My Cultural Life - ESP and the Fallen Arches

What's Up?

Nothing much. 

At least not as far as watching the telly this week. I write this Wednesday evening and so far this week we have watched The Institute, the first half hour of the most recent Mission Impossible film and a couple of episodes of Legion. This is because we've had family up and we've had other stuff to do. I expect we won't watch anything this evening either, leaving just Thursday and Friday, which is likely to be what we haven't finished watching, so the idea did cross my mind to skip this week and just double up next week, but I dismissed that idea because I don't want any of you to pine. Normal service might resume next week.  

What's Also Up?

All the major - mainstream - political parties are so invested in a failing idea - Capitalism - that none of them now know how to run their country. The default position of them all is "Look at that brown person in a boat." We have a journalism that is also invested in the same shit the governments are, so their default position is "brown people, especially in small boats, are coming to eat your food and steal your jobs," and therefore with xenophobia, hatred and mistrust sown on an almost daily basis by what is essentially a propaganda tool for the meg-rich, it's no surprise that nothing gets fixed and it's all someone else's fault.

Politicians are elected to serve the people, but really they're elected to serve their capitalist overlords and because there are enough ignorant people out there the narrative is never challenged. It's why you never see (or hear) a 'journalist' asking a difficult question. Yet, if anyone else challenges this status quo - intelligently - they are now either branded as insurrectionists or conspiracy theorists. "You believe there's a conspiracy run by rich people? You must be mad. They'd never use their money to do such an insidious thing..." As Elon Musk ponders creating his own political party because bat shit crazy Donald Trump didn't like some of his ideas...

The logical conclusion to all of this is a world war. When the world is rife with tin pot dictators all leading it towards inevitable confrontation, what usually happens is the planet comes out of it seeming fairer and less prejudiced, for a while. It's not like the past; the world has changed an awful lot and while many suspect the Third World War has already begun, I expect this war will be not be like any previously held; it will be spill out far more locally than you would expect and very few countries will escape it. It won't just be about borders, it will also be about division; right versus left; right versus moderate; white versus brown/black; you, for believing that woke shit, versus us, for believing our own truth!

Have you noticed how, over the last few years, we've been drip fed a diet of doom and gloom, of managing to get by, the cost of living crisis, wars, corruption, protests and why it isn't going to get better? That's deliberate. That's social conditioning on a mammoth scale to adjust the way we view the world and how - the people - need to be kept in our place and accept continuous lowering of standards so that the incredibly wealthy remain happy in their swelling opulence. We are not governed by politicians, we're being ruled by a monstrous corporate machine that controls all the corporations with visible presences. Control all the money, you then gain control over power, but these mega corporations don't want to rule the world, that's far too difficult, they just want to control it, to ensure what they need in the now and the future is guaranteed. Presidents didn't go into politics because they are altruists, every $billion campaign is paid for by someone and what do you get for helping someone become the most visibly powerful man in the world? With money and power comes overall control and the only hindrance is people.

One other thing; Palestine Action, according to Yvette Cooper, are a far more insidious organisation than anyone knows, this is why they have been proscribed as a terrorist group. The Far Right organise protests outside of hotels housing asylum seekers; there is violence, the threat of violence and many arrests; no one anywhere is suggesting these people should be labelled terrorists, despite the terror they bring. Palestine Action became a terrorist group within days of the UK government reaching a £2billion deal with Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company that will be supplying specialist training to the UK military. In politics there are no coincidences.

Mission Incomprehensible 

I suppose the most important thing about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning is what an absolute load of old shit it is, It has an improbable plot, ridiculous set pieces - none of which are a patch on previous ones - and a pretty ludicrous sequence of events that make it simply a load of twaddle. I know; I get it. This is Mission Impossible, it has to be more fiendish and convoluted than ever before, especially as this is probably (only maybe possibly) the last one; but Jesus H Christ it felt like hard work for two and a half hours plus...

The main problem is the 'Entity' isn't a very good villain. It's faceless and the minuscule amount of 'face time' we have with it is pointless and a little like an 80s pop video - probably by Frankie Goes to Hollywood - therefore, an actual villain is needed and the actions of Esai Morales are bewildering at best and simply ridiculous at other times - he's not a patch on other MI villains. There is a sequence towards the end where Morales needs some device held by Ethan Cunt, but he spends most of the scene trying to crash Ethan's plane or kill him with extreme force - it made no sense. The movie is full of British actors playing Americans, which I'm beginning to see as a mark of cheapness or cutting corners - you want New York, here's Glasgow and a cadre of British thesps all doing growly - but shit - Yankee accents.

There are illogical things in this that felt wrong or out of place; almost every serious jeopardy situation ended up having an easy way out and I don't know how many times Ethan died only to be resurrected by a shot of Hayley Atwell's ample cleavage. Cruise looks jowly; they killed off one of his team, he recruited new members with a flamboyance that was almost improbable and frankly I really expected better; much better. The film before this was much better and felt like a Mission Impossible movie; this was a leathery, slightly smelling of wee, dull action adventure with lots of bollocks to pad it out. 5/10

Kid Alien

In an episode where a lot happened, it felt like very little was achieved; but this could just be me nit-picking. Lots of things that bugged critics were dealt with in this part, especially the risking of billions and billions of dollars of R&D on the whim of Wendy. This was probably the thing that bugged many but now you shall be bugged by it no more. We saw a little more of Morrow, the Weyland-Yutani cyborg, who is now on a personal mission to recover all the aliens that have fallen into the hands of Prodigy. We saw Wendy dismember an alien, which was unexpected. We also saw the 'Lost Boys' dealing with the fact they're all kids in superhuman bodies a little more and oddly enough it doesn't grate like it did; it is, in fact, quite sweet and amusing.

