TV You might remember this time last year in a fit of holiday sadness I emailed Schott's Almanac about the errors in their 2006 edition. For the three people who care, I thought I'd post this from the Errata to the 2007 edition which may suggest I wasn't the only one ... kind of comforting in a way ...
Review 2006
Billy asks:
Would you stop writing your blog if your stats told you there were 0 readers?
Of course I would.
When I began writing the blog, five and a half years ago now, I didn't have any readers. I don't think anyone was looking in for months and if they were it was from Google. It's a shame because I still think that was when the blog was its best, when I seemed to have much more to write about and the cynicism hadn't really set in yet.
I was a much more promiscuous linker back then, with a feature in which I highlighted another blog each day, the backlinks for which I'm sure drew some readers and I think you just gain them through search engines because people find you and like what you're doing. But I don't think that at any point have I really gone after a particular audience. Primarily this is like a textual scrapbook, a place to keep a record of who I am each day or week and I'm not sure I could give it up even if no one was reading.
I love that I can look at some random week, say in mid-July 2003, when I was mostly kvetching about Big Brother and the government, both subjects I've given up worrying about. I wish I was able to do that with my whole life, seeing what the version of me at fourteen really had on his mind. I would have probably been talking about Kylie Minogue, getting annoyed with the sheer badness of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, studying Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and complaining about how poor the films were that year. Things haven't changed that much then.
That said, although I'd like to say that none of this was about you, plainly it is. I do wonder who is reading and find it quite bizarre that I'm not sure exactly what my circulation is. Although site meter says that this week the blog had over a thousand hits, all the referrer logs seems to list are google searches. Bloglines shows thirty-one subscribers but how many of them read the blog and just haven't gotten around to deleting it? Just how many readers do I have?
Review 2006
Neil from Behind The Sofa asks:
Why is Doctor Who so disappointing all of a sudden? Is it down to age?
In two thousand and two when the prospect of a new television series looked completely impossible, I decided that someone needed to do something and after watching the film Jerry Maguire late one night sat down to write a mission statement, what I thought would be the model to follow if ever anyone decided to produce a new series. I looked at the kinds of drama series that were in production but also wanted to reflect somewhat the novels I'd been reading and the audios I'd been listening to. From April 2002 then:
A vision for the future of television Doctor Who:Most that is common sense stuff but I'm still amazed, excited and pleased at how closely the new series matches my expectations. But for some reason during the second series, I began to find faults and cracks and although I was mostly loving some of the episodes I kept having a nagging feeling that I wasn't enjoying the series as much as I could be.
Main Characters: The Doctor; Female companion; The TARDIS
Familiarity. Turn on your average post-Troughton story this is your set up. The companion explores the problem at hand, The Doctor explains and solves it. The average viewer isn't expecting three 'teenagers' and a robot. Better to give depth to one companion than to have two or three ciphers.
Six one hour episodes.
Clarity, attention span, budget. With judicious and careful editing most tv Who stories could be told in an hour - the audio version of Genesis of the Daleks which crams six episodes onto long play record proves this. Yes, it's nice to see Tom and Lalla running around Paris in City of Death but it doesn't exactly drive the plot forward does it? If Buffy can do it, so can 'Who'.
First episode - Cybermen. Last episode - Daleks (with cliffhanger ending)
Nice and familiar. Monsters, and monsters the public have heard of. Could redesign the Cybermen a bit, but keep the Daleks as pepper pots (that's half their appeal). Daleks in last episode not first so as not to show all your good cards.
In between, The Doctor takes his companion to see the first civilisations (Stonehenge, Ancient Egypt, even earlier) and the end of time (last surviving human, aliens trading the last human DNA remains). Episode set on a strange alien planet, episode on a starship.
The Hartnell era might be a good pattern to follow. So two sci-fi, one quasi-historical, one pure historical. Random order. I'd have the historical as episode two, sci-fi three, then follow in The Time Meddlers footsteps and sell the quasi-historical initially as a historical. Then Sci-Fi, then that Dalek story. Returns the show to unpredictability; the TARDIS guidance circuits have malfunctioned so he doesn't know (and therefore we don't know) where he'll end up next (that's real adventure isn't it?). Historicals potentially an easier sell now alongside the monster stories because the BBC are still so good at them.
Ignore continuity references, but don't contradict anything too much.
Base everything on what the general public probably knows - yes, we know The Doctor is a Timelord, but do we need some boring old episode on Gallifrey to prove the point? Only exposition relating to plot at hand then, and make the stories self contained. No need to keep referring back to 'the canon' all the time, but don't contract it. That way the old fans will be content that this isn't a re-boot, but the new fans won't start turning off in their droves when it becomes clear that they should have seen half a dozen old stories and read four novels to make the present story at all comprehensible (Attack of the Cybermen - aaaaaaaaaah!)
No romance, but lots of flirting.
See Pertwee and Jo Grant; Tom Baker and everyone (apart from Harry); whilst I personally had no problem with 'that kiss' this is a family show.
Family show, but scary enough to need a sofa
Everyone says they hid behind the sofa. Nothing wrong here - scary monsters and cartoon violence. But keep to the model of The Doctor using his mind to outwit his opponents.
Before listing what these reservations are I do want to drop in some caveats. In no way is this supposed to be a 'the problem with Doctor Who article in the same vein as the Torchwood analysis I recently published. In relation to performances and production and direction it's as good as we could possibly have expected and it's amazing that you can now see kids in Forbidden Planet getting excited over a copy of Murray Gold's soundtrack, attempting to convince their parents to invest because it comes with a free badge. I loved the latest special The Runaway Bride and watching the special documentary on Christmas Day I had a lump in my throat.
I love the Tenth Doctor. David Tennant, being a fan himself, his performance is a believable amalgam of the previous nine and yet has still brought his own indefinable magic, which is backed up with writing that makes him thoroughly likeable. Author Paul Magrs has said: 'I was always pleased when the Doctor was content to blunder into things, let himself meet fabulous characters in that sweetly picaresque eighteenth century way of his' - he was describing the Eighth Doctor (the Paul McGann incarnation) but that's entirely true of Tenth, that carefree attitude that can switch to seriousness at a moments notice. Some have criticized the pop culture references, the Ghostbusters moment being particular dislikes, and some of the smugness, but above all the man is heroic and precisely what the drama needs.
The treatment of the companion has improved too and that's definitely a legacy of the spin-off culture. Rose Tyler had a life, a back story and a developing personality that effected her reaction to each adventure, changing more than just her costume across the seasons. This simply didn't happen before - Nyssa lost her family and home planet but this was hardly remarked upon again, at least not in an emotional way. Indeed companions would often join and leave in the most random of circumstances when the actors contract was up for renewal and often in stories that had little or nothing to do with their passing. The final episode of the last series, Doomsday was pinioned around the loss of Rose, written that way because the only way to split those two up convincingly was to stick them in different universes.
Like the first, that second series also brought some classic stories as good as anything the franchise has produced in any medium. No one saw The Girl In The Fireplace coming, distilling everything that's oddball and goofy about the concept whilst and the same time injecting passion and sadness. The story of the Doctor saving Madame de Pompadour, the French courtesan from clockwork men from the future using windows in time from a spaceship lacked the one line synopsis that most stories are dogged by but still managed to be exciting accessible entertainment. When the Doctor's heart was broken at the end, you felt it was because of the underplaying - he'd met someone who seemed to understand him but she was lost in time. It wasn't like the loss of Rose later in the series; they were friends but never equals in the same way that Reinette could be.
The problem with the second series is that these kinds of unresolved emotional arcs that cut the Doctor to the core were fewer than in the first series when the Ninth Doctor was at the centre. The Chris Eccleston model was still getting over the effects of the destruction of his home planet and as the season wore on it became apparent that a time war with the Daleks had led him to doing the deed himself. What this meant was that every story was personal; from trying to save the Gelth in The Unquiet Dead to fighting to save everyone in The Empty Child ('Just this time Rose, everybody lives!') each story had his struggle with guilt at the core and was about him dealing with being the only survivor of his race. In the second series, that guilt has lifted and so when he tries to deal with the problem at hand it's out of the goodness of his heart, his moral duty to protect the innocent.
