Vermin (5 Stars)

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This is the 32nd film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I needed to think a long time before rating "Vermin". It's definitely the best film of this year's festival, but does it really deserve five stars? It's not a perfect film. Maybe I just feel the need to give at least one film a five star rating.

Spiders have been bred in an Arab desert. The exact country isn't obvious. One of them finds its way into a small shop in France. It's sold for 100 Euros to Kaleb, a young man who likes to collect exotic animals. He puts it in a shoe box, but it eats its way out, and it soon multiplies. Each generation is bigger than the last. Giant spiders terrorise the building where Kaleb lives.

My main problem with the film is the pacing. When it's a battle with the spiders the film is brilliant, but it keeps slowing down to deal with subplots that I find irrelevant. So Kaleb hasn't spoken to his brother for years? So what? Let's not waste time while he explains it, let's get back to fighting the spiders.

Maybe "Vermin" will be better when it goes on general release. We were told that it wasn't complete in time for the festival, so a provisional version was sent. They still have time to put things right.

This is the final film of the festival. I was disappointed this year. Usually there's a mixture of brilliant, average and awful films. This year there have been some good films, but nothing that I considered brilliant. There's only one film that I've given five stars, "Vermin", and I'm not sure if that's a mistake. Putting it another way, there isn't a single film in this year's festival that I want to buy on disc. Let's hope next year's festival is better.

Birth / Rebirth (2 Stars)

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This is the 31st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

There are certain things I don't like in films. One thing I can't stand is hospital operations, especially if they look realistic. That's exactly the problem that I have: the realism. I don't mind seeing heads chopped off or limbs severed in horror films. I know it's fake. But when I see hospital operations, they look like they could be really happening. I don't have the stomach for it.

Dr. Rose Casper is a hospital pathologist who wants to find a cure for death. She steals dead bodies from work so she can experiment with them at home. One of the dead bodies is the daughter of Celie, a maternity nurse in the same hospital. Officially, the body has been transferred from the hospital to an organisation for organ donations, but Celie knows enough about the way the hospital works to confront Dr. Casper at home. She finds her daughter alive, though in a weak state. She needs regular supplies of foetal tissue to get well. The two women work together to get what they want.

But there are repeated operations in hospital. The director says that she's based the film on the story of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein novel, but it's only very loosely based on the novel's premise, and there's no similarity with the film versions. "Birth/Rebirth" is an ugly film with lots of blood.

What Remains (1 Star)

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This is the 30th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"What Remains" is an international mash-up. It's a true story about Mads Lake (aka Sture Bergwall), a man who lived in Sweden in the 1990's. The director is Chinese, and he decided to make the film after reading about Mads. The film crew is Chinese. The actors are a mixture of Swedish and English. The film's dialogue is in English. The locations are claimed to be in Sweden, but it was actually filmed in Finland.

The film begins with Mads in a psychiatric hospital. It's not stated why. Two months before his release he began to talk about a boy who had disappeared seven years previously. He claimed to have met the boy on the day of his disappearance, but he couldn't remember what happened. There was a police investigation. The police officer was convinced that Mads was a serial killer and questioned him about other boys who had disappeared at the same time. Mads confessed to 33 murders, but his psychiatrist said that Mads was innocent. Mads was found guilty of eight murders, but 20 years later the verdict was overturned. The incident became a scandal in Sweden about how a mentally ill person could be convinced that he was a killer.

I find the story fascinating, but the film is badly made. It rambles on for 126 minutes, mostly conversations between the various characters. The film is much too long and much too dull.

The Harbinger (3 Stars)

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This is the 29th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"The Harbinger" is a film set in the era of the Corona pandemic. We see a family so paranoid that they wear masks at home and don't even sit next to one another in the living room. This isn't just coincidental, it's important to the plot. There's a demon that's been unleashed by people's fears. It's a demon that attacks people in their dreams. People who meet the demon can can wake up in completely different places. I don't mean sleepwalking, the new place might be in another city miles away. But the curse of the Harbinger is that he wipes out a person's existence. A person doesn't just disappear, nobody remembers him.

It's a complex film. When we stood discussing it we couldn't agree on what everything meant. It's a film that I suspect I might give a higher rating when I see it again.

