Mad Men: Ladies' Room

 "What do women want...?

The second episode, while is does a lot of other stuff, rather cleverly examines the lot of women in the America of 1960 through the respective lenses of Peggy, continuing to settle in at the firm, and Betty Draper, whom we properly meet for the first time. Contrasting against them is Don's other woman, Bohemian and carefree to the point of throwing a television out of her window, but lacking any real connection to society, long term security or- so far, at least- even a name.

Peggy continues to run the gauntlet of constant male attention in a world in which casual sexual harassment and even groping is utterly normalised- the worldly-wise Joan takes it utterly for granted- and the only acceptable excuse to a man's advances is to claim to "belong" to someone. 

Meanwhile, Betty- whose name evokes Betty Friedan of The Feminine Mystique fame- is drowning in a life of suburban domesticity where the arrival across the road of- shock horror- a divorced woman is the subject for hushed gossip. It hardly seems surprising that she should have a nervous breakdown. Nor is Don's very contemporary resistance to her seeing a psychiatrist, given the stigma of mental illness- although, like a stopped clock being right twice a day, he sort of has a point in that this shrink seems to be a Freudian, and therefore a quack. And even when he relents, we learn that the shrink is reporting to him. Don, who is cheating on his docile wife, is subtly controlling her.

Oh, and there are a lot of women crying in the ladies...

There's also Don's evasiveness about his past, which is moving slowly towards the foreground. This is brilliant television, and it' very telling how well we know the characters after two episodes.

Daredevil: Dogs to a Gunfight

 "Maybe we created him...?"

Again, there's so much going on in this gripping and excellent episode. We still see little of the Punisher, lreaving the rumours from terrified Grotto (and an equally terrified Karen, who hints at hiding secret guilt) to shape how we feel about this terrifying ogre figure.His only speaking scene- Jon Bernthal's first- has his buying illicit stuff from a black market shop... and giving the proprietor a beating when he turns out to be selling underage porn.

Yet the morals of this are fully explored. We may feel a brief instinctive good feeling about this paedo, who profits from and indirectly creates such unspeakable suffering, getting a beating. But is this justice? As Aeschylus taught us, long ago, we need justice and not vendettas. With vendettas- as the police sergeant notes- not only the guilty ultimately suffer. And then there' the cycle of revenge. Justice may be imperfect, corrupt, unfair... but it's better than vigilantis,

And yet, this being the case, what of Daredevil...? Here we face the hard questions: the differences between DD and the Punisher are only ones of degree. Daredevil doesn't kill, but he uses violent force unsanctioned by an accountable state. And then there's the question, horrifying to Karen, of the Punisher being a copycat killer.

We see another argument between Matt- covering for him yet again after his shooting- and Foggy re Matt's extra-curricular activities. We are reminded of the firm's dire financial situation. And we see the easy bond between Foggy and Karen and the equally close but more complicated one between Karen and Matt which again hints at possible romantic feelings. Yet we also see Karen beginning to suspect that Matt- and indirectly Foggy- is not telling her something.

We meet the District Attorney, Reyes, a hard bitch who tries to push Foggy around until he starts being awesome. I've never heard of Reyes, but her deputy Blake Tower is a familiar figure from the comics, so I rather suspect she's not long for this world. We shall see.

We end with the tension of Grotto being double crossed and used as bait for the Punisher, as the Punisher and DD fight...

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)

 "What if you have to pee when you're on fire?"

Yes, I know: this film is notoriously not very good. And on the strength of tonight's viewing I'm not going to quibble with the consensus. Yet I've seen worse films- annoying directoral style aside, this is a pedestrian but mildly entertaining watch, if disappointing. But it could have been more.

I don't mean to suggest, of course, that this film is big or clever, or should aspire to be anything more than a good B movie. But there's nothing wrong with a good B movie. And I think we have here a decent if corny action plot, with  decent if corny characters, by decent if corny actors, with Nicolas Cage fitting the description exactly, Idris Elba stealing the show as a kind of religious French James Bond, and Ciaran Hinds chewing the scenery in the best possible way. There's lots of Da Vinci Code-style religious conspiracy hijinks, there's Blackout, there's Danny Ketch from the comic as the boy the Devil/Mephisto is after- interesting. Allthis is promising. The script could perhaps do with a polish, but I think the same script directed better would have garnered a much more favourable reaction.

Because the direction is bloody awful- music video lighting and music video camerawork throughout. Cool camera tricks have their place, but there's too much of it here and, fatally, although the camera trick culd have been gloriously silly, they give the impression of trying to be cool. The same goes with the dizzying camera movements throughoit. There's lots of action but very little mood or atmosphere. And the direction is utterly humourous, which works very much against the grain of a silly B movie script.

It's a shame. This is a bad film, but could easily have been a rather fun one.

Mad Men: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

 "Now, try not to be overwhelmed by all this technology. It looks complicated, but the men who designed it made it simple enough for a woman to use."

I've seen the first season of Mad Men before, but in 2008, before this blog was conceived. Revisiting this first episode has been fascinating, but the overall experience has been the same. This is bloody good.

In terms of plot, things are fairly simple- it's 1960, and Don Draper is a Madison Avenue ad executive known for his inspiration. On the surface he is charming and brilliant but, like many charismatic introverts, he has hidden depths, as hinted at most strongly in his conversation with Rachel Mencken, where he is phiposophical and she is perceptive, recognising another person living a life perhaps different from what one's origins may indicate. Essentially, he comes up with an advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes, while Peggy has her first day- and sleeps with creepy Pete after his stag night. Then we see that Done- who is having an affair with a Bohemian girl with whom he connects- is married to a trophy wife with two kids.

Yet it's not about the plot, it's about the subtle (and blatant!) evocation of a mid-twentieth century, before the '60s started swinging, filled with all sorts of gender and racial norms, and attitudes that jump out at us, whether about smoking, women working or Jewish clients using Jewish firms. Don, as an advertising exec, has essentially a bullshit job, but with prestige. He's allowed to sleep in work time. Meanwhile, Peggy's doctor humiliates her when mansplaining about the pill.

The writing, acting and direction are all masterful. Let's see how the rest of the season goes.

Daredevil: Bang

 "If I take a night off, people get hurt."

I know, it's been a while. I've always intended to carry on with the now long ended Netflix Marvel series, but there's so much good telly to watch and so it's somehow been several years. But now, although unspoiled, I'm led to understand that the Netflix stuff is about to possibly become a little more relevant to future stuff, so here goes. I'll endeavour to make a project of doing all of them, alternated with other stuff, until they're done, with the occasional short break if I happen to do any other Marvel or DC-themed telly, so the blog isn't too comics-heavy.

Essentially, this is s splendid episode. The direction and visuals are superb, with an excellent pre-titles action sequence and particularly excellent and effective lighting throughout. The chemistry between Matt, Karen and Foggy is wonderful, even as it's being gently established that the law firm is in deep financial trouble through being essentially run as a charity by people who are extremely nice, but perhaps not sustainably so. And, of course, our three leads remind us how wonderful they are.

And then there's the arc plot- of what at first seems like a paramilitary organisation massacring all those gangs who are trying to take over from the vacuum left over by the fall of Wilson Fisk. The long bit of clever misdirection with the gathering of the Irish mob, the speech, and the eventual massacre, feels like The Godfather or The Sopranos, with a very pleasing whiff of Scorsese.

And the conclusion, as DD realises these paramilitaries are in fact one man, the man enters the hospital in pursuit of brave Karen and her charge, and DD is shot in the face... ooh, I've missed Daredevil. More please.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

 "I tell ya, it's a whole different sex!"

This is only, I believe, the second film featuring the grest Marilyn Monroe I've ever blogged, or even seen. It's also, I'm certain, my first film featuring Jack Lemmon. It may a;so be my first film featuring Tony Curtis. All three performers are, of course, sublime, although Marilyn mesmerises in her own unique fashion. Her charisma is in a class of its own. Also, she is somewhat sexy. Just saying, as one of her (sometimes) bespectacled and geeky gemtlemen.

This, thankfully, is not my first Billy Wilder film and, althogh face it is and farce is harsly my favourite type of comedy, farce doesn't get much better than this. The cross-dressing is positively Shakespearean, but it's extraordinary to think that it contributed to a hit film in 1959, when being a gay man was illegal both here and in America and trans rights were unheard of, as they were until so very recently- and we in 2021 are so very, very primitive in that respect, including myself.

This farce is perfectly crafted. The last line is perfect. The script, performances, timing, skewering of the moronic stupidity of Prohibition- all are perfect. This is truly the finest cinematic farce I have ever seen. But what do I know? Nobody's perfect.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations- Comes with Everything You See Here

 "We have the power!"

And so it ends, and brilliantly, the perfect deconstruction of Masters of the Universe yet with plenty of heart, plenty of nicely existentialist themes and plenty of character. Kevin Smith has done good.

