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

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

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

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

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

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

A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle

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

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

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

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

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

Superman and the Mole Men (1951)

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

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

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

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

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

The Final Programme by Michael Moorcock

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)

 "It was English cooking..."

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

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

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

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

The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick

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

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

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

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

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

Black Moon (1934)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hammer House of Horror: The Carpathian Eagle

 “Are you going to be strict with me?”

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

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

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

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

 “Time is playing games with you all."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Dragon in the Sword by Michael Moorcock

 

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

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

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

The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967)

 "The blood is the life..."

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

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

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

And we love those, don't we?

Squid Game: A Fair World

 “Everyone is equal…”

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

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

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

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

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

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

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

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

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

Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon

 "It's getting dark outside..."

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

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

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

I May Destroy You: Line Spectrum Border

 "It's no longer an active investigation."

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

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

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

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

Breaking Bad: ABQ

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

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

And it doesn't.

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

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

This is a magnificent bit of telly. 

What next?

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

 “Repair must not be undertaken by idiots!"

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

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

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

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

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

Delayed Doctor Who Blog

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

The Fashion in Shrouds by Margery Allingham

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

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

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

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

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

Inspector Morse: Last Seen Wearing

 "You were so keen to have a murder. You should be happy."

One ought to bear in mind that Colin Dexter's novel was written fifteen or so years earlier, but it's striking to see that, in 1988, missing persons cases were dealt with via paper files, and in the case of Valerie Craven the number of files means that Morse, "the three file man", has to be called in. It dates the programme quite as much as the appearance of the London Docklands.

The characterisation of Morse here, while fascinating, may be a bit of a time capsule too, and I shall focus on this rather than commenting on the whodunit: I remember the novel too well, He's presented as a devilishly clever chap who is allowed to behave in shockingly unprofessional ways- extensively drinking on the job, not bothering to look at the files, perving at the private schoolgirls doing PE who he denigrates as "rich and thick", being terribly cynical about the whole thing, even forging a letter to the parents of the missing girl- and getting bollocked by Strange for good measure.

Yet, after the bollocking, he gets results. And continues to be a beer snob, a definite point in his favour. The dialogue, and characterisation, is subtly brilliant here, from Morse to Lewis to Strange to the arrogant gaslighting Phillipson to the cultured, Irish, Yeats-quoting Mrs Craven. This is the subtlest, finest, adaptation yet.

But I fear we are, mostly, to be veering off Colin Dexter's path most of the time from here. Let's hope the quality remains.

Squid Game: Stick to the Team

 "I don't trust people..."

This is a superb episode- all peril, tension and dog eat dog action. And yet, by putting the characters under such stress and danger, it shows us so much about them as people.

The players really are put through the wringer here. Right after the last game they are deliberately put on short rations in order to generate friction and lethal fighting after lights out, following which it's straight into the next game in the morning- a tug of war. And this intensity is entertaining in itself. Far more interesting, though, is what is does to the people we've come to know, and their relationship. So Gi-Hun's gang of four from the end of last episode is strengthened, with even the old man (who seems to be forgetting his name bringing something to the table. And our North Korean defector seems to be joining the gang.

Meanwhile, Deok-Su, having no morals whatsoever, tries to survive by seizing alpha male status, making enemies in the process and losing his moll the morning after they have sex in the toilet. His chances of surviving the last episode are, I very much suspect, zero by the iron laws of television drama.

We end with a tug of war cliffhanger, as though the episode hasn't been emtertaining enough. And hrough it all there's the ever-present sublimity of the design, from the costumes to the Escher-esque staircases. Squid Game is getting better and better.

Hammer House of Horror: The Silent Scream

 "Prisons without walls, cages without bars..."

This is an interesting episode- clever, imaginative, ingenious, with a strong central concept, and anchored superbly with performances from Brian Cox and none other than Peter Cushing himself, however cheap it must have been to film: this is quite blatantly the season cheapie. Either that or Cushing's slary took half the budget.

It's 1980. The wine is awful. A concentration camp guard could be of an age to be running a pet shop. Fairy liquid bottles look different. And attitudes to keeping big cats captive, forty years before Tiger King, are somewhat different. There's also an element of "this entire building is surrounded by film" in the stock footage sequences. Yet all this period charm, as well as the presence of Cushing and the bizarrely young presence of Cox, keeps us watching.

It's not a bad piece of telly. It certainly holds the attention and is both intriguing and well made. Yet it doesn't manage to be scary, and comes across more as a weird thriller than anything to do with horror. It doesn't quite work, yet it doesn't quite fail. It is, regardless, interesting.

Breaking Bad: Phoenix

 "If I gave you that money, you would be dead inside a week..."

I've mentioned before that this series is the tale of Walter White's represses sociopathic or psychopathic (I'm no expert) gradually revealing themselves as circumstances and temptation make his drift inexorably from humble respectability to the criminal underworld where life is cheap. But this is the episode, and a superb bit of telly it is too, that proves it beyond doubt.

