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13 Reasons Why, Netflix, 2017
13 Reasons why is the currently most talked about series on TV. It is a teenage morality tale about a 17 year old girl who has committed suicide in the weeks before the series begins. She has left behind a suicide note, in the form of 13, C60 audio cassettes, each one naming a different person as having a hand in causing her to take her own life. Each cassette states what this person did to affect her and she has arranged that the whole series of tapes is delivered to each of the thirteen people in turn.
So far, so dark – a horrible premise of a teenager’s suicide and the ultimate naming, blaming and shaming fantasy. This could have been so awful that I almost gave up watching after each of the first three episodes.
However, Hannah, the girl who killed herself, is a likeable, witty, attractive personality and we want to find out what drove her to despair. She mostly avoids playing the blame game and the series is really a universal tale about the complications of dealing with serious and difficult problems, often for the first time, as a teenager negotiates the change from child to adult.
The characters are well written and well rounded. The story is told half in the current timeline and half in flashback, this is clever, as we can see the change that Hannah’s death has brought to each person. There are stereotypes, in that they fit into their groups at the school but each individual is given a three dimensional personality and the only caricature is the one who does not get to listen to the tapes.
The acting is great, everyone talks about how good the two leads are – they are excellent. Christian Navarro is also very good as Tony, who serves as a kind of nuanced narrator. Kate Walsh is brilliant, playing two parts really, as Hannah’s mother, before and after the suicide.
I liked the fact that the show concentrates just as much on the devastation left behind as the reasons for the death. It is a thin line between negating the reasons for Hannah’s suicide and justifying them, the show manages to realistically state the reasons for her actions but never says that she was right to do so. There is talk of a second series because of the success of season one, and possibly because of the unresolved nature of some of the issues. I believe that the show had to leave these issues open because to close them would have implied that her killing herself would have achieved a closure that might not have been attained had she lived.
I enjoyed this series very much but I hope they choose not to film a season two, either to resolve these issues or to follow the lives of some of the other characters, 13 Reasons Why, is all about Hannah, let’s keep it about her.
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Get Out (dir. Jordan Peele) 2017
Get Out has a number of “jump back in your seat” moments which is always a good thing in a horror movie. It also has humour, both laugh out loud bits, and some sly, embarrassing, observational moments. These carry you along nicely to the next scary part.
The acting is good, Bradley Whitford is excellent as a white liberal intellectual, explaining his guilt away. Catherine Keener is creepy as the psychologist mother. Daniel Kaluuya is good at noticing the slights but not taking offence, a fine line to tread.
I really liked Jordan Peele’s manner of dealing with incidental, institutional racism in this film. It is there throughout the movie, and it isn’t ignored, but it is supposedly not the main storyline. The front story is a brainwashing, Stepford, comedy/horror thing. He shows great promise in his first film, with his light touch on an awkward subject. Interestingly, he has just become the first black debut director to have his film gross over $100 million.
There is some gore, enough to make you feel some disgust, but not enough to want to hide behind your cinema seat.
The ending is interesting too, it is always nice to have a finish that is unexpected, and this finale suited the movie much better.
I have to say that I really enjoyed this film, a great mixture of comedy, horror and social comment.
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Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World, Design Museum, London
Fear and Love: Reactions to a Complex World is the opening exhibit to the new Design Museum in High Street Kensington. It is actually 11 different installations exploring issues that define our world in the 21st Century. As you would imagine, with so many totally unconnected exhibits, some work better than others and some are more interesting than others.
I like the curious robot that comes and stares at you when you look at it. It feels quite aggressive and two separate parents who thought their child would love it, had to deal with them running away in tears after it came right up to their face.
The installation about Grindr and how it changed lives in the 21st Century is worthy, but it is also a bit dry and dull, which is not something I would have expected to report on an exhibit on that subject.
The Mongolian Yurt is nice, one can sit inside and watch a video about how the city of Ulaan Baator is growing very quickly. There is an installation about Death Masks. These death masks are pretty and quite creepy. They are made in plastic with a 3D printer. There are 5 different fictional people with 3 masks each, depicting different states, I don’t know why they have done it, but they are interesting to look at.
The video about dolphins and go seems plain weird, half of it is pictures of sea and boats from a dolphins point of view, and half is of a computer playing the game go. I may have got that wrong, I found it hard to understand, possibly because the point of it just went right over my head. The exhibit of videos playing in a corrugated shack about the Bolivian ghettos are thought provoking.
I like the 2 very different ones about recycling clothing. One was about recycling clothing in rural China and the other about a machine that sorts discarded clothes by colour.
My favourite is the living room furnished with an item from every country in the EU, the view from the “window” is quite chilling.
