Andor: Kassa

 "This case appears to bear all the hallmarks of what I like to describe as regrettable misadventure."

Hmm. This isn't bad telly. It's perfectrly fine. But so far that's all it is. Perfectly decent but no more than that.

I suppose Cassian Andor was always going to be a harder sell than Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi or even the Mandalorian- a new character but a familiar look. These shows harked back to classic Star Wars; Andor appeared only once in Rogue One. Like many others, I've seen the original trilogy many times over the decades, but Rogue One only once. So Andor is a perfectly decent character, but he doesn't have the resonance.

Also, while this is clearly set in the lived-in future of Star Wars, with the tech and general look being unmistakeable... but there are far fewer Easter eggs than previous series on Disney Plus, and all the planets are new. No more Tattooine!

The story is engaging enough, and it's good that we aren't spoon fed either what Kassian is doing or what happened with him and his missing sister as children. It's a nice touch that, so far, the Imperial forces are a distant threat, the immediate problem being highly militarised corporate security.

It's all set-up, of course, but this is nothing special so far. But this is but the first episode...

The Sandman: Dream of a Thousand Cats/Calliope

 "Writers are liars."

I'm again following far too many series because pesky present day telly insists on throwing up The Rings of Power, Inside Man and (coming soon to this blog) Andor. Fortunately this is a season finale, so I now have only Hawkeye, Breaking Bad and films to balance with all those. Anyway...

This is a beautiful coda to what is hopefully not the only series of Sandman. Here we have two achingly beautiful, profoundly meaningful fairytales that are so very, well... Gaimanesque.

As one who has been the property of many feline owners over the years, I was both amused by and admiring of Dream of a Thousand Cats, a cartoon with many famous voices. It transcends its superficial resemblance to Animal Farm (the Prophet is stroikingly similar to Old Major) to reach annundeniable truth. Cats, much as we adore them, have utterly enslaved us, and would certainly kill and eat them if they could... well, except Ashi, and Badger, and Loki, and Gizmo. I'm their daddy, so I'm safe. Right?

So it indisputably true that a reality shift occurred not all that long ago, and before then we were much smaller than them, and hunted by them. This is undoubtedly true,

Calliope is much darker, using myth to explore male abuse and exploitation of women, and the ensuing hypocrisy. In this case Richard is stealing the ideas of Calliope, a woman, and taking credit... not exactly unptrecedented. Arthur Darvill is superb as a dark protagonist straight out of an updated version of Hammer House of Horror, while Derek Jacobi is exquisite as an elderly writer who owes all his success to the fact that he kidnapped a Muse, Calliope, while on holiday in Greece, the Muse who inspired Homer.

Richard finally gets his just comeuppance at the hands of Morpheus, whose tender relationship with Calliope- despite their past bad blood centred on theor son Orpheus(!) is deeply touching.

This is just a profoundly beautiful bit of telly.

Inside Man: Episode 1

 "Anyone can wind up in this place..."

One might say, in some ways, that there is much we might have expected from Steven Moffat in this, his long-awaited new drama.There's a character- Jefferson Grieff- who is superficially similar to Sherlock in how he solves crimes. Paul McGuigan directs. It's all very clever, with different plot strands interconnecting at various points. David Tennant star as Harry, our likeable vicar protagonist. Lydia West and Dolly Wells are well known for starring in work by Moffat and his mate RTD.over-complex.

Yet this is not, as no doubt some are saying, just Moffat doing his usual tropes. It is not, as no doubt some are saying, confusing and over-complex. Just pay attention. It's all there. And it's much more than a puzzle box, this is about something.

Harry is a good man, a husband, a father, a lynchpin of his community. So when his verger, with his overbearing (and violent) mother asks him to take from him a drive with "porn", he sees this as a trivial matter. And yet-this being the central premise- a good man can become a murderer, given the right circumstances.

We have a parallel in Jefferson, who seems to have murdered his wife and believes he deserves his upcoming execution. As various conversations hint, he was also a good man who made a wrong decision, and somehow became a murderer. He accepts his fate, and whiles away his time in Death Row solving crimes. Yet the Sherlocking is superficial. The point is that this is a man who has done something evil, though not an evil man. And he accepts the consequences with integrity. Not just death, but to be hated. He actively dissuades Beth from ewriting about him positively. His ideas of "moral worth" are fascinating.

