Very not a book, but this weekend I’m in Sheffield watching figure skating. I’m having the best time, even though all the pictures I’ve taken are terrible but then I don’t think I was expecting an iPhone to take the best figure skating photos! I’ve even popped up in some of the photos of the event…
Yes, that’s me, sitting behind the Lilah and Lewis banner (not line, belongs to the people sitting behind me) and concentrating fiercely on something – I think probably on one of the male skaters practicing their jumps.
Anyway, in case you don’t know, the Grand Prix of figure skating is a six event series that leads to a grand final and this year because of Covid restrictions in China (and Russia being banned), Great Britain is hosting an event for the first time. I haven’t been to see skating live for a decade – since the European championships came to Sheffield – so I was first in the queue for tickets. And so far it’s been amazing. If you see this before the events finish today and happen to have a look at the coverage, you might be able to spot me (and that banner) right behind the skaters as they start and end their routines – I’m right opposite the judges:
I hope you’re all having as wonderful a weekend as I am – check out my Insta stories if you want to see my terrible photos – and see you tomorrow for Week in Books!
The fourth series is finally available to watch in the UK this week – via Disney + this time sadly and not on the BBC (yet, she says hopefully) and it’s one of my favourite tv shows so of course I’m going to write about it.
The show is a mockumentary spin off of the film of the same name that follows a group of vampires as they navigate life in suburban America rather than New Zealand. I’ve mentioned before that I have a slightly strange relationship with vampire and supernatural stuff but this is exactly on the end of things that I really like.
Lazlo, Nadja, Nandor and Colin Robinson are Staten Island’s resident vampires. With the help of their familiar Guillermo they try to stay inconspicuous and yet keep on top of the supernatural hierarchy. I was trying to pick a favourite character, but I couldn’t because they’re all great and every time I think I’ve picked one, I remember something brilliant one of the others does or says. As the series has gone on (and budgets have increased!) their world has increased in ways that I can’t really explain without giving huge plot spoilers, but I am very excited to see what happens this season given the way the last one ended. Tell you what; have the season four trailer, but seriously only watch this if you’ve seen the first three series and use it to increase your excitement levels. The rest of you don’t spoil it!
So in summary: The Office but actually more Parks and Rec in a way, but with horny vampires who incompetently try to take over the world. It’s very, very funny.
I’m finishing the Halloween-y themed posts with two of my favourite films of the early 90s that also happen to be very weird and the perfect films to watch at this time of year – whether you’re an adult or a kid.
So the films in question are the early 1990s live action Addams family movies, which I think are pretty much the perfect kids scary movies where there is something for the adults too. My favourite is Addams Family Values, for reasons which I will come to but they are both pretty blooming brilliant. I had watched some of the black and white TV series (although I think I had seen more of the Munsters than the Addams) but never read any of the actual cartoon strips so the characters existed to me already – but these movies are the way I see them in my head. Angélica Huston and Raul Julia are Morticia and Gomez to me and their relationship is a perfect alchemy of creepy and nuts about each other.
The plot of the first film sees the reappearance of Gomez’s long lost brother Fester – or is he? He’s in train with two con artists who have designs on the Addams’ house and wealth. I nearly said that the plot is quite thin, and that it does a lot of establishing of the characters, but there is actually quite a lot of plot it just doesn’t always seem to hang together very well, but it does keep you guessing about whether “Fester” is or isn’t the long lost brother.
Now to the sequel, and first the plot: Morticia has had a new baby and brings in a nanny to help. Uncle Fester falls in love with the nanny, but is she all she seems? Each strand of this is great – Fester and Debbie, Debbie and the kids, the kids at summer camp. I prefer the sequel partly because it has a better plot and I think it has better one liners, but also because I think the holiday camp section is just brilliant – it does everything you could want if you have ever read a book about an American summer camp (or watched the Hayley Mills Parent Trap). I defy anyone to come away from this without having laughed at something.
These are on tv fairly regularly – and I think they will be in the next few days, but you can rent them from some of the steaming services too. You won’t regret it. And here’s some summer camp to show you what I mean!
Today’s post is the latest instalment in my very loose collection of stuff about religion, which had previously featured stuff like Under the Banner of Heaven (now a tv series that I haven’t watched yet!), Murder Among the Mormons, Educated, Lula Rich and Unfinished: Short Creek.
Tammy Faye Bakker was a televangelist. Starting in the 1960s she and her preacher husband Jim were regular features on Christian TV channels – including founding their own network: The PTL network (PTL stands for Praise The Lord). This is a biopic of her life, following her from her childhood in Minnesota through the highs and lows. I don’t know how much I should tell you about the rest of the plot, because I don’t know what’s common knowledge and what’s not because I’ve read a lot about this sort of thing over the years! Jessica Chastain is Tammy – and was nominated for a bunch of awards for it. In fact the makeup department won the Oscar – and if you watch it, you’ll see why. Andrew Garfield is Jim and he’s very good too, although her performance was the one that was picked out.
