September Round-Up
"Really more nightmare material."
GREETINGS & SALUTATIONS
In this edition:
The Ghost with the most is BACK
Colin Farrell is back as
Robert De NiroThe PenguinArnie Vs. Sly Vs. Jean-Claude Vs. Dolph…
Autumn, I never thought you’d arrive! Yep, the sun is out (as in gone), and Lemsips are in! (I write this with my first head cold of the season) . It’s been a quiet but busy month working on a brand new script which I’m hoping to have completed by the end of October. The kids are back to school, and we’re already dealing with the admission process for secondary school. *GULP*
I rediscovered my love of video editing (I had to help my son make a short video for school) - this would have been a dream job, under the right circumstances (i.e. not like how it used to be in the 90s, pulling all-nighters and stressing over deadlines).
The new script is coming along nicely - it’s a sort of fantasy/action mix of The Warriors and Young Guns, but more female-led. It makes a change to jump into a new idea and not have 15 years’ worth of notes to plough through! What also helps is the weather: The dark, grey mornings are perfect for writing!
It was Star Wars weekend recently, and all the movies have had a re-issue (apart from the Solo movie, oddly - it’s not THAT bad!). I popped down to my local cinema and look who I bumped into:
Right. I’m off to see a few films I’ve been trying to see for a while (and failing due to my local cinema barely screening them), so I shall report back in a month!
JUST ONE MORE THING…
I’ve been playing The Simpsons Tapped Out since it first hit the app store in 2012, and have played it ever since. So imagine my face when I opened the app last week to see this:
What. WHAT!
So, that’s all, folks. EA have most likely had their licence expire because I don’t believe this game has stopped making money. Either way, it sucks for those (not me, btw) who spent ACTUAL MONEY on buying characters and such-like and sucks for those who still enjoyed tapping away on their mobile as a substitute for dealing with reality.
But: EA have made it possible to buy everything in the game, so if you want a few months of Simpsons fun, get in quick before it goes!
At least they let Homer have the last word:
The Simpsons: Tapped Out 2012-2024
CINEMA
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Back in 1988, I watched Beetlejuice. And I watched it again. Immediately. By the time the weekend had ended, I had watched it seven times. It was a near-life-changing movie for me, so saying its much-belated sequel had a lot to live up to is an understatement.
It opened exactly how I’d hoped it would, but then kicks off the story with an unnecessary B-Plot about Beetlejuice’s very much dead ex-wife out for revenge.
In the original, Beetlejuice wasn’t about Beetlejuice - as in it wasn’t his story. He was a slowly cranked jack-in-the-box. This time he has more backstory, and his introduction should be TA-DA. Here, it is a bit of a misfire. Introducing Beetlejuice in an office is… the total opposite of “HERE I AM!”. It’s a case of less is more: We need Beetlejuice to be unleashed and go nuts, not see him in a day job in the afterlife. And don’t ask how they unshrunk his head. I’ve no idea.
Another inconvenience shrugged off is The Maitlands - the main characters from the original. They ARE mentioned briefly, but that’s it. I understand that de-ageing Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis wouldn’t have worked, but it would have been better if their absence had been dealt with in a more integral way. After all, Beetlejuice was THEIR story.
There are some plot holes and some sign-posted plot twists, but unlike the recent Alien: Romulus it mostly avoids slavishly re-hashing the original’s best bits (although the latter part of the movie performs the greatest hits). Willem Dafoe has fun as a ghostly detective, Winona Ryder has some interesting character development, and Jenna Ortega is a watchable sullen schoolgirl (if a bit too old for the role). The star player is Catherine O’Hara, who effortlessly steps into her original character’s shoes like she’s never been away. It’s great to see Michael Keaton back as The Juice, but sadly underserved in the jokes department.
At times it almost hits the heights of the original, in the moments where it goes OTT and crazy - when director Tim Burton really goes for it - if only it could have held that vibe for the entire movie, and not over-complicated the plot with unessential story threads. That said, it’s Burton’s best movie in a long time, it ends on a high note, I giggled out loud a few times and left with a smile on my face. Why did we have to wait so long?
Now, where’s my Heathers 2 script?
VERDICT: Messy but fun.
ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY
At the end of September, it was Star Wars weekend at the cinema. I have seen them all many, many times (especially the original trilogy), but I had missed Rogue One on its initial release, so I checked it out on the big screen. There’s a lot to admire about this prequel to Episode 4: It marked the start of “serious Star Wars”, where the emphasis was more on character and story rather than Saturday morning pictures daring-do.
The sets and costumes tie in nicely with the original movie, and the plot (briefly mentioned in Ep 4) is fleshed out with water-tight precision, with lots of spot-on callbacks and references. It’s an actual war film, and the supporting characters are the ones that really bring the film to life: Alan Tudyk gets most of the lighter moments with his reprogrammed robot K-2SO, Donnie Yen and Wen Jiang make for a great partnership with Chirrut and Baze, and Riz Ahmed brings a strung-out Pilot-under-pressure Bodhi. But the stand-out role and performance goes to Ben Mendelsohn’s Director Krennic, the bad guy with aspirations of getting his dues.
