Fool Me Once: Episode 6

 "You keep sytumbling over dead bodies, don't you, Maya?"

A grumble, before the praise begins. I know I've whinged a lot about Kierce getting called "Detective Kierce" rather than "Detective Inspector", but this time his boss gets called "Captain Proctor" rather than Detective Chief Inspector Proctor". I don't mind a bit of adaptation to a largely American audience- this is Netflix- but things like that really take away the realism.

That aside, this episode is superb. The plot twists and turns like a twisty-turny thing yet again, and in a hugely entertaining manner. There are shocks and bombshells all the time, not least at the very end- did Joe really kill Andrew? But that's not all. What's Corey really after? Did he kill Tommy Dark? Is Judith, as I now suspect, a red herring?  Is Joe alive after all? There's a lot to uncover, I have no idea whats happening, yet we're really quite close to the end.

Yet, despite all this, this is all about Sami Kierce and his coming to terms with things, along with the help of his loving, lovely fiancee. Adeel Akhtar is once again sublime in a role that really showcases his talents. This is all about the shocks and the plot equivalent of jump scares, it's got no deeper subtext I can discern, but I'm loving the ride... and the characters feel very real.

Better Call Saul: Pinata

 "Get rich quick schemes never work."

The saddest scene, and also the most revealing, is where Jimmy visits HHM to pick up his $5,000. The firm, and Howard, are struggling... and it is all, of course, the fault of Jimmy, who destroys all he touches. Worse, HE tells HOWARD that hes a "****** lawyer" and much better at being a salesman. Pot, kettle...

Jimmy's only talent is the gift of the gab. The episode begins with a fadscinating flashback to Jimmy's mailroom days. We see a brilliant, triumphant Chuck and intern Kim, clearly going places. No one sees Jimmy as important. Cut to today... and Kim is still awesome, clearly held back by Jimmy, going places as he sells phones to the dodgy.

Jimmy has a brutal side, too, as we discover when he deals with the three ne-er-do-wells who attacked him last episode. But nowhere near as brutal as Gus. Giancarlo Esposito has a truly chilling, sublime monologue, making it clear he wants Hector alive and conscious just so he can suffer. Brr.

Gus trusts Mike increasingly, though, his fixer and reliable lieutenant already. Mike is fascinating, working for some dodgy people while also being a good family man, making amends with his daughter-in-law, with whom he has a genuinely sweet relationship. These characters, all of them, are very, very real people. This is, as ever, close to televisual perfection.

The Red Beret (1953)

 "There are two kinds of men who jump- those who are crazy and those who are stupid."

This is, I suppose, a fairly standard British war film, despite the fact that it happens to have an American star in the person of a notably getting-on-a-bit Alan Ladd. And it's a good, exciting bit of adventure with a nice bit of characterisation- McKendrick is an American pretending to be Ameriucan who has joined the parachute regiment here in Blighty.

Now, I'm a bit scared of heights. Not to extremes- I'll travel by plane (well, maybe, these days I'd have to think about the fossil fuels), but I'll go a bit quiet at takeoff and landing. But there's absolutely no way you'll ever get me in a parachute. I could never, ever, jump off a plane, even with a modern, much safer parachute. But back then... the early scene where the poor instructor "Roman candles" and plummets to his doom is existentially horrifying. The fear of that happening, much more likely then than it would be now, is unimaginable. But these men would do that and then go straight into combat.

There's nothing particularly outstanding about this film, it's no all-time classic, but it impresses simply by being very good and getting the basics right. The cast isn't that stellar but it does the job. The story, characterisation and script are impressive without necessaily being up there with the best. The tyrannical Scottish sergeant major is a nicely done little knowing stereotype. It's short, entertaining and worth a watch.

Batman: Slaves of the Rising Sun

"You and all your Axis cronies... you're through!"

A lot happens in this episode between the two cliffhangers of the railway bridge and the van going off a cliff. One of Daka's hoods, having failred in his mission and turned agaimnst Daka, is foolish enough to stand right on top of the trap door and ends up fed to Daka's aligators in that spendid supervillain trope. Some sake is drunk. There's a fortune teller and a switcheroo, a car chase, Batman firing the radium gun.

But... well, again it's the staggering levels of racism, even taking full account of the context, that stands out here. I know we had one staggeringly racist line in the first episode, but this time we get "That's the kind of answer that fits the colour of your skin."

