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Drag Race España All Stars: Reunion (2024)
A very difficult watch
When a contestant admits to struggling with health (physical or mental) several times to production (in their 'confessionals' and possibly behind the scenes) and the other contestants, it's vital to remember that there's more at stake than a tv show contract.
However, telling them that their attitude stinks, to "go read a book" and joking that they have the mental age of a baby (all of which and more we saw throughout the season) should deservedly ruin your reputation.
Sitting them down, replaying all of those moments back for entertainment, and making them face even stronger anger from even more contestants once again without even touching on the wider subject of mental health status marches belligerently across the line into abuse.
This particular contestant has been known online to be outspoken, so when they called out the favouritism of production, it was naturally taken for a stubborn tantrum. That's a very human response. Fine. This episode put everyone together again and played every moment of that contestant calling out the favouritism and being stressed and withdrawn in long drawn-out clips after which Supremme asks questions to poke everyone into creating a 'television moment'. It's deeply uncomfortable to watch them try and keep their poise and smile as they watch themselves break down and be consequently attacked, then to be attacked again live on stage.
Almost everyone involved in this episode should rethink their approach to both humanity and specifically mental health.
Most importantly I wish all the happiness and joy for that one contestant. Thank you for standing up to a rigged system - it's the hope the world needs to see. May you get your cookies.
Sardar Udham (2021)
Masterpiece
For those who found this film boring, Coolie No. 1 is also available on Amazon Prime. Enjoy.
This is exceptionally well executed, gut wrenching and never bowing to commercialisation or expectations. As a Brit myself, it was sobering to watch my ancestors shown in all their racist, colonial and bigoted reality (a country's most shameful acts are always left out of their history books, so my history books were only 5 pages long).
Vicky Kaushal cements his greatest role yet, with a multi-layered performance so hypnotic, he dazzles whenever he's on screen.
Fantastic movie.
RuPaul's Drag Race: Freaky Friday Queens (2021)
RuPaul's Squid Game next year please
First off, objectively, if we rate this episode 9, 10 or even 1 or 2, then we're guilty of the same thing we're accusing the judging panel of doing - judging unfairly. The show is still there, with its high production skill, during a pandemic. Gottmik, Rosé, Symone and Olivia are still bringing their freshness and lightness to the season. Some challenges are good. And... it's colourful, yay.
But the problem with this episode, as so many of us have said, is with the judging. Most episodes, it feels trite. The writers write good one-liners to make the panel appear snappier than they are, but the delivery makes it obvious they're reading prepared lines (before the runway and during the runway), especially when they're not on-screen delivering the line it just feels like the jokes were put in during post-production.
All other comments (on all other platforms) have described how 'off' the judging is in S13, so I won't offer anything new there. It does just. Feel. Off.
Side note, I'm trying to work out... does Kandy Muse just have a big tongue or something?
The psychic section was another very 'off' addition to the episode. It didn't accomplish anything or drive the episode forward. However, it did give us the memory of Clara the Cow. Yes and amen to that. Personally I have an issue with using VFX in reality shows (for example season 9 when they had to present fairy tale characters next to floating cartoons - it made me think, 'what are the judges seeing?') The medium (excuse the pun) of reality TV is such that we buy into every moment as 'real', and VFX jolt us out of reality because we know some fancy digital manipulation is going on.)
On a final note, it's not a terrible episode, it's good, in fact, but there are some big stinkers that ruin it.
Hopefully our wish will come true for season 14, and the producers will turn the competition into a Squid Game-like show.
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars: This Is Our Country (2021)
A fantastic season
A country song about America doesn't translate to everyone, but I'm able to see past what I expect of a finale and see the bigger picture. Speaking of seeing the bigger picture, congrats to the winner, who has had to deal with a lifelong battle against external hatred and internal confusion. It could have been any of the top four or five, but I'm so happy for the winner. Let's grow up, get past our own opinions and expectations, smile, breathe and celebrate a wonderful human receiving recognition.
RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under: Rucycled (2021)
Messy as hell and loving it!
