Modern Culture: Begin with Begins

I feel I need to quantify something, a bit like I needed to quantify something with the Marvel films and the fact I've never been a huge fan of Spider-Man. There was a period in Spidey's comicbook history that I look back with some fondness, but generally I always liked other Marvel comics more. The same could be said about Batman; there was a period in Batman's long history where I actually liked the comics - the run in Detective Comics by Steve Englehart, Marshal Rogers and Terry Austin; a time when DC Comics was actually in danger of going under (the late 1970s). I know a lot of people look back to the Denny O'Neil written era, especially when Neal Adams occasionally drew him, and say that was the true halcyon days of the Caped Crusader. I wasn't into DC comics at that time (circa 1970-72) and by the time I might have been they were already too expensive and, you know, I was never really into Batman.

There was a period when I liked the 1960s Batman TV series, but I was under 10 and it was great if you were under 10, but despite running and owning a comic book shop when Tim Burton's Batman came out, I never really got excited about it. In fact, I've seen the two Burton films once, when they came out, and I've never seen them again, so when I decided it was time to watch some Batman films, they were the perfect place to start, so I watched the Christopher Nolan reboot first; starting at the beginning with Batman Begins. 

We'd seen this film way back in 2005 and the first thing I noticed was how little the film had aged; other superhero films of that specific opening decade of the 2000s now look terribly dated and of a specific era, but this has a timeless feel you don't know if it's the 40s or the 90s or any time between until mobile phones appear, they're obscured enough for you not to pinpoint an actual time in the 21st century.

The second thing I noticed was that it was surprisingly better than I expected; having recently seen Robert Pattinson's emo The Batman and having my customary dislike of it. This appears to be mainly because I was so vocal about hating The Dark Knight (despite it's 9.0 rating on IMDB) because I really disliked Heath Ledger's Joker - but that's for another review... But, yeah, Batman Begins was most enjoyable, even if all of the main actors, apart from Morgan Freeman and Katie Holmes, were all British and it was made mainly in the UK - not that that's a problem, it's just weird for a quintessentially American character and film style to have been made on this side of the Atlantic.

The third thing I take from this film is I probably think it's a better film than any of the Spider-Man films, in fact, as a superhero film it's remarkably level headed and as a DC film there's been nothing I've seen since that's a patch on it (and I liked Shazam a lot), but a lot of that might have been the approach taken and the unorthodox re-writing of Batman's origin - not the killing of his parents bit, but the way he eventually becomes the Dark Knight. I've always loved the line in Justice League when Flash asks the Ben Affleck Batman what his superpowers are and he replies, 'I'm a billionaire.' and Batman Begins expands on that idea despite being made 12 year earlier.

***

10 Cloverfield Lane is something of a curate's egg. Starring geek film 'superstar' Mary Elisabeth Winstead, it's essentially two films grafted to each other and for the first 90 minutes, with the exception of one 90 second incident with 'the woman from the car' there is nothing that makes you think this is a film about anything other than a survivalist nutter and the people he's 'collected' to keep him company while he sits out the apocalypse that either has or hasn't happened 30 feet above their heads, one he's been constructing for a number of years.

Then, of course, it goes a bit wonky and the rational part of your brain starts to wonder if 'the woman from the car' might be some kind of stooge, or maybe one of the victim's of Howard's (John Goodman) master plan. Winstead's Michelle, Goodman's Howard and John Gallagher's Emmett are 'trapped' inside Howard's nuclear bunker with just his word that the end of the world has arrived either by another country or possibly extra terrestrials. He's quite batshit crazy which doesn't help things and he never really looks like he's going to be anything other than a scary threat. Once Winstead manages to escape, the film wanders into the territory promised by its title as she inadvertently draws the attention of a space ship and the really strange and creepy aliens.

We get a bit of Die Hard meets Independence Day and then Michelle is on the road, in the car belonging to 'the woman' and not being hassled by aliens, deciding whether she's going to help with the resistance or going to help with the makeshift hospital that's been set up, all about which she finds on the radio on an open frequency, suggesting that while Howard knew there's was bad shit happening above, he just wanted his own little 'family' that he could control and... maybe... just maybe, be more monstrous than the things invading the planet.

The Cloverfield franchise/trilogy in itself is a weird set of movies; the found footage monster movie featuring a kind of fucked up Godzilla; this psychological thriller with an extra terrestrial twist of and then the final film which killed the 'franchise' off with bad ideas, acting and no budget. The thing about 10 Cloverfield Lane is the psychological part is both scary, feasible and well made and the wacky extra terrestrial bonkers is the same; I'm just not sure the two work as one even though it doesn't feel like a different ending stitched on. I'm sure the small and perfectly formed cast knew what they were making, at least Winstead must have. Watching this for the first time in 6 years, made me realise that had they made the 3rd instalment with half as much thought, the Cloverfield thing might still be going strong today.

***

Next up we went for the second of James Wan's horror films about the Warrens. This was The Conjuring 2 and where we quite enjoyed the first outing, this one was fucking awful. Let me explain why...

It was loosely based on the Enfield Haunting, a famously debunked 'haunting' that took place in Enfield, Herts in 1977. Ed and Lorraine Warren start this film by looking into the Amityville Horror where Lorraine encounters a malevolent nun demon who seems to have it in for everybody; she tries to persuade Ed that they need to give up on the demon hunting because it's getting dangerous and she fears for his safety. Then the Hodgson family turns up with their own demonic possession thing going on and they decide, at the behest of the Catholic church, to travel to England and find out if this is a hoax or real. So far so meh. Then as a natural born Hertfordshire lad things start to get a wee bit hokey...

Barely any of the film was actually filmed in London or Enfield; scenes with Ed & Lorraine outside the Hodgson house were on a soundstage with a recreation of the Enfield house doubling up. The house itself was remarkable - from the outside it looked like a simple end of terrace house in a normal English street, however inside it resembled a North American house - by its dimensions; every room was fooking huge; I mean big enough to fit your average poor family home into a couple of times over. It also had a back to the house that was more like the arse end of a US tenement building rather than an Edwardian house and then there was the cellar... Anyone who's ever had a cellar in this country would be amazed at the cathedral sized room given to this house, with its windy stairs and more space than the airship hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire.

With two (almost) exceptions, none of the kids were English; their mother was an Australia actress who worked most of her acting career in the UK and the bloke playing Maurice - the would be psychic investigator was British and was last seen as the bishop in Rev, everyone else was either Aussie or American. The nun looked like Marilyn Manson - no, really - and it wasn't scary, creepy or particularly enjoyable; it felt like a half-arsed attempt at schlock horror and it failed on almost every level. I wasn't remotely tempted by the umpteen other Conjuring spin-offs, now I'm going to avoid them like a plague that's shit itself.

***

I have a confession to make. I hated Batman: The Dark Knight. It was more to do with Heath Ledger's Joker than anything else - I said then and still feel the same way now that his Joker is essentially him channelling Jeff Goldblum's Seth Brundell in Cronenberg's remake of The Fly and not at all what I feel the Joker should be. I kind of want the Joker to be a cross between Cesar Romero and, well, Heath Ledger. For me in 2008 this spoiled the film and led me to not bother watching the third part of the trilogy; I had enough of a bug up my arse about disliking Batman then, that I was going to stick with my principals - after all, I'd never watched the second Andrew Garfield Spider-Man film when it came out because I didn't like the first.

The thing is, The Dark Knight is arguably the best superhero film ever made. It is relentless, dark - very dark - and probably needed some humour in it, just a little levity to stop it from being ... um... dark and relentless. Apart from that it's incredibly well written and a much better film than Batman Begins.

There are some key things I noticed having watched the first part less than three days ago. The first is Maggie Gyllenhaal isn't Katie Holmes and isn't really a leading lady, but I can forgive that, Holmes had probably married Tom Cruise by this point and gotten involved in all of his scientology nonsense. The second is Gotham was now like New York and had lost all of its gothic feel; it was new and shiny and this was only about a year after the first film. There was no monorail any more and that sense of timelessness had gone, replaced by a, dare I say it, Metropolis. 

For a film that's 2½ hours long, it's incredibly well paced and has some brilliant set pieces that would have graced any other film's finale and the finale of this was almost understated, like everything else had been awesome so you needed a little less dynamic; something with more pathos. There are elements of it that I found problematic, but in general the main problem I have with it is Batman's code which, considering what the Joker puts him through, should have been broken into pieces as he tore the Master of Mirth to shreds, but he doesn't and the Joker's 'demise' is almost anticlimactic. Ledger's death meant there was never going to be a reprise so in the end it felt a little pointless.

It is an absolutely brilliant film and I've changed my mind about it 180 degrees; if anything there wasn't enough Batman in it... Now we have The Dark Knight Rises, a film I can reliably say I've never seen. I know nothing about it at all apart from Tom Hardy playing Bane, who became the Caped Crusader's main antagonist in the era when I was running my own comic shop and Batman was one of my top sellers (I didn't read it then so all I know is it involved a broken back; whether that happens in the third part of the trilogy I'll find out this very soon). 

***

Reach for the Sky was made in 1956 and starred the brilliant Kenneth More as Douglas Bader. More was much maligned because of his outspoken views - mainly about other people for which he was sued at least three times - but I always thought he was a genuine British star.

This has been one of my favourite films since I first saw it, a biopic about the British war hero with no legs and re-watching it this week it's a proper stiff upper lip tale of derring-do and one which perfectly suited Kenneth More (a sort of serious actor's Richard Briers of the 40s, 50s and 60s). Yes, some of the dialogue is questionable and it used a lot of stock footage of planes and air fights, but it had a solid cast of well-remembered British actors and the only thing that really let the film down was the way it casually breezed over Bader's time as a WW2 POW and the fact this man, who lost his legs in a plane crash that was undoubtedly because he was pratting about, caused the Germans so much trouble by continuously trying to escape while simultaneously treating Germans like they were all beneath him.

***

The Dark Knight Rises is a film we've never seen, mainly because of my now oft repeated disdain for The Dark Knight, so coming into the film fresh and with no real idea what it was about was interesting and obviously more so because of my about face regarding the film prior to this.

My first thoughts were that it was far too long and didn't have the focus the first two had. It soon became clear that this 3rd part of the trilogy was also more of a follow up to the first film, although it obviously has many links to the second film. Bane - played by Tom Hardy - was a strange one; he sounded like a Russian trying to do a posh Englishman reciting Shakespeare and apart from his vague origin - mainly spoken about - there was not a lot of explanation about him or why he had the strange contraption over his mouth - which at times made it difficult to actually understand what he was saying. Like the second film, you sometimes wondered why a carefully placed sniper bullet didn't simply remove him early on, but I suppose if your villain is offed in the opening hour it makes the rest of the film tough to make.

