The Cutprice Guignol

January 13, 2015

The League, and The Problem with Sitcom Sexism

Being a feminist and existing almost entirely on a pop-culture plane is exhausting. Casual sexism is everywhere. Games of Thrones disempowers female characters through rape before they can become all-powerful. American Horror Story has been known to piss all over it’s male characters to make room for strong women. Black Canary in Arrow gets to fight crime in the extremely practical ensemble of a bodice-ripping corset, leather trousers, and a cropped leather jacket. Bleh . Once you start noticing these little, irritating slips, it’s hard to ignore them. So when I clicked on to The League a concept-driven semi-improvised comedy based around a fantasy football league, I promised myself that I would try to ignore any of the potential quiet sexism I’d gotten used to.

And, two and a half series in, there it was. Female judges who were just waiting to sexually dominate male characters; sexy teen au pairs hired purely on looks because the child’s father wants his kid to get used to being around gorgeous women. Katie Asleton, who plays the one female main cast member, is regularly shown to be “one of the guys”, enjoying dope and booze and sex (because hey, no women I know enjoy dope and booze and sex), an exception to the other wives and girlfriends in the series (one of the main character’s wives appears, significantly, once in the first season, where her episode arc revolves around cooking lunch for everyone while they try to watch football). Women are constantly hurling themselves at the five leading men, giving the romantic side of the series a sense of being scripted as somebody’s ultimate fantasy. It’s low-level, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s kind of irritating.

But I have sexism fatigue. I just wanted to watch a show where my feminism senses weren’t going to be tingling; I’m not looking for an excuse to be enraged or feel victimised, but seeing the same tired women stereotypes paraded out was grating as a fan of pop culture (because lazy) too. And that got me thinking: is sexism more damaging to shows than stupid stereotypes? And if it is, how important is sexism in judging the intentions of it’s creators?

I think that sexism is particularly egregious when it’s unimaginative. Sitcoms have comfortably settled into a recognisable rhythm, with certain beats to hit and characters to work through. The League regurgitates a handful of stereotypes- dumb blonde, stupid promiscuous guy, sexy Latina woman, oblivious wife- that only serve to underline how easy it’s is to fall back on gender and racial safeguards because they’re easy. These stereotypes are shorthand for spelling out things that the show hasn’t got the time or inclination to do itself, because when we see a few traits from a certain stereotype applied to a character we can fill in the rest of the blanks ourselves. I’m picking on The League here, but loads of sitcoms do it, and in a way it makes sense. With twenty-three minutes to tell a story, you don’t want to spend too long developing characters who aren’t going to impact much of the rest of the series, so you’ll rely on the audience’s knowledge of stock sitcom characters to cut out the middle man. But at the same time, it’s lazy: sketch in these characters, sure, but actually make them a bit different and a bit new. Subvert expectations. The closer you look at the low-level sexism that inhabits these kind of sitcoms, the more you realize that it’s less an issue of feminism or gender disparity than it is an issue of lazy (or time-constrained, depending on how you see it) writing. The fact that they use these stereotypes for more than just female characters doesn’t excuse them, but it at least makes it understandable- and explains why the problem with sitcom sexism might well not be ill-intentioned, but rather an ingrained, quick way to get a point across.

And here’s the kicker: does it matter if the show is sexist? In an interview with Salon, co-creator Jackie Schaffer said this on the subject of sexism in the show;

“I kinda don’t really think about what anybody says. I don’t really think the show is sexist. I think we try to make it feel authentic and – it’s what we’re writing about and it’s our point of view, so maybe the world or life is a little bit sexist…”

And I don’t think that’s an entirely unfair defence. The show itself is okay, not great, not awful, with a few laugh-out-loud moments and fun characters to watch for. This is a sitcom, so it’s naturally a bit bigger and more caricatured than real life. Most of the lead characters are pretty awful people in one way or another- the sort of people who’d rent out their unknowing friend’s apartment for a porn shoot (with Seth Rogen in it, bizarrely), or force another of their friends to pay for a giant anniversary party for his wife-but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to attach all those qualities to the people who write, direct, and act in The League. There are a handful of shows whose treatment of female characters does make me suspect sexism on the part of the creators; this isn’t one of them. And hey, people behind The League could probably do with being a little more self-aware about their treatment of women. I’m not saying we should let it entirely away with the occasional sexism (and grim stalkerish behaviour which I’ll go into in more detail when I review the whole show) but there are far worse things on television that we give a pass to because they’re considered of higher intellectual or artistic quality (Read: Game of Thrones). Many of the scenes involve men talking to other men in a facetious, often sexist way that’s clearly meant to bring the audience in on how awful these guys really are. The League isn’t high art; it’s a show about a bunch of dudes and a chick in a fantasy football league. And sure, it can be pretty sexist. But we need to look at it from a practical, time-constrained point of view, so we can understand it’s reliance on stereotypes, it if not excuse it. Because understanding a problem is the only way we can effectively get rid of it, and I am so, so ready to see the back of boring sitcom sexism.

