Stranger Things 2

Who you gonna trick or treat?

The first season of Stranger Things was a runaway success, a wonder of American Gothic television that built on familiar influences to make something fresh and unique. And now it’s back and strangerer than ever. And just as good. Like seriously. Just. As. Good.

With a handful of new additions and an upping of the stakes in terms of the big bad boss level danger, season two drops us back in Hawkins, Indiana to hang out with those meddling kids again. And those meddling adolescents. And those meddling grown-ups. Can you tell I’m trying to go spoiler free here?

The boys at the heart of it all are a year older, slightly more disparate as a group but only because puberty beckons not because they’re less tight than before. It’s not really a spoiler to say Eleven is also back as she’s been plastered all over the promo material for this season. She’s becoming increasingly aware of her abilities but also learning more about the kind of normal life an upbringing in a military complex denied her.

Samwise Gamgee is also around only he’s not here because he was a Hobbit but because long before his feet went all huge and hairy he was a Goonie. Yes they nod to it, the Duffer Brothers were never going to be able to resist nerding out over such a casting coup.

Will, who spent so much of the first season present by his absence is front and centre this time around and it’s fair to say his experiences in the Upside Down have left a mark.

Conspiracy theories are probed, teen love further explored, bad haircuts invoked, arcade games played, Indiana Jones’s hat continues to adorn the police chief’s head, Eleven’s history is developed and she connects to a deeper past, Winona Ryder is still awesome and still looks in need of several large dinners, tricking and treating looks a whole lot scarier than it does in the scenes from ET that are obviously being referenced.

Just watch it. You’ll be very glad you did. And then watch the nerd fest that is Beyond Stranger Things and learn stuff about the actors, writers and director as they chitter chat with some uber geek who is probably famous for uber geeking in the US but I’d never heard of him cos I’m just a stupid Limey.

Star Trek: Discovery - Almost Half Term Report

Next week’s episode of Star Trek: Discovery will be the ‘mid-season finale’, an oxymoronic term which simply means that the season has been split into two parts and will resume in early 2018. Doctor Who fans will know the curious frustration which mingles with excited anticipation that more is to come as outgoing showrunner Steven Moffat wanked about with season breaks for a bit to enable him to supersize his bank account writing another hit BBC show about some detective or other.

I digress. Discovery is unlikely to lose viewers due to the break as the season so far has exceeded expectations and given audiences the most grown-up version of Trek yet. Crew members swear (yup, no substituting the word ‘fuck’ for ‘frack’ here, Battlestar fans), they experience genuinely complex emotions - Burnham and Stamets especially - and most of the scripts have delivered dark, reflective science fiction fit to grace movie screens, let alone TV.

Jonathan Frakes has observed that the cast seem as tightly bonded as TNG were which can’t harm the show in the least. A tight knit crew often create something together which can reach beyond the sum of its parts. But it’s not just the actors, every interview I’ve seen with producers, writers, special effects people, stunt teams etc, has revealed a genuine love of what they’re working on. When Star Trek itself is half a century old and has inspired a generation or two to go into various sides of the industry, you’re bound to end up with a hell of a lot of Trekkies gravitating towards each new addition to the franchise.

Trekkies within the scriptwriting team also ensures canonical matters are dealt with in a dignified manner even when aspects of canon are being bent out of shape - Sarek raised an adopted child as well as his own son Spock? Well that’s new on us but by the end of the first two episodes nobody was griping about it. None of the Klingons look much like Warf but this is all taking place way before he’s even born and maybe he’s just a rare pretty one, eh?

The look of the show is incredible, again reaching cinematic levels due to a combination of advanced special effects, incredible set designs and presumably a far larger budget than TOS ever had.

Most importantly of all because this is Trek, despite the backdrop of war, despite the body count being rather high (especially when you factor in Harry Mudd repeatedly destroying The Discovery in his looped attempts to work out how the spore drive works), despite esoteric and occasionally mind bending sci-fi plotting, the show remains focused on the people at the heart of the action. The central characters are all multi-layered and it is already evident that it might take several seasons to fully explore individuals such as Captain Lorca, Saru and Michael Burnham herself.

I’m a fan. Not a given despite my being a Trekkie (I’m not hot on Enterprise and I can’t say I’ve seen every episode of DS9). In dark times we seek escape and inspiration in fictional heroes who are also undergoing hard, even traumatising circumstances. Discovery is the perfect Trek for the modern age; Michael Burnham is us - a flawed yet true-hearted person faced with impossible decisions and irrevocable choices on an almost daily basis. Only she has better hair and gets to cop off with the sexiest guy on the ship.

Star Trek: Discovery

Last week’s screening of the first and second episodes of Discovery followed a Trek tradition of introducing audiences to a new crew across a double hander. Only it was more like a two-part origins story in which quite a few of the new crew we got to meet were killed off courtesy of a space-tacular battle between the Federation and a spiky Klingon faction trying to reunite the 24 noble houses and defend their culture against dilution from Earthy/Vulcany/Whoevery infiltration.

Then came this week’s third episode (the first aboard the actual ship Discovery) and the audience’s discovery, if you will, that this promises to be a darker, more intense Trek than the small screen has ever seen.

Michael Burnham, the pivotal focus of this series, is not the captain. Indeed she (it can be a woman’s name, get over yourself) is a mutineer en route to a penal colony where she is meant to spend the rest of her born naturals. Which would be boring unless they wanted to do Orange Is The New Trek. They don't want to do that. They want to show a pre-Kirk era Federation at war with the Klingons. And weird science. And they sort of want to reference any and all good science fiction as well as nodding at Trek’s history along the way.

