Frozen II (2019)

“You can’t just follow me into fire.”

“Then don’t run into fire!”

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

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

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

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

True Blood: You Smell Like Dinner

"It's Bon Temps, Sook. Not like I expected the red fucking carpet!"

So Eric bought the house because he wants to protect Sookie, a fairy, from other vampires. He's even made himself a little cubby hole. Hmm. Not stalkerish at all then.

Less creepy is Sam's relationship with fellow shifter Luna, which is developing nicely. And equally intriguing is the flashback to a punk rock Bill(!) in the London of 1982, looking very much like Sid Vicious and being seemingly recruited by Nan Flanagan into an assimilist conspiracy within the Authority. My, that Stephen Moyer does a rather good English accent.

Oh, and Louis Pasteur is a vampire. Cool. So is the way True Blood is like a gradually unpeeling onion of complex vampire political agendas.

Tara, meanwhile, finally comes back to visit Bon Temps, her girlfriend in New Orleans believing her to be another identity entirely. The plot thickens as Bill explains that Marnie's Wiccans are necromancers and therefore a threat which Eric is to neutralise. Unfortunately he loses his memory while doing so. Isn't that a bummer?

In other bombshells, Jessica is starting to cheat on Foyt- is monogamy for her?- while Felton and Crystal are back. It seems that Felton, with all that inbreeding, has nothing in the tank and he thus wants Jason to inpregnate his sister-wife. True Blood certainly knows how to do a good twist..!

This is shaping up to be good season. I'm addicted as ever...

True Blood: Hitting the Ground

"Never really thought I was smart enough to get depressed, but here I am..."

It's a miraculously if temporarily recovered Bill to the rescue; what other resolution could there have been? The pre-titles teaser ends with Lorena's death. Her last words are "I love you, William."

Alcide's ex, Debbie, is the adversary for much of the early part of the episode, and I suppose she's very real as a character- an addict who has chosen a very bad relationship. She certainly doesn't react well when Alcide shoots her new bloke, the one she got herself branded for.

Hoyt's new girlfriend is incredibly annoying. He's only with her to get back at Jessica, and now he's stuck with someone he can't stand. And she's really into him. Oops. Bill is into Sookie, too- literally; he has to be physically restrained from drinking too much of Sookie's blood when unconscious. This goes down very badly with all concerned, especially as Bill is on very thin ice at the moment. There's an awful lot of drama over a supposedly dying Sookie until Bill is finally allowed to turn up and save her. None of this is doing anything for Tara's current hatred of all things undead, understandably given her recent experiences.

Sam finally finds out what his family is up to- and it's truly reprehensible: his birth parents are using Tommy, their own son, to take part in dogfights to earn income for them all- and his feckless dad just gambles away the money. Sam, quite rightly, takes Tommy away from them, but he's a troubled kid. 

Perhaps even more surprising as this, mind, is the revelation that Jason is the older sibling. Really? The really big reveal, though, is Sookie's dream in which she meets others like herself, one of whine, Claudine, is played by Itene Adler herself, Lara Pulver...

We end with Eric and the King rescuing Pam... by murdering the Magister, although naturally not before getting him to declare Russell and Sophie-Anne married: the King of Mississippi has just annexed Louisiana. What with the Authority do? And, actually, just who are they?

Perhaps there's just a little too much hospital, but this is a brilliant episode with revelation after revelation.

True Blood: I Got a Right to Sing the Blues

"Well, that sucks. Not in a good way."

Interesting; the King is nearly 3,000 years old, old enough to learn contempt for blind tradition but not as wise as the much younger Godric. I wonder which civilisation he comes from, and if he can even remember?

But there's little scope for such reflection as Sookie and Bill are utterly betrayed by Eric. Bill is sent to the slave quarters to be tortuously executed- by Lorena of all people. Cue various scenes of TV-friendly torture and, on her part, much emo.

Meanwhile Lafayette and Jesus are still a sweet couple; there's a contrasting spikiness between Jason and the decidedly non-kinky Crystal. After sex, though, she vanished, telling Jason that she won't see him again. This being a television drama, of course, we know she will.

Edgington, in a chat with Eric, reveals his motives; much as he despises werewolves he works with them in the grounds that demihumans must unite against humans, who are despoiling the Earth. He has a point, although I wonder whether vampires would truly be willing to forgo their carbon-guzzling gizmos.

