newatt-2 Reviews

Sort Of (2021–2024)

Stumbled upon

[8/10 · 24 August 2022]

I had heard nothing about this show and just set my PVR to record all the new CBC shows of the summer. This was defo my favourite because it doesn't have a loud neurotic supposedly-funny girl-who-should-be-a-woman-but-can't-get-past-her-neuroses-and-ticks at the centre of it (which I mostly forgave Moonshine for (but not completely) and I certainly do not ever forgive Strays for transplanting from Kim's Convenience). Such a relief.

The central character, Sabi, is so compelling and charismatic that I watched in a glow of compassion/love. It's very odd when that happens.

I don't think this show is particularly intended to be funny, so unlike some reviewers, that wasn't a negative for me. I think it is intended to be thoughtful and poignant and gentle about tough situations and tough circumstances. I felt that and I liked it. I liked the thoughtful pace of the action.

I also love Sabi's fashion sense - they have style in everything.

I really hope they do NOT get a better comedic writer on the show. It was lovely as was.

The Indian Detective (2017)

A certain louche charm

[7/10 · 7 December 2017]

I am not a Russell Peters fan and never will be - but for some reason I enjoy the Seinfeld-style wooden acting, the evocative music and scenery, the too-gorgeous-for-Russell-Peters actress and the mostly patchy dialogue that doesn't quite settle on a genre. I'm right up to date watching it, which argues to me that I must be having a good time doing so, although I cannot say precisely why.

Weekend Reno (2014– )

A nice entertaining show for real people

[7/10 · 27 March 2017]

As a veteran design show watcher, this one is a little breath of fresh air. The concept is fun (48 hours to change the look of a cottage) and the people involved are reasonable. Anthony, the carpenter, is a tiny bit hosehead in his accent (which I love as it's disappearing from our culture).

It suffers from the same formulaic set-up as all the design shows, which is mildly irritating (Anthony and Merrill unload the truck, this cottage needs work (always true), we're scared we won't get it done on time, there's this problem we didn't anticipate that is dire etc.) but basically it's a nice show with precious little greige on the walls.

The amount of money and people and scope means that many of the changes are merely surface changes, but that is also fun, because it means that some of the things they do can be done by the home viewer. Also, Michelle is often stuck being unable to change a layout, because cottages... Occasionally, I think she does things that are a little too visually noisy (and I notice that when this happens, they are often easy-to-change accents), but that's also more interesting than greige.

Also, Michelle has a nice talent for adding flea market finds and natural found materials.

The cast seem earthy, natural and fun to drink beers with.

All in all, I like this one and hope they do another season sometime.

National Theatre Live: The Beaux' Stratagem (2015)

Consent

[6/10 · 24 October 2015]

This version of the Beaux is alright if you don't care about accuracy in costuming or music or comic restoration acting style.

The costumes range from the 16th to the 21st century (yes, sometimes on the same person) and are bizarre (I mean in the sense of bizarre textile patterns). I was disappointed by this because I find accuracy more interesting and I find inaccuracy distracting. I found the costuming utterly annoying.

The music was folky-Irishy stuff, completely unlike the popular music of its time, some of which would have easily supplied some great catchy music for this play. It was perfectly enjoyable so long as you forgot you were watching a play from 1707.

Boniface throws away the humour of all of his "as the saying is" lines and Froigard is terribly unclear in his Irish accent. Cherry is miscast - she strains for the flashing keen flirtatiousness demanded by the part - it seems to me that Dorinda and Cherry may have played each other's parts much more effectively. Archer is firmly grounded in the 21st century in affect (as are nearly all of the cast) and is believable as an attractive man, but not as a dangerous rake (ah Paul Freeman, I wish I'd been able to tape your performance of this role way back when - you oozed sexiness in that long red lovelocked wig).

The director does not seem up to the task of making this uneasy comedy comic. The fight scene is silly. The dance scenes are just made-up "folky" choreography. The emphasis on the word "consent" in Mrs. Sullen's last speech was silly and did not make it topical, it just sapped the speech's power.

If you don't care about any of those things, I think you'll really like it, but I do care about all of those things, so I thought it was okay.

Othello (2001 TV Movie)

A really fine adaptation

[9/10 · 27 January 2014]

It's been a long while since I've seen this, but bristling at the poor reviews I am moved to make a couple of remarks.

One is that upon seeing it on public TV, I immediately purchased it and showed it to all my friends and family, who were similarly impressed. Both Othello and Iago are wonderfully inhabited by their actors.

Two is that Davies elevates his diction and provides rhythm in his "modernizing" to the extent that I remember being moved to write embittered love poetry after watching it. (I know that the world doesn't need more embittered love poetry, but it is pretty cool that his language put me in that place.)

I like my Shakespeare adaptations to be coherent and this setting is pertinent and coherent. All in all, an excellent experience.

