any female in the film to get her tits out. Kilmer is incredible as Morrison, but Morrison is an arsehole and you literally, from about the hour mark, start wishing for it to hurry up and let him die, in Paris. He's unpleasant, egotistical and dislikeable; but so are everyone else in this film, either overtly or passively. This is a film that was fantastic in 1991 and now feels of its time and like something best forgotten about. 5/10

A Song of Ice and Flatulence

At the age of 76, suffering from ill health and 14 years since he wrote the last published part of his Game of Thrones series of books, it is now blatantly clear, given his most recent blog, that the fat fuck who is responsible for said Game of Thrones nonsense isn't going to finish writing The Winds of Winter and will never begin writing A Dream of Spring, which, allegedly, would conclude the massive tome. Martin basically said in his most recent blog - which he manages to write with far more regularity than he does anything to do with Westeros - that people should be excited for all the other projects he has coming out and need to allow him to enjoy these things and not hassle him for the latest in the Westeros saga. So, it's not an actual admission that it isn't going to happen, but IT'S NOT GOING TO FUCKING HAPPEN! I've been convinced about this for at least seven years when I got embroiled in an argument about whether this ludicrously overrated writer owed it to his fans to finish a story so many were invested in. I was firmly on the side of 'If you start something and it's popular then you owe it to the people who have made you shit loads of money to finish it.' There were many people quite happy to allow GRRM 25 years to finish the story and others who claimed it was his right to do whatever the fuck he wanted. He can. He's still a fucking Grade A Tool in my books and he won't get another penny out of me. 

Almost Midsummer Santa

Time plays tricks with your mind. Over the last twelve months or so, ever since we watched a dodgy horror film about Krampus, I've been trying to remember this Nordic horror movie we saw that I was so impressed with I wanted to watch it again. Then I stumbled across Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, a Finnish film which was the movie I'd been trying to track down. There's this American company drilling into a mountain in Finland and they hit a vein of pure sawdust and then it's a race against time to plunder this underground for everything they can get before Christmas. It's at this point in the movie that you think something is building to crazy crescendo; reindeer die, strange things start happening, like all the kids disappear and all the while Onni Tommila - Pietari - thinks there's something odd going on involving Santa Claus. There is this bizarre build up with hundreds of bearded naked old men running wild in the Finnish snow fields and a giant something encased in ice and then something happens, all the naked men stop trying to kill everyone and that's about it. 75 minutes, at best. I was convinced we'd watched a version that had had all the action removed; maybe to confuse non-Nordic people into wondering what the fuck they'd just watched. The wife said, "Maybe that's why it stayed in your mind, because nothing happened and it was really shit?" 2/10

Och Aye the Noo, Old Chap

The Powell and Pressburger film I Know Where I'm Going made in 1945 and starring Roger Livesey and [Dame] Wendy Hiller is really of an age and utterly bonkers. Hiller plays Joan Webster, a selfish, gold-digging posh girl from London who is about to marry a rich man on his Scottish island, so she leaves on the overnight sleeper for the start of a journey to the Outer Hebrides. Along the way she meets Torquil MacNeil, a navy officer (and laird) also on his way to the same island and a host of interestingly accented Scots people - all of which sounding like the King, including the ones speaking Gaelic - in very un-Gaelic accents. Tha Torquil gu math dèidheil air Joan and because the weather is so bad she can't get over to marry her rich fiancée, so he does things to try and keep her amused, but she's a selfish bitch who only cares about herself, but he's smitten, so when she tries to kill them all instead of beating her senseless with someone's wooden leg, he decides to try and woo her instead and she's as accommodating as a porn star in her 51st movie. There's a good turn from Pamela Brown (pictured) as Torquil's mad (and questionable) female friend Catriona and John Laurie from Dad's Army has a role and also was the actual technical director for the ceilidh scenes. It was very much of its time and jolly strange, what, what. 5/10 

