Enter the Dragon (1973)

“Boards don’t hit back.”

This film is surprisingly excellent- very Hollywood compared to the other Bruce Lee stuff I’ve seen but very, very good. It is, of course, absolutely a James Bond film though.

Consider the plot: a rebel Shaolin monk abandons the teachings of his temple to, er, but a private island and run a drug and sex slavery operation under cover of martial arts contests while surrounded by loads of henchman. Yep, that’s a Bond villain all right. Plus, our hero is hired by a mysterious British chap called Braithwaite to infiltrate said Bond villain’s lair as a kind of spy. Yep, all very Bond film so far.

This is, of course, sort of a martial arts film too, but there are times you’d forget it wasn’t a Bond film that happened to have lots of martial arts in it. So much so that Lee and Braithwaite remind us early on that guns are banned from the film... er, island, because “any bloody fool can pull a trigger”.

Bruce Lee is a charismatic star, and the fighting scenes are obviously impressive. But the film is so good, in spite of the differences from the generally historical tenor of Lee’s other work, precisely because it successfully takes on the template of a Bond film. There are other nice touches too- we emphasise with Williams after the racism he experiences from cops in LA, who get their just desserts. The direction is very good, and the early sequences show off Hong Kong very well. This is a genuinely impressive film, and far from the sort of kitsch martial arts film you’d often get at the time.

Union Jack: Compromised

"You're like a shit Captain Britain."

Well, that went in a direction I wasn’t expecting. An Axis Mundi agent running MI5; Joe and Slaymaster uniting against a common enemy; lots of complex allegiances. A typically brilliant episode this week, with the usual likeable characters, witty humour and enjoyably tally fight scenes. This is a series that understands how dull silent fight scenes can be, and that’s appreciated.

Slaymaster certainly seems to be a cynic and no angel, but he claims to be reformed- this isn’t quite the character who blinded Betsy Braddock in the comics. Here, so far, he’s pretty much just a cool red herring. He’s also an indicator that Joe is somewhat out of his depth, but that’s a big part of what makes Union Jack a hero; Captain Britain he is not.

As ever, though, the joy is in the dialogue- the exchange about the password between Romany and Joe including “How the fuck am I going to get the word ‘banana’ into a conversation with a supervillain?”, and all the Captain Britain stuff. But on top of all the arc plot is becoming ever more intricate. I’m enjoying this a lot.

Look it up on YouTube!

The Box of Delights: The Wolves Are Running

"That's the time that likings are made."

I have distinct childhood memories of watching The Box of Delights, but I haven’t seen it since 1984, when I was seven. I’ve only seen it that once, thirty-five years ago, and such memories I have are full of the fuzziness of being that age- and bound up with other things of the era like reading Battle Action Force and whatever else I was into at that particular time. So what will I make of it now?

The first episode is an odd but atmospheric beast. That title sequence is bloody terrifying, though, especially Mr Punch- how come I have no childhood memories of this giving me nightmares when other things most certainly did? Surprising, too, that I don’t remember recognising Patrick Troughton, as I certainly knew who he was. But, mostly, my memories are just impressions and this felt new, my memories just faint ghosts.

So, it’s the early twentieth century, presumably 1935 going by the novel, and we begin with a steam train in the English countryside, where young Kay Harker is returning home for Christmas having been sent away to boarding school for the whole half term, the heartlessness of which is not remarked upon. But then again, I assume he’s an orphan, and Caroline Louisa is his older sister? The two of them share an obvious affection, but she isn’t very maternal and, possible crucially, not much of an authority figure.

Cole Hawlings is a suitably mysterious and wizard-like figure, doing his stuff since “pagan times” (although presumably not Punch and Judy for as long as all that) who has undefined magic powers- able to show Kay a Phoenix and walk into a picture, both times by harnessing the incredible power of cartoons. Only Patrick Troughton could possibly have played him.

Cole’s real magic is contrasted against the sinister card sharpery of Foxy Faced Charles and Chubby Joe, but only at the end do we, and Kay, see the full extent of the baddies- including Rat (Bill Sallis, incredibly) and the unnamed baddie boss, played by that icon of the ‘60s stage Robert Stephens, who was so splendid in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Alas, he supposedly turned to the bottle and derailed his career, but he’s in fine fettle here, quite the ac-tor.

But this is only the beginning. I’m excited for the rest...

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks (Revisited), Episodes Five and Six

Episode Five

"Why do human beings kill human beings?"

The Daleks have revealed their plans, and we know them to be duplicating: you'd expect this to be a water-treading fifth episode. And yet, in spite of the Doctor spending the episode in a cell, and Michael Craze being off for a week, a hell of a lot happens in David Whittaker's intelligent and gripping script.

For a start, the only person to have see the Daleks duplicating is Lesterson, the one character whom no one will believe. The scene where Janley subtly gaslights him in front of Bragen is chillingly effective, his plans to wipe out the Daleks doomed. He's hoist by his own hubris. But he won't be alone. Hubris is everywhere on Vulcan.

