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    Current Watching

    DirecTV started showing Trailer Park Boys on Thursday evenings- two episodes per week- all 7 series- in order. It has to be one of the top 10 shows ever created- make that top 5. I saw maybe half of one episode a few years ago when it was on BBCAmerica and was none too impressed. I keep telling myself I didn't like it because they only showed edited version- gawd what was I thinking. The show is fantastic.

    Bravo's Flipping Out season 3 is scheduled to start in July- I think.. Can't wait for that one.

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      Current Watching

      Nil Arshavin wrote:
      Please tell me that there are other fans of Chuck on the site. The last episode was the most awesome episode of any entertainment/comedy show ever.
      I keep forgetting to record this. It looks promising.

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        Current Watching

        It has to be one of the top 10 shows ever created- make that top 5.

        Hi praise Kev. It was certainly a brilliant series. Started to lose it's way around season six, they ended it at just the right time. I hope the Christmas special is included, without a doubt it is the best ever.

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          Current Watching

          It took me a couple episodes until I went 'fuck me, this is Dukes of Hazard on meth/pot/vodka and coke':
          Dukes / Trailer Park
          Bo & Luke / Ricky & Julian
          Boss Hog / Jim Lahey
          Rosco P. Coltrane / Randy
          Cooter / Bubbles
          Daisy Duke / Lucy
          Uncle Jesse / Ricky's dad
          moonshine / pot
          the General Lee / Ricky's doorless car

          to be continued...

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            Current Watching

            No equivalent to J-Roc though, or Cory and Trevor. But I take your point.

            It's hard for me to see the series as anything other than a particularly magnificent example of Canadian small-town humour. A genre that goes back to Stephen Leacock at least. SCTV* was maybe the best TV example until Trailer Park Boys came along, and Corner Gas is a more mainstream current version of the same thing.

            *For Bob and Doug read Ricky and Julian.

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              Current Watching

              I keep watching horrible horror films. Eden Lake last night, which was like an English version of Wolf Creek - innocents go to visit a remarkable natural feature and find themselves being hunted down by murderous locals. Only being English it was a much crappier "beauty spot" and teenage yobs rather than an Ed Gein psycopath. It was grim anyway. (But not as bad as Martyrs) I think I need to stop watching depressing horror and just go for rom coms or things with Anne Hathaway in.

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                Current Watching

                Nacho Libre today - good Sunday afternoon fare.

                Very silly and very funny.

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                  Current Watching

                  'The International', with Clive Owen and a very uncomfortable-looking Naomi Watts. A (very) poor cousin of 'Michael Clayton' - slow, predictable, and packed with clumsy exposition.

                  Not recommended.

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                    Current Watching

                    Silent Hill which was terrifying, just like I remember the game being all those years ago. I love Radha Mitchell, too. Loses its way a little in the last third, but, properly scary.

                    Unlike Outbreak which we watched in honour of la grippe porcine, which is just silly nonsense, if entertaining enough if you're bored.

                    And Deep Rising and Ghost Ship which are pretty similar, one has sea monsters, the other, demons & ghosts, but otherwise are much the same thing. Again they pass the time. I used to watch so many more proper films. It's sad.

                    TV wise I have added Fringe and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Inbetweeners to my list. Loving Fringe, even though I was wary of it's being an XFiles clone, but it is humorous about being such a total ripoff, and it has the Abrams factor which I personally like a great deal. Also, Cedric Daniels plays the Walter Skinner character. Considering he also pops up in Lost all the time, I feel like I see him almost a little too much, but he is great. Also, the beautiful FBI agent and her gorgeous maverick sidekick Pacey off Dawson's Creek are pretty cool. The other two are just funny in the current vein of let's laugh at idiots and racists. I made the mistake of suggesting watching the Inbetweeners with the family at Easter. Oops. But I still love it. I fear that 'clunge' is going to go mainstream any minute now.

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                      Current Watching

                      Got the first series of Life On Mars on disk, so i'm working my way through that. I only saw the odd episode when it was on telly. It's um, good.