I liked the film and I really liked the little nods to the past, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Robin character, who does what very few others were able to do and realised Bruce Wayne was the Batman almost immediately, which makes you wonder why if by the end of this film about a dozen people knew his secret why he insisted on putting on the gruff character voice when he was around them. The problems with the film, IMHO, are the pacing and the ... bittiness of it. It didn't feel like a film, it felt like three hour long programmes stitched together to make a film and the big reveal/secret towards the end was both unexpected and a bit silly. I say silly because there were clues to it but they weren't obvious enough and it was only when the three army guys trying to contact Lucius Fox and the Wayne Industries board had their cover blown for no apparent reason that you started to think that maybe there was a mole in the outfit. I also don't know if the copy we watched was cut for some of the violence or if they just 'looked away' when it was being done - to maybe secure a PG-13 certificate, but it kind of made Bane less psychopathic - not that I thought he was a particularly good villain in the first place, but they wanted to wrap up the Ra's Al Ghul and I suppose making him another disciple allowed that - but even that ended up being a sort of red herring.

I applaud Christopher Nolan for making this a finite trilogy with no real chance of Christian Bale returning to the role or them carrying on with this franchise in other ways, although the randomness of Selina Kyle and her Catwoman persona was a bit of a stretch, especially if you know about the character's comicbook origins. I just felt there was things in this film that felt like it was a showpiece rather than a story and the eventual demise of Bane felt, with the Joker in the previous film, like an anti-climax or the fact that it wasn't Batman who took him out or that there was no 'what happened to Bane?' part of the epilogue. I just had problems with this film that I didn't have with the first two; it was almost like in its attempts to be the biggest and best of the trilogy it ended up being the least effective and the most clichéd. 

The next Bat films we have planned are the two Tim Burton films, which I expect I'll remember more about than any of these three, whether I'll like them is another thing entirely. 

***

In 2007, a film came out that I was stoked up to see and when I walked out of the cinema I was almost apoplectic with rage. In fact I went on about how much I fucking hated The Golden Compass I swore I'd never watch it again and would kill anyone who didn't agree with me that it was an abomination, the worst of all anathema. The reason for this was the His Dark Materials trilogy, which I had just finished reading and still consider to one of the greatest series of books I've ever read - so much so I've read them three times in the last 17 years.

My dear best friend Roger made a passing comment after that fateful night, suggesting it would have been done better had the BBC done it as a series, so imagine my happiness - tinged with trepidation - when His Dark Materials was announced and eventually landed. The first two series were as good as I could have expected, even if there had been some changes to allow it to be made into a finite series, otherwise it would have been a lot longer and much of it relatively superfluous to the specific narrative.

The wife and I have both enjoyed the books, however she felt the entire story was slightly diminished by the third book - The Amber Spyglass - while I thought it was possibly one of the greatest works of fiction I'd ever read. If the story - essentially a series of YA book - was designed for the reader to grow older while reading them - from maybe pre-teen with The Northern Lights to young adult with the final part, then it worked brilliantly well. Philip Pullman became something of a hero for me. However, I've harboured a fear from the very first episode of the BBC/HBO series - how would they do the final book justice?

The reason is because it goes along at a cracking pace and honestly if they did it all they would have needed 12 hour-long episodes and had some dubious bits in it that neither broadcaster would have fancied dealing with; so I expected they would ... abridge it, and two parts in, with another two to watch before it debuts on BBC this coming Sunday I'm beginning to panic a little because we don't appear to have moved on very much. My biggest problem with series two was they cut a lot out and spent too much time dwelling on some things and overlooking others; now, without giving too much away because I will have finished the series (thanks to BBC America/HBO) before you even get to episode three, I'm concerned that chopping swathes of the book out and rewriting other bits means the most important part of The Amber Spyglass might get lost in the 'bigger picture'.

One of the segments of the third part of the book was when Will, Lyra and Mary Malone find themselves on an alternative earth that is vastly different from all the others, the world of the utterly spellbinding Mulefa and a world with the answer to everything. From the opening titles animation it's clear they will travel to this world because the opening sequence features the trees where the amber spyglass is fashioned, using the resin from the giant seed pods, but are they going to have the tripod-like Mulefa, with their wheels instead of feet and their totally wonderful and unique loveliness; their innocent brilliance and the fact that without them the entire story will lose so much? For me the Mulefa completed the books; they added that je ne sais quoi that set the trilogy above any story of its ilk. Yet every preview and clip of the third series has not shown them at all and I will be just as apoplectic if that happens. I'd fucking write to Director General of the BBC, the boss of HBO and to Pullman, asking him why he allowed it to happen, but I almost didn't forgive him for allowing The Golden Compass film to be made with such horrendous changes that ruined what should have been the start of a brilliant franchise.

That feeling doesn't change in episode three and I feel that with the exception of Lyra and Will's story the impending war with God and his angels has been exaggerated, changed and made far more prominent in the TV series than I remembered it ever being in the books. The books were about Lyra and Will, what her parents were doing in the background was secondary because Lyra and Will would eventually be the reason for the conclusion of the story. However, if you've got James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, Will Keen and other big names, including Lin Manuel Miranda (who will pop up, unexpectedly, in episode five - unexpectedly because he doesn't re-appear in the book) in your cast, I suppose you want to give them something more than just act as supporting characters to a couple of teenagers.

The overriding thing about this entire series has been the glacial pace it's taken to reach where it's going to; so much so that there has had to be references made to how much older the two young protagonists have got and how little they've actually done compared to the books. That doesn't necessarily detract from the enjoyment, but by the time episode four gets underway, there is a distinct feeling that Pullman has allowed the show's makers carte blanche to change the story to whatever degree they feel in order to make it more... dynamic. So by the time I punched the air in sheer delight at the first appearance of the Mulefa most everything else about this final, concluding, series had changed in order to give Asriel, Mrs Coulter and the Magisterium more prominence. My personal jury is out as to whether I will be happy with the conclusion because it appears that Will and Lyra's story remains relatively untouched, just the supporting characters have been developed in a far greater, expansive, way.

The final four parts will be covered in next week's thrilling episode...

***

So, the World Cup is over and I can say, very honestly, that I watched a grand total of three games and about 90 minutes of all the others put together. I stuck to my principals and I'm aware that others either relented or showed no scruples whatsoever and just watched it regardless of the corruption, the pissing all over human rights or the corruption that swamps the world's most legitimately corrupt organisation. It was clear that FIFA wanted this one to be won by a South American country, preferably one with Lionel Messi in the side; the Qataris wanted it as well, with the head of their World Cup team suggesting it wouldn't have been a success if Messi didn't claim the trophy. Any follower of any British team needs to understand that FIFA doesn't allow teams it doesn't want to win this trophy.

I might have approached the 2026 World Cup with more enthusiasm, especially as only a third of it is held in the USA, but we've seen corruption, fixed matches, biased referees, laughable VAR decisions and no one is even trying or tried to hold anyone accountable; it's like FIFA told the BBC and ITV if they wanted to continue covering the tournaments they had to stop criticising them. It has been a vile spectacle of privilege and power, money and hatred stamping all over human rights, fair play and allowing normal people to think it's been a success. I think the one thing I'd like to see before I die is the end of FIFA - an organisation that makes the Mafia look like a benevolent society...

Modern Culture: It'll be Alright at the Bottom of the Barrel

Jesus H Christ...

Is anyone here old enough to remember Denis Norden? He'd have been 100 earlier this year and he was mostly famous for It'll Be Alright on the Night, a clip show using outtakes and, as he used to succinctly put it, cock-ups by actors when recording TV and films. It started in 1977 and he did it for nearly 30 years and it was also very much an example of the Law of Diminishing Returns, because the longer it went on the weaker the outtakes became.

The first few compilations - usually done as Christmas, Easter and Bank Holiday specials - were full of fantastic clips of A list actors cocking up, forgetting lines, swearing or in the case of the brilliant Peter Sellars corpsing and infecting everyone else on the set to bouts of uncontrollable laughter. It was unmissable TV because you saw the untouchables being human. However, by the middle to late 1980s the quality of the outtakes had dropped considerably and the level of celeb had also taken a dip.

On the 6th December, we watched a new film and it finished about 9.15, meaning we didn't really want to start watching another film and we had nothing recorded we fancied watching that was about an hour long and the only things on TV were repeats. We started watching a sensationalist documentary on the 1976 heatwave, which I had masses of problems with*, so we turned over and settled on the latest incarnation of IBAOTN now presented by, or rather voiced over, by one of the UK's most overrated and untalented wankers David Walliams and that's where the opening three words of this blog come into play. It's like some kind of existential fucking nightmare presented by a cunt who makes Matt Lucas seem mildly amusing ...

I presume this is supposed to be some kind of hilarious comedy? The kind of thing that will have the average punter rolling on the living room floor in fits of Peter Sellars-like uncontrollable laughter? If people falling over, the wind turning umbrellas inside out, a news presenter spilling tea on her blouse or a presenter of GMB's phone alarm going off are supposed to be hilarious then for fuck's sake can someone put ITV out of its misery. We don't watch ITV, mainly because of unmitigated horse shit like I'm A Cunt Get Me Out of Here and now we have another reason.

I wouldn't mind so much but because we live in the arse end of TV reception hell we literally get BBC 1, 2, 3 & 4, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC Scotland, the BBC News and Parliament channels, ITV 1, 2, 3 & 4, Channel 4, E4, More4, Film 4, Channel 5, 5Select, and The [fucking] Bible Network; as well as five +1 channels and less radio stations than a broken car stereo gets, so boycotting ITV completely (apart from films) doesn't really fuck up our viewing, but it would be nice if we could get some alternatives because ITV is simply a massive load of diarrhoea, in a bucket, without a cherry on top and it represents a weighty % of what we have available to us. 

* The main problem I had with the 1976 heatwave documentary was it was chronologically inaccurate. The actual heatwave, per se, started at the beginning of May 1976 when we had about six weeks of seasonably higher temperatures and little rain; then we had a four day period between June 20-24 where we had slightly above average rainfall and then from the 25th we had the 11 week drought (not in parts of Scotland and Northern Ireland though) and heatwave, which included 28 consecutive days where the temperature in the UK exceeded 30 degrees (in the south of England, not across the entire country).
The doc also suggests that the heatwave ended on the weekend of the August Bank Holiday, but what actually happened was over a three day period the UK recorded three times the monthly rainfall in three days before returning to hot and sunny weather until the end of September. What this documentary has done has rewritten history to make it sound like the summer of 76 was just an 11 week period, when in truth, apart from 7 days, it was actually a 20 week period. I know I'm nit-picking but you only have to check the Met Office's own data for 1976 to see that the doc was being selective and sensationalist rather than being accurate, because it was actually longer and far worse than the producers made it out to be...

***

The new film we watched, prior to our ITV nightmare, has been out about a week and already has a 5.9 rating on IMDB, which makes me think people who use IMDB are either xenophobic cunts or wouldn't know a fun film if it offered them a blow job that made them ejaculate repeatedly, because the Norwegian fantasy action film Troll is a good little movie with some awesome special effects.

I won't spoil it for you because it's too good to be spoiled by a twat like me, but I will say it's kind of like a modern day Scandinavian King Kong and while it's full of clichés they work extremely well because it knows it's full of clichés. It's also got subtitles so some of you might be put off.