Well, perhaps not in production terms. Animation can show us hordes of Daleks, none of them cardboard. But a Daleks reminder that no more than three of them ought to be seen at one time sort of gives away how many props there were. But Janley? She oozes hubris, believing the Daleks can be controlled. Bragen is even worse, riding the revolution to power and then seeking to massacre those who helped him. And then the unexpectedly returned Governor, couped and murdered by Dalek gun in a tense and superb scene which ends with a positively megalomaniacal Bragen in firm control.

Polly only half-convinces Valmar of the plot, but all this plotting ends up being supremely relevant, as we end with the famously surviving scene of revived



Episode Six

"Daleks conquer and destroy!"

Everything looks bleak at the start, as it seems that everybody is going to be exterminating. And, well, things just carry on being bleak as the Daleks happily massacre away, all the human skulduggery being for nothing and utterly exploited by the Daleks.

It’s a bit of a fudge that Bragen, the Doctor, Polly and Quinn aren’t just killed by the Dalek at the time, mine. Letting them past and then weakly announcing that “they will be exterminated” doesn’t quite fulfill the Daleks’ promise. But apart from this it’s an episode of slaughter.

Even at this late stage there’s still a bit of plotting- Valmar overhears Bragen telling a reluctant Janley that he and his friends are all to be killed, now expendable after assisting his coup. But it’s all suddenly meaningless, and Bragen is now king of nothing. And the Daleks just keep on killing- it's just that some killings, like that of Lesterson, are laced with more irony than most.

The Doctor finally defeats the Daleks by destroying the (ahem) power of the Daleks- but, interestingly, it's very much lampshaded that the Doctor could have done this in a far less anarchistic way than to destroy the entire colony's electricity supply. Does he intend to help them unite through adversity? Whatever, it's a surprising manipulative act. Then there's the shockingly deliberate decision to use Bragen's arriving guards as bait. This Doctor may be charming, he may on the whole be a goodie, but he certainly has his dark side. That's brave.


And so, as a whole, being able to fully follow what's going on, the story stands revealed as a triumph, and a far better script than I'd even suspected. It also helps that we don't get those bloody carboard cut-out Daleks...

Union Jack: Clean

"Why is the first thing that you say that he's Muslim...?"

I’m afraid this episode is late- life and all that; I’ve had a few days of only being able to get online on my phone, and that’s not good for YouTube. I’m back now, though, so what of this new story arc?

Well, Vixen and Slaymaster are characters I know well from the Alan Moore and Alan Davis golden age of Captain Britain, and it’s good to see them- or rather have their presence, particularly Slaymaster’s, hanging over the episode to provide tension. I like the way Slaymaster’s coolness is slowly built up, the joke about the first thing Gavin mentioning about this “terrorist” is that he’s a Muslim, and the fact that we hear about him from two different, and probably equally reliable, narrators. Slaymaster may or may not appear (is that him Joe fights at the end?), but he hasn’t been this cool since he was leader of the Crazy Gang.

The regulars are likeable and funny as ever, too, from the banter between Joe and the long-suffering Romany to the opening scene of Joe shooting at a crude drawing of the Baroness- but it’s time for vampires to take a back seat. We also get a cautionary tale about the folly of trying to drive down in That London, but then southerners (even when one of them is sort of Mancunian but not) are all mad. But it’s all about the enigma of Slaymaster- mysterious, silent (“I love a bit of dialogue in a fight scene”) and itching for a proper introduction, which I suspect won’t be long coming.

Excellent stuff. Catch it now on YouTube.

The War of the Worlds: Part 1

“I mean, something can’t erupt from Mars and end up in Surrey.”

I know, I’m a week behind, but here I am blogging this. After all, following Jonathan Strange I could hardly miss another adaptation of a classic geek novel by Peter Harness and while, I think, this isn’t quite as good- much like the source material, to be honest- it’s a solid and welcome return of War of the Worlds to its period roots- although why they set it a few years after the novel’s publication dare of 1898 I have no idea. Edward VII is king but the Tories are clearly in power, going by the prominent role of a monocle-free Uncle Joe Chamberlain, so it’s only a few years later- presumably 1902 as Ogilvy mentions Mars has been equally close in ‘94 and ‘98.. Why change the period so very slightly?

Nevertheless, the whole thing looks superb. That goes for both the period setting and the visual effects, which either goes light on the CGI or wears it lightly. The direction cannot be faulted. And the script takes an intelligent approach of taking Wells’ plot and approach and adding drama- so Wells’ unnamed narrator is now George, and he is scandalously living in sin with Amy while technically still incestuously married- and because his ex won’t sign the papers he won’t get a divorce until she dies. Ouch. All this, and the ensuing friction with George’s brother Frederick, adds depth. So does the use of the imperialistic Chamberlain as politician of choice- after all, the subtext of the novel is to turn the behaviour of the imperialistic British against us.

Eleanor Tomlinson is splendidly charismatic, and Robert Carlyle excels against type as the scholarly Ogilvy. But there’s a charisma vacuum in the person of Rage Spall, who doesn’t make us like or care about George. So, in spite of the top not h production and Peter Harness’s script, I’m a little ambivalent, not only about Spall but whether Wells’ novel as source material can lead to good drama; there are reasons why it’s often been departed from.

