Tag: not a book

film, not a book

Not a Book: The Oscars

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It’s the biggest night in the movie calendar tonight – or at least that’s what the Academy of Motion Picture, Arts and Science would like you to believe. I do love an awards ceremony – but I tend to record them so I can fast forward through the boring bits, even when they’re in the right time zone for me, so I won’t be staying up for all of the Oscars tonight – but it is the first year in a long time that they’ve been on free to air TV in the UK – they’re on ITV!

And, I’m not going to lie, I haven’t seen anything that’s nominated tonight – but there are still a few things I’m rooting for. Firstly I want I’m Just Ken to win the best original song prize, because I’ve really enjoyed Ryan Gosling’s face whenever it’s won all season. I would be all in on rooting for him to win best actor, except that I was an Ally and Larry fan back in the days of season four of Ally McBeal, and it turns out that I’m still not over the fact that Robert Downey Junior’s drug arrest meant he was written out at the end of the season and we never got the happy ending for them that the writers planned. And season five never recovered – because Larry was just so perfect for Ally that no one else could stand up to it. Now maybe if I could rewatch the series I would get over it, because I’m fairly sure it hasn’t aged well, but it’s not on any streaming services so I can’t watch it and find out. All I can do is watch snippets on Youtube. Like this one, the only occasion on which I will voluntarily watch Sting.

I would be rooting for Maestro – because I love Leonard Bernstein, but I’ve got so fed up of Bradley Cooper this awards season, and although I started watched Maestro I gave up after about 10 minutes (does this mean I’m lying when I say I haven’t seen any of the movies? I don’t think it counts because it’s less than 10 percent of the movie). And I know I won’t watch Killers of the Flower Moon (I’m too wimpy for every Scorsese except The Aviator, which I love) but I will be rooting for Lily Gladstone in the Best Actress category.

But beyond that, it may be that a fair amount of fast forwarding is going on – especially if the ceremony is as sad and joyless as some of the recent ones have been. But fingers crossed they get it right this year. I leave you with this video of the best costume nominees – I hope we get something as bonkers as this is:

not a book, streaming

Not a Book: Bitconned

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Happy Sunday everyone, I hope you’re all having a good weekend. This weekend is the latest instalment in my occasional series of stuff about scams. I’ve already talked about documentaries about MLMs, about hydrogen trucks, and the next thing I’m expecting a wave of podcasts and documentaries about is crypto. I’ve already listened to a bunch of podcasts about Sam Bankman Fried and the fall of FTX, but that hasn’t really made it to screen yet, but what has is Bitconned, which tells the story of Centra Tech, a crypto startup who created their own currency but also said they were creating a debit card that you could use to spend your crypto in the real world. Except that it’s all a scam.

And what this documentary had is interviews with the people behind the scam. Yes, as in the actual people who carried out the con did interviews for this doc. It’s absolutely wild. And yes, they’re as obnoxious as they seem in the trailer. Maybe more so, but don’t let that stop you from watching it because it’s a truly bonkers scheme they tried to pull – and demonstrates what experts mean when they say that crypto was a Wild West!

Have a great Sunday!

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Not a Book: Drive to Survive is back

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I mean that’s pretty much the message. The new season dropped on Friday and so thats what we settled down to watch on Friday night after work. You all know how much I’ve enjoyed the previous series but they had lots of on track action to work with so I was very interested to see what they did with the 2023 season which, spoiler alert, was not the most exciting on the actual racing front. If you want to watch, it’s on Netflix but if you haven’t watched before go back and start with maybe season two (not all the teams did season one) and go from there.

not a book

Not a Book: Houseplant update!

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Yes, yes, my plant obsession continues. I’m hoping that everything has survived the winter and that worst of the cold weather is over.

I’ve got a bit of repotting to do – the mini Christmas tree was a gift and I’ll get it properly potted up now the decorations are down, but also the Pothos needs a bigger pole to climb – and maybe some kind of encouragement to put out some more shoots for the other side of the pole! And the ficus just needs some support. And if you’re thinking that the downstairs window sill is looking a little emptier – never fear, that’s not because they’re dead, it’s because I moved a few of them upstairs in January when we went on holiday and they haven’t come back down yet because I quite like my bureau top of plants.

See- it looks pretty good doesn’t it. Here is the newest of my spider plants, Cecily, along with Palmeria and in the background my Christmas cactus, and the fishbone cactus and tucked away right at the back a variagated Croton which is probably the most at risk of not making it through the cold snap.

And here are the big ones – the umbrella tree finally seems to be happy, Roger the monstera keeps flinging out new leaves and the bulbs are gearing up to floor. The banana plant is a little more of an unknown quantity, but I’m hoping when it warms up he’ll be ok too.

This is just a selection of the plants – I’ll try and do more at some point soon, but more dusting and tidying is require to show you more!

not a book

Super Bowl Sunday again

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It’s the final word of the NFL season against, and this year the Vince Lombardi trophy will be handed out in Las Vegas. I don’t think I’ll be staying up to t watch this year, but I might try and make it to the half time show, which this year is Usher.