The House of Eliott (1991–1994)

Season 1 was very good

[6/10 · 28 September 2013]

I know people don't like negative reviews, but I bought the full series at quite a price and I am becoming sorry I did so.

This show has many attractive elements. I thoroughly enjoyed watching season 1.

The writing in Season 2 is dreadful. It is as if the original idea proposed by Jean Marsh and Eileen Atkins was all used up by the end of season 1. Every plot point is telegraphed; there are no surprises. The melodrama is cheesy without being delightfully so - the music is godawful. Many of the stories are disconnected from each other. One feels that the writers slammed their ideas together at high speed without reference to how real people would react were they part of these stories. Such a waste of such fine actors, such beautiful design and such a lovely concept. It is almost as though the writers don't believe in the characters and don't like them. I'm not sure I'm going to make it through to the end.

The Inspector Lynley Mysteries (2001–2007)

Yo-Yo Series writing-wise - mild spoilers

[7/10 · 7 March 2013]

I've just finished watching the whole series over a period of a month or so. This series is hard to rate, due to inconsistency -- not the actors' fault - the writing for these series is distinctly weird. It starts off as a pretty good series, then sometime around the middle or end of S2 it becomes distinctly bad, then for s3 and maybe early s4, almost too bad to watch, then it gets tolerably good again.

I didn't mind the replacement of Helen, in fact I thought the last Helen was the best of the lot. If she had been Helen all along, the series would have been better IMHO.

I haven't read the books and, given the horrible clichéd writing of many of the episodes that were based on the books, I am disinclined to.

BBC Play of the Month: The Changeling (1974) Season 9, Episode 5

An interesting rendition - spoilers

[7/10 · 21 July 2010]

Helen Mirren and Stanley Baker (and to a somewhat lesser extent, the actor who plays Alsemero) really know what they're doing. It is fascinating to watch Beatrice-Joanna struggle with her lust for de Flores.

My sad little confession is that I suspect it is the lack of continuous score makes it a little difficult to feel the tragedy of the piece. Piraquo dies and I barely twitch, Diaphanta dies and the same. There's somehow a little bit of a wall between the audience and the evil.

In many of the smaller roles, the lines are recited rather than acted and this detracts from the meaning for those people to whom Jacobean language is less than clear. I watched it with subtitles and cannot count how many times the meaning of lines was obscured by mechanical delivery. Beatrice-Joanna's father seemed to be the worst offender to me.

Dan for Mayor (2010– )

Towards the end of Season One

[9/10 · 13 June 2010]

I'm really happy this show has been renewed. I'm not nutty about any of the individual actors except Fred, but as an ensemble they somehow make the corny overdrama work. This effort is greatly assisted by the theme music which absolutely perfectly captures the feeling of the show.

After watching every episode, I feeling tickled and lighter. I think the tone of the show is uniquely Canadian. Even though it is nothing like Kids in the Hall, it reminds me of the perception created by the Kids that you are watching quintessential Canadiana (in a good way).

I hope they can keep up the pace, because I'd really like this show to last.

Caesar and Cleopatra (2009)

Much better than I expected

[9/10 · 6 June 2010]

I rented this recently, after waiting an unconscionable time because it was always out from my local Blockbuster. Due to the fact that I am an English teacher, I see rather more filmed plays than the ordinary joe does and this was one of the superior ones. I didn't quite feel like I was in the theatre, but nor did I feel like I was watching something that didn't belong on the screen.

Plummer is old for the role, but he has all the presence of a great ruler. James was transcendent, although a little too hysterical in her more immature bits. Donaldson was remarkably suitable in this, which I didn't think he was going to be when I saw his name.

Costuming and staging were really entertaining.

Like the reviewer who didn't like it, I'm not sure what point Shaw was trying to make except for the rather broad and obvious satirical stabs at Britain, the sharpest points of which were dulled by a sort of silly sentimentality. However, I didn't feel it needed one point, particularly. It was a fine interpretation of the possible relationship between a Caesar and a Cleopatra - full of love and believable tensions.

I really enjoyed this production.

The Beggar's Opera (1983 TV Movie)

For fans of the original

[10/10 · 3 October 2009]

This is a really interesting outing which attempts to be naturalistic with a deeply artificial form. I have watched it tens of times because I love the original and I love this version.

As always, MacHeath and Polly are not terribly likable - which is more a fault of changing mores and the script than the acting.

However, everyone else in the cast is brilliant, with the most amazingly chewy performance by Patricia Routledge as Mrs. Peachum. Peachum and Lockit and Lucy and Filch are all very likable. Bob Hoskins does an excellent cameo.

The production values are really high. The costuming is wonderful. The music is lush. The scenery is appropriately grotty and dark.

