Hearing-impaired young people perform Shakespeare

"From the beginning, the boys seemed uncommunicative, but now our young actors are really inspired and seriously involved," said Asatiani, adding that the boys are very responsible, come to rehearsals early and often leave the theatre late, "they are so caught up with their roles that once, while playing, one boy began crying. They have very expressive faces and that's why we decided that while playing spectators will see them and not just their hands," she said.

Hyper Hamlet

" A cultural history of the play has to take into account the history of its text, of performance practices on stage and in reading, produced by what one may call, metaphorically, the cultural and political climate. Narratives, scenes, figures, phrases and ideas from the play entered the discourse of the moment, enhanced the play's cultural status as a classic, and in turn were fed back into the understanding of the play."

Quiz!

Quiz!


Which Website are You?

Starship Captain Sundance Kid

In the week that Enterprise is officially cancelled, it's interesting to look back at the situation the show was in during the 1970s, when the The Original Series was running in syndication. Paramount knew there would be some mileage in a film version, but their initial opinion was that it couldn't fly with a bunch of tv actors at the helm, so they'd have to recast the whole crew with box office gold. Apparently they became very close to casting Robert Redford as James T Kirk and Paul Newman as Spock. Who wouldn't have paid to see that movie? (apart from everyone who loved the tv series)

`I regret going to the show. I think that was my mistake.'

TV I've just spent the past half hour reading this excellent interview / manifesto from Ronald D Moore from just after he left Star Trek: Voyager and a couple of years before Galactica. He basically says everything I have about Voyager's premise for years and sort of demonstrates what he's been trying to do with the remake. Definately worth taking the time to read it.[via Metafilter]

All alone

Film I suppose some people will go to the cinema and if the poster looks good they'll put down their fiver and look forward to a couple of hours of escape from the horror that is their lives. But if you're film aware you end up making value judgements about what you're going to see. No matter how good the reviews or oscar nominations, if the words 'harrowing' or 'portrayal' appear together in the synopsis, you couldn't pay me to enter the screen. When it comes to reviews I tend to follow the wisdom of Mark Kermode, Empire Magazine and Time Out. If Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian hates something I'll probably love it.

But sometimes the weight of critical opinion comes into play. If a film is universally reviewed well, I'm there. If a film split critical opinion massively so that they either love it or hate it I'll also go so that I can make up my own mind. If it gets mixed reviews I'll wait for the dvd. But if a film is so critically panned that it gets 1% at Rotten Tomatoes I wouldn't miss it for the world. So, assume it doesn't go dtdvd over here I'll be waiting in line for Alone In The Dark. Obviously its hunting season with writers trying beat each other for the best snide comment, but my favourite (seen here originally) is this:

"Saying Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark is better than his 2003 American debut House of the Dead possibly the worst horror film of the past decade is akin to praising syphilis for not being HIV."

That's from Nick Schager in Slate. There is however one lone voice in the crowd. Step forward Michelle Alexandria of Eclipse Magazine:

"Alone In The Dark" isn't going to set the world on fire, but it largely succeeds with what it has to work with. If you don't question it, can sit back and just enjoy the action, nice cinematography, and Christian Slater's performance, you will find a lot to commend in this otherwise train wreck. It's a fun ride that reminds you fondly of the game. Just don't take it seriously."

Alex gave the film a C+, which is good enough for me.

Links for 2005-02-03 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2005-02-03 [del.icio.us]

Yes it’s available to buy in all its Burberry glory.
Some cars could only be sold on ebay [thanks Natasha!]

Hitchhiker's Guide Q&A - Part 4!
Final part of the interview with film director Garth Marenghi ... sorry Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith

Neighborly Mod
"The Ebeling House in Dortmund, Germany makes a direct challenge to conventional expectations and local taste, and it is equally bold in its reference to modernist minimalism. Is this boldness hostile, or friendly?"

Look Around You
Excellent website for the second series. Of course a synthesiser will never be able to create the sound of bassoon. Not in our lifetimes.

'Star Trek: Enterprise' cancelled

Escape From It's a Wonderful Life (1996) (TV)
Anyone seen this? It sounds incredible.

Ash Zangryus Guitar

Twitch Interviews Neil Gaiman
Another brilliant interview from Todd.