Let’s hope the remaining two episodes don’t rely much on Spall.

Frozen II (2019)

“You can’t just follow me into fire.”

“Then don’t run into fire!”

This afternoon Mrs Llamastrangler and I visited our local cinema accompanied by a certain little girl who was in equal measures nervous and excited. Yes, Little Miss Llamastrangler is both four years old and completely obsessed with Disney princesses, and this seemed like a good choice for her first ever film at the cinema. And it was. She loved everything about it, which ultimately should probably outweigh the more qualified praise of her forty-two year old father.

A Disney film sequel that isn’t a casually tossed off straight-to-video release is a rarity, but this is the real deal, with cast and creative team reuniting to dig for more box office gold-successfully, I suspect. But, with no original fairytale source to draw upon, the pressure was on.

But I needn’t have worried. Yes, the early scenes seemed overly cosy and devoid of the conflict that all good drama needs, but the magical mystery of the nearby enchanted forest gives the film the injection of epic fairytale magic that it needs. And by the hilarious Olaf song about how everything make sense when you’re an adult, and you in know way feel like an older child who’s winging it, I was well and truly won over. The animation, the story, some nice characterisations and the humour all worked well, and one of the songs in particular had Little Miss Llamastrangler singing all the way home.

Is it as good as the original? Probably not. But it’s a solid, moving, funny film that probably deserves the success it’s pretty much certain to get, particularly as a more cynical cash-in would doubtless have done just as well.

Phenomena (1985)

“People call it the Swiss Transylvania...”

This is, to my shame, the first film by Dario Argento that I’ve seen. This film isn’t perhaps quite as good as the critics say, but it certainly isn’t the last of his films I’ll be Seinfeld. It’s very well shot, stylish and pleasingly weird, if a little slow.

This is a slasher, sort of, in a very ‘80s style yet a cut above visually with a more artistic approach than you might expect from the genre- as well as an interestingly prog and metal soundtrack with a central role for Iron Maiden. In many ways, I suppose, this is a vaguely European Friday the 13th- in terms of plot as well as style- but it’s much, much better made without escaping its genre.

It’s odd to see such a very Italian film in English, and to see its stars- a fifteen year old Jennifer Connelly and a late period performance by the great Donald Pleasance who, it must be said, does not have the most convincing Scottish accent.

It’s all very much of it’s time with the fashion, music, and cars, and visually it’s always made both with an artistic, dreamlike vision and the uneasily creepy grammar of horror film visuals. It is, at times, guilty of a slowness of pace caused by lingering arty camerawork, but the film works narratively and the final twist, although predictable to the genre-savvy, is well done.

This is, I suspect, a fairly average example of Argento’s work, but on the whole I enjoyed it. I’ll certainly be seeing more.

Avengers: Endgame (2019)

“Go to sleep or I’ll sell all your toys!

I don’t care if I’m skipping a couple of recent films for this one; I’ve never been strictly chronological with the Marvel films in a pinch and I won’t start now. The months of spoiler-dodging stop now.

So... wow. A big, blockbuster geeky film that’s three hours long yet doesn’t feature a single Hobbit. And it had me in equal measures gripped, laughing and trying not to cry. This film is indeed as good as everyone says it is.

It also subverts expectations in an awfully clever way. In showing us the true horror of Thanos’ click via Hawkeye and his vanished family, it shows us a Thanos who has forever destroyed all the Infinity Stones and retired- so the Avengers visit him and Thor kills him in a massive anticlimax. Fast forward five years. That certainly wasn’t the obvious thing to do.

Cue the return of Ant-Man eventually prompting Tony Stark, now a husband and father, to invent time travel, and lots of highly entertaining dialogue about how the butterfly effect, and hence every time trace movie ever, doesn’t imply in the Marvel Universe. Time travel doesn’t work as in Back to the Future, says the now-smart Hulk, yet the solution to Thanos’ click is to travel back into the recent past and do a Back to the Future II, which is both clever and hilarious.

And so we get a coda where the Hulk’s click brings the dead back- but the Thanos of 2014 has found out the truth from the future Nebula and has time travelled back to kill them all. It’s good to see Karen Gillan with such a prominent role here, but her story is so very timey-wimey. And it seems to explain why Thanos originally had Nebula tied up, yet history is changed here and the 2014 Thanos has events play out differently. The dynamic between the two very different Nebulas, and Gamora, is wonderful, but this film doesn’t let its big, epic nature get in the way of character, pathos or humour. So Black Widow’s death has meaning. Tony Stark’s final, fatal click, saying “I am Iron Man”, May save the army if goodies from Thanos but gives him a meaningful death, dwelt on properly as it should be; if any character can be said to be the main star of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s him.

Cap, too, gets a suitable exit, spending the rest of his days with Peggy in a beautiful coda.

There’s so much more, though. Fat Thor. Tony Stark meeting his dad in 1970, with a cameo from Jarvis whom we’ve only seen in Agent Carter- at least one of the MCU TV series is sort of recognised as canon. There’s “Scott, I get emails from a raccoon”. Thor getting a pep talk from his mother. It’s wonderful that the film has so much heart, and all its characters are properly used.

