Modern Culture - Beyond Belief

The Usual Spoilers...

Witchy Women

Kristen states an interesting fact in the latest episode of Evil; the number of cases they have investigated where women are the subject. It was in the 60s compared to just 18 cases involving a man. She wasn't suggesting the Catholic church is a sexist, misogynistic, chauvinistic cabal of men trying to oppress women, but she was really and Ben seemed to agree. This week it was all about witches and whether or not a coven was responsible for the possession and gruesome crime committed by a former member of a dance troupe.

It was yet another strangely 'incomplete' episode that opened up more possibilities while simultaneously shutting them down again. The witches coven and their ghostly muse actually seemed like an interesting development, but you get the feeling that it might be the last time we see them, even if Kristen seemed quite taken by one of the dancers. It was also another fine example of how this show lulls you into a false sense of deduction only for there to be a reveal at the end that is opposite what you might think. The problem I'm beginning to have is we're at episode 6 now, there's only 10 more to go and while some areas of the ongoing story are moving along at a pace; others are floundering around the same way they have for four seasons...

We've now been three episodes without Ben's djinn; Kristen's husband is still in rehab and the girls haven't mentioned the events that led up to it. While Cheryl now knows that Leland might have been trying to murder one of her granddaughters, by proxy; this might end up being an interesting confrontation or it might be weeks before it's revisited. David's slightly dull astral projection/drawing thing subplot is happening more and more, while I'm not seeing anything new that suggests the Vatican might be manipulated by demons; maybe because his new handler seems genuine enough - after a fashion. There's also the fact that Kristen's blabbermouth daughters are now spending a lot of time with grannie and their half brother - the antichrist, who is getting exponentially bigger and older - and haven't yet blabbed anything to their mom is not in keeping with the rest of the show. It's still good TV, but it's going to have to do a lot of housecleaning and quickly if we're not going to have a quick and unfulfilling ending.

Killer Sheep

I suppose the best thing about this week's The Boys was the fact that it dished up the obligatory bad taste episode in spades. There's always one in every season that has you going 'WTF?' or 'I can't believe they just did that.' And this season's they went for it BIG time.

I couldn't understand why Hughie's dad had been brought back for this season, especially as Simon Pegg is a bit bigger than the series, but it was so they could turn him into a psychopathic teleporting murderer - just for a while. The amount of blood, guts and internal organs on display in the hospital where he was [not] recovering from his stroke [until given V] was up there with exploding whales and the penis gag from season three. The point of it escaped me a little apart from this show's need to try and upstage anything else they've done previously and the thing is this wouldn't have got anywhere near previous gorefests if it hadn't have been for the V infected sheep the rest of the team encountered. These were the real LOL moments of the episode as they swooped down and took a cow apart and then focused on the Boys as well as various associates of the VP (the one who can explode heads). Oh and Annie seems to be having a problem with her powers and the Seven have decided to become proper superheroes rather than plastic Vought puppets; the problem is their existing ideology. It was all very much the same as it ever was. This has not been the cutting edge show it once was and now seems a little like it's getting bogged down by the myriad of stuff going on here and in the spin-off.

Who's Crying Now?

Oh FFS. Really? Is that as good as they've got? That's me done. I sat through I don't know how many Chibnall/Whitaker Doctor Who episodes but I never once said, 'fuck it, I'm done with this shit.' Well - today, the 22nd June 2024 - I'm done with this shit (obviously until the Christmas special which I will watch because I will have forgotten that I swore never to watch this heap of dung ever again). This was without a doubt the most mundane and boring season finale in the history of season finales. What an absolute fucking let down. Ruby Sunday was nothing special at all, just some average abandoned kid from an insignificant mother who was so pointless and uninspiring the worst evil the universe ever faced couldn't work out who she was or why she was so important. What an absolute load of bollocks. It was the anti-climax to beat all anti-climaxes; the antithesis of the blockbuster ending and... Jesus wept (and boy can the Doctor weep as well, he was more leaky faucet than time lord), what an ending; using the God of Death as the God of Life and using him via the Tardis and a bungee rope to rip a hole in the fabric of time to allow all the billions upon billions of things it killed to magically be reborn again like a perverse version of Avengers: Endgame, except instead of using a magic gauntlet they used a non-magic red herring of an assistant. As I said, FFS. It made absolutely no sense at all; none. It doesn't matter how much you try to understand it, it was worse than bollocks; it was like it had been plotted by a rotting avocado.

Then there was the epilogue, which we now know has been quashed by Disney because that's not the end of Ruby Sunday at all as she's going to be back for the next series along with another female companion - are they worried that a male companion might tempt the gay Doctor to get his trouser snake out and scare all the Disney+ viewers? Absolute wank; turgid pseudo-sentimental horse shit. Please, never darken my TV screen ever again.

Outer My Mind

If one time travel load of bollocks wasn't enough... The reason we stuck with Outer Range was because I'd been reliably informed that while season one was slow and quite boring, season two really ups the ante. Well, fortunately this weird and wonderful neo-western got weirder than a buffalo taking a shit in a corner shop in Bicester.

I can live with most of the first season, but there were some things that just seemed too stupid to be believable. Let's start with the fact that if Royal knew about the hole in his 'yard' since the late 19th century, why was he trying to so hard to keep its existence a secret, when by the end of season one just about everyone in the series knew about it? Is the youngest Tillerson boy mentally challenged or does he just want to be a 21st century Gene Autrey? How the fuck did the sheriff continue with her singular line of investigation on the Trevor Tillerson murder when the coroner told her he'd been dead for eight hours but had been missing for five days? I mean, if she's as good as she thinks she is, it didn't matter how much she suspected an Abbot for the killing, you'd have thought she would have followed the logical course of the investigation? And is Autumn the most annoying fucking character ever to appear in a weird TV show? Except, we now might know why....

One thing I did realise while watching the season one finale was that Lewis Pullman who plays Rhett Abbott also played the fantastic Calvin Evans in Lessons in Chemistry. Anyhow, we have season two lined up to watch and like I said it's supposed to have a lot more happen in it. It needs that to be the case...

Then along came season two like we only stopped watching the first season just yesterday... 

One thing I will say is that we were promised a ramp up in weirdness and that's exactly what we got. This first episode went all in on the 'you think you had an idea what's happening, well think again!' The new tag team of Royal and Autumn make some waves; Wayne's back from the almost dead; Perry's back in the - what looks like - 1980s; Joy is back in the 1880s and Luke is being talked to by dead owls. It stays this way through the opening half of the second season, culminating in a clutch of episodes that are staggeringly bizarre. There's a complete episode set in 1886 - the year Royal went through the hole and into the 1960s or 70s - with Joy living with the Shoshone; this is one of the highlights of the entire series and through this we learn either the truth of what happened with Royal's father or that her appearance there altered it.

Then there's the last couple of episodes (and the long wait for the next series) where everything gets well and truly fucked up. Let's put it this way, if you've watched this series or intend to watch it then season two will considerably blow your mind at times, but by the time you get to the last few episodes it won't just blow your mind, it'll take it out for a walk, give it LSD, shag it, then leave it in a dry and desolate place before throwing it in the sea and getting it drunk. Just the simple fact that stuff happens - mainly with Perry - that is inexplicable and exists in its own self contained madness makes this one of the most fucked up TV shows I have ever seen.

I have to say that as an aficionado of time travel nonsense there are some gaping paradoxical holes in the narrative - but is there? Something does happen in the season two finale that seriously makes you wonder why events in the past are not changing things in the present. As a portal to the future I can understand the confusion, but if the 'river of time' that flows under the West Pasture goes back and forth, how come events of this series aren't written into the fabric of the past? I will say that season two really does get batshit crazy and if you can plough through season one, season two is almost everything you want it to be. Roll on May 2026 and season three.

The Firing Line

The Clooney-fest continues with Up in the Air, a film we both remember watching 15 years ago and we both remembered nothing about it apart from one scene; oddly enough it's the scene that turns it from a wonderful light comedy about firing people to a wonderful tragical movie about loneliness...

Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a professional firer of people. He works for a company that are employed by cowardly executives to come into firms and sack their staff because the owners are too chicken shit to do it themselves. Ryan is very good at it, but Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is a graduate who has joined the company and believes she can save them hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing their job via a video link rather than in person. This is something the self-centred and happily lonesome Ryan doesn't like the idea of at all. You see he's so invested in his life as a man who lives 'up in the air' the last thing he wants or needs is to be grounded back in Omaha, Nebraska. He has a casual life, with casual relationships and accrues airmiles to the point he is on the verge of becoming only the 7th person to get to 10million miles.

Then he meets Vera Farmiga's Alex, who is basically a female Ryan and the two of them essentially become fuck buddies whenever they can, except because of Natalie's old-fashioned-for-her-age look at life Ryan begins to reassess his own life and that's when things start to change for him, especially when he goes home for his younger sister's wedding, a woman he barely knows. I remembered thoroughly enjoying this film, but I'd forgotten just how sad and slightly unsettling it is, especially when you realise that this is what corporate USA is really like - just another reason to hate that fucking country with an absolute passion; a soulless, shit house of a nasty place where people are treated like less than shit. Great film, though.

Twin Tragedy

Exactly what you suspected would happen after the tumultuous final scenes from the season two opener of House of the Dragon happened and Rhys Ifans was very much all over it like the political rash maker he is, unfortunately his authority has been undermined by his daughter's illicit lover and his grandson's grief.

This really was an episode about how to deal with a disaster as best you can. While Rhaenyr could not believe that her husband was stupid enough to allow the idiots he sent to kill Alicent's second son to take someone else's life instead, so heinously that any support she might have got could be seen slipping away like sand through her hands. The new king was simultaneously winning the propaganda war and then pissing all over it by having every single rat catcher in the city hung from the city gates, causing something of a faux pas that he didn't really give a shit about. This was an episode about making bad choices when prudence might have been the better option. There are changes in allegiances and a battle between two brothers that was only going to end with more tragedy. One wonders where this series is going to end up, but given how fucking mad the Targaryen family is I wouldn't be at all surprised if they don't all try to kill each other off to claim the Iron Throne. 

In an unexpected plot twist, [is the Guardian reading my blogs?] that awful newspaper has suddenly realised this is a very dull and boring sequel and nothing much happens, there's no sex, no one of any worth has died yet and it's too dark and mumbly... Or maybe one of their critics actually bothered to watch an episode rather than think they know what's going to happen from a plot synopsis?

O Boy, You're Really Here

It came out 24 years ago and while the wife has always fancied watching it, I have never been that bothered about it. That's probably down to the fact that I haven't enjoyed a film musical since the late 1950s made ones; I'm not even keen on West Side Story, which I believe was the last of the truly great Hollywood musicals.

Tonight, we remedied that and finally watched the Cohen Brothers O Brother, Where Art Thou and while it was an enjoyable and slightly silly movie, I'm struggling to understand why it is such a cult classic and beloved by almost everyone who has seen it. It's okay, some of the tunes are catchy, but it's essentially about three idiots wandering across the southern States trying to avoid being captured after they escape from a chain gang. It's a film built on lies and incompetence and how the three - George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson - even managed to escape the chain gang let alone have so many strange and fantastic adventures along the way is a mystery unto itself. It was fun; the cast obviously had a ball making it; Clooney has never looked more at home but it felt more like an homage to the Three Stooges than to anything else and with a couple of LOL moments early on I found it dragged on a bit and really wasn't what I expected. However, as I don't really know what I expected that's a bit of a throwaway comment. Still, that's another Cohen Brothers and Clooney film ticked off the list, I'm sure there aren't many more to watch.

Barely Burbling C**t

The BBC's Colin Patterson is anything but a journalist. This gurning, ever-smiling bag of Scottish wind somehow got a job as the BBC's entertainment correspondent and does his utmost to help give the Beeb a bad name... Have you ever seen a TV correspondent (Okay, Andi Peters maybe) so vacuous, fawning and  annoying? Everything is so brilliant he could be the Scottish cousin of Paul Whitehouse's Brilliant character from the Fast Show and this week he's been interviewing Glastonbury guests in a way that would have made Hello! Magazine vomit...

To music icon Shania Twain on BBC Breakfast he asked such important questions as: As the Legends slot usually brings fans out wearing fancy dress based on whoever is appearing, what would you recommend fans wear when you appear in this slot? How about: You're a big fan of animals, would you consider riding a horse onto the stage? FFS, is this really the level of 'interviewing' we can expect now from the BBC? No facile questions like: how does it feel to be classed as a Legend and sharing a stage that's usually is occupied by really old, nearly dead pop stars? Or maybe: How do you feel about appearing at Glastonbury; is it something you ever thought would happen? Does your arse look bigger now? Do you give a fuck about what anyone asks you anymore? Jesus on an inflatable carp...

And then Glastonbury arrived with almost blanket coverage from the moment the gates opened on Wednesday to Dual IPA's Pyramid Stage performance [last night] and there was Patterson poncing about like someone had slipped him a dozen Ees. He gets fucking paid to attend this pointless spectacle for anyone over the age of 50. He even managed to interview Keane for about ten minutes this morning which had all the relevance of watching a bison take a shit in a corner shop in Bicester... I know I'm an old cunt who hasn't been to Glastonbury for 39 years, but can't the BBC show this on BBC3 and on line and not plaster it all over BBC1 and 2 like it's important for everyone?

The Really Gong Show

The George Clooney directed biopic Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is an odd fish at best. Sam Rockwell played Chuck Barris, the man who invented the concept for Blind Date, Mr & Mrs and created the Gong Show, which was the template for so many talent contests. Barris also claimed he was a CIA undercover operative who killed 33 people.

What this movie actually felt like was the delusions of an egotist and fantasist. Barris had an extraordinary amount of success as a producer and a host but there doesn't appear to be a lot of corroborating evidence to suggest he was a hitman for a secretive branch of the CIA. Clooney played his 'handler' and the man who recruited him based on his ability to get beaten up in bar fights and the all-star cast included roles for Brad Pitt and Matt Damon - neither of them spoke a word - and Julia Roberts as a femme fatale who worked with Barris on some of his hits. This is a tonally awkward film; there is lots about it that felt like it really was the ramblings of a man who possibly took too many drugs or drank too much or simply had the shit beaten out of him so often his brain was addled. It purports to be a comedy but felt like an examination of mental illness; the drama wasn't particularly dramatic and I got the impression that Clooney, a huge fan and star of a number of Cohen brothers films, wanted to make something in the same vein as they did. This was entertaining but not great entertainment.

Simply Amazing

We've given up on most of George Clarke's TV shows, but we stick with Amazing Spaces because it's always a mixture of brilliant and bonkers watching people do crazy things with unusual stuff and watching it come out quite... amazing. I think the good thing about this new series is that Will Hardie is back - after a year's sabbatical - and he adds an element of professionalism to the show. He's not an architect like Clarke, he understands the stuff that is happening, while his big Geordie privileged friend takes his amiable self around being the star of the show. Will is the brains of the outfit; he's the guy who does all the donkey work with their annual 'big project' and there's something slightly irreverent about him, especially when he's dealing with the ever ebullient George. The other entertaining aspect of this are the people who do their own projects; the imagination and ability many of them show and the remarkable results they have. If anything, after ten seasons, the least amazing thing about this show is actually George Clarke; who's looking a bit overweight, old and frayed around the edges, like he either needs a makeover, or Will Hardie builds a new compact and bijou replacement - with a wider vocabulary and less cheese... 

Wondrous Repeats

I have been so disappointed by this revamped, relaunch of Doctor Who that I decided instead of watching football matches over this summer I'd watch some classic David Tenant and Matt Smith episodes and I started off with two double bills from season 4, when Tenant and Catherine Tate were flying the Tardis.

