Current Watching

[Ray de Galles]

Did anyone else watch Daisy Haggard's black comedy BBC series 'Back To Life' on BBC recently? Haggard play a woman returning to her home town and parent's house eighteen years after murdering one of her best friends.

I watched the latter five episodes over one night recently. I had that strange feeling of not really knowing quite how much I liked it but it must have had something to have me binge-watching as that's not something I'm in the habit of doing so. Ricky Gervais's recent series was the same, though I think 'Back To Life' is the the better show.

The fact that we only slowly found out the circumstances of the murder was certainly part of it but I enjoyed the performances and script too.

[elguapo4]

I watched it on Talking Pictures a few months ago and really enjoyed it.

That's the one that Michael Caine has a small role as a Bobby isn't it?

[Benjm]

That's the one that Michael Caine has a small role as a Bobby isn't it?

Yes; it's blink and you miss it but he's so unmistakeably Michael Caine in those few seconds that it seems plausible that someone might have retrospectively tampered with the audio track for a laugh by hiring an impressionist to redub it.

[Nocturnal Submission]

I just watched the second programme of Miriam's Dead Good Adventure, where Miriam Margolyes explores attitudes to death, preparations for it and so on. Anyway, it's one of the finest, most sensitive bits of telly I've seen in a long while, filled with some remarkable characters, including Tracy, who has terminal ovarian cancer. Wow. What an amazing woman. If you're feeling a bit negative about us as a species, I'd encourage you to watch this and remind yourself how resilient, loving, funny and caring people can be.

There's even a bit of non-league football.

Link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...es-1-episode-2

[Patrick Thistle]

I went to the cinema again yesterday and watched 'Missing Link'. It's the latest stop motion film from Laika studio. I thought it was quite good although there wasn't much of a story and I wasn't really convinced by the villain - a common problem for me. There was one bit where I really, really laughed.

I do find Laika can be slightly off with their films but this one was more hit than miss. In the credits they show a time-lapse of a particular scene and it's incredible, really.

[Crusoe]

Ooh, that's one of my favourite old sci-fis, if not my favourite.

Ditto. I love The Day the Earth Caught Fire. It's up there with the original Thing From Another World as a favourite.

[Ray de Galles]

I went to the cinema again yesterday and watched 'Missing Link'. It's the latest stop motion film from Laika studio. I thought it was quite good although there wasn't much of a story and I wasn't really convinced by the villain - a common problem for me. There was one bit where I really, really laughed.

I do find Laika can be slightly off with their films but this one was more hit than miss. In the credits they show a time-lapse of a particular scene and it's incredible, really.

I saw it on Easter weekend as a holiday treat with my younger two, as much because there wasn't anything else that grabbed us that we hadn't already seen as anything. It's funny that seeing a "British" stop motion animation you subconsciously expect an Aardman type film with their gag rate but this is a bit sillier and sweeter. Lovely visuals and great voice cast, I hadn't realised I'd never seen a Laika movie before.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I caught the first hour of barry Lyndon. My god it's hilarious. It's very difficult to really get into a movie when you can recognize exactly where everything is filmed. Most of the first hour is filmed in the Deise (South Tipperary, waterford, and south kilkenny) Barry lyndon's house is on the road between Clogheen and lismore, as you head across the mountains. I could tell what bits were Cahir Castle by the colour of the walls. Bits of it were in wicklow (the bits with lakes) but I could recognise the particular mountain in the background of a lot of the scenes, and it was over near fethard. The music is cracking though we do get to hear rather a lot of Sean O'Riada's Mna na Heireann (which I think Kate Bush covered) and an mhaighdean mara, (the mermaid)

Why did they cast Ryan O'Neal? And does the movie carry on in this really weird series of disconnected, if very enjoyable scenes?

[Patrick Thistle]

I saw it on Easter weekend as a holiday treat with my younger two, as much because there wasn't anything else that grabbed us that we hadn't already seen as anything. It's funny that seeing a "British" stop motion animation you subconsciously expect an Aardman type film with their gag rate but this is a bit sillier and sweeter. Lovely visuals and great voice cast, I hadn't realised I'd never seen a Laika movie before.

