The Cutprice Guignol

January 9, 2014

World War Bun

With the last season of The Great British Bake-Off nothing but a distant memory, I’ve been grappling around for another competitive baking show to while away the hours. And I thought I’d found it in Cupcake Wars, an long-running American show in which professional bakers battle it out to create cupcakes for a glitzy event-sort of Masterchef: The Professionals meets Glee. Perfect, eh? Well, no.

To start, we’ve got the host. Now, I’ve watched about seven episodes of this nonsense and I couldn’t for the life of me actually give you his name: turns out he’s Justin Willman, enigma. Some casual research reveals he broke both his arms as a child trying to ride a bike while on rollerblades (brilliant), is a magician (superb), and presumably has a twisted fetish for presenting low-stakes gameshows in his spare time (as well as Cupcake Bores, his credits include Last Cake Standing and the momentously hilarious Scrabble Showdown). We can only hope that he’s created some elaborate illusion of himself and sent it to daytime TV, laughing all the way to the magic bank.

Anyway, Willman is cursed with both an impossibly terrible script and a surgical lack of charm; his witty comments basically amount to “A man walks into a bar…cupcakes” or “Knock knock…frosting”. His only use is explaining the self-explanatory rules of the game and looking simultaneously slightly inhuman and infuriatingly like someone else you can’t quite remember.

If Willman is a charisma vaccumn, the judges are a positive black hole of likability. First, there’s the magnificent Florian Bellanger, co-owner of Mad Mac Macaroons (get it?) and full claimant to a French accent last heard in a crass 1970s British sketch about the frog-eating continentals. Seriously, you can’t prepare yourself for how screamingly unbelievable this voice is; maybe that really is how he speaks English, but as long as people continue to laugh at me for sounding a bit plummy when I’m drunk I shall continue to piss myself every time Florian croons out another sentence about candied walnuts or fondant. A guest judge, usually linked tenuously with the event the winners will be catering, rolls up to plug their existence and attempt to say anything other than “huh, cupcakes” and nod sagely as Florian speaks entirely in vowels. They’re joined by someone so dramatically unremarkable that even this sentence about her isn’t worth writi

The contestants are delightfully predictable; you’ve got the down-to-earth, endearing ones (usually with the word “soul” in their team name; one went by the moniker of “Soul Cups” which, to me, sounded like a pair of especially spiritual tits), the shrieky, “You go girl!” chicks, the clear winners, and the overly-confident losers who end up setting their bun cases on fire or something equally unlikely.

As my closing statement, I’d like you to consider this: over the course of its entire run, Cupcake Wars has created somewhere in the realm of 231, 380 glorified afternoon teas. That’s enough to start World War Bun!

I’ll see myself out.

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December 18, 2013

The Last Action (Man) Hero

Hilarious wander through the landscape of early Action Man.

The Man Place

Action Man was, frankly, a bit of a disappointment. Like so many toys in the 1960s the reality didn’t live up to the intense anticipation and hype. Not that you would have guessed that when Palitoy launched their new “moveable fighting man” in the UK in 1966 to a fanfare of publicity.

Action Sailor. C’mon now, really?

The problem was that the initial launch included just three figures – Action Sailor, Action Soldier and Action Pilot. They were, without exception, crap and were rightly and justifiably shunned by most small boys. The box art for Action Sailor for example, showed a dramatic scene of a wetsuit clad figure complete with aqualung, dynamite and dagger. The actual contents were very different – Action Sailor came with just a blue shirt, boots, jeans and a perky white cap. Even to my nine year old eyes he looked worryingly like a bloke in jeans. In…

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December 15, 2013

America’s Next Top Model: Redux

Last year, I wrote a protracted and essentially pointless rampage against America’s Next Top Model while drunk, that involved a whole lot of babbling about sandwiches and the conclusion that the show was a bit grim but essentially harmless. I was wrong. Oh, how wrong was I. Apparently, I feel the urge to devour a couple of seasons of this unrelenting tripe a couple of times a year, usually when I’m sick or fighting off some bout of crippling boredom or depression (pause for uncomfortable laughter; is she joking? Are we allowed to laugh at it if she is? If she’s not, isn’t that the sort of thing you just shouldn’t joke about? I mean, it’s a bit far, really, and frankly I hope The Guardian launch a liberal hate campaign against her, the scummy, anti-mental health “satirist” cow. Bet she’s sexist too. How many women have you employed, eh, Louise? That’s the question the public are clamoring for an answer to.).