We get Ram Man. We get Teela rejecting the need to stay tethered to the castle as Sorceress, preferring to share the power with all Eternia. And even He-Man, whose return is a massive and greatle earned event followed by much joyful kicking of arse, notes to Skeletor that "It's not about us" because too much hoarding of agency by "heroes" is not a good thing. It's a pity it doesn't extend to getting rid of Randor because kings are not a good thing either but, you know.

We get Orko back, for a little while, this time being awesome. We get Lyn being a well-rounded and empathetic baddie again, but best of all we get Teela basically saving the universe by putting the case for existentialism instead of nihilism. God is dead, perhaps, but one can see a universe without purpose as bleakness or as freedom. Let's choose freedom, and live the life we want.

And then we get the sequel-hunting end, with thre Motherboard taking Skeletor, and the symbol of Hordak. This is amazing. I hope we get more.

Inspector Morse: The Settling of the Sun

 "The most suspicious thing of all is an excellent alibi."

This is, as is almost too obvious to point out, the first episode not to be either based on a novel by Colin Dexter or later to be adapted into one- although Dexter, I see, co-wrote the script. And yet, despite the obvious observation that for once the story was fully new to me, it didn't feel obvious. 

Mostly.

Because this episode was superb, but in a way I haven't really seen before in Inspector Morse. It was all about the dialogue- sparse, restrained, quietly and Englishly full of deep pain and anguish, almost Pinterian in its bleak economy of words. This style of dialogue allows clues to double wonderfully as character moments, such as the German student who looks uncannily like Bernard from Yes Minister remarking about how the war infected his childhood, and Jane telling poor Morse- spurned again- how she never fancied them.

The plot is clever, with its double drugs red herring, its Japanese doppelganger plot that is a sly comment on the racism of "they all look the same", its roots in Japanese atrocities in Singapore- to crucify a priest, and make the object of his faith be forever tied to unimaginable trauma is truly evil- which touch upon the theme of endless cycles of revenge, as old as Aeschylus. This is both a superb detective story and a profoundly meaningful drama.

And I must praise Thaw here, whose performance reaches new heights and who seems to relish the Pinterian dialogue. I'm hopeful that the series may still be worth watching once we (mostly) move away from the novels.

Master of the Universe: Revelations- Hope, for a Destination

 I witnessed the death of God at the beginning of time!"

This is basically, in its concluding episodes, a study in Evil Lyn as nihilist, seeing no purpose and thus no point in the existence of the universe, and so wanting to destroy it. Alas, Eternia has no Jean-Paul Sartre to put her right with existentialism. Yes, perhaps God is dead (as alluded to in Lyn's dream) and the universe has no plan for us, but does that not set us free to live for ourselves, decide our own purpose and meaning, and do good because it's the right thing and not from a selfish desire for heavenly reward? Perhaps Lyn did the right thing in destroying heaven, but the actual universe matters precisely because it has and needs no meaning.

And yet Lyn remains a sympathetic character. Her nuhilism comes, as is nailed home in her hard-hitting monologue to Skeletor, from a lifetime of psychological and physucal abuse, gaslighting, and coercive control. She speaks with the justified rage of an abused woman who has found freedom from her abusers control- including the parts of the control based inside her own mind. I suspect the conclusion will see some sort of healing catharsis for her. I hope so.

Meanwhile we also see Teela come to terms with her power, which she wields better than she thinks, and a conversation with her late mother about how being the Sorceress means abandoning all human attachments- including to one's child, which Teela's mum seems to get away with here a little too likely. I suspect Teela will make a better choice, in the end, than her mother.

But it's all looking very epic, excited as we are by the brief appearance of Blade from the movie and the Adam/Skeletor double act. This is truly excellent telly.

Bernard and the Genie ( TV Film)

 "If you need anything, you just call and I'll be up there faster than a poker up a pervert."

For those of us who are of a certain age- and yes, it causes me a certain amount of distress to type those words- this excellent TV special is a hilarious memory of that telly Christmas of 1991 after Only Fools and Horses had finished. (Wasn't that the year in Miami?) Yet, in hindsight, this is a fascinating halfway house: a TV film by a recently post-Blackadder Richard Curtis, in a period when Blackadder was a justly worshipped recent memory, that would pave the way for his film career, which would prove to be at once increasingly successful and increasingly successful.

There's some sentiment here too. The bromance between Bernard and Josephus is deeper and more full of feeling than anything which the hilariously cynical Blackadder would have tolerated. Yet the opening scenes, where Bernard Bottle's high-flying life falls apart, are played purely for Blackadder-type laughs. As for Rowan Atkinson's delicious baddie... well, hiss ye, hiss ye. Oh, and nice beard,

Bernard is a sympatheic character- nice, naive, more than a little uncool, and portrayed with real comic charisma by an appallingly young Alan Cumming. And Lenny Henry really steals the show as Josephus, a characyer that could easily have been a stereotype but turns out to be a witty commentator on modern society- modern society being so very, very 1991, with even bloody Leonardo turning up, and I mean the chelonian kind.

But while this is, perhaps, plot-widse, a precursor to the sort of stuff Richard Curtis would go on to do. it's every bit as funny as Blackadder and absolutely the same sort of humour. This is a very, very good thing.

Anyway, Merry Christmas. Unless you're the sort of person who whinges that "we're not allowed to say Merry Christmas these days because of wokery and that", in which case, Happy Holidays.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations- The Gutter Rat

 "Nobody around here fears you, Evil Lyn. We all pity you."

This series gets better and better, really making the most of the opportunity to use this setting without a reset button. So we have Adam's parents both overjoyed to see him alive- but they've grown apart in his absence, and Adam feels guit over that, as he does with how his secret hurt Teela. The other thread of the episode is, of course, the edgy subject of Skeletor's domestic abuse of Evil Lyn, and her depressingly typical downplaying of it, until the worm turns after some hard-hitting words from Duncan.

There's some joy in that Andra finds belonging in Eternos, yet we also hear of Lyn's tragic upbringing, and how appalled she is at the cold, impersonal emptiness of the universe and Skeletor's lack of ambition. In the end it's almost easy how she usurps the power of Skeletor, who has always been her inferior. And she does have ambitions... first with a very literal deconscruction of the concept of heaven. Wow.

Then, just when it looks as though there can be no suprrises left to spring, bloody Skeletor turns up wanting to help our friends...

Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar

I read this novel once before, long ago, and recall being as impressed with it as much back then as I am now. To state the obvious, it is in the form of a long valedictory letter  from a dying Hadrian to a young Marcus Aurelius, his successor’s successor. As an extended letter, though, it is hardly an epistolary novel and, while a fictionalised autobiography that nevertheless recounts a version of real events, it is constructed more as a philosophical essay than as the recounting of a story. It has no dialogue between characters, is very much from a single viewpoint, and can only very vaguely be said to have a plot.

Yet the novel, if that is what it is, bursts with classical learning as it describes the last years of the classical era, an era which, like all eras, feels itself to be in decline and culturally ossified while also fearing the loss of its immense heritage. Marguerite Yourcenar has achieved wonders in capturing the unique and plausible voice of Hadrian, a patrician of a certain time and place more alien to us than we think, with its dogma-free yet empty religious practices and its casual acceptance of suicide. She is to be commended in particular for capturing, in 1951, the casual normality of sexual attraction between men and adolescent boys that was so common in the classical era, at least amongst the aristocracy, by men who had no concept either of sexual orientation or of sin. This, at least, feels civilised, although the respective ages of a Hadrian and an Antinous are decidedly icky.

As much as the philosophy of civilisation and its transience, though, this is a treatise on how to endure old age with grace from an avowed non-stoic, and a thing of wonder in that respect. Without dialogue, without plot twists, this is an extraordinarily different yet deeply satisfying novel.

Breaking Bad: El Caballo sin Nombre

 "I got dipping sticks..."

I may not speak any Spanish but, given the song that Walt rather amusingly sings in the car and in the shower, I can tell it refers to un cheval sans nom. 

Anyway, this is an extraordinary bit of telly which sees a fascinating contrast throughout between Walt and Heusenberg for control. Walt keeps insisting, despite Saul's protests, that his cooking days are over- for now. But his outburst at the cop is pure Heisenberg... leading, of course, to his needing to be humiliatingly rescued by Hank, who also takes his side about Skyler's refusal to allow contact with his children. The conflict between the feuding spouses is fascinating, especially after Saul gets fixer Mike to get to work on the "wife problem". And, of course, poor Flynn/Walt Jr is stuck in the middle and understandably confused.

Oh, and the pizza on the roof. That's obviously the highlight of the episode.

Saul also shows his stuff with Jesse, of course. There's a nicely written awkward conversation between Jesse and his dad, full of awkward silences and unspoken bitterness... and then Saul, in a tour de force, gets Jesse's parents to sell the house at a knockdown price. The scene where they realise who they sold it to is priceless. Jesse even got to stop his annoying little brother goint to space camp. It's quite delicious.