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January 6, 2015

A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Mozart in the Jungle

The year: 2000. A twenty-year-old Mexican actor by the name of Gael Garcia Bernal explodes onto the scene with a harrowing performance in dark thriller Amores Perros, playing a beaten-down teenager (above) who turns to dogfighting in order to prove to his uninterested crush that he can take care of her before getting involved in a horrifying, life-altering car crash.

2004. Bernal cements his burgeoning career with two important but wildly different turns. One as a con-artist transvestite dealing with the aftermath of sexual abuse in the church in Almodovar’s controversial Bad Education, the other as a young Ernesto “Che” Guevara travelling across Latin America where the seeds of his future communism are sowed.

Jump to 2012. After a series of critically-acclaimed turns in films like Babel and The King, Bernal appears in award-winning Chilean drama No, which charts his character’s grappling with political manoeuvring in Pinochet-era Chile.

Skip to 2014, and Bernal is starring in…a light American dramedy in which he plays an off-the-wall classical conductor with a passion for the silly? Yup, it’s time to talk about Mozart in the Jungle, an often baffling but occasionally entertaining venture into the world of classical music in New York.

If I haven’t made it clear enough above, one of the things that attracted me to this series was how fucking bizarre it was for Bernal to be playing such a light role. He’s an astoundingly good actor who usually sticks to the kind of roles that win him awards whether he wants them or not: brave, stark, dramatic, and intelligent roles that prove over and over again how incredible a serious actor he is. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any of his films (at least those that have gained traction across the pond) in which he’s played a consistently fun role. I spent the first half of the series waiting for him to snap and start making his orchestra fight each other for cash, but was instead met by a charming, extremely funny guy who just wanted to conduct some classical music and annotate some manuscripts, yo. Rodriguo de Souza is a childish, witty, clever, passionate character who’s brought in to breathe new life into the New York Symphony Orchestra, and the kind of person who you’d consider changing religion for (did you see those pictures I put up there? I mean, are you made of stone?).

Right, here’s the thing about this flagship Amazon original series: it’s Smash, but with classical music. Smash promised a cheeky, sordid look behind the scenes of Broadway theatre and failed to deliver: Mozart in the Jungle succeeds on all the levels Smash couldn’t. It even gives Bernadette Peters, who’s got roles in both series, a much better part to play, for Chrissake. It demolishes and embarrasses Smash by showing them just how easy and brilliant this kind of show could be. It’s packed with engaging characters, but what makes them even better is their ability to interact with each other like adults instead of the preening, shrieking, stomping ninny-children we’ve come to expect from dramedy shows. Lola Kirke’s (who I also spotted in Gone Girl, which is excellent and in which she is excellent) self-deprecating, sarcastic, up-and-coming oboist doesn’t need to have screaming matches over mantelpieces with her love interest in order to sort out their problems; they just go for a shag and a chat. Saffron Burrows as the louche, charming cellist of your dreams gets high and screws someone she regrets; they discuss it and agree not to mention it to anyone for fear of making the orchestra an awkward place to work. Instead of being constantly pitted against each other, the women are smart, ambitious, and know when to work with or against each other. Everyone deals with things in a grown-up way, which makes the drama, when it does arrive, all the more engaging and juicy, because you know it must be serious. The curtain-twitching community of the orchestra is filled out with snapshots of characters that let us fill in the blanks, but the effectiveness of giving the background cast faces cannot be overstated.

Beyond that, the series is just a metric shit-ton of compressed all-over-the-place-ness held together by a sense of game fun. One minute Malcolm Macdowell (who’s place in this series is possibly more inexplicable than Bernal’s) is drinking coconut water and wearing a Hawaiin shirt; the next Bernal’s manic violinist ex-lover is screaming at an audience to “SHUT UP!” as they try to applaud her. Jason Schwartzman in a leather gilet turns up. Roman Coppola directs. Hannah Dunne smokes dope and tattoos people. Everyone seems overqualified for this series, and it’s wild.

But it all boils down to one thing: the music. As the kind of person who was determined to learn how to play instruments but never had a natural aptitude for them (twenty combined years of bass, cello, and piano have proved that the most I can do is smugly shout “YOU’RE NOT PLAYING THAT RIGHT” at the screen occasionally), I love hearing classical music. Take a superb scene in which the orchestra plays the 1812 Overture (amusing aside: a member of my family was pulled over by the police in their car, and had an argument with them in which the police wouldn’t believe that they had this track on CD in the player. They did. Not sure how the cops took that) in a broken-into lot in New York City; packed with bravado and the utter passion that stems from brilliant classical music, the show draws it’s energy from the variety and novelty of it’s setlist. Entrenching the series so deeply in such a specific type of music was an audacious choice, but one that works entirely to give every episode a running theme and thread. It makes no odds if you like classical music or not (and if you don’t, listen to this and come back to me), because Mozart in the Jungle isn’t here to patronise; it’s not even here to educate. It’s here to fucking entertain. And by God, it does.