The first thing about Silence in the Library, Forest of the Dead, The Stolen Earth and Journey's End is simply how fucking good they are compared to anything that has been on over the last five years. They simply ooze class and while I fully understand that there's a lot of baggage in at least two of these episodes, compared to the dog shit dished up by Chibnall and then the camp excrement squeezed out from RTD's return, these are uber classic episodes, with a sense of investment and brimming with tension and entertainment. This was Doctor Who at its very best, with guest stars galore, intriguing ideas, and a sense of knowing what it was doing and plots that made sense. No wonder RTD brought Tenant back for a swan song before the arrival of cry baby Gatwa. All of the reboot episodes are currently on iPlayer and I'm going to watch quite a few of them over the next couple of weeks, because it's better than international football, Wimbledon or politicians who only care about themselves and the divisions they sow...

Next Time...

The Bear will be watched, probably starting Saturday night. We didn't watch it during this 7 day cycle because we had other things to get out of the way and I expect we're going to do all 10 episodes over three nights - which might limit the amount of stuff in next week's blog. Which, if you've been paying attention, you'll know might have to (or maybe already has) migrate to a new home as Facebook hasn't allowed me to post from this blog's address recently because they view it as either spam or offensive, which might be accurate to a point but isn't really the point.

There will be other stuff as well. Evil, The Boys, House of the [Boring] Dragon and other observations and opinions. Like always, you'll read what I end up watching.

The MCU and Where It Went Wrong

Where Marvel Went Wrong and What I Would Have Done.

Most of you have probably realised that I'm slightly obsessed with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I view it as a reasonably healthy obsession because it allows me to flex some of my writing muscles, even if a lot of stuff never gets seen by anybody. It's also a continuation of something I've done, in comics, for over 40 years - predict the future and relive the past.

I don't know a Marvel (or DC) fan who hasn't had his or her own story to tell or idea they think would be a great comic and I'm sure everyone who's had some investment in the MCU will wonder about things that have yet to come. It's part of the attraction, it's what makes comics films a big thing, or at least it used to. I got thinking how Endgame ended it for many people, how there was literally a jumping off point offered to everyone. You could walk away from that and not really wonder what happens next.

That was a catastrophic idea and I know we have the benefit of hindsight but someone must have thought it had a finality about it, like people wouldn't bother any more, especially if they throw new unknown characters at us.

So what I would have done? What could Marvel/Disney done that wouldn't have helped kill off the superhero film genre? 

First up, I would have postponed Avengers: Infinity War for a year, at least. Everything up to that point is okay and you can work with it. I would have scheduled the Black Widow film, not necessarily the one we ended up with, but not too dissimilar and the Captain Marvel film, with slightly altered post credit scenes. I would even have considered adding another film - possibly a final Iron Man acting as a preamble to Avengers: Infinity War. 

It's what happens after this film that is important because Marvel missed an opportunity and that was to have a two year gap between Infinity War and Endgame; the fear of audiences forgetting was too real to them and they couldn't see what an opportunity they missed - three extra films looking at life after the blip. You could have had a Captain America/Black Widow film tying in with the underused Hawkeye/Ronin idea in a Mission Impossible styled thriller. They could have introduced the multiverse concept and arguably they could have had an entire film that looked at the consequences of this new timeline and then you have Endgame, and more importantly you can have a different ending - a logical ending...

In the Infinity War, Thanos uses the Time Gem to reverse time to regain the gem that powered the Vision. No one seemed to think about this after it happened. The Time Gem by its very nature can move time back and forth depending on who is wielding it? This is one of the flaws in the entire story's logic and that is based on what the Ancient One tells Bruce Banner in Endgame. Once the gem is used an alternate timeline is created, therefore by its very nature the Time Gem either cannot EVER be used or if it has been then there are multiverse strands already in existence and the Ancient One's lecture is moot and unnecessary. When Thanos used the Time Gem to restore Vision's Gem to then steal it, the first alternate time line was created, therefore this is the crux and solution to the entire story...

Endgame then could still have been a time travel movie, but one that needed to go back to that point at the end of Infinity War to prevent Thanos from using the Time Gem. In fact, not a lot would have to have been changed in that movie, except the circumstances which led to the final battle. Had the Avengers managed to use the newly discovered Quantum Realm's ability to manipulate time and returned to the point where a multiverse was created by kidnapping Thanos (and his army) and transporting them to a neutral playing field - say the Quantum Realm. You could still have achieved what was needed but without the subsequent baggage and it would give you a relatively clear slate to carry on. Everything about Endgame could have remained virtually as it did; you could have killed off Natasha; Tony could have taken the gauntlet and erased Thanos from existence and Steve Rogers, instead of being given a happy, timeline bending ending (wow, what poetry!) could have been, say lost in time, giving them an open goal to be able to introduce a multiverse logically, through some accident of winning.

How can you carry on with a superhero franchise when it's clear this is the end of the best story? You do the thing that Marvel did but with far more of a Phase One feel and you've sown your seed about the multiverse. It would have been crazy and inspired if...

The film that followed Endgame (and the Spider-Man film with bits changed) would have been the Fantastic Four...

Except it would start like it's the cliffhanger of a first unseen film; the FF fighting Doctor Doom atop of the Baxter Building and beating him with the help of a few other heroes, Iron Man, Black Widow and someone we haven't seen yet, a male Captain Marvel looking much different from the one in the MCU. Doc Doom is defeated and in the aftermath Iron Man takes his helmet off and it isn't the Tony Stark we know, but someone quite close and the Natasha Romanova isn't 'our' Natasha. We're clearly not in Kansas any more.

The story could have been Doom trying to get access to the Negative Zone because he feels he can use it to channel energy from parallel dimensions and has woken up Annihilas who now can see this dimension. The film will end with the FF falling out of their reality and into a new one, not unlike the one they left... A standalone film obviously set in a world that is similar but not the same as the MCU we've grown to love.

You can then have your next Doctor Strange and Thor films, you could then have introduced a T'Challa from another multiverse, you could have moved the story forward and had fun at the same time as the multiverse's walls crumble and the many worlds collide and that gives you the chance to introduce new characters and aim for another Avengers film which would realign the worlds and you've already got either a new jumping off point or a clean slate to jump back on. Using the multiverse to your advantage rather than as a problem. Introduce variations of existing heroes and new heroes and villains via the multiverse and then using another Avengers film to realign all the multiverses as one unified universe but now inhabited by many of the same heroes but also many more, newer, ones.

This could allow you to retell the MCU yet again with new, younger actors, playing the key roles. It allows you to introduce X-Men and mutants; to introduce characters that the usage of has been returned to Marvel. Marvel could have tested the waters for new concepts inside other films, by introducing them in one movie and spinning them off from that if the box office seemed conducive. Instead of throwing enough shit at the wall hoping some of it stuck. it could also have used Disney+ as a way of tying up old subplots and introducing new ones; made the two interactive, thus allowing the viewer to want to see TV shows rather than feeling they have to and then abandoning them. 

It was clear there was no real plan after Endgame, whatever Kevin Feige says about it, hoisted by their own petard the people in charge of the MCU just threw shit everywhere, not even at a specific target. Let's do this, let's do that, let's do a kung fu film, let's introduce Gods from almost every culture on the planet, let's do a comedy Thor film about death, let's introduce an entire team of immortal beings who did fuck all during the Thanos business, let's just shit on the floor and spread it all around! Can you honestly defend Marvel and Disney execs for the rubbish we ended up with? Can you forgive them for fucking up what was a pretty good thing?

It's quite possible that the superhero genre might have imploded anyhow - just look at the excrement DC pumps out or how, say, The Boys has lost its edge (and that's nowt to do with either of the big boys). The superhero entertainment genre is in the shitter and there's nothing to suggest the MCU wouldn't have bottomed out; people are fickle and would have got bored even if the MCU had continued to bang out highly rated films. The point is had the MCU followed Endgame with a mix of actual MCU films and movies set firmly in the Multiverse, meaning they could literally do whatever they liked; introduced whoever they wanted and killed off all kinds of familiar characters it would have introduced an element of 'what's going on?' That keeps cinema goers on their toes.

