sevendaughters

on the Mathews/Linehan contribution thing, my view was always that Linehan was the half of the duo that structured and formalised and wrote bang after bang jokes, whilst Mathews was basically the details man, the person who understood the world this was rooted in, the guy who responsible for this being an above-average farcical situation comedy.

If you watch the Mathews-solo sitcon Val Martin, TD (starring Ardal O'Hanlon) it tries to coast on fewer gags and more Irish specificity. It's a shame it isn't funny at all, but it is well-observed.

furthermore, there is definitely something to the idea that IT Crowd is Father Ted transplanted into a less well-observed arena; Linehan replaces the careful attention to language and mise-en-scene and culture with broader performances and famous people. I always felt Katherine Parkinson was told to basically 'do Elaine' as her character notes.

I can't watch it at the minute partly because of Linehan but also it is playing on a 24/7 channel in my own brain through overwatch. Tentacles of Doom my current favourite.

had a meeting with my boss at one of my jobs today. Was on a 0.4 at one place (this one) and 0.3 at another. Anyway, they said the candidate field for the job was ridiculously strong, but there's a job coming up in a bit that is more obviously my thing, and also they bumped me up to 0.6. so not a bad outcome after a week of stressing out.

saw the first episode of The Rehearsal, the new Nathan Fielder series. If you liked Nathan For You, particularly the episodes that were more about changing the life of an ordinary person, then you will like this a lot.

I might just do that after I finish this session of headbutting a wall.

to bring the thread down a peg, I had a rough double knock back on Monday gone.

Rejected for both plum job I interviewed for and passed over for interview as internal candidate for full time role at one of the two places I am PT at. Same essential job that I do, same pay band. And there's five people they'd rather were doing it.

Even worse, in the second one, I found out by getting invited to watch the presentations of the successfully shortlisted candidates rather than my boss giving me a heads up.

Been a bit of an ego blow. I changed careers in my early 30s to give this one a good old go but this week feels like a shit or get off the pot moment that I was constipated for.

edit - will return

I'm not mega familar with much outside of Catalonia tbf. We were on holiday in Zaragoza (very nice, halfway between Barca and Madrid) and saw we could get a cheap return to Bilbao and went for it. Would love to go back, and might take advantage of the free train thing the govt are bringing in later this year.

Also top username shout out to the greatest charity single of the 80s.

12 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Whereabouts is that? Looks abroad.

Bilbao! Lovely place. Gets a bit wet.

18 hours ago, Edgehead said:

 

wow as a lifelong poor sleeper I would regularly watch this before going off to do a paper round but have literally not thought about it in 20+ years, even if the idiom 'eat your words' came up. Which is weird because visually the show is the stuff of nightmares, all mad visuals and sick eating games (that's sick eating, not sick-eating).

I also do not remember Konnie Huq on it either - I think I remember Simon Parkin or maybe even Mark Speight (RIP).

I'm 39 and have become a Hat Guy (balding, vain).

WWE had final cut on the doc. Netflix not going to comply in the whitewashing of a crime, but they shouldn't have been making the film in the first place.

is trending now btw apropos of absolutely nothing

23 minutes ago, Teedy Kay said:

Gove just been SACKED!

Fuck me it's a shambles.

context aside as the powerplay of a jelly manlet - I bet that feels mint to sack Gove

six gone in the last refresh of my computer. he's toast. gone before the weekend.

just read the whole thread. money marks ain't what they used to be! come back (from the dead) Herb, all is forgiven.

Truss is acceptable politician incompetent, a Raab type, Dorries is a windbreak/shitshield.

that Konuwa bloke is this year's happy clapper for VinceCorp. full on herpes-tier journalism.

Wajda is very influential! His war trilogy definitely a huge influence on Kubrick and Scorsese. Cahiers du Cinema used to absolutely cream over him. Just don't think he's as well known in Anglophone circles.

But yeah Dekalog and KK's later work is a real touchstone for all sorts of things. You can link so many mini-series and premium television things back to Dekalog.

the Culture Wars was an invention of the right to make it seem like the left and the liberals are demonising anything they're into. It's hard to nail down exactly when this arose, and some people think that Watergate might have even been the touch paper given that in a case of clear corruption the Republicans mostly seemed to think Nixon should retain the presidency. Post-war consensus shattered, partisanship rises, and just grows. 9/11 puts it over huge.