It’s two hours long – and I think it’s a good watch, even if you’re not interested in the American religion nexus like I am. If you want to watch it, you’ll need Disney + in the UK – there are various trials around, and of course if you do get one, you can also watch The Dropout!
Here’s the latest in my posts on prestige TV – I have watched the Julia Roberts Watergate drama and I have thoughts!
So Gaslit tells some of the untold stories of the Watergate saga based on the Watergate series Slate podcast Slowburn. The main focus is Martha Mitchell (played by Julia Roberts) who was the wife of the Attorney General and a celebrity socialite, but it also follows John Dean (Dan Stevens) the White House counsel, Frank Willis (Patrick Walker) the Watergate security guard and G Gordon Liddy (Shea Whigham) and his band of burglars.
In fact the actual burglary is a very small part of this story and over very fast but the fall out of it is huge. Obviously it took down a president – and to a point where most people don’t know that the vice-president was also a crook unless you’ve also read (or listened to) Bag Man or done some research of your own* – but it also impacted a huge number of other people, some of whom are sympathetic, some who are… not.
There are some fabulous performances in this. Julia Roberts is amazing as The Mouth of the South, Martha Mitchell. It might be the best acting I’ve seen her do. Dan Stevens is excellent in a slippery out for everything he can get to advance himself role. I was frankly terrified of Shea Whigham’s Liddy – and really need to go and do some reading to see if he was really that insane. And then there is Sean Penn who is absolutely unrecognisable – to the point where I had to check it was him moee than once – as Mitchell. As a whole it is quite bleak – you know it’s bad when you’re rooting for a cat to turn up alive – but it’s really worth some of your time if you’re even vaguely interested in American politics. It doesn’t have the (dark) humour that The Dropout has, but it is compelling and thought provoking.
Gaslit is on Starzplay, which you can get via Amazon Prime – I watched it all during my seven day free trial!
* it’s also a great trivia question – who is the only unelected president of the United States: answer Gerald Ford who was appointed to vice president after Spiro Agnew stood down.
I worked my way through a lot of TV during my shingles situation, and today’s Not a Book is for one of the series I watched – which has a new season out this week.
We watched the first few series of Selling Sunset and then got fed up that it was turning into all drama and no property. Luxe Listing Sydney has – so far – resisted that urge and serves up plenty of expensive properties to gawk at with a side order of rivalries between rival agents. You’ve got Gavin and D’Leanne who work at rival sales agencies and then Simon who is a buyers agent. In series two we added another rival sales agent in Monica – and who knows who they might add in to series three, although the trailer is promising (more) Delta Goodrem…
Basically if you need a bingeable property show, with plenty of multimillion dollar properties, this ticks a lot of boxes. Although I couldn’t work for anyone on it except maybe D’Leanne!
It was the Japanese MotoGP Grand Prix today – time differences mean it’ll already be all over by the time this post goes up, but for today’s Not a Book, I’m writing about Amazon’s Drive to Survive rival – which focuses on the world of grand prix motorcycle racing.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the motorbike racing world, MotoGP is the premiere category in motorbike racing. The riders ride purpose built, specially designed bikes – as opposed to World Superbikes where they race versions of production models. MotoGP weekends also include two feeder series, Moto 2 and Moto 3, with smaller bikes and developing riders – a bit like Formula one has F2 and F3, except that the paddocks are all more linked – some of the MotoGP teams have junior teams in the junior categories and some of the riders themselves own junior teams. The first season of MotoGP Unlimited follows the 2021 season, primarily looking at the MotoGP action, but the other categories feature where the action crosses over.
The big difference between the actual sports is that motorbike racing is much more dangerous than F1 is. Every year MotoGP has broken bones and injuries. In fact if you look across the three categories you’d probably say every weekend has a rider breaking something. There are a number of people in the paddock in wheelchairs as a result of bike crashes. And sadly sometimes people die – and I warn you that it happens in one of the junior categories in this season although you don’t see it happen, but you do very much see the effect it has on the riders.
Then I would say there are two big differences between the MotoGP Unlimited and Drive to Survive. The first is that while English is the first language of the paddock in F1, it is very much not in MotoGP. So the producers decided to let the riders speak which ever language they are most comfortable with – which means a lot of Spanish and Italian. Initially they released the series dubbed, but there was an outcry and they added a subtitles version (much better). This means you get a real sense of the riders and their personalities and the rivalries and friendships, which I don’t think you would have got if the producers had forced them to speak in English.
The second is that while Drive to Survive picks centres each episode around one story and follows it across a couple of races or even most of the season, Unlimited takes the season in chronological order. As someone who watches both sports all season long, I think the unlimited approach gives you more of a sense of what it actually felt like to follow along, whereas the DTS approach creates more drama and tension and gives you backstage shenanigans you don’t know about as the races are happening. Both approaches have their merits – DTS has come under fire for creating drama where there was none but it has also boosted F1’s profile enormously, made Daniel Ricciardo everyone’s second favourite driver, turned Günter Steiner into a meme and boosted Haas’s profile. I’m not sure Unlimited has done the same for MotoGP, but it’s only had one season yet so give it time.
