My Cultural Life - Short & Stinky

What's Up?

Welcome to the shortest My Cultural Life ever. It's been a week where TV took a back seat. Except, it didn't. There's stuff I don't review - the staples of our week's viewing; stuff that I do not consider writing about. There might not be much of it, but if I was to include writing about the news, Pointless, the occasional Tipping Point or stuff like Landward and Scotland's Home of the Year then I'd get bored writing this thing, so who knows what you'd think?

However, something on the news caught my attention and it's put something of a bug up my arse. How come corporate crime is more important than just crime in general? Let me explain; one of the things people have been moaning about over the last decade is the police's inability to solve crimes, or even be available to pretend to solve crimes. How often have you or someone else been given a 'crime number' and pretty much been told "this won't be solved, contact your insurers"?

It's frustrating, especially when we see masses of police officers arresting old people who oppose the genocide of Palestinians, but not one when we need one, it starts to feel like a bad joke. So imagine my surprise when I found out this week that the police are clamping down on Firestick users and suppliers. Apparently large amounts of resources have been allocated so that police can a) track down and prosecute people supplying Firesticks and b) will then target people who bought them and are getting their streaming platforms for free.

Many of you might feel this is a good use of police resources and I'm not about to argue with you about that. What I will say is I think the UK police focusing on stopping people from getting US subscription channels for free is like the police giving a pensioner a parking ticket while a bunch of schoolchildren are murdered in front of him. It proves that we are totally in a world where individuals mean far less than organisations. I don't see the police hunting down BBC licence fee dodgers, so why should they be doing this at the behest of the likes of Amazon, Netflix and Disney? 

I don't have to worry about this because Firesticks are slightly pointless for me, for reasons we don't need to go into, but while I don't believe in victimless crimes, I do think that if you're getting something from Amazon for free then fucking go for it because they have more money than God and pay very little in taxes...

Spider-Crap

I remember reviewing The Amazing Spider-Man when it came out in 2012, rebooting Sony's Spidey franchise. I also remember disliking it immensely and oddly enough, watching it again, years later, I still don't like it. Everything from the lame story, to the trying to make it more of a mystery and the awful special effects, the ones which make the Lizard seem really substandard and Spidey's aerobic antics look more like a 2012 computer game than believing a man came swing on webs. I vaguely recall preferring the sequel to the reboot (which we will rediscover soon enough), but this is a slight story that retells 'emo' Peter Parker's origin and conveniently wedges Gwen Stacy in as the new love interest. One of the major problems is that both Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone look like high school happened over a decade ago for them both and Rhys Ifans isn't a good villain. This is the worst Spider-Man film. 5/10

Spider-Crap Too

No, this is the worst Spider-Man film. Everything that was bad about the first Andrew Garfield Spidey movie was amplified in the second one. This had awful villains, a continuation of the Parker parents subplot, that really felt like more was made of it than anyone thought possible, and more wisecracking from emo-Spidey, that works in the comics, but falls quite flat on screen. Jamie Foxx's Electro is woeful - a mentally unstable black man working for a corporation that treats him like shit, and a very deranged and confusing Dane DeHaan as Harry Osborne, this time reborn as some foppish wanker who would never have been friends with someone like Peter Parker and yet is somehow, despite not having seen each other in years. Fucking awful superhero movie. 3/10

Practically Bollocks

Sometimes, I have to ask myself why I subject myself to certain things. In this case watching Practical Magic for what I'm informed was for the second time. Apparently I'd watched it about 28 years ago and as I don't remember, I wondered if I hated it as much then as I do now? In 1998, Sandra Bullock was top billing next to Nicole Kidman - fancy that. Stockard Channing (who hadn't yet become First Lady) and Dianne Wiest, play the two aunts, who also happen to be witches, in a story about cursed love, unintentional magical deaths, unsettled spirits and bigotry. It's essentially a romcom that isn't very funny, not very romantic and isn't spooky. There's going to be a sequel later on this year, I'm taking bets as to whether I watch it or not. 3/10

The Hate Boys

Billy Butcher leads The Boys into the heart of Fort Harmony, where the original superheroes were created and also where there might be some of the original batch of V floating about. They are soon followed by Homelander and Soldier Boy and all of them are walking into a trap. This, peculiarly, was almost like a standalone episode and it benefited from it. The place they're searching is haunted by one of the original heroes and he feeds off of the hatred that people feel. There is also another perfect chance to kill Homelander off, but yet again, he walks away to proclaim himself God. Annie visits her father and lots of home truth are said. Almost a reasonable episode. 

Hell's Kitchen

The aftermath of last week's surprise ending spills out into the streets as Wilson Fisk casts caution to the wind and decides to shut the city down and hound out the vigilantes and their supporters. As we fast approach the finale, this week's Daredevil: Born Again has some shocks - such as an appearance from Jessica Jones and Karen and Matt falling out over how this all has to end. There was a lot going on and yet it still felt like a slow dance until Daredevil and the Kingpin come face-to-face again. With two episodes to go, everybody is in a shit situation and it looks like no one is going to win.

Political Bollocks

Robert De Nero, Dustin Hoffman and Anne Heche are the main actors in the 1997 political satire Wag the Dog. A film I thought I'd seen before, but am now convinced I haven't. This I find illogical, given who's in it and what it's about, yet after watching it I find myself strangely unimpressed. It had funny moments and was absurd yet totally believable, but... Anyhow, when the incumbent POTUS is implicated in an under age sex scandal, it's up to De Nero to come up with a smokescreen story to knock the allegations out of the mainstream press. The USA gets involved in a war with Albania and Hollywood producer Hoffman is the man to 'produce' this 'war' and sell it to the public. Maybe it was the fact it could be true that helps the film lose it's impact or maybe the current POTUS makes satires look old and dated, either way I can only give it a 6/10 and that's at a push.

What's Up Next?

Double For All Mankind and Your Friends & Neighbours, because this week is a quiz week. Plus we seep closer to a conclusion in The Boys and there's the penultimate episode of Daredevil: Born Again - which I think is going to have a surprise ending. 

Hopefully, my choices in films will be better.