I mean, imagine if a Fantastic Four film had ended with Galactus consuming Earth and the four heroes escaping through the Quantum Realm into a new universe similar but not the same? That would have been unexpected; people going to the cinema would, at least, been mildly astounded. The Multiverse should have been a licence to fuck about, but instead we had that bag of toilet waste that was Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Wankers and TV shows that were so boring shaving your own arse with a blunt Bic razor became more enjoyable. It's like Disney threw a lot of shit at a lot of marginally talented writers to see which ones swallowed it and then they said 'go, write an MCU TV show and make sure it's as shitty as what you have just consumed.'

I suppose if this had been a Multiversal world where I was Kevin Feige, I wouldn't have thrown too much shit at the wall. I would have argued with Disney execs about quality over quantity and I wouldn't have gone, "Ooh, the Chinese market is huge let's do a crap kung fu film." I might have done it, but I would have found a way to introduce the character in a clever way and I wouldn't have had big fuck off dragons fighting at the end and I might not have tried to tie it all into the MCU and the Avengers. I definitely would not have commissioned a load of crap TV shows. Yes, I'm sure no one knew they would have been shit, but maybe I would have said to other execs - "we had a lot of success by not sticking our oars in, so let's leave these talented filmmakers alone." I maybe wouldn't have tried to introduce cultural deities every single time a superpowered individual appeared. The whole thing about the Norse 'gods' is that they're not really 'gods', they're an alien race who believe they're better than everyone else. Asgardians are just super powerful humanoids; they might have been treated as actual gods by the Norse, but, you know... common sense. 

I also would have limited films to two a year; if Sony wants to pump out non-Spiderverse excrement there's nothing you can do about it and I would have asked Disney if there was something they could do to remove the Marvel MCU rolling logo from Sony's films. Their existence puts pressure on other superhero films by virtue of them being unbelievably awful, but without what seems to be a favourable endorsement by Marvel they'd perhaps get the attention they deserve, which is none at all. I also would never be telling punters what we're planning on doing for the next ten years; tell people what is coming out in the next two years and what is planned for the third year, but everything else is under wraps. As one year ends, reveal what is planned for the next third year arc. If there's internet leaks, so what? Let the fanboys generate the interest; it worked for comics, it should work for films.

The bottom line is, at the end of July we'll get the first MCU Deadpool film and first film in over a year and the only one this year. Whether that's a huge success or a pile of wank is immaterial; we might see the Fantastic Four film, we also might see the fourth Captain America movie (although the longer that drags on and the more re-re-re-shoots that happen the less confident everyone becomes) and I'm sure Blade will happen (Ha ha ha), but everything else I'd wage money that we never see them, or they won't be coming out through Disney. Marvel/Disney are not solely responsible for the end of the superhero genre, but they fanned the flames and did nothing to raise the bar and instead of standing above all the shit from DC and Sony, they appeared to allow themselves to be dragged down to that level. Compare anything from Marvel's Phase One to the wank that comes out now and you'll completely understand.

Pop Culture - It Don't Half Dragon

Spoilers - there might be some, there might not; more likely I'll skirt around them without giving too much away that spoils it...

Dragon and On and On

And so the Game of Thrones prequel returns complete with an opening titles sequence that now uses the GoT theme tune but with a slightly more medieval feeling. In fact, it has been something like two years since the end of the first series of House of the Dragon, with the death of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen's youngest son by the hand of her former best friend the Dowager Queen Alicent Hightower's youngest son Aemond and the declaration of war between the two Targaryen factions, yet I didn't really need that much of a recap because the story is essentially quite a simple one.

Chronologically, no time has passed at all from the end of last season and it's still a case of wounds being very raw and plans gone out of the window thanks to the insanity that House Targaryen is riddled with. Rhaenyra (pictured left) is off grieving while her uncle/cousin/husband (Matt Smith) has been scheming and planning the death of Aemond and rallying his own troops to side with his wife; who you might remember was supposed to be the new Queen but she was betrayed by her former best friend who lied about the late King's wishes so her own child would become king. That would be Aegon II who might also be as mad as a box of frogs but also might have some compassion in him, which will need to be knocked out of him and that is likely to happen given the events at the end of this season opener. The thing is I'm not sure I give a shit about this series any more. I can't vouch for anyone else watching, but the GoT zeitgeist seems to have gone away and the two year gap between this and the first series might well have not so much lost fans they just might have moved on and are maybe not that bothered about this mumbling, dark and brooding series about family, betrayal and shagging your sister while a bloodthirsty dragon watches on. I enjoyed the first series of House of the Dragon because it was less complicated and had considerably less baggage than its parent show, but I found this all a bit dull and, dare I say it, boring.

Smoke and Mirrors?

A Doctor Who fan and friend of mine called the latest episode 'the best one he's seen in years; proper science fiction,' and that got me excited. I trust the opinion of this person because he's a proper fan. Sadly, I think he was blinded by all the noise and flashing lights, the faux technology and the apparent twists and turns; because The Legend of Ruby Sunday was not as good as people seem to think...

New/old big bad, old and new faces and a mystery within a mystery, but what does it all mean? Is there something we're missing? Does Ruby hold the key to this or is it a red herring? Is her mum something special - maybe an incarnation of the Doctor or another Time Lord? What has it got to do with the new God of Death? Do I actually care that much? I don't know that I do; you see in the past the Doctor would have done something about it, rather than stand around looking puzzled or looking out of windows. yes, he was confused; he couldn't work out what was going on, but, you know he wouldn't have allowed the things that happened if he'd been a true Doctor. It just makes me think he's a poor facsimile of an actual Doctor and given the trailer for next week's episode it's clear that David Tennant is back, but whether that's to die or to bail out this new rubbish incarnation, we'll have to wait and see. Too many new characters, too many comedic digresses and not enough of anything happening other than menace. It was like we were being led down a specific garden path that was going nowhere we expected; which isn't a bad plot idea but some idea of it might have also been good - a clue or two that everything wasn't simple and easy.

Yes, it was entertaining, after a fashion, but I'm no longer sure it serves a purpose. I'm thinking next Saturday might be the day I finally bow out and leave everyone else to worry about Doctor Who...

Is It Me?

Between seven and ten years ago, when we lived in Northampton and had to suffer Look East and their extensive coverage of tins of beans falling off of shelves in Diss. We also got our first look at the weather woman Elizabeth Rizzini - she was the fill in forecaster, usually at weekends and Bank Holidays. She was exceptionally annoying. In recent months, we've seen many of our traditional weather people disappear from our screens; they probably move on to other things, many of them are actually meteorologists and about 18 months ago we saw Rizzini establish herself as one of the BBC's main presenters and she's still cartoonishly annoying. 

I know she's an actual meteorologist, but she seems more like eye candy than serious weather forecaster and I've got to the stage where I've subscribed to the Met Office's Tube of You channel rather than watch the, now rather erratic, BBC weather coverage. Plus, the Met Office use their own forecasts, whereas the BBC has used Accuweather for the last half a dozen years and Accuweather are essentially data miners - taking everyone else's public forecasts and producing forecasts that are the 'average' of everyone else's. The thing is, whatever they tell us they're getting it wrong more often than right. A week ago we were told the shit weather would last until at least the 24th June, but as the week progressed the forecast, thankfully, changed and now we might actually see some summer before midsummer. This is pretty much diametrically opposite what they were suggesting until they quietly changed their forecast. Weather forecasting should carry a warning along the lines of 'this forecast is advisory at best.'

Starshit Poopers

It's been so long since we last watched Paul Verhoeven's Starship Troopers that we forgot it is essentially an ultra-violent comedy. I remember when it came out and critics were fawning over the depiction of the future and 27 years later it does have elements about it that are prophetic rather than crazy, but it's largely a Freudian exploitation film - especially towards women - with genitalia references all over the place and the acting is, in general, fucking abysmal.

