Pop Culture - A 'Slow' Week

It's mostly about TV this week. I've tried to avoid spoilers but I might not...

The MI5 Run-Around

As we have grown accustomed, Slow Horses starts off with one thing and invariably will end up somewhere else entirely. This superb show is anything but predictable, however there is an element of predictability in the opening episode of the fourth season... 

Gary Oldman is back as Jackson Lamb, the guy running the department where all failed spies go to waste away until they die or get killed off. But of course, as we've discovered, Lamb has apparently no time for his team, everyone thinks they're shite and yet they seem to spend more time solving MI5 problems than MI5 does and this is likely to be another one of those cases. The new series kicks off with Jonathon Pryce (River Cartwright's grandfather, David, who is suffering from early stages of dementia) accidentally killing his grandson with a shotgun, except when Lamb is called to identify the body of his most able bodied but accident-prone team member, he seems less than bothered - usual par for the course antics from a man who makes the Steptoe brothers look well kept. It soon becomes clear that someone wants David Cartwright dead and as he used to be First Desk - ie: head of MI5 - this could be important.

Obviously, MI5 are way behind everyone else, except for Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner, who hasn't become First Desk like we expected her to be, but is running around sorting out the new #1's problems because he's got chocolate teapot written all over him. She suspects something is going on, but apart from River's apparent death doesn't think this is a Slough House thing. Meanwhile, Jackson has already visited Saskia Reeves' Standish and worked out most of what is happening and mobilised his team of misfits into doing some work. Jackson has a new PA who has already pissed him off - just by being there - and there's a new team member who doesn't appear to do anything and seems deeply disturbed. It's great to have it back. I'll conclude my review next week.

Second Thoughts

This week was all about Victor (Rhenzy Feliz); the boss's apprentice in The Penguin. Oz's young assistant, recruited because Oz could see something of himself in the stuttering young Hispanic, is at a crossroads in his life and has to make some decisions. This played out by looking at Vic's days before the flood and before Gotham's fall. Things didn't seem that bad for him - loving family, girlfriend and mates. Then the Riddler came along and anyone who doesn't have money in Gotham has been paying the price ever since. This episode was really more about decisions than actions. In this case, specifically Vic's reasons for being Oz's new kid; Oz's reasons for now being on Sofia's side (or is he?) considering his betrayal of her a decade earlier and the reasons both want revenge over the wide Falcone empire. This week includes extortion, double crosses and admissions of guilt, but it's just part of the long game. The only problem I have with this is Sofia might be a psychopath but she's as sharp as a razor and some of Cobb's moves can't be going over her head quite as far as they appear to be...

Afterthought

You remember the other week when I was filling space by talking about shit I won't watch, anime with ridiculous names and ... oh yes, talking about anime with ridiculous names, does anyone fancy a season of As a Reincarnated Aristocrat I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World? Who knew? Aristocrats have an appraisal skill; that's what they do! I mean, is life so fucking exciting in Japan that they make boring anime as anti-dopamine for the masses?

Stretch Armstrong

I think Ryan Gosling is a lucky man because he is a film star, a veritable A lister, and yet, by and large, he comes across as really fucking dull, so who better to play Neil Armstrong. First Man is a biopic of the first man on the moon and I'm amazed it weighs in at over two hours, because Armstrong was never a charismatic individual and always came over as a bit boring - almost the perfect choice for first man on another planet - no hyperbole from Neil. It's not an exciting film as you can imagine because you know everything that's going to happen, it's just the bit beforehand that we weren't really clear about. I don't know if this is factually accurate; I can't say if Armstrong and his first wife had a strained relationship (they lasted another 25 years after he walked on the moon) and I don't know if he dropped beads belonging to his dead daughter on the surface. I didn't really care, to be honest. I don't know what I expected really; I knew about NASA and the moon landings and I knew Armstrong was as exciting as watching paint dry. I shouldn't be disappointed that his biopic was meh.

Shameless Copy?

The entertaining thing about Brassic when it started was how it felt like a derivative, there was a charm that made it feel more authentic, not a knock off. Then, at almost the perfect time, ten minutes from the conclusion of season four, it really looked like they were going to wrap it all up and let Vinnie and his chums go their own way, we got a cliffhanger epilogue and everything changed.