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January 1, 2015

Here’s The Thing About Internet Feminism

Let me get this out here, right in the first sentence: I’m a feminist. I believe in the elimination of gender inequality through focusing on the negative effects that gender stereotypes project onto all genders. There are various reasons that my feminism only reared it’s #feministsareugly head within the last year or so, but that’s not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about feminism on the internet.

With the rise of sites like Twitter and Tumblr, and with the focus and debate raging over feminism that’s taken place over the last eighteen months, feminism has been forced to defend itself. BBut the problem with feminism on social media platforms is that it gets scattered; opinions are vehemently divided over almost every issue, and critics of feminism brandish this lack of unity as proof that the feminist movement may as well not exist. If we can’t even agree with each other, how are we meant to propagate any effective change in the wider world? If we can’t criticise people who openly declare their misandry (and not in the dark-toned jokes so often plucked up by the #feminismisawful hashtag, but those who actually, openly believe that men are inferior and deserve to be oppressed), how can we claim to be fighting for gender equality?

Being a feminist active on social media right now is to spend half your time dancing around a minefield of potential hypocrisy. So many issues who’s context and impact informs so much of the opinions we hold on them rise up and demand attention, while critics demand that feminists present some united front on the issue. Failing that, the front that’s attributed to us is the most controversial or the most synonymous with the misandry that many antifeminists attach to the movement. The waters become muddy with people declaring their agreement or disagreement with the most prominent opinion on the matter, and casual observers or critics are often left with a variety of vastly dissenting opinions that fail to leave any cohesive impression.

I think the size of the current feminist movement and the voracity with which people engage with feminist issues in a positive way is fantastic, heartening stuff. And eliminating those dissenting opinions entirely is surely a bad idea, as it removes the onus of debate from the movement. So here’s a New Year’s resolution for all internet feminists who feel the way I do about the movement. Next time you see an opinion that’s being attributed to feminists-whether it came from feminists or not- that you don’t believe jives with the gender equality feminism should be striving for, say so. Blog about it, tweet it, post it on Tumblr or Facebook. Say that you’re a feminist, and you don’t agree with this opinion. Give your reasons. Don’t silence voices, but try to add yours to them. Call out misandry, hypocrisy, and sexism when you see it, whether it’s within the movement or not. Forcing the feminism movement into one, single-voiced bunch is too simplistic, but providing opinions that challenge popular, seized-upon “proof” of problems in the movement can do nothing but strengthen the feminist cause.

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December 30, 2014

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Katie Hopkins?

You know what Katie Hopkins is? She’s a time toilet. The ex-Apprentice contestant says something offensive, and you disappear down a Facebook/Twitter/Youtube rabbithole for as long as it takes to absorb her irritatingly misinformed opinion. Then she’s gone, fading away into the mists of offensiveness until she next takes in upon herself to make the nation roll it’s eyes so hard we shift four inches to the left.

Yesterday, it was reported that a Scottish nurse who’d recently returned from travelling to Sierra Leone with a group of healthcare workers from Save the Children had a suspected case of Ebola. The suspicion was confirmed, and she was moved to London for further treatment. Katie Hopkins had these thoughts:

Glaswegian ebola patient moved to London's Royal Free Hospital. Not so independent when it matters most are we jocksville?

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) December 30, 2014

Little sweaty jocks, sending us Ebola bombs in the form of sweaty Glaswegians just isn't cricket. Scottish NHS sucks. http://t.co/EZpO0UTYHx

— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) December 30, 2014

Patently, she’s acting out the colloquial definition of a wanker. And by the end of the day, Twitter was aflame with the Katie Hopkins tweets, some in defense, the rest of us in blinding irritation. Some have accused her of committing a hate crime due to the perceived racism in the Tweet. The furore has been covered in a number of news outlets, including the Independent and the Metro.

Katie Hopkins and her ilk are the mobius strip of awful; they cater to our desire to be outraged just enough to keep themselves in the legal clear. The more people react to her, the more newspapers report on her, the more people want her on their morning shows, the more people find out how she is. So next time she says something offensive, more people react. And so it goes on.

Hopkins knows how to stoke outrage with finesse. She’s not like Dapper Laughs, who accidentally blunders out stuff which he probably doesn’t realize is as grim as it is.; she’s just close enough to enough people’s real-life opinions that she often gets away with the “telling it like it is” tag, despite the fact that most rational-minded people realize what a tremendously nonsensical twat she is. So how do you solve a problem like Katie Hopkins?

