The View From Lower Down

TL;DR: TikTok made a musical, it's surprisingly good , donate to The Actor's Fund UPDATE: My brother has said that my comments re Six: The Musical are going to cause offence. I disagreed, but I relented anyway and added some positive stuff to balance it out. So to explain this, we first need to do a bit of history. This trend started on TikTok. If you don't know what TikTok is, click this link for a quick explanation. Not detailed enough? Try this . Still don't get it? Try this (warning: lower quality) . OK, jokes aside, it's like Vine if Vine was... again. And slightly longer. This story has four main sections, which I will explain below: Part 1 - The Birth So it started with one video. On August 11 2020, 26-year-old teacher Emily Jacobsen (I'm not sure how big she is on TikTok (see above), but I can't find her on YouTube) heard about  Ratatouille: The Ride being launched; then started singing to herself: Remy, the ratatouille, The rat of all my dreams, I ...

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As there haven't been many movies released this (last) year (at least ones that I've seen), I thought I would make a new awards ceremony called The Viewies. Unfortunately I can remember virtually none of the movies I've seen this year, so I've started making a list for next year. The awards are going to be mostly weird ones; not just the traditional categories: Best Picture Best Actor Best Actress Best Director (Main awards from The Academy Awards/The Oscars - Full list ) etc. Nor will it be like the Golden Raspberry Awards: Worst Picture Worst Actor Worst Actress Worst Director ( Full list ) No, the Viewies will be mostly based on The Broscars . Not with the same categories, but with the same basic concept in mind - Things I noticed about the movies I saw. Here are some of the award categories I have ideas for: Worst CGI Most Underrated Movie Most Overrated Movie Best Score Best One-liner Least convincing fake accent - The Dick van Dyke Award If you have any other idea...

 This post is specifically for the entrants to the Christmas Quiz 2020, who are currently in the 6 Days of Christmas extra time round. As you know, this year's theme was Bad Translations, meaning that I put the title of a Christmas Movie into Google Translate, then translated it through six different foreign languages. Today's question is to see if you can work out what those six languages are. You are allowed to submit up to ten languages. *Apologies to anyone who has already submitted their answer. I have checked again and one of the languages was English, so there are actually only five languages to get. The same rules re points still apply though. You will get 50 points for each correct answer, 500 points if you get all five correct answers and 1000 points if you get them in the right order! Six additional clues/tips(?) 1. There are 108 different languages currently used by Google Translate. You can find a list of them here . 2. At least one of the six languages uses a non-...

Just a funny update; I have a few funny stories about Christmas this year But first, a TV recommendation (UK only, for now anyway) The Nativity Goes Wrong (iPlayer)  For the few of you who don't know, it's a Christmas special of The Goes Wrong Show, which is a show about an inept group of amateur actors who are trying to perform a play, but everything that can go wrong does. Story One! I have a Cadbury advent calendar. This is not particularly interesting in itself, but I noticed something interesting on one of the days. On every day, you open a cardboard window and there is a chocolate behind it. On the other side of the door there is a short message, such as Can you do a Christmas Dance? or Have you written to Santa? The day that has been causing the most trouble is Day 4 , but my issue is with Day 7. Before I tell you what it said, I think we should first establish what an Advent Calendar is supposed to do: Give you one chocolate/sweet/ message  per day Count down the days ...

The final leaderboard is as follows: Mappa-Mundi - 1189 It’s a Wonderful Life - 960 The Hippos - 860 Mr A’s Barmy Army - 390 Dominic&Willow - 200 Too Yule For School  Special congratulations go to  Mappa-Mundi  for the fastest answer, answering in less than a minute on one occasion! (Apologies; this was previously incorrectly stated as Mr A’s Barmy Army ) Last updated 2 January 2022

This is an extension to the rules of the Christmas Quiz 2020  Some clues can be harder than others, so here are some useful tips: 1. Google it. Obviously, the clue won't show up word for word, but if you just type in the first few words, Autofill might be able to help with the rest. 2. Reverse engineering. Think of as many Christmas movies as you can and test them against the clue. It may also help to look at an online list of Christmas movies as well. That's how I wrote it, so I won't tell you which one to use.   3. Guess! There's no penalty for guessing wrong,      so you might as well just submit answers until you get it right! 4. Phone a Friend. Many of you have entered as individuals, and most of those of you in groups have said how many are on your team, but you are all welcome to ask other people as well. I have no way of telling, much less of stopping you, how many people you ask. (Those who speak to me IRL, I will not be telling you the answer if you a...

Thank you for joining! (If you are reading this and you have not yet joined the Christmas Quiz 2020, sorry but you can't enter until next year. Watch this blog in early November 2021 for joining instructions). The entrants this year are: Mappa-Mundi Cottoneye Joe Bad Santa Princess and the Frog All the teams above will be displayed on a leaderboard , to be updated daily with your scores. The rules are as follows: On every WEEKDAY at 11am (as voted for by you); a clue will be released which is a title of a Christmas movie put through Google Translate several times and then back into English. Your job is to guess the original title. Due to the fact that a lot of the titles didn't change much ([redacted] came out as [redacted]  <- This clue is not in the quiz), I will only be accepting EXACT titles.  [redacted]  - WRONG [redacted]  - RIGHT <-also not in the quiz Your answers should be in by midnight THAT DAY. The first correct answer will get 50 points The se...

