The best TV & Movies of 2014

Film / TV of 2014  11-12-14

Having listened to Jason Solomons list of the best movies of 2014 on Robert Elms always interesting show on BBC London 94.9FM today , I have thought about my favourites this year. Jason included" Nightcrawler" with Jake Gyllenhall as a creepy opportunist ambulance chasing newshound, which I thought was a terrific comment on modern day inter-personal communication and the news agenda. I currently think  "Welcome to New York" is my favourite release of the year; Abel Ferrara is back on top form, pushing back the taboo boundaries in a similar way to his 1992 success," Bad Lieutenant". The tale of the cop falling apart starred Harvey Keitel, taking crack and praying in a church having disrobed, created a media storm at the time. It is unlikely this time round seeing as the story of the notorious depravity of the high profile French politician whoring his way round NYC was barely seen in a UK cinema. Nor did it go straight to DVD; its fate was even worse; straight to stream online. That says it all to me about how we in the UK cannot cope with adult films about sex - as opposed to adult sex films - we can cope with them OK.

How different the times are now for Abel Ferrara, Dario Argento, David Cronenbourg as well as Harvey Keitel, Nick Cage and David Lynch. The careers of these cult figures tend to go through peaks and troughs; many of them have had their biggest success for aeons this year. Cronenbourgs "Maps to The Stars" was one of the best films about Hollywood I have ever seen, and is my favourite movie from across the pond (USA). Us Brits can take credit for many high points of the year including Mike Leigh's "Mr Turner" which got better and better as it went on, after a low key and clunky first half hour. Dario Argento has announced a new film of the Sandman comic legend with Iggy Pop as the eye-eating monster who haunts childrens' nightmares. Should be great, especially if Dario can persuade his daughter, Treedown Gotobed's favourite actress of modern times - Asia Argento - to take part.

Two biopics were similar in many ways including the rampant egotism of their main subject. "Finding Fela" was another DVD release that deserved better, especially as the man was such a megastar. Alex Gibney's documentary does not shy away from the awkward aspects of his story; the huge joints he would smoke on stage, the 27 wives he married in one ceremony, and his brutal, sexist bullying of women. Fela's unapologetic credo has the African husband always in charge, and always right.

His fantastic band - so tight they made Paul McCartney cry - left him after his control freakery got too much. As did James Browns Famous Flames, who upped and left after being fined for every mistake by the self proclaimed Godfather of Soul.

Starring Chadwick Boseman in a lively performance, The James Brown story "Get On Up"was entertaining and interesting, detailing his dirt poor childhood through to the swift rise to success and battles with the payola system that had a hold of the American music industry. Dan Akroyd plays the sage manager who takes him all the way to top of the R&B charts and often No 1 in the main Billboards charts as well. Both films excel on the music front which isn't surprising seeing as both artists were superlative geniuses.

But 2014 was another year ruled by the TV series. No more Breaking Bad - we had True Detective . My goodness, what a master of the charismatic alpha male Matthew McConnaughay has become. And even us Brits - so lagging behind in this arena - had our own product of equally top quality. Just as Finding Fela had me speaking in a Nigerian accent for the rest of the night,The Fall has used its Belfast location to great effect. Not so much the city itself, but the people, and that accent became deliciously alluring when Boss cop Gillian Anderson sent a simulacrum into the police cell to bump the beautiful male psychopath out of communication shut down. Dressed in Stella's signature outfit and with her long dark hair deliberately styled to mirror Paul Spector's preferred victim type, the young officer delivered news of being 'further arrested' in the most spine-tingling seductive manner ever seen in a British police station. The female superstar - all restrained authority, sexy silk shirts and pencil skirts, is backed up by an ultra-modern take on sexual relations between consenting adults irrespective of gender. As the male anti-hero Jamie Dornan delivers dollops of sex appeal and charisma to match any American heavyweight as they play out their cat and mouse psychological mind games. Top effort, and full marks writer/director Alan Cubitt and the BBC drama dept - can't wait for the next series in 2015.

Orion Mars mission

Mission to Mars - Id rather go to Neptune - 07-12-14

According to Bloomberg, the money NaSA need to send the Orion capsule to Mars are astonomical. And even if they get the $22billion they need for starters, Orion may not make it to Mars...

"The Orion space capsule that launched earlier today has been under development by NASA since the mid-2000s. But, watching it splash down in the Pacific ocean four hours later, you'd be forgiven for thinking of the 1970s. The capsule, which by some reliable estimates cost over $10 billion, didn’t accomplish anything that wasn’t somewhat routine for NASA in the era of the Apollo moon landings.NASA, however, is encouraging a very different view.  Rather than admit Orion's many shortcomings, it has boldly  promoted the mission as the first step in America’s journey to Mars -- or, as NASA tweets it, America's #JourneyToMars

It's laudable, of course, that a perpetually under-funded government agency -- one that hasn’t sent a crewed mission beyond low-Earth orbit in forty-two years -- is able to muster this sort of long-term optimism. But optimism alone won’t send a jumbo-sized space capsule to Mars. You need money, and lots of it: a recent National Research Council study looked at several mission pathways to Mars, including Orion, and saw no possibility that any mission could be accomplished for less than hundreds of billions of dollars. In contrast, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) expects to spend $22 billion on Orion and the Space Launch System rocket by 2021 (according to the Government Accountability Office, a true accounting of Orion’s costs has not been provided by NASA). There's no reason to believe that greater volumes of money will ever materialize.  NASA, in other words, intends on spending vast sums of money on a Mars capsule that will not be going to Mars."

A trip to Mars would mean missing 10 Victorias Secret shows - minimum

Now this may not be such a bad thing after all. Lets take a look at what we know about Mars. Theres not a whole lot going on there. In fact, fuck all goes on there. You might as well send the astronauts to the Sahara for a year or two and save them the discomfort and danger of the take-off, the 2 year journey, and the touch down. Even if there is no touch down, and they just bypass Mars and carry on to someplace else, and frankly who could blame them,they still need to bring Orion back home at some time hence.

If anyone thought for one second that Martians were going to materilise I'd be all for it. Never mind Martians, if anyone thought the tiniest worm might crawl out of the red sandy surface, it might justify a few dollars to go there. Then we could all say - "hurrah, its ET !"

But even that seems a forlorn hope. So NASA is going to send those privileged sops to the most boring planet ever discovered. Id rather they went to Planet Hollywood and ordered 50million burger and fries for the undernourished Africans who need a good meal. Go to to see Spurs play, go to the jungle and bring national treasure Carl Fogarty back to Bolton, Go to Russia and call Putin a pansy...you never know what might happen.

But going to Mars is a round trip to nowhere useful, entertaining and not worth terraforming. Go the other way NASA, arent Neptunes moons worth a quick(ish) trip?