In theory, the show actually comes from a pretty reasonable place. Tyra Banks, who spends much of her time forgetting to put on trousers, decided to re-define beauty in the fashion industry because….well, I don’t know actually. Maybe she had an afternoon free or something. Either way, I kind of respect her buisness acumen; being a model is a career with a built-in sell-by-date, so turning your attentions to becoming Oprah-building a TV empire seems pretty savvy. And giving less conventionally beautiful women (like all these hideously unattractive women here) a chance to break into an industry that would have previously simply laughed in their faces because they were plus-size or short is actually a really nice idea.

While much of the criticism for the show can be drawn for the fashion industry itself-with models being told they are “too slim for plus-size modelling” and the majority of winners being skinny, conventionally gorgeous women in their late teens-I’m going to focus on what’s off with the show alone. For one, not one-NOT ONE- winner or contestants have gone on to become what is, by anyone’s standards, a top model. A top model is an instantly recognisable name, someone who’s probably run around with rock stars for a while, somebody for whom their actual profession takes a back seat to the maelstrom of publicity surrounding them because they’re kind of fascinating and cool. Now, Cara Develigne has proved supermodels still exist-it’s just that the show doesn’t prepare it’s victims for the fashion industry in any way. Ex-winner Caridee English released a statement regarding the effect the show has on the models involved, after contestant Jael Strauss was discovered to be harboring a pretty sizeable meth addiction. Basically, she claimed that participants were greeted by a world in which they were lofty celebrities but unqualified and inexperienced models. There’s something tragically misleading about baring this in mind when watching the show, as the girls go through a heap of emotional distress, upsetting photoshoots and the constantly drilled-in belief that they will have a sky-rocketing career should they win the show. On a related note, both an ex-contestant and a judge have appeared on Celebrity Rehab since their stint of ANTM.

Backing away from the heavy stuff, there’s also the made-up words and phrases the show shoves down your throat at every opportunity. Smize, for example. Which is a word ellision, one that represents the notion of “smiling with one’s eyes”. Can I ask you something? Go to a mirror right now. And try to do that; try to imbue your eyes with emotion without moving the rest of your face. Can’t be done, can it? No, it fucking can’t. Maybe I’m stupid and a terrible model (it would explain the current faliure of my modelling career), but I like to believe that an expression requires some movement of your whole face. “Smizing” is not just an irritating anti-word, it’s also bullshit. This, along with forcing the attractive and charming British photographer Nigel Barker to continually use the word “fierce”, is enough to condemn the show to hell from my point of view.

Then, of course, there’s this: a collection of words so outrageous you’ll die, right here, in front of your computer or preferred device. On the All-Stars Cycle (What?), Tyra Banks filmed a “Motion Editorial” (eh?) for her novel (Come again)? Modelland, about an elite model’s boarding school (Okay, seriously now) featuring anthropomorphic people (I don’t even-), which starred the finalists from that series fondling blood oranges and gorging on whipped cream (a single flatline will suffice).

I first saw this monstrosity in the early hours of the morning and genuinley considered the option that I’d completely lost my mind. Basically, it sums up the show beautifully; a pointless, pretentious, unironically awful piece of crap that has less to do with modelling than my breakfast. Thank you, and kill me.

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December 5, 2013

On Adulthood and Alcohol

In the past week, it’s been my birthday, I got really sick, and a Fast & Furious star died in an ironic car crash. I’ve been getting good and existential over the last few days, helped by the slight move closer to death and lots of rum consumed over the last few days. With my teenage life-less as a member of the human race than as a runner in a weepy, Paula-Radcliffe style half-marathon-entering into it’s last year, some semblance of adulthood is drawing near and I feel this should be acknowledged. There have definetly been some vague steps in this direction over the last year-university, wobbly steps into a writing career, my own flat, becoming weirdly obsessed with hipster American sweets-but one of the main things that defines one’s leap into the Real World is alcohol.

