Have I mentioned that I've not been well? I have? Oh, well, I'm still not well. This is becoming slightly concerning, but apparently nothing to worry about, really. The wife has had the same virus for two weeks and she usually kicks colds and flu in the nuts while laughing like a maniac...
I had my Covid and Flu jabs on Wednesday and the very nice nurse who administered them - she was called Susan - told me that she hasn't known an autumn like it for persistent viruses and because of my COPD it was probably just taking a wee bit longer than normal to get over it. I hope she's right because it has been relentless and really doesn't feel like it's getting better. The thing is, unlike other viruses where I've literally just wrapped up in a duvet and waited for it to end, because I'm not the only one suffering I've been a trooper and carried on doing things I probably should have taken a rest from. That said if it carries on for much longer I feel like writing a strongly worded letter of complaint... The problem is, who do I send it to? Probably Nigel Farage, mainly because he's a massive cunt.
is concerned. Without wishing to sound odd, I find the prejudice to be both unsettling and almost pornographic. I'm well aware that being black in the past, especially the 50s and 60s was a dangerous and horrible time, but there's almost a pleasure being taken about showing white people being as prejudiced as possible and because there are a number of black people in this series there is a propensity for vile and hateful racism, which part of me feels doesn't work even if it's truthful and obviously amplified by my knowledge of Stephen King's Derry. There's something counterproductive about it, especially in these racist-fuelled times.
However, this isn't Stephen King's Derry, this is Andy Muschietti's Derry from his adaptation of It. In his films, the story is set in 1988 and then 30 years later; in King's book it is the late 1950s and the late 1980s; it has been updated, so to speak, to make it more relevant. Therefore this TV series is set in 1962 and some of the familiar names are the parents of characters from the films. One of the quirks of King's book was the fact that whatever was under Derry, masquerading as Pennywise the clown, could 'help' people who got older to forget the horrors they might have seen as children, so I get the potential explanation of why so much is happening in 1962 that is never mentioned in Muschietti's films or the source material. It just sits wrongly with me. I find it contrived and also a little strange.
What is unsettling is the horror, because it is fucking out there. There is a genuinely disturbing feel about the scenes of ghoulishness and they are, I imagine, quite scary and the kids involved in them have to be given credit for coping with the sick mind that devised them. However (again), I'm finding the idea of Jovan Adepo as an air force major with no sense of fear - therefore he's going to see what is happening rather than whatever the alien under Derry wants him to see - a little convenient, especially as this is a series that will be told in three parts, each series set 25 years further in the past. Don't get me wrong, this is expertly made, the sets are phenomenal, but it feels constructed; there's a sense that it doesn't matter, that we're just playing out something that will ultimately just be there for the scares and any solution or explanation will be exchanged for really chilling and nasty special effects. I'm enjoying this, but I'm not sure why...
Ripper, Mate
Despite having watched
From Hell shortly after it was released on video in 2002, we remembered almost nothing about it, therefore it was like watching it for the first time. Johnny Depp (again) does a surprisingly good East End accent, but his Inspector Abberline, the psychic detective is a bit too fantasy even if the story is most probably as close as we'll ever find out about the true story of Jack the Ripper. Based on the comic by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell, there's a little known controversy about the original comic as a south London comic shop owner always claimed that Moore stole the story he had relentlessly researched, but in truth most of the information that has been dressed up in the Hughes Brothers film is probably out there in the public domain and with a little supposition and extrapolation you can come up with variations of what probably did happen. As a film, it was quite good, even if it felt a little like style over substance. Victorian London looked fabulous and the squalor of Whitechapel depicted extremely well. The ending? Well, I got the impression they wanted to have something positive come out of it, even if it didn't end positively for Abberline. 6/10
Sunday Night
We did something 'normal' on Sunday. We watched the telly (or iPlayer to be precise). First we watched Whitehouse & Mortimer Gone Fishing, which felt a little ... weak and short. After that we watched this week's Landward, which, for the benefit of those of you outside of Scotland, is Scotland's version of Countryfile, but considerably better and more relevant.
After this we watched QI:XL which was one of the better episodes, but that was probably down to Aisling Bea being on it and she always brings a touch of surrealism to the show and brings the best out of Alan Davies. Then we watched another episode of the repeated Simon Reeve: Tropic of Cancer, which we had seen before but is always worth rewatching, even if it was getting on for 15 years old. After that we finished the evening off by watching one of the new episodes of Pointless, which I believe is now the longest running 5.15pm quiz show the BBC has ever had.
This is what your average person does, apparently...
Body Swaps
It's not often I stumble on a film that I didn't know about that I also overlooked on IMDB, but the Ryan Reynolds vehicle
Self/Less was very much something I missed. This movie poses the question - if you could transfer your brain into a brand new body would you do it even if there was some morally dubious shit entangled in it? Ben Kingsley plays a dying billionaire in New York who discovers there is a way to have his mind transferred into the body of a younger man, just so long as he gives up his old life and accepts his new self and enjoys his new life. The body he ends up in is Ryan Reynolds, who he thinks is a lab grown clone, but is in fact an ex-army veteran in a lot of medical debt. What follows is an interesting and action-packed romp that was stymied by some glaring plotting errors. It was a relatively fun way to spend a Monday night. 7/10
Chip and Pinned
Watching
Upgrade again, we'd forgotten quite what an unusual but enjoyable movie it was. Starring Logan Marshal-Green as a car mechanic involved in a carjacking that leaves him a paraplegic and his wife dead. He is offered the chance of having a chip installed that will restore his motor functions and this helps him go on a revenge mission to catch the killers. It's a bleak futuristic story with shady Elon Musk type characters and psychopaths galore. It's a darkly comic tale with a couple of very nasty twists at the end that is only really spoiled by the cop whose job was to track down Marshal-Green's attackers but spends most of it trying to prove that the person she's supposed to be helping is really a bad guy. 7/10
Down Shit Street
So... the third episode of the Emma Thompson detective series
Down Cemetery Road has been watched and it really would be so much better if it dispensed with the poor attempts at British humour and had just concentrated on the story of why the MoD appears to want to kill off eight servicemen who they've already faked the deaths of. This is pretty much the premise of the story from what you can make out in the latest instalment. The big black guy who saved Ruth Wilson from the psycho black guy is a veteran who is trying to save the people that the MoD want killed and that includes - possibly - the little girl who didn't go boom in the Oxford house. This is contrived and really a bit trite but at least the third episode has made it feel like it's worth sticking with for at least another week.