Based on the Robert Heinlein book, it's about a group of Buenos Ares 'civilians' who join the army to fight the bugs that have, inexplicably, decided to wage war on us from several galaxies away by firing rogue asteroids at us (see? Bonkers!). Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Neil Patrick Harris join up to fight bugs, but when the bugs destroy the capital of Argentina (full of Americans with Latino names) a full scale war is declared and it's all about getting as much bug goo on you as you can without being killed. It's overblown, overwrought, melodramatic to the point of pantomime at times, tragic and as funny as fuck without ever giving you a Laugh Out Loud moment (or even a snigger). It reminds me of a 1950s Sci-Fi film but updated for the late 90s. It's also not even a complete story but a snapshot of different points in the progression of the 'gang' and obviously sets itself up for a sequel (which there were four and all of them shite). The special effects are off the scale for a 1997 film and the general tongue-in-cheek feel was a welcome change when it was released. The two biggest problems are how much parts of it have aged and not stood up to the test of time and the am-dram acting, which is borderline nonsense.

A (Not So) Game Show

The wife is a big fan of The Chase and I have been known to watch it from time to time. The problem I have with it - like many quiz shows we watch - are the contestants, or at least the contestants with no balls (and I'm not being genderist). On The Chase once you've done a cash builder round, the Chaser offers you a low figure, the figure you achieved and a much higher number. I have never been able to understand why someone would go on a quiz show and accept the low figure - especially if it's a minus. I mean, what's the fucking point of going on a quiz show to win money if you don't feel confident enough to at least try for the amount of money you originally accrued? As someone who is - modestly - very good at General Knowledge, if I was on that show I'd make it clear to any of my team members that if they go for a lower figure they'd be on their own in the final because I wouldn't share what I've won with a quitter and a 15 minutes of famer, because that can be the only reason they're on a show like it. Cowardly wankers, the lot of them.

A Comedy of Errors

You're going to see a theme over the next few weeks - a lot of George Clooney films. Some we've seen and most we haven't. For some reason, despite both of us being something of a fan of the Kentucky-born actor, there are a lot of his films we've never seen, so I remedied that and we now have about ten Clooney films to indulge in.

Burn After Reading is a film we saw 15 years ago, but like so many films we've watched it might as well have been the first time. We both remembered Brad Pitt's dozy gym bunny character, but other than that we might as well have been watching a film that comes out next year. This is a Cohen Brothers film and like all Cohen Brothers films we've seen it was quite superb and absolutely as odd as fake mince. It starts with John Malkovich being fired from his job as an analyst for the CIA, allegedly for having a drink problem and from this point on it just gets tangled up in a crazy mess like a game of Twister with ten drunk monkeys on LSD.

Malkovich is married to Tilda Swinton who is having an affair with George Clooney - a philandering fantasist who works in government security - his wife is a children's author and while she's hardly in the movie she is important to the plot. Pitt and Frances McDormand work at a gym that Malkovich's personal files from his computer - on a CD - was stolen and then lost by Swinton's lawyer's secretary and falls into the hands of Pitt, who thinks it's CIA secrets and he then tries to blackmail Malkovich - badly. Clooney as well as shagging Swinton, also hooks up with McDormand. He's also as paranoid as fuck and starts thinking he's being followed by government agents; he is being followed but they're not the government. It's all incestuous and interlinked and all the time the CIA are sort of monitoring it and the two gym workers attempts to sell Malkovich's bank account details and outline for his book to the Russians. We're talking farce here, but it is done so incredibly well you almost get lost in the twists and turns. It has a conclusion, but probably not the one you imagine happening. If you've not seen it, you should, but you might need to watch it twice!

What IFs

I'm probably a sentimental old fool, but I thought IF was a wonderful film, with comical characters and if it went over the top on the sentimentality then so what. It was a movie about rediscovering the things you give up when you grow up and about the imaginations of individuals being unique to them and no one else. Imaginary friends belong to the person who imagines them and no one else...

This is the latest Ryan Reynolds vehicle, directed and co-starring John Krasinski and featuring a veritable host of famous actors doing voice parts ranging from one line to entire monologues. It is a fantasy family film about a girl - Bea - who has faced enormous heartache and could be on the verge of facing even more when she starts seeing peoples' imaginary friends. To begin with she's scared and bewildered, but before long she begins to understand that these fantastic and strange creations were all once loved by children who grew up and moved on. She is guided into helping these IFs into finding new children by Cal - Ryan Reynolds - a mysterious man who lives on the top floor of the apartments where her grandmother lives. While this now 12-year-old brings hope to these strange assortment of characters, she has no real success unless she takes the IFs back to their original 'owners'. This is a film with some neat twists, some absolutely 'reach for the tissues' moments and Cailey Fleming - who played Judith Grimes in The Walking Dead - plays Bea in a confident and assured way that really makes the film work. This is a for all the family thing, but it's also the sort of movie that you can watch in your 60s and get an absolute kick from, whether you had your own IF or not.

Get Outer Here

I read about a TV show from Amazon starring Josh Brolin that sounded weird enough for me to give it a try and weird is an understatement to say the least. Outer Range is yet another show that really defies logic and could either end up being a load of old bollocks or the new Twin Peaks; whatever it is the first few episodes certainly left us bewildered and befuddled. It's described by IMDB as a mystery drama, but on Wiki its the more accurate Science Fiction Neo-Western.

Brolin plays Royal Abbott, the owner of a ranch in Wyoming who is involved in a land struggle with his neighbours regarding 600 acres of his ranch. This area just happens to be where something inexplicable and unfathomable has appeared - a black hole in the ground that swallows up anything that is thrown into it, but might be a time portal either into the future or maybe the past. Royal's sons have an altercation with the neighbouring Tillerson boys and one of them is killed in a fight, which the Abbotts' then cover up, by throwing the body into the black hole, but a mysterious woman who has asked for permission to camp on their land sees Royal dispose of the body and pushes him into the hole. There is a lot more going on and both the mystery woman and Royal have strange pasts which they have little or no memory of and there's a lot of very odd dialogue, references to the myth of Cronos and a struggle between religion and atheism. There's two seasons of this so far and we're just starting out, it does appear to be glacial slow but given it appears to be about time and I love time travel things, I can't wait for this to develop.

That 50s Film

Our second Cohen Brothers film of the week was almost diametrically opposite Burn After Reading and yet it kind of had the same feel; but perhaps that's the whole point of the Cohens, they make movies which are multi-stranded yet through the quirkiness of how they see the world they all end up coming out similar in the wash.

In a week that seems destined to be full of George Clooney, it might also have a lot of Josh Brolin in it as well as Hail, Caesar! has both of them in the two leading roles. This is a movie about a fixer - a job that Clooney often does, but this time it's down to Brolin as Eddie Mannix. the guy a top studio hires to not only run the studio smoothly but to get its top talent out of as many scrapes and controversy as possible. He has his fingers in all the pies while trying to decide whether he wants to take a job working for Lockheed and trying to locate his star performer, Clooney's Baird Whitlock, who has been kidnapped by communists. As usual with Cohen Brothers films there are characters involved you simply don't understand how they fit in yet in the end it all fits together very nicely. However, this simply doesn't have the panache and style of any other Cohens film I have ever seen; in fact it look fantastic but it's a very slight movie that feels as though there should be more to it than there is. Like the aforementioned Burn After Reading, there's that comedy of errors elements in it, but this time it doesn't really work. It isn't that funny, the set pieces are all a bit forced and it felt like re-tread rather than anything original.

Blood, Sweat and er... Blood

Episode four of The Boys offered something a little different, but whether it was enough to stop this from the doldrums remains to be seen. It felt like a pivotal episode especially as it's the half way point of the series and it really needed something to happen.

Homelander went 'home' to where it all started and it didn't end well for most of the people in the lab where he was 'grown'. Annie's deepest darkest secrets are revealed live on TV and her reaction was probably exactly what was wanted by the cleverest woman in the world, while Frenchie's guilty conscious got the better of him when he probably shouldn't have let it. Billy might still be invested with superpowers, but one thing is for sure he's as mad as a barking fish and he appears to have some kind of worm living inside him, while Hughie and A Train bury the hatchet to enable Hughie to try and save his dad, which he opts against only for the situation to get way out of his control. This was the episode where it probably reaches the nadir for our 'heroes' which means everything from now on in will probably start going their way.

High-Flying Evil

The latest episode of Evil dispensed with the comedy - to a degree - and swapped it for something of a shaggy dog story which seemed, from the start, to be a way of allowing certain events to happen, casting a shadow over the Vatican's role in all of this. 

