scaryblog

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   Top 50 Films of 2021   #26 :   The World To Come Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby play two wives who fall in love amid the grinding exhaustion and violence of pioneer life in a tale of secret passions in frontier-era America. Hmmm - I can't say I'm holding out much enthusiasm for this one.  I'm sure it will look very fine and all be very worthy, but can't help but suspect it will struggle to hold my attention - something like a frontier-set Ammonite .  My guess for the plot is that life is hard and seems pointless until the wives discover each other, at which point they discover a reason for living, but then they either get found out or one of them decides they have to give it up.  Let's see how close I am, eh? Well whatever the plot is, it REALLY took its time getting anywhere - I would have given up on it under normal circumstances, but I do have to admit that with 30 minutes to go, I was finally drawn in and in...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 03/07/20 :  Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent - Lewis Capaldi We were always going to bump into this sooner or later - we've had a few close calls in the past couple of months, but finally we've made it.  From what I've seen, I like the guy - he always looks like he is enjoying his moment in the spotlight and he's not going to let it overly change him, as borne out by his amusingly sweary Brit acceptance award (which contains about three words after the censorship - and one of them is "fucking").  I've not listened to the album, but I'm expecting a decent enough shift - although doubting too much of it will hit the heights of "Someone You Loved". And yeah, that's pretty much where we are - but when you relisten to "Someone You Loved", you realise this isn't entirely fair because it is indeed a very fine tune.  If you're going to listen to this kind of thing,...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 10/07/20 :  On Sunset - Paul Weller Wow!  Our third visit with Mr Weller on the album charts in less than three years - is it going to be a case of Weller, Weller, Weller - ooh!?  My overall suspicion is that there's going to be nothing here which is going to trouble my view that Stanley Road is his best album.  But you never know, I might be surprised. Hmmm - well.  This is an odd one and no mistake - I don't quite know how to describe it.  It's obviously Mr Weller, but he's taking one of his meanders through various musical genres and there are all sorts on here - for instance there's a surprising amount of oom-pah and Chas & Dave piano on the album, which I wasn't really expecting.  I didn't hate it, but I don't think it hung together as an album and I can't say I remembered any of it in the slightest.  It might be a grower given a chance, but that's just not going to happen, I'...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 17/07/20 :  None Of Us Are Getting Out Of This Life - The Streets I know he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't mind a bit of Mr Skinner - particularly Original Pirate Material  and A Grand Don't Come For Free, with the latter in particular being a very well crafted album.  However, I don't think I was even aware this album existed so that's possibly not the best sign ever - but let's see... No, this is not up there with his highlights - he's lacking the variety of the previously mentioned albums and there just doesn't seem to be any point or story to any of the tracks, which is a shame.  And his vocal delivery is just flat in comparison with his best stuff and he's very keen on the c word, which like other such words just loses its impact when overused.  The title track in particular is just dreadful - very dreary repetition.  All in all, a disappointment. We're at #2 in the chart...

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2021 .   #14 :  Ted Lasso What else is there to say about Ted Lasso? Its achievements are already numerous – it’s funny, warm-hearted, wildly celebrated and it made people actually want to watch Apple TV+ – and yet you sense that more is to come. The first season was an unexpectedly sweet fish out of water comedy, the second dug a little deeper into the compulsions of its characters. What on Earth will a third do? Initiate world peace? I've heard a lot of nice things about this, so am looking forward to watching it - and honoured it by decided to start at the beginning (apparently season 1 is more instant, but season 2 gets to you given time).  I also started it whilst I had the previous two entries still on the go because I was hoping for something a little more light-hearted and a little less full-on racist. And I'm pleased to say Ted Lasso delivers on both fronts - that's lucky, eh?!  It actually...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 24/07/20 :  Brightest Blue - Ellie Goulding I don't mind a bit of Ellie (and think she comes across well as a person in interviews and on Bake Off, which I watched last night!), but I'm not aware I've ever actually listened to a whole album of hers which feels like a bit of an omission - she's had three #1 albums since she arrived on the scene on 2010 (yes, it really was that long ago).  I was expecting to find this bearable, but maybe a bit samey across a whole album. But it's not all that samey - there's more variety than I was expecting, although I'm not sure I really liked it.  There are more slow numbers than I was expecting and I'm not she carries them off all that well.  None of them are dreadful and they're all put together well enough, but for an album that lasts nearly a whole hour, there aren't nearly enough stand-out tracks for me.  Bizarrely, the three tracks I liked most were ...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 31/07/20 :  Twenty Twenty - Ronan Keating Well, I'm not entirely sure this was what I had in mind when I started this exercise - but here we are anyway.  I must own up to not minding some of Ronan's stuff from the dim and distant past - "When You Say Nothing At All" is a good song, but we do have to bear in mind that a) it was 23 (TWENTY THREE!!!) years ago now and b) you do revisit his love songs when you learn he was shagging one of his backing dancers behind his wife's back at the time.  But, as I say, it was 23 years ago now, so I can forgive him that but whether I can forgive him his latest album remains to be seen. Well, they're nice enough songs but they're all a bit bland - except for "When You Say Nothing At All" which is pretty much exactly the same as the original, so you have to wonder why he bothered.  Having said that "Life Is A Rollercoaster" (which wasn't a gre...

