Seeing as it’s a proven scientific fact that all popular culture created after the mid 1990s is complete shite, I’ve resorted to downloading complete TV series of classic television from ‘the good old days’ off the internet, to give me something to gawp at while shovelling my dinner into my gob, of an evening.

At the moment, I’m working my way through all four seasons of the 1970s cop show, Starsky & Hutch and I thought I’d share the delights of this old classic with those of you, amongst my vast readership, who are unaware of this televisual delight.

[I believe that, in accordance with the current trend for rehashing the past, rather than creating anything new, a Starsky & Hutch movie was made not long ago, but this review is about the ‘real’ thing, not some crappy modern rip-off]

David Starsky and Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson are a couple of West Coast American coppers. They drive around [mostly] in Starsky’s souped-up red & white Ford Torino [disparagingly referred to as ‘The Tomato’ by Hutch,] crashing down cardboard box-filled alleyways, across truck-filled junctions and through red traffic lights, shooting and beating up baddies, and trying to kop off with a never-ending conveyor belt of women sporting hideous 1970s hairstyles –all in the name of the law.

Drive it like you nicked it,

In this ongoing quest to make the mean streets a safer place, they are aided and abetted by their pet ‘grass’ Huggy Bear and harangued by their permanently furious boss, Captain Dobey.

Starsky and Hutch is great low-brow fun for all the family [except your uncle Arthur, who would fucking hate it!] and, even though the last couple of series are not as good as the first two, it’s still well worth seeking out, if you happen to frequent certain Swedish buccaneering themed websites.

Paul Michael Glaser [L] as Starsky, David Soul [R] as Hutch

Here is my quick run-down on all you need to know about the characters involved:

Dave Starsky –is the smaller, dark-haired one. He’s played a bit more for laughs than Hutch. Starsky’s pride and joy is his aforementioned Ford Torino motor. Running jokes in the series include the fact that older women the duo come across always seem to fancy Starsky, leading to much merriment as he tries to extricate himself from their amorous advances.

In earlier series, Starsky is the chilli-guzzling, burger munching foil to Hutch’s yoghurt-swigging, alfalfa-chomping health fanatic, but these roles seem to become a bit blurred partway through.

Ken ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson –is the taller, blonde one. He’s a bit more of a straight man than Starsky and tends to be more successful at ‘pulling the birds’. Hutch’s car is a battered old wreck which tends to break down or have bits fall off it at the crucial moment, whenever the duo use it ‘on duty’ –which makes you wonder why they ever do.

Hutch’s way with women leads him to fall madly in love on a regular basis; an infatuation which usually ends badly for the lassie involved, as she inevitably ends up dead, blinded, crippled, raped or imprisoned, by the end of the episode. Thankfully Hutch’s grief coping mechanism is highly developed and, by the following week, the dear departed is forgotten, as Hutch begins sniffing round his next amour

Captain Dobey –is the pair’s boss. He spends most of the first series stuffing his fat face and yelling furiously at Starsky and Hutch. Sometimes he seems to yell at them to “get out on the streets and catch…” whoever they’re looking for, just so he can help himself to the lunch they were about to tuck into. It may be apocryphal but, in our house, a shouted “Starsky! –leave the pizza!” has become a popular Dobey-esque catchphrase.

Starsky! –leave the pizza!

Huggy Bear –is a pimp-tastic groover, sporting the flariest flares and the widest lapels in all of christendom. Occasional bar owner and general street hustler, he manages to combine an encyclopaedic knowledge of what’s ‘going down’ amongst the underworld, with an ongoing willingness to spill the beans on these shenanigans to his pals Starsky & Hutch –somehow without ending up minus kneecaps, or cemented into the foundations of a flyover somewhere, for his troubles.

Huggy Bear in one of his more subdued numbers

Every episode will begin with a violent crime, inevitably perpetrated by, perpetrated upon or witnessed by, a ‘glamorous’ [1970s style] female and, after justice has been well and truly meted out, will equally predictably end with a humorous throw-away scene wherein one of the characters will end up the butt of some excruciatingly bad joke, initiated by one of the others.

In between, Starsky & Hutch will narrowly avoid mowing down pedestrians and decimating the civilian population as, with gay abandon, they hurl their car through oncoming traffic and fire their guns across crowded streets, after their fleeing quarry –whilst simultaneously vying for the affections of every young female they encounter.

It’s not all burning rubber, gunfights and kicking ‘baddy’ ass, though. In more thoughtful moments, the pair maintain a relationship that sometimes seems to veer towards the homo-erotic side of ‘best buddy’-dom. This subtext is reinforced when watching from this distance in time where, with the advent of same-sex marriage, the pair’s frequent emotionally expressed concern for “my partner” seems invested with an extra significance.