But, and this is a big BUT, this has meant that there has been a move towards attempting to shoehorn in the sentiment to the extent that every story apparently needs to have an emotional crescendo. In some cases that really works - in Fireplace or School Reunion (and to a lesser extent The Runaway Bride), mainly because those are about the Doctor and his feelings. In the very worst cases, Fear Her for example, there are about three climaxes and there is a law of diminishing returns so that by the time the Doctor is lighting the Olympic flame it's just too much. Such climaxes are also drowned in music and in a Hollywood sense the chords are telling the audience how they should feel which can make some of us feel a bit disgruntled.
The other big problem is that given that the main characters have a time machine that can go anywhere in history or the cosmos, the broadcast adventures seem to spend a lot of time in London in the suburbs in the twentieth or twenty-first century, something that hadn't occurred to Davies until journalist Ben Cook mentioned it to him in an interview for Doctor Who Magazine. Much as I loved the latest Christmas episode, it's a shame they didn't take the opportunity to set it in some far future Christmas. Is (almost) present day Earth to be invaded every 25th December for as long as there are specials?
Elsewhere Davies has mentioned how impressed he is that at the dawn of the series, the Doctor and co would find themselves in a vast range of locations all of which were achieved on a very tiny budget, but for some reason, that hasn't been reflected in the new series, with the various comic strips and novels doing the really wacky experimental things instead (Love & Monsters a tale told from the point of view of a fan of the Doctor accepted). In short, why no pure historicals which are just about the Doctor plus one and the Police Box lost in history?
In 1999, Doctor Who Magazine asked a group of writers who were fans of Doctor Who what they thought the new series would be like. It's become a bit of a legend because they somehow managed to pick on Russell T Davies, Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, Steven Moffat and Gareth Roberts, all of whom would go on to write for the new series in some capacity (the other was Lance Parkin who hasn't yet been tapped despite having tv experience although it's rumoured he was asked but couldn't due to other commitments). At the end of the interview there are two telling quotes. When asked for final thoughts, Moffat says that 'the way you'd know you'd got it right would be if the 11-year-olds all jumped up and down and said it was the best show ever and all the sadder Doctor Who fans muttered that it was no longer serious adult drama like it was when they were 11.' Which is exactly what has happened. Seeing the kids at the Doctor Who Concert goggle eyed but genuinely happy to see all of the monsters and David and the clips from the episodes proves that actually so long as they're happy, that's ok.
All of these grumbles seem like small issues, all artistic choices reflecting the tastes of the current production team. That's always been the way of things with the franchise, each producer or editor having their own idea of what it should be and what it should be about and that's why we love it - none of it looks or sounds the same. The brief was about bringing the series back and making it as accessible by as wide an audience as possible and here we are looking forward to a third series, a rating success all round against stiff competition. The general audience expects a big emotional punch and the domesticity is born from a need to produce a series that reflects people's lives. They're never going to please everyone least of all us fans all of the time, but as the kid in Forbidden Planet being excited about the cd proves, it's not really about us. The final quote in that roundtable is actually from Davies himself and reflects actually how seriously he understood the undertaking: "God help anyone in charge of bringing it back - what a responsibility!"
Review 2006
Kate asks:
Do you think any of the cultural stereotypes about English people are true?
The Misterpoll website has a quiz which attempts to demonstrate how the stereotypes seen in popular culture differ from actuality. Within they actually list the expectations of the stereotype. It's quite shocking to see your entire culture reduced to nine bullet points, and perhaps even more shocking to see how many are actually true.
Drinking tea We do drink an awful lot of tea. Although Starbucks (bless them) and other coffee chains have run riot through all of our city centres making them all look like mini-Seattles, I don't think it's possible to go anywhere without being offered a tea and I'm even drinking a cup right now. I probably go through about three a day and I've never really known why - it doesn't taste that good. But it's warm and brown and it doesn't give you bad breath like coffee. I don't think many people take 'high tea' any more, but when I was working at an art gallery we did have a tea break in the morning and afternoon which felt very civilized and it was the first time I learnt the wonders of warming the mug or pot first.
Wearing bowler (derby) hats I have never seen anyone wearing a bowler hat in the wild. I don't even remember being in a shop that sells them. Most of anything I see around are woolen hats, caps and the kind of fisherman's friend my Dad favours.
Carrying umbrellas Oh yes, everyone carries umbrellas. I think. But not the big black ones you're expecting. Sometimes the golf umbrellas. Mostly they're the ones that fold up and you can keep in your bag. Every job I've had in my career has involved trying to avoid the umbrellas in a doorway, opened out and drying, which I was always told as a child was bad luck.
Talking about the weather Given that I somehow managed to spend a whole question during this obviously misdescribed Review 2006 talking about the weather somewhat proves that it's a national pastime and actually there isn't all that much wrong with that. It's an ice breaker, it's something total strangers have in common and everyone is an expert. And always remember that if it's a rainy day, people will complain but paradoxically they'll also complain if it's just too sunny. People like to talk and it gives them something to talk about. Perhaps Douglas Adams was right, if we do ever stop talking, our brains will seize up.
Speaking in rhyming slang I would say that's a cultural stereotype which is local to London but given that you never see people using it too often in documentaries about the place, I'd say it's only really perpetuated in Guy Ritchie films.
Crooking their little finger when drinking It happens. I think I even do it, although my little finger is slightly crooked and won't bend properly when I do anything. It just sort of hangs there when I type. I just thought everyone did this.
Drinking warm beer That's a stereotype? I don't drink much beer so I can't really comment, although I'd imagine that people go chilled if they can. There is a pub in Liverpool city centre whose chillers never work properly and their beer is always warm. Does that count?
Rioting over soccer Not as much as they used to but it's still prevalent, if not endemic. It does seem to be self perpetuating though. Often with British fans travel abroad, security is stepped up because of the reputation, which means that sometimes there is overkill which can lead to retaliation if too much booze has been drunk. Sometimes I suspect that if the police in these areas weren't expecting a fight, there wouldn't be one.
Queueing The British love to queue. In the January Sales there were massive queues within most stores and its amazing how patient people were being. I did notice that sometimes they were going out their way to queue. In HMV for example, people were simply going to the main bank and there were smaller satellite tills, in the classical music section for example, that were being completely ignored. I suppose the most exciting queue I ever saw happened with Jacqueline Wilson was signing at the WH Smiths and people stood all of the way up Church Street and nearly onto Bold Street.
Being spanked I've looked at this back and forth and I really can't decide on the context. I'm guessing it isn't a sexual thing, but that that pat on the behind that was memorably a plot point in an episode of Friends in which case, oh no. It would lead to much punching.
There were some items missing on that list which I was really expecting, but luckily the wikipedia has filled in the gap:
The English people are stereotyped as being extremely proper, prudish, and stiff with bad teeth. Running my tongue across my molars I can sadly concur with the final item, but given all of the rumpus about binge drinking amongst women and everything else, I think you can actually say the rest is true of British people anymore. It's a generational thing, and people my age and younger do appear to be a lot more . . . relaxed. But, I suppose, it also depends on the social class you're from. Sex and swearing are no longer taboos.
So most of these stereotypes are true, which about what you should expect. That's the point with stereotypes. There is always a ring of truth about them...
Ready for a fall
Meme Mp3 player on random, fill in the track details and ...