Janice, too, is clever and highly principled, as we see in the opening train scene. And so the terrible misunderstanding is set up, where she finds the verger's child porn, believing it to belong to Harry's son. Harry panics, handles things badly... and Janice ends up locked in the cellar. This is brilliant writing, and acting.

And so we face the consequences. Harry's horrified wife. And the confrontation with Janice, who fully realises the only possible fate for her is to be murdered as Harry, though a good man, has no other way out. But she will not make it easy...

And Beth is on the case. This is superb stuff.

The Lord of the Rings- The Rings of Power: Partings

 "We set sail!"

This episode, and a fine episode it is- the start has been uneven, but there was much to establish. Thois iscan episode, a pivotal episode, one in which the forces of hope start to amass against the orcs, Adar, Sauron... and it's all about loyalty. Loyalty as a test.

The Stranger- now very clearly a proto-wizard, ahem!- proves his loyalty to the poroto-Hobbits by scaring away the Wargs. Others have it less easy. Elrond is torn between the honour of his oath to Durin and his Elven loyalty because mithril, apparently, is the ghost of a Silmaril (I know what they are!) and is needed to save the Eldar... yes, it's a word coined by Tolkien. but it makes me think of Space Marines and such. Bah.

The Men of the Southlands have conflicting loyalties. half of them, led by Waldreg, are bloody traitors. Arondir, bless him, is true, and will fight for the humans even if they will not fight for themselves. Bronwyn, heartbreakingly, is torn.

On the doomed Numenor, the queen shows admirable steel. Thev loyalty of Galadriel is not in doubt, though her fanaticism fascinates. The loyalty of the political class is not without cynicism, but true.Idildur, though... we know his name, and that of his fathervElendil, as the first two kings of Gondor, meaning Numenor must be doomed in the very short term. Yet he is portrayed, with all due melodrama, as a ne'er-do-well made good.

I have no problem with that. t describes myself. This episode oozes character, restrained wit and narrative skill.

Better Call Saul: Uno

 "You work for people who have sex with chopped off head?"

Straight into this prequel to Breaking Bad- you knew this was coming- and crikey, this is already good indeed, even if we do already know the central character and are looking for Easter Eggs (hello, Mike as tollboth man).

But this is divinely crafted by Mr Vince Gilligan himself. We start, fasciinatingly, with a moustachioed Saul running that bakery in Nebraska he casually mentioned at the end of Breaking Bad... and his life is safe, if paranoid; decent, materially ok... and symbolically in monochrome. No wonder he drinks cheap whisky and watched videotapes of his glory days.

The, we flash back... so abruptly I thought my telly was on the blink- to Albuquerque... and the good old days are not as the rose tinted glasses see the, Jimmy McGill is a struggling public defender, talented yet offered no hope by the system, despite the urgings of his very interesting brother Chuck- intelligent, principled, cultured and (we assume) dying by some disease, probably cancer, which is a ****.

The argument between the two men is pivotal- Chuck was a partner in a law film who got ill, and has been shafted, to his brother's extreme chagrin, yet he refuses to sue the firm (Did it cause his condition? I admire how we are not just being spoonfed.) out of loyalty to the staff. He and  Jimmy disagree, yet here are two good, decent men disagreeing on points of conscience. Jimmy may have been guilty of ice-based naughtiness in his youth, butbhe;s a good man... whom we know will become a deeply cynical, criminal-adjacent lawyer in a trajectory which we cannot but parallel with that of Walter White.

And his first attempt at such cynicism in practice- with two young, naive, pathetic conmen- leads us to... Tuco, whom we know of old.

Oh dear.

I'm hooked already,

Incidentally, I'll be blogging this weekly. The Marvel series (currently Hawkeye) will continue as scheduled. I'll keep on with The Rings of Power, next episode (I hope) tomorrow. I have one more episode of Sandman. Then I really ought to start Andor, as I note three episodes have dropped.

I'll start a neew series, probably something vintage, when the constant stream of new telly alllows!

