Better Call Saul
Season One, 2015 We knew this couldn’t be as good as Breaking Bad but it’s still well worth a look, compellingly so. The series is based on mobile phone-destroying attorney Saul Goodman, an artful dodger with an extremely flawed appreciation of legal professional privilege, who was not only comedy relief in several seasons of BB, but often a deus ex machina to boot (who can forget the moment when DEA Officer Hank Schraeder has Walt and Jesse cornered, only to get the slimiest of bum steers via phone from Saul’s office?) With this ‘prequel’, we go back in time to when Saul (Bob…
Continue Reading →Python is Squashed
“Absolutely Anything” (Dir. Terry Jones) (2015) Let’s get this over with: this is the Worst Picture of the Year. It’s Monty Python’s Tomb. There’s not an ounce of wit or a solitary laugh in it. Derivative, tired, completely lustreless. Every person in or connected with it is diminished. Simon Pegg took a wrong career turn after Spaced and Sean of the Dead. Or rather, he missed the turn towards something new and kept straight down the road of playing gormless, anorak-wearing types, till he hit this dead end. There is no need to explain the thing – just pass on by….
Continue Reading →Florence and the Uffizi Gallery
(photo by Chris Wee)
(Dir. Luca Viotto) (2015) This documentary on the city that invented the Renaissance is a treat but it could have been better, says Director Pete: We don’t need an actor (albeit highly competent Simon Merrells) in a shiny suit and dubious red flannel to ‘play’ the ‘ghost’ of Lorenzo the Magnificent to talk about his ‘feelings’ and his cultured mates. Medici was formidable, and deserved better. We wanted 3D. We got 2D. We didn’t really appreciate the Director’s exegesis concerning various masterworks. With all due respect to his obvious erudition, they struck us as squarely phallocentric. No problem with that, but it…
Continue Reading →Islam-o-nut
By Hubert van Ravesteyn (1671)
It looks like any other nut. The outer shell is hard And seemingly impervious, The flesh within is poisoned. Despite the strength of its integument This is prone to burst-forth After fermentation. It will lay in a shrinking room, Touching all within. So this is a nut one must not crack In the event its toxic traces Spill over the table.
Continue Reading →Casablanca
"Forget Paris"
(Dir. Michael Curtiz) (1942) We recall this classic-of-classics in the wake of the horror in Paris. The soccer fans leaving the bombed-out stadium did it: Marchons, marchons! Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons ! (Take note, Australia: La Marseillaise – now, that’s a national anthem for you). And in the best ‘B’ film ever made*, Paul Henreid leads the band and crowd in Rick’s Café in a rousing version, drowning out nasty Conrad Veidt’s Teutonic warbling “Die Wacht am Rhein”. [*David Shipman (“The Great Movie Stars”) called Casablanca “probably the best bad film ever made”]. What a cast – Humphrey Bogart as Rick…
Continue Reading →