An American Mockumentary

For our Friday night movie entertainment, we decided to sit down and watch an extremely accurate depiction of what the USA is going to be like in probably a few weeks. Idiocracy is a film we have seen before, but as it has been almost 20 years, I wondered if it had stood the test of time or if it still felt like a stretch too far... On a tangent, it was interesting to see Luke Wilson - Owen's brother - in a film, meaning we've had a pair of Wilsons this week. It was also good to finally remember where we'd seen Maya Rudolph before, having seen her recently in whatever forgettable thing we'd seen her in. He plays a useless army grunt and she a slightly dense prostitute who are picked to take part in an experiment to keep them in suspended animation for one year, but they end up being in it for 500 years and when they wake up America is ruled by Jabba the Trump - a vile, slobbering semi-corpse... No, not that at all, but they wake up in a country so stupid it doesn't bother to wipe its own arse. It's mildly amusing but also quite disturbing, because it appears that the USA has not learned anything since this film's release. It has some sharp observational humour; many people acting stupid and a story that is essentially Wall-E with morons. It wasn't as cutting edge as I remembered it, but that might be because... you know... it's looking more like a documentary than a comedy. I'm surprised Trump never got a cursory mention. 6/10.

Blink and You Miss It

This week's thrilling mini-instalment of Murderbot featured a panic attack; a graphic operation to remove a neuro-fibre from Murderbot's back; a betrayal; a gory death scene and from what clues we got the beginning of a mystery that might include the company allowing our team of space hippies to study the planet they're on. It also puts the space hippies into a strange place as Murderbot saves their lives from the murderous Leebeebee only for them to be shocked at the way the sec unit does its job. There's a bunch of usual segues into the rubbish Murderbot watches for relaxation and the growing feeling that this is going to be a set-up series and it will end on a cliffhanger meaning a second season. It's not that this is a bad idea, but we've had about an hour and a half of this so far and I swear I could grow mould on my face quicker...

Reshuffle

As we hurtle towards the end of season four, this week's Welcome to Wrexham focuses on the changing times and faces at the football club. Former CEO Shaun takes on a new role as club ambassador - he could have gone anywhere but the feeling of family at this football team means he's staying to help with overseas development and taking the club forwards (as a brand). There's a look at the fading lights that have been Olly Palmer and Paul Mullin - both heroes for what they've achieved at the club, but now finding life tough as the team basically pulls away from them and their contribution wanes. Then there's a focus on Humphrey Ker, who used to be a director but now has a different role within the club and is running a marathon to raise money for one of the things he's now focused on. It also features the story of a 12 year old young man who is a huge fan of the team but is in hospital with a rare form of leukaemia. He has a bond with hero Paul Mullin, who has taken the boy under his wing and there is a scene where the Wrexham legend calls Ryan Reynolds up to have a chat with the kid - there isn't a dry eye in the house. It's at this point when you realise what the two Hollywood stars have done for this club and the city is beyond words. It also was nice to hear that as far as the management is concerned Paul Mullin's career at Wrexham is far from over, but whether that will be as a player or as a future coach remains to be seen. This is still the most enjoyable actual documentary on TV.

What's Up Next?

If there's still a planet left once Israel has finished with it, the coming week doesn't feel like it has a lot going on. A couple of shows reach their penultimate episodes and there's usually always something new that crops up. As usual, what you read about is what I've seen. 

My Cultural Life - Shedloads

What's Up?

Sometimes there is a pleasure in not having much to talk about. Given the amount I'm going to waffle on about, that's probably a good thing. 

A Fitting Finale

It's funny. I have mentioned on numerous occasions how I almost gave up on Your Friends & Neighbors [sic] but stuck with it and in the end it was an absolutely stunning TV series that had both of us heavily invested in. John Hamm's Andy Cooper is the kind of antihero you want to place your money on and after eight almost flirtatious episodes, we got down to the nitty gritty and Coop's D-Day. This was by far and away the most emotional and also the best part so far. This largely frivolous story of rich cunts and the pretentious games they play, suddenly had a real life thing chucking shovel loads of shit at the fan. Coop's entire freedom was at risk because he didn't know how to deal with it. It was almost like he was going to give in even if he didn't murder his lover's husband.