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/04/22 :  Noughty By Nature - Digga D I don't think I like Digga D, so I don't think I'm going to like this.  I'm hoping I'm wrong, but I really don't think I'm going to be. Well, it's not my sort of thing but I didn’t completely hate it - the man’s got lyrical skills (although I'd be lying if I said I understood a lot of it) and there are some nice enough backing noises going on there as well.  I actually found it  quite exhausting to listen to - but I appreciate I’m just old.  It's a surprisingly cute album cover though! We're straight in at #1 this week - I struggle to imagine it will be around for long, but we'll see.  It was the only new entry in the top 30 and half of the top 30 had over 100 weeks on the chart, so I'd have to say my theory that the charts are stagnating is not exactly being disproved currently.  But maybe it's just going through a bad patch... Wik...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   Top 50 Films of 2021   #28 :   Procession Robert Greene’s extraordinary documentary follows the stories of six men abused as children by Catholic priests in Kansas City with remarkable care and creativity. I've always said I like a good documentary, but last year's exercise taught me that I prefer a documentary that tells a story rather than a biographical documentary, so I had high hopes for this one even though I had a slight  suspicion it wasn't going to be the easiest of watches. And the first scene is a real-life press conference given by some survivors of sexual abuse by priests which gave some horrific, but unfortunately not entirely surprising, statistics.  However, the press conference gives some impression of closure and a caption then announces that the film-makers only started thinking about making the film after seeing the press conference.  It then tells us that the film documents a three year process inv...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 07/08/20 :  Legends Never Die - Juice WRLD I heard the odd Juice WRLD track around this time due his unfortunate death earlier in the year and the huge number of conspiracy theories surrounding it (which both my daughters were bizarrely obsessed with).  I seem to recall not hating them (the songs, not my daughters), but I can't say any of them have stuck with me either. And yeah, having listened to it, I can see why - it's quite close to stuff I really don't like, but he manages to keep it bearable.  Not enough for me to actually like it though - it's pretty generic US rappy stuff to me.  I'm happy to be told it's better than the average, but only because I couldn't be bothered to argue - if you like this then you're welcome to it. We're at #4 in the chart this week - which is the joint lowest we've been and this is the only time we've been there without Ed , Adele and Abba occupying ...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 14/08/20 :  Dreamland - Glass Animals I don't mind Glass Animals (who recently got to #1 in the US charts with "Heat Waves" which took a record 59 weeks to climb there - and got over a billion streams on Spotify in the process!) but I do worry that a whole album will prove to be a little samey. But actually, they pull it off quite well with considerably more variety than I expect - I'm not sure all of it works (particularly the odd rappy bit) but I didn't find myself going "OK, enough with this already" at any point, which was a pleasant surprise.  It does a good job of bringing an 80s sound up to date, so fans of that genre might like to check this out.  "Heat Waves" is indeed a fine track (and interestingly placed at track 14 on the album) - "Your Love (Deja Vu)" also jumped out at me, but it was all pleasingly listenable.  I'm really not convinced by the album cover thoug...

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's   Top 50 Films of 2021   #29 :   The Nest Jude Law moves his family to a dark Surrey manor house in Sean Durkin’s 80s-set ghost story cum emotional parable that becomes a riveting neoliberal fever dream. My opinion of Jude Law is a funny one - I've got nothing tangible to hold against the man, but he just kinda annoys me.  And the fact that I've no reason for this just annoys me more - which I know I can't blame on him, but it really doesn't help matters.  Looking through his filmography, he's been in a lot of well-regarded films, most of which I've not seen - apart from The Talented Mr Ripley, which he was actually very good in.  So, maybe this will be the film to convince me of his worth - but the fact that The Guardian describes it as a "riveting neoliberal fever dream" is not helping its case (even if, or probably because, I've no idea what that actually means).  Oh well - let's just see, shall we?  ...

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 21/08/20 :  A Celebration Of Endings - Biffy Clyro Last time we met  Biffy Clyro, I declared it to be not my sort of thing, but surprisingly bearable - so I was suspecting more of the same here... ...which I got, although this time around I guess it's unsurprisingly bearable - I'd possibly even go as far as say I quite liked it.  "Space" is a fine track which builds very nicely and went straight on my general playlist - some of the other tracks were a bit too noisy for my sensitive ears, but overall I'd say it's a well-crafted album which sounds pretty good turned up loud. We're in the usual place in the chart this week - they managed seven weeks before disappearing, which seems like a reasonable run and suggests they've got a decent fanbase out there.  Other new entries in the top ten this week are Sea Girls (#3), James Dean Bradfield (#6) and The Levellers (#8 - they're still going?!?). Wik...