When you start drinking-and my very first drink was a bottle of tooth-achingly sweet pear cider my Dad got me when I was sixteen-there is a certain amount of mystique to it. You think you’re infallible, impossible to inebriate and immune to hangover. The first time I got drunk was with my excellent friend back home over two Jackass films, when I realized I had had far too much to drink after I woke up with both my foot and my hair in a small pile of my own sick on his floor. My head was furious at me, my eyes thick with blergh, and my friend wasn’t impressed that I’d been sick down his Busted Tour T-shirt (sorry Cameron). But there was a kind of righteous, swaggering dignity to that hangover; like bills or unwanted pregnancy, I had a problem that was exclusive to the quasi-adult world. In my ironic t-shirt and crusty hair, I’d permanently joined the world of the grown-ups for a grim, miserable morning.

The first term of university is best glossed over; while I didn’t drink myself into a coma every night, being away from home and forced at fucking gunpoint by everyone in the world to MAKE FRIENDS FOR LIFE because it’s PART OF THE UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE was simply aided by a generous dollop of social lubricant. It was also around this time that I began to see nothing wrong with indulging in a good movie, a bottle of wine and no humans cluttering up the proceedings because sometimes, people just can’t live up to inebriated fiction.

(On a side note, drinking alone is curiously maligned; I wouldn’t encourage sitting at home weepily downing a bottle of whisky as the night draws in evening after evening, but simply peppering around a bunch of people to make it seem more legitimate is ridiculous. I had a cheeky few glasses of wine over a Heston Blumenthal marathon last week and it was heaven; other people would have just laughed at me for getting weepy when he made the sick kids at that hospital happy).

I realised earlier this evening that I’m a real grown-up/ponce when I made and enjoyed a Fancy Drink (rum, coke and a squeeze of lime. Alright, so my standards are low). I sat with a great friend, gossiped, chatted about real life, American Horror Story and ate junk food as the night wore on-and that’s the best part. The moment at which alcohol becomes, not a quick way to avoid an arse-clenchingly awkward lack of conversation, or a cheap sleeping pill with added hangover, but simply a tasty addition to an already wonderful evening, is when I consider it to be a part of my grown-up life in the real world. I’ll drink to that.

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November 20, 2013

American Horror Story: Burn, Witch, Burn!/The Axeman Cometh

I’ve noticed something about this series of AMH; each pair of episodes seems to play out at a set-up/pay-off rate from week-to-week. One week there’s a plot heavy furore where we get introduced to all the shit that’s going to go down in the next episode. I don’t particularly mind this set-up, but it still leaves the season with an overall sense of uneveness and lack of coherency.

Take the last two episodes as an example: Burn, Witch, Burn! was a ridiculous, thrilling, breathlessly entertaining hour that blasted through a bunch of brilliantly fun plot points, climaxing in an outrageously slick finale/tribute to Resevoir Dogs in which a stake-burning took place to the strains of Right Place, Wrong Time. It was sickeningly cool; fuck, Jessica Lange lit to pyre with her cigarette. Also scattered around the episode were some cool zombies, Taissa Farmiga growing some balls (and wielding a chainsaw into the bargain), and Jessica Lange winning herself an Emmy in the course of five minutes, a hospital room and a stillborn baby. It was a manic, hilarious, grotesquely affecting episode that hit all the markers set up by last week’s outing.

Then the latest episode-featuring Danny Huston as real-life serial killer The Axeman of New Orleans-just seemed to be preparing us for what was about to happen. Aside from Angela Bisset delivering the line “white-ass cracker bitch” and some gratefully recieved Lily Rabe, there wasn’t much actually going on in The Axeman Cometh. It was still entertaining enough (and benefited from a lack of Kathy Bates, who the writers just don’t seem to know what to do with), but there was a real sense of tantric TV; they brought us to the pitch of excitement then did nothing about it because they’re saving their metaphorical ejaculation for next week’s outing.

On a side note, I’ve been doing a bit of research into this series (which Stevie Nicks has confirmed her appearance in, yeah!), and discovered that no less than three characters are based directly off people who really existed. The least offensive of these is probably Angela Bisset as Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Because there’s clearly a lot of mythos surrounding her anyway, adapting her into a kick-ass voodoo bitch-slapper isn’t really much of a leap. But then you’ve got Kathy Bates as Madame LaLaurie. Now, forgive me if you disagree, but when you take someone who genuinley existed, and did some really quite upsettingly horrible things to innocent people for a large part of her life, and whack her in a semi-serious show as an immortal, highly racist bit of comic relief, aren’t you somewhat undermining the nature of the astoundingly awful things she’s done?

