My Cultural Life - We Can Be Heroes

What's Up?

Apparently, Nigel Farridge's Reform Party now lead Labour in opinion polls, with the Tories fighting the LibDems for the damp patch. I thought much of the country woke up and realised that leaving the EU was a fundamentally bad decision, where we actually penalised ourselves and allowed the Free Market, that one the Tories are always bragging about, to come and strip mine the UK for whatever was left and then increase our prices by an awful lot more than the supposedly in crisis EU is charging in a move that looks like squeezing the pips until they burst. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd be looking at the increasing hatred, blame and dog whistling going on and say the UK was being primed to become the next neo-Nazi-type of country.

It's quite distressing watching the world sink into this spiral of hatred and gloom. I'm actually seeing people advocate violence and discrimination now, especially if it's going to benefit them. But, to get back on track... Farridge in charge of the UK? Do you idiots know what will happen? I'm sure a lot of misogynistic, chauvinistic and most likely white English people will be frothing at the mouth at the idea of things like benefits being stripped away from the people they think of as scroungers; as they will be just as priapic about fewer foreigners, telling the EU to go fuck itself and selling the NHS to the Americans and watching the UK descend into a country where 50% of its inhabitants won't be able to afford healthcare, but the gammons will be happy about that as well because it thins the gene pool, makes sure less poor people survive, oh and can we increase funeral costs while we're at it, because people need to be made bankrupt for giving a loved one a decent funeral...

Farridge supporters, of which I'm worried I have a few as friends, won't see a right wing, authoritarian, libertarian, power-hungry, swivelled eyed fuckwit, like the rest of the country - a dwindling number by the sounds of things - when they vote for more self-punishment and fewer freedoms. Nige is one of us! Yes, yes he is, apart from all the things that make him just as bad as any Eton schooled former PM who has put his mates first and then the people of the country after some other right wing wanker junta running a once proud and democratic country. We appear to be sleepwalking into a similar scenario to WW2, but with added hubris, stupidity and relentlessness. Did you hear that Trump wants to forcibly remove an entire race and dump them on other Arab countries, so he can develop Gaza and then sell it to rich Israelis? There is a very realistic possibility if the world starts fighting back against Trump fuckwittery it will involve lots of death. Most of us won't want to see it and will quite happily almost welcome it when it arrives, in jackboots, and Nazi salutes and bonus Google points if you can give the authorities enough information about your neighbour to ensure they end of in concentration camps and their assets becoming that of the state.

Optimistic, eh?

Meanwhile, Obi WanKeir and his assemblage of spare pricks at a boring wedding, just annoy people. It's like they've been paid to fuck up. Have they all been promised untold riches to just carry on like the Tories had never left? Is this part of the plan to get Farridge in No.10? Make Labour seem like a cabal of incompetence, lumbering from one problem to another while uttering the largely pointless word, 'growth.' They might as well don a South Wales accent and start shouting 'Nurses' at passers by. 

Growl For One

I saw little or no promotional material for Blumhouse's new Wolf Man; a post modern look at the werewolf genre with Christopher Abbott and Julia Garner - who is about to defy expectations as a female Silver Surfer. This is about a guy, who now lives in the city, who gets confirmation that his father, having been missing for years, has been declared dead and his property now belongs to his son, Blake, who is now married to a reporter - Garner - and they have a daughter, who Blake has built a special relationship with, given that he's 'between jobs' - the underwritten problem between the spouses, it appears. In his youth, Blake was taken out by his father almost daily, hunting and learning survival skills and then one day they're attacked by something and narrowly get away.

Fast forward 30 years, Blake and family are heading to the backwoods of Oregon and are going to clear out his father's place. They pick up an old acquaintance of Blake's, who Garner has a serious problem with, because he's a redneck, presumably, but they give him a lift as he shows them how to get to daddy's place via a detour. That goes very tits up, very quickly as the van Blake is driving is forced off the road and goes careering down a slope, leaving them all in trouble. It all deteriorates from that point on, as Blake and his family struggle to stay alive against the wolf at their door. It's a little on the gory side and the wolves are not really very wolf-like, but the idea that they see and hear everything completely differently is well executed. However, it's kind of lacking in jeopardy, isn't very scary and feels a little rushed. It literally takes place over the space of a number of hours and everyone seems to cope with the craziness better than you'd think. It was all right and only just about scrapes in with a 5.5/10; it would have scored higher if the wolf men actually looked like wolves. 

