What is one to do with thoughts that are far too long for Twitter but not nearly long enough for a proper blog post? Why round them up and turn them into a sixteenth portmanteau post on television of course!
To Be Young, Gifted and Bad
FX’s Legion came in for some harsh criticism here recently so here’s some cheerleading of a show that is actually telling a story with minor characters in the X-Men universe, Fox’s The Gifted. The Gifted reminds me both of Heroes (the powerless but still commanding father of teenage mutant girl) and Dark Angel (relentless pursuit by shady government agency, a decrepit building that looks like the Pulse hit it), so even while it was still in its first season it felt like the return of a long lost friend. The most interesting element of the show has probably been Polaris being tempted by the dark side, as it were. The stunning finale in which she gave vent to her fury was a masterstroke in developing a villain from hugely misguided good intentions. But there were plenty of other interesting elements in the show, a highlight being 3 x 1: the cloned daughters of Emma Frost, who entice mutants to join the Hellfire Club. The perfectly synchronised movements, the identical dresses, the sharing of sentences between all three sisters, the telepathic mind-games – all were touches both chilling and exciting.
Stop. Sip. Sleep. Wait, what?
Another Any Other Business, another gripe at government-funded nonsense… From the very first time I saw this short advertisement by the Road Safety Authority it has bothered me, because it offended my sense of logic. Why would you drink the coffee and then attempt to get a 15 minute nap?! If you were fatigued, wouldn’t you have the nap first, then drink the coffee to energise yourself anew? I mean, don’t many people stop drinking coffee a certain amount of time before they go to bed because otherwise they won’t be able to sleep? Who approved this?
Uneasy lies the studio head that pays The Crown
Claire Foy says she feels naive she didn’t ask for the same pay as Matt Smith for The Crown. Except, as the producers initially made plain, and which was the truth, she didn’t get paid less because she was a woman and he was a man, she got paid less because she was Little Dorritt and he was Doctor Who. I thought Foy was great in Little Dorritt and followed her career with interest, but I suggest most people would have recognised Matt Smith when they saw trailers for The Crown, and not known who she was. The bigger star gets paid more, just as the bigger star gets billed first; unless they get billed last – witness bizarre fights like Dunkirk’s scramble to be the last ‘And…’. Jennifer Lawrence got paid more for Passengers than Chris Pratt. She also got first billing, despite the fact that structurally his character was the lead, and as a result he had more screen-time. Pratt got paid 8 million dollars less for doing more work than Lawrence, but nobody cried foul. Why weren’t they paid the same? If your answer is the truth; J-Law is a bigger deal than CP; why doesn’t that apply to The Crown too? Foy is as big a deal as Smith now, probably bigger – look at the forthcoming Lisbeth Salander reboot sequel. But she wasn’t then, so giving her ‘back pay’ seems very odd, and merely, par Bret Easton Ellis, a corporate gesture to just make the internet noise stop.
Talking Movies 