Modern Culture - Monsters

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

Which Mobster?

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

Witch Monster?

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

Dull Men in Lab Coats

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

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

Funny History

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

Needless Shits

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

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

Trailer Trash

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

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

The End of Grimm is Nigh

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

Preparatory

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

In Concert

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

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

Next Time...

Whatever we watch in the coming week...