Return of the RECENT VIEWING

[Tom Waits For No One]

Delia Derbyshire: The Myths And The Legendary Tapes

Fab!
Available on BBC iPlayer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w6tr

[Jumper K]

I was really looking forward to this, I'm doing a lot of reading around the BPP and the movement at present. Great central performances, gripping narrative and conveys really well the moral ambiguity at the centre of the story. But I think its flawed in that it doesn't give enough countenance to the reasons Hampton was such a threat, or explore in any detail his personal ideology and philosophy. As an exploration of the relationship between Hampton and O'Neal its really good.
As one critic put it 'too much Judas and not enough Messiah'
Ulitimately depressing as nothing really has changed.

[The Modernist]

Finally got round to Trainspotting 2.
I thought it was a commendable failure. It's main problem was that it couldn't find a good reason to bring these characters back together again and this left a lack of purpose and an empty heart at the centre of the film that Boyle's hyper-stylism couldn't disguise. Some great moments though and it was good to see the actors inhabit those roles again. I guess you could call it an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, just a shame it wasn't more than that.

[Rorschach]

Finally got round to Trainspotting 2.
I thought it was a commendable failure. It's main problem was that it couldn't find a good reason to bring these characters back together again and this left a lack of purpose and an empty heart at the centre of the film that Boyle's hyper-stylism couldn't disguise. Some great moments though and it was good to see the actors inhabit those roles again. I guess you could call it an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, just a shame it wasn't more than that.

I may be misremembering (again) but I found the reasoning behind them coming back into each other's orbits was believable.

I agree with your last sentence anyway, but more because it lacked the hardness and the horror of the original.

[The Modernist]

Finally got round to Trainspotting 2.
I thought it was a commendable failure. It's main problem was that it couldn't find a good reason to bring these characters back together again and this left a lack of purpose and an empty heart at the centre of the film that Boyle's hyper-stylism couldn't disguise. Some great moments though and it was good to see the actors inhabit those roles again. I guess you could call it an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, just a shame it wasn't more than that.

I may be misremembering (again) but I found the reasoning behind them coming back into each other's orbits was believable.

I agree with your last sentence anyway, but more because it lacked the hardness and the horror of the original.

It seemed more like a slightly clumsy plot device (broken marriage) to get him there and it was even unclearer why he would've stayed ( is he really going to stay to help sick boy run a brothel in Leith?). I am generally forgiving of that kind of thing ( the plot is just a device to help you explore more interesting things as far as I'm concerned), but in this case it seemed reflective of a deeper problem that the film didn't really have anything to say and wasn't that sure what to do with its characters other than sink into a nostalgic self-referentiality.
Still there were some great sequences, like the improvised anti-Catholic song!

[Rorschach]

You're probably right. You've seen it a lot more recently than me and it wan't the kind of film to stick in the memory like the first one. But I thought he was sticking around because he was homesick?
Maybe I'm making that up...

I agree that the film didn't have a lot to say.

[Minnie Cheddars]

Watched this over the weekend on the Criterion Channel

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_Is ... _Our_Lives

Well worth viewing - catch it before Pride month is done if you can.

[The Prof]

A nicely paced film about a father/daughter relationship with the former suffering PTSD (or something similar) from fighting in Iraq. There's no real 'bad guys', you can empathise will all the characters.
on Amazon Prime.

[Tom Waits For No One]

The Sparks Brothers

Very good it was too.

[Samoan]

I stumbled onto Channel 4's Episode 1 of Series 2 of This Way Up last night and it's fabulous. Why did no one tell me about it ?! It features two Irish sisters living in London and they swear like troopers but all in the best possible taste.
Jesus!

BAFTA-winning comedy-drama starring Aisling Bea as Aine, a whip-smart teacher who's trying to pull her life back together after a 'teeny little nervous breakdown'. With Sharon Horgan.

[Snarfyguy]

Somehow I'd never seen this before.



The Producers. USA 1967, d. Mel Brooks

Some of the jokes have not aged well, but it had its moments.

I was also surprised to realize I'd not seen Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief before, either, which despite Cary Grant being Cary Grant, Grace Kelly's otherworldly presence, the Riviera, the cars and so on and so forth, I found a bit subpar, dragging in sections. By no means as taut and lean as something like The 39 Steps.

[Samoan]

The Mercy (2017) the biographical drama film of amateur sailor, Donald Crowhurst.
A tale of delusion and self delusion. Firth plays the benighted Crowhurst with David Thewlis and Ken Stott co-starring. Engrossing viewing.

[Minnie Cheddars]

Watched this short and stunning film last week - I had never even heard of it until it popped up on TCM. I don't want to spoil it by talking much about it, but Ralph Richardson is out of this world.

[Samoan]

Watched this short and stunning film last week - I had never even heard of it until it popped up on TCM. I don't want to spoil it by talking much about it, but Ralph Richardson is out of this world.

^^
I'm a big fan of that film.
It was on the other week but I must have seen it 5 times or more.

[The Fish]

Not yet "recent" as recording set for tomorrow night

The Windermere Children. Dramatization, followed by interviews with the children themselves. I saw part 2 before so looking forward to the first part. True story of 300 children plucked in 1945 from the horrors of the holocaust to a camp set up on shores of lake Windermere. The very definition of heartwarming. Imagine enduring what they had and then finding themselves in what to them seemed like absolute paradise. Recommended.

[Minnie Cheddars]

Bloody HELL! I saw this for the first time last night. I was on the edge of my seat!


SPOILER





SPOILER






When the camera is just on the housekeeper cleaning the stuff off the chest as the rest of them are all talking about David... fucking hell, I went through my toenails!!

[Tom Waits For No One]

After Life - Series 3



Great stuff.

[Samoan]

Set in Bolton, this wonderful film perhaps ought to be in the kitchen sink genre but it was filmed in 1970, colour is integral to the screenplay and the cinematography and the angry young people are women.
The anger kicks off about a herring coated in breadcrumbs fried in the best butter and from there, it all escalates.
Superb cast with James Mason as the patriarch.

[Minnie Cheddars]

Been on a Hitchcock splurge!
The Lady Vanishes last night, Family Plot night before that, Sabotage before that..

[slightbreeze]

After Life - Series 3



Great stuff.

Indeed. We've just watched the first two episodes so far......pacing ourselves as it seems to be over in a flash. Normally, no time for Ricky, but this is masterful