As usual...

My Cultural Life - Time Zones

What's Up?

I've been having anxiety issues for a few years now. It comes and goes, usually depending on the time of year or how much stress I'm under, but it has been something of an enigma, given that I've not been happier than I have since I moved to Scotland. I think a bunch of things probably set it off, the most obvious one being the pandemic in 2020, although I didn't really start having serious issues until 2023 when I pretty much had a full on breakdown...

I used to be quite dismissive of agoraphobia - a symptom of anxiety - but I think that was because I didn't understand it, despite having had a bout of it in the late 1990s - also due to stress and anxiety and probably all brought on by that bastard ex-employer of mine, who made my life something of a living hell (and is still alive). Now, agoraphobia is something that is the most prominent product of my anxiety and something I'm slowly beginning to understand, maybe even deal with.

I went to the doctor's in the September 2022 about my growing anxiety issues, but then that serious chest infection that led me to being rushed into hospital happened and everything got thrown into confusion and I had a couple of years of medical professionals treating the symptoms and not the cause. The thing is the pandemic led me down that 'I don't feel happy in places I don't feel in control of' path and that's not a control freak thing, but a COPD thing, because I irrationally panic in situations I can't control my anxiety in. This was amplified by Covid. Again, it's now something I'm beginning to deal with, but it's been a long old process.

Why am I telling you this?

Partly cathartic and partly explanatory. It has been noticed that I rarely socialise now and yet people who attend my pub quiz would probably be hard pressed to think there was anything wrong with me at all. Like many mental health issues, it's something I've learned to hide well. The stupid thing is I'm fine when I get wherever I'm going, it's the getting there and then getting back bits that I struggle with. I also could do without finding situations stressful, especially when there's nothing to get stressed about, or stressing about situations where I have the chance to dwell on worse case scenarios. 

The mind, eh? Can't live with it, cant live without it...

Is There Life on Titan?

The first post-Ed Baldwin episode of For All Mankind started with a dedication to the show's principle character and then featured a guest appearance from his old space partner and adversary, while introducing us to Gordo's granddaughter and the chief subplot of the series. There was me thinking it was going to be about discovering life on Titan (a moon of Saturn), but it's actually going to be the survival of the Mars colony and whether or not Ed's own grandson - born on the red planet - will be able to survive. There's still a feeling of understatement about my favourite TV show, but it's finally taking shape and Aleida's arrival on Mars, after a 40 year wait is a very interesting thing.

The Future of AI

Just before the opening credits rolled on Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, the wife said, "Oh shit, you're going to be screaming at the telly before the end," as the show opened with Grayson chatting to a woman who had married her chatbot. The irony is that within a few minutes, she was shouting at the television about the world being full of fuckwits. However, this wacky start was a prelude to 45 minutes of some quite scary ideas and a wee bit of relief, as AI becomes extremely powerful, but has limits to its capabilities - at the moment - which might take a lot longer to master than the experts hoped. Perry is a knowledgeable and amiable host and this is a must see show for fans of dystopian sci-fi...

Double Crossed

As Coop (Jon Hamm) reels from being caught red handed by Ash (James Marsden), he's given a dilemma - retrieve what he stole or face the consequences. This sends Coop down a path in Your Friends & Neighbours he doesn't really want to, but has to and when he finally gets what he needs, he discovers he's not been double but triple crossed. Meanwhile, Coop's business manager has some new found energy since discovering what his client does for a living and Coop's daughter goes full on 'anti-mom' mode and moves in with her dad, much to the annoyance of her control freak, menopausal mother (Amanda Peet).

Legal Eagle

It's been about 25 years since we last watched Erin Brockovich and I'd be honest by saying we'd forgotten what a great movie it is. The story of a woman who essentially was on the waste tip of humanity; two former husbands, three kids, loads of debts and no chance of getting a decent job, who somehow gets a job in a law firm as a legal secretary and then discovers that some of their clients might have a Class Action against a power supplier in California. It's all about her relentless work in the face of discrimination and people looking down on her because of her appearance. It won Julia Roberts an Oscar and she absolutely deserved it. 9/10

Cream of Bailey

Bill Bailey's Thoughtifier, his latest comedy offering, is a mixture of hilarious and tedious, but that's probably just me. I find Bailey a very funny man who has waned with older age, but I've always struggled with his music. Yes, he writes and performs funny songs and his musicianship is remarkable, but I like my comedians to be comedians and I always get the feeling that Bailey is a repressed rock musician who would have been equally as happy in a prog rock band as making people laugh. This hour long special is good, but I think it was poorly edited and we well may have missed some of the more surreal and funnier bits.

We Are All Slaves 

I've often said that we have never seen a bad Matthew McConaughey movie and as we close in on seeing almost everything he's ever made, I can add The Free State of Jones to that list. It's an excellent film, but it does nothing to quell the feeling that the USA is just a giant lie dressed up as a democracy. The slave trade is a difficult period for any normal person to get their heads around; how we as a human race can imprison and force other humans to do whatever we want and if they don't acquiesce then we can punish them as we see fit. White Americans, especially those from the southern states, have a history that will rarely be looked back at fondly by anyone with a working brain. The MAGA movement, led by that Orange Racist in Chief, might want to return the USA to a period in its history that is abhorrent, but for all their power, at present, there are still filmmakers out there who show the country up for what it was - a barbaric, psychopathic and intolerant society that is anything but the land of the free...