A wonderful film, and a fitting end to an age. Let’s hope the future is just as bright.

The Sopranos: Down Neck

"Meadow was one thing- this is my son."

A particularly good episode this time as we deal with the themes of destiny versus free will in the terms of whether children are fated to repeat the mistakes of their parents- and the corruption of being brought up by the fruits of immoral earnings. This latter point applies not only to Mafia families but to all of us, as Tony implies with his comments on polluters- but don’t we all benefit from slave labour in poor countries, and don’t we all contribute to unsustainable emissions of CO2, something far more acute now than twenty years ago?

Yes. 1999 was twenty years ago. I know, it’s appalling.

We have two parallel storylines of Mafia sons- young Anthony is found bucking and drinking communion wine at school which leads to friction between Carmela and Tony over whether or not he has ADD, a great ‘90s debate to fit alongside, well, Prozac. The two of them eventually unite over the view that it’s all over-medicalised bollocks but, of course, the truth is more subjective as it always will be with any condition where one needs to exhibit a number of subjective indicators. ADHD, like personality disorders, may be artificial constructs, but they can be useful. And Tony learns that Anthony knows, from school, what he does for a living. There’s a lot of angst about the younger generation finding out about “this thing of ours” and how it affects their life chances- but, on the other hand, it’s Mafia money that sends the Soprano kids to private schools.

This is contrasted with fascinating flashbacks first appearing after a superb semi-dreamlike sequence in which Tony wakes up to his wife and son rowing in the background, and takes his Prozac to the splendid sound of Jefferson Airplane’s famous trippy rodent-based classic. This takes him back to 1967, a world of parental authority and casual racism, and the first time he sees his father and uncle beating a bloke up- and seeing his father getting arrested. We also see how disturbing his mother was even back then (“I could stick this fork in your eye!”) and how she gave Johnny so much emasculating drama- stopping them from moving to Reno where, in hindsight, they could have made billions.

We also have Livia finding out about Tony’s psychiatrist and reacting as one would expect. And, of course, we get a mention of South Park’s seminal “Cartman Gets an Anal Probe” as a top 1999 pop culture reference. This is bloody good telly.

Atypical: Season 3, Episode 4: Y.H.G.G.

"Sorry, would you mind turning down your backpack?"

Right. You know how I started off blogging this season by suggesting that something was missing, that it was still very good but, perhaps because of the sheer amount of necessary early-season exposition, it wasn't quite catching fire in the way the two previous seasons had.

Well, forget that. At this point the season has fully reached peak Atypical. This is an episode that mixes perfect plotting and pacing with heart and humour in exactly the way this show does at its best. I think the jitters are over.

The use of Paige is as clever as it is sad- we begin with her on Skype to Sam describing her uni social life to Sam, encouraging to make friends or suffer the terrible social death that a friend of hers did. The fact that Sam does indeed have a good time at some kind of drawing jam party is nice but, more importantly, the final reveal is devastating- the "Burrito lab rat" is Paige herself, and she's miserable, bullied, and at the end of her tether.

Things are more bittersweet for Izzie, hanging around Elsa in a blatant attempt to escape her clearly dysfunctional family- and the two of them bond over their shit childhoods. Both of them are suddenly much deeper characters.

But there's happiness for Zahid who, after an excruciating party experience, randomly meets a girl by a rubbish skip and falls in love. And there's more bonding after the recent rough patch for Casey and Evan as they visit his shit estranged dad with his sister and they, er, kidnap a dog. And Casey's magnificent bollocking of a shamefaced Evan's dad is a wnder to behold- no wonder Evan kisses her.

THAT is how to do character drama.

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

"What evil sorcery is this?"

I've seen this splendid Ray Harryhausen film (and is it not instructive how we all see this as his film, director and obscure cast notwithstanding) several times before. Of course I have. But my DVD went missing years ago and only now do I get to blog it.

It's a splendid tour-de-force of stop motion brilliance, of course; very much a Technicolor King Kong. I mean this literally; the stars of the film are not Kerwin Mathews and Kathryn Grant but the horned Cyclops, the Roc, the dragon and the skeleton- and the final fight between the Cyclops and the dragon is very King Kong indeed.

Of course, Rocs aside, the story owes far more to The Odyssey than to Arabian Nights. And the acting, aside from Torin Thatcher’s splendid scenery chewing as the sneaky magician Sokurah, is pure plywood. Indeed, there is a major plot hole- why do the Caliph and Sultan not suspect the clearly dodgy wizard of being the man who shrunk the princess? Why, after declaring war on Baghdad for no obvious reason, does the Sultan allow his daughter to remain there? Actually, how come a Caliph and Sultan both exist, as equals? Were there sultans before the Ottomans, anyway?

Ultimately, we don’t care about any of this. The stop motion is awesome, therefore the film is awesome. It’s one of those films, and Ray Harryhausen was the greatest ever in his field.

Union Jack: Fate

"I've got a Pomeranian."

