Toast (2010)

Based on Nigel Slater’s memoir, Toast was a comedy-drama TV-movie shown on BBC4 over Christmas. I’ve heard of Slater, and my knowledge of him and his life begins and ends with recognition of his name. The main draw for me therefore was the good review in the Radio Times along with the fact that Helena Bonham Carter featured heavily.

Toast turned out to be a hilarious, poignant and tasty journey through a couple of key early years in Slater’s young life. Newcomer Oscar Kennedy portrayed Slater around the age of 10/11, for about 2/3 of the film, with Freddie Highmore playing him at 16 for the remaining 1/3. Constant through the drama is Ken Stott as Slater’s father, and these three actors really make the story come alive and fill it with warmth and humour, helped in no small part by a terrifically witty script. I’d single out young Kennedy as the best actor in the piece, his performance is flawless and he’s an utter delight – it was a shame when he grew into Highmore, although the latter was great too.

Bonham Carter played Slater’s step-mother, a common cleaning lady who works her way into his father’s affections (via his stomach) following the asthmatic death of Slater’s mother. His mother could cook toast and anything that came in a tin (though not often successfully) but step-mother Joan Potter is a culinary genius. Forever ignored or shouted at by his grumpy father, young Slater turns to home economics to compete with Joan’s cookery skills. It is these skills at cooking and being a food critic for which Nigel Slater, the adult, is now (apparently) well known.

As well as following Nigel’s turbulent relationship with his father, and then Joan, and seeing how the seeds of his fascination for food were sown, the film quietly tackles the young man’s emerging sexuality. As I say, I didn’t know Slater before, so I didn’t know he was gay, so it came as a pleasant surprise to see the tender and tentative way in which this fact was revealed in Toast. From an early scene with Nigel catching a glimpse of the family gardener changing his trousers and his subsequent idolising of him, to his decision to take up a male classmates offer of seeing his privates rather than a young girl’s knickers, the inklings of his sexuality were there but not obvious.

When Highmore took over and the older Nigel took up home economics to choruses of ‘poof’ from female classmates it was still possible that I was reading too much in to events. Then when he eventually gets a kiss from a male friend he is inspired, following the sudden death of his father, to jack in life with Joan Potter to find try his luck in London. There the film ends, with real-life Slater cameoing as a chef taking young Nigel on at the Savoy, and telling him that everything will be alright now. It’s a sweet moment, and one that left me with a grin, as did much of the preceding 90 minutes. As a portrayal of young sexuality and a difficult parental relationship, Toast succeeded admirably.

Panda! Go, Panda! (1972-73)

Last night we watched a DVD that I had bought as a gift for Andrew due to his interest in Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli movies. Panda! Go, Panda! is made up of two shorts of about 30 mins each stuck together, using the same characters and setting. It plays like two episodes of a TV show, although they are not stitched into one movie, rather when The End shows for Panda! Go, Panda! the next short, Rainy-Day Circus begins.

I was shocked to find the shorts were made in the early seventies as the animation and the whole feel seemed more modern, although I guess there is a timelessness to the whole. An incredibly cute but not too kiddified production, Panda sees young Mimiko abandoned by her elderly grandmother, off to Nagaski, and left to her own devices. Mimiko is looking forward to meeting burglars, and tells all of the townspeople she’ll be alone – a very unwise move I thought, particularly with the red-faced shop owner looking a bit too excited about this. Anyway, this isn’t a cautionary tale about leaving young children alone.

The movie is about pandas, an incredibly cute young one named Panny and a massive one with a strangely Caribbean accent named Papa, who Mimiko asks to be her father, if she can be Panny’s mother. I know, the girl’s clearly got some screwed up views on what family is, but hey, I’m not going to judge. There’s a cute adventure where the girl and her new panda family get up to some hijinks, and then in Rainy-Day Circus a baby tiger is added to the mix, who has escaped from a travelling circus (the clue’s in the title).

It’s all fun and cute, especially the rendering of Panny and Papa, and isn’t taxing on the brain. Involving to a degree, and never boring, Panda! Go, Panda! gives Ponyo a run for it’s money in the cutest anime stakes. 

Forever Today (Deborah Wearing, 2005)

In my quest to get through some of the books gathering dust on our shelves I plucked something a bit different off last weekend, a memoir. I’ve read a few biographies (Bill Clinton, Churchill, Stalin, Walt Disney, Dolly Parton – spot the connection?!) but never a memoir like this one, Forever Today, written by Deborah Weaving. I don’t even know what possessed me to purchase this, I was possibly adding to my basket on the Book People in order to get free post and packing.

