October Horror Movie Challenge 2020 - Fundraising Begins

It's that time again!  Start the jingle!

"Two more months till Halloween!
"Halloween!
"Halloween!
"Two more months till Halloween!
"Silver Shamrock!"

Canary Duty - Tenet, and a bit about cinema in the time of COVID

Woo, I'm back!  Now, before I talk about the film itself, I should address the experience of returning to cinema at all.  Since this whole lurgy business began, I've been wondering a bit about whether I've been tempting fate with my title of Canary, as I don't think it's ever been more appropriate than with this trip.  I was hmming and ha-ing about whether or not to go back to the cinemas, however I managed to book for a nearly empty screening at Odeon Swiss Cottage this morning (just me near the front, an elderly couple right at the back), and had a free promo code, so it seemed a relatively low risk in the grand scheme of things.  Besides, I work in a school, so in terms of risk, work will be the bigger one.  In the end, I think Odeon have mostly got the right idea, in terms of blocking off seats either side when you book, making sure everyone stays in their areas, use of masks, and cleaning a lot, I felt pretty safe.  My one concern though is that it's still possible in their bookings to go right in front or behind someone, which is when you think about it a bigger risk than sat next to them, so that's far from ideal, and also being a small screening with a teeny audience I can't talk for when it gets busy.  I say if you're not comfortable with the idea of going back to the big screen yet, I understand and don't blame you at all; I felt reasonably safe the way things were, but I will say that if the screening looked any more busy, chances are I might not have bothered.   So yeah, I felt OK on this occasion, but I'm almost certainly not going back as regularly as I might for a little while yet.  With all that out of the way then, here's the question; is Tenet the experience that demands to be seen on the big screen that will bring us all back to the multiplexes?

Lessons Not Learned - The Fall of the Studio System

Hey, I know, long time, no see.  Well, that's what comes from starting a new job, and then a whole mess of terror about an apocalyptic global event getting in the way, sorry.  Still, I think I have some new things to say on here.

Now I'm not a very big player of video games, but I am interested in them, and seeing what the games industry has been going through recently has been fascinating, if a bit saddening.  Major issues of systematic harassment, exploitation of staff, corruption, and still making utterly obscene profits on top of predatory business practices.  With recent legal interventions on some of these points occurring, as well as a few other recent things which I'll mention in a moment, it suddenly hit me that where the Triple-AAA games publishers are these days is very similar to where The Big Five Studios used to be before a slow-motion trainwreck of their own creation mangled them across the 1940s and 50s.  So it's time to also dust off my "Lessons Not Learned" title, for not a look at a film going wrong, but close to the entire US film industry going wrong, and how we can see a few parallels with things happening in the games industry today.

Best way I could think of illustrating old cinema and modern video games at the same time.

The Morlocks Will Be Right - Cummings and Goings

Hey, I've been quiet on here for a while, I know.  Well, the general level of global stress and bru-ha-ha has not been great for the ol' mental health, not exactly ideal writing conditions (and entering the brain-broiling heat of summer isn't exactly helping).  However, I decided that working constructively on here is perhaps one of the best forms of therapy I can have, so to that end, here's the start of a new little column, The Morlocks Will Be Right, which is me going full political.  If you don't get why it's called that, have a little think about what message a certain Mr. Wells was going for in his work.  This isn't going to be that regular, it's just more here to help clear my head whenever the world get too... interesting.  So with that in mind, let's talk about the Dominic Cummings situation.

The energy I'm going for.  Especially with my quarantine haircut.

Happy Birthday to Me - 34 More Underrated Films from my Lifetime

Well, I enjoyed doing it last year, I thought I'd try it again this one too.  As a little birthday treat for myself, here are 34 films that deserve a bit of a better reputation than they currently do.  They're not necessarily the best of that year, or true classics, and some do have a better reputation than others, they just all deserve to be a bit better known.  Some are well known to film geeks, but they really should be household names.  Others are a lot more obscure, and just an audience to find them.  How many of these have you seen?

Canary Duty - Inside No. 9 Series Five

Another TV preview, however a pretty tricky one to review.  Inside No. 9, the wonderfully dark anthology show from half of the League of Gentlemen, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton, has developed a reputation for its twists in the story, though as I can say from the Q&A somewhat to at least one of the creators' annoyance.  So if I say anything about whether or not there are twists or big surprises in either of the episodes, it will colour your initial watching of them, you'll spend all the time trying to "guess the twist", when it's best just to follow along with the story and performances.  Thus rest assured, I will not be giving any spoilers, nothing that you couldn't gather from a Radio Times listing; this show has had plenty of surprises that you couldn't have paid me to give away.

The Oscars - My Countering

I was going to do a blog about the Oscars in a more calm manner, one where I have a proper look at the nominations and get into what they did right, what they didn't.  Well the thing is, some of the omissions were ones so massive, and some of the decisions were so wrong-headed (11 nominations for Joker?  Really?  11?  It's the frontrunner.  Are you kidding?), that I decided I had to do a proper retort to this.  Now there were some fine decisions made, most of the Best Picture nominations are very strong (and then there's Joker squatting in amongst them, like it slipped past the bouncer saying "I'm with them"), glad that Taika Waititi, Greta Gerwig, and Rian Johnson got some noms (although none for Best Director, when the guy behind The Hangover did), and that an international feature like Parasite (which you bet I'll be seeing as soon as it gets a proper release over here) has gotten a lot of love.  But still, there are some notable absences and bad calls, like an all male Best Director line up again, in a year when there were a load of female lead features to pick from.  So what I'm going to do is take a note from The Kermode Awards, and give my thoughts on what I think should have gotten in there.  Now these aren't necessarily my favourites of last year, they are ones though where I genuinely do think that they are of the calibre to deserve the nod.  Before I start, I can't comment on ones I haven't seen yet, so I can't say much about Rocketman, Little Women, The Farewell, or Dolemite is my Name, even though I plan to catch up with all of them this month.  Let's get started though with...