Yes. Really. That line is literally in this episode. Wow.

I'm lefdt wondering just how much more we'll see that's at this level. Jingoism, anti-Japanese sentiment, even a bit of mild xenophobia could be largely explained by the context. But this? Wow.

Fool Me Once: Episode 5

 "The rich protect each other..."

The plot continues to be splendidly convoluted. Corey knows the Burketts are mixed up in some seriously bad criminal stuff, possibly involving Joe. The plot thickens, too, around his late brother Andrew andthat sinister public school. Another kid, a working class outsider turned popular achiever, dies of "alcohol poisoning" shortly before Andrew's apparent suicide. And yeah, the headmaster is definitely hiding something. 

In support of the "evil Burketts" theory is Judith's continued creepiness. She's a psychiatrist, making veiled threats to institutionalise Maya, having altready renfdered her daiughter Caroline a madwoman in the attic. Brr. Meanwhile, Eddie continues to be decent and his daughter has her own fascinating plot thread.

Oh, and there's a storage place. With at least one frozen body in it. Literal Brr.

But the real emotional core here, of course, is with Inspector Kierce and the sublime performance of Adeel Akhtar who, cruelly, as he's about to become a husband and father, faces a truly horrible fate. 

Again, this is perhaps not exactly oozing with subtext. It's a whodunit-cum-melodrama.But it's bloody good melodrama.

What If... Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?

 "'Twas only two hours prior, and the Tower was not yet on fire..."

I know, it's late January, and I'm doing the Christmas episode of What If?. I still have Echo to go, plus all the non-MCU stuff I'm doing. This may not quite be the furthest behind I've ever been but, well, I'm juggling all this with Twin Peaks, Fool Me Once, Better Call Saul, Batman and really need to get back to Robin of Sherwood soon. Aaargh.

Anyway, this is a nice little comedy episode with lots of witty lines, lots of fun and allusions to just how many years Darcy has been at uni, just how many intern placements she's had, and how little Happy (or "Hulk Hogan", as jhe's nicknamed by a very naughty Justin Hammer) is probably being paid for all he's going through.

This is all a bit of a subtle allusion to the not-so-good old days before David Michelinie's first run on the Iron Man title, when Happy would regularly turn into a bizarre creature called, yes indeed, "the Freak". But the episode manages to get away with it, mainly by just being very funny indeed.

Good stuff. Although not necessary the standard programming...

Better Call Saul: Quite a Ride

 "You can't play chicken with me. I invented chicken."

It's a fascinating choice that this episode, filled with notably creative directorial choices even by the standards of Better Call Saul, begins with a flash forward to the very end of Breaking Bad, showing us the offices of Saul Goodman for the first time,or the last time, depending on your perspective. Saul's... Jimmy's last goodbye to Francesca is as awkward as it was always going to be. It's the end of Jimmy's life as anuything other than monochrome mediocrity and paranoia, reminding us that yes, he may seem to get away with his morally dodgy choices while others suffer, but karma will be back to punish him in the end.

Jimmy's behaviour here is typically cynical. Instead of honestly selling phones in the shop, he goes out at night to sell to the mildly criminal, grey market semi-undrrworld, only to be mugged for his pains: on this one occasion, karma is more immrediate, and he seems to learn his lesson and go back to orthodoxy. At his typically hmilating meeting with his parole officer, he seems resigned to biding his time until he can hopefully get his law licence back. And... we've seen where that ultimately leads.

Meanwhile, he continues to slowly ruin the lives of others around him. Kim really damages her reputation with her Mese Verde clients because she's having to take on other work to support Jimmy. And Howard, being a decent sort, seems to be falling apart with all the guilt. Guilt that rightly belongs to Jimmy.

And yet, while elsewhere we see Jimmy with his dodgy ways, and how he damages the lives and careers of thosearound him, we end the episode with a German structural emngineer bimpressing Gus with his consummate professionalism. Professionalism with not a Jimmy in sight.

Superb telly, obviously.

Dogma (1999)

 "Bethany, bless the sink!"

I watched, and enjoyed this film, many years ago but, as often happens as the decades pass- and I am not, you understand, in any way confessing to being middle aged- I remembered very litttle. Last night was pretty much a second first viewing.

And it's superb. As a comedy, it's bloody good, with a constant stream of laughs. Linda Fiorentino is perfect as the star. Chris Rock and Alan Rickman are both brilliant. George Carlin is perfect casting as a down-with-the-kids cardinal. Some dodgy angel wing CGI aside- and we can be forgiving, because it's 1999- there's not much wrong with this.