A lot of people have called for her to be banned from a variety of social media outlets, and that’s not the answer. Blocking her opinions entirely confirms you see that she’s said something stupid, don’t watch it, don’t search for it, don’t click on articles about it. Utterly, utterly ignore it. that she’s significant enough to warrant a reaction, and that just adds to the rolling stone of leathery, platinum moss. It’s confirmed to many people that she’s “too much” when that’s not true; she’s just repugnant and profoundly annoying. I am not offended by Katie Hopkins, I just have no interest in hearing what she’s got to say on anything ever again. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t got the right to say it at all. Professional offense-mongerers live off publicity, as Hopkins well knows. The only way to get her out of the news, off TV, and keep her opinions out of earshot is to cut off that oxygen. Next time you see that she’s said something stupid, shut it down, ignore it, and encourage other people to do the same if they don’t want to hear anything from her again. Hopkins is on a cliff-edge with her career and her fame; we can provide that nudge and shut her down entirely if we don’t want to listen to her. Do it. Do it for me.

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December 17, 2014

Hemlock Grove: A Wanker’s Literary Reaction

Yup, I’m combining blog series. Deal with it. Look, in theory I LOVE Eli Roth. To be honest, I find him as a person tremendously interesting- he’s spent decades immersed passionately in the horror genre, getting dirt under his nails and blood on his shoes in the name of making better horror movies. Which would be brilliant if the horror movies he made were actually any good. I feel horrible saying this because he’s clearly deeply knowledgeable and passionate about a genre that I consider the greatest one out there, but his films straddle an awkward boundary of wanting to pay homage to the classics while still making an original story with Roth’s stamp all over it. It seems to be a case of having a director so totally surrounded by a certain type of film that he, subconsciously or consciously, peppers his films with far too many genre clichés to truly separate his own work from that of his predecessors. Add to that the images of sexualised dead bodies in Hostel- which I find utterly, unforgivably grim no matter the gender or situation-and you’ve got a man who I love almost entirely outside of his films. But not, perhaps, outside of his TV shows. I’m taking a look at his Netflix series Hemlock Grove for the first time, and this blog post will serve to document my honest reaction accordingly. I’m also drinking every time I see nipples, a murder, or nipples AND a murder in the same scene.

Seriously though, nipples AND blood in the opening scene.

Look, I’ll be honest: this isn’t a GOOD show. Not by a stretch, But that doesn’t mean that it’s not buggeringly good fun. Imagine if Twilight had actually had a sense of humour and a bit of self-awareness; this is what you’d be looking at. With Peter Rumaneck, troubled Romany He’s-DEFINITELY-Not-A-Werewolf who moves to the town of Hemlock Grove with his mother, swaggering about with the kind of easy, sexy charm that the aforementioned young adult series could have done with in spades. Though he’s placed up against an interminably awful love interest-who, within moments on appearing on screen, announces “I’M A NOVELIST”, a move which simultaneously makes me want to punch myself in the face and reminds me that I have that planning for my book to do- he manages to sparkle on-screen in an entirely non-Edward like way. Imagine if Twilight was told from Edward’s point of view- some weird girl turns up and starts obsessing over him, and he’s just trying to get on with his life- and you’ve got the gist and thrust of this character. The script also has great fun with his settling into the discomforting elements of the town, such as when he’s apparently the only one to notice a shuffling, groaning woman with light pouring out of her face wandering down the school corridor as lights flicker ominously above.

What I like most about the series, though, is the Godfreys. An old-money family with some dark secrets and a seriously nice house, we meet the fabulous Famke Jamsen early on as the matriarch of the tribe, a brilliantly awful cow who brings just the right level of pissed-off repression to the role. Then you’ve got Roman, the seventeen-year-old tearaway, a man so beautiful that I don’t think I’m bisexual any more. Seriously, the first time he came on-screen-

– my jaw actually fell off. A bit of research reveals that he’s Bill Skarsgard, marking the third series that’s secretly dominated by an incandescent performance from that family (Alexander Skarsgard in True Blood, Gustaf Skarsgard in Vikings, Bill Skasgard in This Show Which I Will Only Remember Because He’s Super Fucking Hot). It helps, too, that they’ve given him plenty of fun to have with the role, hissing “Do the fields need tiiiiilled?” when he’s woken up too early for his liking. He’s one of those people for whom serious material would be too easy, so they’ve handed him a cornucopia of weirdness and fun to the already tongue-in-cheek show.

The direction- courtesy of Eli Roth, at least in the first episode- is occasionally inspired (such as the found footage-y sequence of a young girl fleeing from an unknown monster) but sensibly takes a back seat to scene-setting and exploring the fabulous possibilities the series’ hometown has to offer. The centrepiece direction sequence for the first episode is undoubtedly a flashback to Roman’s childhood, which is filmed like a B-movie-right down to Famke Jansen’s hand languidly dangling a glass of wine over the edge of a seat-and proves that Eli Roth’s admirable horror knowledge can work beautifully if it’s deployed in the right way.

