Monthly culture: December 2021
Friday, January 7th, 2022 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tamaranth04DEC21: Under Milk Wood (Dylan Thomas, Sian Owen) -- NT At Home
Dylan Thomas' poem with a framing narrative, featuring National Treasure Michael Sheen. I found the framing narrative -- Alzheimers / dementia patients in a care home, confused about the present but brightening as they meander through memories -- quite emotionally challenging, but thought it worked very well to contextualise the past depicted by the poem, and the vividness of memory. Wonderful soundscapes, for instance the fade-in of the dawn chorus. Thomas' lines are so majestic and Sheen gives them beautifully. I had forgotten the cat-cannibalism though...
09DEC21: Single All the Way (Mayer, 2021) -- Netflix
Gay Christmas romcom, featuring some classic tropes: fake relationship! only one bed! blind date! wearing only a towel! surprise plumber! And, of course, friends-to-lovers ... There was a fabulous ensemble cast (though of course nobody I recognised): especially impressed by the scheming teenage nieces, who need their own sitcom ASAP. New England in the snow, caring if clueless family (they are 100% accepting of Peter's homosexuality, and extend a warm welcome to his friend Nick who is an orphan and thus in need of a family Christmas -- a nice found-family variant), and a sub-plot about a Christmas pageant run by flamboyant Aunt Sandy. Super-festive, mixed-race couple, basic niceness all round and really very cheerful.
16DEC21: tick, tick... BOOM! (Miranda, 2021) -- Netflix
Curiously depressing biopic based on an autobiographical stage show by Jonathan Larson, composer of Rent. Andrew Garfield is brilliant as Larson, who does not come across as especially likeable: he sidelines his girlfriend, his best friend (who is diagnosed with HIV: this is New York in the early 1980s ...) and pretty much everyone else who gets in the way of his Art.
Featuring the actual voice of actual Stephen Sondheim, in an answerphone message.
17DEC21: Spiderman: No Way Home (Watts, 2021) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I liked it very much indeed (the Sorcerer Supreme! the scaffolding around the Statue of Liberty! the sheer kindness of Peter's treatment of alternate-universe villains!) I cried at one point, as I suspect did many. But for much of the film I was growing increasingly uncomfortable because we were mid-row in an unexpectedly crowded cinema (lunchtime showing, hadn't realised it was last day of skool term). Would love to see again with plague-related (and, to be fair, stomach-related) stress.
18DEC21: Rockets and Blue Lights (Winsome Pinnock) -- NT at Home
Two entwined stories: in the present day, a young actress is trying to get to grips with her role in a film about the artist J M W Turner; in the 19th century, a Black sailor and his lover deal with freedom, and J M W Turner.
There was perhaps too much going on in this play: too many threads, too much to resolve. But it was beautifully staged, the music was great, and the sense of the past intruding / encroaching on the present was palpable.
28DEC21: Last Train to Christmas (Kemp, 2021)
Billed as Christmas time-travel comedy drama (starring, again, National Treasure Michael Sheen) but I did not find it especially amusing. It brought back horrid memories of my annual Christmas train journeys to Plymouth before my father died.
The premise is that our 'hero', Tony Towers -- who starts as a successful nightclub entrepreneur -- travels in time when he moves between carriages. Sometimes, when he travels forward, it isn't to the same future that he left. Sometimes, when he travels back, he tries to change things for the better.
An interesting film -- not least for the changes in colour tones and video quality -- but the alternate realities made for very patchy continuity. Yes, the same family members, friends and lovers kept appearing, but their stories had changed too. I did find the depictions of journeys in the 1970s and 1980s amusingly nostalgic (Escape from Colditz! Travellers Fare! Tammy!) but Tony's desperate attempts to improve his own life and that of his brother Roger (a fabulous Cary Elwes) were not at all cheering.
Light relief was provided by our film group's railway expert, who pointed out such details as 'they're in Germany now, that's a German train', and 'Kettering trains didn't go to Nottingham Victoria'. Actually, this genuinely helped a lot.
29DEC21: Happiest Season (DuVall, 2020)
Another gay Christmas rom-com, with almost the opposite plot to Single all the Way. Abby (Kristen Stewart, cheerful and comic) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) have been dating almost a year, but en route to Harper's family Christmas Abby learns that when Harper told her about coming out to her family and everyone being excited to meet Abby, this was a whopping fib, and Abby is going to have to pretend to be Just A Friend.
"Flee! Fleeeeee!" we chorussed.
Matters do not improve with the addition of Harper's ultra-toxic family, Harper's manly ex Connor (her womanly ex, Riley -- a slinky Aubrey Plaza -- makes eyes at Abby), and Harper's horrible niece and nephew who frame Abby for theft.
Luckily help is at hand! It is Abby's best friend John (Dan Levy).
Sadly, everything comes 'right' in the end, and Harper is honest with her family, and the rest of her family are honest with each other, and reconciliation, and I still think Abby should have run off with Riley rather than stick with a woman who would throw her under the family bus without any 'we're in this together' vibe.
30DEC21: The Lady in the Van (Hytner, 2015) -- Netflix
Young playwright in 1970s Camden unwillingly befriends cantankerous old woman who parks her van on his driveway. Alan Bennett (for it is he) has many conversations with himself, also with social workers and neighbours, and of course with the lady in the van. Compare and contrast his relationship with two women: the aforementioned lady (who really is, or was, a lady despite her current situation) and his mother. Melancholy, and comic only in the sense that people are so very easily satirised. Did not cheer me.
