Walking between the raindrops

[alexsarll]

Not that Nuisance ever sees much in the way of sobriety, but everyone seemed even drunker than usual on Friday; possibly because I'd already been for drinks beforehand at T Bird (which is good again! Hurrah), within an hour of arrival I found myself thinking what a beautiful ceiling the Monarch has. Yeah. That aside, it was largely a picnicky sort of weekend, the greyness of this August notwithstanding; on Saturday I was in Kensington Gardens with Stationery Club, and Sunday was Brumfields in Highgate Woods. Both had plenty of comedy passing dogs (especially Brumfields, where one joined in most tenaciously with a game of frisbee, and another snaffled two Jammy Dodgers in one mouthful), and other Local Colour en route. Alongside the Serpentine I saw a teenager on a penny farthing with no idea how to get off, and someone on rollerblades using an umbrella as a sail; in Highgate I was asked for directions by an unusually attractive tranny just as the Passage's polymorphously perverse 'XOYO' started up on the headphones. Then later, back along a Parkland Walk which seemed oddly still, even where someone was playing woodwind - not apparently for money - under one of the darker bridges.

Watched two films the last couple of days, both sequels which don't require any familiarity with the original, both featuring possession by ectoplasmic mists. And that's about all they have in common apart from being damn good. Evil Dead 2 is a gleefully gory romp, man versus the supernatural presented as almost slapstick. Whereas Hellboy II - which feels much more like a Guillermo del Toro film than its predecessor, even though he directed them both - is a terribly sad and elegiac thing in amongst all the fighting and 'aw, crap'; every monster vanquished is a strange and wonderful thing which has now passed from the Earth, and when Hellboy is being tempted by the genocidal elf-prince (played, bizarrely but very well, by Luke from Bros), you at least half-want him to go for it.

I remember Jimmy McGovern's The Lakes being much-discussed in the nineties, mainly in terms of the sex. For whatever reason, I never saw it, but on a free trial of one of those DVD rental services I thought, well, John Simm stars, has to at least be worth a look, right? Only problem is, Simm is playing a scouser. Within minutes of his arrival in the Lake District, he's twice faced prejudice over this - ah, thinks I, this is about him showing the locals not all scousers are feckless gobshites. Except it rapidly becomes clear that he is; he's a thieving, idle little weasel who gets a local girl pregnant and whose compulsive gambling leads to the death of three kids. And Simm is still at least a little charming, but he gets that whiny voice down pat enough to almost extinguish it. Oh, I forgot to mention the music, which is like some nightmarish antimatter universe Nuisance; in the first episode alone, two major emotional scenes are soundtracked by Cast. There are some fine performances - especially the village priest - and lovely touches (some business with milk-sniffing, threaded lightly through the whole show, is astonishing) but overall it's a nasty, mean little show. And I really don't get why even my hormonal peers thought it was sexy.

Comments

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

I liked the episode of Cracker where John Simm played a teenage-ish gayer with his top off. Can't really remember what happened aside from that... Never saw The Lakes, but 90s TV sex scenes all seem pretty dreadful, I think, certainly the one in Buffy S2 (97/8) is cheese-tastic, all extreme close-ups of softly moving and semi-unrecognisable body parts, blankets and kissyface, and I think there was some similar pap in Brimstone.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I remember Buffy doing sex quite well - even when it involved boring Riley, that time where they're trapped in bed as a power source for a haunted house was pretty good. And of course Spike and Drusilla torturing Angel with holy water. The Lakes just errs a bit too much on the side of comedy in most of the scenes, and also emphasises girls-on-top in a way which suggests they think they're being edgy when they're not.

I have the Cracker box set but have never even popped the clingfilm on it.

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

Oh, later series (s4 was 99/00 and has a very different style, visually and being more, well, not quite adult but cusp-y) do, yes, and as you say, some of the Spike/Dru/Angel/Angelus stuff is pretty good (and a little surprising given that mostly it's still played as a show for teens). But the actual sex scene in s2 is pretty dire.

(Also, Faith in Buffy's body, shame we didn't get to see much of what happened, though it was with Boringbob Dullpants, so.)

[puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com]

Oh, also, 'popped the clingfilm', possibly.