"I don't know what that is."

Another episode, another disclaimer at the start, and more of the rather well-crafted superhero sitcom with likeable characters that we’ve come to know and love. A lot happens, too; the Baroness gets to drink some blood at a mysterious pre-dawn ceremony and continues to be a rather cool fourth wall-breaking baddie, Ken tragically turns to dust as the sun rises in a flash of rather impressive visual effects, and there are a lot of those rather amusing combat sequences with lots of top comedy banter from our lad Joe. I also need to mention the music from Tasha Fights Tigers, whoever they are- they’re really rather good.

I like the little comedy scene introducing us to Edith, with some nice bits of dialogue including a line asking Joe if, as Union Jack, he might be a little bit of a right wing nationalist as you’d probably assume. There’s a bit of an implicit acknowledgement that Joe is supposed to be from Manchester but has never, either here or in the old Marvel issues I happen to have read, sounded remotely northern. And we have Joe’s boss Gavin turning up to save the day, proving himself to be more than just a git.

But the Baroness has won and... could she be pregnant? That’s this first arc seemingly over, then, but I’m sure we’ll see more of the Baroness.

Splendid stuff, and it’s here: https://youtu.be/7sL5wnnTbjI

Atypical: Season 3, Episode 3- Cocaine Pills and Pony Meat

"I forgot to check the anal fins."

This episode is, thankfully, much better and more in line with the first two seasons. Perhaps it's because it gets more of a chance to breathe but a lot of it, I suspect, is that it's heavily based on Sam navigating his first few days at uni, as narrated by him with the requisite (and genuinely interesting) references to Ernest Shackleton.

We're introduced to a suspiciously abrasive ethics professor who is, I suspect, going to gradually soften and become more likeable as the episodes can't go by. Personally I find it impossible to dislike anyone who is a fellow Nirvana fan and teachers her seminars whilst wearing an In Utero t-shirt just like we all had back in '93-'94. But it's all a shock to the system for Sam, who nonetheless copes with a lot of organisation and a huge reserve of resilience. So far this season he hasn't had any meltdowns at all. That's real progress.

Things aren't going well for Evan, who is helplessly seeing himself pushed out of Casey's life by Izzy, who shares dreams, horizons and yes, education levels with Casey that he can't hope to match. There's some real social class angst here and, while the episode finishes with a touching reconciliation, I think there's trouble ahead.

Also not good is Doug, not usually a dick, pulling the dick move of bringing Megan into the house in front of Elsa- and poor Elsa tries and fails to confront Megan. She's also anxious about backing off and giving people space as requested by Julia- who has a cute new baby.

We end with Sam finally getting help at uni for his disabilities, meeting Sidney who, in spite of having a man's name, is an obvious love interest. I notice Nice Bloke Sam is still turning up too. This season has twists and turns to go, and I'm enjoying it.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks (Revisited), Episodes Three and Four

Episode Three

"A Dalek is bett... is not the same as a human."

Again, moving pictures make such a difference and mean, for once, that I can fully follow the plot both in ways I knew I wasn’t following before and in getting extra nuances. Who cares if the animation is a bit rubbish?

Anyway, the colony certainly starts the episode enthused about the potential of the Daleks to do labour tasks in mines and so forth that, er, would surely require much better mobility and actual hands, but never mind.

Quinn is clearly innocent, and telling the truth when saying he sent for the examiner, but is locked up anyway. Bragen is the new Deputy Governor- and is immediately revealed to be colluding with Janley and the rebels in a plot to exploit their grievances to launch a coup d’etat. Blimey.

Meanwhile, Lesterson is puzzlingly impressed by what he thinks of as the Dalek’s robotic “positronic brain (so Whitaker read Asimov?) as it recites chemical formulas by rote, and is easily manipulated into getting it materials to build a machine which will absolutely predict meteor impacts as the Dalek claims and in no way manufacture an army of Dalek casings so the Daleks can massacre everybody.

Two more Daleks emerge but, hey, Lesterson is in control, while the Doctor flits about learning things- and we get our first “When I say run, run”. And Bragen knows the Doctor is an impostor- but the Doctor knows he killed the real Examiner. Stalemate?

This is a much better episode, with all the skulduggery, when you can easily follow the plot.



Episode Four

"We understand the human mind."

Lesterson begins by asserting his authority in temporarily switching off the Daleks’, er, power to show his dominance, probably the last chance he will have. This is his last big moment before his nervous breakdown, a good bit of characterisation.

But, not forgetting the new Doctor, we get our first “I would like a hat like that”, Troughton’s early catchphrase. He’s alarmed to see Daleks everywhere as servants... and then there were somehow four Daleks, not three. This concern about the mysterious extra Dalek is a superb way of building tension. One odd thing, though, is that the Daleks suddenly operate by static electricity again, for the first and only time since The Daleks. Meanwhile Polly, kidnapped by Janley last episode, is absent so Anneke can have a week off.

