This Blog In September 2001: Day Five.

People My paradoxical personality is wrapping itself around the Kate Winslet story. I'm in a spin because I hate celebrity gossip - most of it lies or statistics. But here is someone I genuinely like as an actress and a person - and it's hard to see someone go through this kind of thing in the glare of the media. Rather like Minnie Driver, Winslet is an actress first - anything else is a by-product. We have a girl who has appeared in one of the biggest (although not greatest) films of all time. Yet decided not to even try and build on the position (realising a once in a lifetime moment) and made a string of quite personal small films of greater quality and depth which in the stretch of a career she is more likely to be remembered for (something co-star Leo would do well to remember). I mean you've got love the fact that after Titanic one of the only TV shows she 'did' was 'Ready Steady Cook'. Libby Brooks insightful article in 'The Guardian' today uses slightly longer words to make the same point: "Kate Winslet has always stood apart from the celebrity panoply of talents, teases and tragic heroines. A redoubtable actor, she radiates a fearless emotional honesty in person as well as in performance. Intelligent, immoderate and inconsistent, she calls a spade a bloody shovel." *

Book The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Film is a string of essays describing the problems involved in adapting what is essentially a theatrical form to cinema. It's an academic work and so the writing is quite dry at times and because we have essays we have repetition - how many times you can write about Olivier's 'Richard III'. There are three essays of note. 'Videos and its paradoxes' looks at the use of video as a study aid, and how the productions on show can colour the student's view of the play - so Anthony Hopkins characterisation of Othello in the BBC production is wildly different to Lawrence Fishburne's in the recent film - neither is necessarily correct, but the student might not make that connection. 'Filming Shakespeare's history: three films of Richard III' offers the best and most honest review of Pacino's 'Looking for Richard' I've read, treating the film on it's own merits and not as a version of the actual play. Finally, 'Flamboyant realist: Kenneth Branagh' again tries to re-dress the critical mauling his films have been subjected to - there really isn't anything like the four hour 'Hamlet'. The one disappointment is 'Shakespeare's cinematic offshoots' which looks at adaptations which are re-imaginings of the text. It's cursory, anodyne and misses out 'In The Bleak Midwinter' and 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'. Why?

Games Unlike, seemingly the whole entire rest of the country, my first computer was an Acorn Electron. No 'Mony On The Run' or 'Horace Goes Skiing' for me - my favourites were 'Chuckie Egg' and 'Snapper'. So I've gone positively cock-a-hoop over The Stairway To Hell, the site of an Electron emulator. There isn't anything better than watching my Pentium dissolve into the familiar black screen with Acorn sign. As well as images of every game imaginable, there is the option of plugging a tape deck into your sound card and loading games straight from cassette....not that Sphinx Adventure was ever worth that wait...

* Sigh.  I had planned to keep comments to a minimum, but it's important to note I was not stalking this woman.

This Blog In September 2001: Day Four.

Commuter Life The most striking person I know lives around the corner from me. I know not her name or where she is from. I've heard her speak but once. She is a girl out of time. She's modelled herself on the paintings of Rossetti, her red hair tied up in a bun, her skin a milky white. She wears flowery dresses, blue cardigans and a velvet coat of emerald. She carries a crochet shopping bag. She's breath-taking as she weaves about the modern world, amongst the business suits and tracksuits, seemingly unconcerned by pollution and concrete. I saw her on the train the other day and it seemed incongruous that she would be travelling anywhere. To me she always just seems to be just there - and that's where I hope she'll stay. *

feeling listless classics I watched this Metafilter thread develop in real time. I was amazed to find this page anywhere. The gentleman involved has decided that widescreen films actually censor the picture. Not a serious point, but he goes at it hammer and nails. So I could not post it to Mefi - and found out actually how many people visit the blue screen heaven. When I initially found the page, the counter (now sadly broken) read 41 hits. By the time the Mefiers had been at it - well you can see... I'd keep popping back every so often after the thread was long gone, and it eventually reached over 5000 - before mysteriously returning to zero... **

* Sigh.  I had planned to keep comments to a minimum, but it's important to note I was not stalking this woman.  It was supposed to be a kind of "slice of life" piece.