Based on this first episode, I will be watching the rest of the series. It’s not the best thing on TV in a technical sense, but it’s certainly got it’s charm. The writing is solid and brought to life by some enthusiastic performances from the cast, and everyone seems to be going at the campier elements hell for leather. If American Horror Story ever needed a campier, more teen-friendly spin-off then this is it. That said, I am now pretty drunk so don’t take my word for anything.

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December 12, 2014

Doctor Who Fan? Console Yourself With Sleepy Hollow

So, I’ve been watching Sleepy Hollow recently. I was determined not to like it, as that would mean the consort had been right about a show and I would therefore never trick him into watching something like Suburgatory again (which is, by the way, utter, unparalleled genius).

But Gosh darn, if I didn’t really love Sleepy Hollow. My first attraction to the series was this;

I’d rather not say how long I spent looking for a Tom Mison picture, thanks.

That’s Tom Mison, who plays co-lead Ichabod Crane, a man transported from revolutionary American to modern-day Sleepy Hollow by witchery in order to stop evil. Ridiculous? Utterly. But Tom Mison, who pitches the comic scenes about his change in time-such as soliloquising down the phone about love to a phone operative- perfectly, is perfection. He’s at some times bumbling, at some times swashbuckling, at some times a little bit terse. He also happens to be second only to Norman Reedus in the “Men On TV I Would” list.

Then there’s this;

Well-developed, witty and consequential female characters really do it for me.

This is Nicole Beharie, who plays the police lieutenant who meets Crane soon after he arrives in Sleepy Hollow. Compassionate, intelligent, selfless, brave, and driven, Abbey Mills is one of the finest female characters on TV today and her partnership with Crane- devoid of Mulder-and-Scully style sexual tension, at least so far- is all the better for it. She also happens to be second only to Lauren Cohan in the “Women on TV I Would Do” list. Walking Dead really has the monopoly on impossibly good-looking characters facing an apocalypse.

Along with a cohort of fun regular characters- Lyndie Greenwood as Abbey’s troubled, more ruthless sister Jenny is my favourite, but Orlando Jones as a sceptic-turned-believer police chief is close behind- the duo run around trying to fight off the apocalypse predicted in the Book of Revelations. Occasionally John Noble, esteemed thesp, turns up to make dinner of the scenery and smile in an ambiguous way. And it’s as brilliantly silly as it sounds- the stories are brisk and uncomplicated, with a freak-of-the-week set up featuring some gloriously underused monster (Wendigos, Golems, Green Man etc) with some sensational real effects. It’s bright, delicious, clever fun, with a lightness of touch that stops the show ever getting bogged down in it’s own mythology.

And this got me thinking: why was it I loved this show so much? Then I realised: it’s my replacement Doctor Who. After a season in which I found DW stories too convoluted, found character tension to be forced, found the series dissapearing up it’s own arse, Sleepy Hollow is the embodiment of all the things I love about Doctor Who: the out-of-time man matched with a banterous audience surrogate, fighting monsters every week and leading everything up to a neat series finale. And so, for anyone else who’s soul was troubled by this series of Doctor Who, I cannot recommend Sleepy Hollow enough. Just don’t mess with the Horseman. Any of them.

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December 11, 2014

“The Old Department” and “The Early Hours” by Louise Macgregor

new bourgeois

The Old Department

The floors are cracked and white;
No windows. Corridors are long. Dry.
I can tell, they were handsome once- strong jaws, hairlines hidden under sparks,
Grey scribbled out with dye.
The toe of my pretty leather girl’s shoe catches, and I trip-
My thoughts thrown, I try to remember where I’ve been. An old dream
Beats behind every door and leeching screen.

The Early Hours

Our backs move like fins in shadows,

Half-light growing, birds singing as if they don’t know we’re hunters,

You bite with dry teeth.

I arch against the damp air,

Garrulity unraveling to a small cry

And words to syllables and sounds.

We move to a beat like poetry,

Eyes closed, lost in your cadence, my staccato note.

Louise Macgregor is a freelance pop culture and lifestyle writer with a sideline in poetry and short fiction. She’s passionate about horror movies, late nights, and her music blog

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December 5, 2014

The Cutprice Guignol: A Year’s Review

Well, it’s time: time for the magnificent Guignol to take a look at the highs and lows in this year’s television and film. Be warned of spoilers ahead, because I get excited about stuff and want to tell everyone about everything I’d seen.

Best Movie Performance of the Year: Jake Gyllenhal in Nightcrawler. Somehow managing to scrub his beautiful, deep, expressive eyes completely free of any emotion and it actually worked. Can’t implore anyone enough to go and see this very quiet masterpiece.

