Little Miss Can't Be Wrong.

Film  The Guardian has a piece today about Kathryn Bigelow's A House of Dynamite in which Mike McCahill says various things about the film, but like a lot of critics he doesn't seem to have found the virtues I found in how the story is structured and particularly the climax, which I won't spoil for those of you who haven't had a chance to watch it amongst the firehouse of stuff released every day.

The number of film writers who've missed the point of A House of Dynamite are worryingly large.  It's not a thriller, it's a character study.  The repetition is the point.  We're seeing the calamity through the lenses of much smaller and less knowledgeable groups as the decision on whether to retaliate ends up on the shoulders of someone who even less qualified than they are.  At a basic level, don't give human beings world-ending weaponry.  It's bad.

On each iteration we hear exposition and dialogue and then discover their significance as the narrative elements repeat.  In the first couple of rounds, the President sounds Trumpian and incompetent.  But when we finally meet him, he's an affable, smart person who is then handed the worst decision in the world at a moment's notice and has a series of near or total strangers advising him.

Which is utterly disturbing and in sharp relief to something like Fail Safe (both versions) and most of these kinds of films, in which almost all Presidents are portrayed as some kind of academic and diplomatic paragon in a fantasy world in which someone is elected based on how smart they are, which has *rarely* been the case.  Unlike those films, the heads of state wouldn't immediately be on the phone with one another.  The contact takes place way below the chain.

There's a terrific article in Slate by Fred Kaplan (ht, Allyn), a Pulitzer Prize nominated author of a book about just this subject which offers much greater depth on how realistic the film is and if anything it's even less terrifying than the situation we're in now when all of the key positions shown in the film are filled with people whose only qualification is they're willing to tell the President what he wants to hear all of the time.

But my overall point is that a lot of critics have missed that it isn't a traditional Clancyesque thriller.  They've gone in expecting The Sum of All Fears or By Dawn's Early Light (which shares a similar story) and been disappointed.  It's an "art house" film wearing the trappings of a mid-budget Summer blockbuster which asks the viewer to make a psychological leap beyond what they expect it to be into what it is.  

on Wednesday, October 29, 2025 0 comments Labels:

Hall of the Ten Thousand (Big Finish Audio Short Trip)

Audio  A neat bit of pure blood Eighth and Charley with the original theme, which at the time was pretty rare (2019), with India Fisher reading all the parts. Running just under forty minutes, it's a relatively complex story about the horrors of war and those who continue to live with the consequences. The TARDIS team visit a gallery to see one of the Doctor's favourite artists, who is pretty quickly revealed to be a megalomaniac who has destroyed thousands of lives because the righteousness of her ideology has become drowned out by her methods. This is Hidden Empire writer Jaine Fenn's only contribution to Doctor Who, yet she captures the two main characters perfectly, especially Charley, who has a fine moment when she uses some true/false logic straight out of Jim Henson's film Labyrinth.

Placement: Probably between seasons with the cluster of Short Trips.

on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 0 comments Labels: ,

7 Durham University Library


Books  Durham University's First Folio is reputed to have almost the longest single ownership of all extant volumes. It was originally owned by the churchman John Cosin, who is thought to have bought it shortly after its publication around 1630. Exiled to France in 1644 for his loyalty to the monarchy, notably Charles I, Cosin's Folio was housed with his extensive book collection at Peterhouse, Cambridge. After the monarchy was restored in 1660, Cosin was made Bishop of Durham and built one of the country's earliest public libraries on the green near Durham Cathedral. In 1672, he bequeathed his collection, including the Folio, to the clergy of the diocese. It remained in the library—now called Cosin's Library—for centuries, until the collection was passed to Durham University in 1963.

Then, in 1998, the Folio was famously stolen. In 2010, the BBC made Stealing Shakespeare, a documentary about the affair narrated by David Tennant. In summary, an eccentric book dealer named Raymond Scott brought a First Folio to the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., for authentication, claiming he had acquired it in Cuba during a holiday with his girlfriend. Experts quickly identified it as the Durham Folio. When Scott returned to the UK, he was arrested and convicted of handling stolen goods, although authorities were unable to prove he was the original burglar. Scott unalived himself in prison two years later, maintaining his innocence to the end. However, an interview with a local newspaper, later quoted by The Guardian, suggested there was more to the story.


Once its identity was confirmed in court with a witness statement from Anthony James West—author of the most current census of Folios at the time—it was returned to the university. Staff then began the process of stabilising it. As you can see from the above image, the goatskin binding, added in 1845 by Charles C Tuckett & Son, was removed while the book was missing, as were the title pages and the final leaves of Cymbeline, presumably in an attempt to hide its identity. To date, the University has decided not to rebind the book.   One of the few benefits of the vandalism is that it has offered unprecedented access to the binding and the pages themselves, allowing for observations that couldn't be made with an intact copy (you don't teardown a book worth millions of pounds just to see what's underneath).