The Oblong Box (1969)

 "We have knowledge of things you know nothing of..."

This film is an odd yet enjoyable beast. It's an adaptation of an Edgar Poe Story, sort of, as it has pretty much no scenes or characters in common with it other than the coffin itself. This is no sea voyage along the Eastern Seaboard of the USA, but a British horror film of the late '60s with literally all the tropes that implies.

This is no bad thing.

It's 1865, and looks good, as such historical films often do, Vincent Price stars, inevitably, given the double whammy of British cinema of this time worshipping him and given him work and, of course, his association with Poe, courtesy of the great Roger Corman, having ceased but five years before.

The script is original, not Poe in the slightest, par for the course for a British horror film of the period, but it works. Both Price and Christopher Lee are amazing.

Gordon Kessler's direction is Jekyll and Hyde. His domestic scenes are ho-hum, but his scenes of horror and excitement are creative and inspired. The film centres on African voodoo, the opening scene feels- and is- quite unthinkingly racist- yet the sensitive treatment of Harry Baird's noble african character goes some way to mitigate, and the script goes some way to show colonialism as the original sin behind all of this.

This is not, perhaps, a great film. But, for those of us who love this type of horror, it is exquisite.

Hawkeye: Hide and Seek

 "A twenty-two year old vigilante. Shouldn't you be in school?"

Ok, first of all, the Hawkeye LARPing montage was obviously awesome. But we hearing aid wearers find it easier to follow what's going on with tabletop RPGs. Maybe Clint would enjoy that more...

Yet there's so much elseto admire in a series that is settling down quite nively. Clint's frustration at not being with his family at Christmas brings us closer to him. Yet Kate is awesome, too, just like us in a way: wanting to learn from Clint to achieve her dream and make it as a superhero. Anything to escape from the life with the family business that's been planned out for her.

Then there's her new stepfather, Jack... the Swordsman. Charming, evasive... and seemingly at the scene of Armand's murder. Kate has problems, and complications. Not only are she and Clint captured and at the mercy of the, er, Tracksuit Mafia, but the cops want to question her in the morning.

Best of all, though, is the chemistry between the hero worshipping, naive yet resourceful Kate and the gruff and annoyed Clint. The script, and both actors, are superb.

The Sandman: Lost Hearts

 "It was a pleasure being human with you."

It is, perhaps, true, that the second half of this first season, adapting The Doll's House from the comics, while very good, has not quite matched what came before it. Yet this conclusion, season finale, really, though there isa coda to come, is nothing short of magnificent.

This is the stuff of fairytale. Dream's punishment of the collectors is grimly appropriate. His ultimate triuph over the Corinthian- whose eyes we finally see- has an air of inevitability once he persuades Rose. And Unity's dreamingly reading of the book of her life that would have been, in Lucienne's library, is not only poetic but utterly prefigures her beautiful sacrifice to save Rose, her family.

And Rose has lots of family. Her brother, yes, but also a family she chose. And they all live happily ever after. Even the ending of Fiddler's Green- a lovely man, and perfectly cast as Stephen Fry- is something lovelier than death. It's all very beautiful.

Yet it was all a trick by Desire, to get Dream to kill Desire's own granddaughter(!) and, it is hinted, trick him into breaking some rule by killing a descendent of the Endless. And it is hinted that the sublings fall into two opposing camps- Dream, Death and Destiny versus Desire, Despair and Delirium. Interesting.

Oh, and it appears Hell is going to war....

Hawkeye: Never Meet Your Heroes

 "I need a bow and arrow!"

This is all very new to me. I know Hawkeye, obviously, but Kate Bishop is from well after my comics-reading years. I know Jack must be the Swordsman, which is exciting, but I've never heard of Hawkeye as the Ronin, which I think of as a massive great big robot kaijin that went up against the Avengers.

We get a big revelation about Clint's unexpected past, we see him with his kids, and we get an actual mentioj of his hearing aid- although, trust me as one who knows: if you switch your hearing off you bloody well take it out and let your ear breathe a bit. Hearing aids help you hear more like other people do so you can fit in, but they're bloody uncomfortable to wear for hours on end.