I devoured the book in less than a week (I’m getting through a few like that lately) as it was a truly fascinating account. Deborah Weaving writes about her husband Clive, formerly a respected conductor and musician, who was struck down with an illness in 1985 that wiped out the part of his brain that holds and forms memories. While he still has procedural memory and thus can dress himself, make a cup of tea and even play the piano, he is unable to create new memories, thus every few minutes he believes he has just ‘woken up’. When Deborah enters the room he’s seeing her for the first time, if she’s out of sight for a moment he’s forgotten she was ever there and is pleased to see her all over again.

Deborah writes of the illness, with real compassion – she was and continues to be deeply in love with Clive, and he remembers that he loves her, constantly writing in his diary that he wants her to arrive ‘at the speed of light’. Rather than being maudlin and downbeat, Forever Today is a touching, heartfelt account of the love shared between two people, and the barrier that Clive’s illness throws in their way. I was fascinated with the description of his condition, but Weaving’s writing never makes her husband feel like a scientific study subject.

From the harrowing early days of the illness, through the endless loop of repetition (Clive always asking the same questions, unable to remember answers) to Deborah’s decision to divorce Clive and look for love elsewhere in USA and Greece, the book charts Deborah’s attempts to deal with the disease, her fight to obtain proper support for amnesiacs, and her sense of utter loss and semi-grief when she tries to move on with her life. She is unable to stop loving Clive though, and happily by the end of the book, Clive is showing massive improvements in his ability to absorb information and they renew their marriage vows. Deborah finds solace in religion to assist her in dealing with Clive, and there the memoir ends.

I was pleased to discover that Clive is still living, in his 70s, according to Wikipedia. His story is endless interesting and touching, and Deborah’s experiences offer much food for thought. This may have been a bit of a random purchase, nevertheless it has been a rewarding one.

Silkwood (1983)

Wednesday night was movie night, although we didn’t take advantage of Orange’s 241 offer, rather we stayed in with a curry and watched Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell and Cher. I knew the two female leads had been Oscar nominated and that it was based on real events, but other than that wasn’t sure what to expect.

The film follows Karen Silkwood as she becomes more and more concerned about the safety record of the plutonium power plant at which she works. She becomes involved with the union and uncovers some dodgy practices, and becomes sicker as her investigations continue. This is a Meryl Streep Oscar Nominated Picture, and it’s clear why, she’s in most every scene and creates a sympathetic figure in Karen.

Kurt Russell barely gets anything to do as Karen’s love interest, and Cher is playing against type as their dowdy lesbian flatmate, but again with not much to do other than pine for Karen and be fabulous. It’s a role a million miles away from that in Burlesque, and apparently a whole nose away too.

Silkwood would have been improved with a bit of editing, it’s over 2 hours long but really, not that much happens. Nothing particularly exciting anyway. The nature of the film led me to believe that Streep would not leave the film alive, although rather than succumbing to plutonium-enriched cancer, she’s driven off the road and killed in a car crash. And there the film ends, with some text to the effect that no one knows whether she was murdered or had an accident. It’s a bit of a dud end, but then it reflects the real life story of the poor woman.

The acting is the main thing to admire in Silkwood, the story meanders along too freely and without a great deal of incident. By the end of the film I couldn’t really decide whether there was an anti-nuclear message, or just an anti-this-particular-company meaning. Meryl and Cher were great whatever.

Hustle: Series 7 (2011)

I can’t believe that Hustle has been running for 7 series. Good shows like this and Spooks, that look pricey glossy and pricey, don’t normally hang around very long in TV schedules that churn out medical dramas and soaps daily. I’m glad that Hustle and Spooks buck the trend though. Especially now I’ve heard that there won’t be any more stories for Zen on the BBC :(

This series of Hustle felt like an improvement over the last, though I’m not sure if I could put my finger on why. I think perhaps the marks were more interesting and varied this time around. There seemed to be less knowing winks to camera, so the characters didn’t feel quite so smug. Ash (Robert Glenister) continues to be my favourite of the team, he’s the most fun and gets the best lines. Sean is resident hottie, and Matt Di Angelo proves he can act too, while Emma (Kelly ‘Kylie’ Adams) is a good as the token woman.

Adrian Lester does solid work as Mickey, and Albert (Robert Vaughn) is a real pleasure. The final episode featuring Albert’s newly discovered daughter – played by Claire Goose in an episode that also included Hannah Gordon and Clive Swift (Roger Lloyd Pack, Swift’s Old Guys co-star also popped up earlier this series) – brought an unexpectedly downbeat tone to the end of the series as Albert succumbed to the lure of a poker game and forgot to see his daughter off at the airport. I quite like it when Hustle has a heart, as it showed last year with Sean and Emma’s dad returning to their lives. I hope the planned 8^th series continues to build on these emotional foundations, without forgetting the utter fun that all involved appear to enjoy each week.