The team needs to deal with an exorcism gone wrong, especially after the first they hear about it is after it's gone wrong. They do some investigating and something crops up that seems to have such a great religious significance the three are summoned to Rome, where they're given something of a run around until they're sent home with the now apparent worthless antiquity. However, while they're on the flight, David gets a call from the Vatican telling him that the artefact might not be what they thought it was but it's still dangerous and they're put in a tricky situation. Meanwhile, Kristen has left the four kids with a friend of hers, who mysteriously gets called away from babysitting duties within an hour of Kristen leaving for Rome. A series of unfortunate and weird events lead the girls to call their grandmother, who comes to the rescue and during her unexpected visit, she brings Timothy, the Antichrist with her to Kristen's house where she eventually tells the kids who he is. Ordinarily I wouldn't have read anything into this had it not been for the silent treatment and weird behaviour of the priests in the Vatican. Yet, by the end I started to think that the Catholic Church is fully aware of what Leland's plans are, especially for Kristen and they want the nasty peoples plans to grow and escalate - maybe for genuine religious reasons, but I'm beginning to think that our three heroes and maybe their genuine allies at CCHQ are the only ones trying to stop something they don't know is coming and it wouldn't shock me if the Catholic Church ended up being complicit in all this shit.

Next Time...

The Bear season three. That is all. 

 

Modern Culture - Wide Angle

Let's Hear It For The ...

It's back! After what seemed like an age, The Boys has returned - even if that does sound grammatically wrong - and it feels as though it maybe shouldn't have bothered. I started to feel, during season three, that it was getting a little too silly - which is an odd thing to say given how actually quite silly it is - but maybe 'silly' isn't actually the word I'm looking for...

I appreciate that the season three finale pretty much sets up this fourth outing and the spin-off series Gen Z added further possible subplots, but there seems to be something a little... desperate about this, especially the first three parts which dropped midweek. Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr and Erin Moriarty are back, with all the other regulars and there's the usual amount of OTT shenanigans and ultra-violence, but there seems to be an element of clutching at straws going on. I suppose there was only two ways they could go with this - what they call in comics circles 'The Miracleman Route' wherein the supers basically take over the world and destroy everything including each other until the strongest remains standing or the Donald Trump route where the USA is split into two warring factions - those who love Homelander and those who hate Vought and Homelander. The strange thing is they appear to be taking a bit of both.

Billy Butcher has got six months to live and wants to save Ryan - his wife's son by Homelander - but he's been ostracised from The Boys. Homelander is beginning to feel his age and wants a legacy for his son and enlists the brains of the smartest person in the world to help him achieve that. A Train's slowly dawning disillusionment is picking up pace and Hughie's dad has had a massive stroke and his mother has reappeared and she only works for Vought now. Frenchie seems to have become a bit gay and Kimoko has discovered beer (and maybe her sister). MM is now in charge and working for the CIA again and Victoria Neumann is a Presidential Elect's death away from becoming POTUS and none of it seems to be very interesting. We're used to arms and legs being ripped off; Butcher calling people 'cunts' and Homelander being indestructible; Gen Z seemed to introduce a way out but that entire mini-series was rendered moot by Butcher saying the virus that kills supes won't work on Homelander. So we seem to be in a bit of a vacuum with the team spending too much time trying to work out what Homelander is doing and lots of quite irrelevant supporting characters who don't really do much but fill up the screen.

This season we had the first three episodes drop at the same time and then it's a weekly until the next cliffhanger or resolution that can lead into another series. I don't want to sound like I've gone off this show, but it simply no longer feels cutting edge and how a superhero show should be done; it's almost a pastiche of itself and needs something to happen that doesn't feel scripted. It's like superhero fatigue has infected this show as well...

There Goes a Million Viewers

It's time to be 62 years old curmudgeon and cause some controversy... This week's Doctor Who will have caused heterosexual men over the age of 50, Gammons, UKIP/Reform voters, prudes and homophobes to call it quits with the show and they may never come back again. This is a TV series that - based on viewing figures in the UK - could well be on its last legs and this may well have tipped it into cancellation territory; I suppose it all depends on how well it's doing for Disney. But Rogue was shite and I'm gobsmacked it could be shown before the watershed.

This was a facile and childish homage to whatever a Bridgerton is and the ridiculously quick and easy way in which the Doctor fell in love with a galactic bounty hunter destroyed all and any ambiguity this new incarnation might have had. I imagine gay fans of the show - of which there are many - were all in rapture about it, while die hard aficionados (who are not gay) are probably writing to the BBC and demanding their licence fee back. This was wrong and I have many LGBT+ friends, but while the Doctor has kissed a number of people since the series returned, I don't think any of them had the sexual undertones this one did. Had the story been better than a bunch of cosplaying childish aliens body snatching then it might have taken a back seat but because the story was fucking ridiculous, had a stupid ending - oh let's not forget the move to save Ruby - and left no one with any doubts that this Doctor is as camp as a gay Christmas in Brighton, I think there are going to be a lot of people angry, disgusted and with absolutely no intention of ever watching a Gatwa DW ever again - who, incidentally, now cries at the drop of a hat.

I don't want anyone to think I'm being homophobic, but [ouch] since RTD returned to the show we've had so many LGBT+ moments it almost feels like a Party Political show on behalf of a rainbow alliance. I'm sorry, but it has absolutely no place in a family show or in Doctor Who. It spoiled an otherwise shit episode. After this is cancelled and goes on indefinite hiatus it will be brought back in 10 years time with a white asexual Doctor who doesn't show any emotions towards male or female companions. I should stop watching this, especially when I feel the show has somehow become politicised with Davies' personal crusade, because that's what it feels like.

A Kick Up The Nineties 

The thing that spoiled The Bone Collector was the fact it was made 25 years ago, in the 1990s, when films felt so much more sophisticated than films from the 1980s but now feel like movies from an era that desperately wants to be forgotten.

Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie star in this extremely taut thriller about a serial killer terrorising New York over a short period of time. It had lots of famous names looking extremely young and also some future famous faces in fleeting cameos and they all featured in a nasty little thriller that owed a debt of gratitude to Se7en. I expect if this film had been made 10 years later it would have felt completely different, but this tale of a former forensics wizard left a quadriplegic after trying to rescue an already dead NY cop struggled to feel very contemporary and left us both puzzling over Jolie's lips - I mean are they real or fake? We had never seen this film, although we both knew quite a bit about it and there were enough red herrings, garden paths and surprises to allow us to forget about how dated it felt. The killer is playing cat and mouse with the NYPD and is using an old book of murders as his inspiration, but it ends up being a little more complicated than you might imagine. It's worth checking out if it ever appears on TV again.

Texas Hold Em

This decision to watch a bunch of films from the 1990s, many of which we'd never seen before, continued on Sunday with a film that in many ways felt like a low budget movie that made much more of an impact than perhaps it was expected. The 1996 thriller Lone Star had some famous names in it - Kris Kristofferson, Frances McDormand and Matthew McConaughey - all in cameo roles, as it was dominated by names you wouldn't expect to see in 'BIG' films.  

This was a story about a small southern Texas town that is dominated by the discovery of the remains of a dead body - a skeleton - that might be a former sheriff (Kristofferson) who disappeared nearly 40 years earlier. It falls to the current sheriff - Chris Cooper - who just happens to be the son of the former deputy who took over as sheriff when his boss disappeared. As Cooper digs deeper it starts to look as though his whiter-than-snow father might be the man who killed the man whose remains they have found. However, this isn't the only thing going on and we're introduced to many subplots that are seemingly unrelated to the main story. The relationship between a newly arrived army colonel played by Joe Morton and his estranged bar owning father - Ron Canada - a man who had form with Kristofferson's sheriff Wade. There is also an Hispanic schoolteacher - Elizabeth Peña - and her snob of a mother - Míriam Colón, who is very choosey about who her daughter sees romantically, even though she's now in her 40s with two teenage children. Her mother is particularly against her daughter having anything to do with Cooper's sheriff, even though the mother is undoubtedly a snob and very pro-American; she also runs a reputable restaurant in the town, which might be complicit in something - historically - to do with illegal immigrants. Then there's the town mayor, who used to be Wade's other deputy back in the 1950s and a number of other characters who all have stories about Wade, Cooper's father or other things that gradually all begin to either relate to what is happening or have an allegorical relevance.

