Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

It's been a strange year again, with not enough live performances in the mix yet.  I've already given my Awards for Film, Television and Theatre for 2022 here , so this is about other stuff that happened this year I didn't want to forget (and some things I maybe did).   The year started off with pretty low expectations and in many ways it managed to underdeliver, but there were some high spots too if you look hard enough. My fantasy children This was the year that I discovered mum-crushes.  I'm used to the usual sort, but I now follow more actors with a proud parent vibe than I do with any light lusting.  This is a worrying development and I fear it confirms that I have got old.  The main objects of my new affections this year have been the casts of Stranger Things and of course Heartstopper.  It's so exciting watching actors at the beginning of their career, when you can see all the potential starting to be realised.  For example, Joe Locke absolutely killing it in

Drum roll for the inaugural Chatterbox Film, TV  and Theatre awards 2022.  This is a really random selection and I  am sure I have forgotten some great stuff but these are the bits that have stuck in my memory.  You may be relieved I have forgotten some things, as this has turned out to be far too long, like every award ceremony you have ever seen.  May contain spoilers. Best TV Moment It was a good year for TV moments. The nominees are: Stranger Things: There were a lot of great moments in series 4.  I almost picked  Kate Bush saves Max, but really that's probably more a group of moments.  Or I could have picked one of the moments where poor Will has his romantic hopes dashed.  Instead though I have picked the iconic moment in the finale of series 4, with Eddie Munson's heroic playing of Metallica's Master of Puppets.  The game changer in the battle, sacrificing himself for his friends, and also spot on brand for the metalhead/ dungeons and dragons crossover that I remembe

His Dark Materials I've been seeing really annoying spoilers for weeks about the final series of Phillip Pullman's perfect trilogy, as for some reason it was released earlier in the US, a week at a time.  So, I already knew a little bit of what to expect, and when the series dropped on iplayer on Sunday, I started watching straight away, with a plan to watch two episodes a night.  Well that lasted on Sunday and Monday but last night, at the end of episode 6 I just couldn't stop and so tore on through right to the end.  I think this production has done the books proud, in a way that The Golden Compass just didn't.  For a start the right people are British, and there was enough time to tell the story properly enough that I didn't feel there were any glaring holes, although there were some changes made.   One of the good things was the way that the large chunks of philosophy in the last book of the series, The Amber Spyglass, was spread out very effectively throughout.

The power of stories and how we choose to believe them is the overriding theme in this slightly haunting film, and the disconcerting framing device at the beginning and the end is used to hammer the point home . Set in Ireland in the 1890s when the famine was a recent memory, the film is about a ‘fasting girl’ supposedly surviving on prayer alone, seen through the eyes of the nurse (Florence Pugh) employed to watch and report on the veracity of the claims.     Everyone has their own version of the story they want to protect, and that they are prepared to do or condone appalling things to maintain it.     We have a doctor, a scientist, convinced that the girl has found a new source of life, the religious believers, the scientific disbelievers and the journalist as well as the parents, all with their own agendas.     Florence Pugh is impressive as the nurse at the heart of this, both uncovering the stories upon stories woven together here, and adding layers of her own.     The scenery an

This was an unlikely impulse read, as I'm not usually that keen on romance novels as a genre, but I was really pleasantly surprised. I read it for two reasons,  Firstly I am still hoovering up the work of all of the Heartstopper alumni, and one of the actors will be playing the romantic lead in the film. But what sealed the deal was it was written by an American but the novel is based in Winchester and Hampshire (where I spend my time when not in London!)  Anyway,  it's a fairly standard set up for a coming of age journey, but it turned out to be a thinly disguised homage to the author's Cuban heritage full of lots of loving and rounded detail about food and culture and family.  And added to this were the locations, not just in Winchester but also accurate descriptions of one of my favourite walks along Basingstoke Canal to Odiham Castle which is not a location that tends to crop up often in bestselling novels.  Finally, the  characters were also well enough drawn that

  Continuing on my Olivia Coleman odyssey, last night I caught up with The Father.     What a fantastic piece of work this is.     Anthony Hopkins channels King Lear with his anger, frustration and bewilderment with what appear to be his three daughters.     We share his view of the world as it changes around him seeming to make no sense, and as all spirals to the devastating ending,  he and we briefly have clarity before the fog descends again.       Olivia Coleman is stunning too (of course) as the daughter with impossible choices, and makes it possible to sympathise with her decisions even while we are seeing the consequences.     Absolutely gut-wrenchingly impressive.

 I read Orlando as a teenager but haven’t been back since.  I remembered it being a feminist treatise but of course revisiting it now, the sexual and gender identity aspects feel just as important.  We tried out some cheap seats in a box, and I was a bit worried that we would have a repeat of the Noises Off debacle back in 2012 when we could only see half the stage.  In fact this turned out to be a tiny box with just the two seats that we could move about, which meant we could lean over if we really wanted to see something tucked away, so it worked out well in the end.   So, what about the play you ask? Well, it opens with 9 Virginia Woolfs (Wolves?) on stage, a chorus maybe, representing different selves I guess, but it allows for an entertaining dialogue when deciding what should happen to Orlando next.  Having an onstage dresser in the form of Deborah Findlay also gave us a narrator and guide to run alongside the Virginia chorus to keep Orlando and the audience on track.  Emma Corr

Still following the degrees of connection in my viewing I decided to follow the breadcrumb trails from Olivia Coleman and Paul Mescal which led me to finally watch this film, written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, which is (partly at least) another meditation on parenthood.  Olivia Coleman is Leda, a deliberately evocative name if I ever heard one, spending a week alone in a beachside get-away. The family that arrives to disrupt her peace is an irritant and a trigger for a series of flashes of memory about motherhood and relationship with her daughters.  Having so recently watched Aftersun, I can’t help but see this as a partner piece, but this time there is no nostalgic childlike filter to soften the edges.  The chaotic, brutal and unsparing look at the constant denial of self that parenting often requires was really on point, and the petty triumphs that the young version of Leda (an excellent Jessie Buckley) exacts are as recognisable as they are painful.  This is a woman that co