My only criticism (which still stands from the first time I saw it): I don’t have an emotional connection to it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great film and expertly made, but there’s a disconnect with the lead characters Jyn and Cassian. I feel like I should be invested in them as their storylines and motivations make perfect sense - perhaps it’s because they are both constantly in the zone of their trauma/motivation that there’s little room for light and shade? I especially find Cassian Andor a difficult character to connect with (a feeling I still had when watching his spin-off TV series, Andor.) He’s an anti-hero with no nod or wink. He kills in cold blood for his cause. This greying of lines shares a lot with the recent series The Acolyte, which successfully captured a both-sides-of-the-story narrative. I felt invested in those characters, even though they could switch from good to bad on a heel turn.
Andor always struck me as relentlessly serious: someone playing all sides for his own purposes. Not that I’m suggesting he should be cracking jokes, but I find him a tad impenetrable. Even though Krennic is the bad guy, I still click with his motivation. A small niggle compared to the rest of it, Rogue One stands as a brilliantly-realised quality addition to the Star Wars universe.
VERDICT: A fitting prequel to the one that started it all.
TELEVISION
THE PENGUIN
Colin Farrell returns as The Penguin (originally appearing in 2022’s The Batman), and once again (obvs) he’s unrecognisable under a shed-load of prosthetic make-up. It’s an amazing performance and proves again that Farrell is one of the best actors working today. Yes, some have asked why they couldn’t just find an old fat dude to play the part, but could they play it like Robert De Niro as Tony Soprano? Probably not. Cristin Milioti is also great as mob boss Falcone’s daughter, and Highlander’s Clancy Brown pops up as another dodgy mob boss.
It is the usual mix of gangland warfare and stitch-ups, as two episodes in so far, it is fine - how essential it is remains to be seen, but as an extension of the world stylised in The Batman, it is a decent spin-off.
VERDICT: Watch it for Farrell’s performance.
AGATHA ALL ALONG
Like The Penguin, Marvel’s Agatha All Along is another spin-off, this time from 2021’s WandaVision. So successful as a GIF (the knowing wink. You know the one.), this seems to be the reason AAL exists - which is pretty weird. How many shows have that claim to fame? It all feels a little late in the day to be doing a spin-off (unless I’ve got this completely wrong and the showrunners had planned this spin-off from the get-go?). The new series starts as WandaVision did: The main character is living in a fake, almost Truman Show-like reality, so there’s deliberate over-acting a-go-go. Fine, but it does reach grating point. Thankfully the real story kicks in, and the show begins in earnest. It is an okay-watch: If you’re not a Marvel fan this isn’t going to change anything, and if you’ve not seen WandaVision you won’t have a scooby, but it’s okay, well-made… but is it essential?
VERDICT: I Wanda if I’ll make it to the end of the series…
READING
THE LAST ACTION HEROES by Nick de Semlyen
The 80s produced a legion of action heroes whose careers would go from strength to strength, with their one-liners and macho antics even influencing world leaders. This book charts the careers of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme and the pony-tailed version of Donald Trump, Steven Seagal. I’ll admit I’m a huge fan of Arnie, Sly and Bruce and familiar with their stories, but I knew little about Norris, Lundgren, JCVD etc. and initially struggled with the idea of reading about Steven Seagal, who I cannot stand: But it is those “lesser” action stars who provide the most fascinating and hilarious insights into how they achieved stardom. And the chapters about Seagal are brilliantly funny. This book is crying out for a Ryan Murphy-esque television series!
A HEART THAT WORKS by Rob Delaney
“A heart that hurts is a heart that works”. Rob Delaney’s son, Henry, was diagnosed with a brain tumour when he was one. Henry died. Delaney writes with such emotional clarity and honesty that his writing is hard to process at times. Which is good, because how do you process a loved one - especially a child - dying? It’s everything your worst nightmare is and beyond. Naturally, it’s heart-breaking, but also challenging: What do you say to someone in this situation? What do you do? How do you help when there’s nothing you can do? What if it’s YOU on the frontline of a terrible situation? How do you cope? Do you cope? I can’t recommend this book enough. It’s direct, it hurts, and those who believe the NHS should be privatised should be forced to listen to the audiobook on a loop until their ears melt.
Finally, here’s what musical picks have been on rotation this month: I’ve been lining up my next script, and it’s about time I put this baby to bed: I wrote the first draft of Perfect Harmony in 1997, and I’ve finally hit on a fresh take for it. I’ll be starting on this black comedy/fantasy/horror/noir in the vein of Saltburn and The Substance - all luxurious aesthetics and dark humour, exploring wealth, vanity and the decay of privilege - focusing on a group of jet-set friends who buy a huge house together, intending to develop it into their magnum opus. All it requires is a little murder…
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