I like Kate. The odds are stacked against her as a spoiled little rich girl, but I like her, a credit to both Halle Steinfeld and the writing. She's cool, resourceful and has just the right amount of sadness in her past. Plus she worships superheroes, especially the esteemed Mr Barton.

This is mostly set-up, but there's much to intrigue. The Swordsman. Simon Callow, as the late Armand, playing American. What the hell is going on with all this Ronin stuff. This isn't quite up there, so far, with WandaVision and Loki, but I'm enjoying it.

The Sandman: Collectors

 "I thought there'd be cereal..."

My Netflix issues are fixed. Normal blogging is resumed. Phew.

Things are moving fast. Rose as the vortex seems to be the unwitting cause of Lyta's being with her dead husband in her dreams... and her pregnancy. Yet this seems to be leading to instability. Cracks are appearing.

So what does Dream do? He continues to be an utter dick. After offending Lucienne last episode- and Matthew speaks for all of us when he criticises their mutual sulk, he tramples into Lyta's dream like a bull in a china shop, heartlessly crumbling her husband to dust and, if that isn't bad enough, threatening that one day he will come and take Lyta's baby. Yes, he's a mythically powerful and capricious god, but he's also a dick.

We see more of the serial killer convention this episode, and it's utterly, blackly hilarious. We also get to see more of the wonderful Gilbert, played with aplomb by the one and only Stephen Fry... and get to learn who he is. But we end with the Corinthian triumphant in a staggeringly excellent episode full of twists, turns and much coolness.

The Lord of the Rings- The Rings of Power: The Great Wave

 "You have been told many lies..."

Halfway through the season, already, and things are getting ominous. I liked this episode a lot. 

Evil tidings aboung everywhere. Arandir is freed by Adar- an elf who seems to command the orcs- to deliver an ultimatum to the humans in the elf tower- surrender the Southlands to him or be crushed. Young Theo, fresh from nearly getting heroically killed, is told by a fellow villager, a sinister individual, that the falling stars some nightsago mean Sauron is coming.

Meanwhile, Elrond learns the dwarves are tentatively mining a new mineral- mithril, previously unknown. Yet the efforts almost end in disaster, and I sense that Durin's royal father will not live long. And the Dwarves know that Elrond is hiding something. It's all very friendly, but everyone is hiding something.

Most fascinating are the events in Numenor, as Galadriel hears the reason for all the suspicion; the royals have a seeing stone, one foretelling the fooding end destruction of Numenor. Isildur disgraces himself at sea. And yet... we know that "Elendil" was a battle cry for Aragorn, his distant descendent. And Isildur will achieve legendary things... I think he was called the first king of Gondor? But Gondor is on Middle Earth. I suspect Numenor is doomed, and soon. All these revelations are thrilling. The series has build up slowly, at times, but this episode really delivers the goods.

And, unexpectedly, Numenor goes to war with Galadriel, the Queen and Isildur among the troops. I'm excited.

Black Coffee by Agatha Christie at the Little Theatre in Leicester

 I saw this excellent play last night, admittedly because a friend of mine is in it, but it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. 

Agatha Christie, as I have said many time, cannot be matched in terms of whodunit plotting, yet her prose and characterisation are lacking to the point that it is not Christie but Margery Allingham who is the Queen of Golden Age Crime Fiction.

Yet Christie’s work can nevertheless shine where actors can provide characterisation that the words on the page do not. And that is the case here. The cast is uniformly excellent, filling their performances with subtle mannerisms and line deliveries that add so much.

The set is particularly excellent, too, in a play based around a single room. And the MacGuffin- a formula for a new type of devastating atomic explosive- is quite an arresting idea for 1930.

If there are any tickets left, I would heartily recommend scrapping them up.

What If... the Watcher Broke His Oath?

 "Blimey! Bloody bollocks!"

Still having Netflix issues which may delay the last episodes of Sandman for a few days, so I'll just carry on with the Disney Marvel shows untol that's sorted- with episodes of Rings of Power as they drop, of course. Once Netflix is back with me, the normal blogging schedule will resume. 