It was from that fourth season that things changed. Joe Gilgun started to sound like he wanted to be somewhere else; Damien Molony wanted to be somewhere else, so he did and Michelle Keegan's bright future had come to a stuttering halt - Brassic was now the only thing she had left. There was also a massive drop off of Dominic West from that point as well - he's Vinnie's psychiatrist and large buyer of weed as well as being so much more at times... The thing is, Brassic had its faults but it was fun, even the serious subplots had a pantomime feel about them, but with season five, to try and reinvigorate things and to try and replace what they'd lost, they started to delve into the worlds of Vin's supporting crew and the thing is you don't need to do that. Vinnie has dodgy mates, we don't need to know how they got dodgy.

Plus and especially last series, I started to get increasingly hacked off with the filming schedule and the subsequent editing. What is it with Northern dramas and television? Is it not possible to shoot things chronologically any longer? In the opening episode - a jaunt to Dublin for a 'Fools and Horses' styled 'heist' episode - the filming took place in the spring, summer, autumn and winter and was then spliced together. It might be a small and simple thing but it is disconcerting if you notice it.

There is a familial comfort about this series, but I no longer think it has the strong characters it once had. However, this new season appears to be an ongoing plot inside of an existing narrative - if you know what I mean - there were many questions left unanswered at the end of season five and so far each episode has dealt with one of those questions, while simultaneously introducing new stories that help the story flow. The wife said, 'this is better than the last series, isn't it?' and she's probably right; it does feel as though some of the mojo has been rediscovered. We're halfway through, the remaining episodes will be talked about next week.

Cheated?

The extremely strange Outer Range, the time travel, black hole, neo-western series starring Josh Brolin was cancelled in July; after two seasons and a massive cliffhanger, Amazon pulled the plug on the show leaving anyone who followed it (and enjoyed it) a little disappointed. Brolin said in an interview recently that he'd like to see the story concluded but it was unlikely to happen in the current climate.

This was a TV show with big bucks and big stars but was a difficult watch at times because you never really had a clue where things were going. Brolin played Royal Abbott, the head of a family of ranchers, who it seems came out of nowhere in the 1970s and was adopted by the Abbott family. On his land is a black hole; a seeming portal to different times and alternate existences. Included in this was his wife played by Lili Taylor, his two sons - Lewis Pullman and Tom Pelphrey and his grand daughter played by Olive Abercrombie and Imogen Poots. The biggest problem the Abbots have, apart from themselves, is the Tillerson family who own the next door farm and want to acquire the land where the mysterious hole is. By the end of season two it was more like a game of time-related snakes and ladders than a straight forward narrative, but it was a cracking series that felt like a re-imagining of the brilliant German time travel series Dark - despite there being absolutely nothing to suggest this other than the time travel business. Hopefully someone will come along and try and get a final season made, but with many of this show's stars having moved onto bigger and greater projects, I expect that will be unlikely.

Agatha OMG

Do you know, I almost forgot I watched this, it is having such a profound effect on me... One thing is certain about episode five of Agatha All Along is the comedy (what little there was) was drained away with this, rather dark and foreboding instalment.

This is still dull and little boring, although we're learning some things, a couple of them should not surprise anyone. Agatha is an absolute bitch; she's a bad guy and no one has anything decent to say about her. She uses people, manipulates them and then 'absorbs' anything positive from a situation and turns it into her advantage and all of her coven knew this but they still came along for the ride. The biggest problem this show has apart from very little happening is the absence of jeopardy and threat. None of the characters - apart from Agatha - have been seen before, therefore no one has any investment in them and subsequently when one 'dies' it's more of a shrug moment than anything else. The underlying mystery of who 'Teen' is might be interesting now it's clear he isn't Agatha's sacrificed son, especially the closing scene of this part, which suggests he's going to be one of the Romanov twins - the children Wanda had in WandaVision but, of course, were just constructs from her warped and damaged mind. To be honest, that works for me because we're talking magic here and I figure it's a template for 'no holds barred, we can do anything'. 

This week was also another opportunity for the cast to dress up in groovy, multi-coloured outfits like they're about to appear on a 1980s Noel Edmonds TV show. There were also some nods to other MCU films that include magic in them and the Salem Seven showed up again - a genuinely scary bunch of characters, I'm hoping they offer some resistance in the closing four parts because at the moment they're a creepy looking damp squib. This series will not go down as a glorious success.

Next Time...