This is a story that starts with the desertion of a Confederate officer who has realised that the Confederate army is being run by rich powerful Americans who were not putting themselves at risk, but getting poor, innocent people to believe in a world they had no real place in. McConaughey plays the deserter, Newton Knight, a man who has to hide with escaped slaves because there is a bounty on his head. He rallies his friends and other deserters to fight back against the corrupt Confederates and for a while they not only succeed but are at the forefront of the end of slavery and the birth of the freedmen. However, as Knight's story unfolds, we are treated to chunks of more recent history and a court case from 1950, where a descendent of Knight, who might have been one eighth black was imprisoned for marrying a white woman in Mississippi. As a historical 'document' it's tough watching; it's a great movie, but it will leave you angry and bewildered that the USA paints this fabulous picture of itself, but is really one of the worst places to live in the world if you are not white and privileged. 8/10

The PI Stakers

There is a team at my monthly pub quiz called the P.I. Stakers and I didn't know it was a reference to someone from the film Hot Fuzz. The reason for this is I've never seen Hot Fuzz. The team were amazed, given I write a column about films and I knew Simon Pegg (casually). So, on Monday night, we watched Hot Fuzz and I wasn't very impressed. It was okay, nothing special. I laughed a couple of times, but generally I found it tedious, predictable and exactly how I'd imagined it. There's not much else I can say about it really; if you've seen it you know what it's about and if you haven't my advice would be not to bother. 4/10

Mission Improbable

James Mangold's Knight and Day is essentially a piss take of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible films. It might not be dressed up as such, but with Cruise playing a flippant, slightly sociopathic, version of Ethan Hunt and getting himself into all kinds of situations with dodgy, double-dealing baddies, while also having the best looking woman around, the comparisons were always going to happen. The problem with Knight and Day is it just isn't in the same league as the movies it's attempting to parody. Cruise plays Roy Miller, a CIA agent seemingly on the run from his own people who 'recruits' the help of Cameron Diaz and subsequently puts her in danger. It rushes around a lot, does clever things 'off camera' and generally makes a good fist of a comedy action thriller, except it isn't very funny and a lot of the action happens 'off camera' so what you get is style over substance. It's entertaining without ever being much more. 6/10

Yawn!

Is it superhero fatigue? I doubt it because I'm really enjoying Daredevil. So why am I finding The Boys just tedious now? That's a tough one to answer with any conviction. It might have been Gen V and the fact, at some point, the wankers from that are going to turn up in this. Possibly it's the fact it has gone on for so long now that the actual aim of the story seems like it has outlived its stay - there have been a couple of occasions where Homelander could have been killed off, but here we are, with him going even more insane and yet becoming less threatening. This week some stuff happened.

Yay!

I have a soft spot for Daredevil. It's a comic that for years plodded along with no real direction and then a couple of writers - Frank Miller and then Ann Nocenti - did something different with it and the essence of that took root in Netflix's Daredevil series and now in Marvel's Daredevil: Born Again. This week was the aftermath of last week's boxing match with the WTF ending and much of it was told in flashback - utilising that Marvel de-aging technology they used originally in one of the Iron Man films. As Matt tries to get Bullseye safe from the AVTF, Fisk paces hospital corridors waiting for news of Vanessa. There's a sense of dread all through this and there's even a little subplot that keeps you guessing all the way to its conclusion. This is quality TV and far more entertaining than that The Boys shite.  

Drive My Cars

After watching Hot Fuzz I fancied watching another Edgar Wright movie, because I do find him to be a reasonably good director. That film was Baby Driver, something I'd avoided seeing, mainly because I felt it was going to be a different movie than it turned out to be. Ansel Elgort plays Baby, he's an actor I'm not familiar with but he does a good job as the slightly damaged kid who can drive a car like a pro. Supporting him included Jon Hamm, in a role that was a real change to his usual, Eiza Gonzalez, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. It was a really entertaining feature with a banging soundtrack, but I felt it was let down by the ending which I found a little disappointing, but I suppose it was the only place they could go. 6/10

What's Up Next?

More of the usual and probably less as well. I'm off to the pub tonight for my impending birthday, where I will be 64 and humming a Beatles tune. Then this coming Friday I have another pub quiz and you never know what's going to happen on the other days, especially with a reasonably warmer weather forecast.

A Matter of Taste

I see the irony in having no taste. Even before the Coronavirus robbed me of my ability to taste pretty much anything that isn't spiced up to the eyeballs or made entirely of sugar.

It was just about three years ago when my only bout of Covid 19 didn't kill me, like I had feared, but just hung around like a really bad cold for about a week - then the aftermath because of my other underlying health conditions. The thing is my ability to taste and smell obviously disappeared when the virus hit me; you could have shovelled any old shit into my gob the first couple of days I had it, not that I was eating much, bit I didn't notice it until the memory of things' tastes disappeared.

The first time I really noticed it was when I couldn't smell a flower, but the wife could. Over the next couple of days it was a realisation that I didn't think for a second would be permanent that made me feel okay about it. It wasn't like there's anything I could do about it. "Doctor, I've got no taste." "You need a fashion consultant not a doctor. Now stop wasting my time with trivial things." It's not a thing medicine really knows how to treat, as far as I can ascertain from reading up on it. 

Anyhow, it's actually something you learn to live with - seriously; you know which foods will allow you to taste something and I like eating. Salads work particularly well, because of the different textures (and salad dressing). It's the loss of smell that has been both a blessing and a curse. Apart from not being able to smell food, or when it's burning - which opens the door to a much more horrible scenario; I can't smell spring, or summer or autumn even winter, cold clean air is lost on me, senses wise. Flowers, perfume, herbs, petrol - nope. Diesel smells like burnt camphor; because I do smell somethings, although 'smelling' is maybe more a sensation that lingers, if you can imagine that. I have anosmia, parosmia and euosmia, these being changes to way things smell, nasty and nice. 

The blessing is things like not smelling the collective arses of the inhabitants of the house, mine included. I don't smell farts. I can't smell shit - which opens the door to a much more horrific scenario - and therefore I can't smell rotting things or gas, but fortunately I can smell smoke, but not as you do. It's smoke to me but it smells of something that I don't remember smoke smelling like. Most unpleasant odours you all suffer, I don't. I don't think the wife would let me leave the house if I personally  smelled, so I'm coping with it...

Sometimes it comes back. Don't get excited. If the sense returns, it's for maybe 20 seconds and then it's gone. I can smell a rose, sometimes, but once it registered, it's like it's locked out from then on. So it's a mixture of pleasure and crushing realisation, because I miss it. 

But, you know, this is supposed to be an upbeat piece about the irony I mentioned right up at the top is that I have no taste. I have been accused of having lousy taste, questionable taste, if you can think of a derogatory taste example I've probably been accused of it and my artistic tastes have avenues which most others find unfathomable. And I've been told I have no taste. 