Best TV Performance of the Year: There’s a lot of competition in this category as you might imagine given the amount of fucking TV I spend all day every day watching. Special commendations have to go to Gustaf Skarsgard in Vikings (and the whole rest of the leading cast in Vikings, come to think of it), Michelle Gomez (despite the pitiful amount of screentime she got as the Master), and everyone who even considered being in Hannibal, but I’m going to go ahead and throw this one to Finn Wittrock as Dandy in American Horror Story. In a patchy season, the virtual unknown has proved himself with style, claiming some of the best moments of the series as his own as well as bringing an American Psycho-esque depth and neuroses to what is essentially a totally clichéd role.

Best On-Screen Duo of the Year: Nicole Beharie and Tom Mison in Sleepy Hollow. Next.

Accent of the Year: Kathy Bates in American Horror Story with that alleged Baltimore accent. Considering how great her performance is this season, that accent is a testament to good acting overcoming all.

Biggest Film Disappointment of the Year: Godzilla. Probably just missold, if anything, but it wasn’t anything I expected it to be, in a bad way.

Biggest TV Disappointment of the Year: Doctor Who. So much so that me and the consort very nearly never spoke again after the first episode as it so shook the foundations of our relationship. If Doctor Who isn’t good, what can I believe in?

TV Moment of the Year: I’d repressed it till now, but Michael Pitt sawing off his own face under the influence of psychotropic drugs and feeding it to dogs is eternally etched onto my memory. The woozy cinematography and presence of Mads Mikklesen’s terrifying Hannibal Lecter (the only truly great one there’s ever been, in my eyes) served to make this scene the petrifying, distorted crescendo to an already brain-bending series. Ugh. Think I was just a little bit sick into my mouth.

Movie Moment of the Year: There have been a few great ones, but the closing moments of Mockingjay part 1- with Josh Hutchinson’s Peeta battling in a terrified stupor against his bindings while a doubtful, vulnerable Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) looks on- was ominous, brutal, and utterly brilliant.

Cheering-Out-Loud Moment of the Year: Anything involving Carol (Melissa McBride) in the first episode of The Walking Dead series five. Especially her tear-jerking but not sentimental reunion with Daryl. That woman can kick ass AND rock a pixie haircut: therefore, she’s my idol.

TV Show of the Year: Anyone who’s spoken to me since those manic few days where I marathoned both series will know that I’m going to say Vikings. The plotting is refreshingly simple in an era of Moffatian twists and turns, the performances are affecting, understated and well-earned, the characterisation is consistent and constantly evolving, the story is driven by logical character choices, the battle scenes as good as you’d hope, and it’s shot with audacious beauty and style for a low-budget, History channel drama. And Clive Standen punches someone off a chair! OFF A CHAIR!

Runner-Up: Logically, Hannibal, because it’s beautiful, utterly original, and will lodge itself under your skin in ways you won’t always like. And I say this as someone who’s watched and enjoyed seven Saw films: it’s really fucking brutal.

Movie of the Year: Nightcrawler. It won’t get any Oscars, but that’s probably just a statement as to how original, dark, and adult this psycho-thriller is.

Runner-Up: The Double, Richard Ayoade’s superd follow-up to Submarine. Jesse Eisenberg proved himself as a truly diverse actor taking on the two lead roles in a psychedelic, sci-fi noir thriller that was unafraid of having a sense of humour. Think Gilliam, but British.

Music Moment of the Year: Jessica Lange out-Bowieing Bowie with an entirely anachronistic performance of Life on Mars in AHS. Why not?

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November 14, 2014

Fifty Shades of Grey: Chapter Seven

Well, I’m bored, finished work, and currently trying to find excuses not to clean my flat. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS: it’s Fifty Shades post meridian. Before I begin, though, I’d like to draw your attention to this. ‘Kay? ‘Kay. As your reward: recap time!

We left Ana and Christian just as Christian revealed his playroom to our snoozey Mary Sue. Ana opens the chapter by describing literally everything about the room, right down to the smell (disappointingly, it’s not the scent of banana condoms mixed with vaginal secretions, sweat, and Grey’s ego), even drawing our attention to a large wooden cross with restraining cuffs on each end. Let it be known that when the movie comes out, I’m going to overdub this scene with this music, because I find it intrinsically hilarious and…well, just picture it.

DO DO DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DO-DOOO-DOOOOO

Ana also mentions that there’s a mattress covered in red leather, which I find pretty offputting. In theory (by which I mean in porn), this is “sexy”, but in practice, you’d just be ripping layers of your skin off every time you went to change positions, earning yourself a tremendous burn and stinky leather in the process. Wouldn’t this also be insanely expensive? I’ve never come across red leather bedding in any form, and even for a gazillionaire like Christian it seems like a pointlessly extravagant purchase.

If you don’t like the Muppets, there’s something intrinsically wrong with you as a person.