Basically a new underground road/tunnel system disturbs a long dormant mountain troll who is disoriented and disturbed after hundreds of years of sleep and goes on an unintentional rampage as he heads towards Oslo. It takes a palaeontologist, the adviser to the Norwegian PM and a trendy army captain to resolve the problem while the Norwegian government are portrayed as simpering wankers with a desire for mass destruction (or as the collective Mayor of Amity in Jaws). I thought it was a funny, poignant and extremely well put together film and I would rather have watched it again than sit through David Walliams having his own private wankfest to unfunny clips of cunts doing unfunny natural mistakes...

***

If ever I needed an example of having watched a film 5 years ago but not remembering a minute, it was watching Suicide Squad (the 2016 film and not the one preceded by a The). The things I could remember about it was that Will Smith, Joel Kinnaman and Margot Robbie were in it and that Jared Leto is the worst Joker ever. However, if you'd asked me before my second viewing what it was about I think I might have made it up on the spot and got nowhere near what actually happened.

The main problem with this film is it needed the humour and irreverence of THE Suicide Squad, which was written and directed by James (Guardians of the Galaxy) Gunn, it also needed to have a coherent story that didn't unnecessarily stray down avenues that weren't really needed. Essentially this film acts as an origin story for Harley Quinn, but not for anyone else, which either suggests they figured there was a big future for Harley or they needed to justify having the Joker (and his love interest) in it. The thing is it adds about 20 minutes to a film that needed to be more concise and half an hour shorter.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy it and it's a shame that some of the 'villains' used didn't appear in the 'follow up'. That said the Boomerang fella could easily be forgotten about and Killer Croc was a bit weedy looking considering he ate people for fun. In fact, for a film that's over 2 hours long there was a lot of things that were either left unexplained or just left open and up in the air (and we watched the extended edition with added Joker... not the best advert considering Leto can't act and his was about as menacing as Boomerang's pink unicorn - which equally had no real explanation).

The thing is it wasn't actually a bad film, it just felt badly assembled. Smith, Kinnaman, Robbie, Viola Davis (Amanda Waller) and Jay Hernandez (Diablo) were all excellent, while Cara Delavigne proved without a doubt that she's really not an actor (they even dubbed someone else's voice onto her when she became the real Enchantress) and there were some fun cameos, such as Ben Affleck and Ezra Miller, who we may end up seeing as The Flash next year unless DC have another Batgirl moment and cancels it because of Miller's crass lunacy. It was also the first chance we had to see Amanda Waller - the woman who wields so much power, but is actually nastier than all the villains rolled into one; this is a character with no redeeming factors and I expect if and when they kill her off it will make whatever film it's in a blockbuster just so people can finally see her bite the big one. Davis plays her excellently well...

However, neither of us really remembered any of it, not even enough to make us go 'oh yeah, that happened.' Either it's a film that improves with age and a second viewing or the extended version is a bit like Zack Snyder's Justice League which bore little or no resemblance to Joss Whedon's Justice League despite them both being the same film.

This also marks the beginning of a bit of a DC fest, as we've decided to watch the Birds of Prey film (which we know we haven't seen) and the two Tim Burton Batman films (but not the Joel Schumacher ones) and the three Christian Bale reboots; more of them in later blogs...

***

Just when I thought the countdown to Christmas was going to be films and fuckwitted ITV bollocks, a new series of Doom Patrol rocks up with two episodes at the same time...

A quick recap: series one was fantastic and without a doubt the best thing DC has had any involvement with in recent years. Series two was also of a high standard but started to run out of steam with the introduction of certain characters and because of COVID it ended prematurely and on a [ahem] cliffhanger which was resolved far too quickly at the start of series three. The third season lost the plot somewhat for me; the premise was clever but it felt like a great simple idea that was spread out across 13 episodes when maybe three would have been enough, plus the weirdness simply became silly and seemed to be thrown in as much as possible without any real thought.

I had big hopes for Season four mainly because the show seemed to have sorted out all of its psychological issues, like the dull uninteresting waffle that seemed to be there to pad out episodes and it looked, for intents and purposes, like we were finally going to go in a direction that was complimentary to the brilliant first series. 

Season four kicks off with Vic in a post-apocalyptic future before cutting back to present day where Vic and his dad have built Cliff a hand with a finger that actually feels things. The first thing he wants to feel with his new hand is his grandson so they jump into the modified 'time' machine to head for Florida but end up 20 years into the future where the opening sequence takes place. They discover they're probably responsible for the ... Butt-pocalypse because one of the Butt monsters they were supposed to have exterminated in season three had escaped, as a zombie, and this was the catalyst for the end of the world. So far, so fucking stupid. 

The [I hesitate to say this but I will] beauty of season three was despite it being really boring and silly it all eventually fitted together and made sense - in a Doom Patrol kind of way - and I'm sure that season four will end up the same, but season three had some great new characters, not least Michelle Gomez's Madame Rouge - who has now become 'probationary' leader of the team because Rita is really shit at it. However, a really bad sign is I fell asleep four times in 45 minutes because frankly Vic is boring now; Jane has never been electrifyingly interesting since the end of the first season; there's not enough Larry and if there was he's becoming a little tedious and Rita's had her spotlight series, she's just returned to being a selfish and dull character. Oh and Cliff (annoyingly voiced by Brendan Fraser) has never really been anything but annoying.

I struggle to wonder why I thought it was such a good series; it's made on such a small budget that the butt monsters appear to have eaten most of it up and Doom Patrol appear to be a team of misfit superheroes that exist in the least populated part of the world because this series has always had the feeling it's made with about 20 extras - even crowd scenes feel empty and forced. I'm not enjoying it so far, but there are 11 to go, so it might surprise me. The problem with it is it's just silly; it needs to be weird, but it isn't. 

***

Back to the films and we decided to watch another film we thought we'd seen but it became clear very quickly that perhaps we'd intended to watch this but never got around to it. This time it was the 2015 Christmas 'comedy' horror film Krampus. I toyed with the idea that perhaps we'd seen a foreign film that this was a remake or adaptation of, but no, if we'd seen this film it had flown from our memories like Santa from rooftop to chimney...

Do you remember the 2007 adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist? It starred Thomas Jane, before he was relegated to making shit films like The Punisher and The Predator and perhaps The Mist was why his star fell so quickly. The thing about this film and why I bring it up is that it's a bloody brilliant adaptation, one of the best King films of all time; it's a Frank Darabont film and it's unbelievably faithful to the novella it comes from, apart from the ending that US viewers found so downbeat and sad that they stayed away from the cinema in droves... Without giving away the ending of Krampus too much I wonder if this film also suffered a similar fate because there isn't a happy ending for anyone in this and it's what makes the film so good.

It's about a decent and nice family being invaded by their thoroughly horrendous right wing relatives for the holiday season and how one loose wish by the young and persecuted Max leads to their eventual demise at the hands of the nasty spirit of Christmas and his fucked up helpers. It's actually a really enjoyable film in a nasty, sometimes poorly made way and if anyone's showing it this Christmas you should go out of your way to watch it.

***

There's this advert out at the moment for a perfume called Daisy. My dearly beloved old friend Pat Fish, who shuffled off this mortal plane earlier this year would have probably had an embolism had he still been alive, as would my old chum Malcolm Alsop (who left us a few years ago after a long battle with cancer) as would the also dead and brilliant Alan Vega of Suicide fame (the 70's electronic punk duo/band, not the act of killing oneself), because Suicide's awesome 1978 song Cheree has been bastardised and stolen for this facile and trite perfume advert. It's a fucking affront to a genius and the fantastic people who loved it and are no longer with us, but if Chanel can 'steal' a Lorde song about inner city squalor and gangs and turn it into a cutesy perfume advert then there really isn't any hope for anyone...

***

The Conjuring is a film we'd never seen before. We kind of gave up on 'horror' films about 15 years ago and while we've seen a few since - the pointless Poltergeist remake, the hyped-up bollocks that was Insidious, the quite dreadful Midsommar and now the aforementioned Krampus are the ones that spring to mind; they might not be the only ones, but they are the ones that spring to mind - there hasn't been a better time to try some of those we disregarded without a second thought and The Conjuring has the highest IMDB rating of the ones we opted for.

What you get is a very well-made cross between The Exorcist, Poltergeist and The Haunting set in 1971 and based loosely on a supposed 'true' story. It stars the lovely Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson and Lily Taylor (at her least weird looking I've ever seen her despite being possessed) and from the opening sequence it's clear we've wandered into a film that figured out it was going to be a franchise before it started. 

That said, it wasn't too bad a film and while it wasn't scary - what horror films are? - it was not short of the occasional shock and jump. Much of the plot is telegraphed ten minutes ahead of the action and there's quite a bit of superfluous flotsam masquerading as supporting characters, but it wasn't too bad and we're going to give the follow up a try.

***

As England were losing in the World Cup or as I now like to think of it as The Mafia and Pablo Escobar teaming up for Billionaires in Need show, I was discovering a truly awesome film. 10 years ago Cloud Atlas was released and all I really knew about it was: a) it's a Marmite film with people either loving it or hating it and b) it's one of two films Tom Hanks he actually likes - I can understand why; it's a wonderful 2½ hours, a truly fantastic work of genius and I can't understand why I've never been tempted by it before.

It's not even like I can start to explain what it's about, but it tells a story over about 1000 years, from the perspectives of different people who all have a birthmark that resembles a comet, It's a tale of love, betrayal, determination, hope, redemption and tragedy; it will make you smile, it will make you go 'Yeah!' and it will leave you on the brink of tears. I think it's one of the best films I've seen in the 21st century and I look forward to 2025 or 6 when I watch it a second time and relive the experience. The weird thing is after 30 minutes I was wondering what the actual fuck I was watching because it really does jump backwards and forwards through time without really giving you any clue as to how it would all fit together.

I feel as though I should have led a blog with this, or even given it an entire entry on its own. Tom Hanks, James Darcy, Susan Sarandon, Ben Whishaw, Halle Berry, Hugo Weaving, Hugh Grant, Bae Doona, Keith David, Jim Sturgess, David Gyasi, Jim Broadbent and Hamish MacBeth's Ralph Riach (TV John, in probably his last role) knocked the ball out of the park in this Tom Tykwer and the Wachowski sisters film adapted from the David Mitchell (not that one) novel. Watch it; be stunned and amazed.

***

Weird, ennit? I sometimes struggle to do one of these in a month and usually aim for one every two weeks, but have managed one, on average, every six days since the start of the 2022 Corruptionfest. I think the WC has annoyed me so much I've needed to focus my attention on something else and this is much better than having my comments moderated by The Guardian or getting bans on Facebook for suggesting that bald cunt Infantino should be beheaded.

At least this week's instalment has something new as well as a bunch of films, which, on the whole, have been better than watching a goalless draw between two teams of highly paid footballers with the moral fibre of plankton...

Next week there will be some Batman films - probably the Christopher Nolan ones first because I'm loathe to watch the Burton/Keaton ones again because I hated them so passionately 30+ years ago when they first appeared. There'll be the sequel to The Conjuring and apart from that I can't tell you because it really depends on what the wife fancies and the usual 'other stuff'.