Episode 3 alone paid homage to Alien, Doctor Who, Minority Report, Serenity and possibly even Star Wars as far as my nerd-dar could make out. Oh and quoted Alice In Wonderland. Yup, Burnham falls right down the rabbit hole but such moments are the least satisfying in Discovery, seeming over-egged and hinting at eyebrows arched higher than Spock himself could ever manage.

Good he came up: Burnham was fostered by Spock’s parents after her own (both human) parents were killed by the previous last Klingon attack some years ahead of the opening twinisodes. No, that's never come up in fifty years of Trekking. No, the Internet doesn't seem to have completely melted down over it. Yet.

I could spoiler you right up if I wanted to. Like mentioning that bit where…and the…with a melon…

Not gonna. Get the heck on Netflix and catch up. When Star Trek first aired in its original form in the sixties is was intended as both a reflection of the times and a pointer to a better future, as sci-fi often is unless it's all dystopian and shit. Diversity was key, intergalactic harmony as a metaphor for international peace in the real world? With Discovery things are less flower-power optimistic, just as modern politics is more shit-coloured and subject to interpretation by whomever controls the media lens through which it is dispersed. It shines a light on us, not on a plausible future. Which in truth has always been Trek’s purpose. Long and prosperously may it live.

Straight Outta Compton

As a white British male all I really understood when NWA’s ‘Straight Outta Compton’ album hit the record stores in the late 80s was that that I liked this darker, harder, more political rap just as much as I'd liked most of the strictly groove based incarnations throughout the decade. 

The small West Country town I grew up in had violence aplenty but I’m talking different factions of music lovers scrapping over turf with fists and feet. No guns, no hard-core gangs, no genuine deprivation - ours was a predominantly middle-class, Caucasian town although youth culture was driven by my working class peers more than by anything else at that time.

Being young, black, talented and ambitious in Compton at that time was a very different matter and did not excuse the NWA members from police harassment and brutality or from gang-bangers swaggering around the neighbourhood brandishing handguns in case their dicks and bravado were not large enough. If the music was hard - lamely dubbed ‘gangsta rap’ by a white mainstream media as frightened by the truth of certain aspects of their country’s schizophrenic attitudes to privilege and power as it was thirty years earlier when rock and roll thrust so many black artists into the public domain - it was because it reflected the truth of the world these young men grew up into.

No, they were not innocents and their early careers were peppered with controversy, street language to go along with the street knowledge, drugs, sex and conflict both within the group and from that appalled white media.

What this movie conveys despite not wanting to pretty up the darker aspects of the lives of the three greatest contributors to the NWA sound - Ice Cube, Eazy E and Dr Dre - is the friendships that endured despite betrayals over money and personal power trips, the importance of their music and lyrics to a disenfranchised generation of black youths and their wider cultural influence. Surely only Public Enemy can lay claim to similarly vocalising the issues of that generation and equally providing musical foundations for the generations to come.

The performances are spot on with Jason Mitchell’s portrayal of Eric ‘Eazy E’ Wright particularly compelling. He is the heart of the movie, Dre (Corey Taylor) and Cube (played by his own son, O'Shea Jackson Jr) initially revolving around him like planets orbiting a star but eventually realising they have to find their own way, their own trail across the heavens if you will, in order to fully satisfy a creative compulsion that E seems to drop the ball on once the money and the drugs and the women come rolling in.

E’s widow was an executive producer along with Cube and Dre which means this is ultimately a love-letter to a dear friend and partner whose sexual appetites led to a shockingly early demise from AIDS related complications just as the three friends seemed on the verge of getting past their conflict and rivalries and were looking to record new material with the original line-up.

If the tragedy is Eric Wright’s ignorance that heterosexuals could spread HIV as well as homosexuals (still a very common fallacy at the time), an ignorance that ultimately led to his death, the menace is brought into sharp focus by R. Marcos Taylor’s depiction of Suge Knight, founder of Death Row Records and a man with a reputation for being more than happy to settle old scores and fresh grievances with violence and death threats.

For all the sombre tones this is also an exhilarating tale of a group of guys who defied the odds of their locality and their position within society to make celebratory as well as angry music - Express Yourself funks along like James Brown on sensimilia.

Great movies about rock and roll bands are rare. Great movies about rap artists are even more rare but this surpasses pretty much all that do exist. And it's even got Paul Giamatti doing his customary trick of playing a character you somehow both love and hate, this time as the band’s manager Jerry Heller.

Yes I know that Ice Cube has since made some god awful family movies to pay the bills but he's also been involved in scripting and performing in one or two classics along the way, not least ‘Boyz N The Hood’. Dr Dre has spent the years since NWA’s heyday perfecting the incredible talent he already had for laying down beats and producing music with some of the greatest rap artists of all time. ‘Straight Outta Compton’ leaves them both on the cusp of these developments in their lives, distraught at the death of Eazy E but looking forward. 

The film ends with actual footage of NWA videos, news clips describing reactions to E’s death from the rap community and the public, and snippets of the futures to come. At a time when white supremacists march openly in the United States of America and the uber white-privileged man in the White-est of White Houses fails to condemn such defiantly racist behaviour, the history and the messages of NWA are perhaps even more important than they were at the time.