Ana asks Christian about the room, who he uses it with, and why he brought her heOH GOD MY CAT IS ABOUT TO BE SICK ON MY BED, FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK-

Right, anyway, Christian says he brought her to the playroom because, after expressing physical interest in her and kissing her passionately, he apparently wants to have sex with her now? Look, I know that Ana is meant to be a beautiful, pure untouched virgin, but one minute she’s basically fully understanding what the playroom is for- and bear in mind that many sexually active people go through their whole lives without encountering BDSM of this intensity-and the next she’s surprised that this guy who has basically outrightly said he wants to fuck her wants to fuck her?

Fuck it. I’m out.

The next passage seriously annoys me. In it, Christian explains that he is a dominant and that this room is used to both punish and reward his (consenting) submissives. Suddenly, Ana is all “HE’S DANGEROUS FOR MY HEALTH” and “KATE WAS RIGHT ABOUT HIM” and so forth. Look, of all the fucking creepy shit he’s done so far-which, to recount, includes taking her away from a party, back to his hotel room, undressing her, and sleeping next to her without her consent-having a torture room full of kinky BDSM gear and being comfortable calmly explaining it ISN’T THAT FUCKING DANGEROUS.

This passage happens;

“This is what I cannot reconcile. Kind, caring Christian who rescues me from inebriation and holds me gently while I’m throwing up into the azaleas, and the monster who possesses whips and chains in a special room”.

For the last time: being into BDSM doesn’t make you a monster. Having a room dedicated to BDSM seems pretty sensible. “Rescuing” someone from inebriation is a dick move. I’m drunk right now, and the only thing rescuing me from inebriation is my cat and that’s only because she’s wanting fed. Ana is tremendously confused about what makes a “monster”.

Christian leads her downstairs to get something to eat, despite the fact the seeing his pain dungeon torture leather basement has made her lose her appetite. Once again, we’re pulling on the Ana-is-an-untouched-virgin trope here, but is exposing someone to your sexual desire really that awful? I mean, I’ve encountered my fair share of bizarre sexual stuff, and-aside from one experience where someone else’s period started at a tremendously inopportune moment- the worst I’ve done is say “hey, look, this really isn’t for me”. If Ana is having such an obviously visceral reaction to Christian’s home porn set, why the fuck doesn’t she just politely leave?

Ana eats some grapes after Christian starts haranguing her over whether she likes cheese or not (no, seriously) and that’s that. They discuss his history with BDSM, another one of those scenes which will play out much better in the film (which I will be paying money to see, then reviewing on this blog as a grand finale to these recaps if I can be fucked). Christian takes her to the office, and shows her the contract she’d have to sign if she were his submissive; one of the clauses involves clothing.

Happy E

“I want you dressed well. I’m sure your salary, when you do get a job, won’t cover the kind of clothes I’d like you to wear”.

Prrrrrrrick.

The other parts of the contract (OOH ALL THIS TALK OF LEGAL NEGOTIATION IS MAKING ME WANT TO PUT MY DOWN MY TROUSERS) deal with his hard limits, which rule out almost all the fun stuff. What’s the point of sex without a little fire-play? When Christian asks Ana if there’s anything she’d like to add, she reveals that she’s never actually had sex before. Aaand….that’s the cliffhanger to end this chapter on. Ballin’.

Did you know I also recap Doctor Who on this blog? You should totally read my award-winning* reviews!
*Only awards one are given in little ceremony to myself in the mirror before I go to bed.

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November 8, 2014

Doctor Who: Timorous Adventure Reflects Directly Improving Series

Well, this is it: the end to one of the most dissapointing series of television I’ve ever been privy too. Yes, season eight of Doctor Who had a tantalising amount of promise, and delivered in a slim ratio of episodes- but more often than not, was churning out one-shotters than landed somewhere between mediocre and actively violating. We’ve swung from the dizzying highs of Listen, to the dismal lows of Deep Breath and- whisper it- Kill the Moon. But with a solid first half of a finale under our belt from last week, we swing into action for the last time until the Christmas special with Death in Heaven, with a major metropolitan centre overrun with cybermen (for, by my count, the third time), and the soaringly glorious return of The Master, as Missy. Ready to crack on?

I said last week that the success of Dark Water really rested on how good this follow up was- if this hour-long special really cocked it up, the impact and power of that first half evaporates into nothing. Until this episode was broadcast, Dark Water hung in an odd kind of halfway house, wherein it had been broadcast and seen and critiqued, but no-one could really give a definitive opinion on it yet. And now we can.

I don’t think Death in Heaven was as good as last week’s outing. I think there were some spectacular high points to the episode, though, and those do not deserve to be buried underneath the niggling problems that arose. Firstly, let’s talk about those performances. It came down to a central four: Clara, Danny, the Doctor, and Missy. Right off the bat, let’s talk about Michelle Gomez: I imagine one of the most offputting things about bringing the Master back was that John Simm was devastatingly good in his take on the character, a psycopathic, charming, charismatic, slightly saucy nemesis that had an unassailable hold on our lead character. But Gomez sold it with style, more than living up to the mantle of the character and practically leaving me swooning over her best moments. She was magnetic, brilliant, and any number of synonyms for greatness that define how good that performance was. She was magnificent.

