By Roy Mathur, on 2024-08-19, at 23:59:15 to 01:13:50 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
Since last time, my stomach broke my RPi, the hedgetrimmer broke and broke even more when I attempted a repair, Mum was sick, a nationally nortorius local carpark with hidden signage stung us with a penalty charge while I was on ambulance duty, some of my social engagements were cancelled, I was tired from excessive podcasting, depressed by the racist rioters, too hot from the heatwave, had both a migraine and an IBS attack, and my back hurts.
But components arrived to fix the RPi, I'm using old school shears, Mum got better, we paid the carpark bastards, my lack of social engagements were replaced by other social engagements that more than made up the shortfall, I'm less tired, the racist rioters are being banged up, I rode my motorbike at night to enjoy the delicious buffeting of cool air and the lights and stars, the migraine manifested mostly as an aura, the IBS went away, my back... let's not talk about it, and I'm here talking to you now.
Hello again, wonderful listeners, old and new, happy Independence Day India (15th August), and welcome to another episode of the UK geek podcast. Unbelievably, what you are about to hear is only a subset of all the content I gobbled down since the last pod. As with all these "everything" episodes, it is mostly genre, with a few deviations. This episode's title is in honour of a certain seagoing creature of whom I am rather fond. Enjoy enjoy.
John Hyams (Peter Hyams son) horror 2020 movie about serial killing jeep driver picking on the wrong prey is without much substance in terms of story or bad guy, though the heroine kicks bottom and there's a nastily satisfying ending.
More spectacular motor mayhem from George Miller in this 2024 Warner Bros. Pictures action fest.
Just my cup of guzzline, but depressing, more sadistic than previous Maxs, and though Anya Taylor-Joy is a fantastic actress and did really well with the action, she is no Charlize Theron.
Let's boogie.
The fighting is great and minorities like tribals and Hijira get payback in this 2024 Universal Pictures action/revenge film by Dev Patel.
I wouldn't mind a turbo tuck tuck like the one featured and I like that the film is using Hinduism in a non-jingoistic way.
However, the trailer makes this look to be a very different film, I'm not sure why Sharlto Copley is in this, there's too much spoken English, too much documentary-style shakeycam, too painful to watch twice, and far too violent and sweary for Mum
In summary: what if John Wick took on the BJP?
Not that it's a competition, and I really like Keannu Reeves, but I'm pretty sure Taekwondo black belt Dev Patel can squish Keannu like a wet peanut shell.
The 2023 Godzilla series period scifi from the original Toho Studios was finally aired at Castle Royenstein.
Deserting kamikze pilot Koichi Shikishima lands on island and survives several attacks by the big lizard. Later, he finds love with homeless woman Noriko Oishi and abandoned baby Akiko in a post-war poverty-stricken and bombed out Tokyo. He unwisely takes a job clearing sea mines to support his precious new family, but after the crew of the little minesweeper encounter and fail to kill Godzilla, the creature attacks and levels Tokyo. One of his crew forms plans A and B to destroy the monster, though he has his own plan to pilot a plane into the mouth of the beast, should those fail...
The eccentric minesweeper crew, the terrible wooden little boat, bobbing mines into the monster, the freon barrels, and the float made me think of a mishmash of Apocalypse Now and Jaws rolled into a strongly anti-war, anti-nuke film. Though it can't compare to the very first Gojira (1954), it is similarly arthouse cinema with a monster. Heart breaking, heart warming, massive destruction; recommended.
Warner Bros/Toho 2024.
Kong, Godzilla, and Mothra (I thought she died?) save the world from an evil gian ape king in a hidden underworld beneath the hidden underworld. Earth's like an onion! There's a little help from MONARCH too as most of the team get back together in this big silly, mostly enjoyable nonsense if you look past the gaping lapses in logic.
No Millie Bobbie brown, but insane conspiracy theorist Bernie (Brian Tyree Henry), a character I love, is back, and Dan Stevens' hippy vet replaces wet geologist Scarsgard.
2022 horror.
Lonely, poor, young mixed-race woman finds welcoming posh rich white relatives in England... who turn out to vampires.
Imagine a fairytale princess film mixed with Get Out with much more blood, though a lister tone.
Wes Anderson's 2023 Netflix short film of forty plus minutes is an adaptation of Roald Dahl's 1977 fantastical short story about the redemption of a useless playboy through his acquisition of a supernatural ability. It is told by Raph Fiennes, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, and Ben Kingsley in rapidfire monologues as a series of theatrical sets assemble around them.
The funny, beautiful, very cleverly realised, and superbly acted short film reminds one of a particularly excellent episode of Jackanory.
In 2024, it became one of four Roald Dahl stories released in the longer eighty-eight minute anthology film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More (2024), also containing The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison, which I will watch soon.
If you didn't like men before this, you will afterwards in this 2020 horror flick, in which Chloe Grace Moretz takes on a gremlin in a flying fortress crewed largely by sexist, racist arseholes, who you aren't sorry to see perish.
I watched with my hand clamped over my mouth for most extremely hair-raising aerial antics.
Episode 7 shows us the truth of the Jedi's total cock-up and then cover-upon Brekon. Sol's insistence on taking Osho as his Padawan, ends in a confrontation with the witches that he misunderstands and murders her mother. The other Night Sisters die when Indara severs their connection with the Wookie geezer.
