honestly
Elsewhere Tonight's entertainment can be found at The Hamlet Weblog, were I become very excited by a new book which blows the play wide open. Honestly, yesterday afternoon all you could hear from me was "Why didn't I know about this before?"
kid in cardboard box
News The FARK headline says it all:
"Mom who put kid in cardboard box on top of van speaks out. "It was just a bad decision". Bonus video of reporter reenacting what it's like to be a kid in a box on the side of the road."Link to story and more entertainingly, the video. I'd be interested to know at what point you began thinking "This has to be an unused clip from The Day Today."
abuse
Film Ghostbusters then and now:
"Note the new glass-curtain building on the right. The building to the left, which was probably considered a dump in 1983, is now the Bubbles Lounge champagne bar. Times have changed. The alley next to the firehouse is used for firefighter parking.""I don't have to take this abuse from you, I've got hundreds of people dying to abuse me. "
don't envy
Liverpool Life The Daily Post brings news of the refurbishment and restoration happening to Sefton Park, my park:
"Visitors to the park are able to see the emerging roof of the boathouse, which is currently being worked on at the southern end of the lake. The boathouse, which has been plagued by vandalism and arson attacks is to be given a new lease of life and will re-open next year. Visitors will be able to use the refreshment kiosk and it is hoped that boats will be available for hire on the lake.Considering the weather today, if they're out working I don't envy them.
a reference to Twitter
TV It’s a shame that after getting a reference to Twitter so correct early in tonight's uk episode of Flash Forward (the second), the writers blew their terminology mojo at the end by suggesting a posting to the Mosaic website is a ‘blog’. If it is indeed a blog, I’d hate to think what the RSS feed looks like with that many posts flying through in such a small time frame. Like Post Secret on ritalin. The episode did generally fall into the trap of generalising the internet and technology on the assumption that the great unwashed wouldn’t be able to cope with something that looked too technical, even though its core audience is the kind of group who would know exactly what a mouse would look like.
Hello. Don’t expect this to be a weekly post match meeting for Flash Forward. It’s rare that I’ll watch every episode of a television series “live” and the show hasn’t yet become must see television. But second episodes of any high concept series is always interesting because it sets the stall for whatever the formula will be for the rest of the series. Flash Forward looks like it’s going to fall into a similar pattern to the late lamented Odyssey 5, whose protagonists were also wrestling with their knowledge of the future, by having a “clue” of the week to be dealt with surrounded by the soapier elements caused by the predicament.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some series fail because they try desperately not to be formulaic leading to tone and character confusion, but on the other hand, keep too rigidly to a structure and your audience can become bored. To repeat what I said last week, Flash Forward will probably end up being a deeply mechanical programme masking a very wild premise and the devil will be in trying to make it interesting enough that the less trad audience won’t simply dismiss it as rubbish. In other more judgemental words, if this was about the supernatural, it’s trying to hook the kinds of people who liked Charmed and the rest of us who liked Buffy.
One of the elements is an odd skein of quirky humour. This is the second episode and already a vital clue is presented through a flash whose witness which looked she'd walked in from an episode of Pushing Daisies. The agents are merrily taking the piss out of their boss who in a nicely played scene gives all the appearance of haemorrhoidal problems, hours spent on the toilet, wishing, hoping and preying. Unlike the oh so serious 24, these agents take the piss out of one another; Torchwood did this all the time and like Torchwood it could become a problem when the show then has to do something properly dramatic.
The performances and direction continue to be good though the editing and pacing of the episode seemed a little off (though that could partly be the fault of Five and their laissez faire attitude to ad breaks). The episode just didn’t seem to know when to end. The perfect cut off point would have been the revelation about John Cho, but then there was yet another scene with yet another revelation. The writers need to sparing with their clues and secrets otherwise the audience will begin to spot when they’re coming up, particularly if all of the episodes have the same duration. If this keeps happening at about minute fifty-five (or thirty-five on dvd) it could get very tired.
