My Cultural Life - Twinsets and Green Pearls

What's Up? 

* Here's a concept you might have never spent any time contemplating. We all know what life is, don't we? We are all alive. Plants, insects, animals, fungi - the planet is a haven for life. Yet, have we never considered the planet itself is alive? Is the idea that an entire planet being a sentient being something we can't comprehend? If the earth brings life, could it be that the earth is life?

Yeah, I know, this sounds like a load of hippy bullshit. It's life, man, but not as we know it kind of thing. But what if it is? What if our planet is alive and suddenly it's own version of white blood cells are saying 'I've had enough of this shit' and is starting to fight back?

Take 2026 as a snapshot - the warmest year on record; natural disasters - earthquakes; wild fires, tsunamis, landslides, droughts, volcanoes, hurricanes, typhoons, El Nino and any other natural disaster you can think of. It's the like the planet has decided it's time to issue some warnings. It's just a shame it can't target its victims, but I don't think it works that way or it would have rained down all kinds of shit on the White House this year, rather than allowing the world's biggest orange shit stain to bully his way across the world like some petulant moronic child ape.

I've believed for a long time that humans are a virus that are no longer controllable. There is nothing more dangerous than an angry virus and humans are becoming increasingly angry - the problem is they haven't got a clue who they should be angry at therefore they're picking on each other rather than the things they should be...

* It appears that the Clacton Fuhrer's days could be numbered. Despite a lot of people caring about corrupt politicians but not caring about Farage, who is far more corrupt than most, the latest news to come out about accepting money from journalists posing as foreign donors could be the end, or the beginning of it, at least. Nigel can bleat all he wants about the establishment trying to stitch him up, but when he stitches himself up... well, he can blame whoever he wants, but he's not going to escape this scrutiny and could even end up in court, maybe even prison. That would be a glorious day in British history. 

* In other actual TV news, I learned that the BBC is bringing back Top Gear and that Amazon are resurrecting The Grand Tour. This got a reaction from me that was akin to a large yawn. Whatever peoples thoughts on Clarkson, May and Hammond, they kind of broke the mold for this kind of thing and while the last team on Top Gear looked as though they might capture some of that three middle aged lads on a jolly feel, tragedy struck and we really should have seen the back of car shows after that. But now we have two; the BBC's looks a bit meh, while Amazon's three replacements for the original trio look anodyne and a bit weird. It gets a big thumbs down from me, I'd rather watch ancient Top Gears than this imitation bollocks.

Disclaimer

Oh, by the way. For TV shows that are ongoing I try to avoid any spoilers; for old TV shows that we're finally watching, there might be spoilers, but, hey, the review is of an old show so... For movies, if it's a new film then I will avoid spoilers; if the film is over two years old then not so much.

The Piranha Brothers

For many, Ron and Reg Kray were legends, which is probably why the biopic of their lives was called Legend. These East end gangsters were both heroes and villains in the 1960s and for a while got away with murder. The wife grew up in the East End of London and the Krays were feared and loved in equal measure. I had never seen this film and now wonder why that was, because it was quite excellent and also quite scary. Tom Hardy, who played both of the brothers, could easily have been two different actors, the way he portrays the men so effortlessly differently - Reg, the clever and charming brains behind the outfit and Ron, the gay psychopath, a mixture of innocence and slaughter. This movie essentially follows the 18 month period between them taking over the London crime scene leading up to the point where everything fell apart and both men ended up in prison for separate murders. It's bizarrely quite funny and reminded me - at times - of the Monty Python Doug and Dinsdale episode, which was basically a parody of the Krays. 1960s London was brought vividly back to life and the film is most definitely worth trying to track down. 9/10

Twin Puzzles

Someone asked me if I'd watched Ludwig, to which I replied, "No." They said, "Oh, it's very good." And several weeks passed, the second series started and, of course, we are running out of things to watch. So we watched the opening episode straight after the Kray film, so we went from one pair of twins to another in the space of an evening. What did I think? Well, I laughed on several occasions; it's good to see Anna Maxwell Martin not playing an old hag or a psychopath and while the premise is a little bit of a stretch - given that even identical twins start to look different as they grow older - we saw enough to add it to the Watchlist...

As we've moved steadily through the first season all week, I have to say that in general it's been entertaining, if absolutely nothing like real life or how a team of police officers would work. The comedy elements have dwindled and the inaccuracies increased and I'm reconsidering my position of Anna Maxwell Martin... I think there's a psychopath in every role she plays, which is a concern because that means she might just be a psychopath in real life, or something like that...

The Pianist

So by Sunday night, I'd watched two films in two days and both of them were bloody excellent. That's not a bad average considering I've been moaning about not having anything to watch. Both movies, the one about the Kray twins and this one had been watched by the wife and I didn't bother, thus proving the wife has considerably better taste in stuff than I do. The latter, Green Book starring Viggo Mortenson and Mahershala Ali is based on the true story of an Italian American 'playa' who gets the job as chauffeur and PA to a world famous black pianist, in 1962, who decided to undertake a tour of the USA, especially the southern States, where blacks were still being treated lower than snake shit. It is an absolutely superb movie that makes you laugh, makes you realise that the USA is fundamentally a reasonable place inhabited by a bunch of white supremacist arseholes, who just happen to be in power and it gives you a feeling that friendships can be made in the most unlikely of settings. It's an absolute cracker of a movie. 10/10

Fearless

Despite the series only having been on two weeks, the latest episode of Lanterns was all about John Stewart; effectively his origin story and apart from a late cameo by Hal Jordan, the closest thing to the Green Lanterns was Laura Linney as one of the Guardians from Oa. This was how John was effectively picked and then trained by his parents to be a future protector of Earth, which we kind of know might not even be the case given that we're presuming Hal is dead in 2026 (the final scene of episode one) and that Guy Gardner is the current GL (the Superman film and the Peacemaker series two). However, despite seemingly out of place in the continuity of this series, it was an interesting and intelligent way of explaining more about the man being trained by Hal Jordan and why he ticks. What it had to do with a story we've barely scratched the surface of... I'm not so sure.