 You only have one more day to enter the Christmas Quiz . All applications must be received by Midnight tomorrow, 27 November, or they will be invalid. If you do not receive a confirmation email, your entry was too late and your vote will not be counted but you may still be charged.

What kind of movies do you like? Action? Romcom? Comic Book? Superhero? Musical? Well what if I told you there was one movie that covered ALL those genres? I watched it on Saturday just gone, and here are my notes: (Also, this movie probably has the longest IMDb trivia page of any movie ever, so a lot of the notes will be trivia related. All from memory though) Unique logo Sex Bob-Omb HOW many superheroes? Cleverly cut conversations Robby? 7-Foot light switch The package Musical number Bread makes you fat?! Universal theme Dialup tone I gotta pee on her I don't know the meaning of the word 90% is curds and whey Chicken isn't vegan? Kick her in the balls! Katayanagi twins 1-up With jetpacks? Password? You can't cheat death From now on you will be known as Neil You made me swallow my gum 2 hours! Nega Scott I'm too cool for you Continue? This post is to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the movie's release; but I deliberately haven't included the name, to keep yo...

 Recently I published a post about my annual Christmas Quiz,  which you can find here . It contained a link to send an email to enter the quiz. That email address is  xmasquiz2020@gmail.com If you click the link above, your device will open your default email application (this may be your browser, in which case it will probably open in a new window) and open a blank email with that address in the Recipients box.  However, I copied most of the text from  this post  (entry requirements for the 2019 quiz), so it contained a link to  xmasquiz2019@gmail.com  (last year's email address). I noticed the inconsistency and changed the text, but the link remained the same. What do I mean by this? Try clicking the link below, and this time look more carefully at the Recipients box. xmasquiz2020@gmail.com Pretty trippy right? So why is that happening? It's because the link and the text are two different things. That's how the link in paragraph 3 says...

This is a spinoff rant from a previous post about the plot of the movie Clue vs. the board game Cluedo , more specifically the modern updated version Cluedo: Master Detective , or whatever version I'm confusing it with in my head. There's also a realistic (read: large) chance that I've made some (read: most) of it up myself. The prequel: Sir Hugh  Black ( not  Dr; I'll explain that in a minute) was a wealthy businessman and the owner of Tudor Mansion. Sir Hugh died, leaving his entire fortune to his nephew Dr Black, for whom he had been the primary guardian throughout his childhood. On inheriting his uncle's estate, Dr Black decided to go through his bank statements and discovered a number of mysterious payments going to six individuals. Wanting to know the reason for these payments, he invited all six people to Tudor Mansion to confront them. That was a month ago. Now... Welcome to Tudor Mansion. Sadly, you are too late to meet its owner Dr. Black. He was found mu...

Firstly, if you are American, VOTE !  DO NOT vote anymore in this election. That is electoral fraud, and is illegal. Moving on. It's November, and my ones of fans will know that November is when I launch my Christmas Quiz. Every weekday throughout December (starting Tuesday December 1st), I will send out a clue relating to a Christmas Movie via email, and if you reply with the correct answer you receive points. I don't know the points system yet as it will depend on how many people enter this year. The earlier you send a correct answer, the more points you will get. The theme changes every year. This year's theme is BAD TRANSLATIONS If you want to be involved, email  xmasquiz2020@gmail.com  with the below information. You can play on your own or as part of a group. This can be a group you have formed, or if you prefer, you can work anonymously as part of a group with another entrant who you will never communicate with. Please confirm which you want to be a part of in...

 Why do one task well when you can do 5 tasks badly ? That's a pretty long post (although it's actually short by my standards!), so here's just a list of the projects I have on the go atm: The Blog ;  Tangents: Interactive ; The Mystery Play ; The Podcast Here's how they're going: The Blog : You're reading it; you decide. Tangents: Interactive : Dead in the water The Mystery Play : Writing sessions every week, with 2 co-writers. The Podcast : Dead on dry land. So what's the most logical thing to do? Obviously, start another project! So I'm writing a Murder Mystery movie. But the thing is, it's deliberately bad. Imagine if Clue and The Murder at Haversham Manor had a baby and it was directed by Jason Friedman and Aaron Seltzberg (The guys who wrote/directed Disaster Movie; Epic Movie; Meet the Spartans and more) I originally planned on writing a movie with all the movie tropes and calling it Tropes , but that would be a gargantuan task due to the shee...

This post isn't cooked yet, but read it anyway. Recently I went on a YouTube Rabbit-hole dive of talk show interviews with former First Lady Michelle Obama and Former President Barack Obama. This has nothing to do with my political views of them or their successors Donald and Melania Trump. I have views on the matter, but they have no place here on my blog. Some of you may recall my previous post on voting , and although I cannot vote in the US election, my political party the Voter Party is also not running in America and the policies are the same. DISCLAIMER: NONE of the links in the above post apply to American elections, but much of the general information is the same. You can find out more at https://www.vote.org/ Given the current lockdown situation, in most cases I would suggest postal voting, but that's up to you (and your local lockdown laws; CHECK THESE) For Musical Theatre fans (which, let's face it, is probably a significant portion of my readership), the cast o...