What If... Agatha Went to Hollywood?

 "Wow! That chemistry was hotter than the Hindenburg!"

I love the style of this, all late '30s Hollywood with opening titles to match, a massive contemporary musical number, pop culture references like the above and the Hollywoodland sign (not Hoyywood, yet) as a nice touch. And it's interesting to mix up Agatha Harkness with the world of Eternals and Celestials and the rapport between Howard Stark and Jarvis that we know so well from Agent Carter.

I'll be honest, though: I've only seen The Eternals once and there hasn't since been much follow-up. I just about remembered the Dreaming Celestial and Arishem's secret agenda to treat Earth as expendable. And if I'm a little vague on this stuff, surely many others, even those who try to keep up with the MCU, like myself, willbe in a similar situation?

Still, this works. I wouldn't say it's an absolute triumph, but it works. Kathryn Hahn can elevate anything just by being herself, and the script has lots of fun and clever touches- I love the bit where Howard casually and cheerfully reveals that he's well aware that Agatha is using real magic and Kingo is a powerful alien robot thingy, but it fine with it as it saves him money on special effects.

Overall, then, a nice little curiosity. And heavy hints that other Celestials will be back for a sequel. I wonder... is this a hint that the Eternals and Celestials will be used again in the MCU at some point?

What if... Captain Carter Were the First Avenger?

 "Who needs a plan? I have shield!"

So Loki has unleashed the Multiverse. Branches now proliferate. So here's the first.

In alternate history (Google the fourm; it's an interest of mine) we have a phrase, the "POD" or point of divergence. Here, it's Peggy choosing to stay, and so becoming the Super Soldier instead of Steve... hence the Captain Carter in Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness.

This is huge fun. Captain America: The First Avenger plays out with Peggy as the hero- allowed to display the Union Flag, for some reason, by Americans of 1943, who would have been somewhat more ambiguous about us.

And it's wonderful. The romance between strong Peggy and War Machine weaking Steve, with a character that wins her heart. The Lovecraftian horror. I love this.

Mamma Mia! (2008)

“Nurse! Donkey testicles, quickly!"

Ok, I suppose after the last few years I can't quite say I don't like musicals. No, I'll never be a huge fan of show tunes, but the genre is much broader than that. But anyone who knows me will know that, open-minded to all sorts of delightfully weird music that I am, I have pretty much zero tolerance for chart pop, which is cynical, depressing, exploitative, unlistenable and vile. So why do I like Abba?

Well, Abba are the poster girls and boys of a more innocent time, when "pop" encompassed a broader range than today's horrible world of girl bands and boy bands, wankers like Cowell and his fellow amoral svengalis, and horribly compressed, autotuned, incredibly narrow "music" that no longer appeals to ordinary people. But Abba? They wrote their on songs, played their own instruments, hurt no one. It was a very different world.

Hence the joyous stage show, and this rather fun film with its inexplicable number of stars. I mean, Meryl Streep? She's incredibly classy, garlanded with Oscars, appears only in the most serious films, is pretty much America's answer to Dame Maggie Smith... yet she deigns to appear in a bit of fun like this. And no, she most certainly cannot sing. But, frankly, who cares? She's giving it a go, as is Pierce Brosnan, whose singing looks good only next to hers.

The plot, bizarrely, with its farcical moments and rigid structure, only needs a bit of crossdressing to look suspiciously like a Shakespeare comedy. But this kind of structure works, and the plot is very cleverly woven around the songs and, while there is conflict and drama, things always remain suitably light and fluffy. A delight.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Hollywood Ending

"I don't speak megalomaniac. Fortunately Mr. Stark does."

I've got a lot of TV series on the go and have started three more lately; time to finish one, I think. And the last episode of this season- indeed, it seems, the last episode ever- delivers in spades.

There are several types of season finales; this one, quite appropriately is a fun romp with lots of action, the good guys winning and Peggy finally getting the guy (Daniel) in a knowingly and delightfully cliched way. But the main thing is, of course, Howard Stark arriving like a whirlwind and, while not saving the day, becoming an indispensable part of the team with his wit and genius and, rather neatly, ending up with giving Jason a job; few others would in the racist 1940s. Even
Manfredi joins in as everyone uses cleverness to stop Whitney at long last. All this, and Howard putting golf balls into the portal to zero matter, as you do.

We end on a cliffhanger, as Jack is mysteriously shot dead and the dirt on Peggy stolen. Will
This ever get resolved? Regardless, this is a superb ending to an excellent two seasons. I'll miss Peggy Carter and co.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Better Angels

"Have you quite finished fannying about?"

So Dr. Jason Wilkes isn't dead after all. Oops. He merely lacks physical substance, which is concerning. How can he eat? Does he need to? Does he get hungry or thirsty? Does he get horny? He and Peggy are certainly getting on well these days, not good news for the very married Jarvis, who holds a torch for Peggy with his employer's blessing.

Ah yes, the magnificent Mr. Howard Stark, who turns up like a hurricane and immediately takes charge. Wit, ladies' man and scientific genius, he oozes charisma and coolness, effortlessly dispelling all by himself the trope that scientist are nerds. He is, in effect, exactly like his son but in the 1940s. He's also pleasingly non-racist, bonding very quickly with Jason.

Stark's cool cleverness allows Peggy to get very sneaky and cook inside a snooty and dodgy posh club, but her and Sousa's corrupted boss isn't having it. They're being taken off the case and Peggy summoned back to New York. Whitney isn't happy either: her infection is spreading and she's just killer her well-connected lover, Calvin. Oops. Another excellent episode.

