Category: not a book

film, not a book, streaming, tv

Not a Book: What I watched this Christmas

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Happy Sunday everyone, it’s the last day of the Christmas and New Year holidays and so I thought I’d treat you to a recap of some of the Christmas viewing in my household.

I should start by saying that much sport has been watched, thanks to the Africa Cup of Nations, the Premier League and the NFL. Three months until the motorsport seasons starts again. Which, given the seasons only ended in December this year is altogether too short a break for all the teams and people involved. But that’s a story for another day.

We have also watched an awful lot of Taskmaster. This is because there was a Champion of Champions on this Christmas and I realised that we had only watched two of the seaons that the champions were from. So we’ve now watched all of series 18 and 17 and havr started series 16 which I have definitely seen some of but not all of. Fun fact: This time last year I hadn’t watched any Taskmaster at all, I watched my first ever episodes a year ago next week as it was on in the background when I was visiting my sister and her new baby. And now I have watched rather a lot of episodes just with not a lot of logic or order to them.

BBC Four is often the home of unexpected treats. This year one of them was the John Le Carre night, with a couple of documentaries and the first two episodes of the Alec Guinness adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. The whole series is on the iPlayer. In fact there was a bit of a spying theme to some of my watching, because as part of the tribute night to Prunella Scales, BBC Four also showed the TV adaption of Alan Bennett’s play A Question of Attribution about the Soviet spy Sir Anthony Blunt which has a rather scene stealing turn from Scales as Elizabeth II.

Then there was Secrets of the Conclave about the behind the scenes of the real selection of the new Pope – which had a really good selection of talking heads, including the two British Cardinals who were there, one of the American cardinals and Cardinal Tagle who was named as one of the Papabile ahead of the conclave. I definitely got the feeling that one of the reasons the people were so willing to take part in this was because they had thoughts on the movie Conclave and wanted to set the record straight on how it really works – as opposed to how the Robert Harris book and movie say it goes. But that just made it an even more interesting watch.

It was also a particularly good Christmas for movies – especially old favourites. Both Murder on the Orient Expresses (Finney and Branagh) as well the Ustinov Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun for the Agatha Christie fans. There were a string of classic movies including Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and North by Northwest and Carol Reed’s The Third Man. If you wanted something a bit newer there were some Austen adaptations as we’ve just come past the 200th anniversary – with the Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility and Clueless. I also watched When Harry Met Sally again, because how could I not, especially after the death of Rob Reiner and his wife just a few weeks ago.

And finally, it will not surprise you that I watched Kiss Me Kate again when it was on TV on New Year’s Eve. And I’ve kept it on the box so I can watch it again at a time of need. If you haven’t watched it yet despite this being the third time I’ve written about it, you can find it on the iPlayer for then next year.

Have a great Sunday and I hope you don’t have the return to work horrors ahead of the back to normal tomorrow.

book adjacent, film, streaming

Book Adjacent: Muppet Christmas Carol

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It’s Christmas Day, and I probably should have posted this yesterday because most of the action takes place on Christmas Eve, some of it is on Christmas Day, so I’m going with it. And yes I realise that this my second post about a Christmas Carol adaptation in less than a week but I maintain that this isn’t just the best Muppet Movie, it’s also the best on screen Christmas Carol adaption.

I can’t believe any of you don’t know this, but The Muppet Christmas Carol is the Muppet’s take on Dickens’ classic novel. Michael Caine plays Ebenezer Scrooge, and human actors play his nephew and his nephew’s wife, as well as Scrooge’s former love interest, but every other character in the story is played by a muppet. Kermit is Bob Cratchit, Miss Piggy is his wife, The Great Gonzo is Charles Dickens guiding us through the story, with the help of Rizzo the Rat (“light the lamp not the rat!”).

I think it goes without saying that Michael Caine is brilliant in this. There’s this quote that does the rounds on reddit every year about the movie:

The reason Michael Caine and Tim Curry are so good in their respective Muppet movies is that Michael Caine treats the Muppets as fellow actors, and Tim Curry treats himself as a fellow Muppet.

