Rae had suggested that she wanted to see “The Squid And The Whale” but since I had heard that it was a study of a disintegrating family after a bitter divorce I wasn’t keen and it was only after she said that she’d heard it was actually quite amusing that I agreed. I normally don’t touch reviews as I like to keep an open mind but when I’m undecided about seeing something I do look for a general consensus. The Guardian movie section does have a great comparative chart so you can see how a movie favours across the board. This one seemed to have found praise everywhere and the cast looked good – the added attraction of lovely Anna Paquin playing an almost identical role to her sassy student in Spike Lee’s superb 25th Hour was difficult to ignore.

The film was actually fantastic. Set in 1986 it was director, Noah Baumbach’s memories of his own parents’ split and how it affected him and his brother. Jeff Daniels took the main role after Bill Murray became unavailable and, not that Murray isn’t consistently watchable, I’m quite glad as Daniels was excellent. Jeff Daniels is actor persistently undervalued, most memorable for tripe like “Dumb and Dumber” (where Jim Carrey made sure he dominated the screen anyway) and small roles in things like Speed and Pleasantville. His minor role in The Hours went largely unnoticed. Here Daniels plays overbearing Bernard, a (very) bearded English literature teacher who had found semi literary fame some time ago but having failed to get anything published since has become chronically resentful and insecure when his wife (the ever excellent Laura Linney) finds success with her own work. This indirectly leads to the divorce. Brooklyn in the 80’s is well realised and there are myriad precious moments as the two boys try to come to terms with their parents’ living apart and being used to score points against a parent by the other, not to mention their own growing pains. It is in turns painful and hilarious. Younger brother Frank (no older than ten) takes to heavy drinking and masturbating in school to a disembodied magazine picture of female genitalia (taking care to wipe his semen over library books and locker doors) while older brother Walt tries to emulate his father’s literary pontificating while chatting up girls, claiming that Kafka’s writing is Kafkaesque. What’s also interesting is how Walt sides with his father but Frank has more of a simpatico relationship with his mother and how this affects the dynamic when the joint custody entails time spent at respective parents’ houses. Throw in the complications caused when young Lili (Paquin) moves in with Bernard and William Baldwin as Frank’s “right on” tennis coach and it makes for a very entertaining 80 mins. I realised afterwards that Noah Baumbach had co-written “The Life Aquatic” with Wes Anderson (who co produced this) which largely explains why it was so good. Well worth your time if you get the chance to see it.

I’m quite excited. My favourite Doctor Who villains, The Cybermen, return tonight. I think they’re particularly cool and one of the most memorable images of the show from my childhood. I had a quick look on t’internet and found out that the story I remember was called “Silver Nemesis” and featured Sylvester McCoy running round trying to stop these guys getting hold of bits of a statue that would help them to become all powerful or something. I also seem to remember that one of the only ways they could be destroyed was using a crossbow (or did I make that up?). I’d be able to re-watch the episode and see for myself if it were available on DVD but sadly it aint. I’m not sure about the new design for them though. According to this week’s Radio Times the art department thought it would be a good idea to go Art Deco with the design and whilst this looks very cool and reminds me of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, I actually really liked the look they employed back at the end of the eighties - I think it made the cyborgs appear more humanoid; as if they had only undergone a few evolutionary steps from being a living, thinking person and that the technology was more crude which somehow for me made it all the more scary (I think it reminded must have reminded me of that traumatizing moment in Superman 3 when evil Vera Webster was sucked into the super computer near the end). There’s a then and now below for you to make your own mind up - unles you’ve been assimilated and have it made up for you.

