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...