Into town today to retrieve a notebook I left in the Central Library last week. The town was full of Wales, bound for Murrayfield, bound for the pub, bound for glory. I walked up the High Street surrounded by men in red dragon onesies and women in short-sleeved rugby tops and miniskirts despite the chill. It was fun.
I took the opportunity to drop into the Cameo at Tollcross for a lunchtime showing of Captain Marvel. I hadn’t been there since, I think, Shallow Grave (and before that Babylon, though I might be wrong–it’s possible I saw Absolute Beginners there too). Eating a quick lunch before the film, I liked the music playing in the bar well enough to Soundhound it. I guess Brian Fallon is quite well known but he’s new to me. His music wears its influences like a neon badge on his lapel, but it’s well executed.
I enjoyed Captain Marvel. I thought the first fifteen minutes or so could do with more showing and less telling (cinema is a visual medium after all), but once it hit its stride I was quite happy to be carried along for the ride.
Captain Marvel will, when it comes out on BluRay, join my short list of ‘beer and pizza’ films for nights in (currently The Incredibles, The Force Awakens, Rogue One and Pacific Rim). It’s a fun movie held together by a good buddy-movie partnership between Brie Larson and Samuel L Jackson. And its soundtrack is ace.
One of the problems I have with Marvel productions is that, one way or another, they nearly all revolve around the Avengers franchise. The best of them manage to be their own thing while hitting their Avengers cues; The ones I really liked–Black Panther, Thor Ragnarok, Antman, Doctor Strange and the excellent Logan–succeed by creating their own reality (and Logan, of course, has nothing to do with the Avengers). Captain Marvel walks something of a fine line seeing as it tees up Avengers Endgame, but it succeeds on its own terms (hint: I’m not really interested in the Avengers franchise and wasn’t especially impressed by Infinity War which I thought was more spectacle than substance).
My TV viewing has been as minimal as usual, but I did watch The Umbrella Academy in a concentrated binge. I wasn’t sure about the first episode but I’m glad I stuck with it. Like Brian Fallon the influences are obvious, but apart from some de rigueur camera angles meant to reflect the comic-book origins of the show (and they’re not as egregious or distracting as in American Gods), it is well done. Ellen Page is really good, but it is a measure of how closely it sticks to well-worn tropes that as soon as we’re told she has no powers and is ‘ordinary’ in episode one it is a nailed-on certainty that she has, and isn’t.
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