Reichenbach Falls (2007)

A one-off TV movie from the mind of Ian Rankin, his fingerprints are all over it. Filmed around Edinburgh and featuring snippets of the city’s history, this is a love story to the city wrapped around a detective mystery with a twist. The grumpy protagonist, Jim Buchan (Alec Newman) is a detective who believes his nemesis ‘the Monkey’ is out to get him. And then Richard Wilson pops up in the guise of Arthur Conan-Doyle to try and guide him through the truth of the matter.

It turns out that Buchan is actually fictional, created by the pen of writer Jack Harvey (Alastair Mackenzie)… who is also the Monkey. But Buchan is friends with Harvey, who he thought was his best friend who stole his wife away. And there’s Buchan’s new partner. And the fact Buchan falls off a bridge to his death with the Monkey, before being resurrected, Sherlock Holmes like, after Jack Harvey is offered a big wodge of cash.

I have to say, it was all a little confusing for me to fully understand what was going on, although I confess I was on my laptop downloading music while I watched it. The film was atmospheric and Edinburgh looked beautiful, and the central conceit was a real shocker, even though in retrospect I don’t get certain bits. If I watched it again I’d certainly give it my full attention.

Yes, Prime Minister (Leeds Grand Theatre, 15/02/11)

Having seen the first series of Yes Minister I was eager to catch the new stage play, which puts PM Jim Hacker (Richard McCabe), Sir Humphrey (Simon Williams) and Bernard in a very modern setting, albeit with the same interesting relationships. Written and directed by the shows original writers, the play is a witty, often hilarious look at the state of modern Britain and what it means to be a Prime Minister in the 21^st Century.

Set at Chequers, the play follows an increasingly difficult night in Hacker’s premiership, as he is variously blamed for global warming, discovers his chef is an illegal immigrant, and finds the only way to save Europe’s economy is to do a dodgy oil-pipe deal with Kumranistan, whose ambassador has made a delicate request for an underage companion… Farce piles upon farce and McCabe does a superb job of progressively unravelling, audibly and visibly. He is amiably supported by a small cast, with Williams proving a good Sir Humphrey, but he fails to come out from the shadow of Nigel Hawthorne. While Williams is great at the long-winded, verbose politcospeak of Sir Humphrey, I found him a little subdued in places when he should have been providing a bit more ‘oomph’.

A more entertaining night I couldn’t have asked for. It also gave a good work out for my grey cells, as the language and content is in no way dumbed down. It’s a good job I have a grasp of current affairs too, otherwise some of the satire could have gone over my head. I hope that the play is committed to tape so that I can enjoy this again.

Outcasts (2011)

This is an unusual entry for the blog. It’s for a TV series that hasn’t yet finished being broadcast, but it’s one that I haven’t got beyond 2 episodes of, because it’s rubbish. Well, it might not turn out to be so bad, but I’ve decided there’s too much quality product out there to watch to waste my time on cr*p new content.

A po-faced sci fi drama from the BBC, the cast promised much – Eric Mabius from Ugly Betty, Jamie Bamber from Battlestar Galactica, and the main draw, Hermione ‘Ros from Spooks’ Norris – but sadly the flat action and unexciting dialogue left me feeling cheated. Also it’s got Daniel Mays in it, who’s got a horrible accent, face and style of acting and ruins most everything I’ve seen him in (with the exception of series 3 of Ashes to Ashes where he was annoying but the character was supposed to be horrible so it worked). Sadly, the premise was good, with humans who have fled Earth marooned on a distant planet, filmed among gorgeous South African vistas, it’s not enough. Where’s the humour? Where are the characters I can care about? I’ve plenty more to watch instead.

Dead Cert (Dick Francis, 1962)

Continuing a bit of an equine theme within the fiction I've read lately - Black Beauty, Gulliver's Travels (the horse-like Houyhnhnms) - the next book I picked off the pile of crime novel box sets was Dick Francis' Dead Cert. The first of Francis' 40+ bestsellers, set in the world of jockeys and horse-racing, it's also the first of his works I've read. I've got to say that I'm baffled by betting and racing holds no interest for me, so I was a bit dubious about what I'd get out of Dead Cert.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that an interest in horses wasn't a prerequisite for enjoying the book (just like Harlan Coben's Myron Bolitar novels don't require an interest in sport to enjoy the thrillers involving the sports-agent amateur detective) which is a taught piece of crime literature. Opening with the death of a jockey who falls from his horse during a race - our narrator Alan York, a 24 year old from South Africa, suspects foul play - the novel charts York's sleuthing as it takes him from dodgy bookies, violent cabbies and through the English woodland.

