Ian Gourlay

Disney makes dogs of films. It extends this principle into buying hyper profitable franchises, then transforming them into terrible agenda-laden horrors whose runtime really, really needs looking at, and boy did this thing need cut differently. And MASSIVELY. Writers should not produce or direct the results of their overplayed screenplays. Really, not. A bad idea. As in VERY, very bad indeed. Has Disney forsaken its old core values? I see no trace of those here in this boring, deadly dull tragiflick-movie. Quite why Martin Freeman chose to appear in this thing, is a puzzle. After all, he’s an ACTOR. Sharing the screen with people whose main contribution is having been born to african american parents. Casting director. “OK, next please! Do we need a black actor for this? Can’t have white people cast as African Tribesmen, y’know… What colour are you? Black? Right, you’re in, thankyou. Next please?” And so it went. Allegedly. Priority 1. cast FEMALE leads. Not the kind with the bollox, guys. Priority 2. Cast nobody white unless it can’t be helped. Martin Freeman? He’ll do - he’s pint sized and everybody thought he and Sherlock were getting it on so he’s got that in his favour. Another cast “type-box” ticked! Excellent! Next!!! The agendas reach out from the screen and slap you right across the face. So - if that’s your thang, gonna LOVE this one, dearie. This isn’t the Namor from the comics, Not by a dozen country miles. He was The Submariner, not a cheesy mexican of no great stature, more the reverse in fact. This flick might make people sit through the final scrolling titles, in the hope of getting some actual entertainment from their ticket $dollars, since the movie itself is unlikely greatly to satisfy that particular need. Stay away children, this is a clunker - and for aficionados only, who want later to be able to claim at some minor Comicon (Rubesville) that they sat through every dreary moment possible.

Been bingeing this via BBC’s iplayer. It was produced for BBC Scotland by STV, if you can credit that. And for the first four seasons, it staggered along at glacial rates that took lots of my restricted supply of patience, mostly making it needful to concentrate on the Shetland locations to repay the effort required to stick with the overstretched plot lines. Broadly, it’s been clear from episode 1, first season that the content is not enough to justify the screen hours one has to wade through to get to story’s end. Every single scene is held for around double the time needful to get the skimpy dialogue worked through, but one can adjust to that. And I did. But. this series 5 is different, and not forgivably different. The script is diabolically awful, with interchanges between the core character and witnesses that beggar belief, when questions that scream to be asked are omitted, and interchanges with same witnesses are curtailed - after which any actual policeman would end up on professional standards checks, and been found tragically deficient. The writing is utterly, terminally hopeless - and the “directing” - if it can be called such - is so slack that one wonders if the director was actually present - or asked the odd job guy to stand in for him as he needed a day-long bit of me-time…. it’s really that bad. Previous years of this show have stumbled along tolerably enough, but this one looks to me that the producers decided to spend a great deal less on production values, most especially on screenwriting. which is terminally terrible. The cast has to take some responsibility for this drop in standards, as they’re the ones delivering these ridiculously lousy dialogues. But the producers are where standards filter down from, and they need to accept that things are bad, bad, bad, - compared to previous seasons. NOT good enough. Nowhere near it.

One of the BBC’s better period dramas, even though the casting was a little bit patchy - in two distinctly different ways. As to that latter, Damian Lewis as Henry lacks that profundity that a Henry VIII performance must needs have in spades. His voice lacks the depth of rumble that should be present in a tyrant’s utterings. Rylance underplays his Cromwell very thoroughly, knowing that a word misplaced in the hyper-paranoia of the Tudorian court might lead to the loss of a head-span from one’s height at any moment, at one word out of place or said in the wrong company. Spies everywhere, factions galore and each backing a source of ambition based on a lack of established right to succeed to England’s throne, so all jostle for angles of precedence and betterment. A hellish place to be, and it’s very convincingly presented in this dramatised adaptations of the Wolf Hall novels. It’s all easily good enough to have tempted me to buy the original novels. What higher praise possible? But. With a second point of reserve re casting, but a generalised one. The presence of black faces in a drama seeking to be an accurate presentation of Tudor England - is reduced to a nonsense of pandering to the schools of “inclusiveness” that as aye always work in one way only. In productions with a black cast based in a setting of, let’s say a Zulu Kraal in the time around the Rorke’s Drift action between Victorian riflemen and Zulu impis - in such would this one way street of inclusiveness be enforced so as to pepper the ranks of Zulu warriors with blatantly white, yellow, red actors? I think not, somehow. These things are calculated with one end in view only. To insert non-white races into historic pieces that they could never have been present in - in reality. But 100% only when those inserted faces aren’t white ones. Making such productions into a nonsense of racial misrepresentation. It’s dishonest and it’s racial propaganda. For shame, BBC.