An Offer You Can't Refuse
Last year, a biopic came out and yet it's taken over a year for it to end up being streamed. The film called
Waltzing with Brando is the story of Marlon Brando's ill-fated attempts to build an eco-friendly house on a remote Tahitian island with the help of a pioneering LA architect called Bernard Judge - played by John Heder. Brando is played by Billy Zane who absolutely nails the actor and really deserves accolades for his portrayal. This is an absolutely charming movie; it's funny, sexy and very very involving and pretty much as true as it happened. There's not much else to say about it apart from the fact that everybody seems to have a great time making the film and I had a great time watching it. 8/10
Idiot Box
"Good morning and welcome to
Morning Live. On today's show we have loads of information to make your life easier. Such as features on how to wipe your arse properly, what the right type of clothes are for the weather outside and this week's top 100 scams and how to fall for them. But first over to Gethin with an important feature. Gethin?"
"Yes, thanks Michelle. Have you ever gone outside and noticed wet stuff falling from the sky? This is called rain and in olden times when this happened people used one of these [holds umbrella up]. This is an umbrella; don't be put off by the strangeness of the word, it is specifically designed to keep rain off of you and it's very good at it. Former Olympic athlete Greg Rutherford has been out on the streets of Salford showing people how it works..."
FML.
Family Tragedies
The biggest let down in last week's
The Morning Show was the lack of Cory Ellison. Billy Crudup is consistently the best thing about this brilliant series and when he's missing it never feels quite as good. This week he takes centre stage, as does Jennifer Aniston's Alex Levy, but the two never appear together, because this is about their parents. In Cory's case his mother who is beginning to suffer from dementia and Alex's father, who she probably wishes was suffering from it. This is the tale of two parents and how they can differ so diametrically. It is an episode that is both unbearably sad and fabulously nasty and all the while the story continues. Said story is going to bite someone on the arse big time, but it all depends on whether Bradley can get her story, which just happens to be in Belarus. One of the best episodes in its four seasons.
Island of Lost Dreams
This seems to be the week where we watch charming films, because for the second night in a row we sat down and watched a movie that was simply lovely.
The Ballad of Wallis Island is the tale of a two-time lottery winner who devises a scheme to reunite his favourite band and get them to play a private gig for him on his island. The lottery winner is Charles, who is essentially really annoying; the kind of bloke you want to avoid at parties; one who never seems to stop talking and most of what he says is cringeworthy. Written and starring Tim Key and Tom Basden, the former pays the latter half a million quid to perform on his beach and also pays his former partner nearly the same amount to come and get the old band back together. She's played by Carey Mulligan and the former duo have a lot of baggage, much of which Basden is still holding onto.
This is a truly charming story of lost loves, finding new ones and rekindling flames that should have stayed dead. The music is lovely, the scenery is spectacular and it's also very funny in a really touching way. This is a truly nice film and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good British film. 8/10
A Not So Wonderful Life
We settled down to watch the new Guillermo Del Toro
Frankenstein movie for our Friday night entertainment, when it soon became apparent the copy I had obtained was in Indian, this meant we had something of a dilemma. I could have tried to obtain another copy of the film (with subtitles because of the bits that aren't in English - a common problem I have now with downloaded movies) or we could watch something else and save the monster film for tomorrow. The alternative was
Good Fortune, which is essentially a post modern contemporary version of
It's A Wonderful Life.
This is a film by and starring Aziz Ansari, with Seth Rogan and Keanu Reeves and it has to be said it is everything I despise about the USA in a film about what is absolutely fucking horrible about living in modern day USA. Ansari plays a gig economy worker who literally can't earn enough money to survive, who gets a job with a self made wanker - Seth Rogan - but makes a mistake and is dumped on his arse by said wanker. Keanu plays Gabriel, a low level angel, responsible for protecting people who text and drive at the same time, who decides he wants to help a lost soul and what follows is a life swap film where Aziz becomes Seth and vice versa. It is an enjoyable and slightly infuriating movie with undertones of Scrooge and is also a touching romance about how, sometimes, having everything you could wish for doesn't give you everything that you want. It was a good compromise to the monster we had lined up and yet again we have watched a good film this week. 7.5/10
What's Up Next?
There will be Frankenstein. There will also be Pluribus, the new Vince Gilligan series with Rhea Seehorn. The latest episodes of the things we're watching at the moment and there's also a couple of films that haven't been watched yet, including Black Phone 2 and The Smashing Machine, which, to be fair, sounds like a Northerner's way of describing a really excellent bit of machinery.
Lovely. Smashing. Great.
But that's next week...
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