It is, of course, a very different beast from the very '90s slacker romantic comedies for which Kevin Smith had previously been known, although there's a fair bit of that sort of thing here. But the religious stuff is obviously going to come across as provocative, not least with Bethany working at an abortion clinic and (spoilers!) the plot requiring God's life support machine to be switched off. Casting Alanis Morissette as God is, of course, entirely uncontroversial.

And yet... I don't get this film to be mocking faith, or religion itself, in any way, but rather the reactionary and socially conservative structure that eventually inserts itself around every religion. I've never had any religious faith myself, I wasn't brought up with it and am simply unable to believe in something without empirical proof, but even I was moved by Bethany's drunken nostalgia for a time when she had a childlike, simple faith. But perhaps this film also hints at a deeper truth. Divine or not, this Jesus person seems to have been anything but conservative.

What If... Peter Quill Attacked Earth's Mightiest Heroes?

 "Bummer. I thought you were the dude from Van Halen."

Yes, I know. I'm doing so much telly at the moment, and it's a struggle to keep up. I blame all the new telly. There's this, there's Fool Me Once, there's Echo after this. I fear that Twin Peaks and the Batman movie serial may have to take a very temporary back seat, but they're very much ongoing. Same with Robin of Sherwood.

Anyway, I enjoyed this. There's character stuff with PeterQuill as a kid with Ego as the main threat. There is, perhaps, an overly neat resolution. But it's fun seeing an Avengers team form in 1988. We get a young Hank Pym, Bill Foster, and the fortysomethings are represented by T'Chaka... and both Peggy and Howard must be nearing retirement age. Peggy isn't aging bad. The Winter Soldier is well handled, though, and Thor is fun. 

One complaint, though: the United States has many fine ales and a proud brewing traditiob. But its bottled "light beers" are unfit for human consumption. Thor and T'Chaka endorsing "light beer" is the most unrealistic thing in this episode.

Fool Me Once: Episode 4

 "Boom!"

Grr. I know I've spent half these reviews moanimg about Kierce being referred to as "Detective" rather than "Inspector" and saying that this is not America... but this time we get "DUI", goddammit.

That aside, though, this is bloody good telly. It twists and turns, in the words of the great Lord Melchett, like a twisty-turny thing. I won't recount said twists and turns of the plot... but damn, there are some superb character moments here, triumphs of writing and acting.

Joanna Lumley is wonderful as the evil mother-in-law from Hell, pretty much threatening to put Maya in a psychiatric ward as she claims to have done with her daughter Caroline. And that shot of Caroline in the upstairs window... brr! Then there's the sweet, mutually respectful reconciliation between Maya and Eddie. And then we have Kierce and his underling being open with one another, about blackouts and sexual orientation resprectively. 

Perhaps even more interesting, though, is the thoughtful little chat between Maya and her erstwhile nemesis, Corey the Whistle. There's a kind of mutual regard there, too, and it feels plausible.

Halfway through. Lots of twisting and turning to go. It'sa fun ride.

Fool Me Once: Episode 3

 "Life-ruining rat!"

Deep breath. Lots of rabbit holes here. So...

The red car belongs to Corey the Whistle, who had dodgy arrangements with both Claire and Joe, feeding him info to protect Maya... infor for whi they both deied. Info about the Burketts? They're certainly paying off a lot of person. And that Neil (the third Burkett brother?) certainly seems dodgy. Which probably, of course, makes him the red herring.

Of course, I'm sure there's a lot to be revealed about what truly happened with Maya's apparent war crime- we're certainly being teased a lot. Then there's Claire's kids investigating a tech bro ex of their mother's, whose firm has a weird, QR code-flashing robot thingy.  Oh, and one of the motorbiokes from Joe's murder is linked to that unpleasant football coach. and the cliffhanger... wow.

And yet... what really impresses is the characters. Michelle Keegan is great, of course. But Adeel Akhtar also impresses as the able but world-weary DI Kierce (again, stop calling him "Detective Kierce!: this is not America!), a very well-rounded character. I'm still not sure this is about anything beyond the thrills... but does it have to be?

Fool Me Once: Episode 2

 "Lying's never good policing."