And it’s right – I’ve seen quotes where he says he treated it like he was acting at the RSC – deadly serious, straight acting. And he clearly loved making it and loves the film – as you can see in this GQ interview from 2016. But as well as Michael Caine being excellent, the Muppets are great and they’re playing characters that aren’t (just) themselves. And there are so many little touches that make it brilliant – like adding a second Marley brother so that they can be played by Stadler and Waldorf, Tiny Tim being Robin the Frog but all the girls being pigs.

So it’s got great acting, but it’s also got songs and a surprising amount of actual Dickens dialogue and it will make you smile what ever time of year you watch it. One of my friends had this on VHS when we were kids and we would watch it maybe every other month when I was over at hers. I think I knew all the words to all the songs and could probably still remember most of them although an extra one has been restored since so I’m not as good on that.

It’s on Disney+ these days, but you can also rent it from other streaming services if you don’t have that one at the moment.

Happy Christmas!

book adjacent, not a book, theatre

Book Adjacent: Christmas Carol Goes Wrong

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Happy Sunday, and I’ve got another show recommendation for you today, as we barrel towards Christmas. And after a musical-at-the-cinema yesterday, today it’s a new comedy play in the West End.

Christmas Carol Goes Wrong is the latest show from Mischief Theatre and the third stage outing for their Cornley Drama Society characters following The Play that Goes Wrong and Peter Pan Goes Wrong. Unlike those previous shows, this has scenes that aren’t part of the production which fills out the world and also enables some new and different twists to the Goes Wrong formula. This is important as you don’t want things to get stale, but also because Mischief did a version of A Christmas Carol on TV a few years back.

This is (slightly?) less dependent on things breaking than the previous stage shows were, but if you like the other Goes Wrong shows you will likely like this (and the reverse is also true). I was practically crying with laughter at several points and the anticipation of what was to come was also brilliant. And I can’t explain what I mean without giving big old plot spoilers. But it’s so funny. This has got a mix of original Goes Wrong cast – Chris Leask as Trevor, Greg Tannahill as Jonathan and Nancy Zamit (in a job share) as Annie with other Mischief regulars along with writers Jonathan Sayer as Dennis and Henry Lewis as Robert. The third of the writing trio Henry Shields isn’t in this but Daniel Fraser is excellent in Shield’s usual role of Chris. I think that Henry Lewis steals the show a little bit – he’s got some amazing moments in the show in terms of phyiscal comedy and of character moments.

I was originally going to save this post for actual Christmas Day because that’s when the action takes place, but actually the reviews for this came out this week and tickets are going to get even harder to get, so I’m throwing it out there now, because it is a limited run. This is in the West End until mid January and then goes on a five venue tour. Tickets for the West End are already at a bit of a premium, so get in there now if you want to see this one. The next nearest venue to London is Aylesbury. Details on Mischief’s site here.

Happy Christmas everyone!

book adjacent, film

Book Adjacent: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

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I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a run of long term favourite old movies recently, but I’m back with another one because Dick Van Dyke’s 100th birthday was yesterday (13 December) and given that I’ve already told you how much I love his other big kids movie role in Mary Poppins, this seemed fitting.

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the iconic story of a magical car owned by a not very successful inventor and which takes him and his family on adventures, including to rescue their grandfather from a foreign land where children are banned. It’s loosely based on the children’s book of the same name by Ian Fleming (of James Bond fame). By loosely I mean the whistling sweets, the flying and the floating of the car are from the book, but the whole Baron Bomburst plot is… not (the book has gunrunners on the French coast instead!). Chitty probably has just as much plot as Bedknobs, but it has a lot more musical numbers. Bedknobs is a kids movie with some songs, this is definitely a movie musical.

It should be stated up front that the Child Catcher is one of the scariest villains in all children’s movies and if you’ve got kids do remember that before you show it to them for the first time. Robert Helpmann is amazing playing him and it’s a creepy scary character and performance that can easily give kids nightmares. Dick Van Dyke is perfect for the chaos energy of Caractacus Potts – a scatty inventor and single dad who can be totally oblivious to anything but his work but who has made a contraption to cook food for his family. And he also gets to show of his dancing. I’ve put the Me Ol’ Bam-boo scene in here because it’s just so good – it’s basically the equivalent in this of the Chimney Sweep on the roof scene in Poppins, with massed dancing and tricks except that Van Dyke is two beats behind for a lot of it because the schtick is that he’s copying the others and learning it as he goes because he’s hiding from a man who’s just had a disastrous hair cut from one of his inventions.

