People, places and what triggers you to make faces

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Not Expendable

There are two kinds of Hollywood royalty, the Meryl Streep section in private boxes, and the Sly Stallone backbenchers. A little of the former goes a long way, but there's unlimited fun to be had with the latter and The Expendables 3 shows why that is.
Age, as older people figure out, is just a number. When seated at a table with lean, muscled men in dark Levi's and leather jackets, lounging with cigars and heavy tumblers of golden liquid, looking capable of gunning the bad guys down on the streets with just a look, well, no one's going to ask them for IDs. What's the movie about? No idea. Perform what the usual arms of the government cannot, transport some heavy-duty material from some banana republic, shoot a lot of people, throw some betrayal into the mix and there you go. It's adrenaline-inducing with the added charm of being one of those movies where many of the actors are real friends in a kind of heavy-duty, members-only club that is impossible to penetrate.
Things to note: The motorcycle stunt which goes vertical, stunning. Mel Gibson, (who straddles both groups of Hollywood royalty, by the way), watching his amoral representation of the character Stonebanks you're amazed at what the man from Braveheart is capable of. Antonio Banderas' comic timing is great, Jet Li's presence is weird and the young 'uns are like faded sepia photos; sometimes, experience is not expendable.
The script is execrable, “Drummer's in the house”, “Let's mow the lawn”, “Christmas is coming...But it's only June”, although when Lee Christmas is Jason Statham, all can be forgiven.
And when it all comes with a guaranteed HEA, as romance novelists say, what more can you ask from a movie when it gives you a vacation from your life?


Thanks for the Knick, Steven


Knickerbocker Hospital, turn-of-century New York, is not the place you want to get admitted, overrun as it is by a coke addict, a brilliant black doctor who is not allowed to practice and a manager up to his neck with debt collectors. Then again, there's no place better if you get the right man at the right moment. When directed by Steven Soderbergh, how can this new show on HBO Hits be anything but brilliant. The energy, the colours, the twisted characters and best or worst, the practice of medicine in all its blood and gore (warning: you need a strong stomach to watch this), by people who are obsessed with their profession makes The Knick a precursor to Grey's Anatomy. Where it differs from Grey's is not in the baring of bones to show the skeleton of human ailments, both physical and spiritual, but in the fact that you give a damn about the people at The Knick. You feel for each one, flawed as they are, because they struggle to rise above what they seem to be.
Clive Owen plays Dr John Thackery, a cold yet committed soul with a monkey on his back that grows heavier by the day. Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) runs an 'informal' clinic for coloured people in the basement, politics and egos clash on a regular basis and well-to-do former lovers arrive with syphilis. Good stuff.

Penny Wunnerful


When hands split through a man's chest in a revision of the iconic scene from Ridley Scott's Alien, it was easy to guess Penny Dreadful would be a winner.
Set in Victorian London, the AXN series centres on a motley crew of supernatural-hunters who themselves are not what they seem. They are ostensibly searching for a man's missing daughter but the viewer is soon entangled in everything from Dracula to Dorian Gray and this: A doctor is working on what looks like an autopsy, when the lights go off, he lights a lamp, turns around and the corpse is standing. The doctor weeps and the creature moves towards him, finger outstretched to catch a tear and rub it down his own eye. “Can you hear?” the doctor asks. The man does and the doctor whispers, “My name...is Victor Frankenstein.”
If that doesn't give you your penny's worth, nothing will. The title is from 19th century England, referring to lurid, serialised stories printed on cheap paper that cost a penny each.
With this show, though, it's the words that carry most weight. Listen to Frankenstein's 'firstborn' sneering at him: “Were you really so naive to imagine that we’d see eternity in a daffodil?” in a nod to Wordsworth and Blake and you will get an idea of the emotional ballast headed your way. The cast speaking the lines help in no small way, although HarryTreadaway as the good Doctor swimming in emotional angst is a clear winner.
This Penny Dreadful is written by John Logan. You can just imagine him as he should be, in a dark, dank garret clutching a tawdry Christmas star bauble in his ink-smeared hands and cackling at man's hubris from his own gutter.