It's not that Walt keeps Jesse's $480,000 share of the meth deal from him until he's off the heroin; that's the right thing to do, amusing though it is to see Jesse trying to confront him in the classroom and immediately getting alpha maled by a father figure he can't help but defer to.

It sort of is the casual lying to Skyler, which surely can't go on for ever- in this episode he rings her while drinking at a bar with music playing, pretending to be shopping for nappies, bonding with Jane's despairing father (John de Lancie himself!) with unexpected results.

And yes, it sort of is the devastating final scene where, having just been blackmailed by Jane for the $480k with which she and Jesse were talking about a new life in New Zealand but got high instead, Jane vomits while asleep... and Walt just stands there, calculating that her dying now is in his best interests. That's cold, and the scene is shocking.

But even that is not the main thing. It's how he can miss his own daughter's birth and, when he finally gets there, how he's clearly just acting, and trying to hide his coldness. I'm the father of a daughter, and let's just say that the birth of Little Miss Llamastrangler went rather differently.

There are other things in this episode- Walt's problem with being unable to find a way of being able to spend his money with everybody thinking he's nearly bankrupt, possibly solved by an innocent Walt Jr, Saul and two "Rain Man types" in Belarus; Hank not being a fan of public breastfeeding; Skyler's boss and potential lover Ted being at the birth. But man, Walt is cold. And this is as good as television gets.

Doctor Who: Flux, Chapter One- The Halloween Apocalypse

 “What's the matter with Sheffield?"

"Too near Leeds...

Here we go then: a new season of Doctor Who, after what feels like an eternity and after some rather big revelations in The Timeless Child that the Doctor's past is more complicated than we thought. Those revelations were certainly a bombshell and I was rather impressed. However, those revelations need to work in the long term, not just add shock value to an "event" episode. I suspect we shall see during this interestingly structured six parter how this pans out.

I don't mean to suggest this episode is one of the greatest ever: let's have some perspective. But I enjoyed it. The opening, with the Doctor and Yaz in media res in a Bond villain deathtrap, was the perfect opening, and I'm pleased to see that Chris Chibnall seems to be improving the humour content of his scripts. And there's a suitably epic scale. We have this mysterious "Flux", a kind of storm that is destroying the universe for reasons unknown. We have a baddie, who reminds me of Eldrad, imprisoned since the dawn of time and now free... and this baddie seems to recall the Doctor from her Division days. Meanwhile, we have the concept of the red herring species, the dog-like Lupari, pair-bonded to humans to save them from the Flux. And one of their number, the nicely exasperated Karvanista, seems to have connections to the Division.

There's also a mysterious dig in  Liverpool... and modern day Scouser Dan, played rather well by John Bishop, a new companion who is shown to live in poverty, for such is Britain in 2021. He makes a good impression, likeable and resourceful while acting as the voice of the audience who, now that Yaz is a seasoned adventurer and TARDIS co-pilot, can fulfil the traditional companion role of saying "what's that, Doctor?".

There's also Claire, who has met the Doctor and Yaz although they haven't yet met her, something which really ought to happen more often on a time travel show. I suspect this has something to do with the Weeping Angel she sees, in a truly horrific and effective sequence. And we also have a nicely entertaining scene with two amusing Sontarans looking forward(!) to the Flux. There are a lot of elements and sub-plots in play, which I like, which is a real strength of doing the season as a single six part story.

It must be said, too, that Jodie Whittaker has never been better. She's nearing the end, but her Doctor is charismatic and cool. Let's just hope the script gives the Doctor a little more depth. Last season was an improvement on that store but there's still some way to go.

Still, this is a very promising start. Let's hope the quality stays at this level.

To the Devil a Daughter (1976)

 “Damn you!”

I thought this was supposed to be a terrible film, the flop that ruined Hammer. It may not be as good as The Devil Rides Out, Hammer’s previous Dennis Wheatley adaptation, but few films are. Why is this film, which I have just thoroughly enjoyed,so widely disliked?

This is an oddity. Hammer did very few films in 1974, but here comes their last hurrah, two years later, post-dating the attempted revival of the format by Tyburn. And, as far as I can see, this is a wonderful Satanic horror film, not quite up there with Hammer’s very best but very much bubbling under. The plot is gripping, the direction sublime, the tension exquisite, the performances superb. Christopher Lee has never been more charismatic nor more evil. Richard Widmark is the perfect tough guy hero. Klaus Kinski’s daughter is bloody good. Honor Blackman and Denholm Elliott are extraordinary in supporting roles.

I’m baffled as to why this flopped. I enjoyed this much more than Don’t Look Now last night.

Don’t Look Now (1973)

 “The one who’s blind. She’s the one who can see.”

This film has a reputation of one of this country’s famous horror films, despite the fact that it’s largely set in Venice, and one of its two co-stars is Canadian. I am, I’m sure you’ve gathered, blogging this because it’s Halloween weekend. Yet this isn’t the film I was expecting.

The direction is filets and full of nice little tricks and juxtapositions. The whole directorial grammar is that of a horror film. Nicolas Roeg, whose I work I have never previously, to my fault, seen, excels. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland are excellent. There’s a lot of cleverness here, from the echoes from John’s job being to restore the murky and faded past, which is awfully gothic, to the whole presence of Venice here in this very British yet also very Italian, Giallo film.