As a season finale it had everything you'd want and yet I got the decidedly strong feeling that this was originally intended to be a one season story and no more. That's because almost every stone was turned; every i was dotted and every t was crossed. Then it was like, "Uh, guys, we've been renewed for a second series" and a couple of scenes were tacked onto the end. That's not to sound like I'm complaining because I'm not. A show I would happily have given up on after three weeks ended up being one of the most enjoyable things I've watched this year. It's a more than satisfactory conclusion which was both unexpected and totally expected. In fact, with the exception of James Marsden who is joining the cast, everything is almost back in its place, where we started, except for one thing. You'll just have to watch it to work it out.

Cash Cows

There is this Tube of You channel called James May's Planet Gin, which is essentially an advertising platform for May's pub, gin, old age mucking about and various television projects. It also acts as an explainer about both Top Gear and The Grand Tour. In one of the many episodes that float around on the internet, one of them was a viewer Q&A asking about things from May's past. Recently one of the questions was: how much of Top Gear and The Grand Tour was scripted? This garnered a cagey and very telling reply from the former BBC man. "Er... That would be telling." He said, floundering around for an answer where no answer was needed; May's response said everything we needed to know - much of their car programmes worked to a basic script. Yes, there were moments that were both impromptu and unscripted, but largely everyone knew what was going to happen from the start all the way to the end. It was expertly done, but a lot of the time a horrid faux pas or the pissing off of an entire capital city because of three buffoons was staged. Yes, I know, it takes some of the comedy and the magic out of TV and my place isn't to do that. Except...

Clarkson's Farm is one of those TV programmes. It has to be. Because someone as wealthy as Jeremy Clarkson isn't going to wander blindly into money pits and bureaucracy that is going to cost somewhere between six and seven figures. This pub Clarkson has bought - The Windmill at Burford - cost a little under £1million, but once you factor in all the work that's needed, all the frivolous nonsense that's being added on and all the other things I'm sure he must have known about before mugging it for the cameras, the final cost is likely to be getting on for £2million. It's obviously a tax write off - like Diddly Squat farm was, despite Clarkson's protestations to Victoria Derbyshire last autumn - and he will get tax allowances, but where Clarkson's Farm has done a good job, for most of its life, at painting accurate pictures of farming life, this takes the series into a different territory and one that stretches the viewers belief in Jezza's project.

This week's double bill focused mainly on the pub and the home grown products Clarkson wants to sell. We got unexpected cameos from both James May (telling Jeremy about the stupidity of buying a pub) and Richard Hammond (whose company is going to chromium-up an old tractor to hang from the rafters of the pub that will eventually be called The Farmer's Dog) and it was during the meeting with the latter where we had an unspoken and mental "Er... That would be telling" moment. Hammond's bill, along with other bills flying at Clarkson from all angles (and all around the £40K mark) was presented in a Well, you're pissing money up a wall, so give me some kind of way and that made me wonder just how much of this show is re-shot to make some of the things in it more... dramatic? Yes, I know I'm probably being very naïve, but when this show dealt with farming problems, it still dealt with real farming problems, it might have had Jeremy arsing around or Kaleb speaking to his boss in a way you would never believe Clarkson would put up with, but you knew that the issues being raised were pertinent and relevant. This pub venture feels more like it was paid for by Amazon for the craic.

The finale has had to wait until next week and I wonder if it will include Clarkson's heart valve by-pass that he underwent shortly after his pub opening. The penultimate episode at least spent some time back on the farm and started to show Jezza looking old, fat and unwell. There were genuine moments of tension between him and Kaleb, mainly because the thick farm manager decided to do things he knew would piss off his boss - my belief that Kaleb is becoming hoisted by his own petard seems to be coming true, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the two part company in the fifth season.

Mystery Bot

I still can't quite work out why this show is only 20 minutes of original content per episode. I could understand it if Murderbot was an out-and-out comedy or if it just told one 'story' inside those 20 minutes, but this is an ongoing show with some serious undertones, for all the quirkiness and fish out of water antics the bunch of scientists Murderbot (or Sec Unit as they call him) is assigned to protect. This week continued where last left off, with the Sec Unit being dragged through the other group of scientists lab space by a far more advanced version of Sec Unit which is obviously working to an agenda we're not privy to. Yes, this is corny, some of the Sec Unit 'daydreams' are inspired and crazy, but there's a serious story hammering at the fourth wall trying to get out. The most recent episode at least moved the narrative forward, but the limited time makes it difficult. We're halfway through and I suppose I shouldn't be disappointed about where we are in the story because ordinarily we wouldn't be this far even if this just spent its time explaining to us what has been happening so far... However, I threw a theory at the wife after watching Friday night's fifth episode. This feels like it was originally made as a feature film, but was slashed into 10 parts instead and made into a TV series.

