Timewasters Extraordinaire!

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John Carpenter mostly comes up with the goods again. Although a lot of the dystopian themes here remain relevant, you still don't want to take the movie totally seriously. I mean, a working-class drifter discovers the world is secretly run by aliens controlling people's minds. It's only borderline horror, and it's not especially subtle, nor is the acting always stellar. It's really more of a 50s-homage sci-fi action flick, but it's campy and colourful and all the better for that.

Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster all play their parts well, and it's always at least watchable. There's a famous fight scene that's very well done – without stunt performers, I should note – and though it's frankly a little overlong even for the point it's making with the length, it's pretty exciting. There are also several nice one-liners – including one of those that make you go, "Oh, that's where this comes from!" A pity the satire is rather submerged in the action later on, but still a solid movie. ★★★

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I had a pretty good time with this, even if it is remarkably similar in its underlying storyline to One Hundred and One Dalmatians. Like that film, it's animated in the "Xerox" style, and I think it works well here; the movie is very appealing and bright to look at. I know some people find fault with it, but it never got in my way. The Parisian (and environs) setting gives it a different texture from the swamps of Dalmatians, which helps to distinguish it from the earlier film beyond "cats not dogs".

At heart, it's a clichéd "upper-class woman meets loveable rogue" story, but both Duchess and Thomas O'Malley are solid enough characters and the humour is usually good. The kittens are amusing without (mostly) being impossibly saccharine, the geese are funny in their way, and supporting cast of jazz cats are generally excellent. The exception is the achingly racist, though thankfully relatively little seen, Shun Gon (played by a white American guy...) That aside, the main drawback is that Edgar, the villain, is rather a fool and is simply not as hissable as Cruella de Vil.

The great joy of The Aristocats is its music, with the excellent jazz a delight, not least thanks to the very good Scatman Crothers as Scat Cat. "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat" is a classic for a reason, and "Scales and Arpeggios" shows you can make a good song out of very little. I'm slightly less enamoured of Maurice Chevalier's title number, a pity since it was his very last film song, but it's decent enough. This might have squeezed a four, but half a star off for Shun Gon. ★★★½

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Yep, you're getting a film post and a music post today! This is The Beautiful South's number eight hit, "Don't Marry Her", which was included on their generally excellent if at times rather dark-toned 1996 album Blue is the Colour. It's got some really excellent songwriting – make sure you listen to the lyrics! It's also extremely catchy, so I make no apologies if it earworms you. The one you're hearing here is the single version, which had to be cleaned up a little to get broadcast. The album version keeps the original explicit lyrics and can be heard here. I'd have posted that one, but it doesn't have the video, so the family-friendly single is what you're getting!

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Back to exploitation movies now, with this Roger Corman-produced (though Paul Bartel-directed) piece of futuristic dystopia. A just pre-superstardom Sylvester Stallone (Rocky was a year away) is the most recognisable name here, despite David Carradine taking top billing. In true Corman style, this was a quickfire and cheap (the budget was under $1m) response to Rollerball. There's an interesting satirical backdrop to the movie, even though Corman scrubbed many of the satirical jokes and leant more heavily into the cars and crashes once he realised that would play better at the box office.

The effects are pretty cheap – surprised? – and a lot of it doesn't actually make much sense. Why is one of the drivers a literal Nazi, complete with swastikas? Why doesn't "Mr President" have an actual name? Why is the scoring system apparently made up as the film goes along despite the race having taken place for years? But honestly, if you want a racing film that makes sense, go and watch Le Mans '66. This one is basically Wacky Races with added (cheerfully unrealistic) gore and bonkers TV reporters. If you ever played Carmageddon way back when, this film is why that exists. ★★½

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Not only that, but the sun came out for the morning and some of the afternoon! I went to Worcester to see friends, and a very nice few hours was had. Lots of silliness as ever, and one of Caffè Bolero's superb chocolate muffins to go with my coffee. The only annoyance was on the way home, when a landslip affected signalling for trains out of Foregate Street station (the Worcester area still uses semaphore signals) and so I had to slog up to Shrub Hill to find a running service home. I'll get a small amount of compensation from Delay Repay, but it was mildly annoying nevertheless, especially as public information at Shrub Hill is usually terrible. The train crew themselves were the ones who gave us the key info the announcements had been lacking. Anyway, I got home all right.

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I don't know why I'm even surprised. It's rained steadily almost all today, except for a short period when it was drizzling. Tomorrow is forecast to be actually dry, but I'll believe that when I see it. In the morning I went to Sainsbury's in Kidderminster to pick up some unexciting bits and pieces, and I stopped off to have a coffee in the equally unexciting Carluccio's café they have upstairs. Vodafone had graciously given me a free Sainsbury's gift card worth a munificent £1.50, so I used it to get a box of Ritz cheese biscuits. It rained throughout, although fortunately not inside Sainsbury's.