[Not So] Modern Culture: More Old films and New Trailers

I've changed my mind on a longstanding belief. Opinions are not like arseholes, because to my knowledge most people only have one arsehole, unlike opinions. I often have lots of opinions about Marvel films, yet despite sometimes thinking I have more, I only really have one arsehole. For example, based on the trailers, I knew immediately that Thor: Love & Thunder was going to be a stinker because the trailer didn't do anything it was probably supposed to do; it left me thinking it was going to be unnecessary and frivolous - it was. However, sometimes I get a good feeling about trailers and wish I'd kept my mouth shut and sometimes - although quite rarely - I see a trailer and think positive, almost optimistic thoughts.

When the Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantomania trailer dropped a few weeks back, I got something I hadn't felt for a long time, that frisson of 'oh hello, this could be different' (even if it did have a kind of Micronauts meets the Guardians vibe) and I'm still of the opinion that it's going to be a very serious Ant-Man film; it's going to be choc-a-bloc full of trademark Ant-Man silliness, but it's going to conclude the trilogy with something unexpected and slightly dark. How could it not? It's introducing to the MCU film franchise the next Big Bad. The villain who we already know will take on the next incarnation of The Avengers. That said, a friend saw the trailer at the cinema last week and echoed what I said last time out, it's a green screen nightmare and the SFX don't appear to be very good (this seems to be a recurring problem with post Endgame films; it's like they spaffed most of the next ten years' budget on that and are having to make do with old Pixar programmes.

The first Guardian of the Galaxy Vol 3 trailer also arrived last week and while I think this is going to continue in the theme of being a comedy film, I'm even more convinced that it's going to change tone very suddenly and fuck up a lot of people - on screen and watching it. The trailer starts off with a laugh out loud moment, but quickly grows dark and ominous... 

I think the next two MCU films, considering they both feature the more light-hearted characters, are going to be what execs like to call 'game changers'. At least that's the impression I got from the initial trailers for both films and the dying embers of the child who fell in love with Marvel Comics is hoping these two films have something in them that will reignite my passion for the MCU, ironically by using two franchises I've had little or no time for thus far and by killing off people. 

There are lines in both these trailers that suggest the gloves get taken off and things are going to get serious to the point of life or death serious. I got a palpable buzz of excitement when I heard Kang tell Scott Lang that he's way out of his depth because we all know he is, but we also know when the baddie tells the good guy something like this we're heading into the business end of the franchise.

In the Guardians trailer, you get the impression that Rocket is being serious again, like he was in Endgame and serious enough to know he won't be walking away. There's also the most angry, emotive and exciting 'We are Groot!' scene where the tree and Peter Quill are looking like they're fighting their last battle - it won't be, but if the trailers are anything to go by then both these films third outings are going to go out with a bang and at the moment I want to hold onto that feeling of pessimistic optimism... That might be down to the fact that I think a lot of main characters are going to die in Guardians, with my bets on all of them bar Quill and Groot! 

I also really don't want to feel as excited about the Guardians film as I do, given that I had absolutely zero love for either of the first two, but, you know, I hate goodbyes and this feels like it's going to be a really, really, sad one - at least that's what my heart is telling me and the reaction I get every time I watch that trailer. You get the impression that the High Evolutionary is going to be one screwed up and twisted villain and there's a short burst of a scene where Peter looks like he's just seen one of his pals dissected on a table.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will stream any day from December 25th onward; the likelihood is that it will enter into our homes sometime in the first week of 2023. I'm told I'll like it, which is always a worry...

***

Does anyone else feel like December is a really shit month? I get it that Christmas is coming and (usually) it's a happy time of the year with much excess, but in recent years the arrival of December has usually meant the departure of regular TV shows replaced by repeats and Christmas Specials that aren't at all special.

It's probably down to the amount of TV channels we have, the amount of streaming services and the lack of imagination - even things like Netflix, HBO and [insert any of the others here] seem to have given up on quality entertainment in favour of nostalgia and cheap reruns. I can remember when there was only three channels and Christmas week was so jam-packed with new films and proper specials that you had to carefully plan your viewing, because without a VCR, you had to sacrifice some things. This year, things have not been helped by the fucking World Cup, which I have largely boycotted for a number of political reasons but mainly because I fell out of love with international football around 1997 and I've never rekindled it. 

It might have something to do with where I live and how I feel about my adopted (and ancestral) home, but it's more than likely to do with the fact that England are like Spurs, it's been decades since they won anything and it doesn't look like that run is going to end. My journey of watching England and Wales's progress in this year's FIFA Corruption Fest has been to watch old films rather than subject myself to a football tournament I feel can never achieve the hype because of where it is and because Qataris like the Saudi Arabians and other Middle Eastern desert state dictatorships are humans I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire, although I might help them to be on fire. I'm not being racist or religion intolerant, I'm being human and that's something these extremist wankstains have no concept of - whether they're Qataris or members of FIFA.

The reason we're watching so many old films is because there isn't an alternative. Bearing in mind we have a total of about 25 TV stations - which are essentially the BBCs, the ITVs, the Channel 4s, two Channel 5 offerings and some +1s; outside of this we get TBN - the God channel - and nothing else; not that it bothers us because I doubt we'd watch anything else because most of them are full of shit shows and repeats. When Roger Waters said something about 200 channels of shit on your TV screens he wasn't lying (and he has an accounting background, doncha know!).

Yet, I still manage to find something TV and cinema related to talk about, which suggests to me that I'm far more brilliant than any of you ever suspected - an easy trap to fall in given how modest and self-effacing I appear when people are allowed to meet me in person...

***

The Riddick Trilogy... Do you know I didn't even know there was a third film? ITV4 showed Pitch Black and then three nights later The Chronicles of Riddick, which had [amazingly] Judi Dench in it and an extremely youthful looking Karl Urban. It wasn't what I expected because I'd always wrongly believed it was the prequel to Pitch Black, it clearly isn't. Chronicles is an odd movie; like the bastard off-spring of an obscure corner of the Star Wars galaxy and despite some excellent set pieces, a real sense of menace and a two hour running time, it ended up feeling like the poor middle part of a dodgy trilogy (which it is). You get the impression that lots was cut out of this film because coherence is less important than an accessible running time and how Judi Dench got involved is the greatest enigma of them all - perhaps she fancied a new conservatory or a foreign holiday?

The ending of Pitch Black was, at least, an ending, even if you didn't see Radha Mitchell's death coming. The sequel ends on an unfinished note, but is most definitely setting you up for part 3, with Richard B Riddick now in charge of the universe's Nazi Death Cult worshippers, the Necromongers and all that comes with it. One thing you can guarantee about Riddick films is he's completely upfront about things and doesn't shy away from confrontation - it's Die Hard on steroids. This film tries to explain why he is what he is and plays fast and loose with some of the things he said in the first film - like why his eyes are the way they are. It would have been nice to discover how this member of a super powerful race called the Furyans ended up with such a human name...

The Nazi Death Cult spends most of its time, when not usurping worlds, trying to kill off whoever's in charge. Being the boss is a dangerous occupation and frankly why anyone would want the mantle is beyond me. Plus whatever the Underverse is and what the Necromongers are actually seeking has been inconveniently overlooked in favour of naked torsos and tortuous posturing. 

By the start of the third film, ten years have elapsed since the end of the first film and now the eponymously titled Riddick is about how he fell out with the Nazi Death Cult and ended up on a very inhospitable planet. The opening ten minutes pretty much explains how our shiny eyed hero was alone, vulnerable and injured on the run from crazy alien nasties. 

From that point on, we essentially get Die Hard meets Aliens as Riddick first acclimatises to the planet, then decides it's time for him to get off of it. This is achieved by activating a Bounty Hunter alarm beacon, notifying all the mercenaries nearby that he is alive and well on this planet. Enter two teams of bounty hunters; one featuring Dave Bautista and a rag tag bunch of incompetents led by a wanker called Santana. 

The other team is led by the father of the arsehole from Pitch Black who Riddick allowed to die because he wanted to sacrifice a young girl to save his own skin. Daddy wants to find out what happened to his son ten years earlier and for most of the film isn't interested in the truth. On his team is former Battlestar Galactica alumni Katee Sackhoff, who it has to be said didn't have the kind of acting career after that series finished that she probably thought she deserved; that much is proved when about half way through the film we get some gratuitous nudity from her. She's a fine looking woman, but I can't help thinking I would have felt better about it had she kept her tits to herself.

As an action/adventure film it's really top notch stuff - seriously - but like both the films before it, it suffers from poor dialogue and once the slightly far fetched conclusion arrives you're left thinking that the remaining arseholes Vin Diesel hasn't killed simply wouldn't have the change of heart they jump the sharkingly do. Then for an epilogue we're back to the Necromongers for a (not so) neat and quick bookend sequence setting us up for Riddick 4 or Furya as it is, at the moment, called. 

Riddick was made in 2013, Karl Urban's brief cameo suggests to me that he agreed to his three minutes on screen as a favour to David Twohy, who had overseen the trilogy, despite becoming something of a bigger star in the seven years between Chronicles and Riddick. 

Furya isn't likely to come out for another three to five years - it's in production, which could mean it's anywhere between script and final polishing. Diesel claims it's not far away and frankly it needs to be soon because our titular hero's now 55 and I'm thinking he's not likely to be doing many naked torso shots, especially as his moobs are going to be less interesting than Katee Sackhoff's boob.

***

The old film fest ploughs on without a pause, as the wife and I re-engage with films we've seen and ones we've missed. The first bunch on our list were all from 2011 and began with the prequel to The Thing interestingly titled The Thing, which features weird SF alumni (and nerd crumpet) Mary Elisabeth Winstead. I remember watching this film the first time around and thinking, it's just a remake of the Kurt Russell film, but this time with more diversity in the cast, but while it's easily passed off as a 'remake' there are elements of it that work very well; not least the director's painstaking detail to recreate the Norwegian Antarctic based exactly as it was shown in the 1982 film and make sure the end of this film mirrored the start of the 'sequel'.

I have a few problems with it, such as what happens to Winstead after she blows up the alien on his ship and then fries Joel Egerton as he too has been 'assimilated'? Or did the grenade used to off the ship's alien create the massive collapse exposing the alien ship that is found by the scientists at the US base in the 1982 film, because it certainly didn't look like it? The other problem the film had was there were literally too many people in it, so it was difficult to even keep a track of who lived and who fried, but I enjoyed it much more than I did 11 years ago. 

It's an interesting curiosity, especially if, like me, you think John Carpenter's remake of The Thing From Another World is one of the best SF/horror movies ever made.

***

I remember watching Battle Los Angeles when it came out in 2011, but it obviously left little or no impact because watching it again the other night I felt like I was new to the party. This Aaron Eckhart vehicle originally involved the Strause brothers doing the special effects, but they quit the film to do their own version called Skyline (a film that hasn't aged well at all). The FX in the latter film are excellent even if the rest of the film is a big mound of poo; the FX in Battle Los Angeles aren't excellent, at least not when it involves the alien invaders and as one reviewer described - it felt like Black Hawk Down with aliens. It's a film full of testosterone (even Eckhart, who made a third of the film with an unknown broken arm) and actors who would go on to do other, more memorable, things and for the first time in literally months, I fell asleep during it a number of times.