It's been a busy week and most of the TV viewing has been parts of boxsets. Next week, as well as the latest instalments of Agatha All Along and The Penguin, there will conclusions for Brassic and Slow Horses. In the queue waiting to be watched are season two of The Old Man, that 2022 HBO series Let The Right One In, there's also Grotesquerie and Teacup to be started. We left Grimm at the end of season three with a cliffhanger, but we're trying to have some variety in what we're watching, so we might try and go another week without dipping back into creepy Portland...

There are films on the FDoD and on the set top box hard drive; Caddo Lake and Speak No Evil are two films recently released that will be prioritised over the older stuff. It will be what it will be and you'll be the first to see it, next Saturday...

 

Modern Culture - Blood and Blunders

Frankly, this once, I don't give a shit about spoilers...

BoredPool and Dullverine

It has been almost a year since the last Marvel/MCU film. That was the woefully poor The Marvels, which was considerably worse than I thought it was going to be. You might also note that usually I give an entire column over to the latest MCU film, but this once I thought, 'Ah fuck it. It can slum it with the rest of the shite.'

Honestly? Deadpool & Wolverine is not a good film. It actually gets quite boring after a while as it lurches from one set piece to another; a movie in search of a fathomable story. It rides roughshod over some Marvel history and has unnecessary cameos, which felt more like who they could get rather than anyone top quality or they would have liked. Yes, Chris Evans is good, but where are the other members of this FF? Or any of the others for that matter? The TVA, in this, have driven a Mad Max styled car through the excellent Loki series with their appearance and Matthew McFadyen's Mr Paradox is far too slimy to be anything other than a twat. When you have the third part of a trilogy (albeit one that no one saw coming for a few years) you'd expect it to feel like it was some kind of special event. This felt like they got loaned one of the old location sites used for Doctor Who shows in the 1970s and ran wild with it. Huge swathes of this make no sense at all - absolutely nothing. Why were the army of other Deadpools so determined to kill 'our' Wade and his Wolverine? Is that dog for real and if so was it painful? I felt like I needed to write a concerned letter to the Kennel Club. What about the 'villain' - the bald twin sister of Charles Xavier, introduced in the comics after my time and... um... why is she bald? Charlie lost his hair when he was young to something un-mutant related, so why is his twin sister bald? It was for the look and the style, wasn't it? Bald lady villain look good!!!

This was a truly awful movie. The first LOL moment for me came 100 minutes into it and while there was a second inside the following ten minutes, this is a poor return for a 'franchise' that prides itself on its comedy and despite the first two films being okay, they were far funnier than this. D&W really did feel as though it was written with the exact brief of simply being more Deadpool [Read: Ryan Reynolds] than the first two. I mean, if there was ever a place to use as a dumping ground for bad ideas - Kang maybe? - or a place to literally show where bad ideas go to die, this film could have done it and claimed afterwards that while it was a piss take, the actual continuity in it is proper. Anyhow after all this nonsense, Deadpool remains on his own timeline, which he has made healthier - gosh and darn - and with a heap of luck we may never see a fourth film ever materialise or hopefully an X-Men movie ever again. There's this pained expression on Huge Ackman's face for most of the movie, like he was doing this for a favour and the money wasn't good enough to assuage the feeling of having been conned by an old buddy. What astounds me is the 8 rating on IMDB; the fact that people liked this heap of shite even though it was an incoherent mess of guts and shit. Remember when other people said 'normal' people reviews were the true reflection of a movie because there was no vested interest in it for the reviewer? That's a crock of shit. If you haven't seen this and were considering it, perhaps go for a curry the night before - have extra poppadums, a naan, a healthy starter and a Vindaloo to take home; drink 17 pints of Guinness, eat lots of lentil snacks and avoid going anywhere near a toilet until you're about to start this film; then take a laxative and run.

Bang the Drum

It was a big film 10 years ago. I think it won an Oscar or two and everything from the subject to the way it was played out won kudos and praise from Hollywood and it barely ever registered on my radar. A film about sadistic drum teachers and subservient pupils doesn't really sound like a riveting thing and to be honest, it wasn't that interesting.