Raging Grace (3 Stars)

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This is the 27th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Joy is an illegal immigrant from the Philippines who lives in London. She's a trained nurse, but without a visa the best job she can get is as a cleaner. She has a young daughter called Grace, who's intelligent but mischievous. She's offered a visa for £15,000. It's almost certainly illegal, but it will look realistic enough to fool the authorities. The trouble is that she only has £10,000 and she has to get the visa within a month.

Joy considers theft, but when she enters a stately home she's offered a job as a maid for £1,000 per week. It's better than she could have hoped for. She thinks she won't get the job if she says that she has a daughter, so she hides Grace in her room. But there are sinister things happening in the house. She's told that the owner is about to die, but her training as a nurse tells her that he's being given medication to make him ill.

The film begins very slowly. For the first 45 minutes it's so slow that I had to ask myself what the point of the film is. After that it speeds up and develops into a gripping horror story.

Tiger Stripes (3 Stars)

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This is the 26th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Tiger Stripes" is the first Malaysian film I've ever watched. It's been highly praised by critics, but it's been banned in Malaysia itself.

The film is about three young Moslem girls who visit a girls school. They're wilder than most of their classmates. They like to post videos of themselves dancing on Tik Tok.

When Zaffan has her first period, she's rejected by her friends. They say she smells bad. She doesn't get much support from her parents. She begins to act strangely, and a local exorcist claims she's possessed. He tries to cast out the demon, but there's no demon. She's turning into a tiger.

The director says that the film is a parable about the suppression of women in Malaysia. I can see that. But not all young girls can establish themselves as strong women by turning into tigers.

New Gods: Yang Jian (4½ Stars)

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This is the 25th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's the third day in the festival that has begun with an animated film. "New Gods: Yang Jian" is by far the best of the three films. It's overwhelming, from beginning to end. It's based on a 16th Century Chinese novel, which itself is based on old Chinese myths. It would be interesting to sit with someone from China to discuss the myths. I assume I would have been better able to understand the film if I'd known the background.

Yang Jian is a God who's lost most of his powers and now works as a bounty hunter. He's hired to retrieve a magic lamp from a thief called Chenxiang. He soon finds the thief, but others are also searching for the lamp. The events escalate, and Yang Jian discovers that he has a connection with Chenxiang.

"New Gods" (shortening the title) is the best film in the festival so far. I almost gave it a five star rating, but I deducted half a star for the simple reason that I didn't understand it all. There are too many characters who are barely introduced. Their names aren't enough to explain their motivation, and I was confused when some of them changed sides, fighting first on Yang Jian's side, then against him.

The film is two hours long, but I found it was overly compressed. An additional half hour would have helped to explain the story to western novices like me. Added to this, there's a mid-credits scene that confused me even more, because it featured characters who didn't appear in the film itself. I can imagine that Chinese audiences would have watched it and said, "Ah ha! That's who we'll see in the next film".

Girl Unknown (4 Stars)

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This is the 21st film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

At the beginning of the film there's a text screen in which the director requests that the audience doesn't tell anyone about the content of the film, because there are many items in the film's later scenes that could be considered spoilers. I'll follow his wish, by only describing the first two minutes.

A young girl meets a man online and arranges to see him in a local park. Online he'd said he was 16, but he's obviously much older.

I greatly enjoyed the film's slow development and the build-up of tension. Surprisingly, I was one of the few people in the cinema who liked it. The people sitting on both sides of me found the film disappointing. It was a mixture of the film's unpleasant subject matter and the slow pacing. I liked it, and I can recommend it. Make up your own minds.

Vincent must die (3½ Stars)

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This is the 18th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Vincent Borel is a middle-aged graphics designer in Lyon. He leads a dull life, creating dull computer animations of walk-throughs through houses. One day an intern in his company makes an unprovoked attack on him, hitting him over the head with a laptop. The intern is fired. The next day one of Vincent's colleagues attacks him, stabbing him with a pen. Over the next few days Vincent is repeatedly attacked without reason, even by small children. Everyone wants to kill him.