Doctor Who: Jodie Whittaker

I’ve waited a while before imposing my opinion about the upcoming changes for Doctor Who. Knee jerk internet jerks are no doubt still frothing and bubbling in their mother’s basements about the fact that the Thirteenth Doctor is to be played by a woman. Or, worse, rubbing their knees and nethers in disgusting boyticipation. Mostly they are decrying what to them is a step too far for a science fiction show.

Science fiction, lest anyone has forgotten, is all about fantasy, imagination and the possibilities at the edge of probability. In the shape of Doctor Who science fiction has always, absolutely always, been about breaking rules, imagining the impossible and making fantasy seem so almost-real that young kids who get hooked on it are still obsessed when they are approaching their dotage.

As one such uber-nerd I should like to point to the very first edition of the show, all the way back in 1963: An Unearthly Child. And who was that child? It was the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, a woman, no less. A Time Lady, dontcha know. I'd wager that while she was mostly a damsel in distress sort of character, as was common back then for most females in action-driven shows aside from the odd possessor of her own agency such as Honor Blackman, she was also canonical proof that Timelords do both genders.

And when the Doctor eventually visited his homeland onscreen in the seventies Time Ladies were in evidence, despite the ‘Lords’ still being more front and centre. Until Romana, that is, the second longer-term Time Lady incumbent in the Tardis. Both male and female characters, even The Brigadier, played second fiddle to Tom Baker’s Puckish Fourth Doctor, so it's no surprise Romana was often also somewhat damselly and distressy.

All of this long before Who was rebooted by a generation of screenwriters infected by a more modern ‘political correctness gone mad’, as some are still assuming is the reason for casting a woman in the role of the Doctor for the first time. It's as if those who most loathe the idea of a female Doctor are privileged white male misogynists who may well suffer with varying degrees of homophobia and racism, isn't it? 

Hmm, whatever. If they don't like the direction the show is going in they could always choose not to watch it and save themselves from some kind of seizure.

Jodie Whittaker, like Matt Smith before her and even David Tennant to a degree, is a moderately well known purveyor of the acting arts yet to make the step up into being a big name. Like both of them, Peter Capaldi and Christopher Eccleston, she is also a brilliant purveyor of said arts, despite only being moderately well known thus far. She has range, she has a unique energy, she can totally inhabit the roles she plays: all perfect qualifications for being the Doctor. Does the lack of a penis create a demerit so enormous that those facts about her as an actor are irrelevant? No, knee jerk internet jerks, it does not.

I'm going to miss Capaldi. But I was also going to miss Smith. And Tennant. And Eccleston. And McGann. And…skips a bit here to the next one I really, really was going to miss…Tom Baker. And Jon Pertwee. I’m not quite ancient enough to remember watching Troughton and possibly never did more than hear Hartnell’s bumblesome tones from my pram. The point is, virtually every actor who has played the Doctor made the role their own; Jodie Whittaker will do exactly that too and not because she’s a woman but because she’s brilliant.

And when she leaves the show to be replaced by a robot fish I will miss her like heck too. Until halfway through the first episode of the Fourteenth Doctor’s adventures.

Doctor Who: The Doctor Falls

It is the end, but the moment has been prepared for. 

Tom Baker’s final words as he began to morph into Peter Davison have been quoted a fair deal in the run-up to Peter Capaldi’s last season finale before he regenerates in this year’s Christmas special. However, as he lay on the floor of the Tardis towards the end of the episode, apparently dead beyond regenerative trickery, it was Jon Pertwee’s last scene I was most reminded of. From the dandified cuffs of Capaldi’s shirt to the bat-splayed red lining of his ragged jacket to the creased face and bedraggled silver locks, the Twelfth Doctor mirrored the Third with Moffat-fuelled accuracy.

That he later quoted his more immediate predecessor’s last words would have been no whimsical notion nor a spot of nostalgic fanboy onanism from the outgoing show-runner. The moment when it is (of course) revealed that he's not dead after all harked back to the flashbacks Davison had when it was his turn to hand over the sonic screwdriver but let's not dwell on that as the Sixth Doctor was a multi-chrome clown in all the wrong ways.

The Doctor Falls deliberately draws on iconic imagery from Moffat’s own tenure too but more in the spirit of a greatest hits package than the feel of the regeneration echoes (I will grant him kudos for inverting Eleven carrying Amy during Asylum of the Daleks and having CyberBill hold the failing Twelve in the same tragic pose). By alerting long-time fans of the show to the ripples of so many other Doctors running through the energy of Capaldi’s oncoming regeneration it led us to the final twist of the season: Twelve looks to be spending Christmas with the first incarnation of The Doctor.

If you want to nitpick it's the third incarnation of the first incarnation of The Doctor: William Hartnell and Richard Hurndall being far too real-life dead to appear so David Bradley has stepped into the role. It's only fair, he did play Hartnell and thus Hartnell’s Doctor brilliantly in the 2013 anniversary drama about the genesis of the show itself.

My reaction is mixed. It is a thrilling prospect indeed for the Christmas special to feature the original Doctor as well as a soon to golden-glow his way into somebody else Twelve. But the prospect of incoming show-runner Chris Chibnall deciding to reset the entire programme by somehow having Capaldi regenerate as Bradley’s version of Hartnell lurks at the back of my mind like the stench of a rotten cucumber lingers in a refrigerator.

The concept is fine but I pray it's not one that Chibnall has given any serious thought to. Anniversaries are one thing, a great excuse to gather up a couple of previous Doctors and let them squabble their way to harmonious solutions to some devilish alien plot, but a Marvel Spider-Man style reset would most likely lose fans rather than push the show onwards towards 2023’s 60th jubilee.