I’ve written about the NFL before – here are my posts about me and the NFL, the Chicago Stars series and Swamp Kings. I’ve just finished watching this season of Hard Knocks, which was following the Miami Dolphins, and I’ve also been watching The Franchise, which has been following the Kansas City Chiefs – defending Super Bowl champions, who play the San Francisco 49ers tonight.

I was talking the other week about trends in romance – we’ve had famous people and normal people, we’ve started getting Taylor Swift-influenced romance s – and u expect in the next little while we’ll start getting pop star and NFL player romances. Mark my words!

Enjoy the game if you’re watching – enjoy whatever else tire doing with your Sunday if you’re not!

books, not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Spymonkey’s The Frogs

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We finished off our time of work with a trip to the theatre on Monday tonight to see the new show from one of my favourite comedy theatre companies – Spymonkey.

Their latest show is another coproduction with my local – Royal and Derngate. This time they’re doing their version of The Frogs, but with an incredibly Meta twist. The original four monkeys are down to two – Petra is on “ long-term loan” to Las Vegas, where she’s the star of a cabaret show (except when joining the ENO for the Gilbert and Sullivan I saw before Christmas!) and Stephan died (yes, really died) in 2021. So as well as being drama’s oldest double act who go searching for a dead playwright in the under world, the Tony and Aitor double act is also searching for a missing person – and looking to a different future. And while it’s still gloriously silly and utterly bonkers, there is an edge of sadness about it. I was wondering if that’s only because I’ve met the monkeys in real life – I pitched a piece for work about their previous show at R&D and got to interview them and film them rehearsing The Complete Deaths, but Him Indoors hasn’t met them – he’s just come to see that shows with me – and he felt it too.

And because I’ve seen their previous shows is hard for me to judge how someone who hasn’t will see this. There are call backs to their previous shows and the hallmarks of their comedy. And this is the point where I say I’ve sometimes found it hard to work out who to recommend them to, because as well as being quite off the wall in comedy terms, full frontal nudity is a thing that happens in most of their shows, and that isn’t something for everyone! Anyway, we had a great time, I hope non-super fans do too and I’m not ruling out going to see it again when it transfers to The Kiln in London in a few weeks time.

I’m off to watch my DVD of Cooped aka Hysteria. Have a lovely Sunday everyone.

not a book

Not a Book: What’s in the Ticket Box?

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As I’ve looked ahead at everything else this January, today I’m doing a quick run through what I’ve got tickets for so far this year – as always I do a lot of my buying last minute, but there are a few things that I’ve booked in advance as ever.

Let’s do the theatres first and this week coming I’m catching the very tail end of the run of Backstairs Billy in the West End. It’s a comedy about the Queen Mother and her “most loyal” servant and it has good reviews. Then in March I’m seeing a new version of The Time Machine which had a London run before Christmas and is now out on tour. Then there’s a big gap until July, which is when I’m off to see Imelda Staunton in Hello Dolly!

On the comedy front, there’s a couple in the box already – Rhod Gilbert in April and then Henning Wehn all the way in October. I’ve only got one music gig booked so far – Caravan Palace in April. We saw them in early 2020 in one is the last things we did before the world shut down so I’m looking forward to seeing them again. And finally – we’re off to the Athletics this year too. No not the Olympics, the last event before the Paris Games at the London Stadium in mid July.

And just writing this out has made me realise that I need to get booking some more stuff! There are some more things coming into the West End this year that I should really get the tickets in for.

Quick, someone hide my wallet…

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: Another week in theatre…

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Two more shows this week and I just can’t stop myself from telling you about them! But that’s pretty on brand for me at this point, so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

First up was Peter Pan Goes Wrong, which has had a Christmas season in the West End. I saw the original cast when they were touring the UK back in 2014 (I was shocked when I realised how long ago that was). Since then the Mischief Theatre Crew have done all sorts of things – many of which I’ve seen (Groan Ups, Magic Goes Wrong, the TV series) and now fresh from a run on Broadway some of the original crew are back in the show before it goes out (with a slightly different cast) on a 2024 tour. Having been asked to explain panto earlier in the week on a Discord group I treated myself to a trip to this not quite a panto but based on a panto. I was worried that it wouldn’t be as funny as it was the first time, but I shouldn’t have. It’s still side achingly funny in the first half and when it takes a turn in the second it brings it all back around in true panto style.

Heres the trailer for the TV version of Peter Pan Goes Wrong on YouTube- although I think the TV version doesn’t do the theatre experience justice.If it’s coming to your local theatre, and you like comedy based on physical humour, then this might be your thing. I think if you’ve seen and enjoyed shows like Noises Off then it will work for you.

And then on Thursday night we were at my local for Yipee Kay Yay – which is a one-man retelling of the classic Christmas movie Die Hard. I would suggest having seen the film before you go – we did a refresher the week before to make sure we were ready for it, but I think Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber is nearly well known enough that you’ll get some laughs out of it even if you haven’t. I bought the tickets for Him Indoors for Christmas because he loves a cheesy action movie and he laughed consistently the whole way though (so did I). I asked him to sum it up for you all and his response was: “one very enthusiastic man’s poetic take on the Die Hard movie and how it’s affected his life”. In case that doesn’t make any sense, here’s the 30 second trailer!