Delicious.

Jenna Coleman, too, did very well it what would essentially prove to be her send-off episode. Like last week, it was her interaction with Danny that served as the emotional core of the adventure, landing just short of schmaltzy and remaining tremendously affecting throughout. She became the first assistant to make an active decision to let the Doctor go, as opposed to being taken from him or having him taken from her, which gave her a pleasing bit of agency. Did anyone else get the feeling that we’ve still got a lot of questions about Clara that need to be answered, though? The most pressing one for me is where the knock-off Dannys (Dannies?) we saw earlier in the series came from, and I’d still really like to know about the whole being-scattered-throughout-the-Doctors-timestream while we’re on the subject. Samuel Anderson was sensational, as ever, despite the fact that I’m furious to see one of the most succintly drawn, consistently performed characters leave the show after only a handful of really meaty episodes. I would have loved to have had more time to really get under his skin and enjoy that performance a little londer. Capaldi had a blinder too, with his climatic scene- discovering that Missy had lied to him about the location of Gallifrey- carried out in silenced audio but with maximum pathos. It was stark, dramatic, and a centrepiece for this incarnation.

And while we’re on the good stuff, let’s mention Rachel Talalay’s direction, which was brilliant, how excellent the cybermen looked, a beautiful nod to the Brigadier, and what was broadly a pretty solid script when it came to the talky scenes. But I’m sure you can see where this is going, and I won’t keep you waiting much longer; I was pretty underwhelmed by the series finale.

So many interesting points were brought up in last week’s episode that seemed to be muted or ignored here. Danny meeting the child he killed, only to choose to send him back to the land of the living to Clara at the end of the episode, made sense, but could have used a bit of fleshing out. And when you consider the hour-long runtime, surely they could have cut silly little scenes, like the one where the Doctor is declared President of Earth (which bore no relevance to the plot that I could fathom), to make room for some building-up there. I was also seriously disappointed by the lack of Missy in the episode; sure, she was there, and she did wonderfully when given the screentime, but the script was far more interested in the dull rehashing of Army of the Dead from series two than it was with their reincarnation of the Master. In my eyes, at least, that’s a mistake. I’m dissapointed to assume that this is the last we’ll be seeing of Michelle Gomez’ incarnation of the Master, as she barely got time to inhabit the character before she was snatched offscreen by the Brig.

Ah, Jenna, you were tremendous, talented, and tiny. My sexy Bambi.

There was also the problem of the cybermen themselves, as they’ve now been given the ability to fly (because SHUT UP), and appeared to fly about using fart power which was upsettingly hilarious. On that point, why would UNIT assume that, after finding out the cybermen could fly, the safest place for the Doc was in an aeroplane? It all smelled like a spurious excuse to have a slightly shite scene of the metal men tearing the plane apart, and killing off tertiary characters who’d been given enough screentime to lead me to believe we were supposed to care about them. Speaking of which, say farewell to Oswin, who bought it by being a huge idiot in front of Missy in a stupid, stupid sequence that I can’t even be bothered touching on.

Broadly, I’d say Death in Heaven reflected the quality of the series overall. It hit some strong emotional notes, but too often was focused on creating glam action sequences and MAKING A POINT than it was about telling a really good story. I’ve been on a rollercoaster with series 8, sometimes magnificent, sometimes getting stuck upside-down in a loop-the-loop for half an hour and making me feel a bit sick. But with a new dawn and new plot points to chase for Capaldi’s Doctor, cut loose and on his own, I’m confident that what we saw this year was simply the teething stage for a character who’s going to make us forget Into the Dalek ever existed. Death in Heaven wasn’t a goodbye, despite what it looked like: it was a big, brash hello to Capaldi’s solo Doctor, cut free of any Matt-Smith related trappings (sorry, Clara, Oswin, etc) and given a chance to shine on his own. I want this series to be wonderful again, and, given some time to recharge, re-evaluate, and re-assistant, I think it will be.

SERIES 8: AN OVERVIEW

I feel like this Peter Capaldi gif will be coming in very handy for these recaps.

How did this get here?

Episodes rated, from worst to best: Kill the Moon, Deep Breath, In the Forest of the Night, Into the Dalek, Death in Heaven, Flatline, The Caretaker, Robot of Sherwood, Time Heist, Mummy on the Orient Express, Dark Water, Listen

Best Moment: Danny’s final “I love you” to Clara in Dark Water. Heart-explodingly poignant.

Worst Moment: “I HAVE A DUTY OF CARE”. THEN DON’T TAKE YOUR STUDENTS TO THE MOON.

In A Sentence: Even it’s staggering highs couldn’t obliterate the cringing lows, but cherry-pick Capaldi’s wobbly first series and you’re left with some great television.

Out of Ten: Six.

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