Defeated Tory leadership hopeful Stephen Crabb has expressed his belief that he can “cure” Remain voters of their pro-EU tendencies.
“Many Pro-Remain voters have been deeply unhappy since the Brexit result,” says the former Work and Pensions Secretary. “First, they swallowed all that Project Fear nonsense about the pound plummeting and there being political and social turmoil should the electorate vote to Leave. Now they just whinge constantly and post endless links about holding a second referendum on Facebook.”
Mr. Crabb who ran for the party leadership under the slogan, “Crouching tiger, hidden Crabb” also expressed his controversial view that far from being genetically predetermined, voting Remain was a clear lifestyle choice like reading The Observer or ordering a veggie box. He hopes that a cure treatment can be offered to Remainers: “The irony is that far from the stereotypical view of pro-Europeans being happy or gay people, many actually never stop moaning. So you lost your job? Well, you were always complaining about it anyway. Suck it up!”
Mr. Crabb also hopes the service may be extended to Conservative MPs to “cure” the 90% or so of members who chose to vote for candidates other than Mr. Stephen Crabb as leader.
John Hinckley Jr. who has been released 35 years after attempting to assassinate Ronald Reagan in a bid to “impress” actress Jodie Foster, has announced plans to renew his attempts to court the now double Oscar winning actress.
“To be honest, I probably came on a bit strong last time, shooting the president and everything,” admits Hinckley. “Apparently she wasn’t “impressed” at all. To be honest, I’m not sure she would have even been that “impressed” if I’d actually managed to kill him. I might just send some flowers this time. Most girls seem to respond better to shit like that.”
Hinckley who admits liking Silence of the Lambs but found Little Man Tate “boring,” is undeterred by the news Foster is now reportedly in a same sex relationship. “Love will find a way,” he says.
Dublin, 1985 and teenager Conor is having a tough time. His home life is hell as he and his older brother and sister are forced to support each other as their parents are totally distracted by an ugly break-up. What’s more, Conor is forced to attend a tough new school where he faces a daily battle to avoid being beaten up by the other pupils as well as by the priests who are supposed to be running it. As if all that wasn’t enough, the Irish Republic is in the doldrums with many young people pinning all their hopes on escape to the UK, itself experiencing record breaking levels of unemployment under Margaret Thatcher at this time.
Thankfully, Conor has two great comforts: firstly, his love of music, encouraged by his brother (US actor Reynor), who though only slightly older seems to have otherwise already given up on life and secondly, his passion for attractive local girl Raphina (Boynton). He attempts to fuse these two interests together by forming a band in a bid to win his girl over.
It may seem bizarre to describe Sing Street as a feelgood film, given this review’s first paragraph, but though it has a harder edge to it than John Carney’s Once and Begin Again (the last of these is reviewed here http://bit.ly/2abGb3M), this is still generally uplifting stuff. The generally young cast is great, particularly Walsh-Peelo as Conor/Cosmo. Particularly amusing is the band’s tendency to instantly transform their image according to the fashions of the day: New Romantic one minute, Goth the next.
Criminally overlooked at the cinemas, this is one of the most charming, enjoyable films of 2016.
And the soundtrack is awesome.
Director:John Carney
Special Features:
Go Now by Adam Levine
The Making of Go Now Featurette
A Beautiful Sea Live Performance
Starring: Ferdia Walsh-Peelo, Lucy Boynton, Aiden Gillen, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Jack Reynor, Kelly Thornton, Ian Kenny, Ben Carolan
This article (written by me) has been reproduced with the kind permission of Chortle. It first appeared in 2012.
‘I want to be remembered when I’m dead. I want books written about me. I want songs sung about me. And then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes of my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some heroic actor of the age.’ (Edmund Blackadder, Dual and Duality).
It has now been a full quarter-century since the screening of Blackadder The Third. Under normal circumstances, the anniversary of the third series of anything would not be a cause for comment. Yet Blackadder is not a normal programme and the third series alone must rank as one of the best sitcoms of the Eighties in its own right.
Continuing the slow social decline of the Blackadders (from 15th Century royalty in the first series to a…
You could feel the shockwaves reverberating around the British comedy world for days afterwards: Ben Elton had written a good sitcom.
It should not have been a shock, of course. Elton co-wrote two of the best British sitcoms of all time, The Young Ones and Blackadder, indeed, the three best series of Blackadder. The ghost of Blackadder II hangs over Upstart Crow which also has an Elizabethan setting. It is not as good as Blackadder II (few things are) but it’s a noble attempt.