So, this week on AMH: I over-analyse my over-analysing. Great.

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November 9, 2013

The Interesting People Project

Hello, my loyal follower(s). I’m basically here today to do a bit of shameless self-promotion, and this is what I’m promoting: http://theinterestingpeopleproject.wordpress.com/.

After a spate of moderately bad luck with writing (you’d think people you’d done work for would think it polite to pay you, but no matter) I decided to do something on my own terms. So I’ve started up a blog for people, like me, trying to break into the creative industries; I’m basically interviewing a bunch of people who’s established themselves in whatever it is they do in the hopes of creating a resource for people looking for a poke in the right direction.

Please feel free to have a browse, subscribe and share it with people who might find it useful; there have been only a small amount of blood, sweat and tears put into it so far thanks to my brilliant interviewees, but there’ll be a lot more if you don’t read it. And it’ll be yours.

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November 5, 2013

Ryan Murphy: Defended

Ryan Murphy, eh? What’s the deal with the evil genius behind Nip/Tuck, American Horror Story, and (of all things) Glee? I’ve recently been re-watching Nip/tuck, the soap opera on acid that takes places in a plastic surgery clinic to better follow the lives of it’s two surgeon protagonists, Christian Troy and Sean McNamara. Now, this all sounds pretty par for the course so far, but this is a Ryan Murphy show, so I can guarantee that it’s probably going to smack you round the face with a big block of unlikely stories before running away and singing some show tunes on his other show.

One of the hallmarks of Murphy show (and, I suppose, a Murphy/Falchuck creation, because dear old Brad has had so much to do with the conception of both American Horror Story and Glee) is the completely hectic pace at which they rattle through plotlines; a kind of ADHD storytelling that works pretty convincingly if, like me, you tend to get bored with shows that linger over one plot strand too long. There’s also the sheer outrageousness of the plots to contend with, too; American Horror Story pretty much excepted, because, c’mon, it’s a horror show. But looking at Glee or Nip/Tuck or even Popular, shows which are allegedly set in the real world (even a violently technicolour version of it) are filled with stonkingly unbelievable plots.
For example, one character in one particular show (which I won’t name for spoiler’s sake) dates a closeted lesbian, tries to cut his own foreskin off, gets involved in a three-way relationship with her and her new girlfriend, dates a transsexual, dates a bigoted racist chick, beats the crap out of an unrelated transsexual, marries his father’s ex (who’s also a porn star), has a baby, gets into gay porn, becomes a meth addict, gets caught in a meth explosion, falls in love with his burns counsellor, decides to go to college to become a doctor, becomes a mime instead, goes on a robbery spree dressed as a mime, ends up somebody’s bitch in prison, strangles him with some lingerie before getting released early and running off with aforementioned baby and aforementioned transsexual to start a new life. After that, you’d want one. It’s mental. It’s ridiculous. And the worst part is I’ve barely scratched the surface of everything that happens to this character.

And that’s the hallmark of Murphy (and, later, Murphchuck shows): they are unbelievably silly. Yeah, occasionally Glee glanced over some after-school-special territory with bullying and homophobia and teenage pregnancy and what have you, but for the most part they revel in hysterical histrionics. Nonsense is what they do best, and I don’t think there’s anything outrightly wrong with that- in fact, I think it’s what makes them some of my favourite TV-brainboxes working right now. Never ones to rely on what they already know to sell a programme, they’ve constantly bounced between genres because, presumably, they get bored dealing with just one-and, surprisingly enough, they often create shows that are actually kind of excellent.

I will hold up my right to watch, read, and listen to trash as long as I enjoy it on some level, and Murphchuck have consistently created just the right balance of trash and moderate innovation for me to continue watching. Gourmet crap, if you will.

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November 1, 2013

American Horror Story: Fearful Pranks Ensue

Ladies and Gentemen, we have horror. Repeat, we have horror. The latest episode of Murphchuck’s finest series opens with a brilliant three-minute sequence featuring racism, the 60s, voodoo nonsense, and revenge zombies. I’d pay good money to see that in a full-length movie, and it’s added to by the fact that AHS seems to have taken a step back from the innately uncomfortable LSD trip that was last week and embraced some familiar horror.

