Modern Culture - Monsters

The usual spoiler warnings apply... But in my defence I try to avoid them where possible.

Which Mobster?

The finale of The Penguin proved one irrefutable thing - this was an absolutely awesome television series that is a must see for anyone who hasn't come across it yet. It's like a grim and grimy version of The Sopranos with comicbook characters (except there's nothing at all comic book about these characters). The final part was everything you would hope for in a conclusion and just a little bit more. Colin Farrell has been a revelation in this series, as has Cristin Milioti - both as friends and sworn enemies they held this together and drove it forward. The conclusion gave us the politics of being a mobster as something Oz said in an earlier episode came true. Vic was the guy who really saved the day, while the closing ten minutes of this outrageous final part was some of the most heartbreaking and scary you could possibly imagine. It will surely go down as one of the best TV shows of 2024.

Witch Monster?

The last time we sat down to watch a Mel Gibson film it was Boneyard, which on the face of it looked like a good movie, but we turned it off after ten minutes because it was awful with appalling acting and we were left wondering what happened to this once mega-successful box office superstar. The answer to this is simple, his stock has fallen since some ill-advised drunken ranting about Jewish people and it might never return. That doesn't mean that his career is finished and he's the main man in a very enjoyable teen movie called Monster Summer, where he plays a solitary retired police detective who helps a wannabe journalist uncover strange goings on at Martha's Vineyard in the late 1990s. Gibson plays Carruthers, a man who probably shouldn't get involved in the fantasies of 14 year old boys, but can't help it when a number of kids in his neighbourhood start exhibiting catatonic behaviour. Mason Thames, as Noah - the main boy involved - thinks it's the work of a witch and subsequently any chance of a serious investigation disappears, leaving the boy labelled as a liar and fantasist. Carruthers takes on the case from a police forensics point of view and eventually manages to piece things together. It is a little disjointed in places, but is also quite creepy and probably doesn't know if it's a teen flick or a PG rated horror. It is quite a good film and is the kind of thing that families should watch at Halloween (so it hit streaming a week after...).

Dull Men in Lab Coats

I unashamedly admit to being a fan of James May; his Our Man In... travelogue series was fantastic, but Amazon cancelled it; while his Oh Cook was possibly one of the best cookery shows ever to grace our screens - but there's not going to be any more of these either because the idea was to turn a novice into a chef and it pretty much achieved what it set out to be. So, May's new series is called James May and the Dull Men and it's about coming up with novel ways of doing things and solving problems. It was one of the funniest 45 minutes I have spent in ages as we discovered that there are literally hundreds of social media groups for so-called Dull Men, who come up with ideas and solutions to all the most important and unimportant things that bother people. In the opening episode we discovered how to crack a walnut shell with a sledge hammer, how to scare away pesky animals from your Wiltshire garden, how to get the most out of your pencils and by far and away the craziest idea ever - how to cook a three course meal in your washing machine - which was also extremely hilarious and has to be seen to be believed.  

However, episode two, which featured how to make glue with toenail clippings, filling potholes with shredded tyres, how to keep park benches dry and a couple of other slightly crazy ideas really failed to match the opening episode in innovation and humour. In fact, where the first episode had us laughing a lot at the general craziness, the second barely raised a snigger. It felt like during the eight or so episodes in this series there might be a lot of actually quite dull things...

Funny History

Saturday Night is the biopic for the massively successful Saturday Night Live, which will celebrate 50 years as a staple Saturday night show next October. It tells the story - probably a little dramatised - of the birth of the comedy sketch show by focusing on the hour before it went live for the first time. There are some famous faces involved in this and quite a few that you haven't seen before, all doing really fine impersonations of the likes of Jim Henson, Dan Ackroyd, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Chevy Chase and the show's creator Lorne Michaels. The weird thing about it is it's really a drama and the fact it's about a immensely popular bunch of iconic comedians doesn't really apply here. It's another excellent time capsule and you get the impression there's probably a lot of facts here, it just felt a little soulless and like it was more important to get the renditions of these famous people more accurate than telling a compelling story. It's a fun movie, but, you know, it doesn't rock.

Needless Shits

Despite having something like 80 films to watch, I decided to download an old Stephen King film adaptation that we haven't seen for 30 years. Needful Things is, arguably, one of the 'better' adaptations of King's works, based on his early 1990s novel of the same name, subtitled The Last Castle Rock Story. The original cut of this film was about ten minutes longer, but some of the unnecessary stuff was cut from it so that it would 'flow' better and that was the version we watched. The novel was King at his finest 'let's destroy a small town' while the movie failed to match the book or even feel creepy. In fact, in places it almost felt like a poor attempt at a black comedy about greed and being easily led. Max Von Sydow plays Leland Gaunt, essentially a devil or a demon as he was in the novel. His brief is to go to places and cause unrest, death and destruction; he may have been around for all manner of tragedies and wars and he does this by giving people their heart's desire in exchange for little acts of betrayal. 

Ed Harris plays Sheriff Alan Pangborn, a mainstay of King's earlier novels and Bonnie Bedelia plays his fiancée Polly Chalmers, there's also supporting gigs from Amanda Plummer, JT Walsh and Don S Davis. The thing is, this 1993 movie feels more like a TV movie with a cheap budget and not a huge amount of confidence it would be anything other than just an also ran feature; the kind that would do a few weeks in cinemas and then go to video. A lot of the novel has been changed - but that's to be expected, King literally destroys an entire town in the book - and the conclusion is similar yet completely different, in that Leland Gaunt gets away with it (although I seem to recall in the book he meets his end in a very unexpected way in the epilogue, but I might be misremembering). I'm sure we could have spent our Saturday night watching something more contemporary; sometimes I should just tuck my nostalgia away in a dark place and only let it out when there's nothing else to watch...

Trailer Trash

A big pair of MCU trailers fell at the weekend. The first was Captain America: Brave New World which does a good job of essentially telling you roughly what the plot is. To be honest, it does really look like a throwback to earlier Cap films which were as much espionage thrillers as superhero films. This looks like a plot to kill the new President - Thaddeus Ross - which dumps Anthony Mackie's Sam Wilson in the middle of a conspiracy. In the trailer we see one of the 1950s Captain America copies, Thunderbolt Ross as Pres and turning into the Red Hulk and a lot of Cap flying around being the USA's #1 hero. It looks good, but arguably trailers make all films look good. I still have issues with this regarding the use of Sabra - the Israeli Mossad 'hero' - and none of the trailers have shown any of the alumni from the second Hulk film at all. I want this to be a good movie, if only because the previous three Cap films have all been excellent, but, you know, Marvel/Disney are not doing it at the moment.

The biggest reservation I have about Thunderbolts* is the fact Marvel has released a near three minute 30 second trailer for the July released movie. There's an extended scene at the start before a more conventional type of trailer. It doesn't really give much away apart from the fact the anti-heroes in question are all brought together and there's Bob - who, we know, is The Sentry, in one of the worst kept secrets in the MCU. The Sentry is a hero whose strength rivals, possibly is bigger, than the Hulk and his story is simple; he was a hero alongside all the other Marvel heroes but something happened that required him to be erased from the memories of all the people on Earth, possibly the galaxy. In the comics only the Hulk remembered him, but the MCU is now a different beast with characters and timelines completely different than the comics. Like the Cap trailer, this looks interesting and like it's going to be a good film, but if you haven't seen any of the TV shows, watched all the post credit scenes in most of the Phase Four films or even all of those films, you are going to be slightly confused by many of the characters, with Sebastian Stan's Winter Soldier probably being the most visible and well known. This is going to be a film about whether or not these disposable 'heroes' are any match for Bob. There is no hint as to whether there is a major villain in it, nor is there any suggestion that the Red Hulk will be in the movie like he was prominent in the comics, in fact you don't get much of an idea what it's going to be about. Again, I hope it's going to be good, but I suspect it will ultimately disappoint...

