Category: film

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, 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.

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.

film, not a book

Not a Book: The Sting

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It’s Sunday and I’m back with a film recommendation today. Robert Redford died just over a month ago and this is both my favourite film of his and possibly my favourite heist film too.

The Sting is the story of two professional grifters who team up to try and con a mob boss. The plot is very complicated and I’m not even going to try and explain it more because I’m not sure I can. It’s got twist after twist after twist. Robert Redford is Johnny Hooker who is out for revenge on Lonnegan who has murdered one of his partners. Paul Newman is Henry Gondorff, an older conman who he recruits to help him. Lonnegan is Robert Shaw who you may also have seen in Jaws but also as the Spectre assassin in From Russia With Love. And it’s also the movie that caused a resurgence in Scott Joplin and ragtime music when it came out.

I don’t want to say too much about it all because I don’t want to ruin it. I knew very little about it the first time I watched it and i was on the edge of my seat for a large amount of it not knowing where it was going and how it was going to work out. It’s just so cleverly put together. And the good news is that you can watch the whole thing for free – legally – with ads on YouTube. It’s a perfect Sunday afternoon movie. Enjoy!

film, not a book

Not a Book: Rocky Horror documentary

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Happy Sunday everyone, and I’ve got a new release film for you this week that I went to see yesterday and am posting about straight away beause screenings may be limited and (spoiler) I really liked it and want it to do well.

Strange Journey is a documentary telling the story of Rocky Horror documentary as it went from Upstairs at the Royal Court in London, to the Kings Road in Chelsea, to LA to the big screen and then its transformation into probably the ultimate cult movie. It’s directed by Linus O’Brien who is the son of Rocky creator and original Riff Raff Richard O’Brien and as well as being a history of Rocky, it’s also the story of Richard O’Brien’s own journey with his gender identity. It’s got all the talking heads you could want, as well as Richard O’Brien – singing some of the songs while playing them on guitar at 83! – it has Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Jim Sharman and most importantly Tim Curry. And there’s loads of behind the scenes footage too – it turns out someone had a cine camera behind the scenes of the Rocky movie shoot as well as at some of the early London theatre performances, so you get to see them all in their original incarnations as well as things like watching Curry performing Sweet Transvestite to the movie camera with all the trappings of the set. I’ve put the trailer in here because it gives you a good idea of what you’re in for:

It’s very much a history and appreciation – it’s got Trixie Mattel and Jack Black for talking heads as well as various film academics and shadow cast members talking about the historical significance of the film and the positive effect that it has had on their lives. I really enjoyed it – it brought a tear to my eye more than once and I once again remember that Tim Curry’s Frank N Furter is incredible.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first saw the movie, but I first went to the touring musical when I was in my final year at uni – and came straight out of the early evening show and bought a ticket to see the late show and watched it again from the front row, having spent more of my monthly budget than I intended and then went out to the stage door afterwards (not a very Verity thing to do) and got a picture with David Bedella (an even less Verity thing) which I still have, still think I look goofy in, but still sort of love all the same. So I think I’m the ideal audience member for this, and can’t really work out how it will land if you’re not a Rocky fan. But then it’s a cult of its own really, so hopefully some of the people who go to midnight screenings every week will turn out to see it.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

film, not a book, streaming

Not a Book – Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story

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Another Sunday, another documentary from me. And it’s probably not unexpected that a musicals geek like me would watch a documentary about Liza Minelli, but I’m here to make a case forwhy you’d be interested in it even if you’re not a fan of musicals or divas.

This is a documentary about Liza Minelli, which focuses principally on Liza’s life after the death of her mother Judy Garland, and her work establishing herself as separate to her mother and building her own legacy and legend. As you can see from the trailer, Liza is in it (a lot) as are numerous of her friends – both famous and not.

Liza’s life is pretty incredible. She’s the daughter of one of Hollywood’s most beloved (but troubled) stars and a legendary director of musical films, She was in the public eye from the day that she was born, but she went on to be an iconic performer herself. She’s one of only six people to be a non-competitive EGOT – her Grammy is an honorary one, but she won her Oscar, Emmy and three Tonys in competition (and has a fourth honorary Tony too). And that career is covered extensively in this documentary.