Waking Up: Pat Benetar - Love is a Battlefield
First Day at School: Loyko - Djelem
Falling In Love: Sarah McLachlan - Dirty Little Secret
Fight Song: John Martyn - Go Down Easy
Breaking Up: Rosemary Clooney - Me and My Teddy Bear
Prom: Tori Amos - Rattlesnakes
Life: PJ Olsson - Ready For A Fall
Mental Breakdown: Liberty X - No Clouds
Driving: Paula Cole - Carmen
Flashback: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - K621.1 Overture La Clemenza Di Tito
Wedding: Rainbow - I surrender
Birth of Child: The Beach Boys - Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
Final Battle: Gavin Byars With Tom Waits - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (Excerpt)
Death Scene: Martika - Temptation
Funeral Song: Crash Test Dummies - How Does A Duck Know?
End Credit: Fleetwood Mac - Albatross
[via]
Waking Up: Pat Benetar - Love is a Battlefield
First Day at School: Loyko - Djelem
Falling In Love: Sarah McLachlan - Dirty Little Secret
Fight Song: John Martyn - Go Down Easy
Breaking Up: Rosemary Clooney - Me and My Teddy Bear
Prom: Tori Amos - Rattlesnakes
Life: PJ Olsson - Ready For A Fall
Mental Breakdown: Liberty X - No Clouds
Driving: Paula Cole - Carmen
Flashback: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - K621.1 Overture La Clemenza Di Tito
Wedding: Rainbow - I surrender
Birth of Child: The Beach Boys - Don't Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)
Final Battle: Gavin Byars With Tom Waits - Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet (Excerpt)
Death Scene: Martika - Temptation
Funeral Song: Crash Test Dummies - How Does A Duck Know?
End Credit: Fleetwood Mac - Albatross
[via]
Under Torch Wood
TV A parody for voices:
"FIRST VOICE The Rift is a kind of hellmouth that is sucking on a transcendental, transdimensional gobstopper. It is a double-egg MacGuffin served with large flies. It is
SECOND VOICE an easy way for lazy writers to generate indulgence-straining plots, without ever troubling to think up anything new, or plausible, or to know or look up any science."
Priceless stuff and unbelievably harsh. [via]
"FIRST VOICE The Rift is a kind of hellmouth that is sucking on a transcendental, transdimensional gobstopper. It is a double-egg MacGuffin served with large flies. It is
SECOND VOICE an easy way for lazy writers to generate indulgence-straining plots, without ever troubling to think up anything new, or plausible, or to know or look up any science."
Priceless stuff and unbelievably harsh. [via]
Silent
That Day Christmas was quiet which is the way I like it. After such a busy year (again) it's been nice just to let the festive season wash over me, the music, the smells, the happiness. I was spoiled again with a new scanner (hp scanjet 2400), an almost complete set of The Movie: Illustrated History of the Cinema (an old part magazine) and a remote controlled Dalek (cue The Go-Gos) - it's at times like this I wish I had a pet so that I could bother them with it. Mum and Dad liked their CrockPot Slow Cooker although the best reaction was from my mum for this cd which I think brought back memories from their time visting the Folk Clubs of Liverpool. As usual the day went far quickly than I'd like, The Queen's Speech arriving far too quickly and then the roll down to Doctor Who (which was particularly special this year -- wasn't Catherine Tate good?). Thanks for asking Suw, hope you had a good one too. Glad you've got your mobile back.
Review 2006
Neil of Tachyon TV asks:
BBC4 have just given you carte blanche to create your own TV evening from 7pm-2am. What do you show and why?
Click the picture to see a bigger version.
I've simply tried to create a schedule of programmes which I would really like to watch. There isn't a regular tv music strand covering a range of music from pop to classical and everything in between. I've never seen an in-depth documentary about my favourite Shakespeare play or anything that lists the lid on the tricks of science programme makers. The Spanish Apartment is a great film that no one has seen (largely because it was saddled with the even less interesting title Pot Luck in this country) and Northern Soul is a tv show I tried writing myself years ago. And why isn't After Dark still on the screen wrestling with these big issues? The other thing is self explanatory.
Review 2006
Suw from Strange Attractor asks:
Which bit of trivia about you would you like to be remembered by?
Given that I haven't reached legendary status (yet) it's hard to judge what can be classed as good trivia, especially the trivia my life. The 100 things about me is a good start and glancing through those entries, I'm sure one day I'll elaborate on number twenty-three, 'I haven't seen the girl I had my first kiss with since two minutes after it happened' but given the answer to the love question which still dare not speak its name I think I'm going to choose number ninety-four, 'I once walked through a Macdonalds drive-in to get a burger with the cars. I wasn't drunk' which I wrote about many, many moons ago, but I think bares repeating here because I think it makes me look more daring and crazy than I actually am.
Unless you include the fact that I hadn't my notice in at my job before I knew that I had been accepted to university.
It was 1998, I was in my early twenties and the sitcom Friends was in one of its good patches. My friend Tris had been away and missed much of season two, so I'd been to his then new house for a catch up night. We began at after dinner and by eleven we realised that there are only so many episodes of any programme you can watch in a single evening. As I'm leaving I realise I'm still hungry, and since the only place open at that time of night was Macdonalds, and this was in the years before the release of Super Size-Me, I decide to drop in there on the way home.
When I get to the retail park where the restaurant is (and still is), I find that actually the damn place is shut. This was a bit disappointing, especially since I'd walked in the pouring rain for nearly twenty minutes getting lost on the way. Then I noticed that the drive-thru is open. I look at the people in their warm cars all being served with the processed meat on sesame seed buns with cheese and it just doesn't seem fair that they would get food simply because they're sitting in a shelter on wheels. At the back of my mind, years of watching those tv commercial with the clown coalesced and even though as I've already stressed, I wasn't under the influence of alcohol, I decide that the best thing to do is join the queue. With the cars. Without a car.
The queue is not short - by the time I arrive there must be about twenty-five car. I'm standing there, in my long black woolen coat, which is just sponging up those raindrops, wondering what the personal number plate 'FO 1' means. The kid on the back seat of the car in front is staring at me, and the guy in the car that just pulled up behind me honks his horn. I glare at him and wish I had something to honk back at him.
I stand there for a good ten minutes. As with any good human queue, I move forward with the other bodies, bending the corners in the lane that twists around the building. Of course, I knew all this was vaguely -- unusual. But I kept saying to myself - pickled gerkins, cheese, lettuce, beef, all wrapped up in a sesame seed bun. A guy in a car a few ahead in the queue opens his window and asks me were I left my sun roof.
I first spotted the police as they were cruised up the carriageway. I thought nothing of it. Then they appeared around the corner in front and actually give me a drive by. We eyed each other as they passed-by, and I could tell that they are checking me out to see if I was alright, something which was probably debatable. Was I actually breaking the law doing this? I decide that if I run, or try and disappear, it will look even noe suspicious so I stand my ground. At the back of my mind all I can think of is that I'm about to be done for causing an obstruction or breaking one of the unspoken laws of the road.
The police disappear. I sigh and step forward determined to reach the front.
A window opens in the car in front and a girl drops her head out. She asks me what I'm doing. I tell her I'm waiting in the queue because of my burger craving and because the restaurant is closed. It is now, some twenty minutes after I'd stood there, that she decides to tell me that there is actually a window at the front for people like me (although not obviously people like me) who are on foot. At first I don't believe her. But she insists.
I shrug and approach her.
'Could you do me a favour?' I ask.
She shrugs.
'Could you keep my place?'
It takes a few moments for this to register with her. She nods and says quietly 'Well OK', and I charge off looking for the window, already deciding that I'll simply go home if the window doesn't exist, knowing I'd looked like a tart for quite long enough.
The window exists. I arrive and order a cheeseburger and fries. I'm bedraggled and feel like an idiot. But I tell the girl serving my story, hoping to break her obvious sullenness at having to serve people like me at one o'clock on a Saturday night. She has every right to be depressed. But it has the right effect. She laughs hard and loud though, and then tells me in her lovely Glaswegian accent that I've made her evening and it will come in really useful at 3 o'clock when she still has half of her shift to go. We chat for a moment while she works. She tells me that their computer keeps bollixing up and losing orders. Which is why there is a tailback of cars in a usually efficient system.