The Folio is currently on display at an exhibition in Cosin's Library that runs until the end of October. It's housed in a glass cabinet, allowing for a 360-degree view of the book, including its spine and back. Surrounding it are double-sided glass cases displaying pages that are still loose: the list of principal actors, the contents page, John Heminges and Henry Condell's introduction ("To the great Variety of Readers"), and odd pages from Cymbeline. Usually on these visits, the most I can see is whichever pages are on display and perhaps the binding, so this is a welcome change, even if the circumstances that led to it are grim. The university has also released a video offering an excellent view of the gorgeous Cosin's Library:

That video was almost the closest I was going to get to seeing the Folio. After hearing about the display, I booked an overnight trip to Durham from Sunday to Monday, planning to visit the cathedral on my arrival day (it had its own exhibition on the Magna Carta)(she did not die in vain) and see the Folio the next morning.  Durham Cathedral is as gorgeous as its reputation suggests, and I especially recommend its museum. Apparently, it doesn't have the same footfall as the rest of the building, but it houses numerous important relics. These include the extraordinary wooden coffin of St Cuthbert; the saint himself, along with the Venerable Bede, is buried elsewhere in the cathedral in his own tomb. As a bonus, you can also see the spots where the Asgard scenes were filmed for Avengers: Endgame.

After finishing at the Cathedral on my first day, I realised the First Folio exhibition was nearby, so I decided to pop in to check the opening hours for Monday and see if I needed to book a space. The very helpful person at reception informed me that the library, and therefore the exhibition, were closed on Mondays, but that I had arrived just in time for the final entry of the day.  In other words, if I hadn't happened to drop in, I would have travelled all the way to Durham for no reason—much like a recent, trip to London with its lack of various fruits. Fortunately, just this once, Rose, I was in the right place at the right time and was able to see the Durham University First Folio. It's one of the documents listed in my guide on this journey, The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Catalogue, and one that I thought was going to be among the most difficult to see.

on Wednesday, August 13, 2025 0 comments Labels:

Navigating Glastonbury 2025

Music  Hope you're all enjoying Glastonbury this weekend, even from your armchair.  After a similar posts proved popular in the last couple of years, I've decided to repeat the exercise for 2025.  As I explained last year, the navigation of the various stages and sets on the BBC website isn't particularly ideal.  Unlike the previous decade when the line-up was structured around stages, this year, everything is mostly just bunged in all together under different "genres".

This year, after shutting down the music pages, they haven't even bothered with a line-up and instead you're directed straight to the iPlayer, which doesn't matter exactly, but it's still a lot of effort to navigate especially because as usual it's sometimes difficult to see the difference between a broadcast highlights show and a full set.  The list below will only have the full set unless there's no other choice.

So I've created a breakdown of Glastonbury by stage with links to these full sets - most of Friday is already there and I'll keep updating this over the next week checking in now and then.  Most stages have every act apart from the first few.  The links below should be valid for a month so you have until near the end of July to catch up.  Obviously this is only helpful if you're watching things on a tablet or PC.  You could always try casting them I suppose.  Anyway, on with the show.


Pyramid Stage

Friday 27 June


Saturday 28 June

Sunday 29 June


Other Stage

Friday 27 June

Rizzle Kicks
Fabio & Grooverider And The Outlook Orchestra

Saturday 28 June

Sunday 29 June


West Holts Stage

Friday 27 June

Saturday 28 June

Yussef Dayes [clip]
Bob Vylan
Nilüfer Yanya
Infinity Song

Sunday 29 June


Woodsies

Friday 27 June

Saturday 28 June

Sunday 29 June


The Park Stage

Friday 27 June
Saturday 28 June
Sunday 29 June


Greenpeace Stage

Saturday 28 June


on Sunday, June 29, 2025 0 comments

Reflections.

Audio  There's an old video from the A Bit of Everything Youtube channel which the algo surfaced this morning.  The maker's raison d'etre is investigating the timeline placement for new content in the Marvel, Star Wars and DC cinema universes through close readings of props, dialogue and captions.  As you might imagine this is catnip to me and through the spreadsheets on his Google Drive, I'm at least able to work out in which order to store the Marvel blurays.

This particular video talks about the approaches taken by the MCU and Star Wars in relation to their own timeline or mythological histories.  The whole thing is worth watching but essentially he notices that while almost every new piece of MCU content is set after the previous and is telling a story which rarely looks backwards, everything Star Wars releases (including the EU now) is set earlier in its timeline than the sequel trilogy with nothing set after The Rise of Skywalker.  He proposes that at some point Star Wars is going to run out of space to tell stories.

Somehow, Doctor Who has always managed to combine the two.  While each new television series offers the next chunk of the Doctor's story, spin-off media fills in the gaps.  Even when the franchise was off-air, the instinct of most publishers was to produce new tales of the "current" incumbent whilst also providing extra adventures for his past incarnations.  If the show falls off air again, who can bet BBC Books will be right there with the new adventures of the Sixteenth Doctor with Billie's face making a welcome return.

Meanwhile Big Finish will be creating boxsets  set in the past lives of the character.  Like Andor, we know the fate of most of the main characters but somehow there is still an interesting story to tell, in this example how Cass ends up on the ship crashing into Karn and why she doesn't know who the Eighth Doctor is and why she's so scared of the Time Lords.  Yet it also feels like we're listening to the ongoing story even though it's set at least a dozen incarnations earlier than whoever's due to be in control of the TARDIS on TV.

