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Questionable Taste Theatre

The Ghosts in Their Lives: The Hour, Season 2

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lixrandall
Sometimes a show is so good you just wish it were better. The Hour, a BBC miniseries-series we could really use a better term for, returned this winter for a second season of shenanigans behind the scenes of a late-1950s BBC newsmagazine. It comes into the lineup with several advantages, besides the momentum of a critically-successful first season. Its 6-episode format means it can frame a single Big Story, which helps keep focus tight and allows tertiary plots to be heavier on character beats. It’s written almost without exception by creator Abi Morgan, a double-edged sword of singular authorial voice. And it has a universally excellent cast. This last point is The Hour’s greatest draw; this is not an “excellent” cast in that they’re all good; this is an “excellent” cast in the true sense, and they give the show an addictive and ineffable confidence that alone would be worth watching for the whole season. This doesn’t mean the show’s without mistakes. In fact, given these advantages, it makes a remarkable number; they’re the mistakes… Read more »

Questionable Taste Theatre: “Starcrossed”

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[Channel Flip resumes shortly; in the meantime, this was too good to miss.] Thanks to late nights and decisions that seem poor but are in fact awesome, I’ve seen some truly amazing movies. The most recent is Starcrossed, otherwise known as The Movie Nicholas Winding Refn Probably Secretly Saw Before He Made Drive. The movie isn’t just that, but at intervals it’s pretty markedly that, what with its car-mechanic hero willing to give up everything to protect a particularly winsome young lady whose love he can never keep, illustrated by montages of driving at night, the best car chase ever committed to film, and everyone’s favorite Pink Neon font. You give me a time and a place, I give you a five minute window. Anything happens in that five minutes and I’m James Spader. No matter what. What this movie also is: the ’80s-est movie you’ve never heard of that features a beautiful alien who comes to earth seeking freedom, but finds James Spader instead. She knows nothing of love; he just knows nothing. Never… Read more »

Ten Things You Should Know about “Solomon Kane”

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Sometimes, in a sea of movies trying their best, you appreciate a movie that is ambitiously bad. (For example, I appreciated the preview for a horror movie about what happens if you don’t hold your breath as you pass a cemetery, actual thing.) You want the sort of movie where three times as much money was spent on Fancy Scar Makeup as on script. The sort of movie where it feels like every major decision was presented to someone whose response was, “…Okay, sure!”, and most of those people were British character actors whose numbers had come up in Rent Roulette. In related news, let’s talk about Solomon Kane. Extremely short version: “Verily, Those Monsters Stole My Hot Chick – to Battle!”: The Motion Picture. Short version: Solomon Kane used to be a ruthless mercenary, but after realizing his soul is bound for Hell, he tries to mend his ways and redeem himself as a man of peace. He even falls in with Puritan family the Crowthorns and contemplates following them to America to start… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Moth”

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So, here’s the deal: Part of me always wanted to save the best Cookson for last. However, the moment comes in your life when you realize you are just never going to make it through A Dinner of Herbs, and if I waited for that to happen before I did The Moth, this entry would be dated sometime in 2017. So, let’s just end 2011 on a high note, with the very best Cookson of them all: The Moth! The Moth is actually where all this rigmarole got started in the first place: my friend Eileen, who knows from period pieces, brought The Moth over on a visit on a lark, thinking we’d watch it a little and then hang out and actually do something in New York. That was foolish, obviously, because as soon as we finished that one I was looking for the next one. Also, it turns out we accidentally started with the best one, which made the rest of the Catherine Cookson Experience sort of a slide downhill? Not that I… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Wingless Bird”

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I fell off the wagon about these in a major way, didn’t I? And in the home stretch! Shame on me. For those who are new since my last one (welcome!), a bit about the Catherine Cookson Experience. Catherine Cookson, author of historical potboilers, enjoyed a magnificent heyday between about 1995 and 1997, in which the BBC went NUTS for her and filmed approximately eight hundred of her books in an attempt to employ every actor from Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland it could get its hands on, and also to use up a lot of sawed-off basketballs they needed to use to simulate pregnancy. More than a year ago, in a fit of good judgment, I embarked on a quest to watch every Catherine Cookson movie ever filmed. As it turns out, that is very difficult, partly because there are so many of them, and partly because some of them are just the worst ever and involve a lot of asshole dads and/or men getting romantically interested in a girl he met when she… Read more »

The Catherine Cookson Experience: “The Rag Nymph”

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Wow, that was kind of a long hiatus! (I made the last one in 1996, it looks like.) I know this has become something of a habit, like that time I tried to make a picspam of my French vacation and only got two-thirds of the way through, so if you are a literalist it looks like I never actually came home but am instead blogging from an attic somewhere overlooking the amusement park in Rouen. (Note to that person: well-spotted, mon frère!) But I have my act together now, and the time has come for another Catherine Cookson Experience! Today’s is different from most of the others, because I genuinely love this one. It is a pulpy mess, and I enjoy every second of its cheesy glory. You will be able to tell this soon, but I thought I might as well warn you up front: this one is awesome, and I have the eight thousand photos to prove it! This is The Rag Nymph. Vital Stats: Era: 1850s, looks like. Heroine: Millie Siblings… Read more »
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