It is a really boring film; even when the marines are fighting aliens. It's just a war film and not a very good one at that. 

***

Source Code also came out 11 years ago and we both remembered the premise but had forgotten just how totally fucked up it was. Jake Gyllenhaal plays a Air Force captain who finds himself repeatedly transported into the last eight minutes of a train journey that ends with total annihilation. I'm actually going to avoid spoilers for this because if you haven't seen it, you should. It's a cracking little film - weighing in at barely 90 minutes - and while the ending smacks a little of wishful thinking you can't help but feel it was right for the characters involved. 

It was directed by Duncan Jones, who many might recall is also known as Zowie Bowie; son of the late great singer/songwriter/auteur and proves, without a doubt, that genius might be running in the DNA. If you've never seen it, go out of your way to.

***

The Adjustment Bureau is a film also from 2011 and one I remember loving first time round. If anything it got a bit better watching it again because while I remembered the premise I forgot all the details. I think the only real problem I have with the film is that at its heart it's deeply religious and works on our acceptance that there's a supreme being in control of the destinies of everyone.

I think it was also the film when I fell in love with Emily Blunt and acknowledged that Matt Damon is actually an A list actor. For those of you who haven't seen it, Damon plays a politician who on the eve of losing his first attempt at being elected as a senator meets Blunt and they hit it off like they had always been destined to, except according to the person that writes the grand scheme of things that meeting was to be a singular one and Damon can't meet up with her again because she would prevent him from becoming President and he wouldn't be able to go on and do great things, so the Adjustment Bureau do everything in their power to prevent this, even resorting to exposing themselves to him to prove to him that it's the way it is for a reason.

Screw that, says Damon and spend the rest of the film trying to track down this woman who has had such a profound effect on him. It is one of the best examples of True Love Conquers All and I don't think there's been a stranger movie that sends the message out that God exists [he doesn't]. 

Interesting factoid: This film features the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Howard - Tony's father - Stark (John Slattery), but I'm thinking that most actors at some point are going to end up in an MCU film. However, last time out when I reviewed the two Deadpool films, I forgot to mention that The Vanisher - one of X-Force (but also one of the original Brotherhood of Evil Mutants) - was played - in the three seconds he was actually on screen; while being electrocuted - by Brad Pitt. I'm also sure Matt Damon has appeared in a Deadpool film as well...

***

A quick mention for Silent Hill (from 2006, but who's counting). We switched it off after 20 minutes; for a creepy horror movie it was full of dire acting, illogical motivation and felt like the video game it was based on (although I've never actually played it). Radha Mitchell might have been a kick ass character in Pitch Black but in this she was reduced to running around a lot and shouting. Sean Bean also brings nothing to the film apart from a bad US accent. It had creepy ideas but these don't make an interesting film, that usually needs a decent script and a plot that is easily understood.

***

This is the End from Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel, with a host of other Hollywood A and B listers in a parody end of existence comedy, was funnier first time round, although Emma Watson is great in it. It's the kind of film that really needed to be half an hour shorter, mainly because some of it was really unnecessary, such as the five minute argument between Danny McBride and James Franco about where they can ejaculate in Franco's house to cause the most offense; which might sound funny but actually makes you feel a little queasy.

There's no shortage of massive penises in this film, some of which are actually erect (although only seen in shadow, in that instance) and a very poorly judged discussion about raping Emma Watson, which was also unnecessary and quite distasteful, even if the original intentions were supposed to be chivalrous. In fact, it's essentially a film about Hollywood A and B list actors (they all play vacuous, self-interested versions of themselves) and how offensive they can be and still get laughs; the problem with the film is the laughs are actually few and far between and become even thinner on the ground the further into the 2 hour running time you get. Plus the denouement is extremely weak and it struggles with consistency, even if it's supposed to be a zany comedy in bad taste.

***

And that's it for this week... Next time: pick any number of films from the following - Troll - a new Norwegian film. Chappie a 2105 film about a robot. Chef, Cloud Atlas, Django Unchained, Interstellar, Life of Pi, Moneyball, Mystery Men, Prisoners, The Change-Up, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive and a few other films I've recorded off the TV; I might also get around to watching Black Bird, a six-part TV series which I've downloaded on recommendation of The Guardian. Plus the usual rants, raves and cunts...

Modern Culture - Mostly Marvel Arse Drippings and Old Films

I know, it's not even December and already I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel to come up with stuff to talk about, but as this woeful World Cup will still be fucking up the TV schedules until a week before Santa gets here, I don't expect there's going to be that much to talk about after it, as there is usually very little new stuff unless you like pointless [small P] Christmas specials.

However, you can always guarantee that Marvel/Disney will come up with a pointless Christmas special and they did (albeit with a couple of Easter Eggs thrown in so that the next film makes more sense)...

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special was a sort of entertaining 38 minutes of nonsense with a mix of piss poor special effects, some jolly bits of Christmas cheer and even Kevin Bacon - who was surprisingly better than I expected, even if we didn't really need his little C&W Christmas tune near the end. This was really all about Drax and Mantis fucking up Hollywood with a little bit of Starlord and some cameos from Nebula, Rocket and Groot (so obviously a man in a wooden suit rather than actual CGI). 

We've heard that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 is going to be the last outing for this particular group of heroes, but the post credit scene of this Holiday Special suggested that until that film finally lands, Marvel and Disney is going to milk this particular subsection of the franchise until it bleeds from its putrid cock.

This wasn't a patch on the Werewolf by Night special, but that was the best thing Marvel has done since Infinity War and most of these 'specials' are probably never going to be that special. GotGHS apparently was an idea James Gunn had after the very first film; I do wish it had stayed an idea, but just to spoil it for you: Mantis is Peter's (half) sister and the Guardians have bought Nowhere - what they intend to do with it is anyone guess, but I expect the new and fucked up Adam Warlock will destroy it and the last dregs of my hope that the MCU might have a salvation movie in the future...

***

Despite their ubiquitous presence on Film4, I'd resisted the two Deadpool films for a long time; not because I didn't enjoy them, but because whenever I've been channel hopping at the end of the day, I've usually ended up watching five or ten minutes of either of these films. They remind me, in a perverse way, of An American Tail, a film I've never actually watched from start to finish but during the 1990s when I used to visit my mate Maurice, the film was always on, being watched by his then 5 year old daughter. I've probably seen the film a dozen times without ever completing it in one sitting.

Deadpool and Ryan Reynolds seem to be one of those guilty pleasures that's a bit like flannelette sheets when it isn't freezing cold outside and don't ask me to explain that analogy because it would probably fall apart if I did. 

The films are essentially throwaway nonsense that take place in a Marvel Universe that seems slightly different from other Marvel universes - of which we now know there are multiples versions of - possibly a similar universe to She Hulk because, you know, fourth wall breaking. The thing about Deadpool is his films, unlike She Hulk's TV series, are actually funny; laugh out loud funny rather than mildly amusing if you get the joke.

The first film is great, even if far too much of it is spent on Deadpool's origin and it falls into that abhorrent old Marvel film category of 'mutants can be created rather than being born that way' which has always made any Marvel mutant film immediately shite. Cut away the superfluous bollocks and Deadpool is a monster of a movie, with excellent set pieces and some really funny jokes and one can see why it was such a huge hit. Reynolds is a genuinely funny guy who brings essentially himself to the ball and has great fun with it; the script is mostly as sharp as a tack and it literally spends most of the time pushing the limits of tastelessness. 

The villains are a bit stereotypical, the use of lesser known X-Men suggests that when the film was made no one wanted to potentially hurt the X-Men franchise, but Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead (who?) hold the thing together and while it ultimately feels like a bunch of comedy set pieces stitched together with a weak plot it was one of the highlights of 2016.

Deadpool 2 on the other hand is far too long and has far too many unwanted and poorly acted characters... well... character, that of Julian Dennison, the New Zealand 'actor' who shot to fame starring with Sam Neill in Hunt for the Wilderpeople and probably should have retired after that film. I don't have a problem with actors from New Zealand, even if they do sound very odd, but I do have problems with actors who can't act and bring fuck all to the show and Dennison fits that description perfectly. The only thing that's redeeming about his character - Firefist - is his name and that wasn't exploited nearly as much as it should have been.

I would have enjoyed this film had it simply been a series of set pieces where Wade Wilson just kills loads of people in inventive ways, but this film tries to be really clever and it fails. Don't get me wrong, it's great fun and doubles up on the LOL moments, but so much of it is unnecessary and feels like padding. It's like they tried very hard to hide a serious film under the slapstick comedy exterior.

I thought the idea of X-Force was a cool one; I thought the idea of killing all of them bar Domino off at the start of their first mission was even more inspired; but I didn't like Eddie Marsan's character or what he represented; I found Cable to be just a tad annoying and in places ridiculous (although when Wade calls him Thanos that was his best moment, but when Cable uses the C word that was his worst moment; that was not needed - like when Loki calls Natasha a quim) and there wasn't enough time with the original supporting cast. Domino, however, was a class addition and I hope Marvel finds a way to keep her around.

I think the main problem I had with the sequel is despite being a thoroughly enjoyable film, the final post credit scene sort of ruined it all without ruining it at all... 

Huh? 

Let me explain: as an aficionado of time travel films, they're usually made with a degree of logic and common sense, but Marvel's excursions into time travel - be it The X-Men, Deadpool or the Avengers have dispensed with logic completely; it's just a vehicle not a plot and with Deadpool 2 it's reduced to being a trivial sideshow. Cable has come from the future (with his daughter's teddy bear) to kill Firefist before he turns into a psychopathic killer who offs his wife and kid; Wade stops him, converts Firefist to not being a killer and everything in the future become nice again. Wade wouldn't have been involved in any of the film had Ness not been killed by a token Russian mafia thug; he wouldn't have joined the X-Men and he wouldn't have ended up in the Ice Box (a stronghold for evil mutants) with Firefist... Cable not returning to the future also causes a paradox that could result in him never marrying his wife or having the daughter the entire film was based around... So far so good?

At the end of the film Wade using one of Cable's time travel doodads goes back in time and prevents Ness from being killed, which technically speaking would prevent any of his subsequent involvement in the rest of the film. She wouldn't die, he wouldn't be rescued by Colossus, there would be no X-Force, Cable would come to the past and kill Firefist unopposed and the same outcome would be achieved except we'd have one dead New Zealand actor. Deadpool 2 suffers the same paradoxical bollocks that made Avengers: Endgame such a stinker of a film when you put it under any scrutiny.

That said, I totally love the Deadpool films and I cannot believe that Deadpool 3 - whenever it arrives - will be a patch on the first two because I do not believe that Marvel/Disney would allow such a massively bad taste movie to exist under their banner. The MCU has embraced 'shit' as an expletive, even this week's Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special has at least one shit in it and that 'special' was essentially aimed at kids, but I can't see them allowing something that moves the boundaries of bad taste to entirely new horizons.