The mystery is a good 'un and the protagonist is believable in his ability to hunt out clues - and he has a good reason for not leaving it up to the police - they don't believe him. What I found most interesting is the period detail of the early 60's, the formalities and the language. The novel's not just a horsey one, it's a period one, albeit written in the period! While I won't actively seek out more Dick Francis - I'm trying to get through the massive pile of books I've already got - I wouldn't say no to another one of these racing thrillers.

Walt Disney: The Biography (Neal Gabler, 2006)

Hands down the best non-fiction work I've ever read - and quite possibly the best book period - Neal Gabler's officially sanctioned biography of Walt Disney is a peerless volume. Gabler had access to the Walt Disney archives and has clearly talked to hundreds of people and read masses of letters, previous biographies and interviews, and the result is an account of Disney's life that is unlikely to be equalled. 

It's taken me several months to read this book - not because it's hard going or over long (600-odd pages). I've got the first edition hardback version so it's a weighty tome and not designed for taking on trains or reading comfortably sat up in bed so I've had to lie down and savour it. Everytime I opened it up I got lost in the tales of Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Disneyland and everything else. Sometimes devouring in short bursts was the only way to keep up with all that Disney packed into his relatively short life. 

So many advances in filmmaking and beyond were done first or done best by Walt - colour shorts, feature-length animation, Fantasia, movie studios getting into TV, the Disneyland theme park, animatronics, storyboards... the list of his accomplishments is almost unending and continue to have an impact across the world. Gabler doesn't shy away from Walt's follies or faults - this isn't just a big back-slap for the animation genius. Walt is shown as a physically unhealthy, chain-smoking, peevish figure often. Gabler faces accusations of Walt's anti-semitism and racism head on and provides evidence he was guilty of neither any more than people were in the 30s, 40s, 50s. There's not a great deal about Walt's relationship with Lillian, his wife, but then that is because the movies, theme park and all were his focus for much of the time. 

The picture that Gabler paints of Disney is far from the utopian ideal that many think his company now pedals. The biography is a tale of perseverance, of success and failure and of one man's drive to always being doing something new, something different, something he enjoyed. From the early days of animation, through the second world war when the Disney Studio was commissioned by the government to produce propaganda, through to experiments in TV and the success of the theme parks, Walt Disney's life was never boring, and this biography brought everything vividly to life. A masterpiece.

Crippen (John Boyne, 2004)

Subtitled: 'A Novel of Murder', Crippen is a first rate fictionalised account of real-life murderer 'Dr' Hawley Harvey Crippin who, in 1910, poisoned his wife Cora, chopped her up into pieces and buried her in his cellar. This before escaping from London to Antwerp and then catching a ship to Canada, with his young lover Ethel LeNeve, disguised as his son... At least, this is the version that is popularly known - Boyne posits a different theory that serves as an I-didn't-see-that-coming yet wholly believable plot twist. 

Opening with a chapter that meets various characters boarding the Montrose liner to Canada, I was slightly puzzled at the lack of mention of Crippen. The next chapter goes back in time and follows Crippen through his youth, the third flashes back again to the present day, months earlier than the first chapter, as Cora Crippen's suspicious friend takes her concerns to Scotland Yard... The novel continues in this fashion, moving between places, times, and characters and it's a conceit that Boyne handles with aplomb. Never confusing, always enlightening, each chapter filling in a piece of the puzzle to explain who Crippen is, who Cora was, how she came to  be murdered, and how Crippen and LeNeve find themselves disguised on board the Montrose with Scotland Yard's finest in pursuit. 

It's a really rivetting read, and every character, no matter how incidental, is well drawn. All of Crippen's interactions with travellers on board the ship are filled with possibilities - will he kill again? Will they work out who he is? Will the ghastly Victoria succeed in seducing Edmund a.k.a. Ethel? Parts of Crippen's life are drip-fed through revelations and the details of his life. It's a fascinating study of a man brow-beaten by his wife, and Boyne almost appears to excuse Hawley's actions by explaining how much of a harridan Cora was. And then there's the twist, and the twists continue through the last couple of chapters as the real murderer is revealed. When I picked this book up I was expected a throwaway crime story I could read in a couple of days and not think about again, but Crippen proved to be far more enthralling. 

Tangled 3D (2010)

The 50^th Walt Disney Animated feature since Snow White started it all in 1937, Tangled is a simply wonderful addition to the canon. It looks exquisite – the CGI animation is faultless, and the 3D breathtaking in some scenes. Rapunzel’s hair is so detailed, and the human characters more expressive than any other I’ve seen, including in motion-capture movies like Beowulf.

