and it involved... dragons. It really looked for the opening 45 minutes that we were in for another spellbinding instalment of fuck all. Matt Smith is still having weird dreams and meeting a Scottish witch with strange brews. Alicent is taking 'get rid of this unwanted pregnancy' potions, while Larys plots, schemes and double crosses his way into Varys territory. Then came this odd sidebar, why was the King's Hand really bothering with a pathetic little fiefdom's castle when the people in charge really want Harrenhal - where Matt Smith is? The logic seemed sound but it did seem like a piffling little thing, so piffling that the king decides to enter the fray on his ickle dragon. The episode is called 'A Dance with Dragons' and it culminated with two big battles and really unexpected stuff - two really unexpected stuffs in particular; after umpteen episodes of nothing in particular happening we get one with HUGE ramifications all round. The piffling little thing turned out to be fucking enormous and while it was really only the last 15 minutes, it was the best episode of the series so far - it's now how they handle this bombshell of an episode that matters...
NB: People sometimes wonder why I have such a bug up my arse about the fucking Guardian; well, here's one good enough reason. The day after this episode aired they ran an article about something specific that happens in the show and promptly opened the article by warning people who aren't up to date with the TV series to avoid reading because of spoilers. They then - within a paragraph - revealed something from future episodes via Wikipedia, which regular viewers of the show will not know until they've watched future episodes. The comments BTL were full of attacks at the newspaper and angry viewers who essentially have had their enjoyment spoiled by a newspaper with an almost psychopathic desire to spoil things for its readers. To call them a bunch of cunts would be a disservice to cunts...
Alien Encounters
The 2013 Blumhouse Sci-Fi horror film Dark Skies is pretty much an exercise in sinister bollocks [now there's a concept]. It's actually quite a creepy and slightly disturbing movie until it enters into the world of aliens rather than just skirting around the edges.
Keri Russell and Josh Hamilton's family begin to experience weird shit that is inexplicable. Do they have poltergeists or is one of their kids doing strange stuff, without realising it, in the night? Why is dad always rubbing the back of his ear and why is mom trying to break her head open on a double glazed patio door? Who is the Sandman the youngest son is always talking about? And to be honest, the set up is clever and while it's kind of devoid of suspense or even tension, the build up is quite effective. Then it sort of descends into a schlock version of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. JK Simmons comes into the film, in what is really just a cameo role, to tell the Barrett parents that they've got an infestation of Greys and it's not going to end well. It's this point of the film where it sort of loses the plot even though we're not stupid and we know this is about alien home invasion from the offset. It's just so bloody ludicrous, especially when aliens are painted as essentially B movie serial kidnappers with sadistic streaks. What was a tight little mystery ends up being a silly load of bollocks.
Revenge of the Small Guy
The first of this week's George Clooney films is something I had absolutely no knowledge of and given it was directed by Jodie Foster and starred the aforementioned Clooney, Julia Roberts, Giancarlo Esposito, Dominic West and Jack O'Donnell - plus a few other faces you'll know from TV and films - it seems odd that it fell off the radar.
Money Monster is a 2016 movie that is really powerful and completely wrong foots you. Clooney plays Lee Gates, the host of the eponymous Money Monster stock market show; the go to guy for tips and tricks about making money from stocks and shares. He's presenting his usual Friday show but one of his key guests isn't available; a guy who is CEO of a company that has just lost $800million in a market crash. Enter O'Donnell, a disgruntled delivery driver called Kyle, who has lost $60K because of the algorithm malfunction. He breaks into the studio, takes everyone hostage, puts Gates in a vest that is stuffed with explosives and starts demanding answers as to why he lost his money and why it's always the little guy who pays for the rich guys fuck ups. This is an extremely powerful film that changes tack about halfway through. It goes from a siege film to a siege mentality story as we discover there's a lot more to this than we first think.
This is a movie that has Clooney playing the kind of guy you would not expect him to, but gradually he reverts into George Clooney as he goes from victim to the man ultimately in charge of a breaking story that's much bigger than being the victim of an angry young man with a gun. This is something you should try to see if you get the chance; it is an excellent story that, yet again, shows the shit side of the USA, especially the corporate side.
Political Animal
Ryan Gosling, looking young and not as handsome as everyone claims he is, stars in tonight's double bill of Clooney written, produced, directed and starred in movies. It seems I have a bottomless pit of George films to watch.
