What's Up?
It would appear that having a provocative title for weekly blog does not increase viewing figures. In fact, while last week's blog was one of the shortest I've written for a while, it was also the least looked at over a one week period than anything on this particular blog that I can ever recall. Sensational titles do not immediately bring people to the table... Hence this week's title...
In other 'news', am I the only person to have noticed that Donald Trump has never been far from news headlines since January? It's like the Orange Shitler doesn't like it when people aren't talking about him. We've known for many years that he's a narcissistic, attention-seeking, massively 'little' wanker, but he's really excelling himself at the moment. This contradictory piece of human garbage goes a day or two without the world talking about him, so he imposes more tariffs or, worse still, goes on a foreign jolly, agrees with the powers that be there only for him to return to the White House and say the exact opposite. I mean, talk about playing to your audience. The fact the USA is complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians is probably something that in many years time will shine a very unfavourable light on this 'little' wanker; not that he'd care, even if he lived to be 120 he'd still view criticism of him and his decisions as people talking about HIM rather than anyone else. My God has there ever been such an odious, oleaginous lump of walking human excrement as this twat?
Meanwhile, it's August. Fuck me, how did that happen? There's a new Cardiacs album arriving next month. I missed the announcement but have now caught up. It's a poignant and slightly sad release because Tim Smith has been dead for a while now and this album has been sitting around half finished since 2007. I'm quietly hopeful that it will fill a void, but equally I'm worried that it might not be what I want or expected.
On the television front, there's uproar about the BBC's decision to show the final series of Masterchef, with Greg Wallace and John Torode, despite both of them being sacked for saying naughty things... Maybe it's my age, but we've been gradually moving in two directions in this country - a large percentage that is embracing hatred, racism and dissent and another large percentage who are literally getting their knickers in a twist by men of a certain age who might have said something sexist or inappropriate at some point in their long careers. No wonder the gammons get so wound up. We've got politicians allowing a genocide for fear of upsetting a few Jewish Nazis, while the press goes on an uproariously lunatic campaign to have anyone who might have said something now regarded as bad to be sacked and never work again. I mean, did Wallace and Torode rape a bus load of children? Did they go on some kind of rampage insulting any minority they could possibly think of? Did they starve children to death? No. Apparently Wallace was a bit of a sexist twat who took his celebrity status a bit too literally and Torode may have made a racial slur - apparently according to some on-line sources he was sacked for asking a member of his production team if they fancied going for a 'Chinky' after work - I mean, that's a fucking death sentence right there!.
Now, we have people who were on the show demanding they're edited out of it and TV unions saying the series has to be shelved because, you know, some bad language in need of some diversity sign posts. Fuck the rest of the contestants and the person who won it; yeah they can be asked back to have another go under two new whiter-than-white presenters, but what if they lose and get kicked off the show; or heaven forbid, what happens if they win and the BBC gets accused to cheating or fixing the outcome? I appreciate that we have to watch what we say if we're in a position of being in front of the public, but isn't it getting a little stupid now? We don't have presenters who have their own personalities and quirks now - just look at how Gary Lineker was hounded out of the BBC for having an opinion - we have scripted automatons who are so fucking neutral they're all as bland as Gethin Jones - a man who needs a broomstick shoved up his arse just to animate him.
Anyhow... here's some reviews.
Staggering!
I don't really rate Mike Flanagan. I think he's a shlock director and lacks true ability unlike many of his peers. So I went into
The Life of Chuck with few expectations and the feeling that I would be disappointed. How wrong could I be? What a staggeringly brilliant movie this is. I was blown away by it. It is truly one of the best Stephen King adaptations I have ever seen - up there with Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and a handful of others. What makes it even crazier is I have the book of novellas this is from, but I have only read the title story and none of the others.