On a related subject, I was totally unaware that there is something like 30 Deadpool shorts - not the clothing, but little filmettes that Reynolds has made since the first film debuted in 2016. I get it that the character has essentially helped turn Reynolds into an A list superstar but this smacks a little of overkill.

***

I don't like Christmas very much and I think the last decent Christmas film was made in the 1950s, but I've changed my mind recently when I saw a film - in November - called The Man Who Invented Christmas starring Dan Stevens and the late, great Christopher Plummer.

It's a fictionalised story about how Charles Dickens came up with and developed A Christmas Carol and it was absolutely delightful, extremely funny and felt like it should have been the Christmas Day afternoon film on any of the major TV stations. Oddly enough, one of the best Christmas films ever is Alastair Sim's version of Scrooge made in 1951, this wasn't as good as that but it's a close run thing and I urge you to watch it next time it's on TV and you get the chance. 

***

We watched Eternals again. Given that we found both Black Widow and Shang-Chi better the second time around (although I still don't get the latter and why it was even made), we expected to go into this one feeling like we might enjoy it more. I don't think we did...

One of our friends thinks this is the best MCU film of all time, but I'm now convinced he just likes being contrary, probably to be slightly controversial and maybe to get people talking, but how anyone can think that this abomination of a film is the best thing Marvel has ever done probably needs therapy, because it simply isn't. It's full of bad acting; it's driven by a implausibly bad script and it simply makes little or no sense. It has moments in it that are great, but these are so few and far between that they lose any impact they might have had.

It's also either far too long or not long enough (I'd go for the former because if this had gone on for longer than the 2+ hours I would have lost the will to live). The characters make little or no sense; we have an Indian guy, an Asian guy, a black gay guy, a deaf woman, another Oriental woman, a Hispanic woman and an American woman; we have a child, a Scottish guy and an Irish guy - why? Why are they a selected bunch of ethnicities when they arrived on Earth before even such a concept even existed? Why is there a deaf woman, but not a blind one or one that can't smell or one that is incontinent? Why does this film even exist?

In the comics, Thanos at some point (which has probably been retroactively re-written) was classed as being related to the Deviants - the villains the Eternals are trusted to protect the earth from, yet despite a kind of generally plausible reason for them never getting involved in the Infinity War, it kind of feels like they're not really protecting anything, especially if the entire reason for them being there is to ensure the population of the planet exceeds a certain number in the billions so that a new Celestial can be born, thus ending the lives of all those billions of people. Surely, when Thanos cut the world's population in half that would have been classed as a threat to the creation of the new Celestial and good reason for the bunch of mismatched heroes, with strange unrelated powers and accents, to get involved? Or how come there's never been a recorded sighting of the Deviants by any other hero or person in the MCU before this film?

It's a fucking abortion of a film. Laughable for so many reasons. Probably the biggest being that Chloé Zhao, the director, publicly stated she wanted as little CGI in the film as possible and it's probably the most heavily CGI'd film in the MCU's existence and most of it is shit. Or how about when Thena - played poorly by Angelina Jolie - goes all rogue for absolutely no reason whatsoever, out of the blue, with no foreshadowing and it takes nearly an hour for the script to even bother to address her crazy bat shit attempts at killing all her 'siblings'. 

I really wanted to like this film more than I did first time around and I ended up hating it even more. Only Avengers: Endgame, which I liked as a spectacle film, until you put it under actual scrutiny, has had such a negative reaction from me. Even the fact that a few of the Eternals are actually cunts and a couple of them are essentially cowards doesn't make this a good [as in clever] film and the most heartbreaking thing about it is at the end when you get ... The Eternals will return caption, like we've just watched an Avengers or Thor film. I don't want them to return unless they get killed off in the pre-credit scene before the film actually starts.

There has been some extremely ill-judged decisions by Kevin Feige and the MCU but it seems that both Marvel and DC, at present, seem to think that ideas Jack Kirby had in the 1970s are the next best thing to the ideas he and Stan Lee had in the 1960s - they're not. Kirby stopped having good ideas around 1964, by the 1970s if you weren't aware he was an old man you'd think was on crappier versions of the drugs that Jim Starlin and Steve Englehart were taking. Nothing this one-time comics genius created after 1970 is worth anything at all and this proved it beyond reasonable doubt; it is the worst Marvel film ever made; even worse than the Punisher films, the Ghost Rider films or that Man-Thing film they made in the early noughties. Eternals is irredeemable shit.  

***

I take that back. The Eternals is not the worst Marvel film ever... It's the third worst film but absolutely the worst MCU film. 

I said I wasn't going to watch the two Ghost Rider films having seen the first one 15 years ago and never having seen the 'follow up'. So we decided to be gluttons for punishment and watch both films in one sitting rather than subject ourselves to more World Cup bollocks.

The first thing I noticed was that Ghost Rider (2007) must have impressed us so much we put any memory of it out of our brains so that if we ever watched it again it would seem fresh and unwatched because neither of us remembered anything about it at all. The second thing is that it's described as 'action fantasy thriller' on IMDB and has an almighty 5.2 rating. What it should have been described as was 'action comedy bollocks' and been given a 3 rating, mainly because the special effects weren't that bad for a film with a budget of $25.

The third thing I noticed is that Eva Mendes - who played Roxy, Johnny Blaze's love interest, must have felt a little soiled and desperately hoping for her own personal 'Me Too' moment because the director obviously told her to spend most of the film with as much cleavage showing without her bra or nipples getting in the shot and the fourth thing about it was how utterly shite it was from Nick Cage's phoned in acting to the things in it that made so little sense I'm still scratching my head about them - such as why Sam Elliot was in it and what the point of his original Ghost Rider cameo near the end was. Yet, compared to the sequel it's an absolute masterpiece; a Titanic of a superhero film that at least had some ideas in it which might have been redeeming had it not been a load of diarrhoea gushing from the anus of abysmal films.

Yet, you might have noticed I said the words 'compared to the sequel' and that's because Spirit of Vengeance is a film that simply made as much sense as a drunken stoned Scotsman with no teeth explaining his theory of nuclear fission to a chimpanzee. For starters even though it was a 'sequel' it felt like the Marvel Multiverse was at play again with a twisted recap of Johnny Blaze's origin but this time really different from the first film and without Peter Fonda's devil, now replaced by Ciarán Hinds' Rourke - also the devil, but not, or maybe he is... The entire film had lost me within the opening five minutes.

Blaze was now in eastern Europe running away from his past and straight into a new story involving the son of the devil and the promise that he can be cured of his curse by Idris Elba's religious brotherhood - led by Anthony Head. A curse you might recall the devil offered to lift himself but Blaze turned him down (at the end of the first film). If the script, acting and general feel of the first film was bad this film's only redeeming feature is that the actual Ghost Rider looked a little more realistic than the first film's, even if very little of that film remained. This really must be another universe's Johnny Blaze unless the people who made it thought that people who watched the first film would do what we did and completely forget everything about it.

This is the worst Marvel film ever made, by a country mile and a half. This film makes Eternals seem like Citizen Kane or Casablanca. It is every bad shit you've ever had put into one of those washing machine balls and shoved into your entire wardrobe with some dynamite on a hot wash. Don't be tempted to watch it on that recommendation because you will want to die horribly at the hands of slugs with teeth.

***

The World Cup... As a fan of football (although as a Spurs supporter that is debatable at times) I have to say outside of this morally bankrupt competition, this has been one of the most boring tournaments I've ever witnessed. Yes, there have been a couple of thrashings and 6 goal thrillers, but generally it's been dull and uninspiring with a heap of 0-0 draws, which has made not bothering to watch most of it really easy.

However, putting my proper footballing hat on, I expect a lot of footballers will be retiring from the international scene at Christmas and a lot more managers will find themselves out of work before Santa brings them their massive payoffs. While I expect the eventual winners will be one of the chosen few (France, Brazil, Spain), it has been one full of weird results - such as Costa Rica losing 7-0 to Spain and then beating Japan 1-0 after Japan had beaten Germany 2-1. 

I expect whoever wins it no one outside of that country will give a flying fuck.

***

In the last couple of weeks, we've gone out of our way to watch two films with extremely high ratings on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes, which for one reason or another we'd never got around to watching.

The first was Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain with Huge Ackman and Rachel Weiss. Despite its 7.2 rating on IMDB - even though it's almost 17 years old - we found it, like other Aronofsky films, a trifle weird, strange and probably not worth such a high rating despite it looking good and having some great acting in it. The film is essentially about love and loss and living forever all wrapped up in three different but interconnecting stories. As the wife said, it isn't a film we'd go out of our way to watch again.

The other was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which we'd avoided largely because of Jim Carey, who neither of us like and the last film of his I watched was actually The Mask and that was like 1994. We were pretty much blown away at how good the film was and how, like The Fountain, it all clicked together - but in a far more coherent way despite the number of headfucks it dished out. Oddly enough, like so many other films - like Godzilla had Wanda and Pietro together in different roles - this had two Marvel alumni in Gwen (Kirsten Dunst - being ultra sexy) Stacey and Bruce (a young Mark Ruffalo) Banner in supporting roles, as well as a Hobbit and the often brilliant Kate Winslet. It's a film I wished we'd watched ten years ago so we could watch it again and not remembered much about it at all. I expect most of the people reading this will have seen it but if you haven't it deserves the extremely high rating it gets from all film websites; it's a cracker.

***

We've been recording films off the TV a lot in the last four to six weeks - basically because since I was ill my lifestyle has changed and I spend about a tenth of the time I did on the computer; less social media, no games and pretty much blogs only, because I was not writing as much as I should have been and procrastination has always been very easy for me.

Our go to channels are Film 4 and ITV4, both of which have an array of old films, classics and things we've seen but not for a very long time - such as Pitch Black and Predator 2 - but lurking in the wee hours of a midweek I noticed the first Bill Murray film, directed by Ivan Reitman and scripted (partially) by Harold Ramis; yes, the Ghostbuster team and I realised that I hadn't seen the film for at least 40 years and given it was made in the mid-70s and called Meatballs I expected it was going to be dated and probably full of boobs (of the mammary kind)...

Oh heavens above... No wonder Film 4 had a warning about the themes and language of the film being from an era when it was considered okay. Meatballs is a deeply, deeply offensive movie that I expect most paedophiles have in their collections. Does Bill Murray look back on this film and wince with pain? We literally lasted until the first advert break, a little over 20 minutes, because it wasn't funny: a character was called Spaz; the older camp leaders (it was set on a summer camp for kids aged between 6 and 16) were making almost continuous sexual innuendos (and some not even innuendo) to 13 and 14 year old girls and while it might have been a realistic commentary on what the sexually repressed Mid West might have been like in 1976, it was more like a bad porn film than a comedy.

Why on earth did Film 4 show this film, even in the small hours? Are there not a bunch of better, more appropriate films to show? I can think of a list of films I have either never seen on TV or haven't been shown for donkeys years that would have been better and not caused such offense and while I'm aware that offense is a very personal thing, I expect any parent watching this film expecting to see Bill Murray in a film like Caddyshack (his second film) will feel dirty and slightly soiled and astounded that someone at Channel 4 and its sideshows didn't at least watch this first to see just how anachronistic and morally objectionable it is.