One has to wonder how the book’s author viewed this rush-job of a shadow of the novel. It’s necessary to read it to gain a sense of the scale of the plot’s downsizing to fit the shallow presentability capacity of 2+hours of screen time. Forsyth uses massive layers of deeply relevant narrative, which can’t easily be presented in moving pictures. But Hollywood can’t resist grabbing screen rights, authors who might need $$$ feel the pressure to accept paychecks with open season on the content a condition written into the covering contract. That open season on The Odessa File filleted the thing so it was reduced so ridiculously terminal that one might have seen the film then read the book and apart from names being the same might not link the two. So if you know the novel it might be a good idea to stick to its memory - or maybe reread it? Since the Voight film does NOT do it justice, doesn’t try to come near to the book. It’s a lazy piece of writing, this film - is a good example of a book that might have been better left as a book. Or try the audio-book version? It’s well read by a very competent voice actor.

The writers of this hard show clearly believe that the more “fuckings” they insert into more or less all dialogues, the harder and more believable become the story lines and similar re. the deadliness of the protagonists. Adopting the basest of street speak and upping its frequency to tell the above tale as frequently as possible, this is apparently how we can tell that it’s *really* effective people who we're watching. After all, they curse and badmouth anyone and everything, everywhere. They must be hard bastards, right? It’s stupid and it’s childish and it’s fucking boring and it’s fucking insulting. too. And it’s how those with a lousy command of English speak when trying to sound harder than they are. The plot lines are a stretch at best but the action is as hard as might be expected from such masters of curse-speak. But it’s another stretch to infer that just because they’re called lionesses that they’re deadlier than the male. Lions are bigger and stronger than lionesses just as men are bigger and stronger than women, and when they see the need to discipline a lioness on the veldt that ladycat does not send her boyfriend packing. She takes a whacking and learns not to annoy the bigger cat wearing the mane. But that’s hardly in line with this show’s main thrust. I can accept these distortions, after all it’s only an entertainment-show. But I hate being insulted by frequency levels of “fuckings” that wouldn’t be out of place among brainless street gang teens who know no better than the vocabulary of the gutter. All it proves is that the writers have a schoolboy-narrow view of how effective spec-force operatives speak.

It’s a well enough made flick, with some steamy bits and overall high quality performances from all three leads. And a screenplay adapted from the stage play by the playwright, which isn’t all that common - but more likely to result in something close to the original, unless the writer chose to correct late-discovered points in need of adjustment? But. It’s flawed. How so? Its casting. Anyone married to Anne Archer would have had to be deranged to stray with - Glenn Close? Who on her best day is a hard faced harridan compared to the intensely-femininely-lovely Archer. Cast them the other way around, it all would have become more believable. But only comparatively so. Since Close would still have been a hard faced harridan and an unlikely match for Douglas. The warning bells sound early in this simple story, and it seems so unlikely that someone with the life he has would knowingly put all at risk for an encounter with any other woman, given who his wife is, whoops, This is only repeating the first moan as above, Bad reviewing, Ian,.. Only going to show the depth of the flaw in the choices made before the first frame of film stock ran through the shutter… Otherwise, the main shortfall in the story is how easily Douglas’ character fails to step smartly away away from very early - but hardly invisible - indicators that his newfound totty is a crazed nut job. But then - if he’d done that, who’d have wanted to watch a movie about such goodie-goodieness?

I don’t award lots of 5* scores in these here google reviews, but this series screams to get just that. It’s wild and savage in places, but it’s also noble and savage. The core character is a young woman of just 18 years, with her horse riding genius and her ability to love her surroundings and the people who she encounters. Especially young men, either young cowpokes or Comanche braves… I somehow doubt that her mating with that young man (however forward thinking her parents might be) would be as readily accepted as is here pictured, but it is what it is. It’s done rather beautifully, with acceptance and no trace of repugnance at the idea of their grandchildren being of mixed race. Such views are very modern, and in this world where multiculturalism is rammed down our throats by all and sundry because of the agenda that drives all public views these days, it’s necessary to say nowt when many would be saying Oh No You Don’t to such inclusiveness… yet here it is onscreen, but not done in a preachy way. But it ain’t realistic, it ain’t real. But it’s TV. TV is the mainstream educator of great swathes of populations these days, and if a lesson should be delivered it’s better to show examples of cooperation rather than of adverseness. It’s a programme that sucks you in, and makes hours seem like minutes. Which is much, much nicer than the other way around, And there’s no shortage of that around on 21st C. TV. Give it a shot. enjoy its gentleness, learn from its savagery - that being savage is only allowable when savagery is by brought to you by malefactors. Sam Elliot is the big name, but the young blonde woman is very, very watchable indeed. Look out for her. She’s got what it takes, and I don’t mean her looks, which are nice enough but no beauty contest winner grade, she has an innocence, coupled with a gravitas at times that might have thrown her, had she lacked the needful. The cast is convincing, if the german settlers are a bit too unlearning and naive to be taken seriously. It’s a very watchable show.

