When I go see Tottenham, I know there'll be no stoppin em. When I go see spurs, Its cold.

 

Dang but  ICE ROAD (2021) is one dumb film.  It's basically an episode of a cartoon show from the mid-1980s about truckers fighting evil corporate polluters, and at one point even has a slimy corporate guy try to blow up the heroes with a stick of fizzing dynamite.
The plot revolves around Liam Neeson as mumblemumblemumble, a long-haul driver in the desolate wastelands of Canada who can't hold down a job because of his explosive temper which now and then prompts him to violently defend his brain-damaged veteran brother from mockery.  They dream of owning a Kenworth truck and Neeson's brother even carries a Kenworth brochure which he peruses onscreen while listing the many fine features of the Kenworth range of long-distance haulage vehicles.  When Neeson's brother passes, the coroner solemnly tells Neeson "we found this in your brother's things", and rather than a St Christopher, a treasured family photograph of the pair in happier times, or his Congressional medal of honor, it's the brochure for Kenworth trucks - his most prized possession, which Liam Neeson then takes a moment to peruse on-camera while his brother's corpse stiffens nearby.  I am going to go out on a limb and say that I think Kenworth trucks might have given the production some money.

I don't know why I'm bothering to write a review, to be honest: it's a Liam Neeson film - an actor who knows his lane and sticks to it - and you know what you're buying into.  I did like that the film featured a First Nation actor, though, as in acknowledging First Nation people exist, the film has already done better than the actual country of Canada, which tends to only acknowledge the existence of First Nation people when its politicians have to go in front of a camera to dismiss a pile of battered bodies that has mysteriously appeared without explanation in front of a First Nation drinking water reservoir, and by "a First Nation drinking water reservoir" I of course mean an oil pipeline construction site.  Like the Canadian government, I constantly get these two things confused.

This is the whitest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen those shoes that have toes

 

Lucifer is not bad in the traditional sense of poor acting and writing - though it's not a good performer in those areas, either - but it is most definitely a cringe-inducing show for the viewer.  The concept of "engagement" as the ultimate barometer of a show's worth is a relatively new development, but in Lucifer's case it was unavoidable, from its beginnings as a One Million Moms-baiting concept to its eventual fate as a refugee from network television that found asylum on Netflix, where it no longer had to structure itself around the demands of advertising slots and the writers could do anything they wanted - literally anything, from more violence, nudity and swearing, to any possible storyline they wanted to explore being on the table.  Nothing was taboo, and all they had to do was keep their audience engaged.  Which they have done by making a show that is often amazingly bad.

While what has been produced is not very good, surprisingly, it seems to know it and doesn't care - like when a character has an epiphany in their relationship with the titular character by figuring out the plot structure of the average Lucifer episode and uses it to better understand his motivations and impulsiveness, saying out loud "he's projecting his latest issues onto the case" which for the show's writers is a bit like Donald Trump just absent-mindedly tweeting about his crimes.  No subterfuge or being coy, just... "that's what we did.  So what?"  No-one worries about telling the audience the simplistic formula writers have used on this and many other cop procedurals, because this is Netflix, baby, and we know exactly how many episodes we have to work with and then we're done with this nonsense forever.  Except Netflix renewed it for an extra 10 episodes, so it doesn't end when it was supposed to.  Presumably the ratings for this have been really good, the ploy to make something so embarrassing to watch that people tune in to hate-watch or rag on it with their friends has worked better than expected, or it is just really cheap to produce.  I suspect it's this last one, because it often looks really cheap for a show that can afford to licence so many pop and rock tracks.

Lucifer is really cringe, is what I am saying.  It is bad television and I would not recommend it to anyone, I am just saying it is interesting - to me, and possibly only to me - to see something autopsy itself in real time.  Some very capable and charismatic performers do their best with sub-par material, but there's only so much polishing they can do to that material before it starts smearing all over their hands and crumbling.  Tom Ellis, if nothing else, must be complimented on his very fine ass.

Every mining camp should have a hanging tree - makes folks feel respectable

I thought I would go back to blogging at some point, but then 2020 happened.

For what it's worth, while my last post in which I predicted humanitarian disaster for the UK was entirely correct in its central thesis that the NHS is this benighted and backwards nation of despair's one good achievement, I - like everyone else except perhaps the Wuhan Germ Warfare Planning Department THIS IS JOKE PLS DO NOT CANCEL - had no idea how or why this would turn out to be proven true, and yet doctors and nurses are still not worth a 1% pay rise because Britain is an awful country and I am glad it's dying.  Quite frankly, it can't happen soon enough, because I am tired of the white British male's refusal to integrate with modern society.  If they don't like multiculturalism and knowing people's preferred pronouns, they should just clear off and live somewhere else.  Oh no wait they can't because they voted for that Brexit thing.

Anyway, I guess for the good of my mental health I'm writing this blog again.  I only stopped for the good of everyone else's BDUM TISH etc but I mean, what could I really say about The Plague Year that wasn't already being said by far more eloquent others?  The depths of callousness and disregard for human life from the UK's establishment has been as unsurprising as its sociopathic opportunism, but the sadly-dwindling body of genuinely good and caring people of this nation pulled us through despite our best efforts to embrace oncoming disaster and pile bodies high rather than disrupt Business As Usual because we have been conditioned to sooner embrace the deaths of millions than ask for a momentary show of restraint from capitalism.  Sweet jeepers this exercise was supposed to be good for my mental health, but clearly things are already going badly.