Fletch Lives

Channing Tatum is the latest Hollywood superstar to drop into North Wales. The 45-year-old actor and friend of Ryan Reynolds was one of the focal points of last week's Welcome to Wrexham, which spent some time on Tatum making an advert with the team; some time looking at how the youth academy and the women's team need investment in and then on the 37-year-old goal machine super-sub the team has in Steven Fletcher. He's the man with the dodgy haircut who comes on with 15 minutes to go and wins the game for the Championship-bound football club. This was an episode laden with subtitles, presumably because Americans might struggle with a subtle Scottish accent or even a vaguely Scouse one. It's like when TV shows subtitle the Asian appearing despite him/her speaking better, clearer English than people who aren't subtitled. Like Clarkson's Farm this is often about the money that needs to be spent, unlike Clarkson's Farm you realise these fiscal discussions are not scripted. This Friday's most recent episode was all about departures and people moving away from their positions they once held. What was really lovely about this episode was the way Rob and Ryan paid tribute to one of the fans who recently died - the 100 year old fan who was honoured by the club  last season and was now honoured again in the TV show. This was also about the likes of Olly Palmer and Paul Mullins no longer being the first names on the team sheet and about the emergence of new heroes. Yes, it's about football, but as a football fan, I watch this and keep an eye on Wrexham and it brings back that feeling I had in the 1970s, when football meant a lot more to me...

A Racist Paradise

Scandinavia boats some of the happiest places on the planet. They have socialist or semi-socialist politicians and they embrace nationalism. To say they are Nationalist Socialists would be an insult to them, but they have essentially shunned migration and do not view asylum seekers or refugees as being anything other than temporary. Which begs the question - does Sweden have such a high crime rate because of this policy or is there another reason? Because during the third and final part of Simon Reeve: Scandinavia we saw two sides to Sweden and Denmark. We saw these rich, happy countries with free health and child care, high taxes but even higher disposable incomes, yet Sweden in particular is blighted by one of the highest murder rates in the world! The problem it seems are all the foreigners; 90% of all crimes in Sweden are committed by non-Swedish nationals and despite this rich and welcoming country doing everything it can for its own people, migrants are treated badly (and have become a scapegoat).

It's not so bad in Denmark, but that's because Denmark has already made non-Danish people second class citizens. They literally outlaw places from becoming migrant ghettoes; they forcibly move, mainly Muslim, families into areas with a higher concentration of Danish people in the hope that Danish values and principles will rub off on these people and make them 'better' people. It smacks of racism, yet the figures unfortunately back up what a lot of right wing politicians claim - it's the foreigners what did it, Guv. It's difficult to say whether this is a chicken or an egg situation, but in Sweden particularly there's this fabulous country blighted by crime and the crime is being committed mainly by migrants. It is the same all over most of the Nordic countries; the reason you don't hear about it in Norway is because Norway only takes a fraction compared to Sweden and Denmark. It's a situation that fuels the far right over here, yet over there it is political parties left of our current Labour party enforcing these policies and looking like they're taking notes from Mein Kampf. 

An absolutely eye-opening but scary mini-series, you should watch it on iPlayer, but it raises so many questions, especially about migration. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a tolerant, inclusive person (despite my general dislike of right wing idiots), but recently I had a tradesman in the house, originally from Middlesbrough, and during a conversation with him over a coffee, he wheeled out anti-immigrant, anti-asylum seeker rhetoric like he was calling bingo numbers. "Too many foreigners." "Too many black people." "Asylum seekers stealing our jobs." And the most scary: "Maybe when Reform get into power we can take our country back?" However, he also claimed the weather was being controlled by the government... We should laugh, but deep down I knew I was staring at the future of the UK...