The story it seems is simple; Prodigy have all Weyland-Yutani's aliens and are going to research the shit out of them, using only synthetics to do the job. They are conveniently on an island miles from any mainland, which suggests at some point the aliens will all escape but be unable to get off the island, so it will become a kind of glorified cat and mouse game with the non-humans as the only salvation (therefore possibly just another Jurassic Park film...). Other than that it's about rivalry - between the major corporations and the Lost Boys - and how all the pieces will magically fit together. This is a Noah Hawley show, so if it doesn't make a lot of sense at the moment it will fit together eventually even if it never feels like it will.

Low Budget No Frills

I read a review of the first episode of The Institute which said that the entire first episode's FX budget was used on a single special effect involving a glass of water. I think they were wrong; I think the entire series budget was used on that one special effect. The reason is simple, there hasn't really been another special effect in it since that manipulating a spilled glass of water scene. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Oh yeah, this week Luke moved some paper clips with his mind... In fact, this show has proved without a doubt that it was made for about $1.50 plus change. The changes to the book have been far reaching; Stephen King's book pitted a genius kid against the US government; the Institute was a fortress and while none of the staff trusted each other, there were loads of them and half the book's charm was how Luke Ellis - the boy genius - manages to outsmart them all; get halfway across the country and convince the law enforcement people of Dennison, Texas that he was being chased by bad people working for the government. It's actually one of King's better books and I remember thinking it would make a good film or TV show. I was so wrong. This has cut so many corners it's almost round.

Instead of this well oiled machine that Ellis manages to tie in knots, the Institute is run by half a dozen frazzled evil people and a few grunts; it seems to work outside of the government and Luke Ellis has barely had to use his vast intellect. His superior brain has been redundant for most of the series and now we're into the endgame Joe Freeman must be looking at the fucking car crash of an adaptation and thinking he's been wasted and the writers haven't got a clue. So much has been changed about this it could almost have been a different story; every short cut possible has been taken; every perfect corner and straight line of the story has been turned into a crooked line or completely shattered corner. It is almost laughable. The acting, even the proper actor in it - Mary Louise-Parker - has been reduced to a piss poor script that bears little or no resemblance to the book. 

In this penultimate part, instead of fighting a huge battle in the streets of Dennison with an army of government wetworks ops; we have a standoff in someone's living room - literally. There doesn't appear to be the storming of the Institute - to free the rest of the kids - which made the book so unexpectedly full of surprises and Tim - Ben Barnes - is not going to be the up front hero he was and neither is his police girlfriend, who to be fair, probably doesn't know how to do the acting thing well enough to be anything other than an extra given lines. Hannah Galway sounds like she's reading from an autocue ALL THE TIME, with added. husky. voice... Didn't the people making this series realise it, or was it a case of she was all they could afford? It ends next week and that's a relief because there was so much wrong with this penultimate part that I'd go into detail but I've already written far too much. I will say that when Tim finds Luke - Joe Freeman - in the woods, last week, and saves him from the first threat, it is the height of summer and yet this week it's the middle of autumn and the lush trees from the woods are now skeletal and menacing. It's literally like they stopped filming for a few months - perhaps to get enough money to finish it off - just for that added change of light. It really is a very dreadful adaptation, I can't wait for it to finish. 

The Maker of Peace

Season one of Peacemaker was an outlandish, over-the-top, feast of stupidity and brilliance. It wobbled at times, but was one of the better superhero TV shows of the last five years. James Gunn turned the dislikeable supporting character from Suicide Squad into a human being, albeit a right wing, violently psychotic one with a pet eagle and a love of poodle rock. The team he was hooked up with were misfits of the top order and it fitted into the DCU in a similar way to how Deadpool sat in the X-Men Universe; its specifics were less important than the story it was telling. That was 2022 and while James Gunn probably knew he was about to reshape the DCU into his own image, this still was firmly in the DCEU of Momoa's Aquaman and probably Cavill's Man of Steel. How was this going to transcend the changes that have happened and would it be plausible?

Well... I'm not really sure based on the first episode of season two what or where this is going. It's clearly set in the same universe and yet we have Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl to set it in the same place as the Superman film I reviewed last week. The thing is where season one was a cacophony of lunacy and violence, this appears to be different in a few ways. I won't go into any great detail because that involves spoilers, but there is an extended orgy scene about two thirds of the way through which felt absolutely unnecessary. The team that stopped the alien invasion are now outcasts; Peacemaker can't get work, but nor can almost all of the rest of the team, just Economus remains in employment and he's spying on his friend Chris Smith aka Peacemaker. 

It's an opening episode that deals with heroes on a scrap heap, but it quickly finds a new path to venture down and this is Chris's interdimensional pocket universe where he keeps his weapons and technology. it appears it is similar to the one Lex Luthor created in Superman and not only is the government interested, Chris has discovered a reality where his brother is alive and his dad loves him and this is far more attractive than the one he's currently in... I struggled with this, to be honest, it wants to be the same as the 2022 series, yet it felt as though a lot had changed, including the desire to be vulgar and shocking for no real reason. Yes, I've become a prude in my old age and the extended orgy scene felt wrong, misplaced and as I said earlier unnecessary - it felt like a case of 'I'm James Gunn and if I want lots of full on, in-yer-face, nudity in my TV show I will have it.' It didn't add to the story and really didn't need to be there. It spoiled it for me and lowered the tone to a level it didn't need to go. 

Mindfuck

And so we concluded the second season of Legion and where we eventually got what season one was doing, we lost the plot early on in season two and it never seemed to return. This was/is truly cerebral television and I'm not really sure if it was all a set up for season three or they finally realised that David 'Legion' Haller in the comics was unbelievably dangerous and morally ambiguous schizophrenic; someone who did what he wanted to do on a whim and if that meant helping bad guys (beat the X-Men) then fine. I have to say that there was little in the first ten episodes that led me to think that the finale would turn everything on its head and leave the viewer seriously wondering what was happening. The about turn by his friends may have been alluded to, but if it was I missed it. Like season one, I expected it all to fit together and I'd understand what happened, but if it does I missed the memo. It is still mind-blowing TV and I'm amazed we didn't stick with it first time around.