But we also have those two blokes from last episode, tracking down Walt and inexorably walking towards him, seemingly about to axe him to death in the shower, Psycho-style. Until Gus finds out, and stops them. although not without Walt noticing something awry. I love the use of the eye.

This is brilliant. Already this season it feels as though things have gone up a gear. There's a real confidence to Breaking Bad right now.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations- Reason and Blood

 "Isn't this usually the bit where you start cackling?"

And so we have another fascinating episode which expands the mythos while also developing characters. Adam has called forth the power without the sword and, well, turned into the Hulk. But the original, pre-cartoon conception of He-Man was as a barbarian, appropriately with the exact same axe that barbarian Adam uses.

There's a poerfully emotive climax as the Hulk is turned back to Bruce Ban... er, Prince Adam by the loving words of a father who admits what a fool he's been to be so disappointed over all these years. And yet there's something else, too. It's impressed on us, again and again, that Adam used the power only to help others, and relinquised it when finished, while Skeletor hoards the power greedily. And both Skeletor and Evil Lyn are interested in the wheres and wherefores of relinquishing the power as we already see rifts growing between Skeletor and his new Sorceress.

Teela, too, has growing magical powers, inherited from her mother, while her father Duncan continues to be the gruff hero even in such adversity as this. For a twenty-odd minute episode there's a lot going on. I continue to be impressed.

Hammer House of Horror: The Mark of Satan

 "Gentlemen- the brain!"

And so we come to the final episode of Hammer House of Horror- and it may very well be one of the finest, a fascinating (and timely, in 2021 with all these anti-vaxxer nutters), study of an individual who falls way down into the pit of conspiracy theories and magical thinking by way of his obsession with the number nine.

And yet this works so very well as serious drama. It's certainly superbly directed, with the unsettling visual grammar of a horror film, and the cast is equally superb- Peter McEnery is reminiscent of a young John Hurt here, Emrys James steals his scenes as an eccentric surgeon superbly, and Georgina Hale shows all the naturalistic subtlety that made Ken Russell cast her so very often. 

Yet it's the writing that makes this such a triumph. From the plot, to the subject matter- arguably there's nothing supernatural here; the only evil is the fatal temptation of conspiratorial thinking. Even the priest here sees fit to quote from Iron Maiden's favourite bit of the Book of Revelation, a part of the Bible that a large proportion even of Christians seem to think is, well, on drugs. There's a mood of paranoia and claustrophobia throughout, evokes by a perfect marriage of character, direction and dialogue. There's humour, too: Edwyn's mum's last words when stabbed are "Oh dear", while Stella- a surprisingly nuanced and realistic character- responds to his expounding of conspiracy theory nonsense with "Do you take sugar?". 

The series really is ending on a high.

Masters of the Universe: Revelations- Cleaved in Twain

 "I'd sure like to fist him!"

Yeah, there was only going to be one possibility for this episode's quote.

This is, of course, an outstanding episode, and not only because Kevin Smith totally leaned in to our childish jokes about Fisto there. It seemed almost impossible to top the cliffhanger at the end of last episode before this agonising break, but the episode pretty much managed it.

The extended scenes of the now-godlike Skeletor gloating over his enemies are eletrifying, and a triumph for Mark Hamill. The Sorceress- after a moving flashback showing her having to leave her baby daughter with Duncan- gets a heroic death. But all seems bleak as our heroes escape, with Skeletor now seeming both all-powerful and genuinely terrifying, proceeding to turn the entire population of King Randor's city into an Army of the Dead.

Cruelly, this includes (ahem) Fisto and Clamp-Champ, who get heroic deaths... only for their souls to be unjustly damned by Skeletor. Ouch. That's bleak.

And yet, after an episode of increasing bleakness, we end on a note of hope, and a brilliant conceptual leap- Adam calls upon the Power of Grayskull without the sword. And, er, seems to turn into some kind of Incredible Hulk. Which is sort of appropriate, because in 1982 or so, when I was five, the series of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ended on Children's ITV ad was replaced with the then-new cartoon of The Incredible Hulk.

I'm already addicted. This is awesome.

Breaking Bad: No Mas

 "I'm the bad guy..."

This is, as I knew it would be, a magnificent season opener. It points forward, of course, as season openers do. The opening, yellow-tinted, scene introduces us to a pair of baddies and some surreal imagery of the sort we've come to expect.

Also Skyler is definitely divorcing Walt... and, in an extraordinary scene, she gets him to confess the truth and blackmails him into staying away from his two children forever. Ouch. Not sure if prison is actually worse than that, but this certainly looks as though the family stuff is going to recede into the background. And this, of course, is going to mean more Heisenberg and less Walt. Of which more later.

There are some neat scenes here. Hank unknowingly handling the drug money. The sheer awfulness of Jesse's rehab. But most of the emphasis here is on the duality between Walt and Heisenberg. So Walt sets fire to the drug money, and Heisenberg stops him. There's a big event at school to talk through the enormity of the plane crash, and what Walt says is pure, sociopathic Heisenberg, awkward and tone deaf as well as self-serving in its denial of the incomprehensible enormity of it all. Then he does the same thing later with Jesse, trying to minimise his guilt.

Yet it's Walt, not Heisenberg, who refuses Gus' offer for a big job. We know this won't last. But this looks like a season in which Heisenberg takes over more and more. Extraordinary telly, as ever.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

 "I'm a reasonable guy. But I've just experienced some very unreasonable things."

I've only seen two of John Carpenter's films before- Halloween and Christine. Both, to some extent, are genre films. This is a massively mainstream Hollywood blockbuster. And it's awesome. I don't care if it flopped. You can't trust the judgement of the general public. You, dear reader, have impeccable taste. But people in general are rubbish and like rubbish things. I'm sure you agree.

Anyway, this is bloody good. It seems to give quite a positive depiction of Chinese culture to my ignorant eyes, but this was 1986. There's plenty of scope for cultural insensitivity to have happened which will have sailed right over the head of this Leicestershire lad. Yet it seems to me that, whatever flaws I cannot see, the film shows a lot of affection to Hong kong kung fu movies, and with bloody good direction to boot.

Kurt Russell is an idiosyncratic, mildly humorous, action hero- the working class man as decent bloke rather than as the bigoted wanker that modern expectations may demand. It's quite refreshing to see a leading man from a time where politics wasn't composed of this culture war nonsense and Donald Trump, if rather more compos mentis in 1986 than he was in his rather confused presidency, was rightly dismissed by the Jack Burtons of this world as a rich wanker.

This is a wonderful, very '80s film, with an equally '80s soundtrack and splendid performances from all involved, not only the wonderful Kim Cattrall but a load of Chinese-American actors who seem to have few other credits. It's as good an '80s blockbuster as any of its many competitors.

The Stars, My Destination by Alfred Bester

 

I’d never read any Alfred Bester until now, not that he was a prolific writer. I’d vaguely pigeonholed him as another ‘50s writer of hard science fiction. And he really isn’t.

This is, to put it mildly, not the novel I was expecting. It isn’t really space opera, although it has spaceships in it. Telepathy and teleportation- “jaunting”- are important concepts here, but not necessarily the main point. The future society prefigures cyberpunk with extraordinary prescience: we have a future dominated by corporate clans, urban dystopia and casual cruelty. There are lots of wonderful details, and cool concepts thrown away almost casually.

Yet it’s all about the weird but compelling prose, and the unique central character, a simplistic thug whose crude desire for revenge ironically leads him to wisdom and to freedom- and not only for himself.

This is a difficult novel at times, but full of great ideas and wild experimentalism. I’ll remember it for a long time.

Squid Game: One Lucky Day

 "I am NOT a horse!"

And so it ends, unexpectedly in several ways. Gi-hun wins, as we knew he would... and then has to go back to real life, and its tragedies. Money will not bring his dead mother back. But, given that he takes a year to try his daughter, and abandons her at the end to compete suicidally again, it's suddenly clear that Gi-hun, this apparently decent man, is just a crap dad and always was. Sod him.

The episode is full of surprises, not least that the final game- the eponymous squid game itself, of course- takes up relatively little of the episode, and is pretty much just a dirty scrap between Ji-hun and Sang-wu, with Sang-wu ultimately killing himself in defeat to ensure that, if Gi-hun has to win, he should at least win the prize.

Before long, though, Gi-hun is back in the real world, and his mother is dead: all that money is mreaningless. And then we get the big revelation- the old man we all loved so much is neither as nice nor as dead as we'd previously supposed. But I'm rather afraid I lose all sympathy for Gi-hun before this point. I know he's depressed, but he's not even tried to see his daughter for a year. Plus his hairdo is stupid.

This is an interesting choice, to make him suddenly unlikeable,and an interesting one. I'm not sure I like it, but it's an admirable and brave move to do something so abrasive and challenge not only our expectation od the happy ending but our liking for Gi-hun, who perhaps never was the good man we thought..

Squid Game: Front Man

 "YOU!"

A strangely short episode in the run-up before the final game gives us lots of tension from two angles- that of Jun-ho's attempt to avoid capture by Front Man and of the last night for the three finalists before the final game. It is, of course, utterly gripping.

