2020 Vision

I make no apologies for that title.  Anyway, it's time to have a look ahead across the coming year, to see a few things I'm looking forward to in the world of film.  Now you'll notice that most of the titles on here are big studio properties; that's not due to a personal preference of mine, it's more that such projects by their nature tend to be more stable, and more visible in the long term compared to indie fare.  I'm also going to skip over in this list stuff being released relatively early in the year, just so I'm not blogging about it twice in quick succession, so I'm not mentioning 1917 or JoJo Rabbit right now, as I'm already going to see at least one of those within a week.

Top Ten of 2019

OK, so it's time for my favourites of the year.  Now, just to qualify, these are my own personal favourites out of the newly released, and film festival previewed, films released to British cinemas during the last twelve months.  I'm not getting into the nitty-gritty of what counts as a "2019" movie or not, life's too short to waste on things like that, this is my list, of my favourites and I want to talk about them.  Also, keep in mind that the order is 100% utterly arbitrary, so chances are if you ask me again in a week or two, the exact running order bar the top slot will be different.  Hell, I'm catching up with at least a couple of major titles from this year on New Year's Day (Little Women and/or Jojo Rabbit), in order to make sure my movie year is off to a good start, and given what I've been hearing, either of those might just make it on here if I was doing this list a bit later.  This is purely about what I feel like at this exact moment in time.  OK?  OK, so let's start with a few runners up...

Canary Duty - Cats

You may be wondering why the hell I'm bothering with this one; hell, cats have been known to eat canaries after all.  Well the thing is that there's been a lot of... performative outrage over this one ever since the first trailer came out, and I admit that in coining the line "Dr. Moreau's Reject Pile" I was part of that.  A lot of these bad reviews have been huge scale attacks on the whole thing, some being oddly very well worded for something where the press screenings were only a few days ago.  So I thought I should go in with a more level head in mind.  I should mention that though I'm familiar with the stage show, and actually have a few friends that have done Cats costumes before, I haven't actually seen the whole thing, so this is me going in completely fresh, no real expectations about how it "should be", just a filmgoer saying "OK movie, impress me!".  I'm writing this opening paragraph before going in, so let's see if the hyperbole was justified...

:one attempted viewing later...:

Jesus wept.

Just One More Thing - The Limits of Cinema

As the year is winding down, I'm sorting out a few final blog posts of the year.  There'll be a look at some good films of this year, my top ten, and a look ahead to stuff I'm looking forward to in the new year. I might also do a favourite films of the decade list, but I might leave that a little while, as I have some catching up to do for a few major titles.  I'm also planning out what I'm seeing in the new year, what previews and such I can get to as "Canary Duty" material; for example, I'm currently on to see a preview of next series of Inside No. 9 in early January, that should be done by the second weekend of 2020. 

Canary Duty - Martin's Close

Another day, another TV preview and Q&A with Mark Gatiss at the BFI to write up.  This time it's the latest of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas, an adaptation of Martin's Close by M.R. James, starring Peter Capaldi in a magnificent wig.  Seriously, just look at that thing.  His actual hair was getting to that stage by the end of his time on Doctor Who!

Canary Duty - Dracula Episode One (Spoiler Free)

If my War of the Worlds review has taught me anything, you can't judge a full series just by one episode.  So obviously what I say here can only reflect on the single episode I saw at the BFI's preview for this series, but I can say right now that this episode on it's own knocks it out of the park!  Steve Moffat (who was there with co-creator Mark Gatiss and many of the cast and crew) did the usual thing he does at these preview events and asked us very nicely not to give away any big surprises, including whether or not there are big surprises, so I'm going to do my best to avoid any here.  I won't go into any big reveals, nor whether or not I guessed anything ahead of time, nothing like that, just the shape of this one's storyline, the performances, and the feel of the production.  If even that is too much of a spoiler, my TL/DR version is as follows; this is a full blooded production, great scares, surprising number of laughs, feels true to the book and character whilst bringing some new things to the table, a must-watch recommendation from me.  Right, now all of that's out of the way, let's go right in.  Carpe Jugulum!

Thirty Years Since "There are worlds out there...", and other Doctor Who memories

So here's an interesting little anniversary; it's thirty years ago tonight that Survival, the last official episode of the original run of Doctor Who (dubbed "The Classic Era" these days) aired.  The end of a 26 year run.  I was at an event at the BFI a few Saturdays ago, a special screening of The Curse of Fenric to big up the release of the Season 26 Blu Ray set (now due out in early January), part of it was a Q&A with Ace herself Sophie Aldred, and the show's script editor Andrew Cartmell.  In the Q&A, Cartmell said that it wasn't an official, outright cancellation, it was that the BBC were effectively "ghosting" them, just saying that they were putting the show on hold for a bit... and just never answering the question about when it was going to start up again.  As such, John-Nathan Turner asked Cartmell to add in a little speech to the end of the last episode to be broadcast, Survival, and that has become one of the most well remembered parts of the show to a lot of fans...