I've loved every minute of Capaldi as The Doctor and applaud Moffat for bucking the previous trend of recruiting younger and younger actors to the role, seemingly to ensure fangirls came along with the fanboys, but the best regenerations and smoothest transitions in the show’s history work when a proper contrast of personalities (rather than vomit-hued jackets) is set up. Since returning to our screens no Doctor has been too similar to the previous one; there would be a danger of chiming many familiar Capaldi notes if Bradley becomes the next Doctor full time.

I don't know that anybody else is squawking about this or even considering it a possibility. I may be putting Twelve and One together and not coming up with Thirteen. A cryptic Moffat statement about this regeneration being rather different to those we’ve seen before and the continuing lack of announcement about Capaldi’s successor are the fragmentary foundations of my thesis, not really enough to give credence to the idea, right?

Or maybe that's exactly what Chibnall hopes geeks like me will be imagining, the better to help us accept a female Doctor this time? Personally I've been fine with the idea of a woman taking on the role for most of my adult life (once I'd got past the prepubescent ‘girls are pooey’ stage) so I don't really need subterfuge to help me cope with gender changes in a science fiction series.

Hey ho, on with the show. Only it seems like on with the show minus Pearl Mackie, John Simm, Michelle Gomez and Peter Capaldi as the Master/Missy double act reversed the polarity of multiple Doctors by killing one another towards the end, and Bill Potts looks like she’s off to snog around the universe with her romantic interest from the first episode of the season. Talk about regime change.

Doctor Who Season Ten: Half-Time Report

Halfway through Season 10 of Doctor Who (the modern, circa 2005 revamped version, no idea how many seasons there have been altogether since 1963) and things are beginning to take shape in terms of various plot strands. Pearl Mackie has bedded seamlessly into place as new companion Bill Potts and even the mystery of why Matt Lucas is aboard the Tardis has become less a vexation and more the possibility of his character Nardole stamping himself into Whovian folklore as a secret badass.

Hanging over everything this year is the fact that it is public knowledge Peter Capaldi is leaving the show. Internet theories abound as to his replacement, theories I have little response to other than to hope the Kris Marshall fans are disappointed when the announcement is finally made. Other theories skitter across the web too, such as the possibility that Capaldi might not last until the end of the season. The first show of the series included a look ahead clip package at the end which showed the Twelfth Doctor in the now classic regeneration pose, something akin to Christ on the cross only with more golden light and no halo.

Tradition tends to insist that the Doctor becomes a brand new version of himself (or herself) in the final show of a season or, more, frequently, at the conclusion of a slightly oversentimental Christmas special. But there is a precedent for replacing a Doctor within the season itself, albeit not an especially encouraging one for older fans. Back in the mid 1980s when another Peter, Mr Davison, had announced he was to step down the role, his replacement came along at the tail end of the penultimate storyline that series, The Caves of Androzani. The season rounded off with The Twin Dilemma, Colin Baker's first full appearance as the Sixth Doctor. Yes THAT Baker, the ridiculous costume one, the portly one, the worst actor of the lot with some of the worst storylines and lowest effects budgets. That went well, then.

In its present form Doctor Who is twelve years old which is pretty good going for any prime time show. Altogether it has been around for fifty four years although of course there was nothing but a wonderful Doctor in a poor TV special to keep us going between 1989 and 2005. The freshness of the Russell T Davies era, the cocksure swagger of the opening couple of seasons under Steven Moffat, these have faded a little yet Capaldi has been given some of the best genuine science fiction stories of all the Doctor's incarnations. As well as a few duffers such as In The Forest Of The Night. Hey, Tenant has Fear Her on his Timelord CV don't forget, and Matt Smith somehow chewed his way through the dialogue of The Power Of Three.

Along with a new Doctor will come a new show runner in Chris Chibnall. He has Who previous: sadly The Power of Three was his work but he was largely responsible for the tour de force power of the first season of spin-off show Torchwood. Apparently he's been doing some detectivey thing with David Tenant in the main role more recently. So how is this season shaping up to hand over to Chibbers (as nobody calls him)?

So far so awesome. The fallibility of The Doctor is not always properly explored but seeing as he's spent two full episodes blind as a bat and was unable to prevent Bill from making a potentially disastrous decision on behalf of the planet at the end of the most recent episode it's fair to say that Capaldi's Doctor will in part be remembered for the times he did not just waltz in and save the day with a wave of his sonic screwdriver (a huge criticism of the Tenant and Smith eras). Uncertainty and vulnerability were an integral part to the role as portrayed by William Hartnell and Patrick Troughton so this might be a chance to re-establish the character as well-meaning but not always triumphant.

Too much failure, however, and you're in Fifth Doctor territory. We forget, given how great a job Matt Smith did of making his youth irrelevant in terms of how we saw the Tenth Doctor, that Davison struggled throughout his tenure to stamp authority on a role previously associated with the brusque bossiness of Jon Pertwee and the maverick genius of Tom Baker. The Thirteenth Doctor will need to hit the ground running and establish themselves as firmly as Smith managed to do on the heels of Tenant or the next series might be the show's last in its current guise.