Tom Hiddleston plays the eponymous Chuck in a story that starts at the end and works its way back to the beginning. We see very little of Hiddleston in the first part; his (2nd) section, which showcases his fantastic ability to dance before a brief flash forward in the third and longest part. This third part was about when he was a child, living through far too much trauma and tragedy that any young man should endure. As the film goes on you start seeing repetitions, similar characters, the same stories told differently and instead of grating on you it makes you desperate to know more; to find out why this story is the way it is. There's some great support from Karen Gillan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mark Hamill, Mia Sara, Carl Lumbly and Jacob Tremblay, but it's Hiddleston who steals this film by doing almost nothing in it apart from a dance. It is one of the best films I have seen this year, possibly the best. It's a peaceful film going at 100mph with a tiny bit of King hidden away in it. I can't recommend it enough. 10/10
Jesus Wept
Something was going on, down the road from where I lived, for many years. We - me and my peers, many of my elders and a bunch of others - all knew that the Jesus Fellowship, out of Bugbrooke in rural Northants, was as dodgy as fuck and even more so when they became known as the Jesus Army, but probably our worst nightmares would never have prepared us for what unfolded in the documentary
Inside the Jesus Army - available on iPlayer. It is equal parts horror story and tragedy. it tells the story of Noel Stanton, the man who broke away from the Baptist church and formed his own cult, which eventually included rape, molestation, possible deaths and a culture that put men at the forefront and destroyed families, friends and lives. All of this took place less than 20 miles from where I lived. I had a good friend who was part of this Christian Fellowship, but I always suspected he was only really there because his wife had a desire to be oppressed by fucking weird men. My friend died in 2010, so it would have been interesting to know what he would have said about this programme which was jaw-droppingly scary and will probably, one day, inspire a very nasty horror film.
The Bad Place
The biggest problem with
The Institute is the way the TV adaptation looks like it's played fast and loose with the book. Now I know this is something I need to accept because adaptations are never going to please anyone who has read the source material and enjoyed it. This has a bunch of things that are annoying, but most I can live with but the geography, the actual time frame and the needless changing of the story seem incongruent and unnecessary. We've reached the halfway point of this eight-parter and something needs to start happening because the book was something of a rollercoaster despite it taking place over a much longer time period. The TV show looks like they didn't have the money to actually employ a full cast; whereas in the book The Institute was very much a government sponsored thing and there were a lot of staff, the TV show has DOGE written all over it. Plus by the midway point of the book, Joe Freeman's Luke had pretty much managed to escape and was on the run from a lot of very determined and ruthless government agents. With the geography of the dynamics of the story having been changed then the quarter of the book with Luke on the run can literally be written off in half an episode.
The other thing that's becoming annoying is that we're now essentially on episode four (of eight) and it's been the same old same old every part. Yes there's some tension between the wafer thin staff and everyone is terrified - the staff almost more than the inmates - but nothing has happened. I want something to happen because I am quite enjoying it, but my fear is that they're going to cram the second half of the book into the last two episodes and that would be a catastrophe.
The Ended Ones
I managed to persuade the wife to allow us to watch the second half of what is the final season of
The Sandman. I'm a little disappointed that it should end because of Neil Gaiman - but I refer you to my points in the preamble. I feel that it could have gone three seasons and perhaps fleshed it out a little more; but like Gary Glitter's greatest hits and episodes of Top of the Pops presented by Jimmy Savile,
The Sandman will become something of a pariah and many fans of the comics and subsequent TV shows will never admit to having been avid followers. These final parts loosely adapt the last 12 issues of the comic after whizzing through other bits of the story in the first six parts. I liked this; I think it's adult fantasy for erudite people and it's... um... connections have deprived us of something that might have been special.
However, before I leave this for the last time, I should mention the 12th episode - the epilogue if you will. A sort of adaptation of the comic mini-series Death: The High Cost of Living; it felt like it should have been earlier in the series, or maybe just a standalone rather than tail-ending the events in
The Sandman. Death - Kirby Howell-Baptiste - gets a day off every 100 years (which is convenient) and this time she opts to spend it with Colin Morgan's Sexton, a man so despondent with the world that he is about to kill himself after driving his girlfriend away with all his doom and gloom and lack of optimism. It's an odd mirror reflection of the very first episode and how Death's brother was trapped for 100 years in the realm of man; so I suppose it works as a fitting bookend, while having an allegorical significance. It was considerably brighter and lighter than the series it comes from, which, of course, is the irony of Death; she's a really lovely person and has a positive effect on those around her.