Venice is so very present- reminding me of nothing so much as Siouxie and the Banshees with their video for their cover of Dear Prudence- but has never been more dark or creepy.

And yet, good as the film is, it somehow doesn’t particularly impress as a horror film until it’s too late. This film is seen as a classic of the genre, yet beyond the considerable style, I must confess, I find little substance beyond the obvious.

However, the film is very well shot, and Venice is. Wry pressure. I just wish I’d enjoyed this more.

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

I should say, at the start, that this novel, unlike all the other Asimovs so far, isn’t one I’ve ever read before.

This, like the Foundation trilogy, masquerades as a novel but is not, strictly speaking, any such thing. Yet the various short stories are linked together into a kind of narrative by the narrator, with the common themes revolving around Asimov’s famed Three Laws of Robotics.

Yet the whole thing has a kind of coherence, and the short stories are fun to read- revolving, as the do, on the puzzle of how a robot is behaving in a certain way in relation to the Laws.

It’s amusing, of course, to see the course of the twenty-first century as seen from the 1940s. Gender roles are very much as they were. Smoking is ubiquitous. Even in 2052 there are no issues with oil and gas. The “Machines” that control the economy are interesting to contrast with modern computers and AI, and our fears of the Singularity. There is also an annoying and American prejudice in the final story, seeing Europe as old and exhausting. And we end with a dispiriting kind of infantile utopia where the Machines take care of humanity but we have no agency.

For all its flaws, though, and for all its lacking the depth of ideas of Foundation, this is nevertheless an extraordinary novel that develops the idea of the robot in ways that others- including Asimov himself- would go on to push towards bigger and better things.

The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov

This is, on the surface, a science fiction novel. Spaceships and alien planets abound. There are even little nods towards the fact that this is the same continuity as the Foundation novels,  albeit millennia before those events- things like interstellar travel working the same way, or that psychic musical instrument from Foundation and Empire.

And yet the trappings of science fiction are just that- trappings. This is essentially a spy novel full of clever twists and turns but no mind-boggling science fiction idea. While the plot twists are clever and entertaining, and I enjoyed the novel, Asimov’s limitations here in terms of prose and characterisations loom larger here in the absence of big ideas. This is a fairly good novel but, I fear, not touched with greatness.

Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Yes, I got through this bloody quickly, but these novels are so damn readable. Again, the prose and characterisation are basic, but nobody cares when the ideas and the plot twists are so good. Like The Jetsons, too, this is a space-hopping future that is a kind of eternal 1950s but, again, we can allow ourselves a brief amused smile and move on. This is bloody brilliant.

The plot is full of revelation and counter-revelation, with both halves of the novel turning their attention to the mysterious and fascinating Second Foundation, a society of rigorously mathematical psychologists- no Freudian quackery here- who are the guardians of the Seldon Plan, desperate to put things back on track after the Mule ruined everything. Everything here is a game of ten dimensional chess, with the truth hidden beneath many layers. The whole thing is profoundly addictive to read and is the perfect end to the original trilogy.

And it doesn’t matter at all that Asimov can’t write teenage girls or dictators’ mistresses for toffee.

I fear I don’t currently have access to the later Foundation novels. But more Asimov is coming..

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

This second novel is not, in a sense, a novel at all, just like it’s predecessor. It is a compilation of a serialised succession of short stories telling a story, and Sotho question of where one Foundation novel ends and another begins is a little arbitrator. Yet there is a certain coherence to this instalment, as the expansion of the Foundation runs up against the remnants of the Galactic Empire.

There are two segments. The first pits the Foundation against the decaying rump empire and is very much Gibbon with spaceships, cleverly using the fact that any emperor will be suspicious of the loyalty of any successful general.

We then more on to the Mule. The ideas here are magnificent- the Seldon Plan being led astray due to a mutant who can control minds, and hints as to the Second Foundation. Yet the oppressive gender roles as depicted mainly via the character of Bayta, and the silly dialogue of the “clown” Magnifico, are a little embarrassing.

None of that means that the ideas here, or the central concept, are anything other than extraordinary. The flaws of prose and characterisation cannot undermine this novel’s greatness.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Michael Moorcock marathon is briefly interrupted by an unexpected change in my circumstances (nothing to worry about), so I’ve managed to squeeze in this short and extremely readable old favourite.

This isn’t so much a novel as a rather obviously serialised sequence of linked short stories. The prose is basic and functional. There are few women in it. This far future, to the reader of today, quite obviously has the mores of the mid twentieth century, with everybody smoking and no women in professional positions. Characterisation is no less functional than the prose.

Yet this is quite possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, and a real joy to read.

This is a novel of big ideas. Tens of millennia in the future, humanity has spread throughout the Galaxy, and comprises a Galactic Empire. Yet this empire, in terms Gibbon May recognise, is falling, slowly but inevitably. But one Hari Seldon, mathematician and “psycho historian” plans a Foundation on an obscure planet which will slowly grow in power, shortening the Dark Ages to come. And he does this via a mathematical science of predicting future historical trends, on the basis that, given sufficiently large populations of people, individual foibles cancel out.