The Ides of March is about the dirty business of finding a nominee to run for President. Gosling plays a campaign #2 working for Philip Seymour Hoffman, the campaign manager for Clooney, who plays a Democratic governor hoping for the nomination. He's young, clever and probably perfect to set up for a fall. He gets involved with a young intern, who just happens to be the head of the DNC's daughter, but he isn't the only one who has fallen for her charms. This is about double dealing, shit slinging and whether or not you actually have the goods to bring men down. There is a distinct feeling that this is probably very much how US politics works, especially when you get down to the nitty gritty of who is going to run for President. Dog eat dog is too tame a description for it. Brutal, cold and nasty is a better way to describe it all.
Signing Off
The biopic of Edward R Murrow,
Good Night, And Good Luck is another Clooney look at US politics, this time at the award-winning CBS show where Murrow decides to take on senator Joe McCarthy and his Communist witch hunt. It's a bleak, paranoid film that is based entirely on transcripts and eye witness accounts of what actually happened in the 1950s during the trials and for the TV show, the network and the people involved behind the scenes. It is not exactly an exciting film, it's very wordy and studio based, but it is tense and earnest and David Strathairn is quite brilliant as Murrow and Clooney quite subdued as his producer Fred Friendly. This is a snapshot of US history and led to the downfall of McCarthy and the end to a period in US politics that wasn't based on facts but on lies and rumour. This is a great little film, worth watching.
Attack of the Spider-Men
As I've been nursing another chest infection, it has meant more time in front of the TV during the day and the first film I watched was on E4 and my second outing for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony's first actual decent superhero film. A hybrid of CGI and animation that seemed to get all the things it needed to do right.
I've never really warmed to the Ultimate Spider-Man idea of having someone else other than Peter Parker being the titular hero, but the way this first part of the trilogy works certainly made for a refreshing and interesting take on an idea that's now over 60 years old. as we were to find out in the second part, Miles Morales should not have become Spider-Man, especially as his reality already had one, but he did and he took over the mantle with some teething troubles. The reason for this film is really to introduce the [Spider] Multiverse and that is achieved by the Kingpin looking for an alternate reality to bring back his wife and child after they died in an accident he probably caused. So far so
Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Wankers and really this is the template for the third MCU Spider-Man film and it does it without the baggage. The animation is intense and different; the soundtrack is not my thing but I see how it works and it's considerably darker than you would think for what is essentially a kids film. If only Sony could make every superhero movie it makes even a fraction as good as this...
We get versions of Doc Ock, Tombstone, The Scorpion and a Kingpin that is a damned sight scarier and nastier than the one that has so far appeared in the Netflix/MCU - we're talking shithouse rat on steroids and more De Niro than D'Onofrio. This is a film that drags you in and keeps you entertained right until the final scene. Marvel/Disney could do with thinking about this as a template for the future rather than pursuing the dead end it's heading for at speed.
Moon Boys
Back when I was a pre-teen and even when I burst into the world as a teenager, there were films that I loved and always watched when they were on TV. These films were usually ones that involved Ray Harryhausen and his stop motion monsters.
The 1964 adaptation of HG Wells's
First Men in the Moon was always a favourite and on Monday, still feeling a little on the shitty side, I sat down and watched it. Yes, it's an absolute load of nonsense, but it was made five years before the moon landings; it is based on a book written in the Victorian era and it's that that drives the narrative - the way Victorian England barrelled its way through whatever it wanted to without fear or consequence and this really does a good job of showing that arrogance, mixed with the better side of humanity - something Nigel Kneale, who wrote it would return to again and again. Starring Martha Hyer, Edward Judd and the brilliant Lionel Jeffries as Professor Cavor, this is essentially a slapstick comedy about travelling to the moon in a metal box and destroying an existent civilisation by ignorance and something else that Wells used in his science fiction stories - the common cold. I can see why the 10 year old me loved this film so much; 50+ years later... it's a curio piece at best.