The End of Grimm is Nigh

I feel that I shouldn't spoil this for some people, but it's eight years old and if you haven't seen Grimm nothing I say is likely to make you want to rush out and find it (apparently it's available on Now TV). The thing is for all of the faults - and there are many - it's been an enjoyable ride for most of it. When it dispensed with the standalone episodes and went full scale ongoing stories it probably became the Buffy for a new generation, but now we only have one season and 13 episodes to go I kind of want everyone - or at least most of the characters - to die horrible deaths. In this fifth season we've seen Drew Wu turn into a werewolf; Diana - Adalind and Renard's daughter turn into the fastest growing psychotic child god ever; Hank essentially only having relationships with people who are either out to exploit his friendship with Nick or who want to kill him and weirdest of all Juliette's resurrection and transformation into the emotionless Eve - the good Hexenbiest who might still be harbouring a hidden love for her ex-beau. Hadrian's Wall - the secret organisation charged with ridding the world of bad wesen and the bad wesen known as the Black Claw are both about a believable as... well, nothing is believable really; the one clear thing about Grimm is how far fetched it is and how Portland really isn't a safe place to live because of all the monsters and the half a dozen police officers who work there. It's been a hoot, but it's also been an absolute load of shite and has this been released in 2024 we wouldn't have given it houseroom. Compare it to Evil and there's simply no comparison.

Preparatory

I have no real idea of what is going on in Before but as we reach the midway point of this intriguing series I have to wonder how they're going to continue forward after the shocking events of the final seconds. This is one very weird show so far and as I said last week I just hope there's some kind of resolution. This week the connection between Noah and Eli's dead wife Lin is becoming more apparent and there's a couple of very strange things happen on the ward. We learn that Eli's mother-in-law is still very much alive but suffers from dementia and is there some connection between Lin's former lover Benjamin and Noah? Billy Crystal remains a class act and the weird shit that's happening is beginning to be seen by some of the nursing staff, but is that enough to acquit Eli for what he does at the end? 

In Concert

In April 1982, I discovered Simple Minds. It was actually the B-side of their first hit record - I Promised You a Miracle - that hooked me. That instrumental was called Theme For Great Cities and I still believe it is one of, if not, the best instrumentals ever recorded. As a result, I became a huge fan of the band for the next five years, although, to be honest, I'd pretty much given up on the band by the time Once Upon a Time came out in 1985. However, I did get to see them live and for a couple of years albums like Sons and Fascinations, Sister Feelings Call and New Gold Dream 81, 82, 83, 84 made them one of my favourite bands of all time.

So when I saw there was a Radio 2 In Concert show on Friday night, I thought that maybe I should watch it, especially as there was a promise of songs from the earliest days and many of those songs during the period where I was a huge fan. The first thing I realised was it was a repeat from at least 2018 - mainly because Steve Harley appeared during the encore and he's been dead a couple of years, but also because Jim Kerr was talking about their 40th anniversary that was coming up - their first album was in 1979. So it wasn't anything new. The next thing I realised was that while I have a heap of respect for the very talented Charlie Burchill (lead guitarist and co-writer), I always thought Simple Minds were much better when Jim Kerr wasn't singing - I liked their instrumentals a lot more than songs with vocals; so much so I managed to find a version of New Gold Dream without Kerr singing. The final thing I realised was, these scaled back, acoustic driven songs were quite fucking awful. Kerr - pushing 60 when it was made doesn't have the power or range he used to have and Burchill is best with an electric guitar in his hands. They were also a band that needed Mick MacNeil - their original keyboardist - and Derek Forbes - the original bassist, maybe even Brian Magee, the original drummer, because the original line-up produced some fantastic songs with krautrock and European electronic influences and once this band started to get popular they ditched the rhythm section, the innovative keyboards and just wanted to be U2 from Scotland. The concert is on iPlayer, I'd give it a wide berth if I were you...

Next Time...

Whatever we watch in the coming week...

 

Pop Culture - Blood and Guts

This is full of spoilers for TV shows you SHOULD NOT WATCH! There are no spoilers for the things you should watch... Oh, hang on, there might be ickle spoilers but not enough to really ruin things!

Oh, For Fuck's Sake!

Don't fucking watch it. DO. NOT. BE. TEMPTED. Ignore everything I said about Grotesquerie. This was a heap of steaming shit and the second time in two days I have been left absolutely fucking fuming about a television series. I thought Teacup was an affront to my intelligence, this beats that into a hole.

The first five episodes - awesome TV, if completely bonkers. The second five episodes - fox shit of the stinkiest kind. Utter bollocks. Complete wank. I am so fucking annoyed that I fell for this. The people behind this are worse than cunts. It was like the worst kind of prick tease; you get set up with a heinous number of vicious crimes, albeit in a slightly surreal setting and then you get the rug pulled from under you and you get the next half that bears no resemblance to the first half apart from the actors. I remember people being baffled by David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, but that had two excuses: 1) David Lynch and 2) It still made some kind of bewildering sense. This was five nightmares followed by something you would imagine AI to write. I was angry about Teacup - I mean, really angry, but that was because I started to realise I was being conned from about the third episode on. I sensed that I was going to be tele-visually butt-fucked but I stuck with it and I shouldn't have. I should have cut my losses after three episodes and found something else to waste my time on. 

Grotesquerie was brilliant - those first five episodes had a dreamlike quality to them but they were absolutely like being punched in the face. Episode six was also quite good, but it arrived with four episodes to go, so something had to be wrong. I had this theory that Lois was dreaming it all; that it was her in a coma, but I didn't dare believe that this would probably be what was happening and I didn't need three episodes of re-world building, of trying to convince the viewer that everything you've seen is bollocks and we're actually in a drama about a woman whose life is fucked up beyond help. A TV series that was really all about everything that happened in the first five parts but without the murders and the nun, only to then have this reality to start bleeding into that reality. The thing is it was so badly done; so trying to be clever by half, that leaves you feeling like something nasty should happen to everyone involved... I had a warning though. After downloading the first nine episodes, I checked on IMDB and it had a rating of 7.0, by the time I'd downloaded episode 10 - which would have been about ten hours after it aired on US TV - it had dropped to 6.3; that's a huge drop in a short space of time. I thought maybe it was because the Americans who watched it weren't intellectual enough to understand something as cerebral as it appeared to be, but it was because these people who downgraded it saw what a heap of putrefying pig shit it really was. I'm fucking disgusted...

Psycho of the Hour

Arguably, the most confusing part of the new Anna Kendrick film is just who the woman is in the title Woman of the Hour? Was it Kendrick's Sheryl Bradshaw, who appeared on the Dating Game with serial killer Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto) - of which most of this movie is centred around. Or was it Nicolette Robinson's Laura, who was in the audience of The Dating Game when Alcala appeared and it freaked her out so much she went to the police about it - and was completely ignored. Or was it - and I think this is the most likely - Autumn Best's Amy, who survived being beaten, raped and abused by Alcala and then managed to escape and finally get the police to arrest a man who killed at least half a dozen women, but might have killed as many as 130.