Jun-ho, of course, is in a no-win situation, and ends up in an unequal Mexican stand-off worthy of Tarantino, at the edge of a cliff-and almost (almost!) certainly ends up dead. It's a fitting ending to his sub-plot, but what gives it meaning is the huuuuuge revelation that Front Man is the very brother he came to found.

Then we have the clever character stuff between a dying Sae-byeok, Sang-woo and Gi-hun. It's all cleverly arranged, after a mockingly posh dinner like one of those formals at uni, that all three of them should spend the night armed with a knife. There's a clear indication that one of them will die, and it has to be the dying Sae-byeok, especially after her nice chat with Gi-hun. But the reason for her deayh is unexpected: Sang-woo is turning out to be unexpectedly villainous. You really hate him by this point.

This is top telly. The tension is electric for the finale.

I May Destroy You: Ego Death

 "The alliance is spicy, blud..."

This final episode, even in the context of the eleven episodes that precede it, is extraordinary. We are presented, in a bravely non-linear finale, with three alternate endings before the simple ending is revealed.

The first ending, while chaotic, consists of simple, violent revenge... and goes too far, because anger and hate are dangerous. Then we have a more nuanced revenge ending in arrest and justice, yet the rapist here (David) turns out to have been an abused child, still traumatised. And this is the problem with crime, punishment and revenge: there are cycles of abuse. People are not born evil; they become so through suffering. An eye for an eye makes us all blind, prison brutalises, and judicial punishment just outsources violence to the state. It's progress from vendettas, as per the Oresteia, but society needs to move beyond such things. The answer lies in rehabilitation and understanding, not in "punishment".

The third narrative has Arabella consensually seduce and shag David, which is deliberately awkward and provocative in context. On the surface, Bella is taking control, but there are all sorts of problems here, not least that men like David would never be capable of such bedroom etiquette. 

The ending, finally, shows true wisdom, as Bella decides not to go to Ego Death. After all, the rapist doesn't matter. He is nothing. Far more important to live her life, publish her novel, be awesome. And, yes, to recognise that flsatmate Ben is lovely and give him a hug.

This is beautiful, understated, complex drama.

Hammer House of Horror: The Two Faces of Evil

 "You're perfectly safe, my dear..."

This episode, while perhaps a little slow, is splendidly and uncannily directed and uses a simple central idea- a family holiday goes wrong when a hitchhiker attacks Martin, but turns out to be his doppelganger- to maximum effect, wringing  huge amounts of tension out of whether the dead man or the survivor is Janet's husband.

It helps that so many of the cast, including the ward sister, are pleasingly sinister, as is the way everything is shot. The slow pace allows the episode to wallow in the uncanny mood and Janet's unease. The hospital itself is creepy, and from the moment Janet wakes everything feels off-kilter.

Anna Calder-Marshall is superb in the central role, but Gary Raymond is equally superb in a necessarily ambiguous part where you are never quite sure whether he's evil or not. Then there's Pauline Delaney, who is far too good here for me never to have heard of.

A quietly excellent episode.

I May Destroy You: Would You Like to Know the Sex?

 "And now I have the outward appearance of a man, but there within my pants lies a vagina."

This is a bloody clever penultimate episode. Obviously it relates to the ending where Bella has flashbacks of the assault, and also to Terri (yay for her job!) and her new "boyfriend", whose gender is not as it may appear. It also, of course, refers to the author who has inspiured Bella to finish her novel, yet she turns out to be... Zain.

Yet there's so much going on here, from Bella losing the contract with her publisher and suddenly being in debt to them to Kwame's nice relationship going slow with his nice boyfriend, contrasting with the unpleasant result of this attempted apology to the woman he slept with. We also see that poor Ben feels lonely. And that the publisher whom Bella so admired, and once compared to Obama, turns out to be shallow and ruthless. Hopefully she'll show them all.

In confronting Zain, and letting her help her, Bella is dealing with one of her demons. The perpetrator is not being punished judicially but, as dialogue elsewhere says, that often doesn't happen. Will she now confront and control the original assault itself? This is deep, powerful, extraordinary stuff.

Doctor Who: Flux, Episode 6- The Vanquishers

 “What an awfully big adventure!"

Perhaps this isn't quite the perfect finale, but it's nonetheless a fine culmination to what s easily Chibnall's best series. It's a busy episode and, if the Sontarans' attempt to save and then rule the universe by backstabbing some suspicioiusly gullible Daleks and Cybermen doesn't quite ring true, there''s enough going on to gloss over it. Even if the Sontarans are simutaneously a bigger threat than they've ever been and, er, overly partial to chocolate. I rather wish that hadn't been done. This os a weakness that will probably be repeated again until we eventually reach the equivalent of Ace chucking gold at Cybermen in Silver Nemesis. Still, I liked it on the whole.

The threads are drawn together well. Vinder and Bel are reunited rather straightforwardly in the end. The Professor, a wonderful character, gets a cool and heroic death. All the characters get something meaningful to do, even if there are a lot of plot threads to tie up. The mystery of the Doctotr's past is dangldd in front of us again, with that nice little metaphor of the Escher-esque rickety house of memory. We learn that Karvanista, perhaps, was a companion, but little else. Indeed, the Doctor ends up with the pocket watch only to deliberately hide it from herself. She fears she would not approve of the person she once was.

The use of the Sontaran plan, and the Passenger, to destroy the flux is clever, although it's not entirely clear how much of the damage can be undone. Azure and Swarm's plan- to sacrifice the Doctor to Time on Atropos and stsrt an endless time loop of the end of the universe- is gloriously bonkers, and I like the hint that it echoes something the Doctor may once have done to them, which makes me think of the fate of the Family in Human Nature.

Oh, and I liked "contact" with the three splinters of the Doctor, deliberately and appropriately echoing The Three Doctors in a tale about anti-matter destroying the universe.

The Doctor and Yaz being reunited is touching, and will do nothing to discourage the shippers, nor will the Doctor's pledge to be more open from now on. And Dan, having just been puzzlingly dumped by the rather resourceful Diane, is now officially a member of the team having well and truly proved himself.

All the more interesting, though, are the hints from Time at the end. The Doctor has little time yet, and will not regenerate. The Master will be involved. It is suddenly starting to feel like the end. And it's all very good. It just doesn't quite feel as epic as it should.

Die Hard (1988)

 "You macho assholes!"

It's December. Merry Christmas. This is, of course, the consummate Christmas film, so there can be no better time for me to watch it again for the first time since, disturbingly enough, the twentieth century.

The conventional opinion is that a film lives and dies by its script, or at least for those not convinced by the French school of the director auteur. Now, I love France and its cinema (I voted Remain, to boot), but I am one of said school. Except... this is a so so script, perfectly fine but no more than that. And yet this a magnificent film, one that has been remembered. Why?

Admittedly, it's because of not only the superb direction, which makes the many extended action scenes entertaining rather than boring, as action sequences often can be, because of the movement and the tension which is ALWAYS present, but because of the superlative individual performance by the excellent Bruce Willis, the everyman who faces a group of cynical, materialistic, one may almost say Thatcherite terrorists, led by the almost equally charismatic Alan Rickman. His performance is truly magnetic.

The script really is middling. The direction is brillianty, but focussing on the two main principals, Bruce Willis makes this film, and solidifies his career as action hero leading man. Alan Rickman chews the scenery in the best possible way.

But let's agree on the main point. This is THE Christmas film, set on Christmas Eve, with lot of Chritmas tree. It's the epitome of Christmas, right?

Right.

The Reptile (1966)

 "They don't like strangers in these parts!"

This may not exactly be Hammer's finest hour. It may, indeed, be a deeply formulaic Hammer Horror with a pleasingly unironic approsch to tropes. After all, we have both a pub that empties at the mention of the evil residence in question and a conclusion based around a country house being set on fire. But it's quirky, it's fun, and frankly I could never dislike a film in which Private Fraser from Dad's Army is bitten to death by Servalan from Blake's 7.

Yes, the film does tend to get slow towards the end as it runs out of plot but needs to pad out time until the exposition and conclusion, with various characters dramatically exploring the house to eerie Stockhausen-like incidental music. Yes, the reptile make-up is rubbish. But it's cheesy, it's fun, and it's recognisably Hammer.

It's nice, too, that there aren't any stars here, and that instead we get a stream of character actors. I'm not sure that this film is in any way scary, but there's plenty of intrigue, tension and mystery to hold the interest. Jennifer Daniel and Ray Barrett make an intriguing enough leading couple, while both Noel Wilman and Jacqueline Pearce are suitably sinister. John Laurie, of course, steals every scene he's in.

This is nothing special, certainly. It's Hammer by numbers. But there are times when Hammer by numbers is exactly what we want.

Squid Game: VIPs

 “Ah, the real sixty-nine, huh?"