The music is by the Sherman Brothers, who basically did the music for all my childhood favourite children’s movies because they also did Mary Poppins, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and of course The Parent Trap as well as most of The Jungle Book. And just to link it to my favourites even more, Irwin Kostal who conducted the music also did The Sound of Music (as well as Bedknobs and Mary P). Like Bedknobs and Broomsticks this was in my sister and my Saturday night rotation when we were kids, again recorded off the TV onto VCS and I’m pretty sure I still know all the words to the songs even now. I definitely borrowed the easy piano book from the town library more than once so that I could play the songs and sing along. Side note: I know that the word “quay” is pronounced “key” and when I’m singing along to Hushabye Mountain in the film I’m fine with the line “down by the quay” but any time I encountered it written down when I was playing the piano music it trips me up. Anyway.

And if you’ve watched the James Bond films there is a bit of cross over here too beyond just the fact that they’re both Fleming creations. Baron Bomburst is Gert Fröbe aka Goldfinger and the man that is scrapping the wreck of Chitty at the start of the movie is Desmond Llewellyn aka Q. And the screenplay is written by Roald Dahl (yes him) who also wrote the screenplay for You Only Live Twice. And it’s produced by Cubby Broccoli’s Eon movies and so of course because they’ve just been sold to Amazon there is talk of a remake, which is one thing we really do not need. This is already not a short film. It’s over two hours – nearly half an hour longer than Bedknobs and nearly ten minutes longer than Poppins – and I’ve never known a remake to be shorter than the original! But in any case, this is pretty perfect as is.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

film, not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Knives Out 3

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I’m breaking my own rules today, and instead of a post about a book series, it’s a post about the latest movie in the Knives Out series, which is hitting Netflix in the UK today after a two week cinematic release – and we went the other weekend.

Wake Up Dead Man sees Benoit Blanc return to investigate the death of Monseigneur Jefferson Wicks, a charismatic but fire and brimstone type priest, who is killed in a seemingly impossible crime during the middle of taking mass. He is assisted by Reverend Jud Duplenticy, a young priest who has been set to Wick’s church as punishment for having punched another deacon. Jud is the obvious suspect – as he has had conflict with Wick, but despite the fact that Wick’s congregation is in a thrall to him, but all of them might also have reason to want him dead.

I’ve seen all of the Knives Out films at the cinema and I don’t remember the other two being as laugh out loud funny as this one is. As in there were multiple moments where the screening I went to was audibly laughing at the movie. There is also a literary connection to this, which I can’t explain without spoiling the plot, but which had my brain working in the background of watching it to try and figure out what clues I could take from it to the solution. Daniel Craig looks like he’s having a ball as Blanc – again – and that just adds to the fun of the thing too. The supporting cast is as starry as ever, I particularly enjoyed Andrew Scott’s turn as

It does have a slightly different tone than the previous films – but not so different that if you didn’t like the previous movies I don’t know that this will change your mind. I think Rian Johnson is also making more commentary on the state of the world at the moment as part of this as well. If the last movie was picking at the ultra-rich and their lives, this one is going at organised religion – and that may hit differently with audiences too because obviously there are more people involved in religion than there are ultra rich! I’ll definitely be watching it again on Netflix though to try and spot the things that I missed first time around too.

Have a great weekend.

theatre

Not A Book: Fallen Angels

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Happy Sunday everyone, double theatre recommendations this week for you as we head towards Christmas and I get out and about in the run up before the festivities start.

Fallen Angels by Noel Coward is 100 years old this year and this is the first revival in twenty five years. Jane and Julia are best friends and one morning after their husbands leave for a golfing weekend, they hear from a former boyfriend that he’s in London and is planning on paying them a visit. The news throws them into a panic and then into a state of wild excitement and recklessness. The upshot is chaos – very, very funny chaos.