But was the film any good? It was Kendrick's directorial debut and it was a compact and tight 90 minute feature that really didn't dwell too much on anything. It opens with Alcala murdering one of his first victims in 1977 and when it isn't focused on the TV show it swaps back and forth between various girls who eventually are killed. It's in many ways a very PG rated serial killer film - not that this isn't a bad thing - but the lack of real jeopardy and the general feeling that this creep managed to kill so many people mainly because US police officers are utterly crap at their jobs, were the real overriding feelings you get. As with any period film set in the USA, we really could have been in the late 1970s and the leads are both good, but it felt slight and a little superficial for someone who might have been one of the USA's worst murderers.

The Big Blow Up

The penultimate episode of The Penguin opened with a flashback to when Oz was a kid and his two brothers were still alive. Doting on his mother, you could feel the animosity he had towards his siblings because his mother paid them as much attention as she did him and given the final scene in episode six, you get a clear idea of how much she means to him.

It's clear that Oz will do anything to protect his mother and that becomes clear as everything starts to fall apart. She's out of his reach and Vic has been badly beaten, so it really is crash or burn time in Gotham's criminal community as Sofia and Maroni play their last big gamble to win back what they feel Oz stole from them. Francis gets under Sofia's skin, but it's clear to the mobster's daughter that her captive is hovering between lucid and lost, but she's had all of her compassion beaten out of her in Arkham so Francis's fate is very much up in the air. The to-and-fro power struggle hits a crescendo as it becomes a personal vendetta and the drug business, in fact everything else becomes of no importance at all - this will be Oz versus Sofia in the end and I expect the finale will focus on these two grotesque but brilliant characters.

Family Ties

A film starring Peter Dinklage, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Brendan Fraser, M. Emmett Walsh (in his last film), with a cameo from Marisa Tomei and a blink and you'll miss it appearance by Aaron Taylor-Johnson sounds like a movie not to be missed...

However, I could have missed it and it wouldn't have changed anything. Brothers isn't a high point in the careers of the aforementioned, but it probably doesn't deserve the 5.4 rating, which I discovered it had half way through watching it. Dinklage and Brolin play twins - see not even that is original - and rubbish crooks. Actually Dinklage is the rubbish one, Brolin is just a kind of guy who would vote for Donald Trump; he's not the cleverest of people. One is a perennial convict, while the other is trying desperately to settle down with his wife and the baby they are expecting. The thing is 30 years ago, their mother stole a load of emeralds, which just happened to find their way into the stomach of her dying boyfriend. Instead of reconnecting with her sons, she spends 30 years on the run and avoiding them, until she decides that they are the two people to help her find the body of her ex and rummage around in his stomach for the missing emeralds and that is essentially the entire film. 

There are some additional bits, such as the prison guard who is blackmailing Dinklage for a cut of the emeralds; the new age hippy he met on-line (Tomei) who just happens to have a 400lb orangutan living with her and a private golf course that leads to possibly the reason why this film has such a poor rating on IMDB. The thing is, I've seen much worse (this week) and despite it being about a bunch of stupid people, there is something honest about it and while it will probably never be regarded as even a middling point in Dinklage, Brolin or Close's career, we watched it, laughed at a couple of scenes and agreed that it wasn't a bad way to spend 85 minutes. Don't go out of your way to see it, but if it's ever on a streaming platform or TV and you have fuck all else to do, it's probably worth a watch, if only to see Josh Brolin playing an imbecile with a knack for safe cracking.

Grimm-ly Fiendish

After ten days off, we returned to Portland for season five of Grimm, the monster show that's written by people who don't understand monsters, the police or German, which would be okay if it wasn't largely about monsters, police and badly translated German. That said, it's great fun even if it's also a load of crap. It reminds me more and more of a hybrid of the worst episodes of Buffy and that other brilliant crap police procedural supernatural series, Lucifer. This time around things couldn't be more different (well they could but I'm speaking figuratively); Nick and Adelind's baby boy has a girl's name and they've shacked up together in an impenetrable warehouse that can't be found by anyone, so it's no surprise that Truble finds them inside five episodes. Hank, Drew Wu and Sean Renard are now the Wesen Police, as more and more of Portland's finest (who all work out of one police station) are recruited into the ways of the weird and you spend much of the opening six episodes thinking that Juliette is still dead until things happen that contradict that assumption. My favourite part of this series so far is Nick wandering around complaining that some mystery group have kidnapped Truble, stolen Juliette's body and his mother's head from his old house and managed to clean it up as well - I added the last bit. Now the royal family subplot has died, we're focusing on a Wesen Supremacist story interspersed with the usual Wesen murder of the week, with the best one so far being the rat creatures who meld together to create a giant rat creature. The stories are getting freakier and funkier and only Drew Wu seems to get the joke...

That's a NO From Me

I was looking back at reviews from the last couple of years and saw that I swore I would not watch another episode of Jeff Bridges' The Old Man after watching all of season one and just as it was about to conclude they dropped a 'we're doing a second season' cliffhanger. This was a show that literally tied all the subplots up and quite neatly and then went, "Ah fuck it, let's do another one with the floor sweepings we have left..." I had downloaded the second series, but there was this nagging feeling, which is why I went in search of it in old blogs. To make matters worse, I've read a few reviews of season two, one or two with spoilers, and there's going to be a season three. Not for me there isn't.

The Time Killer

We've seen Kiernan Shipka in a couple of things this year and she's an actor with bags of potential both for comedy and drama work. I wasn't aware she was in Totally Killer when we decided to watch it. She was in the woeful Twisters and the above excellent Longlegs this year, as well as a bunch of TV shows; it would be fairly safe to say she's fast becoming one of the business's go to stars. Totally Killer is a time travel serial killer film; a kind of Back to the Future meets Michael Myers and while there's not a huge amount of originality in this movie, it is full of moments that make you want to hide behind the sofa - not because it's scary because it'll make you cringe with embarrassment. Let me clarify this, it's a reasonably good film - a lot of fun and a clever whodunnit (even if the murderer's raison d'être is a bit of a stretch); what makes it cringingly embarrassing are the obvious mistakes Shipka's Jamie makes because of her lack of knowledge about the USA in 1987 and just how cringeworthy the late 1908s actually were, which this film does a good job of highlighting. As I say almost twice a month, the yanks do a good job with US period stuff. This is violent and at times extremely bitchy, but the time travel stuff kind of works and the subsequent Butterfly Effect adds to the fun as Jamie alters things in the past and in the 'present' stuff changes subtly but not enough to change the entire idea. I could, if I so pleased, rip elements of it apart, but I think it was never meant to be treated that seriously - think Hot Tub Time Machine without the boobies. There's some funny references and an interesting supporting cast.

Don't Be Fooled (Again)

I discovered something interesting the other week about Facebook's memories section. I have been regularly checking my FB memories now for well over 18 months; it's just something new I added to my daily incursions into Zuckerberg's Platform of Hell. I also took the opportunity to delete certain things from it; nothing 'important' just stuff that is irrelevant now - such as posts about games I played when the thing started; stuff like Farkle or Texas Hold'em, links that I don't remember ever posting but are there anyhow. I also delete Network Blogs posts, mainly because like the aforementioned games these no longer exist on Facebook and invariably I also posted links to my actual blog, so the repetition isn't needed. Then, one day, Facebook kind of fucked up and wouldn't load back in, so I did the old Ctrl F5 trick to see if it worked and it did. I couldn't remember if I'd finished looking through my memories, so I scrolled back down through them again.

