Comedy and Laughter - A Still Game Review

Comedy and Laughter - A Still Game Review

Still Game is a Scottish comedy in which actors in their 30’s and 40’s play retired people in their 70’s. Both of the main characters, Jack and Victor are about 73, widowed and rent apartments right next to each other. As best friends they share everything, from breakfast to going to the pub together to staying up late at night at Jack’s place because he got sky and Victor hasn’t. Other characters are a Muslim corner shop owner, Navid, and his talkative cleaning lady, Isa, who is incredibly nosy and lives on the same floor as Jack and Victor; both are played by young actors playing old people.

In this comedy, they use a mix of toilet humor, Shadenfreude and intellectual humor to make the audience laugh, and it’s a burlesque form of humor as the producers and writers have caricatured retired people and applied exaggerated characterization to them.

In one specific scene, Bobby, the owner and barman of the local pub the Clansman goes on a bike tour to stay in the next village overnight. He cycles to the next pub and is greeted by a barman that is nearly an exact replica of himself, mullet hair and lines in face, and when he orders a pint and is asked what he does for a living, he is quick to reply lawyer, as he doesn’t want anyone to know how stereotypical and samey his pub is. The door opens and two people looking an awful lot like Jack and Victor walk in, being introduced with names that even sound like Jack and Victor, at which Bobby nearly chokes on his beer and leaves quickly before he can find out any more similarities between both pubs.

It took me a good while to get used to the rural Glasgow accent, but even before that the stereotypical characters being acted out are just behaving in very funny ways. For example, one morning Victor walks over to Jack still in pyjamas and lets the bottoms down for Jack to inspect his piles. Isa, being her nosy self looks through the letter box slit and assumes they must be up to something and tells everyone that Jack and Victor are gay, after which they get awkward tolerance from everyone one else, except for that they don’t know what’s up. As many jokes are very visual (a person slipping on ice, Jack and Victor walking over to help and slip as well) I did not need to understand what they said to make me laugh, but as many jokes were intellectually funny (in a hospital setting Jack and Victor are responsible for the radio; one man’s last wish was “Rosemary” so they go to lengths to find the song, play it and it turns out to be his ex-wife’s name, his wife sitting by his bedside is furious)  I learnt to understand and love them too.

Still Game is a great adult comedy that teachers the watcher to understand a weird Scottish accent if patient enough and until then keeps entertained with slapstick and other graphically funny moments, my personal score is 5/5.

The Rules of Documentary – A Religious Review

The Rules of Documentary – A Religious Review

Religious (2008) is a documentary in which Bill Maher visits religious people all over the world to compare their views and challenge them about their own beliefs and actions. He talks to fundamentalists in America, a Franciscan monk in Amsterdam and a priest in the Vatican, to name a few.

Bill Maher is an American comedian who describes himself as an atheist, raised as Roman Catholic with a Jewish mother. In this documentary he talks to several people all over the world that express their religion openly, be it in profession or by taking part in a play, concluding that taking the bible literally cannot work in our day and age and should at least be interpreted metaphorically, but not taken word for word.

Religious seems to be done it the reflexive mode, as Maher shows different views and expresses in front of the person saying (and with that, to the viewer) that this specific idea might not be the ultimate truth they’ve all been looking for. Opinion forming happens in front of the viewer’s eyes to give them a chance to make up their own mind and there is a definite awareness of the process as this documentary definitely has a specific layout that gives the audience a specific picture that Maher aimed at.

The type of documentary is most likely a shockumentary, as the attention is mostly drawn to how many people really do take the bible literally and how much they believe that they are right. In contrast it also includes opinions that feature reasonable people, most of them based in Western Europe (can anyone see a pattern there?).

The theme of religious is obvious: religions. Jews, Christians, Mormons, Franciscans & Muslim are all featured and partly explored, pointing out irregularities with science; for example, an American fundamentalist built a park in which Jesus rides a dinosaur – because if the earth was created 7000 odd years ago, there must have been humans and dinosaurs at the same time!

The opinion bias is definitely towards the ridiculousness of people that literally believe their holy script, and maybe also that Europe is a better place for religion as Maher makes it out that people in Europe don’t just faithfully believe in what’s being preached to them but put science into the equation. 