It’s a superb central idea, and seeing how Terminus progresses over its first few centuries of Seldon Crises is utterly gripping. Who cares about prose and characterisation when the ideas are this good. 

Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

I had a vague impression I’d seen this film 🎥 before. I hadn’t. It is, to avoid all beating around any bushes, brilliant. Oh, the cast is superb. Sam Neill and Laura Dern star with great brightness. Dickie Attenborough gives us a real career highlight. Jeff Goldblum gives us the prototype of the splendid maverick scientist role that he would come to own. Bob Peck, a find actor, finally makes it in Hollywood.

The CGI is dated. The science, perhaps, too: dinosaurs ARE birds. And, yes, Ian is highly charismatic. Yet his spiel against John’s sci-fi dinosaur DNS nonsense is subtly religious, objecting not only to John’s playing around with the ecosystem but to his perceived blasphemy- and “blasphemy” is a concept accepted only by tyrants who despise freedom and crave theocratic absolutism. Also, there’s an amusingly obvious subplot of getting the kid-hating Alan to begin to tolerate the little soda.

That aside, though, this is a solid blockbuster from the esteemed and too often snobbish my dismissed Mr Spielberg. Long may he direct.

I May Destroy You: Happy Animals

 "It's declined. Can I get a selfie, please?"

As ever, this is a thought-provoking episode with lots to unpick, centred around Terri's birthday party and the fact that Bella, still needing to earn a living despite the rapes, is broke.

Bella's treatment by the publishing boss she'd previously idolised is horribly, patronisingly casual: an advance isn't forthcoming. And she's to fulfil the contract, not write things about rape. All of which follows from humiliation in the supermarket.

We also see Kwame beginning to process what has happened to him, telling Terri about it. And we get some awkwardly racialised stuff about climate change. The pastor spouts absurd climate sceptic conspiracy theories bases on colonialism and white exploitation of resources which is, on the face of it, absurd and harmful..,. but then Theo confesses she got paid more for introducing Bella as an influencer because she's a "person of colour". Yet Theo is honest, and very frank about the ethical problems. She very much seems a decent person... but, as Terri mentions, the sins of the past have yet to be acknowledged. There are no easy answers here.

Terri and Bella pronounce their undying, and rather drunken, love for each other at the party... but an earlier conversation with an aggrieved Simon indicates that Terri may have more to do with the abandonment of Arabella to her eventual rape that night than previously thought. The plot thickens. Again, this is good, ethically nuanced, uncomfortable yet sublime telly.

Squid Game: The Man with the Umbrella

 "It hurts a lot. It's like trying to push out a kid..."

After last episode being so drama-heavy, this is all about the island, the mysterious masked people, and the game- which an impressive 187 people out of 201 have returned to play after their respective bruising encounters with the real world.

We start with the undercover cop, Jun-ho, who is searching for his brother. In showing how he smuggles himself on the island and disguises himself as a masked underling, we get to see how these underlings are treated- unable to speak, highly regimented and living in horribly spartan and featureless cells on on site, never able to remove their masks for any reason, thereby symbolising their identity as corporate drones. This is maintained even to the point that the boy who is taken hostage, and his mask removed, is shot by the boss. These people need to get unionised pretty sharpish.

The game is, of course, evil, and therefore hugely enteryaining. The tension is incredible, and the shooting free and wide-ranging. Yet, as ever, this is all about the characters. There's our resourceful North Korean defector, and the wonderful Sae-Byeok, with her resourcefulness and her potty mouth, who may be rivalling the old man as my favourite character. Interestingly, she seems to be throwing her lot in with the gangster.

Teams are forming- and Gi-Hun is with Sang-woo, the old man and Ali, a mostly likeable bunch. It's becoming clear that, yes, the games are a glorious bit of grand guignol. But at its heart this is a series about people. And is, beneath it all, quite angrily political.

Breaking Bad: Mandala

 “This game we're playing? You don't got the street cred to survive it."

This ewpisode really raises the stakes and moves things to a higher level. The pressure is on, not only for Walt in keeping both his lives together (Or is it Heisenberg? It's increasingly ambiguous which is the alter ego, with a lot of credit due to Bryan Cranston's facial acting, as ever) but for Jesse and Walt in maintaining the meth dealing in the face of increasingly hostuile competition.

The first scene- with one of Jesse's underlings being killed- is extraordinary in how bloody tense it is, and the horror of the eventual killing (by a kid on a bike with a gun!) really hits home. It hits home for Jesse too, who falls completely to pieces, his rewaction being a total contrast to the now clearly sociopathic Walt. It's clear that Jesse is far from cut out for the role he's occupying- and, implicity, the role that may partly have made Jane fall for him- and he's only there because, as Walt later says out loud, he does what he's told.

