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People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan (2021)
People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan (2021)
2021 | Comedy
7
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Good jokes, most of which land (1 more)
Enough David Brent/Partridge moments to make you cringe
As a PJDN virgin, I still laughed a lot!
It’s brave then that such a relatively niche UK TV show should have a go at ‘jumping the shark’ onto the big screen. Would fans like it? And, just as importantly, would newcomers to the characters, like me, be able to enjoy the film as a standalone entity? The answer to the last question is a qualified “yes”.

Positives:
- It well-surpasses the “6 laugh test” for a comedy. There are some scenes that I found extremely funny, with others that rated highly for me on the David Brent / Alan Partridge scale of cringiness.
- I’ve seen comment that the story is "silly" and “unbelievable”. But having experienced the crazy clash between English and Japanese culture first hand, it strikes me as very true to form! The way in which the Japanese music execs try to stylise the ground as a ‘boy band’ (“Bang Boys”!), which Grindah greedily goes along with, is a nice satire on the music industry asserting its brand over musician’s art.
- A subplot of a love story beween the inept Steves and the cute Japanese translator Ishika (Ayumi Itô) is nicely done and strangely touching.
- The good news is that you don’t need any previous experience of the characters to get fun out of the movie: you can jump right in. That being said though, I’m sure fans of the series will get more out of this than I did.

Negatives:
- While the ending was uplifting, I was itching to know what fallout (or success?) there was from the event we witnessed. Perhaps if its a box office success (unlikely I think!) then there will be a sequel.

Summary Thoughts on “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan”: IMDB is littered with disastrous reviews of British TV shows that have tried and failed to make the leap from the small screen to the big screen. “On the Buses”; “Are You Being Served?”; “Steptoe and Son”; “Please Sir”; “Love Thy Neighbour” – the list is endless. They are mostly all horribly unfunny. Even the great “Morecambe and Wise”, although showing occasional moments of brilliance, struggled to fully land any of their three big-screen outings.

The ‘go-to’ of many of these efforts was to “go abroad”: take the well-loved characters and put them into a ‘bigger’ and stranger pool. So “People Just Do Nothing: Big in Japan” was following a well-trodden path here. It’s a tribute to the team and their TV-series director Jack Clough, in his feature debut, that they pretty much pull it off.

I’d like to agree with Kevin Maher of “The Times” that the movie is full of “Japanese stereotypes… drunken businessmen, passive giggling women etc”. But having travelled extensively on business in Japan, it seems pretty close to the mark with its observations to me! More importantly, the film never seems to be particularly derogatory or disrespectful of the culture. For example, they take their shoes off too much!

Key to its box office success will be whether or not it can attract an audience outside of its niche TV fan-bases. As a member of that sub-group, I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this one, but I actually did. It was good fun, and if you want a good laugh at the cinema – a pretty rare thing – then I’d recommend this one, even if – like me – you haven’t seen the original TV show.

(For the full graphical review, please check out onemannsmovies on the web, Facebook and Tiktok. Thanks!)
  
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Jonathan Higgs recommended Kid A by Radiohead in Music (curated)

 
Kid A by Radiohead
Kid A by Radiohead
2000 | Indie
8.0 (6 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Like lots of people my age, Radiohead were a big band before Kid A. The Bends were where I really got into them, and then OK Computer really blew me away. But then Kid A came out and it was nothing like their other stuff. They took away all their guitars. They were the kings of guitars and they took them all away, and they replaced it with really out of tune, quiet synths and little drum machines and it made me and all my friends really surprised. We didn't know what this meant because we were so used to guitars being important, and then Radiohead came along and said you don't need any of that stuff, screw it. That really changed my attitude. Radiohead showed a generation that you don't need to be afraid of change. I just think it was such a brave decision, considering where they were in their career, what they had come from and what they had become well known for. They threw it all out the window and that inspired a huge amount of people I think, and it inspires us every time with think of it, or whenever we talk about turning our attention to a new album, we always have it in the back of our minds that we could ""pull a Kid A"", we could pull a U-turn, and that comes down to the fact that they were willing to do that, it was inspiring. Obviously loads of musical stuff came out of Kid A. The way Thom Yorke sings is pretty indelibly put into me, and a lot of the way the band play, and everything Jonny Greenwood does, influences us. It's what Kid A's attitude was really. It's really slapdash in the way it's recorded, it's really awkwardly mixed. It sounds like they've done it themselves out of old pieces of machinery that shouldn't work anymore. Gone are all the shiny, beautiful guitar tones and high production. Even his voice is beautiful and yet it's been corrupted and you can't really hear what he's saying, and he's singing falsetto. All the stuff that we kind of relied on them for all got chucked in the bin and that's just fucking awesome!"