I hadn't worked for a while (alright years) and I asks her if it is worth joining that branch and after a moment's thought, she says yes, and tells me were to apply. Like all near-great real life stories, this one doesn't have a punch line, I didn't get her phone number, we did not go out, for issues probably related somewhat to why I never saw the girl I had my first kiss with again. But for now I'm happy with that as my memorable bit of trivia, at least because it proves number ninety-four on the list -- that I don't need to get drunk to do weird things.
The Runaway Bride.
TV Sometimes it's great to be a Doctor Who fan. With all of the disappointment surrounding Torchwood, here was an exciting, confident, dare I say magnificent bit of comedy drama that was just the thing you need on Christmas night. If it'll never be conferred the classic status that already enjoys it doesn't really need to. This was Who with the volume turned up to eleven, hilariously funny and with all the ramshackle trimmings you'd want. This was old school Doctor Who, boiling down, despite all the Tardis chases to the Doctor having a shouting match a grotesque alien intent on destroying the Earth - and for once this didn't mean Catherine Tate.
As far as I could tell, Donna the bride had been fed some kind of particles which when fed into a space ship at the centre of the earth would release the offspring of the surviving member of a spider race from the beginning of time. I'd say this was purposefully complicated so that the viewer would be in the same position as Donna - one step behind the Doctor at all times which is just right because it increases the mystery surrounding. Not malevolent in a Seventh Doctor sense, just more aware of what's happening and what he needs to do to stop it. But as usual, this was just a big prickly Christmas tree on which to hang all of those lovely moments in what was, bravely for the timeslot, essentially a two hander, a screwball comedy of errors.
Russell T has said that so long as he's making the Christmas specials they'll have the festive season at their heart. The robotic santas make a reappearance and were a far more effective foe this time around as did the killer Christmas tree with its exploding baubles. There's nothing wrong with any of this. There's always something a bit weird about watching some sitcom's feature length edition set in the midst of summer, pulling you out of the holiday season. Shame to see that Christmas 2007 won't be a white Christmas either unless there is a handy type 40 lying around.
With all of the looking for taxis and visit to ancient history this actually had a ring of City of Death about it. So now we know that the Earth was created by the Arachnoss ship and Scaroth created the life on the rock. The Whoniverse version of this planet was a crowded place in pre-history wasn't it? This was the series suddenly being aware of its own history, with all of the references to the invasion the previous Christmas and the Battle of Canary Warf and Torchwood using the locksmiths as a front company.
And did anyone expect the sudden appearance of Gallifrey which was surely the most exciting part of the episode. It's reappearance here as a term suggests that actually it's going to play some part in the next season - in the closing trailer, the Face of Boe had a glint in his eye. His last words will be 'You are not alone...' or some such, you mark, and I'll say this again, you mark my words.
As the Doctor and Donna watched the creation of the planet Earth, it felt like a return to the roots of the show, to educate as well as entertain. Granted this was busted somewhat by the appearance of she space ship, later when Lance spat the trivia of Donna's like all X-Factor and showbiz gossip this felt like sea change, championing science and thought and Reithian values ahead of reality tv and pop culture.
With the exception of Paul Cornell's short story, this was our first chance to see the Tenth Doctor really alone and unlike the previous series, his guard was up, is energies fixed on the problem at hand. Still hurting from the loss of Rose (nice use of crosscutting with New Earth at the non-reception) he seems have pulled away again from the domestic, showing once more the slightly darker figure glimpsed in School Reunion. All the ticks were there, his mouth running off ten to the dozen and the shouting but that smugness, so criticised in the past series was gone. This was helped somewhat by all the face slapping from Donna when he was going too far with the babble.
Tennant's superb performance had the customary robustness, but also a fragility - with the slightly non-committal ending I wonder if this will be carried over into the next series. Assuming there's a gap between adventures that means that the Doctor will be traveling alone for the first time in ages, a handy continuity gap for the Big Finish spin-off cds of the future.
I was a bit unkind about Ms. Tate in the opening paragraph, and although her performance was certainly pointedly one dimensional in the opening twenty-minutes as the episode continued she demonstrated that she's an actress as well as a comedienne and perfectly deserving of the credit in the titles (it's a shame we know that Freema will be taking - how much greater the impact if they'd misinformed that Tate was going to be the permanent companion?).
Watching her crumpled at the realization that the last six months of her life were sham was really heartbreaking and by the end as she disappeared into the snow, although I wouldn't say I would have like to have seen the Doctor carrying her around the galaxy, shouting at everything that moved, my heart had certainly softened to her. This was aided by Russell T Davies clever writing, which carefully layered in material adding depth as the episode went on.
Poor old Sarah Parish though. Unrecognisable under ten inches of latex, she had the hardest job of all and if the episode did have a weak link it was this scarlet empress, half of her dialogue lost in the sound mix. Like the Sycorax, the real development of the character came from the Doctor's exposition rather than anything that they might be saying, Neil Gorton's design's biggest moment being the reveal with all the scale. It's a shame that Parish, such a great actress otherwise, wasn't given much room to develop the character. It didn't help that, except in the outstanding shots of the ship, she seemed rooted to the floor. How exciting would it have been to see her chasing the Doctor through the streets of Cardiff, sorry, London?
With Tennant and Tate and Parish taking the lions share of the action, the fourth wheel, Don Gilet as Lance acquitted himself well - I was surprised when it transpired that he was a turncoat which is a job done. The flashbacks to the actuality of the courtship were hilarious, although I did wonder whether, if Lance actually wanted to be put in the position of marrying Donna, why he played quite so hard to get. The rest of the Bride's family were perfectly fine, largely in the background, the mum nicely echoing Jackie Tyler without being a clone.
Euros Lynn proved once more that he's one of the series best directors, able to handle character and action sequences with equal clarity. That Tardis chase, whatever your views on its validity within Whovian physics, was really exciting, the cutaways to the kids in the back of the car reacting to the ensuing adventure perfectly chosen. And let's face it there nothing more exciting than a giant tank throwing missiles at a ship like that.
The Mill's work too was largely top notch providing the movie like feel we've come to expect, the highlight once again being the ship over London, added to which this time was epic shot of the draining of the Thames (those council tax bills are going to be massive again in 2008). Murray Gold was given the use of an orchestra again to great effect, dropping in a whole range of new themes which I'm sure will become familiar in the coming months - a big score is just what you need to this kind of story and that's exactly what we got.
Time marches on and I'm about ready for another mince pie and play with my new Radio Controlled Dalek so I'll sign off for the night. This was a shot in the arm, showing that actually Russell T Davies knows how to judge a script and the audience and that this show at least continues to be in safe hands. I just love that they can drop in such brilliantly unexpected gifts like the first mainstream BBC One sighting of a sedgway, with The Doctor and Donna laughing giddily on the back just as they should. But look also at the trailer for the next series, Freema looks amazing and good lord, the Daleks are back again. Hooray!
In The Bleak Midwinter (1995)
Hamlet played by Joe Harper
Directed by Joe Harper
It's December 1995, I'm at university the first time around and I live very close to the one cinema I would say that I ever really loved, The Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. In The Bleak Midwinter turned up pretty much unheralded but I'd read about it in Empire Magazine who gave it a sparkling review and having loved everything else Kenneth Branagh had directed (yes, even Dead Again) and being someway into a lifelong appreciation of Shakespeare I knew had to go and see it..
The Hyde Park was the kind of cinema in which any film could potentially be packed out because the audience tended to go see whatever was on. I took my tall friend Dave with me, even though he wasn't sure if it was his kind of thing - in black and white and about theatre - and we sat at the back of the balcony because there was more legroom.
I'd like to be able to give you a long flowing description of the experience of seeing it for the first time but I really can't. I remember being enchanted and laughing a lot and feeling very Christmassy afterwards and Dave saying that it wasn't what he was expecting and that he really enjoyed it but other than that I'd say that it just made me more excited about seeing Branagh's Hamlet the following year, this almost being a rehearsal for that.