The Virgin Queen

There is growing evidence that Queen Elizabeth I was very far from fulfilling the promise of her nickname. On numerous occasions, her parliament tried to pursuad her to marry to the point that it eventually advised: "You Majesty declares yourself resolved to die a virgin" to which she replied "I am resolved never to marry" which is slightly different thing. When pressed on the subject again later she said: "I am no angel." According to this book, a rough list of suitors might include a Lord Seymour, The Duke of Norfolk and The Earl of Wessex (who would later romance Mary, Queen of Scots, just to be choosy).

'Who died and made you Danny Ocean?'

Film There are certain times at the cinema when it slowly becomes clear that you're the only person who is loving the film. I wierd chemistry occurs in which your enjoyment of the evening is diametrically opposed to everyone elses. And so it was tonight during Ocean's Twelve. It really isn't the film anyone was expecting, but that actually means is so much better. If you're a fan of the first film becuase of all the heist hijinks you'll probably hate this. If you're a fan of Steven Soderbergh and seen all of his films, you'll just love it.

I don't want to talk about the plot here because frankly you wouldn't believe me. Just when you think the film is going to settle down into some kind of recognisable rhythm, something entirely unexpected is thrown in turning everything on it's head. You know the moment at the end of the first film when everything you thought you saw turned out to be something different? Pretty much every scene here is like that. Which is probably were I and nearly all the mean spirited reviews I've read part company. The general feeling seems to be that the plot was thrown together and the story lacks structure. Well yes that's the point. Soderbergh's messing about with what you're allowed to do in a so-called typical Hollywood sequel. It's experimental rather than erratic.

I'll admit to a degree that is a greatest hits of Soderbergh's greatest hits, with a variety of film stock and messy camera angles on display. Flashbacks are in full evidence as are the freeze frames and captions in multiple fonts. But so what? Would it have been better if some hack had been hired to trot out a clone of the first film, clinically perfect without any passion? He should be applauded for not making the same movie again, opting instead for something which resembles his own Full Frontal, with obscure film in-jokes intact. Go with an open mind and a clear heart.

School

Photography


School
Originally uploaded by Big K of Justice.
Just to show that class sizes really are increasing.

delicious spam

Delicious They get everywhere. I spotted this in one of my RSS feeds from the Delicious ...

The best site ever made

By [deleted] on .imported .net 10placesofmycity 2005 3d academic accessibility activism advertising ai amazon amusing animation anime apache api app apple apps architecture art article articles astronomy audio backup bands bittorrent blog blogging blogs book bookmark books browser business c canada career china christian clothing cms code coding collaboration color comic comics community computer computers computing cooking cool creativity css culture daily database deals debian del.icio.us delicious design dev development diy download dvd eclipse economics education emacs email english entertainment environment family fashion fiction film finance firefox flash flickr folksonomy fonts food forum foss free freeware friends fun funny future gadget gadgets game games gaming geek gmail google government gps graphics gtd guide guitar hack hacking hacks hardware health help history home hosting howto html htpc humor humour icons ideas illustration image images info information inspiration interesting internet interview ipod iraq it japan japanese java javascript job jobs journalism knowledge language law learning library life lifehacks links linux lisp literature local mac macintosh macosx magazine mail management marketing math media metadata microsoft misc mobile moleskine money movie movies mozilla mp3 music mycomments network networking news nyc online open-source opensource organization os oss osx p2p palm pc pda people perl personal philosophy phone photo photoblog-posts photography photos photoshop php podcast podcasting politics porn productivity programming project projects psychology pvr python queer radio rails random rdf read reading readlater recipes reference religion research resource resources review reviews rss ruby school science search searchengine security semanticweb seo service services sex sf shop shopping sns social socialsoftware software spam sports sql standards sysadmin tag tagging tags tech technology temp testing tips tivo todo tool tools toread torrent torrents toys travel tutorial tutorials tv typography ui uk unix us usa usability useful utilities video videogames voip weather web web_design webcomic webdesign webdev weblog weblogs wedding weird wiki windows wireless wishlist wordpress work world writing xhtml xml
Sign up now!

Items deleted or amended were appropriate. This strikes me as a dirty way of subverting the 'tags' process. And to get people to visit what turns out to be some games discussion board which deserves about three seconds of your time.. So while some of the tags above are undoubtedly appropriate, 'sex' certainly isn't. What rankles is that as this great Guardian article demonstrates, tags are an incredibly interesting useful and interesting way of keep and introducing new material online. It'd be a bit pointless f everyone used the same method as the above cretin.

The Doctor and McCoy

TV Not really having had a chance to see Star Trek: Enterprise I can't really comment on whether the cancellation is a good or bad idea. SFX magazine's reviews have become increasingly positive though and I'm actually looking forward to the dvd release so that I can catch up. It does mean though, that there won't be a new season of any Trek series for the first time since 1987. That's a pretty good record. Can I suggest what will happen now?