What's Up Next?

More aliens, more superheroes, more telekinetic kids in peril, and probably something else that will arrive that I will have forgotten about or will surprise me. The problem I have is that 25% of the things I've been looking forward to have felt like a huge let down and I can't make up my mind if I'm just growing jaded at TV and film in general. I shouldn't be because there have been some real highlights over the last few months, but I spent almost four nights away from the TV this week and felt I could have spent more...

My Cultural Life - Some Big Ones

What's Up? 

In London last Saturday, over 500 people were arrested for showing solidarity with Palestine Action, a group of 'terrorist' protestors who, to my knowledge, daubed a lot of red paint on an RAF aircraft and are campaigning for the stopping of babies being murdered in Gaza. At the same time about 500 people, very many of who were right wing neo-Nazis, marched down a high street in Nuneaton, waving racist banners, chanting recognised far right expressions and threatening non-white people - one person was arrested on the threat of causing criminal damage. They were doing it because allegedly two Afghan refugees are accused of raping a 12 year old girl. This is a horrible thing, but apparently it's far more acceptable for 500 people to march against something that hasn't been confirmed than 500 people who don't want babies being murdered get arrested. This is where we live now...

** In other news, Donald Trump's more bluff than bluster attempts to win himself the Nobel Peace Prize continued this week with him trying to broker a deal with Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Now the USA have essentially gained control of Ukraine's rare earth metal lands, it doesn't really compute to the Donald that stopping the war by allowing Russia to retain all of the land it has stolen - by force - is essentially rewarding the aggressor. He doesn't care because whatever happens his country now guards Ukraine's main reason for being such a key bit of world real estate. He wins, Putin gets more than he probably bargained for and the Ukraine, well they'll probably stop being bombed - for a few years...

** I get a little bit cheesed off with people when they post awful memes about our awful PM. I can't stand Starmer, but he does have a few things that should give him the benefit of the doubt if nothing else. One - he inherited a country and politics badly broken by the Tories. You can't deny that the UK didn't have much of its infrastructure working how we'd like it to by the time they went scurrying off to political oblivion. He was never going to change much immediately because if he'd just gone and borrowed a lot of money and started rebuilding the country, he would have had everyone and the Bank of England on his back for increasing the 'National Debt' when, realistically it would generate work, jobs, money and spending, be good for the economy and (I say this through gritted teeth for other reasons) we can pay that 'debt' off more quickly. Or maybe taxed the rich. Or stop reacting to every far right dog whistle. They need to govern and be like the Tories and not care what their critics say.

** Isn't racism awful? I mean, anyone who thinks racism is horrible is probably going to be a reasonable human being. I think I'd be right about that. The thing is racism is rampant at the moment; it's a proper white supremacist racism too. They're all very... public about their racism. If racism has to exist then the best place for it has always been in the mind of the solitary racist; not allowed to become so common place that unified outrage from people who aren't racist is irrelevant. On the Spurs page I run, someone was really very awful about a black footballer who missed a penalty. This person even went to great lengths to tell the page (me) and all the non-racists that we can all fuck off because he doesn't care if he's banned, people need to see the damage non-white people are doing to our lives. I shit you not. We are fucking doomed because it is becoming a serious risk to challenge brazen racists now, which is why it doesn't happen; people are fearful of repercussions. So, these idiots act with impunity knowing our police are busy arresting pensioners for not wanting brown babies to die.

Oh, Superman...

Right, before I get into this, I have to say Edi Gathegi as Mr Terrific is, by a country mile, the best thing in this film. I didn't get any kind of indication from the myriad of clips that came out that some of the supporting cast would have the roles they had, so it was really good that not only was Mr T on the right side, he was also absolutely superb. As for David Corenswet's Superman, well, he might be the best Superman since Henry Cavill and considerably better than Brandon Routh and the weird looking guy who plays him in the most recent TV series. The problem is while this is an excellent film, it doesn't have a heart. There's love and history missing from this. There's too much weight of expectation. There are far too many unexplained other superheroes and there is absolutely no feeling of jeopardy. Clark also has hick, slack-jawed parents.

Nicholas Hoult is a fantastic Lex Luthor, 100% nasty arsehole and very much the Luthor of Pre-Crisis Superman; a man driven by his irrational hatred of the Man of Steel, prepared to do anything to finally win; but even he struggled to make this tale of obfuscation and deflection really tick. This was about dog whistling, literally and metaphorically - which might be why the right wing wankers disliked it - about saying 'this is bad' and getting a load of monkeys on social media to click like. This is about how the human race is losing its moral compass and ability to think rationally when over reaction is the best policy. When it boils down to it all, this isn't about a kaiju destroying Metropolis; or the Justice Gang helping out. It isn't about whether Superman's real parents were closet fascists with world domination in mind. This was about one man making lots of money and accruing even more power by making the world look at one overblown thing while he tinkered about somewhere else.

Was it any good? Well, yes. It's the best new superhero film I've seen for a few years, but it's a bit hollow - a trademark of director James Gunn, I suspect. I didn't at any point feel emotionally involved or connected with it. Rachel Brosnahan is okay as Lois Lane, but she's a bit too punk, where Clark, who claims to like punk music is a bit too nerd and that felt wrong for both characters. This is a film that feels like chunks of it have been cut out; bits that might have made us care more about the things were were supposed to care about... if there were any. It felt a little like  Superman for the TikTok generation and one that lacked a soul. A Superman with his heart dialled down. 7/10

Alien Invasion

Noah Hawley is all over my TV at the moment. We're watching Legion, season two, and now his much heralded Alien: Earth has landed and it felt more like an extended film than the start of a TV series. This is a weird one; absolutely nothing wrong with it at all, but if there's a story it's been hidden in typical Hawley fashion. The first part is taken up with an out-of-control science vessel, casually, ploughing into a building on Earth in 2120. A planet pretty much divided between four mega corporations, with a fifth, new kid on the block - Prodigy - about to join them. The race is who will create the best future life - human hybrids, cyborgs or total AI androids and Weyland-Yutani has just brought alien life back in the star ship that has crashed into a Prodigy owned building and it could be a gamechanger. This is a world where Search & Rescue is armed to the teeth, where empathy and compassion are pretty much non-existent.