The price of entry to Fear and Love is £14, quite high considering the mixed standard of installations, but there is a free permanent exhibition on the third floor, which is excellent and certainly worth a visit. So, although there are things here that will make you stare and think Why?, there is also a wide variety of subjects on display and everyone is likely to have at least something that will delight them.
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The Design Museum, Kensington High Street, London
1970s Olivetti Advertisement at the Design Museum The Design Museum has a new building on Kensington High Street. The setting is lovely, right on the edge of Holland Park. The building itself is, as you would expect, beautifully designed. The interior is bright and spacious, filled with indirect light, the curves of the roof are attractive, the stairs and levels of the building are cleverly arranged to describe a pleasing combination of form and function, the atrium widening as it rises, with built in seating among the stairs on the lower levels and along the walls, further up.
I like the way, that even now, when it is open and in use, it still has the look and feel of the architect design drawings that would have been put on show at its conception. It will be very interesting to see how the building ages, I have great hopes that the clean lines of the wood, marble and glass will hold the elegance that it has now.
The free exhibition on the third floor is good too, larger and more interactive than it was in the old museum. It is still packed with examples of outstanding design and has many of the pieces that were on display in its old home on the South Bank. The exhibits include the design development of many common household items, for example clocks, phones and headphones from their earliest designs to current iterations.
It will also hold paid for exhibits, currently these are Love and Fear, and Imagine Moscow. However, the permanent exhibition is worth the trip even if you choose not to visit the chargeable offering. If you go on a fine day, Holland Park is a very pretty park to walk through too, it is well maintained and has nice ordered gardens.
The new Design Museum with regard to its building, setting and free exhibits has to be regarded as a complete success.
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This Charming Man, Marian Keyes, 2008
It seems to me, from reviews that I have read, that Marian Keyes is not regarded as a serious author. I suspect that this comes from her novels being easy to read. “This Charming Man” is indeed easy to read, but that is because it is well written and not because it does not approach difficult subjects.
The main subjects of this book are abusive relationships, alcoholism and corruption in politics, with brief forays into living with a cancer diagnosis and isolation of cross dressers in rural communities. Marian Keyes has a deftness of touch and a sense of humour that manages to make this book engaging while still keeping the reader aware of the difficulties of the characters lives.
This is no less literature than Dickens or Austen, she has a great deal in common with Jane Austen in that the book is a good insight into society and the social norms of the time in which it is written. This story is told from the points of view of four different women and this is a structure also favoured by Austen. They also have wit in common and both poke gentle fun at their heroines as a way of pointing out the foibles of the culture in which they live. This novel is set in Dublin, London and County Clare.
Having said that, this particular novel is a little darker than some of her other books, although it is remarkable, maybe even a bit of a stretch, that she managed to tie up the loose ends quite as well as she did.
This Charming Man won the Popular Fiction Prize at the Irish Book Awards. I think it should have been considered for other more seriously regarded literary awards also, because there is no doubt that Marian Keyes’ books are going to be regarded as representative of late 20th, early 21st century literature in hundreds of years time.
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The Other Palace, Victoria, London, SW1
The Other Palace started life as St James Theatre in 2012 when it was the first newly built theatre in Central London for over 30 years. It was bought by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s, Really Useful Group, last year and has been rebranded and it intended as a place to develop new musicals.
The opening season looks very promising. The first show was “The Wild Party” which was an auspicious start . This was my review of it. The Wild Party, The Other Palace, Victoria, London. Later in the year The National Youth Music Theatre will be bringing “Sunday in the Park with George”. A musical based on Fellini’s “La Strada” should be interesting too.
The complex itself, is a space containing two theatres, a restaurant upstairs and a ground floor bar. The building is glass fronted on the ground and first floor making the entrance, bar and restaurant feel bright and airy. The main theatre is relatively small, with around 300 capacity, nicely laid out, with every seat giving a good view of the stage. The studio is quite intimate, capacity around 100, it was laid out as a cabaret bar, but seating arrangements could be flexible. The cabaret tables and chairs worked perfectly for the show on at the time.
The upstairs restaurant, is modern and light. The setting is lovely. I have not eaten there since it has been rebranded as The Other Naughty Piglet but I have heard good things about, Naughty Piglets, their other restaurant, in Brixton.
The bar is set slightly lower than ground level, it catches the light well and it is a comfortable place to chat. It’s not huge, though, and does get crowded during the interval, this is a bar where it is definitely worth pre-ordering your interval drinks. The house white and house rose were both dry and good quality.
The Really Useful group have made a shrewd buy in this handily located theatre. It is very close to Victoria Station and right across the road from Buckingham Palace.
I love the idea of it being a place to refine new work and I wish them every success in their endeavour.