Nowhere, Never

How would I have approached television's Wish World if I'd listened to Cass's domestication in this story first?  Unlike Belinda, her personality doesn't fundamentally change even if, as is the way with the Eighth Doctor and his friends in general and specifically in this series, she has amnesia.  Shades too of Wandavision as her overfriendly neighbour reveals her sinister side, the casting of Hattie Morahan a glorious red herring.  Night of the Doctor didn't offer much information about Cass, but the writing in this series, particularly from Katherine Armitage here is turning her into a very rich, memorable character.

The Road Untravelled

Even with her memories back (as far as she knows), Cass then finds herself in the situation of having a ship's crew of people recognising her and she not having the faintest idea who they are.  But the real draw in Tim Foley's script are the scenes in which Alex has his origin story forced on him, with glimpses of stories never told and a hint of the climax of the Lucie Bleeding Miller adventures.  This would have been an excellent moment for a Sheridan Smith cameo but unlike Lucasfilm, Big Finish doesn't have infinite money.  This is the kind of story which repays the loyalty of listeners.

Cass-cade

The set piece stand alone episode in the boxset, writer James Moran's return to the Eighth Doctor's life sees Cass dealing with the amnesia of others, in this case the Doctor and Alex, who keep appearing with only a hazy recollection of who they are.  It's a jigsaw narrative, with Cass attempting to draw together the chronology of events just enough for her to meet herself and her friends backwards.  Her pleas to be remembered by the Doctor have extra gravity given that its the two of them forgetting each other which leads to her demise.  Expect to see this in the nominations for audio drama awards.

Borrow or Rob

Now it's the Doctor's memory which causes a rift with his great grandson, as his macro approach to problems at the dying embers of this incarnation lead him to forget to check on the health of individuals.  Although Alex's mind is effected by the juicy fruits, much of what he says about the Doctor is true (although I did like how Cass attempted to distance herself from his other remarks.  Then there's the shocking cliff hanger in which Dan Starkey turns out to playing the enemy we actually think he must be playing and is just the kind of random bollocks which makes Doctor Who so special.

Placement:  Directly after Cass.

on Friday, June 13, 2025 0 comments Labels: ,

The Final End.

TV  You will have seen reports in the past few days in which people who know they've signed NDAs but are a bit loose in their understanding of what one of those is, have "revealed" some details of when Ncuti Gatwa's time might otherwise have ended.  The usual places have created text to fill in the gaps between advertising but we've no way of knowing what really occurred.  As far as Unleashed and DWM are concerned, Ncuti only originally signed on for a couple of seasons (which is pretty usual when it comes to contracts) with presumably the potential for an extension.  Even the classic series had a similar situation (see David Brunt's The Doctor Who Production Diary: The Hartnell Years for extensive examples of the paperwork).

Most of the outlets in the broken telephone exchange have decided that there were massive reshoots whilst noting that Disney+ accidentally leaked the above photo of a May Day celebration which was originally going to cap off the series and had an outrageous, Face of Boe-like reveal which probably left RTD chuckling into his ashtray at 3am in the morning, hopefully between emails with Ben Cook in preparation for The Writer's Tale: Redemption.  Except we don't know if something has been lost in translation and that scene wasn't simply dropped because tonally it wasn't working and didn't fit within the context of everything around it.  Cue a clip from the Hearts of Darkness documentary of Francis Ford Coppola freaking out about cutting the French plantation sequence in Apocalypse Now.

But just for a moment, let's just speculate on the process of having to shoot new material for the end of that story.  On the socials in the week of broadcast, I received several likes for saying that the story as a whole was a bit like one of those old six parters, your Seeds of Doom or Invasions of Time, in which the germ of one story become the catalyst for another.  The main narrative pretty much wraps up with the Doctor helps Ruby leave the wish baby with her Mum and Grand Mum and you can see version which would indeed cut to the party scene with the episode ending on the revelation of Poppy being Susan's parent leading into the following year's shenanigans, a thematic connection about mothers and daughters.

That would leave the episode with a duration of about forty-five ish minutes, comparable to the rest of the series.  In which case the new material kicks in when we return to the TARDIS and the Doctor relishes being domestic until he doesn't thereby creating the inciting incident which leads to his regeneration.  Let's disengage from suggestions about a third series foregrounding the search for Poppy.  That feels overly complicated and not RTDs sort of thing at all.  Plus the idea of crashing into the party scene with Ruby sobbing while everyone around her is celebrating doesn't feel logical.  This version of Doctor Who, Lindy Pepper-Bean not withstanding, is more celebratory than that, more Disney.  

In which case, let's celebrate how, with limited time and presumably resources, RTD and rest of the production team were able to bring everything together for this new material.  In writing this coda  Russell knows the budget won't extend to a massive new locale, so in a virtuoso piece of writing he utilises what he has - the TARDIS console room, which is a standing set and UNIT Headquarters which has just recently been utilised for the spin-off series.  Perhaps the interior of Belinda's house is a redress of another domestic property from The War Between the Land and the Sea.  Davies also might have repurposed dialogue from the original version, perhaps even the party scene, but to be reshot so that it blends which this new conclusion.