Lesterson is now easily manipulated both by the Daleks and the calmly fanatical Janley, a superbly nuanced female character. The rebels want to use the Daleks, and it’s Janley who persuades then that it will be fine and in no way will the Daleks just massacre them all. Meanwhile Bragen, temporarily in charge, exposes and imprisons the Doctor, giving him a chance to compare notes with Quinn.

The ending is superb, and so much better than the frustration of watching these highly visual scenes via telesnaps, as an agog Lesterson sees a Dalek army being manufactured. I particularly love how the bubbling little lumps of hate are removed from water and placed into casings. The whole sequence is amazing, all the more so for the fact that animation doesn’t do cardboard cut out Daleks.

This story, which I already rated very highly, is rising rapidly in my estimation.

The Sopranos: Pax Soprana

“If you were a dildo, we wouldn't be fighting".

This episode is fascinating, and a realignment in a couple of contexts as Tony is forced to accept that Dr Melfi is romantically out of bounds, he persuades Junior to act as a benevolent boss, and he and Carmela start to work on their marriage. Of course, it’s all actually much more nuanced than that.

Things come to a proper head with Dr Melfi. Tony not only had erotic dreams about her but can only maintain an erection when thinking of her- even his Ukrainian “goomar” can’t satisfy him. So we have the scene where he slowly, embarrassingly describes his impotence to Dr Melfi, declares his love and kisses her- and she reacts firmly and professionally on stopping him there, explaining that the things he finds attractive about her are just a part of her role. She seems remarkable tolerant of finding out that he had her followed, and stole her car to fix it- but then, she knows what he is agreed to take him as a client, regardless. Dr Melfi, in spite of her role, isn’t quite a blank canvas of a character. It will be fun to find out more about what makes her tick.

Meanwhile Carmela is upset during an awkward anniversary meal and reacts passively aggressively in ways that don’t help Tony’s stress- but she’s right. Tony does see “goomars” despite his protestations. And he has been neglecting her in every way, prioritising everything else. Even worth is that Father Phil, who is supposed to be her friend, is a misogynist arsehole with his advice. He firmly rules out all suggestion of divorce, although it’s clearly immoral to trap people in formal couplings they no longer consent to. And he blames her for tolerating his earlier dalliances, saying that she is “not entirely without sin”. It’s a distressing scene to watch, and leads us to question the foundations of their attempt at reconciliation at the end, where it’s her who persuades him to keep on seeing Dr Melfi.

Also worrying is Junior’s autocratic style as boss, taking and not giving as boss, but it’s Tony who handles this with a little speech about Octavian- I like his penchant for Roman history. But there’s some interesting dialogue in which Tony and other capos admit that Junior is boss because someone has to take the fall if the Feds come calling and it’s better it be an old man without children- and, as we see at the end, the FBI are on to them. Although the board with pinned photos and post-it notes is the most 1999 thing ever...

Superlative as always.

Atypical: Season 3, Episode 2- Standing Sam

“You punched a milkshake?”

We get to see Sam navigate his first day at uni this episode and, really, he does awesomely. There’s a scene early on where he seems due for a meltdown... and it doesn’t happen. He’s prepared for everything. He makes friends. Yes, they turn out to be douches but that’s ok; he makes a friend who seems nice. And is called Sam too.

Otherwise things are ominous. Casey’s feud with Nate is ongoing. Elsa and Doug are not going well- and Megan sends him a flirty text. And then there are the ongoing worries with Zahid and his self-destructive streak and Casey not feeling like she fits in at private school. And are she and Evan really ok?

This episode is better. It’s wittier, the characters are well written and acted... but something is lacking, an extra little spark. Season Three so far is good, very good. But it’s not reaching its previous heights.  but let’s see what happens: Mrs Llamastrangler and I will be zooming through this.

Atypical: Season 3, Episode 1- Best Laid Plans

“Can you please pick up a fire extinguisher on the way home?”

The plus side of getting into a series late is that sometimes, as here for Mrs Llamastrangler and I, you don’t have to wait long for a new season to come along and here it is- the further adventures of the characters we’ve come to know and love, picking up from last time.

And this is a good opening episode to a season that promises to be enjoyable. It’s funny and it has heart. But I am, perhaps, a little less wowed this time. I wonder whether that’s just familiarity on my part of there perhaps isn’t quite so much sparkle?

This is good stuff, though- we pick up with Paige getting back together with Sam, with Casey overwhelmed by the awkward triangle between Evan and Izzie, with Elsa and Doug still awkwardly falling to communicate after what happened. And Doug is being tempted by Megan.

There’s a lot about Sam preparing for uni, and how far he’s come as an autistic person. There’s some comedy about Paige wanting sex but them never seeming to find the time, and some touching stuff about his autism. But the monologues aren’t as sharp or as relevant, and the whole thing doesn’t sing quite so much as it did.

This is still very good by the standard of lesser shows, but I’m left ever so slightly underwhelmed.

Doctor Who: The Power of the Daleks (Revisited), Episodes One and Two

Episode One

"Life depends on change and renewal."