Now, I should point out that I began to suspect something a few months earlier when it appeared that things I'd painstakingly deleted appeared in the memories feed again. I thought, 'Why am I getting links to games that I'm sure I'd already deleted?' Well, through this Ctrl F5 moment I didn't so much discover why, just that your memories are as selective as what you see in your news feed. Scrolling down the page I noticed not only more links to things such as Farkle and Texas Hold'em but also posts I didn't see first time round. Not that many, but all of them older than 13 years ago. So almost every day since that happened I have been Ctrl F5ing it at the end of my nostalgia trip and 75% of the time 'new' old posts are appearing, leading me to pretty much confirm that your memories section shows you a selection rather than all of them or... maybe you think you're deleting them but all you're doing is hiding them until next year, when they will reappear leaving you confused and perplexed...

Crystal Clear As Mud

My biggest fear is that after a couple of massive let downs in the last two weeks, Before will end up finishing on a cliffhanger or will turn out to be a load of old shit. The reason for these fears is because so far this really is a quality TV show and who would have thought Billy Crystal was 76. This exceptional TV series about an aged child psychologist whose wife has committed suicide and finds himself working one last extremely difficult case is mind-bending and boggling at the same time. There are no clues so far, although I'm sure there are we just don't see them. This week's fourth instalment finds Eli losing Noah (Jacobi Jupe) in the children's section of the hospital and then later discovering his wife was corresponding with his best friend Jackson before she died. In between these things, Eli visits the Catholic church where Noah was abandoned and gets into an argument with the local priest about the existence of God. Noah seems to be regressing, even if he is talking now, while Eli's fragile state of mind seems to be deteriorating as he's now seeing things and all of this isn't helped by the discovery of his wife's hair blocking the bath tub - the one she committed suicide in. In many ways it's a good thing the episodes are only about 30 minutes long, because it can be harrowing. It's still very intriguing stuff, I just hope it either remains very supernatural or has a feasible conclusion. 

The Quest Continues

First off - here's why I can't see me watching too many more of Mythic Quest. It's not because it's no good; it is, in fact, really excellent. However, it has some flaws and those flaws are what spoils it for me. Episode four of season one actually does a good job of explaining this; it shines a light on a number of things - the lack of emancipated women working on the Mythic Quest game. Yes, the lead programmer is a girl/woman and the testers are both women and there's the psychopathic woman who is the CEO's PA and there's the woman in the basement. Yet, Poppy - the head programmer - is essentially like all the lead males in this show, not particularly likeable. The biggest problem I have with Mythic Quest is all of the main [ahem] players are stupid and while I don't think it would work as a comedy about gaming if all the characters were 'normal', after a while (quite quickly in all fairness), the characters become tedious and you know that each episode is going to be about Ian's (pronounced Iron, which is really annoying) megalomania; Poppy's insecurities; Jo's psychopathic personality; David's being a bit of a wanker; Brad's deviousness; Rachel's infatuation with Dana, Carl's aged perversions - it's essentially the same every episode and while the stories are inventive, it all boils down to the same thing all the time; it's like the Fast Show sketch where Arabella Weir comes up with great ideas and the men ignore her and think they've come up with the great idea. However good this show is, I can't escape the feeling that every episode (bar one) I've seen has been the same meat with different gravy.

That said, I would 100% recommend people to watch season one episode five, because it is a standalone and leaves you wondering why it was even made apart from to suggest the people who bankrolled Mythic Quest the game were no strangers to taking risks with new ideas. The episode is called Dark Quiet Death and features Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti as visionary computer game creators who create a revolutionary game in the 1990s but gradually sell out as the game becomes more and more popular. It's an outstanding solo part to the series and really shows the birth of the computer game industry from its shaky start and it was one of the best 33 minutes I've spent in a while. That might be because I really like Milioti and Johnson has been in some excellent films.

Next Time...

See what happens when I confidently predict new television? There is no new television. I am slightly intrigued by The Day of the Jackal adaptation, but I'll wait and see what reviews are like and whether I can download it in a format that I can watch. Other than that, I am wondering whether or not we will see any actual new TV with us only seven weeks before that winter holiday at the back end of December. 

Next week it's the finale of The Penguin, another episode of Before and you never know something might turn up that I wasn't expecting. We have some other TV series we can start, but we've been ploughing through the fifth season of Grimm and we've now watched 99 episodes (it really doesn't feel like it) and I expect we'll finish this season next week. 

I also think we have so many films to choose from now - the FDoD has nearly 30 films on it and the set top box hard drive has another 40 films we've 'taped' off the TV - the expression 'spoilt for choice' really applies here, but also the fact that some of the movies we have are maybe just taking up space rather than waiting in a queue to be watched...

 

Modern Culture - Magical Mystery Tour

Spoilers here, spoilers there, but not spoilers everywhere...

Big Cat Hunt

If ever an actor was typecast it's Elijah Wood. I mean, once a hobbit always a hobbit, right? Forget the fact he starred in the rather cool late-90s sci-fi movie The Faculty or that he plays a weird nerd in Yellowjackets or a role in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and even the fabulous Wilfred, where he was the only person to see his neighbour's dog as a man in a dog suit; Wood will always be Frodo Baggins and that's a real shame. He's 43 now and his entire career is summed up by the bloody Lord of the Rings films and that seems unfair... However, he does play Strawn Wise - a magician who could have been a huge star once upon a time but missed out because his best ideas were stolen by David Blaine - in the truly wonderful load of nonsense called Bookworm, and while he is excellent in this film, he plays second fiddle to someone else - just like he did in so many of his most famous roles and that seems unfair as well...

First fiddle in Bookworm is the outstanding Nell Fisher who plays Mildred. She is his 11-year-old daughter who he has never met before when he turns up to look after her, after her mother is electrocuted by a faulty toaster. He has flown all the way from the States to New Zealand to babysit while his former [brief] girlfriend recovers from her electrification and she absolutely takes advantage of this, the way any hyper-intelligent kid would. What follows is a voyage of discovery for both father and daughter as they go in search of the mythical Canterbury Panther - a big cat believed to live in the outback of south Island. It is a magical film in many ways; it's funny, touching, gentle, silly and not really what you'd think it was if you just acted on the description alone. Fisher is truly brilliant and has a huge future ahead of her, (the New Zealand accent is fake, she's from London) and Wood, yet again, proves he will do anything to ensure people stop thinking of him as Frodo. There's a slightly bizarre section in the middle with Michael Smiley that ordinarily would feel out of place, but it kind of works here. This is a real treat and you should watch it.

Precursor

The idea of Billy Crystal in a psychological horror drama series sounds a little like Al Pacino in an erotic thriller [see last week], yet unlike that Pacino film this works like butter on toast. Before is strange, disturbing, unsettling and intriguing; if that isn't a good reason to give it a try then I don't really know what is. Crystal plays Eli Adler, a celebrated child psychologist who is still recovering from the suicide of his wife of many years. He thinks he's losing his mind as the ghost of his wife haunts his dreams and some of his waking life; she has conversations with him and makes observations about the way he is living. He's on the verge of giving up his work and retiring. Then one morning he finds a small boy scratching something on the panel next to his front door, but before he can find out what the child is doing he runs away, leaving Eli slightly perplexed. The next night the boy crawls through Eli's dog flap and wakes him up before running home.

