TalahaseesLittleBrother

The Lost Symbol.

Oh, it's a mystery all right!

Dan Brown is a spectacularly popular writer, though Lord knows why, because he is so spectacularly inept a writer at best. Or maybe he is a genius. It's a mystery all right.

His plots are tarted-up conspiracies with a wafer thin veneer of pseudo-intellectualism, in prose best suited to wax crayon. But maybe that's his genius; conspiracies are popular, we all like to think that we are smart despite most of us not being so; and very few of us can write for toffee. So Dan Brown has found an audience. Personally, I feel his prose is like reading a shopping list with many items ineptly described and then repeated ad nauseam.

And so to this latest adaptation of a Dan Brown literary classic, The Lost Symbol. How would one adapt Dan Brown in an appropriately representative way? The answer is to film it in exactly the same way as it was written. Which is to say:

Perfunctory.

This TV show is as Dan Brown novels are; devoid of any artistic creativity or art or originality except at a very superficial level. You simply cannot afford to scratch the surface of any Dan Brown product because what is underneath is deeply unsatisfying and unable to withstand any scrutiny.

The mystery is how a pig's ear can make a silk purse. The simple answer is that it cannot, but then I've also heard said that you cannot educate pork.

All of which is to say that the TV show The Lost Symbol is as good as the Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol. Hurrah! Well done you, people.

But if your taste is for the perfunctory, and in particularly Dan Brown's take on perfunctory, good for you. Enjoy it.

As for my review, I won't waste words unnecessarily, unlike Mr Brown. My review is one simple word and I have used it too many times already; perfunctory.

No longer relevant. Apparently.

So many questions...

If Southpark is no longer relevant, why is it so existentially damned relevant right now?

Why has Southpark, in the words of others, gone so left-wing?

Why do the 'defenders of free speech' find themselves the very subject of the free speech they claim is under attack?

Why is Southpark so damned funny?

The answer to these, and so many other questions, is the simple raising of a middle finger.

Southpark, the equal opportunity offender, for which nothing and no side of any argument is off-limits for satire. Which is how it show be. For that is free speech. And the extremes of both sides of an argument are catnip for satire. Don't like being the butt of a joke? Don't be so extreme.

Which is why the new series of Southpark appears so Trump-centric. There really is no other show in town more extreme and ripe for ridicule than the current onccupant and sycophants who reside on Pennsylvania Avenue. It's hard to satirise the left because, frankly, it doesn't seem to exist any more. MAGA is strong enough to take it, but should Southpark use the funny hammer on the defenceless Democratics? Probably, yes. I'm sure there has been a seal-clubbing gag at some point over the years. I'm being cereal.

When free speech and dissension are under existential threat, what greater purpose does satire have other than to say "we see you and we see what you are doing?" The first episode of the new season was just about as perfect as it gets. There really is genius is that any criticism of the humour simply proves the validity and power of the satire and makes it funnier, which in turn increases its relevance. The main joke in the opening episode was about the use of lawfare to censor free-speech. Southpark had the balls to become the lone man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square, only this time baring his ass at authority. Don't shout at the Devil, laugh at him. Belittle him. Emasculate him.

So keep going, Southpark. Keep mining for comedy gold until the seam runs dry.

Update: 2nd watch and I pretty much stand by my comments below.

F1: The Movie a technical achievement and is a very hard film to dislike, unless, of course, you are the most zealous of Formula 1 fans. If that is you, I have one simple reminder for you; this is a movie. Races are not movies and movies are not races. Nor is it a documentary. And like racing itself, movies have rules.

What you have is a technically excellent movie, with a proven movie star, given access to the keys of fast machines most of us will never experience. F1:The Movie is very much Top Gun: Maverick with wheels. And like TG:M, everything is on the screen and in your ears, sometimes at the expense of an over complex plot, which is probably for the best.

It is hard to imagine two movies that have better been able to put on screen the experience of moving so fast in such precision machines. Which is great.

As for the racing? Just like TG:M, F1 has to rely on the tropes of its genre for dramatic effect, and as such the details are not quite so precise as the camerawork. Formula 1 is a precision sport, and as such the driving of star protagonist would in reality be more likely to alienate spectators than is portrayed here. But hey, how many times in a Rocky movie does Balboa touch his gloves to the canvas and not get a mandatory count? Call it poetic licence for dramatic effect.

So, perhaps the racing etiquette and the overall drama of the season could be more accurate, but it might not then be quite so cinematic. But so far as being placed inside a racing car at full chat down the straights with the rear wing open, this movie is unsurpassed.

Is it the best racing movie? That's a hard one. Both Rush and Ford V Ferrari are better films, but the racing in both does not compare. Both of these films are better written and acted, but are not even in the same lap - or even at the same circuit - in terms of placing the viewer behind the wheel.

So, F1: The Movie is what it is. Just like the sport itself it is a technical achievement at the very pinnacle of its game, but that said, perhaps the best forms of racing for the media lies elsewhere. The overwhelming technical aspects of F1 inevitably detract from the potential for a more complex plot or the time needed for character depth and story arcs.

But it is what it is, and it is the best of what it could be for a movie which in effect was produced by its subject matter.

Absolutely worth watching, and not just for the racing, and though it skirts the with the track limits of self indulgence at times, the star power of Brad Pitt keeps at least one wheel on the track at all times.