Oh, and this episode's geekgasm is Kid Colt! All we need now is the Rawhide Kid and things will be perfect.

Agent Carter: Valediction

"I plan a complete and total overhaul of the kitchen spices..."

It's the end of the season and, worryingly, if online gossip is at all reliable, the series. So it's time to thank a certain person for making it possible for seeing these episode. This person goes by the YouTube handle of MrVortexofDOOM and, for those of us who like this sort of thing, his missing episode reconstructions knock Loose Cannon into a cocked hat. So please have a proper look at his channel, press the "like" button, and spread the word.

As we might expect,the episode is topped and tailed with deliberately egregious examples of sexism; we begin with that Captain America radio show again, with its arse-clenching rendition of Peggy's character, and we end with a triumphant Peggy being applauded back into the office, only for official credit to fall to the much less competent, but much more male, Jack Thompson. In between these two bookends are some wonderful things.

Tony Stark gets a baptism of fire; he may now have been cleared, but he's hypnotised to do himself in by taking off in a plane and doing a Steve Rogers. It's an interesting riff on the guilt that he feels about that day, and the fact that it is Peggy who persuades him to come back from the brink speaks volumes about the mutual respect they share, forged in war, in spite of everything.

It's a feelgood ending; Dotty Underwood escapes to strike again, and both Peggy and Angie get to stay together chez Stark. Most touchingly, Jarvis trusts Peggy, and not his employer, with Steve Rogers' blood.

This is a very pleasing finale. It would be awfully good to have a second season now...

Agent Carter: SNAFU

"Have you ever been hanged, Mr. Jarvis?"

"I don't think I have, no."

"It is quite unpleasant."

The penultimate episode, then, and a dramatic one, with Dooley's horrific yet heroic death as its centrepiece; hypnotised into wearing a suicide vest, he heroically defenestrates himself to his doom, and that's a phrase which one doesn't often get a chance to use. Get in.

Peggy's desperate attempts to get the SSR to believe the truth- Dotty Underwood and her hypnotist mate are the baddies- flounder on the usual casual sexism; the assumption, predictably, is that she and Stark had a "thing". Fortunately, the potentially frustrating scenes of the SSR not believing Peggy don't outstay their welcome; the episode soon becomes a gripping thriller. 

After a gripping final scene with gas being released at a cinema we are left eagerly anticipating the finale. Agent  Carter may have suffered some pacing problems in the middle but the concluding episodes have been excellent so far. 

Agent Carter: The Blitzkrieg Button

"Hey, can I borrow the sports section?"

Yes, it's the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, sitting on a park bench. He's 94, you know.

A confession: I have in fact seen the whole series of Agent Carter, having intravenously injected the whole addictive series a few days ago. Try as I might to maintain dramatic irony, I know how it ends. I shall discuss the hows and wherefores at the end, but in the meantime you may wish to look up the YouTube channel of a certain MrVortexofDOOM, especially if you're partial to reconstructions of missing Doctor Who. It's jolly good.

Anyway...

This episode is where we really get to know Howard Stark. Then again, we already do; he's a genius millionaire playboy, exactly like his son, and he does absolutely nothing that you can't imagine being played by Robert Downey Jr. Dominic Cooper is an excellent second best, though. The scenes with him "hiding" in Peggy's apartment are a hoot.

I also loved the '40s science lab, and the proto-James Bond pen. But the episode is mainly about a big plot twist; Howard's big, dangerous MacGuffin is not in fact a big bomb but Steve Rogers' Super Soldier blood. This, naturally, is not without meaning for Peggy. And the temperature is rising for our Peg, technically committing treason although, it must be said, Jarvis seems to be more worried on her behalf than she dies. Their relationship is touching; alone of all the men in this (well, besides Stark), he respects her and I'm so glad there's no suggestion of sexual attraction between them, which would entirely spoil things.

We end, though, with Peggy beginning to harbour doubts about Stark; were all the risks she ran for nothing? And what of her blonde neighbour's propensity for duffing people up? Halfway through, and this is more and more intriguing. This is gripping stuff.

This blog post was brought to you by a man with his baby daughter in one arm, so hopefully there aren't too many typos...!

Marvel's Agent Carter: Now Is Not the End

"You're an agent. They treat you like a secretary."

First impressions count for a lot, which is fortunate, as first signs are great here. Like Mad Men, this miniseries hangs a lot of its charm on recreating the look and feel of the middle of the last century, and succeeds magnificently with the cars, the (awful) clothes and the social mores. There's also more than a little influence from Raymond Chandler, and many of the action sequences look like a film that could star the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

This isn't, despite the presence of Enver Gjokaj, a Mutant Enemy production, and Joss Whedon's involvement is even less than it is with Agents of SHIELD. The writing, though, is excellent, even if I haven't ever heard of the writers. It's fun seeing the Marvel Universe in 1946, with Howard Stark being just like his son (albeit on the run from a thinly veiled HUAC), and names like Roxxon and Abraham Erksine. We also have, of course, Jarvis, an engagingly Giles-like character.

Hayley Atwell, though, is magnificent as a kind of stiff-upper-lipped River Song for the 1940s, engaging in setting-do with the best of them and, in a nice little scene, giving a sexist, groping bastard in a diner a bit of a shock; this woman has balls. And yet she is, privately at least, devastated at the death of her flatmate, a death that happened because of her.

This is a splendid opener, much more so than the pilot for Agents of SHIELD. This series promises to be good. So let's have a UK screening please!