Other random notes:
-- I still think John Cho’s character could be lying. At one point in this episode he says he hasn’t talked to his fiancé about his lack of a flash forward – and he didn’t mention what his fiance’s flash might be and whether he was in it. That’s either odd writing or he’s deliberately keeping something back. Similarly when the lady rings him having magically spotted his “blog” amongst nearly a million and gives him his incept date, the reaction could mean “Oh shit, hold on, I thought I was alive…” (and yes, I know Cho has contradicted this theory in interviews, but he’s hardly going to throw about spoilers, is he?)
-- Jack Davenport’s good isn’t he? The scene in which his character breaks the news of his wife’s death to his autistic son could have been a saccharine mess but Davenport’s playing gave it a sheen of dignity. Note too that this was the first scene told from his point of view in which we weren’t seeing him through another character’s eyes, confirming that he’s a proper regular, rather than a guest star. Unless the writers are playing games with the language of television but I don’t think so.
-- In an interview in this month’s SFX magazine, creator David S Goyer says that the characters will catch up with their flash forward at the close of this season AND that for the scenario to play out he needs at least three seasons and that he has it all planned out.* In this episode there’s a hint that the agents believe it’s possible that the phenomena could be repeated which suggests (as I did last week) that indeed at the close of the series or the beginning of the next there will be another flash, that it is cyclical, whoever’s causing it (aliens? angels? The Dhama Collective?)
-- Where was the babysitter? She seemed very important in the pilot, but here she was referred to without a name. One of those occasions when a character doesn’t make it past the first episode?
-- The flashbacks are irritating. On the assumption that people have memory of a goldfish, the show includes moments from previous scenes (including flash forwards) to explain the context of a given conversation and sometimes from just minutes before. If it's not to careful it could become the first series in which every episode becomes a clip show. It reminds me of the second episode of Clerks: The Animated Series that parodied such things by flashing back to the first episode and then incidents far more random and interesting. Sound familiar?
(real Gwyneth Paltrow by the way. From when she was still going with Ben Affleck).
* Planning ahead is always dangerous. J Michael Strazinski went into Babylon 5 with a five year story mapped out then had to tell it in four years when it looked like the show was going to be cancelled. Then the ratings picked up in that forth year and he had to cast about for material for the fifth year which understandably ended up being a bit inferior since he'd already said what he wanted to say, just a bit quicker. Odyssey 5 similarly had such plans but was canned after about ten or so episodes.
Hello. Don’t expect this to be a weekly post match meeting for Flash Forward. It’s rare that I’ll watch every episode of a television series “live” and the show hasn’t yet become must see television. But second episodes of any high concept series is always interesting because it sets the stall for whatever the formula will be for the rest of the series. Flash Forward looks like it’s going to fall into a similar pattern to the late lamented Odyssey 5, whose protagonists were also wrestling with their knowledge of the future, by having a “clue” of the week to be dealt with surrounded by the soapier elements caused by the predicament.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Some series fail because they try desperately not to be formulaic leading to tone and character confusion, but on the other hand, keep too rigidly to a structure and your audience can become bored. To repeat what I said last week, Flash Forward will probably end up being a deeply mechanical programme masking a very wild premise and the devil will be in trying to make it interesting enough that the less trad audience won’t simply dismiss it as rubbish. In other more judgemental words, if this was about the supernatural, it’s trying to hook the kinds of people who liked Charmed and the rest of us who liked Buffy.
One of the elements is an odd skein of quirky humour. This is the second episode and already a vital clue is presented through a flash whose witness which looked she'd walked in from an episode of Pushing Daisies. The agents are merrily taking the piss out of their boss who in a nicely played scene gives all the appearance of haemorrhoidal problems, hours spent on the toilet, wishing, hoping and preying. Unlike the oh so serious 24, these agents take the piss out of one another; Torchwood did this all the time and like Torchwood it could become a problem when the show then has to do something properly dramatic.
The performances and direction continue to be good though the editing and pacing of the episode seemed a little off (though that could partly be the fault of Five and their laissez faire attitude to ad breaks). The episode just didn’t seem to know when to end. The perfect cut off point would have been the revelation about John Cho, but then there was yet another scene with yet another revelation. The writers need to sparing with their clues and secrets otherwise the audience will begin to spot when they’re coming up, particularly if all of the episodes have the same duration. If this keeps happening at about minute fifty-five (or thirty-five on dvd) it could get very tired.