I don’t know how the idea of women having had pre-marital sex and getting drunk will hit to younger audiences who just accept it as a fact of life, but I can see why this caused a huge stir when it was first produced – with the personal intervention of the Lord Chancellor being needed to get it the licence it needed to be performed. This version stars Janie Dee, who I loved in Follies and Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends but haven’t seen in a play since the Angela Lansbury revival of another Coward play Blithe Spirit more than a decade ago (gosh that’s scary). It was pretty early in previews when I saw it, but it was already in really good shape – although I suspect some of the physical comedy moments will have tightened up by now. I didn’t love it the way I did Private Lives, but that’s a very high bar (current count: four viewings of three different productions of it live and repeat viewings of one of those as well as TV version on streaming services) but if you like Coward, I think you’ll enjoy this. I saw it less than a week after I went to the Cecil Beaton exhibition and I think they’d make a pretty good double bill.

Fallen Angels is on at the Menier Chocolate Factory until 21 February 2026, although judging by how full it was the night I went (it looked sold out) you may want to buy your ticket sooner rather than later.

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Titanique

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Don’t panic everyone, it not a Sunday everyone, but we’re into December and I’ve seen so much stuff in recently that I want to talk about and as I try valiantly not to go too Christmas, too fast, and all the bookshops are Christmas central at this point with all the same book and gifts I thought I’d treat you to a bonus (non-Christmas) show today – although it would make a good festive outing if you wanted to, just saying.

So in case you can’t tell from the programme cover, Titanique is a jukebox musical parodying the film Titanic. It features the songs of Celine Dion and is told from Celine’s point of view after she interrupts a tour of a Titanic museum to claim that she is a survivor of the sinking. It’s another short show too – 100 or so minutes, no interval* and it really comes in, does it’s thing and ends on a high without outstaying its welcome.

I actually really struggled with how to describe this because it’s so off the wall but also at times it’s closer to a cabaret or comedy night than it is to a traditional musical. I would need to see it again to be sure, but it felt like there was a fair bit of improv coming from Astrid Harris as Celine. And you can see that dichotomy in the Olivier Awards categories it was in – it won Best Entertainement or Comedy Play (beating among others Ballet Shoes) but also Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Layton Williams as the Iceberg (and various others). Lauren Drew, who was the original Celine was also nominated in Best Actress in a Musical.

I had a great time and would recommend it for people looking for a fun night out, but I think because of all the pop culture references it’s probably more one for adults, and maybe even millennials and up. I’ve never seen the film Titanic, but I’m old enough to remember it coming out and know what happens in it, so all the jokes about the film landed for me all the same. I can feel that this could end up being a show that groups go to on a night out – and there are definitely deals to be had on the tickets to make that happen. It’s in the Criterion which is at the smaller end of West End capacities (as well as being probably the most underground of them all) and also in one of the prime spots for passing footfall on Piccadilly Circus right next to Eros so it has that in its favour to keep it going for a while – The 39 Steps managed nearly a decade in there, and I think The Comedy about a Bank Robbery would have lasted longer than its four years if it hadn’t been for the pandemic. And I liked it enough that I’m not ruling out going back to see how the improv changes – or how a different cast handle it. But there are just so many shows I want to see that I haven’t already been to that I suspect it won’t happen in the near future!

Have a great Sunday.

*which made it three in a row in the West End for me – with Born With Teeth and Clarkston the other two.

Exhibitions, not a book

Not a Book: Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World

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Happy Sunday everyone, I had a really good time out at a gallery on Friday and given that the exhibition is only on until early January, I thought i ought to write about it sooner rather than later.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World at the National Portrait Gallery is an examination of the photographer’s work in Fashion and Portrait photography. It takes you through from his early days and Bright Young Things of the 1920s to the My Fair Lady era in the 1960s. Along side the photographs there are also things like his first camera, which he used all the way through til after he first started at Vogue, and one of the dresses he designed for Julie Andrews to wear as Eliza Doolittle in the West End production of My Fair Lady in the late 19050s.