It's clear from almost the first minute of Whiplash that Miles Teller wanted to be a brilliant drummer, so that he would help his cause to get there he would allow himself to be mentally abused on a daily basis while simultaneously being treated like a piece of shit isn't really that different from real life, except JK Simmons plays the teacher with a casual cruelty that's about maximum hurt. In fact, it becomes clear this is simply an allegory for any kind of 'domestic' abuse, even down to the desire to return to it even if it is bad for you, the highs are so much better. It is not a likeable film; Teller is weaselly and cold while Simmons is fire and brimstone, in a 'there-could-be-Oscars-in-this-for-us' way and the denouement was a mixture of the sadist and the masochist routine but with a huge nod to how without pain there is no gain. Like I said, not likeable, very American with a message that it is both bad, but good, to live your life this way.

Fishing For a Spark

I doesn't even feel like it was last year we were here talking about the then most recent Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing series and I was suggesting that maybe it needed to go out to pasture, maybe wheel the pair out for a Christmas special every yule where they get sent to ridiculously inhospitable places around the globe as they get older and more likely to have some repeat but deadlier cardiac infarction. So when they concluded said series with a reminder that this wasn't the end of their fishing trips, they were already planning season 6, we all knew that something that probably didn't need to be would be back for another.

The opener took the boys back to Norfolk and in search of tench and carp and it also managed to fit in the chat with the heart doctor who saved Bob's life - as they do every series. One gets the idea that Bob enjoys his couple of weeks filming round the UK with his mate, while Paul has seemed increasingly like he'd rather we doing ten other things - literally. However, that feeling had disappeared slightly with a poignant and slow but graceful episode which saw the boys catch three of the biggest fish we've seen on this show and having done this seems to have allowed Paul Whitehouse to enjoy himself again. There is a strange competition between the two men, one I don't think Bob is aware of, so while Paul was pleased as punch that Bob caught an absolute hefty tench, when he pulled an even bigger one and then a monster carp, there was the sense of competition in his eyes and face. It did feel like it had been given a refresh without doing much than returning to what it became popular for.

Criminal Moves

The Penguin needed to be something extraordinary to pull off even getting close to its first stunning episode and I'm sorry to say it didn't get close. It wasn't bad, but I think I see what the problem is and it makes some sense...

There's this thing in comics that having a run of 6 issues in a popular comic written by different people every month might provide a good idea, but there's going to be something jarring about the stuff that isn't the main story that everyone is sticking with. It's usually dialogue and/or character interaction between each issue that makes it feel a little incongruous. Episode one does such a good job of showing this longstanding knowledge even borderline friendship between Sofia Falcone and Oz, and the conclusion of that episode would have been noted by the Sofia from episode one, but she seemed to be gone in the second part. The interaction between her and Oz was like two strangers at times; conversations you feel would have been had many years before episode one was even thought of. But, meh, it was a small foible that bugged me. Other than that it was yet another episode of Oz causing as much chaos and havoc from inside the Falcone operation while managing never to get the finger pointed at him. I'm hoping that the 'goal' Oz talks about is what is achieved in the coming season and we don't just have HBO trying to recreate the Sopranos using some background Batman cast. 

The Backfire

We return to one of the regular - sometimes rhetorical - questions I ask myself in this blog: why do I believe that The Guardian would direct me towards a good movie when it has systematically failed to do so for the last five years or so? To be honest, the 'newspaper' is batting a very poor 20%, possibly even lower than that, in the 'do I trust the review' game and while this one only got a three-star rank, I entered into it with a degree of, dare I say it, optimism. I don't know why... Could this, for me, be... The Last Straw... ..?

Jessica Belkin has just been promoted to management at her family diner in the arse end of nowhere. She's just discovered she's pregnant, she fucks anything that moves, so the father could be one of a few people and she has an attitude problem that makes you wonder why anyone would want to go near here. On her first night 'in charge' she fires the cook Jake, for no real reason other than she's an arsehole and he's a bit of a twat. She does this because he gets smart about some even wankier idiots who come into the diner and cause a stink. It should have been at this point - about 25 minutes in - when we should have turned it off and watched something else. The acting was poor and there didn't seem to be much of a story. Then the diner is attacked by some dodgy guys on mopeds - possibly the ones who gave her a bad time earlier. Then the film gets turned on its head and even this twist isn't enough to make it better than shite. It's got a 5.3 rating on IMDB; I would have avoided it like the plague, but something about the Guardian review made me think maybe all the people who watched this and realised it was a load of shite, maybe they got it wrong and the Guardian had uncovered a low budget violent thriller that really rocked. Or maybe it would just be like the watery discharge from some one suffering from dysentery, but the Guardian is paid by sadists to tell us crap films are really quite good...