It's not just familiar xenomorphs, but five other alien species and they're loose and Prodigy has people on the ground trying to save civilians, who are being chewed up by the nasties. Enter, Prodigy's 'Lost Boys' - human hybrids; androids with dying children's minds imprinted into them, because a child's mind is more 'flexible' and they have abilities to perform far better than humans. Led by Wendy, they are the creation of the Boy Kavalier, who is the genius behind Prodigy and he wants whatever Weyland-Yutani has got on the crashed ship, even if it is heavily guarded by someone with his company's interests only at heart. It's this element of the show that clearly doesn't work and feels shoehorned in. I get the idea of Prodigy but Kavalier's Lost Boys feels like a scenario that wouldn't happen in a real world situation in a billion years, especially as Wendy appears to be the only one of them who has any awareness or idea what she's doing. The first two episodes seem heavy on style, do have some substance, but isn't specific with what or where the story is likely to go; maybe it's just going to set us up for a second season where more is revealed. It's was an interesting and action-packed introduction with just a smidgeon of doubt as to whether this can be more than what Alien films usually end up being. There was also a noticeable drop in overall quality between episodes one and two.

Lo-Fi Sci-Fi

I'm not really sure how to review this. As a piece of filmmaking it was pretty excellent; everything from the long tracking shots to the feel of the late 1950s USA, was pretty perfect. This was an homage to programmes like The Twilight Zone, with even the dialogue feeling like it had been lifted from a 1950s script. The problem with The Vast of Night is it simply isn't very good. It's a talking heads picture, which ironically came out on Amazon streaming in 2020 - at the height of the pandemic - but was actually made in late 2018. There is little or no action - apart from the running and largely unnecessary bits in a car - and it's all about the story, or in this case the lack of it. It is a heavy style over substance movie that I'm not sure would have benefited from having any more substance...

Starring Jake Horowitz and Sierra McCormick (no, me neither) and directed (also written and produced under a pseudonym) by Andrew Patterson (no, me neither again), it tells the story of how aliens visit a small town in New Mexico during the opening basketball match of the 1958 season, when the town is crammed into the sports hall and the local DJ and the girl who fancies him, the night shift telephonist, first hear strange noises and then pursue the 'things in the sky'. As a period piece it is outstanding, but nothing really happens; you spend the entire film waiting for something to happen and when it looks like something is going to happen, nothing else happens and then it's over. It looks fabulous, but it's a little like waiting for paint to dry or phlegm to dissipate. 5/10

Escape From Nowhere

With just two episodes to go in The Institute the makers are going to have to cram more than a third of book into it. This should include a full scale battle on the streets of Dennison and Luke and Tim enacting a mass breakout of hostages and kicking some arse. Whether that will happen is a complete unknown because the story has been changed, in some places unnecessarily I think. Lots of convenient stuff happens in this where the book was far more detailed and focused on Luke's computer-like brain, which really seems to have largely been neglected throughout the last six weeks. It seems that people can't help change King's stuff but rarely make it better.

Rocket To The Moon

To borrow a joke from someone else, we watched James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3 by James Gunn on Monday night because it had been two years since we last watched it and I simply fancied something I've enjoyed and there's not that many MCU films that I've enjoyed in recent years. This, arguably, could be the last best MCU movie ever made and even this has a ton of stuff that muddied the story rather than helped it. However, I still feel the High Evolutionary - Chukwudi Iwuji - would have made a much better Big Bad than anything we were promised or will end up with. Narcissistic, nasty, heartless and powerful - he ticks all the boxes...

Things that are wrong with this: Warlock and the people he came from. I get it's tying up something that happened in the second (or was it first) film's epilogue, but it felt shoehorned into a story where it wasn't needed, or could have been less clunky. The Ravagers or whatever they're called and therefore Gamora, with very little exceptions all were actually quite unnecessary. There felt like there was too much music and it also gets a little flabby in the middle and depends on sentiment and tugging at heartstrings too much, but it is a good film for all the right reasons. 7/10

What the Fuckington?

I've seen two Ari Aster movies in my life. One was unbelievably boring and the other was a load of shite (I'm talking Midsommer and Hereditary), so having heard some positive things about Eddington, when it became available I jumped on it like a frog onto a lily pad. Sometimes I should seriously question my better judgement. Eddington is almost two and a half hours long; it would have benefited from being an hour forty at best, possibly even not existing at all. I'm not saying it's a bad film, because it isn't, it's just... well... fucking boring apart from one ten minute segment near the end, which is only very loosely explained. 

Labelled as a 'modern western', what it really feels like is an attempt to make a Cohen Brothers film without the humour, wit and sophistication. Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the sheriff of Eddington, who is surrounded by conspiracy theory nuts (his wife - Emma Stone - and his mother-in-law - Deirdre O'Connell) in May 2020, as COVID is hitting the world. He seems like a decent, but misguided, guy but he's clearly got a problem with the town's mayor - Pedro Pascal - and this boils over in a number of confrontations that leads Cross to decide to run for mayor. In the background is an America being run by Trump, the Black Lives Matter movement is growing and its set in a dying small town where the young people feel abandoned and alienated. The tensions between Phoenix and Pascal begin to boil over and the last hour of the film is about how that goes off the rails ending in a killing spree through the deserted streets of Eddington, New Mexico. The problem I had with it more than anything else is how so much of fuck all happened. Does Aster just make fucking long films because he can? In many ways the first hour didn't add much to the story; it didn't even do a good job of character building - it was just there, stinking the TV for 60 minutes and by the time stuff happened I didn't give a fuck. 4/10 

The Weirdness Continues

Season one of Legion is essentially a story about madness and parasites; season two is a horror story infested with strangeness and subterfuge. It kicks off with something of a mystery and slowly, much like the first season, starts letting you know what's happening in increments; a tease here, a clue there. We spent the entire first season trying to figure out how David was going to rid himself of the mega-powerful mutant parasite Amal Farouk and season two is about how David has been coerced into helping Farouk find his real body - which we were told in season one would be a really bad thing. There's a 'Days of Future Past' element to this, but now with the mutants working with Division 3 and all the hallucinogenic qualities that brings with it, I'm wondering if this is just a set up for something bigger that's going to pop up in the future?