Entertainment shows like Drag Race are so much fun when we let go and not take them seriously. Didn't like the Game of Thrones finale? It doesn't matter because it's a tv show. Didn't like how Line of Duty ended? Let go, it's a tv show.
RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under is such a messy show, with frontrunners being eliminated early, contestants being brought back, questionable judging, and Kylie Minogue showing up as a guest... via video call. I mean, it's so hilarious.
In this episode, we have a gag moment from the onset, we have Scarlet Adams throwing Electra Shock under the bus for doing "20 splits" in the previous challenge, Anita giving us the unsurpassably joyful image of her playing trumpet in the Navy band.
Sure, there's nothing new here with regards to the format, it's a design challenge on Drag Race, but these characters are such a joy to watch, especially for those of us watching from lockdown.
So, thank you RuPaul for giving us more drama and smiles in a world that takes itself too seriously to remember that life is too short.
Inside No. 9: Love's Great Adventure (2020)
A beautiful Loachian microcosm
The first time I watched this I would have given it 7/10, maybe I wasn't watching it in the right conditions or something... not sure.
Upon a second viewing, everything seems to sing. The advent calendar format is a beautifully simple way of telling a story of this one microcosm of humanity - an unassuming family in the north of England (I myself grew up in Sheffield and Leeds, so all the details make for a rich background to the story - the terrible singing Christmas tree, mum inexplicably buying Brazil nuts and saving the satsumas as a treat for Christmas day, the panic of approaching a roundabout in your driving lessons).
The direction by Guillem Morales is so nuanced and he brings out beautiful performances from a very talented ensemble of actors (special mention goes to Bobby Schofield for a gutwrenching performance so real it made me IMDb him just to find out where the hell he came from suddenly).
The one moment of terror (when Trevor waits up all night) is far scarier than anything Shearsmith and Pemberton attempted in The Harrowing and Seance Time because we don't want anything bad to happen to this family. Maybe they remind us of our own little family trying to get by. It's subjective I suppose. I definitely felt it.
American Horror Story: The End (2018)
Nuclear apocalypse? More like someone set fire to a used diaper.
While the cinematography by Gavin Kelly goes a long way to creating the creepy dread needed to make the premise of this eighth season work, you can't help but wonder if that's all that's making it work. Sure the costumes are great, but this is AHS, so it's all got to be flamboyant. The musical leitmotif(s?) are effective but this is AHS so every scene has got to be saturated in music to hammer the horror home.
Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk seem to have made the same mistake as in 'Cult' that taking a hot topic and finding the sheer horror in it doesn't create good dialogue, story or characters. From the very opening scene, we're introduced to Evan Peters' and Leslie Grossman's characters - two pastiches drawn with such thick strokes that the painting elephant can't even handle the brush. Later, when a character hears who else will be in a fallout shelter, her response of "rich people, of course" smacks of the same dualistic us-versus-them attitude that Murphy and Falchuk actually did well to challenge last year. It feels like the show regresses every year.
To some, this is sufficient entertainment. But Murphy and Falchuk can't even trust their fans to work out for themselves that someone jumping out of a building during a nuclear missile warning is committing suicide to not have to live through the fallout. There has always got to be someone blurting exposition. This is a show where a character's very presence commands silence when she walks into a room, but she still rings a bell, because... it looks cool?You can't have a good story without genuine dialogue coming from genuine characters, and unfortunately Apocalypse stacks up too many wince-enducing moments to make it all work. Not even Sarah Paulson Evan Peters are able to make their characters seem like anything more than caricatures. And with their calibre, that's saying alot.
So it all comes down to the look of it all. Sure, there's nice creepy use made of architectural symmetry and low lighting. Candlelight reflected in champagne glasses. 'Hotel' shared that same sumptuous positive aspect, but again, Hotel was brought down by the sheer lack of vision and an inability to make anything thrown at it stick.
This reviewer will no doubt be watching the rest of the series hoping that some life can come out of this nuclear wasteland. But by the end, it might all be just another "meh"... which is admittedly not the effect you would hope a show set during a nuclear apocalypse would give you.