My Cultural Life - Different Kinds of Dystopia

What's Up?

The West is gone. There is no more West. The alliance between Europe and North America was destroyed when the despot ruining the USA decided that he wanted to join the world's other despots. What's worse is his little billionaire buddy, the South African with the weird, fucked up face is openly channelling one of Hitler's right hand men - probably Goebbels - and all probably because he can never be POTUS and probably has less chance of becoming South Africa's president, given that he's essentially from old money apartheid supporting twats (plus holds Canadian citizenship). The owner of Xitter is like some post-modern Ozymandias, a worthless (morally) cunt who wants us all to look upon his works (while despairing)... The thing is you could say the same about the orange Shitler as well - Ozymandias has never been so populist. 

What I have noticed in the last week is that the Orange Shitler is finding out that most of the rest of the world's politicians actually do politics, something Shitler doesn't really understand. For him everything is a deal to be done, morals and ethics go out of the window when there's money to be made. The problem is when he tries to do big boy stuff - like politics - he's often seen backtracking a couple of days later. One thing narcissists don't like is being shown up by everyone else. He can live with ritual humiliation for a day because he can spin his way out of it; the problem with the rest of the world's politicians is it doesn't matter how much spin he puts on it, they all know he's a big fat orange out of his depth Shitler and he knows they know.

That doesn't help the West though. Europe has problems, not just because of USA, but also because they can't count on the UK and Germany's lurching to the right, joining Hungary, Italy and any of the lesser tin pot members of the EU who have also lurched to the right (The Netherlands spring to mind). The last rational place on the planet is falling to populist bullshit and the best we can hope for is they all adopt isolationist policies. Obviously it won't help refugees or the Middle East or the developing countries, but hiding behind their borders they can celebrate un-diversity and look for someone new to blame. I'm glad I'm old and with an incurable disease; I won't be around to watch the end of the world as we know it...

*And then yesterday happened, a few days after I'd written this, and those who give a shit about the world in general would have seen the President of the United States of America and his Vice President bully the President of the Ukraine on live TV, shouting and being aggressive towards him and sounding like bullies in a playground. It was horrendous and if you really don't know why, it's because... Christ if I have to tell you then you're part of the problem. The most powerful man in the world should not and can not act like a tin-pot dictator, bullying lesser countries into peace 'deals' that literally and completely benefit the USA. Them's the actions of a Mafia boss not a politician, my friends. Maybe I will be around to see the end of the world?

Dreams of Dead People

My initial thoughts on Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho were mixed. It was a very ... interesting movie, but there was something about it that grated on me a little. This was the story of a young 1960s obsessed girl who dreams of leaving Cornwall and becoming big in the fashion world, but the girl harbours a strange secret - she can see dead people in mirrors. This confident and bright young thing finds London - where she moves to - a dark and insidious place full of menace and that's just most of her halls of residence, with her less than friendly fellow students at the London School of Fashion; the rest of the place is just a rat's nest of depravity and wankers. She quickly grows to hate living in there so moves into a flat in Soho on the top floor of a house owned by the late Diana Rigg...

It's here she starts dreaming of a girl called Sandie - Anya Taylor Joy - who has come to London to be the next Cilla Black; she's a singer and is full of brash confidence, but thanks to Jack - Matt Smith - that is soon knocked out of her. The thing is Eloise or Ellie - played by Thomasin McKenzie - is reliving Sandie's life and it isn't very nice at all. As she becomes more immersed in Sandie's life things start to take a sinister and supernatural turn until we get to the denouement which was expertly handled and you don't see coming. The problem with the film is it stretches other elements far beyond believable; for instance, Ellie is a student with a grant and a bursary, but can still afford to rent a top floor flat in the middle of Soho, buy vintage clothes and act as though everything is still 1960s prices? Plus there's the actor playing her, who seemed to be recruited straight out of Yokel Am Dram; she had little screen presence and was really quite dull. Then there's the gaggle of brattish girls who are in her class at college; these came straight out of a stereotypical American high school in their style and approach, while Ellie's possible love interest drove a car and - yes, this might have been a joke, but... claims it's the best way of travelling from South to North London - obviously, given the age of his car he's also rich enough to afford petrol and the ULEZ charges? Surely Edgar Wright has been to London? Apart from the foibles, it's a good film with lots of twists and turns, it also looks fabulous - really colourful portrayals of the mid-1960s and showed a real vibrant menace. I'm giving it a 7/10.

