Tag: not a book

comedy, not a book, streaming

Not a Book: I’m Chevy Chase, and You’re Not

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Happy Sunday, it’s documentary o’clock again, and this is one that came out around New Year, so I’m even kind of topical for once. Check Me.

I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not is a documentary film exploring the life and career of Chevy Chase. For those who are younger than me: Now in his 80s, Chevy Chase was the breakout star from the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975 and left the show in its second season to go to Hollywood. In the 1980s he was in a string of box office hits – in Caddyshack, three National Lampoon’s Vacation movies and the one I remember being repeated on TV when I was a child: Three Amigos. But as the 90s progressed his movie career stalled out and he only really returned to prominence when he was cast in the sitcom Community in 2009, and then that ended badly. As you can see from the trailer, this has interviews with the man himself, his family, some of his costars and others who have worked with him behind the scenes and a few other famous talking heads.

Now the other thing that you need to know about him is that he’s got a bit of a reputation for being an “asshole”. I read Nick de Semylen’s Wild and Crazy Guys back in 2023 and he didn’t come over as particularly sympathetic in that. And he’s not helping himself out in some of the interviews that he does for this either. There are some glaring absences among the talking heads of people who have worked with him. So he’s not a massively sympathetic figure a lot of the time. But his childhood sounds grim and he’s been married to the same woman for more than 40 years and so that helps soften him a little. And he’s been ill recently – with time in a coma which has left him with some memory loss, which along with the coke addiction may mean that he’s not (always) lying when he says that he doesn’t remember doing or saying what others say he did or said.

This is directed by Marina Zenovich, who also made Lance about Lance Armstrong (which is really good) and Robin Williams: Come Inside my Mind (which I have on my to watch list) as well as other documentaries including two about Roman Polanski and another about Richard Prior. So she has plenty of experience with making films about comedians and it shows because the clips she’s picked of Chevy in his comedy prime are really good. If you weren’t around for his hey day (which I wasn’t) it’s easy to just dismiss him because of the stories about what a nightmare he can be. But he’s hard going when he’s not playing a character. He really is. Just read this New York Times interview he did with Zenovich to promote the documentary if you don’t believe me.

This is on Sky Documentaries and Now TV in the UK and on CNN in the US at the moment. It is due to appear on HBO Max at the end of January

Happy Sunday!

announcement, Book of the Week, books

No Book of the Week!

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I’m sorry! Too much skating, not enough reading . I’ve got three things part finished but nothing to write about today so I’m giving myself a pass this week. In the meantime, here are some of my favourite performances from last week that might have gone under the radar if you only watched the final groups of the competition:

Josefin Taljegard from Sweden absolutely nailing her skate to It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, skating second in the women’s free programme (after the first person fell five times) and getting a standing ovation from the crowd for her performance, musicality and emotion. And we didn’t give many ovations.

We’ve had a lot of Moulin Rouge routines over the year but nothing quite like The Finns and their slightly unhinged but very entertaining take on it (that’s them in the picture at the top taking their bow).

And finally, my prediction for a potential viral moment at the Olympics: if Tomas Llorenc can land the triple axel at the start of this Minions programme for in Milan it will take the roof off.

Enjoy!

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Death Cap

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Happy Sunday everyone, I’m back with a documentary series for you this week, but just a warning to start with, it may make you wary of eating mushrooms for a while after you eat it!

Has there been a more notorious true crime case in the last five years than the case of the Mushroom Murders in Australia? I’ll wait. Erin Patterson invited four of her in-laws over for lunch and afterwards three of them died and the fourth nearly died. When the investigation started it discovered that the four victims had ingested death cap mushrooms. The story was soon being covered by international media outlets, and when the trial happened this summer there were multiple daily podcasts about the case as well as a huge amount of reporters from around the world covering the case.

This is a three part documentary which explores the investigation and trial and has the advantage of many true crime docs because of all the coverage that this case had. I’m not a big true crime person, but so many of the series that I have watched are reliant on reconstructions. This does not have that issue. There were journalists on the ground from the start, this was clearly in the process of being made during the trial and because it’s so recent the memories of the locals that are interviewed are fresh. It’s so fresh in fact that Erin Patterson’s appeal against her sentence (sorry, spoiler!) was only lodged in November.

For me, the most interesting part of this case was seeing and finding out more about the part of Australia where this happened. Leongatha has a population of less than 6,000. Morwell where the trial took place has around 15,000 residents. They’re both in the Gippsland area of Victoria, which basically looks like beautiful English countryside and not like the desert outback that you so often picture when you think of Australia. And the Paterson case turned the town upside down – firstly because everyone knows everyone there and secondly because of the huge attention it garnered. I watched all three episodes back to back one night in the run up to Christmas and could have watched another hour if there was one. All of which means that I suspect this won’t be the last content about this case I consume, even if I haven’t knowingly eaten mushrooms since!

If you want to watch this, it was made by the Australian streamer Stan and has been sold on to various different streamers in other parts of the world. The trailer I found on YouTube is for CNN and says it’s a CNN Original, but in the UK it’s on Netflix. So you may have to have a little hunt on your local streaming services to find out where this is in your territory.

not a book

Not a Book: Not-Theatre 2026 Lookahead

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This is the very final start of year post, I promise. But after the theatre lookahead yesterday, today there are a few bits and bobs that are happening this year that aren’t plays or musicals that I wanted to mention.

