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Brettto
Reviews
You Should Be So Lucky! (1986)
Ahead of its time
Everything Colin Bennett touches has a sense of being ahead of its time. This superbly kitsch piece of groan inducing kids TV was surely a timely warning to those parents today who are raising stage school kids. The X factor generation who seek fame through performance. Colin Bennett is without a doubt the unsung hero of under-current British comedy. His pedigree in TV alone should indicate something deeper afoot with any project he graces. My abiding memory of this show was his asides to camera, his knowing cheese, the god awful kids who played a double bass or sang or tap danced. I wonder if this show will ever surface on DVD somewhere, somehow. I doubt it will but perhaps it has done its job in an invisible way, when it first aired, in altering the ironic landscape of comedy... If you thought this show was purely trash you have only picked up on one level. I instinctually felt it was deeply penetrative on numerous comedic levels but as a failed stage school kid, I would say that.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
The power of hype, the failure of genre...
Oh crap why did I pay £7.00 to see this. I so wanted to believe! That an unknown film maker on a shoestring budget had really delivered a terrifying experience. That I would have trouble sleeping etc. Thanks for making me see how easily my desires can be manipulated. A successful exercise in hype, that's the only reason I'll remember this piece of god-awful, plodding pap.
If you've seen this by now, let's reminisce now on how wanky it was. A psychic who looks like a geography teacher adds precisely zero back story with his lame protestations that the presence in the house is 'too much for him' As if! and the bloke who he suggests never shows up! Having seen Drag Me To Hell, Amtyville Horror, The Exorcist etc I well understand the genre dictates certain staples - concerned clergyman or 'man in touch with the other side' who puts the willies up the audience with his vague mumblings of encroaching evil. The innocent protagonists have to be clueless and powerless to stop this happening, and the audience demand to see at least the horror in the faces of the actors, if not the actual horror itself. But Paranormal Activity labours every point it tries to make. From tired knocking sound to goose bumpy sleepwalking this poorly paced shocker meanders through the clichés to a dismal end that leaves no one wishing for a sequel. Somewhere in the mix the film maker had a shred of good intention and a grasp of cranking up tension, but the finished article is simply not good enough for general release. Only hype has saved it from laughable box office returns. Avoid at all costs.
Blake's 7: Blake (1981)
Cruel, magnificent and spellbinding.
'Have you betrayed us? Have you betrayed me?' Avon stands over his friend moments after killing him, facing certain death. His comrades strewn lifelessly about him and flanked by armed Federation guards, he looks sadly down at his fallen prey. In a final act of remembrance to Blake he smiles defiantly. A single shot followed by a barrage of gunfire echoes behind as the dark curtain of stars falls for the last time and the credits roll. Ironies and role reversals abound in 'Blake'- surely it is the arch intelligencer Avon who is ever the ruthless trickster through all four seasons of freedom fighting? (his icy words to a traumatised Villa at the close of 'Orbit' - 'as you always say Villa, you know you are safe with me'. Yet it's the stout, idealist Blake of all people who has turned embittered double bluffer, trusting no one at face value. As Deva prophetically warns, 'These stupid games you insist on playing, Blake, will get someone killed one day.' Blake has gone native, a bounty hunter using money and baited escapes as tests to sift the greedy from the pure. But trying to prune out the bad apples from such a twisted orchard would surely exhaust anyone. Even Orac couldn't trace a clear line though the forest of traps and disguises, legacy of Servilan. A battle scarred and weary Blake admits he simply, 'cannot tell anymore
' who to trust. And inevitably Blake's valiant dream flounders in the mire. Meeting Blake after years apart, Avon faces his dark night of the soul, beseeching his former ally. His judgement paralysed by doubt, buckling under the threat of the double cross. Shocked to see Blake's once noble visage disfigured, perhaps spying Blake's knife Avon has but one reflex. Survival is winning. Instinctively firing on an advancing Blake he no longer knows nor knows if he believes in. Blake! Not a Travis figure, a hated enemy, rather his captain, his true friend. Tarrant's peeved and pragmatic take on matters proves tragically misguided. But who on Gauda Prime can see the wood for the trees? Avon pulls the trigger and kills the thing he loves. Shakespearean tragedy in a sci-fi serial? it's unexpected and devastating. It isn't easy to watch the demise of beloved characters in this way but then Blake's 7 isn't easy television. The stakes were always bleak. The Federation are cold killers. The crew of The Liberator set out from episode one to reassert some chaos amidst the terrible new order, but it was always a fool's hope they would triumph. Few endings are more powerful or memorable across the galaxy of British television - 'Blake' seals the series indelibly in the mind as cruel, magnificent and spellbinding. A masterstroke to bring Blake back. Servilan omitted?- a puzzling yet bold move, she at least lives on. Plenty to argue about as the years have rolled on, never bettered, 'Blake' is a cultural treasure.