The meta-ness of the attempt to be natural with it can turn one's head inside out occasionally, particularly with the lovely ending gallop to "Thus I stand like the Turk", which substitutes for a curtain call. All in all, if you like the play, you should really enjoy this TV-made film.

Doomstown (2006 TV Movie)

Some outstanding acting

[8/10 · 22 August 2009]

I don't know why people rate this movie so low. I surfed into it accidentally and couldn't look away. I had no idea what the movie was at all, and was mesmerized by the fact that I knew we were in Toronto before seeing any physical markers of that fact and by the fact that Mark Taylor was just so damn attractive.

As I kept watching, I, of course, recognized the resemblance to events in the papers here. The script was good, the casting was really good. I missed the first twenty minutes, but I see that Gary Farmer was cast as a person of Swedish descent, so I guess his ethnicity in this case was a wink to those in the know about Canada's justice system.

I know the ending was probably happier than one could reasonably expect real life to turn out, but as fairy tales go it was beautiful.

And KC Collins grew on me. He is also very good looking and an amazing actor. Watching his face open up as his life does is truly enjoyable.

The Duchess (2008)

Costume and Physical Beauty

[8/10 · 22 April 2009]

I despise the idiots who think that Keira Knightley can play a beautiful woman of any time period before 1980, so despite the fact that I have read a number of books about Georgiana and despite the fact that the time period is one of abiding interest to me, I was not going to watch this film. However, I could not resist the lure of the costumes and so finally I capitulated.

The costumes are often very wonderful and although KK looks like a badly-put-together praying mantis in some of the outfits and hairstyles (particularly the early ones and the taller hairstyles, less so in the hedgehog variations which she quite suits to a 21st century eye) and although she does not resemble Lady Georgiana in the slightest, she does a very credible job of portraying the characteristics of Georgiana as most historians understand her to have been.

Unfortunately, even when she looks divine in an outfit, she still looks nothing like the person whom she is portraying nor like someone who would not be pitied for her face in the time period in which she is supposed to be representing a great beauty.

How She Move (2007)

This movie is better than average dance movie

[7/10 · 4 August 2008]

I watch them all.

It's not better than the amazing ones (_Strictly Ballroom_, _Shall we dance?_ (Japanese version), but it's completely respectable and pleasingly different in parts.

I am an English teacher and I find some of the ignorance about language in some of these reviews rather upsetting. For example: the "name should scream don't watch. 'How she move.' Since when can movie titles ignore grammar?"

There is nothing inherently incorrect about Caribbean English grammar. It's just not Canadian standard English grammar. Comments about the dialogue seem off to me. I put on the subtitles because I'm a Canadian standard English speaker, so I just AUTOMATICALLY assumed that I would have trouble understanding all of it. It wasn't all that difficult and it gave a distinctly different flavour as the other step movies I have seen were so American.

I loved that this movie was set in Toronto and, in fact, wish it was even more clearly set there. I loved that the heroine was so atypically cast. I enjoyed the stepping routines. I liked the driven Mum character. I felt that many of the issues in the movie were addressed more subtly than is characteristic of dance movies.

In summary, if you tend to like dance movies, then this is a decent one. If you have superiority issues about the grammar of the English standard you grew up speaking, your narrow mind may have difficulty enjoying this movie.

As You Like It (2006)

Branagh destroys Branagh

[6/10 · 29 September 2007]

I no longer await Branagh's _King Lear_ with bated breath and, in fact, would stop it from happening at all had I the superpowers. I hadn't heard good things about _AYLI_, but I went into it with an open mind and enjoyed the first half hour sorta.

Then it struck me how (again) how much I despise Branagh's taste in film music; then it struck me how much Alex Wyndham sounded like he was imitating or channelling Branagh; and then I was struck by Kevin Kline's ability to be misused in Shakespearean films (well, 2 outta 3).

Unbelievably Branagh has almost ruined his _Much Ado about Nothing_, one of my favourite films ever, with this one. This was such a slavish imitation of his own style that he has permanently damaged my ability to enjoy the original. The odd setting seems to have no purpose and mostly detracts. The casting of Brian Blessed as brothers is not successful -- one is always still looking at Brian Blessed. There are a few nice moments, but they are mostly buried in Branagh-isms.

Hatching, Matching, & Dispatching (2005–2006)

A very undervalued show

[9/10 · 31 August 2007]

I can't understand how undervalued this show is. It's got all sorts of elements of other popular shows (particularly HBO ones like "Six Feet Under" and "Trailer Park Boys") and is outrageously funny. Maybe it's the Newf accents, although they have been kept down to a dull roar. I did spend some educational years in Newfoundland, so perhaps this is why I think it's so brilliant, but it doesn't seem all that impenetrable to me.

Naughtiness was everywhere and it was hilarious. Cedric and the moose literally made my insides lose all air and go giddy with glee over something so disgusting being on our national broadcaster.