Best buddies

Starsky and Hutch is classic 1970s fare; violent, sexist, pontificating and wearing some atrocious ‘threads’. But, in spite of the ceaseless diet of crime and violence, it’s also oddly comforting and, for me at least, drenched in nostalgia, as I remember being glued to the telly watching it, way back when it was originally broadcast.

Download it now, you shits!

One of the websites I frequent is currently holding a poll to find the “Worst Film Ever”. I added my tuppence worth to the debate and then realised that, with a bit of cynical recycling, I could rehash my post there as a review here . So here it is. Apropos of abso-bloody-lutely nothing, save the fact I’ve not actually written anything for a while, just been re-posting my scroodls:

If you measure awfulness in sheer tedium, as opposed to irritation, then you couldn’t do much worse than “The Last Station”:

Christopher Plummer [as Leon Tolstoy] spends almost the entire film, lying in bed, waiting to die… with a beard.

Full-on beard thrills.

Occasionally his slumbers are interrupted by the arrival of one of either of two visitors; his wife [Helen Mirren], who berates him for toying with the notion of leaving his money to The Siberian Beard Research Collective, instead of her; or a young representative of The Siberian Beard Research Collective, who likewise berates Tolstoy for potential betrayal of beard-dom, should he leave the cash to the missus.

The film continues in this vein for what seems like several days, with Tolstoy contemplating the ceiling and [presumably praying for death] while Mirren and whoever the hell the other bloke is, rotate in and out of his room on a carousel, repeating their demands that they cop for the eventual loot.

There may have been some flashbacks, featuring Tolstoy looking out from behind the different lengthed beards of his youth, but I’m not sure as, by this stage, I was watching my own whiskers grow, as a more action-packed alternative.

I’ve just stumbled upon this, through the randomness that is retweeting and I love it! It’s an entertaining read and it combines a review of the film with personal anecdotes and hand-drawn artwork.  what’s not to like?  Possibly something to ponder for you lot out there with reviews to write for your PDPs.

“Think outside of the box”,  and all thon!

War Horse –an illustrated review.

“…people ought not to be afraid of their governments.

governments ought to be afraid of their people…”

last night, in honour of guy fawkes night i rewatched the excellent V for vendetta again.

for those of you who have yet to see the film, it is based on a graphic novel of the same name and is the story of… well, how to sum it up?  think ‘guy fawkes meets 1984, by the makers of the matrix’ and you’ll be on the right lines.

definitely one of the best british films of recent times.

i willnae give too much of the plot away, in case you have yet to watch the film but, in essence:

in the near future, the US has ceased to exist as a world power and britain is a totalitarian, orwellian state, ruled by adam sutler [john hurt] -a man who came to power, promising a return to traditional values and a crackdown on terrorists, homosexuals, islamists and so on.

[the original graphic novel was written in the middle of the thatcher era, so you can draw your own conclusions, as to the ‘message in the music’!]

the main protagonist in the film is a young girl called evey [natalie portman], who works as a general dogsbody in the state broadcasting company BTN.  we meet her at the beginning of the movie as she ventures out one night, after curfew, to visit a sick uncle.

on the way she is cornered in an alleyway by a menacing gang of undercover state policemen, hunting for curfew breakers.  gang rape looks set to ensue when, all of a sudden, a dark stranger appears from out of the gloom, dressed top to toe in black, wearing a guy fawkes mask and speaking in shakespearian english.  this is V [hugo weaving], who –with a beltful of daggers and a fistful of ninja moves– proceeds to educate the policemen as to the error of their ways and to save evey from their not-so-amorous advances.

from this point on, evey’s life and that of V become intertwined - all the more so when, shortly after,  he mounts an audacious raid on BTN headquarters [where evey works] and takes over the airwaves to broadcast to the british people and urge them to rise up against their fascist government on the next 5th of november.

further adventures ensue as V continues a one-man war against the apparatus of the state and the leaders of the government, via a series of explosions and assassinations.

against her will, evey is drawn into the battle, as the secret police suspect she is V’s accomplice and try to hunt her down for arrest and inevitable torture.

an added twist to the plot arrives in the shape of inspector finch [stephen rea] of the regular police, who is charged with tracking V down. in doing so, he begins to uncover a web of lies and deceit, which goes right to the heart of sutler’s government and suggest that V is not just a terrorist madman bent on wanton destruction, after all –and that the government has some very damaging skeletons hidden in its closet.

the film itself is wonderfully photographed and the storyline will pluck at the heartstrings of anyone with an ounce of the anarchist spirit within them. there are fantastic quotes and some of the set pieces -especially towards the end of the film- will have you punching the air,  as V well and truly “socks it to the man”.

if you havenae yet watched this movie, do it now!

this is most definitely not a link to a snidey copy of the film!