Not Only a Movie

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I don't currently have the bandwidth to deal with the stuff going on in UK politics right now, so instead I'll tell you something really boring. I was at Merry Hill (a shopping centre) today and my phone notified me that I could have a bottle of Coke Zero for a quid at Costa. So I went to the branch I usually use there (on top of Next) and it looked fine. Then I saw the sign saying "Our card machine is not working; our staff will be pleased to direct you to the nearest ATM." Irritatingly, I didn't have a pound coin – this is rare for me, since I almost always have a bit of cash on me as several shops in Bewdley are cash only.

So I plodded off to another branch of Costa at the other end of the shopping centre. No problem in getting my Coke this time, and everything went okay. A table of pensioners nearby who seemed to think everyone within ten miles needed to hear their conversation, but nothing worse than that. (These people didn't have terrible hearing, as they could talk quietly when they wanted. They just didn't want.) Anyway, I sat around for half an hour and drank my drink, and then I carried on with the other stuff I'd gone to Merry Hill to do. And if you've read all this stuff, you probably deserve some kind of medal! ;)

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This is exactly the kind of day when I'm glad that I no longer have to go out looking for a photo for the 365 project! It's absolutely awful: it's been 3 °C all morning with gloomy skies and constant light-moderate rain. For what it's worth, non-UK folks, this is what actual British people tend to mean when they complain about our weather. Unless you live in the Faeroes or Newfoundland, you probably get more sunshine than the UK, Ireland and NW Continental Europe. And right now, it really shows.

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This was fun. Vincent Price usually is, and he's very Vincent Price here. He plays a millionaire who invites five guests to a party he's giving for his fourth wife. They get $10,000 each... if they survive the night in the locked, haunted mansion. Opening with a black screan and screaming works nicely. Unsurprisingly the 1950s practical effects aren't terrifying, but it has a nice, tense atmosphere. It doesn't always make that much sense, and one late scene requires some pretty stupid behaviour from a main character despite amusing special effects, but the film is often entertaining. Make sure you read the end credits carefully! ★★★½

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364/365: Jaguar XJ8, Bewdley
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I went to the Courtyard down by the river this afternoon for a quick break. A pot of tea and a Biscoff cheesecake; the latter was larger than I'd expected it to be, but very nice all the same. On the way back I spotted this 2002 Jaguar XJ8 parked in a side street. You don't often see these on the road nowadays, but I've always rather liked them. They were the final evolution of the "classic" Jaguar saloon style that began with the Jaguar Mark X in 1961, and were discontinued in 2009.

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363/365: Hagley station footbridge
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I was in Hagley briefly this morning, and it was chillier than it looks in the photo so I made sure I got on with things! I'd forgotten that despite being only a large village it has two Co-ops! One at each end of the High Street, each owned by a different co-operative society. Very strange. The picture shows the footbridge at Hagley station, which was built in 1884 by the Great Western Railway and restored in 2012. If you're a model railway person you may just recognise it as one which was used as a model for one of Hornby's products. The train disappearing into the distance is the one I'd just alighted from.

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I have an enormous soft spot for Paddington, having grown up on his stop-motion shorts – which at their best are glorious. The big-screen series has largely kept his charm, but Paddington in Peru is definitely the weakest of the trilogy. Admittedly the superb Paddington 2 was a hard act to follow, but this third instalment sometimes feels like it's trying too hard. Perhaps the change of director had something to do with that. I don't especially mind the casting change for Mrs Brown: yes, Sally Hawkins did a wonderful job, but Emily Mortimer's version of the character is still fine. Julie Walters as Mrs Bird is unsurprisingly excellent, too.

The real problem is that it feels rather by-the-numbers. Look, the Brown family are growing up and drifting apart, what a fantastically original setup! Hey, they're going on a big adventure that may just bring them back together and lead them to realise what family truly means! And so on. You can get away with that, but only if the execution is perfect, which it isn't. It all feels very linear compared with its predecessor, and far too much of it is predictable almost from the start. It's not as funny as Paddington 2, either. I don't want to make out this is a bad movie. It's not. As a family film it's warm and agreeable, just like Paddington himself. I just hoped for more. ★★★

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I'd been a bit scared of Reddit, although I've had an account there for a while. But I thought "Nothing ventured, nothing gained" and decided to see if I could make a serious post about Sandra Peabody's abuse on the Last House on the Left set be noticed by anyone at all. I was expecting one of three things: either that it would get basically ignored and pick up about two upvotes and one comment, or that it would be downvoted to hell by diehard fans of Last House, or that it would get deleted because I'd accidentally broken some minor rule and the mod on duty was feeling grumpy.

In fact, as you see above and to my enormous surprise, the post resonated. After 18 hours it's just hit 250,000 views – though that's not a terribly helpful metric, as someone who just scrolls past it on their feed counts there. 774 upvotes, which is probably low for a 250k-view post but isn't bad at all considering how many people dislike "liking" a post that is about abuse. 341 shares. 200+ comments, most thoughtful. And the one that really surprised me: 96.9% upvote ratio. I was absolutely expecting considerably more pushback from the "It was the 1970s; you're indulging in presentism" crowd.

I've left linking the post until now because I need to warn folks that it includes uncensored extracts from the actors' commentary track and that they contain disturbing comments, including stories of threats being treated as amusing anecdotes. The post is all text (the image at the end is a scan of magazine text). So, if you do want to see the #1 post on r/horror today then here:

Last House on the Left (1972) - the actors' Blu-ray commentary track is pretty disturbing 

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359/365: Horn and Trumpet pub sign, Bewdley
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This isn't the Horn and Trumpet in Worcester; it's the pub of the same name in Bewdley. I only realised as I was walking home from Sainsbury's this afternoon that I'd forgotten to take a 365 photo today, so this is all you're getting!

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358/365: Waiting room, Worcester Shrub Hill station
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To Worcester today for another meetup with my MLP friends. Just the seven of us this time, as a couple of people couldn't make it, but we had a nice afternoon nevertheless. As usual, not a lot to report since most of the jokes and silliness wouldn't make much sense to outsiders. Here's a photo of something I may well have posted before, but not as part of my 365 project. This is the restored Victorian waiting room at Worcester Shrub Hill station. Irritatingly it seems to have been closed today for some reason, but I didn't need to wait there anyway so it didn't matter!

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I've been wanting to find a film that had a significant element that was about the Indian Ocean slave trade in some way. You know, the way any number of films talk about the Atlantic one. And I've barely been able to find anything. Considering the Indian Ocean trade trafficked about the same number of people as the Atlantic one (12 million, albeit over a longer period) this is an extraordinary and deeply frustrating omission.

In fairly extensive searching, I've turned up one film (in Malayalam), a couple of TV series and a few documentaries. That's it. I wouldn't expect a $150 million blockbuster, but a smaller-scale human drama could be made much more cheaply. It's pretty depressing that Hollywood appears to think slavery means the Romans and then the Atlantic slavers and pretty much nothing else. :/