Which would be a shame as the scope of the premise is, as always, limitless. Alien nutjob with a penchant for doing good owns a space-time travelling device so s/he can literally rock up anywhere, anywhen and anyhow in search of adventure and televisual feast. Bill's story arc is more subtle, perhaps, than the days of Rose or Amy but she's strong, funny and unique. If they decide she should stay to help bed in the next Doctor it can only be a bonus. After all, Clara's main detractors forgot their trolling when she was shown in new lights playing against Capaldi's version of the main character.

Still to come this season we have two versions of The Master/Missy colluding to do whatever vile things they can come up with together and we have Hartnell-era Cybermen returning, possibly to wear Capaldi a little thin and cause his regeneration. I've got a boner the size of all space and time just thinking about it. Haven't you, madam?

Doctor Who - Smile

Future cities, The Doctor likes taking his fresh companions to future cities so it's no surprise that Bill gets the same treatment from Number Twelve in her first proper Tardis outing. Viewers have already seen that all is not well in the apparent paradise they find themselves in and it doesn't take the time travellers long to suss this out for themselves.

Swarms of flying nano bots are apparently linked to emoji-faced base-station droids, and their insistence on happiness from human occupants of the city would add sinister overtones to everything if it wasn't so reminiscent of both The Beast Below's 'smilers' and the 'this is a kindness' robots from The Girl Who Waited. I wasn't a huge fan of Frank Cottrell-Boyce's first Doctor Who script (In The Forest of the Night) and am not entirely convinced by this follow up. 

I do, however, like the intention of making it largely a double-hander to more fully embed Pearl Mackie into the role and into public consciousness but there is a danger of straying too far towards the late excesses of Tom Baker's time at the helm when wordy exposition regularly supplanted action. Not to worry, action does happen once the duo begin to integrate with the robots and the newly awakening citizens of the colony.

It's a morality tale disguised as a thriller, just like Cottrell-Boyce's previous fare: the robots have achieved a degree of sentience that entitles them to be considered a new species. Not only that but, as they have constructed and maintained the city out of themselves (literally, they form the buildings and break out of the walls only to deal with crop necessities or damage control) the city is arguable more theirs than it is owned by the emergent humans.

Yes it is true that damage control to these new life forms somehow translates into killing off unhappy humans but once The Doctor turns them off and on again (I'm still hoping the Kris Marshall rumours are untrue and that Richard Ayoade can be persuaded to take over when Capaldi regenerates) they have no memory of that unpleasant murdery business and seem willing to tend to the needs of the newcomers. Peace in our time.

In the bigger scheme of things this is all about as likely to affect the story arc of the season as little as Rose's first trip with the newly regenerated Doctor Ten affected season Two's grand narrative but buried right at the start of the episode an exchange between Nardole and The Doctor may prove more meaningful. Whatever vow the time lord has made to stay on Earth and guard the mysterious vault in the basement of St Luke's, Nardole appears to be integral to holding The Doctor to his promise. He also appears to be crap at his job and easily distracted with tea making errands.

Bill continues to ask the questions nobody ever seems to have asked. She continues to get few direct answers but that's ok as we love it when companions work stuff out for themselves. I'd now like to see both her and The Doctor given a meatier story to chew on: we've met her, we like her, it's time she was thrown properly into the deep end. London frost fairs anyone?

Doctor Who -The Pilot

Doctor Who is back. Peter Capaldi's final season kicked off with a new companion, a fairly rubbish alien lifeform, a robot other companion who has robot alopecia, apparently, and some bonus stuff thrown in for the fans. Well, it wouldn't be Easter without Easter eggs, eh?

The fan stuff included Daleks fighting Movellans (very Fourth Doctor); photos of River and of Susan on display in The Doctor's office (he has an office now, offices are cool); many sonic screwdrivers; montage of Bill's days echoing the montage of Rose's life before she met the Ninth Doctor in the first episode of the rebooted series; Leela running around naked in the background.

No, that last didn't happen but I wasn't sure you were paying attention.

Reboot. An interesting concept. Effectively Steven Moffat rebooted Doctor Who for the second time in five years in 2010 with the Eleventh Doctor and Amy meeting in her garden when she was a tiny. And now he's once again provided a season opener that could serve as a kicking off point for brand new fans. There is often a hint of the new every time a fresh companion hooks up with our favourite time travelling nutjob and through Bill we get to remind ourselves how out of this world the Doctor truly is. 

Only Bill isn't quite like most of the other newbies we've met down the years. No, I don't mean because of her ethnicity or sexual persuasion, those are just her being her. I mean the questions she asks that somehow nobody has quite got round to asking in 54 years of the show. Like, if he's from another planet why does the acronym which gives his time machine its name work in English, not Gallifreyan? No, you can't go back to the real first ever episode and say Susan came up with it because that ignores the fact that every Time Lord we've ever encountered refers to the machines as Tardis too. Tardises? Tardi? 

Bigger questions not yet answered mostly revolve around why Doctor Twelve is loitering with very obvious intent at St Luke's college. There is a vault he's guarding in the basement. What's in it, why is he guarding it and why did he locate it at the university (if indeed he did)? Will the answers to such questions have anything to do with Hartnell style cybermen or double incarnations of The Master/Missy later in the season? 

As I said, this week's alien was pretty rubbish, a sentient puddle that took on the form of a girl Bill fancied in such a way as to remind me of the scary aqueous life forms in The Waters of Mars from 2009. The aliens can often be lame when the season starts with a new companion being bedded in (Prisoner Zero was fairly shit, the Adipose were terrible, The Judoon looked scarier with their space helmets on). The big bads come later. The more we get to know a companion the more we truly feel the jeopardy their travels with The Doctor place them in.

