Lobot
Film 10 Star Wars characters with more history than you'd think: "The EU tells us that Lobot received his cyborg headpiece (the "Borg Construct Aj^6"...Borg Construct? Wrong franchise, people) as part of a punitive sentence for stealing on Cloud City when he was but a lad. Sentenced to 15 years of community service, they drilled a couple of holes in his skull, plonked on the hardware and hooked his brain up to the central computer, allowing him to control "issues of bureaucracy, law enforcement, computer programming and repair, and security, as well as the communication systems, repulsorlifts, and life-support systems."
Easter Circus
The Moscow State Circus arrived in the park yesterday morning.
This morning they've begun to put the tent up.
It will probably take most of the day.
Is that the same red car?
Watching the sound films Hitchock made for British International Pictures
Film Watching the sound films Hitchock made for British International Pictures is a relatively frustrating experience. During his four silent years, he’d mastered the art of visual storytelling, able to communicate cleanly a range of information about plot and character with such precision that his recourse to title cards was relatively rare in comparison to other films of the period. As I suspected, when he’s gifted the ability to use sound, the quality of the work disintegrates.
Mostly this is because of the ‘technology’; cameras became static and housed in what amounted to small rooms so as to shield the hammer of the shutters away from the microphones which means that often scenes that would require a collection of different image types are now often reduced to a single continuous shot of two or three people in a room talking, which I imagine was the novelty back then so audiences were far more tolerant of the languorous pacing but now are a horrifyingly tedious experience.
Only when Hitch is given a piece of the story which can only be told visually do these films truly sing; the cutting is now pretty ropy as is the sound editing (from what I heard, when you shot something you were stuck with whatever background noise was evident). Yet, there are still moments, which I’ll mention below, that are as good as some of his silent material and definitely point to him working through his ideas as to the kinds of films he was interested in making, this nine year period starting with The Pleasure Garden his film school.
Strip away the historical relevance of Blackmail (first British talkie), the elements that point to Hitch’s future tastes (a climax at a national landmark in this case the British Museum) and the reason I’d recommend the film is for Anny Ondra’s central performance as the tobacconist’s daughter who’s caught in the blackmail plot after she murders an artist in self defence. It’s often trivialised because Ondra’s heavy Czech accent, not a problem in silent film, led to Hitch having her mime her sound scenes with another actress standing on set filling in with the words, and there’s no doubt in those moments she’s distractingly uncomfortable.
Hitch doesn’t actually show us the murder. It all happens behind the curtain, first the girl’s screams as the man takes advantage of her, then her hand reaching out to grasp a knife, then what we assume to be a stabbing, and the dead man’s hand relaxing into view. Then it’s all up to Ondra to relay what has happened and it’s in these silent moments, the actress offers a tour de force in reactive exposition as at first the gravity of what she’s done hits her then the quite resignation in realising that she’s a completely different person, that there’s nothing to be done, and she rather coolly cleans the murder scene as best she can, her eyes wide and glassy throughout.
Hitch next made the tedious Juno and the Paycock, a film he hated making at the time and had nothing good to say about later on, and it's almost as though Blackmail never happened. Based on a play about the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War, he decided to faithfully shoot the thing word for word without much in the way of directorial intervention and I think it’s about the longest hour and a half I’ve spent in front of any film. The pacing is catatonic, the acting superficial, and it’s near impossible to follow what story there is (about a non-existent inheritance) because the strong accents coupled with primitive microphone technology renders much of the dialogue inaudible.
There’s a famous scene in which the characters sit listening to a gramophone record and the only way to achieve this was to have singers and a band on set off camera playing in the music. But on screen it still amounts to the action stopping so that we can watch the characters sit listening to a gramophone record. About the only interesting element is the relationship between the head of the family, Boyle and his friend Joxer, who look like prototypes for Vladimir and Estragon from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot with jokes about groinal problems, drunkness and at least initially a general impression of inertia.
Predictably, judging by the title, Hitch is far more comfortable with his next film Murder!, his only murder mystery (which he also made in German). He’s back in experimental mode as the director offers the first occasion of a lead actor’s thoughts appearing in voiceover on the soundtrack as a member of the jury at a trial comes to the conclusion (whilst shaving!) that the woman he helped to convict is in fact innocent. It’s still relatively creaky stuff though; some of the scenes continue on beyond his point being made like he’s still directing the character scenes in a silent film, and the resolution is pure Scooby-Doo as the real villain is revealed to be some hitherto unseen assailant.