The trigger seems to be eye contact. As soon as someone looks into Vincent's eyes, he wants to kill him. The only thing Vincent can do is avoid people altogether. He makes a girlfriend in a diner. At first they get on well, but then she wants to kill him as well.

I shan't go into more details, except to say that it's a confusing film. There's no explanation for the attacks. I couldn't even understand the logic of the developments in the last half hour. Other reviewers have said that the film is a satire. If it is, I don't get it. It's a film I'd like to watch again. It deserves a second chance.

Farang (4 Stars)

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This is the 17th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Samir has lived a life of crime. He's been carrying drugs for a French gang. When he's sentenced to five years in prison, he decides to make a new start. He's a model prisoner, and he wants to live a clean life when he's released. It's not that easy. His former gang members want him to work for them again. When he refuses, they attempt to beat him up, but he fights off the attackers, accidentally killing the gang boss's brother.

Samir decides to run away. He moves to Thailand, where he marries a woman and adopts her daughters. But it's a small world. The gangsters in Thailand have contacts with the French gang. He has to fight for his life.

The fight scenes are brutal. "Farang" has been compared with "The Raid", but I don't see much similarity. The fight scenes in "Farang" are more realistic. I prefer the fight choreography in "The Raid". The realism in "Farang" makes the fights too horrific for me.

The Animal Kingdom (3 Stars)

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This is the 15th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

In the near future there's an illness that makes people turn into animals. Some turn into fish, some into birds, some into bears, some into frogs; any sort of animal. It's a gradual process. At first the person retains his intelligence, but as the disease progresses he degenerates more and more into animal qualities. These people are tolerated, as long as they don't hurt anyone. There are care homes to look after the critters, as they're called.

Emile lives with his parents. His mother is slowly becoming a bear. At first she's kept at home, but then they decide to send her to a care home. On the way there's a road accident, and the bus carrying the critters crashes into a swamp. About 40 critters escape. The police want to deal with them carefully, but the army is sent in with instructions to shoot to kill.

While Emile is trying to find his mother, he realises that he's turning into a wolf. He tries to disguise it, because he wants to fit in at his new school.

It's a strange story. I could understand if everyone were turning into the same type of animal, but it's weird that people are turning into different animals.

The Moon (3 Stars)

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This is the 14th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

South Korea has sent three astronauts on a mission to the dark side of the Moon, hoping to become the second country to succeed in landing men on the Moon. Their spacecraft sustains minor damage from solar wind. While they're repairing the craft there are renewed blasts of solar wind, and two of the astronauts die.

The remaining astronaut, Hwang Sun-woo, is ordered to return home, but he's so close to the Moon that he insists on completing the mission by himself. However, while he's exploring his lunar vehicle is wrecked by a meteor shower.

There's a lot of action and several subplots on Earth, but the film didn't excite me. Obviously I was in the minority, because there was loud applause when the film ended. There's no official release date in America or any European countries, but if you manage to see it, please leave a comment telling me what you think.

Pandemonium (3 Stars)

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This is the 13th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

There's a road accident on a mountain road. Nathan and Daniel think they've survived, but they haven't. They're both dead, and they find their bodies lying on the road. They think they're destined to live as ghosts, but then doorways to Heaven and Hell open. Daniel accepts that Hell is his destiny, but Nathan insists that he's worthy of Heaven, until a large monster forces him towards the doorway to Hell.

"Pandemonium" is another film that starts well but drifts off course. As long as we see Nathan and Daniel talking about their lives, the film is interesting. But after Daniel enters Hell we don't see him any more. We see Nathan's arrival in Hell, but when he examines the bodies on the ground he sees flashbacks of their lives and what they've done to deserve Hell. I found this irrelevant. The story should have concentrated on Nathan and Daniel.

The screenwriter/director obviously had some interesting ideas, but they weren't enough to fill the film, so he padded it with ideas of lesser quality.

Robot Dreams (3½ Stars)

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This is the 12th film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Today is another day that started with an animated film. Once more I felt tempted to stay at home and wait for the next film. This time I'm glad that I didn't stay at home. "Robot Dreams" is a much better film than "Mars Express".

The film takes place in New York in the 1980's. The director, Pablo Berger, calls the film a love letter to New York. He says that he lived in New York for ten years, and the film portrays New York as he remembers it.

