Off Topic The Review Thread

That’s one where the ‘revelations’ are no surprise at all.

Right settling in for episode 5 of Gods. I hope they go back to Lakeside.

 

Well that’s a disappointment. Episode 5 not uploaded, on a seven day break......possibly something to do with the Superb Owl.

balls, I was looking forward to that.

 

Feck, that's my evening viewing botched too! Back to finishing zerozerozero again...

 

Watching Ex Machina. Quite diverting, but too long and overthought/written.

 

It’s back tonight, presumably they’ve edited Mr Manson out now. Watching now.

 

I've started watching Your Honour.....

Brian Cranston is a judge in New Orleans, a bit on the liberal side and quite fair as judges go. His wife was shot in a shop in a ghetto part of town while carrying out some research, and on the anniversary of her death their son goes to pay tribute, gets spooked by the locals and speeds away in his car.....and ends up hitting a boy on a motorbike, killing him. In a blind panic, the son drives away. However, this isn't just some nobody he's killed it's the son of the mafia kingpin in New Orleans, who has the police in his back pocket and swears vengence on whoever killed his son.

As they attempt to cover up the hit and run, their efforts to throw off any investigation get thwarted by sheer bad luck, ineptitude and circumstance, and lead to another lad facing some serious ****.

I'm only two episodes in but it's got some good potential.

 

What channel/service? Or is it via one of your dodgy box streams?

 

Adam Curtis’ latest epic visual essay, Can’t Get you Out of My Head, has been launched on BBC iPlayer. 8 hours in total an exploration of why, in the age of individualism and personal empowerment there is so much anxiety, conspiracy fears and angst. Usual mix of deadpan voice over, stock film and good music, doubtless hugely thought provoking. Don’t forget to view with a critical eye, its what, I think, Curtis would want, he’s putting theories out there, not an ideology.

Just watched the first instalment of this. An astonishing piece of work, pulling together themes and connections from all over the place, and never patronising the viewer. It’s mesmerising but I must confess I’m struggling to make all the connections and see the relevance of all of the different threads. I feel like I’m learning something, but I’m not quite sure what. There is an irony to it, he claims that conspiracy theories are based on imagined connections and links......which his own work could be accused of.

Next to Jonathan Meades my favourite oddball individual film maker.

 

It's on the "dodgy box" at the moment, but a quick Google came up with this...

UK viewers don't have too long to wait before Your Honor hits our shores. The series, which airs in the U.S. on Showtime, will come to Sky Atlantic and Now TV on March 2.

 

Not often that I listen to Desert Island Discs with genuine attention. Lauren Laverne, who I am sure is a nice person but really isn’t up to much as an interviewer, and many of the recent guests are people I’ve not really heard of and lots seem to be picking music to make an impression rather than reflect their genuine tastes.

Today, however, is an exception, a genuine icon, Sophia Loren. She speaks English in a beautiful Italian way, is fascinating and generous with her memories, and her musical taste is great as well (well, a couple of big melodramatic over emotional Italian ballads in there as well as the good stuff.). Even Laverne can’t muck this one up. A woman who worked with Vittorio di Sica, Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Clark Gable, Charlie Chaplin, Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Peter Sellers, Marcello Mastrioanni etc etc starting in genuine poverty in wartime Naples.

Really great listening.

 

Okay for those of you that have Netflix I highly recommend a 6 part British production called Behind her eyes.
It follows Louise, a single mom with a son and a part-time job in a psychiatrist's office. She begins an affair with her boss and strikes up an unlikely friendship with his wife.
The twist at the end will be something to remember.

 

Watched the first episode last night

The woman playing the Doctor's wife is Bono's daughter i think? She's a good actress

 

Really? I didn’t know that but I picked up an Irish accent in some parts of her speech. She is very good and gets better as the show goes on.

 

Eve Hewson

 

A couple of weeks back there was a debate on the Politics thread about "class" - I've caught a couple of episodes on BBC Scotland of this guys shows...

Darren McGarvey’s Class Wars, Series 1: 1. Identity Crisis:

Far from his birthplace of Glasgow’s Pollok, Darren finds himself in the stately home of Lauriston Castle in Edinburgh. Beginning with a linguist examining Darren’s accent, this journey quickly spirals out into an authored examination of the impact of social class today and Darren’s own identity crisis.

Along the way, Darren tries his hand at Scotland’s ‘secret’ sport, cricket, meeting two diverse teams in Inverness who are doing what they can to remove the image of cucumber sandwiches He nearly comes to blows with a butler who tells him to get his hands out his pockets, and over a game of croquet, Darren begins to realise he has much in common with the upper classes.

Later he sits with a voice coach as she helps clients 'posh up' or even change their accents, before meeting some people from a 1950s cohort study in Aberdeen that is now being used to examine how people move between social classes.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000s7hd via @bbciplayer

There's three episodes available so far, and if you can get past his accent (he has quite a strong Glaswegian accent) there's some really interesting stories and facts to learn about the way our class structure is being eroded.

 

Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have a new album, Carnage, out. Not quite as elegiac and harrowing as Ghosteen, but not as aggressive as their Grinderman incarnation, it’s a worthy addition to the canon.

Cave has a very regular correspondence with his fans, or just people who write to him. It’s great.
https://www.theredhandfiles.com/

 

Has your live date in Barcelona or Lisbon (?) to see Cave been re-scheduled?

 

No, he’s cancelled the 2021 tour entirely, uncertain about whether they could put on the type of experience they want in the constantly changing circumstances, but fully committed to be touring as soon as they can do it properly.

 

Pity - I've had a few gigs cancelled completely (was really looking forward to Pixies) and loads rescheduled, some two or three times. Can't wait to get back to watching live music - the live streams just don't do it for me, you miss the atmosphere of the crowd.

 

Pixies would be a cracker. Is Kim Deal back with them?