A princess tale that is also a buddy story between Rapunzel and Flynn Rider, it pleases on all fronts – memorable songs, hilarious sidekick characters (Maximus, the horse who moves like a dog, and Pascal, Rapunzel’s pet chameleon, of all things) who steal every scene, a genuinely heartfelt romance, snappy dialogue and a truly sinister villain.

I couldn’t pick a fault with the whole production, it was just superb. I hope that the next 50 are this good. And I don’t hold much truck with Disney apparently announcing there will be no more princess-centred movies, just because The Princess and the Frog didn’t do so well – they also said that Home on the Range would be the final 2D animation and look how that panned out. Tangled proves that there is life in the Disney princess yet!

Mary Portas: Secret Shopper (2010)

Mary Portas’ move from BBC to Channel 4 has brought about a change of focus for her show – high street chains and customer service rather than Mary Queen of Shops’ independent retailers and individual shops – and as a result of adverts, pre and post-ad break recaps, each of the four episodes only seems to contain half the content of an hour of her last show. That’s not to say the show was bad, just not as good as what went before.

The scope of Mary’s challenge – taking on the customer service within cheap clothes stores, sofa superstores, mobile phone shops, and estate agents – meant that there was less of a feeling of success at the end of an episode. She took on one or two stores in a specific chain (who basically said yes to the show to get some free publicity and free advice from Mary) and helped change a few minds of the workers within. Admittedly she also changed the POV of the owners of said chains, but she only really scratched the surface of a mammoth customer service issue on Britain’s high streets.

When she did succeed within the individual shops it was always hearting since a lot of the tw*ts working in them – all terrible hair, wide-boy suits and talking bull (sofa sellers, phone sellers and estate agents) – were taught a thing or two by Mary’s customer-focussed approach. The women’s clothes shop assistants weren’t as bad, they were just bored and surly, but Mary’s decision to install trendy dressing room-style changing rooms was a massive success and you could see the shop assistants actually getting enthusiastic about their work.

The show was good yet brief and only chipped away at the top of the ice berg. With any luck, business owners watching will have picked up a few tips. In my case, I marvelled week after week at the outlandish jewellery and snazzy look of Ms. Portas herself. And laughed at the fright wigs and northern accents she affected to do under cover filming. If the shop-sorting-out business dries up she can always move into character-based comedy.

Steget Efter / One Step Behind (2005) & Pyramiden / The Pyramid (2007)

The final two Wallanders that were on over Christmas were theatrically released in Sweden, and thus shorter than the other mini-series, and appear to be the last in the series starring Rolf Lassgard. They’re also the best Wallander stories and productions I’ve seen so far.

One Step Behind (which comes chronologically before Firewall) is a very emotional piece of cinema, centred around Wallander’s colleague Svedberg who tragically commits suicide in the opening 10 minutes, following the discovery of a macabre scene of recently dug-up and posed corpses. It turns out Svedberg was actually murdered, and as Wallander and his colleagues delve further into Svedberg’s life they discover some surprising things about a man who was supposed to be their friend.

Svedberg certainly was Wallander’s friend, and he also turns out to have been gay and harbouring a crush on his portly colleague (I don’t know it is about Lassgard’s Wallander that has women and men throwing themselves at him, he’s not at all attractive). Hidden desires and jealousy are at the centre of an atmospheric, beautifully filmed episode. The ending features some real jeopardy as Kurt and Anne-Brit are kidnapped by the crazed killer of Svedberg – and when Wallander shoots him finally and then administers mouth-to-mouth so that he doesn’t die and take the easy way out, it opens up the lead character to interesting questions and motives.

In The Pyramid, Wallander is haunted by a case from his past in which he failed to pull the trigger and shoot a killer, leading to the death of one of his friends. Rather than being a hackneyed way of joining Kurt’s first case with what turns out to be his last, the conceit works well and allows Lassgard some meaty scenes of internal struggle as he tries to shoot the long-ago escaped killer at point blank range but ultimate decides he’s not that person.

This is a less stylishly filmed story, but it is no less cinematic, with explosions going off with gay abandon, and a particularly nasty villain with a heart of stone. Seeing Wallander resign in the final moments of the episode is sad, as I’ve really come to like Lassgard’s portrayal – he’s more bombastic, less introspective than Krister Henriksson, but he’s a bigger hit with the ladies (I love how shy he gets with ones he fancies, it’s endearing), and he’s still pretty dour – and the movies have been top notch, with an excellent supporting cast. That said, the ending feels believable – Kurt is visibly relieved to be free of police work that has subsumed his life, and it is good to see him off happy.