Been a while since I blogged any non-current Doctor Who, hasn't it? I blogged the actual The Enemy of the World and The Web of Fear when Philip Morris found them, but otherwise I just blogged them all at the very beginning of this blog- which, indeed, didn't start as a blog at all but as a series of reviews, alongside a bunch of others, for The Great Nap Year Marathon of 2008 to 2010 on Outpost Gallifrey. This blog only existed at first so I could keep my own copies of the reviews... and then we all somehow finished marathoning all of Doctor Who, from 1963 to 2010. Only then did I start to turn this into a wider TV and film blog, having caught the habit- keeping up with current Doctor Who along the way, of course.

But I'm drawn back to The Power of the Daleks. My original review was of the Loose Cannon recon, and there are no episodes so frustrating as this one, where the Doctor is recast (I shouldn't yet say "regenerated") for the first time, and we see Patrick Troughton first attempting the role- or, that is, we don't.

So what of this animated version? Well, the animation itself is crude and basic, but it gives us something we lacked: moving pictures. It also helps enormously that we get a) much clearer sound and b) subtitles. It's such a relief to be able to watch one of the most pivotal episodes ever and be able to understand the narrative. Well, almost. It's pretty clear that the Doctor's movements as he wakes up, stands and has his dizzy little trippy experience are pretty much extrapolated from the telesnaps. Much of the movement we see see here is guesswork, inevitably.

It's good to have the brief recap at the start for context, reminding us of just how little the narrative was holding our hands- and in this first episode mercurial old David Whitaker reminds us of the necessity of change and renewal, throwing us a great big mercurial metaphor in the forms of those great big pools of..,. well  yes, remember who's writing this. One could even stretch a point and say that Polly and Ben being poisoned a bit by mercury fumes reflect difficulties in adapting to change. But it's a brave episode that doesn't patronise, lets Troughton be sinister and weird, and allows us to work out for ourselves whether we accept him as the Doctor. As Ben says of Polly and himself, where do they stand now? And where, indeed, do the viewers stand?

The plot of what's happening on Vulcan starts pretty sharpish, although not really foregrounded yet, but the Doctor havng the documents of the Examiner fall literally into his hand is a nice narrative shortcut tantamount to Psychic Paper, and the fiction between Quinn and Bragen shows us immediately that the colony may not be a happy place, Interesting, though, that they claim to have seen the TARDIS "overshoot" like any old spaceship.

It isn't long, though, until we briefly meet Lesterson and Janley, who is established sketchily as A Bit Political, and then our heroes are sneaking into the capsule. There we find THAT door opening sound, lots of incidental music which is not so much by Tristram Carey but simply reused from The Daleks and, well, Daleks...



Episode Two

"One Dalek?"

"Yes. All that is needed to wipe out this entire colony."

This episode foregrounds the Vulcan politics and the many mysteries (Who shot the real examiner? What's going on with the Examiner? Who really cut the communication cables to Earth as Quinn is an obvious red herring?) as we flesh out this colony where we hear of political discontent and, sinisterly "secret newspapers" suggesting this isn't exactly a free society. Everyone is brittle, suspicious and guarded around everyone else, whether the open mutual loathing of Quinn and Brazen or the political incompatibility of Lesterson's two assistants- Janley coming across as a proper Momentum cultist while Resno is your typical working class Tory. It feels as though a storm is about to start, ad establishing that mood is a brilliant piece of writing- and much clearer  with moving pictures.

We also, this time no longer in the foreground, examine this new Doctor and how he operates- acting the eccentric to seem harmless but always thinking, examining, trying to understand. And yes, when the Dalek recognises him at the end we can finally accept that this is the Doctor.

The cliffhanger is so very, very good anyway, with the Doctor's protestations of how dangerous the Daleks are constantly undercut by "I-AM-YOUR-SER-VANT". But the constant shots from the Dalek's POV make this so much more unnerving. So far this is televsion of the very first rank.

Fargo (1996)

“You betcha, yah.”

I admit, somewhat sheepishly, that this is only the second film by the Coen brothers that I've seen. Given the evidence, firstly of O Brother, Where Art Thou and now of this splendid little film, I’m forced to say they are real giants of the Hollywood scene over the course of the last twenty plus years.

This is wonderful from the very first shot, as a brilliant white snowscapes is punctured and illuminated by car headlights. In spite of the North Dakota title (and there’s a state we European tourists are unlikely to visit) the film is very, very Minnesota. I love the accent, with the “yah” and the ineffable Teutonic hints of the otherwise all-American vowels of these characters with mostly very Germanic surnames, with more than a sprinkling of Scandinavia. Presumably those Viking social democratic genes are what led the good burghers of the state not to vote for that moron Reagan in ‘84, like everybody else foolishly did.

William H. Macy is perfectly cast as Jerry, nebbishy car salesman and ultimate cause of all the mischief as his desperation over his immense debts leads him to concoct a kidnapping and ransom plot for his own wife. Also superb is Steve Buscemi,  playing his usual sort of character. But Frances McDormand is a revelation as heavily pregnant cop Marge, interrupting brilliant bouts of seduction with less brilliant bouts of morning sickness. After this film I fully understand why they cast McDormand as the voice of God in Good Omens.

