Category: [Films & TV]

The 2000… well, 100 Year Old Man

He made it too!

It was a joy to see David Attenborough make it to his century, and I’m equally delighted to see Mel Brooks also make it to his. From the article:

In his youth, Brooks’ preferred method of making a noise was playing the drums and he was actually taught the instrument by Buddy Rich. Neither could possibly have known at the time that they would both go on to have seismic effects on the two great American artforms: comedy and jazz. That youth, like so many others, was interrupted by Adolf Hitler. The teenage Brooks joined the army and participated in the Battle of the Bulge. If one is looking to understand the artist’s fearlessness or his utter commitment to mocking Nazis for the remainder of his days, those war years provide ample explanation. It may also explain his assertion that “comedy is the opposite of death”. […]
He is the son of immigrants who fought the Nazis and ultimately triumphed in every area of showbusiness. He is the American dream made flesh. Brooks might not live to be 2,000, but 100 years looked equally implausible when he served in the 78th Infantry division. When asked the secret to a long life after a screening of Blazing Saddles I attended in London years ago, this icon of American entertainment offered some sage advice he has evidently lived by: “Don’t die.”

Eminently good advice that Mel has clearly taken seriously. Happy 100th, sir.

The greatest shitshow in the galaxy

I’ve seen rumours about the Doctor Who xmas episode being canned, and… yeah, evidently it has been.

The corporation announced last year that there would be a festive special in 2026, but confirmed on Wednesday that it will no longer proceed.
Instead, the broadcaster is inviting production companies to put themselves forward to help co-produce the next series.
Showrunner Russell T Davies also confirmed he will leave the long-running programme, writing on Instagram that it is “goodbye from me but hello to a big new future for the show”.
Referring to the announcement of the Christmas special, he explained: “We only cooked that up to guarantee a future when no one knew what would happen, but now we do know, there’s no need for it.
“You’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Doctor Who… but you’ll be waiting for more Doctor Who than a one-off. So it’s worth it!
“For the record: there was no script, I never wrote it, and no actor was ever approached to play the next Doctor.”

So there never even was a Xmas episode? Am I reading that right? Did the production team have so little idea of what they were doing in Ncuti’s era? One day there will be books about the production history of 21st century Who and they will be damning reading, especially the last few years.

On Wednesday, the BBC gave more details of Doctor Who’s next era and said it had collectively decided, along with Davies and Bad Wolf, not to go ahead with the planned Christmas episode.
“This decision was not taken lightly, and we know it will be disappointing for fans,” the corporation said.

Bullshit, the FANS will fucking LOVE this. No more Rusty, no Billie Piper as the Doctor, and quite possibly no more show that they purport to love (despite the BBC’s insistence that it’s looking for co-producers for future series). They would miss being able to piss and moan about it, but they’d get over it and find something else to complain about. Fucking FANS.

RIP “George”

The Italian film industry has lost one of its wildest facial expressions with the passing of George Eastman at the age of 83.

The actor, writer, and (on a couple of occasions) director formerly known as Luigi Montefiori actually did have some contact with “respectable” cinema like Fellini’s Satyricon and even a couple of Hollywood roles, but he was a lot better known for his work at the lower end of the Italian film industry, especially with Joe D’Amato; you can see him above in D’Amato’s Anthropophagus (1980) which he also wrote, but he also did some of Joe’s early skinflicks including Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust. I have seen the former and it convinced me not to go in search of the latter; it’s possibly the only film I’ve seen where I was actually kind of happy that I got the cut version…

Saving Private Somebody or Other

Michael Bay To Direct True Story On Largest Rescue Mission In American History To Save Two Downed Pilots In Iran

You know… that rescue where they’ve never actually named the guys they rescued, or proved that they even exist? That one. That true story.

