My Cultural Life - New Year, Newish Look

Welcome to a new blog. A bit like the old blog but slightly different in that this won't just be about films and TV, it will also be about music, books and my life, because I expect 2025 will be different - well, it's more hope than expectation, but I'll be 63 in April and I've got to do more than just sit in front of the TV and then tell you about it while trying not to spoil things for those of you who might not have seen what I was watching...

Christmas Repeat

Facebook memories has become a useful tool in many ways, especially around things like birthdays and, of course, Christmas and the New Year. I've been doing Facebook for 17 years in June and that's longer than I want to think about - I mean, it still feels newish.

What these memories also do is show me how bloody often I've been ill over the holidays. This was our 8th Scottish Christmas/Hogmanay and it was also the fourth time one or both of us have been ill. Fortunately (if that is the right word), it was only me this time and it waited until December 28 before it hit me. What had been a teensy sniffle on the 23rd, 24th and 25th, got a bit more snotty on Boxing Day and the 27th and then whatever virus I'd managed to catch took hold and by New Year's Eve I'd broken out the emergency antibiotics and steroids.

A cold will probably be the death of me. In many ways it was the death of my mum; it was a cold that made the previous chain of events (my dad's non-fatal heart attack and the subsequent days that followed) a concoction of imminent death. Of course, we didn't know this at the time, but less than 3 weeks after my dad came out of hospital, my mum was in it and dying. When I was diagnosed with COPD, the doctor - a lovely woman called Helen Mead - said as I was leaving her office, "Oh and try not to get any colds; colds are bad for you." I've been told by a number of health professionals since that it was very unprofessional of her to say this, but I think it was her way of saying that at some point in the future a cold will be my undoing.

Jeez, this is maudlin, you're probably thinking? The thing is mum died when she was 64 and I'm zeroing in on that number and with COPD, my anxiety issues, propensity to get viruses and lack of any discernible social life - since COVID - I made a decision at the end of November to do stuff. So I signed up to a Tai Chi class; I have gotten involved in helping the newly acquired community buy out of the pub (and will work there for free if they'll have me - at least until they're up and running) and I have a bunch of other things on a 2025 list of things I need to do to get me back being the Phil I once was. It might be a resolution I screw up, but I've never been one for New Year change, so why not start now?

So this new blog is going to be more than just what I watch on the Smart TV in the living room. It might not seem that different for a while, but I have things to read, to listen to and to get involved with that I hope will be more interesting than weekly updates of what I think of a 10 year old TV series I've just got around to watching. That said, we ended 2024 with something altogether better than I expected...

Creep

What a simply superb movie Heretic is. Who would have thought that a) a film about two Mormon missionaries on a recruitment drive and b) Hugh Grant being Hugh Grant in a totally scary way, could be such a barnstormer of a feature? Not me for starters. I'd had this for a couple of months and I kept putting it off, preferring to watch anything rather than see if all the critics were right. They were. Heretic is a modern horror classic because like any really good horror film, it's totally plausible. Grant plays Mr Reed, a man who lives in a lovely - very British looking - house, who has expressed interest in talking to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, so he is visited by two young and idealistic young women. The moment they walk into his house it looks like a bad idea and if you have any idea what the film is about then you're looking at all the clues and thinking exactly what you're supposed to be thinking.

For a movie that is mainly set in Reed's living room, parlour and cellar, it pretty much whizzes along and about a third of the way through any atheists out there will be totally enjoying Hugh Grant's speeches about religion; by which time all the two women want is to leave - something both of them now realise isn't going to happen. This is a clever, nasty and quite shocking feature and was the perfect way to end 2024 - we watched it NYE - if you haven't seen it, then I recommend you do and if I had to give it a rating - my rating rather than an IMDB one - then I'd give it a solid 8/10.

There is also a weird connection between The Hollies, Radiohead and Lana Del Rey, but you'll need to see it to understand it.

Invisible Touch?

Unlike many old films I review, I'd never seen the 2000 adaptation of Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho and after finally watching it I'm glad I'd never watched it and wish it had stayed that way. It's a very confusing film that made little sense to me until about the halfway mark when I started to realise that everything in it was going on in his head. Now if that's a spoiler then tough because this film is a quarter of a century old and if you haven't seen it by now then you're never going to. Possibly the funniest moment in this darkly comic movie was Bale discussing his love of Genesis (the pop iteration of the prog band) and his admiration for Phil Collins, which, if nothing else, proved categorically that this was indeed a comedy. What was real, what wasn't? Was Christian Bale actually playing someone called Patrick Bateman or was his name Davies? In the end it made little sense and I felt it was badly acted - apart from Bale - and was mindblowingly bad. I rate this a 3/10 and a recommendation to watch something more interesting instead.