The fact that all of the actors were able to return and produce the performances they do in these circumstances is a mindwalk, especially Millie Gibson, who carries the emotional weight of this new story as Ruby gives that speech about Poppy's disappearance brimming with "If there's nothing wrong with me, maybe there's something wrong with the universe!" energy.  Jodie wandering in and being her Doctor again as though no time has passed (perhaps helped by recently recording at Big Finish) in what's probably one her best scenes ever.  And of course there's Ncuti, having decided to move on from the role because the entire world is his oyster now giving his incarnation the full belt send-off (Jodie has the braces).

The way this has been talked about as some kind of conspiracy theory and incredibly negatively and what especially pisses me off is how Billie's emergence at the end is somehow a "lazy" or "illogical" choice.  A lot of work will have gone into those few seconds of screen time, from finding out if she's interested, signing contracts, setting aside a studio day, costume, make-up, special effects, even deciding what her first words is going to be.  Plus it's gutsy.  It's the RTD of old having an unexpected appearance of Catherine Tate in the console room seemingly from nowhere or the Tenth Doctor regenerating in a gleeful creative moment after being shot by a Dalek at close range.  What the fuck happens next?!?

Not to mention, as Chris Williams said on Mr BlueSky:

...RTD knows what he's doing... Everyone is talking about the regeneration and wants to know what happens next. Rather than leave it hanging with half a regeneration and a vague end to it all. Plus if it is the end then the last face we see is the first face we saw in 2005....

— Chris Williams (dink) (@chriswilliams-dink.bsky.social) 31 May 2025 at 23:50

But we don't know if this is the final end (until the next one).  Even if Disney have pulled their funding, as these extra scenes and the yesteryear of the franchise demonstrates, Doctor Who is arguably at its best when its on life support and fighting for its existence.  There's six months until Christmas.  Who wouldn't want to tune in to see a Billie Piper incarnation of the Doctor saving themselves or the universe for an hour with whatever caves, sets and props can be found in the store alongside the TARDIS set.  More Keys of Marinus?  Another Mind Robber?  The Revenge of Koquillion?  After Midnight?  Actually no, they've already done that one.  Either way, I'm all in.  As usual.

on Wednesday, June 11, 2025 0 comments Labels: ,

The Final Poblom (The Paternoster Gang: Last Stand)

Audio  Having skipped the middle two boxed sets in this series for financial reasons (Eighth Doctor completists of the world unite!), I entered this with little idea as to who this great antagonist, the Zygon Brottac actually is.  Curiously the character doesn't have his own page on the TARDIS Wiki, a place where even a random shopkeeper in a Torchwood audio is gifted a mention.  He's supposed to be Vastra's Moriarty figure with this her The Final Problem (the title of the final play in the box an obvious play on words).  The whole thing is an excellent romp with some killer one liners from Strax one of which made me laugh so much I had to pause the drama until I'd finish.  I'm still grinning about it.

The Final Poblom

McGann plays duel roles, the vocally acceptable face of Brottac, a rare occasion on Big Finish when he goes full Zaroff and the Eighth Doctor himself for a couple of brief scenes.  My understanding from listen to this is that it was revealed in one of the plays I skipped that the Eighth from the first play may have been at least partly Brottac in disguise.  The Time Lord himself appears in just a couple of scenes, both of which continue the notion of him appearing in their lives in a non-chronological order.  He's still a pretty shadowing figure and there's not much more to say.  The ending seems to suggest that this isn't his last appearance in The Paternoster Gang (hopefully with more to do next time).

Placement: Straight after Till Death Do Us Part

on Friday, June 06, 2025 0 comments Labels:

The Absence of the Folios.


Books  You may have noticed recently the publicity surrounding the sale of four Shakespeare Folios at Sothebys later this month.  Here's a version of the story in the Smithsonian Magazine although there were dozens of others, mainly reprinting the contents of the press release.  It's a rare occasion when F1, F2, F3 and F4 are being sold as a single lot.  Having made a similar trip in 2022, I immediately booked tickets for London, for yesterday, to view the First Folio and glance at the others.

This was possibly going to be the first and last time I could see it, especially since it isn't actually on the list.  The four Folios originally surfaced at a Christies sale in 2016 (although I didn't notice).  Christies listed them separately but they were snatched by a single buyer which is why they're together now.  The four of them then cost the buyer around £2.5m, which considering the 2022 sale of just a First Folio in a nice display case went for £2m, this was a bargain.  The other volumes usually go for several hundred thousand pounds each.

It's the provenance from the Sothebys press release which allowed me to make the connection with the Christies sale.  Both auction houses mention in their sales details that F1, F3 and F4 they were bought around 1800 by the collector George Augustus William Shuckburgh-Evelyn then sat on a shelf in the family mansion for centuries until there was a clear out. The Second Folio was added by whoever bought the lot at Christies in 2016 and selling them again as a job lot now.

George Shuckburgh-Evelyn, as the Wikipedia lists him, was a politician, mathematician and politician.  He pioneered the the collation of price indexes.  He observed changes in the boiling points of water at different pressures aiding the collaboration of thermometers.  He built his own telescope and observed features of the lunar surface.  He has a crater on the moon named for him.  He also served in the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for Warwickshire from 1780 until his death in 1804, so his ownership of the Fs was apt.