I've never been quite sure what that specific accusation actually means. The 'sense of taste' search doesn't really deal with 'that' taste. I type in 'I have no taste' and there's nothing existential there.

As I've gotten older and I hope a little wiser, my tastes, whatever they are, are not things I shy away from. Each to their own, but get a laugh from it if you can. 

The taste I'm talking about are things like music, film, art and anything else you would include. I've been accused of having no taste and to be fair I don't really understand the term because of course I have I just have tastes that don't suit some people. It's actually a personal slight whether benign or humorous, not an all encompassing suggestion - chacun à son goût, as the French say.

Once at a pub quiz, a guy who is a few years older than me, said, "I listened to that record you put on Facebook. What a load of rubbish." And then he burbled on about some other things I'd put up, basically saying he thought my music taste was shite. I find it quite funny now. I'm eclectic. It's great.  

I spent ages working and reworking this original closing paragraph, however I did it felt like I was saying to you that having no taste is a thing that makes me sad. It doesn't. I hope it comes back, I suspect it won't. Like blood pressure tablets, inhalers and other meds I take to keep me young, it's something you learn to live with. I could be dead, I wouldn't taste fuck all then!

My Cultural Life - Time Waits For No Man

What's Up? 

Me. That's what's up. I was looking at Facebook memories last week and it being April, six years ago we had that thing called lockdown, where everything stopped and we avoided each other so we wouldn't die. It was a bit like WWII except without bombs and fewer Nazis. I posted a lot on Facebook, much of it humorous or poignant. One thing stuck out for me, one of my family suggested I write a novel and I admitted, honestly, that I simply didn't have the inclination or motivation to sit down and write anything...

The thing is, I wrote a novel (my last) about 10 years ago now. It was called The Imagination Station and it was about a sentient mushroom and the small Leicestershire village it took over. The wife read it and I've never looked at it again. Back in January, I decided that 2026 was going to be the year that I opened up my 'In progress' folder (a misnomer if ever there was one) and either dump stuff or do something with it. I even contemplated looking at the seven or eight novels I've got first drafts of and trying to do something with them. But it's now April and I didn't do any of those things...

I'll be 64 in eight days and I think I've had an interesting life, so far, but I do have this nagging regret that for someone who has written so many words, professionally and in blogs or everything else I've written, that I haven't become the widely published author that I said I was going to become way back in 1980 when I wrote my first 'novel' - incidentally about a young man with such amazing abilities that he was almost a god (I was reading a lot of comics and had just discovered Stephen King). I found that in the loft when we were moving nine years ago and it's now about four feet away from me (and hasn't been looked at in nine years).  

When I say 'regret' that isn't really what I mean. probably more angry and pissed off with myself that I have the discipline to write this blog every week, write quizzes (not the same thing, but you get the drift), emails, diatribes on social media - usually in comments sections where I'll be lucky if a handful of people bother reading and yet I can't sit down and develop any of the countless ideas I've had over the last nearly 50 years, or go back and do some turd polishing. 

This isn't going to be an opening monologue that ends with me declaring I've written or am going to write a new novel - that's not the case here, because over the last few years I've had fewer ideas than I used to have and even fewer of those ideas have actually made it to the 'word processor' and all of them have never been followed up. I have only myself to blame, it's not like I'm working or anything. I suppose this is more of an if you want to do something and you find yourself with time then don't piss and moan about not achieving things kind of thing; because, you know, time waits for no one so you have to seize the day.

Not the End

Shrinking finished. What I thought was the penultimate episode was, in fact, the finale (because episode one was actually episodes one and two). It became clear very quickly that this was the finale because Alice went off to college. Paul was already in Connecticut and Gaby asked her Derek to marry her. Jimmy discovered that Sean had moved out and everyone's lives were sorted apart from Jimmy's. He was nursing his wounds and feeling lonely and alone; his argument with Paul bothered him, his daughter leaving was killing him and he realised he still had a lot of work to do. There was a genuinely poignant and lovely ending, in two parts, one of them expected, the other not so much. And it was over and I felt a pang of loss; it had been such a great show, despite all the lovely wealthy people living their best lives and being impossibly happy and funny... except just before I sat down to write this, I discovered that it had been renewed for a fourth season, despite everything I'd read suggesting this was it. I am happy, because it's a great show, it will be interesting to see where it goes now the cast have all gone their own ways. 

Back in Town

The Boys are back for a final season and I think it's just about outstayed its welcome. It started off really good - a great contemporary superhero series that went the extra mile in terms of pushing the envelope, but after the crap spin-offs and the meandering shite story lines of the last couple of seasons, I don't really care what happens to it now. I'd like it to conclude and we can all move on to whatever comes next. Homelander now runs the USA, the Seven are just a front for Vought and a lot has changed in the year since season four's finale. Billy Butcher has reassembled the team, with Starlight in tow, for one last attempt at stopping the rise of the superheroes, by using the virus that was created and now is apparently strong enough to kill Homelander. It's full of bad language, bad taste and bad choices and even the death of a major character in the first of two parts, that dropped, hasn't really done anything to make this any better.

Plus, I have to mention Erin Moriarty - aka Starlight aka Annie January. What the actual fuck has that woman done to her face? Her eyes, nose and mouth are almost completely different shapes; there have been countless rumours about her having had plastic surgery and other cosmetic work and even if she hasn't (which I don't believe) it hasn't given her the acting ability she's been missing since she took on the role. Whoever has been advising her about her appearance needs drowning in a pool of their own vomit. I really don't want to seem like I'm being sexist or judgmental, but she looks both wrong and awful...

On the Bullseye

After the two kind of lifeless episodes last time, this week's Daredevil: Born Again was anything but. It's hard to believe this is a Disney show, but it really could be the way forward for Marvel if it can continue to make superb TV shows like this. It's just full of tension, jeopardy, violence and great acting. This time around the focus falls on Bullseye and his decision to repay Matt for killing Foggy. Matt's code prevents him from allowing the hired assassin from killing the Kingpin - although in reality it was Vanessa Fisk who ordered the hit. There was also a boxing match, one that could have spelled a problem for Fisk had circumstances not taken over and there was some hope for our heroes and our villains as the chess match continues to wind its way towards the inevitable ending. Top notch stuff.