Alas, Lafayette's sweet relationship with Jesus is seemingly ended by the revelation that he does drugs. A less sweet relationship also begins as Russell forcibly proposes to the cash-strapped Queen of Louisiana, presumably meaning his annexation of the state. More satisfying is Tara's escape, as she violently kills the loathsome rapist Franklin in highly satisfying scenes.

Jason's reunion with Crystal after tracking her down doesn't go as hoped; not only does she deny having met him but she has a thuggish fiancé, Felton. What's going on here? And what's the secret with Sam's birth family? All this has to wait over the mid-season break. Naturally we get a big cliffhanger as an escaped Sookie and Tara are attacked by Lorena as a dying Bill lies helpless..

It's all good stuff. But given the ending I'm grateful for box sets...

True Blood: Bad Blood

"Pam, I'm in no mood for lesbian weirdness!"

Again we continue straight on from the dramatic season finale, with Bill missing, Eggs just having been shot dead by Jason and Sam looking for his birth family. Not much is resolved, per se, but much is set up and, as it leaves you wanting more, this is a bloody good season opener.

Bill, it seems, has been kidnapped by a bunch of blokes who want to feed on his blood. Tara is distraught, and in no mood for Arlene's horribly racist comments- but I suppose a character like her, a working class white woman in the Deep South, would hold all sorts of horrible views. At least Eric is duty-bound as to help look for Bill; the police were distinctly unhelpful. Crime against vampires, it seems, is taken as seriously as black-on-black crime.

Sam, meanwhile, is up in Arkansas following up leads and, er, having awkwardly erotic dreams about Bill after ingesting his blood. Arlene is pregnant! And the Magister is getting suspicious about Eric and Queen Sophie-Anne dealing V. The Queen, in particular, is so cool that she gets her own directorial flourishes.

Sookie's on the case, but over in Mississippi Bill has werewolf trouble- are they the season's big bad? And what's with their tatto, the same one seen in Seadon 5 of Grimm? There's so much going on. I love it.

True Blood: Beyond Here Lies Nothin'

"Was there no god?"

And so we have this truly thrilling finale. Maryann's death is fitting and, interestingly, seems to have an atheistic subtext, albeit one based on disbelief in an Ancient Greek god so as to avoid offending anyone. Again, too, the season finale points forward to next season as Sam sets off to discover his real parents. Shockingly, too, we end with the sudden death of Eggs, the result of a horrible moral dilemma for Sookie and proof that Tara is the most unfortunate person ever.

We learn here that Sam is truly brave (and allowed, here, to be the hero), Bill is a clever tactician, that Eric doesn't like Yahtzee any more than I do and (this is truly horrific) Queen Sophie-Anne plays it to five million. That's just evil. 

It's good to see Hoyt finally rejecting and leaving his abusive mother, and Andy getting his badge back as a reward. Yet Jessica isn't responding to Hoyt's advances, and is biting some other bloke. And Eggs' death is... well. Poor Tara.

If that isn't enough drama, we have Bill proposing to Sookie in a restaurant (where does he get the money for those plane tickets? Does he have any income?)... and her hesitating. Worse, when she returns from the ladies', about to say yes, he's gone, and seemingly by force....

Making people wait for this to be resolved is pure evil. Fortunately I have it all on box set, though, and after a brief cinematic interlude I'll be moving on to Season Theee...

True Blood: Frenzy

"Tiny, tiny souls. Or penises. Or both."

I love the Queen of Louisiana- mad as a brush, delightfully polysexual and keen on Yahtzee- a rather boring game to us sane people but let us not be prejudiced. Anyway, she provides some much-needed exposition on how a Maenad may be killed- apparently she needs to be persuaded that her God is ravishing and sacrificing her, and she will die in joyful agony. Perhaps. We'll see. 

There's another big revelation too- it was Tara who summoned Maryann through that silly exorcism. Even quack ceremonies have power, which is a scary concept. There's a surprising amount of exposition and explanation for such an action-filled episode. Indeed, it's so action-filled that there's surprisingly little to write about.