Conjunctivitis
The Wes Craven thriller
Red Eye made in 2005 was a recommendation from someone - remind me, when I remember who it was, to not take any notice of them in the future. An 'interesting' fact about this is the picture to the left of this review is the best I could do; it seems there are literally no stills at all from the film that don't carry logos or aren't from the current TV series. But all that aside, this is a really short film; a total of a few seconds shy of 77 minutes and even that felt a little too long. It had a reasonable cast in Rachel McAdam, Cillian Murphy and Brian Cox (the actor, not the physicist), but the script was a bit poo and the film was really devoid of suspense. It was a good idea; terrorists hold the manager of a hotel hostage on a flight to Miami and tells her that her father will be killed if she doesn't phone her hotel and get the room of a visiting senator moved so he (and his family) can be the victim of an Exocet missile attack. But... it just felt like an idea that was stretched out too much even for 77 minutes (so I hope to some deity that the TV series
Red Eye isn't using the same plot because that would be stretching it further than knicker elastic as a bungee jump rope). It was a below average film.
The Golf Gulf
Indulge me for a moment... I have been a fan of golf for most of my life, I played it until the 1990s when the first of a series of slipped discs forced me to become a spectator rather than a reasonable novice. Then the BBC essentially gave up their coverage of the sport and I won't give my money to Murdock, so I pretty much stopped watching golf in in 2017. I liked watching it 'live' so highlights programmes were just... dull.
Golf films are also something I'm not a huge fan of, mainly because they always look so half-baked and fake. Happy Gilmore is a fantastic comedy film, made me howl with laughter, but it isn't a golf movie. I never succumbed to other golf films until earlier this year when we watched
The Long Game which, while good, suffered from that half-baked fake look, especially when it came to the actual golf... Sitting on my hard drive for nearly two years has been
The Phantom of the Open, a comedy biopic of the infamous Maurice Flitcroft and his attempt to infiltrate the British Open Golf Championship in the long hot summer of 1976. It had been overlooked on the FDoD for so long I thought it was going to root itself in and refuse to be deleted; but with the actual Open about to start next week, I decided to give it watch.
The thing you need to understand (if you so choose) is that Flitcroft probably had anger and mental health issues. He managed to get a spot in the qualifying rounds of the Open (not the televised one, but the rounds to determine who qualified for the tournament proper), shot an unprecedented 121 for 18 holes and caused anger, consternation and a change in the rules. The 'Open' meant that as an open tournament, anyone could technically apply to play in it, as long as they met certain criteria, which Flitcroft never did. While this film is a comedy it didn't really address the Barrow-in-Furness man's bitterness at what he saw as upper class snobbery that prevented the average man from being involved in the world of golf. After being disqualified from the 1976 Open (for claiming he represented a golf club that refused him entry, not for shooting 121), he tried to enter the competition for years after, using fake names, false credentials and did more to harm the world of golf for the average person than help. This movie ignores loads of the facts to try and make a Full Monty type British underdog slapstick comedy film which, for the opening half an hour, is light-hearted and silly enough to appeal but then gets embarrassing and problematic - from all directions you look at it. It's not bad if you want something that is very, extremely, loosely based on a true story, but it's also cringe making and a waste of Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins' talents.
Hollywood Mobster
I'd forgotten just how good Get Shorty was. It's a film that the Cohen Brothers would have been proud to have made and yet it's a Barry Sonenfeld movie based on an Elmore Leonard story that twists, turns and generally has you wondering what the hell is going on while never losing sight of the ball. It's very much a work of genius.
It's yet another example of what a brilliant actor John Travolta was, especially during the 1990s and before he started making crap films and being involved with the Church of Scientology. He plays Chili Palmer, a debt collector for the mob who has the simple job of collecting a $15,000 debt that amazingly turns into a much larger deal through a series of mishaps and wrong steps. Palmer first goes to Las Vegas, where he discovers that the guy he's after has done a bunk to LA, but before Palmer leaves he's offered another job of tracking down a Hollywood producer who owes the casino $150k too. This producer, played by Gene Hackman, has a script that is quite brilliant, but Palmer also has a story that could be a film and by the time you're 20 minutes into the movie you need a scorecard to keep track of what's happening. Others involved in this classic are Rene Russo, Delroy Lindo, Danny DeVito, James Gandolfini, Dennis Farina and Bette Midler and they all add to a very enjoyable romp where Travolta rises head and shoulders above everyone else as the epitome of cool - something he managed to do for a lot longer than he probably thought.
No Muppet Show
I really don't think Benedict Cumberbatch does a good American accent, but it seems other do, because this time he's a New Yorker whose child is abducted in the unusual six-part series Eric.