For now we have a madman with a box, a robot Matt Lucas whose purpose has yet to be defined or justified and a crazy-haired new girl. And all of time and space. Good enough for me.

Ghost In The Shell

This is a much anticipated live action adaptation of the hugely acclaimed cyberpunk manga by Masamune Shirow, it has also gained a fair amount of attention for its casting of caucasian Scarlett Johansson in the lead role amid accusations of ‘whitewashing’

Well Johansson plays ‘Major’, a woman, who’s brain has been placed into a cybernetic body, and against the wishes of her Doctor/Designer Dr. Ouelet (played by Juliette Binoche) now heads up a combat unit for Section 9, dedicated to tracking down cyber terrorists, most notably the mysterious ‘Kuze’ who is rather busy making scrambled egg out of the brains of Hanka Corporation employees involved in a mysterious project 2571 , the very company that built Major…. Da Da Daaaaaa!

Much chasing of Kuze with sidekick Batou and unit boss Chief Aramaki ensues, more Hanka peeps get turned into breakfast bites, and Major discovers that she is not who she was conditioned to believe she was before her fantastic drastic plastic makeover. As she delves deeper into the motivations of Kuze’s beef with her makers, apple carts get upset, truths get exposed, mums get met, and nasty corporate bosses get even nastyerish.

This movie is a near future cyberpunk flick, so you don’t need Sherlock to deduce it’s fairly big on the CGI, but there is nothing groundbreaking in its look. The influences such as Blade Runner, Fifth Element, and under-appreciated Tarsem Singh movie ‘The Cell’ are worn pretty heavily on the old sleeve. It looks good without wowing ya, but on the plus side it’s not so busy that it makes you boss eyed, but instead allows you to take in the view, which compared with some recent fare (Latest instalment of resident Evil a prime example) is a blessed relief and gives me hope I will not develop celluloid induced epilepsy anytime soon.       Script and pace are pretty sound and overall Rupert Sanders filled the directors chair ably.

This is not a great movie. If I had to categorize it I would say it sits somewhere between Okay and good, but it is a must see. Why you ask? Well I will tell ya, and you are not gonna believe it kids! Put the whitewashing guff to one side. Scarlett Johansson was cast in this movie because she was able to convey the very basic theme of the movie, and that is asking the question ‘How far do we embrace technology before we stop being human?’ Scarlett Johansson showed us in the Indy flick ‘Under the Skin’ that she is able to physically convey un-humanness to a spectacular degree, and that is why she was cast in this movie. Miss J is truly unnerving in this film. The way she walks, her posture, the way she interacts, are all infinitesimally ‘off’ to the extent that you don’t notice it at first, but it kinda pulls you in and subtly freaks you out over time. This is an actor doing what they do at the top of their game, and it’s worth the ticket price for that alone.

The persona of Johansson’s ‘Major’ absolutely dominates this movie, to the extent that few others manage to really get a look in, but Juliette Binoche, and Takeshi Kitano as ‘The Chief’ both manage to give their characters some depth.

If like me you are into the Ghost in the Shell lore, you are more than likely to find this a strong(ish) addition to what has gone before, otherwise it’s a fairly entertaining watch that will leave you slightly weirded out by an actor with alt-human bones….

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Colin Firth is...Colin Firth, same as always. But that's a good thing, isn't it? We haven't got totally fed up of his suave Britishness like we did Hugh Grant's stumble-bumble Britishness. Not yet. Anyway, he's a spy but it's not a government run thing, it's a secret society known as Kingsmen. But otherwise it's basically Bond with a junior Bond storyline thrown in for good measure.

Which is where Taron Egerton comes in with his kind of odd name as though he's American or made it up but he's actually like well chavvy n that. In this movie. When he's being Eddie the Eagle he's not chavvy. But he is much dumber. Lovably dumber. The Brits love a plucky loser. Wonder why more of us don't like Donald Trump, then?

Anyway (again), lost my train of thought there (again). Yup, Firth owes Egerton (even his surname sounds made up) a favour as he was present when the teenager's dad died during final training to become a cool spy. So he throws him a chance to do the same training and maybe die during the final part of it.

Michael Caine is the boss but don't get excited, he's emailing most of his performance in. Some young posho types are also in the training which we see scenes from alternating with an escalating plot involving the deaths, disappearances and some form of control over influential people of the world. Behind this scheme is Samuel L. Jackson but channelling Will.i.am for some reason. Trigger warning, one scene contains a very, very bad pun at the expense of McDonald's.

Egsy (Egerton's character has almost as odd a name as he does in real life but it's ok as it's a nickname), goes through various rites of passage scenarios. Yes they're faintly predictable but this isn't a movie trying to reinvent the wheel. This is a Matthew Vaughn film which from the off should lead you to expect some high class violence without too much gore and a better sense of humour than Guy Ritchie's films have displayed since Snatch. Much of the best violence comes from Jackson's henchwoman, Sofia Boutella.

End of the world as we know it scenario for the climax?  But of course. That's what we want from our spy films. Oh and for Michael Caine to say the word 'fuck' in that peerless guttural way of his. Does the world end? Does Samuel L Jackson get away with it or does he get thwarted by some pesky kids? Let's just say there's a sequel in the planning. Which is a good thing.