But the reason that I think that this is of interest to people beyond the Liza fans, is because of that life time of fame. Liza has never really had a private life, and she’s had a public persona from the moment her parents first put her in front of a camera. in a way, she’s one of the last vestiges of the studio system: a child brought up in the business who watched how her mother was portrayed in the press and who has deliberately and constantly guarded what facets of herself she shows to her fans and her public when she’s not performing. So don’t go expecting any big revelations or confessions here – but that’s what I found so fascinating – what Minelli is like in normal life is essentially unknowable unless you’re in her inner circle. And you get glimpses of that from the friends and family – but just that, glimpses because her one overriding motivation in her public persona is to prove to everyone that she’s not Judy Garland and that she didn’t inherit all the problems that her mother had.

So it’s incredibly watchable, but there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors. There’s loads of great archive and lots of evidence that she’s a kind person but she’s not going to tell you how she feels, or what she really thinks. I know that Peter Allen was the husband that she liked the most – according to her friends but there’s nothing really good or bad from her about any of them, although various of her friends are not shy to tell you that they really didn’t like David Gest. She’s still sticking to it that she never really saw any drugs at Studio 54, despite all other evidence to the contrary. You come away feeling doused in showbiz pizzaz, and slowly realise that you’re none the wiser about the reality. Just fascinating.

This one is available on different streaming services depending on where you are – in the UK it’s on the iPlayer at the moment.

Have a good Sunday!

film, not a book

Not a Book: The Phoenician Scheme

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Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’ve all had a good weekend so far, and I’m back with another suggestion of something to watch – this time at the cinemas because it only came out last week.

The Phoenician Scheme is the latest film from Wes Anderson. Written by Anderson and from a story by him and Roman Coppola, it’s a black comedy about a wealthy businessman who appoints his daughter as his heir after the latest of (many) assassination attempts against him sees his plane crash (again). The two of them set off to try and save his latest business venture where they are targeted by more assassins, tycoons and terrorists.

Anderson is known for his distinctive visual style and ensemble casts featuring regular players as well as the dark comedy, nostalgia-inspired worlds and quirkiness. My first Wes Anderson was The Life Aquatic, which I saw at the cinema in my year in France. Now that is not one of his more critically acclaimed movies, but which I really enjoyed – because of that crazy aesthetic and style. I loved Grand Budapest Hotel when that came out and have been to the last couple at the cinema because I like seeing them on the big screen. I’ve never had a bad time watching them – but some of them I think I will definitely watch again when they come around on the TV and others I probably won’t. This one I think is in the former category – whereas Asteroid City is probably the latter. But his films can be a bit of divisive – I’ve put Mark Kermode’s review here because he explains the situation very well.

Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

film, not a book, tv

Old Favourites at Christmas

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Every year in the run up to Christmas, I need to clear space on the TiVo for all the new stuff that’s coming – and that means that I’ll delete a few of my favourite movies to clear space – knowing that they’ll be on again at some point over the 10 days of Christmas and if the TV happens to be on when they’re showing, I’ll probably switch over and watch too. So today, here are a few things that are on that list…

Some people say it’s not Christmas if the Wizard of Oz isn’t on TV, I say it isn’t Christmas if The Sound of Music isn’t on somewhere. It is in my top 10 favourite movies, if not my top five. But it’s also now a tradition to read this genius article from McSweeneys: I Regret to Inform You that My Wedding to Captain Von Trapp has been Cancelled. It’s thirteen years old now and it’s still as funny as the first time I read it. I think I like it more than I like their Decorative Gourd Season article. And that’s saying something!

I’m also a big Doris Day fan – and Christmas is often a time when her movies pop up on TV. This year as well as Pillow Talk (definitely in my top five) there’s Lover Come Back, Move Over Darling and Calamity Jane where you can also enjoy the wonder that is Howard Keele – star of the movie version of Kiss Me, Kate (which inexplicably isn’t on this Christmas damnit).

And then there’s the Agatha Christie adaptation situation. Unusually this year there are no repeats of the Joan Hickson Miss Marples (Alibi are repeating some of the Ngaio Marsh Alleyn adaptations this year though) but you can watch the Albert Finney Murder on the Orient Express, which is definitely a Christmas movie (snow!) and has an all star cast and amazing music and is much better than the recent remake – which isn’t bad, it’s just not that one!

Oh and Some Like it Hot is on too. Another from my all time my top five. My TiVo is going to be so, so full!

Happy Christmas Eve everyone!