It's set in 1985 and Benedict plays Vincent, the son of a real estate millionaire, who has made a name for himself as a puppeteer on a Sesame Street type kids TV show called Good Day Sunshine, but he's an egotistical alcoholic who has a destructive relationship with his wife - who is having an affair with a soup kitchen worker. Their son, Edgar, wants to be like his dad, but in a creative sense and is trying to invent a new character for the show, which his father is vehemently against - the new character not his son's ideas. When Edgar is abducted one morning - a morning Vincent should have been taking him to school - everything is thrown into disarray. The cop in charge of missing persons is also involved in something; he's secretly gay and lives with his partner who is clearly dying of AIDS. The cop - Mikey - thinks a dodgy club called Lux might be involved in the disappearance and things get murkier still when an undercover drug cop is killed in an hit and run accident, less than a day after a confrontation with Mikey inside Lux. But the thing that lifts this into the realms of truly weird is Eric, the manifestation of Edgar's creation for his dad's TV show - a six foot tall monster who looks like a cross between the Gruffalo and Bluey. It's full of twists, turns and things that don't make a lot of sense, at least until the end. It's one to watch out for.
Tits and Hacks
What do Wolverine, Storm, War Machine and Chili Palmer have in common? I'll give you a clue; it lives underwater and has a long nose... We'd never seen Swordfish. We knew little about it apart from the now infamous Halle Berry gets her tits out scene and when we finally watched it I couldn't understand why we never got around to watching it. It's a cracking movie.
Huge Ackman plays a hacker who is out on parole from Leavenworth and living in a trailer in Texas while his daughter lives with a drugged up mother in the home of a porn mogul. Don Cheadle plays a FBI agent who seems to be chasing his own tail at times, while Halle Berry is a DEA agent deeply entrenched in John Travolta's covert group who claim to be top secret government an anti-terrorist unit attempting to embezzle $9billion from a dead government account. This is a brazen, rude and confident movie that is action-packed and keeps you puzzled throughout most of it, from the WTF opening to the 'this is what we do' explanation to the unexpected twists and turns that keep you absolutely nailed to it. There's maybe a little too much sexploitation going on, but you kind of realise that it's all part of the hustle and that hustle is far reaching and knows no limits. This is a great film that shocks and surprises and while it's 23 years old, it doesn't feel that dated.
How To Save A Life
What we had here was a slightly throw away story wrapped around an essential plot episode. The halfway point of the final season of Evil was big on plot and slightly superficial on our heroes.
While Ben, David and Kristen try to track down the subject of one of David's visions to save his life, Cheryl, sister Andrea and Father Frank carry out a christening in the most unlikely of circumstances with everything trying to prevent them from doing it. You see Cheryl has a plan to screw up Leland's plans, even if it ultimately means her death and now she has the church's support, even if Father Frank has no idea what he's really doing. Meanwhile David's remote viewing is being screwed up by coincidences he couldn't see until it was literally at the end of his nose. What we also had here was no mention of last week's cliffhanger ending [I told you so!] and no unnecessary children, Djinns, unwanted girlfriends and not much of the Vatican. It was a plot episode hidden away inside a salvation story with the three main characters having little or nothing to do with anything.
Butcher's Last Stand?
Let's put it this way; there has been no sign of Billy Butcher being saved, so unless there's a Deus Ex Machina waiting in the wings, next week could be the last episode we see Karl Urban in for The Boys.
Lots of revelations this week, far too many to go into without really spoiling it for those who are playing catch-up, but it seems that the now fired Sage was always so ahead of the curve that her biggest mistake was not letting anyone else in on her nefarious plans; the thing is now Homelander has got rid of her (and she isn't dead), is she going to end up being the help The Boys need in preventing the assassination of the new President or are they going to need help from elsewhere? Maybe it's going to be Ryan, who finally seems to be tiring of his natural father's megalomaniacal bullshit and could be the best weapon to fight him. Or perhaps Hughie got through to Victoria even if she didn't seem to have been changed after they had a final meeting. If this is Butcher's last stand then I hope the show is brave enough to let him go and focus on a new look team of anti-heroes next time around. Perhaps it's time for A Train to go to the light side? Or maybe whatever happened to Butcher in that caravan a few episodes back is going to be the saviour of him? Whatever happens this is a series that needs a new direction to stop it from just being a re-tread of everything that has happened before.
