Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens is billed as an inter-galactic disco extravaganza that explodes all around you. Well something exploded, or backfired. Think all-singing, trying-to-dance Battlestar Galactica meets Mad Max, throw in some glitter, silver lamé and a few other odds and sods from another solar-system’s secondhand dressing-up box.
In amongst magnetosphere-of-madness is a wannabe poet cosmic Cyclops, a zodiac German doctor impersonator, a metallic-headed basque-sporting Medusa with two klingons in tow – the vixen trio. And thrust into the starlight as if she just landed from another planet, Chesty Prospects (Sophie Cordwell James): imagine Cheryl Fernandez-Versini trying to pull-off ‘fierce’, with a live vocal performance wearing a studded bra and stardust. Light years from close.
Confused? So were we. There’s a serial killer, and these super-fashion crime-fighters from a groovier galaxy with a mission to fight crime and liberate the universe harnessing the Power of Disco. Or, a dark-matter Rocky-Horror-esque disco blended with a whole sphere of amateur cabaret.
The production lifted off quite well but gravity kicked in and it landed flat on Uranus. The concept is fun but the stage time could have been halved, and for some, more rehearsal time added.
Nutshell – Rudyard Kipling’s book was adapted into the 1967 cartoon movie classic which was Walt Disney’s last film before he died. It turned into a perennial favourite thanks to its great jazz tunes tastefully reprised here and superb story and entertainment value. Here we have just one actor Mowgli and an array of computer generated characters, phenomenal backgrounds enlivened by the obligatory list of superstar voices. There is a lot of action here throughout the film to appeal to the modern audience coupled with some great comedy and boy does it work on every front big time. A movie for kids, big kids and everyone else that just wants a good honest fun commercial thrill ride with a heart of gold.
Time – 106 mins and man is it crammed from opening chase to closing showdown;
Certificate – PG it’s a family movie of course – it will become a TV holiday staple.
Tagline – ‘The Legend Will Never Be The Same’ – This follows Disney’s successful run of reproducing its animated standards in live action format. We have had Alice In wonderland, Cinderella, Snow White & last month’s The Huntsman and Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty) and every one has been massively more successful than the original so expect the same here.
THE GAY UK FACTOR – Don’t be silly, there is nothing here for your willy or libido, yes there are bears, giant phallic stakes and mano on mano action but get your head out of the gutter this is pure clean fun. Just switch your Scruff off and put your Grindr on mute and relive your childhood you can visit the gay bar on your way home for your jollies.
Cast – Debutant Neel Sethi as boycub Mowgli, then the stars step in – Bill Murray as Baloo, Scarlett Johansson as Kaa the snake, Idris Elba as villainous tiger Sheer Khan, Ben Kingsley as Panther Bagheera, Christopher Walken singing as ape supremo King Louie and so on through Gary Shandling, Lupita Nyong’o, Sam Raimi and even the director himself Jon Favreau.
Key Player –‘Trust in me’ everyone is superb with one exception see below but the movie is dominated by Bill Murray’s Baloo. He is funny, sad, heroic and just what you want him to be. He was allowed to ad lib through his scenes and unusually for an effectively computer generated cartoon he was able to do voices acting alongside the other characters in particular Mowgli and it so works probably only been bettered by Robin William’s Genie in Aladdin.
Budget – We are in big bollocks territory here with a mega budget of $175 million. No worries though – after 2 weeks it had made over $300 million and it still needs to open in many territories so a lot more moolah to come for this one – it will make a big stack of Rupees and it could surpass Batman v Superman to become the biggest hit of 2016 so far.
Best Bit – 0.51 mins; There are so many great set pieces and they get everyone just right. Therefore you could pick the exciting first chase by Sheer Khan through the grasslands involving a ‘tribute’ stampede or you could pick the sad moment when Baloo has to lie or the excellent moment when Mowgli becomes the hero of the Elephants. All superb but you will really feel the true magic when you see a little boy floating down a stream banging out the beat to a very familiar tune on a big bears chest where you will be heading straight back to your childhood with the biggest of smiles on your face as if Tom Daley’s Speedos have just fallen off mid dive.
Worst Bit – 0.02 mins; The very live looking animals take some getting used to when they start speaking – it just seems weird but you soon accept it and then along comes Bagheera the panther. Ben Kingsley is a great actor and has a very distinctive voice but it is so posh and Oxbridge that coming out of a wild animal or a big cat just seems as wrong as Donald Trump’s haircut.