Comanche Run

If you want to be honest, when a franchise as big as this one boasts the original, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the best of the bunch then any discerning movie goer would question whether watching any of the sequels is worth the time and effort. However, Prey the 2022 prequel to Arnie's Predator is an incredibly well done, back-to-basics, film that is worth your time, even if you don't like sci-fi films with ugly brutish monsters as the main antagonist. This is set in North America in 1791 and is all about Amber Midthunder as Naru, a woman who wants to be a warrior but isn't taken seriously by her elders and 'betters'. All of her attempts to prove herself either fail or fail spectacularly; that is until a Predator arrives on her peoples' reservation and starts hacking the heads off its prey.   

This is an excellent addition to the franchise, with possibly only Adrien Brody's 2010 sequel Predators also worth your time and effort. Midthunder is excellent (as is her dog) and this absolutely is a full on, no time to rest, thriller with nods to the original film as well as some ingenious ideas. It deserves a solid 7/10 and a thumbs up from me if you've never seen it. Don't be put off by the sci-fi monster premise; this is about emancipation as much as it's about alien creatures with advanced weaponry for the 18th century.

Beach Bums

The documentary about the history of The Beach Boys has been floating around my hard drive for over six months. It's something I've wanted to watch but never got around to it, so on New Year's Day afternoon, we settled down and watched the film that is currently available on Disney+. It's very comprehensive up to a point and spends best part of two hours looking at the period between 1961 when the Wilsons' decided to start a band and goes up to the mid 1970s when the band had fallen into decline and were no longer the superstars they had been. While it does a really good job of telling the story of their success and the savant genius that Brian Wilson was, it skirts over issues in their later life and careers that might have made this an even more enjoyable (and truthful) documentary. 

I suppose this was a celebration so the darker moments in the band's career were overlooked or simply airbrushed out. There was no mention of Dennis Wilson's ostracization and drug struggles or his death which was accidental but could have been suicide. Neither was there any meaningful mention of Carl Wilson's struggle with cancer before he died in the late 1990s. The Mike Love controversy was swept over briefly, with no real mention of the huge rift that formed between Love and his cousin Brian Wilson, which led to the two not speaking for years after Love - rightly - sued for loss of royalties. The problem was he sued Brian and it wasn't really Brian's fault his father was a complete cunt.

I learned a lot of things that I never knew, like Glen Campbell was a member of the band for a while in the 60s or that effectively there were two Beach Boys - the studio band and the touring one, because Wilson - who is clearly on the spectrum - kept having breakdowns when he went on tour, so stayed in the studio composing all their hits with Phil Spector's session band The Wrecking Crew. Anyhow, if you want to have a nostalgic two hours of songs we all know and many of us grew up with then this is worth your while. I give it a wobbly 6.5/10.

Pot Sounds?

Honestly, this is what I should do more with this blog... Much of the focus of the Beach Boys documentary was on Pet Sounds, the groundbreaking (really?) album which many believe was the best thing the Californian band ever created [read: Brian Wilson]. So after watching the documentary, I gave the album a couple of listens to. This is what I think... 

The documentary has Al Jardine claiming he played the album to Lennon and McCartney and they were so blown away they listened to it three times. This may well have been the case, but one suspects because of the rivalry built up either side of the Atlantic by the people associated to the bands, Lennon and McCartney wanted to see what they're rivals were up to next and maybe they were impressed by it or maybe they thought, "If this is the best Wilson can do then lets go into the studio and blow him away!" Pet Sounds is a Beach Boys album. It has less surfs up type songs and a few things - God Only Knows and Wouldn't It Be Nice especially - that showed they were capable of doing something other than derivative pop. It doesn't float my boat and I like the band's hit singles - but that's about as far as it goes. This has some excellent hits on it and a bunch of meh other tracks that didn't - for me - show the genius of Brian Wilson. Yes, as an arranger and producer he was good, but probably with the exception of Good Vibrations (which wasn't on this album) there hasn't been anything really innovative and even that classic single is still the Beach Boys. Considering they pretty much went into decline after this album, one wonders if people view this with rose tinted glasses rather than with a serious critical hat on. It's okay, but if I hadn't already owned it, I wouldn't go and buy it.