Since the catalogue of all known First Folios was published in 2012 and this didn't surface until 2016, it's effectively unlisted and hasn't been seen by academic eyes.  Who knows if Eric Rasmussen has dropped by in the meantime readying material for a second edition.  Nevertheless, I was all ready to take in the couple of pages Sothebys had chosen to show us during the viewing period.  Would there be notes in the margin in Shuckburgh-Evelyn's own hand.

The empty space and title of this post will indicate that nothing went to plan.  Wandering into Sothebys, I was surprised by how quiet the auction house was but assumed that was due to it being the middle of the afternoon.  Feeling slightly under-dressed in my Frozen princesses t-shirt and jeans, I asked a security guard where the Folios were on display.  Blank face.  Don't know.  I asked another, similarly no idea what I was talking about.  She pointed me back towards the reception desk.

Reception confirmed what I feared.  They'd been withdrawn from sale and weren't even in the building.  The explanation he seemed to be given by someone on the phone was that they might be in the process of being offered around British institutions first before potentially leaving the country which made sense.  I was surprisingly sanguine about it.  I should have been suspicious when the page at the Sothebys website went offline.  But I assumed it was a technical error.  Too many outlets had written about the sale for it not to be happening.

After a cup of coffee in the restaurant, in a bid to make the trip not feel completely wasted, I walked to Covent Garden and finally visited the London Transport Museum, which is certainly too big to visit an hour before closing, especially if your body's tired of travelling and bought a few fridge magnets.  After a burger and fries at Five Guys, it was time to return to Euston and catch the train home.  It's a sign I'm getting older that I think I'm still getting over all of the walking I did on Friday.  My heart don't with to roam.

"... a funny thing happened when I rang Sotheby’s and started asking questions on behalf of The Observer. The auction, I was suddenly told, had been cancelled. The listing was scrubbed from the website; the “set” had been privately sold.
"This may be cockup rather than conspiracy: two antiquarian sources suggested to me that the private sale had been in the works for some time, and that “the sale should never have been announced” publicly. At last week’s London’s Rare Books Fair, where Stephen Fry and Graham Brady were among the men in suits queuing outside the Saatchi Gallery, the gossip was of furious collectors outmanoeuvred by a megabid."

So there we have it.  This Folio remains inaccessible even to academics as whoever bought them at Christies in 2016 has sold them to another private buyer.  If Sothebys hadn't made the sale public, us normals would never have known about them.

But I do hold Sothebys somewhat responsible for my predicament.  Rather than simply yanking the press release from the website leading to the generic 404 and some intimidating telephone numbers, a more helpful option would have been a note saying that the item had been removed from sale and that viewings had been cancelled.  Even Tesco tells its shoppers when a product has sold out.  Anyway, I've emailed Sothebys with that suggestion and this Tesco gag.  Let's see what happens.

on Sunday, May 18, 2025 0 comments Labels:

"Put on your suit and tie, put on that killer smile."

 

Life  Much better day today.  Slept in on purpose and didn't have the same anxiety as yesterday, mostly because I was going to the cinema to see Steven Soderbergh's new one, Black Bag.  Finally offering us his slow burn spy film, we're in and out of the story in 90 minutes.  I've haven't wanted to be Cate Blanchett in a film this much since Ocean's 8.  The trick each day seems to be to give myself a reason to get out of bed, and mores the point go outside, even if it's just to wander up to the local Spar shop to buy a paper.

Meanwhile, the promo for the Sugababes' Jungle is out and its a blessed chaos, Siobhan trapped in a shop front on a travellator like an extra in Jacqui Tati's Playtime, Keisha's in the demo pod of a Bose shop and Mutya's hungover outie dancing in a lift from Severance.    Watch out for the poltergeist creating chair structures and the male model making the interesting career decision of having the Sugababes logo tattooed across his shoulders.  At least it'll guarantee him some work going forward if the album's a hit.

The song itself is growing on me.  The brevity helps.  It's a tight 2m 42s that still manages to demonstrate the strengths of each of the vocalists and their sweet harmony.  The similarity to Smells Like Teen Spirit must surely be unintentional but it's there and not in a bad way.  Jungle is a bop which should work well live.  Somehow manages to feel like the Sugababes of One Touch but with some extra decades and still of now.  Roll on the album.
on Friday, March 14, 2025 0 comments Labels: ,

Welcome to the Jungle.

 

Life  Sometimes, when anxiety hits, I have days that just don't start well. I manage to get my brain working to some extent by mid-afternoon, and then I have about eight good hours before bedtime. My alarm clock is at the other end of the room, which forces me to get up and turn it off. This morning, when it rang at 7 a.m., I did just that, went to the loo, and because it was a bit chilly, jumped back into bed to listen to the news headlines. At which point, I fell asleep again.

At 9 a.m., I woke up again, and my anxiety really kicked in. My whole body felt tight, and I had the most immense pain in my stomach, which felt like it was weighing me down like a medicine ball, or if one of those cartoon hippos from a Disney cartoon were sitting on top of me. At which point, I spiralled. Sometimes anxiety happens because there's something in your subconscious which is freaking you out, and you have to work out what it is. Sometimes it's just anxiety about having anxiety and not knowing why you have anxiety.