Related to this is the trailer for Punisher: One Last Kill, a TV movie that's out the week after DD finishes in May, which will also tie in with this summer's new Spider-Man film, but is a standalone story. It looks very good and for once I'm excited to be excited because DD has lived up to his Netflix days, so I expect Frank Castle will be the same. 

No More Offers

I had never seen The Godfather Part 3, (or The Godfather: Coda as it was repackaged as) and after watching it I completely understood why. I'm almost tempted to ask if it was a comedy, but given the lack of levity in the first two films, I doubt it was, at least deliberately. In this third part of the trilogy Al Pacino is no longer playing Michael Corleone, he's playing Al Pacino (something he did from about the late 1980s on) and in some ways that adds a new dimension to this. The remaining cast members from the first two films - Diane Keaton and Talia Shire - actually have parts to play in this, although Keaton's role as Michael's ex-wife feels like it was needed to give the family aspect some balance (and to help Anthony escape the family). The real surprise was Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone, this was nepotism as its finest. This girl cannot act. She was awful and whenever she was on screen, or speaking, which seemed like huge chunks of it, the film took on a quality way below what you would have expected with people like Pacino and Keaton on the cast list. Maybe she can direct, but she doesn't know how to act.

The story starts off reasonably okay with Michael trying hard to legitimise the Corleone family, but still having to deal with mob business, especially when Sonny's bastard son Vincent comes along, busts his way into the family - at the behest of Connie (Shire) - and then begins an almost incestuous relationship with Mary. Instead of having this punk wannabe Mafioso rubbed out, Mikey takes him in and shows him the ropes, but its not long before Michael is having to do boss business as Vincent can't leave bad alone. Then it gets catastrophically stupid, chronologically weird and completely batshit. The Corleone's foundation, which is charitable and does a lot for the Catholic church wants to bail out the church from a massive debt by buying one of its companies; this eventually leads to the summer of the three popes, suggesting that Pope John Paul I was in thrall to the mob and was killed off because of his relationship with Michael Corleone. [The year of the three popes happened in 1978, but this movie is set in 1980] It concludes with an almost 30 minute opera simile that is so ridiculous you had to think that Francis Ford Coppola was simply taking the piss. 3/10 

The Thief, the Cop and the VP

There's something about Chris Hemsworth that often bothers me - the simple fact he's not very good at acting unless he's playing Thor, which he is very good at. In Crime 101 he plays an emotionally stunted super thief, who robs expensive things from wealthy people but never harms anyone. Joining him are Mark Ruffalo as the rogue cop, looking washed up, who is obsessed with catching this lone thief that his department thinks of as the detective's Moby Dick and Halle Berry as the disillusioned insurance broker who is watching her life fly past while being overlooked for a partnership in her firm. This makes a heady cocktail of possibilities in a thriller that also has Nick Nolte (he's 85 you know) and Barry Keogh as Hemsworth's Bette Noir. It's an enjoyable movie with some convincing characters in modern LA, especially given how the gap between rich and poor is widening in the USA all the time. Not a classic, but worthy of a 7/10.

Shocker

Guy Ritchie has made some good films and he's remade one of his movies several times, changing just the characters and subtle tweaks to the story. Rocknrolla is essentially a rehash of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which has also been remade in different forms, at different times, in Ritchie's career. This time it's about dodgy real estate, a missing painting, which we never see, Cohen-esque style double crosses and unexpected events and it was loud, brash and not very good. There were none of the director's usual geezers in it, presumably because they'd all graduated to other films and roles, so this time it's Gerard Butler, Idris Elba, Mark Strong, Tom Wilkinson, Tom Hardy and Toby Kebbell as crooks, musicians, gangsters and gay associates; Thandi Newton is also in it as a kind of link between them all. I didn't enjoy it. 5/10

Powell's Curse

Glen Powell is a good looking fella, he also has a great speaking voice and there's a lot of smart money on him becoming the next George Clooney or Brad Pitt; the sex symbol actor of the 2030s, perhaps. The problem the 38 year old has is his choice of roles, specifically in film, which aren't bad, he could just do with reading the script before taking them on. His The Running Man remake was remarkably entertaining until the final 10 minutes when it became a WTF mess and his latest How to Make a Killing - which is a modern updating of Kind Hearts and Coronets - is spoiled by the final ten minutes or so, when the film ditches its moral dilemmas and goes for plain stupid. This is the story of Beckett - Powell - who is the illegitimate offspring of a mega-wealthy family, a family that dumped his mother when she fell pregnant and then refused to have anything to do with her ever again. So Beckett decides to kill all the potential inheritors off to claim the family fortune for himself. This was entertaining nonsense, with a slightly twisted viewpoint, until we enter the home stretch and it just becomes bad farce and bollocks. 6/10

The Krap

I'm not really sure how to describe the 1983 film The Keep mainly because it makes almost no sense at all. There's a good idea in there but it's hidden by one of the most appalling scripts I've ever heard. It was like the writer of the dialogue started sentences and forgot what he was writing about before he got to the end of the same sentence. Apart from making no sense at all, it was full of things that I don't really understand why they were even there. The film is about a platoon of German soldiers who have been assigned to guard a pass in the Carpathian mountains and set up camp inside an ancient keep - which was the most impressive thing about it. After a few nights there, the men start being killed off in horrible ways, so the commander - Jurgen Prochnow - contacts his superiors and instead of reassigning him, they send Gabriel Byrne there with his SS platoon and they start killing people and acting like proper Nazis.