No, DI Kierce. And nor is lying by omission to your fiancee about your blackouts while being open to them to yoiur dodgy Alcoholics Anonymous counsellor. You need to stay away from that semi-cult for a start, but at least on this occasion she gives good advice. Get tested. And bloody tell your fiancee, who miraculously failed to spot anything dodgy after your very well-shot breakfast blackout.

Meanwhjile, in some ways, the plot advances quietly. In other ways it doesn's, as Maya finds a lead to ploice don't suspect- Claire had a secret phone which she used only for talking to someone at a retro gaming arcade. Was she having an affair with Joe, as the police (and Eddie) suspdct? I don't think so. I think it was a very different secret, and connected to all the dodgy cult stuff.

Then there's the photos of a young Claire, developed by her kids- and, incidentally, her son doesn't understand why the camera doesn't have a screen. I feel old- in which shre's pregnant with another child from before she met their dad. We see the reading of Joe's willpostponed by the lack of a death certificate, and we meet KJoe's likeable sister, Caroline, who has her own suspicions that not only Joe but his brother Andrew may not be dead.

Oh, and one final bombshell: Joe's family are paying Kierce a load of money every month. Conflict of interest much? But I suspect eve this is not what it seems. Nothing is. This is quite the most twisty-turny bit of telly I can remember ever seeing. I'm not sure if it's all that deep behind all these whodunit equivalent of jump scares, but my God I'm loving the ride.

Twin Peaks: Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer

"Fire, walk with me..."

This, if you'll recall, is the third episode, and the one I inadvertentle skipped, having watched and blogged Episode Five. Now, thankfully, linear chronology is restored. And gosh... it would have been damned useful to have watched this episode in its proper place.

It is, perhaps, my favourite thus far, dreamlike from the very first scene in which Ben's brother Jerry (ha!) returns from Paris to interrupt an awkward, silent dinner where the wine is served from a decanter and a Native American bloke in full headdress just happens to be sitting at table, saying and doing nothing. We then proceed to learn of One Eyed Jack's.

We learn much more, too. How increasingly suspicious Leo is becoming. Jocelyn's discovery of the two sets of accounts.We meet Albert, FBI forensic genius and the rudestv man in America. And Agent Cooper's bizarre thing with the bottle, arising from dreams and Tibet, which both functions as a rather nice bit of exposition and actually gets Sheriff Truman to think more highly of him.

But then we get to the drewam itself and... oh my.This is peak David Lynch. It is a thing of beauty. I'm sure it all means something, if not necessarily in a linear way, which, i Suppose, makres it rather appropriate that I've inadvertently made a non-linear mishap. I shall endeavour not to do it again.

Fool Me Once: Episode 1

 "Duran Duran came on the radio and he's never even heard of them...!"

Aboiut time I got round to this new-ish thriller on Netflix which everyone is talking about: my very lovely partner has convinced me and now I see to be quite hopelessly addicted. And yeah, I know I'm blogging loads of different things and this is one more... but it was ever thus with this blog. It’s what I do.

So on the surface the conceit is simple. Maya, a former soldier (she loved combat and was addicted to it, an interesting character trait!) sees her husband Joe, from a much posher family than her, gunned down by apparent motorcylist muggers. Some time later, by means of a "nanny cam" (don't ask), she appears to see her late husband with her young daughter. Did this really happen? Or is this one of the many visions she's been having?

Also... is she the killer? Yeah, I know, she's the protagonist and there are unwritten rules of TV drama, so she probably isn't. But Detective Inspector Sami Kierce (not "Detective Kierce", please: this is not America) hasn't ruled her out. After all, her sister was recently killed, and her widower wants Maya to stay away from his daughters because "death follows you". Ouch. Indeed, we learn that both murders were done using the same gun.

There's dodginess in her past, too. Her old army mates seem to like her, but was she really dishonourably discharged for killing innocent civilians? Is there a connectioin with her murky past? I think we know there is.

But then we end with a bombshell. Maya's posh mother-in-law, Judith, is somewhat overbearing- I've had worse, mind- and there's a real subtext of snobbery. Except... we begin with a flashback to 1996, a private school, and some sort of Dennis Wheatley-style Satanic ritual. Then,  in the final scene, we realise this all pertains to Joe's younger brother, who died that year at seventeen. Does all this creepy aristcratic weirdness link to all this? We know it does.

Aaaargh. The tension is all coiled up like a spring. But I'll be good. Another episode tomorrow. And I'm not promising just the onre...