Fans will have a protest and even produce a charity record featuring some of the stars called 'Doctor Phlox in Distress'. A rumour will be put about that the network's switchboards are going to be inundated with people calling to complain about the cancellation. Said network will hire in extra staff, but in reality only a few people will call.

The original Pocket Book novels will continue telling stories too broad and epic for television. There will run for about ten years and existing authors will be augmented by people who already worked on the television series and fans. There will increasing introduce more adult themes and horror elements. Fans will complain that they don't read like their beloved series and that the main characters have strayed too far from their tv origins.

Ten years later a pilot will be made for the new series. Although a lot of money will be spent, it'll run opposite the finale to a popular long running sitcom and no one will tune in. Fans will complain that it looks nothing like the show they love even though certain elements have been included almost as a fop. Someone will controversially kiss someone else.

Cashing in on the new film, Pocket Book's license is brought back in-house. Although the initial intention with the new books is the appeal to a younger audience, the books will eventually start looking more like they have all along with labarynthian plot arcs and multi-layered characterisation as most of the writers migrate over.

Within a few years a group of fans license the Star Trek concept and start producing monthly cd adventures featuring many of the original cast members. These will fit within the original continuity, although some cast members refuse to do them because they don't want to be typecast (disappointing fans). Listeners consider them to be a perfectly good subsitute for what went before and in some ways better.

Over the years, fans of the series have worked their way into various key positions in television. Out of nowhere in the fortieth anniversary year it's announced that one of the fans with a track record on tv has been given the job of reviving the series. It's taken fifteen years but the starships will fly again.

A well known celebrity wife and former pop star is cast in a key role. For once the hard core fanbase are impressed, but the moronic naysayers start criticising before they've seen anything ...

... etc ... etc ... etc ... I mean that's how it always happens isn't it?

Not now Buster!

Silent comedy stallwart Buster Keaton didn't smile once in any of his films, letting physical comedy create the mirth. The one time he did smile, in a kind of knowing wink at the end of one of his film, the audience hated the moment so much he had to edit the scene out of the film before any would go and see it.

Laura Fraser alert

TV Billboards are up throughout Liverpool advertising the new BBC Three series Casanova written by Russell T Davies. Here is a press release from last September. In the midst of what is a fairly stella cast (Peter O'Toole) is Laura Fraser who long time readers will know is one of those actors I've still got my fingers crossed about making big. If Virginia Madsen can suddenly get noticed and be cast as Harrison Ford's wife, anything is possible.

[And for anyone for whom this means anything I noticed that David Tennant is playing Casanova. He's a great actor, but is it co-incidental he previously appeared in Big Finish audio dramas and Scream of the Shalka in Doctor Who stories and is now in something by the new television producer of that series. And low the fans didst enter the halls of television centre and brought change from the inside.]

Another sigh.

Film I wanted to post this full paragraph, because it captures perfectly what's wrong with modern Hollywood. So you hire a great actor and ...

Talk about moving from the ridiculous to the sublime. One of our greatest classical actors, Derek Jacobi, has just returned from Vancouver, where he has been filming the vampire versus werewolves sequel, Underworld: Evolution. He's not happy about it. "My character was the daddy of all the werewolves," he sighs, but it wasn't the subject matter that irritated him. It was, as usual, the script editing. "Any line that for me was characterful was cut. So my part ended up being completely plot and cipher." Did he at least get to wear some monster prosthetics, I ask encouragingly. Another sigh. "No, but I did at least get a hideous death."

It's a brief interview in the FT. Frequently really great actors turn up in really duff films and you know they wouldn't be prostituting themselves unless they were seriously getting paid or saw some spark in the script which was snuffed out by the time they came to film it. Neither of which explains Judi Dench in The Chronicles of Riddick ...

Plastics...

Film Mean Girls is Clueless meets The Wild Thornberrys with a nice line in Scrubs-style visual gags. It certainly entertaining but the best humour comes from incidental moments unconnected to the main thrust of the plotlines. It can't decide whether it wants to be a traditional teen comedy, a cavalcade of sight gags or a satire on human nature. What saves the film are the moments between the teachers and the xenobiological approach to high school cliques.

Links for 2005-01-30 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2005-01-30 [del.icio.us]

Desperate Housewives -- Unaired Pilot
Original version featured Sheryl (Laura Palmer) Lee as the wife who shot herself and gave voiceover.

