What's Up?
The UK Far Right is one of the whingiest and most demanding minority demographics on social media just now. At the moment, they're very scared of or offended by road signs, certain fluids, vegan scones, and the ethnicity of their 'favourite' cartoon character.
They say so. Regularly on certain Facebook pages and comments sections of publications.
They get sweaty and phobic when small families use parks and beaches (or their own homes and gardens), and they faint/swoon/weep uncontrollably when confronted by harmless eccentric costumery, a flag of different colours, or an innocent face mask. They admit these things. Every day, like a badge of honour. What you moan about is for sissies, this is hardcore.
They're anxious of and simultaneously offended by young people, kind people, vulnerable people, teachers, trans gender people, experts, doctors, travellers, and sun lotion. They tell us on a daily basis about all the none things that are a problem, but they never seem to moan about things that are worth moaning about.
The problem is, they hate the poor. They hate the different. They hate logic and science. They hate non-whites. Just ask them, they quite open about it now. They claim it's the new normal. Racism is more socially acceptable than caring for people or being 'woke'.
If you actually stop and think about what the UK Far Right dislikes, they moan a lot more than anyone else and none of the things they moan passionately about is the problem.
Will Buys A Vauxhall Vecna
I dunno. Maybe there's something wrong with me? My old nemesis The Guardian gave season five, part one of
Stranger Things a four-star rating and said by the end of this section, we'd be standing on our chairs cheering. Really? Look, if you're going to watch this you've probably watched it already, therefore I have to ask how Will's inner gayness makes him Eleven mk2? How does that even work?
I'm not convinced the Duffer Brothers knew what they were going to do with this when they started it. The chances are that the very first series of Stranger Things might have had the opportunity to extend itself tagged on after the majority of it was in the can, or maybe Netflix thought they were onto a good thing and told the inexperienced filmmaking brothers to go for it. The thing is, I sat through this segment of the final season wondering what the fuck was going on. Kids living inside Henry's memories; giant walls made of putrefying flesh; trying to tie up pointless subplots from earlier seasons; the US army as bad guys I can get my head around, but all the misdirection and confusion, the melodramatic confrontations, the jarring supporting characters - it's just not very good.
Just what is Wynona Ryder doing in this? She's been as ineffectual as the proverbial chocolate teapot. What has happened to Maya Hawke's Robin? She's suddenly become ebullient and excitable, two things she has never been before. And what about the acting abilities of the (former) kids? Oh and while we're on that subject, Priah Fergusan, who plays Lucas's 11-year-old loudmouthed sister is 19 fucking years old and she looks it. I literally could write a long list of things that are wrong with this overhyped disgrace of a series.
It hasn't been good since season two and even those first two seasons relied far too much on Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, with a smattering of John Carpenter and Joe Dante thrown in for good measure. There is nothing original in this and despite everything that has gone on so far, Vecna is even more powerful than he was, his backstory is still as shit as it was and it totally lost me inside a couple of minutes of the first episode of season five's first segment of episodes... I mean, it's even a long and drawn out way of trying to explain where exactly in the order of things you are. I'll be standing on my chair cheering on January 1st when I never have to think about this bloated abomination ever again...
Court Case Nut Case
Despite finding it a good, if dated, feature film, I don't really know why
Primal Fear was called that, because it isn't really about fear and there was very little that's primal about it - as it wasn't the first or original. This Richard Gere movie is about a lawyer who craves to be centre of attention, so when a young man is literally caught red handed after the heinous murder of a Chicago Archbishop, it's the perfect job for him. What looks like a cut and dried case soon becomes one with twists, turns and a stink of corruption. Laura Linney plays Gere's ex who is given the case of prosecuting Edward Norton's meek and mild Aaron and what starts off as an easy case soon becomes a battle for her job. This is yet another Gregory Hoblit film, someone who, after cutting his teeth on shows like Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, became a high profile director in the late 90s and early 00s. It does feel of its time, but if you don't know the film (or the story its based on) then you will not see the end coming. 7/10
Derry Things
Of course, the irony hasn't escaped me.