All For One

Well, one thing led to another and that other was four hours (nearly) of Zach Snyder's Justice League, a magnificent example of how to make an epic movie, let down by an unnecessary 20 minute epilogue that should have been five. From almost the opening minutes of this extraordinary film it was just non-stop entertainment; from the attempted gathering of Earth's existing heroes to the final battle, which probably could have been a little longer and more complex, it was almost the perfect superhero movie - bombastic, brilliant, heroic, funny, sad and something different. The fact that it's almost two and a half hours before Superman comes back into it isn't an issue, because Bruce Wayne's preparation for the coming storm is intense and captivating. There are some slightly contrived elements, but this is a movie about comicbook heroes so that is to be expected. Wonder Woman is better than she is in her own films, Aquaman is considerably better and Cyborg - the least well known - is better the second time around; Victor Stone isn't exactly the most charismatic character. But it's Ezra Miller's Barry Allen - the Flash - who steals almost every scene he's in. I mean, he's not the Barry Allen from the comics, but in many ways he's so much better. His reactions to his surroundings and other heroes is exactly what you'd expect from a young man in awe of everything. I could wax lyrically about why Barry Allen ended up being the most tragic and heroic of all DC superheroes, but no one wants to read that; let's just say if you have to use Deus ex Machina as a plot device there's no better hero than the Flash to wield it...

However, this felt like it borrowed from the Lord of the Rings and the MCU's Infinity Saga at times and there were a number of plot devices - such as the time it took to bring Big Blue back to life, because he pretty much made mincemeat of the villain and had he been around from the beginning this would have been an eight-minute short. And then there was the epilogue, which frankly turned this film from a 9.5/10 to an 8/10. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the first six or seven minutes and when Clark ducked down an alley in Metropolis and started to rip his shirt off revealing the S on his chest, I should have stopped it right there and so should Snyder. He knew that this wasn't going to go anywhere; this was a version Warner Brothers allowed him to release because the cobbled together Joss Whedon original was largely a load of shite. The DCEU wasn't going to suddenly go back to Snyder and play with the other 12 minutes of epilogue. There should have been a sequel allowed, that way the team could have faced Darkseid and his hordes with some new heroes and maybe there could have been some tragedy to make it less like a two way battle; but the mumbo-jumbo with the Joker; the unnecessary Martian Manhunter cameos (both in the epilogue and mid way through the movie); the needless Lex Luthor bit. It was all done to set up the next few movies in the DC Snyderverse, which this film was permitted to wrap up. Still, had they never bothered with the epilogue after Clark then this would have got a deserved 9.5/10, but it ends up with an 8/10 because the last 12 minutes spoils it - as you can tell from the amount of time I'm spending being annoyed by it.

More Wank of Dave

Did you know that it's really called Burnley Savings and Loan? The only similarity to the title of the original film and the new sequel is the catchphrase, which was '[You can] Bank on Dave.' As I said last week, The Bank of Dave was a feelgood movie for the 21st century; however, the same cannot be said about the Bank of Dave: The Loan Ranger, the 2025 follow-up, which has Dave Fishwick taking on pay day loan companies. It's basically a ten bob sequel that is heavy on the [poor] comedy, tries to lever in a slightly preposterous love story (which I won't explain because it would be cruel of me, if I wanted to be honest about it) and add a bit of jeopardy as Dave goes toe-to-toe to a possible New Jersey crime boss (played by Rob Delaney). This is a movie that pretty much doesn't reach any of the heights the original did, was clearly made in the UK, despite 20 minutes of it supposedly being in New York and managed to crowbar Def Leppard in, again, for an encore. Rory Kinnear is great, he reminded me of my recently deceased good friend George, but in general this was a load of shite. 4/10

Universal

We, for some unfathomable reason, never watched Brian Cox's The Planets from 2019. So we decided to remedy this and we watched it - it started with the four rocky planets, closest to the sun, with an added bit of Titan, out there orbiting Saturn. Then we got the gas giants - of which I would have liked to have known more about rather than their influence on Earth and stuff. Yes, Brian Cox has far too many teeth and as an astrophysicist he fancies himself as a pop star, but I learned some stuff. It's good BBC documentary stuff. But you knew that already, didn't you?

