What's Up?
You might not have considered this before, but if you hold a placard up criticising the Israeli government for committing genocide, you are more likely to be thrown into prison than if you incite a riot.
There has been little or no outrage at the twat who ponces about as our would be UK Führer inciting people to 'show their rage' at the unfortunate bad policing of an incident in Southampton, while two US academics, who both oppose Zionism, are banned from coming into the country, because they might say something that offends.
Double standards? Nah, double standards is no longer something that even ruffles the feathers of politicians and their groupies. We live in a world (not just a country) where the people are angry and getting angrier, mainly about things that either don't affect them or are unlikely to. Everything is shit, from the roads to the price of food, energy and fuel to the fact that ignorant morons are still happy to blame everyone but the people responsible.
Our would be UK Führer is a lazy, corrupt, racist who is also a very dangerous man. He has somehow elevated himself to a position where whatever he does his supporters believe it's a left wing conspiracy to besmirch his fine name and wondrous words. The thing is, when the right wing media do the same to any politician who isn't a right wing cockwomble, the same morons lap it up. Zack Polanski, he's just a Jew hating Jewish gay man who wants to tax everyone, ban your wood burner and drive all the rich people out of the country. Our would be UK Führer can be as racist as a member of the KKK (or Donald Trump) and he's being misquoted, taken out of context, said these things when he was a boy or, in many cases, has about 15% of the country complaining that he doesn't go far enough in his hate speech.
We're fucking doomed and like in 2016 it's going to be because of the idiotic turkeys who vote for Christmas. What a sad world/country we live in now; where shysters and billionaires dictate the message and cretins believe every word. I just feel sorry for the people who will suffer because of this shift towards an idiocracy...
New Life!
The season finale of
For All Mankind did something the previous nine episodes failed to do. It reminded me why it's my favourite TV show of the 2020s. It was seat of the pants television that left us guessing right up to the ending and... boy, what an ending. The sixth and final season, set in 2020 and beyond, looks like it could be very strange indeed. This season concluded with the war on Mars being resolved, but not before some tense stand-offs between all sides and some nasty decisions that have to be made to save peoples lives. However, Mars has always been the secondary story even if it's taken up the most time; the real story has been Kelly Baldwin on Titan and whether her 20 year search for extra-terrestrial life would be resolved. It is and that's no spoiler, because we always knew she would, it's the circumstances around it and the kind of life she discovers that opens a can of worms and sets us up for a final season that could blow our minds. This was one of the best episodes of this truly groundbreaking alternate history show...
The Arms Race
As we race towards the season end of
Your Friends & Neighbours there are still a number of unsolved mysteries; such as who kidnapped Coop at the end of the previous episode if it wasn't Owen Ashe? Where has Ali disappeared to? Will Coop and Mel get back together? And how the hell are they all going to get out of the latest situation after an apoplectic Ashe goes on the rampage with a gun, after really saying some stupid things. I actually said to the wife at the end of this episode that we almost didn't bother watching this show, we only did because it was on Apple TV+ and had Jon Hamm in it. We're so glad we did.
Anyhow, what a season finale it turned out to be... An episode I didn't see coming (and I'll bet no one else did). Talk about downbeat and depressing; this wasn't a finale to uplift your mood, this was a slow pot boiler of a continuous cliffhanger. This was setting pieces in place so that the domino effect would come along and wreck the lives of these comfortable rich arseholes. Those unanswered questions I mentioned in the earlier paragraph? Well, they weren't resolved but are left like hanging question marks over Coop's life (apart from Ali's new home, which Coop bolts for when it gets too tough). This was unexpected and extremely good; roll on next season.
Only Reconnect
We've been watching the reruns of the earliest Only Connect quiz show - from 2008, on BBC4, from when Victoria Coren was a mere slip of a thing (and wasn't as attractive as she has become in later life). This was before Egyptian Hieroglyphs and really clever people. There's a plodding feel to the hardest quiz show on TV and back in 2008 it was absolutely bloody ridiculously hard and obscure. Great fun watching it though.