It's a movie that unlike The Bone Collector doesn't feel as dated, even if it was made nearly three years earlier and like I said, with such an abundance of B list actors in this, you feel that it was never intended to be a highly ranked and well-respected film. The great thing about Lone Star is the way it really does lead you down several paths that seem unconnected and then BOOM you realise they all lead to the same garden. And then there's the ending which is one of the best twists in the tale I've ever seen on film. The 1990s was a great decade for twists - Se7en, The Sixth Sense to name just two (I can think of) but this has one you really don't see coming and probably wouldn't until the final pieces are revealed and then it's an 'Oh wow!' moment with a little bit of ick thrown in. It's a cracking film and is thoroughly recommended.

And The Big Prize is...

I write this part of the review with three days to go until the season finale of The Big Door Prize, a show that the wife has finally warmed to. This is really a fantastic series, which has dazzled me over the 18 episodes I've seen so far. The weird thing is Chris O'Dowd's Dusty and Gabrielle Dennis's Cass - the two main characters - have become the most annoying thing about this series and why that's such a juxtaposition is because many of the other regulars were annoying but they have all become really great additions to the cast and I think that was one of the key things about this series - change.

As we hurtle towards the finale, all the supporting characters lives are getting sorted, one way or another. They learned their potentials and then they saw the next stage and now they're all better people for it.

Sammy Fourlas as Jacob and Djouliet Amara as Trina - the two teenagers who have really been holding everything together are also finally working out their positions in all of this craziness and it's just Dusty and Cass left. Dusty has been slowly forming a relationship with Alice (played by the gorgeous Justine Lupe) and Cass has been discovering that she can survive quite well without her mother or Dusty, but neither seem able to admit it and I think that is about to be decided in the final part. This has been one of my favourite 'fantasy' series ever; a show that has very little fantasy, a lot of weirdness and a story that never seemed to be going anywhere until it arrived... 

... The finale episode was... not what I expected, although to be fair I don't really know what I expected, just not this. I figured it would wrap things up and Dusty and Cass would go their own separate ways and everyone would live happily ever after and for a large part of the finale it really looked like it would and then... it started to get weird again. Hana and the priest went back to her old bar to see if the Morpho machine that was there was still there - because Hana believed it was following her around - and it wasn't. However, as she poured her heart out to Reuben, he finds a large envelope in the form of a Morpho envelope and inside it contains a cassette recorder (again playing on this retro feel the entire series slips into at times) and it had a recording or her father and Hana playing a song. Meanwhile Cass steals the show at the Deercoming with her rendition of a boy band hit and her mother ditches being centre stage and spends the time with her new girlfriend. Things go horribly wrong for Trina and Jacob as Trina's propensity for doing stupid things really backfires and Dusty sees a white deer, which tells him to return to the Morpho machine, oh and it starts snowing. By this point we're past the 30 minute mark and it's either going to be a quick resolution or it's going to be an extended finale...

What actually happens is we're left with another cliffhanger. One that is either a metaphor I'm not getting and this is the end - END - of the series or it leaves us in a very weird place. If it's another cliffhanger then I'm slightly disappointed because while it still would have been a shaggy dog story as far as the machine was concerned it would have had a conclusion for the residents of Deerfield, but the fact that we have had a resolution for most of them but it's looking likely that there will be a third season I'm wondering - especially with the incredibly strange ending - where they can take this now? Yes, there needs to be certain things resolved or explained but can they make ten more 30 minutes episodes from that and more of Giorgio being annoying? I suppose I'll find out next year.

Historically Topical 

Steven Spielberg might be Jewish and the massacre of Israelis at the Munich Olympics in 1972 might have been horrendous, but when the two meet you get what I thought was a very ambiguous movie that focused on aspects that you maybe wouldn't expect from a historical film. Munich was a long, violent and harrowing film, something I'd never been that interested in watching but now finds itself in a position of historical importance given what has been happening in Gaza for the last nine months.

Eric Bana and Daniel Craig are the lead actors in a film that doesn't exactly paint Mossad - the Israeli intelligence agency - in a very good light; in fact no one really gets out of this in any way positively. The movie's title is almost misleading in that Munich and the events there during the games is the reason for the rest of the story. In fact very little time is spent on the actual event, what we witness is Israel's revenge on the Palestinian men we are led to believe were responsible. The thing is this is a murky story and nothing is clear almost from the point where Bana playing Avner Kaufman is picked up by Mossad from his home and taken for a meeting with Golda Meir and her chiefs of staff. What happens there is also ambiguous as we discover that Avner was one of her bodyguards and there is a familial relationship between the future assassin and the then prime minister of Israel.

Avner leads a mission with four other men he doesn't know to track down and kill the 11 men he is told are responsible for the deaths of the Israeli athletes and the majority of the film is just that; this team of five men tracking down individuals and killing them, in most cases with extreme prejudice and as cold blooded as possible. The problem is the longer it takes to track down these Arabs, the more the Israeli secret team of killers become targets themselves and gradually three of Avner's team are killed off and the ambiguity continues to be ramped up. Who has killed his men; can he trust the remaining member - Craig, playing a South African Jew who has been antagonistic from the very beginning. Has Avner's information source reneged on their deal? Paranoia takes over and finally with six kills in 18 months, he returns to Israel where he discovers he is something of a 'superstar'.

The interesting thing about this film is that Spielberg paints a picture that suggests that while the Israeli's deserve their revenge, the people Avner is targeting might not be linked to Munich. His team might be committing murder and targeting people that Israeli intelligence simply want dead - are they now a rogue team offing enemies of their State? Avner can no longer function as a human being, he jumps at every noise, is terrified for his family and has no idea if his life is in danger and whether it is in danger from his own people. The other picture that is painted is Israel has become as bad as the people they now hate the most, the Palestinians. There is also a chilling moment when he meets his Mossad handler in New York - played by Geoffrey Rush - when he is offered a chance to return home with his wife and daughter. Avner offers Ephraim to come to his house and break bread with him so they might talk about the proposal, but his handler turns him down - a most un-Jewish thing to do, or as the wife said, "I can't accept your offer because I still might have to kill you."

The '90s Become the '70s

One of those 'classic' 1990s films that I never bothered to watch finally made it to my TV. Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused has been considered a 90s equivalent to Francis Ford Coppola's American Graffiti which was a 70s film about the 1950s.

This is a movie that has an enormous amount of young actors, many of which we will grow to know and love, but mainly in this particular film it's a case of 'God, doesn't he/she look young!' This is also a movie that doesn't have a plot; it's 100 minutes of the lives of high school and junior high school students on the last day of school before their summer holidays. It switches back and forth between different groups of friends never settling on one specific person or persons for more than a minute before cutting to someone else. It does focus on a number of individuals but I'm not going to waste either of our times concentrating on them because this is a snapshot of young peoples' lives on a hot late spring day. There's pot smoking; perverse arse paddling by senior males and weird rituals by senior females; there's beer buying, car racing, party arranging, making out and fights and frankly it's not really a particularly interesting or even good film. It does paint an interesting picture; it has an excellent mid 1970s rock soundtrack, but it doesn't feature Led Zep's Dazed & Confused, which is a bit strange. Matthew McConaughey is probably the most famous person in it and his hair is worth the admission price (if you saw it at a cinema or on VHS) and... well, I've seen it and I'll probably never see it again. I'm wondering why it's a 'classic'. 

Mr Fixer

It has made a change to have a week of entertaining films, especially ones we haven't seen and Michael Clayton was no exception. This film about a law firm 'fixer' probably came onto our radar 17 years ago when it came out, but for some reason we never got around to watching it.