So we complete the season with the conclusion of the fourth wall-breaking two parter and it's entertaing enough, albeit rather heavily based on action. Inevitably we get a team assembled by the Watcher from throughout the season. Theseare apparently the perfect team to defeat Ultron. Yes, even a version of Thor who is nothing but a Hooray Henry. Hmm.

It's fun, though. The characters interact well. It's impressive that we manage to get cameos from the likes of Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jacksom and Tom Hiddleston. And, sadly, this is the Marvel swansong for Chadwick Boseman.

There are nice little heartwarming happy endings for both Peggy and Natasha too. Sentimental, yes, but just about earned. Overall, this is a decent enough conclusion, if a little crowded and by-the-book.

Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

 "If you don't shut up, you won't be invited to the orgy.

Right, let's just get Taika Waititi to do all the Thor films from now on, shall we? This is awesome: witty, fourth wall-breakingly funny but without crossing a certain line... and absolutely heartbreaking. Jane's death is devastating (but yay for the post-credits) as well as being the right way to end. There's a nice bit of misdirection in that we suspect Eternity's wish is going to cure her, but no. She and Thor, at last deciding to stop pushing people away, fall in love all over again... and she dies, both of cancer and in battle. At least she dies well.

There's so much coolness here. New Asgard as tourist trap. Jane Foster becoming Thor, which I understand is based on a comic story after my time. Thor's look echoing Eric Masterson, which isn't. All those narrations by Korg. Tessa Thompson as the highly relatable Valkyrie. The fact that it's self-evidently necessary to take loads and loads of beer on a heroic mission, which is unquestionably true. Even the soppy ending is both earned and cool.

But, yeah, Russel Crowe as Zeus. With a Greek accent and a thunderbolt. That is certainly something to behold.

Gorr as a villain is similarly, I suspect, from comics after my time. But Christian Bale is superb, and the character's origin is magnificently done. Gorr's visual impression is absolutely extraordinary. And the sheer, existential horror of being told by your gods that they don't care about you, your place is to suffer for them without meaning, and the afterlife is a lie... wow. That's dark.

This is, of course, like the last Thor film, a comedy. Yet it simultaneously manages to function asa superb action film while tugging most effectively at the heartstrings. Utterly splendid.

What If... Ultron Won?

 "All those worlds. All that suffering. And you just watched?"

And that's more like it. Wow.

(Bear with me on Sandman: more Netflix issues!)

It's the penultimate episode, so of course they do something different with the format and end in a cliffhanger. It's nice how they very quickly show Ultron destroying all life on Earth, a nice touch being how quickly he dispatches Thanos... and takes all the Infinity Stones. Thus he destroys all sentient life in the universe... via montage. Then he's finished. and has no purpose.

Throughout all this he's opposed by Black Widow and an increasingly despondent Hawkeye, his wife and children certainly dead. Clint's death is brutally and emotionally bleak, followed shortly by Natasha, but Ultron has long since discovered theb Multiverse... and broken the fourth wall by challenging the Watcher. In a nice touch, he calls him "creepy"!

And so the Watcher must break his oath, in a way which nicely deconstructs the entire premise of the series in ways that, of course, the eponymous comic book did many times, but still packs a punch here. It's magnificently done.

What If... Thor Were an Only Child?

 "We never get to fire the nukes...!"

I think it's fair to say this is a lighter episode in both senses. Yes, it's light-hearted and yes, it's funny... but it's not that funny. And, as it's fairly lightweight in every other respect, having little of substance to say, it nearly needs to be funnier than it is in order to be more than ok.

The premise is that Frigga and Odin never adopt Loki, and Thor therefore develops into a bit of a frat boy, spending the whole episode partying on Earth.

The episode plays everything for laught. Countries are emblazoned with their names, as we see Thor hurl Captain Marvel from land named "France" to land named "United Kingdom". The characterisation and dialogue are funny; Jane Foster and Darcy are a great comedy double act. Yes, people act out of character for the sake of having witty lines and visuals, but an episode like this can get away with that.

This isn't unfunny. There's nothing wrong with it. It's just... well, ok.

The Lord of the Rings- The Rings of Power: Adar

 "The sea is always right..."