Almost. In "Robot Dreams" the city is inhabited by animals. There isn't a human in sight. Dog, as the main character is called, lives alone in an apartment near First Avenue subway station. He's lonely, so he buys a robot to keep him company. The robot becomes Dog's best friend. They're inseparable.

The problems start when Dog and Robot visit Ocean Beach. Robot breaks down and can't walk, maybe because he's spent too much time swimming. Dog goes home to get a repair kit, but when he comes back the beach is closed. It's the end of the season, and the beach won't be open again until 1st June the following year.

Robot is sad that he's been left alone. He dreams about being reunited with Dog. That's the reason for the film's name. Dog misses Robot at first, but he gets a girlfriend and forgets about Robot.

I like the film because of its vibrant colours and the amusing settings. If the  film had continued as it started in the first half I would have given it a five star rating. The second half is strange. Robot repeatedly stands up and goes home to Dog, but every time he wakes up and finds it was only a dream. It's not pleasant to the viewer to see Dog forgetting his best friend.

God is a Bullet (3 Stars)

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This is the tenth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

It's supposedly based on a true story, but I haven't been able to find out which true events form the basis for the story.

Bob Highwater is a God fearing police detective in a small American town not far from the American border. His daughter is snatched while waiting for her mother outside a store. After weeks of investigation there are still no clues. Then Case Hardin offers her assistance. She says that she knows who's taken Bob's daughter, because it happened to her as well. There's a Satanic cult which kidnaps young girls, then gets them hooked on heroin so they can be used as child prostitutes. Case used to be a cult member, but she was allowed to leave. No reason is named. Maybe she was too old. The cult is always on the move, but Case can contact them through her old contacts.

The film has a lot of action, and it's an interesting story, but it's an ugly story that's often disturbing. It's also too long. It runs for 156 minutes, and it should have been an hour shorter. Particularly annoying is that after Bob's daughter is found the story doesn't end quickly, it rambles on from one wrap-up to the next. There are too many little endings.

It's not a film that I want to watch again.

The Survival of Kindness (1 Star)

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This is the ninth film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

The festival catalogue describes this film as abstract. When I hear the word abstract I understand it as experimental. The director obviously has some interesting ideas that he wants to put across without words. Most of the film has no dialogue, and when the characters finally speak it's in foreign languages, and they're unable to understand one another.

The film takes place in Australia. It begins with a woman, presumably an Aborigine, in a cage in the desert. She breaks out of the cage. She sees men who are dead or dying. She finds a deserted town. Finally she's captured by men wearing gas masks, who capture her and other Aborigines, making them work as slaves.

It's not obvious what the film means. It seems that there's an illness that kills white people, but Aborigines are immune. Even if I have this understanding, the things that happen in the film aren't clear to me. It's very frustrating for a film to end with a final scene that makes no sense.

Mars Express (2 Stars)

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This is the seventh film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

I almost didn't go to see this film. I don't particularly like animated films, so I checked the trailer for "Mars Express", and I wasn't very impressed. But I thought I'd give it a chance. In retrospect I regret it.

The film takes place in the future when Mars has been colonised. The population is made up of humans and robots who live side by side. Some of the robots are guided by artificial intelligence, whereas others are backups, i.e. robots who are steered by a brain that's been copied from a human. A backup is usually made shortly before a person's death, so that the person's thoughts and memories can exist forever.

Two detectives, Aline (human) and her partner Carlos (backup) are searching for a missing student, Jun Chow. Evidently Jun Chow has discovered something important, because mercenaries have been sent to kill her. She's also made a backup of herself, which is illegal unless a person is very old or terminally ill.

I couldn't relate to the film, neither the infeasible story nor the murky graphics. Surprisingly, most of the people I spoke to liked it. I wish I'd stayed at home. 

Nightman (3 Stars)

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This is the third film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

"Nightman" is a slow-moving psychological drama. Damian and Alex are a young married couple. They move into the remote house of Damian's mother who's recently gone into an old people's home. He needs solitude to finish writing his university thesis.

Soon after moving, Alex discovers that her husband is sleep-walking, although he denies it. At the same time people are being murdered, and Alex suspects her husband is the killer. Is it possible to sleep-murder? Damian also has secrets that he's hiding from his wife.