The characters all feel real, it’s beautifully shot, and as a narrative the whole thing is simple awesome. I feel a slow Coen Brothers binge may be on the cards.

Union Jack: Faith

"Before we start, I really need to do a poo."

Another Thursday, another episode, and we start with another splendid episode, which may begin with a slight variation of last week's "please don't sue us, Marvel" disclaimer but quickly segues into an impressively shot dream sequence for hungover Ken, at once erotic, dreamy and trippy. We then continue with another 27 minutes of likeable characters (Sam O'Hara Childs walks the line between sitcom humour and heroism superbly), good writing and witty lines. Who cares if this is low budget with limited locations, a small cast and no extras; this is solidly excellent viewing.

The plot advances a bit; the Baroness seduces Ken and vamps him at the end, erotically as vampires have ever since Bram Stoker sexualised them in the first place, with another trippy dream for good measure. And dialogue strongly hints that his mysterious blood condition is a family thing, the Farnsworths not being your normal family in many ways with their history of vampirism and penchant for massive pots of tea.

As per last time, though, the episode is nicely structured and full of wit. I loved the constant digs at Captain Britain, and the fact that Romany and Joe have the same debates over the correct pronunciation of "scone" as Mrs Llamastrangler and myself do. More top stuff. More please.

The Sopranos: College

"Of all the finook priests in all the world, why did I have to get the one who's straight?"

This is an episode based around the future, I suppose, as Tony drives Meadow around several posh universities in Maine. But it’s also an episode full of ghosts and secrets from the past. Tony takes time out from chauffeuring and bonding with his daughter to track down and eventually strangle to death an informer he randomly spots at a petrol station. Meanwhile, he and Meadow bond over mutual honesty as he (eventually) gives an honest answer to the blunt question “Are you in the Mafia?”while she confesses to having taken speed- only for him to let her down by not saying what he’s been up to with the informer.

Less sanguine about the ethics of living in a big house on Mafia money is Carmela, as she breaks down after several glasses of wine and confesses to Father Phil- although this religious catharsis seems unlikely to lead to anything. The relationship between her and Phil is fascinating. He’s a very worldly priest, up on his popular culture and always visiting Carmela to (as he cheerfully admits) eat her food and drink her wine. And (there’s a moment when he seems about to kiss her) he obviously fancies the pants off her. But, in a nice touch of dialogue the morning after, it’s clear that she’s very much aware of all this but is happy to have him as a friend, perhaps a much-needed one. And, I think, behind the religious flummery, there’s a very real bond.

Phil staying over is a non-issue; as we see, Tony just assumes he’s gay. Less easy to brush off is Carmela discovering Dr Melfi’s gender...

Meadow gets drunk too, incidentally, in the company of a few extras one of whom is Eve from the final scene of Angel, which is an actor-spotting win from me. But this episode doesn’t need a tot spotting wins to be awesome as ever, and a nice change of pace.

The Finishing Touch (1928)

This is another Laurel and Hardy short from their early period, before the later sound films for which they would later become well known. It's coming up to four years since my rave review of a similar short, Leave 'Em Laughing; this is every bit as good. Then again, so were all the many (sound) shorts I happened to see on the telly back in the '80s when schedulers weren't afraid of black and white.

This is sheer cartoon humour, done extremely well, by two superlative comedy actors who excel, particularly, in facial comedy acting. A superb script helps, with a conceit that is straightforwardly funny, but what really makes this short film excel is the comedy double act between Laurel and Hardy and their little mannerisms. There's a hint of melancholy in that these two, a kind of pre-Depression Lenny and George, will forever be poor, struggling and aimless but such thing are, rightly, not dwelt upon in favour of hilariously well-executed slapstick comedy.  And there's plenty of opportunity for that when these two try to build a house.

The hats, and Hardy's moustache, may be dated here, but the comedy hasn't. It's bizarre to think the two of them were a good few years younger than I am now while making this. Absolutely first class comedy, although I certainly ought to try a longer work of theirs one of these days.

Ewoks: The Battle for Endor (1985)

"Wicket Cindel's family now..."

I had to get this TV movie watched, seeing as I can't watch Caravan of Courage and not this. Fortunately, while it's a mid-budget TV movie for kids and should be judged as such, it's actually a fairly decent watch.

The beginning is well harrowing, though, as the baddies torch the village and kill loads of people including poor Cindel's entire family. Fortunately, the sheer trauma of such an event for poor Cindel is very much downplayed in favour of some child-friendly mourning of her parents.

And it’s straight into another very fairytale adventure, from another story by George Lucas, Cindel and Wicket escapee, courtesy of being ickle, and have an exciting little escapade with a rather cool little stop motion dragon. Then they meet a cheeky alien monkey muppet. And then they meet new father figure Noa, who inevitably turns out to be gruff but kind.

So off they go on a rescue mission to a castle with an acid moat. And much excitement ensues. With Sian Phillips as a witch type character- this is definitely fantasy, but so is all Star Wars. But the days of playing Livia In I Clavdivs must seem so long ago..

No, this isn’t as good as Caravan of Courage. But it’s still good stuff. Give it a go while it’s on Amazon Prime.