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Post by Lord Emsworth on May 31, 2022 14:51:19 GMT
Just watched the first episode. I'm not really sure who it's aimed at, and there is a great deal of artistic licence taken. But it is a drama, a telling of a story and some of the characters are portrayed differently to how we know them; McClaren being the obvious example. A lot of the lines spoken are delivered to further the story, a narrative device. But I'm not going to get worked up about something that isn't factually correct. Television is littered with stories that take artistic licence with the truth, this is just another one of those. Second episode here I come...... I have managed to see the first 30 mins of episode one I came to much the same conclusion wardance The good stuff... Mixing documentary and archive footage into the edit giving a powerful sense of the 1970s The look and the feel is very authentic
Staying faithful to Steve's story (so far) The evocation of Sex in the Kings Road The less good stuff... The script - as wardance suggests it's obvious the characters would not have said a lot of the stuff that is put into their mouths. We've all seen the Pistols interviewed in the early days, there were a lot of silences. Like most kids they were pretty inarticulate. You'd not think so watching this. See also the lines McLaren, Viv W and Chrissie Hynde are given
Also no one was saying "edgy" in the 1970s especially Steve Jones
BUT it is a drama and not a documentary Taken on it's own terms it's very watchable and a lot of fun so far |
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Post by stu77 on May 31, 2022 15:13:20 GMT
Seen first episode.
Can't add anything to what's been said.
Wasn't expecting to hear Pink Floyd!
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Post by wardance on May 31, 2022 15:15:23 GMT
Just watched the first episode. I'm not really sure who it's aimed at, and there is a great deal of artistic licence taken. But it is a drama, a telling of a story and some of the characters are portrayed differently to how we know them; McClaren being the obvious example. A lot of the lines spoken are delivered to further the story, a narrative device. But I'm not going to get worked up about something that isn't factually correct. Television is littered with stories that take artistic licence with the truth, this is just another one of those. Second episode here I come...... I have managed to see the first 30 mins of episode one I came to much the same conclusion wardance The good stuff... Mixing documentary and archive footage into the edit giving a powerful sense of the 1970s The look and the feel is very authentic
Staying faithful to Steve's story (so far) The evocation of Sex in the Kings Road The less good stuff... The script - as wardance suggests it's obvious the characters would not have said a lot of the stuff that is put into their mouths. We've all seen the Pistols interviewed in the early days, there were a lot of silences. Like most kids they were pretty inarticulate. You'd not think so watching this. See also the lines McLaren, Viv W and Chrissie Hynde are given
Also no one was saying "edgy" in the 1970s especially Steve Jones
BUT it is a drama and not a documentary Taken on it's own terms it's very watchable and a lot of fun so far The script is awful. It's as though it's been written by a committee of Disney executives, keen to get across 'the message' for 'the kids.' This is one of those shows where they feel the need to explain everything to the audience. And the second episode reminded me of the Double Deckers when they're all in the Denmark St rehearsal rooms. The best bit of the 2nd episode is the end credit music - a fairground version of 'Shang-a-lang'. |
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Post by stu77 on May 31, 2022 16:19:44 GMT
The guy playing McLaren is brilliant.
The depiction of Glen is a bit silly.
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Post by wardance on May 31, 2022 20:08:34 GMT
The guy playing McLaren is brilliant. The depiction of Glen is a bit silly. Matlock's like a young Alan Partridge. I think he, rather than Lydon, needs to take legal action. And Lydon's voice occasionally disappears into 'Phil Cornwall doing Mick Jagger in Stella Street' territory. |
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Post by stu77 on Jun 1, 2022 1:08:02 GMT
Ah, the Speakeasy incident.
Still the subject of confusion about who was there and who did what.
Oh and I've never seen a photo or footage of Paul Cook smoking.
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Post by andyloneshark on Jun 1, 2022 14:00:53 GMT
I'm holding out on seeing this, till Gripper, Roly and Zammo enter the story!!   |
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 1, 2022 18:38:35 GMT
The guy playing McLaren is brilliant. The depiction of Glen is a bit silly. The McLaren actor is great but he does look younger than Steve Jones, which is a bit weird I’m into episode two now. For all its faults it’s very watchable so far |
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Post by andyloneshark on Jun 1, 2022 19:13:58 GMT
...yes, the bloke who plays McClaren looks like he hasn't even started shaving yet  When you have watched all the Episodes, post a review on here. If i get a chance to see it, i will. |
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 4, 2022 14:40:05 GMT
Jon Savage, he say yes
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Post by doug61 on Jun 5, 2022 10:44:26 GMT
Why is McClaren only 12 in it?