How to remove search engines from the Firefox search box
That's the way to do it

Laughing cavalier
Chris Morris profiled. All the usual stuff trotted out.

Art In Liverpool Weblog: Introducing Kaye and Stuart

Talkin' About Someone Else's Generation
Sorry about the NYT post, but its really worth BugMeNotting. Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are tackling twentysomeings in '1/4 Life'. But on ABC again after all the cancelled wreckage including 'My So-Called Life'? Gluttons for punishment?

Here's Looking Hughes
The enduring legacy of John Hughes films, with many quotes from actors and directors who are still being influenced by his work. [note: magazine scans at NewsAskew]

"Have you heard of someone called Asterix?"

Film I'm begin to lose faith in subtitled films.

Sorry, let me type that again.

I'm beginning to lose faith with subtitles in film.

For a while I've been watching international cinema with a certain amount of caution, not because the film's aren't great, because they are, but I'm losing the conviction that what my mono-lingual eyes are reading doesn't match the dialogue. For all I know, I could be getting the wrong idea about a range of characters and plotlines because I'm trusting the subtitler to do a good job. I was once watching the film Go with Fani and she was laughing now and then, and it turned out the Greek subtitles included jokes which weren't in the English version. The other week when reader Jay Griffiths said she'd been at a screen of Fellini's 8 1/2 the night after me and said that the screen words were not half as filthy as the spoken words.

Then tonight I saw La Haine and the wierdness continued. The film is about twenty-four hours in the life three Paris suburbanites, which in that city means tracksuits, drugs and guns. The three characters travel into the city to pick up some money from a gangster type whose nickname is Asterix. They aren't sure were he lives in an apartment so they decide to ring each flat in turn until his answers. Which means they have to ask each person if they've heard of someone called Asterix. That's Asterix. The Gaul. Small guy, helmet, blonde moustache. The three youngster are all saying Asterix. So why when one of them calls a flat and they ask:

"Have you heard of someone called Asterix?"

do the subtitles say ....

"Have you heard of someone called Snoopy?"

Now I understand the reason. The subtitlers are afraid that not everyone in the world has heard of the small French character. But this assumes that everyone in the English speaking world has read the work of Charles Schultz. It just seems wrong. But then -- the flat owner retorts with something along the lines of ...

"Yeah, and I'm Obelix."

with becomes ...

"Yeah, and I'm Charlie Brown."

The other issue is that anyone trying to learn the language would be particularly confused and wonder why if there is already and Asterix in France they decided to give Snoopy the same name. Unless like me they're aware of both properties and sit in wonder trying to work out why they made such a pointless change. Any other clangers out there?

Mandelbroccoli

romanesco broccoli is a vegitable expression of fractals. It looks man-engineered but is apparently quite natural which confirms what I've always said about everything being connected. [via bookofjoe]

Links for 2005-01-29 [del.icio.us]

Links for 2005-01-29 [del.icio.us]

notting hill carnival - a photoset on Flickr
Excellently atmospheric

On TV as in Life, Presidents Don't Last
Spoilery article about the future presidency in 'The West Wing'.

BBC Research & Development
Look Around you starts again on Monday BBC Two, 10pm

A day in the life of Newsnight
"I even once had to interview the world Cluedo champion, who arrived dressed as Colonel Mustard. I have a sneaking feeling that the producer responsible went on to edit the programme."

jonah's Melrose Drive slideshow on Flickr
For some reason this reminds me of the opening titles to Mr Benn.

please don't let me be misunderstood.
Sometimes you just want to post things without an explanation, because it isn't really needed.

Making the Movie...
Never mind the picture: "A year ago, I was in Calgary, Canada, producing a six hour miniseries, a new, invigorated and expansive version of Little House on the Prairie. I am still working on it in post production..."

Episode III: How It Begins
The opening crawl for the new film. War! What is it good for?

Look 'Sideways'

Sideways has various wierd similarities with the 80s film Electric Dreams.

Virginia Madsen's character name in the new film is Maya which has the same name origins as Madeline a character she played in the older film.

Both characters romance a man called Miles.

In both films love breaks down because of a lie introduced by a third party.

In both films the couples get bored with an official tour and disappear off on their own -- in Electric Dreams it's Alcatraz.

There is also a scene in which Madsen's character describes why she's passionate about something in the former film it's music.



Also but unrelated ...



Sandra Oh (Stephanie) is married to the director Alexander Payne, and both Oh and Paul Giamatti (Miles) have worked together before on the kids film Big Fat Liar.