This episode is really an indulgent nod to fans of the past seasons, with Alexandra Breckenridge and Frances Conroy returning in substantial roles, and Denis O’Hare finally getting some solid (and brilliant) screentime. Involving a mute character is always a brave choice, especially when you consider O’Hare’s first appearance in the show where he goes like a wind-up toy, but the man’s got such talent and wit that he actually manages to sell all the disconcertingly surreal sequences this episode presents him with.

After a couple of shaky set-up episodes, Fearful Pranks Ensue features the cast in full flight as the series squares up to the insanity of the various plots. It’s a breathless dash through minatour rape, creepy tea parties, the utterly magnetic Angela Bisset, the Witches Council, undead Evan Peters, and some stuff which even might be an attempt at thematic consistency. What I like about American Horror Story, and what I have always liked about it, is the pace at which it rattles through ideas. I have the image of the writer’s room, filled with jittery scribes jacked up on greasy joe from the machine outside, going “Yeah, but what if we did THIS?” “But then what about THAT?” “What do we do with THEM?” until some sort of passably coherent script is churned out.

This makes it completely unpredictable-for the last few weeks, I’d been bemoaning how boring Sarah Paulson’s subplot with her boring, boring husband was and BAM! Left-turned the whole thing for no apparent reason. Thought Emma Roberts was going to be in the full series? Think again. You’ve worked out who the new supreme is? Nope. And that’s what keeps me coming back; because just when you’ve got a grip on the whole thing, it knees you in the groin and feeds you to the manatour.

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October 25, 2013

American Horror Story: Boy Parts/The Replacements

I’ve been re-watching American Horror Story recently, and one the things that got me about this show is the balance of crazy shit and genuine storytelling. In one scene, Jessica Lange is gleefully feeding the mashed-up remains of her husband to the dogs; in the next, Evan Peters is committing a harrowing school shooting. Occasionally, AHS strikes this balance perfectly and the show shines. A lot of the time, it doesn’t, but usually it tips over into batshit lunacy and retains some entertainment value at the risk of throwing any semblance of plot out the window.

And that’s how I plan to dissect the two latest episodes of Coven. Take apart each plot thread and examine it for levels of ridiculousness, emotion, style, finesse and scary shit. Because that’s the only way you can come close to looking at this show scientifically and not get distracted by Jessica Lange.

Plot Thread One: Frankincest

Let’s get right into the juicy stuff; Emma Roberts and Taissa Farmiga sneak into the morgue where the victims of episode one’s bus crash are being held and assemble a franken-frat boy from the remains so Zoe can have her boy toy back. That’s all well and good, and (with a brief detour to an inexplicably alive Lily Rabe channeling a hotter Stevie Nicks under their belt), it looks as if Zoe might have a fuck who won’t have an aneurysm every time they get past third base. Then Taissa makes the stunningly stupid decision to bring Kyle back to his mother in the hopes of reviving some of his ebbing humanity. What follows is essentially a panning shot of the truly horrified faces of the audience; Kyle’s mum, realizing his body is not as she remembered it, is revealed to have indulged in a whole lot of incest with her recently-deceased son. Which we are then briefly privy to. Luckily for us, Kyle then resolves the issue by beating his mother to death in a fit of poorly-articulated rage. But that image of his ma going in for a handy? Nope.

CRAZINESS: 8
STORYTELLING: 5, at a push.

Plot Thread Two: Goings-on at Hogwarts

Pheeeeeoooow, so, a hot new neighbour has moved in next door (his mother played by a bible-bashing Patti LuPone), but seems more interested in Nan (played with incredible competence, wit and style by Jamie Brewer) despite Madison (Emma Roberts-still solid, by the way) practically impregnating him with one, short-skirted quip. Meantime, Kathy Bates is adapting to modern life, haunted by the gruesome deaths of her family and by the fact we have a black president (hot tip for line reading of the decade for Bates’ reactive delivery of “liiiieeeeeees!”). Matters aren’t helped by the fact Jessica’s made her Gabourey Sibide’s “slave” (subtle move for racial equality there, Murphchuck), or the return of the brutal minatour figure that she created in the first episode. Which Queenie then goes on to seduce. Yes, fact fans, we’ve vaulted the boundaries of bestiality and incest in one episode.