The Time Out Film Guide notes that the film offers British cinema’s first gay stereotype which is true though Hitch euphemistically describes him as mixed-race or 'half-caste' instead. The film is a menagerie of odd balls and lost souls as the director delves into the theatrical world for the first time and can’t quite seem to decide how sympathetic he wants to be. Theatre has rarely been given a fair display on film, just as plays about film rarely work either unless there’s a Shakespearean element, chemically the two simply can’t mix unless the Bard is added as an agent.
Hitchcock’s next project was this sketch for the revue film Elstree Calling. It’s hilarious.
Lol, rofl etc.
Another theatre adaptation, The Skin Game is saved from Paycock-style tedium by three things. Firstly, it’s thematically interesting as new wealth in the form of a nouveau riche northerner breezes into the lives of some aristocrats as he attempts to buy the land next to their stately home to build a coal mine so it’s about the class struggle and the industrialisation of the countryside. That's The Skin Game, the rivalry between the two factions that eventually leads to tragedy.
The said epitome of new money, Hornblower is played by one Edmund Glenn who’d later essay the part of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street and seems to channel one of Brian Glover’s performances from the future as he chews through some whacking great political speeches that also recall Shylock. Thirdly, when the land is up for auction we see the bidders from the auctioneers perspective, the camera darting from face to face across the room as the strategies of the interested parties playout.
It’s difficult to like Number 17. Another play brought to the screen, this time Hitch decided to take the piss somewhat and do it in the style of his previous thrillers with lots of editing, shadows and men in hats and coats culminating in a chase sequence using steam engines. Consequently it has bags of atmosphere with some beautifully lit bits of suspense and excellent use of close-ups. Paul Merton spent some time in his recent documentary highlighting the model work in the finale, which is probably revolutionary, but I just wish it had been in service of something a bit more coherent.
The problem is he’s also stripped out anything related to logical storytelling and none of the characters are introduced properly and he only really spells out what’s been happening for the past hour in the closing minute or two. There’s also some particularly irritating clowning from Leon M Lion as a manservant, whose sole purpose is to point out where and when the ‘jokes’ are happening just in case we miss them.
Hitchcock’s final film for BIP was Rich and Strange a fantastic little curio and the one film that isn’t Blackmail I’d recommend you seeking out. A bored suburban couple with marital difficulties come into some money and decide to go on the south sea cruise they’ve always dreamed of and extra martial affairs and other adventures ensue. A labour of love, Hitch returns to all of the elements of silent cinema he was forced to lose in the sound era, the illustrative titles, the fast, punchy editing, expressive acting and exaggerated make up style and yet it’s the most modern of these films. Most of the dialogue is functional and naturalistic and there’s a sense of anecdotal storytelling, a free wheeling structure.
And it just works. The screwball chemistry between the leads Henry Kendall and Joan Barry (who was the voice of Anny Ondra in Blackmail just to bookend things) is as good as anything I’ve seen from old Hollywood, especially in the final quarter of the film when for various reasons the plot steers into black comedy and a kind of loopy desperation sets in. Proceedings only really lag during some of the longer dialogue scenes and when Elsie Randolph’s old maid stumbles through as the comic relief. Even then, she’s deployed at a crucial moment to add a layer of tragedy – think Mrs Bagot during the closing scene of Brief Encounter. It’s worth speculating what might have happened if this film had not been a critical and commercial failure – would Hitchcock still have become the master of suspense?
Mostly this is because of the ‘technology’; cameras became static and housed in what amounted to small rooms so as to shield the hammer of the shutters away from the microphones which means that often scenes that would require a collection of different image types are now often reduced to a single continuous shot of two or three people in a room talking, which I imagine was the novelty back then so audiences were far more tolerant of the languorous pacing but now are a horrifyingly tedious experience.
Only when Hitch is given a piece of the story which can only be told visually do these films truly sing; the cutting is now pretty ropy as is the sound editing (from what I heard, when you shot something you were stuck with whatever background noise was evident). Yet, there are still moments, which I’ll mention below, that are as good as some of his silent material and definitely point to him working through his ideas as to the kinds of films he was interested in making, this nine year period starting with The Pleasure Garden his film school.
Strip away the historical relevance of Blackmail (first British talkie), the elements that point to Hitch’s future tastes (a climax at a national landmark in this case the British Museum) and the reason I’d recommend the film is for Anny Ondra’s central performance as the tobacconist’s daughter who’s caught in the blackmail plot after she murders an artist in self defence. It’s often trivialised because Ondra’s heavy Czech accent, not a problem in silent film, led to Hitch having her mime her sound scenes with another actress standing on set filling in with the words, and there’s no doubt in those moments she’s distractingly uncomfortable.
