Blog post #1
I decided to have a go and write a blog. Well, it’s more of a weekly round-up. I’ve attempted blogs before, but I’ve never continued with them. Motivation is difficult when you think nobody’s reading. However, now that I’m in a more comfortable if busier position to watch many films and series every week, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to show myself off. My imposter syndrome has prevented that in the past and I feel awkward doing it now – but, frankly, it’s probably a profitable step in this ridiculous career choice.
I can also be more personal here. It’s difficult finding your style, niche, and identity as a writer, so I’m hoping this will open up my creativity and avoid another identity crisis. This is mostly about me, but I hope you’ll get something out of it too. Enjoy. Or not, whatever you want…
MUST WATCH:
Dickinson season 2, AppleTV+
Hailee Steinfeld as Emily Dickinson in Dickinson. Photo: Apple
Whereas the first season of Dickinson was an erudite guilty pleasure – Emily Dickinson’s life as if told by a teen, Gen-Z feminist – season two is a vast improvement. Starring a perfectly cast Hailee Steinfeld as Emily, the poet is approaching the fickle food of fame. She’s scared of it, enamoured by it.
I can’t say too much because of various embargoes, but the series is best when discussing the craft of writing. It inspires me with my own attempts at fiction, kept in files and Moleskins and read by nobody. Some will be put off by the series’ modern aspects – chiefly the sassy, social media vernacular – but there is a poetry in melding the 19th and 21st centuries together and watching the similarities spark across the screen.
Other highlights:
I can’t wait to continue The Great on Channel 4, starring Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult. It was initially on STARZPLAY, so I hadn’t watched it on its first run. The writer/showrunner Tony McNamara also co-penned The Favourite, and this series possesses much of the same surreal and sexual comedy. Continues Sundays at 9pm.
A Perfect Planet on BBC One and iPlayer is another Attenborough triumph. The first episode is on volcanoes, their impact on the planet, and how they affect the surrounding ecosystems. The flamingo scenes at the start are beautiful as much as terrifying, as the bird babies sprint from imposing predators. All episodes are available on iPlayer.
I didn’t really catch Staged the first time round, but I saw series one over Christmas and found it claustrophobically hilarious. David Tennant and Michael Sheen, who I loved in the Amazon Prime Neil Gaiman series Good Omens, bicker and debate as themselves over Zoom. It’s a smug, thespian delight that reminded me a lot of The Trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, bringing funny arrogance as much as starry charm. Series two aired this week, as Lockdown 3 came into action, so the timing felt perfect.
I’ve also binged through the French comedy series Call My Agent! on Netflix, which follows the world inside a Parisian talent agency. It’s turned into a new obsession for me. The characters are vivid and funny, navigating the film world, and there’s a prominent actor-cameo in each episode. I’ll admit I didn’t recognise the French actors at first, but then Juliette Binoche and Jean Dujardin suddenly turned up and made me love the series even more. Some of the storylines even took me back to days on set, making student films at university. The fourth and final season comes out on Thursday 21 January.
Call My Agent! Photo: Netflix
What I’ve written this week
My review for Dickinson season 2 (see above)
My review for Pieces of a Woman, which I didn’t like that much. The first half-hour is phenomenal, and could be one of the best movie openings this year, but everything after is cold and empty. The presence of Shia LaBeouf, who’s facing new abuse allegations, doesn’t help either. But Vanessa Kirby is breathless as a pregnant mother-to-be who faces a terrible loss. It’s available to watch on Netflix now.
Bridgerton. Photo: Netflix
I wrote a piece about the Netflix-Shondaland period-drama Bridgerton. It’s silly and fluffy, unfolding like Jane Austen fan-fiction written by Americans – but what a comfortable way to turn your brain off and forget the world for eight hours.
My preview for the upcoming ITV family drama Finding Alice, starring Keeley Hawes. The six-part series is an examination of grief as Alice’s husband suddenly dies. She has to deal with the bills, the extended family, and the police. It airs on Sunday 17 January at 9pm on ITV.
My review for The Pembrokeshire Murders, ITV’s latest true-crime drama to play across three nights (Monday 11th to Wednesday 13th). Even though it’s a classic police/serial-killer procedural, I found it too formulaic. I much preferred the subplot involving the killer’s son than the actual investigation. But it’s worth a watch.
The Pembrokeshire Murders. Photo: ITV
What I’ve read this week
There’s been a lot in the news about the recent allegations against Shia LaBeouf, an actor with a history of abuse and mental health issues. Clarisse Loughrey from The Independent summarises why it’s not acceptable to keep forgiving these actors when they cause harm.
I remember the first time I listened to David Bowie’s Heroes, in the back seat on a car journey from Southampton. And I remember listening to it on the day he died, driving towards Southampton: finally bursting through the radio after hours of no Bowie being played. It was a devastating day, one of many eminent celebrities to die in 2016. Stuart Maconie’s Bowie piece in the New Statesman captures pieces of what he was really like – away from Ziggy or The Thin White Duke – from people who knew him. BBC Four has also recently re-broadcast The Last Five Years, an emotional documentary about Bowie that I might be too fragile to watch again.
I finished reading the Noel Coward play Blithe Spirit, and watched the 1945 film adaptation by David Lean with Rex Harrison. I wasn’t totally invested, but there are a fair few funny lines in there. Maybe the upcoming 2021 adaptation with Dan Stevens and Judi Dench will be better?
I’ve also been slowly reading Sketches By Boz, the first fictional writings by Charles Dickens. Although the stories are mainly just descriptions (hence, ‘sketches’), they’re wonderful to read. During this pandemic, I’ve missed walking around London and Dickens takes me back, despite the stories being nearly 200 years old. Even his bleak descriptions have a strange nostalgia running through the words:
But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter’s night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy, without cleansing it of any of its impurities; and when the heavy lazy mist, which hangs over every object, makes the gas-lamps looks brighter, and the brilliantly-lighted shops more splendid, from the contrast they present to the darkness around.
SURREAL FILM OF THE WEEK
Orphée (1950), dir. Jean Cocteau
There is freedom in watching a work of creative liberty. One that abandons the rules of realism and plunges into a sort of dream logic, in which the rational has no place. I thought this a lot while watching Orphée, a surreal adaptation of the Orpheus myth by the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. The camera and editing trickery – disappearing and reappearing, reverse playback, mirror illusions – still immerse despite the magic being easily decipherable.
Cocteau does fanny around a bit too much, even for a 90-minute film, but Orphée’s journey into the afterlife grips in its eerieness. It reminded me of Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built, and I reckon David Lynch must’ve watched the film prior to Eraserhead and Twin Peaks (the zig-zag floor doesn’t lie). Orphée isn’t one I’m desperate to rewatch, but it’s an intriguing dream nonetheless.