Swords and Sandals

Do you remember Brett Ratner? He directed some stuff in the Noughties and was going to be the next big thing. He did X-Men: Last Stand; the third in the original series, which was a load of shite and in 2014, he made his last film as a director - Hercules - with Dwayne Johnson, Ian McShane, Rufus Sewel and John Hurt. It was essentially a Magnificent Seven film about the son of Zeus and his band of warriors saving the bacon of Lord Cortys (Hurt), except there's a few twists in the tale. It is largely an action adventure, with some hints of comedy and, in equal measure, hints of past angst. It's not a classic, by any stretch and Johnson looks odd with hair and a beard. Rebecca Ferguson also appears, but is low down on the credits. Ratner's career died after sexual assault allegations, by a number of actors, including Elliot Page, when the Umbrella Academy was still Elaine Page. I presume he used his power to do despicable things, rather than try to make good films; or maybe he was an arsehole because he couldn't make decent movies? This is, at best, a 4/10. 

Trailer Trash

We're coming up to the Superbowl, therefore there's a bunch of new trailers hitting the airwaves and the one with the most nostalgia, oozing from its pores, is Fantastic Four: First Steps. It looks sumptuous, even if I still have problems with at least half the casting. What we're allowed to see in this preview does rather excite the anticipation glands, even if Ebon Moss-Bacharach's Thing actually looks like a dubbed bit of CGI - but I'm sure that will be ironed out, because the look for Ben is the best so far. It's the Kirby/Sinnott FF, even if Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby are totally not right as the Richards' - both of them are far too old. The retro 1960s look - making this an MCU film not set on the MCU Earth - knocks it out of the park; I watched the trail three times because, despite my reservations about Pascal and Kirby, it looks retro, clever and totally awesome. There have been some rumours though; such as Joe Quinn's Johnny Storm being not hot-headed enough and not all jive and chutzpah; or Kirby not being Sue Storm enough. We'll just have to wait and see; it comes out the same week in July as Superman...

The other major Marvel preview has been snippets of Captain America: Brave New World, which, by all accounts, has Disney execs chewing their collective fingernails down to the wick. This is a movie that has had several rewrites, four - yes FOUR - banks of reshoots, a complete change of direction as far as the story goes (it was originally going to be a gateway into Thunderbolts* but the two were separated, presumably to give the latter a chance to stand on its own). This is a film that was in the can as early as May 2023, but was put on hold for reasons we can only speculate. The trailers look good, but let's be honest, the trailers for The Marvels and Thor: Love and Thunder suggested these might be a good films and how wrong they were.

The other problem, and I expect something during half time of the world's most uninteresting spectacle, is Thunderbolts* which needs to be something other than Marvel's Suicide Squad and while there's a lot of positivity floating around that this year will see the MCU reset and go forward in a direction that's better than almost everything since Endgame, there's so much trepidation inside Disney you can almost feel it. Die hard fans will point at the $billion+ returns of the Deadpool heap of bollocks, but that was an event film; the only real event film coming this year from Disney is The Fantastic Four: First Steps and that just happens to be going up against the biggest comicbook icon of them all - Superman, made by the guy who's made arguably one of the few decent MCU films since 2019, James Gunn. This DC reboot film also looks really good, although my worry is that it might end up being a touch anti-climatic and introduce too many new characters. 

Jurassic World Rebirth looks like a very bad Scarlett Johansson misstep. This is a franchise that presumably still makes enough money to allow even more films to be made. This 'reboot' - the second in the last ten years, looks and feels like a contrived load of bollocks and I reckon that's what it's going to be - this time giant dinosaur DNA could be used to create a cure for everything!!! I mean, how many dinosaur movies can be made where it won't eventually end up with two giant monsters fighting it out while the chief protagonists look on from their flimsy protection? This time around we have both Ed Skrein and Rupert Friend obviously vying for the role of chief nasty bastard (my money's on Friend because he looks like he's been stuck in an oven for half an hour before being perfectly coiffured) and Mahershala Ali as the tragic but heroic geezer who saves Scarlett and co-star Jonathan Bailey's lives. Obviously, it will be watched and it will be a load of velociraptor shit.