After about half an hour, I managed to convince my body to get out of bed. I cooked some porridge and watched this slightly patronising YouTube video about Dua Lipa's capabilities as an interviewer and one of those Star Trek theme videos this time for Enterprise, Trip's reaction giving me a good giggle.   By then, I'd taken my anxiety medicine, which often makes me drowsy. So I fell asleep again, this time in an armchair for another hour and a half, waking up again at about midday. It's not until about 1 p.m., after I'd had a chat with my Dad and made a sandwich, that I felt more like myself again (whatever that is).

Why am I telling you all of this? Because something which has gone missing from me for years is writing this blog. It's been spluttering along, but actually writing something which is actually about my own life disappeared about a decade or so ago, at about the time when I had my first anxiety attack. So perhaps by putting some of that pain into words and shouting it out into the world, it'll help me come to terms with it a bit more. Why not just keep it as a personal journal? Because it'll force me to make it into something consumable by others.

This does, of course, fall under the genre of blog post "apologizing for not posting more," for which the obvious response is "no one cares, just post more." But at least I'm not starting a podcast. For one thing, I tried it once, and no one should have my speaking voice imposed on them, especially if it's unscripted, and also because it'll give me a moment to stop and think about what I'm about to write and even if I want it to go out into the world or just leave it in draft.

Also the Sugababes have a new single out.
on Thursday, March 13, 2025 0 comments Labels: ,

26 National Art Library

 

Books  In Eric Rasmussen's catalogue of Shakespeare's First Folios, the 'manuscript annotations' section typically covers about half to three-quarters of a page. However, this copy features two full pages of dense text and a separate paragraph of general notes.  That’s because a previous owner took it upon themselves to correct the text in red pen, going through four history plays, changing every comma to a semicolon, underlining any artillery terms in King John, and sporadically ‘correcting’ modern English spellings to more contemporary versions (‘marlemas’ written above ‘Michaelmas’).  

Rasmussen suggests these annotations were the work of John Forster, the biographer and literary critic who was the final private owner before bequeathing his library to the National Art Library (now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum). However, the man who gifted it to him, Joseph C. King, a schoolmaster best known for educating two of Charles Dickens's sons, was the only other known owner.  Purely fantasy, probably, but it’s easy to imagine him poring over the text with the same zeal he applied to his students’ scripts, tutting and shaking his head as he proofread Henry VIII, writing ‘confessions’ above ‘commissions’.  That’s probably why these pages were chosen for display—they’re the least scarred.

Ticking this folio off the list was a happy accident.  For the past six months or so, I've been travelling down to London again thanks to Avanti Superfare, with mixed experiences.  The cheapness of the tickets has the caveat that because they're seat filling you don't know what time that will be.  Almost every month it's been the 11:45 am from Lime Street which means not arriving at Euston until 2:00 pm, with a return ticket at about 7:45 p.m., not so much a day trip as an afternoon 'rager' (if you can compare being overwhelmed by the intellectual brilliance of others in ancient buildings to drinking five Jägerbombs and chundering in a strangers garden which in my post-alcohol world you certainly can).  

What with that chronological uncertainty, this was my last trip down to London for a while (or at least until the price become low enough  for me to be able to afford an earlier journey) so I decided to return to the Theatre & Performance galleries, which were the site of my first visit.  The space has changed considerably in the past nine years.  Originally it was somewhat chronological with models of the original playhouses in the first section and sense of beginning at the beginning.  Now its much more thematic and based in crafts, with costume, set design, props and the rest given their own sections.  Fortunately Kylie's dressing room is still present and correct with its good luck lipstick greeting from Dannii on the mirror.

But still, right at the beginning, is Shakespeare's First Folio, and I surprised and delighted to find it wasn't the same edition displayed in 2016 and featured on television but the aforementioned volume last owned by Forster.  As you can see from the photo, it's displayed against a black background, mounted with a fair gap from the protective glass and for some reason parallel to a join so that it's impossible to look at it straight on, let alone get a picture of it.  You can just about make out that it's the second two pages of A Midsummer Night's Dream (146 & 147), the kids deep into the initial explanations of who loves who at that point.  If I'd known about the red "corrections" at the time I would have looked for them but they're not obvious from the photograph.

In terms of physical differences from other copies, Rasmussen notes in the First Folio catalogue that the authorship of a couple of plays is also questioned.  The title page of Cymbeline has "Not Shakespears, any part of it" written across it (don't tell Michael Blanding) and Titus Andronicus says "Not Shakespeare; scarce a word" even though Henry VI is right there.  Recent research from Brian Vickers (well, from 2002) suggests it could have been co-authored with George Peele so perhaps the statement might be partially correct.  Once it came into the National Art Library's possession they stamped it with 'Department of Science and Art 1876' in block capitals, along with 'Forester Bequest'.  It's also incomplete.  The preliminary pages (introduction and so forth) are 'poor-quality printed facsimiles'.  Every copy is different.  Next.

on Wednesday, March 12, 2025 0 comments Labels:

The 231163 Diaries:
Charlton Heston


History  Charlton Heston was an American actor. He gained stardom for his leading man roles in numerous Hollywood films including biblical epics, science-fiction films and action films  In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was one of a handful of Hollywood actors who openly denounced racism and he was also an active supporter of the civil rights movement. 

