As the title suggests, so forth.
Just Stop Oil (Painting)
As some wag has dubbed the movement. I’ve written about conspiracy theories before on this blog, and it’s taken a lot for me to start ascribing plausibility to this scenario, but, by following their attack on Stonehenge with a double whammy assault on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Just Stop Oil are looking more and more like an elaborate psy-op by Big Oil to discredit climate activists and any attempts to rein in climate change before we all end up living in a Mad Max hellscape by the year 2049. (Although I’ve always wondered where the people in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max universe get their apparently endless supply of oil to keep their bespoke motors going) The worst thing is that I could genuinely believe the people who are going to prison now are the definition of useful idiots in such a scenario – blissfully unaware that Big Oil executives are laughing themselves to death at their gullibility. I’ve written about these clowns before but something needs to be restated. There is a particular kind of person that derives real pleasure from destroying something beautiful. And they are generally not the kind of people you’d want to be around.
An Acting Cog in the Plot Machine: Part II
Well, now. I was watching a rerun of The Champions on ITV 4 the other month and found myself rolling my eyes at the terrible performance of a supporting actor. Pure ham. Cured, for a year, sliced for a good meal with cabbage and parsley sauce – that kind of acting gibberish. He is acting, I thought to myself, at such a pitch of shouting fury, and splenetic rage, that his character could drop dead of an apoplectic fit without anyone raising an eyebrow. And then his character did just that. Ah. I had misjudged the man. His performance was awful but it was in service of the writing – he was merely an acting cog in the plot machine. And now I find myself second-guessing other terrible performances I keep in a sealed-off warehouse in my memory. Colin Farrell in Cassandra’s Dream, Dougray Scott in Taken 3, Paul Dano in The Batman. Were they really terrible performances? Or were they earnest attempts to get across the blunt message of an extremely poor script?
The Merritt Folding of the Mind
Alas, So Help Me Todd. Cut short in its prime. And just as the mysterious Mr Folding had finally appeared. Sort of. For Merritt runs his law firm with the same hands-on presence with which Charlie ran his Angels. But the last ever images of So Help Me Todd were of the brown shoes and suit belonging to one Merritt Folding as he finally arrived to work at his actual office for the first time ever in the show’s 32 episodes. It’s been depressing but interesting to read Scott Prendergast’s plans for seasons three thru seven as revealed in the aftermath of the unexpected cancellation. Apparently Joe Pantoliano was being eyed to guest star as Merritt Folding so he and Marcia Gay Harden could engage in a game of cat and also cat for season three. But we will never see that. And so in my own mind I have a different Merritt Folding walking off that elevator. As the very tall Beverly Crest cries “Gird your loins!” to Margaret, I like to think that she was expecting the presence of someone who looks down on her, literally and figuratively, the way she looks down on Margaret. And for me that could only be one man, in full Tripp Darling mode – Donald Sutherland.
Talking Movies 