It's a creepy film, set in beautiful Irish countryside. The atmosphere is better than the story itself.

Dogman (4 Stars)

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This is the first film in the Stuttgart Fantasy Film Festival.

Every year the Fantasy Film Festival begins with a special film, and this year it's the new film by Luc Besson. The film is about a young boy called Douglas whose father trains dogs for dog fights. He starves the dogs to make them fight harder. Douglas pities the dogs and feeds them in secret. When his father finds out he locks him in the cage with the dogs.

Douglas escapes, but he's confined to a wheelchair because of a gunshot wound. He lives with his dogs in a disused high school. He has a university degree, but because of his disability the only job he can get is as a drag queen. The film is bizarre. I shan't say too much about it, but in one scene he reads Shakespeare to his dogs while they sit attentively.

X (5 Stars)

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It all starts as a simple idea. An aspiring film director travels with five friends to make a pornographic film on a farm in a remote Texas village. It's 1979, the early days of home video. The cameraman thinks he can create a work of art. "It's possible to make a good dirty movie". The director just wants to make a film that will sexually excite the viewers. That's not a contradiction. Both of them want to make money.

The problem is that the director doesn't tell the farmer what he's doing. He could hardly tell a God-fearing farmer, "We want to film a porno in your barn". The reaction isn't quite what we would expect. The farmer thinks that the film crew are evil and should be destroyed, but his wife Pearl is jealous of the women's beauty and wants to be in the film with them.

What might not be immediately obvious is that the farmer's wife and the director's girlfriend Maxine are both played by the same actress, Mia Goth. In "X" it seems like a random casting choice, but when we watch the prequel "Pearl" it becomes obvious why. The two women are destined to walk the same path. In "Pearl" the title character speaks the same words that Maxine speaks in "X". They both want to be big stars, they both want their names to be known throughout the world. And yet Maxine yells at Pearl, "I'm nothing like you".

"X" is a terrifying horror film. It made me shiver while I watched it. It's ugly but fascinating at the same time, carried by the performance of Mia Goth. A sequel called "Maxine" should be released later this year. I can hardly wait.

Success Rate:  + 13.1

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Wine: Besigheimer Felsengarten Cabernet Dorsa

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Tomorrow I intend to visit the yearly wine festival in Besigheim. I say "yearly", but it's actually the first festival since the Corona pandemic, so it's going to be a special occasion. The people of Besigheim are proud of their wine. Germany makes the best wines in the world. That might come as a surprise to wine lovers in England, because Germany hardly exports any wine. In fact, when it comes to wine Germans look down on England. They say that the English don't understand wine, so Germans drink the best wine themselves and export the rubbish to England.

There are 13 wine growing areas in Germany. The opinions on the relative quality are biased. There are distinct differences in taste, and people in each area say their own wine is the best. Call me biased, but I'm convinced that Württemberg wines are the best. That's what my work colleagues told me when I first moved to Stuttgart, and over time I began to agree with them. One thing I was told is that when you're invited to someone's home you should give them a bottle of wine, but only Württemberg wine. If you give him a bottle of French wine he'll be insulted.

The people of Besigheim say their wine is the best wine in Württemberg, i.e. the best wine in the world. I enjoy the Besigheimer wines, and I've drunk a lot of them, but I have to disagree. I prefer the wine from the Heilbronn area.

Today I've been drinking a Besigheimer wine, the Cabernet Dorsa. It's a new wine to me. It was created in Württemberg in 1971 as a cross of the grapes Lemberger and Dornfelder, but it wasn't recognised as a new variety until 2004. Since then it's been rapidly growing in popularity, planted in vineyards across Germany. Surprisingly, the majority of Cabernet Dorsa grapes are grown in the Pfalz (Palatinate), 78 hectares (193 acres), compared with only 29 hectares (72 acres) in Württemberg. It would be interesting to compare them.

This is a map of the wine-growing areas in Germany. The largest areas are:

    Rheinhessen (26,685 hectares)

    Pfalz (22,885 hectares)

    Baden (15,429 hectares)

    Württemberg (11,140 hectares)

    Mosel (8,594 hectares)

I'll let you convert the hectares into acres yourself. Multiply by 2.5.