Sources tell Deadline that Bay is developing a feature film chronicling the extraordinary heroism of the two U.S. airmen rescued after their F-15E Strike Eagle was downed during Operation Epic Fury. The film will be based on the upcoming book by Mitchell Zuckoff, which HarperCollins will publish in 2027.
In early April, a month after Operation Epic Fury began, the U.S. military launched a massive, successful rescue operation in the Zagros Mountains of Iran after the jet was shot down. The daring extraction successfully recovered the pilot as well as the weapons system officer from hostile forces behind enemy lines. The mission made global headlines and caught Bay’s eye as he was deciding what might be the next thing he directs. Bay most recently directed Ambulance for Universal and has a production deal with the studio, making it the obvious choice for the package once he was on board.
The film will reunite Bay with producers Scott Gardenhour and Erwin Stoff, who all collaborated on another true war story, 13 Hours: The Secret Solders of Benhazi. Bay, Stoff and Gardenhour will produce the new pic.
Bay has spent nearly three decades collaborating with the U.S. military and law enforcement on films including The Rock, Bad Boys and Armageddon. Most notably on titles including Pearl Harbor, Transformers and 13 Hours, military leadership provided immense logistical support, equipment and personnel to ensure accurate portrayals of the U.S. Armed Forces.
When reached by Deadline for comment, Bay said: “I’ve had an amazing partnership over my 30-year career working with the Department of War and amazing U.S. military members. In my film 13 Hours, no rescue force answered the call for help. This film is about everyone who answered the call in one of the most complex, intricate and high-stakes operations in recent history. It celebrates the true heroism and unwavering dedication of our service members.”

In other words, it looks like a retread of Black Hawk Down, which was a transparent attempt to rewrite the debacle of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, with some exceptions: Operation Gothic Serpent (the actual official name of the Somalia event) was a far cooler name than Operation Epic Fury; the Iran debacle isn’t actually over yet; the people that BHD was about verifiably existed; and this is going to be absolutely and overtly government propaganda. The real executive producers of this thing are going to be Pete Hegseth and Mushroom Cock. Maybe they can give cameos or something to the “real” airmen.

O fuckwit, why art thou?

I have no idea if Christopher Nolan’s film of the Odyssey is any good or not (obviously, cos no one’s seen the thing yet) but it’s already pissing off the right people:

Elon Musk is facing backlash after he went on another online crusade against Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated forthcoming film The Odyssey.
Nolan confirmed in a recent interview that Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o will play dual roles as both Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra in his adaptation of Homer’s epic, slated for a July release.
The casting news sparked swarms of racially charged and misogynistic posts directed at the 12 Years a Slave star, with many people pointing out that Helen of Troy was renowned in Greek mythology as the most beautiful woman in the world.
Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh claimed in an unfounded X post that “not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world,’” and added, “Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave ‘the most beautiful woman’ role to a white woman. Nolan is technically talented but a coward. Too afraid to do anything that even slightly challenges the spirit of the age.”
Musk, 54, responded to the post by simply saying: “True.”

I do find it a little odd that this article (and, to be sure, others on the theme) picks up on Edolf reposting Malsh Walsh being a racist rather than Malsh himself, but I suppose more people know who Edolf is… they’re also not happy about Elliot Page being in the film, apparently as the ghost of Achilles, because there’s no transgender people in classical mythology so there shouldn’t be any in films about classical myths either… But, obviously the point is that the story of the Odyssey IS a myth, and they’re getting worked up about people who never existed in the first place. Odysseus moves through a literal world of gods and monsters; the Cyclopes, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens, the Laestrygonians, Circe transforming his crew into pigs, Calypso, Zeus, Aeolus, Athena, all of that is apparently fine for these shitheads… and instead for them the most unbelievable thing about this film is that a white character—who, again, never existed—could be played by a black woman. I can’t help but feel that if Nolan had cast a brown-eyed white brunette, Malsh and Tim Polio and Edolf and all these other cunts would have no problem with her not matching the traditional description of Helen either…

EDIT Friday afternoon:

Attenhundred

He made it!

David Attenborough has made it to his century. I’ve always believed that if you manage to make it to your 90s then you kind of deserve to make it to your 100s as well, but obviously once you do make it to 90s the chances of you then making to 100 become a lot narrower. So I think a lot of us have worried about Sir Dave in recent times not making it, with the world being what it is that would’ve been hard to take. But here we are, he’s racked up his century, and though the world is still what it is, that’s a point of light worth being happy about.

Mind you, standing that close to an erupting volcano doesn’t necessarily help your chances… I mean, I watched that clip and he said they weren’t in any danger, but still. I got that picture from this Guardian piece, which offers a useful reminder that, on top of his own productions, Attenborough was controller of BBC2 (and later director of programmes for both BBC TV channels), in which capacity he introduced colour TV to the UK and commissioned shows like Monty Python’s Flying Circus; it also offers the interesting trivia that his first actual on-screen appearance was a game show in 1953. But the ABC article linked at the top offers an even better story of how he initially tried to get into radio but failed:

Then, someone else from the BBC called and asked if he was interested in a television role:
“I had to confess that I hadn’t actually seen much television. I had once watched a television play in my wife’s parents’ house, but they were the only people I knew with a set, and I certainly had not got one myself.”
Sir David took a chance, quit his job and underwent a three-month BBC traineeship with no guarantee of employment at the end.