The Rack Pack

Well today's  movie can best be described as a curio. It's about world matchplay snooker, as far as I am aware only the second of its kind after the weirdly wonderful 'Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire' This however is a biopic set around wild boy Alex Higgins and socially inept Steve Davis and reads like a tabletop Hunt Vs Lauda, but with a completely different set of balls. Inexplicably I had a bit of a thing about snooker during the time this is set so I kinda relate to it, but just like ‘Rush’, and indeed every other sports related movie I can think of, the script takes some liberties with the historical events to adrenaline up what is essentially a bunch of men nudging balls around a table with little sticks. If you look behind the rather overblown personalities however it rather effectively shows the transformation of a slightly seedy niche game into a money spinning televised ‘sport’.  

What really lets this movie down is the Danny Dyersville acting. From Luke Treadaway’s angst ridden Alex Higgins and Will Merrick’s fright wigging Steve Davis, the cast stomp around the script like toddlers in Doc Martins. Surely the BBC and the UK can do better than this for thespy talent? The only person who comes out of this with any kind of distinction is Kevin Bishop as svengali/manager Barry Hearn. Overall an experience that slices a yellow rather than pots a black.

Whisky Tango Foxtrot

Afghanistan unsurprisingly has been 'done' a fair bit on screen over the decade or more, but this movie doesn't do the big badda boom badge of honour action, but focuses on the lives, interactions, and mindsets of war correspondents and the people around them, within a context of light drama with (for me at least) laugh out loud moments, and does it rather well, despite the director team of  Glen Ficarra and John Requa having previously given us the soul numbing ‘Bad Grandpa’ There is a sensitive balance in tension between the seriousness and ridiculousness of reporting on armed conflict without it turning into Boo Ra!  or ‘War Inc’ pastiche, and it has something serious to say about major news services treating conflicts as fashionable commodity. It also shows, and I know ‘cos I’ve met a couple, what an utterly bonkers lot conflict journo’s are.

The storyline? Well jaundiced copy editor chucks herself into the void to escape the walls closing in, wonders briefly what the fuck she’s done, and then chases the big story. Big story nailed, she hangs in and racks up some scare miles until eventually realizing that no one in the big comfy news media offices gives a flying Taliban anymore unless it’s a biiii………iiiiiiiiiiig story. Throw in a bit of romance, some mad soldiery, droolly politicians, and warlordiness… and that’s your Kofta’s served.
Tina Fey? Well I've seen her in a few light comedies that have not exactly set my synapses on fire, but .with her particular brand of wide eyed neurosis she carries the lead in this one well enough. Margo Robbie is solid. Billy Bob Thornton continues his 'second wind' as a serious actor and gives superb sarky military in this one, and

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Martin Freeman surprises in a relatively un-type loose limbed performance, even if his Scots accent was a bit…erm…odd. The stand out for me though is Christopher Abbott (who I must confess I know little about) as Afghan guide/security man Fahim, in a remarkably nuanced performance. An actor to watch out for I reckon. The only casting blip is the choice of Alfred Molina as an Afghan minister. Seen him do some fine work previously but so miscast here it almost seems he is in a different movie to everyone else.
Where this movie really wins out is scripting and pace. There is no fat here, and I found myself engaged throughout. All in all maybe not a must see, but if you do come across it? It’s worth a punt 

The Program

Well Lance Armstrong did say they would make a movie about him one day, but I suspect he anticipated just a wee bit more creative control over its content and tone at the time. What we get here is Lance becoming a Wewy wewy bad boy, apparently because he was the wrong shape to be a wewy wewy good boy, and all of this while battling cancer, and being determined to be dressed in a very unflattering shade of yellow. To be honest I don't think it would have bothered the distributors either way, but this flick sure didn’t do the cause any favours. Interesting story cobbled by rather lacklustre and uneven tele-movie scripting, and cinematography that simply doesn’t do the subject justice. Now I’m no cycling nut, but I have seen live coverage and docu footage of Tour that is absolutely thrilling. These shots are so flat they almost level the sneckin’ Alps. There are a whole bunch of Stephen Frears directed movies I like bigly, and his name on top was a reason I picked this up. Boy does he mislay a testicle on this one.

 There are a few deviations from the Armstrong story we may have picked up through some kind of tabloid cultural osmosis, even if we thought a peloton was a slightly comedic lookin’ bird   For example Cheryl Crow fans might be disappointed that she has been washed out of the tale, though I’m pretty damned sure the lady herself ensured she wasn’t mortified on celluloid. Every day might be a winding road, but who the hell needs to build their own chicanes?

Ben Foster plays speedy speedo Lance, but despite the promo’s hailing the performance as ‘gripping’ the only things being gripped in this is the occasional handlebar and syringe.  Chris O’Dowd is up as doggedly persistent journo nemesis David Walsh, but despite his best efforts I don’t feel he was the best casting for the role, while why Dustin Hoffman agreed to be in this initially baffled me, but then I remembered that Mr. Mumbles agreed to be in 'The Cobbler' and 'The Fokkers' movies, and realized that he can do all this stuff in second gear

This movie kinda sucks. Not in a big shouty way, but in that way that sneaks up on you about 15 minutes in, just long enough to resent the shit out of it for not being so bad that someone warned you…

One More Time

Seems to have been a mini run of movies centred around elderly washed up singers recently, but unlike the lamentable Al Pacino three wheeled clown wagon 'Danny Collins', this movie pretty much nails it. The always good value Chris Walken plays slimy crooner Paul Lombard on the crotchety zimmer comeback trail, but the movie revolves around pinky haired slacker emo thirty something daughter Jude, played to great effect by Amber Heard. The flick is not big on story but essentially it's a family study of a small-time celebrity tribe limping along through the ongoing effects of crooner dad's rank egocentricity, swinging along with Dean Martinesque tunes and such an ambiguous moral compass he could be stood on the north pole.
Walken is perfect for the role, Heard handles herself well, and Oliver Platt (The long suffering manager) is solid. It's a shame though that 'other' sister Corrine, played very angsty and ably by Kelli Garner, is not given more airtime as a counterpoint to Jude/Heard's flip flop character.
If you are into people movies this one is worth checking out. I certainly found it good value, and it has a cracking musical soundtrack as well 

Inception

Why not think it over boys and join our incept nation?

