Hannah Woods

There was a young lady last week in the bank who seemed strangely familiar. So much so that, as much as I tried not to, I couldn't help looking up at her to try and remember where I had seen her before.

And of course, after a minute or so, she happened to look my way as I was looking at her and like an idiot I immediately looked away as if I had something to hide. Then I couldn't look again. And I felt embarrassed. And I thought she was probably feeling uncomfortable because she'd seen an older guy looking at her. And I felt more embarrassed.

All made worse by a story I heard on the radio about unwanted sexual attention. Which was actually about men groping women (and girls) in public places. But it had made me slightly annoyed because it also implied that men shouldn't even look at women if it made them uncomfortable...

...that's the women being uncomfortable. But have you considered how men might feel walking down a street with teenage girls wearing next to nothing? Do you not think that makes me feel uncomfortable? Because it does.

Of course everyone has the right to wear what they like. But the best articulation of how I feel was expressed by someone else like this: "You have the right to leave a diamond necklace on the back seat of your car, and not expect anyone to steal it. But you don't do that."

You can't have it both ways. You either dress eye-catchingly and expect people to look at you. Or you dress more modestly.

Anyway, I don't expect anyone to listen to me. But back to the origin of this post... I was fairly sure that I hadn't seen the girl in the bank, and that she simply reminded me of someone else.

I couldn't think who though. It had to have been someone in film or TV. I couldn't place her. Then I got a memory of a distinctive voice. So it had to be an actress didn't it?

Blind alley. I spent ages wondering which film or TV show she was from. Yes, you are right, I didn't have much else to do over the long weekend.

Have you ever tried to remember something, decided it wasn't worth the bother and then tried not to bother remembering it? The more I tried to put it out of my mind, the more it came coming back. Who was she? I don't care! Yes, but who is she?

And so it went on, all weekend.

Then, suddenly, I thought "If I can't remember her from film and TV series, and I don't know her, then maybe she was just a distinctive character on a game show or something?"

Bingo. I don't watch much TV that isn't drama, but I always watch University Challenge (go figure) ... and that was it. Suddenly I could picture her as clear as day. She was one of the captains on the current series. She'd been on several shows. I'd recorded most of them on my DVR. So I just had to flick through the last few.

Hannah Woods, captain of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

She stood out because she was a very good captain, as well as being quite pretty, having a funny eyebrow that seemed permanently raised, and speaking with a quite distinctive voice.

I looked her up on the internet. But was quite shocked to see articles about how women who appear on programmes like UC often get stalked on social media.

So I stopped looking. It feels like you can't take any interest in women now without being a nuisance.

This is a sad product of the 21 century, isn't it? In the old days you could only attract the attention of the people you actually met, or who were obsessed enough to write you a letter. Now you can be inundated with electronic messages that take no thought and no effort to send.

Anyway, good luck to Hannah and all the other contestants in the semi-finals of University Challenge. I'll be watching... if that's all right with you? 

Guns and Talks (2001)

Korean action is one of my favourite genres. Which takes some saying because I hate the pigeon-holing of films (and anything else) into narrow bins with names. It is lazy, often debatable, and sometimes just wrong.

So it is with Guns and Talks. I wouldn't call this an action film. But it is Korean ;)

It has some of the elements of an action film, but no-one who had actually watched the film all the way through would call it an action film. Unless they were told to promote it as an action film...

Anyway, I digress. Despite my initial disappointment at the lack of action (I thought I was in the mood for blood) I did enjoy this film. It is sort of quirky and somewhat thought provoking.

At first the 4 anti-heroes are so matter-of-fact about being hired assassins that you wonder how they can be likeable characters. But over the film you do grow to like them in a way... because even killers are people? This is helped by the police being nasty pieces of work too. If not more so than the 4 friends.

There is some humour too. At one point one of the killers is talking about his feelings and he thinks the others have been moved to tears... when in fact they have covered their faces because they are cracking up laughing. Nicely done in the context of the story.

A decent film, not much action, but plenty of entertainment.

Spoilerman

A friend of mine, who knows I am a Marvel fan, asked me last night why I'm not more excited about Spiderman being in the new Civil War trailer.

Because I haven't seen it and don't want to see it.