It wasn't until the following Christmas, when I was given the video that I really fell for the film. There was certainly the nostalgia factor - I'd left university by then and it reminded me of a good night out at a place that I wouldn't necessarily be able to go back to with someone I hadn't seen in months. But it was also that it somehow managed to distill everything I felt about Shakespeare into an hour and a half and was also brilliantly funny and touching.
The following year, in 1997, I watched it around Christmas time again while I was wrapping my presents. And again in '98 and since then it's become part of the ritual. When I say that I watch it every Christmas, I really do. Which seems like the definition of a favourite film. Each viewing it means more or less to me than the year before depending on what else is happening in life. Last year I was at university again nd it just fitted into the many hundreds of other films I seemed to be watching. This year I noticed that the main character mentions in his opening monologue that he's thirty-three and I realised that I'd be the same age as him next time I see it.
Perhaps I should provide some background because I know that this isn't a film many people have heard of (it's not even available on dvd). In The Bleak Midwinter (or A Midwinter's Tale as it's called in the US) features Branagh and Shakespeare stalwart Michael Maloney as Joe an out of work actor who decides to produce Hamlet at Christmas time in a disused church in his sister's home village of Hope. With him are a group of actors, some in the offseason from seaside shows, all with their own neuroses and the film charts the rehearsal process and the production. It very much follows the structure and style of the Hollywood backstage films from the heyday of the studio system, except with obvious nods and influences from sources as diverse as Woody Allen, Ealing comedies and silent cinema.
Branagh says that it isn't autobiographical, but when Joe describes his passion for the play, that he saw it when he was fifteen and it changed his life that's exactly what the director has said about seeing Jacobi at the RSC all those years ago. His motivation for making the epic film version of the play later mirrors one of Joe's needs here - to try and make something which has a reputation for being musty and boring and making it exciting for a new generation, essentially dragging out of slow amateur schoolroom readings.
Having tried acting and been around a few actors I can absolutely say that the film captures the brilliance and pain of the art, the fact that it can boil down to bringing the deep seated emotional crap that you try to suppress up to the surface in order to entertain others. But what is really clever, is that having suggested from the opening that all of the characters are pretentious and affected and everything everyone expects actors to be - John Session's raving queen and Richard Briers grumpy old man, for example, in a series of carefully chosen two-handers he carefully peels away the surface and reveals them to be perfectly normal people like us, absolutely aware of the mask they're otherwise wearing to get by in the profession.
I think the film was derided at the time as another opportunity for Ken to give his chums something to do, but I thought it was unfair, particularly since it allows them to reproduce the fragile chemistry that any short term group dynamic has but also because many of them are producing what I think are career best performances. People like John Sessions or Celia Imrie, so often stuck playing grotesques and eccentrics are brilliant here when demonstrating the serious side of their all too camp exteriors. Gerard Horan, latterly typecast as policeman is beautifully touching as Carnforth the man with the drink problem. To be honest the only weak link is Jennifer Saunders with her mad American accent who looks like she's charged in from a Comic Strip skit, but there no doubt she's fulfilling the role of the big producer redolent of the genre.
The film is composed rather like a something from earlier in that century - most of the action plays out in medium or wide shots in deep focus with the actors moving into the foreground and back again creating the effect of seeing characters on a theatre stage - there are very few close ups and they only appear late in the film as the group is fractured and the infighting and arguments have begun in earnest. There are montage sequences, such as the audition process and the costuming but Branagh uses a series of jump cuts and juxtapositions to move the story forward.
Branagh employs lighting akin to film noir which fits the mood of the play in production and there are some lovely compositions as the actors walk in and out of silhouette.
Noir is also implied in the costumes that are finally selected for the production within the film which have a kind of 40s gangster style - and there's a spectacular use of a machine gun which accentuates that idea which I don't want to give away. There's also very little music. The film opens with Noel Coward singing 'Why Must The Show Go On' and ends with a plucked instrumental version of the titular Christmas carol. It's a brave stylistic choice but it gives room for the actor's performances to provide the emotional core and make the one musical moment from inside their story - when Nina (Julia Sawalha) sings Ophelia's lament - all the more heartbreaking.
It has dated slightly. One of the jokes hinges on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which to be honest seemed out of the date at the time although the target audience will at least have heard of it - I'm not sure what the equivalent now would be - probably Xbox or Wii. Also, when Nicholas Farrell's Tom is auditioning for Laertes, he goes into a wild digression about how relevant Hamlet it and mentions that it's like Bosnia. That would be Iraq now I suppose. One element that hasn't aged is the crucial plot point of the filming of a giant sci-fi trilogy that could be the new Star Wars, especially since we've actually had a new Star Wars trilogy (coindentally featuring Celia Imrie as a fighter pilot) and since and everything seems to be about pre-planned franchises and series now.
Some other things I noticed watching it again the other night - the (uncredited) puppet theatre girl in the audition scene is Katy Carmichael who played Twist in the sitcom Spaced. The brilliance of the acronym LCA - Less Crap Acting. Joan Collins as Joe's agent gives probably her best performance since classic Star Trek's City of the Edge of Forever. That Maloney is the best Doctor Who we never had and is completely wasted playing the range of wackos always seems to now in tv dramas - this is the man who stole Juliet Stevenson from Alan Rickman in Truly Madly Deeply after all.
Stylistically different to anything else what Branagh has directed but still with that love of theatre and theatrics, it touches me each year and even with the darkness, somehow manages to put me in the Christmas mood. There is a scene in which people talk about what makes their life worth living and someone mentions Brief Encounter and offers to buy someone as a present. Do yourself a favour and hunt a copy of this down in time for next Christmas because if you're a reader of this blog I really think you'll enjoy it.
Review 2006: Life Props Christmas Special
Annette asks:
What is your favourite film and why?
In The Bleak Midwinter (1995)
It's December 1995, I'm at university the first time around and I live very close to the one cinema I would say that I ever really loved, The Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. In The Bleak Midwinter turned up pretty much unheralded but I'd read about it in Empire Magazine who gave it a sparkling review and having loved everything else Kenneth Branagh had directed (yes, even Dead Again) and being someway into a lifelong appreciation of Shakespeare I knew had to go and see it..
The Hyde Park was the kind of cinema in which any film could potentially be packed out because the audience tended to go see whatever was on. I took my tall friend Dave with me, even though he wasn't sure if it was his kind of thing - in black and white and about theatre - and we sat at the back of the balcony because there was more legroom.
I'd like to be able to give you a long flowing description of the experience of seeing it for the first time but I really can't. I remember being enchanted and laughing a lot and feeling very Christmassy afterwards and Dave saying that it wasn't what he was expecting and that he really enjoyed it but other than that I'd say that it just made me more excited about seeing Branagh's Hamlet the following year, this almost being a rehearsal for that.
It wasn't until the following Christmas, when I was given the video that I really fell for the film. There was certainly the nostalgia factor - I'd left university by then and it reminded me of a good night out at a place that I wouldn't necessarily be able to go back to with someone I hadn't seen in months. But it was also that it somehow managed to distill everything I felt about Shakespeare into an hour and a half and was also brilliantly funny and touching.
The following year, in 1997, I watched it around Christmas time again while I was wrapping my presents. And again in '98 and since then it's become part of the ritual. When I say that I watch it every Christmas, I really do. Which seems like the definition of a favourite film. Each viewing it means more or less to me than the year before depending on what else is happening in life. Last year I was at university again nd it just fitted into the many hundreds of other films I seemed to be watching. This year I noticed that the main character mentions in his opening monologue that he's thirty-three and I realised that I'd be the same age as him next time I see it.