David Mitchell plays William Shakespeare, a man torn between the demands of his rather lowbrow Stratford household and that of London and his pursuit of a career as a playwright and a poet. At home, he has a loving wife Anne (Liza Tarbuck), a permanently grumpy teenage daughter (the excellent Helen Monks of Raised By Wolves in an underwritten part) and his elderly parents (Harry Enfield and…
Cast: Amita Dihri, Jack Davenport, Jason Hughes, Andrew Lincoln, Daniela Nardini, Ramon Tikaram
It has now been twenty years since we were first introduced to the five twentysomething London lawyers who made up BBC drama This Life.
Who could forget them? Anna (Nardini): perhaps the most memorable character, sharp tongued feisty, yet ultimately vulnerable and fixated on university end of term one night stand Miles (Davenport), posh, misogynist, homophobic and snobbish, but one senses, as human as anyone else underneath. Then there’s Egg (Lincoln), perhaps the nicest character in the house although clearly not cut out for a career in law as his sexy, ambitious girlfriend Milly (Dhiri) seems to be. Last but not least comes gay Welshman Warren (Hughes), inclined towards regular visits to a therapist and occasional moments of madness. He is later joined by troubled bisexual Ferdy (Tikaram).
John Heilemann And Mark Halperin: Double Down: The Explosive Inside Account Of The 2012 Election.
Published by: WH Allen.
They had a tough act to follow. Following on from the triumph of the4ir book Race Of A Lifetime, which chronicled the highs and lows of the 2008 presidential contest, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann must have confronted the task of repeating the trick with an account of the 2012 election with some trepidation. 2008 was, after all, an unusually eventful campaign, literally the “race of a lifetime”. That election featured an incredibly bitter Democratic primary battle between a former First Lady and a dynamic black hopeful, a calamitous sideshow (the disastrous campaign of Senator John Edwards), a grumpy an aged Republican nominee (John McCain), the rise and fall of Sarah Palin and ultimately an unprecedented outcome: the election of the first black president, a result that would have seemed unthinkable…
American Sniper is based on the story of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL who served four tours in Iraq and became the most prolific sniper in US history.
Brought up in a strict God fearing, gun-toting Texan family environment, Kyle (played as an adult by Bradley Cooper) has nevertheless rather gone off the rails by the time we meet him in adulthood, wasting his time on booze, bucking broncos and broads. The solution? He decides to replace his Stetson with a helmet. Intensely patriotic, Kyle enrols as a Navy SEAL and is soon going through the rigours of an intense beefing up programme, catching the eye of future wife Taya (Sienna Miller) along the way. Soon Kyle is in Iraq, engaged in numerous hugely dangerous combat missions, often involving shooting potential terrorists from great distances.
The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek. Author: Lance Parkin. Aurum Press. Published: July 21st 2016.
It has been fifty years since the creation of Star Trek and the franchise is undeniably going strong. A new film and TV series are both scheduled to appear later this year.
Twenty five years after his death, the reputation of the series creator Gene Roddenberry is more uncertain. On the one hand, he has been subject to a personality cult almost as elaborate as that surrounding Scientology creator and sci-fi author, L. Ron Hubbard. On the other hand, he has been sometimes unfairly demonised as a fraud, a philanderer and a phoney. The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in between.
He was born in 1921 and served with distinction as a pilot in the Second World War. After the war, ironically he came very close to death in a Pan Am air crash which killed seven people in 1947. He served in the US police force drifting into TV writing and creating one non-Star Trek series, a police-themed one called The Lieutenant. He then created Star Trek which ran for three series between 1966 and 1968. At the time, it was neither very successful or a failure. The TV series of Mission Impossible which ran at about the same time was probably more successful. Mr Spock actor, Leonard Nimoy indeed joined the Mission Impossible cast after Star Trek ended. But unexpectedly, Star Trek became a huge success after it had ended through syndicated repeat showings. The show just grew and grew and grew.
Many of the myths surrounding Star Trek seem to come from stories Roddenberry himself, often from tales spun by him at science fiction conventions in the 1970s. Some had the commendable aim of consolidating a following for the series, but others clearly had more to do with Roddenberry’s ego. Yes, the series did end after three series but Roddenberry’s claims that it was ended unfairly by small-minded producers don’t add up. By that stage, it had no longer been profitable and the last series was significantly worse than the others. Roddenberry also subsequently exaggerated his own role as a champion of equality and civil rights claiming falsely that he fought narrow-minded studio heads over the issue In fact, though he wasn’t racist by mid-20th century standards, the 1960s series only ever featured as many other minorities as most other US TV series of the time. Nichelle Nicholls’ Uhura, for example, was barely ever given anything important to do. She was one of many women Roddenberry had affairs with and in truth, the original series really didn’t have a progressive role towards women at all.