Hitch doesn’t actually show us the murder. It all happens behind the curtain, first the girl’s screams as the man takes advantage of her, then her hand reaching out to grasp a knife, then what we assume to be a stabbing, and the dead man’s hand relaxing into view. Then it’s all up to Ondra to relay what has happened and it’s in these silent moments, the actress offers a tour de force in reactive exposition as at first the gravity of what she’s done hits her then the quite resignation in realising that she’s a completely different person, that there’s nothing to be done, and she rather coolly cleans the murder scene as best she can, her eyes wide and glassy throughout.
Hitch next made the tedious Juno and the Paycock, a film he hated making at the time and had nothing good to say about later on, and it's almost as though Blackmail never happened. Based on a play about the slums of Dublin during the Irish Civil War, he decided to faithfully shoot the thing word for word without much in the way of directorial intervention and I think it’s about the longest hour and a half I’ve spent in front of any film. The pacing is catatonic, the acting superficial, and it’s near impossible to follow what story there is (about a non-existent inheritance) because the strong accents coupled with primitive microphone technology renders much of the dialogue inaudible.
There’s a famous scene in which the characters sit listening to a gramophone record and the only way to achieve this was to have singers and a band on set off camera playing in the music. But on screen it still amounts to the action stopping so that we can watch the characters sit listening to a gramophone record. About the only interesting element is the relationship between the head of the family, Boyle and his friend Joxer, who look like prototypes for Vladimir and Estragon from Beckett’s Waiting for Godot with jokes about groinal problems, drunkness and at least initially a general impression of inertia.
Predictably, judging by the title, Hitch is far more comfortable with his next film Murder!, his only murder mystery (which he also made in German). He’s back in experimental mode as the director offers the first occasion of a lead actor’s thoughts appearing in voiceover on the soundtrack as a member of the jury at a trial comes to the conclusion (whilst shaving!) that the woman he helped to convict is in fact innocent. It’s still relatively creaky stuff though; some of the scenes continue on beyond his point being made like he’s still directing the character scenes in a silent film, and the resolution is pure Scooby-Doo as the real villain is revealed to be some hitherto unseen assailant.
The Time Out Film Guide notes that the film offers British cinema’s first gay stereotype which is true though Hitch euphemistically describes him as mixed-race or 'half-caste' instead. The film is a menagerie of odd balls and lost souls as the director delves into the theatrical world for the first time and can’t quite seem to decide how sympathetic he wants to be. Theatre has rarely been given a fair display on film, just as plays about film rarely work either unless there’s a Shakespearean element, chemically the two simply can’t mix unless the Bard is added as an agent.
Hitchcock’s next project was this sketch for the revue film Elstree Calling. It’s hilarious.
Lol, rofl etc.
Another theatre adaptation, The Skin Game is saved from Paycock-style tedium by three things. Firstly, it’s thematically interesting as new wealth in the form of a nouveau riche northerner breezes into the lives of some aristocrats as he attempts to buy the land next to their stately home to build a coal mine so it’s about the class struggle and the industrialisation of the countryside. That's The Skin Game, the rivalry between the two factions that eventually leads to tragedy.
The said epitome of new money, Hornblower is played by one Edmund Glenn who’d later essay the part of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street and seems to channel one of Brian Glover’s performances from the future as he chews through some whacking great political speeches that also recall Shylock. Thirdly, when the land is up for auction we see the bidders from the auctioneers perspective, the camera darting from face to face across the room as the strategies of the interested parties playout.
It’s difficult to like Number 17. Another play brought to the screen, this time Hitch decided to take the piss somewhat and do it in the style of his previous thrillers with lots of editing, shadows and men in hats and coats culminating in a chase sequence using steam engines. Consequently it has bags of atmosphere with some beautifully lit bits of suspense and excellent use of close-ups. Paul Merton spent some time in his recent documentary highlighting the model work in the finale, which is probably revolutionary, but I just wish it had been in service of something a bit more coherent.
The problem is he’s also stripped out anything related to logical storytelling and none of the characters are introduced properly and he only really spells out what’s been happening for the past hour in the closing minute or two. There’s also some particularly irritating clowning from Leon M Lion as a manservant, whose sole purpose is to point out where and when the ‘jokes’ are happening just in case we miss them.