I always feel very out of my depth when discussing all things Gallifrey. I’ve met people with ridiculous amounts of knowledge on the topic, but I should be alright here because it’s just my opinion and I do enjoy comprehensive information on that subject. BBC 3 has been re-running the adventures of the ninth doctor this week. I’d missed most of them when they were first shown. I couldn’t help but be struck how po-faced a lot of it was. I really like Christopher Eccleston in almost everything I’ve ever seen him in, from Shallow Grave to Our Friends In The North; from eXistenZ to Elizabeth, but he’s no Doctor Who, is he? There is no real charisma, certainly not much (successful) wit and disappointingly a real lack of the refusal to take anything seriously that made you feel so comfortable with the other time lords (which oddly seems to make everything less scary here). Maybe it didn’t help that BBC 4 showed Jon Pertwee’s scrape with The Green Death the week before which was fantastic stuff about radioactive, mutated maggots in a Welsh mine and a sinister chemical-peddling corporation controlled by a camp super-computer. I just didn’t get the same sense of fun in this recent series. Maybe David Tennant will be more fun but if his adventures are as disappointing as the Christmas Special then I won’t hold my breath.

…In “Green Wing“? Firstly and foremostly; it’s not funny. Secondly; despite the hype, it’s actually woefully unoriginal. They try too hard (and fail) to do the smug, aloof comedy that Chris Morris was pulling off successfully in “Jam” SIX years ago. Many of the stylings and self conscious editing techniques were also used to much better effect in “Jam” and “Spaced” (which incidentally was SEVEN years ago) except that the programme makers of these shows had a tad more imagination than to repeatedly play around with the speed of the film; a trick, I think we can all agree, has had its impact significantly lessened by using it in EVERY OTHER SCENE. By setting the show in a hospital it has sadly become reliant on many soap conventions and now we’re all supposed to care what becomes of these vain, nihilistic
and frankly contemptable wankers. The show might have retained some charm and overcome these flaws but for some reason someone wanted to capitalise on the serial element and made the show 50 minutes long which has the effect of stretching out the tired plot; highlighting the show’s reliance on its hackneyed style-over-substance approach and makes you wonder how it can get by on so few jokes (that don’t come off). Also, someone should point out to the programme makers that using established comedy actors such as Mark Heap and Tamsin Grieg only serves to remind us that Spaced and Black Books respectively are more successful and effortlessly more rewarding than this (undeservedly) self-satisfied, confused tower-of-wank.

In addition to attempting to invent a few additional Rules to Mornington Crescent (in this case taking Mornington Crescent to mean the entirety of the London Underground and that there could be no clarifications of any statements made between Waterloo and London Bridge on The Jubilee Line on a Sunday if you didn’t posess a valid form…)  I encountered much strangeness this weekend. Dave explains the great Mammal Cheese Debate of our time better than I ever could but in addition to these important issues was the notion that we are all using far too much management-speak and pat phrases around and if the trend or habit of using them instead of bothering to think of the words that would serve you better, then we are in danger of becoming a society that is inarticulate and insincere (alright more inarticulate and insincere, then). We attempted to construct phrases that consist of nothing more than popular phrases and metaphores (hybrids were allowed) something like; “Grass never grows on the tip of the iceberg which will never boil at the end of the day but could in a perfect world because the bigger pictures reveals it can jump through hoops if brought to the table.” Then everything is followed up with, “That’s really the thin end of the wedge” as if to imply that it can get a lot worse, which of course it can, as afterall it’s only the “Square slippery slope in a round edge of reason”. This could even become a drinking game if more of the Rules of Mornington Crescent were involved. Wait, it gets worse.
I continued this thinking (pointless musing) on the train home last night (after Kelvin and I had managed to come up with a cookery show about maths hosted by Tom Selleck that had sprung from changing Magnum P.I. to Magnum π and then ultimately Magnum Pie) and decided that if you had a good knowledge of actors, politicians, sportsmen, authors, musicians, scientists, religious leaders and the Christmas Special of Father Ted you could play the “Mrs Doyle tries to guess Todd Unctious’s Name Game”. Bet you’re curious now, huh? Each player takes it in turns to say famous (or infamous) people’s names prefixed by the word “Father” e.g. “Father Eamon Holmes”. The other player retorts with another famous person from a different background such as “Father Pol Pott”. At any time a player can play a wild card by using the name of one of the Fathers Mrs Doyle actually guesses such as “Father Neil Hannon” or “Father Hiroshima Twinkie”. When they do, the other player must counter with another one of Mrs Doyle’s guesses. The player who loses is the one who is forced to guess “Father Todd Unctious”. I’m going to go and look for a job now…