Game of Things
It's finally arrived; the TV event of 2025 - the first part of the final season of
Stranger Things... Let me explain a few [heh] things before we get into this... I thought season one was excellent TV and season two was possibly even better. However season three was all over the place and season four was a massive let down. I think we all expected something more than we actually got. I'm not a huge fan of this show; it's good, but not that good. It's a bit derivative; it borrows heavily from other things and the characters are all over the place at times.
Right. Because of this month's pub quiz, we only watched the first three episodes of the four-part season five preamble. We're saving the 90 minute pseudo-finale for Saturday night, but our Thursday night was Stranger Things night and boy was I underwhelmed. If season four was an uneven mess with a real copout ending, this decided to continue the story about 18 months after the last one ended and didn't bother to explain how or why everything that is happening happened. Some of the crew are now running a radio station inside an army quarantined town that allows the residents of Hawkins to carry on as normal, while not allowing them to leave. There are so many possibly holes in the premise that I didn't even want to think about the plot, which actually seems to be non-existent. I mean, the army now has a base inside the Upside Down and this base has helicopters, RVs and all kinds of shit; in fact if it wasn't for the demigorgons you'd think the USA now controlled this demon realm.
There's this general feeling that the anti-Vecna gang can do whatever they want and the army are only interested in Eleven, who seems to be able to evade detection despite Hawkins being cordoned off from the rest of Indiana. Have they bothered to visit Hopper? Popped into the Byers household or visited the Wheeler's? The army is desperate to get Eleven back in their control but they've obviously not read the scripts of the first four seasons and looked in all the obvious places. Look, I want to like this, but it's just not that brilliant. Vecna also looks a bit like DC's Swamp Thing. It's entertaining and if you can get past the fact that the actor playing Nancy Wheeler is now 30 and her boyfriend is 33 playing a 19 year old or that the D&D gang are all in their early 20s playing 15 year old kids or that they had to recast some characters because they couldn't just set the thing five years later, then maybe you can suspend disbelief enough to think this is fantastic. I can't.
Oh, Yeah. What's Up?
It's always puzzled me how On The Spot Fixed Penalty Notices work. I mean, some bod with a lanyard that says they're an employee or representative of a local council comes up and informs you that because you tipped the dregs of your coffee down a drain you are contravening some obscure act and they are issuing you with a fine. How does that work? Are people that stupid they just give these wankers their names and addresses?
If someone approached me for failing to pick up dog shit (I always do), or dropping a cigarette butt (I don't smoke) and informed me that I am being fined, the first thing I'd say is, "How you going to do that then?" Unless you're wearing a big name badge with your address and telephone number, you don't actually have to give them any of your details. What are they going to do? Demand you give it to them? Complain to you that you're not being reasonable? Threaten to call the police? Given what our police currently spend their time doing, you're probably not old enough or wearing the right T-shirt...
You just walk away. Tell them they have no right to harass you; no law on their side to enforce any obscure by-laws; and there's no obligation on your part to give them any information about yourself. If they follow you, tell them that if they don't leave you alone you will punch them on the nose - a threat of protecting yourself from harassment from some nutter isn't a crime. Threaten them with your dog (or someone else's). Start videoing them and asking them awkward and difficult questions; or better still start making allegations about them while telling them you are live streaming the encounter across social media. "Why did I see you trying to persuade that 11-year-old girl into the back of your van?" That should get rid of them very quickly.
You might think I'm being an arsehole, but remember this, almost every 'enforcement officer' are not employed by your local council but by a private company who can receive between 50 and 100% of the fines they issue. Councils use these companies as a deterrent rather than a revenue stream. Yes, if you're an actual offender who flaunts the law, abuses your rights and causes grief to other members of the public, then you're in the wrong and should be confronted; but you're more likely to be a problem to them if you fall into that category. About 75% of council by-laws are more obscure than an honest person in the Tory party and these companies don't target angry, big or threatening people, they target the weak, the meek and the mild. It's time people stood up to idiotic bureaucracy and the arseholes employed to enforce it.
American Dystopia
Jesus Christ, that was not a clever way to spend a Sunday night. I sat down to what I thought was a political thriller, but it turned out to be a dystopian science fiction film that could be fact inside the next three years.
Anniversary is one of the most frightening movies I have seen in many years, it is also extremely good. However, it really isn't for the faint hearted, nor for people fearful that Donald Trump is the start of some fascist takeover of the USA. This film will scare the shit out of you and then squeeze your bowels to get the last drop of poo out of your system and then go on a mission to find some more...
It begins with the 25th wedding anniversary of a restauranteur and his college professor wife. It is a family affair, a big party, where their three daughters and son come along to celebrate the big day. The son, played chillingly by Dylan O'Brien (who seems incapable of making a bad film), has his new girlfriend in tow, someone Mom - Diane Lane - seems to know. A largely incident free party passes by until Mom realises her son's girlfriend - Phoebe Dynevor - is actually a free radical supporter of fascism who she taught eight years earlier at her university and is on the verge of having her treatise on anti-democracy and dictatorship published by a corporation that wants to take over the USA, by force if necessary.
The story plays out over a five year period, coming back every year for further developments and to see how far the USA has spiralled into an age of extreme fascism, where enemies of the state are summarily executed or put in prison for a minimum of 40 years - with no parole. This is a grim and dark feature that feels all the more horrendous because you can imagine it actually happening, over the next few years, initiated by Trump and a Republican Party that has been taking politics lessons from the Nazis. This film should be shown in every school in the USA and everywhere else. 9/10
Spies Like Us
We finally got around to watching
The Night Manager. I think we avoided it because it was written by John Le Carre and his spy thrillers are usually less thrilling than wordy. This, however, is an altogether different beast. Starring Tom Hiddleston, Olivia Coleman and Hugh Laurie, it originally came out nine years ago but with a long awaited second series about to drop, what better time than to catch up with the ex-army man with a conscience.