There's a bit of intrigue, too, as Bill threatens to tell the queen about Eric selling V-juice, Hoyt hears devastating things about his past and Jason and Andy bond over both being thick. But it's all hands to the final showdown now as we prepare to end a superb season...

True Blood: New World in My View

"Jesus and me agreed to see other people. Don't mean we don't talk from time to time."

The episode starts, interestingly, with Sookie having an erotic dream about Eric, an obvious consequence of last episode, but the episode is about her, Jason's and Bill's return to Bon Temps and the true decadence they find there. There's nothing like an outsider's perspective and, after all this time in Dallas, that's what they have.

Things in Bon Temps are not going well; Maryann is still planning the ritual sacrifice of Sam as Sookie and Jason arrive back to be filled in by Hoyt on what's been happening as he and Jessica deal with his possessed mother. Sam and Andy are on the run, and Tara is going through cold turkey with Lafayette and her highly unreliable mother. 

It's interesting how fascinated Maryann is with Dookie and her mysterious powers, helping to foreground this ongoing mystery as we learn that it was Maryann who attacked her in the woods. Maryann's doings are bittersweet, though: the controlled Terry is not a damaged person but a highly competent soldier. 

Fortunately, Dookie brings Tara back from Maryann's clutches. Unfortunately, Tata still escapes as a result of her mother's stupidity, and heads off looking for Eggs. But we end with a double cliffhanger as a starving Jessica bites Hoyt's mum and Bill goes for help from a vampire queen...

Thirteen (2004)

“I think my nose is melting off. Ew!”

This is a film I most likely never would have seen if my gorgeous girlfriend hadn’t introduced me to it a few days ago; thirteen girls in 2004 are a very alien species to a thirteen year old boy from 1990. It is, as one would imagine, a rather scary watch for someone who expects to become a father in a few years’ time. I should probably admit that a fair few of the thoughts in this review, especially about the direction, are shamelessly nicked off things said by my girlfriend while we were watching it.

This is helmed by Catherine Hardwicke, who did a rather unimpressive job in directing Twilight, which was largely ruined by the dullness of the washed-out colour. Here she does a much better job but, interestingly, what works so well here is very similar to what failed in the other film, namely the use of colour. At the beginning of the film, with Tracy doing well at school and living a safe and relatively happy life, the film is brightly coloured. But the colours wash away throughout the film until, at the end, there is nothing but a blue tint. There is also a billboard which becomes more and more distressed-looking, mirroring Tracy’s decline as a kind of Dorian Gray painting in reverse.

This isn’t a pleasant film to watch. The actresses may have been eighteen, but it’s extremely disturbing to see thirteen year olds being so sexualised. The peer pressure is awful too; I may not have been one of the cooler kids at thirteen, but I never wore any designer labels or the like; I dressed like the child that I was. Still, I don’t exactly wear designer labels now, so I’m probably not typical. I’m uncomfortably reminded of the fact (I’m 35) that I’m not as young as I was. But I’m reminded of a simple fact: being a teenager is horrible, and too many of us forget that later in our lives. Intense pressure from all sides is combined with a total lack of experience in how to handle this, plus there are hormones on top.

There’s use of LSD and cocaine in this film, shoplifting, a certain amount of sexual activity and, worst of all, graphic and horrible instances of self-harm. There’s thankfully no paedo stuff or sexual abuse, but everything else that parents worry about is here. Most terrifying of all is the powerless of Tracy’s well-meaning but weak mother, who has no way of responding to her daughter’s tantrums and, worse, has a fair idea of what is going on throughout. The climax, when she discovers her daughter’s drug abuse and scars from self-harm, is utterly terrifying to watch. Depressingly, Tracy’s father, well-off though he is, is neglectful and useless. Once again it’s the woman who has to cope while the man does nothing.

The fickle nature of teenage friendships, and their terrible cost, lies at the film’s core, as Tracy’s new “bad girl” friend Evie betrays her. Yet there are shades of grey; Evie’s claims of abuse may easily be true. There are no easy answers, and there is no resolution at the end, a brave choice.

This isn’t a film to enjoy. It’s natural audience may, perhaps, be limited, and I worry about its central message being scarily easy to Daily Mail-ify. Nevertheless, it’s an extremely well-made film. What didn't impress me, though, was the lack of subtitles on the DVD: there's no excuse for this.