Except, of course, having fallen to pieces, he doesn'r- with consequences not only for Walt but for Jane, the poor girl, who has fallen for him hard. After so much effort to give up, she gets back on the heroin wagon for him, and we get a deeply disturbing scene straight out of Trainspotting.

Meanwhile, Walt's life continues to be complex. His improved condition means that further surgery looms- and, this being America, this means forking out a six figure sum, which is a lot of meth. I can't help feeling that the NHS must be keeping this country's drug problem from reaching quite the same level. His relationship with Skyler continues to be deceptively smooth; there's no conflic, but they're increasingly distant, and both have secrets.  Noonly is Skyler clearly close to affair territory with her boss, but a bit of forensic bookkeeping seems set to lead her to dabble in criminality, rather neatly paralleling her husband.

Oh, and the baby is due. Speaking as a father, I can say that this is the biggest thing that can ever happen to a bloke.. yet Walt, with more superbly subtle acting from Cranston, clearly cares about this much less than the meth.

More the focus of the plot, though, is our introduction (via Saul, becoming more and more Hyman Roth) to Gus, a distributor who is professional, risk-averse and, I'm sure, important. I know this more, perhaps, than would have been obvious in 2009 as Giancatlo Esposito has since become a well-known actor, courtesy of The Boys and The Mandalorian.

The end shows how clever the plotting is: with Jesse out of it, Walt is under pressure, taking huge risks to get the meth to Gus' underlings. And that's when Skyler's waters break....

An extraordinary, and pivotal, episode.

Squid Game: Hell

 “Out here is worse!”

This is an interesting way to do a second episode in many senses: we’ve seen the premise, and now it’s suddenly taken away as the surviving players (narrowly) decide to leave the game and return to their lives. Yet the episode is crucial in getting us to know the characters and where they’re coming from; to believe that they are so desperate, by the end, to return to the games; and to show yet again the grinding effects of poverty that form the underlying theme of the series.

So we have Ali, the polite and good  immigrant trying to make a decent life for his wife and child in a society that seeks to rip him off and keep him down at every turn. Yet his boss (nicely done industrial accident, incidentally) has not been able to afford to pay anyone for months

We have Sang-woo, high flyer turned embezzler who is wanted by the police, in more debt than anyone and has all but gambled away his mother’s home.

We have the desperate North Korean defector who wants to bring her family across, and is prepared to be as badass as she has to be in order to achieve that. 

We have the nice old man, dying and lonely, who can either find meaning with the games or end his days alone.

And finally, we have Gi-hun, whose mother is desperately ill with diabetes but cannot afford to be treated because South Korea, incredibly for a first world country, has no health system. And if that’s not bad enough, his estranged wife will soon be taking his daughter out of the country with her new husband and he will never see her again- because of poverty meaning he is unable to support her. To add insult to injury, his ex’s husband tries to throw money at him to go away.

We don’t need the games, or the death. The Dickensian poverty of modern South Korea- just like the UK- is horrific enough. This is gripping and well made telly, games or no games. 

Phoenix in Obsidian by Michael Moircock

.

This is the second in Moorcock’s Eternal Champion and, if rather less unified in its structure than the previous novel, is a very interesting- and, in my experience, very fast- read.

There are lots of ideas here- a dying, frozen future Earth where humanity has become decadent, knowing that there is no future. Threre are some nice touches in describing such a culture: the visual arts and the prose of this society are absurdly over-complex, as is the architecture. Less fortunate is the kink-shaming description of their somewhat adventurous and painful sexual habits as a sign of decadence, but this is 1970.

We have a Moon that has long since crashed to Earth and become a mountain range, We have a scarlet fjord. We have long-lost technologies. We have a baddie who is a most worldly bishop and makes me think of those popes of the time of the Borgias. We have tantalising habits of the Eternal Champion's many existences and his ultimate backstory.

Yet the ideas here are all brilliantly imaginative rather than the sorts of ideas than may raise a novella of science fantasy weirdness to aspire to the literary. Unlike its predecessor, I don't think Phoenix in Obsidian does that.

That, however, is no crime. This is a hugely enjoyable piece of pulp fiction that can be read by a time-poor reader in the space of four or five days. We do not need to ask for more.

Right. One more Moorcock to go, then something else...

Squid Game: Red Light, Green Light

 “Would you like to play a game with me...?"

Yes; I've finally jumped on to the bandwagon. All the other series I'm blogging will continue, but Mrs Llamastrangler and myself will be watching this on most Fridays until we've done all nine episodes. So at last I'm starting to know what the fuss is about and hopefully understand some of those ubiquitous memes.

Essentially, before we even get to the premise, characters and themes, this is very well-directed, written and acted telly. Our main character, Gi-hun, is a poverty- and denbt-stricken fortysomething deadbeat dad and failure in life, who lives with and off his elderly mother. He has all sorts of character fkaws but means well, and is played superbly in an alternately comial and tragic performance from Lee Jung-jae, in a performance that had to be pitched perfectly for the whole thing to work.