Dylan Thomas' poem with a framing narrative, featuring National Treasure Michael Sheen. I found the framing narrative -- Alzheimers / dementia patients in a care home, confused about the present but brightening as they meander through memories -- quite emotionally challenging, but thought it worked very well to contextualise the past depicted by the poem, and the vividness of memory. Wonderful soundscapes, for instance the fade-in of the dawn chorus. Thomas' lines are so majestic and Sheen gives them beautifully. I had forgotten the cat-cannibalism though...
09DEC21: Single All the Way (Mayer, 2021) -- Netflix
Gay Christmas romcom, featuring some classic tropes: fake relationship! only one bed! blind date! wearing only a towel! surprise plumber! And, of course, friends-to-lovers ... There was a fabulous ensemble cast (though of course nobody I recognised): especially impressed by the scheming teenage nieces, who need their own sitcom ASAP. New England in the snow, caring if clueless family (they are 100% accepting of Peter's homosexuality, and extend a warm welcome to his friend Nick who is an orphan and thus in need of a family Christmas -- a nice found-family variant), and a sub-plot about a Christmas pageant run by flamboyant Aunt Sandy. Super-festive, mixed-race couple, basic niceness all round and really very cheerful.
16DEC21: tick, tick... BOOM! (Miranda, 2021) -- Netflix
Curiously depressing biopic based on an autobiographical stage show by Jonathan Larson, composer of Rent. Andrew Garfield is brilliant as Larson, who does not come across as especially likeable: he sidelines his girlfriend, his best friend (who is diagnosed with HIV: this is New York in the early 1980s ...) and pretty much everyone else who gets in the way of his Art.
Featuring the actual voice of actual Stephen Sondheim, in an answerphone message.
17DEC21: Spiderman: No Way Home (Watts, 2021) -- Greenwich PictureHouse
I liked it very much indeed (the Sorcerer Supreme! the scaffolding around the Statue of Liberty! the sheer kindness of Peter's treatment of alternate-universe villains!) I cried at one point, as I suspect did many. But for much of the film I was growing increasingly uncomfortable because we were mid-row in an unexpectedly crowded cinema (lunchtime showing, hadn't realised it was last day of skool term). Would love to see again with plague-related (and, to be fair, stomach-related) stress.
18DEC21: Rockets and Blue Lights (Winsome Pinnock) -- NT at Home
Two entwined stories: in the present day, a young actress is trying to get to grips with her role in a film about the artist J M W Turner; in the 19th century, a Black sailor and his lover deal with freedom, and J M W Turner.
There was perhaps too much going on in this play: too many threads, too much to resolve. But it was beautifully staged, the music was great, and the sense of the past intruding / encroaching on the present was palpable.
28DEC21: Last Train to Christmas (Kemp, 2021)
Billed as Christmas time-travel comedy drama (starring, again, National Treasure Michael Sheen) but I did not find it especially amusing. It brought back horrid memories of my annual Christmas train journeys to Plymouth before my father died.
The premise is that our 'hero', Tony Towers -- who starts as a successful nightclub entrepreneur -- travels in time when he moves between carriages. Sometimes, when he travels forward, it isn't to the same future that he left. Sometimes, when he travels back, he tries to change things for the better.
An interesting film -- not least for the changes in colour tones and video quality -- but the alternate realities made for very patchy continuity. Yes, the same family members, friends and lovers kept appearing, but their stories had changed too. I did find the depictions of journeys in the 1970s and 1980s amusingly nostalgic (Escape from Colditz! Travellers Fare! Tammy!) but Tony's desperate attempts to improve his own life and that of his brother Roger (a fabulous Cary Elwes) were not at all cheering.
Light relief was provided by our film group's railway expert, who pointed out such details as 'they're in Germany now, that's a German train', and 'Kettering trains didn't go to Nottingham Victoria'. Actually, this genuinely helped a lot.
29DEC21: Happiest Season (DuVall, 2020)
Another gay Christmas rom-com, with almost the opposite plot to Single all the Way. Abby (Kristen Stewart, cheerful and comic) and Harper (Mackenzie Davis) have been dating almost a year, but en route to Harper's family Christmas Abby learns that when Harper told her about coming out to her family and everyone being excited to meet Abby, this was a whopping fib, and Abby is going to have to pretend to be Just A Friend.
"Flee! Fleeeeee!" we chorussed.
Matters do not improve with the addition of Harper's ultra-toxic family, Harper's manly ex Connor (her womanly ex, Riley -- a slinky Aubrey Plaza -- makes eyes at Abby), and Harper's horrible niece and nephew who frame Abby for theft.
Luckily help is at hand! It is Abby's best friend John (Dan Levy).
Sadly, everything comes 'right' in the end, and Harper is honest with her family, and the rest of her family are honest with each other, and reconciliation, and I still think Abby should have run off with Riley rather than stick with a woman who would throw her under the family bus without any 'we're in this together' vibe.
30DEC21: The Lady in the Van (Hytner, 2015) -- Netflix
Young playwright in 1970s Camden unwillingly befriends cantankerous old woman who parks her van on his driveway. Alan Bennett (for it is he) has many conversations with himself, also with social workers and neighbours, and of course with the lady in the van. Compare and contrast his relationship with two women: the aforementioned lady (who really is, or was, a lady despite her current situation) and his mother. Melancholy, and comic only in the sense that people are so very easily satirised. Did not cheer me.