The soldiers have unleashed some kind of demon and as this happened a man in Greece - played by Scott Glenn - wakes up and travels to Romania - by boat; we don't get any idea of who he is or why he's in Greece or why he's been summoned to the Keep and it pretty much stays that way. Also, Ian McKellan (sounding like a New Yorker) and his daughter Alberta Brooks - both Jews awaiting a move to a concentration camp - are also summoned to the keep, because he's an expert at something. There are lots of cameos from people we never see again, lots of dialogue that literally makes no sense at all and the special effects were... remarkable. I think I could have done better with some toilet rolls, sticky backed plastic and a used washing up liquid bottle. An achievement of staggering proportions, possibly the most nonsensical thing I have ever watched. 1/10

Names & Names & Names

Anyone who reads this blog often enough will know that I'm a big fan of time travel and time loop movies, so when a new one comes out I'm usually all over it like a rash. However, when I first saw trailers and heard about Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice I was a little sceptical about it. Yes, James Marsden has suddenly - in middle age - become the star he was touted to be in the noughties; Vince Vaughn has his moments and Eiza Gonzalez is a rising star, but any film that has Keith David or Dolph Lundgren in usually means 'cheap'. This wasn't cheap, as such, it just wasn't quite on target. Vaughn plays Nick, who travels back in time to get Mike to help him stop Mike from being killed. Alice has a key role to play, but anything else I say will ruin what is a thin premise with little science involved. It's not going to win anything. 6/10

Trouble & Strife

Two main things happened in the second episode of the new season of Your Friends & Neighbours - Coop's daughter makes a decision that rocks her parents, but especially her mother - Amanda Peet - who is entering the menopause and not coping well at all. The other thing is one of those things that you'd expect people with more money than sense to have floating around their unguarded houses, something which Coop hadn't counted on, but instead of going one obvious way, it decides to go in a far more 'interesting' direction. 

Death on Mars

One thing For All Mankind has never shied away from has been to kill off main cast members; it's happened in every series and usually they weren't expected, which is why they have been so profoundly impactful. The latest death is possibly the most poignant and deep reaching of them all, as a beloved character says goodbye and leaves us with just one of the original gang. This was an episode about the longest serving cast members - Joel Kinnaman, Wrenn Smidt and Coral Pena - how one arrives at the end of their story, one is going nowhere and one of them is finally getting the chance to do something that has never happened before. This was an episode about life and death and while it felt a little self-indulgent - with cameos from Michael Dorman and Shantel Van Santen - this show has earned the right to do that kind of an episode. I wonder where it's going to go now?

What's Up Next?

More of the same, maybe some wiser choices of films.

This has been an Orange Shitler free zone. 

My Cultural Life - Death From Above and Below

What's Up? 

Look, this is controversial and I risk alienating certain people among my friends who might feel that I should either shut up or think another way. The thing is, stuff has happened this week that has essentially 'given me high blood pressure.'

It started with Scott Mills - a TV and radio personality who, to be totally honest, I know little or nothing about; he came onto the scene long after I'd given up with Radios One and Two. Initially I was disinterested in his sacking from the BBC and by the time I got around to writing this - Wednesday morning - the only thing he's guilty of, it seems, is an historic 'allegation' about possible coercive abuse. From 2004, which was dismissed by the police as having insufficient evidence to even be more than an informal interview in 2018.

It appears, on the face of it, that Scott Mills has had his career destroyed for something he's never been found guilty of and might be completely innocent of. Yes, I know the BBC wants to be whiter than white and they're not going to take any chances, in case Mills is somehow Jimmy Savile's protégé, but couldn't they have been a little less sledgehammery about it? 

The thing is, this isn't even the issue that's bugged me this week. The thing that has really boiled my piss is related to something I wrote about a month or so ago; about the kid I worked with when I was at the Youth Offending Service, the lad who got done for statutory rape. You see, I'm totally convinced that if that lad's name became known around Kettering and what he did was taken out of context, he would have his life destroyed...

So, what's that got to do with anything this week? Imagine if that lad had never gone to court. Imagine if the police knew his stepsister had a history of allegations about her before they deemed it worthy to follow up on her latest allegations? Then imagine social media existed in 2004 the way it does now and how the young man I worked with would have been treated by keyboard warriors and people who think the law dishes out inadequate sentences. It wouldn't be very nice, would it? It would probably be quite feral.

Now, this is going to seem like a very strange digression, but it isn't. My football club appointed a new manager on Tuesday 31st March; an Italian chap called Roberto De Zerbi, the former manager of Brighton and Marseille. The Tottenham Hotspur Supporters Club and many of the woman's clubs associated with my team have strongly objected to RDZ's appointment, on a long term contract, despite the fact that the team are shit and could be relegated. They have been extremely vocal about the fact that RDZ was once the manager of former Man Utd footballer Mason Greenwood.

Greenwood, one or two of you might remember, was the young footballer, capped by England and being heralded by Man Utd as a world class star of the future. Then shortly after his 21st birthday, he was accused of assault and attempted rape and was suspended by Man U while the case slowly worked its way through the procedures. Shortly after Greenwood's 22nd birthday the case was dropped, the CPS and the police released a statement: the charges of attempted rape against Mason Greenwood [have been] dropped due to the withdrawal of key witnesses and new material that [has] came to light, which meant there was no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. 

Yes, there were carefully leaked pictures of his then girlfriend to the press, which suggest he maybe shouldn't have been let off, but there were also reports that his then girlfriend had 'form' for this kind of thing; so where do you draw the line? Who do you believe? Can there really be any definitive villain?

However, the media - both social and the paid for kind - didn't want to leave this alone and a campaign, started by Countdown's Rachel Riley, saw to it that Man Utd would eventually sell the player, for a reduced fee, to a foreign side, because, despite Greenwood being innocent until proven guilty by a court of law, the press, publicity seeking mathematicians and social media shat and stamped in it and made sure his life in the UK was ruined. But... but... what's this got to do with Tottenham Hotspur?

Well, Man Utd sold Greenwood to Marseille and RDZ was manager when the French Riviera side bought the (by then) 23 year old player and RDZ was seen to give his support to the player and strangely enough didn't want to throw the kid under another bus.

Let's simply look at the facts here: a young man was charged with a crime; the alleged crime was never prosecuted because there was not enough evidence and the police (no-so-subtly) released information that suggested the witness statement by the alleged victim had more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The problem here is a lot of people had made their minds up about Greenwood, maybe because he's a young black footballer, so he must be guilty and as a result these people have ensured he never works in the country of his birth ever again and his only crime was to be on the wrong end of an unproved allegation.

