Cable has been on the blink all day, bloody Foxtel. Fat cow poet, do your job and take calls, sodding cow! The help line has been engaged for just as long as service has been cut.
Anyway, there were some noteworthy programmes - I’m over the moon that a new English history series has started up - David Starkey’s Henry VIII. Starkey is one of the more well-respected history doc guys, and he’s usually dry and posh, but he’s gone a bit…smutty? Is it because they now refer to him as Professor? There seems to be a bit of a trend in BBC type history documentaries to jazz up history and relate it to contemporary events.
For instance, they were comparing Catherine of Aragon to Diana, Princess of Wales because Charles wanted Camilla Parker-Bowles who wasn’t very popular with the public. Just like Anne Boleyn wasn’t - the lady that Henry VIII ditched Catherine for. It was very smutty!
Tonight I saw Into the Blue with Jessica Alba and Paul Walker. I don’t much care for Paul Walker - I think Jessica Alba is way hotter - but this film reminded me just how shit-scared I am of water. There’s no computer special effects and few stuntpeople - impressively, the actors had to learn to free dive and were constantly swimming in shark-infested waters. I don’t know how they did it: the idea of being underwater for a long time is genuinely unsettling but they swam like fish.
There’s something about being submerged in water that made me feel like it was a crowded, overwhelming place. It just reminded me of the same sort of panic one can have during an anxiety attack in a public place. Panicking in a place like underwater could be fatal. Hmm…another metaphor for the mentals of this world…
Right now, I’m rewatching this extremely creepy, atmospheric film called The Bunker. It’s a very simple premise: some German (therefore Nazi) soldiers have barely made it to a bunker on the Germany-Belgium border and everyone’s going a bit potty. The Nazis inside the bunker are showing signs of mental collapse from being enclosed too long, and have also been warned about Allies posing as Nazis coming to slaughter them.
Some Germans have made it to the bunker and are barely admitted. Things start to get worse as the Nazis become increasingly paranoid and they discover a tunnel in the bunker. Someone spouts a bunch of ghost stories and it becomes clear that the conscience of the group now enclosed is not entirely untainted. Something about an ambush and a gruesome mass murder of the local town’s diseased and ill. What are the newly arrived soldiers not telling those who have been in the bunker?
Again, there’s virtually no special effects, the action is contained in a small area and the soundtrack is excellent. The amusing thing is that this is a British film and none of the actors attempt, thank god, that hammy German accent but speak in their own natural accents - and you can tell they aren’t all from the same area. Makes it difficult to remember these guys are supposed to be Nazis!
Last one! It is one of my favourite films - Elizabeth. I forgot what a hoot French actor Vincent Cassel is as the Duke of Anjou. It needs to be seen purely for the time when the Duke of Anjou meets Queen Elizabeth to begin their courtship. Damn, I forgot how funny that bloke is. Cate Blanchett makes an excellent Queen Elizabeth I.
Now, there’s a cruddy series about the Kings and Queens of England hosted by this hack Nigel Spivey. He reported that Mary Queen of Scots needed three blows of the axe to sever her head completely. Wrong! It was two. How the hell can you stuff that up as an academic?!
