"My son’s part-time nounou"

Travel The three days I spent in Paris over a decade ago are still seared into my memory in a way which is probably unhealthy especially since I really should have been abroad since. I can't imagine the wrench of leaving the place after twenty-years, the experience of Julie Street who totters around her own nostalgia in this warm piece for France Today:

"One of the most thrilling things about living in Paris was the iconic architecture that formed the backdrop to my everyday life. My son’s part-time nounou—nanny—was married to a policeman who lived in the gendarmerie behind the Place des Vosges. This meant that every afternoon I turned up to find my three-year-old playing in the sandbox in a 17th-century park surrounded by vaulted stone arcades and historic mansions. What better start to life could he have than whizzing down the slide in front of Victor Hugo’s former townhouse (No.6) and eating ice cream outside the birthplace of Madame de Sévigné (No.1 bis)?"

The only way to really experience a city is to have lived there, become part of it. I really need to do that again somewhere else soon.

"pledged to secrecy"

Journalism  Astonishing story of how an Associated Press journalist was fired for doing his job, reporting the end of World War II against the wishes of censors who wanted to stage manage the release of information about Germany's surrender for political reasons:

"Kennedy was one of 17 reporters taken to witness the ceremony. He and the others were hastily assembled by military commanders, then pledged to secrecy by a US general while the group flew over France. As a condition of being allowed to see the surrender in person, the correspondents were barred from reporting what they had witnessed until authorised by allied headquarters.

"Initially, the journalists were told the news would be held up for only a few hours. But after the surrender was complete, the embargo was extended for 36 hours – until 3pm the following day.

"Kennedy was astounded."

Journalists still work within limits and embargoes. When Obama emerged in Afganistan the other day, it's unlikely that journalists didn't know in advance so that they could cover the story.  But it's now generally understood, I think, that there's a difference between protecting a head of state and protecting a story which is not only the biggest on the planet but also somewhat in the public domain.  Hence, AP's welcome apology.

The Oxford Paragraphs: Rudyard Kipling The Man who would be King and Other Stories

Books  Not having visited a newsroom yet myself, I don’t know how accurate Kipling’s description of the Bombay Mail at the opening of The Man who would be King is, but it’s exactly how I’ve always imagined, understandable given the author was working as a journalist in India when writing these stories.  Evocatively expressed between semi-colons, this is  a disorganised chaos of humanity working against the odds in a barely comfortable, stiflingly humid atmosphere, to produce a coherent message or at the very least fill a newspaper's columns with informative content from some mostly reputable sources.  Kipling’s style is an acquired taste, as messy but flavoursome as the cuisine of the country he’s evoking, only really gaining momentum in those stories with a vivid, psychologically challenging idea like The Haunted Rickshaw or At Twenty-Two, in which a mining disaster inspired by Emile Zola’s Germinal is transposed to Kipling's country of origin.

what's yet to go to preorder

TV Having just ordered the latest three Doctor Who releases, or at least the latest three to go to pre-order, The Krotons, Planet of the Giants and The Greatest Show on Earth, I decided to have a glance at the Wikipedia's thorough page about the releases to see what's yet to go to preorder. Well:

First Doctor: after Giants, only the incomplete The Reign of Terror, Galaxy 4 and The Tenth Planet are left. We know the missing episodes of Terror are being animated and should be out by the end of the year. I'd be surprised if the newly found episode of Galaxy 4 isn't tethered to Tenth at some point.

Second Doctor: after The Krotons there's only the The Underwater Menace and The Ice Warriors left, both incomplete. No news yet on what's happening with those. Back in the day, there was an Ice Warrior VHS box set which included what was left of both these stories. Perhaps they'll do that again.

Third Doctor: The Ambassadors of Death, The Mind of Evil and Death to the Daleks. Daleks is out in June. The other other two are in the process of being colourised or not.

Fourth Doctor: Amazingly only Terror of the Zygons is left. Which is excellent because it means they're finishing on a story I haven't seen. The completed bits of Shada is being released as part of a "Legacy" set with the More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS documentary.

Fifth Doctor: All out.

Sixth Doctor: All out.

Seventh Doctor: All either out or available for pre-order.

Which means that after over ten years there are only nine stories waiting for release dates, with a few of those most likely as part of a box set.  I might just have room on the shelf after all.

Updated!  3/5/2013  Coincidentally, the Doctor Who news page have done the same exercise with more coherence and facts. The only unannounced story with nothing wrong with it, Terror of the Zygons is due in 2013. I have a sneaky suspicion it'll be the final release. Which means we have months worth of wounded stories ahead.  Unless someone finds Marco Polo or some such in the meantime.

"Sherlock in particular."

