Red Dead Redemption 2 has sucked me in. I’m a recent re-convert to console gaming. In my 20s I had an X-box and played Halo and Rock Band (see this post here for rocking-out awesomeness and me with hair) with friends round at my house with pizza and beers. Then I entered my 30s, coupled up, and the gaming largely stopped. A year ago I bought an X-Box wanting to play The Last of Us, the zombie epic. I played a little, but struggled with the 1st person controls and couldn’t kill the zombies. I also bought The Witcher, but …
Doctor Who series 11 episode 5 – Demons in the Punjab review
I’ve seen some reviewers charging that Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who is too fluffy and doesn’t engage with weighty issues. When I read that, I can’t help but scoff. What on Earth are they talking about? Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor Who is absolutely a Social Justice Warrior of the very best, foremost class. Thus far she has taken on the very real issues of: Racism and Jim Crow in the Rosa Parks era – as well as in the far future The evils and stupidity of guns The terrible cost of fascist dictatorships (destroying whole worlds) The very fact that she is …
Doctor Who series 11 episode 4 – Arachnids in the UK review
After the intense social commentary and emotional social justice warrior-ing of episode 3 Rosa Parks, Chris Chibnall’s Doctor Who goes for a simple ‘monster of the week’ episode – in this case, spiders. But this new Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) can’t leave PC politicking well enough alone. It’s everywhere you look, and I admire that enormously. The episode begins with the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham arriving back in Sheffield, and facing their imminent dissolution. The Doctor is about to go off on her own, the others back to their lives. It’s quite a sad moment, because sure, the Doctor leads …
Re-evaluating Peep Show – is it misogynistic?
I have always loved Peep Show – the story of two lovable uber-losers Mark and Jeremy (Jezz) living in a flatshare in Croydon, struggling to make their way in the world today. The humor is almost entirely built on their pathetic, small-minded pettiness, often combined with their very English sense of embarrassment. It’s done knowingly, of course. I always wanted to cheer these affable sadsacks, even as you wince along with them. For example, Mark accidentally kills a person’s dog – but can’t ppossibly admit to that. He tries to dispose of the body by burning it, but fails. He …
Doctor Who series 11 episode 3 – Rosa Parks review
Last night’s episode of Dr. Who, in which the Dr. and her merry band went back in time to meet and protect Rosa Parks from a time-traveling rogue white supremacist from the future, absolutely shattered TV boundaries and thoroughly nailed its unabashed, bold, and beautiful progressive colors to the mast. Image: BBC It blew my head off completely. I feel like I’ve never seen anything like this on TV before, and certainly not within the world of Dr.Who. Where before it was always frivolous, empty, frothy escapades with a pointlessly manic Doctor, whizz-popping like LSD balls in a tombola through …
Stephen King’s The Outsider is not good :(
I have always had an up-down reader relationship with Stephen King. His best book in my view (and I have not read many of his classics, so they’re not in the running here), is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. His worst was, hmm, maybe the Outsider? I liked much of Needful Things, and much of The Stand, and maybe Mr. Mercedes too though I have no real memory of it, but I didn’t get the appeal of The Dark Tower. I realize the following criticism is going to annoy King fans, so to speak to that: King is obviously …
Doctor Who series 11 episode 2 – The Ghost Monument review
I am loving the new series of Dr. Who. Embedded in the stories, characters and setting so far are deep, meaningful comments on our current world from an unapologetic, muscular kind of liberalism. When one character suggests using a gun, the Doctor rounds on that unequivocally. That is a bad idea. It’s stupid. We have to use our brains. And because the show is bending to her will, the attempt to use a gun goes incredibly badly. It’s humiliating. And so it should be. In England we think guns are bad. People shouldn’t have them. We are right in this …
First Man – movie review
One of my favorite movies is Interstellar by Christopher Nolan. There are some moments in this space-faring movie where the threat of imminent death combines with the genius of human scientific endeavor along with one human’s will to survive that fill me with a riot of glorious, awe-inspiring emotions. I’m thinking primarily of the moment where they have to pull their main ship out of a spiraling death spin through an insane docking maneuver. Phew. That whole extended sequence is insane. Stressful and hopeful in equal measure, with soaring music that keeps on ratcheting the tension and stakes to deliver …
Ha ha OF COURSE Walking Dead s8 mid-season finale was terrible, but…
Ha ha ha – of course the Walking Dead season 8 mid-season finale ‘How It’s Gotta Be’ was terrible!! It is not even interesting to talk about the bad things in it because they are basically all of it! So now I am going to pick out the good things: ? – When the trash heap wankers scuttled away at the first sign of trouble. Yes! F off back to the shitheap you came from, and stay there until Rick comes round (again) to kill your stupid spiked walker. Like a goddamn metronome… ? – When Carl listened to the …
Walking Dead season 8 premiere review – ugh!
Saw Walking Dead season 8 premiere. Ugh. ? SPOILERS ? I didn’t like it. The old feeling that they were just barely scraping by, and surviving by the skin of their teeth, has been long gone. Seems they just take actions in a vacuum now. It was damn easy to take out those watchmen. Why not do it earlier? It was damn easy to roll up to Negan’s gates with an army, and he didn’t even know what was happening? Why did he not have a garrison at each of those settlements, watching over them? He has dudes in the …