After I deleted it, we watched Pitch Black again; the first time in over 15 years and while it still has really poor acting and some of cinema's worst mumbling, as a creepy sci fi film it's still pretty good and has some of the best aliens since, well, Alien. One thing I did notice about it was that the only thing Vin Diesel does nowadays is the voice of Groot and given the vocal range of this alien tree, he probably doesn't spend a lot of time in any studio or sound booth.

Modern Culture: The Morally Ambiguous meets The Morally Dubious

Oh yeah, spoilers ahead...

There's not much to talk about TV at this time of the year unless you want to waffle on about the World Cup (which I will) or hope that something turns up on TV or at the cinema that is worth the effort. That said, I managed to find some things to write about, even if most of it has made me feel slightly queasy and make me want to burn my eyes out with phosphorus exposed to air.

Black Adam has to be one of the best examples of a mix of offensive and contradictory - if such a beast actually existed before this latest DC/Shazam spin-off. Before I even get into criticising this film, there's a point in it when the Justice Society turn up in the Wakanda-esque Arab kingdom of Kahndaq to stop and apprehend Black Adam because, presumably, the USA thinks he's too powerful to exist. This just smacks of US imperialism and shows what a thoroughly horrible and morally shit character Amanda Waller is, either in films, TV or originally comics. This is even pointed out by female lead Sarah Shahi when the JSA turn up and start destroying her city to stop a character who is, initially, saving her city from dodgy invaders. It's just offensive and regardless of how potentially nasty Adam might be you immediately want the four members of the JSA to die horrible deaths like most of the Intergang members suffered, but for some strange reason Adam is unable to destroy the heroes as easily as the villains.

Then there's the fact that it's essentially a sort of Shazam with some dark tweaks and gets even more Wakanda with the introduction of Eternium - a fabulous rare element that yadda yadda yadda... It's Vibranium with Arabs and an anti-hero who is like a cross between Superman, Flash and Batman, but black and Arab and 5000 years old and misunderstood etc etc etc...

It's a film let down by poor everything apart from Dwayne Johnson, who is playing a silent but deadly version of Dwayne Johnson. It's an alright film given how shite most DC films are, but it's a very poor film given how good Shazam was. Shazam is pretty much how most DC films should be, even if Mark Strong is starting to be typecast as a DC villain, whether he's bald or red and bald or just bad (as in evil).

The problem with this film is it's so morally all over the place that you're with the guy who wants to kill people and I'm loathe to admit this but revenge seems to be a fitting reason for wiping out an evil king and his minions; fuck this altruistic US superhero bullshit; whatever Black Adam's secret is, frying wankers is a far more effective method than simply telling them off.

DC continues to have far more misses than hits and even with the imminent arrival of James Gunn as their films' showrunner, I can't see there ever being a consistency that is admired from afar. Whatever I think of Marvel films, DC makes movies to make as much money as they can for the least amount of thought, until they stop that's all she wrote. 

One last thing: at the end of the credits there's reference to Jack Kirby's Fourth World and I can't understand why. What was in Black Adam that had anything to do with Kirby's short foray into the DC Universe? I couldn't find anything when I googled it, but to be honest I didn't look very hard because I didn't really care, but if someone knows, please let me know!

***

Okay, I can't resist talking about the finale, the final ever episode of The Walking Dead, subtitled Happy Ever After, which is a lie as is the words final, last ever and ending. This bloated corpse of a TV series didn't promise us resolution, it promised us the last episode of this specific part of the expanding franchise suffering from the law of diminishing returns. Some long lasting cast members died; there was some maudlin music and there was some conclusions that felt like they'd been shoehorned in to make it easy for some people to call it a day and jump off the horse and find some other shite to become engaged with.

What we got in the extended finale was the ending to the story of season 11 with an epilogue tagged onto the end which felt more like an extended advert for the three new spin-off series and for the fast descending back into shite Fear the Walking Dead. We had the preview to Rick & Michonne, which is basically Andy Lincoln's sadness at leaving the franchise in the first place and not becoming the A-list star he thought he would; where as Danai Gurira is quickly becoming a top actress, so why she's getting involved in this is beyond my understanding.

Then there's Daryl Dixon, the adventures of Daryl (but not Carol, because she didn't want to spend 9 months a year in Europe filming the series, which begs the question why they're filming it in Europe - is it cheaper? Does Daryl find a plane, a 747 maybe, a decides to see how the rest of the world is fairing?) The fact that Daryl is a one-note character whose one responsibility was to look after Judith after her dad and step mum fucked off and doesn't do a good job at that suggests this is a series that will need some strong supporting characters.

Then there's Dead City (or is it Cities, I can't remember and can't be arsed to check), which appears to be a Negan and Maggie spin-off series. Now there's a match made in hell if ever there was one. Negan is actually quite a decent character albeit one who has gone from megalomaniac psychopath to anti-hero with a heart and Maggie hates him because Negan turned her husband's head into an ashtray. A Negan spin-off I could almost get behind, but this is a stretch too far.

Plus there's the return of Madison to Fear. For those of you that give a shit, Madison was the main protagonist in the first three series of this spin-off. She was a woefully dull character who should have died multiple times but somehow didn't until she was 'killed off' - but we never saw the body. Now, just as her only surviving child is infected with the zombie virus, she's back with Morgan in tow tracking down dodgy child stealing armageddonists and subsequently making Fear once again the most want-to-be-missed show on AMC.

The finale of TWD is my jumping off point. There won't be any more mentions of the franchise from me; if you care about it watch it, just don't expect me to slag it off eloquently any longer...

***

Eleven years ago, the BBC had a six-part historical drama called Desperate Romantics, the wife watched it and recently recorded the repeats off BBC4 for a bit of nostalgic viewing. I decided to watch it - for the first time - and I can only say if you get the chance watch it as well. It's quality TV with Aiden Turner playing pre-Raphaelite Dante Gabriel Rossetti - a thoroughly cuntish human being if ever there was one. It's a cracking series and proves one thing I doubted for a long time, Rafe Spall can actually act and Turner might be an absolute heartthrob but he's at his best when he plays thoroughly rakish bastards.

***

 Which brings me nicely to the World Cup in Qatar...

Yeah, I know, I write about football elsewhere but this isn't really about the football more about the politics - which I also write about elsewhere - and the general feeling that we're witnessing the afterbirth of the coupling of the most corrupt organisation in the world - FIFA - and one of the nastiest quasi-Conservative Muslim countries also in the same world - Qatar. A place that is essentially a modern front for Saudi Arabia, a country that makes North Korea seem like an adventure park with clowns.

Speaking of the Saudis, just after they caused a seismic shock by beating one of the pre-tournament favourites Argentina (who got the competition when led by a well dodgy military junta back in the 70s), they beheaded 17 prisoners - in three days, as opposed to the seven people a week the country usually executes. Qatar might also execute people but they have balloons and colourful things to make you think that homosexuality and women's rights actually are allowed to exist and aren't punishable by death. If ever there was part of the planet that was morally shot to pieces it's this part of the Middle East and before you start saying shit like 'When in Rome...' or 'It's their culture, innit?' If England and Wales weren't playing there the criticism of this country would probably be widespread, even among the gammons who are trying to justify it because...you know... football. 

Everything about the competition was guaranteed to not be right once we passed the point of no return and it couldn't be held somewhere else. For all the Qataris promises, anyone with half a brain knew that once the tournament was underway anyone who isn't heterosexual was going to be in fear of their lives and anyone who doesn't have a penis is going to feel as though they've been transported back in time to a bygone age where women were third class citizens after slugs and sofas.

I don't care if England do well because this is an abhorrent spectacle, which incidentally cost £191billion more than the last World Cup, which at £9 billion was the most expensive and was held in Russia, which had already annexed Crimea by this time and Putin was already being heralded as the latest dictator en vogue. If FIFA doesn't stand for how to be so transparently corrupt and only interested in swelling its coffers with filthy cash then I need someone to tell me what good they actually do, because Giovanni Infantino's rant just before the tournament had no less than ELEVEN factually inaccurate lies in it as he berated the West for being far worse than the Middle East. If ever a man deserved to be beheaded by the Saudis it's this bald cunt.

One of the things that has annoyed me about gammons is their feeble attempts at justifying the barbaric culture of these extreme Muslim states. I have absolutely no problem with Muslims; I'd defend them more than Christians - who I've had experience of being truly nasty people - but the particular brands of Islam that these Middle East countries follow is the same kind that the gammons would be frothing at the mouths about if it happened in Bradford. The double standards of British arseholes is crazy, but hey, the UK press is still trying to convince everyone that people going on strike are worse than paedophiles, while conveniently ignoring the fact that the bosses of these 'private' companies wallow in massive amounts of cash they probably don't need. But, you know, people struggling are far worse than arseholes with yachts. 

The same gammons who defend Arabs owning their football clubs and indulging in sports washing are quick to morally judge the LGBTQ+ community, therefore basically showing us what kind of people they truly are; but we need to remember is these are the same idiots and arseholes who resort to whataboutery whenever they're faced with a moral dilemma that they shouldn't even have an opinion on. However, the other side of the coin has people outraged by this World Cup using the same tactic about the European clubs backdown regarding the One Love armband; conveniently pointing out that the country where the England kit is manufactured pays its workers less than £1 a day, because, you know, pointing out some other fucking wrong thing in the world makes the original wrong thing less wrong.

The bottom line is FIFA should disband or be abolished, replaced by a non-corrupt World Football Federation with extremely tight rules that disallows lobbying, backhanders and blatant examples of rich cunts benefitting from allowing morally dubious countries from having a competition that shouldn't be subject to the amount of justified criticism the last two have been. 

One of the worst things about this anathema is the TV stations' belief that everyone wants to watch it therefore meaning the rest of television is old repeats and crap reality bollocks. Personally, it simply highlights to me what a crap world we live in and how it's unlikely to get any better.

Modern Culture: Oops, I Did it Again (eventually)

This article - like the previous - contains spoilers. I know I should warn you every time I do one, but Elvis is dead and so is the Queen... Oh and most of this was written before I got ill, so it's nearly a month old.

The epic conclusion to series one of House of the Dragon leaked a few days early, much to HBO's anger and our otherwise dull Saturday night's delight. It was... bleak, grim and uplifting and had a conclusion, if not in some ways expected, that was still one of those, 'Oh shit, I bet you wish you hadn't been such a twat' moments that you know will have far reaching consequences for the next three series.

It was proper Dragon v Dragon stuff, except it was like Mike Tyson meeting Eddie the Eagle Edwards in a MMA boxing match with no skis rather than any fair contest. In fact, after a belligerent start, the smaller dragon was taken out with just one bite, rider and all. So if anything was needed to tweak Rhaenyrs' nipple it was having her second son become dragon lunch and the final scene of the black queen's shock and awe was all you needed to set you up for a year long wait until the next 10 episodes drop.