TV TV Tropes now has a page on Sherlock. It's immense:

"Ping Pong Naïveté:
Sherlock in particular. In A Study in Pink he remarks that the abandoned partner in a breakup will keep things for "sentiment", but in The Hounds of Baskerville five episodes later, John has to explain what sentiment is. Similarly, in The Blind Banker, he understands from subtle cues that a victim was sleeping with his PA, but in the same episode, John has to explain to him what a date is. And even then he doesn't know better than to crash one of John's. In The Blind Banker he deliberately charms Molly Hooper to manipulate her. It seems from this that he's aware she has a crush on him; in A Scandal in Belgravia he appears to be genuinely gobsmacked when he realises in the middle of a Christmas party that she does have a thing for him, meaning that although he's the world's most observant person, he's missed that she's been throwing herself at him for four episodes straight."

All of which is true but ignores the huge time differentials between events, sometimes in episodes during which, if their life is anything like mine, an understanding of how human life is maintained can change fundamentally.  Or the other, cleverer defence I'm going to think of and get back to you with.  If I remember.

"rodents that ‘specialise’"

Nature The University of Liverpool have a theory as to why rats and mice predominate over other rodents. Their mouths are multi-functional:

"Scientists at the University have found that mice and rats have evolved to gnaw with their front teeth and chew with their back teeth more successfully than rodents that ‘specialise’ in one or other of these biting mechanisms.

"Researchers designed a computer model to simulate the bite of rats to understand whether their skull shape or muscle arrangement was a major factor in their evolutionary success and global dominance, making them one of the most common pest species in the world."

Unfortunately this has translated into humanity as jobs that were once done by three people now being offered to one.

"Listen... I'm tired of your chickenshit games! I don't want hints... I need to know what you know."

The Prince of Wales and Robert Redford, a photo by The British Monarchy on Flickr.

the greatest films of all time

Film Roger Ebert's been asked to include his votes in Sight & Sound's decadal poll for the greatest films of all time. One of the films he's swapped in for this go around is certainly brave and certainly wouldn't be my choice. 

Since I have a spare half hour this evening before the usual fifty minutes of prevarication thinly disguised as current affairs programming (#newsnight) I thought I'd attempt my list.

 Again this isn't just favourite films. This is films which I objectively believe to be the best constructed in film history. Eep.

Citizen Kane (Welles)
Annie Hall (Allen)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
Last Year at Marienbad (Resnais)
Hamlet (Branagh)
All The President's Men (Pakula)
Rear Window (Hitchcock)
Blade Runner (Scott)
The Last Temptation of Christ (Scorsese)
Magnolia (Anderson)

Which is bloody outrageous frankly.  No Ozu.  No Coppola.  Nothing silent, what's worse Blade Runner and not Metropolis.  Here's some brief justifications.

Because it's Citizen Kane.
Because it would have been outrageous to include my original choice.
Because it's strangely the most life affirming of Bergman's films.
Because it's Last Year at Marienbad.
Because I needed to include something Shakespeare.
Because it rewrote narrative expectations.
Because it's subtle in its genius.
Because no other film is quite this immersive.
Because I couldn't get away with The Aviator.
Because of the middle hour.

No Tarkovsky either.  But I do still think Solaris is an all round better film than 2001.  Oh I could be at this all night.  Or for the rest of my life.  Should I have picked Wild Strawberries?

becomes corporeal. Offers hugs

Film Because nature, or at least the cinematic production cycle abhors a vacuum, the latest Charlie Kaufman-esque has downloaded from someone's Avid. In Ruby Sparks, a writer's fictional manic pixie dream girl becomes corporeal. Offers hugs:



Zoe Kazan's always been a MPDG who's bubbled under, fighting for supremacy with the likes of Claire Danes in the likes of Orson Welles and Me. This should put her mainstream.

The marketing on the film is clearly attempting to attract the Woody Allen audience too with this sparse poster of actors names and the title of the film ala Interiors or Husbands and Wives.

But such cynicism shouldn't suggest I'm not looking forward to this.  It's Weird Science with A-Levels and Weird Science is one of those films which helped to shepherd me through adolescence.

"a watchful eye"

Books  Mental Floss collects together some old photos of librarians from the good old days:

"During WWII, rationing registration often took place at local schools. Here we see one such event occurring in a school library in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The school principal, M.C. Demmy, handled the registration while the town librarian, Mrs. Searle, overlooked the process and kept a watchful eye on the library itself. This image reminds us that libraries often play important roles in communities that extend beyond the simple lending of books. Photo taken by Marjory Collins in 1942."

Even when I was trained in the mid-90s, librarianship was a profession and still is despite what our present government thinks.  Or the Chignecto-Central regional school board in Nova Scotia which has just fired all the school librarians.  It's a pleasure to see, judging by the comments, that they're still valued somewhere in the world.

"I had to rely on memory"

Theatre One of most expressive ideas in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and indeed most iconic of filmic images in Trauffaut's film adaptation is in the concept of memorizing entire books to save them for future generations. 

There's always been an aural tradition in storytelling, verse epics like Beowolf passed down through generations, but the idea of doing that for something like a Jane Austen novel feels like an even greater challenge.