It was one of the direct inspirations for
Stranger Things and now
It - Welcome to Derry is being maligned by its similarity to the first season of
Stranger Things (or something like that). Maybe it's because both shows have so much promise and continually fail to deliver? This week's sixth part (that means there are two to go) was a massive case of fuck all. Young love and drums. Look at my manky eye. A little more 'look how racist we can be.'
I have to rewatch the two It films because I want to understand how adults and Pennywise interact. If memory serves me, adults forget about the clown and the tragedies very quickly; they just become 'one of those Derry things' - That's how it worked in the book, I'm pretty sure of. I'm wondering if we're really going to have two more series set further back in the past and if we do are they going to be unrelated to the flashbacks in this season? But I'm also wondering how this big air force operation was never mentioned by anyone in the films? Let's not mention the glowing obsidian-like stone with magical anti-Pennywise properties either...
I'm more than aware that since the second episode, I have struggled to find anything good to say about this series, but this latest instalment is an insult to our collective intelligence. It's a 'we haven't really got a story to last eight parts so here's a proper filler episode before we get into the penultimate and final parts'. You know Pennywise has that trademark red balloon? I think this one has a leak in it and it's now really flabby.
Troll Too?
One of the surprise films of 2022 was
Troll, a Norwegian Kaiju film with a tragic ending. Despite its now low rating on IMDB it was an entertaining and enjoyable monster romp with excellent special effects.
Troll 2 also boast quite brilliant effects, it also isn't a bad film, despite its IMDB score. I think many of the Americans who review things on that website don't understand 'foreign' movies. Yes, this is a bit corny - but we're talking about trolls, FFS, 100 foot tall organically natural beings that turn into stone at the sight of sunlight and dislike Christians - I mean, they could almost be vampires.
This time around, a troll the Norway government has had on ice for 100 years wakes up and decides to take its revenge on man. Welcome back Ine Marie Wilmann as Nora Tidemann, the palaeontologist from the first film, who is also a bit of a troll whisperer. She knows of the existence of another troll, who she calls 'Beautiful' and thinks she can get troll B to convince troll A to stop destroying things and eating people. The script telegraphs itself around an awful lot, so there are no surprises and there weren't enough scenes with trolls in them or enough action - for a film with the biggest ever budget in Norway they could have spread it around a bit more. It's 90+ minutes of silly fun with lots of film references, but it also feels like a generic Kaiju movie, if such a thing exists. 6/10
Island Dreams
Almost all of the penultimate episode of
Down Cemetery Road was set on the fictitious Scottish island where ex-soldiers went to be experimented on. People died, there was an element of a cliffhanger ending and the show's main villain continued to be villainous, while back in Whitehall, the civil servant who put the entire story into motion has realised the dopey Defence Secretary, the one he's dismissed out of hand in his British sitcom manner, has the make of him. This is utter shit and if there ever was a second season I'd rather saw my own penis off with someone else's hacksaw and then feed it to my eyes...
DIY Laughs
Last year there was this mildly amusing TV show on Discovery called
James May and the Dull Men's Club, this was essentially about James May doing stuff that the actual Dull Men's Club would get behind. It co-starred this acquaintance of May's called Seb Riley, who was really fucking creepy, posh and is probably the reason why it has been replaced with
James May's Shed Load of Ideas, which has essentially the same show and team minus creepy Seb.
It was very funny in places and considerably more entertaining than its previous incarnation. We did learn something though, James is almost certainly a 'Jim' to his friends, as one of the producer's referred to him as Jim during a skit about turning a shopping trolley into a hybrid bike/trolley thing. There's no Seb, so this is ace, viewers...
