Monday, October 13, 2014

Strictly? Not Dancing

How long will it be before the BBC puts Strictly Come Dancing out of its misery? 

On Saturday night, the show, in its infinite lack of wisdom, decided to add a fifth judge. And who better to pick than that well-known master of the ballroom, Donny Osmond.
   
That’s right. Donny Osmond. One time teen pop star, clean cut, nice enough bloke, but totally the wrong choice to join an already overcrowded panel of judges. He may have won the US equivalent, Dancing with the Stars, but his comments and absurd marks added nothing to a show that increasingly has less to do with dancing and more to do with making headlines.
   
With every series, the “dancing” (and I use the word very loosely) increasingly resembles a gymnastics competition. The amateurs often barely move a muscle, while the professionals gyrate around them, doing all the fancy stuff in order to hide the flaws and, in many cases, incompetency.
   
Craig Revel Horwood sits there looking angry throughout – and even bored, now - playing up the pantomime dame act on which he has built his persona; but what was once entertaining has become cringe-worthy. Darcey Bussell plays it nice, and Len Goodman is the know all. Bruno Tolioli is, quite simply, outstanding, as he is on the US show, too: a man who totally understands dance and show business, and whose energy is the one thing that keeps the whole thing from falling flat on its backside. It can only be a matter of time before he is given his own show – he certainly deserves it.
   
When Bruce Forsyth was presenting Strictly, the air of danger in wondering when he would next fluff his lines was entertainment in itself; and while Tess Daly is an experienced and much liked presenter, there is a feeling that she is just going through the motions. As for Claudia Winkleman upstairs, when did they throw away her grammar book?
   
Strictly may still be pulling in the viewers (although many complained about Donny on Saturday night), but when it comes to mainstream family entertainment, it is ITV rather than the BBC that gets it absolutely right with its best shows. Switching channels from Strictly on Saturday, The X Factor could have come from a different planet, for all the superiority it showed.
   
Undoubtedly, it has benefited from Simon Cowell making a return to the panel (but please stop munching on those snacks, Simon; chewing is not a good look on television). The dynamic between him, Cheryl Whateverhernameisthesedays (Corelone? Something Italian sounding, anyway), Mel B and Louis Walsh is terrific. It is clear that Simon is boss – when he tells Cheryl to “Shush”, she does, but always comes back with a nicely timed barb at a later date.
   
The back stories to the contestants are certainly attempts to manipulate the audience, but they are real people with real stories. Strictly has tried to follow suit with background scenarios that force contestants into play acting, and the result is utter embarrassment. For the most part, these people are not actors, and trying to get them to perform as such just looks ridiculous.
   
No matter how much we scream at The X Factor, the best people (and don’t mock Jedward – they are hugely successful) still make it to the final, and the winner is always deserving. Only when Susan Boyle lost out to Diversity in the 2009 final did the nation gasp, but the dance group were still very worthy winners.
   
The same is not true of Strictly. Often, some of the best people are knocked out early on and duds make it through. In 2008, ex-political editor John Sergeant even left the competition of his own volition because, despite judges’ negative comments, the public kept voting him in.
   
It is pretty much the same audience demographic voting for both shows, but where viewers keep the fun acts in the X Factor to a point, they take it very seriously when it gets down to the wire; on Strictly, there is a feeling that despite outward appearances, the whole thing is still just a bit of a laugh – or, these days, a joke.
   
The reason is simple: the public are the people who will be buying the records of The X Factor’s participants. In voting for them, they are endorsing their own music tastes and setting their own standards; they feel closely related to the acts they support because, at the end of the day, they will be inviting them into their homes; they have a stake in their stardom.
   
There is no such investment in the Strictly format. All we really care about each season is which partners will sleep together; we enjoy the murky headlines far more than we enjoy the show. And at no time has this been truer than this series; even the costumes are inferior to previous years. Clearly, the sequin budget has been severely cut.
   
The X Factor remains top of the leader board in terms of prime time family entertainment, and the faultlessly produced X Factor still has legs and continues to re-invent itself every season. Strictly, by comparison, is very much on its last legs. 