I’m not sure it will convert fans the same way that Drive to Survive has, but if you’re a casual motor bike racing fan it’s definitely worth a look – and hopefully we’ll get a second season to see it get into its stride – MotoGP is struggling a little this year with how to deal with the retirement of charismatic sporting icon Valentino Rossi which could make for an interesting side story to the 2022 title fight.
Bonus photo: We went to the Silverstone race that features in the series – and here’s my best attempt at a photo of Valentino Rossi at the end of the race.
If you’re heading back to school this week after the summer holiday – whether you’re a teacher or a student, I hope this week goes well for you – or as well as these things can and that this school year is better than the last one.
Let’s continue the overarching themes of this month again – with some ballet and some theatre in a classic film.
The Red Shoes is all about a ballerina’s dedication to her art being tested by an impresario forcing her to chose between her career and love. Moira Shearer’s Vicky Page is plucked from obscurity to be the lead role in a new ballet, based on the Hans Christian Andersen story of the Red Shoes. But at the same time she’s secretly falling in love with a composer who is working with the country. And so it begins. I’m not spoiling the rest of it.
Made in 1948, it’s frequently on lists of the best British films ever – it got a bunch of Oscar nominations at the time and its reputation has only increased since then. It’s one of the sequence of Powell and Pressburger films from that period – coming after the adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Black Narcissus which is one of the other really well known ones. It’s also packed full of real ballet dancers – so you can see Robert Helpmann in a role that’s not the Child Catcher!
For me, when I first saw it the opening ballet class and performance sequences showed me exactly what I had imagined Veronica’s life at the Wells to be like. The film is from just a couple of years before the first Sadlers Wells book was published – I think Moira Shearer even gets a mention in one of them – although obviously Veronica is a child and Vicky is already a trained dancer, and Veronica and Sebastian’s… situation has a positive resolution!
A couple of years back, Matthew Bourne turned the film into a ballet, using the amazing score. I saw it on it it’s first tour and it’s proper good. New Adventures rotate through their shows, and it was touring when Covid started and everything stopped, so it might be a while before it’s on stage again – but it’s worth seeing when it is. But in the meantime, you can just go an watch the original film, which was restored in 2009 and looks amazing. It’s on BritBox if you have that, or you can buy it on DVD. It also comes around on TV reasonably regularly – often around Christmas.
Happy Sunday everyone – if it’s a bank holiday where you are, I hope you’re enjoying it.
To keep the children’s book theme going while I’m at conference, today’s not a book is one of my favourite children films – which also happens to be based on a middle grade book!
Let’s make something clear to start with: I’m talking about the Hayley Mills Parent Trap. Yes I’ve watched the Lindsay Logan version, but by the time that came out I had already seen the original and I was not about to be won over! I first stumbled over the second half of this film on tv one weekend afternoon when I was an early teen and was astonished to find a film that seemed to have the plot of one of my favourite books from primary school – except set in America. The book in question is Erich Kästner’s Lottie and Lisa – which I had been borrowing as my reading book from the school library about once a term (maybe more) since I had finished the reading grade levels. I think it might have been the first time that I’d come across a book adaptation that had really been adapted and changed for the film. Or at least the first time I realised I had! And apologies if you’ve never see the film – because the trailer does do the entire plot, but hey.
Instead of 1930s Vienna, we’re in contemporary America but our two separated at birth twins still meet at camp. In the book they’re younger than the movie’s thirteen going on fourteen, but the plan is the same – switch places and meet the parent they don’t remember and try to engineer a reconciliation. And yes, as a rational adult I know that splitting up twins when they’re tiny and never telling them that the other exists is wrong, but oh boy do I love it as a plot. And because it’s Disney their lives look glossy and fabulous. Sharon lives in a fancy house in Boston with her mum, delightful grandpa and uptight grandma but Susan lives on a California ranch with a lake that she swims in, her own horse and what would be called now an indoor/outdoor life style. It just looks so cool. Why wouldn’t the twins want to get their parents back together so they can stay at the ranch forever.
I also love Maureen O’Hara and Brian Keith as the warring parents. They’re not bit characters in Sharon and Susan’s story – they’ve got proper plot and a love story of their own. In fact I’d argue that O’Hara’s Maggie is the best part – with great outfits and all the best lines as she does her part in outfoxing her ex’s new girlfriend. Just try to ignore the bit where she punches Mitch in the eye! And then there’s the technical achievement of getting Haley Mills to play two characters at once in the pre-CGI era. It was like magic – and the explainer video on my DVD of how they did it is fascinating. It’s such a technical achievement.
Honestly I could go on for hours about how much I love this film, but I’ve written enough and now I need to stop because I want to go and watch it again on Disney+!