He is then contacted by child services asking if he would be interested in taking on the case of a troubled boy who has been through four foster homes and is having trouble adjusting to life in general and, guess what? The boy only turns out to be the one who has been visiting him. So far so weird. Except that isn't just it, the boy called Noah is violent and mute, rarely speaking and is obviously having some kind of psychotic episodes. He sees water acting in strange ways and when he does speak it's in a 17th century Dutch dialect, which sometimes he reacts to and sometimes he looks bewildered when Eli speaks it to him. Crystal retains some of his trademark humour, but this time it's more a defence mechanism than anything else and the story in general is, as I said, unsettling and most definitely creepy. The opening two parts successfully drew us in and the third part moved the story along really well. There's some hints about things in the latest instalment, such as what really happened to Eli's dead wife. Hopefully it remains at this level as it continues through to its outcome.

Who's Waddling Now?

Many questions are answered in this week's thrilling instalment of The Penguin, as Oz (Colin Farrell) asserts his influences all over Gotham with the distribution of the mushroom juice called Bliss. The story has moved on a few months and the overarching thing is how Oz is modelling himself as a modern Robin Hood; creating wealth and paying the locals good money for their loyalty. The thing is, for all of his narcissistic tendencies, Oz Cobb seems to be a loyal man who looks after the people he cares about; this is one of the things that makes this series so good - the juxtaposition of the lead character, is he a nasty villain or a man of principles? Meanwhile, Sofia and Salvatore Maroni have teamed up but they're nothing now that Cobb has destroyed both families; they have little or no influence, so the Penguin is moving into and taking over turf that used to be theirs. All they can do is put the frighteners on the new guys in town, but Oz has built up something very loyal in the neighbourhood, so breaking his business or flushing him out into the public is almost impossible. This game of back and forth is not winning for either side. Vic does something he never thought he would do and Oz's mother slowly sinks into a dementia that is quick and debilitating. Watching how good this series is makes you wonder if Marvel wishes they could do TV shows as well as this. We get Agatha All Along with its camp feel and comicbook witches, while DC has allowed a comicbook Sopranos to be created - this could be the one of the TV highlights of the year.

Idiot's Savant

What happens when you have a cleaning woman with an incredibly high IQ that makes her think on the same level as Sherlock Holmes? She becomes a consultant detective for the police department, of course. That's the premise for Kaitlin Olson's new TV show High Potential about a genius who accidentally solves a puzzling crime.

I'm not really familiar with this Olson's work, but on the recommendation (I think) of a friend, I gave this a watch... Now, I think it was recommended because the person who told me about it wondered if I would have the same feelings about it as he did; that, of course, might be the antithesis of a recommendation; he might have hated it, but I suspect he wouldn't have mentioned it if that was the case... Anyhow, it was like so many of these genius-helps-the-police shows it paints cops as precious idiots and the protagonist has to be quirky or have secrets in her past that need exploring. It's formulaic and reminds me of TV shows before a point in the past, where they all were 22 or 23 episodes in a season and it felt like it was filmed in a cheap format that made it look especially for TV. The pilot is reasonable, but despite plausible reasons why someone so clever as Olson's character - Morgan Gillory - is as she is, it just feels a bit contrived. What is also quite staggering is the fact that Olson is 50 next year; she's obviously not playing someone batting half a century, but if you look closely, she's done up to the nines (meow). We're probably not going to give it another episode. Oddly enough, it turns out my mate (the fabulous Martin Shipp in case anyone was wondering) wasn't recommending it, he was telling me that it was so bad he was enjoying it. I'm not going to see enough of it to enjoy not liking it. This is one you can chalk off to being Very Low Potential...

Bob and Paul Again

The reason I'm returning to Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is because in the 6th part - Perch fishing on the Great Ouse in Bedford - 1) This was one of the best episodes of this now long running show and 2) I discovered something about it which I had an inkling about a few weeks back - it's filmed well over a year in advance. This 2024 series was actually filmed during the late spring and summer of 2023. This only came to light when Bob, in a butchers in Bedford was buying some tripe for his and Paul's dinner (that didn't go down well) and on the label it said it had a best before date of September 12, 2023. Anyhow, this was the third time they've been searching for perch - a fish I often caught when I used to fish - and the third time they didn't get a big one (oo-er, missus). It was, however, very funny, poignant and the weather and scenery was glorious. They were in Turvey and the surrounding area - a place I knew very well once; it was nice seeing it in all its glory on a wonderful early September day when temperatures were very high; I sometimes miss the countryside of Northants and Beds, not the weather so much now; too hot and humid.

WTAF?

It's not often I watch something and am completely baffled by it. It's the first thing I've watched of Ryan Murphy's since the first season of American Horror Story and before that Nip/Tuck. I'm not as enthused by his stuff as others and wouldn't call myself knowledgeable about his style or substance, but whatever of his I have seen I've never seen anything quite like Grotesquerie. 

It starts horrifically, with a crime scene that is so horrible that many police officers at the scene are throwing their guts up and ratchets up the gore from that point on. We're talking a serial killer who is using his crimes as a canvas, painting dreadful pictures. By the time we get to the end of the second part the death toll is borderline extraordinary, with a scene depicting the last supper but with murdered homeless people. In the centre of this is Niecy Nash-Betts as Detective Lois Tryon, an alcoholic with a husband in hospital in a coma that he looks unlikely to wake up from. She also has a daughter as home, played by Raven Goodwin, who is morbidly obese and is a compulsive eater - she is massive and is proud of her weight and size. There's also something else going on with her, it involves the nurse responsible for her husband's care - played by Leslie Manville, this is an entirely different level of weird and fucked up and something I feel would drag into an essay if I tried to even start explaining. Suffice it to say, the nurse is infatuated with Lois's comatose husband and clearly has a serious problem with his wife...

Add to the Sister Megan Duval, played by Micaela Diamond. Remember Carol Kane in Taxi? Latka's wife, the one with the weird voice? Well Sister Duval looks like her and sounds like a bible-thumping psychologist. She turns up at the police station seeking Lois to try and get the scoop on the killings for the Catholic paper she writes for - this in itself is weird enough, but when Louis starts to confide in her and then pulls her into the actual case it gets even stranger. Admittedly, there's more than a fleeting suggestion that the murders might be religious in theme, possibly even Satanic, so getting the sister involved is maybe not a silly idea and by the end of the second episode there's a good case for having someone of the cloth involved because it is taking its toll on all the police officers. 

Then episodes three and four come along and I'm not sure if the wheels have fallen off or we're watching it from inside someone's nightmare. What was a relatively bonkers first two parts, gets absolutely insane with these two - we're introduced to Sister Duval's boss, a hip and trendy local priest who flagellates himself and talks in a way you've never heard a Catholic priest talk. Lois meets a hunky young hospital nurse, who helps her out and obviously, like the priest, goes on our list of potential suspects. While this is happening a fifth murder scene is uncovered and this in many ways is the worst one - body parts sewn together with the head of a goat; this series pulls no punches. One thing that does feel like padding is the amount of flashbacks to when Lois's husband was not in a coma; I'm wondering if this has some bearing on the story rather than just fleshing out Lois's character, but is it? I'm formulating a theory about this and the husband is key to that. 

Then episode five happens and - in line with my theory - you really get the sense that this is Lois's nightmare and we're living it. There's a burning sink hole, a geologist, a motel from hell - complete with unexplained brazen madness - and a sixth murder is uncovered and seriously, whoever thought up this series has some issues because the murders are getting more vile and nasty. This is just a really strange show; the wife described it as 'A Twin Peaks for the 21st century' and she might be right, except Twin peaks was never this fucked up and nasty. There's more to like in this than dislike. I have some reservations, but in general, we whizzed through the first half in a couple of evenings. There'll be a conclusion of this review (and series) next week!

