What's Up?
My monthly pub quiz at my local was last night. Yet again it was plagued by technology issues and that was after I'd got very stressed out about the sudden changes to the seating plan and my own stupid mistake that left one team without a table. We got there in the end but it does raise serious questions about Wi-Fi, routers, and all the other connectivity based operations we have our homes and businesses linked into. If it goes down, everything goes down and that can be from a break in internet coverage to what happened last night, a sudden fault that seemingly had no reason to happen which took 45 minutes to sort out. Ten years ago I would either have laughed or exploded.
Anyhow, it wasn't my most professional of performances, but it turned out to be one of the best - one of my contestants came up to me and said I was like Jack Dee but more honest, which I'll take over a certain dead 'comedian' who I was always likened to when I was younger. I had a few new teams, but in general I pretty much knew the other teams, even if I didn't know the people personally. Therefore I seemed to morph into a wannabe comedian hosting a pub quiz. The quiz would have overrun even if it hadn't been for the other issues because everyone was having a good time even though some of them were getting ribbed by me for some of their answers.
The wife thinks I suffer from stage fright, because until I put that mic in my hand I'm a bag of stress and anxiety, which tends to set off breathlessness, which I then have to handle and when I have a 45 minute delay... That's where my usual, polished spiel went out of the window and I was just me. I toned down the swearing, because I do swear a lot and it's a 'kids' show for adults, at least that's what a good pub quiz should be; camps of extremely sociable people having banter and laughs and even though they're playing for £200 the quiz is second to the fun. So, yeah, if I suffer from stage fright, it brings the best out in me.
Anyhow, it was a close run thing in the end with only about 6 points separating the top 6 teams and even the teams scoring low thanked me for a good night. It costs them £2 to spend three hours listening to someone talk and doing some thinking for yourself. I bloody love a good pub quiz; I just miss not being able to do one.
Oh, and I stood in my first ever election - as a community councillor - and finished last with 44 votes. That's really all I have to say about it, really. I know I have a reputation for being outspoken and anyone that knows me here will tell you I am passionate about where I live; two things you would imagine would be ideal for being on a council. But it was not to be and my brief flirtation with local politics is over as quickly as it started. I'm glad I did it. I'd like to thank the 43 other people who voted for me, even if they never see this. I think it's time, with my health and anxiety issues, that I retired from this kind of stuff and aimed for a stress free rest of my life.
The Greatest?
Our plan for our wedding anniversary was to go to the pub and watch the live band with many of our friends. However, as afternoon turned into evening, the storm clouds gathered and by 7pm we were in the middle of a series of thunderstorms and it was freaking at least two of the dogs out - kind of in the same way as fireworks do. The wife, concerned about two of the dogs, suggested we didn't go out and as we'd been out for a nice meal the night before, we decided to sit in and watch
The Shawshank Redemption, a film that is now regarded as the greatest film ever made, or at least the world's favourite movie. The big question for all... Is it?
It is an adaptation of Stephen King's
Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, a novella the horror writer penned in the 1980s, which was one of the first stories without anything ghostly or supernatural in it. It is one of King's greatest stories and perhaps the reason why the adaptation is so good is because, while it does take a few liberties, it remains pretty much as the written story. Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman are the stars; a tale of rights and wrongs, patience and virtues and friendship in the face of extreme adversity. It's about crooks on the inside and even worse ones on the outside and it is worth every one of its 9.3 rating on IMDB. It's maybe not as... magical as I remember it when I first saw it, but it is something very special and if you've never seen it, you should. 10/10
The Biggest of Hearts
The big fear now is after two nights of brilliant films we're obviously headed for some real shit for the rest of the week... I know Tom Hanks is an acquired taste; there are people out there who hate him - my eldest brother irrationally dislikes him and I really don't understand why. We've seen a lot of Hanks films, but
A Man Called Otto has lived a charmed life in our house. I originally recorded it off of Film4 and it sat on the hard drive for about six months, then one day I deleted it because I couldn't see us watching it. About a month after that I caught five minutes of it on Film4 (again) and decided to download it, which I did, in May and it has sat on the Flash Drive of Doom ever since, being ignored, like it was when it was on the TV's hard drive. We finally watched it on Sunday night and... well... if we'd have watched it sooner we wouldn't have had such a fabulous Sunday night.
Otto is a curmudgeonly old bastard; he lives in a gated cul-de-sac and he used to be chairman of the residents' committee. Now as a grumpy old widower with nothing better to do with his life than be a miserable old git, he rules over his street with an iron fist (not that many people take him too seriously, which, if you watch carefully gives you some clue to what Otto might have been like before his wife died). One day, Marisol and her family move in over the road and in a really unfriendly way, Otto is very neighbourly and Marisol decides she likes him and from that moment on Otto's life changes. Very slowly at first, but soon he rediscovers how to live and it is such a lovely, funny, tender, moving story that the wife blubbed like a baby when it finished and I felt like joining her. It is a truly wonderful film that I thought they'd stopped making in the 21st century. 10/10
Spanish Send Off
The film that has been on the FDoD for the longest time has finally been watched.
Pan's Labyrinth has been sitting unwatched for over three years until tonight (Monday). I've never really known what I would expect from this; the wife has seen it but a long time ago and she was worried it would be impenetrable and difficult to comprehend, but in reality it's a Spanish Civil war drama with a fantasy subplot, which may be, but probably isn't, happening to the young girl in the story.