Explorers (1985)

The fact that it was River Phoenix’s first film, and it was directed by Joe ‘Gremlins’ Dante, drew me to Explorers. A movie I’d never heard of before, it turned out to be a classic 1980’s children’s adventure movie, at least for the first hour, and then it turned into a very bizarre and funny science fiction piece.

Geeky Wolfgang (Phoenix), wholesome and only just staying the right side of annoying Ben (Ethan Hawke, looking about 10, but actually 15) and bad boy Darren (Jason Pressan? No, me neither) are the film’s heroes, brought together through strange dreams that leads Wolfgang to programme his clunky computer to create some sort of force-field bubble. The boys manipulate the bubble and build a spaceship to go inside it in order for them to explorer space.

They eventually make it to space, where their ship is taken over by a UFO and they’re brought aboard to meet… two very rubbery aliens, who have been watching American TV for years and only speak in over-the-top TV presenter styles and using quotes direct from movies – the male alien’s first utterance is Bug Bunny’s ‘What’s up, doc?’ It’s very odd. And also very funny. And in the best 80’s adventure movie tradition, not a lot of it makes any sense, but that doesn’t matter you just go with it and revel in the fantasy and the silliness.

I enjoyed this much more than The Goonies, another supposed ‘classic’ of the era and genre. There’s a real spirit of fun, camaraderie and adventure, and the young cast are great. The adult cast is barely given any screen time, other than a guy I recognised from Gremlins, and James Cromwell as Wolfgang’s father is about the only other ‘name’ in the cast. Ben gets a bit of a ‘romantic’ subplot, i.e. he fancies a girl in his class, and this feels a bit shoe-horned in, especially since the girl in question gets screen time but only about 2 lines of dialogue. That doesn’t stop Explorers being a whole load of fun.

Rock & Chips: Five Gold Rings (2010)

Early last year the BBC produced a feature length Only Fools & Horses prequel, Rock & Chips, which was good, although I ended my review noting that there was no need for any more. During Christmas 2010 the BBC snuck out a new instalment of Rock & Chips, following young Del Boy and his mum Joan in 1960 once more, and Wikipedia informs me that a third in the trilogy is due in April this year.

This second episode (just 60 mins, and better for it) I didn't like as much as the last one, because that felt like it finished the story in a good place, with Joan, Reg and Grandad moving in to 'Walter Raleigh House' to begin a new life that would lead to the flat being left to Del and Rodney. This time round, Del Boy gets engaged to a couple of girls at once, hoping to get his end away, while Joan gets her job back at the cinema with the randy manager, and restarts her fling with Freddie the Frog (Nicholas Lyndhurst). Throw in a cameo of sorts from Mel Smith as a policeman, Paula Wilcox as Violent Trotter and Kacey 'Little Mo' Ainsworth and the whole never feels like more than the sum of its parts.

In the first episode the drama involving Joan and her affair with Freddie was really quite sweet. Here it feels more like a lazy plot retread. The best bits come from spotting the Only Fools & Horses references, such as the car dealer wearing a donkey jacket, the shop poster for 'Lovely Jubbly' ice lollies, and Joan's mangling of French - all Del Boy trademarks. I will watch the third episode, to see how things turn out, but like the show that spawned it, I suspect Rock & Chips has gone on a couple of episodes too long.

Consenting Adults (2007)

Consenting Adults is an interesting TV movie depicting the events of the Wolfenden enquiry, which did a lot of work towards the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Charles Dance plays Reading University Dean John Wolfenden who is tasked by the government to lead an investigation into prostitution, and lumped in with this, homosexuality, with a brief to either change existing laws or confirm that they should be enforced. 

Alongside committee room scenes where Wolfenden and his panel of MPs, doctors and others listen to testimony from a policeman, Alfred Kinsey, and (shock horror!) an actual homosexual(!), the drama follows Jeremy Wolfenden, the future knight's son, who has announced he's queer and flounces off to Oxford with the aim of becoming a journalist. Additionally, a married man has an affair with a young labourer, before the latter gets too clingy and the married guy shops him to the police, leading to several arrests. These other storylines are not that well tied in with the Wolfenden committee, but I guess they're supposed to give an idea of what life was like for gays back in the 1950s to contrast with the prehistoric views held by Wolfenden and some of his colleagues. 

Where the drama succeeds is in the arguments for decriminalising homosexuality, which are nicely played with some humour, and the way Dance subtled portrays Wolfenden's thawing in his stance, partly as a result of the testimony of professional witnesses, and partly through the experience of his son - not that he would admit this as father and son have a testy relationship at best. Consenting Adults does a fine job in presenting an important piece of gay history, and for that reason should be made compulsory viewing for all card-carrying homosexuals. Oh and my viewing of this during Gay History Month is entirely coincidental!