We'll get to the gore in a bit, but this sereies is really about poverty. The poverty that grinds you down, steals your dignity, destroys your soul, removes your freedom and wastes yoiur life. There's some subtle politcal subtext here, in allowing us to see the unpleasant sides of desperate poverty, with its loan sharks, violence, humiliation and magical thinking that leads nowhere. Gi-hun getting slapped in the face for losing the game may be darkly funny, but the loan sharks are no better. There may be no humanity within the game, but there's none outside either.

The aesthetics of the games island are brilliant, with its bright, childlike colours, masked baddies and big boss ("Front Man") with his V mask and glasses of scotch. And the game itself is creepy; essentially What's The Time, Mr Wolf? with a big, creepy, plastic little girl. At first it's just eerie, but one player can't say still... and then he's shot. And things slowly build towards a massacre in which over half the debt-ridden, desperate players are killed.

This is brilliant. It reminds me, and I'm sure many others, of Saw. But the real horror here is poverty. A society without an adequate safety net is not a free society.

Hammer House of Horror: Charlie Boy

 “I’m going to get YOU…”

This is not the greatest episode so far but, after the misstep that it was its predecessor, it's a solid return of form for this tale of a voodoo curse emanating from a sinister African fetish. Hey, it's 1980: the phrase "cultural appropriation" doesn't exist yet. African art may be valuable and admired, but it's seen to come from a mysterious, exotic and somewhat magical culture.

The way the story unfolds is utterly predictable, but that's exactly what makes the whole thing so enjoyable: we know which characters are going to die, and in which order, so it's a question of when and how. There's a clear influence here from The Omen;  the deaths are all due to pleasingly gory incidents.

The cast is good, too, especially Angela Bruce as the sensible (and Geordie) Sarah, and Marius Goring as the slightly sinister German stereotype Heinz. It's also fun to see a young Jeff Rawls in a minor part.

This episode is good, not great: it isn't going to be one of those episodes that lingers in the mind. But it's a solid and enjoyable piece of telly.

I May Destroy You: The Alliance

 "I'm here to learn how to avoid being raped..."

We see yet another angle on rape and sexual assault in tghis clever and subtle episode. Arabella finds a support group run by Theodora, an old friend, who appears to be awesome, and a survivor of sexual abuse. There's no denying that Arabella benefits from being there, even if the words she says are utterly heartbreaking. She's terrified of being raped yet again.

Yet Theo's past, seen in a flashback to 2004 (surely just a couple of years ago...?), is full of ambiguity. On the surface, she falsely accuses a boy, Ryan, of rape- and it is, sadly, not exactly immaterial to how the complaint is treated that she has her "white girl tears" and Ryan is Black. Ryan is exonerated when the phone footage is found, and his friends, including a young Terry and Arabella, help him celebrate as Theo mutters a racist epithet under her breath.

Yet there's more to it; it seems this isn't the first time Theo lied about such things, being coached by her mother to lie about her father sexually abusing her and domestically abusing her mother for reasons of custody. Making a child do that is itself abuse, and Theo's behaviour is part of a cycle of abuse.

And, it must be said, Ryan is a dick. Theo wanted love, but she got a cheap shag for money, with photos taken without her consent in what is arguably a kind of sexual assault. Things are ambiguous, as ever. This is excellent, thought-provoking telly.

Breaking Bad: Over

 "You cannot beat the thermal efficiency of the C3!"

This episode may not have the high concepts or dramatic incidends of recent instalments, being very much a character piece. But it's an utterly superb, and very subtle, bit of drama, getting to do subtle little things with all these characters that are made possible by the previous gradual development of all the characters.There's some interesting stuff with Jesse and Jane, with her reluctance to introduce him to her dad seeming to indicate that she likes this stoner with criminal connections, wants to sleep with him and spend time with him, but doesn't see a long term future in the way he does. Ouch.

But essentially the episode is all about being an alpha male, Walt's need for it, and the places he can find it.

He can't find it at home. There's Hank, competing with him as father figure to Walt Jr as well as at being a man generally. His fight with Hank about how much tequila the sixteen year old Walt Jr should drink may be petty, but it's about status, not how much a teenager should drink. And it's revealing that, in the heat of the row, Walt should look at Hank with Heisenberg's eyes- which shows where this is headed.

He's not a man at home, where his over-the-top DIY hardly impresses Skyler. He's at the back of his own party, delivering an embarrassing speech. He's very much the beta male- and, if he only knew, Skyler's boss is being the kind of sensitive, attentive, caring man to Skyler that he isn't. And Skyler is very much noticing.

And yet he's top dog with Walt, who is totally dependent on "Mr White". And he seems to effortlessly switch to being Heisenberg at the end as he warns competitors off his territory. This shows that, much as Walt may imagine he can leave his new life as a budding meth godfather, he can't. It was never really just about paying for the cancer. It was always about being a man, an alpha male.

He needs that. And always will. This, I suspect, is the seed of his destruction.

Superlative telly, as though that needed saying.

Logan (2017)

 "Don't be what they made you..."

I'm going to do my best to watch the few remaining X-Men films from Fox in order. It'll be Dark Phoenix next, fairly soon, but for now we have this rather unexpectedly styled and surprisingly good film based on a limited series featuring Wolverine in the future (2029!) well after my time.