This is another firt class episode, fortunately not so heartbreaking. The penultimate game is most entertaining, and there's an intriguing twist in the arrival of the interestingly masked "VIPs", who proceed to bet on the game and, in one case, choose the wrong member of staff to sexually harass.

There's also the nature of the game- a bridge where half the steps are tempered glass, and half glass that will break. The tactics and strategy are fascinating, from the order they go in to the realisation that pushing is possible. There's the shock that Mi-Nyeo wasn't killed- and the fact that she dies (aww, I liked here!) but rather pleasingly takes Deok-Su with her. Good. This is all perfectly paced, dramatic entertainment, yet with heard. The suicide of the cruelly widowed number 69 is devastating.

So the survivors are Sae-byeok, Sang-woo and Gi-hun. Three left... and the undercover cop has escaped. Two episodes to go...

Hammer House of Horror: Visitor from the Grave

 "Be a good girl, and do exactly what I tell you!"

Trigger warning: violent sexual assault is very prominent here.

This is, on a storytelling level, a good episode. The twist at the end is superb, the performances are good and it pretty much acieves what it sets out to do. The direction from Peter Sasdy is particularly magnificent.

And yet there's something uncomfortable about the basic concept: a man breaks into a woman's home, tries to rape her, is shot dead and appears as a ghost to attract "revenge". This is the use of violent stranger rape as entertainment without any real social subtext, something that wouldn't be done these days.

On the other hand, Harry is creepy, and that's done deliberately. It's not overdone, but I think we're meant to see his relationship with the much wealthier but mentally ill and vulnerable Penny as one of coercive control. There's a subtlety to the characterisation here which is impressive. Kathryn Leigh Scott and Simon MacCorkindale are both superb in portraying this dynamic.

This is a disturbing episode, mainly to do with the treatment of rape, but I can't deny it's impressively written and made.

I May Destroy You: The Cause the Cure

 "You lot getting your Brady Bunch on?"

Like every other episode of I May Destroy You, this is devastatingly incredible telly. The sexual assault is not absent, of course; Bella finally tells her mum, and decides to discreetly forgive Terri after Simon lets slip what she did on that night.

But this episode, like all the others, ois really about memory, and how memory isn't necessarily the truth. There are many little flashbacks of Bella's childhood between two houses and two parents as the family, including her studious brother Nick, visit her mum for her birthday, Yet Bella's adolescent memories trn out to be a sanitised version of the truth. Her "auntie" was in fact her father's lover. And a terrible burglary, in which her hard-working father lost everything, was the result of teenage Arabella using the window to get in and out. Once again the past hurts Arabella.

And yet, for Kwame, there's hope.A man he meets on Grindr turns out to want something more meaningful than a quick shag. It's a contrastingly pleasant part of another episode of harsh truth and compromise.

Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss

 "Don't you know the power of positive evil?"

This episode is one of the finest yet. Written by David Fisher, who had written some impressive episodes of Doctor Who over the preceding two years, this is essentially a Dennis Wheatley pastiche, played very straight. It reminded me very much of Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (although To the Devil a Daughter is much underrated) in its structure- a devil worshipping cult, scrying glasses, cows, invetrd crosses and all the iconography, all playing out over a landscape of posh country houses and deceased decadent aristocrats.

Yet it's more than that. The John Dee connection is clever. The use of voodo dolls is creepy. John Carson is a superb villain. Paul Darrow is great fun as a creepy cultist. And the twist at the end is excellent, the perfect capstone to a fine script, very much foreshadowed and earned. I can forgive the driving with no seatbelts (hey, it's 1980) and the amusing sex scene where Mike and Alison start doing foreplay while still wearing clothes over their naughty bits in the time-honoured television fashion.

This may ebe the best yet. Not many episodes left to beat it...

Squid Game: Gganbu

 "I'm pretty good at getting the things in the holes, huh?"

After weeks and weeks it's been quite clear that Squid Game, while being fundamentally plotted around the deadly games, is also a bloody good drama with character and subtext... and emotions. But dammit, this episode made this forty-four year old man cry.

The gimmick is simple: the characters pair off... and it turns out they have to play marbles against each other for survival, with characters tending to have paired off with their friends or, in one case, spouses. Naturally, the pairings are for maximum emotional cruelty, but the first casualty is poor Mi-Nyeo, whose desperate charm cannot save her from being the one character unable to find a partner, and thus the first to die. Ouch. I liked her.

Up to a point it's not hard to suppose that the characters we've followed will best the randomers against whom they are pitted, so it's no surprise to see Deok-su, not yet receiving his inevitable comeuppance, survive. Nor are we surprised to see Mi-Nyeo win out against a woman we haven't really seen before, but the circumstances are heartwrenching as this lovely lady willingly lays down her life after a heart to heart, concluding that Mi-Nyeo has more to live for.

Then there's the evil Sang-woo, whose dirty tricks doom poor Ali. I hope he bloody well dies for this. But most heart-wrenching of all is the pairing between Gi-hun and the old man, who sacrifices his life for the younger man but not before teaching him a stern moral lesson about exploiting the weaknesses of others. The old man's death scene is utterly devastating, although he at least has the dignity of being shot off-screen.

This is excellent, devastating television.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 5- Survivors of the Flux

 "Fetch your dog!"

This is, let us confess with all due squeeing, if that word still exists, that this was a somewhat exciting episode, teasing us almost as much as the Nepalese seer with his Conan Doyle obsession. We had Dan, a rather fetchingly dressed Yaz  and Professor Jericho (yay!) as Edwardian Indiana Joneses. We had Bel and Vinder. We had the Grand Serpent manipulating the history of UNIT, complete with what may have been a bit of Nick Courtney's voice, until Kate Stewart proves to be his match. We get the beginnings of an explanation for the Williamson tunnels. We get, in short, the beginnings of some answers, as befits a fifth episode of our first literal six parter since The Armageddon Factor, another story about time, cosmic balance and war.

Chibnall does well to balance the enormous number of characters here, and gives us feels as well as exposition. There is a lot of character development, from the Doctor's affection (love?) for Yaz to Yaz's resourcefulness as the leader of the intrepid gang stranded in Edwardian times. She's tough, and Dan and the Prof are lucky to have her.  Yet we also feel for poor Mr Williamson (with his anachronistically modern Scouse accent; a Scouser in the 1820s would have sounded more like the rest of Lancashire) as he is at last believed.

It has to  e said, though, that the best bits are the fun, globe-trotting, action set pieces in 1904, as well as the little bits that are bound to pay off later- UNIT, se see, has the TARDIS as it was at the end of last episode.

But the big event is the Division, and the revelation that Barbara Flynn is in fact playing Tecteum,the Doctor's adoptive "mother" (and, by implied retcon, the Claire Bloom character in The End of Time?), as well as that the Division exists outside of time, and has been shaping the history not only of our universe but a whole multiverse (right at the point where I'm reading loads of Michael Moorcock)... to the poinyt of wanting to destroy this universe and move to the next one. Which, incidentally, may be the universe from which the baby Doctor-to-be had just arrived by wormhole when first found by Tecteum, whoincidentally has the Doctor's memories stored in a Chameleon Arch pocket watch.

Deep breath. This is exciting stuff, and if that's not enough the Sontarans are invading, Swarm and Azure have just killed Tecteum and it seems the Doctor is next, amongst some rather exciting silultaneous cliffhangers.

And... breath. Yeah, that was a bit good. And Chibbers wrote it...

Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)

 "Now, that's the way a cigarette should taste..."

This is, seen one way, a typical Tarantino film. It has his signature cinema-literate metatextuality (there’s an extended riff towards the end on spaghetti westerns and the whole Italian B movie industry, which I much enjoy), his narratives within narratives, his sense of controlled irony, his non-linear narratives and his deliberately ambiguous elements- did Cliff kill his wife or not, as many seem to think? He seems a decent man, but people are complicated.

And yet, in another sense, this is a real outlier in that it is not an action film at all but a serious drama with big themes- how one responds to the approach of middle ag;  male friendship and how it develops when the two men are not of equal status, with one living in a Hollywood mansion and the other in a trailer; how, in 1969, the era of Westerns and war films is slowly ebbing away towards an era of auteurs, hippies and changing values. It’s a film that uses footage cleverly to show us all the different sides of 1969, with Tarantino’s usual visual wit, and has a similarly evocative soundtrack, as his films invariably do.

This is not really a film about the Manson “family”, despite Margot Robbie’s splendid turn as Sharon Tate: it’s appropriate that Charles Manson himself only appears briefly and is told to go away. His “family” are shown as shallow, duplicitous petty criminals, manipulating a blind old man with dementia to get a place to stay- and, arguably, raping him. It’s fitting that Tarantino should do as he did in Inglourious Basterds and have history pan out differently and far more pleasingly.

This film is superbly shot, superbly made, and full of both heart and complexity. It may well be Tarantino’s masterpiece.

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

The first shock upon reading this justifiably admires piece of pulp fiction is how unexpectedly short it is. But then, like so many “novels” of its era, it is in reality just an extended short story written for publication in a periodical, much as many of what we know as lengthy Victorian novels were serialised versions of the same. Yet, as a murder  mystery and as the introduction of the immortal Sherlock Holmes, it is a work of magnificence.

