Stuff and Things

Politics has always been a tricky subject to represent in a meaningful way. The problem is, by and large, that the subjects involved are almost beyond portrayal a lot of the time, such is the vacuous, used car salesman veneer of most politicians on the entire planet. How do you tell stories about non-people pretending to be people? The best efforts are often satirical (2009's 'In The Loop' being a fine example) or overly-glossy and not realistic (any episode of 'The West Wing'). Most works that tackle the murky world of politics are pieces like 'The Wire' (2004) or 'All The President's Men' (1976), wherein politics is kind of the macro world in which a far more compelling story takes place.  However, in 2011 'The Ides of March' came out and made very little in the way of a splash upon it's release. This being despite the fact that it stars George Clooney and Ryan Gosling in the lead roles. Not to mention the likes of Paul Giamatti, Ph...

Obviously, in this day and age, the subject of Sean "Puffy" Combs, aka Puff Daddy, aka Diddy, is a touchy one. At the time of this writing, he is sitting in county jail awaiting trial on a variety of charges, including assault and sex trafficking (among other things). As a human being, he has always been suspect. Even way back when the east coast / west coast beef was destroying hip hop, famously taking the lives of 2pac and Puffy's best-selling artist The Notorious BIG, if you delved deeper into the issues at hand you would find Puff Daddy at the centre of things and showing some seriously dodgy behaviour. So who knows if he'll ever see the light of day again.  Regardless, we sometimes must attempt to separate the art from the person and recently I found myself revisiting his first album 'No Way Out'. To say it's a 'Puff Daddy' album is somewhat misleading, as it is really more of a showcase for the Bad Boy Records of 1997. Similar to Dr. Dre'...

In 1988, not that much was widely known about the escalating gang situation in Los Angeles. This was the time of the Showtime Lakers, Planet Hollywood, and Box Office Hits. No one wanted to hear that there was a war going on south of the 10 freeway that had, at that point, claimed thousands of lives. Perhaps it was because the victims in this war were almost exclusively young black and latino males. That is a wider topic that, fortunately,  as we sit in 2025, there have been many documentaries, films and books made about - 2005 documentary 'Bastards of the Party' probably being the most seminal - and these works have shone a light on LA gang culture in such a way that, bizarrely, the pendulum seems to have swung completely the other way. Meaning we now live in a world where Serena Williams can freely crip-walk at the Superbowl. However, there is a brutal core to this culture and, make no mistake, when this film came out showing that, it shocked a lot of individuals.  Directed ...

This isn't a popular opinion but here it is anyway. I'm not a huge fan of Brian De Palma. To film buffs, this idea is largely considered sacrilege as he is often viewed as the heir to Alfred Hitchcock's throne. The new master of suspense. Quentin Tarantino went as far as to call him 'the greatest director of his generation', which is high praise indeed considering his classmates include Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese. My beef is similar to my beef with, you guessed it, Hitchcock himself. I always find their films good , but never great . Maybe it's a matter of personal taste, we are after all talking about art and not the 100m finals of the Olympics, but, for me, the films of these two directors always start strong, and end up descending into silliness, thus taking away from all the good set-up work done previous. 1981's 'Blow Out' is, unfortunately, no exception.  Set in Philadelphia, the story follows John Travolta playing a foley artist for a low...

“You're gorgeous, you old hag, and if I could give you just one gift ever for the rest of your life it would be this. Confidence. It would be the gift of confidence. Either that or a scented candle” This book, now a popular series on Netflix, is a romantic comedy steeped very much in the Richard Curtis / Nick Hornby tradition of middle class white people doing middle class white people things. On paper, this sounds potentially irritating, instead it's written in such an earnest and disarming way that you find yourself not only caring about these two characters, but being hit with a surprising emotional oomph by the time you're done.  The story focuses on two friends from University, Dexter - a well-off dreamboat, and Emma - a slightly rougher round the edges lass from Leeds. They begin their journey by sleeping together on July 15th, 1988. This date is important because each chapter from here on out happens on the same date, but a year on in their respective lives. Of cours...

It's been 30 years since the murder trial of one Orenthal James Simpson where, despite a seemingly overwhelming amount of physical evidence, he was remarkably acquitted of killing his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend Ron Goldman. The whole saga was really the first time something of this magnitude had played out mostly on live television and, at the time, was a watershed moment in not only American history, but in the history of media itself. You could even make the point that this case marked the genesis for the deluge-of-information age we now live in.  If you're unfamiliar with the particulars of the trial, I won't bore you with them here but, in essence, the human cesspit that was OJ Simpson was a once famous sports and crossover Hollywood star who systematically abused Nicole Brown and made her life absolute hell before brutally killing her. Ron Goldman innocently stumbled upon the scene and was slaughtered too. This utter loaf then went on the run, leading to the...

Depending on your point of view, Marvel films are either the best or the worst thing to happen to cinema. Personally, I lean towards the latter. Some might even go so far as to say that I'd rather watch my bare feet being slowly consumed by gnawing rodents than watch most of them, but who's to say. To me they all seem formulaic to the point of abject boredom. A manifestation of what is considered art for the iPhone generation. Every release seemed to quite obviously follow the same plot points:  - Hi, I'm normal a person who discovers they have (insert superpower here). - Wow, having my (insert superpower her) is awesome!  - Hold on, there is responsibility attached to having (insert superpower here) and I'm not sure I'm ready for it.  - No, I must use my (insert superpower here) to defeat this bad guy who is threatening mankind. - Massive fight featuring lots and lots of things on screen.  - Post-credit sequel set-up. Plus I heard that not only are these things in ...

To try and categorize the music of Ween is really an exercise in futility. To say their music crosses many genres is a massive understatement - it's more like they fully become a different band with every song, unless we're talking about something like their 1996 release '12 Golden Country Greats' wherein the band go full-on spit and sawdust for an entire album. This genre-bending style culminated, in the opinion of many, in 1997's 'The Mollusk' - widely considered to be their most fully realised body of work. Now, if you'd have told me that I would enjoy an album that veers from vaudeville show tunes to sea shanties to an acid jazz jam-out whose only vocals were that of a barking dog, I would've thought that idea highly scoff-worthy. Yet here we are.  A fun fact about this album is that it was apparently the inspiration behind the creation of 'Spongebob Squarepants' and almost immediately you can see why. Indeed you could argue that this alb...

To say this film was polarizing upon its release would be an understatement. Friendly terms such as 'the worst film ever made' began following this film around almost as soon as the first weekend's screenings were over. Fans of the comic book genre were baffled. Fans of the first film were baffled. Critics showered it with scourn. Yet among the noise there have been a select few offering their praise, notably one Quentin Tarantino whose opinion on film is respected almost across the board these days.  Having not been as much of a fan of the first installment in this franchise, I personally went in with some trepidation. The first film was, for me at least, a sort of lightweight version of both Taxi Driver (1976) and The King of Comedy (1982), and while paying homage to both, matched or bettered neither. The core problem with the film, as I saw it, is that the Joker himself, or in this case Arthur Fleck, just isn't that interesting. That's not to say there is anythin...