Spider-Ham
I struggled to find the love for
Spider-Noir. It's one of the best looking shows on TV, the reimagining of classic Spidey villains is really good - all linked to mad German scientists - natch - and I just couldn't seem to like it. Maybe it was Nick Cage's casting - hey, just because he voiced the character in an animated Spider-Man film doesn't mean he
has to play the character on screen. The wife enjoyed it, but I think she ended up thinking it was a bit of a one trick pony, with dodgy dialogue and even dodgier plots; she like me struggled with Cage playing a superhero 25 years his younger. The other problem I had with it was the fact it was trying to be a smart-mouthed comedy, in the wise-cracking Spidey way and it was just a bit cringe. I expect it will get a second season, I suspect I won't be watching it...
Hide and Yawn
I dunno... Maybe sometimes I'm just hard to please. When we watched the original film -
Ready or Not - it was silly, slightly stupid and quite original. I think I gave it a 6 or a 7 out of 10. The sequel -
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is possibly a step too far. Samara Weaving, who survived the first film where she had to survive until dawn or become the prize of some devil worshipping family, is back this time with Kathryn Newton as her sister as they battle four families who all want to become Satan's ruler on earth. This was very silly and despite a relatively short run time and some interesting actors - Sarah Michelle Gellar (looking old), Nestor Carbonell and David Cronenberg - still got a bit boring after a while. It just wasn't necessary. 5/10
Grey Areas
Guy Ritchie's
In the Grey is quite a complicated set up; it's about retrieving dodgy money using legal and illegal means. It stars Eiza González, Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal and plays out like a post-modern rendition of the A Team. It's 100 minutes of lots of scenes, some of them done in a show and tell way, others as a straightforward narrative. It's entertaining and while it's not lightweight, in terms of subject matter, there's a triviality about it. It was better than chopping my own genitals off with a rusty blunt spoon. 6/10
Back On the Farm
Jeremy Clarkson is back with his usually extremely educational
Clarkson's Farm. The one good thing about this series was its focus on the plight of British farmers; yes it has lots of staged stuff to entertain the stragglers, but generally it does more for farming than say
Countryfile does. So season five kicks off with two episodes that highlight what an arsehole Clarkson is - in case you'd forgotten - and the show has now veered dangerously close to jingoism. It has all the usual buffoonery but maybe it's because of Clarkson's health issues or just that he's a miserable old git, but there was an element of 'Do you know, I no longer care about this guy's woes' for me. That's a shame, this has been a good programme and to be fair, the second pair of episodes (3 & 4) were much better - one was extremely educational, about the future of farming, while the last of the first four to drop focused on Clarkson's biggest emotional fuck up so far - buying rare breed pigs and having to have them slaughtered because they simply are fit for very little in the food chain.
However, the wife made a very good point about this - if you follow the chronology of the TV series, the pigs were obtained in year two, we're now on year five - how come he's only finding out now that the meat is fit for sausages only? Is it possible that some things happen earlier than they are depicted in the show because of the way it is made, edited, put together, etc?
Friday the 13th, Part?
Thinking that having killed off the 300 year old man, the island and town of
Widow's Bay seems a much less threatening place, everything seems fine again until someone notices that a murderer's mask has gone missing from the museum. As the Mayor, played by Matthew Rhys, arranges to take his son off island and to a Red Sox game, Patricia, the assistant mayor, is being stalked through the streets by a masked slasher, who looks straight out of a 1980s horror flick. The mayor's son finds stuff about his mother that comes as a surprise and Wick (Stephen Root) can't be everywhere at once. This was back to being quirky
and sinister. Great stuff.
What's Up Next?
I did watch other stuff this week. Welcome to Wrexham among them; the thing is however I reword my reviews, something like this tends to be... much the same format so much the same to say; so what's the point? If you watch it my reviews are moot; if you don't it's just something to skip over. I'll revisit the show at the end of the season.
Anyhow, the coming week is likely to be a bit thin on the ground. In fact the coming six weeks is going to be dominated by the fucking World Cup and I don't watch international football.
Whatever...