They Came from Beyond Space (1967)

 "I will not have sentiment interfering with our vital work!”

I knew, before watching, only that Amicus made this film at the same time as Daleks: Invasion Earth: 2150 AD, and reused some sets, costumes or whatnot.

Having seen it last night, though, I strongly suspect another Doctor Who connection. Yes, this is basically a cheeky rip-off of Quatermass II, both in terms of the plot and in terms of having an American star amongst an otherwise all-British cast. If you’ll forgive a brief Doctor Who fanboy diversion, though, I strongly suspect Robert Holmes saw this film, at the pictures, a couple of years before writing Spearhead from Space. I suspect said story’s debt to Nigel Kneale comes at least partly via this film, which not only has the plot based on alien meteorites leading to mysterious alien doings, but has as its hero an endearingly rude scientist with a vintage car. Yes, quite.

Rip-off it is, but the film is rather good. The cast may be fairly low-wattage, but they do a good job. The visuals are nicely trippy in a 1967 way, making this rather old-fashioned sort of film look relatively contemporary. It does, admittedly, run out of both ideas and budget once the story leaves Earth, but the rather sudden conclusion is brilliantly hilarious in a way which must surely have been intended. Let us just say that the cameo by Michael Gough is… unique.

This film is utterly bonkers. I can’t call it a classic, but I can say it’s thoroughly enjoyable.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

This is a compelling, addictive, novel, one which I've found it very difficuklt to put aside every now and again for, you know, eating, seeping, that sort of thing. But it's odd. It's one of six detective novels by Josephine Tey featuring a Detective Inspector Alan Grant, the last of them before Tey sadly died. However, the other fice in the series are not widely read today. This particular novel is very unusual for an award winning whodunit.

Simply put, our inspector is laid up in hospital with a broken leg, he's bored out of his skull, and he ends up looking into the deaths of the Princes in the Tower and pondering whether the murderer was Richard III, as popularly supposed, or someone else.

It sounds simple. But what makes this novel compelling is the how. This is an investigation where we're really shown the working. All of the primary evidence, all the facts, are lain before us an analysed, and a modern (well, 1951) police approach is taken. The reasoning, and the conclusions, feel pretty damn rigorous, although other views of the case are available. 

I suppose, like the Jack the Ripper TV series from the '70s I recently blogged where the conceit was two fictional detectives investigating the murders in a documentary in the form of a drama, this may be seen as factual history dressed up as fiction. Yet the prose, the plotting, the characterisation, all are superb. 

This novel is a veritable Class A substance.

Twin Peaks: The One-Armed Man

 "In real life, there is no algebra..."

Bums. Just belatedly realised that, because of how the episodes are displayed on the DVD, I inadvertently missed the third episode, so the last one I blogged was ion fact the fourth. Aaaargh. That's incredibly annoying. I'll blog the third one next, then onwards.

Anyway...

I think, given how damned complicated things are getting- although, I'll note, it's not that hard to follow, which is a triumph of storytelling- I'm not going to be too thorough about discussing plot developments in these blog posts. So many characters, so many connections between them, so many secrets... and the point is not so much the endless mystery as the mood, in any case. And plenty of it.

Leland's chat with Leo is a surprise, though. And it's interesting how multiple characters are now having seemingly precognitive dreams. There's feeling here, too: Shelly's domestic abuse by Leo isn't treated lightly. We meet Hank, unexpectedly successful in his parole hearing, which is going to cause problems.. 

But mostly this is where the weirdness creeps in a little more. The goings-on are becoming more and more absurd. I'm minded of how the investigation takes a turn towards parrots and mynah birds. The absurdity, of course, is by no means a bad thing. This is the world of David Lynch. So much weirdness, so many symbols. Does any of it mean anything? Does it matter? I'm engrossed.

Batman: The Mark of the Zombies

 "I suggest that you adopt an attitude of fatal tresignation..."

This is the episode where, predictably, Linda's uncle gets zombified by Daka, in a suiably bonkers machine which reminds me of a pound shop version of the device from Bride of Frankenstein, a fairly recent film at this point. Daka is a properly moustache-twirling baddie and... yeah, even his henchmen are racist about him behind his back. I've learned, since last episode, that J. Carroll Naish was originally set to play the Joker, and you can kind of see with the costume and the hideout. Instead... oh dear. There's a danger of actually getting desensitised to the racism.