Perhaps I should provide some background because I know that this isn't a film many people have heard of (it's not even available on dvd). In The Bleak Midwinter (or A Midwinter's Tale as it's called in the US) features Branagh and Shakespeare stalwart Michael Maloney as Joe an out of work actor who decides to produce Hamlet at Christmas time in a disused church in his sister's home village of Hope. With him are a group of actors, some in the offseason from seaside shows, all with their own neuroses and the film charts the rehearsal process and the production. It very much follows the structure and style of the Hollywood backstage films from the heyday of the studio system, except with obvious nods and influences from sources as diverse as Woody Allen, Ealing comedies and silent cinema.
Branagh says that it isn't autobiographical, but when Joe describes his passion for the play, that he saw it when he was fifteen and it changed his life that's exactly what the director has said about seeing Jacobi at the RSC all those years ago. His motivation for making the epic film version of the play later mirrors one of Joe's needs here - to try and make something which has a reputation for being musty and boring and making it exciting for a new generation, essentially dragging out of slow amateur schoolroom readings.
Having tried acting and been around a few actors I can absolutely say that the film captures the brilliance and pain of the art, the fact that it can boil down to bringing the deep seated emotional crap that you try to suppress up to the surface in order to entertain others. But what is really clever, is that having suggested from the opening that all of the characters are pretentious and affected and everything everyone expects actors to be - John Session's raving queen and Richard Briers grumpy old man, for example, in a series of carefully chosen two-handers he carefully peels away the surface and reveals them to be perfectly normal people like us, absolutely aware of the mask they're otherwise wearing to get by in the profession.
I think the film was derided at the time as another opportunity for Ken to give his chums something to do, but I thought it was unfair, particularly since it allows them to reproduce the fragile chemistry that any short term group dynamic has but also because many of them are producing what I think are career best performances. People like John Sessions or Celia Imrie, so often stuck playing grotesques and eccentrics are brilliant here when demonstrating the serious side of their all too camp exteriors. Gerard Horan, latterly typecast as policeman is beautifully touching as Carnforth the man with the drink problem. To be honest the only weak link is Jennifer Saunders with her mad American accent who looks like she's charged in from a Comic Strip skit, but there no doubt she's fulfilling the role of the big producer redolent of the genre.
The film is composed rather like a something from earlier in that century - most of the action plays out in medium or wide shots in deep focus with the actors moving into the foreground and back again creating the effect of seeing characters on a theatre stage - there are very few close ups and they only appear late in the film as the group is fractured and the infighting and arguments have begun in earnest. There are montage sequences, such as the audition process and the costuming but Branagh uses a series of jump cuts and juxtapositions to move the story forward.
Branagh employs lighting akin to film noir which fits the mood of the play in production and there are some lovely compositions as the actors walk in and out of silhouette.
Noir is also implied in the costumes that are finally selected for the production within the film which have a kind of 40s gangster style - and there's a spectacular use of a machine gun which accentuates that idea which I don't want to give away. There's also very little music. The film opens with Noel Coward singing 'Why Must The Show Go On' and ends with a plucked instrumental version of the titular Christmas carol. It's a brave stylistic choice but it gives room for the actor's performances to provide the emotional core and make the one musical moment from inside their story - when Nina (Julia Sawalha) sings Ophelia's lament - all the more heartbreaking.
It has dated slightly. One of the jokes hinges on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which to be honest seemed out of the date at the time although the target audience will at least have heard of it - I'm not sure what the equivalent now would be - probably Xbox or Wii. Also, when Nicholas Farrell's Tom is auditioning for Laertes, he goes into a wild digression about how relevant Hamlet it and mentions that it's like Bosnia. That would be Iraq now I suppose. One element that hasn't aged is the crucial plot point of the filming of a giant sci-fi trilogy that could be the new Star Wars, especially since we've actually had a new Star Wars trilogy (coindentally featuring Celia Imrie as a fighter pilot) and since and everything seems to be about pre-planned franchises and series now.
Some other things I noticed watching it again the other night - the (uncredited) puppet theatre girl in the audition scene is Katy Carmichael who played Twist in the sitcom Spaced. The brilliance of the acronym LCA - Less Crap Acting. Joan Collins as Joe's agent gives probably her best performance since classic Star Trek's City of the Edge of Forever. That Maloney is the best Doctor Who we never had and is completely wasted playing the range of wackos always seems to now in tv dramas - this is the man who stole Juliet Stevenson from Alan Rickman in Truly Madly Deeply after all.
Stylistically different to anything else what Branagh has directed but still with that love of theatre and theatrics it touches me each year and even with the darkness it somehow manages to put me in the Christmas mood. There is a scene within in which people talk about what makes their life worth living and someone mentions Brief Encounter and offers to buy someone a copy for Christmas. Do yourself a favour and hunt a copy of this down in time for next Christmas because if you're a reader of this blog I really think you'll enjoy it.
Which seems like the perfect moment to run through my ten favourite films of 2006. Something that happened this year is that I stopped getting too excited about release dates and being really quite disappointed with most of the films I've seen at the cinema. But anyway I've managed to hash together the following. Happy Christmas!
Clerks II
Somehow managed to be nostalgic about the original and also a development. Funny, touching and just as quotable. Won't be able to see The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the same light again.
Mission: Impossible III
One of, if not the best action film of the year cruelly overshadowed by its star's public activities. Never thought I'd ever see Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in the same frame together. Actually enjoyed this more than Casino Royale which was too damn long.
The Prestige
Although it didn't quite manage to sustain its finely balanced storytelling into the final reel, it's still a magnificently atmospheric film with great performances. Yes, even David Bowie.
Superman Returns
About as good as you would want it to be, although I've since wondered if there was slightly too much stylization going on and not enough action - but as an iteration of an old myth it works brilliantly and seeing those credits and that music on the big screen again was gutwrenching.
An Inconvenient Truth
Save the debate about whether this is a real film, I saw it at the cinema which is good enough for me. Brilliantly presented the case for global warming and managed to turn the non-election of AlGore into the White House look like a very big mistake indeed.
The Russian Dolls
This ramshackle sequel to The Spanish Apartment has bags of heart and the moment when Kelly Reilly was left on the railway station platform was one of the saddest of the year. The perfect antidote to having to sit through Love Actually five times when writing my dissertation.(pictured)
A Cock and Bull Story
Somehow managed to make me laugh at two of my least favourite comedians. Another triumph from Michael Winterbottom, this managed to be slapstick and intelligent at the same time.
The Squid and the Whale
Demonstrated once again that shorter films are often the best. Direct and to the point, Noah Baumbach's film seemed to distill what Woody Allen has been trying to do shots and editing since the 90s and succeeds ahead of him.
Volver
The first Almodovar film I've really engaged with, and Penelope Cruz's best performance in years. Particularly worked because as well as being a relationship drama, it was a mystery.
Pan's Labyrinth
With a caveat. I don't think it's the Citizen Kane of fantasy Mr. Mark Kermode although it is still a great historical film about the civil war with one of the greatest devils on screen this year in the shape of that Captain.
What is your favourite film and why?
In The Bleak Midwinter (1995)
It's December 1995, I'm at university the first time around and I live very close to the one cinema I would say that I ever really loved, The Hyde Park Picture House in Leeds. In The Bleak Midwinter turned up pretty much unheralded but I'd read about it in Empire Magazine who gave it a sparkling review and having loved everything else Kenneth Branagh had directed (yes, even Dead Again) and being someway into a lifelong appreciation of Shakespeare I knew had to go and see it..
The Hyde Park was the kind of cinema in which any film could potentially be packed out because the audience tended to go see whatever was on. I took my tall friend Dave with me, even though he wasn't sure if it was his kind of thing - in black and white and about theatre - and we sat at the back of the balcony because there was more legroom.
I'd like to be able to give you a long flowing description of the experience of seeing it for the first time but I really can't. I remember being enchanted and laughing a lot and feeling very Christmassy afterwards and Dave saying that it wasn't what he was expecting and that he really enjoyed it but other than that I'd say that it just made me more excited about seeing Branagh's Hamlet the following year, this almost being a rehearsal for that.