Part One of Three

So, having never seen any of this trilogy of movies, we decided to watch The Maze Runner, partly because we both rate Dylan O'Brien - having seen him in a great monster film (Love & Monsters) and the utterly stunning Caddo Lake, which was one of the best things we saw in 2024. However, while The Maze Runner wasn't a bad movie, it just failed to be a really good one; probably because it became clear from the outset that we weren't going to be given many, if any, answers as to what is going on. I pretty much guessed what the reason for all these boys being stuck in the middle of a huge maze was for, but I thought aliens rather than the end of the world. I mean, if the world is dying and there's this horrid virus going round, the first thing you'd do is build a moveable maze in the middle of a desert, full of all kinds of dangers and monster robot spiders, just to stick a bunch of kids in it to ... live and run around the maze, possibly to find a way out, but no one knows why.

Oops, I appear to have given the entire plot away in one sentence. Maybe it's because this has Kaya Scodelario in it - she who was Effy in Skins - because, to be honest, she can't act to save her life, but I can't understand why I never watched this 11 years ago when it came out (but it took us a long time to watch The Hunger Games trilogy)... and that might be a rhetorical question, so let's not dwell on it. As well as O'Brien and Scodelario, there's also Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Will Poulter (with a dodgy American accent, much like Scodelario's) and an appearance by Patricia Clarkson, as the women who seems to be pulling all the strings. It's not a bad film, but it was clearly made with the intention of making it a trilogy, so there was never going to be any real conclusion, but it had to be good enough to pull you in enough to watch the other parts (which it seems to have done for us). I enjoyed it; there was a degree of jeopardy and peril that is often missing from films of this nature and I'll give it a 6.5/10.

Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

This is going to be difficult because I don't know if enough happened in this episode to describe, to even get to the bottom of the attached picture. The 'why do people enjoy The White Lotus mystery' continues with an episode that simply had as little as possible happen for an entire hour. Jason Isaac's character is in some kind of legal trouble. Walton Goggins' isn't quite as miserable this week and finally decides to shag his girlfriend. There's a robbery at the resort and the three women are all talking about each other behind their backs. Phew... Made it. Just a few more words and I can move onto something else. At least we know why this is eight parts instead of the seven of the first two seasons; they needed to get this episode of fuck all happening out of the way so they opted for near the start so you might think it's a blip and be tempted to go back for some more. This didn't even feel like a character-building exercise and I got a strangely arrogant feel off the show rather than the episode - like it knows it's popular so it doesn't have to try. I think my problem with this show is I don't give enough of a shit about the idea or the usually quite loathsome wankers that wander around in it. If there was more choice out there at the moment I'd give up on this and find something more interesting, instead. 

Blackout

We watched the first two parts of Zero Day last week and we were a little stumped as to what was going on. The USA has fallen victim to a cyber hack that shuts the country down and kills over 3000 people (connected to life support systems, in things where loss of power means loss of life, etc) and POTUS Angela Bassett has called on former POTUS Robert De Niro to find the bad guys. This was a clever and well thought out little drama that's spoiled by some slightly ludicrous red herrings and some story cul-de-sacs that remained unexplained or were brushed over. In the end it felt like a four part series that got strung out to six parts. Huge chunks of the 'plot' were breezed over or left unexplained - such as Who Killed Bambi? Or even what its actual significance was. However, it has a satisfying ending - even if that feels a little undercooked. The most curious thing is when I obtained this series its rating on IMDB was a really worrying 6.0, but by the time we finished it that rating was 7.1. I expect a lot of Trump supporters marked it down because they don't like De Niro and this is about right wing tactics, so as reasonable people watched it the rating went up. The thing is it really could have been so much better even if it delivered a really left field conclusion for some of the characters. Special mention for Jesse Plemens who looks as though he's lost about ten stones since he made Alex Garland's Civil War last year.

And Then... Bang!

The elephant in the room for most of this first season of Paradise has been what actually happened at the end the world. Well, in this penultimate episode we find out and boy is it a big one! This is an absolute WOW episode and is riveting and edge of your seat from almost the opening seconds. This is what this rather pedestrian show really needed, to find out what happened to drive 25,000 people underground, fearing the rest of the planet dead. Sterling K Brown and James Marsters have been the two most constant beams of light in this series; a president and his bodyguard - an unlikely friendship formed through trust and simply having to suffer each others' company all the time. We find out how Xavier's wife didn't make it; we learn how Cal Bradford did two unbelievably brilliant things - one before the end of the world and the other during it. We also learn that regardless of what aces she might hold up her sleeve, the best thing Xavier should have done is put a bullet into Sinatra's pea brain. One thing is clear, this isn't going to be resolved next week; the season finale will just set us up for a second season (should it be renewed) which might follow a different path entirely. I just wish the entire series had been about a President and his bodyguard overcoming and surviving the end of the world. It needs to push a shed load of buttons (and maybe find a way to give me a virtual blow job) because however excellent this episode was, I can't see myself watching the second season. [There were two Bongwater* references in this review - Bongwater has nothing whatsoever to do with Paradise]
* Bongwater was a band consisting of Ann Magnusson - a performing arts singist and Mark Kramer - who isn't Dutch.

