Off Topic The Review Thread

Dark movie, definately not a feel-good happy film, but does face up to some of the issues of inner-city life. Excellent soundtrack too!

 

Just seen Never Mind the Baubles - Christmas with the Sex Pistols 1977 on BBC4. A Julien Temple film featuring footage from two Christmas Day gigs (one for the kids of striking firemen) they played in Huddersfield and contributions from the modern day Lydon, Jones and Cook. Probably been on before but I haven’t seen it. Absolutely fantastic, made better for watching it with my 17 year old daughter who got it - ‘this was really important wasn’t it, not like music today’ brought a tear to my eye.

 

I was about 8 or 9 when this was first shown, my Dad worked at Scrubs and was disgusted, but it stuck in my head and lead to probably nearly 10.years of discord in my house til I moved out when I was 16 in late '85....Anarchy/anti-establishmentarialism (just made that up - hope it's real!!)was a big thing for me in my early teens - so glad your kids enjoyed it Stan, will be making sure SM Jnr has a watch over the weekend if it's on iPlayer!

 

From the sublime on BBC4 last night to the dire this morning horrible, edition of the Today programme all about its own 60th anniversary (they have been spending increasing chunks of the programme looking backwards and patting themselves on the back for months) no news on it at all apart from the headlines. Worst bit so far a joint interview by Humphrys with Kinnock and Gove, where the politicians blew smoke up Humphrys arse telling him how brilliant and important he is. Low point (so far, it really is shockingly bad, car crash Radio) was a pre-prepared ‘joke’ by Gove who said being interviewed by Humphrys was like ‘being invited into Harvey Weinstein’s bedroom’ at which Kinnock jumped in with ‘its much worse than being groped’. Now I don’t think anything is off limits for attempted humour, even if I don’t find it funny, but the sheer stupidity and insensitivity of these comments from people who presumably think they represent women as well as men shows us how little we have moved on in 60 years at least in some people’s heads.

Followed by a completely unfunny sports report where the awful Gary Richardson, who thinks he is a comedian and isn’t, got Alaistair MacGowan to do bad impressions of people which the live Radio 4 audience didn’t laugh at.

The whole thing is so cringe making I have turned it off. What a **** way to start the day.

 

Gary Richardson is truly awful. His interviewing technique consists mainly of "say something controversial - go on, go on" in an attempt to come up with something that can be endlessly repeated on BBC radio.

 

I see that Gove has apologised already. Too late, this was clearly something he had thought through and planned to say given the chance. We know how your brain works.

 

Blue Planet 2.

****ing awesome in the true sense of the word.

 

It is truly awesome, but I find it impossible to properly enjoy it when I know what we are doing to the oceans.

 

Gunpowder. Another example of the kind of thing that the BBC does so brilliantly. Horribly authentic in its brutality, but we all knew the ending. People killing and torturing others in the name of religion, thankfully that doesn't happen anymore.

 

Because I am trapped with the dog I watched the final bit of this tonight, to remind myself what I am incarcerated for, much better than I expected. Tom Hardy really has to up the gore in the next series of Taboo. Now I need to check how the gunpowder plotters were executed as they weren’t chucked on a fire in this version.

****ing fireworks still going having started at about 5.30. I bet less than 10% of the people letting them off know what it’s about.

I loved the bit about the false killer whales meeting up with their mates the dolphins.

 

I was aware that Catesby and most of the others wound up holed up as portrayed. Perhaps their end wasn't quite as Butch and Sundance as was represented here though. Apparently the fella that played Catesby is actually a descendent of the man himself.

 

Just read up about it, the programme was pretty accurate, Catesby and one other were killed as the kings men came to get them, though their own powder exploded in an accident before this fight started rather than during it. And Guy Fawkes really did jump from the scaffold to break his own neck before he could be cut down and disembowelled while still alive. Of course the fuse wasn’t actually lit when they found Fawkes in the undercroft.

Apparently Cecil, the bloke played by Mark Gatiss, really did have some kind of spinal deformity, but no one knows exactly what. Gatiss decided to play him with his head at that weird angle, too late realising that it hurt.

 

Just watched Howard Goodall's musical dissection of Sgt Pepper's. Absolutely fascinating. I always knew it was a great album, but this made me realise just how musically brilliant it was.

 

One of my top 3 albums.

 

I caught the last 15 minutes of it, very interesting. Then watched the documentary on Magical Mystery Tour, also very interesting. Few of the commentators, especially Martin Scorsese, bigged it up as a work of art a bit much, but it did show how creative, experimental and fearless these 4 still very young men were. Commerciality didn’t seem to come into things.

 

Yes, I watched that too, but found it a bit of a come down after the Goodall thing. I remember seeing MMT at the time and being rather disappointed, but making out to my parents that it was great and they just didn't get it. I don't remember it as being on boxing day, though. Perhaps they showed it again later.

 

Caught the last 30 minutes of one of these the other night. Really good - and as it was focusing on the Kennedy years I’m guessing a re run.

Bugger. That’s another thing I want to catch up on and will never find the time to.

 

Can't remember if it was on here or was mentioned on another thread, but Series 3 of Detectorists has started on BBC4 - fantastically written, funny in a subtle way, with great performances by both Toby Jones and McKenzie Crook - well worth a watch

 

Late last night I found my self watching (or at least conscious in front of) a biopic about the American comic Andy Kaufman, starring Jim Carrey as Kaufman. I can’t stand Carrey and wasn’t enjoying the film, but realised that I was completely unfamiliar with Kaufman’s work (I have never seen an episode of Taxi) though I was aware that many people consider him a ground breaking, totally unique genius. Carrey made him look like a really nasty, self centred, immature jerk, but I thought this might just be Carrey playing himself.

So I’ve done a bit of reading and YouTube watching in between other stuff today, and it turns out that it was a brilliant performance by Carrey (though he didn’t have to stretch himself for it, even though he chose to ‘live’ as Kaufman during the filming and made everyone sick and tired of him as a result) and in my view Kaufman was an irritating, ego driven, pretentious twat. In theory his total dedication to ‘situational’ entertainment and making people feel deeply uncomfortable nearly all the time should appeal to the sort of twisted mind that I sadly possess, but it seems to me that his entire career was a ‘funny’ foreign accent, an acceptable Elvis impersonation, wrestling women and dressing up as an objectionable night club singer (although one of his mates sometimes used to take this role).

I just don’t get it, what am I missing? Any fans out there?

Apparently there is a documentary about to be released about the making of the biopic, and the extreme lengths Carrey went to staying in character, and how it has changed his personality. FFS.