Peeved, More Like

Tough one this... How do you review the finale of Furious without giving stuff away that might spoil it for others who haven't seen it yet or might watch it in the future? The honest answer is - you can't. Mainly because any hint or suggestion of what happens will spoil it in some way. I mean, I can't even tell you what I thought of it because that would mean making a definite call about how I felt at the end and that alone would suggest things that might spoil it. Part of me wants to say that it had a satisfactory ending, because that's ambiguous enough, but if I said it had an unsatisfactory ending that is far less ambiguous. The thing is it had an ending, but I'm not even convinced that it's the end and not just a set up for a second series - which has been confirmed. Emmy Rossum was great. Scoot McNary was also excellent. Quincy Tyler Bernstein was outstanding. The fact there's a second series is almost disappointing. I've said enough...

Bad Moustache Movie

The wife recorded two of the three Christopher Nolan Batman movies off the TV in the last week and we watched the first - Batman Begins - on Tuesday night. It's only been about five years since we last watched it and like Spider-Man, Batman is a comic character I've never really been too enamoured by. This trilogy, regarded by many as three of the best superhero films ever made, is going to be interesting to watch again, especially as I felt the opening salvo now feels slightly dated and a little corny - which, I suspect, was deliberate. This is also a very English film, with just a handful of actors from the USA and most of the scenes filmed in the UK. I seem to have an ongoing problem with films set in the USA populated by British actors - is it a cost thing? A geography thing? Laziness? Anyhow, I thought this was okay, nothing special and a little cheesy, if I want to be honest. I never rated Christian Bale as Batman and the premise - to do with hallucinogenic drugs, microwave machines and other nonsensical gubbins - seemed both adventurous and a bit daft. Plus, almost everyone in this movie had terrible facial hair, that looked about as fake as Gotham did. I'm going against the grain here when I say I only rate this a 6/10. 

Channelling Seth Brundle 

Despite The Dark Knight being the highest rated superhero film on IMDB, I have always struggled with it. Yes, it's heaps better than the first in the series, but where almost everybody thinks the sun shone out of Heath Ledger's arse, I thought he was simply adequate. His Joker was psychotic enough, but lacked the insanely hysterical traits that we've all associated with the Clown Prince of Crime - especially if you were a fan of his in the comics. That said, I didn't like Jack Nicholson's version and let's not even go near Jared Leto, for a number of reasons. I thought Cesar Romero was quite good, he just wasn't psychopathic enough. Anyhow, the second of Christopher Nolan's Bat Trilogy is the best of the three (and it's at least an American film this time around), but I think that's a pretty low bar. I also think this is overlong and slightly contrived, but we've already discovered I have a general problem with Batman as a whole. I also don't really think Christian Bale is suitable to be Bruce Wayne and his constant American Jaysun Stayfum impersonation begins to grate after a while; he must have had a sore throat for weeks after making these films. 7/10

Sports Night 1

Half way through this, alleged, finale season of Ted Lasso and while I know people really like this show, there are bad comedy series made in the 1970s that are funnier and more realistic than this and I know the point of this is to be less than realistic, with its larger than life characters, but, you know, it wouldn't hurt it to try to be something else at times. This week's episode was the least comedic of the five so far - even if three of those five have been woefully short of actual laughs. This was more pseudo dramatic than anything else, even Roy Kent felt a little too serious. Juno Temple edges closer to getting her tits out and is also becoming really quite annoying and Ted was almost the best thing in this.

Sports Night 2

Maybe comedy shows based around sport are not supposed to be funny, or don't have to be funny once they've established themselves. From out of nowhere, the second season of Chad Powers dropped - all six parts - and we managed to watch two of them before the end of the watching week was curtailed by Friday night's quiz. The first series, which was full of laughs has now taken on a few extra layers - a potential love story; a bit of a drama and everything has got a bit serious and intense. That said, compared to Ted Lasso this is a quality series even if you have no idea how American Football actually works. Glen Powell is the former great player who screws up and then uses his father's make-up kit to transform himself into simple hick ball player Chad Powers and he's really good as both dim-witted Chad and his failed alter ego Russ. The opening episode was about a make-up disaster and the second about how things begin to fall apart for reasons other than a man pretending to be someone else. It's still good stuff and the rest will follow next week.

What's Up Next?

I presented (?) my third Quiz Night at The Merse - Wigtown's old church hall turned into an entertainment venue - and as ever the turn out pretty much blew me away. It was a good night and I've committed to another 6 months.

The coming week will see the return of more regular TV watches and I'm building up a new list of movies to watch, many of which we have seen before, but, why not?

The rest, they say, is undetermined. Ciao.