I mentioned above that the Cabernet Dorsa is a cross between Lemberger and Dornfelder grapes. I greatly enjoy Lemberger wines for their fruity flavour, but I find Dornfelder wines harsh and unpalatable. However, the mixture of the two grapes has produced an astoundingly powerful taste. If I were a wine expert I would be able to describe it better. All I can say is that it's very fruity, even more so than Lemberger. It lacks the subtlety of Lemberger, so I suspect that Carnet Dorsa is a wine to drink in larger quantities. I haven't tried it yet. I don't like to get drunk, but I could at least drink a few glasses to get an impression.

Smallville 3.03 - Extinction

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Click here to watch the podcast.

I have a complaint about this week's podcast. It was made without Tom Welling. Supposedly there was a family matter at short notice, so he couldn't take part. Things like that can happen, but I think the podcast should have been postponed instead of carrying on without him. Smallville fans would have understood. 

Ryan Tellez stepped up and became the anchor-man number two, but it's not the same. The Smallville podcast is all about the two main actors, Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum. Without them, i.e. without both of them, it's just not the same.

But let's get to the episode. It's the first day of the hew year at Smallville High. Clark and his friends are now juniors, which means they're aged 16 to 17 for the rest of this season.

Lovestruck teenager Jake Pollen has heard that Lana Lang has broken up with Clark Kent, so he plucks up the courage to approach her. He says Hi to her, and all he gets back is a disinterested Hi as she drives off. Without actually turning him down, she's made it clear that he stands no chance with her. A normal young man would swallow his pride and look for another girl, someone who isn't out of his league. Not Jake. If he can't have Lana, nobody can.

That evening Lana goes to the school's swimming pool for a swim. She's way out of my league as well. I had girlfriends when I was 16, but none of them were as beautiful as Kristin Kreuk. But why is she swimming by herself? Does she have special privileges for after-school activities?

What Lana doesn't know is that Jake is sitting on the bottom of the pool, apparently able to breathe under water. He grabs her leg and pulls her down. She might have died, but an unseen figure shoots him. Before Lana has a chance to thank her rescuer, he throws a piece of meteor rock into the pool on which the word "Freak" is written.

Clark speaks to Jake's best friend, Van McNulty, to ask what his motives are, but he doesn't get any clues. Van only speaks about his father, a war hero who was recently murdered.

Lana and Chloe both think that the mystery shooter was a hero, but Clark isn't convinced. The thinks Lana could have been saved without killing Jake. Chloe reveals that she suspected Jake was a meteor freak. She'd been keeping a file on him. The coroner's report revealed that he had gills. Talking with Clark, she puts two and two together, although poorly written dialogue hides the reason for their conclusions.

This news report says that Van McNulty was bludgeoned to death, and the suspect is known to the police, but he isn't named. Chloe talks about Van wanting revenge for his father's murder, but it doesn't make sense. What the episode doesn't mention is that we saw Mr.  McNulty's death in a previous episode. He was killed by the shapeshifter Tina Greer in the episode "Visage". That makes it all obvious. Van is seeking revenge on meteor freaks in general.

Clark takes Pete Ross to Van's hunting cabin. They find a large armoury, much more than a typical hunter would own, and information that's been stolen from Chloe's computer. There are files on proven and suspected meteor freaks, including Jake Pollen. The next person in the list is Lex Luthor, suspected because he has an abnormal white blood cell count and is seemingly immune to illness. Clark rushes to Metropolis just as Van McNulty is attempting to assassinate Lex. Clark catches the bullet, which is witnessed by Van. Clark catches Van, but in the struggle meteor rocks fall out of his rucksack, making Clark collapse. Van realises that this is Clark's weakness.

That evening Van smelts meteor rocks to make kryptonite bullets. The next day he lies in wait at the Kent Farm to attack Clark. When the bullet is fired, Clark instinctively tries to catch it, but it pierces his hand and buries itself in his shoulder. Van leaves, assuming Clark is dead. Jonathan Kent manages to pull the bullet out with pliers. Clark rapidly heals.