My knowledge of Marvel comics is fairly comprehensive up to circa 1993, and fairly nonexistent after them. So I know of Caliban- played here (and rather well) by Stephen Merchant of all people, and of course of Donald Piercxe and the Reavers, from the late 1980s stories by Chris Claremont in a rather differrent context.

But the situation here is different. Logan- more than two centuries old in a fairly depressing life- is dying of a myserious ailment; Charles Xavier is dying and suffering from dementia, a terrifying outcome for someone with his mental powers, and something which led, a year ago, to the "Westchester Incident" in which several, including multiple X-<Men died. And this is a world in which, for reasons ultimately explained, no mutant has been born for a quarter of a century. Oh, and, unexpectedly, by means of a test tube baby and sperm theft, Logan has a daughter. With claws.

This is a superb film, with superb acting elevating a quite good script to somewhat more than that. Hugh Jackman is excellentt but Patrick Stewart is sublime. The best X-Men film yet and, I suspect, unlikely to be bettered.

The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock

 

I’ve never read this before, or indeed any Michael Moorcock novel other than the two I’ve already blogged. This is a much earlier novel, much less tied to real human history and mythology, and so a very different experience, despite the obvious shared links with Moorcock’s Multiverse, which I am now infinitesimally closer to understanding.

It’s a highly satisfying read, both philosophical and full of unexpected yet entirely logical twists and surprises as what is, on the surface, a very simple narrative deals with heave themes of the ethics of war, the darkness of human nature and its propensity for atrocities, and a devastatingly bleak view of racism and ethnic conflict. 

And yet, I confess, I found the opening chapters difficult. The idea of John Daker somehow having multiple existences in multiple realities and being cursed with that knowledge is fascinating, but it serves as texture rather than as the focus of the plot. We begin with Erekose exploring an unfamiliar Earth with continents and cities unknown to us, at a time in history (past or future?) which is equally unknown. Despite the subtle prose and characterisation this presents Gigi unties for the reader, yet the novel soon settles down and hooks the reader with its prose and characterisation.

The ending is extremely satisfying-and leaves all sorts of questions which will, I’m sure, be echoed in other novels. Is this our Earth, or another Earth of the Eldren, colonised by humans in the far future? Or is history just cyclical? Regardless, this novel is fascinating.

Halloween II (1981)

 "I've been trick or treated to death tonight!"

This, despite its fairly high wattage cast and its script credit for John Carpenter, may be an above average horror film but it can't hold a pumpkin to the original. Yes, Jamie Lee Curtis and Donald Pleasence (despite his accent slipping a bit) are very good. Yes, the killings are effectively done in a way which places this above your average slasher. But the first film was superb, and shot with aplomb by Carpenter himself. This is a bit of a let down in comparison. Such is, I suppose, the fate of most sequels.

There's some interesting stuff here, not least of which is the intriguing twist at the end. It's leaned into, but not made explicit, that Michael Myers may be a bit supernatural. After all, Loomis does shoot him six times, and he may have mentioned it once or twice.

There's also some nice use of Night of the Living Dead being shown on the telly in one of the killings, a nice echo of the parallel use of The Thing from Another World in the first film. The acting and dialogue are decent, and there's a reasonable amount of character stuff for this sort of film.

Still, there's not an awful lot here that's fresh, and a lot of that is down to the decision to make this the story of the few hours immediately after the first film. These events feel like an extended postscript, and they are exactly that. A fairly decent slasher but, disappointingly given its predecessor, no more than that.

Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled to Death

 "House prices are ridiculous these days..."

Ah, 1980. When, apparently, a hospital porter and a housewife could get a mortgage on a house that needed doing up... or could they?

This has the finest title so far, but despite some nice twists, a nicely creepy and mysterious Milton Johns, and some nivce set pieces with loads of blood, it drags a bit and, for me, doesn't quite manage to pull it off or, indeed, grab the attention. I suspect that has much to do with the relatively flat direction, as well as an uninspiring performance from Nicholas Ball as William, a character who needs to be portrayed with much more nuance in order for the conclusion to work.

Spoliers. Read on only if that's ok.

The twist at the end sort of works, although surely the shock of William and Emma not being married must surely have been old-fashioned even in 1980. But the clues that they are not really a couple, at first, are nicely and subtly done. And the ending is appropriate as the couple get their comeuppance.Yet the set pieces don't really work visually, and the miscasting of Nicholas Ball is a disaster.

I don't think it's the fault of the script. But this one, I'm afraid, is a relative dud.

Sex Education: Season 3, Episode 3

 “Yes, Jeffrey, you sex god!”

This episode is bloody eventful, and bloody good. On the other hand, it made Mrs Llamastrangler cry.

There's some strong use of humour tomundercut a lot of the real darkness here, from the cat that was killed by shagging to the way Aimee unburdening herself to Jean about her sexual assault (and how to love her vulva) is swiftly followed by the goat having a poo on the floor.