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    Calculator 3.0

    Calculator 3.0

    Utilities and Productivity

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    App

    Welcome to Calculator 3.0 for Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, and iMessage! Frustrated with the bland...

The Map of Lost Memories
The Map of Lost Memories
Kim Fay | 2013 | Fiction & Poetry
8
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
This book took a little while to really pick up the pace. Once I got a handle on who was who & who had which agenda it became a lot more interesting. The characters were easy to like or to hate depending on who's side you were on. Identifying with them on a "real world" level was a bit more tricky though.
It tells the story of Irene, a museum assistant who gets passed over for a big promotion. When she is so easily dismissed she wants to do something to make a name for herself. With the help of her deceased father's wealthy best friend she goes treasure hunting. She sets out to find the lost Khmer copper scrolls which supposedly tell the as yet unknown history of the Khmer reign in Cambodia.
Yes, there is a good dose of history & politics mixed in throughout the story. Even if you know nothing about the Khmers in Cambodia you can still get into this book & understand the plot lines.
Along her journey from Seattle to the Orient, Irene assembles a misfit band of scientists & treasure hunters...everyone from a drug addicted Khmer scholar to a man who runs the "knowledge" network in Shanghai.
All in all this was a good book. It can be enjoyed by anyone despite the time period setting & the oriental history sprinkled in throughout the text. The story is easy to get lost in once you figure out who is who.
  
Monsieur Gainsbourg Originals by Serge Gainsbourg
Monsieur Gainsbourg Originals by Serge Gainsbourg
2006 | Pop
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"I’d known nothing of Serge Gainsbourg until I was co-producing an album by a French group called Louise Attaque. Their first album ended up being the biggest rock album in France, which was an amazing thing. Being with these French people and making this album, myself and my co-producer asked, ‘Well, what music would you recommend for us to listen to, things that we might not know that you could tell us about. What do you like? Because we like your music and what you do, so what is it that you like?’ This was the first thing that somebody there said, ‘This is what you have to hear, this is great,’ and it just struck me that way. We went to a big record store and said to everybody in the band, ‘Why don’t you pick out music for us? What’s the two or three CDs that are the best, or that you think we need to hear?’ We wouldn’t know a lot of this or maybe any of it, and one of them recommended this and everybody agreed, ‘This is something you need to hear.’ It didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before and I immediately liked it very much, the whole album. And then I found out about Serge Gainsbourg and all the things he did for decades, all different kinds of music. I think he’s really one of the great ones"

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Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno
Here Come the Warm Jets by Brian Eno
1974 | Rock
9.0 (4 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"When I was about 15, Danny and Mick [Quinn, Supergrass bassist] lived in this row of cottages that was literally 10 metres from my family house. That was our base; we’d get together in Mick’s living room. I feel very lucky to have been in a band at that time because we were still approaching music – playing live, writing and recording – the way they had since the beginning; it was the last little window where there was only two-inch tape recording, just a few A&R men around who would come to gigs and stuff, no internet, mobile phones. It seems weird now! We were in the house getting stoned and playing loads of records, everything from Pink Floyd to Gong, Muppets albums, Zappa and Patti Smith. A big one for us was Brian Eno’s Here Come The Warm Jets – it was one we were really hooked on. For somebody so experimental he had killer melodies and the way he double-tracked his voice is just really cool. The production and instrumentation are kind of understated and hint at lo-fi, but in an honest way. We had a meeting with him in New York in the early 00s about producing us. I don’t think it was anything creative that was the issue, it was a boring calendar thing from what I remember, but it was great to meet him and have a chat."

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