The Presents
Joel Edgerton's directorial debut was with the 2015 thriller
The Gift, where he also played Gordo, a man who might have been a friend of Simon - Jason Bateman - when they were at High School, or was he really? The two reacquaint themselves when they bump into each other in a shop in LA, where Simon and his wife Robyn - Rebecca Hall - have returned for his new job. Then a series of gifts are left on Simon's doorstep; first a bottle of wine, then some koi carp and it gets to the stage where Gordo is always turning up and always while Simon is out at work. It all seems a bit creepy stalkerish, but it also feels like a set-up. Simon comes across as a bit of a brat; someone who has little or no time for your average guy and there is some kind of a secret about his 'friendship' with Gordo that never seems to be touched on. I was wondering how they could make a 100 minute film out of this, especially after 30 minutes when it seemed to be accelerating fast to an ending, but instead it goes off in some directions I didn't expect and you probably won't either. It's an entertaining feature and deals with some troubling themes. 7/10
Not That One
What on earth made me think that watching the 2006 British comedy horror film
Severance would be a good idea? Except, apart from the serious shortcomings in the story; a plot you could drive a bus through and the unnecessary female nudity and male sexism, it isn't actually that bad a film. It's not a good film, but it does have its merits. It stars Laura Harris (best known for her part as Daisy in Dead Like Me) as the token actor from the other side of the pond, along with Tim McInnerny, Babou Ceesay and the [really] excellent Danny Dyer, as a bunch of people who work for an arms dealer who go for a weekend retreat in the outback of Hungary for a team building exercise. Except something goes horribly wrong and it turns into a fight for survival against a bunch of unknown assailants. A bit like Assault on Precinct 13 but set in Hungarian woods rather than an LA police station and with considerably less charm. The thing is there are some genuinely funny bits and the gore is over the top enough to be funny. It's still only worth a 5/10 though.
Up in Flames
Watching
Smoke has made me want to listen to the podcast called Firebug, the thing that inspired this TV series. Considering this is a true story I'm amazed that something like this happened at all - an arson investigator who is brilliant at his job and also an arsonist, a narcissist, a control freak, a sociopath and extremely clever, but maybe not clever enough. After solving the chip fat fire 'killer' case, Dave Gudsen (Taron Egerton) is a local celebrity, much to the chagrin of the team of cops investigating him; but it gives them a back door way to possibly track him and find the evidence they need to convict him and this seventh episode is focused on that. The team coerce a local literary agent into the investigation and things look on the up, but because of Dave's intelligence and paranoid leanings it all falls apart. I have to be honest, I was struggling to work out how this could be a nine-part series, despite some fantastic standalone episodes in the opening half, but now I'm wondering how it's only going to be nine parts, because I could honestly watch this for another two months. How does it have such a low score on IMDB (6.4)? Perhaps people reviewing it cannot believe its based on a true story, because frankly it's absolutely bonkers TV and perhaps people can't believe something like this actually happened.
A Band Aid For Africa
I was there in 1985. Not actually at Wembley, but sitting at home with some mates, lots of beer and drugs and we watched Live Aid on the warmest day of the year. Of course, we'd already lived through BandAid and the culturally inappropriate Do They Know It's Christmas song (but we didn't know that at the time) and by the time Live Aid came around the impossible was possible... The BBC documentary
Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World sent shivers down my spine, despite the fact I never bought any of the singles, didn't pledge any cash and thought that pop stars should not be doing the work that governments' should be doing, especially Thatcher's one. The opening programme about the making of the Christmas single and the bringing together of Britain and Ireland's top pop stars was a nostalgia fest; we spent most of the show going "He's dead. She's dead." The second part was equally as much about the people no longer with us, but also about something staggering that had never been done before. We've still got the rest to watch, but these two opening episodes were the ones that defined everything that was to come, whether it was Comic Relief or any other 'Aid' that happened.
Live Aid has two unwavering memories for me. U2 who on the day I thought stole the show and the wonderful, much-missed genius of David Bowie, whose performance of Heroes still fucks me up and how the music world's biggest star decided to give up one of his songs to show a video of dying babies instead. The overriding thing about Band Aid and Live Aid was how a pretty washed up Irish rock star managed to get the most of the industry's biggest stars to be involved and looking back at it how some of the world's biggest stars didn't get involved in it - either because they weren't asked or they thought they were too big for it. The other takeaway from this is while the famine in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s was a natural disaster, it was rooted in the bad government that had aligned itself to the late era Soviet Union and how this perversely mirrors what is happening in Gaza with a rogue nation being backed by a country that is slipping quickly into fascism. If nothing else, this documentary should kick start the collective consciousness of people who think we live in a fair and free world. In the 1980s we had a Cold War, there was the threat of nuclear war and the gap between the rich and the poor was beginning to widen at an exponential rate - and fuck all has changed, just the people in charge.
We, as a human race, should be ashamed of ourselves that we have allowed things like this to happen again through inaction and cruelty.
What's Up Next?
We have 28 Years Later to watch; we've had it a few days but we want to watch Days and Weeks first, just to set the mood.
There's the penultimate Smoke and a brand new series of the fabulous Wednesday. The Institution might start moving in the right direction and I'm sure there's going to be other stuff appearing that I've forgotten about.
As always what I watch you will read about, or skim over because even if I try my hardest to avoid spoilers, I can't help but drop a few.