Now I’ll admit this is harder to see than Peter Pan Goes Wrong, unless you’re reading this in Oxford on Sunday or live in Adelaide – because it’s going to the festival there in March. But it was a hoot and he said at the end that word of mouth was important- so it’s the least I can do. Here’s the Website in case they add more dates.

Peter Pan Goes Wrong has a week left in the West End, then it’s touring til April. Here’s their website to check if it’s coming to you.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

tv

Not a Book: Mad About the Boy

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Having seen two productions of Private Lives in 2023, I thought I’d start 2024’s NOt a Book selections by flagging a documentary I watched over Christmas about the play’s author, Noel Coward.

This is a ninety minute journey through Noel Coward’s life, mostly told in his own words. This is largely told in his own words – through clips from TV appearances and home movies, with extracts from his writings read by Rupert Everett and the whole thing narrated by Alan Cumming.

I’m a pretty big theatre-goer (as you probably know by now!) and so I’m fairly aware of the impact that Noel Coward had on the theatre – I’ve seen Private Lives live four times now (in three different productions), Blithe Spirit twice and Hay Fever as well. I probably should have seen more, but historically I went to musicals more than plays, and plays also used to be harder to get cheap tickets to (although that is now improving/changing). Even if you’ve never seen his work, you may have a distinct image of him in your head -smoking a cigarette and wearing a dressing gown and talking in a very clipped upper class British accent. And you’ll hear Coward referred to as “a witty raconteur” – which can often mean “humour may not translate”. But actually when I was watching this I found him genuinely funny and his life is actually fascinating – his childhood in poverty, building a theatre career, being gay in a time when it was illegal – but not exactly hiding it either, and then when his plays fell out of favour, reinventing himself on the cabaret circuit.

If you already know about Coward, I’m not sure that there’s going to be a lot here that you don’t already know, but for the rest of us – who don’t want to wade through three volumes of autobiography or try to figure out which is the right biography to go for this might do the trick – we certainly enjoyed it while we were watching it – and I spent more time paying attention to the screen than reading my book, which is not always the case!

If you’re in the UK, it’s being repeated in the early hours of the 11th, and you can watch it on iPlayer for the next 11 months.

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Not a Book: Only Murders in the Building

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Happy Sunday everyone, I’m back again with my latest binge watch, this time brought to you thanks to three months free Disney+ from my mobile phone provider!

So in case you’ve missed it, the set up here is that three strangers living in the same New York apartment building discover a shared interest in true crime after another resident of the building is found murdered. And as they investigate the murder together, the launch their own true crime podcast about it called… Only Murders in the Building. Oh and it’s a comedy. Steve Martin is Charles-Hayden Savage, star of a 90s crime drama but currently struggling for work, Martin’s long time friend and sometime collaborator Martin Short plays Oliver Putnam, a washed up theatre director and Selena Gomez is Mabel Mora, an artist living in her aunt’s unit in the Arconia.

At the end of each season, someone new gets murdered – and that case will be the subject of the next season – with Charles, Oliver and Mabel implicated in some sort of way in the crime. And I’m really trying not to say too much about the rest of the plot, because all the season build on each other and I don’t want to spoil anything. The episodes are all sitcom length (aka about 26-28 minutes, an American TV half hour) and it’s incredibly easy to binge. I think we did all of season one and two across about 4 (weekend) nights, and then waited a few weeks for all the season three episodes to be released before we binged that one – again across only a couple of nights. I know it sounds a bit weird to have a comedy series about murders, but it really works – and if you’ve listened to any true crime podcasts there are plenty of jokes here about them too – especially in season two.

Despite my caution above about spoilers, I’ve put the trailers for all three series in here (and I don’t think they’re going to ruin anything), because I think it’s fun to see how the show has developed – and how the guest stars have got bigger and bigger. At the start, aside from the main trio it’s faces you might recognise from TV but who have been bigger stars on stage (or at least they have if you know your Broadway) but by series three we have Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd (and not just as cameos) as well as Matthew Broderick (to complete original The Producers Broadway duo as Nathan Lane was in series one) and Jesse Williams – who did twelve years on Greys Anatomy and did a Tony nominated turn on Broadway in 2022 too, just to complete all the theatre links. And there are a lot of theatre links here. I started looking at how many people in the cast had won or been nominated for Tony Awards and it’s insane. Along with Short, Lane and Broderick who all have at least one, I counted at least 8 other Tony nominees or winners in the cast across the three seasons.

It’s been renewed for season four, but given that we’ve just had an actor and writers strike, who knows whether it will actually appear in autumn 2024 or whether we’ll have to wait a bit longer. It’s getting its US TV debut (on ABC) in the new years, so I guess it may come to UK TV at some point too – although it hasn’t so far. But if you happen to have a Disney+ subscription (or someone gives you one for Christmas) this is a really fun way to spend about 15 hours…

Have a great Sunday everyone.