Current Watching

[Sam]

We watched Top Gun for – for both of us – the first time tonight. It gave me a good excuse to revisit the McSweeney's University course description for its module on Heterosexual Undertones in Top Gun, and it was entertaining enough, but we were both quite struck by how much more entertaining we'd expected it to be. The three-act structure is really odd in that the main dramatic/tragic moment (highlight the rest of this bracketed bit if you want to know what I'm talking about, because spoiler tags often don't work for me: the scene where Goose dies) happens two-thirds of the way in rather than one-third of the way in, with the result that the buildup to it is really long and a bit boring in places and the subsequent dramatic struggle and ultimate character triumph arc feel a little rushed.

The cheesy bits are fantastically cheesy, though.

[Sunderporinostesta]

I saw the revamped Fantasy Football League pilot last night.

It was ok. Elis James was fantastic, Matt Lucas was ok, the new Statto (Andrew Mensah) was dreadful though - I could put that down to settling in issues though.

I liked that they kept to the simplicity of it - funny clips from games that had been shown, silly jokes about niche football things, and players like Darren Bent taking the piss out of themselves in Phoenix from the Flames.

Redknapps Mrs crack or the balloon goal?

[Sunderporinostesta]

With Henshall quitting the show I assumed they’d call it a day after series 7 but it seems not. I think the last three series at least have been overlong and would have benefited from being a couple of episodes shorter. But, yes, it’s decent enough.

Mrs Sundeporino loves Shetland.
His stiff legged/armed pea coat walk has created merriment in our house since I donned mine and stomped around the house during an episode. It even became a drinking game* thing during lockdown for us. Once pointed out it’s impossible for it not to become the focus of the programme. I liked that Henshall vowed never to wear a pea coat again in interviews after his leaving was announced.

*Not as good as the “Msr Le Jooooooodge” drinking game in Spiral though.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Why didn't someone warn me that the Christopher Eccleston character would look unnervingly like Jurgen Klopp by the last episode of Our Friends In The North?

[Sam]

We finished Brooklyn Nine-Nine tonight. Great way of sending it off. Nine-nine!

And after doing so we did a bit of googling and my girlfriend made the discovery that Stephanie Beatriz is Argentine. Born in southern Argentina to a Colombian dad and a Bolivian mum, and lived there until she moved to New York at the age of 2. Astonished that the media here have never made any mention of this, given how much they like to trumpet anyone famous with an Argentine connection (if I'd written a bunch of best-selling novels, say, there are media outlets here who would absolutely refer to me as an Anglo-Argentine author).

[Sam]

(Off-topic, but after posting the above about Beatriz I wanted to check the exact details of an actor the press here frequently do cite as Argentine: Anya Taylor-Joy. Her nationalities change depending on which language you read her Wiki in: the English one goes with American (she was born in Miami while her parents were on holiday) and British, while the Spanish one says she's Argentine and British in the info box and mentions her jus soli US citizenship in the actual text. More confusingly still, the Spanish Wiki says her dad is a Brit of Argentine Scottish extraction, while her English Wiki says he's an Argentine of English and Scottish descent. Neither actually states whether she holds an Argentine passport, although she's certainly given interviews in which she says she feels both Argentine and English. She also describes her birth in Miami as an accident because her folks happened to be on holiday there when she arrived, but I can't help thinking that if you go on holiday somewhere when you're nine months pregnant it's a bit rich to claim you had a child there 'accidentally'. I'm assuming she wasn't born prematurely as I'd expect that to be mentioned!)

[ursus arctos]

Her own site (available only in English) says the following

Anya Taylor-Joy, born 16 April 1996, is an American-born Argentine-British actress and model. Anya is perhaps best known for her role as Thomasin in The Witch (2015).

Anya was born in Miami, Florida, the youngest of six children. Her mother is Spanish-English, and her father is Scottish-Argentinian. As an infant, Anya moved to Argentina and only spoke Spanish, before moving to London at six-years-old. Anya is a former ballet dancer.