Wow. This episode has blown it all wide open. We are suddenly immersed in charactewrs we know from The Lord of the Rings, both the novel(s) and the films. Last episode we had Gil-Galad. Now we find ourselves in Numenor, a name I recognise, a Western island kingdom. Yet Galadriel and Halbrand are introduced to Elendil, the captain of the ship, and his son is a cadet... Isildur. We know these names. My memory is shaky, but will not Aragorn cry into battle crying "Elendil"? Will not Isildur found the Kingdom of Gondor? This is epic stuff. I mean, yes, I read the appendices to Tolkien's masterwork. But that was in another century.

We have conflict. The people of Numenor fought amongst the elves but now hate them. Why? The king was deposed for suppoireting them. Oh, and we have the bombshell that Halbrand is the exiled king of the Southlands... and that Sauron is building a base there. Is this a proto-Mordor?

We have brutal enslavement of elves, including Arandir, by orcs who are certainly shown to be evil, but not stupid. Arandir proves himself to be pretty awesome...but has to face "Adar". Sauron?

Speaking of Sauron, I thought the stranger who appeared to the Hsrfoots was him. I'm now fairly sure he isn't, and another theory is correct. I Shall be discreet, though...

This episode is MUCH better. I'm very pleased.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (2019)

 "Dude, you're on fire!"

This film is, perhaps, a little slow at first. But it's slow for a reason and, as with anything written and shot by Vince Gilligan, it has real depths. For this is a characyer study of one Jesse Pjnkman, a man who has been enslaved and caged for months, and who is suffering intense PTSD at the start of the film. We have various flashbacks, all meaningful, all riffing on what's happening in the present day, one at the end featuring a welcome cameo for Bryan Cranston as Walter White.

But this is a film about how Jesse overcomes his PTSD to become a badass, and to have the chance to start a new life. We see the highly disturbing flashbacks of his life in captivity, and get to know at closequarters just how disturbing Todd is. It goes without saying that Jesse Plemons and, especially, Aaron Paul are magnificent.

It's a slow burn. This, crucially, is not an action film, and won't be enjoyed by those looking for one. But I'm watching it a mere couple of weeks after marathoning all of Breaking Bad. I know what it means to show such guts with those two fake cops; with that very particular vacuum cleaner salesman who can make one disappear; and that Wild West shootout.

Jesse grows so much as a character, if one sees this film as a continuation of Breaking Bad. Those two fake cops waste their money on girls and drugs in a way Jesse once did. But no more. He wants a new start, a new life in, er, Alaska. And he gets it.

This is a philosophical film, not an action thriller. Watch it with that in mind, and it's the perfect coda.

Queen Elizabeth II

 This is weird. More upsetting than this quasi-republican had expected. And more momentous and consequential to so many more people than I can appreciate.

The world isn’t divided nearly into royalists and republicans. There are lots of people, like me, who are less neatly defined. If a republican starts making points about why monarchy shouldn’t exist I’ll probably nod and say “yep” at every point until they’ve finished. Then I’d quietly ask them whether they thought our current generation of politicians were sufficiently honourable and sagacious to be entrusted with major rewrites to the Constitution.

That’s the point, really. Republicanism is fine in the abstract, but we don’t live in the abstract. We are not the Thirteen Colonies between 1783 and 1787. The world just won’t leave us alone for a few years while some Enlightenment intellectuals write us a constitution. The known is imperfect. But we cannot be sure that that the unknown will be better in our imperfect world.

We are where we are. The monarchy exists. The job of monarch exists. And Elizabeth II did it bloody well. For someone who has always avoided royal gossip like the plague, I’ll miss her, and I’m finding this strangely upsetting.

What If... Killmonger Rescued Tony Stark?

 "You believe the cure for human suffering is more suffering?"

This is a fascinating episode. Killmonger saves Tony Stark... so he remains a playboy and never becomes Iron Man, leading to so much stuff not happening. For much of the episode we have basically decent but still very playboy Tony Stark.

But that's not what this episode is about.

It's about Erik Killmonger, and his lifelong concealed rage. Rage against racism. Rage against colonial exploitation. A rage that leads him to use Ulysses Klaw while he remains useful but kills him as soon as he slips into very Sith Efrican casual racism redolent of those days, within living memory, when South Africa was not so civilised. 