This is not quite she Sherlock Holmes we shall eventually come to know, of course. Both he and the still physically frail Watson are young men, both certainly in their twenties. Holmes May disdain Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin but, like the earlier fictional detective, he is shown to rarely leave his room in order to investigate crime, the case depicted being very much described as an exception.

Indeed, the very profession of “consulting detective” as shown here is not as we shall come to see it. Holmes is not a private detective with his own clients but rather a consultant who aids other detectives, including both Lestrade and Gregson, with their cases. This is not quite the fully-formed Holmes, and the section where Watson describes the odd gaps in his knowledge feels awkward.

Nonetheless, the tale rattles along very pleasantly indeed, including the Mormon flashbacks, which rightly decry the twin evils of forced marriage and forced religion and read much better now than they did when I was young, and skipped them.

I rather enjoyed this. I may as well zoom through the rest of the Sherlockian canon, but first let’s have some more Michael Moorcock…

Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

 “Why, you give the impression you’re leading a… a double life!”

 This is a fascinating little document. It may be the first ever full length superhero movie, but it feels in many ways like a typical 150s cheap sci-fi B movie. The Mole Men of the title look hilariously rubbish, with their obvious wigs and pantomime costume. And yet this silly little short film is full of heart and, in its own way, very faithful to the character of Superman. 

It's instructive, in particular, so compare this to the Christopher Reeves films of the '70s and '80s. There, Clark Kent's hat and oold-fashioned suit make him look like an old-fashioned, out of touch country bumpkin, a figure of mockery. He dresses the same way here, but it's 1951; he looks completely anonymous. And Reeves doesn't play Kent as a klutz or as any other kind of comic figure. He's an experienced, professional and very inquisitive reporter.

We also have a Superman here who is much closer to the liberal wish fulfilment figure of the early comics. The eponymous Mole Men aren't trying to conquer the surface: insteasd, they've been disturbed by humans drilling, have come up fpor a look, and are quickly persecuted by murderous lynch mobs. The enemy isn't them; it's human intolerance. This is an interesting message for the time of McCarthyism, when reds were under the bed. It's an allegory for all sorts of persecutions of all sorts of minorities, and Superman at one point accuses the mob of being "like Nazi stormttroopers". Even a silly little cheap B movie can have a subtext.

It's interesting to see how relatively underpowered Superman is here, but he's not fighting mighty foes but social evils, a fascinating dynamic. No wonder this little movie begat a long running television series. It's cheap, it's silly, yet it's also strangely heartwarming.

The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock

This is a very different book from all the previous Michael Moorcock novels I’ve read, to understate hugely. 

There are some similarities and echoes with what I’ve already read, of course. I’m already aware that Jerry Cornelius I’d an aspect of the Eternal Champion, and the ending with the hermaphrodite is echoed, no doubt deliberately, in The City of the Autumn Stars.

Yet this feels different. It’s more light-hearted, and absolutely a product of the London of the part of the ‘60s where mod was yielding to psychedelia, and both drugs and sexuality were becoming more fluid, although there’s also more of a hint of James Bond. This novel very much evokes that age and, if it feels a little more tough and ready than other Moorcock novels, with as much in common with William S. Burroughs than science fiction, I enjoyed the ride.

Groovy, man. I have no idea what the other Jerry Cornelius novels are going to be like…

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 4- Village of the Angels

 “Mrs Hayward, you appear to be... at night."

Right then. I've been pretty positive about pretty much every episode this season so far, leavened by a little apprehension about exactly what Chibnall is doing with his retconning of the mythology and whether the end result will do the show good or ill. I'm enjoying the ride, but perhaps not unconditionally.

Well, this episode is not one for such equivocation. It's bloody sublime, scary Who at its greatest. Well done Maxine Alderton, who gives us another slice of proper behind the sofa scares. This episode treats the Weeping Angels easily as well as Steven Moffat used to, and is crammed with excellent suspense-filled set pieces of exactlythe sort that Doctor Who should be doing. The Angels are the perfect television baddies, literally dependent on being seen by the camera for the very effective scares. And there is, of course, a television within a television, because we all remember that an image of an Angel becomes an Angel.

Yet the setting- a village cut off from the world and a base under siege along two time zones- is compelling and, moreover, so are the characters. We have Claire, suffering the horror of being stranded decades in the past and the further body horror of being possessed, Exorcist-like, by an Angel. We have the likeable Professor Jericho, whose bravery stems from the fact that the horrors he's witnessing tonight are as nothing to the horrors he witnessed at Bergen-Belsen. There's even a brief exchange of words showing that Gerald (who thankfully dies; apparently a second touch of an Angel simply kills) is the worst kind of authoritarian patriarch. This is good writing, and well shot too.

Yet there's more than scares and characterisation. The story of the week may take centre stage here, as in War of the Sontarans, but the arc plot continues apace. Vinder is still (in a nifty mid-credits sequence at the end) on the trail of a rather heroic Bel, while Azure is luring countless victims into a Passenger. The TARDIS crew all get good stuff to do. And there are revelation- The Weeping Angels are (sometimes) working for the Division, and the whole thing is a trap for the Doctor, suddenly recalled to the Division at the end in an effectively shocking moment. And Yaz and Dan are still trapped in 1901.It's all the more effective for seeming to come from nowhere, yet the whole plan makes perfect sense.

I have no idea where this is going, but perhaps I really ought to put aside my reservations about Chibnall's work and admit I'm just enjoying the ride.

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

 "It was English cooking..."

This is, of course, a wonderful film. But the wonder is that, for a British film with a military theme made in 1943, it’s strangely lacking in jingoism. Indeed, I understand Churchill tried to have it banned. I’m rather glad he didn’t succeed.

This film is at once superb and unique, fitting into no real genre. It’s all about war but is not really a war film as we know it. It’s as creatively and wittily directed as one might expect from Powell and Pressburger, with clever visual motifs abounding and a non-linear narrative which is human, cultured and above all realistic about war, and the essential similarities between soldiers who happen to be fighting on different sides but could easily have been friends if fate had not led them to try and shoot each other. 

Yet this is also a film about love, about forgiveness, about not allowing one’s opinions to become too reactionary as one gets older. It’s a film about the essential absurdity of Prussian duelling, about war versus sportsmanship, about the excitement of waiting for the next instalment of The Hound of the Baskervilles in Strand magazine. It’s also a film with quite a large part for an alarmingly young Private Fraser from Dad’s Army.

Most of all, it’s human and warm and funny and wonderful. If you haven’t already, watch it.

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

 I’ve never read a novel by Philip K. Dick before, despite having knowingly seen at least three films based on his work. This is a highly impressive introduction to his work, a novel as thoughtful as it is imaginative.

The fact that one should not perhaps look to closely at the realism of the alternative history presented here in no way harms the nov: sleight of hand is an honourable technique. And the world presented here, where the Axis won the war and split the former USA between them, is compelling and three dimensional.

Germany and Japan are slowly slipping into a rivalry, inevitable with the Nazis’ fundamental and horrifying racism, with the Holocaust having been extended to an African genocide, with others implied. The Japanese are presented sympathetically, despite the awkwardly contemporary hints that they merely imitate others’ cultural products, rather than create. They have culture, feeling, and that nebulous thing called creativity. The Nazis, by contrast, are a society with no culture or humanity whatsoever, a dark and empty dead end. They have put a man on Mars, joylessly, yet television is only now being rolled out. And now, it is implied, they are slowly gaining the upper hand which may result in nuclear Holocaust of Japan.

Yet this is told through real, human characters such as a Jewish craftsman, a German spy and a Japanese businessmen, with an oddly fascinating sting subplot about the forgery of antiques. There is a lot of thoughtful musing on the nature of art and morality through the medium of Eastern religious philosophy, most of which is lost on this godless reader. But the novel is full of wonderful little touches, with the mental universe of this world feeling thoroughly thought through.

Best of all is Dick’s nicely self-abnegating articulation of the death of the author, as his counterpart within the novel, the creator of the novel within the novel, explains that he was simply the medium for a novel that wrote itself. It’s a clever, challenging, perfect ending to a novel which deliberately resists the concept of arbitrary endings. A superb novel.

Black Moon (1934)

 "If I ever find him in the house again, I'll have him whipped."

This is... well, a very racist film. We're not talking a few dated attitudes, we're talking the whole hog. It's not Birth of a Nation or anything: it doesn't emanate hate. It's just... well, first things first.

This film isn't anything special, but for a B kovie of the time it has a somewhat impressive director and cast, starring noless a figure than Fay Wray. It's well shot, with some impressive sequences, but also manages to be both slow and too rushed at the end. If we ignore the implications of the film being about a handful of white people being surrounded by thousands of hostile Black "natives" and their weird voodoo, there's a fairly effective threat.