I'd recommend Coraline, which is creepy as hell. Paranorman is OK. I was disappointed by Box Trolls - great premise but it should have concentrated more on the trolls. Kubo and the Two Strings was worth watching once but I probably won't bother watching it again.

Went to the cinema for the third night in a row tonight and watched Avengers Endgame.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Why did they cast Ryan O'Neal? And does the movie carry on in this really weird series of disconnected, if very enjoyable scenes?

Second question, yes.

First question, who knows? Kubrick's casting choices were frequently... umm...eccentric? Particularly post-Strangelove. They seem to have more to do with how someone looked and/or sounded than actual acting ability. Here's one man's theory:

I believe the woodenness [O'Neal] displays is a deliberate strategy by Kubrick to avoid "easy" comic effects, to portray Barry's calculating side and the way he soaks up everything going on around him, quietly storing it up for future use. It's a nice idea. But to achieve it he seems to have instructed O'Neal to rigorously exclude any show of exuberance or even emotion. With an actor of greater subtlety this might well have worked, but O'Neal comes across as merely impassive and stone-faced, and many of his scenes fall embarrassingly flat.

Kubrick should have chosen a more suitable actor, or at least adapted the part to O'Neal's particular talents. As it is, O'Neal is not much more than a (barely) animated clothes-peg, a cypher overwhelmed by the gorgeous landscapes and interiors.

Kubrick is not really an "actor's" director. Working with an actor of the intelligence and talent of MacDowell or Nicholson he can come up with some spectacular results, but he is not the man to coax a performance out of an actor with whom he cannot engage intellectually, or who is simply miscast. —- Neale Paterson

I'd absolutely agree with the last para.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I got the impression that from the first hour, that Barry was there to make everyone else look more luridly vivid. All of the actors in the early scenes were famous stage and tv actors in ireland. And leonard rossiter's presence is every bit as jarring as he was in 2001. I've got to admit I was impressed how good Barry was at fighting. the way he beats up that soldier in the fight is essentially the anti rocky. The whole thing was somewhat undermined by not being in Prussia, but clearly in Kells Priory in south kilkenny.

I remember visiting this place three or four times as a kid. I bet there's a load of people in kilkenny who don't even know it is there.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

I’m watching Rollerball.....

They didn’t or couldn'’t make much effort to make it look like the future. Everything about it looks and sounds like 1975. Perhaps that was deliberate - more of an alternative present than vision of the future.

Much of it was filmed in the Olympic village in Munich, including the nearby BMW offices and museum - I think the internal rollerball scenes were filmed in the Olympic arena, where the Munich ice hockey still plays, or at least did until recently. The architecture of that area probably seemed quite futuristic at the time, but looks dated now.

[Hot Pepsi]

That’s good info.


I’m watching the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet. I have seen it before when it was released when I i was in high school. I think it was the first version I ever saw performed. I have never seen it live but am trying to see every TV/film version.

[Patrick Thistle]

Last night's film was The Spy Who Dumped Me on Netflix. Very silly and gory fight scenes (which seems to be a thing in comedies now). Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon are very watchable together.

[Crusoe]

Just skim-watched a very odd Swedish film, The Unthinkable, on Netflix. Without giving any spoilers away, it's about a terrible disaster or invasion overtaking Sweden, although portrayed in quite a low-key (and presumably low-budget) way. It's not great, but the plot is just weird. It's only about 75% in that it becomes finally clear whether it's a war film, horror film, or apocalyptic disaster film.

Next up, both on Netflix: The Wandering Earth, which has had good reviews, and Snowpiercer, which I've been wanting to see for years (the one about humanity's last survivors, post-climate apocalypse, fomenting rebellion on a class-divided train that endlessly circles the earth).

[Patrick Thistle]

No film for me tonight but I have just watched an episode of the rebooted Blockbusters, fronted by Dara O'Briain on Comedy Central. It was pretty good. Dara had more decent jokes in the first half of the show than you'd see in an entire series of Only Connect.

