scaryblog

Continuing my trip down The Guardian's  Top 50 TV Shows of 2021 .   #43 : The Flight Attendant Not only did The Flight Attendant start with one of the best premises of the year – an alcoholic comes to with a murdered man in her bed – but it was inventively, breathlessly told, and held together by an all-time great performance from Kaley Cuoco. For some totally unclear reason, I watched the first half of the first episode, quite enjoyed it and never got any further.  My lovely wife then watched it and told me I'd like it - but I knew it was coming in the list, so I avoided it.  Until now! And yeah, it does indeed start with a great premise - but to my surprise it manages to run with it pretty well.  And in both directions in time as well, with some great cliff hangers and blind alleys involved.  And rabbits - one of which is the size of a room.  Obviously.  I'm not really going to give you any details because you're best off without them but I will tell you that it remin

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 19/08/73 : Foreigner  - Cat Stevens We've met Cat once before with the slightly better known Tea For The Tillerman , which I found somewhat disappointing - particularly considering its reputation.  So quite where that leaves my expectations with for album (that I've never even heard of) is unclear. The first side is "Foreigner Suite" - all 18:19 of it.  Lordy - it's quite a thing.  It's very earnest and sprawling and exactly the sort I'd usually hate, but, for some totally unclear reason, I didn't mind it at all.  I think it's because there's quite a bit of variation throughout - some bits of it are really quite Genesis-y, but there's really all sorts in there.  It's a very clean sound - there's some fine production on there.  The second side is somewhat more conventional and features some decent enough tracks which have a stronger jazz/funk influence than I was expecting, but

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  Top 50 Films of 2019 #49 :   Avengers: Endgame Is it cinema? Or is it soulless bobbins that’s degrading the fabric of art and society as we know it? Debate still rages; both sides can point to the Russo brothers’ quasi-finale as evidence for their cause. Of course it's cinema.  There is, of course, an argument that it's also soulless bobbins and it's interesting that I used exactly the same word to describe the last film which was directed by - Martin Scorsese, who famously declared the Marvel films to be "not cinema".  Hold on - what even does "not cinema" mean?!? Anyways, I digress.  I have to admit to not watching this film for this review because I've seen it twice already and I will be watching it again pretty soon as part of the family Marvel film watch, in which three of the family are watching all the Marvel films in order (can you guess which one of the family is giving it a miss?).   I like most of

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 28/10/22 :  Midnights - Taylor Swift I am, obviously, a completely independent reviewer - unbiased and unswervable in my opinions.  However, I also like a quiet life, so if I don't like this there's going to be trouble because it has already been made clear to me, from about four weeks ago, that this is THE BEST ALBUM EVER.  Yes, Mrs Reed is a huge fan and doesn't care who knows.   Sorry, that should read the Misses Reed are huge fans and don't care who knows.  I have heard half of it in passing (including on the day of release over breakfast) and it sounded OK, but let's actually pay attention this time... Phew.  I quite liked it.   There's some proper songs on with decent tunes and lyrics - it's got quite an 80s sound to a lot of it and there's also a lot more bass throughout than I was expecting.  "Anti-hero", "Karma" and "Mastermind" jumped out for me, but I rec

I finished The Guardians  Top 50 films of 2021  with a couple of months left in 2022, so I've decided to see how many of their  Top 50 of 2019  I can get through before 2023 comes around and I can start on their Top 50 of 2022 - I reckon I might get 2019 finished by 2025 if I'm lucky!  Did you follow all the year-based logic there? #50 :   Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese Two legends collaborate and a truckload collide in Martin Scorsese’s epic, freewheeling documentary unspooling on Bob Dylan’s 1975 tourbus. This is going to be a load of bobbins, isn't it?  If it's not mostly pretentious arty nonsense in which I have absolutely no interest, I'm going to be amazed.  And, for extra added annoyance, it's going to have Bob in it. Oh yes, it very much is mostly pretentious arty nonsense in which Bob features quite a lot.  Ostensibly it follows Bob's Rolling Thunder Revue tour which played 57 concerts in '75/'76 in smaller venue

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 26/08/73 : Touch Me In The Morning  - Diana Ross Oooh - this is a tricky one.  According to all the rules we've followed so far, this week we should be listening to Gary Glitter who's at #11 in the charts.  But - can you separate the "art" from the "artist"?   Have you got time to discuss this now?  I mean, I quite understand if you don't - but I'm not sure I have much to offer anyway.  "It depends" - I think that covers my thoughts on the matters.  I do think some people can be too quick to "cancel" others for differences of opinion or for previous comments or behaviour viewed through the lens of currently acceptable behaviour.   And, unsurprisingly, others are conversely more than happy to accept, glorify or refuse to apologise for completely unacceptable actions.  We all draw our lines somewhere I guess - for me, I feel a couple of guilty verdicts in court for serious cri