Not ShIT
I persuaded the wife to watch
It, despite both of us having the feeling we'd not enjoy it. It's been eight years since we saw it and much water has gone under the bridge and much of it felt like a new film. Andy Muschietti takes a few, well deserved, liberties with Stephen King's original story (that's enough mention of that) and breezes over parts of the book that just were either wrong or weren't needed to tell this tale. It does feel like a disturbing film at times; it plays on kids' fears which makes it quite creepy and it does actually lay some groundwork for the TV series, albeit unintentionally (I suspect). Oddly enough, it would have worked as a standalone film had it flopped; a bit of judicious editing at the end and it would have been final. I found I enjoyed it considerably more than I expected. It isn't a bad film at all. 7/10
Extinction Agenda
Meanwhile, in
Pluribus: Carol discovers something quite horrendous and decides to travel to Las Vegas to speak with one of the other 'normal' humans about it and discovers a few things that upset her slightly. She might be the most miserable person left on the planet but she's had reasons for this, many of which she hasn't really bothered to share, and now she's beginning to suffer. The revelatory reason for the horrendous discovery and the fact the other normal humans have all been discussing things Carol has been investigating doesn't help, neither does a personalised message explaining the situation and delivered by John Cena.
Meanwhile in Paraguay, the only other human more suspicious of what's going on, other than Carol, finally realises that Carol might be just like him, so he decides to travel from Paraguay to Albuquerque. This might be the subplot we've been waiting for, because however brilliant this series has been it really is starting to feel like it hasn't actually got a reason for existing. Carol discovers that even the infected have to start realising that a cure is the only way to save a rapidly deteriorating situation, but will they realise it?
Beatling About
As we approach the end of
The Beatles Anthology, we're also fast approaching the last two albums and the beginning of the end for possibly the greatest band that ever existed. It does feel as though the death of Brian Epstein was the catalyst for the things which led to the band splitting up, but they also produced some of their most innovative stuff, almost as if to prove a point. It didn't matter though because the UK press - especially - had decided the Fab Four had been Fab for too long and suddenly everything they did went under a microscope and very little was praised. It's also a period where the then three remaining Beatles had differing memories of what was happening.
What Weather's Up Next?
More discussions in the media about the wet weather. This week has seen the media fixated with: slagging Labour off, the World Cup, ignoring Gaza now despite continued Israeli violence, the Eurovision song contest and the wet weather. It shows you how the TV world has changed that neither Strictly or I'm A Celebrity have been featured on the news when they would normally dictate it, especially over the last 14 years or so.
Here's the thing - In March 2012, I was working at a school, we'd had one of the driest winters ever and March was exceptionally mild in Northampton. It was memorable because the extreme day/night cold broke one of our bathroom windows. We had weeks of cold but dry throughout the winter from November of 2011 and then the high pressure shifted in the March allowing a warmer airflow, but we still had longer nights than days and the nights were cold and still.
I was on my way home for lunch when I heard on the radio that a drought order was being enforced from the 25th or something. I said to myself at the time, 'here comes the rain.' 2012, apart from the first week of the Olympics and a few weeks in September was fucking awful. Will we ever forget the Queen standing on a boat in the Thames with her ancient husband getting soaked in 8 degrees in the middle of June? 2012 was shit. I had potatoes go rotten in the ground. The point is the moment the D word is mentioned, the weather gods, rub their hands together, laugh and turn on the wet stuff.
As a rather nice summer came to an abrupt end in September, we were being told how bad it was as far as water levels were and how bad it's going to get and it's done nothing but dump rain on us, steadily, since then. Like some repetitive joke from the moment the D word was uttered on the BBC. Do you know what? Come April, May, June or July, we'll have had a period of dry, sunny and warm/hot weather that makes our landscape look like it's in the middle of a long hot D word. Because that is what happens with weather. It's not new, it's just a little more extreme.
What's Up Next?
Stuff. Dunno what. A couple of things pencilled in. If there's new stuff coming out, I don't know about it, but that might be because I never really watch 'the right kind of TV'.
Some conclusions - huzzah - and some closing in on their own ones. As always, you get most of what I see.