Which I would read as her having dual British-Argentine nationality (and having not taken up her entitlement to a US passport).

[Sits]

We started This England last night and I've yet to decide whether it's brilliant or dreadful. Something a bit off about Branagh's Boris Johnson. He looks like David Dimbleby around the eyes, for a start.

[Sam]

Her own site (available only in English) says the following



Which I would read as her having dual British-Argentine nationality (and having not taken up her entitlement to a US passport).

Such a short quote from the website, and yet it's managed to make my teeth itch with how badly it needs proofreading (and updating, because I know very little about her but she's certainly not best known for that role any more).

Having googled 'Stephanie Beatriz Argentina' I have now found lots of mentions of her on news sites I tend to not read, but oddly not many from before 2020 (when B99's seventh series came out). It would seem odd that Argentine news outlets weren't all screaming about her much earlier, as they did with ATJ, but for the fact that ATJ is so much ... well, whiter. (Not her fault, of course.) But they never mention Chris de Burgh, so perhaps I'm being unfair.

[Sits]

Something a bit off about Branagh's Johnson.

Just realised how this might read to a North American audience. I will change the original but record it here for posterity.

[Satchmo Distel]

I've only read the reviews but the gist seems to be:

1) The cutting between Johnson's antics and people dying is too jarring

2) It's way too soon - people still dying and grieving, but also not enough time for proper perspective

3) The time period covered is too short because it was filmed before his downfall. This also means it's too kind to him.

[Eggchaser]

Watching the Bond music documentary on Amazon Prime.

SHUT THE FUCKING FUCK UP ABOUT FUCKING NO FUCKING TIME TO FUCKING DIE, NO ONE GIVES A FUCKING SHIT, WHY ARE YOU DEVOTING A QUARTER OF THE FUCKING RUN TIME TO ONE FUCKING FILM YOU FUCKING FUCKS?

Jesus.

[Tony C]

Watched both episodes of the BBC1 drama ‘Inside Man’ this week. It’s rather silly in parts but with the required levels of suspension of disbelief we inevitably bring to these things it’s perfectly watchable if only for Stanley Tucci’s Hannibal Lechter-ish performance.

Revised opinion. It was just too silly in the end. Wouldn’t recommend this. Tucci was good, but watch him on his CNN show touring Italy instead.

[Sunderporinostesta]

Revised opinion. It was just too silly in the end. Wouldn’t recommend this. Tucci was good, but watch him on his CNN show touring Italy instead.

Aye. Daft beyond belief.

[Eggchaser]

Holy shit, the latest episode of She-Hulk was amazing.

"Disney will ruin Daredevil" Corridor says no.

Comic book accurate Matt Murdock shagging all over the shop.

Old fashioned one issue team up.

Old fashioned apparently random, largely unconnected issues (episodes) throwing in plenty of background for the arc.

Wolverine Easter Egg.

Incels ruining a woman's life, woman gets guns pointed at her.

Another great penultimate cliffhanger.

Me and the Egglady put on our lawyer hats snd appreciated a fairly serious courtroom argument based on silliness.

Edit: Also forgot the costume!

Edit edit: Costumes!

[steveeeeeeeee]

Watched "Nothing Compares" last night, a documentary film about Sinead O'Connor, tracking her career up to her performance at Bob Dylan's 30th anniversary concert at MSG.

It is an excellent documentary. What's so revealing is the bitterness and anger she produced in the general public for basically having 2 unarguable viewpoints: woman have the right to choose and the Catholic church protect child abusing priests. What also is unarguable is that the public couldn't take a beautiful young woman, a young mother with a shaved head, having a strong opinion.

I'd never actually seen the Saturday Night Live performance, pre YouTube, I'd only seen stills of the photo being ripped. Ludicrously, it's still controversial and you rarely if ever see it in its entirety. But it's a fantastic performance, intelligent and passionate. The subsequent Bob Dylan performance is painful and anyone there booing is should look back in shame. Someone says in voice over (maybe Kathleen Hannah) what are you doing at a Bob Dylan concert if you are booing someone exposing religious corruption?