** Of course I now know that Mr Lettershlocking was partially correct.  Some widescreen films on VHS & DVD did matte out the top and bottom of the image (see the sterling work of YouTuber Outside The Frame).  The flipper DVD of Top Gun literally does this, with the widescreen version just cropping the top and bottom of the image on the full screen side of the disc and still not fulfilling the director's vision (or whatever) as was the ambition elsewhere.

This Blog In September 2001: Day Three.

Time A bit previous with this - but it's September. Already. In the year 2001. I remember as anyone whose left full time education will, what a milestone this month was. Never mind your birthday, as you entered your school or college you were one year older and you felt it. The signs were obvious. Each year you were drifting further backwards in the assembly hall (until, if you went to my school, you were on a balcony, hidden from view). You'd look out across the school yard and see even more people younger than you. Suddenly you found that the subjects you were follow would eventually have some bearing on the rest of your life. At college the work would become progressively harder, and there would be more of it. Then after over a decade and a half - it stopped - and September became just another month. Until this time. This time I realised I'm going to be twenty-seven in two months. I'll officially be old. Or what I thought was an old person when I was eight.

Review! The Brit-com Coupling's second series begins tonight. Unfairly referred to as a rip-off of 'Friends' (mostly by me) the first series went from a shaky start to a must see programme. More likely to take risks than the American show (and at times much funnier), other than the premise of three men & three women talking about sex, the writer Steven Moffat takes the format in another direction. The episode everyone talks about features a mis-understanding regarding the advances or not of a girl who speaks Hebrew. As Mark Lawson writes in The Guardian: "The point about Moffat is that, unusually among television sitcom writers, he works in the genre of farce. Critics have often suggested that farce is impossible to write in a contemporary setting because the plot motor of the form - the need to lie to prevent loss of face or exposure - is implausible in a society which has ever less sense of shame." This was a stumbling block Moffat encountered with the great lost sit-com of the Eighties, 'Joking Apart' - which at one point played out the classic plotline of having three different lovers in different rooms - something Oscar Wilde was a dab hand at. Let's hope this new series gets the airing it deserves... (Update! Just saw the first episode - gives a whole new meaning to 'I'd give an arm and a leg...')

Liverpool life I thought I'd leave you today with something I've always noticed but which is never referred to. One of the great pubs in Liverpool is 'The Pilgrim', close to the Anglican Cathedral. An old style drinking hole, it's only concessions to modern life are adverts for Red Bull all over the walls and a massive new jukebox graced with recent chart hits. Patrons sit in booths at tables covered in mosaics and they cook one of the greatest English breakfasts known to man. The brick walls are broken up by giant mirrors. At some time other other an artist, possibly at the local art college, has been commissioned to draw giant pencil drawing of 'The Beatles' at various moments of their career and these have been glued to the mirrors with clear Fablon. So we have the Lonely Hearts Club Band; John and Yoko; Paul and Linda; and at the centre, the four on 'The Ed Sullivan Show' - only actually, when you take closer look - it's John, Ringo, George and for some unaccountable reason, the Shakepearean actor Derek Jacobi in a Beatles wig. Take a look next time you're in there and wonder if that artist was watching re-runs of 'I Claudius' at the time...

This Blog In September 2001: Day Two

Sculpture The Henry Moore Institute in Leeds is an exhibition and study venue dedicated to three dimensional art objects. For me, it's one of those places I'll always have a connection to, not just because I worked there, not just because this was the place which cemented my interest in art, but also what it represented for some of the time at university. If my first year was messy, the second was even worse - the house I lived in was from hell, full of people I didn't get along with at all (stories to come you can assume). But when I knew I couldn't go home, there was one place I could go which was a place of calm - away from them, away from study, away from the world. Even on the days I wasn't working there I knew I could drop in, see my friends, and feel the world fall away. This was the place where art first made me cry * and where I went to my first private view.