The opinion constructed by Maher seems to be that fundamentalist believers are hard to get thinking and they would rather stick with what they know than listen to reason, which in turn gives the impression on Maher rightfully being an atheist. Also again – that Western Europe is the most sensible place for religious people to live as they do take everything metaphorically instead of literally and not blindly believe; for example, that god hates gays but that even though the bible doesn’t say it as such, it should state that god in fact loves gays!

Putting the narrative against the facts quickly lets the viewers pick up on a common theme – that America seems to be full of people that literally believe in the bible as there doesn’t seem to be a religious American interviewed (apart from Maher’s family) who isn’t a fundamentalist. This in turn makes America look worse than it probably is (hopefully) while shining the light of glory onto Europe in which even priests and people of the cloth are allowed to say – yes, some of the stuff that’s written in the bible is rubbish, it doesn’t work with science and must not be taken literally, and please think about things you hear, some might not be entirely true.

Altogether, Religious is quite informative and definitely hilarious at times with a high entertainment value but each topic should probably be researched before anyone blindly believes Maher everything (lesson learnt, I’d say). It is interesting to see so many different opinions out there, with the weirdest ideas about how to live their live according to their god (or, in some cases, what god meant to say in the bible) and it makes the British viewer feel glad to not live in a fundamentalist America.

Exploitation Cinema – A Mad Max Film Review

Exploitation Cinema – A Mad Max Film Review

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is set in a post-apocalyptic Australia in which clan membership is the only chance of survival as water is scarce. In this story, a clanswoman “steals” 5 wives of the clanstyrant, drives her war rig into a canyon to try to get more fuel, but because they are followed by the tyrant’s army they are denied fuel and have to flee. Trying to shake the tyrant off, she drives all through a tornado where she gets rid of most pursuers, but Max manages to gain her trust even though he doesn’t have a high stand as the only man between those 6 women. Having a vision of a green place, they drive nonstop trying to rid themselves of the last clans people still following and eventually shake them off, stumbling into a small clan of motorcyclists that turn out to be relatives of the clanswoman, who adopt them immediately.

The films topic is exploitation more than it has a plot: They drive to a place, find it’s hopeless and drive back. The first Mad Max was released in 1979 and this is the fourth film with this title. It is a film that exploits itself – and many other topics while doing it.

The biggest theme is probably carsploitation, as every single being out in this desert seems to have their own vehicle, be it a massive war rig, trucks, modified and fire breathing four by fours or off-road motorcycles.

As a road movie, the next theme is Ozploitation as Australia with the vast outback and scarce water has made the genre their own and since then released countless road movies with others adapting and copying the idea.

Gangsploitation is also heavily featured as Max himself was taken prisoner by the clan the women belong to, worth noting is that all the members of this specific clan are as pale as albinos – even though they live in a desert. Maybe a sign of richness, not having to go outside during the day like the common folk?

For some reason, this clan’s highest achievement is to die in battle and eat in the great halls of Valhalla, which leads to the conclusion that they have adopted the Norse gods and religion, maybe as it’s very heavily relying on drinking and fighting.

The film makers have also borrowed elements from pirate films as they all characters shoot with guns and some scenes, in which the cars race head on head the characters jump over using long poles that swing from side to side and have the same use as the ropes the pirates have to swing themselves onto the other ship. If someone were to reverse certain elements of the film, for example the desert into a great sea and water into food, then the parallels of the cars being ships that race through water rather than sand works well – and the film as a whole would probably still work as well.

 A very big topic of this film is feminism as all the main characters but one are women, which have diverse and atypical personalities, can make decisions for themselves and most of all – fight. Escaping through the desert, they are looking for a childhood memory, the green place. Eventually they come upon a small clan of female motor bikers, which immediately take them in as daughters and protect them at all costs, even if it means to sacrifice their own lives.

Having learnt that the green place doesn’t exist anymore, all head back to the starting point but killing the tyrant on the way, making it a safe place to live now.

Overall it’s a very action laden film with a fairly slow start to the story which then turns amazing, it’s not a film for the faint of heart as the visuals can be quite brutal but altogether story and shooting make a comprehensible, feeling, understanding and brilliant film which should be seen by everyone. My personal score is 5/5.