It can only be a matter of time before it is sent cha cha cha-ing into the sunset.
    
  

   

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Going, Going, Gone Girl - I Wish!

Before this week, the last film I saw in a large public cinema (or movie theater as I am now wont to call it – and yes, spelt that way, too; I am SO American these days) was The Hangover (the first one) in Century City in LA.
   
I bought the biggest burger and drink from the enormous Food Court and relaxed in a seat that was the size of my apartment’s living room.
   
I then laughed non-stop for the whole movie, as did everyone else. I could not remember a time I had laughed quite so much (well, not unless I counted reading my own columns, anyway). For days afterwards, I was still laughing.
  
Although, as a member of BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts), I receive all movies free for voting purposes, I decided this week to go to the real thing once more. The hype surrounding Girl Gone had been huge, as were the opening weekend sales, and, having loved director David Fincher’s The Social Network, was prepared to be massively impressed.
   
Just as I did in The Hangover, I cried throughout: not tears of joy, however, but tears of boredom. And then tears of fear – had I been kidnapped and was I being held against my will and, as in Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, being subjected to something I would never be able to escape? In Waugh, the victim is the character Tony being held by a Mr Todd, who forces him to read Dickens to him – FOR EVER! In Gone Girl, it is . . . well, what is it? I’ll come to that shortly, but let’s say that my third batch of tears were ones of joy as I finally escaped the darkness, both literally and metaphorically and emerged into the light outside the Lowes movie theatre. 

Never has real life looked or felt so good. I went to Whole Foods and spent half an hour working out what I could have bought there for the $15 I had just wasted at the movies (only three things, as it happened, but still preferable).
   
For those who have yet to see Gone Girl (and who, heaven forbid, will still want to after reading this?), and who haven’t read the book, I won’t reveal the essentials, but will talk in generalities.
   
Leaving aside my feeling that Ben Affleck in one of the leads, Nick, is about as underwhelming (to me) as a frozen kipper, it’s a mess of a movie. Rosamund Pike, the other lead, Amy (no fish comparisons intended, by the way), is very good, but it’s impossible to empathise with either character, and if you don’t know who you’re rooting for in a movie, for me it’s over before it’s begun.
   
The catalyst of the movie, the moment that changes everything and leads it in a different direction, is even more underwhelming than Mr Affleck. It should be a real “WOW! I didn’t see that coming” movie moment, but I’ve had more excitement brushing my teeth, to be honest.
   
Then there is the issue of Ms Pike’s weight gain within minutes; the cat that never gets fed (yet never loses weight); the reactions of all the key characters to the central plot i.e. the girl that is gone (although, hardly a girl, quite frankly).
   
The police at the heart of the operation are hopeless; the Sesame Street Cops would have delved more deeply into the evidence. There is way too much repetition, during which we receive the same information, either visually or verbally several times over. The ending is incomprehensible on one essential fact that is supposed to be the other WOW! moment that winds the whole thing up after a staggering 149 minutes. There is not a jot of it that is remotely believable – neither was E.T. literally, but I believed it emotionally – either in terms of plot, characters, or human behaviour. It’s tosh for the masses.
   
It is as if they changed directors (and, at times, writers) every 15 minutes, never quite getting to grips with what kind of movie they wanted it to be (apart from one that made a lot of money by pulling the wool over the general public’s eyes). The hype surrounding it really is a case of Emperor’s new clothes, and its popularity can only be down to the problem of there being so little out there at the moment – and, in Hollywood, there hasn’t been for some time (though I absolutely LOVED The Hundred-Foot Journey, which I saw in a small private cinema). 

Critics who try to analyse Gone Girl in terms of its post modernism and insight into coupledom are, quite frankly, too fearful of shouting out “The King is in the all together!”

   Ms Pike will doubtless receive an Oscar nomination, and the film will make it onto the Best Adapted Screenplay list; but Best Movie? Dear lord, I hope not.
   
It is, alas, 149 minutes I will never get back. Gone Girl? 

Going, going, gone girl - forever, I hope.