The Red Herring

There appears to be a proper conspiracy theory going on in Paradise. With the dead President not even in the ground and his psychiatrist trying to set up Xavier's #2 Billy Pace as a prime suspect, it's up to the 'on leave' former Presidential bodyguard - Sterling K Brown - to get to the bottom of his first red herring. Is his #2 the man who bludgeoned POTUS to death and just what is going on outside of the mountain hideaway, because it's not exactly what the bigwigs are saying. I've still got Silo to watch, despite it now being two series, but I get the impression that Paradise is a bells and whistles on version of that series, maybe a little less grimier and beautiful? The thing that doesn't sit well with me about this particular show is just how normal it looks and feels like it is, living in a giant version of the Truman Show. There's 25,000 people living here and we know that it's run by the world's billionaires, so it's going to be as perfect as they can make it, but my problem is it might look like paradise, but is it sustainable? Where is all the food grown? Where are all the processing plants? Who runs the machines that make Paradise? How come just 25,000 people were allowed to live there but as well as the richest, we also have people who run bars, or bake, or were criminals. 

Yes, there's plausible explanations for these things - his wife is a scientist; he was hired to do dirty jobs; there were teachers and cleaners - but 25K; that's not a huge amount when you start to take into account the billionaires, multi-millionaires and people like doctors, dentists, physicists, biologists, psychiatrists, nutritionists, etc etc etc ad nauseum... who aren't given salvation from the nuclear winter outside the front door, then the altruism of this place starts to feel ludicrous and unworkable. I mean, is a former President or a Royal family member or Taylor Swift going to be excluded for someone who makes the best imitation vegan cheese? There's not going to be 12,500 people with 12,500 servants, service providers and technicians, because something this big probably needs 25,000 people just to make it work on a weekly basis... I sometimes can't look past the plausibility of an idea, however good a story might be. This is a compelling idea that feels like a giant con - inside the story and outside the show for its viewers; that's a shame.

Who's to Blame?

I am aware that this new look blog has a lot of my opinions on other things, which some of you probably wonder what they have to do with Modern Culture; the thing is, shit like politics is cultural; it plays a part in our lives 24/7 whether we want to believe it or not...

That said, I don't try to be controversial, but in a recent blog I did mention that literally everyone is calling out for everything to have a public inquiry and now we have the relatives of the three murdered people in Nottingham demanding a public inquiry about, essentially, who can also be blamed other than Valdo Calocane (who sounds like a Bond villain). The thing about public inquiries is I think people are being conned; I'm not sure a lengthy re-examination of facts, figures and witness testimony does any good. For starters, we live in a country where money is short and we need to spend it wisely, so chucking millions of quids at an inquiry sounds slightly irresponsible, especially when we know everything that is to be known, or probably, more likely, what needs to be known, by the public.

The other problem I have with Public Inquiries is they never actually attribute the blame to the people who are responsible for the lapses that eventually cause a tragedy. Take the Post Office inquiry, it's been fun seeing the finger of guilt pointed at all the villains, but that finger has, by and large, been directed into other directions and away from the people really responsible - the government or governments who were in place and where the buck needed to stop. We saw it with the Tories over the last ten years; if something went wrong it was never their fault and always someone else, usually a person they appointed or supported. With the Calocane business, an inquiry will eventually point the finger of blame at Notts Mental Health services, despite that body having been stripped to the barest of bones by government cuts. Whose fault was it that three people died? The guy who killed them and the state for cutting the amount of money Notts' MHS need to be able to ensure potential risks are given the correct amount of support?

There is no one else to blame, but we as a country will always find someone. Immigration is the reason why people can't do X, Y and Z - but immigration isn't anyone's fault but the government's. Social Services failed Baby P, but it was the government du jour that ensured that Social Services had social workers with caseloads in the 50s, 60s and 70s - ensuring that they couldn't do their jobs properly because there were too few of them to do it. That isn't a council's fault; that's the government. NHS waiting lists aren't the NHS's fault, are they? You know they aren't, but no one wants to say, "Well, if the government had given the NHS more money when they needed it this wouldn't be an issue." And before you say, "But the government can't afford it!" In your best desperate voice with added hand-wringing; if the government hadn't given tax breaks to some of largest earning corporations in the world, if the government had taxed the rich 1p more; if the government had targeted tax avoidance rather than blaming the unemployed, if they hadn't done this, that and the other, we wouldn't be in this mess. Don't give me these worthless and mealy-mouthed excuses; governments are the principal reason for everything that happens, therefore why waste money on Public Inquiries when the only outcome that is worth anything is when the fingers are pointed at governments and the need for them to do more for the people who elected them.