Little Secret – There were two Jungle Books in production at the same time with this and the forthcoming Jungle Book Origins (plus a Tarzan film too). Disney won the race and is raking in the cash but as we have seen with two asteroid movies at the same time, two volcano movies, two Truman Capote movies or two Terrorists taking the White House films etc it does not mean that the film that comes out second suffers it just has to make sure it is damn good. This was Gary Shandling’s last movie he finished – one month before he died.
Movie Mistake – So so many but in a kid’s film does it matter. The animals are all over the place as the film is set in the Indian jungle but we seem to have species from around the globe. African Elephants ? Sumatran orangutans ? Chinese Wolves ? Himalayan Bears ? Peccary’s and Red Eyed Frog’s from whole Continents away and so it goes on. The snake Kaa is 5 times larger than any Indian species ever found and King Louie is even more out of proportion roughly 10 times bigger than any monkey ever. The scars, wounds and bee stings on Mowgli appear and disappear so often that we lost count.
Awards – Nobody has ever won for voice work alone so it won’t happen for individuals and it won’t get nominated in animated categories as it doesn’t fit the criteria so just prizes for the excellent technical team possibly.
Further Viewing –The Jungle Book (1967), Babe, Scrooges, Alice In Wonderland, The Lion King, The Jungle Book (1994), The Jungle Book 2, next years Jungle Book Origins, Greystoke : Lord Of The Apes, Disney’s Tarzan, The Legend Of Tarzan (Out this Summer), Tarzan Of The Apes...
Any Good – Of course it is. Disney is getting really good at delivering these live versions of animated classics and this was probably the most sacred cow and the hardest to do as the cast are almost all animals. Jon Favreau the director delivers big time with every minute put to good use and so much great action and suspense. It looks so damn good too and kids will watch the DVD over and over again and with so much going on that adults will like that won’t drive you as crazy as multi repeats of say Frozen or The Lego Movie.
Rating – 15/100 (15th out of the last 100 films reviewed with 1 being Gay UK filmatic ejaculatery heaven and 100 being as much fun as a Tottenham Hotspur Premiership Victory party)
NHS England have confirmed responsibility for funding post exposure prophylaxis (PEP), a treatment that can prevent HIV infection after the virus has entered a person’s body.
(C) marcbruxel Depositphotos
However, the battle continues to see NHS England accept the same responsibility for funding PrEP – a game-changing treatment that is taken before exposure to HIV. Earlier this year NHS England shelved structured plans for PrEP availability on the NHS, but then last week said they “will carefully consider its position on commissioning PrEP”.
Ian Green, Chief Executive at Terrence Higgins Trust, said:
“We are pleased that NHS England has finally been clear on their responsibility for reimbursing local authorities for antiretroviral drugs used to prevent HIV infection after exposure to the virus.
“What remains to be seen is whether they will accept the same responsibility for funding PrEP, a pill taken once a day by HIV negative people who are at high risk to prevent transmission.
“Every day that access to PrEP is delayed, seven men who have sex with men are infected with HIV, despite advances in HIV prevention. We need answers from NHS England on if and when access to PrEP will be available to those who are at highest risk. Only then can NHS England make a full commitment to HIV prevention.”
“I should have made a comment or a statement, but I just wasn’t ready. I didn’t feel like I owed anyone anything. I think in due time, everyone has to make those decisions when they’re ready, and I wasn’t yet. But I felt like I was letting people down by not coming forward with the rest of what I should have said…People who are so judgmental about those who are gay or different don’t realize that acting 24 hours a day is the most exhausting thing in the world.”
The actor, said he had been out to his family and friends for many years.
The 27-year-old continued,
“It took me so long to get to this point, but I’m doing so good. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, and healthier than I’ve ever been, and that’s what I care about.”
TOWIE superstar Joey Essex has published a picture which leaves very little to the imagination.
CREDIT: Joey Essex/ Instagram
Celebrities take note… you don’t actually need to get naked for your audience to see everything, as demonstrated by Joey Essex.
Taking to Instagram, Joey Essex gave his fans an eyeful after sharing a picture from a forthcoming photo – but kept tight-lipped about who the shoot was for.
Anti-gay or homophobic slurs are still a big issue on social media.