Clearly he did something right. Happy hundredth, Sir David.

Bullshitfront?

Australian director Phillip Noyce shoots feature film for Saudi Arabia celebrating ‘heroism of security men in combating drugs’

The acclaimed Australian film-maker Phillip Noyce is being paid by the Saudi regime to make a feature film portraying the repressive state’s narcotics officers as heroes.
The Watchful Eyes, based on a real Saudi ministry of interior narcotics case, is billed as a dramatic depiction of the “heroism of security men in combating drugs”.
Saudi authorities executed 356 people last year, including 243 for drug-related cases, and analysts say an increase in the kingdom’s execution rate is largely due to its “war on drugs”.
Noyce has enjoyed a decades-long career with directing credits including the 1970s classic Newsfront, Dead Calm, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Bone Collector. […]
Noyce said he had accepted the job “for the challenge of working outside my comfort zone” and for the opportunity “to investigate a previously closed society” but did not address specific questions about the ethics of making a film paid for by the Saudi regime.
Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the Saudi government used its huge investments in sport and entertainment as part of a strategy to whitewash its human rights record.
“Given the subject matter of this film from what’s publicly available, combined with the reality of the rights abuses that have been so inextricably linked with this new war on drugs by the Saudi government, it’s really, really disturbing the role that these narratives may play in covering up the reality of these executions that have just been served the last few years,” Shea said.

Yeah, this looks like the same sort of bullshit as the Riyadh Comedy Festival, and I’m as disappointed in Noyce as I was in some of the people who did thar. Noyce himself doesn’t seem overly hyped about his own work:

Noyce described The Watchful Eyes as “a low-budget kidnapping thriller”.
“Gritty and raw and shot entirely in Arabic, I don’t think the movie will attract any tourists to Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Asked about the country’s human rights record and executions for drug offences, Noyce said: “I guess the story could be edited to send an anti-drug message, but the story I shot was told from the highly emotional point of view of the lead detective in the hunt for a missing child.
“Surprisingly, Sela never once interfered from a creative point of view.”

Probably not, cos I imagine they wouldn’t have needed to; they would’ve made sure they had all the creative control right from the beginning. And if Sela weren’t doing that, someone in government/the royal family would’ve been. I know that in real terms there’s been any number of Hollywood films over the decades that have performed the same function, but they don’t seem as bad as this does…

Scum and villainy

As a not exactly mega fan of Star Wars, I have always found Star Wars Day kind of irritating…

I made this a few years ago in “protest”

…but tonight I have discovered something interesting:

Oh?

OH.

Apparently this is something that’s always been known about, in that there was a making of book about Empire Strikes Back and this was recorded in that (albeit with slightly incorrect details), but, because I am me, I am only finding out about it now forty-seven years later. I wonder how much this influenced the later popularity of the phrase. Either way, though, I now have an actually good reason to be irritated by May the Fourth…

Age shall weary them… or me, at least

ARGH. I have the famous-ish 1913 recording of Beethoven’s 5th symphony by Arthur Nikisch, and have more than once pondered the way it now sits closer in time to the premiere of that symphony in 1808 than it does to us now. 105 years between the premiere and the recording, 113 years between the recording and us in 2026 (the latter number, of course, can only ever get bigger), and I always find that kind of head-spinning to contemplate. But something about this makes me feel even older… 92 years between the book and the film, 116 (and rising) between the film and us. Oh my aching bones. And then he further noted it was closer in time to Mary Shelley’s birth in 1797 than it is to us and oh my even more aching bones…

And then someone else noted:

Oh NO. There are, of course, multiple arguable points for the beginnings on cinema, but for the purposes of this discussion let’s say it was 1893 when Edison first publicly exbibited his… er, mostly W.K.L. Dickson’s experiments. That’s… 117 years from the declaration to the Brooklyn Institute showing and 133 (and rising) from the latter to ourselves. My bones are no longer aching, having disintegrated into a fine powder from the age of it all. If you need me, I’ll be somewhere among the rest of the dust in this room…