Other random notes:
-- I still think John Cho’s character could be lying. At one point in this episode he says he hasn’t talked to his fiancé about his lack of a flash forward – and he didn’t mention what his fiance’s flash might be and whether he was in it. That’s either odd writing or he’s deliberately keeping something back. Similarly when the lady rings him having magically spotted his “blog” amongst nearly a million and gives him his incept date, the reaction could mean “Oh shit, hold on, I thought I was alive…” (and yes, I know Cho has contradicted this theory in interviews, but he’s hardly going to throw about spoilers, is he?)
-- Jack Davenport’s good isn’t he? The scene in which his character breaks the news of his wife’s death to his autistic son could have been a saccharine mess but Davenport’s playing gave it a sheen of dignity. Note too that this was the first scene told from his point of view in which we weren’t seeing him through another character’s eyes, confirming that he’s a proper regular, rather than a guest star. Unless the writers are playing games with the language of television but I don’t think so.
-- In an interview in this month’s SFX magazine, creator David S Goyer says that the characters will catch up with their flash forward at the close of this season AND that for the scenario to play out he needs at least three seasons and that he has it all planned out.* In this episode there’s a hint that the agents believe it’s possible that the phenomena could be repeated which suggests (as I did last week) that indeed at the close of the series or the beginning of the next there will be another flash, that it is cyclical, whoever’s causing it (aliens? angels? The Dhama Collective?)
-- Where was the babysitter? She seemed very important in the pilot, but here she was referred to without a name. One of those occasions when a character doesn’t make it past the first episode?
-- The flashbacks are irritating. On the assumption that people have memory of a goldfish, the show includes moments from previous scenes (including flash forwards) to explain the context of a given conversation and sometimes from just minutes before. If it's not to careful it could become the first series in which every episode becomes a clip show. It reminds me of the second episode of Clerks: The Animated Series that parodied such things by flashing back to the first episode and then incidents far more random and interesting. Sound familiar?
(real Gwyneth Paltrow by the way. From when she was still going with Ben Affleck).
* Planning ahead is always dangerous. J Michael Strazinski went into Babylon 5 with a five year story mapped out then had to tell it in four years when it looked like the show was going to be cancelled. Then the ratings picked up in that forth year and he had to cast about for material for the fifth year which understandably ended up being a bit inferior since he'd already said what he wanted to say, just a bit quicker. Odyssey 5 similarly had such plans but was canned after about ten or so episodes.
a mysterious blue light
TV On the 10th February this year a mysterious blue light appeared amongst the trees in Sefton Park:
It hovered there for nearly an hour before I decided to go and investigate, stepping out into the park from the safety of my home. As I drew closer, my heart pumping because after watching seven seasons of The X-Files (before it became convoluted and rubbish) I knew a blue light could mean only one thing. My hands were shaking:
My eyes blurry (!):
By then (obviously) I could tell that the blue light was fixed to the top of a crane overlooking a garden. Further round I could see some catering vans, a make-up and costume truck and a pile of equipment. It was one of the film crews we regularly see around the park taking advantage of our fabulous period architecture. There was a lighting engineer. I asked him what they were filming. "Some kind of spooky adventure for kids" was all he would tell me. I didn't press him further -- wasn't really any of my business.
Turns out they were filming a new BBC Two series called The Well, the headline being that it features new Doctor Who girl Karen Gillan. I was within papping distance of the new companion and didn't even know it. Enquiries about the photographs featured here, the only three photographs I took, should be directed to the email address at the top of the blog. Etc.
It hovered there for nearly an hour before I decided to go and investigate, stepping out into the park from the safety of my home. As I drew closer, my heart pumping because after watching seven seasons of The X-Files (before it became convoluted and rubbish) I knew a blue light could mean only one thing. My hands were shaking:
My eyes blurry (!):
By then (obviously) I could tell that the blue light was fixed to the top of a crane overlooking a garden. Further round I could see some catering vans, a make-up and costume truck and a pile of equipment. It was one of the film crews we regularly see around the park taking advantage of our fabulous period architecture. There was a lighting engineer. I asked him what they were filming. "Some kind of spooky adventure for kids" was all he would tell me. I didn't press him further -- wasn't really any of my business.