The Song & Dance Vampires

There is so much wrong with Ryan Coogler's new movie Sinners, the good news is that there is actually a great film trying hard to escape. My favourite expression in this blog is 'the problem is' and with Sinners there's a bunch of them. From the mumbling, southern dialects that make a third of the film difficult to understand to the extensive song and dance routines and the weirdly time-twisting scenes where different eras all merge into one. There are some great things about it; the 21st century take on From Dusk Till Dawn plays out extremely well, with the main antagonists being vampires rather than the KKK - this is the deep south and the year is 1932 - but... and there are copious amounts of buts...

Apparently being turned into a vampire also gives you musical and music hall powers - you can sing and dance, play instruments and hold a tune. You also get turned faster than a rabbit bolts down a hole and you become part of a sort of collective hive mind. Michael B Jordan mumbles his way through this as twin brothers - Stack and Smoke - back from working with Al Capone after spending four years in the trenches before that. These are hardened criminals but they're home and they want to open a bar for blacks that keeps them away from the violence and racism of the white folk. Unfortunately, a trio of vampires arrive at their speakeasy and cause all kinds of bloody havoc, leaving a handful of human survivors. Parts of this film were excellent, other parts left me slightly bewildered and wondering what Coogler was trying to convey and maybe it had something to do with the ending, which given the final stand off between the head vampire - Jack O'Connell - made little or no sense; but there were many such moments in a film that at times felt like it was being made up as they went along. It was still entertaining, but the inconsistencies mean I can only give it a 6/10.

An Idea (Possibly Several)

Doctor Who. I actually carried out my intention and stopped watching it. For the first time since 2005, I simply forgot it was on, only being reminded it had been on by posts or stuff in The Guardian. So, on Saturday night, while the wife was sorting out a couple of bowls of strawberries, I happened to flip over and catch the last ten minutes and obviously absolutely none of it made any sense and then he was back in the Tardis having left his companion with a child (!?), off into space where he regenerates into Billie Piper. Spark immense amounts of internet traffic about something that's been a huge disappointment since Matt Smith left and Peter Capaldi's writers lost the plot. The feel of the programme changed. It stopped being fun and sinister, puzzling and somehow omnipotent...

Davies created a Get Out of Jail card before Ncuti Gatwa came on board. By bringing back David Tennant and managing to keep him to allow the show to soft reboot (badly). We all know it's not the last we'll see of that particular Doctor and now there's Billie Piper. A lot of critics and Who fans seem to crave for something different and when they finally did something different it really was quite awful in comparison to the past. Disney likes the past. Disney still has the rights to five more episodes and may well decide to renew their option, despite poor ratings. Doctor Who has always nodded to its past. From The Three Doctors to the most recent episode. It's a time travel show, first and foremost. Timey-wimey. 

What this show has been missing is the Daleks, the Cybermen, The Master, Jack Harkness, the Weeping Angels, stories of peril, jeopardy and fun. If I was Davies, I'd be bringing 'Rose Tyler' back. She has a connection to the Tardis that no other companion has, she's in a different dimension that will never be her home and she's littered throughout the entire history of the modern show. By bringing Rose back instead of The Doctor, in some concocted reason why he/she looks like a past companion you can do something very different. Have a Doctor Who series with Rose trying to work out what the hell just happened and where the 'other' Doctor is - he did expunge all that Time Travel goodness into the universe rather than into a transformation. Rose coming back closes a loop that is now needed to find and save the Doctor. They can literally have an entire season without the present day Doctor and have a relatively simple, but potentially exciting quest to find him; plus you can have David Tennant drop in and give us that extra blast of nostalgic goodness. If I was Disney, I'd be seeing how many other past characters I can bring back for cameos. It allows the series to regain some standing, giving it an opportunity to do something radical when the time is right. It just needs strong writers with solid ideas, rather than the namby-pamby sci-fi RTD serves us up.