Hiddleston plays the titular Night Manager of a Cairo hotel, he's escaping his military past, preferring a lonely nocturnal existence. When the girlfriend of a rich local thug is killed he vows to get revenge and when MI5 come calling he has no hesitation but to help them by going covert to infiltrate the life of psycho arms dealer Dickie Roper - Laurie. What follows is a twisting and turning tale of how he first gets his foot in the door and eventually becomes a trusted friend of Roper, as he discovers secrets that lead all the way back to Cairo...
Kids on Drugs
I have to admit, I'm beginning to struggle with this. It's okay, but there are so many inconsistencies in the story; so many contrivances to drive the story alone and so many liberties taken with a lot of things just to tell a story that isn't going to conclude with the end of this series (and isn't likely to have a conclusion, given it's telling a tale in reverse). It isn't just that though, I sat through tonight's fifth episode of
It: Welcome to Derry and despite the late arrival of Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise, it just feels like loads of style over any substance. Couple this with various
The Shining references now, it's like Andy Muschietti is having a massive Stephen King erection and is using this TV show to have a pointless wank...
I Saw You Standing Alone
Ethan Hawke is superb as Lorenz Hart, one half of the famed musical theatre combo Rodgers & Hart.
Blue Moon is an adaptation of the letters written between Hart and Elizabeth Weiland, over a three year period during the Second World War. Hart was pretty much in the closet and was described by a friend as 'a homosexual man who was infatuated with women.' This film, which could easily have been a play, is based around the opening night of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Hart walks out of the show after the opening number and retires to the bar where the rest of the musical's main people would be arriving for the after show party. Hart, who was also an alcoholic with mental health issues sets the scene by chatting with Eddie the bar man, a young wannabe musician playing the piano and writer E.B. White. It is clear he is an erudite wit, but also a man struggling with more than just his sexuality in a time of war. He is trying to stay on the wagon, but the impending success of his former partner's new show and the fact that Elizabeth sees him as 'just a friend' weighs heavy on him. This is a Richard Linklater movie, it is full of excellent dialogue, well crafted scenery and Hawke plays the diminutive Hart like he was born to play him. Yet, despite all the superlatives, it starts to grate after a while and if it had been on any longer it might have outstayed its welcome. 6/10
Strange Milk
After almost killing Zosia last week, Carol has been ostracised by the hivemind of humanity. They literally exit Albuquerque en masse, leaving her alone with the coyotes. This both annoys, yet pleases the angriest woman on the planet because it leaves her more time to try and come up with a plan to restore earth to the horrible state it was before the alien viral invasion. Because no one lives anywhere near her, everything she needs is now delivered by drone, as the hivemind has decided that it is too dangerous to remain anywhere near her; this also proves to be interesting clues for Carol. Then she discovers the milk cartons that are not full of milk. They are a concoction of water and some crystalline chemical that she believes might be keeping the 'infected' attached to the hivemind, so she starts making videos to be sent to the other 12 humans to see if they are interested or want to help. I have a theory about where
Pluribus is going and given it's by Vince 'Breaking Bad' Gilligan, where I think it's going is somewhere very dark and bordering on unbelievably bad. This was the first hint of a viable subplot and I expect next week's episode will move it forward much further.
Comedy Psychopath
I think the wife is realising just how shit
Down Cemetery Road actually is, but we're heavily invested in it and there's only three episodes to go... This week the psycho hitman realises Emma Thompson is trailing him, but she manages to evade him on a night train to Scotland. Ruth Wilson and her squaddie mate are sleeping rough, in Scotland, but he bails on her, leaving her stuck in the middle of nowhere. Then it gets a bit problematic, even more than it has been so far. Earlier on in the series, many of the scenes shot that were supposed to be in Oxford were actually filmed not far from Teddington on the outskirts of London and now the scenes in Scotland were filmed in Cornwall. I mean, if you're going to have a quaint Scottish fishing village in the middle of nowhere try not to have Cornish street names or houses that look about as Scottish as a Jersey cow. There's three more fucking episodes of this shite to go? How is that going to work? Is there going to be one episode that's an interlude where it's all acted out in interpretive dance? Utter shitting bollocks.
Fab Four
Peter Jackson has taken the 1995 series
The Beatles Anthology and remastered it, added new footage and digitised the sound. It looks like it could have been made last week, apart from the fact that the two remaining living Beatles - Paul and Ringo - are now 83 and 85 respectively, but in their 50s when it was originally released. We watched part one and it was fab; I expect the two other parts we have to watch, before the rest is released will be equally excellent. I'm a big fan of the band and I don't understand anyone who can't see how important they were (but I can't understand why some people think Nigel Farage is a decent bloke; it must be because many people are just cunts).
What's Up Next
The first finale of Stranger Things will dominate Saturday night. Then it will be whatever else that's on next week mixed with whatever films float our boats...
I don't know if it's me but it feels like fewer and fewer things are really impressing me at the moment. I mean, when something is good it's been brilliant, but everything else just seems a bit meh, at best. Maybe I watch too much TV?
We were told that season five of For All Mankind would land this month, but it's been delayed until, by the looks of things, May 2026; that means I can't really think of much to look forward to between now and the end of the year. Maybe there will be something, but I'm not pinning my hopes or holding my breath.
Expect the usual mix next week.
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