So sang Adam Ant many, many years before Christopher Nolan came up with the original idea for Inception. Almost. And I agree with the lunatic king of the wild frontier, why not think it over? But then I do think it over and my head gets all filled up with crazy twisted cityscapes and fruitbat French actresses and I need to have a bit of a lie down.

Leonardo DiCaprio touches his hair a lot. It's either meant to signify something meta in the way kooky mannerisms are used to add layers to characterisation in French New Wave movies, or it's a Leo device for staying in character. The latter, I think, but forgivable. As is Nolan's habit of working with certain stars on a regular basis. I'm happy seeing Cillian Murphy and Marion Cotillard turn up to add their highbrow slant on this acting business and think Joseph Gordon-Levitt does his best work for Nolan.

It's not Nolan-by-Numbers, though. Far from it. It's a mindfuck, layer under layer, special effect thrill ride garnished with a strident score, those near-perfect Tom Hardy features, knowing winks to (literally) labyrinthine mythology such as Ellen Page's character's name and beeyooteefull scenery.

If you've seen it you know what it's about and don't need me to tell you. If you haven't seen it you're a twonk and me telling you about the film won't ever change that. I mean, seriously, it's practically the movie of the century so far when it comes to visual and screenplay innovation and you haven't even bothered to catch up with it yet? I despair, I really do.

Bet you've never even listened to Adam and the Ants either. Philistine.

Birdman

Michael Keaton plays a man who thinks he's Charlie Parker...No he doesn't, he plays an actor who used to play an action hero. Wow, like crazy art and life imitating one another shit here because Michael Keaton did once play an action hero, Batman. Oh right, that's probably why writer and director Iñárittu cast him.

Riggan Thomson has been through personal and career ups and downs since hanging up his winged cape a couple of decades previously and is trying to revive both aspects of his life with an ambitious Broadway production of a Raymond Carver short story which he's adapted, directs and stars in.

Onstage drama isn't enough, of course, so his current girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) is in the cast and his recently out of rehab daughter (Emma Stone) is his personal assistant. The female lead (Naomi Watts) seems stable until the addition of her talented but arrogant boyfriend (Ed Norton) to the play highlights the fault lines in everybody's personalities. But hey, what a cast. And that's without mentioning Zach Galifianakis who suits this smarter, cerebral style of comedy far more than the gross-out crap he usually associates himself with.

Did I mention Riggan is pestered by an inner monologue which has the voice of and eventually takes the physical form of his old superhero character? Well he does, so clearly he's not entirely well in the brain place.

Norton's compelling but brutal approach to the play ensures the uptake for preview shows is full but another spectral figure haunts Riggan, one other people can see: an influential old bag of a reviewer (Lindsay Duncan). She hates the play without even seeing it because for her it represents everything that is wrong with modern theatre - untrained screen celebrities taking up hallowed stages with vanity projects in a bid to prove they are serious actors.

Is that what Riggan's doing? His personal Birdman critic berates him for the same reasons so somewhere inside he must fear that these are his motives. Norton's insistence on reality within the piece urges Keaton further and further away from cosy notions of a small stage success but also possibly further away from sanity.

Iñárittu makes the movie look like it's one long continuous shot, adding to its theatricality and immediacy but the trick wouldn't work without powerful performances from all. While Naomi Watts seems somewhat underused and thus more of a cypher than a character her commitment to the role even manages to turn that into a reflection of theatre land. Norton is as confusingly full of rage and underlying impotence as he is in all his great performances from American History X to Fight Club.

Emma Stone is the woman of the moment. Well her and Jennifer Lawrence but Emma can actually act. Like Watts she manages to paint a relatively small canvas with huge brush strokes and conjure up possibly the finest work I've seen her do (no, I haven't yet seen La La Land. Shut up, already!)

If the other characters become scenery to Keaton's internal and externalised struggles both within himself and with the play it is because it's his film. Are any of them playing people who were once internationally famous as Birdman? No, they're not, so it isn't about them, much as they might antagonise, frustrate, encourage or otherwise impact upon his ambitions.

I think I recall an interview with Keaton from around the turn of the century where he admitted that Batman had killed his career for a while because it meant directors and audiences alike forgot that he is actually a skilled character actor. He's evidently way beyond that stage now if he was more than happy by 2014 to nod to his own past career and its effect in this. What he gives us is a nuanced, tragicomic, heartbreakingly realistic portrayal of a man searching for some kind of personal meaning within a world that still sees him not as whoever he might imagine himself to be but as a superhero they once paid the entry price to see in movie screens up and down the land.

By turns both subtle and blatantly emotive, Birdman is also one of Iñárittu's finest films, something rightly acknowledged at the 87th Academy where it won four Oscars, one of which was for best director. I can't figure it why I haven't watched it before. I know I'll watch it again.