 It's this I thought of when reading Emma Brockes's interview with a Manhattan theatre group who're producing the full text of The Great Gatsby on stage and how one of the actors, Scott Shepherd now knows the entire text off-by-heart proving that Bradbury's idea isn't so much of a fantasy:

"This was put more scarily to the test on stage, says Shepherd, when the book fell apart in his hands one evening. "We've only used two books for this show. One book became so deformed it was held together with duct tape. We had a superstitious attachment to it – the Book – and finally it turned into a taped-together sheaf of papers. Then we had a new book and that started to fall apart. One day, a chunk of chapters went flying out and slammed against the back wall. Fortunately, it was part of the book I'd already read. When they taped it back in, they taped it one page off. The next day I was reading, turned the page and there was a page missing. I had to rely on memory. And I did it."

"something which used to happen quite a lot"

Film Yesterday, I commented on Twitter that Lovefilm, one of the few things which is keeping me sane lately didn't turn around a disc I sent back on Friday on Saturday, something which used to happen quite a lot and wondered if it was a service change which happened at Easter.

Because I used the entertainment emergency service's Twitter name in the message, @lovefilm replied with the following which you may find useful and or interesting:

"We have a limited warehouse service on Saturday. Allocations might happen, but no discs will go out till Monday."

"It's been like that for a while though. Nothing changed at Easter"

In other words, Lovefilm's weekend turnaround service is gooone and has been gooone for ages.  One the one hand I'm pleased that workers are getting something related to a weekend off (even if I don't).  On the other I do miss receiving the odd DVD on a Monday.

Classic Marlowe and Shakespeare BBC Radio series, Vivat Rex, repeated on Radio 4 Extra starting tomorrow.

Astonishingly amazing news:

"Vivat Rex is an epic 26 part drama following the English Crown from Edward II's accession in 1307 to the birth of Elizabeth I. It is told through the adapted works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and other playwrights of the period. Narrated by Richard Burton, it has a celebrated cast including John Hurt, Michael Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. The programme starts Monday at 10am on Radio 4 Extra."

While the main thrust of the series is a run of Shakespeare's history plays ala An Age of Kings, it begins with the rarely recorded and certainly unavailable Edward II by Marlowe and what must be Edward III as co-written by Shakespeare.

More about it here in this two year old post at The Stage which also has an old publicity photo of Burton, a microphone and a crown.  .

Should also be available to listen to via the BBC's programme pages.

Classic Marlowe and Shakespeare BBC Radio series, Vivat Rex, repeated on Radio 4 Extra starting tomorrow.

Theatre Astonishingly amazing news. Classic Marlowe and Shakeseare BBC Radio series, Vivat Rex, repeated on Radio 4 Extra starting tomorrow:

"Vivat Rex is an epic 26 part drama following the English Crown from Edward II's accession in 1307 to the birth of Elizabeth I. It is told through the adapted works of Shakespeare, Marlowe and other playwrights of the period. Narrated by Richard Burton, it has a celebrated cast including John Hurt, Michael Redgrave and Derek Jacobi. The programme starts Monday at 10am on Radio 4 Extra."

While the main thrust of the series is a run of Shakespeare's history plays ala An Age of Kings, it begins with the rarely recorded and certainly unavailable Edward II by Marlowe and what must be Edward III as co-written by Shakespeare.

More about it here in this two year old post at The Stage which also has an old publicity photo of Burton, a microphone and a crown.

Should also be available to listen to via the BBC's programme pages.

"smaller, actually, at just 5ft 3in"

Books The Scotsman meets Brooke Magnanti at a whiskey festival for which she's the guest patron:

"Still, here she is, larger than life (smaller, actually, at just 5ft 3in) swirling a glass of Benromach and charming a steady flow of fans. Men and women, young and old, line up to get their books signed. The covers are emblazoned with Billie Piper, who played Belle in the (equally controversial) ITV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, sprawling on a bed wearing nothing but lingerie and a come-hither expression. All in all, it’s a surreal spectacle: a bunch of strangers, me included, who know every detail of this 36-year-old woman’s sex life. Their questions are polite, familiar, anodyne even. One woman asks whether she thinks Piper has been airbrushed on the cover, another how she is settling in to Fort William, where she moved with her husband after ‘coming out’ in 2009. Someone else addresses her as Belle by mistake. “The hardest part of coming out is having to keep doing it,” she tells me."

Having read Brooke's blog back in the day, but I'm not sure if I'd want to revisit.  Sometimes people are about who they are now.

"your blogger has been silent for a while"

About Am I experiencing Blogger burnout? I don't necessarily see myself in this otherwise corporate directed check-list but I suppose since I'm your blogger, you're the one who's in the best position to judge:

"The second red flag to look out for is a lack of consistent updates or a mass quantity of submitted blogs right before a deadline. A blogger who is not burned out usually will remain consistent with postings, whether that is one a day or a few times a week. If your blogger has been silent for a while, you may want to identify and rectify the problem before moving forward."

Does this happen much? Do people get pulled into offices, virtual or otherwise and asked, "Are you ok? Your blogging's really gone down hill ..."