AI, AI-Oh

Steven Spielberg's homage to Stanley Kubrick, the 2001 A.I. Artificial Intelligence does something really rather strange; it manages to be prophetic in many ways while simultaneously being one of the creepiest films you will ever watch. It is a movie in three parts; the first is about David - Haley Joel Osment - the world's first almost human artificial boy; built and designed to be exactly what someone might need or want. The odd thing about this decision to build an almost child is the artificial infant would never grow old, would remain a perpetual 10 year old, transfixed with the human it has 'imprinted' with. Quite how this would work ten or 20 years after a human comes into contact with this AI that will always be devoted to whoever they're imprinted with, is probably something no one thought about.

The second part is a garish adventure in the world of discarded robots; where humans hunt them for pleasure and resentment to AI is deep-rooted and destructive. This is very much where the nearly-human psycho drama mutates into something different, fantastic and fantasy-filled. This is where Joe, played by Jude Law, enters the picture and becomes a sort of guiding light for the now disoriented and lost David. This effortlessly segues into the third, shorter part, where the more than 2000 year old AI beings left on the now devoid of humans planet discover David frozen in ice and give him almost what he wants but they cannot completely fulfil his dream.

This is Spielberg imagining what Kubrick would have done with the Pinocchio story but with AI. I think the Jaws director tried a little too hard to weave an enigmatic and interesting version/vision of what the dead American director might do, but in reality this is just another Big Brash Spielberg film that is decidedly creepy and unnerving for large parts and pompous and up its own arse in others. It delivers a 'happy' ending, which, of course, is anything but and Haley Joel Osment was a really weird kid when he was all the rage. I didn't get this movie first time I saw it and now 25 years later I do get it and it's essentially a load of modern fairy tale bollocks. 5/10

I See Fire and I See Rain

I didn't think there was much chance of a second season of Smoke, but now you can't rule it out. This had a resolution, after a fashion, Dave Gudsen has been arrested but charges are a long way away and Michele Calderon has got herself in all kinds of a mess and while her brother might have covered it, there's another avenue that remains a long way from being resolved. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I feel the denouement of this series has been the weakest thing about it and if it's true that Dennis Lehane - the writer of the series - sees a total of three seasons, then I can just about see where he's going to take it. Taron Egerton was fantastic in this and at the end we finally see the Dave Gudsen everyone else saw, but aside from the lack of evidence to prove he's an arsonist, there's his boss's corruption and embezzlement, Calderon's extremely iffy judgement calls and attempts at framing others and even some of the supporting characters need closure on what we've seen about them - so I can see a second season at least. It needs to match this completely otherwise it's going to seem like we've been let down...

What's Up Next?

Stuff. There's always new stuff. Whether the stuff that's watched is going to be as big as this week turned out, that remains to be seen. As ever, what goes on in front of my eyes will be talked about regardless...

My Cultural Life - The Barrel is Being Scraped

What's Up?

Facebook memories, that's what's up. I've been going through them daily now for a couple of years and deleting things that either make no sense or no longer have the links I put up in them. It's a bit like Sisyphus and his boulder, mainly because I'm not sure deleting them actually deletes them. I think they disappear from your memories page then reappear a year later and because it's been 365 days you can't remember if you deleted them or not. Except those pesky links for obsolete games, which never seem to go away...

However, that's an aside, what I wanted to say is how my social media posts have changed over the years. 16 years ago, when I joined the frustratingly shite platform called Facebook, I was considerably more personal than I have been over the last eight years - which blows my mind a little, when I consider that I have lived in Scotland for half my Facebook life. The thing is I expect many of my friends are the same; where Facebook was once a place where you were literally surrounded by just your actual friends, a personal riposte or observation seemed natural, but now I think there's a propensity to not show vulnerability; to be guarded. Not all the time, but when I looked at some of the shit times I had in the past and my willingness to share it with all and sunder and compare that to the number of times I've done that in recent years, I realise that Facebook has made me more self aware and less eager to share certain things.

I love pissing and moaning about politics and injustice, because I don't usually give a shit who I upset; but I try not to talk about my health, or get too maudlin about bad things. I tend to post links and stuff rather than update my status and when I do update my status it's usually about some shit that's fucked me off in a general (political) way rather than specifically or personally. The thing is, I've always been suspicious of Facebook, even if I've ignored my own guidance in the past. I think people who advertise the fact they're on holiday are asking to be burgled. I think people who share images of their children shouldn't and I think more people should adhere to privacy settings - don't make your posts public unless you want the public to see them (which of course is now a moot statement as 'public' will soon no longer exist for the average Facebook user). 

Interestingly - for me - it has always been the place where I share my blogs and my questionably eclectic musical taste. The success of this blog (with the exception of the one two weeks ago, which had about a fifth of the average amount of views) has probably been more to do with Facebook than anything else. I experimented recently with a blog that I published and didn't promote and after one week it had six views. So, blogging wouldn't be worth it if it wasn't for Facebook. Oddly enough My Cultural Life and its predecessors are the least popular of all the blogs I write. compared to Balls or Please Stand By, this gets about 50% of what they get - but where as there's about 60 of these a year, there's less than half a dozen of those; possibly proving less is more. 