It wasn't until the following Christmas, when I was given the video that I really fell for the film. There was certainly the nostalgia factor - I'd left university by then and it reminded me of a good night out at a place that I wouldn't necessarily be able to go back to with someone I hadn't seen in months. But it was also that it somehow managed to distill everything I felt about Shakespeare into an hour and a half and was also brilliantly funny and touching.
The following year, in 1997, I watched it around Christmas time again while I was wrapping my presents. And again in '98 and since then it's become part of the ritual. When I say that I watch it every Christmas, I really do. Which seems like the definition of a favourite film. Each viewing it means more or less to me than the year before depending on what else is happening in life. Last year I was at university again nd it just fitted into the many hundreds of other films I seemed to be watching. This year I noticed that the main character mentions in his opening monologue that he's thirty-three and I realised that I'd be the same age as him next time I see it.
Perhaps I should provide some background because I know that this isn't a film many people have heard of (it's not even available on dvd). In The Bleak Midwinter (or A Midwinter's Tale as it's called in the US) features Branagh and Shakespeare stalwart Michael Maloney as Joe an out of work actor who decides to produce Hamlet at Christmas time in a disused church in his sister's home village of Hope. With him are a group of actors, some in the offseason from seaside shows, all with their own neuroses and the film charts the rehearsal process and the production. It very much follows the structure and style of the Hollywood backstage films from the heyday of the studio system, except with obvious nods and influences from sources as diverse as Woody Allen, Ealing comedies and silent cinema.
Branagh says that it isn't autobiographical, but when Joe describes his passion for the play, that he saw it when he was fifteen and it changed his life that's exactly what the director has said about seeing Jacobi at the RSC all those years ago. His motivation for making the epic film version of the play later mirrors one of Joe's needs here - to try and make something which has a reputation for being musty and boring and making it exciting for a new generation, essentially dragging out of slow amateur schoolroom readings.
Having tried acting and been around a few actors I can absolutely say that the film captures the brilliance and pain of the art, the fact that it can boil down to bringing the deep seated emotional crap that you try to suppress up to the surface in order to entertain others. But what is really clever, is that having suggested from the opening that all of the characters are pretentious and affected and everything everyone expects actors to be - John Session's raving queen and Richard Briers grumpy old man, for example, in a series of carefully chosen two-handers he carefully peels away the surface and reveals them to be perfectly normal people like us, absolutely aware of the mask they're otherwise wearing to get by in the profession.
I think the film was derided at the time as another opportunity for Ken to give his chums something to do, but I thought it was unfair, particularly since it allows them to reproduce the fragile chemistry that any short term group dynamic has but also because many of them are producing what I think are career best performances. People like John Sessions or Celia Imrie, so often stuck playing grotesques and eccentrics are brilliant here when demonstrating the serious side of their all too camp exteriors. Gerard Horan, latterly typecast as policeman is beautifully touching as Carnforth the man with the drink problem. To be honest the only weak link is Jennifer Saunders with her mad American accent who looks like she's charged in from a Comic Strip skit, but there no doubt she's fulfilling the role of the big producer redolent of the genre.
The film is composed rather like a something from earlier in that century - most of the action plays out in medium or wide shots in deep focus with the actors moving into the foreground and back again creating the effect of seeing characters on a theatre stage - there are very few close ups and they only appear late in the film as the group is fractured and the infighting and arguments have begun in earnest. There are montage sequences, such as the audition process and the costuming but Branagh uses a series of jump cuts and juxtapositions to move the story forward.
Branagh employs lighting akin to film noir which fits the mood of the play in production and there are some lovely compositions as the actors walk in and out of silhouette.
Noir is also implied in the costumes that are finally selected for the production within the film which have a kind of 40s gangster style - and there's a spectacular use of a machine gun which accentuates that idea which I don't want to give away. There's also very little music. The film opens with Noel Coward singing 'Why Must The Show Go On' and ends with a plucked instrumental version of the titular Christmas carol. It's a brave stylistic choice but it gives room for the actor's performances to provide the emotional core and make the one musical moment from inside their story - when Nina (Julia Sawalha) sings Ophelia's lament - all the more heartbreaking.
It has dated slightly. One of the jokes hinges on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers which to be honest seemed out of the date at the time although the target audience will at least have heard of it - I'm not sure what the equivalent now would be - probably Xbox or Wii. Also, when Nicholas Farrell's Tom is auditioning for Laertes, he goes into a wild digression about how relevant Hamlet it and mentions that it's like Bosnia. That would be Iraq now I suppose. One element that hasn't aged is the crucial plot point of the filming of a giant sci-fi trilogy that could be the new Star Wars, especially since we've actually had a new Star Wars trilogy (coindentally featuring Celia Imrie as a fighter pilot) and since and everything seems to be about pre-planned franchises and series now.
Some other things I noticed watching it again the other night - the (uncredited) puppet theatre girl in the audition scene is Katy Carmichael who played Twist in the sitcom Spaced. The brilliance of the acronym LCA - Less Crap Acting. Joan Collins as Joe's agent gives probably her best performance since classic Star Trek's City of the Edge of Forever. That Maloney is the best Doctor Who we never had and is completely wasted playing the range of wackos always seems to now in tv dramas - this is the man who stole Juliet Stevenson from Alan Rickman in Truly Madly Deeply after all.
Stylistically different to anything else what Branagh has directed but still with that love of theatre and theatrics it touches me each year and even with the darkness it somehow manages to put me in the Christmas mood. There is a scene within in which people talk about what makes their life worth living and someone mentions Brief Encounter and offers to buy someone a copy for Christmas. Do yourself a favour and hunt a copy of this down in time for next Christmas because if you're a reader of this blog I really think you'll enjoy it.
Which seems like the perfect moment to run through my ten favourite films of 2006. Something that happened this year is that I stopped getting too excited about release dates and being really quite disappointed with most of the films I've seen at the cinema. But anyway I've managed to hash together the following. Happy Christmas!
Clerks II
Somehow managed to be nostalgic about the original and also a development. Funny, touching and just as quotable. Won't be able to see The Lord of the Rings trilogy in the same light again.
Mission: Impossible III
One of, if not the best action film of the year cruelly overshadowed by its star's public activities. Never thought I'd ever see Simon Pegg and Tom Cruise in the same frame together. Actually enjoyed this more than Casino Royale which was too damn long.
The Prestige
Although it didn't quite manage to sustain its finely balanced storytelling into the final reel, it's still a magnificently atmospheric film with great performances. Yes, even David Bowie.
Superman Returns
About as good as you would want it to be, although I've since wondered if there was slightly too much stylization going on and not enough action - but as an iteration of an old myth it works brilliantly and seeing those credits and that music on the big screen again was gutwrenching.
An Inconvenient Truth
Save the debate about whether this is a real film, I saw it at the cinema which is good enough for me. Brilliantly presented the case for global warming and managed to turn the non-election of AlGore into the White House look like a very big mistake indeed.
The Russian Dolls
This ramshackle sequel to The Spanish Apartment has bags of heart and the moment when Kelly Reilly was left on the railway station platform was one of the saddest of the year. The perfect antidote to having to sit through Love Actually five times when writing my dissertation.(pictured)
A Cock and Bull Story
Somehow managed to make me laugh at two of my least favourite comedians. Another triumph from Michael Winterbottom, this managed to be slapstick and intelligent at the same time.
The Squid and the Whale
Demonstrated once again that shorter films are often the best. Direct and to the point, Noah Baumbach's film seemed to distill what Woody Allen has been trying to do shots and editing since the 90s and succeeds ahead of him.
Volver
The first Almodovar film I've really engaged with, and Penelope Cruz's best performance in years. Particularly worked because as well as being a relationship drama, it was a mystery.
Pan's Labyrinth
With a caveat. I don't think it's the Citizen Kane of fantasy Mr. Mark Kermode although it is still a great historical film about the civil war with one of the greatest devils on screen this year in the shape of that Captain.