Except for Sean Majumder, Mary Walsh and Mark McKinney I wasn't all that familiar with any of the other actors, but they really did such a good job of portraying that dichotomy between expected reactions and actual reactions that kept me in hysterics throughout.

I've been really sorry that this show has disappeared.

Battle of the Brave (2004)

Hilarious movie

[2/10 · 31 July 2007]

From the second the music swelled (second one of the movie) and it was movie-hack tripe, I knew I was in for a very long ride. Horrendously clichéd - (I laughed a lot and knew how the plot ended WELL before the ending) - they didn't use Louisbourg particularly well and the costuming and hair were kinda awful. (My particular favourite makeup moment is that the only way they age Depardieu as far as I could see was by putting a straight hair wig on him, instead of wavy). I could go on about the ridiculous unsuitability of the music for a long time -- the movie could be improved massively by an 18th century score.

(ETA: AH, it's that horrible moviemusic guy Patrick Doyle who's responsible for the score - say no More! He should NOT be allowed near historical movies -- he should stick to 20th century settings.)

The "visit to the notable people portion" was also hilarious particularly his little visit to Madame Pompadour who was not particularly convincingly played.

I thought the only actor who appeared grounded in the century at hand was Michael Maloney as James Murray. He absolutely stole the show for all 30 seconds he was on screen. Tragically, he made you see what the movie could have been.

The love scenes did have some heat - the two leads were stunning together.

The most awful scene for historians is where they're at the big leavetaking dinner in Britain before Wolfe sails and he lifts his glass and says the first two lines of "How stands the glass around" aka "Why soldiers why" as if it's a toast. Absolutely excruciating failure at historicity, much better to leave it out. Thousands of people know the damn song and thousands more believe the rumour that Wolfe and company sang it (probably drunk, not all stuffy like this bunch). Daft.

Casanova (2005)

Historically disappointing

[6/10 · 16 July 2007]

I know that if you don't have a background in the history of the period, it will all look alright to you, so this note is for the historians among you...

If you are a history buff at all, you may not even enjoy the farcical nature of this movie. I found that I couldn't believe the interaction of the characters because the hairstyles were ALL over the century as was the music and the clothing. It was entirely distracting.

For example, Casanova is romancing his heroine (I can't even remember her name and I watched it last night) while wearing a wig that was a combination of the beginning of the century and the rise of macaronis, whilst she wore a hairstyle that pretty much did not exist during any time period except perhaps the 1930s costume movies and we're supposed to be in 1753? Ridiculous - like looking at a flapper being seduced by a cowboy. I mean, I know that the main star always has to have hair that's more indicative of the time the movie is actually made in, BUT...

Having the "dancers" dance to Handel's music that was NOT written for dancing and has NOTHING to do with dancing was offputting and weird as were many other little things. Such as BOTH of the heroines being trained to swordfight??? I mean some women were trained in the art but I don't think the most famous virgin in Venice is going to be one of them.

Anyhow, harmless little movie if you don't care about history, but to take all that effort to shoot it in Venice and then screw up so many other issues seems a waste.

Crow

King Lear (1983 TV Movie)

Robert Lindsay amazingly good

[8/10 · 23 November 2006]

A very good version of _King Lear_ - Olivier plays it poignantly, you can see his Lear's overweening vanity and his profound humility. Robert Lindsay is my favourite Edmund ever - you immediately love him and wish him well despite the fact that he is a b*ftard (in all senses of the word - haha). Dorothy Tutin's Goneril has the most disapproving glare you have ever seen and her frolicking mutton act is painful to watch if you're a middle-aged woman. Hurt's fool is a wee bit too pathetic and Cordelia's weepiness is not appealing -- Diana Rigg's Regan is certainly convincing at getting across the hidden nastiness that outdoes Goneril. Gloucester is quite perfect in his rough affection. I've seen this many times and I still enjoy watching it for the nuances. The fight between Ed and Ed is a little much. It's too bad it looks quite so made-for-TV. I'm looking forward to Branagh blowing all the meanings up into big cartoons for us when he does his version of Olivier's _Lear_.

A Chorus of Disapproval (1989)

Local dramatics echo on-stage dramatics.

[9/10 · 15 August 2006]

Most brilliant about the script is that "The Beggar's Opera" is being staged and as Jeremy Iron's character progresses through the narrative, many of his experiences mimic MacHeath's -- a phenomenon underlined by the score. So, familiarity with the source material makes for a brilliant movie. It might appear very light without that familiarity - also the twisted ending requires some knowledge of another stock theatre piece. Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons and Prunella Scales are utterly thorough - This is the first movie I ever bought, back in the dark pre-internet days when it had to be seriously hunted for. Sound quality is a bit poor and Anthony Hopkins' Welsh accent is a bit thick for those of us who rarely hear one.