This series quickly descended from interesting to a competition to become the street’s most completely moronic halfwit. Especially that twat that used to be Superman’s girlfriend - Teri Hatcher. She just hunts around for fresh ways to prove she’s the most idiotic of a street of braindead insensitive dolts. And usually succeeds in that crass endeavour. To let us know when we should be rolling around on the floor screaming with uncontrollable mirth the producers thoughtfully provide semi continuous pizzicato string prompts. Indicating that we’re supposed to be as lame in the brain as the characters depicted. If you can tolerate these insults to your intelligence, you’re gonna just love this hyper dumb show, full as it is with pretty people living meaningless lives in a pastel-painted disney world of a planned-development “lane”. And especially if you’re a trump voter, hey, this is one made just for you guys! Enjoy! Only the USA could produce something as repetitiously stupid, with idiocy the one trick known to the script perpetrators. "Friends" shared an element of this in the Joey character, when they wrote him as stupider and even more stupid by the season until he was little more than a sock puppet with a barely recordable IQ. This show's writers are a set of unimaginative trolls who understand one thing only, but badly. IE if someone being brainless got a laff, then make them dumb-squared, then dumb-cubed. Until the whole mess becomes a farcical war on intelligence. There's far, far more to humour than slapstick idiots perpetually making the dumbest choices possible, mixed in with a melange of psycho evildoers and murderers. But in Wisteria Lane, there's no room for anything but the above. Which says much about the standard of television ruling the roost in the USA. since this thing seems to have been at or near the chart heights for at least some of its runtime. So - be aware that watching DH might over the resulting binge reduce your own intelligence by an easily detectable factor.

Potentially decent US show about forensic science applied to crime scenes. But. It’s been assailed by the universal American need to have pretty people in it, with idiot sideline dialogues about “relationships” and suchlike froth. Take away the padding scenes, remove the highly contrived conflicts and associated additions, you’d have a decently focused programme where the science doesn’t get skipped over with a few token throwaways, very much secondary to the kiddie-level interchanges between allegedly dedicated so called professionals whose function it is to solve cases, not to keep soap opera level fixations on the books from start to finish, Frequently unwatchable for anyone who’s seen the UK similarly themed shows such as “Silent Witness” where sidelines never get elevated to the point where needlessly multiple semi-characters dominate the screen for excessive periods. It could be so much better than it is, but Americans seem to prefer their serious crime shows also to include the junk content as above, Because of that, I’m guessing that this will plough on, trying to keep the brainless viewers because presumably those will be the ones least able to exercise sufficient judgment to evade obeying the TV ads’ non stop exhortations to buy, buy, buy. And in America, the only reason to make TV shows is to hook viewers into maximised view figures for entirely commercial reasons. Decent quality of story telling and quality of writing are occasionally found on such shows, but not very often. This one seems to follow the average set of perceived needs. High quality doesn’t play much of a part in “Bones” unfortunately.

Looks like there are lots of people (Americans?) who think they’re reviewing purchases from some store called “Splash”…. Wrong, kiddies. This is where you can review what might just be the stupidest screenplay in the history of Tom Hanks films. There’s not a single thing in this simpleton’s special that manages to get above the gawpingly crass gauge of sheer mindless stupidity. Daryl Hannah gets to wear a fish tail and be a mermaid, all the while managing to keep her (crimped) blonde hair draped over her frontage. Somehow Ron Howard managed to get suckered into this silly fairy-tale where a mermaid swaps her not at all fish stinky fish tail for not altogether unattractive walkabout iimbs. She appears to be the only onesuch in the sea. And is able to gain a workable knowledge of English by watching TV for a while. Maybe someone discovered old folk tales about sea creatures such as the Great Silkie of Sule Skerry, where a seal can change to a human male and impregnate human females, or roughly that anyway. If so, for it to be made palatable for US audiences, (for whom everything MUST take place in the USA) it’s translated into a US setting. Where it stumbles along from one idiotic scene to the next. What was Hanks thinking when he agreed to do this movie? There’s a nominal baddie in it plus an ending that was guessable from the earliest scenes. It’s poorly made with no part capable of surviving any kind of examination above primary school kiddie level. Howard directed it before he’d learned how to direct and Hannah never rise above the gawping pretty blondie grade of “acting”. Hanks has nothing to work with here, and Candy is a sort of fast talking comedy turn, but in each scene he’s in he looks like he’s praying for it all to be over. As was I. If you enjoyed it at some level, well - it’s good that someone did I suppose. I’d have expected audiences to slowly drift away during its runtime, in order to explore other cinematic possibilities in the neighbourhood. As - most anything else no matter how dismal would be an upgrade on having Splash as your evening’s high point.