However, you see the problem. The setting is an island in the Caribbean, based on Haiti, There's a comedy Black American Uncle Tom figure, and every other black character is a creepy Voodoo savage. The white patriarch at the centre of the island lives in a "plantation" and his white underling, killred fairly eaerly on,is an "overseer". It's clear that this family, which takes pride in having ruled the island for two centuries despite six uprisings and "not running away", once ran a brutal slave regime and its morals in 1934 seem little better: Dr Perez actually utters the line quoted above. The Black population of the island are called "natives", glossing over how and whythey came to be on the island. The original sin of slavery, and its horrors, are completely glossed over. Just othering the Black population like this, and treating the white family as virtuous, is extremely problematic. None of this is deliberately hateful, and I'm sure would not have caused the disgust in 1934 that Birth of a Nation did in 1915, but it's impossible to ignore.

The social attitudes of the time permeate everything. FayWray's secretary heroine is besotted with her married boss but "won't live in sin", and spends the whole film acting out all the features of traditional feminine virtue before, it's implied, eventually marrying Stephen. And it's not usual for a film even of this vintage to be so utterly alienating in its attitudes. Still, it's a fascinating curio from a very different time in a way so many films from the same era are not.

I May Destroy You: Social Media Is a Great Way to Connect

 “You kind of had penetrative sex with someone under false pretences, Kwams.”

Yet again we get a multifaceted and fascinating episode. It’s partly about how Arabella is continuing to bury her feelings about the rape- the fact her bags haven’t been looked at and have stayed under the bed since the police returned them speaks volumes and is a blatant metaphor for repression.

Then there’s Bella’s anger, her desire to carry the world in her shoulders. Anger against white men, straight men, men in general. And the injustice she rails against is literally real.

Yet anger is not a healthy or a nuanced emotion where taken too far, and neither is social media. Bella has to step back from anger and realise that, while structural injustice and make violence aren’t going away, not everyone is evil- like her seemingly decent white and male flatmate.

Yet, at the same time, we mustn’t minimise the existence of bad things. Bella is right to be appalled that Kwame should have had sexual with a Roman before telling her he was gay. Yet it takes time- and sight of a foetus she (legitimately; it’s her body) aborted, to realise that her locking him in a room with that bloke at the party was wrong too.

And then, at the end, she returns to Ego Death. This seems to be an important moment. Either way, it’s phenomenal telly.

Hammer House of Horror: The Carpathian Eagle

 “Are you going to be strict with me?”

This is an odd episode, not least because it's based on a purported Polish legend of a wronged countess who led men to her bed and had their hearts plucked out with an eagle. It feels more like a police procedural than a horror story... until the very kinky final scene.

Indeed, it's only at the end, with the detective being killed and the killer surviving to copy yet another female serial killer, that it becomes clear what a clever script this is. At first the police spculate the killer may be homosexual, and there's a sympathetic and very out LGBT character, certainly not typical in 1980. Yet the cleverness here is in reversing the gender roles of the sexualised violence- these creepy men perving on much younger and poorer women turn out, here at least, to be the victims.

Sian Phillips has a memorable role, if a surprisingly small one, and there's a small part for a very young Pierce Brosnan. But the star here is the script, a triumph and the finest so far.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter 3- Once, Upon Time

 “Time is playing games with you all."

I have to admit this episode is pretty damn awesome, and has me bloody excited. I have my usual reservations with Chibnall's retconning of the Doctor's past and continuity- has it been thought through? Is it going to benefit the show in the long term rather than buden it with confused and conflicting continuities? There's a reason why the so-called Cartmel Masterplan quite deliberately never amounted to the odd vague hint. However, in the moment, I'm enjoying the ride. A lot.

I've been reading a lot of Michael Moorcock lately, and this feels very much like his work. Concepts like the Passenger, a planet called Time and awar between Time and Space are very Moorcockian, if that's a word. The Flux is decimating space; now the same is happening in time. The narrative is complex, with the Doctor, Yaz, Dan and Vinder jumping between different times and places simultaneously, some real and some relived memories- but memories with details changed. Nothing is stable. I have reservat ions about how the general public will take to this, but this middle aged geek loves it.

We get nice little glimpses into the pasts of both Yaz and Dan, good character moments for the pair of them Dan and Diane are sweet together and she's clearly besotted, and Dan is horrified to discover she's trapped within the Passenger. We also learn Vinder's past- and he's a whistleblower in a corrupt society who was punished for doing the right thing, a difficult concept to grasp in the "in no way corrupt" Britaoin of 2021 (Ooh, bit of politics there...). We also see the mysterious Bel, on a quest (with her unborm Tamagochi child or summat) for love that encompasses hordes of Daleks, Cybermen and others.... only to discover at the end that she and Vinder are a couple on mutual quests for each other.

Oh, and Vinder knows what a TARDIS is, which is interesting...

But we also, of course, learn a lot about scenes from the Doctor's past which she relives alongside people she sees as Yaz, Dan and Vinder. Yet her own reflection shows her as the Jo Martin Doctor, while Dan is really Karvanista, who must be bloody ancient. So who are the other two...?

The Doctor is leading an army for the Division, an agent of law and order against the same two baddies as the present day. But are they baddies? They seem to have an ideology (Time must not be constrained) which is not obviously any more right than that of the Division.But we get very little context... until a mysterious scene with Barbara Flynn as a mysterious woman who explains that the Flux and all this is deliberate, the universe ending is the point, and it's all the Doctor's fault.

Oh, and there are some awesome action sequences with Cybermen and especially Weeping Angels, now right up there as iconic baddies. Yes, I loved this episode, and Chibnall wrote it. But let's hope what he's doing to the mythology of the show doesn't break it, or I may well look back upon this episode less fondly...

The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock

 

This is the last of the Eternal Champion trilogy, and a fitting ending that draws together many threads from both earlier novels, as well as the two Von Bek novels. It fleshes out Moorcock’s ideas of the Multiverse to a satisfying degree, and shows us a existence of Law forever warring against Chaos in ways which make me highly suspicious that Games Workshop, and others, have been merrily lifting concepts from Moorcock’s novels. Yet these ideas are not just cool but also have intellectual substance. As with the Von Bek novels, the idea seems to be that humanity needs to grow out of gods and the supernatural, and to find the moderate path between Law and Chaos, excess and monkish restraint, licence and tyranny.

Not all ideas are philosophical: we have magnificent fantasy concepts here such as a linked series of worlds in a system resembling a wheel with spikes. But the characters are compelling, especially the likeable version of Von Bek we have here, a man of deep integrity but also humour, distracting us from the somewhat morose personality of the Champion himself.

I’ve enjoyed my mini-Moorcock marathon. There will be more in a while, but first I’ll turn to something else…

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

 "The blood is the life..."

This is a cheap German film which, like many of its ilk, happens to star Christopher Lee who, while phoning it in by his standards, cannot help but ooze charisma. It is, I must observe, a splendidly lurid translation in English, despite being essentially a version of Poe's The Pit and the Pendlum, as becomes quite obvious at the end... with said pendulum clearly positioned at crotch level. Ouch.

I don't know any of the other actors; Lex Barker is apparently a former Tarzan. But this is a well made little film, with locations and sets evoking nineteenth century Germany superbly, if less expensively than Roger Corman. Karin Dor is extremely attractive. 

Yet let us not pretend this is anything other than a B movie cashing in on Lee's name. It is corniness itself, splendidly soo. The "priest" character is very silly. Lee only gets moderate amounts of screen time. The plot is risible. The butler is hilariously violent. The opening seqence with the Count's execution is not so lurid as promised, what with his supposedly being quartered by four horses, which it appears we are going to graphically see untilthe camera cuts to what os undoubtedly a lurid shot, but equally undoubtedly a shot of a painting. This film is not one for torture rubberneckers. Nor is it unmissable for Christopher Lee fans. It's nothing special. But it's a fun little B movie.

And we love those, don't we?

Squid Game: A Fair World

 “Everyone is equal…”

The mid-way point, and we get a very interesting episode with an underlying theme of equality. The cliffhanger is resolved, and a team including several women and an old man proves easily able to vanquish a team of arrogant young men. Gi-Hun persuades Deok-su with clever psychology that a night of peace is in order. And the team slowly starts to bond more, although not without friction.

But the most fascinating sub-plot involves the undercover cop, who discovers a secret organ-smuggling ring which is using the dioctor- and giving him clues to get an unfair advantage.When they're caught, it is this last point that the big boss finds unforgivable: all players must be equal, and unfair advantages are most certainly allowed. After all, it's been that way for years: this is by no means the first year the games have been played, as we and the cop discover.

At last we begin to get the first drips of revelation as to the backstory behind the games, as well as foregrounding a few more players whom we get to know a little more- a bloodthirsty priest and a gobby atheist woman. Let's home they acquire some actual character traits too.

This is intriguing. We're getting some answers as to what's going on, or beginning to...

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

 “She’s not your little girl any more.” 