Hitchcock’s final film for BIP was Rich and Strange a fantastic little curio and the one film that isn’t Blackmail I’d recommend you seeking out. A bored suburban couple with marital difficulties come into some money and decide to go on the south sea cruise they’ve always dreamed of and extra martial affairs and other adventures ensue. A labour of love, Hitch returns to all of the elements of silent cinema he was forced to lose in the sound era, the illustrative titles, the fast, punchy editing, expressive acting and exaggerated make up style and yet it’s the most modern of these films. Most of the dialogue is functional and naturalistic and there’s a sense of anecdotal storytelling, a free wheeling structure.
And it just works. The screwball chemistry between the leads Henry Kendall and Joan Barry (who was the voice of Anny Ondra in Blackmail just to bookend things) is as good as anything I’ve seen from old Hollywood, especially in the final quarter of the film when for various reasons the plot steers into black comedy and a kind of loopy desperation sets in. Proceedings only really lag during some of the longer dialogue scenes and when Elsie Randolph’s old maid stumbles through as the comic relief. Even then, she’s deployed at a crucial moment to add a layer of tragedy – think Mrs Bagot during the closing scene of Brief Encounter. It’s worth speculating what might have happened if this film had not been a critical and commercial failure – would Hitchcock still have become the master of suspense?
crackling on and off
Life I have a new mobile phone. The earpiece on my sickly old Nokia finally stopped speaking in the middle of the week so though the rest of the phone still works it's of little use -- there's no point keeping it charged just for the calculator. I had got quite used to it crackling on and off, even the shouting to be heard even though the person on the other end could hear me just fine it seems. I'll miss its little clamshell design and smooth ZX80 style buttons.
In keeping with my commitment to technology that is just slightly out of date, the new phone is a Samsung SGH-E250 (and half the price Amazon are currently quoting). It has all the top of the range features which people were excited about a couple of years ago such as a camera, picture messaging, Bluetooth and FM radio, and well, I'm excited too, since I've not had all of those in one place before. I can even send emails. Watch the accompanying adverts for news of other exciting features.
It's certainly more flexible than the Nokia. You can use MP3s as a ringtone. I mean, like, wow. Currently, that's set to blare out Tom Lehrer's The Elements. I chose this because my first bricksized phone sang a tinny version of OMD's Enola Gay and the Nokia offered its rendition of the minute waltz and since the first is about one of the biggest expressions of elemental forces ever and the other was written for piano this seems to be the perfect mix of the two. MP3 ringtones. What will they think of next?
clear as mustard
Journalism I was just reading this blog post at The Guardian's Comment Is Free blog and noticed the mixed up terminology in this sentence:
Blinks.
"He launched a furious denial on his blog which met an equally spirited blog from Cohen, in which he admitted to sharing Maher's "contempt" for the Fabians."The word 'blog' is being used both to describe the blog itself and an item on the blog or blog post. I've talked before about this and why this is wrong (and Meg Pickard has this handy chart) and was about to fire off an email to the reader's editor before realising that it was written by the reader's editor. I decided to check The Guardian's own style guide instead:
blog (noun) collection of articles, (verb) action of publishing an article to the blog: "I just blogged about that" post (noun) single article on blog, (verb) action of publishing an article to the blog: "I was going to post later" (also: blogpost)Which is clear as mustard, but I think says that as far as The Guardian's concerned the word is being used correctly in the sentence above. I note it also apologetically adds an 'also' for 'blogpost' at the end.
Blinks.
The Spotify Playlist
View Larger Map
Colours
Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue,
I can sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow,
Sing a rainbow too!
Pot the reds then, skrew back
For the yellow green brown blue pink and black
Snooker loopy nuts are we
We're all snooker loopy!
See also:
Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color
Miles Davis's Aura
Pocket Biscuit's Colorful
keep an eye on this page
About I've experimented with this before, but please do keep an eye on my Google Shared Items page. Here is an RSS feed too.
Exactly.
Journalism My quote of the week is from this month's Doctor Who Magazine. Gary Gillatt (who's always hilarious and clever -- imagine Charlie Brooker reviewing old Doctor Who) is commenting on the narration for a documentary on some new dvd release:
"The Cyber Story, a trip through the history of the monsters, comes with a shocking script. "The first step in the history of the Cybermen was their appearance," blithers the narration. Producers of these extras wouldn't employ a cameraman who doesn't know how to focus a camera, so why employ a writer who can't focus on a sentence?"Exactly.
don't you?
Life I've been trying to learn to relax. This isn't to suggest in anyway I have a hectic lifestyle with no time to sit and reflect. I probably have too much time to do that. I'm sitting writing about this for example. If had the kind of lifestyle that would require me to properly relax I wouldn't be in on a Friday night. But I'm going off the point again, so let's relax.