Van goes to the Talon and tells Lana he's the one who saved her life. He tells her that he's also killed Clark for her own good. The only person worse than a meteor freak, he says, is someone who loves a meteor freak. She rings the police to report Clark's death, after which Van takes her prisoner.

Sheriff Nancy Adams visits the farm and finds Clark alive and well. "The rumours of your death have been greatly exaggerated, Mr.  Kent".

Clark knows that Van carries a police scanner, so he uses a police radio to tell Van that he's still alive and wants to meet him at the school. Van says he'll use a whole clip of bullets to kill Clark. At the school Van fires bullets at Clark, but they don't harm him because he's wearing a bulletproof vest made out of lead. Van is arrested and taken to a mental asylum.

In a subplot, Chloe Sullivan tells Lionel Luthor that she no longer wants to do research on Clark Kent for him. He tells her that if she stops working for him she'll fire her father. Lionel is the real bad guy in the series, much worse than Lex.

Lana visits Clark at the farm and tells him that even if he were in some way infected by the meteor rocks, she'd still stand by him. Silly, silly Clark. He could have used this to reveal his secret to her. She's someone he can trust completely. But he backs away again. She's the right girl for him.

In the podcast Michael Rosenbaum calls "Extinction" a freak-of-the-week episode. He's wrong. Van McNulty isn't a freak, he's a normal man. If anything, he's a non-freak-of-the-week. I'm sure Tom would have contradicted Michael, if he'd been there.

Let's hope Tom is back next week.

Always hold on to Smallville.

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A Royal Night Out (4½ Stars)

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This is an absolutely delightful film that I have to keep returning to. It's about the Queen I've known and loved all my life, and her precocious little sister. The film is fictional, but wrapped in a series of true events. It's best enjoyed if you don't try to work out what's true and what isn't. Just accept the whole film as it is.

I wonder if one day there will be a film of King Charles' teenage antics. That would be amusing.

I've been having problems with the temperature the last few days, especially today. I don't understand it. Earlier today it was 28 degrees, which was too much for me. Anything over 25 makes me sweat. But now the temperature is only 18 degrees, and I'm still sweating. I need to go to bed with my fan turned up.

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Planes (3½ Stars)

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After watching the second Planes film two days ago, my grandson Oliver insisted on watching the first. It introduces us to the cute orange plane, Dusty Crophopper. He's a crop duster who believes he can do more. He wants to become a racing plane. He's trained by the retired navy war plane Skipper Riley. He qualifies for a race around the world, competing against seasoned racing planes. Most of the other planes welcome the newcomer, but the reigning champion, Ripslinger, mocks him and says that he doesn't stand a chance. Dusty does badly in the first few legs of the race, but he edges into the lead. Ripslinger resorts to dirty tricks to win the race.

"Planes" is better than the second film. I still can't relate to the concept of talking airplanes, but I felt sympathy with the underdog competing in a race he can't hope to win.

Success Rate:  + 2.8

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Daliland (4 Stars)

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I'm always excited to see a new film by Mary Harron, especially on the big screen. "Daliland" is untypical for her, because it's less feminocentric than her previous films.

The main character is James Linton, an assistant at a New York gallery that's planned an exhibition of Salvador Dali's works. To be precise, the gallery wants to present his new works and offer them for sale. The gallery has given Dali large financial advances, but he still hasn't painted enough new artworks for the exhibition. Dali is living an extravagant lifestyle in a luxurious hotel, having frequent parties. He's living like a rock star, but he's forgotten that he needs to make money.

James is sent to help Dali and assist him in his work, but he's drawn into the lavish lifestyle. Dali's wife Gala is a businesswoman who encourages her husband to work, but she also spends a lot of money on her young lover, a man she calls Jesus. He's Jeff Fenholt, who's playing the lead role in "Jesus Christ Superstar" on Broadway. I'd never heard of him, but I suspect that he's portrayed unfairly. He claims he'll become a big rock star, but his singing (in the film) is embarrassingly bad. He tells Alice Cooper, a close friend of Dali's, that his music is dull and he'll soon be forgotten, but everyone will remember the name Jeff Fenholt. Jeff who?

Dali may be a talented artist, but he's spending more than he earns. James discovers that people who work for Dali are earning money off him without his knowledge.