BBQ of the Titans

There are a number of awful things about the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans, but Sam Worthington's Aussie accent was probably the most jarring. This Greek son of Zeus was distinctly fair dinkum and g'day mate. In fact watching him reminded me of a young Ange Postecoglou biting the heads off of chickens and feeding them to his goats. This really was melodramatic style over substance with a dodgy story and a plot that jerked around like a schizophrenic on a wood lathe. The thing was this was 2010 and CGI was having something of a heyday and this was absolutely piss poor considering what we were getting by this time. We've lined up the sequel, which we also haven't seen. Sequels are usually much worse than the originals, so I might just take a big shit on the carpet and we can watch that instead. 3/10

Shitty SHOTY

The house we wanted to win Scotland's Home of the Year 2025 ended up second to a house that looked like it had been built by committee and was lived in by office workers who were into 22 hour shifts. The house/home we liked was local-ish and looked and felt like a home, the winner from the North-East and Northern Isles was all steel, wood cladding and the kind of place that Kevin MacLeod would disappear behind a shed to have a quick wank about. The more relevant point was this used to be eight regions - now six - and the final was an hour long with a little more oomph than the three close pegs who now present this show. I've been warming to Banjo Beale a little; he has a good line in off the cuff remarks and slightly pinky blue innuendo, but in this final he looked like he'd thrown together a new pair of pyjamas out of some old quilt covers and a blue biro. Anna Campbell-Jones is just fucking annoying and the irrelevant Danny Campbell had an interesting kilt and a pair of fucking crocs - he, yet again, looked like a prize cunt. SHOTY is an object of ridicule, nothing more.

Wrath of the Shite-Ans

In the two years [real time] that pass between the first film and its sequel, Sam Worthington manages to grow a head full of curly locks, lose his wife (Gemma Arterton obviously baulked at the idea of being in the sequel) have a 12-year-old son and reconcile with his father, who is the God called Zeus and all that happens in the opening 60 seconds of Wrath of the Titans. The interesting thing about this film is it's probably a wee bet better than Clash but it does seem to forget that it's set in Ancient Greece as the dialogue could have come from a hip coffee shop in Shoreditch and because you're more likely to meet an Aussie there than you are in Greece. Yes, Worthington has not lost his Aussie accent, it's just a) a little disguised and b) he doesn't seem to have as much to say in this second film as he did in the first. This is a bit of a mish-mash as far as the plot is concerned. Ralph Fiennes is back as Hades, Liam Neeson as Zeus and they're fighting each other again, this time with the help of Ares, a proper God, who hates his father and wants him dead. Zeus comes across as a really half decent and benign kind of... er... God in these films, so he was either a complete cunt when he was younger or his brothers and offspring are obviously entitled anti-woke bastards with several axes to grind about their errant father. But it's all all right in the end because they all team up to help beat Cronos and everyone lives happily ever after apart from Zeus (and Cronos and Ares). Utterly bonkers hokum, which, as I said, was actually a bit better than Clash of the Titans. 4/10

Morck and Mingey

The excellent Netflix mini-series Dept. Q is one of the best crime dramas you will watch this year and I say that having only watched half of the episodes so far. It is based on a Scandi Noir set of books and films, about an irascible police detective being side lined by a department increasingly dominated by outside politics. Morck takes on the new Cold Case unit and decides to go looking for a barrister who went missing four years earlier and was believed to have thrown herself into the Minch (an area of sea between mainland and Hebridean Scotland), but because she was a prominent lawyer the case wasn't as such closed just marginalised and forgotten about. There is a certain amount of contrived plotting here, but that might be down to trying to translate the Scandinavian to a more British setting. Anyhow, Morck assembles a team of misfits, including a Syrian refugee - Alexej Manelov - who is his civilian aid and Leah Byrne, a detective constable who, like Morck, has been marginalised because of a health issue. He's also roped in his former partner, who is helping the investigation from his hospital bed. Morck - Matthew Goode - is a cantankerous and angry man, but it doesn't stop him from being excellent at what he does. He doesn't think Merrit Lingard (not really a Scottish name) is dead and he might be right. This story flashes back and forth, making you wonder when and where some of it is taking place; it's violent, funny and very complicated. It is well worth your attention.