The kind of relaxation I'm talking about is related to priorities. Knowing what's important. For example, at present, Google Reader says I have 1701 ... 1703 posts waiting to be read. 1681. Sorry I got pulled back in again. 1624. I checked HotUKDeals. The point is that in the past I would have felt a bit of anxiety, well no not anxiety -- skittishness at the size of that thing. Lately, I've decided it's not that important. 1547 (jobs folder). Sorry, not that important to keep oh so up to date with everything.
So there it is going up again. And I don't care. At all. I know that there's probably some cool new thing that jkottke's found (assuming it is him this week) or some blog post at The Guardian website about a west end theatre production I'll never get to see or an amazing new way to clean pans at Lifehacker or some such, but I don't need to know this, I don't need to know this straight away. I have others I should be doing. 1552.
Up until a couple of days ago I had about thirty folders in Google Reader, a range of topics, all cross referenced. I've deleted them all. The feeds are still there but simplified down to what I really want to read, what I could read, and what isn't that important and only if I really have the time. The only really specific folders I've kept are for things which matter. Photography. Recipes. Lovefilm. Spotify. Everything else is either culture or technology or people and I know which one I enjoy reading about the most.
You know I mean people, don't you?
The kind of relaxation I'm talking about is related to priorities. Knowing what's important. For example, at present, Google Reader says I have 1701 ... 1703 posts waiting to be read. 1681. Sorry I got pulled back in again. 1624. I checked HotUKDeals. The point is that in the past I would have felt a bit of anxiety, well no not anxiety -- skittishness at the size of that thing. Lately, I've decided it's not that important. 1547 (jobs folder). Sorry, not that important to keep oh so up to date with everything.
So there it is going up again. And I don't care. At all. I know that there's probably some cool new thing that jkottke's found (assuming it is him this week) or some blog post at The Guardian website about a west end theatre production I'll never get to see or an amazing new way to clean pans at Lifehacker or some such, but I don't need to know this, I don't need to know this straight away. I have others I should be doing. 1552.
Up until a couple of days ago I had about thirty folders in Google Reader, a range of topics, all cross referenced. I've deleted them all. The feeds are still there but simplified down to what I really want to read, what I could read, and what isn't that important and only if I really have the time. The only really specific folders I've kept are for things which matter. Photography. Recipes. Lovefilm. Spotify. Everything else is either culture or technology or people and I know which one I enjoy reading about the most.
You know I mean people, don't you?
Hmm.
TV The draft trailer for the new K9 spin-off series:
"Time for you to go, kids." Um, no.
"Every time there is a bad smell, blame the dog." Hmm.
"Time for you to go, kids." Um, no.
"Every time there is a bad smell, blame the dog." Hmm.
monkeys writing Hamlet process in reverse
Books Suw has been working on (in other words helping with) some public domain software to aid the proofreading of manuscripts. Essentially it's the monkeys writing Hamlet process in reverse, with the monkeys being being a manuscript a line at a time out of context and asked to search for mistakes. As Suw says:
Book Oven sounds like a godsend, and having tried it out for a while is easy to use a oddly addictive as you read through each sentence testing your own ability to spot grammar and spelling. It could also have the effect of improving your own writing too as you slowly, through osmosis, become aware of the mistakes which can happen when typing large blocks of text.
"The first thing we’ve focused on is how to proofread a manuscript for typos. The problem with reading a whole book all at once and looking for typos is that you can get so caught up in reading that your brain starts to skip the mistakes, seeing what it thinks should be there instead of what actually is. But what if you were presented with just one sentence at a time? You’d lack some context, it’s true, but you don’t really need a lot of context to know if “teh” is a misspelling of “the” or that “their” should be “there”.One of the problems I've always had with reports and essays are typos and a general inability to spot them in a crowd of words. I've always thought it was my problem, genuine carelessness. The comments for both of my dissertations essentially said: "Great piece of work. Pity about all of the typos." Now I know that it's something that everyone wrestles with.
Book Oven sounds like a godsend, and having tried it out for a while is easy to use a oddly addictive as you read through each sentence testing your own ability to spot grammar and spelling. It could also have the effect of improving your own writing too as you slowly, through osmosis, become aware of the mistakes which can happen when typing large blocks of text.
my favourite
That Day I think this is my favourite:
Pity about the headline. Bit of a give away that.
Pity about the headline. Bit of a give away that.
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