Pee-cup

The makers of Teacup can fuck right off and then when they've fucked off, they can fuck the fuck off some more. What a bunch of worthless shits they all are and what an absolute massive heap of shit this series was. I have wasted four fucking hours on this stinking bag of tripe. Teacup? Copout more like. It was clear after a while that this was going to end up as an ongoing series, but we had persevered with the final two parts because you never know, something might have fucking happened or even concluded. Some explanation might have been forthcoming. Some fucking sense might have been made of this bag of putrid rats intestines. But no, instead we had another hour of nothing; another hour of character development; another hour of wishing to fuck I'd watched something I knew was going to be a load of shit rather than sticking with this vomit. What happened, I don't hear you ask? Well absolutely fuck all really. They killed off the two characters who were having an affair with each other; thus proving that philanderers are going to die horribly. The rest of the wankers inhabiting this area of Georgia drank the psychedelic kool aid and wandered away from the farm only to meet more alien assassins and then some cool dudes in a souped-up car who basically did what Doc Brown did at the end of Back to the Future and said 'We have more to do!' This was as stinky as the worst arseholes in the world; arseholes encrusted with the stinkiest shit imaginable. I hope the makers of this dog wank die horrible deaths. Cunts.

Agatha All Rubbish No Class

My Thursday night consisted of the final parts of Teacup (see previous review) and the final two parts of Agatha All Along. I feel I could have taken a razorblade to my privates and had a more enjoyable evening. If this is the future of television then someone stuff a bomb up my arse with a short fuse...

Actually, at least Agatha All Along had some semblance of a story and really did tie in with WandaVision and the Doctor Strange film (after a fashion). As my friend Kelvin said, Kathryn Hahn was essentially channelling Missy from Doctor Who and really was a horrid character, going through time massacring witches to keep herself going. The Green Witch or Death (Aubrey Plaza) wanted Agatha to do the dirty on Billy so that she could claim him and stop this unauthorised bollocks, but Agatha doesn't play by the rules, especially when she had a bit of revenge to get from her old lover, in the form of only giving her son Nicky a short life before claiming him. The final two parts started with a conclusion to the first seven episodes and the ninth part was an epilogue with a twist - we got Agatha's origin and just how powerful Billy really was. Agatha died, but has so much power she's now a ghost... yes, I know, I'm spoiling it, but trust me I'm not spoiling anything because this was a load of crap and you'll have been saved from wasting about five hours of your life watching it. Oh and it ends not with a conclusion but with ghostly Agatha and her new mate Billy going in search of Tommy, the missing imaginary brother. Honestly, I would have had more fun covering my testicles in the liquid contents of a toilet duck bottle while looking at them in a mirror...

The MCU Trailer Trash

I don't want you to think I have a problem with race, because I so obviously don't, but the line-up for Marvel's TV shows in 2025 makes me think the demographic has changed and there's a conscious decision to make more superheroes black. Take Ironheart as an example. I don't have a problem with Riri Williams, the main character who first came onto the scene in the second Black Panther movie, yet from what I can gather from the forthcoming series of the same name is that it's going to be a very black culture TV show and I wonder if that possibly alienates a large percentage of the potential audience? However, more than that, is it really needed? Do we need this specific 'black Iron Man' when we've got Don Cheadle's War Machine? The MCU is missing Tony Stark, it needs the Iron Man part of their universe reinstated even if Robert Downey Jr is going to be Doctor Doom (One from an alternate reality that apparently is Tony Stark and not Victor Von Doom). Stark Industries was such a key player in the MCU that even if we can't have Tony Stark his company should be at the forefront of the universe. Ironheart looks like a poor man's rip off and if recent MCU TV shows are anything to go by it will probably end up being a load of shite. But probably not as shite as...

Wonderman... Now this is where I become my curmudgeonly old self and complain that Simon Williams, the template for the Vision in the original Marvel comics, and an atomically powered superhero who is also a B-list film star, is not a man of colour and should never have fucking Trevor Slattery as his wing man. As much as I respect Ben Kingsley, his Slattery character, the 'original' Mandarin in... ahem... Iron Man 3 and then that Shang-Chi bollocks, is annoying and should never have been seen after the post credit scene in the aforementioned film, let alone keep reoccurring. Little can be deduced from the Wonderman snippet/trailer apart from the fact it looks like it might be a comedy, a little like that She-Hulk abomination was. That fills me not so much with dread as a growing determination to give up on MCU TV because, ultimately, it disappoints.

The other snippets teased by Marvel/Disney include a Spider-Man animated TV series that looks bang average; a new series of What If?! which will suffer the same fate as the first two series and not be watched in this household and a four-part Marvel Zombies series, which feels a little like a fucking pointless waste of time and money, I mean zombies were old hat 10 years ago. The comics were dreadful and there's no reason to think an animated TV show is going to be any better... Then there's a Wakanda animated TV show - Eyes of Wakanda (???), which looks as exciting as all the other MCU animated shows; full of piss poor animation and cretinous stories. I suppose Disney has this streaming service so they have to fill it up with something...

The one interesting thing to come from this teaser trailer package is Daredevil: Born Again, which is going to be a nine-episode season with the first part directed by the rather excellent duo of Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, the guys behind Loki and countless weird and wonderful time travel and alternate reality films. Now, I don't know if we're going to find out if this is actually the Netflix DD or an alternate reality MCU one, mainly because he's back in the classic costume he was last seen in for a couple of episodes of that dreadful She-Hulk series. My gut feeling is this is going to be a slightly homogenised version, with less grit and violence and more... MCU bollocks, probably. The reason I say this is because in the blurb to promote it earlier this year, this was said, "[the showrunners] gave the series an episodic structure and lighter tone than the Netflix series." The Kingpin looks slimmer and less menacing, but I suspect that will just be his new exterior now that he's about to become mayor of New York and while I'd like to think this is going to be good, I can't help shake the feeling that the MCU TV universe is a busted flush, chasing viewers instead of building followers. After almost a year off, it seems that Disney has decided to flood the market with six TV shows and three feature films between now and the end of 2025, and I'm wondering if this is going to be a material dump or do they think that superhero fatigue is going to wear off and everyone is going to be sporting new hard-ons about their product? I know which one I'd be betting on...

Nerd Quest Alpha

I've discovered a US sitcom that I quite like, the problem is I'm probably going to have to find time to watch it on my own because the wife thought it was 'all right, but a bit too American' which is code for 'I've seen enough!' To be honest with you, it's a bit too nerdy for me, but not like The Big Bang Theory that I've watched a few episodes of and never managed to utter a laugh at. Mythic Quest is much better than that show even if what is being parodied isn't really my thing. As a mate said, it's the perfect nerd show and I get it completely. This is Rob McElhenney's baby, made by Apple TV+ and full of nerds, sexy women and bad language. It pretty much ticks all the boxes for computer game or comic book fans and after watching the first two episodes I really wanted to watch some more, but as I said, the wife put paid to that. It basically follows the story of the people who put out the world's most popular on-line game, a sword and sorcery first person adventure with the focus on the guy who inspired it, his chief programmer, the company's money man, the CEO (who is shit at his job), two  female games testers (who have the hots for each other but don't realise it) and a psychopathic PA who by the end of episode two had just about destroyed the company for trolling one of the most important influencers in the business. It's great fun and if you like this kind of thing I expect you'll be trolling me in a few weeks/months to tell me all the excellent episodes I've missed...