Homophobic words like faggot, “no homo”, “so gay” and Dyke are used being used over 13,000 times a day or 541 insults an hour, on Twitter alone.
Nohomophobes.com a website set up in September 2012 to log all uses of the words faggot, “no homo”, “so gay” and Dyke on Twitter in real-time, is reporting that those words have been used nearly 61,000,000 times in 3 and a half years.
The word faggot accounts for over half of all of the homophobic language that is Tweeted on Twitter.
Although the trend has been downward since January 2014, alarmingly the use of the word faggot is used thousands of times a day on the social media platform.
Since around June 2015, the levels at which the anti-gay slurs are tweeted have levelled out but still remain shockingly high.
When the site was launched in September 2012, Dr. Kristopher Wells from NoHomophobes.com told us,
“We no longer tolerate racist language, weʼre getting better at dealing with sexist language, but sadly we still see and hear homophobic and transphobic language in our society,
“While this language might not always be meant to be hurtful, we must not forget that words like “faggot” contribute greatly to the continued alienation and isolation of sexual and gender (LGBTQ) people, especially our youth.”
Katie Hopkins has warned if Labour’s Sadiq Khan wins the London Mayoral elections today she’ll do something drastic.
CREDIT: LBC
Michelle Visage’s ex-bestie,Katie Hopkins has taken to social media to say that if Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan should win the election today that she’ll strip naked… and stick a sausage up her bum in protest.
Just that vision… let it meld in your mind for a moment…
The outspoken radio presenter and columnist has nailed her flag to the mast and she definitely doesn’t want a Labour winner.
She hasn’t commented on the type of sausage she’d use, some are speculating on whether it would be a Linda McCartney veggie or a good old British pork.
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Across London today, voters will be taking to the polls to elect a new mayor for London as Boris Johnson’s term comes to an end.
Along with Sadiq Khan, who is standing for Labour, the other candidate are:
Jeff is a married man with a fetish for wrestling. He’s walked out on his religious but shrewish wife and is hiding out in his hometown in southern England where he’s having a fumble with grieving youngster Malcolm. By coincidence, Malcolm’s boss is Jeff’s Biblical claptrap spouting father.
Is a play about a secretly gay married man still relevant in 2016? Sadly it is. It’d be naïve to think that being gay in contemporary British society was accepted by everyone and that gay men weren’t still suppressing their sexuality and trying to hide in plain sight. Any foray into gay life will tell you that the phenomenon of the closeted gay man is still very much present. You can’t spend more than five minutes on a hook-up app, the Internet or in a sauna without tripping over a married man or two. The issues in the play are still prevalent. Gay men might be able to marry and public opinion might have moved on but people are still prejudiced and still spout obscure parts of religious tracts to justify this. Some people are still so affected by the prejudices of others that they suppress their natures and try to be things that they aren’t.
In spite of this there’s something dated feeling about “Abominations”.
The problem with the play isn’t the subject matter but the dialogue and characterisation. Whilst Jeff feels generally convincingly drawn and credible, his wife feels like a two-dimensional throwback to a dated sit-com. Malcolm is an earnest ukulele-playing buffoon who reveals few other character traits than naivety and rather than endearing, is more of an irritant. The dialogue is stilted and quaint at times. Scenes are short with awkward shuffling pauses. In spite of some well-drawn sections the sum of the play is much less than its parts and fails to gel. The comedy often falls flat and sits awkwardly with the more intense and better-written scenes.
The saving grace of the piece has to be the stunning central performance from Alexander Hulme as Jeff. He handles the part with style, imbuing the character with credibility and hinting at the shifting emotional landscape of a man unravelling. He’s all swagger and brittle chav charm but manages to give glimpses of something deeper and darker with a softer core. He’s also very easy on the eye and displays a lot of flesh that distracts the viewer. In the midst of the play there are some genuinely moving scenes between Jeff and his father and Gary Heron displays some fine acting that ably supports Hulme in his role.
This is definitely a play that had potential and there are glimpses of unrealised style and impact. The well-written lines stand out and there are scenes that have real power. Sadly, the finished overall product felt almost as tired and lacklustre as the location of the theatre: Camden High Street.
Abominations plays at the Etcetera Theatre Until the 29th of May 2016
A gay man in Brighton has opened up about a vicious assault to him and his boyfriend in Brighton, he says left him battered and fearing for the sight in his left side.