Chase Me

The wife is a big fan of The Chase, but it's because she's a quiz fan more than anything else. I am also a quiz fan - obs - but this is a show that infuriates me (much like many afternoon quiz shows). Why does it infuriate me? Well, for two reasons. The first is the incredibly stupid people who appear on it. Do these people understand that they're on a quiz show so they need to have a rudimentary understanding of general knowledge? And secondly, why do people go on this show to take the low offer? I mean, you get an opportunity to go on a show, they're already highly unlikely to win the jackpot - I think it happens about once in every 12 shows - so you might as well take what you earned in the cash builder because taking the low offer is just an insult to your team mates.

I've always said if I went on show - which is as likely as me being the next Doctor Who - I'd probably get edited out for telling my team mates if they take the low offer I won't try in the final and they will be on their own with their limited general knowledge. I think it's just people who want to be on TV, getting their 10 minutes of fame and coming across as chicken shit wankers to the rest of the nation. Twats, all of them. 

Dick in a Vice

If a modern actor deserved high praise it's probably Christian Bale for his ability to transform himself for whatever role he's playing; from dodgy skinny boxers to Batman, Bale has been chameleon like in his career, but none of them are a patch on his Dick... I am of course talking about his Dick Cheney - former Vice President of the USA, as well as many other positions within Republican administrations - Chief of Staff and Defence Secretary to name but two. Bale's performance as Cheney in Adam McKay's Vice is quite remarkable and I'm still wondering if he simply put on a lot of weight or a fat suit, because whatever he did the make up department deserved an Oscar. But not just for him, also for Sam Rockwell, who I said just two weeks ago was at his best in The Way Way Back (which also starred Steve Carell, who in Vice plays Donald Rumsfeld), but was also pretty damned good in this. Rockwell was made to look so much like George W Bush that you literally needed to do a double take at times.

Vice is essentially a biopic of Cheney's life - because the man was so secretive much of this movie was conjecture and presumption, but you really get the impression that apart from some artistic licence this was probably what happened and points the finger squarely at the former VP for much of the mess the world is in today - the rise of the Right Wing, the proliferation of capitalism and all those wars that Halliburton has made so much money from - a company that Cheney was CEO of and may still have links. I have said for many years, like other people, that Halliburton is one of the corporations that run the world and this excellent, if not quite scary movie, goes a long way to corroborate that hypothesis. It was our first time watching this movie, another one which we should have watched much sooner than now. It's not the film of the week but it's pretty close and I give it a solid 7.5/10 - it could almost have been an 8 but the depressing nature of the truth got it downgraded by half a point.

Arthouse Thing

What do you get if you cross John Carpenter's The Thing with a David Cronenberg homage made by a French film 'auteur'? You get The Substance, a movie that seems to have really shaken up the film world - a body horror that really is about bodies and a performance from Demi Moore - considering she's 62 - that deserves a positive acknowledgment. She plays fading Hollywood star  Elizabeth Sparkle who hosts an aerobics slot on morning TV. It's not often a woman of Moore's age will wander around for most of a movie with no clothes on - although to be honest, for her age and with NATSO she's in pretty good shape - so all credit to her for doing this with the kind of confidence she showed in the early 1990s. 

In real terms this is a tough film to review without giving anything away or sounding sexist, but I suppose Coralie Fargeat's movie - which actually feels like French film - is about sexism, ageism and being left behind for younger, brighter things. Elizabeth Qualley plays Sue and her unique relationship with Moore is explored in a sinister and strangely addictive way. This is a violent, sexual and bleak feature with most of the dialogue being supplied by the other main actor, Denis Quaid - as both women's producer. It is, I suppose, quite a darkly comic turn, with some excellent, but stylised special effects. Did I enjoy it? Not really. I thought Moore was okay until her life started to fall apart - literally - and that's when she really showed that she is, at times, an exceptional actor. It's a cold and detached look at the decadence of fame and beauty and what people will do to hang on to these things. It has been highly praised in critical circles, but is a difficult movie to like, so I'll go down the middle and give it a firm, but saggy 5/10.

What's Up Next?

I'm still trying to decide what I'm going to do when we come to TV coming back. The plan is with Box Set releases then I'll review the entire series and when there's a big weekly show that returns then I'll see how I'll approach that when it happens. There will be stuff before hand but Severance is back in February and by then I should have got into some kind of groove.

So probably a selection of old and new films until the TV is back, with maybe some other stuff thrown in to mix it up a bit. As with last year, it's a wait and see thing! Ciao!