Turns out they were filming a new BBC Two series called The Well, the headline being that it features new Doctor Who girl Karen Gillan. I was within papping distance of the new companion and didn't even know it. Enquiries about the photographs featured here, the only three photographs I took, should be directed to the email address at the top of the blog. Etc.
those changed about eight times
TV Speaking of nerdy obsessions, we Doctor Who fans can be fairly anal about, well, everything and of the issues which some of us can get very exercised about is the consistency of merchandising inlays and covers. This reaches back as far was when the VHS tapes were being released and over the course of about twenty years the inlays on those changed about eight times which meant that if you were storing the episodes in story order they were a patchwork, with the logo appearing horizontally and vertically, the title in small and large writing and ultimately the whole thing being redesigned anyway [see the photo at this ebay listing].
It's not that these things didn't match; seeing a range of films with all of their different title designs next to each other wasn't a problem. It's that these things look just slightly inconsistent, that they could look the same if someone had cared enough to put some thought into it. So far the dvd releases have been fairly consistent. Since the second release, all of them have had the name of the show is on the side with the title of a particular story and whichever actor's face appearing in a little white circle. That changed after the first set of stories out for no particular reason, so now it looks like Tom Baker is very pleased with whole era apart from The Robots of Death:
But that's about it. There was a mountain of controversy a couple of years ago though, when the releases were shifted over to a company called 2Entertain who quite rightly wanted to slap their logo on somewhere and chose the little randomly coloured spot at the bottom of the spine and then decided to change the shade of their logo from black to white not long afterwards, resulting in a pattern like this appearing on a collector's shelf over time:
That hasn't bothered me. I like things to have a history, I like change. But I imagine, even if I don't need to because there have been online discussions at length about this, that there are fans who sit at home staring at these these spines, unable to come to terms with the lack of perfection, taking the fact that these things don't match any more oh so very personally. If you search in the right places online you can find other fans who've scanned in these inlays, photoshopped out the 2E logo and made them available for printing and replacing.
Skip through to this month's Doctor Who dvds (the Dalek Boxset which featuring Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks for those who care). A label on the plastic wrapper suggested that a reversable inlay was a unique selling point. I expected that it would be some special design but looking overleaf and found an identical image. Except: this past few months the BBC's merchandising logo has changed -- where once BBC Audiobooks and whoever were content to simply slap the square logo on the front (as appears on the BBC website) lately it's been replaced a bright, square multi-coloured box with the proper logo in the middle.
I thought there might be trouble and sure enough it is splattered over the front of this dvd and more "importantly" the spine, replacing the original logo (see above). If the obsessive fan was irritated about the 2E thing, they'd be apoplectic about this:
But, if you look carefully on the back of the much vaunted reversible cover:
That's what I call fan service.
It's not that these things didn't match; seeing a range of films with all of their different title designs next to each other wasn't a problem. It's that these things look just slightly inconsistent, that they could look the same if someone had cared enough to put some thought into it. So far the dvd releases have been fairly consistent. Since the second release, all of them have had the name of the show is on the side with the title of a particular story and whichever actor's face appearing in a little white circle. That changed after the first set of stories out for no particular reason, so now it looks like Tom Baker is very pleased with whole era apart from The Robots of Death:
But that's about it. There was a mountain of controversy a couple of years ago though, when the releases were shifted over to a company called 2Entertain who quite rightly wanted to slap their logo on somewhere and chose the little randomly coloured spot at the bottom of the spine and then decided to change the shade of their logo from black to white not long afterwards, resulting in a pattern like this appearing on a collector's shelf over time:
That hasn't bothered me. I like things to have a history, I like change. But I imagine, even if I don't need to because there have been online discussions at length about this, that there are fans who sit at home staring at these these spines, unable to come to terms with the lack of perfection, taking the fact that these things don't match any more oh so very personally. If you search in the right places online you can find other fans who've scanned in these inlays, photoshopped out the 2E logo and made them available for printing and replacing.