The final thing that struck me watching the film is that Bjork really drew heavily from Sinead O'Connor, the SNL performance of "War" could be Bjork singing, the phrasing, tones, use of loud and quiet. But Bjork would release debut a couple of years after.

[Satchmo Distel]

Roadrunner - the Anthony Bourdain documentary. It's probably the most honest piece that could have been made and doesn't in any way hide his failings. It makes his death a lot more explicable as someone who put all his hopes into one last relationship then felt he had nowhere left to go after it collapsed. There's an air of desperation throughout the outtakes from his last year, when he predictably staked his reputation on backing that relationship and mixing it with his work (There's an interesting angle that he was losing faith in his work so she was his last throw of the dice creatively as well as romantically).

There's what looks like an exploitative hatchet job book being released tomorrow that I'll avoid because it's too easy to find dirt on someone who was an addictive personality and self-destructed, and I think it would make me feel grubby and voyeuristic.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Watched "Nothing Compares" last night, a documentary film about Sinead O'Connor, tracking her career up to her performance at Bob Dylan's 30th anniversary concert at MSG.

It is an excellent documentary. What's so revealing is the bitterness and anger she produced in the general public for basically having 2 unarguable viewpoints: woman have the right to choose and the Catholic church protect child abusing priests. What also is unarguable is that the public couldn't take a beautiful young woman, a young mother with a shaved head, having a strong opinion.

I'd never actually seen the Saturday Night Live performance, pre YouTube, I'd only seen stills of the photo being ripped. Ludicrously, it's still controversial and you rarely if ever see it in its entirety. But it's a fantastic performance, intelligent and passionate. The subsequent Bob Dylan performance is painful and anyone there booing is should look back in shame. Someone says in voice over (maybe Kathleen Hannah) what are you doing at a Bob Dylan concert if you are booing someone exposing religious corruption?

The final thing that struck me watching the film is that Bjork really drew heavily from Sinead O'Connor, the SNL performance of "War" could be Bjork singing, the phrasing, tones, use of loud and quiet. But Bjork would release debut a couple of years after.

Surely Björk's style had developed years earlier in The Sugarcubes?

[Sam]

Started series 3 of Derry Girls tonight. Glorious stuff as always.

[Tony C]

Roadrunner - the Anthony Bourdain documentary. It's probably the most honest piece that could have been made and doesn't in any way hide his failings. It makes his death a lot more explicable as someone who put all his hopes into one last relationship then felt he had nowhere left to go after it collapsed. There's an air of desperation throughout the outtakes from his last year, when he predictably staked his reputation on backing that relationship and mixing it with his work (There's an interesting angle that he was losing faith in his work so she was his last throw of the dice creatively as well as romantically).

There's what looks like an exploitative hatchet job book being released tomorrow that I'll avoid because it's too easy to find dirt on someone who was an addictive personality and self-destructed, and I think it would make me feel grubby and voyeuristic.

A couple of weeks ago I read Laurie Woolever’s ‘Anthony Bourdain In Stories’ which is essentially an extension of the Roadrunner documentary with extended comments from his friends and colleagues who were close to him at different times in his life. Asia Argento did not contribute, but overall it’s an honest and fascinating insight into a very talented but complex individual.

[imp]

Current watching: "What's that smell, Jeff?" It haunts your dreams, but we can't stop - six episodes down, four to go.

[Satchmo Distel]

Surely Björk's style had developed years earlier in The Sugarcubes?

Yes, my reaction to that post was that it was far more likely that the influence was in the opposite direction. I can't think of any female vocalist who sounds like she does in the Sugarcubes. It's not punk or Siouxsie or Cocteaus. O'Connor probably takes more from Siouxsie.

[hobbes]

O'Connor probably takes more from Siouxsie.

Des?

[Sean of the Shed]

Tom.

[Simon G]

I've just watched Top Gun - Maverick.

For cheesy action, with great throwbacks to the first, I thought it was absolutely outstanding.