Facebook, as stated, is changing the way people with followers interact with the world; they are changing personal Facebook pages into Pages - which is a fancy way of saying 'You are now a business and your name is your brand!' The bottom line is if you don't have followers, you won't have to worry, but if you do have people who follow your public posts then you either become a Page or you lose those people and therefore lose what those people give to you - in my case hits on my blogs. The alternative is to become a Page and that means treating everything you do like it's part of your business. You either go private or you go totally public and that pretty much means anyone can look at your page and interact with it; you probably won't have friends, per se, but just a list of followers, of which only a selection will see your posts because there will be an option for you to pay money for me people to see your posts. Welcome to the end of free, all-inclusive social media - Facebook Pay has arrived, albeit through the back door.

Anyhow...

Jurassic Wank Re-Wanked

This appeared on streaming services much quicker than I expected it to. When it was originally released there was a suggestion that it was good enough to properly kickstart the franchise, but over the last month or so the reviews tore the plot to bits, the rating dropped on IMDB and no one asked why this was even made... Still, it brought something unexpected to a Tuesday night that I didn't see coming. Was it as bad as I've been told it was? Is this Jurassic World: Afterbirth?

Oh God, yes. How many more incomprehensible dollops of cinematic excrement are we going to have to suffer before someone decides that these Jurassic Park/World/Wank films have to stop? Or maybe they could employ a writer, someone who comes up with a logical and original idea, rather than just regurgitate all of the shit that has happened before in a slightly different package? This was woeful; an illogical mass of none-ideas strung together with a finale so divest of originality that I thought I was watching a different film. What the fuck were Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali and Jonathon Bailey thinking? Did any one of them, at any point, stop and say to the people making this - this makes no fucking sense! No one in this movie is behaving like a normal human being would behave! Why are people doing things that no one in their right mind would even think about doing? Who the fuck greenlit this project and why are they still being employed by anyone? 

This is Big Pharma wanting to make a drug that prevents heart disease, but they need the DNA from only the really big dinosaurs to create it. That means assembling a crack team of mercenaries to go to yet another Jurassic Park island - that no one knew existed until now - break all kinds of international law, risk their lives, so they can get living dinosaur DNA to make everyone billions of dollars. Throw in a family having a cross-the-Atlantic holiday who get attacked by a dinosaur mid-ocean because they're too close to a zone they're not supposed to be near, and make two of the four complete bimbling, narcissistic, selfish Gen Z wankers and what do you have? Something that has has been done many times before, in various incarnations since the first ever sequel and it appears that no one can see they're just repeating themselves over and over again... And breathe... The hope was this would reboot the franchise and everyone would be happy again. 

Velociraptors were out, cute anthropomorphised 'veggie' dinos in. Unbelievably giant herbivores - with mile long swishing tails that would literally take a man's head off - were in, as were giant flying Pteranodon-type bird things. Oh and there was one ugly mother, who looked like they'd crossed a dinosaur with Alien, that stunk the screen up during the last ten minutes, looking more like a bad Harryhausen creation than something you'd pay to see at the cinema. Trying to mutate dinosaurs and creating something really rather silly was a totally bad move. I've had more enjoyable shits after drinking 17 pints of Guinness. 2/10

Badly Acted Boy

In the quest to watch things I've never seen before (and the realisation that I'm running out of things I've never seen that appeal to me) I found Ender's Game, a sci-fi film which was essentially a cross between Starship Troopers, Han Solo and Ready Player One, except considerably worse than all those things rolled into one. Asa Butterfield stars as Ender Wiggin, a young psychopath who is recruited by Earth to become a commander in the 'war' against the Formics - an alien ant-like race who invaded Earth 40 years before and were beaten back, but not after millions of people died.

This is a film with some abysmal acting, despite having some powerful supporting cast - Viola Davis, Ben Kingsley, Hailee Stansfield (okay, not her) and Abigail Breslin (who frankly made one decent film and this wasn't it). Okay, it didn't have a brilliant cast, but it did have enough professional actors in it to feel like a proper film. The problem (because there's always some) is that the script was shite; the story even worse and the acting was so overwrought and am-dram that after five minutes I pretty much wanted it to stop. There was little explanation, even less exposition and while the ending was quite mad and almost unexpected, the epilogue suggested there would be sequels and the fact there wasn't speaks volumes for how poor this film was. 3/10

A Bit of A Bummer?

Oops, I did it again. I trusted a review I read in the Guardian and now I'm having to convince the wife that we should at least give this TV series a couple more episodes to see if it gets any better. I am talking about Platonic, a 'comedy' with Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne (who I didn't know was an Aussie). There was very little laughter with the pilot episode, I sniggered at a couple of gags, the wife sat relatively stony faced and I managed to persuade her that we should at least give it a couple more episodes before consigning it to the dumpster fire of discarded TV shows.

Rogan and Byrne play two old friends who had a totally platonic relationship but fell out when she didn't like the woman he was going to marry, even though she herself was already married and had three kids (which doesn't mean anything, but if you're going to emphasise the nature of this platonic relationship, I suppose that's important). It was very much a pilot episode, with groundwork laid and characters introduced. It needs to be as inventive and funny as reviews say it is or this will be the second Rogan TV show I've dumped this year - he's not as good as he was 15 years ago and frankly he wasn't that good then... 

We watched another episode and didn't laugh and have now given up on this.

Final Aid

The third and final part of the documentary Live Aid at 40: When Rock 'n' Roll Took on the World was all about Live8, the 2005 mega-concert taking place in all the G8 countries and South Africa. It focused on Bono, who by this time had become the main ambassador of the Live Aid movement, because he was a global superstar. Sir Bob was also in it, but this was really about how the movement managed to go some way to changing the way the West viewed and treated Africa. It was by far the least interesting of the three parts and spent a lot of time looking at the politics rather than the coming together of great artists. In many ways it was a disappointing way for the documentary series to finish, which sounds strange given it's all true, but that might be because Bono is a twat, Sting, who is also a twat, was in it far too much and Geldof was slightly sidelined, almost as the token rather than the driving force - a Sideshow Bob, if you will. Tony Blair comes across as a half decent bloke, which we all know wasn't the case and George W Bush had anyone watching it wishing for a Republican US President as 'normal' as he was. It was still important, but it didn't have the same resonance for me (and there was zero mention of Pink Floyd).