Part Two of Three

Blimey. I mean... wow. Where did this come from? What a total upgrade on the first film (despite having a lower score on IMDB). The Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials was a movie full of jeopardy, peril and genuine shocks. The special effects were way better than the first film and... here's where I get a bit controversial. We discovered in this second part that the earth had been devastated by solar flares and a virus that essentially turned victims into a hybrid of the 28 Days Later 'zombie' and the fungus creatures in The Last of Us, except for at least 90 minutes of this it pissed all over that supposedly brilliant TV series. I mean pissed on it from atop of a skyscraper with a funnel for guidance. This was edge of your seat stuff, whereas The Last of Us was largely two dull people riding around on horses avoiding stuff. This is a similar scenario; the planet is fucked and our remaining gang, from the previous film, are crossing a hostile terrain, against much worse scary things than the aforementioned fungal zombie show, to find a safe haven away from the now obviously evil WCKD.

Yes, the plot has the same holes in it that the first part did, but we're talking a YA movie and one that focuses on the main characters more than the story they're in. The thing is the agents of WCKD are really shit-eating scumbags; the wasteland of what remains of Earth is littered with everything from monsters to social depravity and for a film over two hours long it rattled along at a pace the first part would have been envious about. Oh and Scodelario proved to be the bitch I thought she would be. This deserves at least a full point higher than part one - therefore 7.5/10.

Freedom of Limited Speech

Meanwhile, over on Xitter, an acquaintance of mine has been coming in for some really nasty hate 'tweets' because of his specific stance regarding his dislike of a certain Orange Shitler. He's even had a couple of death threats (both from people in the USA, so he isn't too bothered about them). However, he tells me his account has been suspended for 24 hours because he 'tweeted' in reply to Nigel Farridge's hate post about the idiot former Labour MP, who was briefly going to prison for 10 weeks. He posted in reply to Farridge: "If the guy punched you he'd deserved a knighthood." Xitter deemed it as hate speech and encouraging violence; yet a couple of death threats and spurious sexual accusations from hate supporting people are fine. I'm so glad I got out of that cesspit of cunts...

Part Three of Three

Interesting fact: Walton Goggins appears in this as a cynical anti-establishment 'mutant' with no nose. I'd say, if I was on drugs, that the writer of the Maze Runner movies had a crystal ball into 2024 and what would be popular... The Maze Runner: The Death Cure was the third part of the trilogy and considering the first part was average, the second part was pretty good, it was clear this one would either be the best film ever made or largely a pile of shite. I don't suppose you will be surprised to know that IMHO this was a pile of shite with a contrived storyline, one that makes a lot of emphasis on things that happened in earlier films, which, having watched them over three nights, clearly didn't happen. Thomas was really, really, fucked off with Teresa for ratting out all of her friends and being a WCKD double agent for him to be that attracted - or that's how it seemed. 

The other really poo thing about this part was the dedication and obsession with finding Thomas's mate Minho, it just seemed like a vague idea for the finale. The 'fight back' takes months and all the prisoners they were trying to rescue were (still alive) being transported around on trains, in what seemed a plot contradiction from the second movie. The dystopian landscapes were replaced with a utopian city inhabited by thousands of people who didn't appear to have anything to do but wander around all day, while WCKD inhabited a big tower and were harvesting the souls of teenagers to save the world (or something like that). Except there's a suggestion that WCKD are up to something even more nefarious than harvesting the lives of young people to save themselves from a deadly virus. As a conclusion it fell well short of what I'd hoped. It felt like it was going through the numbers and while I got one of my wishes, it was all in all, a rather disappointing 5/10.

V is For Victory

The 14th episode of the V series of Qi was the perfect microcosm of the entire series - funny at times, laboured at others. This season is coming to an end, there's one more proper episode and a best of and then it's a nine month wait before we have a series of W, then who knows what X, Y and Z will look like. Alan Davies has been doing it for 21 years, apparently. 

What's Up Next?

The first things that happen next week will be the watching of this week's Severance and Yellowjackets; a Friday night out meant these become crucial Saturday evening viewing and that also means two reviews next week - woo. There will also be the season finale of Paradise, which needs 10,000 naked dancing girls, aliens and a plot to make me tune in for season two. Meanwhile Daredevil: Born Again will see the return of Matt Murdoch and Wilson Fisk as the Man Without Fear arrives in the MCU, with maybe a few subtle changes but nothing to destroy what we already know (hopefully). The White Lotus is living on borrowed time and there's bound to be something new to moan about. 

It will be what it is.