"woke", I seem to recall, came out of predominantly black usage and has some interesting history in intersectional thought. Essentially it comes out of the same line of thinking as political correctness - be mindful of how you speak, because it has consequences and upholds various social structures which we now know to be wrong.

You can see how crude and targeted application of these ideals - that certain people are not woke, that certain swathes of culture are not PC - can make certain people feel targeted, even if there is a broader principle behind it. As unfunny and bad as I think it is, I don't think that Little Britain was harmful or the people who liked it were fundamentally evil.

You can quickly see how this gets wrapped up in the partisanship of the culture wars even if the people targeting or being targeted are actually individual and apolitical actors who don't have a consistent position in left and/or right. We're very good at translating surfaces and appearances into whole personas, and social media amplifies everything so deftly, so quickly the person with a genuine quibble about the use of certain language against a certain person becomes The Looney Left Who Love Men Who Think They Are Women vs Graham Linehan's Solemn Noble Quest To Make People Understand Sense About Gender Realism.

I work in a university in an arts-hums department and it is quite clear to see how there is this anxiety underpinning a lot of our interactions. There have been very witch-hunty critiques of texts and films given to study because they contain certain things - things we think are important to study! So there is definitely some abuse of the ideals behind these social correctives, and those are the things the right latch onto and eat up. Like the 'no clapping' at the NUS AGM because of sensory overload.

But it works both wats. Just a month ago we had a tabloid send an FOI request to see what trigger warnings we give out, if any. They're clearly trying to paint universities as hives of obnoxious leftist nonsense, because there's a wider agenda in play. It distracts people from the problems created by current regimes of power and the liberals and the left walk into the trap every single time.

The search for good faith in action has been replaced by this constant noise. At the bottom of 'woke' and 'PC' are good intentions, and I do think some people have been targeted unfairly. Right now actual rights are being threatened as a reactionary measure to all of this, and I think it would help if people organised to fight these material consequences.

I think he's fine and young and set to improve and good for WWE's style but booking like that isn't going to help whatever promotion he works for.

On 5/1/2022 at 12:10 AM, Devon Malcolm said:

The Firemen's Ball (Prime)

Everyone loves a 1960s Czech New Wave comedy, don't they. In all seriousness though this is one of the funniest films I've seen for ages. Milos Forman made some films you might have heard of (I watched Man on the Moon last night, it's really good) but this could be his best. Only 73 minutes too!

outstanding film. I love the Czech New Wave in general so would recommend Juraj Herz's The Cremator and Jiri Menzel's Closely-Watched Trains. Second one is as funny as Fireman's Ball.

On 1/22/2022 at 10:25 AM, Devon Malcolm said:

A Short Film About Love (Curzon channel on Prime)

Poland's greatest ever filmmaker with his take on voyeurism and sexuality. Not quite as good as the Three Colours films or The Double Life of Veronique but really well acted and compact.

Better than Wajda or Polanski? Maybe, I guess. I prefer the earlier Polish-based stuff like ASFAL.

Have you seen the rest of Dekalog?

35 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

From what I've seen of him, which is admittedly little, he's the blandest fucker going.

Is he someone that's been completely built within the WWE system?

I seem to recall him from one of those Florida-based indies that got into bed with WWE like Evolve or Full Impact. WWN guy.

second paragraph never in dispute by anyone and yet expressed with all the certainty of the truly mediocre.

1 minute ago, WyattSheepMask said:

He’s not going to be working house shows so I wouldn’t worry about that.

Going off of what I remember of his match at Wrestlemania he seems perfectly capable of being given a sequence and executing it well. How he copes should said sequence go wrong and how he deals with that remains to be seen, and will also depend on who he’s in the ring with and their own ability to improvise should they need to

I assume he isn't going to work on the road, but I am asking if he is legit talented or just talented for a celebrity. I just saw a gif of his frog splash from Mania and that was well done.