Chatterbox - still talking nonsense

I am spotting a bit of a theme in my January telly. Fellow Travellers:  this lush and steamy romance between two men over decades from the 50's to the 90s, is hidden away a bit at the moment on Paramount+ and I watched this on a free trial (which I then forgot to cancel of course!).  Whilst the romance creates the heart of the story, it is a vehicle for looking at civil rights abuses and battles over the years.  Hawk (Matt Bomer) is a war hero and a State department official, whilst Tim (Jonathan Bailey) is a congressional staffer working for Senator McCarthy.  The story spends a fair chunk of its time on the McCarthy years, focusing on the persecution of LGBTQ+ people alongside anyone with slightly leftish tendencies as 'fellow travelers' of communism. The accompanying racism and sexism and bigotry of the time in general is brought to life through the secondary characters - what must it have been like to be gay and Black, and maybe also a woman?  The kafkaesque...

I've tidied up my notes on some of the films I saw in January. Bird:  Strange,and pretty brutal fantasy/realism coming of age film with Barry Keoghan as an apparently deadbeat dad to Bailey who is 12, views the world through a phone camera and doesn’t want to wear a bridesmaids outfit to their dads wedding.   Set in Gravesend, with a scruffy urban landscape but also capturing the wild beauty of the marshes too where Bailey spends a lot of time watching and photographing the birds, and where they also meet a man called Bird looking for his family. Bailey's mum and siblings are living with a pretty unpleasant man, and there are some gruelling scenes, but there is also kindness and community amongst the brutality.  I really enjoyed Keoghan's layered performance, and I did chuckle at what did appear to be a reference to Saltburn in the middle there.  This isn't at all flashy, a quietly classy film despite the bravado we see throughout, and has a good heart which sh...

This play dives straight into action with the opening scene between two men as Christopher assumes that Sihle (Sifiso Mazibuko) is a workman associated with the truck that is blocking his driveway, only to find out that they are actually new neighbours in suburbia, having renovations done.  This sets the scene pretty well as a sharp comedy/satire about prejudice and privilege, class and wealth which is as entertaining as it is uncomfortable in places.   We meet three couples in the neighbourhood, firstly Christopher and Lynette, white and well established; Lynette manages sale of the properties and ‘encourages’ the right sort of people.  Another white couple, Andrew and Jess who have stretched themselves to live in the estate and don’t really feel they fit, and then there are Sihle and Bonola, a Black couple, aspirational professionals who have worked hard to get where they are.  Bonolo (Mimî M Khayisa) in particular is very wedded to showing that they belong in...