Awkwardly, though, this is actually pretty good for a movie serial.The cliffhanger resolution is actually ok. Daka's train robbery plan is cool, as is Bruce's plan to trap Daka with the newspsaper advert, which Daka sees through... only for the Batman to see through said, er, seeing through.

This is massively formulaic but, hey, it's a movie serial. So far, if it wasn't for the racism, I'd be quite impressed.

Better Call Saul: Talk

 "The one after that, she stabbed her boyfriend over a grilled cheese sandwich..."

Just realised the judge in this, whose hearings are being "observed" by Kim for some reason, is Neelix from Star Trek: Voyager. Wow. (And yes, I do plan at some point to do the whole Star Trek marathon thing, but let's not rush...) 

Anyway, this is one of those quietly fascinating characterisation-based episodes that usually means it's all about to kick off. Everyone gets some sort of development here.

Mike gets a little support group plot, eposing a fraud and flirting a bit with Anita, while showing just how good he is at this security consultant lark. But, inevitably, he's summoned by a superbly menacing Gus, and is clearly about to start Tthe kind of work for him that we recall from Breaking Bad. Impressively, he's low key accused of not being open about the Nacho thing... and gets to maintain his alpha male status in front of Gus himself. Impressive.

Then there's Jimmy, moving a little apart ftrom Kim, waking symbolically alone and reacting in a very Jimmyish way to her suggestion of a shrink. Interswstingly, he self-sabotages a job offer only to reverse course and take up a soul-destroying job... only to make a hell of a lot more money from the illicit exploits from last episode. Legitimacy, it seems, doesn't pay. Jimmy's immediate reaction is, shall we say, interesting.

But Nacho. Oh, Nacho. The webs we weave. We get to see, all from his POV, the deaths and the bloodshed madevnecessary by his lies. And, as we realise at the episode's end, Gus knows. But we always knew, didn't me? From Giancarlo Esposito's facial acting alone. What a show.

Tenet (2020)

 "We are being attacked from the future."

This is one of those Christopher Nolan films that are a massive puzzle box, like Inception and The Prestige, if not quite as good as those two. How much you enjoy these types of film depends on whetheryou like a film to be a puzzle box, in this case a big timey-wimey palindrome thingy. 

Confession time: yes, I understood the broad nature of the plot, but I immediately went on to watch a YouTube video to so I understood it... well, "fully" is an awfully strong word. Again, there will be those who, understandably,don't fancy the idea of a fil that takes effort, and even multiple viewings,to work out what's going on,especially if said film happens to be two and a half hours long.

It's worty it, though. This film is extraordinary, and it's a shame how a certain spiky virus sort of sabotaged it at the box office, although admittedly that's hardly the worst of the many sins of said virus.

The central concept is fantastic- inversion of entropy, meaning that an object or person can be "inverted", moving backwards through time instead of forwards. Hence, there's a lot of time travel in this film, but you have to live through events in real time, whether forwards or backwards. There are great concepts arising from this, such as the "temporal pincer movement" and the rather clever little time paradoxes around the characters, and particularly around the true nature of John David Washington's Protagonist. The fact he's known only as that is a clue.

It's not all that, of course. There's humour. There's Kenneth Branagh being superb as an evil (is there any other kind?) Russian oligarch. There's a chilling yet tasteful exploration of domestic abuse. There's a delightful cameo from old Michael Caine. This film is a joy.

Twin Peaks: Rest in Pain

 "Twin Peaks is weird..."

You don't say.

This is the episode of Laura Palmer's funeral, and inevitably there's drama, with Bobby calling out the town's hypocrisy and getting in to an altercation with James, no doubt to the intense displeasure of his authoritarian but oddly philosophical father. Poor Leland Palmer makes a spectacle of himself too, showing us the things that grief can do.

Meanwhile, Agent Cooper is puyrsuing the investigation by... analysing a dream he has, which is accepted by all and sundry, including the viewer. In any other show, this would be absurd, but this is the David Lynch dimension.

Various weird plot points advanve a little and, the findings of FBI pathologist Albert aside, the focus moves slightly away from Laura's murder to the town itself, with Albert snobbishly dismissing it as a place full of hicks while Cooper increasing feels affection for its charm and decency. It therefore feels natural when, at the end of the episode, Sheriff Truman includes him in a kind of secret society that exists to combat the, er, "evil" in the woods. 

