Silent Runner

I watched Shark Bait last night. A better than expected 'pretty people vs. shark' film that plays out like all of these films do. 5 teenagers steal jet-skis and sail them out to sea. They crash the boats and are stranded miles out from shore - then the shark turns up. Some good gore and decent tension make this a bit better than the usual entries in this genre. 3/5 for shark film fans. 1.5/5 for everyone else.

This season has been hit after hit. I thought the new one was great. A clever idea (a little bit similar to the Me-Seeks maybe) that played out nicely.

Speak no Evil is definitely for you.

Haha - fair question.

Seeing that Lewandowski touch for their goal in person was worth the night I'd say.

There's a season 2 part 2 (or tranche 2 as Alan calls it) coming - another 11 episodes. Alan suggests you might need to spend another credit it to get it though. Finished this up over the weekend and really enjoyed it. The strongest episodes were the first ones and there weren't many laughs in the later episodes but it's all Alan. The pot-holing and wild-swimming chapters were the funniest.

Saw Bodies, Bodies, Bodies today - a group of annoying zoomers (and Lee Pace for some reason) are trapped in a house during a thunder storm and one by one they're killed off. This was pretty good. It balances the violence and comedy nicely. And the characters are all very annoying so when they start getting murdered it's a lot of fun. It's well shot, there's a great soundtrack and there's enough mystery to keep it interesting. Probably not worth a trip to the cinema but this was a good effort. 3.5/5

All the video game stuff was really well done. Mortys pathetic Interstellar video-message was so funny. I loving that they've pretty much dumped the meta-verse stuff (up to a point) and are concentrating on smaller plots this season.

Watched a new film tonight, Do Revenge. It's about a popular high school girl who loses her status at the top of the food-chain after a sex tape leaks. So she teams up with a new girl in school to get revenge on everyone responsible - a teenage version of Stranger on a Train. It's a swing at the Mean Girls/Heaters high school revenge genre, and I had a really fun time with it. Camila Mendes is the lead and she's great - proper funny and able to do serious when it's needed. It's nice to see her get a proper gig after Riverdale. The rest of the cast are fine and there's some fun cameos - unfortunately you can see that sometimes the actors aren't in the same room as each other so it comes over a bit cheap. I don't know if that's a Netflix thing but I can't remember seeing it in films on other services. It's has a great DayGlo aesthetic with the contrast turned right up and the outfits are fab. There's a very good soundtrack, except for the denouement they use a Fatboy Slim song that really doesn't work. It probably overstays its welcome but I dug it. 3.75/5

Oasthouse 2 in two days.

Might be worth a visit to https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ to see what triggering stuff happens. There are spoilers on that page though.

That second goal was pure class. The ball in from Xhaka and the header were superb. Very impressed after 30 minutes.

Yeah, Speak No Evil was something. Pure tension all the way through then a nightmare ending. I felt like there was a lot of Dutch/Danish-relations themes and references that I didn't get but that didn't take away from the experience. Recommended for sure if you want to feel bad. Skip the trailer.

😲 - bit harsh!

Lidls version of Ben and Jerrys 'Phish Food' is pretty much identical to the original. It's called 'Fantastic Fish'.

A Serious Man https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019452/ Larry Gopnik, a Midwestern physics teacher, watches his life unravel over multiple sudden incidents. Though seeking meaning and answers amidst his turmoils, he seems to keep sinking. I'm making my way through a few Coen Brothers films I've never seen, this was the one I watched last night. It's set in some bland part of America in the 60's I think. And follows Michael Stuhlbarg as his normal life starts falling apart - slowly at first, then all at once. I found this a little hard to get into but once I got into the rhythm of it I was fully hooked. It's a series of set backs and inconveniences for a regular guy who keeps going and never surrenders to self pity - his wife leaves him, his brother is a deadbeat, his children are disappointments and his career is at risk. The cast are all excellent. Stuhlbarg plays it dead straight, you feel real sympathy for Larry but you never pity him. There's a load of familiar faces - Richard Kind, Fred Melamed - who put in great turns. It looks great, filmed by Roger Deakins, and despite it's fairly banal setting it has a weird, trippy atmosphere and tone all the way through. Top tier Coen Bros. for sure. 5/5

Yeah, that was quality. Reminded me of some of the early season episodes that got built around a solid sci-fi concept. The Die Hard bits were great too.

Even the cheapest air-fryer will make really good chips from frozen - nice and crispy. One of the best things about air-fryers is when you wake up with a bit of a hangover and remember you have a bag of frozen hash browns in the freezer. Chuck a few in the fryer and while they cook you can get on with the rest of breakfast. 15 minutes later you're eating them.

Ornstein says he's gone. Wins the Champions League then binned a season and bit later. Tough business.

Celtic should be ahead for sure but Madrid were playing a bit at the end of the half. Benzema going off is good news for Celtic in the 2nd half.

Looking forward to getting stuck into Fairy Tale this weekend, got a few other things to finish off first. Good article in Esquire today ranking all his books. There's some placings I'd have an issue with, no way does 11/22/63 belong in the top 5, but it's a fun article. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g41054461/best-stephen-king-books-ranked/

Pretty Little Liars - Season 1 I've watched a few heavy shows recently so I wanted something a bit trashy I could zone out to. I'm not sure what I was expecting with this but it's deeply strange. It's about a group of 5 teenage friends. On Halloween night one of them goes missing and a year later her body is discovered. Her friends are kind of suspects but the cops seem to make no efforts to solve the murder. At the same time they start getting text messages from an unknown harasser threatening to expose all their secrets. This is legit one of the weirdest mainstream shows I've watched. The acting from some of the cast (not the PLLs, they're all great) is the worst I've ever seen - proper school-play level stuff. There's a plot where a teacher dates one of the PLLs, I think she's meant to be 16 and he's 25 or something, and it's played off as romantic instead of deeply creepy and predatory. Characters get dropped and never mentioned again, some stories just disappear and the whole thing is played dead straight. But it's very watchable and as Danial Craig said in Knives Out 'It makes no damn sense - compels me though'. 120+ episodes to go. 3.5/5 Netflix

The Fallout https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11847410/ High schooler Vada navigates the emotional fallout she experiences in the wake of a school tragedy. Relationships with her family, friends and view of the world are forever altered. This follows a teenage girl who survives a shooting at her school. Before the attack she was a happy, bright student but finds it difficult to go back to her previous life. I thought this was excellent and for a directors first feature it was very impressive. Jenna Ortega (X, Scream and Wednesday Adams) is so good as the survivor who finds herself trying to please parents, friends and therapists. It has a hypnotic, woozy atmosphere and plays like an episode of Euphoria directed by Sophia Coppola. There's a great, low-key Finneas soundtrack and it's in and out in 90 minutes. 4/5

🥴 I loved Orphan FK. Proper Malignant vibes.

Lanaaaaaaaaa. First episode of the new season is out and it’s very good.