Tag: ratings

Stop! That! Train!

Stop! That! Train!

Director – Adam Shankman – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 90m

***

A luxury bullet train hurtles towards a stormaganza in what is essentially Airplane! rehashed with drag queens – disaster movie and alleged comedy is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 21st

Commerical break. The Glamazonian Express. The bullet train ride across America where your every whim will be catered for by glamourous hostesses clad in a fetching, bright red. Pampering is the order of the day. Nothing is too much to ask. All the passengers and staff are chic and beautiful people.

Tess (Ginger Minj) and DeeDee (Jujubee) are train hostesses with low budget competitor Stank Rail. In marked contrast to Glamazonian staff, their uniforms are excrement brown and urine yellow-green. Their colleague Barbra (Latrice Royale) has recently been laid off, and further redundancies appear likely. Back at rail training college, the pair pledged to “See America”, but their career trajectory since then has been down the lavatory.

Then they overhear Glamazonian hostesses talking about a departure to Florida delayed because some hostesses have failed to show up. A quick visit to the ladies to improvise makeshift red uniforms, and they themselves show up at Glamazonian’s check-in desk, are given uniforms by Barbra (who does several jobs and will later reappear in other roles), and suddenly are Glamazonian hostesses.… Read the rest

Tags action, Adam Shankman, Asher Alexander, beautiful, bouncing ball, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Brooke Lynn Hytes, brown, bullet train, campaign, check-in desk, chic, Chris Parnell, Christina Friel, comedy, commercial break, competitor, Connor Wright, cover-up, crisis, departure, disaster, divorcee, drag queen, emergency procedures, excrement brown, failed to show, film star, Florida, gay porn magazine. Its three stewardess, Ginger Minj, Glamazonian Express, hostess, improv, improvisation, in-journey safety, instrument panel, Jujubee, laid off, Latrice Royale, lock, low budget, luxury, Marcia Marcia Marcia, Marty Lauter, Matt Rogers, mean girl, Missi Pyle, pampering, pet, pet scorpion, plummeting, plummeting ratings, President, press secretary, Rachel Bloom, rail training college, ratings, redundancy, Rupaul, RuPaul Charles, Sarah Michelle Gellar, scorpion, See America, song and dance, Stank Rail., Stop! That! Train!, storm, stormaganza, Symone, the White House, train defense programme, train driver, train hostess, train traffic control, unaccompanied minor, uniform, urine yellow-green, US President, yellow-greenred

Documentary Features Live Action Movies

The Contestant

Director – Clair Titley – 2023 – UK – Cert.12a – 90m

*****

How a man’s incarceration in a room, broadcast on TV, became a media sensation in Japan– out in UK cinemas on Friday, November 29th

Before The Truman Show (Peter Weir, 1998), which would be released later the same year, a couple of years before Big Brother and the start of the UK’s reality TV phenomenon, a Japanese TV show breaks new boundaries. A man is put in a room where he had to earn a million yen in prizes from magazine competitions before being released. The facilities are basic – there is a sink unit and a gas ring, but no cooking utensils. The whole situation is filmed by two cameras. The man in the room, Nasubi, knows it is being filmed, but has been told by the producer that most of it will be thrown away. He is completely unaware that this setup is being edited into a weekly, six-minute TV spot and going out on the weekly, magazine format, endurance TV show Denpa Shonen.

The Denpa Shonen show is the brainchild of TV producer Tsuchiya, who for this segment auditions a dozen or so male hopefuls and chooses one of them, Nasubi, by lottery.… Read the rest

Tags abuse, air ticket, audience, bag of rice, BBC, BBC Tokyo, Big Brother, broadcast, broken, bullying, censorship, childhood friend, Clair Titley, climbing Everest, complicity, cook, correspondent, dance around the room, Denpa Shonen, diary, door isn’t locked, earn from prizes, earthquake, edited out, eggplant, embarrassed, endurance TV show, euphemism, exhaustion, feelings, filmed, Fukushima, gas ring, genital area, goal, hunger, incarceration, internet, interview subjects, isolation, Japan, Japanese TV, Japanese TV captions, joy, Juliet Hindell, livestreaming, loneliness, lottery, luck, magazine competitions, magazine format, manipulation, mental struggle, million yen target, modesty, mothers and sons, mountain guide, Nasubi, no cooking utensils, no saucepan, play along, press conference, producer, ratings, reality TV phenomenon, release, remove clothing, self-mounted challenges, shame, share, shock, sink unit, solid black circle, South Korea, television persona, The Contestant, The Truman Show, Tokyo, Tsuchiya, tsunami, TV producer, UK, walk out, weekly, weekly TV spot, wiling participant, win a prize

Features Live Action Movies

Cam

Director – Daniel Goldhaber – 2018 – US – Cert. 15 – 94m

***1/2

An erotic webcam performer discovers to her horror that her online presence has been hacked by an unknown rival, in a film conceived by a real-life cam artist – from the 62nd BFI London Film Festival and on Netflix for a limited time from Friday, November 16th 2018

Alice (Madeline Brewer) is in charge of her destiny, or so it seems. From a secret and self-contained, fluffy pink studio set up in her apartment, she promotes herself as her online persona Lola who hosts her own live online erotic shows where enthusiastic fans can encourage her to do specific things by sending her virtual currency. Her goal is to become number one on the site which hosts her and many thousands of other hopefuls, but she seems to have got stuck somewhere around the rank of 60th. What’s a camgirl to do in order to boost her ratings?

Clearly, spicing the sex up with a little violence is a winner, so when one of her admirers encourages her to use a knife, while others egg her on and other still try to talk her out of it, Lola cuts her throat online.… Read the rest