Last Night in Soho by Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns - 7 out of 10

 

Last Night in Soho by Edgar Wright and Krysty Wilson-Cairns

 

7 out of 10

 

 

 Last Night in Soho had its premiere last night, On HBO, albeit it was launched in 2021, three years ago – this is a habit the network has here of declaring a Sunday prime time launch for something that is not decades old, but it would better be, if the quality were superior, only it is neither new, nor good enough, so ‘show me the money’

 

Thomasin McKenzie is clearly not one of my favorites, on the contrary, if she is in a movie, I better avoid it, because her effect is ‘altering the reality’, like Steve Jobs https://realini.blogspot.com/2018/10/leave-no-trace-written-and-directed-by.html but the result is not the making of some iPhone, it is just a flawed motion picture

Leave No Trace was not a case in point, the theme there is interesting, a father aka Ben Foster takes his daughter, played by Thomasin McKenzie, into the woods, where they are supposed to Leave No Trace, it is a quest for a wild, ‘natural’ life away from human kind and the noise, pollution, corruption, maybe Orange Jesus

 

So there is a lot there https://realini.blogspot.com/2018/10/leave-no-trace-written-and-directed-by.html albeit for this cinephile, it would have worked much better with other thespians, but hey, this is not the only actor that makes me leave the cinema or couch in front of the tv,

Elizabeth Debicki has a much more powerful presence, in a negative way, for yours truly, and then it gets worse with the likes of Vin Diesel, The Rock and the list has other names that cause an allergy, only I do not even consider watching one of those, and to think that The Rock was the highest paid ‘actor’ some years ago

 

Revenons a nos moutons, to try and get back to Last Night in Soho – for a short time, so there is a warning here, the lines will go off on a tangent, a ‘weave-like’  departure from the topic, in the way that that awful Orange Felon does, alas – Thomasin McKenzie is Eloise, the leading role, while Anya Taylor-Joy is Sandie

Anya Taylor Joy is much better for the under signed, really impressive in the latest Mad Max Furiosa – I will include a link here, though because I do not know where I have my note on Furiosa, maybe there is none, I have quite abandoned the takes on films, this one is a bit of an exception, I will put in another Mad Max shtick https://realini.blogspot.com/2020/09/83-out-of-100-for-mad-max-thunderdome.html Thunderdome

Rita Tushingham was once a celebrated, spectacular actress, she is now reduced to playing the grandmother of Eloise, in what is a very modest appearance, only few moments on the screen, but this was once the daughter of Doctor Zhivago, in one of the most memorable motion pictures you can see, if you want to

 

David Lean and a cast we could never see again, Omar Shariff, Julie Christie, Rod Steiger, Alec Guinness Tom Courtenay, Klaus Kinski https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/doctor-zhivago-by-boris-pasternak.html a cast with the crème de la crème, nec plus ultra, and a film that was strangely much better than the book

Eloise is moving to London and there she will have visons of Soho, London, only she sees the past, what happened decades ago, when Sandie is the main personage, she is initiated into the life of the bars and dance rooms by Jack aka Matt Smith, this Jack is nefarious, cruel, abusive, violent and exploitative, a villain

 

He seems charming, polite, masculine, decent, kind, but then he has to set the traps and pimps need good Emotional Intelligence, to control their slaves – indeed, I once met one, well, it is more than one, but the ones from the early days after the Revolution, would just sit outside decrepit buildings where the trade took place…

One would talk the price, then would be told where to go, at what room, not much interaction, so I refer to one met some ten years back, maybe, I was using the services of a sex worker, near the Roman Square, center of this city, and on the phone, something was advertised, she does this, that and the other

 

Only when I get there, the ‘offer’ was very limited, indeed, not what the money paid were supposed to cover, so I said look, after these couple of minutes, I will just go, if you say no to this and that, and you only do something I am not that interested in, but she would give the money, which are paid upfront, in case you did not know

So unique in the history of maybe two thousand such visits, I get to see the pimp – with some hindsight, maybe he was amateur, or just some acquaintance, a relative maybe – and we talk about what happened, what I wrote above and how one wants to get what one pays for – ugly, I know, in light of ow we have to see these things

 

I mean, in Sweden, such clients like the disgusting under signed are facing charges, it is illegal and customers are in the spotlight and they break the law, so anyway, I make my case, and she makes hers, I think along the lines with he used some minutes of my time, no small deal, since a ’number’ needs to take a short time

That varies, some clock it with half an hour, the average now is about $40, but it depends on location, looks, services, so in the end, we came to the Golden Mean of Aristotle  https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/aristotle-in-ninety-minutes-by-paul.html I paid half the initial price and walked out, but to conclude, Last Night did not pass the litmus test, it is not on the line between boredom and burnout, it is under that border

 

 Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”