Tag Archives: UK

Bull (2021).

This was just your usual shite and defines what’s so crap about British cinema.

I hated every minute of it, from the moment the director films a moving car in the most irritating way. The writing was frankly ghastly, and I despise, again with the vehicle stuff, scenes of characters looking all serious in cars at night with classical music inevitably playing on the radio. It’s the worst kind of writing. It was all pathetic. There’s even a bit in here involving parents arguing about murder as they are gobbling down fish and chips. TV-quality acting as always; these folk should just stick to Corrie Street.

Another disgrace to cinema this. But check it out if you want some torture.

Next.

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The Office is still pure cringe.

More Netflix throwback viewing brought me to The Office, the early nougthies apotheosis of workplace ennui, inanities, and bury-your-head-in-your-hands moments of embarrassment. Your everyday office environment is so well portrayed that I actually know these people: the delusional ‘boss’ who’s been there for two decades and whose work defines his/her life, the go-getter who thinks they’re in the FBI or something, the joker who isn’t funny, and the roughly 50% of them who know it’s just a job so get on with it.

The most striking aspect of the show is how it highlights the existential funk of the vast majority of workplaces – what we do isn’t particularly important to anyone, and a monkey can perform most tasks if you train it correctly. One looks for meaning in the wrong places. I’ve always been dubious of folk who proudly announce, “I love my job.” They have to be either psychologically pumping themselves up to cope with the pain or are putting on a show, or have to be burdened with actual real-life mental issues.

Unless they have an interesting job. Which is a rarity.

Anyway, The Office defines life.

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Leith wanderings.

 

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The Foot of the Walk (pub).

More aimless trudging about Leith on a Monday morning. It doesn’t half look grimy at times, yet the odd bit of gentrification aside, has a semi-charming honesty about it.

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Easter Road.

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Newkirkgate Shopping Centre.

The hideous trams are sadly expanding their accompanying plague into here, though – more congestion, more roadworks, more ruined small businesses, more vexing tourists without a clue where they are.

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Leith Walk. Trams to shit on here by 2023.

Trams are a nuisance, a conduit for cretins.

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In the Loop (2009) – election season special.

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Election night is a special night, and the UK has had too many to even summarise in the past half decade. It’s a time when all the godawful monotone robots we have for public servants come out of the woodwork, every single one of them a walking, talking bag of empty catchphrases. Behind the scenes, one suspects their minders are the real brains behind the operation, the expletive-laden puppet masters who are laughing at us.

Malcolm Tucker is how I picture them – cynical, verbally violent, Scottish. I have heard very complimentary things about The Thick of It (2005-2012) but I am not going to bother as the movie is a belter and I don’t wish to diverge from it. There are lines of dialogue here so glorious that I can’t even fathom how they were written.

Best line: ‘Within your ‘purview’? Where do you think you are, some fucking regency costume drama? This is a government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock.’

I am gasping to say that to almost every clown I have to work with. One day the moment will present itself. I verily cannot wait.

Further viewing:

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Black Friday in the UK.

00831808Black Friday, yet another ghastly import from our transatlantic cousins. We now have peasants scrapping at the crack of dawn every late November for electrical equipment made by malnourished Chinese children.

We used to fly Spitfires and storm heavily defended beaches; these days it’s fisticuffs over a 4K TV.

Britain is fucked.

Further horror:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/uknews/11259740/Black-Friday-hits-Britain-in-pictures.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/gallery/2016/nov/25/black-friday-around-the-world-in-pictures

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