Fag Hag (Robert Rodi, 1993)

I picked Fag Hag up in a charity shop once a long time ago and I've often picked it off the shelf and then put it back again. I don't know what kept putting me off, maybe I thought it would be a poorly-written piece of trash peopled with campy stereotypes. Anyway, once I did take the plunge I barely stopped reading it and had finished it within a week as I really got into it. 

Telling the tale of Natalie Stathis devotion to her best gay friend Peter and her machinations to keep him single so that he will eventually decide the love of his life is her, Fag Hag is a hilarious, gripping morality tale peopled with believable characters, lampooned stereotypes and a cracking protagonist in Natalie. Faced with a nemesis in Lloyd, a philosophizing gun-store owner and Peter's new found love, Natalie gradually unravels, becoming more and more unhinged, until she takes drastic measures - planting a bug in the happy couple's bedroom in order to find a lever to prise them apart, and eventually resorting to kidnap - all of which is told through witty prose that shows how unstable Natalie has become while not rendering her unsympathetic. 

Along the way Natalie has to battle with her over-baring mother and her new boss, who has been a fag hag and even ended up marrying her gay friend. Reading a gay tale from the early 1990s it's nice to see the spectre of AIDs barely mentioned and to see a gay couple realistically and lovingly portrayed. I loved every minute of time I spent with Fag Hag and the crazy Natalie Stathis and I'd gladly search out more of Robert Rodi's work.

Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (2008)

So this week we watched a Japanese animation, a South African Oscar winner, and a documentary about a Canadian metal band, and last night, a British comedy coming-of-age movie about a teenage girl. My viewing habits are nothing if not varied. 

Set in sunny Eastbourne and peopled by posh-voiced middle class kids, Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging is about as far away from Skins style teenage decadence than you can get. It's a very 'safe' movie that you could watch with your parents, if you so wished, and it has a certain charm that kept my interest. The main hold on my interest was the love interest - played by the impossibly cute Aaron Johnson, who I've read about as the star of Kick-Ass and Nowhere Boy but I've never seen him act or anywhere outside a magazine page. His presence on screen is magnetic, and not just because of his beautiful face (he's 18 in this movie, playing 16 or so) - there's something about his natural performance that really drew me in, he outshone the rest of the cast.

The cast was mostly made up of unknowns, with Alan Davies as the lead Georgia's (Georgia Groome) uncool dad, and they're as good as you'd expect in a film of this sort. Georgia is turning 15 and she hasn't snogged a boy yet, and then Robbie (Johnson) and his twin brother move to Eastbourne and she's smitten. The film's a light-hearted, PG-rated journey through the tumultuousness of being a teenage girl, with cringey teen-speak and wholesome characters. Oh and a cat called Angus, which doesn't have much to do with anything except the title.

It's all fairly predictable stuff, but played well and with a sense of fun. Steve Jones, late of T4, even pops up with about 3 lines, takes his top off, and then turns out (as I expected) to be gay. This is a subplot that I feel should have been covered in much more depth! I'm so shallow. So here are some nice photos to accompany this post...

Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)

When Anvil! The Story of Anvil came out a couple of years ago I remember reading about them in Empire, and possibly Time too, and seeing the documentary winning rave reviews, comparing it to This is Spinal Tap. I recorded it when it was shown on BBC4 as part of the 'Storyville' documentary strand a while back and just got round to watching it, and it's a story every bit as entertaining and, oddly, moving as a scripted movie. 

Apparently, Anvil were a massive metal group back in the 1980s, and now (in 2005/6 anyway) lead singer Lips and original drummer Robb Reiner work in catering and construction, and continue to play at their local clubs on evenings and weekend, while other groups big in the 80s continue to command crowds at arenas. The documentary doesn't so much explore what went wrong - there wasn't a defining moment or career-killing move - rather it follows Lips and Robb as they attempt to make a comeback and a 13th album. One of the band's new European girlfriends manages to book Anvil on a tour around her home continent, which sees them play to massive crowds one night, and a party of 20 the next, along the way not getting paid, missing trains and falling out. 

Following the tour, everything goes back to normal and the band goes back to work, but then, after sending a demo to an old producer, they get the chance to come to England and record the next album. Lips is the star of the documentary, and he's a great guy - he just wants to make music, and he wants as many people to hear it as possible. He's not bothered by ego, but his frustration at the lack of interest from record companies, the constant toil on tour for peanuts and the occasional bust up with best mate Robb is equal parts amusing and heart-breaking. His determination not to give up his music dream (his siblings are doctors, lawyers and the like) is inspiring, and when the movie ends with a massive concert in Japan, where they shared the stage in the 1980s with Bon Jovi and the like, is a really happy, uplifting moment, and you really wish the group well.