Some context: at this moment he's between jobs.  He's signed on for Major Dundee but isn't happy with the script - he says the female role is artificial and contrived.  On November 12, Heston visited Stan Laurel at his apartment in Santa Barbara talk about him collecting a Screen Actors Guild Award but the comedian's health prevents this and Danny Kaye accepts in his stead.

In this moment he's also still a Democrat.  He wouldn't join the Republicans until 1987, when he founded a conservative political action committee supporting Ronald Reagan. Heston was a five-term president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), from 1998 to 2003. After announcing that he had Alzheimer's disease in 2002, he retired from acting and the NRA presidency.

November 22. I was in Walter's office, on the phone, when one of his staff ran in, stammering, "I just heard Kennedy's been shot!" It's a blind, brutal, pointless act, and because of it we're much less than we were, or might have been. If you believe in our system, then you have to believe it won't fail because of this, but it will falter. Today, surely, we're all faltering. 

November 23. New York. I was given a purpose to carry me through this dark weekend, which I seized on eagerly. ABC called me this morning to fly to New York and take part in a memorial service they're rushing to air tomorrow. I spent the flight poring fruitlessly through my Shakespeare concordance looking for meaningful lines. In a meeting with ABC at the apartment, we chose some Psalms, and tentatively, some Frost. Kennedy liked Frost. 

November 24. I spent the morning redacting four Psalms . . . the nintieth, the ninety-first, the one hundred and twenty first, and the twenty-third . . . into one whole, which seemed apt. I also read "Stopping by Woods" and "Fire and Ice," from Frost. The poems seemed to me to say something. The program was . . . worth doing, I think. It's all we can do. 1 was one of the lucky few in those first numb days. I had something specific to do that could be called a response to the shock we all felt. 

November 25. New York/Los Angeles. I watched the caisson roll down Pennsylvania Avenue on TV while I dressed to go to the airport. Before we took off, there was a minute of silence there, and then we flew west, ahead of the sun, across the land he led, well or ill, but strongly, for less time than he deserved. Now we have to do, as all men must, the best we can. 

November 26. Los Angeles. The world, or at least my experience of it, slowly began to return to normal, though the waste of that tough man's death still stabs as you pick up the threads you dropped on Friday. I read through the second version of MAJOR DUNDEE which is . . . not much better, I guess, and did, really, not much else. I played with my son a little. We're building a model of an archaeological dig. This seems very important.

[Source: The Actor's Life, Charlton Heston : Journals, 1956-1976.]

[via Farran Smith Nehme on Bluesky.  You can read a review of the diaries on Neglected Books.]

on Sunday, February 02, 2025 0 comments Labels:

A Chronological Viewing Order For All of Lucy Worsley's Documentaries.


TV   In the past couple of weeks the latest series of Lucy Worsley Investigates has been released on BBC Two and the iPlayer.  Not knowing what to expect, I headed into the first series, starting with The Witch Hunts and was struck once again with Worsley's ability to present difficult subjects with intellectual rigour but in an inclusive style that doesn't patronise the viewer.  

Until recently, every morning I'd watch a documentary of some sort, but age and tiredness have meant I've strayed instead into drama or "whatever's on YouTube".  I'd like to try to get back to that place and after completing the Witch Hunt (so to speak) wondered if Lucy Worsley could be my guide.  She hasn't produced that much, I thought, so it would be a good way back in.

But as her Wikipedia page revealed that she's created quite a large body of work in the past decade or so across various periods of history and BBC networks.  So, I then thought, perhaps I could just do the Investigates series and see where I go from there.  Then the part of my brain which wants to put everything in chronological order decided to take over and ...

Find below all of Lucy Worsley's appearances in history programmes, either presenting or as a guest in chronological order based on subject.  The years are what appear to be when the stories begin or the date of the particular event she's covering based on the programme synopsis or else googling around and squinting.

You'll notice I've arranged them around royal houses.  So much of her work is about the inner workings of court so this seemed appropriate, although it's also irrelevant in the 20th century.  At the bottom are all of the shows which couldn't fit easily into the main chronology because they're so thematic it would be impossible to try and slot them in anywhere.  

Also because I'm a masochist, I've also linked to each episode's programme page.  Quite a lot of what's here is available on the iPlayer and if it isn't, BBC Four will probably repeat it in the next twelve months anyway.  Otherwise there are probably various nefarious ways of finding them in the places you already know where to look.

* - Lucy was just a contributor
** - Portion of a programme

NB:  I've removed Lucy's name from the titles for the most part to stop this looking monotonous.

The Wessexes


The Normans



The Plantagenets



The Tudors


















The Stuarts















The Hanoverians




































The Saxe-Coburgs


1903    Suffragettes






The Windsors




1940    Blitz Spirit







Thematic









on Tuesday, January 14, 2025 0 comments Labels:

Predictions 2024.


That Day We reach the time when I assess how well I predicted the ups and downs of the year and look forward to the next. Here we go again:

The Sugababes release an whole album of brand new material.

Not yet. although there is evidence they've been in the recording studio and there'll be an announcement next year.  No marks.

General election called, Tories lose power.

They did!  One mark.

Overhaul of Disney "content" for better or worse.


Trump jailed.

Ha, nope.  No marks.

X (formerly known as Twitter) sold again.

Ha, nope.  No marks.

Two out of five which looks bad but is better than most years.