It's an episode with Jean and Otis adjusting to Jakob and Ola as new members of the household, and making compromises. It's about Maeve reconnecting with her mum, and forgiving Isaac after his heartfelt and rather lovely speech. It's about Hope dragging the school into the rip off industry that is the school uniform, an institution that exists only to extort money from parents. 

It's also about Viv abandoning all principle in pursuit of power and Jackson's disgust, as well as his anxiety now he's no longer a swimmer, an actor or head boy. And he seems to get on rather well with the ambiguously queer Cal... and their weed.

It's about the double date, and Adam not yet feeling ready to say to his mum that Eric is his boyfriend... and his concern at Eric's forthcoming trip to horribly homophobic Nigeria. Already that's a lot going on, but we also haveLily's obsession wth alien conspiracy theories driving a wedge between her and Ola... and Otis being allowed into Ruby's unglamorous but sweet home life. Sweetly, we gradually learn how Ruby is more besotted with Otis than she lets on... but when she declares her love, he doesn't say it back. Ow.

So much going on here- but the episode doesn't feel crowded. This is a real leap of quality that gives me real hope for this season.

Breaking Bad: 4 Days Out

 “You made poison out of beans, yo!”

This extraordinary episode could be summed up quite easily, I suspect. Walt is expecting bad news from his CT scan and expects he doesn't have long to live, with little to leave for his family. So he and Jesse go to the desert and cook, but end up stranded there (after cooking $672,000 worth of meth- each!) and nearly die of dehydration before Walt pulls some chemistry teacher Macgyver superpowers out of his arse and saves them with science.

But there's a lot more going on than that, and I'm not just thinking of the extended meth cooking scenes which no doubt improved the quality of meth in the USA for years to come. There's Walt's death wish, and deep down shame. There's the fact this is an extended two hander between him and Jesse, giving a bit of depth to their relationship. We see them bond over how much they've cooked: they are potentially very wealthy man if they can keep it up long term. And Jesse may whinge, but he sees "Mr White"  as an authority figure and subconsciously accepts his subordinate position, as well as marvelling at his cleverness. Walt thinks Jesse is a bit of a prat- but a trustworthy prat, and one with necessary connections.

Meawhile Walt and Skyler have made up, but the easy, natural couple stuff has gone and the affection they show each other is much less coded as sexual. It's not the same. And even Saul says exactly what we viewers are thinking: this double life of Walt's is simply not sustainable. I suspect that this season will end with a dramatic demonstration of that.

It is, needless to say, peerlessly good.

I May Destroy You: It Just Came Up

 "Rapebusters!"

This is an incredible bit of telly, genuinely groundbreaking and meaningful. It's taken a few episodes for I Will Destroy You to introduce and flesh out its characters and themes, but now we are properly into a sublimely constructed dramatic exploration of sex, consent, and all those nuances of behaviour, orf attitudes to sexual assault, of what we may or may not define as rape.

Bella goes through the wringer here. Still under pressure to write her new novel- life, and work, must go on- Bella soon learns that a DNA sample has been taken and a suspect arrested, which seems wonderful. Yet it also means the DNA of consensual partners must be taken, which means Biagio. Ad this seemingly caring and decent man starts to blame her for not being careful about her drinking rather than blaming, you know, the rapist that actually raped her. Wanker. It's a powerfully written and devastating scene.

Yet she gets a triumph, of sorts. Learning that what zain did- craftily removing the condom during sex- is rape both morally and legally, Bella plays on his mind for a bit before dramatically, and publically, outing him at the ens, in a victorious moment.

For Kwame, though, there are no such mixed experiences as his reporting of his own sexual assault to the police turns out, despite good intentions on behalf of the somewhat inarticulate policeman he speaks to, to be a humiliating embarrassment.The law seems not to be well-aligned with casual gay sex.

There's a lot to think about here. This is superb, serious drama.

Free Guy (2021)

 "IP's and sequels. That is what people want."

See the quote, in which the film's villain summarises Holluwood This is a deceptively clever film. It's full of CGI,which works in the context. It's certainly very funny. Yet behind the well-executesd humour in this deceptively extraordinary film, a philosophical treatise hiding behind a blockbuster, is a bloody bit of brilliance.

Guy- a clever name for an NP-is a piece if sentient code devised by Keys and Millie. Yet he is also a genuine incidence of AI, a phemomenon that will, barring my outrageously premature death, be made manifest within my lifetime.

This is a film full of of humour amd witticisms.The tone is light. Yet, at its core, it is very philosophical indeed, being focused on a character (Ryan Reynolds) who is a sentient AI. And the film, with a real lightness of touch, really explores the idea of artificial sentience.

Look, I realise the '20s (yes, i know, none of us can quite believe it;'s the 2020s.), and we can quite be legitimately raise an eyebrow at how the film at the end uses such properies as lightsabres (in a scene where it could, of corse, symbolise,,, ahem) and Captain America's shield. Also, I appreciate the metatextual fun in characers such as Buddy and Dude. but, ultimately, this is a film which cheerdfully disregards and, indeed, freely attacks the fourth wall throughout, right until the romantic ending.

A rather good first film of 2021.