[Ginger Yellow]

Comedy Central? Challenge TV must be kicking themselves.

[ad hoc]

No film for me tonight but I have just watched an episode of the rebooted Blockbusters, fronted by Dara O'Briain on Comedy Central. It was pretty good. Dara had more decent jokes in the first half of the show than you'd see in an entire series of Only Connect.

So, one, then?

[WOM]

Good Girls, on Netflix. Almost done S1. It's.....good. The writing isn't stellar, and I've no idea where it's going past season 2. But I could watch Inca's neighbour Christina Hendricks any day of the week. Almost every character is a cardboard cutout, and the plot holes are big enough to drive a stolen truck through. But it's decent. I'm really not doing it any favours here...

[Ginger Yellow]

Speaking of Netflix, don't bother with The Wandering Earth, unless you want a brainless sci-fi action romp. It makes The Core look like a PhD thesis.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Two oldies last night while La Signora was at the opera.

First a pre-code comedy (kinda) that made Jean Harlow a star: Red Headed Woman (1932). Screenplay by Anita Loos, which meant it held some promise. I doubt it would raise much of a smile from anyone today though. It's basically story of an office girl who fucks her way to fortune, and emerges laughing all the way to the bank while carrying on an affair with her latest aging paramour's chauffeur (Charles Boyer in one of his first Hollywood roles.)

The film is only worth watching because of Harlow, and it's portrayal of contemporary sexual attitudes. The men are all utterly gormless, led into every encounter by their erections. Conversely the women are scheming bitches. The interesting thing, and why the film was banned in the UK and Germany, is that they emerge triumphant, while conventional theatrical morality usually made sure they were severely punished. The flick was remade as Baby Face a couple of years later. It's a far better rendering of the story, there's more depth, quirkiness and Barabara Stanwyck is ten times the actor Harlow ever was. I have conflicted feelings about Jean Harlow. I understand why she was popular in her time, but I don't think she transcends it at all. In fact she's about the only screen "sex goddess" who, for me, does nothing at all. Her life was very sad. Losing her hair because of the bleaches she used, a rather reclusive homebody who died tragically young. Probably a nice person, who history has typed as somebody quite other than what she was.

Second, Joseph Losey's remake of M (1951). I was really looking forward to this, and it didn't disappoint. It re-sets Fritz Lang's original in Los Angeles, and makes excellent use of locations, including the now vanished Bunker Hill area, and the interior of the Bradbury Building. The cast is big, mostly unknowns with no stars or even lead players. David Wayne plays the child killer, mostly with his back to the camera until the later scenes. Many of those involved, including Losey, fell foul of HUAC shortly after its release, and a sense of resignation pervades the film. The fact that it's LA underworld, acting collectively, that hunts down and captures the killer rather than the LAPD speaks volumes.

It'll always be compared with Lang's original I suppose, which is a pity because it's a different film, from a different era, in a different place and deserves to be judged on its own terms.

[San Bernardhinault]

I had some retro fun last night, watching Capricorn One. Elliott Gould, OJ Simpson (who really was a terrible actor), Telly Savalas, That Bloke Who Played The Big Lebowski. It was a better made film than I expected - only a couple of effectsy sections seemed really dated (including a terrible car chase that seemed out of place in the broad psycho-thriller non-action mood of the film, and was probably shoehorned in by some idiot studio executive). But I do suspect that it's responsible for something like 90% of our "we never made it to the moon" conspiranoid loons.

[Hot Pepsi]

Watching Can You Ever Forgive Me. Great performances, but since I already know how it’s going to play out, it’s not super compelling.

[Hot Pepsi]

Now watching the kinda racist second episode of The Outer Limits which has the same plot as The Manchuria Candidate. TOL was, I think, a shameless Twilight Zone imitator, but like a lot of old sci-fi, it provides a window on what people in that time were anxious about. Reminders that the good old days weren’t actually that good, and that we survived anyway, makes the present feel less terrifying.

[slackster]

Watched the latest Line of Duty series finale on the BBC. It gets more like a Scooby Doo wrap up every series, but it’s glorious and enjoyable Sunday night nonsense.