One of the strengths of the gallery is the connection to artists. I've always been more interested in the production of art, rather than the subject itself, so I was always impressed by the fact the institute could get world renowned sculptors to visit to talk about their work. At the end of this month, their new exhibition 'Close Encounters: The Sculptor's Studio in the Age Of The Camera' looks at photographic representations of the artist's studio. Such pictures can be earth shattering - to see what are probably some of the most famous works of art in one space together before they disappeared to the four corners - some of them before ink has dried on the sketches or the varnish has dried on the carvings. If ever there was a show to get me back to Leeds this is it...[via The Henry Moore Institute Newsletter]

* Georgina Starr's Crying is still one of my favourite pieces, a devastatingly naked burst of emotion at a time when such things couldn't simply be posted online.  Starr recently posted on Instagram about how a gallery displaying the piece created an uncanny AI replica.  She says, "The replicant disturbs me, like peering into a broken looking glass."  I've also just noticed she actually quotes from my original blogpost on her website's review page.  

This Blog In September 2001: Day One

Life  With the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 upcoming, I thought I'd repost what was on this blog exactly twenty-five years ago this month, warts and all.  When these were written, I would have been twenty-six, old enough to know better but not old enough to understand why I should know better.  At the time, there was also a "Blog of the Day" feature but I'll remove any which aren't still online to retain the writer's privacy (even if they're on the Wayback Machine).  Some links will also be lightly updated with a more contemporary source if necessary (such as linking to a song on YouTube).

Erm... When I was a student (mid-nineties) I knew two things. The first was that by the year 2000 my life would be complete. The second was that club music in all it's forms was the work of the devil to draw the populace away from real music. And I pretty much kept that opinion for much of the rest of the decade. Then last year something strange happened. I was standing in record shop and the DJ began to play 'GrooveJet' by Spiller featuring Sophie. Here was a record almost designed to talk me around to the Ibiza way of thinking. A dance record with a good lyric and melody of sorts which also had the kind of structure I'd never heard before. I walked to the counter and bought the thing straight away - and listened to it five times as soon as I was home.

My distrust of dance music still exists, much of it seeming too easy for words. There are the exceptions - the crossover music which I now feel myself not only appreciating but going positively radio gaga over. I'm becoming particular impressed by R&B. During my long and delayed train journey home tonight, I was welcome of the company of Mary J Blige and her 1997 album, 'share my world'. I should not like this album.  But here I am, listening to it again whilst I write this. I want to gas on about her vocal range (extraordinary) or the production (as you'd expect, with glimpses of genius) And as I 'groove' along to the track 'round and round' I've come to a startling conclusion, and believe me, this is something of a revelation...there isn't one type of music I don't like....

Actually that may not be true. I'd run a mile from Kenny Rogers, James Galway and in fact most people with beards. And I'll draw the line at boy bands. And Atomic Kitten (mention number three on this weblog - six to go possibly).* But when it comes to everything else, I think I can - if not rave - at least understand. There isn't probably anything better at one o'clock in the morning having had many beers than throwing your weight around S Club 7's 'Reach for the Stars'. The rush of a Slipnot concert will be extreme. And quiet stylings of Vangelis lead you into believing that a calmer world is possible. The only boundary in music should be quality...

Interview!  Nelly Furtado interviewed by Caroline Sullivan of 'The Guardian': "She begins chirpily and stays that way, answering even facetious questions with a desire to provide whatever's required. "So you're like a bird? What kind?" I inquire. "A seagull," she says seriously. "I was really inspired by a great book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull [the drippy new age classic by Richard Bach]." Journalists find it difficult to get a handle on Nelly - she can't be clumped in with Alanis, Christina, J-Lo or Tori because she's all four, with a hint of Natalie - and looks unnervingly like Courtney.

* This is what passed as a running gag in the early days.  There have been a few since then mostly in relation to the Sugababes.