The latest in an occasional series of play reviews... To Kill A Mockingbird : The Gielgud Theatre This has been playing at the Gielgud for most of the year and has received excellent reviews, so there was only so long I could ignore the "tickets available for only £X" emails I was getting on a weekly basis - but given that I'd read and enjoyed the book donkey's years ago and I generally like Aaron Sorkin's tricksy dialogue, so I didn't exactly take too much convincing. Settling in to my seat up in the gods, the visible set certainly wasn't giving me any clues as to what I was about to get.   So I was intrigued as to what I was going to get as the lights went down and the wall rises - oh.  Four columns on the stage and that's it - I struggle to imagine we're in for some stark minimalism though. What follows in terms of the play is faithful to the book as much as I remember it, but is quite clever with the timelines, particularly in the first half wh

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 02/09/73 : The Plan  - The Osmonds So last time, I graciously agreed to consider a compilation album - partly because it met my somewhat superficial reasons for consideration, but mostly because it meant I didn't have to listen to this one.  Like I could avoid the will of the album chart gods that easily!  I've no clue what I'm going to find here, but I'm very much not expecting to enjoy it. Hmmm - well, I didn't HATE it, but it's not exactly great either.  It's very much a mixed musical bag - it all sounds like a  lightweight band trying to prove there's more to them than anyone expects by proving their musical versatility.  However, unfortunately all it does is just prove their critics right - which just leaves us with an album that no-one feels the need for, I'm afraid.  They also make some very odd sonic choices in places  - for example, does "Movie Man" REALLY need a swanee whist

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 09/09/73 : Greatest Hits  - Simon And Garfunkel For a change, I'm considering a greatest hits album - I think it hits the mark for both culturally relevant (Bridge Over Troubled Water was in its 187th week of a 244 week run) and timely (this was released a couple of years after their first (of many) acrimonious break-ups).  But, most importantly, if I listen to this I don't have to listen to The Osmonds singing about how great it is to be a Mormon.  SOLD! Having said I'm going to write about it, I don't exactly know what I'm going to say - you either like them or you don't.  Personally I prefer the slightly more upbeat numbers - "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", "The Boxer" and "Cecilia" would be high points, but I do like "America" as well for its poignant lyrics.  If you like a bit of folk and, for some particularly obscure reason, have never hear

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 16/09/73 : Tubular Bells  - Mike Oldfield Unsurprisingly, I am aware of this album, but I suspect I've only ever listened to 30 seconds max of the main theme before I've got bored and let my mind wander elsewhere, so I can't say I'm exactly looking forward to experiencing a whole album of it. And yeah, a minute in and I'm like "enough already" - but I'm pleased to say we do get through it to get a bit more variety.  Is it good variety though?  Well, no.  Like most albums there are bits I like and bits I don't like, but a lot of this is dead average or somewhat peculiar.  Particularly on side two with the  weird monster noises.  Are they backwards?  I'm sure Wikipedia will tell me, but whatever is doing it, there is FAR too much of it.  And then the "Sailor's Hornpipe" bit at the end - who thought that was a good idea?  (Mike, I guess).  I guess I'm glad I listened to it,

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 21/10/22 :  Being Funny In A Foreign Language - The 1975 My second visit with The 1975 and my verdict on the last one was "OK, if annoying in places, and far too long" - so shall we see if they've listened to my criticism?  Well, this one is only 43 minutes long - so maybe, just maybe, they have. And yeah, it's less annoying too - it's less clever-clever than previous experiences I've had with the band, whilst still being admirably complex musically.  At times there's a  real 1980s US sound in there, but not overwhelmingly so - I thought it was all pretty well done.  And  I also really liked "When We Are Together" - a fine song with even better lyrics.  So, all in all, I think we can quite safely say this is a vast improvement - I actually liked it quite a lot.  Wonders will never cease! We're straight in at #1 this week (which isn't the biggest surprise ever) and the rest of th

Continuing my trip back in time through the album charts 23/09/73 : Mott  - Mott The Hoople I'm vaguely aware of Mott The Hoople and know there's at least one track of theirs I know but I'm struggling to bring it to mind just at this minute.  I'm interested to listen to this album, particularly because there would have been no danger of me listening to it under any other circumstances - but I'm not particularly expecting to like it though.  It's all pretty Bowie-ish, so it doesn't surprise me that it was popular at the time - but, I'd actually say it's more accessible than some of Bowie's stuff at the time (and certainly more accessible than what he moved on to do).   I actually didn't mind "I’m a Cadillac / El Camino Dolo Roso" despite it lasting for 7:40 - it gets pretty atmospheric at the end with some nice Eagles-ish guitar on it.  I'm going to go out on a limb here though and say that I actually quite liked most of this - i