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 5, 2022 11:20:27 GMT
Why is McClaren only 12 in it? Yeah, we mention that above Doug It's a great performance but he does look ridiculously young especially as he's meant to be 29 I've finally got to the end of episode 2 and am really enjoying it |
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Post by wardance on Jun 5, 2022 13:43:21 GMT
As Jon Savage says, get past the historical inaccuracies and it is enjoyable. Don't take it too seriously. ( I'm sure many veterans of past ( world ) wars despair at the inaccuracies of many screen portrayals of what they were part of, so let's not get too worked up about it ). I think the ending does attempt to address the failings of what when on for the band, and some of the individuals involved. But I'll still take issue with the dialogue the script writer gives the characters. From today's Guardian: www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/jun/05/pistol-danny-boyle-sex-pistols-review-the-midwich-cuckoos-once-upon-a-time-in-londongrad-state-of-the-unionFor those weary of platinum jubilee bunting last week, there was Danny Boyle’s Pistol, the new Disney+ six-part series on the Sex Pistols, created by Craig Pearce.
It was a big risk tackling the brief (mid to late 1970s), sacred, big-bang cultural moment of punk. Boyle had to encapsulate the filth and the fury while eschewing generic, theme-park punk. Does he manage it? Of course not – no one has ever managed it. Not in the overrated 1986 film Sid and Nancy, where Gary Oldman laboriously gurned in full Sid Snot cosplay, and not now in Pistol.
The series is based on Lonely Boy: Tales from a Sex Pistol, guitarist Steve Jones’s 2016 memoir: an engrossing read that repositions Jones, played here by Toby Wallace, as a sensitive survivor whose bleak, abusive childhood spat him out as an illiterate, hypersexual – “As soon as feelings are involved, I get bored” – petty criminal. Along comes svengali figure Malcolm McLaren (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), who, along with Vivienne Westwood (Talulah Riley), restyles the Pistols as establishment-baiting “sexy young assassins”.
Anyone interested in punk already knows all this, which poses a problem for Pistol: it is doomed to exasperate the older crowd, but will younger viewers be invested? Maybe this is why it hurtles along like a sightseeing doubledecker taking in the punk sights: “To your left, the God Save the Queen single disrupting the 1977 silver jubilee… to your right, Sid Vicious overdosing on heroin”, etc. The result is both eminently watchable and utterly ridiculous.
The young cast – including Maisie Williams as Jordan (AKA Pamela Rooke, RIP) and Sydney Chandler as a pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde – hurl themselves into it, but there are problems here too. Wallace captures Jones’s vulnerability and humour but misses the loutish spark that made him exciting. As John Lydon, Anson Boon is stymied by bizarre styling: forget “artful dodger”, it’s more “startled, hairless cat rolled in Victorian chimney soot”. Whatever you think of Lydon – who lost a court case trying to stop this production being able to use Pistols’ music – he was an electric, charismatic presence who galvanised a generation. Where is the sense of this, or indeed the dirt, grit, and aggro of the era? While such period pieces can function as a form of cultural archive, ultimately, Pistol is a bit too Ladybird Book of Anarchy, in which punk becomes an overearnest “learning moment”. For all the chopped-in real footage, the 1970s looks sanitised, disinfected, as if soaked in a bucket of Dettol. |
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 5, 2022 14:57:53 GMT
All fair comment by you and the Guardian wardance and yet - and you also state - it is enjoyable
Really The Filth and the Fury probably told us all we need to know about the Pistols from a documentary perspective so my advice to anyone going into this is to accept it on its own terms
What has really impressed me is the music which the fictional Pistols appear to be actually playing, and the way Danny Boyle has mixed contemporary footage into what he's filmed to create a convincing evocation of the era
The dialogue is ridiculous but, hey, it was always gonna be that way
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Post by Lord Emsworth on Jun 6, 2022 19:06:29 GMT
Just watched the Speakeasy scene in episode 5
Still very watchable
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