Stark still tries to be a hero in the end, but Killmonger is a fascinating and complex character amongst many in a nuanced and highyly satisfactory episode that packs so much into half an hour.

It's great to hear the voice of Chadwick Boseman. He's in this a lot, and he must have been dying. Was he too sick to appear on film but determined to make as much of a mark as he could in the time he had left? A sad thought.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power- Adrift

 "The tides of fate are flowing..."

This episode, it has to be said, is a fair bit slower and less gripping than the promising opener. It really does drag, which is worrying. A slow pace is fine if you're having fun or lost in good characterisation, but a serious epic like this can't afford to drag. I hope this doesn't continue.

It's pity, as there's actually a lot going on. That strange tramp, fallen from the sky, being looked after by those Harfoot children... is he Sauron, or is this a bit of misdirection? Then there's this beautiful creation Lord Celebrimbor wishes to do... will this end up being the Nine Rings? The series title may, after all, be a clue.

Orcs, rot and entropy seem to be spreading into human and Harfoot lands, hence great migrations. Galadriel meets someone who finally challenges her in ways she may need. And Elrond learns a lesson in manners for those not so long lived as he, while we get to admire the drwarves of Khazzad-Dun, while secrets are kinted at.

There's a lot of good stuff here. But it all happened far too ponderously.

The Sandman: Playing House

 "I'm sure he's fine..."

This is, once again, rich and textured drama with much to say about dreams, both literal and in terms of ambition- Hal, whose ambitions were thwarted, quite rightly has words on that subject to say to Rose.

Yet drems, even nightmares, have dreams. Dream is too quick to believe all is solved when he "saves" Jed's night-time existence from Gault, who wishes only to give Jed some comfort as he is horribly abused in real life. She is punished by a hasty Dream, yet she has harsh and pointed worfds for him. All of us can change anf grow, even, I'm sure, if we are manifestations of abstract concepts.

Abstract concepts abound here. The nature of home. The temptations of dreams- for Jed, as the Golden Age Sandman, a nice touch, but also for Lyra, tempted into idyllic family life by the dreaming ghost of her dead husband. Drwams and ambitions versus the unambitious yet easy life.

Yet this is really about character- Rose, Jed, Hal, the whole wonderful Florida family. Dream, so kind to Rose and so unthinkingly cruel to Gault. Hal, who I hope comes to realise their dreams.

Loving this. Sadly,there';s not long to go.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power- A Shadow of the Past

"We thought our light would never dim..."

 Fear not: Netflix problems are now solved and I'll be carrying on with Sandman alongside What If. However, I absolutely had to add this rather exciting little series to my schedule. I'll alternate all three until I reach the point, very soon, where I'm only able to watch one episode a week of this. That's the forseeable future.

I knew very little of this going in except that it was set well before the Third Age- the First Age, presumably?- and based on those appendices to Lord of the Rings that I last read at a very young age. So it was pleasing to see how well made this is, and hoe epic it feels, beginning with a bit of narration from Galadriel herself on the early days of Valinor, the centuries-long war (no doubt Tolkien's allegory for 1914-18), and the slinking away of Sauron and his orcs, leading to Galadriel's obsession. Galadrielis the main focus here, the Cassandra who insists Sauron is still a threat yet seems to be ignored, but we see lots of visual Elven awesomeness. We also get much of a very young Elrond... and finally get to meet the legendary Gil-Galad.

We also have some human villages, with elves still seeing humans as tainted from their erstwhile loyalty to Morgoth. So it's an interesting twist to have an elf- Arondir- in love with a human, Bronwyn, both of them going AWOL to investigate disturbing portents from the East of disease and decay.

Finally, we have the Harfoots, progenitors of Hobbits, recognisable similar but just a little wilder and less technologically advanced, with Lenny Henry excellent as their wise and troubled leader.

There's a lot going on, but the characters are alrewady distinct and clear, and thisall feels very big indeed. I'm already enjoying this.

The Big Sleep (1946)

 "I don't slap so good around this time of the evening..."