Facebook is Shite
Regular readers will be aware that I'm having problems posting the links to this blog on my Facebook page now. There's a number of reasons given: spam, misleading information, attempts to lure people away from the platform, fishing for likes and while this blog could be construed as spam with misleading information that attempts to lure people away from the platform, I really take umbrage at suggesting I'm some kind of millennial fool who is just doing this for likes. I think anyone who knows me will happily agree that I couldn't give a shit what people think of my blog and if everyone hated it, even ignored it, it wouldn't stop me from doing it.
The thing is, I don't seem to be alone with problems from Zuckerberg's bloated piece of donkey shite. I know of friends who are still being sanctioned for reactions to shit that any ordinary person would have banned from the app years ago. You can't wish ill will on someone who posts 'video nasties' or racist polemic, which in any civilised society beggars belief. Someone can advocate the deaths of refugees but try wishing the same on that person and find yourself in trouble. What kind of fucked up world do we live in where someone calling out heinous behaviour is worse than the person who is being heinous?
I run a wild mushroom foraging page; it has 6.5k members - so is deemed 'small' by Facebook algorithms; every day I get fake accounts trying to join the group. They're easily identifiable and usually they're all linked by liking or being friends with an outfit called The Soul Trippers Club; this is essentially a drug dealing page that promotes things that are illegal in many countries. Every time I report a fake account nothing happens, but if I allowed one of these accounts onto my mushroom group they would spam it with whats'app addresses and links to places where you can buy magic mushrooms. The only conclusion I can draw from this is this page of scammers pays Facebook to 'advertise' therefore they're exempt from scrutiny. Facebook is a free thing, but needs to make money. Another page I own - a Spurs fan club page with over 20K followers - is regarded as a business by Facebook, despite the fact if I tried to make money from it Spurs would sue my arse. I've told Facebook numerous times that it can't be a business, it's a fan page, but they ignore everything, because they can and because they're above any form of scrutiny from any of the world's governments. They are a law unto themselves and everyone who uses the app has fewer rights than a dog does in North Korea.
Trailer Trash
Two Marvel trailers dropped this week: Agatha: All Along which actually looks completely different to what I expected. It certainly doesn't look like a musical series and it does look dark and decidedly creepy. It drops in September and on the evidence of the trailer alone looks worth an hour or two of my time. However, that's been said before of MCU TV and some of it has been shite.
We're finally getting a glimpse of
Captain America: Brave New World and it also looks like it could be quite good, apart from the fact we know there have been more reshoots than a porn film about multiple orgasms. Harrison Ford seems like a strange choice to replace the departed William Hurt, given Ford is about 85 and, you know, you have to wonder how much time is on his side. It also appears to have Giancarlo Esposito in it as a bad guy and there's a guy who looks older than his 66 years. Plus, as you can tell from the picture above, a new Hulk is on the horizon and this probably moots my point about Harrison Ford, especially if General Ross gets permanently turned into the newest version of the many Hulks that currently inhabit the Marvel Comics Universe [there was only the Hulk and She Hulk when I read comics].
The film looks like it's trying to go for that Steve Rogers movie feel and I like the fact that Ford tells Anthony Mackie that he's not Steve Rogers as it kind of grounds the movie a little. I just hope it's a coherent thing and not an incoherent mess, like many superhero films that have had multiple reshoots often turn out to be. Both this and Agatha: All Along trailers are on the Tube of You.
But that's not it... There's another 'superhero' movie coming out; this time a new actor playing an old 'hero'. Jack Kesy is Hellboy in
Hellboy: The Crooked Man, which on the face of it looks low budget and like they're trying to squeeze the Mike Mignola super-demon into a horror picture about a character also created by Mike Mignola. It looks like a mash-up and Kesy's Hellboy looks far worse than David Harbour's dreadful version from a couple of years ago. This appears to be the hero drafted into helping solve the riddle of a nasty serial killer in a Hicksville back country and the trailer - also available on the Tube of You, looks truly fucking woeful.
Next Time...
No Friday night telly for us as I dragged my sorry bronchial arse to another of my new pub quizzes. So, what can you expect next week? What about the season finale of The Boys, the highly anticipated Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and the hope that House of the Dragon remains interesting and the anticipation that it will just slope back off into mumble jumbo land. We have things to finish and stuff to start and a bunch of finals to miss on Sunday. Some summer would be nice...
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