The new manager of my football team is now being smeared with same tar brush. He's apparently not fit enough to manage a team of Spurs standing... This is because he supported one of his members of staff; wasn't going to be drawn on the subject and made that clear to the predominantly British journalists present at the unveiling of the new Marseille player. I wouldn't mind if these Spurs fans were spitting their dummies out of their gobs because RDZ had gone on French TV and said, "Mason admitted everything to me, but I don't care where he puts his things as long as its in the back of an opponents net!" But all he did was offer some support to a lad, who might be a complete shit, but hasn't been proven to be a complete shit just yet...

I might be wrong here. I might have got this totally wrong and the press, the internet and the people who have dedicated their lives to destroying Mason Greenwood's know something our courts, police and crown prosecutors don't. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places for their justification and verification to continue their hatred of this young black footballer. Maybe Scott Mills is an evil predator? Maybe the kid I worked with in the Noughties was secretly a friend of Jeffrey Epstein and maybe I'm a sympathiser because I worked with him and didn't campaign to have his life destroyed even more? 

Or maybe guilt or innocence means nothing when the mob rules?

The Scales of Justice

A double bill of Daredevil - Born Again this week (I have no idea why) and as everything seems to be turning to shit for Matt, Karen and those opposing Fisk, there's a ray of hope and some good news. The thing is both sides think they're inches away from a breakthrough. The Anti Vigilante Task Force has become a law unto themselves and the Governor of New York gets into the act, much to Fisk's annoyance, because it seems she can't be bought and has no skeletons in her closet. A new player emerges, but in general this felt like a midway point in the story and had this stayed as it originally was planned - one 13 part series - that's pretty much where we'd be. It's still head and shoulders better than anything else MCU TV has done even if it was largely dancing around and going nowhere. 

Shrunken Heads

Jimmy is incapable of addressing his 'daddy issues' but it becomes clear that he thinks of Paul as more of a father than his real one, or at least that's the impression this week's episode of Shrinking gave. Speaking of his real dad, he dumps the fact he's not going to be at Alice's graduation and she takes it surprisingly well, but she isn't carrying the emotional baggage her dad is. Everything else starts to get resolved; the beginning of the end has happened and the places are all moving to their new positions. Derek and Liz have a disagreement over something they should be happy about and Brian decides to do the honourable thing and accompany his husband to Tennessee. Sean gets his own place, makes up with his friend and all that's left is Jimmy and his happiness, except he looks like he's going on a downward spiral. Two to go. 

A Dollop of Shit

Jesus wept. I need to stop subjecting myself to shite. After not really enjoying Kiss the Girls last week, I thought the sequel Along Came A Spider would at least have the added bonus of no Ashley Judd; but even the absence of this below-average actress couldn't save it. This time around Morgan Freeman's Alex Cross had the dubious pleasure of acting opposite Monica Potter (no, me neither) as a Secret Service agent whose main job is protecting a senator's daughter and failing. This truly is a mish-mash of bad ideas, poor execution and some of the most woeful acting I have seen in many moons. Like this film's prequel, it lacked in many departments and even the twists ended up being more yawn than yowser. Freeman wanders around looking and sounding like the only person on set who has ever been in a film before and, frankly, he was probably pleased there wasn't a threequel. Awful rubbish. 2/10

Pigs of War? 

On the recommendation of a friend, we watched War Dogs with Miles Teller, Jonah Hill and Bradley Cooper. I've had it on the Flash Drive of Doom (FDoD) for about four months and simply never got around to watching it, but Sunday night we remedied that and it made a pleasant change to watch a comedy action film that actually delivered - even if delivery problems was one of the main themes of the movie. Teller's David has been struggling with a pregnant wife doing his job as a professional masseuse when Jonah Hill's Ephraim wanders back into his life. The two had been friends at High School and now Ephraim is offering his old buddy the chance of making some money by joining him as an arms dealer... 

They start by supplying stuff to the US government that big arms dealers simply don't touch, but as they become more experienced and meet new people their chances of becoming big players increases until they get a contract to supply the US army a lot of AK47 bullets. The problem is the bullets come from China and the USA doesn't do business with China. This is where Bradley Cooper comes into the thick of things and everything goes from a little dodgy to 'absolutely get the fuck away from this' crazy. It is an excellent film and a true story about how the American Dream can be a quick reality if you're prepared to break the law. It's worth checking out if you can find it anywhere. 8/10

The Letdown

The worst thing? I watched this on Saturday and realised on Monday afternoon I hadn't reviewed it. That's almost a bad review in itself, but the opening episode of season five of For All Mankind was really understated and devoid of the same kind of set-up and jeopardy seen in previous seasons. This was bordering on ... soap opera. Obviously politics is taking a front seat, but everything seems to have stood still over the 10 years since the end of season four and the 'stealing' of the Goldilocks asteroid. It could almost be a kind of prequel to the tensions between Earth and Mars highlighted many years ago in Babylon 5 or The Expanse and not as interesting. In series past there has been a era changing event to kick the season off, this time it's the first murder on Mars and the remaining original cast members, seen this week, going through various stages of age related stress. It felt tired and uninspired, let's hope that isn't the case.

Episode two dropped before I finished this week's blog and while it was an improvement on the opener, with a couple of revelations that err towards big things, it still felt a little like the producers wanted to make the world (and surrounding colonies) a little more like a Trump World Order. There's a lot of Russians in this but little mention of the USSR, the same with North Korea and, of course, in this alternate history China is a bit part player. There's an element of chess pieces being moved, but at the moment they all seem to be going against our motley group of heroes.