                      Waiting for the first series of The Wire to turn up from amazon. I haven't seen a single episode of it ever, just going off the fact it's so rated.

                      I've been watching a lot of horror films too. Mainly Dario Argento ones i'd never seen before and early Mario Bava ones like Baron Blood, which is set in the Rhineland, but was probably filmed somewhere in Italy. I liked it. It had Joseph Cotten in it(the badass uncle from Hitchcock's 'Shadow of a Doubt' in it as a disabled aristocrat in a wheel-chair).

                      Also i've been watching bleeding loads of old episode of the Avengers. There's this Honor Blackman one called 'The Wringer' with this sort of part-Beat Poet part-psychologist villain in it, that's just completely out there.

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                        Current Watching

                        Shifty

                        A very good British small scale gangster movie. Calling it a gangster movie is doing the film disservice as it stirs memories of mockney accents and ridiculous glamourisation of old school crime bosses. This film is anything but detailing the realities of the attractions of drug dealing and the miserableness of life for those who have hardcore drug dependencies.

                        The film clearly borrows a lot from the style and playbook of Shane Meadows but that's no bad thing. The actor who plays Shifty puts in a very strong performance and the storytelling devices employed kept me engrossed even if there was a couple of moments of cliche. The look and feel of the film was astonishing considering it only cost £100,000.

                        The only major criticism I had was someone lost their nerve in thinking that the story could be told to the audience in a non expository way. Hence, we were treated to a few moments of Scooby Doo whodunit stuff after what should have been the real ending. A shame but not enough of one to complain too vociferously.

                        Tony Manero
                        For the first time in my life I was the only person in the cinema watching a film. It felt like I was at home with my own personal 40 foot screen. The film convincingly portrayed the daily life of Pinochet era Chile. The main character is a man obsessed with Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever who happens to be a serial killer.

                        It's an odd film with graphic sex (although in fairness most of it has to do with the portrayal of characters than exploitative) and will be mentioned in dispatches when people are listing noteworthy defecation scenes in movies but I can't help but think that I missed out on some metaphor for Chilean society in this period along the way.

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                          Current Watching

                          Anvil
                          Crazy Heavy Metal dudes trying to recapture success in to their fifties with a Robb Reiner. It's as good as Spinal Tap but this is for real and not played for laughter.

                          Helen
                          I was very impressed, my girlfriend was bored to tears. Slow, methodical with non-professional actors. Dealt with identity in a way I hadn't really seen done on film before. Worth checking out.

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                            Current Watching

                            Blow-up
                            I think Austin Powers has ruined any possibility of me enjoying a film about the swinging sixties in London without wanting to take the piss. There is thirty minutes of an excellent movie here and 70 minutes of window-dressing.

                            I get that the window-dressing explains why the main character is bored with life and searching for something deeper but I don't think that it is enough to excuse the lecherous and stone-age attitudes towards women. I was bored by long stretches of this film and I didn't think the intention was to bore me.

                            The extended silent sequence with the development of film was truly gripping and brilliant though. Even this gets interrupted by a need to have girls rolling around naked. I'm as red-blooded as the next man but what the fuck was that about? The guy is convinced that he's just seen an attempted murder but he just cavorts instead of doing something?

                            I quite like the ending and lack of definite answers to what we've seen but a lot of the film was just rubbish padding or is there something I'm missing?

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                              Current Watching

                              Started on The Shield yesterday. Yeah, I like it after 4 eps. I see why people mention it when they mention The Wire, the complexity of characters' morals & motivations could develop really well, plus gritty life on the streets &c and the horrible political machinations that screw everyone's lives up. Although otherwise they're not really that similar.

                              Re Blow-Up - I don't think you're missing anything, I think you're being generous. I loathe that film.

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                                Current Watching

                                Yeah, it's fucking terrible isn't it. I watched it before the whole Austin Powers thing happened, when I was well into the history of mod, but it bored me to tears.

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                                  Current Watching

                                  Even this gets interrupted by a need to have girls rolling around naked. I'm as red-blooded as the next man but what the fuck was that about?