The silent stars go by ...
For anyone who missed it, here is Paul Cornell's lovely Christmas short story, 'Deep and Dreamless Sleep' which was published in the Sunday Times this morning. I can't wait to see what his two parter is like next year.
If that's put you in the mood, Big Finish also have a range of short complete stories on their website as previews for their Short Trips anthologies and here is a list - they're in .PDF format and a download link is embedded on each book's information page. Look under the cover shot.
'The Eighth Wonder of the W0rld' by Simon Guerrier
'The Ruins of Time' by Philip Purser-Hallard
'The Prologue' by Joseph Lidster
'Father Figure' by Steve Lyons
'The Feast' by Stewart Sheargold
'Making History' by Trevor Baxendale
'Introduction' by Jacqueline Rayner
'Ships That Pass' by Karen Dunn
'The Nuclear Option' by Richard Salter
'Mortlake' by Mark Wright
'Long Term' by Andrew Campbell
Happy Christmas!
[Archived for ref purposes. All of the links to the original stories are now dead.]
If that's put you in the mood, Big Finish also have a range of short complete stories on their website as previews for their Short Trips anthologies and here is a list - they're in .PDF format and a download link is embedded on each book's information page. Look under the cover shot.
'The Eighth Wonder of the W0rld' by Simon Guerrier
'The Ruins of Time' by Philip Purser-Hallard
'The Prologue' by Joseph Lidster
'Father Figure' by Steve Lyons
'The Feast' by Stewart Sheargold
'Making History' by Trevor Baxendale
'Introduction' by Jacqueline Rayner
'Ships That Pass' by Karen Dunn
'The Nuclear Option' by Richard Salter
'Mortlake' by Mark Wright
'Long Term' by Andrew Campbell
Happy Christmas!
[Archived for ref purposes. All of the links to the original stories are now dead.]
Combat.
TV It's Christmas Eve, so let me keep this brief, and please understand that this isn't the spirit of the season talking, and really I can't believe I'm typing this .... but ... tonight's episode of Torchwood was quite good. From a perfectly written teaser that was both exciting in terms of setting up the mystery of the main story and important in reintroducing the issues related to Gwen neglecting her responsibilities at home to a perfectly paced script and story which gave everyone something to do and paid off well in its finale, this was the Torchwood I'd been expecting after the stonking first couple of episodes and somewhat suggests that this is a series that is only as good as its writers. Take a bow, Mr. Noel Clarke.
As usual, the concept was not exactly original but unlike usual the interpretation worked exceedingly well. For once, there was a real sense of an investigation in which the characters really looked under the belly of this fictional version of Cardiff to see the awfulness that is probably lurking there even if the truth was obvious to anyone paying attention to the brutality and whose read the Christmas Radio Times.
By holding off the secrets of the Weevil Club to the end, the audience was left in the state of imagining the worst which meant the reveal was bound to be disappointing, which in a sense it should have been -- more Robot Wars that Fight Club. In fact, most of the brutality in the episode on screen was committed my the testosterone filled men rather than the aliens, but unlike Countrycide, by placing both races in the same frame, the viewer was given a dreadful point of comparison.
It's very odd to be watching an episode of a series that for weeks you've had nothing good to say about and actually be enjoying yourself. Even the lurches between tragedy and humour seemed to work - for example the discovery of the body in the warehouse and the sudden deployment of the Crazy Frog ring tone which Jack actually had to explain wasn't his.
There was real sense to of an ongoing cross series story arc, something which has been missing for some weeks. Suddenly a thread can be seen through the whole series begun in the first episode with all the tech borrowing in which the job is having a corrupting influence on the main characters, slowly eating away at their souls - effectively they're all going Suzie. From Jack once again allowing a human to die through to Gwen employing the retcon on Rees it is almost as though each will have to reach the tipping point that both Ianto and Tosh have passed through before returning.
How refreshing to see an A-plot and B-plot running in parallel. Gwen's behaviour consciously recalled the opening episode, with her appearance in the hub with pizza and the aforementioned retcon of her boyfriend. It seems absolutely right that her attempt should fail, and the fact that he fell asleep so quickly demonstrates how strong her will was in those early days and how the job and chipped some of that away.
Even Owen's character began to look coherent, either through a natural viciousness or Weevil infection he's a very bad man and he knows it but he doesn't want to do anything about it. I might even watch last week's episode to see if what we were actually watching was temporary taming of a beast. Either this was all some grand plan, or one of Noel's tasks was to rationalise some of the wayward behaviour seen previously. When he chooses to actually enter the cage with the Weevil, although you're repulsed, it seems in keeping with previous behaviour. Suddenly lines like -- 'I was getting bored of your fuck-tricks anyway' look like characterization choices rather than simply poor writing.
Most of the performances were top notch, although guest Alex Hassell, even though he was supposed to be playing an asshole, hardly gave the subtlest of performances - though no doubt intentional he was a bit too Guy Ritchie mockney gangsta and it seemed to enhance Burn Gorman's various ticks when they shared scenes. But you had to be impressed by that ending when Gorman managed to contort his face to look exactly like a Weevil without any apparent prosthetics. I've seen gurning championships were he'd win first prize.
Unlike last week, I sat in silence for most of the episode my only murmur being 'Hold on - is it me or is this actually quite good. That can't be right..' to no one in particular. It's even put me in a positive mood for the season finale which looks excellent even though it does employ time travel which seems a bit redundant given the mother series. With the introduction of the other Captain Jack Harkness, it's only potential crime would be to ruin The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances by implying that Jack gained his current identity through nefarious means.
Review 2006
Jacob asks:
What are your views on the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre?
" I'll be honest I'm dead against it. People forget that traders need access to [half moaning] Dixons! They do say it'll help people in [half-sighing] wheeeeelchairs?"Luckily, I have been to Norwich. An old school friend was living there some years ago and my friend Chris and I drove down from Liverpool to see him one weekend. For various reasons we came home early and got to 'enjoy' the seemingly endless stream of A-roads in and out of the town at day and night and in neither case were they very attractive. What I remember of the city centre is that the cathedral is very nice and that the rest is particularly modular - I remember having to walk through some very anonymous looking streets between the shops you'd actually want to go to.
- I'm Alan Partridge Episode 2: Alan Gets It On.
Despite being a joke, Mr. Partridge isn't wrong about it not benefiting some traders and but improving access to some customers. The system in Liverpool seems to work quite well - although the main shopping areas are covered in block paving there is some access to vehicles earlier in the day and later at night. I should like pedestrianisation - in some cities it's quite thrilling (if that is the word) to be able to walk from one end to the other uninhibited by vehicles and their pollution, foot traffic being the only thing to avoid (particularly people who are walking front of you and just stop dead so you nearly fall over trying to avoid bumping into them - how annoying is that?). In Liverpool, you can stroll down Bold Street and all of the way up to the Victoria Monument at the top of Lord Street with only a crossing at Ranleigh Street.
The counter argument for me though is based on aesthetics. In some cities, pedestrianisation kills the look of the place lessening its impact as collective piece of architecture. One of the main roads in Birmingham, the one with the Odeon cinema used have traffic passing through it and had a lovely metropolitan feel - now there's a deadness to it - an emptiness no number of people can fill. I'd be extremely unhappy too if they ever paved The Headrow in Leeds which has the Boulevard effect even with its smaller dimensions. Some talk about these pedestrian areas leading to a European café culture. Not from what I've seen. It's far too cold, except for about three days during the summer.
The other problem is that pedestrianisation tends to add to the blanding out of city centres generally. Over the past couple of years I've visited both Nottingham and Shrewsbury and sometimes its difficult to remember which city was which and while I was there I was disappointed with how similar they are to every other city I know. Same shops, similar street fixtures and similar paving. In which case I would say that pedestrianisation is bad for Norwich because it'll ruin the individual character of the place.
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