Thing is, writing it out like that makes it seem silly. But, watching the episode, it works. And that, perhaps, is the key point. We accept and revel in the weirdness. This is oddly compelling television, and unlike pretty much anything else.

The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov

 

Yes, I know, I'm chain reading Isaac Asimov. I'll blog another novel first before I go on to Robots and Empire, honest. To be fair, though, these novels are a Class A substance.

... Which rather spoils from the outset that I very much enjoyed this much-delayed conclusion to the Elijah Baley trilogy. Ah well. And, incidentally, it still doesn't seem to me that Asimov's '80s novels are in any way inferior to his early work. Like Foundation's Edge, this compares very well to its predecessors.

Once again we have a rather agreeableb mix of genuinely clever whodunit, philosophical variations on the Three Laws of Robotics, and pondering on the spacefaring future of mankind. There's also, in the ultimately moribund decadence of the Spacers with their robots, a warning to us all: technology making our lives easier is a double edged sword. We may not, in 2024, have many anthropoid, two-legged robots. But we have Alexa, we have Siri, we have smart speakers: we have robots, just not on two legs. 

Auroran society, while less extreme than that of Solaria, is no less fascinating, although one can't help seeing its casual, easy attitude to sex without thinking of the post-#MeToo reputstion of its author. The troubling consequences of extreme longevity are handled well, as well as a reluctance to engage in political conflict. Baley himself, perhaps, was never the most engaging character, and the love triangle between him, his fawaway wife and Gladia has its awkward side. But no one reads Asimov for characterisation. This is an extraordinary novel of ideas which I thoroughly enjoyed to the point it's genuinely difficult not to just read Asimov after Asimov. But yes, something else first, and something rather different...

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

 " I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it."

This is the first anime, incredibly, that I've blogged. Indeed, it's only the second anime filom I've seen- I saw Akira about twenty years ago, not that I remember much. I have to see some more; this film is superb.

Admittedly, the translated dialogue seems a bit stilted and unnatural, suggesting not so much care has been taken with the translation as would be the case for a live action film, but the film itself can't be blamed for that. The animation is quite brilliant, and the unusual soundtrack extraordinary and atmospheric. Yet what elevates the film to genius is the script.

It's a distant future Japan of 2029(!), and things look and feel very cyberpunk, with cyborgs, corporations, crime and corruption- the three c's of cyberpunk- everywhere. Our protagonists are agents of "Section Nine", rivals to "Section Six", augmented to extremes , including to their brains and memories to the point where it's debatable to what extent they retain the same "self", one of many points made by our philosophical protagonist, Major Kutanagi. Yes, there's a plot full of action and intrigue. And it's nicely done. Yet what lingers in the memory are moments like Kutanagi pointing out that she and her friend Bato would, if they were to retire or resign, have to forfeit all their augmentations- arguably tantamount to losing their sense of self. This is ironic, given the ending, but this line of thinking poses deep, existential questions on the nature of consciousness. We change, evolve and experience life. Are we, therefore, meaningfully the same consciousness as at a given point in the past? Are we sentient, or is the very notion a mere comforting illusion? Is there a self beyond memories? Equally disturbing is the man planted with false memories of a daughter for whom he feels real love, his original memories gone forever.

Yet. if Kutanagi is philosophical, her antagonist the Puppet Master is even more so. The ending is extraordinary. It wasn't what I expected, but this is an extraordinary bit of cinematic hard science fiction.

Motorhead- Overkill (1979)

Happy New Year!

I used to listen to this album a lot in my late teens, but for some reason haven't given it much thought for years. Hearing it again today I'm reminded of why I love it so much.

Then again, we think we know Motorhead, don't we? They're a metal band, right, albeit the metal band that it ewas ok for punks to like before Grunge called a truce between the two genres? 

Wrong. And Lemmy always kept telling us so. They're Motorhead. They play rock'n'roll. Oh, they're heavy, but the songs are very much in the rock'n'roll tradition as much as they obviously owe a lot to the heavy rock of the time. But the songwriting is solid, and the songs are catchy, well-constructed if dsimple, and, well, bangers. There's a reason why this is my favourite Motorhead album, and it's the songs. 

Not, of course, that the playing is anything less than great, or the simple yet clean production. And no, Lemmy's not a great singer, but he's a great frontman- and he writes well for his limited range. But, ultimately, it's about the songs. And I'd quite forgotten how bloody good this collection of songs is.