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Don Juan in Soho, Wyndham’s Theatre, London, 2017
The 17th Century version of this play closed, after only one performance, because of its repulsive and offensive nature. It was not shown in an uncensored form again for almost 150 years. Marber updates the setting to 21st Century Soho, but stays remarkably faithful to the original story.
It is shocking, ribald, offensive but that is the point of the play, Don Juan is not meant to have any redeeming features. David Tennant is very good as the debauched libertine, who is patronising, misogynistic and self serving. Adrian Scarborough is fantastic as Stan, his forgiving manservant, who is just as taken is by his master’s guile as any of the women he seduces. Together they make a fantastic double act, funny and argumentative, Stan feels the guilt that his master doesn’t, but yet he cannot help himself from becoming involved in the collusion. Their duet to close the first act was brilliant.
The script is witty and sharp, Don Juan’s diatribe against social media and celebrity culture is funny, and made it feel current, even if it did not advance his argument. I have to admit that I am not sure what the addition of the dancers in their underwear added to the proceedings, but the use of music is good, the occasional pieces from Mozart’s, Don Giovanni are a nice juxtaposition to the modern score.
This play is always going to a controversial choice, if it doesn’t disturb and distress people, it is not doing its job. It is a brave play for the leading actors to take on because it relies so heavily on the capability and rapport of the two lead characters and if it is not done well, it will always be a mark on their career. However, David Tennant and Adrian Scarborough are both excellent and carry it off admirably.
With the vogue in theatre now, for women to take on roles that have traditionally been played by men, this would be an interesting proposition – and it would go some way to counteracting the misogyny criticisms often levelled against it.
Until that happens, this is a very enjoyable show, an excellent night out and the perfect start to a night of revelry in nearby Soho.
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Tower Block (dir. James Nunn, Ronnie Thompson) 2012
This is a no nonsense, horror/thriller movie. It is set on the top floor of a tower block that is about to be demolished. It is a British film and has an excellent British cast. It moves along exactly as you would expect, but the action is taut and interaction between characters manage to keep good tension going throughout he film.
Sheridan Smith, Russell Tovey, Ralph Brown and Jack O’Connell are all very good as the resourceful tower block inhabitants attempting to escape their situation, while quarrelling amongst themselves. The set is excellent, the block is scuzzy, the area urban, the setting is as bleak as the position the tenants find themselves in.
The characters are flawed, but real, and there is not much pretense of politeness between them. The script is good and we grow to know, even if we don’t necessarily like, the protagonists. We want them succeed and applaud their increasingly desperate ingenuity.
This type of film generally follows a set narrative arc and the denouement is much as you would expect. There aren’t many surprises here, but it is a likeable film and very good at what it does.
Recommended.
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The Nice Guys (dir. Shane Black) 2016
This is a curate’s egg of a film – good in parts. It’s sets out to be a pastiche of a corny 1970s Blaxploitation movie, and it succeeds almost too well for its own good. The plot is very ’70s, a light, far fetched, political conspiracy theory.
The characters are caricatures. Ryan Gosling as Holland March is quite knowing about it and carries it off very well, we get to like him and he is actually very funny. Russell Crowe seems to be just walking through the film saying his lines, so his character is two dimensional. Angourie Rice is great as Holland’s daughter and also has some of the best lines of the show.
This movie contains violence, sex references, nudity, bad language and drug use; all gratuitous, all characteristic of the time. Not so funny in itself but funny because in the 70s they were only recently able to put these into films, so they did, even if it was unnecessary. The humour is broad, bordering on slapstick, but it works, mostly
The sets are perfect and costumes are right on. I particularly enjoyed the soundtrack, apparently some of the songs were too late for the time in which it was set, but they felt right to me.
On balance, Shane Black has done an excellent job directing “The Nice Guys” in that, from slight material, he has made a little go a long way.
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Shake Shack, Victoria Nova, Victoria, London
This is a shiny, brand new, glass fronted burger and hot dog restaurant on the corner in Victoria Nova. The building is beautiful and given the location, there will be a lot of passing trade. It is licensed, so it sells beer and wine, although I did not order any with my burger, and to be honest I did not see any alcohol on any of the tables that were occupied.
The burgers are marketed at the top of the price range, advertised as being 100% Aberdeen Angus beef, source verified and traceable. I don’t doubt that this is true. I had a single smoke shack, which comes with bacon, cheese and cherry peppers.
It was good without being exceptional, the cherry peppers were a nice addition, but the meat was a little bit greasy for my taste. The chips were an extra £3 and were poor value. There wasn’t enough of them, and they were crinkle cut, semi-crispy and hollow. They were also cold when they arrived, although when I complained they changed them without query. The shake was nice and thick, but very sweet, perhaps they are more aimed at children than adults.
Given all the new high-end burger joints opening in London, the competition must be fierce and this did not strike me as one of the best. Sorry to say, I think “5 Guys” does it better.
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