This was George Clooney at that stage in his career where he could have embraced Grecian 2000 but instead started to let his greying hair take over. A man in his 40s allowing himself to look like a man in his 40s. Employed by a top law firm to fix problems, because his history of gambling debts meant he had too many skeletons in his closet to afford him to make partner; what Clayton is is a problem solver. He goes into shit situations and makes the best of bad situations and the reason he is where he is is because he is very good at his job. When an associate - played by the late great Tom Wilkinson - appears to have a breakdown from not taking his meds, putting a $3billion class action in doubt, it's up to Clooney's character to solve the problem. However, the chief lawyer - Tilda Swinton - for the firm that Wilkinson was representing begins to panic and she makes some bad decisions. For huge parts of this film you think you're watching a clever man unravel, but is it really like that or is there just an expert at work? This is a cracking film that is ambiguous and secretive - even down to the dialogue - with such a satisfying ending you will almost punch the air in delight. I'm surprised Clooney didn't get an Oscar nomination for this.

A Swift Escape?

Other than the election and the European Championships, the most common thing on my TV for the past week has been... Taylor Swift. Apparently, she's the biggest thing in music now and this concert tour is set to gross over £2billion, which is about £1.25billion more than any other concert tour, ever. Woo and indeed hoo! So how come I've managed to shoehorn the woman into my weekly column? Am I a secret Swifty? Well, no. I have decided to talk about her because I heard some of one of her songs the other day and it dawned on me that I've never knowingly listened to a Swift record. I couldn't tell you a single solitary hit single she has had and apart from the fact she once went out with Tom Hiddleston and is currently going out with an American footballer, I know nothing about her. However, I've since discovered that she's had 19 boyfriends since becoming a superstar, which suggests she's possibly had [at least] 19 sexual partners and while I give her an encouraging 'you go girl' shout out, one does wonder if she likes sausages and if she's ever been to Liverpool...

Demons of Comedy

I don't know how many of you actually watch Evil but I get the feeling that the comedy has been ratcheted up not just a notch but a whole nine yards. This week's episode - which was called 'How to Build a Coffin' but had nothing to do with building a coffin - was heavy on the humour, from the opening sequence with Leland having to deal with an antichrist baby that shits everywhere, projectile vomits at him, won't shut up or let him sleep, to the fantastic Sister Andrea, tracking down two demons running rampant in the Catholic Church's New York HQ.

The premise of this week's story was that there is a demon who is stealing peoples' words to the point where they all forget how to talk properly. As Sister Andrea pursues this, she also has to do more for the priests, including their washing, ironing and cooking, and she discovers large holes in Wallace Shawn's shirts - that only she can see - and soon discovers that as well as the word demon there's also a grief demon living inside her boss. Meanwhile Leland discovers that Kristen's voice is the only thing that will quieten the antichrist and conspires to fool Andy into killing one of his children so Kristen will take the antichrist in as a replacement. You sometimes have to wonder how this genius of moronic thinking ever got elevated to someone high up in Satan's plan to conquer the world.

Ben gets some oats; David takes something of a back seat in the entire episode, while Kristen has to deal with the fallout from Leland's nefarious plan. This week really was a case of a nasty idea wrapped up in comedy hour, which I suppose is the show's way of dealing with certain subjects, but I am beginning to feel as though there is too much comedy; like the show has stopped taking itself seriously and there's a knowing wink and a nod at the viewing audience. There's still that usual sense of it being slightly contrived, such as Kristen still hasn't been told by her usually blabbermouth kids that Andy was found in the bath tub quivering like a mad thing at the sounds of Feliz Navidad a couple of episodes ago, which, of course, would make her immediately realise that her husband isn't a secret drug addict but is being manipulated by Leland (and her own mother). It's still a great show, though.

Goodbye to Wrexham

I suppose the real question is how the first two series can be 18 episodes and then 15 but the third series, looking at possibly the most important season for the Welsh club is only eight? Are they running out of stories? Interesting people to focus on? Given the TV documentary was hugely successful and one of the many positive things to come from the football club's falling into the hands of Ryan Reynolds and his mate called Rob, eight parts seems almost like an insult. Everything was wrapped up faster than a teenager ejaculating over a jazz mag. People who were constant characters in the first two series were ignored or forgotten about; the fact they were playing in a proper league rather than a feeder league got less focus - maybe the EFL were not happy about the coverage whereas the national league were happy for the exposure? Who can say. It just seemed a little weird considering what an enjoyable show it's turned out to be.

Don't You Forget About Them...

Our end of the week viewing was a documentary. A film by Andrew McCarthy, which also starred him and was largely about him. You'd remember him as one of the members of the infamous 80s group call the Brat Pack and this documentary about that and was called Brats.

It featured many of the original Brat Pack 'members' including Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Lea Thompson, Jon Cryer, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez and a few other - not Brat Packers - including Timothy Hutton, David Blum and an ancient Lauren Shula Donner - with ears that rivalled Dumbo's (if I want to be horribly cruel to a 76 year old woman). Notable by their absence were Molly Ringwald (who didn't want to appear in the film) and Judd Nelson (who McCarthy struggled to track down). I don't know how accurate this is but both these former stars have had personal problems. Ringwald has struggled with her weight, while Nelson is apparently barking mad and looks like a man who has lived in the wilderness tending a juniper tree for many years. Whether this was the reason they didn't appear or if they somehow sensed it would end up being a slightly facile idea and (with one exception) a bit like a self-help group we will never know.

Except for Rob Lowe, who still looks youngish (at 60) and Ally Sheedy, who looks fantastic for 62 and clearly has had absolutely no work done at all (there's a lesson for Demi Moore there) they all looked old and used. Estevez, the man who was responsible for David Blum calling them the Rat Pack in the first place looks and sounds like his dad (Martin Sheen) but on helium and while it was mildly entertaining, you get the impression it would have been better as an hour long feature, without some of the padding bullshit (because that's what it was) that polluted the middle. There was also this odd thing about it - yes, it was a documentary, but did it have to be so obvious about it? The crew that McCarthy took around with him (who all seemed to think there was still a pandemic going on) were constantly in shot or hurriedly walking out of shot when they realised they were in shot. 

At one point, Sheedy, who I don't think thought being in the Brat Pack was that bad, suggested it was all a bit trite and that's pretty much what I thought of the doc. It's interesting and mildly entertaining, but when you realise that the label wasn't actually aimed at "all of them" but at Estevez, Lowe and Nelson because the night they were interviewed they were partying hard. It then suddenly got blown out of all proportions because they and others of a similar age were simply making a lot of films and occasionally together. It was really the press that picked up on the original article and ran with it, labelling almost all of them with the tag, yet conveniently missing obvious inclusions - Mare Winningham, Tom Cruise, Charlie Sheen, Michael Anthony Hall, Patricia Arquette, even James Spader, Robert Downey Jr and a whole bunch of other famous actors who were of a similar age, starred in films with them and could easily have been associated as part of their 'pack'. It felt like the term was used to describe this specific bunch of young talent who appeared in films about young people regularly. Only Rob Lowe really embraced it and, of course, he is probably the most successful of those who got labelled. In the end it seemed like Ringwald and Nelson made the best decisions; they didn't want to revisit that part of their history so they avoided it. I kind of wish I'd avoided this as well.

Next Time: .

Well, depending on how much football and politics interferes with television, it could be a fallow week. That said, I thought I'd be scraping the barrel this week and look at the bumper crop (of word salad) we ended up with - it's almost a thesis on the entertainment industry mixed with borderline bigotry...

There's two more Doctor Who episodes, so I won't bail out this time, but next year's offerings better be science fiction or I'm going to do what I did with Tom Baker and walk away. The Boys will need to improve greatly because it all felt a little uninspiring and Evil still has 12 episodes to go, so without sounding disillusioned I expect there will be more episodes like this week before we get to the nitty-gritty of it all. Plus House of Dragons returns, so it will be interesting to see just how much fawning over this series there is, given how much verbal ejaculation there was after the first. 

We have a bunch of new films on the FDoD and I'm sure there will be some commentary on something or other - maybe how I was deprived as a child because Sky TV hadn't been invented or how I thought Charli XCX was a porn star. Maybe I'll do a diatribe on diversity.

Things would improve greatly if we had some summer, but that's as likely as men having multiple orgasms or parrots with teeth.