Obviously we are less than a month away now from the Winter Olympics, which are happening in Milan and Cortina. I am very, very excited about this, but at the moment I’m even more excited about the fact that the European Figure Skating Championships is happening in Sheffield this week coming, and even better: I’m going. It is not very often that we get an international figure skating competition here – but when they do come it’s usually in Sheffield and I go! I was at the Grand Prix a couple of years ago, and I was also at the Europeans last time they were here – all the way back in 2012.

Also happening in the UK (but that I don’t have tickets for) this year we have the Commonwealth Games which are back in Glasgow because all the other host options dropped out and the European Athletics Championships which are being held in the UK for the first time, at the Alexandra Stadium where I went to see the Commonwealth Games Athletics four years ago. It’s also the men’s World Cup football this summer which has more countries taking part than ever before and is also being staged across three countries for the first time in the USA, Canada and Mexico. This means that for a few weeks this summer, the nation will be gripped with hope that one of our teams will win. This feeling will be fleeting.

Away from the sport to something else that’s actually in the ticket box and this year I’m finally going to see Rufus Wainwright’s Judy Garland concert. This is based on the 1961 comeback concert series that Garland did. I’ve owned the CD of the Rufus version for about 15 years now, and didn’t think I would ever get the chance to see it live, but to mark the 20th anniversary of his original run of it at Carnegie Hall, he’s doing it at the Royal Albert Hall. For those of you who are counting, this will be my fourth or fifth time seeing Rufus – depending on if you count the two Proms on the same day in 2023 separately or not!

Rufus is actually my only musical event in the box at the moment, because the Boyzone reunion concert is happening on a weekend that really doesn’t work for me (and they didn’t add any other dates beyond the first two) and I’ve already seen Take That more than once. But we don’t have the line up for the Proms this year yet, and that’s often where a lot of my concerts come from. And I’m also eyeing up some comedy. As you may know we are deep in Taskmaster at the moment, and several of the comedians that we have really enjoyed on that are on tour this year and coming near us so bookings are definitely possible!

There are a couple of art exhibitions that I really want to see too. There’s a Seurat exhibition at the Courtauld. I have a real soft spot for Seurat and this is the first dedicated exhibition to him in the UK in 30 years. And looking right ahead to the end of the year there is a Renoir exhibition at the National which also falls squarely into my favourite bits of painting. So I’m already plotting when to go to both of those. This summer National Portrait Gallery has got a Marilyn Monroe exhibition to mark the centenary of her birth. The V&A has got a Wallace and Gromit exhibition coming to the Young V&A and a Schiaparelli one at the main museum. Sidenote: I still haven’t been to the new V&A Storehouse and really want to, but the David Bowie archive is already booked out, so I may wait for some availability there before I go there. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of his death so combined with the fact that it’s only just gone on sale, I’m not surprised it’s popular!

Have a great Sunday everyone!

theatre

Not a Book: 2026 Theatre Lookahead

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Yes, I know, you thought that I was done with the start of year posts, but no. One of the other things you hear a lot about from me on here is theatre, so here is what’s coming up this year in the theatre.

A view of Shaftesbury Avenue at night

I’m going to start with the things that I’ve already got in the ticket box. Firstly in May I’m off to Essex to see Thespians, Mischief’s first musical. This is set in Ancient Greece and is about the invention of acting and the world’s first play. As you know, I have such a soft spot for Mischief – I wrote about Christmas Carol Goes Wrong just a couple of weeks ago and I’ve seen so much of their other stuff too and I can’t wait to see what they do with a musical.

Also in the (virtual) ticket box is Jesus Christ Superstar. This is a revival and also a restaging – it’s the Regents Park production of a few years ago that I didn’t manage to get to see, but at the London Palladium this summer and starring Sam Ryder as Jesus. This is the last of the Andrew Lloyd Webber mega musicals that I haven’t seen live in the theatre (although I have seen the early 2000s DVD version quite a few times) and although it’s not my favourite musical, after missing out on the hot tickets that were Sunset Boulevard and Evita revivals the last two years this time I’ve decided to go for it!

Talking on missing out and Evita, I’ve already missed out on tickets for the Last Five Years concert perfomances (also at the Palladium) starring Rachel Ziegler and Ben Platt which are happening in March and were gone in the blink of an eye. Even sooner that that though is the Cynthia Erivo one woman Dracula. That starts in early Februrary and is by the same production team who produced the one-woman Picture of Dorian Gray with Sarah Snook that won a bunch of Oliviers and Tonys.

We’ve also got the London premiere of John Proctor is the Villain, which I’ve been reading about on the various theatre forums for a couple of years at this point. It’s play about a group of high school students studying Arthur Miller’s The Cruicible and got seven Tony nominations for the Broadway production last year, which starred Sadie Sink. No news on the cast for this transfer at the Royal Court, but it’s a Sonia Friedman production (like Merrily) so it could be pretty good on that front too.

Another Broadway transfer is Beetlejuice, which premiered on Broadway back in 2019 and I suspect would ahve been in London sooner but for the pandemic and all that malarkey. There are quite a few plays transferring into the West End from other theatres too – there’s Shadowlands with Hugh Bonneville, which started at Chichester; Grace Pervades starring Ralph Finnes and Miranda Raison coming in from Bath; and Rosamund Pike in Interalia which is coming in from across the river at the National. Talking of the National, they’ve got a revival of Les Liasions Dangereuses, starring Lesley Manville and Aiden Turner.

And finally I’m totally fascinated to see the revival of Avenue Q. You might remember that I went to one of the anniversary performances in 2024 and although I still adored it and the original cast, there are definitely things that haven’t aged well and I wonder how it will hit for new audiences who haven’t got the fond memories of the original that I do. I haven’t booked yet, but I’ll definitely be there at least once!

Have a great weekend 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.

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…