I didn’t get to see the last Cecil Beaton exhibition at the NPG – because it opened just a few days before Covid shut the world down in 2020 and never reopened. I have the exhibition poster from that on the wall of my house and the exhibition book as well, and that one focused on his work in the 1920s and 1930s with the Bright Young Things. This does have some of that, but is much broader in its scope. Yes the famous Stephen Tennant picture is here, but so also are the royal portraits and Hollywood royalty – like Marlon Brando, Katherine Hepburn and a young Yul Brynner with hair!

I really enjoyed myself – it’s in the same space that The Culture Shift exhibition was in earlier in the year which is big enough that you feel that there is plenty to see and that everything has space to breathe but not so big that you get overwhelmed by it all and start to lose focus.

Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World is on at the National Portrait Gallery until January 11, and I would book your ticket in advance, especially if you’re planning on going at a weekend.

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Victoria Beckham documentary

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It’s Sunday again everyone and I’m back with a Netflix documentary series.

Last year we had Beckham, about David Beckham, this year we have Victoria Beckham, about his wife the artist formerly known as Posh Spice who is now a fashion designer. As it’s framing device this is focussing on the fashion business in the run up to a big show at Paris Fashion Week.

Now I’m not going to lie, this is no where near as good as the first one. We’ve covered the contours of Posh n Becks life together in the first doc and so there are times when there is not a lot of new to say. There is a lot about her fashion brand and if you were reading newspapers or online gossip pages when she started that up you will remember the suggestions that Roland Mouret was doing all the work, and she (and Roland) have Things To Say about that. And of course if you’ve been following the Family Drama, you will spot the notable absence of Brooklyn from the documentary, but it’s never discussed – and he wasn’t at Windsor Castle this week when David was knighted so it’s clearly all still going on.

If you’ve watched the first one, the second one is worth watching for contrast and completeness, but if you haven’t then watch the first one instead. No memes will be spawned by this new one…

book adjacent, Children's books, film, not a book

Book Adjacent: Bedknobs and Broomsticks

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Angela Lansbury would have been 100 last month, so today I’m talking about one of my favourite childhood movies – Bedknobs and Broomsticks – which had magic and witches and is thus perfect for a post-Halloween autumn afternoon.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks is loosely based on two books by Mary Norton, who also wrote the Borrowers books. In this Disney version it’s 1940 and three orphans, Charles, Carrie and Paul, are evacuated to the village of Pepperinge Eye on the Dorset coast where they are billeted with the very reluctant Eglantine Price. They try to run away to London but change their mind when they discover Miss Price is a witch. When they try to blackmail her about this, she turns Paul into a rabbit and says that she’s learning magic to try and help fight the Nazis. When her correspondence course writes to say it’s closing down, they head to London on a flying bed to track down her teacher to try and get the final spell on the course. But it turns out the teacher is Emelius Brown, who is a street magician who has no idea his spell work when it’s Miss Price using them. And that’s only got you to the halfway point. The second half has a trip to a magical island and a Nazi invasion to thwart.

As well as Angela Lansbury as Miss Price, it has David Tomlinson (aka Mr Banks in Mary Poppins) as Emelius Brown, Reginald Owen (Admiral Boom from Poppins) and for Brits of a certain age Bruce Forsyth as a spiv. Like Mary Poppins it has a mix of live action and animation sequences and music by the Sherman Brothers. As is often the case the song that got the Oscar nomination (The Age of Not Believing) is not my favourite in the but Beautiful Briny, Substitutiary Locomotion, The Old Home Guard and the Portobello Road songs are singalong bangers.

Like so many Disney films, it was adapted into a musical a few years back and I saw it on tour in Northampton. That was ok rather than brilliant, it was great to hear the songs from the movie but I didn’t love the new additions and I can see why it never went into the West End. My sister and I recorded this off the TV (one Christmas I think) and watched it in rotation with about four other videos on Saturday nights while we were eating dinner in front of the TV (our weekend treat). Even now if I happened across it on TV on a weekend afternoon I’m pretty sure I would stop and watch it to the end.

Have a great Sunday.