America Decides

Having lost my ability to view the USA as anything other than a fascist state already, Tuesday's Presidential election - which I will watch for a while - really is more than just electing a new President. Let's be clear about this, Trump is probably going to win and if he loses he's still going to claim he won and either way the USA is going to burn because of it. The world is run by right wing borderline fascists - not politicians but media moguls, tech bros and corporate heads are the real power and most of these people are bad for the average person. Take what's happening in the UK at the moment; as most of my friends know, I no longer support the Labour Party, yet I'm starting to feel very sorry for them because they're damned. The recent budget, which is arguably the best budget for the country in nearly 20 years, has been elevated to being worse than Liz and Kwasi's mini budget of a few years ago. You remember, the one that was going to borrow huge amounts of money to ensure rich people made more money, while simultaneously increasing mortgage payments by ridiculous amounts in the middle of a cost of living crisis. These two jokers destroyed the economy, yet Rachel Reeves's attempts to fix the public sector, ensure people have more money and penalise (to a degree) the richest is being heralded as the worst thing ever. This is because politicians - in hock to wealthiest and most powerful - should be punishing the average person. Did Labour not read the memo? The less wealthy are used to being financially raped by the state, if you don't carry on this tradition they start to get altruistic ideas, such as being able to fix things...

In the USA, if Trump wins - and I think he will, because more than 50% of that country's citizens are morons and cretins - the first thing he's going to do is go for his political opponents, you know, the kind of thing Hitler would have done. The second thing will be to pardon all of his friends that are in prison for trying to overthrow the government in January 2021. After this it will be attacks on women, non-white people, migrants and then this abominable wanker will show his true colours and all of the countries that have mocked him will become targets. NATO will cease to exist. The Ukraine will fall. Israel will destroy the Middle East. Mexico will be targeted as a 'bad country' and will suffer and the UK will no longer have a 'special relationship'. Then after three years of fucking up the world he will, at almost 80, declare the end of Presidential elections. He will remain President until he dies and name a successor; the USA will finally become a fascist dictatorship and US States will begin ceding from the Union. Alex Garland's Civil War will become prophetic but by this time the rest of the world will be burning or drowning. I'm not being melodramatic; if Trump wins (and I said, I think he will), every one on the planet will be fucked...

Next Time...

Top of my agenda is to finish Grotesquerie, because it's one of the most fucked up TV shows I've seen in a long time. Before is intriguing and enjoyable and The Penguin is one of the best things on TV, these alone are worth staying in for. We have Shrinking to start and catch up on and we've also got The After Party, The Old Man season two and The Resort (with Cristin Milioti) to watch. There's also going to be something new starting this week - there always is - and therefore films could well take a back seat again. I expected to watch more films this week, but it turned out to be the first thing we watched last Saturday and we haven't seen a film since. We have a shit load of films to watch, but autumns and winters are long and the good TV will dry up in December and not return until January, so I'm not too concerned; three months ago it was all films and hardly any TV.

Pop Culture - Robots and Sex Crimes

 The spoilers are somewhere but not everywhere.

The Really Wild Show

Kids films, eh? Who watches them apart from kids and their parents? Getting the wife to watch a children's film is like trying to convince half of America that Donald Trump is a massive cunt - it's not easily done. So I put it on and didn't tell her about it until it started and fortunately the disparaging remarks were few and far between (actually one in the opening two minutes then she settled back down to her knitting and didn't say anything again until the end when she admitted to enjoying it). I'll take that as a win. The film in question is The Wild Robot and if you can get past the talking animals (there's a good explanation for that) and the slightly silly premise, then you'd have to be one cold hearted bastard not to enjoy this movie.

Based on the book of the same name by Peter Brown, this adaptation stars Lupita Nyong'o as Roz, a robot that was one of six lost when a container ship sank. Roz is a helper, tasked with fulfilling objectives she is given, but when she finds herself on an uninhabited island with only the wildlife for company she has to either learn to speak animal or have no purpose. The need for this is sped up when she inadvertently kills a family of geese, leaving just an egg, which hatches and the chick bonds with the robot, thinking it is his mother. It's a relatively simple story of a robot who becomes the surrogate mother of an orphaned goose, who is also the runt of his 'litter' and is tasked with three things - to feed it, teach it to swim and then to fly before the winter comes. Aided by a sly fox called Fink - voiced by Pedro Pascal - this is a schmaltzy feel good film until the last 20 minutes when it gets very dark and possibly quite scary for younger viewers. There really is a lot to unpack in this movie and there's a lot more subtlety involved than I can convey in a short review. It's helped along with added voices from Bill Nighy, Matt Berry, Mark Hamill and Ving Rhames. It's a great kids' film and anyone who watches it will want Stephanie Hsu's Vontra to die a thousand horrible deaths, if that is even possible for an evil squid-like robot. Good fun with a few belly laughs.

Downward Spiral

With Sofia Falcone alive and well and having just eliminated her family, things are looking up for her, while Oz spends most of the episode thinking he's getting his streets paved with gold; so which one will come out of this on the up? The Penguin just keeps getting better and this week is all about moving - whether it's up or down. Oz thinks he's got everything sown up; Sofia's war with her family is taking her out of his hair and his attention turns to the Maroni family and their mushroom juice production; the problem he has is getting the necessary leverage to get things going his way and for a while it looks like all his plans are coming together. Meanwhile, Vic is charged with looking after Oz's mother, who is not happy with having to be moved to one of the shittiest parts of Gotham, for her own safety. Sofia opts to change the family name and teams up with an unexpected new partner, all in the name of getting rid of the Penguin. Oz shows Vic an old Gotham secret, which might make a great HQ for his own crime empire. It's setting itself up for an interesting final three parts.

Witchy Women

Another B+ episode largely down to the fact that Agatha takes very much a back seat in this again. This time its really all about Lilia (Patti LuPone), the 450 year old divination witch and the part she has to play in the grand scheme of this thing. It's very much a time-bending episode as we flash back and forth between Lilia's past and the last six episodes when some of Lilia's actions seemed a bit weird. Once you get a grasp of what is happening here you understand what is going on - at least for this particular witch and her ability to live moments of her life out of sequence. The team are in a castle full of falling swords and there's a tarot reading that needs to be done, but just who is the reader and who is the person the reading is about? There's a few more revelations and some unexpectedly easy (and slightly disappointing) endings. The few moments where Agatha is in it are yet again the most tortuous even if she's dressed up as the wicked witch from Wicked. I know it's unlikely to be the case, but it almost feels as though by the time they got to these last few episodes the people behind the making of it realised that Kathryn Hahn is a one note actress who does annoying far better than anything else. Still, only two episodes to go and there's at least one member of the coven we haven't focused on, so with a bit of luck we'll be reduced to just having Agatha take the main stage in the final part.

Quite Exasperating 

QI [XL] is back for its 22nd series and as you would imagine very little has changed. When the last series started, I was of the opinion that it felt like it was getting a bit stale, that the end of the alphabet couldn't come soon enough and with this new season we reach the letter V and I very much haven't changed my mind on this. It's still thoroughly entertaining TV, but the belly laughs are few and far between now and this was no exception; Joe Lycett, Lou Sanders and the very funny Nabil Abdulrashid joined Alan Davies and Sandy Toksvig for this first week and with a line up as surreal and abstract as these comedians can be you would have expected more, but it was just Abdulrashid who was on the ball and even he felt a little restrained. With the U series, there were a couple of exceptions that really stood out and hopefully the V series will have a better strike rate, but this just fell a little short.