Family Day Out

Every so often I do an IMDB search for something I've never seen, but I figured I'd exhausted just about every search I could, so in an act of desperation I typed "great films I've never seen" into Bing and it gave me a column with 60 films you've probably never heard of but are worth seeing. To be fair, there were about 15 on the list that I've watched and most of these were pretty good, so I took this list as a positive thing. One of the films on it was the 1996 Greg Mottola debut movie The Daytrippers, which reminded me a little of a Billy Wilder film, the way it lingered on dialogue and the humour of a situation. Starring Hope Davis and Stanley Tucci as a married couple living on the outskirts of New York, where she's a teacher and he works in publishing. Also involved is Parker Posey as her sister, Liev Schreiber as her boring boyfriend and Anne Meara as the sisters' overbearing mother - a typical New York mom. Davis's Eliza has a fantastic night out with her husband, they go to a show, come home and make love, everything is fabulous. The next morning he goes off to work in the city, says he might be late home from a work's book launch party and everything is rosy in the world. Then Eliza finds a letter - a love letter - signed Sandy and it sets her off on a quest to find out if her husband is having an affair. This is essentially one set piece after another, introducing unconnected characters and finding clues all the time. Let's just say these things never have the outcomes anyone expects. It did feel like it was 30 years old, but it was a reasonably enjoyable film. I can only really give it 6/10 and that feels a little generous, but there was nothing wrong with it.

Caddy Shed

I like golf. I don't play it any more and I rarely watch it on TV (because it isn't really on terrestrial any longer). Golf movies tend to either be crap comedies or earnest racially historical biopics. Golf TV shows are as common as me getting a hole-in-one, except now there is one and is stars Owen Wilson as a washed-up has-been golfer who had a shot at the big time but blew it in a catastrophic meltdown. Stick is about a man reduced to giving golf lessons and selling clubs to overweight club members. Pryce Cahill is drifting towards middle age with nothing in his life until he sees Santi hitting balls at his club and realises this might be a kid as good as Tiger Woods. All he has to do is persuade the kid, the kid's mother, his own ex-wife and his former caddy to support him and help turn Santi into the Next Big Thing. I'm going to echo other reviews by suggesting this is Ted Lasso for golf, but really it's not that at all. Lasso was about a man out of his comfort zone in a strange place; this is about redemption and being able to look the world in the eye again and say 'I did okay.' It's not really about golf either, it's about a group of people all searching for something - with added golfing metaphors to keep it on message.

A Numbers Game

A couple of weeks ago we watched one of the most enjoyable movies we'd seen in ages, the 2016 action movie The Accountant, starring Ben Affleck as an accountant [der] who has special skills outside of numbers. He's basically a one man army who does the books for anyone willing to pay him a lot of money. It was a strangely cerebral film considering it dealt with both autism and shooting people. The reason I even heard about the movie in the first place was because the sequel had just been released in cinemas and I wondered why I'd not seen it. I have now seen the sequel, The Accountant 2, which continues the story but eight years later and reunites Affleck with Jon Bernthal (as his brother, Braxton) and Cynthia Addai-Robinson as deputy director of the US Treasury Department. This time she teams up with the man she spent most of the first film trying to track down. Her former boss - JK Simmons - is working on a private case about a family from El Salvador who arrived in the US but something tragic happened and he's trying to find out what. Suffice it to say, he ends up on a morgue table and it's time for Affleck and co to sort out the bad guys and save the day. It might not be as fluid as the first film, but it still packs a punch, has many LOL moments and is a great way to kill two hours. I'm giving this film a 7.5/10. 

What's Up Next?

My word, what a busy week and what a great end to it with the sacking of the fat Australian fraud who managed my football team. While it was largely a good week of TV and film, I've been bouncing around like a happy schoolboy since the Aussie got the boot. If ever I'm feeling down through the summer, if the weather is crap or things don't go the way I want them to, I'll just remember that fat fuck took my team to 17th in the league. Trophy? I'm glad we won, but it was a devalued competition with the also rans contesting it - and that includes Spurs...

TV - there's the rest of Dept. Q to watch and finale of Clarkson's Farm, plus more of the stuff that is still ongoing. There's a bunch of new films to watch and I have a busy week of committee meetings and other real life shite, so expect a much shortened version again. As usual, what I watch is what you will read about...