Choosing predictions for the following year is difficult at the best of times, but 2025 already feels like it's going to be absolutely horrendous.  But let's have a go at something positive and in keeping with the usual themes.

There won't be a nuclear conflict.

Doctor Who gets another season either from Disney or the BBC or both.

The Sugababes release an whole album of brand new material.

I finally finish reading Empire Magazine.

The BBC opens official accounts on BlueSky.

Good luck, 2025.


on Tuesday, December 31, 2024 0 comments Labels:

Review 2024: Films

Film  Christ in a crib, it's been a while.  How are we all?  Time for my annual list of favourite films, which I seemed to have completely forgotten to do last year amid the whole link diary thing which haunted my every hour in 2023.  To an extent, the whole thing is a bit pointless.  Do you need me to tell you how good The Holdovers is (The Holdovers is excellent) or give you a spicy take on Megalopolis (which wouldn't have had nearly as much vitriol if it had been projected on a wall via a Raspberry Pi at the Liverpool Biennial)?  Here's an aggregated list from the usual publications if that's the sort of thing you need. 

If you want to see what my year in film was like, just take a look at my diary on Letterboxd.  Some of my favourite viewing experiences weren't even released this year (The Wolf of Snow Hollow) or even a film (Douglas is Cancelled).  Unfortunately, I didn't reach my usual goal of 365 films (one per day) due to the Olympics, binging Taskmaster and a change in my work hours which I'm still trying to get my head around.  But nature abhors a vacuum and so here's a list instead of ten films which I've enjoyed this year which aren't featured in that aggregated list.  In no particular order and with a short justification beneath:

Carry-On
Contains one of my favourite fight sequences of the year in which Danielle Deadwyler fights an assailant while the car in which they're travelling in tumbles out of control, glass and limbs flying everywhere and it all plays out in a single shot all the while the frame keeping parallel with their faces.  However it was done, I really don't care, it turned the movie from being a pretty good thriller into something one of the best action films of recent times.

Fly Me to the Moon
The cat moment.  If you've seen the film, you know the one and if you haven't I won't spoil it for you but I YELPED.

My Old Ass
An excellent example of how to employ your concept sparingly.  Aubrey Plaza doesn't appear as much as the poster would indicate (perhaps she was only available for a few days) but her presence is felt throughout as the protagonist wrestles with the inevitability of time.

Damsel
Arguably this premise was done more convincingly, albeit on a much smaller scale in The Princess (which Disney+ have deleted since its 2022 debut but is available to rent at the usual outlets).  Like Carry-On, this is Netflix resurrecting a genre which theatrical companies are either ignoring or only supporting if their tied to an existing IP.  Also like Carry-On, reviews have missed this and often branded it as "Netflix slop" when there's a lot of talented people working here at the best of their abilities to create entertainments that audiences are otherwise missing.

Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara
The world of para-social relationship laid bare.  I've always had enormous sympathy for smaller scale celebrities who just want to live life like the rest of us, keeping their professions separate.  They owe us nothing but their creative endeavours.  I don't really care much about their social lives unless they're going out of their way to hurt people.  

A Quiet Place: Day One
The central casting suggested that this wasn't going to be just a cash-in and instead, like the best prequels, of which there are few, it provides depth to the series.  Although the horror aspects are present and correct, I wasn't prepared for how romantic yet sad it would be.

The Contestant
Best seen without much prior knowledge, this is deeply troubling exposition of the extremities of "reality TV" and its psychological effects on participants and viewers.

Anyone But You
It's been reported that Sydney Sweeney agreed to make Madame Web on the understanding that Sony would greenlight Anyone But You.  One of them has made her a much bigger star and it's not the one in which she was barely recognisable underneath a massive pair of glasses.  This was a much bigger hit largely due to a witty script and Sweeney and Glen Powell being just so damn charming.  This is an old school romcom of the kind which needs our support.

I Am: Celine Dion
Having had a soft spot for Celine Dion since reading Carl Wilson's Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, it was crushing to see what's happened to one of the most beautiful singing voices of our time.  A companion piece to Pablo Lorrain's Maria (they share similar moments in which the singer strains to return to their original strength), this at least could have a sequel in which we see  Celine triumph from adversity at the Olympics opening ceremony.

Argyle
Having found the Kingsman films pretty tiresome, I didn't enter into this with much hope but came out the other end absolutely beaming.  It's just so fricking weird with gonzo action sequences and Bryce Dallas Howard at her most adorable.  I'm not entirely sure what you were all complaining about.  

* * * * *

If it looks like I haven't watched much contemporary non-English films, you'd be right, but that's largely because so much of the material picked up for release in the UK this year has been on the dark side or already in the aggregated list.  But I am going to use that same list to try and catch up in the new year.  

As for my worst, here are the films released this year which I gave one and two stars.  I'm very forgiving: 

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
Madame Web
Late Night With The Devil

I've noticed Last Night With The Devil is on some best of the year lists despite ultimately being a total wash because after being an incredibly tense, mysterious film for much of its run time, it saps all of that energy at the end by dropping an infodump.  I might have been willing to give it three stars anyway, but the pointless deployment AI artwork, however limited the capacity is an ass move, whatever justifications the filmmakers may have.  So not that forgiving after all.
on Monday, December 30, 2024 0 comments Labels: ,
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