I'm beginning, now I've seen enough 1940s film noirs to at least begin to have opinions about them, to bloody love them. Oh, some of the social attitudes of this film have dated a bit- see the quote. But the writing, the direction, the acting, the dialogue... these are real people, and the film feels somehow more modern and more grown-up than any modern film. Then again, William bloody Faulkner co-scripted.

I've read the original novel, but in another century. I remembered literally nothing so watched the film unspoiled, but loved all the Raymond Chandler tropes- the several femme fatales in this film; the witty dialogue; the fact that, should thinhgs be threatening tomfizzle out, a man with a gun will appear.

Yet the complex and very Chandleresque plot- at once intricate and probably improvised- comes across well on film. And the chemistry, and very unconventional romance, sort of, between Marlowe and Vivian Rutledge, is exquisite. But we know that Bogart and Bacall are always going to be sublime. It seems they were having an affair during filming. That's not surprising.

Martha Vickers deserves enormous praise too, though, as a decadent drug addicted spoiled little rich girl. She's extraordinatry. And so are the twists and turns of the plot. You can even forgive the film for featuring loads and loads of torrential rain.., in LA.

This film is superb. If you haven't seen it, do so. It really is that good.

Rashomon (1950)

 "It's not as thougfh men are reasonable."

I call it the Citizen Kane factor. A film can be pretty much sublime yet the hype is such that it cannot be lived up to. Incredibly, this is not the case here, much as the treatment of rape and misogyny is ambiguous... but even there we have wiggle room.

We have three contrasting narratives surrounding a rape and murder, confusing and philosophically troubling our two main narrators, stunned and downcast by their experiences as the rain splashes symbolically. The direction, this being Kurosawa, is excellent. Suspense, unease and uncertainty are constantly with us, somewhat but not quite akin to the grammar of a horror film in the cinematography, camera movements and, not to be underemphasised, the music.

All three narrative arise from trestimonies to unseen judges, and we see all from a judge's point of view, explicitly made to judge for ourselves. All contradict. All, bizarrely, confess openly to the killing. The rape is, well, not really treated by mediaeval society as something that matters, although the film sort of accepts its effect, although the treatment is extremelt troubling. In one, the husband hates his wife, rejects her and calls her a whore after the rape, making him no better than the rapist and a total piece of ****. The male narrators talk of women "leading them on" and display troubling attitudes- and most of the inconsistent narratives give a troubling account of the woman accepting her rapist and insisting on "manly" fighting to the death between the two men. This is, to say the least, uncomfortable.

Yet this can, I suppose, be seen as the attitudes of unreliable and misigynistic narrators. But perhaps I do the film too much credit. This is Japan in 1950, in turn recreating a mediaeval Japan.

I can't deny, though, that this extraordinary exploration of the sliupperiness of truth, of human dishonesty and self-deception rings very true today, as the deluded and incredibly stupid supporters of would-be tyrant Trump continue to lie and lie and lie.

What If... Zombies?"

 "Do you guys just not have horror movies in Wakanda?"

"We don't need them. We have American reality shows."

Bear with me with Sandman; technical difficulties with Netflix. The Marvel stuff will continue on schedule. I may choose to alternate it with something else for the duration, but anyway...

After last episode's seriousness, here we get a load of fun. It's nt very complicated plot-wise, just taking all the zombie tropes and running with them. I stopped reading comics all but completely n '93-94ish, with the odd exception, after being a pretty much full-on True Believer at that point: I discovered rock music. Hence I know little of the whole "Marvel Zombies" thing.

But this is enormous fun. The Point of Departure is simple, but makes sense: Janet Van Dyne was a zombie who infected Hank Pym in the Quantum Zone, and so on. We have superhero zombies. We have a crew of random motley surviving superheroes. We have the requisite heroic sacrifice from a heroic hero, in this case the Wasp. We have a mini-sanctuary with the Vision, rather cleverly, as being an android he's "not on the menu", but it turns out he's not to be trusted due to his love for Zombie Wanda. Nice twist. And nice use of the Hulk.

And of course we have a, well, maxi-sanctuary in the form of Wakanda, humanity's last hope, where the survivors head, hoping to cure zombie-ism...

After which zombie Thanos is waiting to snap. Nice twist, again.

This is fun, not too serious but that makes it no less witty nor clever.