The trailer, I mean, not the movie ;)

Why are people so keen to see half of a movie's best bits cut together out of context? How is this going to enhance your enjoyment? Wouldn't it have been a great surprise to see Spiderman springing into action? Even if you knew he was going to be in the movie, at least you wouldn't have already seen him.

Civil War is such a well know story that surprises are already going to be pretty thin on the ground. So why go out of your way to dilute the visual surprise elements as well?

I know who the main protagonists are going to be. I know what the likely shock points are going to be. I know who wins the civil war!

So, since I probably already know more about this movie than any previous Marvel flick, the last thing I want to do is see the characters in advance.

Frank (2014)

I remember the comedian Frank Sidebottom. This film is supposedly inspired by him, but doesn't claim to be factual to any significant degree. Which probably means that only the funny dummy head and the weird music are Sidebottom.

Also, sadly, there is no appearance by Little Frank :(

Your mileage may vary, but I didn't find it particularly funny. Amusing, yes. Quirky, certainly. But actually funny? Not really.

The story is quite interesting. For a change instead of a wannabe musician finding his way to deserved success... the wannabe musician goes on a long journey toward the realisation that his music really isn't very good.

And instead of the maverick musical guru turning out to be a true genius... the maverick turns out to be a tormented soul with mental problems and some small talents.

The thing I liked best was the contrast between the ambitious wannabe and the band of misfits. He thought he was joining a potentially popular band that could gain him success. And he tried to push them in a direction that they didn't want... and couldn't actually cope with.

Interesting. 

House of Cards (series 4)

I almost gave up on HoC4 after one episode. Because it resumes exactly where the third series ends and doesn't feel like an opener at all. In fact, it doesn't really seem to offer much more than a bitter husband vs wife feud.

Since I enjoyed seeing Frank + Claire versus the rest of the world, that's not something I wanted to see.

So I actually went a week or so before I decided to give it a couple more episodes.

I'm glad that I did, because the middle part of the series is great, but ultimately I have to say that the ending left me flat.

The main problem with this US "remake" is that it is drawing out the whole thing way too far. In the original UK version there were 3 series. It is rise and fall. Done.

Now I assume there will be a series 5 to wrap up. And I hope they do wrap up properly because it would be a shame to leave things hanging in the hope of a series 6 that fails to appear.

It's the reluctance to draw things to a conclusion that is making HoC much weaker than it could have been. Series 1 & 2 were great. Series 3 was weak and half of series 4 is weak too. But I guess there is just enough there to keep it compelling.

If only the makers had had the confidence to write a solid 3 series and then stop. This would have been a truly great piece of work. As it is, it is just fairly good.

Mystic River (2003) review

Story. Story. Story...

... that's the only thing that I can think is wrong with this film. Because despite some great performances from the 3 leads Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon, I just didn't enjoy it.

I enjoyed plenty of the scenes. But I didn't enjoy the film. Is that down to director Clint Eastwood? I don't know. I'm struggling to put my finger on it. But I think that ultimately the story doesn't work.

Perhaps it is a little bit too contrived? There are an awful lot of coincidences that are each OK, but as a whole a bit too much to swallow. That's probably what is nagging at me. Poor old Dave being a clear suspect for the murder just seems too unlikely. It would have been better if he had been clearly innocent, but implicated anyway just because of people's prejudices... that is more realistic.

Sorry guys. I know a lot of people like this film and it has won awards, which I can see are well deserved, but it didn't work for me.

John Wick (2014) review

This is a very cool action film. There's not a lot of story - bad thing happens to man who turns out to be more than capable of exacting revenge. That's about it.

But there are so many clever details. The hotel which all assassins treat as a neutral zone. The specialist cleaning company that takes care of dead bodies. The payments in gold coins.

All these things have been seen before, but here they are so smoothly slotted together that it creates a wonderfully believable community of killers.

The only thing I didn't like was the "tie up anti-hero on a chair and talk at him for long enough for help to arrive" scene. Yuk. That one scene stands out like a sore thumb! The boss character that has been built to that point would have just shot John Wick in the head at the first opportunity... because he knew how dangerous he was.

One sloppy scene I can forgive, though.

Excellent. So good I watched it twice... on the same night.