Tsotsi (2005)

Sat on the recorder for almost a year, we finally got around to watching Tsotsi this week, the 2005 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film. It's a small film set in a South African slum, following the lead character, Tsotsi (which translates as 'thug') as he works his way through a crisis in his life that sees him beating up one of his friends, stabbing a man for money, and ultimately shooting a woman to steal her car - not realising her baby is on the back seat. 

Finding the baby acts as a catalyst for Tsotsi to reassess his life of crime, but not in a navel-gaving kind of way, and much of the growth is non-verbal. In fact, Tsotsi is a hard character to like, and a flashback showing how his father traumatised him as a youth before he ran away and brought himself up, doesn't necessarily excuse his later actions. Presley Chweneyagae deserves credit then for making Tsotsi an interesting character, and portraying much behind the eyes that shows you he wants to change, if circumstances would let him. 

The movie contrasts Tsotsi's shanty-town existence with the baby's parents' life behind a security gate in suburban Johannesburg, and the characters of the parents are particularly intriguing as they seem curiously willing to forgive Tsotsi his crimes. This was a really good film that was thought-provoking and entertaining without being patronising or sensational.

Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva (2009)

Andrew's a big fan of the Professor Layton puzzle games for the DS, so he was delighted to receive the movie on Blu Ray & DVD for Christmas, and we popped it in the machine, after much nagging, last week. I think it's fair to say that he enjoyed it more than I did. 

A Japanese animation that follows the look of the game completely, the movie is a curiously uninvolving mystery, with an odd supernatural element, and only about 6 puzzles bunched up in the middle. There are some funny characters and the occasional humorous line, but there's far to much expositional gobbledygook and a lack of pace to the movie as a whole. 

The animation is good solid 2D with some pretty looking 3D CGI graphics thrown in, particularly in the impressive crown-shaped opera house/ship that Layton and his young assistant Luke find themselves trapped on. I was hoping the movie would be more like the old Where's Wally TV show that stopped every so often to let you look for Wally, but with puzzles. Apparently there will  be more movies, so I can still hope for this format to be taken on board.

Brandvägg / Firewall (2006)

The second Wallander we watched starring Rolf Lassgård, after The Man Who Smiled, Firewall, a TV mini-series (shown in two parts here), was easily one of the best Wallanders, if not one of the best detective dramas, I've seen yet. The mystery involved an assassin in Africa; a murdered taxi driver; a seemingly unrelated death through dengue fever; and a mysterious diabetes nurse. 

In this story, Wallander really began to fall apart, being betrayed by his police colleague and new lady friend, and being slowed down and impaired through development of diabetes. Talk about a flawed hero, it's a wonder he still has a job at the end of this, especially when his not-paying-by-the-rules attitude leads to the loss and then death of a suspect. His biggest mistake turns out to be trusting someone who I only began to suspect myself late in the game. There's also the bit where he recruits an ex-con hacker to help out on the case, rather than call in the CID big boys from Stockholm - a hacker who bears more than a passing resemblance to one Lisbeth Salander from the Millennium series. 

The plot isn't just about a murder is Ystaad, this computer terrorism ruse has potentially global consequences - and it's refreshing to see something that might affect the world happening in Sweden rather than the USA or UK. There were so many layers and pieces to the puzzle that was Firewall's plot that it get me gripped throughout, and Lassgård proved to be a fascinating Wallander. A superior slice of TV detective drama.

Come Fly With Me: Series 1 (2010-11)

I found Matt Lucas and David Walliams new post-Little Britain series to be funny, cutting and enjoyable, perhaps even more so because there was none of the vomity crude shock factor of the later LB series. I liked how the airport's characters interacted and had continued storylines week to week, and I thought that the comedy pair were as funny as ever and pitched their characters just right. 

Some characters worked better than others, and my favourites were Ian Foot, the believeably xenophobic immigration officer; Tommy Reid, the dim burger employee who got a job at the airport to work his way up to being a pilot; Omar Baba, owner of FlyLo a great parody of real-life budget airline owners; and Precious Little, the black female manager of a coffee shop who's incredibly lazy and religious - played by Matt Lucas. 

Judith and Peter Surname

My all time favourites had to be Peter and Judith Surname, the couple who were continually complaining about having, and I don't normal say this, 'the holiday from hell', then launching into an outrageous holiday run down, with Lucas' Peter being brow-beaten the whole time and in the funniest costume of the whole show. The celebrity cameos (David Schwimmer, Barbara Windsor, Geri Halliwell) were all done well too, with a good selection of guests. I'm glad the BBC has commissioned a second series, it felt like a bit like the show slipped under the radar. It didn't attain the statuts of Little Britain, but then that may be a good thing as that was everywhere.