Something Happens

Finally, something happens in The Institute. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to make us think it is at last going in a direction. I still have problems with the geography of the story as well as the breezing over what could have been a far better reworking, but when you have a programme with a budget of about $5 you have to make sacrifices, I suppose. Joe Freeman - Luke - finally has a way out and Ben Barnes - Tim - is heading in the direction of where Luke will end up; hence the change in geography. This show does a good job of making you hate the people who run the Institute, it just needs to make sure that part of the book is fully adapted in the finale. There's some dodgy acting in this, the story is almost glacial, but I am weirdly enjoying it, for all its faults. Or maybe its because there's so few things worth watching at the moment?

Get Fucked!

Do you remember Get Shorty? That great turn of the century film with John Travolta, Danny DeVito and Gene Hackman? You do? Did you know there was a sequel called Be Cool? If you didn't and you're reading this and thinking, 'How fucking cool is that? Travolta as Chili Palmer again; now in a film about the music business. I have to drop everything and track it down.' Don't. Whatever you do don't. It's a heap of shit. In fact, it's an absolute abortion of a movie. It has a narrative that wanders all over the place; is more like some bizarre slapstick comedy and has far too many people in it who simply can't act. It is a stupid, stupid film that should never have been made. However, Travolta is great in it, because he simply plays Chili Palmer and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson is a fucking revelation as a gay bodyguard called Elliot. That is worth the admission price alone; seeing The Rock acting as camp as Christmas is a thing to behold. 2/10

Out Of Order

I almost completely forgot I watched this it was that poor... We decided to watch the new 28 film, but, like I said last week, we wanted to catch up with the two originals first. The thing was we've seen 28 Days Later at least three times and it's pretty much lodged in our memories; we couldn't say the same about 28 Weeks Later and that's because we watched it once and probably thought, "Fucked if I'd watch that shite again." This is because it's a truly awful movie; badly made, with cheap effects and had token Americans Jeremy Renner and Harold Perrineaux in it, trying to elevate it beyond the shite level. It did have Rose Byrne in it, which seemed a little like synchronicity, but she was pretty awful as well.

This is set... er... 28 weeks after the original outbreak of the rage virus. All of the infected have died of starvation and people are moving back to London, which is now guarded - for our safety - by the US army in a scenario that while feasible was also stilted by the lack of scope and the small, almost stupid way it was being handled. The premise was simple, Robert Carlyle manages to escape the hordes, but leaves his wife in a deadly situation and he's wracked with guilt for leaving her to die. The thing is she doesn't die and is instead semi-immune to the virus, but is now a carrier. There's a lot of overwrought handwringing going on that is resolved almost without any issues and all that's left is for his two kids to basically go off plot and do what the fuck they want in one of the most stereotypical expectations you get in this kind of thing. They wander around a deserted London basically acting like a couple of ignorant idiots, making noise, breaking stuff and are quickly tracked down by the US army and brought back to the 'detention area'. Anyhow, before you know it there's a new rampage, as the newly infected break free and start biting other people and then it simply stops making much sense at all. It actually reminded me of Cloverfield, but without the found footage, except, for all that monster movie's faults, it was a work of genius compared to this bag of sick. 2/10

For We Are Many?

With the Flash Drive of Doom at its lowest ebb since I purchased it and at least another month of the summer to go, the last thing you'd expect me to do is delete stuff off of it that we haven't seen; but that's what I did. I had to be ruthless because if I wasn't I'd never get around to watching anything. Cut my choice down and force me to watch something different was the plan and on Tuesday night, we delved back into the world of Legion, the 2017 Noah Hawley mutant TV show that we watched the first season of and then simply lost track of and we forgot what was happening. And, frankly, I'm not surprised. The first series is absolutely bonkers; made no sense at all (or did it?) and I think with a couple of tiny exceptions, we didn't remember anything about it at all. It was still much better than many of the things we've watched this year and with the X-Men about to soon be introduced into the MCU, maybe they need to look at this because this treats mutants like something different, whereas, arguably the comics and films treat mutants like humans with special powers. If you have something that isn't really human, per se, then you need something that stretches your imagination and this does that in spades. Of course, knowing David Haller (from his comicbook days) it is not impossible that everyone and everything going on in this show could all be happening in his head, but it's a really fun - head-fucking - ride. 

Isolated Albion

I suppose the main thing about 28 Years Later is how fucking awful it is. I expected better and was severely let down. With its disjointed, illogical narrative, strange characters and huge stretches of lack of imagination, this long awaited sequel finds the British Isles completely isolated from the rest of the world. The UK is a cursed land that no one is allowed to go near; where the 'normal' people are left to fend for themselves against the mutated rage virus and its carriers and the very strange people living off the land. In many ways, it's a little like 28 Weeks Later in that the focus is on an ill-equipped young person surviving the trials of the countryside, while everyone around him ends up dying.

Spike goes on his first mainland expedition, with his father - Aaron Taylor Johnson - away from Holy Isle, where they have made their lives. They encounter fat zombies and lots of fast zombies; they also encounter super zombies or Alphas, who can rip a head off of a deer, spinal cord and all. The entire movie felt like it had been made by people who had little or no new ideas and when Spike returns to his home and finds his dad is a philanderer and his mum isn't getting any better (she's not been well); he decides to take her out of the compound and go in search of a fabled doctor - Ralph Fiennes. Bear in mind Spike was crap last time he was on the mainland, now he's taking a raving mad woman with him; it's always going to end well... It was a bleak and largely unimaginative film with very few shocks and an ending that leaves you wondering if Danny Boyle used all of his imagination on that, or maybe he just wanted to do something fucking bonkers but had to wait until the very end before he could do it. This was very disappointing and not very good. 4/10 

The Reality Check

Apparently (not my estimations), a superhero film can't be expected to make more than $½billion any longer and the concept needs to scale back to remain viable in the market. That's one of the most obvious things in the film making world, surely? It makes common sense to cap budgets and if you get a $billion film then you've simply made more money. The reason I'm saying this is because, it seems, depending on where you look, both Superman and Fantastic Four: First Steps have technically bombed at the box office. Supe's stalled in week two and now so has the FF. The DC film is expected to make about $700million in total, which would be less than Man of Steel (but, reasons) and the critically-acclaimed Marvel movie has hit $500million and slowed down markedly. 