Leonard Nimoy certainly grew to hate Roddenberry. Roddenberry would often claim sole credit for the success of the series, ignoring the contribution of many others. He had no role at all in the making of the most acclaimed film in the series, 1982’s The Wrath of Khan (which he hated) and his own increasingly drunken, ageing cocaine-addled influence partly explains why the ultimately excellent Next Generation series had such a dull start.
Author Lance Parkin provides a balanced portrait of a man who for all his many flaws took TV on a journey where no one had gone before.
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Sienna Miller, Jeremy Irons, Keeley Hawes, Elisabeth Moss, Reece Shearsmith. Director: Ben Wheatley. Released: June 18th 2016.Studio Canal
Anarchy has often made material for some surprisingly dull films.
As exciting (or depending on your viewpoint) terrifying as a good riot may be, its difficult to maintain the sustained energy of a genuine rumpus for long on screen. It’s true Quadrophenia was enlivened by a memorable battle between Mods and Rockers while Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing was essentially all a big build up to an urban riot. But JG Ballard’s celebrated 1975 dystopian drama High-Rise is all about a riot: essentially a sky rise building’s not so gradual descent into violence and barbarism. How long can a film continue to shock, titillate and surprise you over a two hour period?
Quite a lot as it happens. Hot British director Ben Wheatley (Sightseers) is in many ways a perfect fit for this sort of thing and ably assisted by a cast of beautiful and not so beautiful people, this just about works while never quite scaling the heights of a novel which has influenced everything from the Blockmania of Judge Dredd to David Cronenberg’s early tower block based horror Shivers.
Indeed, as the accompanying featurette on author JG Ballard reminds us, Cronenberg is one of a number of directors (along with Spielberg) to tackle the late author’s books before. Set in a futuristic version of the Britain of the 1970s and featuring audio commentaries and interviews with cast and crew, High-Rise probably won’t be your favourite film of this year. But it will probably be one of the more interesting.
2001: A Space Odyssey is a long film. Having experienced both it and the actual year 2001, it must be said the film seemed the longer of the two.
In summary: Music. Prehistoric ape men throwing bones into the air. Spaceships moving very slowly to classical music. Leonard Rossiter. The excellent HAL shutdown sequence. The space baby bit which nobody really understands. Many hippies came away in 1968 thinking they had seen the best film ever made. Perhaps they were right. No one had after all, seen Timecop then.
Some muse that the film proves that director Stanley Kubrick helped fake the Apollo 11 moon landings the following year. This seems unlikely. Kubrick was after all a very…
Warning: Karl Pilkington does not moan like he used to.
Don’t worry: he hasn’t stopped completely and still retains his distinctive, unique and often hilarious world view. But, on this evidence, his reputation as a serial moaner is undeserved. Pilkington is often understandably bewildered by many of the strange people and bizarre practices he encounters here, but he embraces most of what he sees and confronts many challenges – night club dancing, ironing in a remote and precarious American location and even going on patrol as a superhero, head on.
Probably the main difference from his earlier series An Idiot Abroad, is the absence of the sometimes cruel presence of Pilkington’s old compadres Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Rather than being sent to random locations as to their whim, here Pilkington is able to travel to some marvellous locations to meet some often very odd people in the hope of…
School-based comedy series have a somewhat hit and miss reputation as anyone who has seen Teachers or the more recent David Walliams/Catherine Tate sitcom Big School will agree. But while not exactly disproving this rule, BBC Three’s relentlessly hip sitcom Bad Education is well worth skipping homework for.
Jack Whitehall returns as Alfie Wickers, the incompetent History teacher at Abbey Grove Comprehensive. Constantly undermined by his desperate attempts to pursue a romantic liaison with fellow teacher Rosie Gulliver (played by the excellent Solemani, star of Him & Her and The Wrong Mans) as well as by the simple fact that he is only slightly older than the pupils he is supposed to be teaching, Alfie faces challenges old and new in this second series (which includes a Christmas Special) first screened last year. Matthew Horne’s desperately trendy Head is still a fun and the supporting cast who include the brilliant…
Chris Hallam's World View 