The film is well made, but Salvador Dali and his wife Gala are both unpleasant people. Maybe Gala is slightly more pleasant. It's terrible to see how wealth and success can corrupt so badly.

The Equalizer 3 (4½ Stars)

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Some films are worth seeing in the cinema more than once. I went to see "The Equalizer 3" a week ago, and it fascinated me. Robert McCall is so different to John Wick. He doesn't rush into a battle with his guns blazing. It's not a bullet ballet. Robert McCall times his action fastidiously. He's always looking at his watch, whether it's nine seconds or six minutes. He's a man of habit, habits that could be called an obsessive compulsive disorder. When he sits in a cafe he spreads two napkins on the table before he begins to drink.

The film ends with him settling in Altamonte, a small town on the Italian coast. He's just passing through, but he likes the place so much that he doesn't want to leave. Is it that easy? Doesn't he need a visa or a residency permit? I don't know what the laws in Italy are, so I shan't argue about it.

"The Equalizer 3" is a film that will find its way into my Blu-ray collection.

Thunderbirds 1.01 - Trapped in the Sky

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Thunderbirds! They were a part of my life when I was growing up. It was a puppet series made by Gerry Anderson. He'd made three previous series of varying quality, but "Thunderbirds" was his masterpiece. The opening sequence has been embedded in my brain:

"Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Thunderbirds are go!"

I don't remember the exact time, but it was broadcast relatively early on Thursday evening, so I had to rush home from school. In alternate weeks I watched it alone or with my school friend Richard Lee, who lived in the same street as me. He wasn't always allowed to watch it at home, because his sister watched a programme on the other channel. I say "the other" because BBC 2 had only recently been launched and most television sets couldn't receive it, so there were only two channels to choose from: BBC and ITV. Thunderbirds was broadcast on ITV.

The setting is a private island in the South Pacific that belongs to the ex-astronaut Jeff Tracy. He lives with his five sons, Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon and John, as well as his mother, a scientific genius nicknamed Brains, a servant called Kyrano and Kyrano's daughter Tin-Tin. Together they run an organisation called International Rescue that operates throughout the world.

Although John is listed as the space monitor, he alternates the service on the space station with his brother Alan.

Jeff Tracy isn't given a place in the title sequence.

Instead, we see Lady Penelope, an English woman who acts as an undercover agent for International Rescue. What's bad about her is that she's always carrying a cigarette. What's good about her is that it's never lit. She drives a beautiful pink Rolls Royce.

The archvillain who appears in about half of the episodes is The Hood. What a great name! He's Kyrano's brother, and he has a psychic link that allows him to hypnotise Kyrano from afar. He's determined to steal the technical secrets of the Thunderbirds vehicles, and he frequently causes accidents to lure International Rescue.

The year is supposedly 2064, a hundred years after the series was first made, but that shouldn't be taken too seriously. Nobody knew what the future would look like. It looks quaintly archaic to see messages being recorded on reel-to-reel tape.

This episode, first broadcast on 30th September 1965, shows the first operation of International Rescue. It's the maiden flight of an atomic powered aircraft from London to Tokyo. The Hood plants a bomb in the plane's landing gear that will detonate when the plane lands. The plane returns to London, but it has to circle above the airport.

Thunderbird One is the fastest craft that arrives on the scene first to assess situations. Thunderbird Two carries the necessary equipment for the rescue.

Thunderbird Two has a selection of six pods to load before leaving.

Pod three contains four elevator cars, of which three are needed for the rescue at London Airport. It's not Heathrow, it's a fictional airport in the future.

The elevator cars catch the plane, so it can land without using its landing gear.

To call Gerry Anderson a genius would be an understatement. He was a visionary. Even though he made "Thunderbirds" in 1964, when televisions were in black and white, he decided to film "Thunderbirds" in colour. Was it a waste of money? When it was broadcast in 1965 I could only watch it in black and white. Gerry was investing in the future, for the day when I could hold the vividly coloured Blu-ray discs in my hands.

The series ran for 32 episodes, followed by two feature films. In 2004 a poor quality live action film was made. From 2015 to 2020 there was a well made CGI series that almost lived up to the quality of the original series.

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