Skip through to this month's Doctor Who dvds (the Dalek Boxset which featuring Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks for those who care). A label on the plastic wrapper suggested that a reversable inlay was a unique selling point. I expected that it would be some special design but looking overleaf and found an identical image. Except: this past few months the BBC's merchandising logo has changed -- where once BBC Audiobooks and whoever were content to simply slap the square logo on the front (as appears on the BBC website) lately it's been replaced a bright, square multi-coloured box with the proper logo in the middle.
I thought there might be trouble and sure enough it is splattered over the front of this dvd and more "importantly" the spine, replacing the original logo (see above). If the obsessive fan was irritated about the 2E thing, they'd be apoplectic about this:
But, if you look carefully on the back of the much vaunted reversible cover:
That's what I call fan service.
nerdy obsession
Art Bridget Riley, whose retrospective is currently playing at The Walker in Liverpool, talks about her inspiration:
"For the last 50 years, it has been my belief that as a modern artist you should make a contribution to the art of your time, if only a small one. When I was young, the situation was very different. Abstract painting hung like a mirage in the desert. The door had been pushed open by a small number of visionary artists – mainly Mondrian, Kandinsky, Malevich, Rodchenko. Although travelling by different routes, each had arrived at what was virtually a common core. Having discarded the figure and nature, what remained? Colour as colour itself, those simple shapes and forms that geometry and writing provided, and the material facts."I continue to be impressed by the nerdy obsession of Riley (of course) even if I'm ultimately disappointed with the resulting paintings.
another pass of the robot dog's dialogue
TV New K-9 spin off trailer:
"Let's grab her and get our butts back through the portal."
"Agreed. Rapid transport of butts imperative."
No, not at all, no. That said, with the addition of John Leeson's voice and what sounds like another pass of the robot dog's dialogue, it's less insulting than the first draft. Still looks like a photocopy of The Sarah Jane Adventures though. That this already has twenty-six episodes in the can and SJA's had to take a budget cut for its third series to make twelve episodes demonstrates that world's axis turns at slightly the wrong angle. Perhaps I'm just bitter because I know I'm going to end up reviewing all twenty-six of those sodding episodes on Behind The Sofa.
"Let's grab her and get our butts back through the portal."
"Agreed. Rapid transport of butts imperative."
No, not at all, no. That said, with the addition of John Leeson's voice and what sounds like another pass of the robot dog's dialogue, it's less insulting than the first draft. Still looks like a photocopy of The Sarah Jane Adventures though. That this already has twenty-six episodes in the can and SJA's had to take a budget cut for its third series to make twelve episodes demonstrates that world's axis turns at slightly the wrong angle. Perhaps I'm just bitter because I know I'm going to end up reviewing all twenty-six of those sodding episodes on Behind The Sofa.
tip over
Film Even at this late stage in his career Alfred Hitchcock experimented with what’s possible and how the audience can be misled, especially in relation to narrative technique. Torn Curtain is essentially split into three sections. At first the story – of the wife (Julie Andrews) of a US scientist (Paul Newman) who discovers that he is defecting to the Soviet Union – is presented almost exclusively from her point of view which means that we’re as bewildered as she is. Then, when we find out why he’s gone over to the other side, that point of view switches to Newman so that the main exposition of the story can be revealed, with the last section joining them together on the usual dash through the countryside now that we understand what is at stake.
Hitchcock originally wanted to see Cary Grant and Eve Marie Saint to repeat their North by Northwest partnership for Torn Curtain, but Grant was nearing retirement and the studio all but forced him to go another way, so he was “stuck” with Newman and Andrews who were the two biggest film stars of the period. Predictably there was tension on set and in places it does seem to tip over onto the screen. Newman clearly wants to be giving one kind of performance but is self-consciously blasting himself elsewhere with Andrews taking some of the collateral damage. But it’s nearly impossible to imagine Grant in the farmhouse scene just as it’s exciting to see Andrews in one of her first straight dramatic roles almost acting him off the screen.
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