Epsiode 8, the finale of the series, sees another big fight, Sol's death, and the appearance of Darth Plaguegis. If that's not Plaguegis lurking in the shadows of Qimir's caves, then I'm going home. Before the final camera iris closes, we see the back of Yoda's head.
It paints the Jedi well-intentioned, but fundamentally flawed in their blindness others' point of view, despite their compassionate credo, arrogant, and not immune to grave dishonesty. Some have said that this is a novel take, but it's really an extension of Jedi cockups we've seen since Obiwan bit the dust by the hand of a former apprentice in Star Wars (1977).
So compelling a tragedy, the mini-series is unofficially slated for a second season, though no release date yet.
Season wrap and dying Bill Butcher, sick of his own son, reverses Hughie's hippy dippy peacenik nonsense in the wake of his dad's tragic death, and goes tentacular supe monster from his abuse of Compound V, heralding the Boy's deployment of the anti-supe virus and all out bio warfare in the next and final season.
Feel like you've lost your zest for life? This delightful animation from Quentin Blake's Box of Treasures about a dare-devil inventor, who temporarily loses her bottle after paragliding into a tree, will help launch you from your comfortable armchair.
I've already covered the other animations in the series. In summary, they're great.
After mostly enjoying season one, I've by now watched season two of BBC iPlayer 2023--2024's quirky serial killer thriller who/how/why dunnit with red herrings galore.
It's not well-rated, but I've a soft spot for Hermione Corfield, who really knows how to play a deeply conflicted psychopath more nuanced than Killing Zoe's Villainelle. I also like Babou Cessay as the chirpy copper on her tail.
Freddie's (Corfield) eccentric fashion sense is very striking. I'm guessing the costumer designer was thinking of a mixture of adult, teenager, and child rolled into one, to reflect someone psychologically trapped between childhood and adulthood through trauma. I really need a shrink on the show. I have so many questions. Any volunteers?
Young British copper of Turkish descent transfers to Istanbul police and his new grumpy eccentric boss, while surreptitiously investigating the assault on his journalist ex-girlfriend.
Not bad for a light cop drama and I enjoyed the city, but too much spoken English in the scenes without the Englishman.
I started watching the 2017--19 Epix (now MGM+) back in 2017 (pod 195). I have since seen the rest of the 3 season series starring Richard Armitage (The Hobbit's Thorin Oakenshield).
I said then it was, "about contemporary, and very, very dishonest CIA spies, in Berlin." And that, "I enjoyed this because we really get into the mindset of what it take to be a spy and the conflict/hypocrisy inherent in the job."
I largely stick by that, though it does get a little ropey and loose after the first season and the final season's momentum, continuity and logic seems to falter, when an evil henchman suddenly seems to forget he's just fought the replacement lead, Ismael Enrique Cruz Cordova, who's character is played surprisingly annoying in contrast to his role in Rings of Power. Or maybe I fell asleep at a crucial juncture.
Based on Tone Koken's light novel of the same name, this is a 12 part 2021 anime about a lonely schoolgirl and orphan called Koguma who, inspired by seeing a scooter overtaking her on her exhausting bicycle ride to school each day, buys a lightly used, but cursed, Honda 50cc Super Cub. The Cub enables her to expand her horizons. She can travel further on her bike. She makes friends with fellow biker, Reiko. She even manages to secure a job as a courier.
Although it is unashamably an extended advertisement for Honda, it does somewhat stand on it's own merit as a pleasant, relaxing slice-of-life anime. All Koguma's first experiences as a new biker, I too have experienced, and am inspired and motivated by her to continue my own biking journey. Overall, a heartwarming putter down the street.
The 2024 finale season fourth of sees our heroes get their powers back in the alt universe so they can fight a cult who are trying to set off the apocalypse. Number Five and Lila get lost in an unexplained alternative universe hopping tube system. In the end, the only way to fix the mess is for them to choose to not exist.
Oddly directionless with a nihilistic ending that makes me think the series should have ended a season earlier. As always, I love Colm Feore's early twentieth century wardrobe for his role of the insane, but elegant alien, Sir Reginald Hargreaves.
On ITVX, I revisited the 1998 Channel 4 horror mini-series by Joe Aherne (Apparitions, Doctor Who, Trance), in which a London policeman is recruited into a anti-vampire death squad after his best friend is turned on the eve of his wedding day. Stars a young Jack Davenport and Idris Elba, as well as the appropriately named Susannah Harker, a young, and Philip Quast.
It's an effective contemporary science-based take on vampirism that I enjoyed at the time and enjoyed on rewatch too. The brooding, grand, vaguely church-like music by Sue Hewitt is fantastic.
LP: Motormouth by Ben Elton, Parallel Lines by Blondie, CD: Deepest Purple: The Very Best of Deep Purple, The Light at the End of the Tunnel by The Damned, lit: You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Waiting for Godot by Samuel Becket, DVD: The Amazing Mr Blunden (Mum approved), tech: Raspberry Pi 3B+ replacement GPT double-decker USB 2.0 ports, RTL-SDR Blog V4 SDR kit (my first AliExpress order).
This incredibly oft overused quote (prime t-shirt slogan) somehow passed me by until recently:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.---Albert EinsteinThat doesn't mean we can skimp entirely on the knowledge part, so let's not get smug, and of course I'm not comparing myself to Einstein, but it is a way of feeling better about yourself if you're a typically moody creative weirdo. Wizard wizard.