scaryblog

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #4 :     The Studio From Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard to Robert Altman’s The Player, Hollywood has always loved to navel-gaze in films about filmmaking. But save for the bro-ier likes of Entourage, this fascination with the industry's navel has rarely found a home on television — and on a streaming service, no less. Enter Seth Rogen’s The Studio, a small-screen satire so incisive, funny, and devastatingly accurate that it has quickly become the must-watch show for industry insiders who recognise themselves in the egotistical, morally misguided behind-the-scenes movers and shakers. (Rogen has reported that nearly every movie studio head has called him to say it was a traumatic watch.) But you don’t have to be a cigar-chomping executive to appreciate cringe comedy this electric, energetic and farcical, often executed in breathless one-shot takes — and stuffed with slyly self-deprecating A-list cameos, from Steve Buscemi, ...

Starting my trip back through the 1981 album charts. 27/12/81 : The Visitors - ABBA Our fifth visit with ABBA (and they're a special case because we've already had TWO best-ofs from them) and I have listened to this before, but not in many a year so I'll be happy to remind myself of it. The opening title track is an odd one because it's very synthesiser-y and lyrically inaccessible (for an ABBA track, at least). And the whole album has a much more downbeat feel than I assume many were expecting with a lot less frothiness than usual - obviously their personal circumstances contributed to this. They still come out with some top tracks here though, with "One Of Us" (with some brutal lyrics), "Slipping Through My Fingers" and "When All Is Said Is Done" being my favourites - I don't think too many people would describe the rest of the tracks as top-drawer ABBA, but I feel the album as a whole works quite well. We're at #1 in the charts t...

So how was 1971? I was expecting 1971 to be pretty close to 1973 in that there would be some gems amongst a whole load of rubbish - but actually there was surprisingly few albums that were obviously tripe here. Yes, it wasn't all to my taste (a higher tolerance for prog would certainly have helped me) but there were obviously a load of very talented musicians at work throughout the year, so there was generally something to appreciate if you looked for it.  The ownership count was a big fat zero amongst the albums we met but, looking at one's we would have reviewed this year had we not already done so, I own Carole King's  Tapestry  and the lovely Mrs Reed has her Dad's original vinyl copy of Simon & Garfunkel's  Bridge Over Troubled Water  - how cool is that? (and I think those are probably the oldest albums we own) And speaking of that S&G album, looking at the best selling albums of the year we can see it was at #1 - which isn't a massive surprise beca...

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts. 03/01/71 : Paint Your Wagon Soundtrack - Various Artists Yes, it's a soundtrack album which features a load of non-original songs, so it should be ignored - but it's such a curious album that I just have to endure it. The film (which was released in '69) had three main stars who were Jean Seberg, Clint Eastwood (he's 96!) and Lee Marvin (did you know he was awarded a Purple Heart?) - and of these, it's fair to say that Jean made the wise choice in allowing (or possibly demanding) Anita Gordon to sing her parts. Clint has quite the interesting voice - it's fair to say that singing is not really his thing, but he kinda talk-sings his way through his songs in a way that isn't totally dreadful ("I Talk To The Trees" ain't great though). And then we get to Lee who could barely speak, let along sing, with "Wand'rin' Star" in particular being an absolute abomination - and so it o...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 25/09/26 : Pylon - beabadoobee  Our second visit with beabadoobee - last time I apparently really liked it, but I don't remember it in the slightest. So I'm wondering if this is going to stick in there any better... In my head, I always think her music is more left-field than it really is - this is very reminiscent of Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish or similar. And not obviously in a lower league, so it's done pretty well and  I liked it OK enough - but I'm not sure it's going to get any further opportunities to impress me. Those that love this sort of thing (and there are many of them) will have listened to it multiple times already though and I suspect they'll continue to do so. And once again, we're at #1 with a new entry (our twelfth in a row) and the rest of the top five are Michael Jackson    (I'm amazed this is hanging in there - someone is gaming the system somehow) ,  Olivia Rodrigo , Si...

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2025 #5 :     Mr Scorsese Not the only unexpected Marty delight to hit Apple TV — or indeed this list — in 2025 (see entry #4), Rebecca Miller’s Mr. Scorsese is, as our glowing five-star review attests, “so kinetic and compelling that it could be mistaken itself for a Martin Scorsese Picture.” Neither hero-worship hagiography nor run-of-the-mill talking-heads piece, Miller’s five-part limited series instead takes the man and his movies together to craft a richly textured portrait of her subject. In one direction we see how a crisis of faith conjured Raging Bull, and in the other we see how the darkness of Shutter Island literally reduced Marty to a panic-attack-suffering wreck. And interspersed throughout are extraordinary, candid reflections from Scorsese himself, and from his collaborators and peers — from Spielberg and De Niro and DiCaprio, to Daniel Day Lewis and Spike Lee and Ari Aster. What more can we say? This one’s pre...