"This must mean it's the end of the superhero film?" Asks lots of people filling column inches with usually questionable knowledge writing nothing but clickbait. Well the answer was in the previous paragraph; they need to do it smaller and cheaper and make good films with stories and characters we might care about. Maybe one or two a year and only greenlight TV shows that people will care about. Someone said (it might have been me), if Marvel can't or won't make a Hulk film, then make a Hulk TV series that pays homage to the Bixby/Ferrigno Hulk but is also contemporary and has a good story. I'd download that illegally, without hesitation. Stop shooting for the moon and start universe building again, but this time different. The problem is the Corporate. The Corporate needs money to justify its existence and the Corporate doesn't like time, especially long gaps of it.

What we're going to get is two monster Avengers movies and a Spider-Man film that has the Hulk guest starring in it - none of these sound like the kind of thing that is needed to keep superheroes going strong. Over at DC, the Supergirl film doesn't sound like it's going to outperform the Superman movie - in any reality - and the Clayface feature sounds like it might be a really bad move. Perhaps James Gunn's DC films will be smaller and rely on story; maybe that's how DC breaks the Disney domination? Or maybe there will be the beginnings of panic in the halls of the powers that be and the end will be nigh?

Going Dutch

The original and first Predator is a curious bag of cheap B movie mixed with one excellent special effect. That might seem like a damning generalisation, but it is largely true. John McTiernan's alien invader action thriller doesn't sit in a good category for the acting, is quite sexist and pretty much 50 minutes happens without so much as a sniff from the alien. It could easily have been a mercenaries on tour film, swap out the nasty fucker with an army of revolutionaries and it's just a guerrilla war movie. Schwarzenegger hadn't yet been able to harness his meagre ability to ham it up and the serious acting is down to Carl Weathers (!?!), best known for fighting Rocky. This is a film that features director Shane Black in a supporting grunt role, 30 odd years before he managed to fuck up his own Predator sequel in spectacular fashion. This is very much of its time and has a cracking final 20 minutes which belie the rest of the movie. It's surprising how little we actually learn about the creature apart from its very good at hunting (when its invisible). This is very much an 80s film but it's not as bad as many movies made around the same time. It still manages to get a 7/10 from me. 

Ends Day?

In January 2023, I wrote this about Wednesday: "I totally get why people have fallen in love with Wednesday, it's brilliant lightweight nonsense that is so easy to immerse yourself in." I went on about how it was a great little show, which sagged a little in the middle but was still a refreshing change. I bemoaned its ending and looked forward to season two. Season two arrived this week (well, half of it did) and I sat through the opening episode stony faced and feeling like I'd let the side down. I didn't enjoy it; it felt more like a Horror Hogwarts than an extension of season one. The new characters didn't gel with me and Catherine Zeta Douglas (or whatever she calls herself) looked like someone was trying to merge her with Miss Piggy (plus, she can't act). 

I'm not sure about this. The wife wasn't bothered and will watch the rest of the series, but will I? I said I'd sit through it and it might get better, but where the first season had that necessary link between a school full of supernatural beings and the real world down the road, this felt forced and like there were too many changes in the two and a half years since we last watched it (only about four months in series time). I'm sure people I know who love this will tell me I'm wrong, or maybe my tastes are changing again?

Fire in the Hold

It's taken eight weeks but I think I can safely say that Smoke is really one of the fucking craziest TV shows I have ever watched. Do you remember me saying in earlier reviews that this really has more WTF moments than you would believe, well this penultimate episode has one of the most unbelievable WTF moments in TV history as the nutter assigned to catch the nutter starting fires drives off the deep end and into the world of loony tunes. I cannot stress how this is a true story and perhaps that's why it's rating is low because people simply don't believe something as relentlessly bonkers as this can possibly be true. I have waited all week for this to drop because the whole week has been full of shit and I needed something to remind me how good TV can be. This show never lets me down.

Everybody is after Dave, but the thing is he might be a criminally insane narcissist arsonist but he's also very clever and he doesn't make that many mistakes. The only reason people suspect him of being an arsonist is because he's essentially just a massive knob, but when it comes to covering his tracks and flaunting everything he's got in public, no one is in the same league as him. Meanwhile, Michelle, his partner, who wants nothing more than to see Dave burn is struggling on all manner of fronts and then just when you thought that her framing of the white supremacist fire fighter in episode two was bad enough, she takes batshit to an altogether new realm. Oh and let's not forget Dave's boss, played by Greg Kinnear - there's a character you never expected to be anything other than whiter than white; well, even he has his secrets. This is probably one of the best TV shows out there at the moment and I'm now left wondering how they're going to wrap it up in one episode. If you get the chance, you have to watch this - it is brilliant.

What's Up Next?

Noah Hawley's Alien series arrives (I believe), but my expectations are tempered slightly because I'm growing fed up with having my expectations shattered. The finale of Smoke will hopefully be as good, if not better, than the previous eight parts and the other stuff...

 

My Cultural Life - Possibly Interesting-ish

What's Up? 

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

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

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

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

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

Anyhow... here's some reviews.

Staggering!

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

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

Jesus Wept

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

The Bad Place

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

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

The Ended Ones

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

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

The Presents

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

Not That One

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

Up in Flames

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

A Band Aid For Africa

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

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

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

What's Up Next?

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

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

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