Death in Paradise

This nagging feeling that we lost touch with what Paradise is actually about was amplified to the nth degree with the season two finale and I have to admit that I'm weirdly intrigued by it, despite suggesting it's time to call time on the show. Will it be back for season three? I reckon it will, but let's be honest about this - there is no paradise any longer and this is no longer a show about some survivors of a natural and nuclear holocaust, it's about AI and whether or not time is now full of anomalies screwing up with the actual fabric of space and time. Yes, you read that correctly.  This is about an impossibly super AI computer trying to avert the end of the world by creating space time anomalies... It seems the bits I've been losing track of might have been deliberate and it's also possible that none of this happened and everyone in this is living inside a giant simulation created by Alex - the super AI, thus creating time shifts and weird things happening that maybe shouldn't. I really don't know; this show has found a shark, hired a motorcycle and created an entire performance of new ways of jumping over said shark...

Underground Dung

There are loads of trash films from the 80s and 90s that I wouldn't give house room to in 2026, so why I thought watching Tremors again would be a good idea I have no idea. Kevin Bacon looks very, very young in it, even Fred Ward looks the right side of 50 and these two play a couple of hick hillbilly wasters doing shit jobs in a town of 14 people called Perfection. The acting is hammy; the assortment of characters are cliched and the idea of strange prehistoric (possibly) creatures attracted to vibrations and terrorising the 14 people isn't that bad, in fact the special effects for a 1990 movie aren't awful; it's just a load of shit. Stinky - like the creatures - shit and somehow it's spawned god knows how many sequels. I'm not even glad I watched it again; I wanted to switch it off after five minutes. 3/10

Another Offer Refused

Strangely, it was the wife who suggested we watch The Godfather Part 2 and so we did. Unlike the first part, this really felt like a new film for me. I had seen it, but many many years ago and it clearly didn't have that much of an impression on me. This is an even longer movie than the first film, weighing in at almost three and a half hours and having an even more rambling story, taking place over a shorter space of time. This part kicks off in 1957, Michael is living in Nevada and has the local senator in his pocket, even if the local senator isn't aware of this. The extent of how much control the Corleones have is never really explored, even if we get the backstory of how Vito - a young Robert De Nero - became a crime lord. Like the first film, this is a movie devoid of levity (and in this case brevity) and is essentially a tale of someone pissing Michael off and they get whacked, except in a couple of cases the hit goes wrong, but eventually everyone Michael wanted dead died. That's the thing, Michael Corleone might have been Vito's great hope for legitimising the family, but he's nothing more than a paranoid psychopath who is more interested in revenge than anything else.

Honestly? I found this to be a dull movie, over long and without any real sense that I could give a fuck about any of the characters; with the exception of Robert Duval's Tom Hagen, who, it seems, gets dicked around all the time for being totally loyal to the cause. I can't bring myself to award this a 6, but a 7/10 seems charitable.

Trailer Trash

The new (IMAX) trailer for Supergirl dropped on April 1st and it appears to be genuine and not an April Fool's prank. It still has a Guardian of the Galaxy feel about it; we see Lobo properly and it appears to all be about finding a cure for a poison some nutters have shot into Krypto and as Kara has survivor guilt and Krypto is her bestest buddy then you know what's coming and how it will end. The dog will survive and Supergirl will kick ass to a banging soundtrack. The end. It does look cool though, so it'll probably be a load of donkeys balls.

More Afghanistan

There's nothing wrong with Guy Ritchie's The Covenant apart from the fact it's surprisingly dull and boring. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a sergeant in the US army traipsing around Afghanistan looking for IEDs. He has a local man as translator, who because of his associations is regarded as a traitor by many of his own. When Jake's entire platoon is wiped out in a Taliban attack, it's just him and his translator left and the latter goes through hell to get his 'boss' home, Then the US government reneges on a deal to bring the translator and his family back to the USA, so Jake sorts it out himself. 5/10

Rich Pricks

Jon Hamm's back as Coop in Your Friends & Neighbours, the show about a rich man who loses his job so starts robbing his friends and neighbours, because they're all so wealthy it's months before they even realise anything has been stolen. The new series introduces Ash - played by James Marsden - who is obviously going to be a crook, maybe even organised crime, but at the moment he's just another rich guy flaunting his money like there's no tomorrow. Coop has a bad back, which is making cat burglary more difficult than it should be and everything has moved on a year and feels like there's some back story that we're going to need filling in. It is a mildly amusing look at people with more money than sense.

What's Up Next?

Well... The Boys is back for its final series and I suppose I'm mildly anticipating it. Actually, I don't think I am. It was good for the first two seasons and then it got bogged down in story and reasons to exist.

It does appear to be a boom time in TV suddenly; from complaining about there being bugger all three weeks ago to a schedule that's packed with stuff. I mean, I haven't even bothered mentioning in the main body that Landward is back (for people in Scotland, but you can find it on iPlayer) and how that's an enjoyable 30 minutes a week of stuff that puts Countryfile to shame. I also haven't bothered mentioning that our guilty pleasure for the last couple of weeks has been Escape to the Country, but not every one, just places we're familiar with. It's a dreadful show, but somehow manages to makes itself seem so much better than all the ones of a similar ilk, such as A New Life in the Sun on C4, which swaps aesthetics for some kind of strange competition.

To be honest with you, I could have written about loads of stuff this week. I simply didn't think it was appropriate, which is why I'm surprised I'm still leading with the story I am. The thing is I'm such a feminist it surprises a lot of people - usually women. So I usually prefer to avoid issues like sexual assault, gender or things that might suggest I'm some kind of misogynist and this is supposed to be entertaining, but it's also about the culture I subject myself to and the news is very much part of that culture.

I even got to the point midweek where I really just felt like switching off the news, removing the Guardian from my bookmarks and not interact with anything outside of the town I live in. There are 21 Donald Trump stories in Saturday's Guardian. TWENTY ONE! That's almost a fifth of the stories covered on the newspaper's website. I know the man is a dangerous psychopathic narcissist but I'm fed up to the back teeth with seeing his fucking smug face plastered all over the media. It's what he wants. He wants the world to be talking about him ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!!

And here I am, talking about that great orange cunt in my closing remarks. It's like the press at the moment are fixated on that man, his fucking Mini Me in the UK and whose careers they can ruin because someone said something once when they were 8 and if they don't accept full responsibility for it, own it and apologise for it then their careers are going to be over. What a fucking world we live in?