It's always instructive where a movie that has a lot seemingly going for it, like this one,turns out to be mildly disappointing. Not that it's terrible, but there's no denying that it fails to translate the excellent of Christ Claremont and John Byrne's source material, nor that the promising first half hour with lots of interesting character development and subtext yields to a load of dull fighting against a bland alien threat. Beyond the fact that we can by now be sure, I think, that Simon Kinberg isn't the person who should have been in charge of these films. But what went wrong?

There's a lot of good stuff in the early part of the film. All the characters feel real and well-rounded, even relatively minor ones like Quicksilver and Nightcrawler. There's some interesting questioning of Charles' habit of manipulating people's minds for their "own good". There's also a nice point made of Charles pushing the X-Men, at great danger, to be superheroes and to be popular, as the alternative is to be hated and feared: it's effective to see how quickly Jean's antics have the X-Men change overnight from popular celebrities to feared outcasts. It's unexpected, and effective, to have Raven die at the hands of Jean.

And yet, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender aside, the main cast are all a bit bland, despite a splendidly charismatic performance by Evan Peters as Quicksilver, for the last time in this continuity. And then there's the vague nature of where the Phoenix force comes from and the equally vague aliens looking for it. There's a lot of good ideas here, but no real way of resenting them once the plot gets moving. A sad ending for the Fox X-Men movies. Let's hope we see them again under happier circumstances.

Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon

 "It's getting dark outside..."

This is a good 'un. A creepy, very well-directed werewolf episode with an unexpectedly creepy Diana Dors magnificenly defying her usual typecasting in a scene-stealing role. She really is extraordinary. The whole thing is a trap for the unfortunate newlywed couple, of course, but the fun is in watching the whole thing inexorably unfold.

Yes, I suppose the werewolf costume is a bit rubbish. But we only glimpse it twice and, frankly, with a story this atmospheric, who cares.We get creepy kids. We get a compelling mystery. We get a clever, surprising, yet logical resolution. If little details aren't all tied up (why does the car accelerator jam early on?) then,well, that's all part of the uncanny feel of successful horror, and the fates of both Sarah and Tom are suitably gruesome, yet it's the anticipation of the horror to come on which the horror relies, not gore.

This is one of the finest episodes yet, although again we see how society has changed in the last forty years. These days one wouldn't say "how do you do" to anyone, let alone a child. And the existence of mobile phones would scupper the entire plot somewhat.

I May Destroy You: Line Spectrum Border

 "It's no longer an active investigation."

Yet again we have a fascinating episode, full of all sorts of moral ambiguities. We begin with Bella's extraordinary speech at the support group about men who knowingly push boundaries, wanting to be on the border of sexual and other abuse without quite getting to the point of unambiguously crossing it. This is then juxtaposed in the next scene with Kwame discussing the fluidity of sexuality and how, having been sexually abused by a man, he's now getting a date with a woman.

Bella goes through the wringer here, again. She's broke, and the police investigation has come to a dead end. So she morally blackmails Terri into sending her to Italy, and Biagio, where things go wrong, and complicated. She's there to "apologise", even though he was a judgemental and victim blaming dick to her over the phone about the sexual assault. He's not happy to see her, and locks her out of his room to get ride of her. And yet... she's there without his consent, in his flat.

Then there's Kwame. The date goes ok, and is no more awkward than one might expect, although it's clear she has a thing for black men, fetishising an ethnicity. There's a bit of awkwardness about his (white) female sexual partner being reluctant to sing along to the "n" word in a song, but then she turns out to be casually homophobic and chucks him out, disgusted. But was he not dishonest in pretending to be straight, and was he not using her?

This is clever, thought provoking, first class telly that is careful not to tell you how to think as it explores the issues.

Breaking Bad: ABQ

 "He's just decent. And he always does the right thing."

Here we go, then: the finale. There's tension throughout, a sense of foreboding. It's not necessatily because of what's happening, but the fact that the storytelling, in terms both of script and framing of shots, is full of awkward juxtapositions between the domesticity of Walt, decent family man, and the death and misery caused by Walt, drug lord. Scenes of Jane's dad being quietly devastated by something which is ultimately Walt's fault are juxtaposed with Walt holding his baby girl. Scenes of Jesse being "fixed" by a new character who reminds me of Harvey Keitel's character from Pulp Fiction are juxtaposed with a cosy breakfast scene chez White. The very structure of the episode is foregrounding how Walt's double life is not sustainable. It can't continue.

And it doesn't.

Walt is no longer a decent man. As Hank has worked out, his blue meth is now spreading well beyond New Mexico, causing exponential misery. He's killed Jane, and destroyed her father. He's ruined Jesse's life, however much he may now be cared for. And the ultimate expression of this, the huge metaphor, is how Jane's grieving dad, an air traffic controller, causes two planes to crash into each other right above Walt.This is the meaning of those arty monochrome openings- the pool, the eye, the teddy bear. Destroyed innocence. Hundreds dead before their time. All cleverly foreshadowed.

Walt has one and truly crossed the moral threshold. Heisenberg is now the real Walt. Jekyll has become Hyde. And Heisenberg does not deserve his family. Walt's lies were never sustainable, and so just two words "Which one?" cause the whole thread to unravel. Suddenly, Skyler (with some superb acting from both Anna Gunn and Bryan Cranston) is dangerously close to knowing all. And Walt is alone, and separated from his baby. Take it from a father; being separated from your baby for more than a few days does not leave yiou in a good place.

This is a magnificent bit of telly. 

What next?

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter Two- War of the Sontarans

 “Repair must not be undertaken by idiots!"

Once again, for the second week in succession, I must admit this episode is pretty good. Chibnall's scripts have a certain lack of wit and polish, but he's getting better. And, much as I'm not sure how the general family viewing public will be reacting to this complex, universe-spanning, timey-wimey plot, I'm quite enjoying it.

The main season plot chugs on underneath as our three mysterious baddies from the dawn of time- Azure, Swarm, and the bizarrely named Passenger- attack a planet called Time, which isn't supposed to exist, where mysterious priests called Mouri keep Time itself under control as, apparently, when Time is uncontrolled it is "evil". All this is brand new mythology, unknown either to us or, interestingly, the Doctor. It'll be interesting to see where Chibbers is going with this. So far it seems to be about providing a Perils of Pauline-style cliffhanger for Yaz and Vinder, now integrated into the gag, just to give us a cliffhanger, but the concepts are cool.

Meanwhile, the Sontarans have exploied the Flux to invade Earth and, in a nice touch, are basing their claim on Linx's exploits all that time ago- and they seem to have time technology far more extensive than that of The Time Warrior, invading Earth at all points in its past in a plan which is rathere confusing to think about. But the extended sequence of the Doctor and Mary Seacole in the Crimean War is rather fun as an A plot for the episode, and I must confess that history being changed so that the British, French and Ottomans are fighting the Sontarans, not the Russians, is pretty damn cool. And I like the portrayal of the Sontarans- comedic, yes, as they have been since RTD brought them back, but also brutal.

As is the Doctor. Jodie Whittaker proves to still be on fire here: she's awesome.So, too, is the character of Dan, merrily slaughtering hordes of Sontarans with a wok given to him by his mum in Sontaran-occupied Liverpool, as you do, in scenes which reminded me a bit of Independence Day.

There's also that sceptical bloke ffom 1820 wandering around in the temple on the planet Time, and so many cool concepts and set pieces not least of which is a Sontaran on a horse. I must admit, I'm rather enjoying this.

Delayed Doctor Who Blog

 I always try to blog Doctor Who, of all programmes, on the day of broadcast, but tonight that won’t be possible because of real life. We’re looking at tomorrow, possibly, but more likely Tuesday.

The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham

It is commonly assumed that, of all the writers of whodunit novels during that golden age of the 1920s and ‘30s, Agatha Christie was the unquestioned queen of them all.

Now, I haven’t read any of her works for a decade or two, and before long I shall remedy that and see if my opinion remains. But read a lot of Christie in my youth, until I reached an age where the prose, the characterisations and the snobbery of the authorial voice made it impossible for teenage me to continue. Her plotting may be second to none, but prose and characters do sort of matter.

And that is why Margery Allingham is the true queen of the whodunit, and Albert Campion a much better character than Hercule Poirot, with actual non-superficial character traits. The plotting may be excellent, but the characters are real people and the prose is wonderful- witty, ironic, joyous to read.

There are a couple of bits of dialogue that make one wince: there’s talk of colonial affairs in what was then the Gold Coast where the n-word is bandied about. The word wasn’t as taboo in 1938 as it is now, but one should not go to the other extreme in excusing it. The whiff of the forbidden surrounding the word may have been less strong than today, but it was their. It is, to say the least, unfortunate. Nor can one simply gloss over the fact that Campion tells his sister Val, who is “hysterical”, that she needs “a nice rape”.

Yet, such moments aside, this is a hugely enjoyable read, masterfully plotted and involving three dimensions characters. And this isn’t even a particularly well known example of Allingham’s Campion novels. I must read, or re-read, some more soon.