It's been much better than I thought it would be and has reinvigorated the GOT franchise without too much sex and convoluted plots. Let's hope it doesn't get bogged down in usual GRRM bullshit. Even Matt Smith has been slightly restrained and less Doctor Whoish...

***

If there was ever a TV show that I probably obsess over more than anything else, despite not really being a fan of is Doctor Who. I think I allow myself to get caught up in its fan side and the industry that has grown up around it. I find myself drawn to speculation as much as any Whovian and even more compelled to write about it. The thing is I've been trying to think of a comparison in the TV world; a program I feel so important to watch yet don't really care much about it. I don't think I have one.

I got hooked on the Doctor back in the early 1970s with the arrival of Jon Pertwee as No.3 and for four years I lapped it up. Sarah Jane Smith, Jo Grant, Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, Sgt Benton, Bessie... it was cracking stuff even if the sets wobbled and the special FX weren't. I was 13 when Tom Baker took over and by the time I was 14 I'd stopped watching the series, I couldn't get on with this 4th Doctor and for seven years the show passed me by. I got a jolt back into it with the arrival of Peter Davidson and stuck with it until Colin Baker started fighting Liquorice All-sorts Men and I never watched a single episode of Sylvester McCoy's tenure - Doctor Who was dead to me.

The announcement of the feature film was greeted with a lot of interest; the world of special effects had moved on considerably in the seven years since the last BBC episode and this big budget thriller, set in New York looked great, unfortunately it just wasn't that good, but it became canon and the movement to bring the Doctor back really got underway. Fast forward nearly a decade and we had a Doctor Who for the 21st century brought to us by Russell T Davies and what had always essentially been a kids program that adults watched, became a for-all-the-family program with much darker elements than ever before and dealing with issues that had never been touched upon in such an environment.

Chris Ecclestone was good, broody and enigmatic and either should never have been cast or should have been coerced into at least doing more than one series. David Tennant, Matt Smith, Peter Capaldi and Jodi Whitaker (with a brief interlude by John Hurt, just to confuse things more) all followed; there were some great episodes and there were some real stinkers; Davies moved on, Moffatt arrived and annoyed lots of people and then Chibnall replaced him and did what I like to think of as a Truss on the show; he fucked it up big time...

Jodi Whitaker was a great choice as a Doctor, but I think any woman would have been and having a token woman demeans it greatly. Chris Chibnall was a woefully inadequate show runner and by trying to 'fix' the Doctor he royally fucked her up. Absolute stinky stories, poor quality supporting cast and scripts that would seem poor for CBBC; Whitaker's Doctor persona was fucking awful and became unbelievably annoying every time she opened her mouth. It wasn't ever her delivery, it was the words she had to speak... Ugh...

Which brings us to Doctor Who: The Power of the Doctor and Jodi's final farewell. So much about this was good that it made you wonder where Chibnall had been hiding his stories, but even this better-than-usual story was contrived nonsense; it was the cone game yet again. If it wasn't the sonic screwdriver to the rescue it was the cone game; how the fuck isn't the Doctor dead? Why hasn't one of their really nasty villains, like the Master just picked up a gun and shot the Doctor - twice - one through each heart, then incinerated the body in a sun? How come every weapon-wielding alien in the universe is a worse shot than a Star Wars Stormtrooper? How did the Cybermen or the Daleks conquer the universe? Basically the Doctor's biggest weapon is his/her name. 'I am the Doctor' has more effect than facing down someone with an army. 

Essentially this was a big plan by The Master, who somehow survived the destruction of Gallifrey (again) has managed to team up the Daleks and the Cybermen to help him finally destroy the Doctor - an obsession that is fantastically realised, but I've struggled for years to understand why. The Master is an utter enigma and if Steven Moffatt did anything right it was Missy; why the new incarnation (if he is indeed the most recent) has reverted to psychopathic type seems like poor character development to me. Anyhow, he swaps bodies with the Doctor, except she's now dead and he's her, looking like him. She's at a cliff edge meeting selected versions of her former self who are telling her some cod bullshit about choices and not being ready and it was at this point the wife prodded me awake. Boring boring boring... Is it just me that believes the BBC has a fantastic template for a brilliant ongoing TV series but just fucks it with a big stick so much it's become impossible to make it linear and comprehensible?

The show is full of nostalgia to the point it almost brings a lump to your throat even if you don't give a flying fuck and then the big reveal - the new Doctor... Except... Except the BBC announcer prior to the start of the show said something like 'It's time for a new doctor or maybe an old one' - not exactly those words, but most definitely an oblique spoiler. The new Doctor is an old Doctor, the David Tennant Doctor, looking a wee bit older but most definitely him. Oh no, what's happened? Where's the new gay black man Doctor we were promised? Why have I written so much about something that shouldn't bother me so much? I have a number of friends who are huge Doctor Who fans, fuck knows what they feel like about this dog's dinner of a TV series.

***

Scraping the bottom of the barrel time...

Part of me wanted to go into this and probably the next column without finding something MCU to talk about, but it's a drug, an addiction and I have three trailers to dissect...

There were three trailers for Black Panther 2: Wakanda Forever before it was released a ferw weeks ago and you can pretty much work out the following things: T'Challa is dead, there's a bunch of vibranium-wielding aquahumans who have suddenly appeared, led by a Hispanic looking bloke with small wings on his feet (Namor) and he wants Wakanda's vibranium and a new female Black Panther is going to turn up. The first and last parts seem fine, it's the Atlantis, Sub-Mariner, secret war elements that bother me. 

I appreciate that Namor, the Sub-Mariner has been in the [extended] Marvel Universe since the early 1940s and including him in the MCU is a no-brainer, but... on the balance it just adds more baggage to a story that's expanding faster than Brendan Fraser's waistline. You know the trailer is going to deceive and deflect from what is really happening, you know that Namor and his Atlanteans will probably team up with Wakanda against a common enemy, but ... Look, I know some people who liked the Aquaman film, but it felt a little like a post-modern The Man From Atlantis writ large with a budget and as Drop the Dead Donkey asked back in the 1990s, 'just how much crime is there underwater'? As The Boys likes to point out, The Deep is the most fucked up member of The Seven because of his weird aquatic fetishes and general stupidity. Underwater is often a joke. 

He also appears to have been retconned. Namor always had a faintly Oriental look about him, possibly a little bit of Japanese, but in Thor's body. Now he's Hispanic, the actor is Mexican, the look is more Conan than green briefs and I feel bad commenting about Marvel/Disney's diversity policy in a negative way, but...

Anyhow, we get a sneak peak of Ironheart and a lot of Angela Bassett emoting about loss all the while a remixed version of Bob Marley's No Woman No Cry plays over the top. I still struggle a little with the first film, being one of the few people who doesn't really rate it as more than average MCU and the feeling you get from this film is it's going more for the Infinity War styled Wakanda action rather than anything else... 

Do you know, writing that above sentence I saw the end of the MCU franchise... Every superhero film is essentially the same formula when it exhausts everything else - it's a big fight that you know, ultimately, the heroes will win. The thing that connects them and makes them less like copies is the difference in the characters and I'm seeing less character development and more set pieces as we become more familiar with the players. 

I hope I'm proved wrong, but I think Wakanda Forever might be a real stinker (it got 3 stars in the Guardian).

On the 25th October, the first trailer for Ant-Man & The Wasp in Quantumania arrived. It came out of the blue and wasn't really what I expected. Could it be that after two relatively benign films, Ant-Man is about to properly enter the real MCU (in a film with his name on it)? Scott Lang has faced Endgame, so his experience of dealing with crazy should be easier to control, but what we get with Quantumania is straight forward; there's (yet) another universe existing underneath our own one and it's far more dangerous. Natch. 

The trailer sends our heroes, the Wasp's parents and Scott's daughter into the Quantum Realm, which appears to be another MCU attempt at recreating a Star Wars-type world full of wondrous creatures and the initial excitement I felt at Marvel doing something 'proper' with Ant-Man was lost. It's a cosmic space film set within a micro-cosmos and Kang the Conqueror is either behind it or is manipulating events to allow him to escape (that last bit is pure speculation, if Kang is offering Scott something he needs you can bet there's a 'but' waiting in the wings.

It looks fantastic but it also looks 95% green screen and needs to be more than just a Guardians of the Galaxy meets Micronauts mash-up. A lot might change between now and February when it's released, but if this is a 'serious' Ant-Man film it needs to deliver. 

And finally The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, which allegedly streams from November 25 and after seeing the trailer for it will someone please pass the bleach...

I want to give you a complete breakdown of the trailer including the fact that Kevin Bacon is in it, playing Kevin Bacon, or that Groot (might) be almost grown up again or that it appears to be set in the same universe as She-Hulk, but I'm not going to because I can no longer see the keyboard to write because my eyes and ears are full of bleach...

All trailers available on YouTube at the Marvel Entertainment page.

***

Vesper is a feature film made by Belgians, Lithuanians and a few Brits. There are some deeply disturbing things that happen in it despite it largely being targeted for a YA audience. Eddie Marson is creepy, the sets are strange, the entire thing was grim, dirty and not overly enjoyable. It reminded me of a cross between Monsters and Annihilation but its problem was it was neither weird enough or compelling enough for a story ten minutes short of two hours.

***

During my unexpected illness, we've been watching a lot of films, some of them memorable for all the wrong reasons...

I spent much of my time on the sofa watching the Legendary monster films - Godzilla (the Gareth Edwards 2013 version), Kong: Skull Island, Godzilla - King of the Monsters and Godzilla versus Kong and I enjoyed all of them to a certain degree. Edwards' giant lizard reboot was hampered by the acting and lack of Godzilla, but much of it had the Monsters maker's trademark feel, especially during the scenes in the overgrown Japanese township near the beginning. Skull Island was spoiled largely by an overblown and slightly stupid performance by Samuel L Jackson and the last two were ruined by the current fascination with Millie Bobby Brown, who really can't act and brings films (and TV series) she's in down to her level of crap acting.

It has been 45 years since I last watched The Exorcist II: The Heretic, the John Boorman follow-up to one of the greatest films of all time. It is a truly dreadful piece of shite with no less than three Oscar winners in it all hamming it up with a dreadful script on some of the most unconvincing sets you could possibly imagine. I remember leaving the cinema in the late 1970s, with my brother, wondering what the actual fuck I'd just watched and that is pretty much what both the wife and I thought after watching it the other night. It's probably one of the worst films ever made.

The Exorcist III: Legion is about midway between I and II, it's pretty much a great film until the last ten minutes when it goes a bit wobbly and is both creepy and really clever. The book, which is a direct sequel to William Peter Blatty's original is better, but he did write and direct this far better sequel than the second sequel ever could be.

***

The Walking Dead finishes in the next few days; it has been on a constant decline since series four and while the wife has been a fan, I watch it out of habit alone. There's news of more spin-offs - one featuring Daryl and another with Rick and Michonne reunited (without their kids), plus there's Fear, which was quite good for a while then got lost up its own arse. Once TWD is over I'm probably never going to watch another zombie related thing ever again because they're all shit.