Cartman
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Post by Cartman on May 16, 2018 8:11:58 GMT
Yes, I remember The Wonder Years and liked it. It had an optimistic feel to it and captured that great period between being a teenager and young adult brilliantly. I like the era it was set in too.
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on May 16, 2018 21:45:38 GMT
I liked The Wonder Years. Seem to remember it being repeated quite often on CH4 in the early 90s. It was around this time I used to watch it.
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Post by Kenny Dalglish 1979 on May 30, 2018 12:33:09 GMT
I've been watching the 2nd series lately. The stories and the acting still hold up very well. You also have a finely balanced mixture of serious drama and outright, genuinely funny comedy.
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DI Alex Drake
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Quite frankly, your guess is as good as mine.
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Post by DI Alex Drake on May 30, 2018 22:48:41 GMT
I just thought I’d look it up on amazon ... ok, maybe not! A mere £69.99
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Del Boy
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Post by Del Boy on May 31, 2018 11:27:29 GMT
70 quid, Wow seems expensive.
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Post by Dirty Epic on Jul 4, 2018 18:27:40 GMT
Another one which falls into this category is Spike Island which I recently re-watched.
It should have everything I like about The Stone Roses and this infamous gig in 1990 but for me it doesn’t quite seem to do it, not quite right and even looking through rose tinted spectacles even I can see it’s romanticising the period, Madchester and what it was like to be 15-16 (as I was) back then. The characters feel a bit forced 2 dimensional and there’s a few clichéd, hackneyed sub plots around it like one lad has a sick father dying in hospital and a absent selfish older brother, another a bullying abusive father, another from a petty crime family etc. along with mandatory love interest between the two leads ‘Tits’ (Elliot Tittensor) and ‘Sally’ (Emilia Clarke).
Additionally the lads are trying to be Stone Roses mk2 up against local rivals 'The Palava' who are The Mondays mk2... again could have been a bit more original here.
For me these clumsy back-stories some how take away the point of the film that the lads are trying to blag their way into the Spike Island gig any means necessary. These parts of the film work, work well but all of this seems to be achieved by two thirds of the film which then starts to drag on an inevitable ending of friends falling out, a father dying and uncertain futures for the lads… although many of us who left school back then had that in front of them.
Superficially Spike Island’s not all bad and there are many good things about it and representing the time/place it does in it if you don’t take it too seriously. But I just feel it lacks something and misses the target which could have made it a much better film about that Madchester period and I suppose if you remember it too well you weren’t really there etc.
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Cartman
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Post by Cartman on Jul 4, 2018 20:49:43 GMT
Yes, I watched that when it was on TV a few months back and couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. It’s a classic example, to me, of an era meaning something to one age group and very little to another one. I was 30 in 1990 and had completely lost interest in current music so the whole Madchester scene totally passed me by and I was only very vaguely aware of it.
I had heard the names Stone Roses and Happy Monday’s but knew nothing of them at all. I have listened to some of their stuff in more recent years and do quite like some of it so I regret now ignoring it at the time.
There were some funny bits of dialogue in it but I thought the film was a bit, sort of soapy, as DE says. I agree that it seemed to present a slightly idealised view of what was, in my opinion, a depressing period. I thought the 90s was very much a game of two halves, the first half (1990-94) was dire, but the decade suddenly perked up in 1995 and I quite liked the second half.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Jul 4, 2018 21:46:58 GMT
Saw some of 'Spike Island' when it was on tv recently & found it somewhat cringeworthy, I think most films & tv dramas of recent years that attempt to recreate a certain period are, 'This Is England' possibly being an exception.
On a Manchester theme I recently saw Steve Coogan as Paul Raymond in 'The Look Of Love' which I thought was awful. I love Coogan as Alan Partridge but he's not a natural film actor.
I remember being on a train platform & seeing lots of people leaving to go to the Spike Island gig. My brother used to be in a local Manchester band in the late 80s, they rehearsed in a garage next to where The Stone Roses rehearsed & often overheard them playing, he even claims that they nicked a song off them. He also went out with a girl who later became a girlfriend of Ian Brown.
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Bojan Scores
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Terry you’re very devious when a bird’s involved...
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Post by Bojan Scores on Jul 5, 2018 11:23:57 GMT
Interesting to read the comments on Spike Island and its subsequent place in pop culture history. At the time I believe, it was a horrible concert experience for fans. I saw Nirvana at the Reading festival in 1992. The weather was cold and wet (even for August), Nirvana were late and played a lack lustre set that didn’t go down well with the festival audience. The set was roundly slagged off in the weekly music papers of the time. The gig was released as a CD and DVD a few years back, and of course it’s now a ‘legendary performance’. It even has a good rating on Amazon, I’m surprised that people can’t believe the evidence of their eyes and ears and buy into its myth. It was shit then, and it’s shit now. Nirvana were a great band, but that was an off night.
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Post by Arthur Pringle on Jul 5, 2018 14:13:39 GMT
I saw Nirvana at Manchester Poly in 1989, they were playing with another Seattle band of the time Tad. They hadn't yet hit big with 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' so there wasn't much hype around them. I don't remember anything special about their performance, the crowd seemed to prefer Tad as their obese lead singer Tad Doyle was a character with lots of banter. I remember Kurt Cobain pinning a young lad to the stage with his guitar, I don't think he liked stage divers. Definitely an overrated band given that there were other good Seattle bands around such as Mudhoney who are largely forgotten, of course it helped that Nirvana had a video that got massive MTV coverage & then the guy goes & kills himself ensuring 'legendary' status.
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