And breathe...

Friends United

Feelgood movie time! It seems that the most enjoyment I get from modern films are the feelgood ones and this 2023 effort with Woody Harrelson is very special indeed. Champions is about an arsehole basketball coach who has gone from being the must-have coach in the sport to having to do 90 hours community service for driving under the influence and that service is to coach a special needs basketball team. It's set in Des Moines - which I always expected to look much nicer - and Harrelson is, as usual, good value for money. Also involved in this - double take - Bobby Farrelly (solo directorial debut) movie is Kaitlin Olsen as Woody's fuck buddy and sister of one of the team members, with support from Cheech Marin, Ernie Hudson and a lot of special needs adults, who pretty much steal the film. It's great fun, not too schmaltzy and has some unexpected twists, not usually associated with feelgood movies. 7/10.

The ABC of Terrorism

The terrorist act perpetrated by Palestinians on Israeli Olympic athletes inside the Athlete's Village at the 1972 Munich Olympics was given a Steven Spielberg biopic about a decade or so ago and where that was slightly subjective, this is a reconstruction of ABC's sports team's coverage of the actual events, on the ground, as they happened, rather than covering the sports for which they were primarily there for. It sticks to the facts and melds actual footage and commentary seamlessly into a 90 minute feature, in a way that a lot of current movies like to do. We saw something similar to this a few months back with the docudrama of the first time Saturday Night Live went on air and this, in many ways, is closer to that than it is to Spielberg's dramatization of those gruesome events. This film starts with a changeover of shifts which is close enough to the village to have heard the first shots and covers the hours between the first murder to events at Munich airport where all the hostages died. Ben Chaplin - he who originally came to our attention in the 1990s as the agoraphobic housemate in Game On is one of the leads in this, as a Jewish producer acting as the conscience of the network. It's an enthralling and quite riveting film and deserves an 8/10 for authenticity, even if it felt a little dumbed down.

Outside Innies

This review contains spoilers about Severance Season 2 Episode 4 - Woe's Hollow

At the end of last week's episode, Mark Scout was having his brain rewired so that he could be Mark S at the same time, yet this week, we switch on to discover an entire episode set in a snowy wilderness as the four Innies are given an Outside Orientation Occurrence and are invited to follow in Keir's footsteps. The problem here is Irving (John Turturro) has lost his shit much quicker than Mark S looked like he was and he's not playing ball. He knows that Helly R isn't the old Helly R but her Outie and he plays a dangerous game to expose this. While this is going on Mark S and Helly R make the beast with two backs and Seth Milchick struggles to play along with whatever this bullshit is. Dylan spends best part of the episode looking like he doesn't belong anywhere and there's lots of... dare I say it... weird stuff going on. It culminates with Irving doing something unspeakable and getting himself well and properly fired by Milchick, but, of course, we know that it's Mark that Lumon wants and if Mark wants Irving to remain, Milchick has fuck all real power. What we now also have is a situation where the Innie Helly R is back and she can tell the other two just who she is...

What's Up Next?

Yellowjackets is back next week. The interesting thing about this was after a blisteringly brilliant and creepy first season, the second was a pile of shite and there's now been nearly two years since that finished and there's been some stuff done to change it, apparently.

Severance is zeroing on the midway point and while stuff has indeed been happening, is enough going to be done to make a potential third season feel as though we're heading for an exit?

Paradise needs things to happen because at the moment it's suffering from logistic problems and if it doesn't make logical sense I'm going to go off of it and start picking holes in it. That would be a shame because it's well made. 

Films... We're running very thin on the ground for movies at the moment. The FDoD has 15 films on it and a few of them are almost included just in case of emergencies. There's a whole bunch of stuff on the set top box's hard drive, but it's not like anything we have at the moment is making anyone in the house priapic.

As usual, you will get what you are given and I'm always intrigued as to whether something unexpected and good will appear...