                                  A career opportunity for Jane Birkin?

                                  Blow Up isn't a good film, when you get right down to it none of Antonioni's are; no coherent plot, no internal dynamic, no interesting characters. But it's edges are arresting. To start with he's a real chroma guy and, though it's not as in your face as it is in The Red Desert the expressive use of colour in Blow-Up is very fine. The vibrancy and saturation of the central character's world — the women's clothing, the (dyed) green of the grass — contrasted with his monochromatic self: clothes, studio, and photographs which, I suppose, some would say illuminates the emptiness of his life. I just think it looked nifty.

                                  Also, this is entirely personal but the dark-room scenes: the magnification, processing and studying of prints I found galvanizing. Getting lost in the grain of a picture, seeing things that might be there or not. I've done all that and so, for me, it's the most realistic and dramatically loaded aspect of the film and I wish it had been more emphatic. (As a footnote it's also nice to have a well filmed record of the Beck/Page Yardbirds too.)

                                  But overall, as I said, it's not so much that emperor has no clothes. The clothes are fine, at times even brilliant, it's just that there's no emperor inside them.

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                                    Current Watching

                                    "Started on The Shield yesterday."

                                    Which series, Lyra? I'm adoring the latest (which is to be the last) one.

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                                      Current Watching

                                      Oh starting at the very beginning, series 1. I reckon it will get even better as it hits its stride, good to know that it is still good at the end!

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                                        Current Watching

                                        The final series is brilliant. The final episode a stunner.

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                                          Current Watching

                                          Current reading about soaps most bizaare moments
                                          Forgotten how mental some of these primetime programmes can be

                                          [url=http://[/url]http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/tv/galleries/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=16580708]http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/tv/galleries/gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=16580708

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                                            Current Watching

                                            My good wife and I have recently discovered Lost. We're watching the first series on DVD.

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                                              Current Watching

                                              Echoing A de C re the last episode of The Shield.

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                                                Current Watching

                                                I watched The Faculty for the first time since the cinema and I think it held up pretty well, it was still fun and funny and quite fresh and not annoyingly 'postmodern', just a tiny bit.

                                                And then Knowing which almost challenges Martyrs for the 'worst film I have seen this year'. What a gigantic bag of shit, honestly. Loathsome right from the start, as so many films of this kind of subgenre seem to be - mawkish, vile. I think I prefer the cloyingly sentimental Deep Impact and even the staggeringly boring Last Night to this heap of drivelling nonsense.

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                                                  Current Watching

                                                  State of Play
                                                  I didn't manage to catch the TV series so I had nothing to compare this to. Every review I've heard or read has the same opinion - good, but not a patch on the TV show. As politic thrillers go it's very good.

                                                  Russell Crowe gives a strong performance but isn't helped by the fact that the character has been written as the all knowing god of journalism. The issue of privatised armed forces is sensationalised but gives stark warnings of the practise. The film is full of cliché (rookie earns respect of master, twists, car park rendez-vous) but remains gripping throughout. Big questions such as the demise of journalism and corruption of officials are raised throughout the film. It's worth seeing without being mind-blowing.

                                                  Human Resources
                                                  The first film of Laurent Cantet, director of The Class, set in a factory. The son of long time factory worker starts as a trainee in the HR department of the factory. The conflict between cost-cutting management and unions is explored in the form of the 35 hour week. Only one professional actor is used and the factory appeared to be producing during shooting. I thoroughly enjoyed it because I emphatised to a large extent with the main character. Not perfect by any means but deals with social class, workers rights and management aspirations in a thorough manner. There are a few emotional family scenes too and they manage to hit the right spot without melodrama.

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                                                    Current Watching

                                                    Central do Brasil (ten years late), with the absolutely magnificent Fernanda Montenegro in the lead role of cynical old woman who finds her heart. It gets a bit maudlin in places, but it provides an interesting contrast to all those frenetic favela flicks.

                                                    But really, it's a master-class in screen acting from FM.

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