Ring Burner

And so we watched The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power for the last time, because we won't be wasting our time if and when they make a third season. It is a television series that looks like it was made by a man who creates fantasy screensavers and backdrops. The dangling plot threads seemed to be 'concluded' in a list - let's start here and work our way through all the different subplots we have running and then we can set things up for the next series and hope we employ someone who knows how to write a fantasy show - and while some died and some not, did I give an actual jot? No I didn't. There were a few nods and winks - the Balrog, Sauron being called LOTR and all the suspense around Galadriel - obviously pointless because we know she's knocking around in a thousand years time, which begs the (unanswered) question about how they're going to pad this series out and what stories will they use. The thing is I don't care. I'm done with it. Dull.

Have You Seen the Witch?

Here's the thing. Marvel doesn't do good quality now; it does Marvel stuff, which covers a shedload of bases and means fuck all in the face of a quality threshold. Agatha All Along is boring, extremely camp, and this week we got another rendition of the witch song from episode one. 

This is simply not that good. It plods along with no real pace, is very wordy and talks about people we have no knowledge of or no interest in; it's either lazy or just not very well thought out. Hahn is borderline annoying and her coven are there to add important link verbiage so she can talk some more about herself or the mysterious new Green witch - Plaza. This week the autumn leaves road takes them to another house, this time to delve into another of the coven's histories and an excuse to dress up and do a sunshine 60s homage pop tune just to ensure the campness is ramped up even higher. MCU TV isn't batting a good average - Loki was superb but they're already ruining that's legacy. The Falcon and Bucky thing was okay and oddly enough WandaVision now feels groundbreaking, the rest are varying degrees of shite, even the ones that you want to like (Ms Marvel) are largely what remains inside a writer's bowels after he's been murdered by a bowel eating killer.  

The Modern Vampire Classic Trashed

If we want to be honest about the two previous Salem's Lot TV mini-series, it would be that neither were that good, probably because they were made for networked TV; so a full-length feature film of the classic modern vampire story and one of Stephen King's seminal offerings seemed like a match made in heaven. Then you hear that it was actually finished in 2021 and a lot of work was 'needed'. I don't think anything was needed apart from maybe a film editor who was allowed to watch the thing he'd been given a pair of scissors to attack. This new film stars Lewis Pullman, my actor du jour and about to grace the Marvel stage as Bob aka Sentry in an upcoming film. He was also Calvin Evans in Lessons in Chemistry and in this he was fantastic. Maybe the reason I'm dwelling on Pullman's past is because this bit of his 'present' stinks like a bucket of fermented shit. In complete honesty, I'm perplexed as to how something like this even gets a release. Has anyone anywhere that writes cheques or gives approval for something or other not seen this? Did they not watch it and go to other people in the chain of this becoming a film and say 'we'd be better off drowning ourselves in buckets of faeces than endorse this amount of digital space'. If you know the story or have seen the other adaptations then do not go anywhere near this; treat it like some idiots have made a Lego version and remind yourself you hate Lego. If you don't know the story then also don't go anywhere near this 'movie'. It will just leave you angry and probably tired; tired of watching so much shit hoping it might be better than you hoped for.

I am genuinely flummoxed by this. It's a truly difficult thing to adapt into anything other than a min-series, yet this was almost all over and done with by the 90th minute. The makers saw fit to add things that were not in the original, yet take other bits out that might have helped the narrative a little. It had clearly been hacked to pieces almost to the point where certain characters literally have no reason. Take Pullman's Ben Mears - in the original, he was drawn back to Salem's Lot because of a scary thing that happened to him in the allegedly haunted Marston House. His arrival in the town coincided with the arrival of the vampires, thus making his 'past issues' now his present issues. He did return to write a book, the thing was he didn't know that, he just used it as an excuse. In the film, he turns up, says he's researching for a new book and you're left with this... emptiness. Mark Petrie in the book was many things, but this story was his journey from point A to Z; in the film he's a plucky little black kid who beats vampire familiar's to death with a poker. The way the film jumps around, people turn up unannounced or some of the dialogue doesn't seem to have any relationship with what's going on suggests that this was an even longer pile of shite and they took a hatchet to it to cut their losses. It has a 5.8 rating on IMDB already, that will drop as it is deserved...

Next Time...

More of the same.