celticman's blog

I’d not heard of David Sedaris. After reading this book, I know there’s been a film-version of his early life. I’ve not seen it. I understand he’s a humourist (perhaps I should use the American spelling, humorist). He’s meant to be funny. Book sales are heavily influenced by the book cover. The book cover here is nothing to look at. I notice these things more than your average non-humourist because I’ve skin in the great game. This screams non-...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/resistance-2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_(2020_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Marceau Jonathan Jakubowicz’s hagiography of Marcel Marceau (Jesse Eisenberg) begins in pre-war Nazi German of 1938. Elsbeth (Bella Ramsey) watches her dad and mum being arrested, beaten and shot. Their crime was being Jewish. It ends post-war in Nuremberg. General Patton (Ed Harris) asks ‘what is courage...

Don Paterson is around the same age as me. But he’s won a stack of poetry and literary awards and is Professor of Poetry at St Andrew’s University. That’s the university that usually comes out near the top for all the English nobs that can’t get into Oxbridge and even a few that can. Don Paterson, like me, grew up in a council estate in Dundee. Dundee is on par with drug deaths with Glasgow, which every year wins the award for dying. That’s how...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/rhino/on-demand/74813-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhino_(film) Right-wing followers of the moron’s moron and former President Trump are trying to indict President Joe Biden ( https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/biden-impeachment-inquiry-what-to-know ) because of his son, Hunter’s, links with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Corruption was and remains at a high levels in Ukraine. Standard...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/minari/on-demand/73507-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minari_(film) Minari is a type of planet used in cooking South Korean dishes that grows like a weed. Monica’s mother Soon-ja (Youn Yuh-jung) travels from South Korea to help look after her grandchildren. She plants minari seeds in the creek bed where it grows abundantly. There’s a metaphor there. As Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun/ Yeun Sang-yeop) explains his...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/night-of-the-kings?.none.none.popular|| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Kings Most prison movies tend to be about escape, or redemption, or both and act as morality plays. Stephen King’s short story turned into a longer film, The Shawshank Redemption , is familiar to most of us. Night of the Kings has a fairy tale feel to it which lifts it out of the ordinary. The plot is simple. Roman (Koné Bakary...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-mustang?.none.none.popular|| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mustang I was brought up watching Champion the Wonder Horse . It could do pretty much anything apart from shoot a gun and dance backwards like Ginger Rodgers. The Mustang is from the same breed. The spiel before the film tells the viewer there are thousands of horses running wild. But they’re overbreeding. Ironically, they are also dying off...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/them-that-follow/on-demand/73188-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Them_That_Follow Olivia Coleman is in this film. She doesn’t usually make duff movies. So I decided to watch the start and see if I liked it. I thought it would be a naff horror about some kind of poltergeist. A curse of some kind. In a way it was. Set in rural Appalachia on ‘the mountain,’ the curse was religion. The kind of Pentecostal...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/benedetta?.none.none.popular%7C%7C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedetta_(film) ‘For extraordinary events, you need extraordinary truth.’ You might have heard that line before. I’ve heard it used many times the claims aliens exist. Here it used by a Papal Nuncio (Lambert Wilson) interrogating Benedetta Carlini (Virginie Efira) and her account that Jesus appears and speaks to her directly. Based on true...

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-handmaiden/on-demand/65950-001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaiden Park-Chan wook’s The Handmaiden won a couple of awards when it came out. Often I don’t watch films to the end. This grabbed me from the beginning. It had me thinking of Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire . A mesmerising take on life and art, or just life in general. That might have been the lesbian element. When it’s two...