Craziness: 9
Storytelling: 7

Plot Thread Three: Jessica, Demon Sex, misc.

Jessica Lange’s Fiona is still swanning around, winning acting forever, but only one main event directly involves her in this two-parter: she murders a young witch who she believes threatens her place as the supreme. Apart from amusing herself, tormenting Kathy Bates and committing minor misdemeanors, The Replacements begins with a superb speech, courtesy of writer James Wong, in which Lange bemoans her aging and her declining health in the most beautifully clever way. Then she fucks some shit up.

Angela Basset is still killing it, the only woman who can hold a candle to Jessica Lange, as the sinister voodoo witch priestess nonsense. Unfortunatley, she doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with what’s actually going on, aside from poking around Sarah Paulson’s womb in a pointless infertility subplot that grossly wastes the talent of everyone involved (but involved Paulson having sex on what appeared to be a set from The Exorcist). I like her laid-back cool and the sharp writing that defines her character, and at the moment I’m just waiting for the mighty trio (Bates, Bisset, Lange) to come together in what will be an earth-shattering Clash of the Titans.

Craziness: 7
Storytelling: 8

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October 11, 2013

American Horror Story: Bitchcraft

Hoo-fucking-rah! American Horror Story has returned, and not a damn minute too soon. This genius series from the makers of Glee has smashed it’s way back onto my TV screen with the third series, Coven, following the jolly larks of a group of young witches.

The Worst Witch it ain’t; the opening scene (featuring an electric Kathy Bates playing her best psycho since Misery) jumps straight into the dark side of the show, with viscous torture and a rather clumsy handling of the RACE ISSUE in 1870s New Orleans. After that, the episode starts smacking us around the face introducing it’s familiar actors playing new roles; Taissa Farmiga as a young witch whose power causes her unfortunate lovers to die while bleeding profusely from every facial orifice, Sarah Paulson as the head of the secretive academy that protects the dwindling number of the supernatrually blessed, Lily Rabe as a fresh-faced witch from the Deep South whose burned alive for her powers, and Frances Conroy as an eccentric grandmother (“I’m simply mad for tartan!”).

Bitchcraft really acts as a world-building episode; we meet the other students at Paulson’s Magic nursery (Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sibide, etc), and learn the place these people hold in society. While most are forced into hiding their powers (“I’M A HUMAN VOODOO DOLL!”), there are some who embrace them, exploit them and live through them.

One of this number is Jessica Lange. It’s difficult to explain how I feel about Lange without being reduced to guttural howls of delight, but suffice to say she once again dominates every second of her screentime. The first shot of her character-a heeled foot stepping out of a car, followed by a crane shot where we can only see her umbrella and her arching shadow-defines it perfectly. She’s sexy, self-assured, darkly hilarious and oozes the sort of charisma Clooney can only dream of. How this show has hung onto her I’ll never know; but I am so glad they did.

Back the episode. Once again, AHS seems to be setting itself for another series full of utterly spectacular female characters. One of the running themes of Coven’s predecessors was the complete lack of women as victims-almost every single wronged woman has taken her fate into her own hands and come out on top. Bitchcraft has a few instances of this; for example, Roberts’ pouty movie star is gang raped at a party (in a scene which could have been horrendously crass and upsetting, but was handled subtley and allowed Emma her dignity). Afterwards, the perpetrators flee onto a bus to make there escape and, as a distraught Farmiga looks on, Roberts’ simply steps into frame and waves her hand at the bus, causing it to flip over and kill almost everyone on board. Later, Farmiga’s Zoe uses her special Jedi skills to rape one of the surviving boys to death in hospital. When Lange is refused a substance meant to restore her youth, she simply sucks the life out of the offending scientist. Whatever you think of what they’re doing-and it’s often violent, frightening, or downright horrific-these are a bunch of women you do not fuck with. And I can get behind that for this series.

Jessica Lange Line Reading of the Week: During an argument with Sarah Paulson (also her daughter, by the way), she delivers a shudderingly caustic “Don’t make me drop a house on you”.

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