Ofelia and her pregnant, but unwell, mother have been moved to the foothills of somewhere in Spain, to be with the Captain of the guard, the mother's new husband who is a cruel and ruthless man hunting rebels and communists. The young girl is desperately unhappy but learns about a fairy tale involving a princess from a different realm who is reborn on Earth and has one chance to return to her home. To achieve this she must brave the labyrinth belonging to Pan, a faun who is guiding the young girl. What this more probably is showing are the allegorical parallels between what is actually happening and what Ofelia believes will happen. The special effects are stunning for a 2006 film made with a small budget in Spain and it has gone on to become a cult classic. It's not a difficult film to follow, although it does leave a lot open to interpretation and scepticism. 7/10
Team Work
The second episode of
Task at least propelled the story forward a considerable amount. The first episode seemed to focus on the grim and while this is no different it at least answers some questions and explains certain motivations. It is a TV show full of dysfunctional individuals on both sides of the law. Mark Ruffalo's newly put together team are getting used to working with him and each other and we discover the big thing hanging over Ruffalo's family, which I guessed but felt no real joy at guessing right. This was a much better, intelligently paced episode and while the similarities to
Dope Thief are strong, it feels like this has even more menace and unpredictability. If they'd dropped this and episode one at the same time or sewn them together as a feature length opener, then this would have been much better.
Alien Language
The craziest thing in
Alien Earth has to be the octopus eye creature, which has been pulling all the strings since it first got taken to 'Tracey Island' - this super intelligent eyeball has been responsible for the majority of alien security breaches throughout the life of this show and finally the Boy Kavalier has realised this and plans on trying to talk to it, especially now it has comically shown him that it understands everything that is said to it. However, while the eye that has hijacked a sheep is the most fascinating thing going on in this series, the rest of it has actually started to make some sense, even if it's all a bit too far-fetched. But, hey, having a synthetic human being with the mind of a real child being treated like an alien's mother and two other synthetic humans with real children's minds doing something catastrophically stupid... I'm going to stop, mainly because I don't want to get into it. This has been a below par series so far, but this penultimate episode was by far the ... I'm loathe to say... best. I still think the end of this series is going to end in some kind of weapon's grade carnage, but we might have seen that already and the finale might surprise us all.
Meanwhile, Back in The Boysville
I'm growing a little tired of
The Boys universe and I didn't fawn over
Gen V when it came out, something like three years ago now. Allegedly, almost half of the original season two had to be scrapped after the real life death of actor Chance Perdomo, who played Andre; but whether that's true or not this has always felt like a poor sibling to
The Boys and that stopped being essential viewing after season two, when the need to shock overtook the need for a good story. The problem
Gen V has, even if they're trying to dupe us into believing otherwise, is that it will always be the spin-off show and it doesn't matter how many characters from the bigger show turn up it's not going to change. The other problem is quite simple, I don't give a fuck about any of the characters, even the cute Emma (Lizze Broadway) is only just about bearable, but is
so schizophrenic in her behaviour depending on who is writing her.
The second season starts with so much contrivance you would have thought the show's writers just said, 'Ah fuck it, let's do what we want, no one will scrutinise it for too long if we have a man who can drink an entire keg of beer through his arse!' So that's what they did. Hamish Linklater joins the cast as the new Dean of Godolkin and my guess is he's probably going to be Godolkin himself or his son, otherwise we wouldn't have been introduced to the founder of the college back in 1967. All the rebel students who got locked up at the end of season one are - unfathomably - back at uni being encouraged to be social media stars again, apart from Andre, who everyone gets damp eyes about because he's dead.
Amazon dropped the opening three episodes this week; it's not unusual, but equally it whiffs a little, but maybe that's me. However by the end of episode three something happens that you didn't see coming but promises to spice things up a lot.
Bad Morning America
It doesn't seem fair that we have to wait two years for every new series of
The Morning Show. I say this because we came to season one four years after it debuted and that meant we watched season two almost straight after, then season three dropped while we were watching season two and now it's been a little over two years and we get to find out what happened to Bradley Jackson (Reese Witherspoon) over her brother's part in the January 7th insurrection and how Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) and her conspirators did with their hijacking of the takeover of UBA.
You have to wait almost 40 minutes before Bradley's name is even mentioned; she's working at a college in West Virginia and is very much 'working' for the FBI or Homeland Security - in a seemingly slightly far-fetched plot wrinkle; but someone wants her back on The Morning Show, while the current hosts and Alex are gearing up for the 2024 Olympics from Paris. There's also the shadow of another Trump election victory on the horizon and Cory Ellison (Billy Crudup) - still by far the best thing in this show - is trying to make a movie in LA, but his name is shit even though he was exonerated of any wrong doing in the UBA takeover or whatever consequences arose from the Bradley Jackson business. This is quality TV and I breathed an inward sigh of relief as I was watching it - grown up TV is back; huzzah!
On the Job Experience
It's been almost 25 years since
Training Day hit the cinemas. I'd never been particularly keen on watching it but I can't give you a definitive reason; it's not like I'm not a fan of Denzel Washington and I've seen very few Ethan Hawke films I haven't liked, yet it managed to escape me until it turned up on BBC2 one night a few months ago and I shoved it on the hard drive for a cold autumn night. Well, tonight wasn't cold (but it's coming) and considering this takes place over one working day in the life of an LAPD detective and the new rookie he's taking out, plenty happened. It's a strange movie because the first hour you're not really sure if what you are watching isn't some elaborate test by the detective to best ameliorate Hawke's character into the job, but then it goes off in a direction that you didn't see coming. It's a difficult film to follow at times, especially when there's lots of jive talking and LA slang used, but it has a solid story, some good sequences and an ending that felt all too real, given what we know about US cops. 7/10
What's Up Next
Much of the same. Much of the same.
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