Drowning in the Pee of Love

It had been almost 35 years since we watched the Al Pacino erotic thriller Sea of Love... What a strange sentence - Al Pacino erotic thriller... sounds like a Jack Nicholson slapstick comedy or a Robert De Niro superhero film; it just doesn't sound right and guess what? It didn't and doesn't really work. Pacino plays Frank Keller, a cop in his late 40s who is eligible for retirement, is borderline alcoholic and has had a messy divorce where his ex-wife is now married to a fellow police officer, possibly even his own ex-partner - it's difficult to say because it isn't made particularly clear. He gets involved in a murder case, one which might be the work of a serial killer, as men who advertise in lonely hearts sections of magazines are murdered in their beds with a shot to the back of the head. The police think it might be a female serial killer and when John Goodman, a cop from Queens comes to Manhattan with a death that has the same MO, the investigation ramps up a gear as they go all out to find the woman doing the killings.

Enter Ellen Barkin, an attractive blonde woman who might be the killer, the problem is Pacino is attracted to her and before you know it they're making the beast with two backs and he's thrown caution to the wind. What follows is a psychological thriller that is neither psychological or thrilling, perpetuates this 1980s vibe of misogyny, female exploitation and bad hair styles. There are a bunch of actors in this who we know from stuff 20 years down the line and look extremely young - cameos from Samuel L Jackson (being Samuel L Jackson), John Spencer (Leo from the West Wing), Richard Jenkins (from Six Feet Under and many other things) and Michael Rooker (Guardians of the Galaxy and The Walking Dead). Pacino just overacts his way through a stodgy story that probably wouldn't be considered for a film in 2024, probably due to advanced police procedures and dating apps. I remembered this being a good film in 1989; 35 years later it's below average at best.

It's Grimm in Portland

We really enjoy Grimm; it's a good laugh and fills a void left by a number of supernatural themed shows. However, it's also a really awful show, where whoever writes it has more knowledge of pidgin German than police procedures, in a major city that seems to have just one police station, where no one really follows any kind of procedure. One thing that is clear though, with season four it was obvious NBC was having something of a success with the show, so the special effects budget got severely ramped up - it's just a shame about the quality of the scripts or the depth of ideas in the plots. It also seems to be following a similar path as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with the formation of a 'team' to battle bigger problems; the [brief] introduction of another, less sophisticated Grimm and subplots that, on the face of it, seem better than the ones we already have. I will say one thing totally in its favour, as season four winds on the story really starts to get very good and if it wasn't so poorly put together you'd be hard pressed to compare it with anything else; stuff happens that leaves you hoping that the show writers don't wimp out on us. Less than 50 to go. 

Trailer Trash

Several years ago, I discovered Simon Stålenhag via his website https://www.simonstalenhag.se/ - which if you haven't seen you should check it out. He's an artist who specialises in the future and his paintings are a mixture of mind-blowing, disturbing and extraordinary. He's probably best known for the adaptation of one of his graphic novels Tales From the Loop, which was on Channel four about five years ago and, frankly, didn't live up to the hype (although it still has a very high rating on IMDB).

I'd pretty much forgotten about Stålenhag until the trailer for the new Netflix film The Electric State dropped and I was filled with a mixture of anticipation and dread... Anticipation because it looks absolutely fantastic - the Russo Brothers knocking the look out of the park - and the dread because it stars Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt. The latter isn't really the problem, it's Brown, who I've mentioned in blogs passim, I have the problems with. She doesn't do bad films, but equally they're not good films either. They sort of inhabit the grey area in between. The other problem is the original graphic novel was sombre, disturbing and not at all an action-packed blockbuster that this appears to be. Also Stålenhag's name isn't attached so that could be because he's disowned the project...  The Electric State is out next March and I imagine the money that's been spent on it, Netflix will want it to be a massive hit and I'm sure it will be. It appears to be the story of a young woman who doesn't want to be detached from the world like her peers and wants to go and find her missing brother. The backdrop of this is a world that once embraced robots, but now despises them. She teams up with Pratt to find the missing sibling but appears to get involved in a war between the controlling humans and the remaining robots - who appear to be far more benign than they're depicted as. I want this film to be good. 

... Meanwhile, it looks 99.9% certain that the MCU's Blade film has been cancelled, or, at best, been indefinitely delayed. What was supposed to be part of the Phase 6 of the MCU is unlikely to be replaced with anything in the schedule and it now looks as though 2025 will feature just the three films: Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts*, and The Fantastic Four, with 2026 likely to be Avengers: Doomsday and maybe one other picture, possibly another sequel to an existing property. There is a rumour circulating that World War Hulk might be on the cards as well as a Young Avengers movie, while some are speculating it might be the third Doctor Strange film. If you want my, usually accurate, assessment, Doomsday will set up Avengers: Secret Wars (in 2027) and there will be no other films and while I'm confident about this, I will add the caveat that there might be another film taking place between the two, possibly a fourth Spider-Man film, but that depends on how long Tom Holland is involved with the new Christopher Nolan project and how it would fit into the new streamlined look for the MCU. Alternatively, there is a chance that in 2027 we might see an MCU X-Men film as I expect Disney will want to take the BIG film only route with the MCU now...

A Weak Cup of Tea

The malaise that set in last week didn't go away with this week's double bill of Teacup. The first part was a 45 minute episode that told the story about what happened at the other ranch and how the original guy in the mask and his mates got into alien hunting. This is a slightly ridiculous load of horse shit; I really didn't want it to be but by the end of that 45 minutes I'd torn the premise and the episode to shreds. This is truly dreadful television that rips off The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and really atrociously. It desperately needs to conclude with the two finale parts or I'm definitely not going to be tempted back for a second season. I simply can't believe how bad the pacing is; how stupid the people are and... actually, I need to give you an example of the people and their stupidity... They've worked out that both the bad alien and the good alien transfer themselves into a new host, so they realise that they should never be alone, so they promptly go out into the dark and almost every single one of them is alone at some point.

I had such hopes for this; my mate Mark sounded like he was looking forward to it and it originally had a really high score of IMDB. It's now at 6.8 there, my mate hasn't mentioned it - hopefully he's read these reviews over the last three weeks and decided it would be a waste of valuable time and I'm just disappointed that I've wasted nearly three hours of my life on something that has deteriorated profoundly over the last two weeks. I'm also sad that the excellent Chaske Spencer is involved; Yvonne Strahovski hopefully did good things with her pay cheque and Boris McGiver must have wondered why they killed him off in Evil even if he knew it was finishing. I will stick with it until the end of this season, but something astounding needs to happen to save this from being an appalling mess of a show.

Sham-Poo

Adverts are culture, aren't they? In that case, I was in the bath the other night and I spied upon one of the wife's hair products; Herbal Essence's Repair, a conditioner that claims to help revitalise and repair damaged hair. Now, I'm not quite sure how that works, but who am I to argue with hair product specialists, especially when they come up with groovy ingredients like Boswellox, which is a derivative of boswellic acid [no, me neither] or Argon oil, which I presume is the oil from argons (or a singular argon) ... However, I was looking at this hair conditioner and I noticed the legend across the front, which reads: "96% Natural Origin." Which begs the question, what are the other 4% made of? Would that be 4% unnatural origin or maybe even 4% supernatural origin? "Our new shampoo has essence of ghosts in it, to make your hair more ethereal!" Or maybe, "This new conditioner contains 4% Werewolf!" or "Our new hair product range contains 4% of things that are strange and slightly frightening!" The thing is Herbal Essence doesn't tell us what the other 4% is and that's scary...

Next Time...

Anything above that hasn't finished; we might get around to watching more than two films (a lot of this week has been taken up with watching half a season of Grimm) and with the clocks going back nothing will affect our usual TV watching, not even the advent of winter... Why is TV at the moment either outstanding or abysmal?