"I wanted to find a place in Islington, but also felt that I needed time to look around and wait for the perfect property. Perhaps I should rent first? I offloaded my tedious residential worries on Douglas one afternoon as we sat in his study staring at a Mac and wondering, for the thousandth time, if we could stop it going "boing" and closing down whenever we tried to do something unusual with it. "Why don't you stay here for a year?" he suggested. "You can house-sit for me. I've decided to go round the world for 12 months seeking out rare animals."The original radio series is available at the website for the new documentary.
Showing posts with label Stephen Fry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Fry. Show all posts
challenge
Nature Stephen Fry takes on the challenge of taking another last chance to see. Something I didn't know:
links for 2009-08-13
- Lovely interview, sounds exactly as you'd hope she would. Compares radio studios to Forbidden Planet.
- "A group of farmers' wives in a remote village in Turkey have transformed their community through theatre - and it seems Hamlet is just the start."
- Why couldn't I have been born with Stephen Fry's memory? I read incessantly, but retain so little.
Doesn't feature much different from what we've heard before
Anna Pickard's excellent Comic-Con dispatches: "While some of us spent most of the day with a large sleeping gentleman dribbling on our shoulder on one side and a lady eating jerky with her mouth open on the other; there were many other things happening around the San Diego convention centre."
Stephen's Dr Who script finally to enter production. Honestly. "There is no clue as to the title of the story, nor the precise location of the scene. All it is possible to surmise is that it appears to be a conversation between two people, Dr Who and the Black Guardian."
Jonathan Rosenbaum's 1998 critique of the AFI's list of the "best" 100 US films of all time. Sadly he doesn't also tell us which films from the past ten years he might add.
There have been two albums apparently. Plenty to choose from…
Intelligent piece. Doesn't feature much different from what we've heard before, but it makes a change to hear him talking about Doctor Who and that other thing with the thing. Plus can you believe: Russell T. Davies interviewed by The AV Club.
Good to have a preview of what Marcus's spot is going to be ahead of schedule.
… which basically branded Richard Herring a racist. I love The Guardian. But sometimes it makes me grind my teeth so much, my fillings might fall out. Someone get Siobhan Butterworth on the phone.
The Daily Mail wonders why it's readership might be stressed out. Here are a few suggestions …
Long range Star Trek fans will remember ion engines being chatted about in spin-off novels and books in the 90s. Warp drives the century after next then?
And the answer seems to be "Yes, well no, well maybe. Listen …"
Gawker asks Wurtzel and her answer seems to be: "Yes, well no, well maybe. Listen …"
links for 2009-07-22
Liverpool to Manchester in thirty minutes. Blimey.
The US has its @stephenfry & @wossy moment.
How the other hemisphere lives.
"I had quite a difficult slot – it was 0200 to 0300 on Sunday 19th. So there was a sizable crowd in Trafalgar Square who were not terribly sober… they wanted to be entertained (is everything Britain's Got Talent?). I knew that the weekend night slots were likely to be more difficult but when you are allocated a slot your only option is to accept it or refuse it – there is no chance of swapping it. So I had decided to do it. A family member had said that the evening weekend slots were "skittles for drunks", and so it partly proved."
Very sorry to hear this. Good luck everyone.
I was waiting for this. Hadley Freeman (who I love) on the new look. She's wrong sadly. She's condemning the man rather than his suit, because he's not David Tennant (who she loves). Best comment underneath? "That's in fashion this season? Really? Everyone round here's wearing jeans and t-shirt."
.. and without the beard and hair (and I hope he dioesn't mind me saying this) looks exactly (almost) like he did at school.
Frankie, do you remember me?
Is that before or after he died? #torchwood
It's Doctor Who Blog and Message-Board BINGO! (I may have written myself into all four corners)
"Enhanced her voice may be, but on the one song she actually begins singing, "Tonight I Celebrate My Love," she has trouble pronouncing the word celebrate which was strange, considering her background."
Whilst I cast about trying to decide what to put in the regular weekend Spotify spot here's a fantastic set of links which demonstrates that no matter how deep you think you've reached into the catalogue there's always something you've missed. Is it wrong that I like the album of Britney covers so much? (Yes.)
The late king of pop recreated in potatoes and tomatoes. See also a cauliflower sheep and a penguin made from aubergine.
Good article, though it fails to mention that the whole Blair Witch project was killed stone dead by Blair Witch 2 which committed the sin of not taking its own premise seriously.
I still have the promo DVD this appeared on — it was given away with the first issue of DVD Review. I wish I was still this excited about them and less suspicious of Blu-Ray. It can't be that much better can it?
The final line in this article is probably why I send myself on these quests.
"Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;"
Books Up until recently, it was generally accepted that William Shakespeare’s final play was The Tempest; there was some historic evidence, not least that it was the first play to appear in the Folio that was published just after his death and how best to commemorate a genius than with their latest, perhaps last work. There’s also the romantic notion that Prospero’s final speech isn’t simply concluding the play but the writer’s career, one final humble exclamation to his audience before retirement:
“[..] Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair,
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so, that it assaults
Mercy itself, and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.”
Sadly, as Jonathan Bate’s brilliant biography, Soul of the Age, demonstrates, Shakespeare’s retirement was a myth. He continued working right through to his death, his hand potentially seen all over the place, his final work most probably the collaboration with upcoming playwright John Fletcher, Two Noble Kinsmen. After all, the man died at the age of fifty-two. He was wealthy, he didn’t need to work, but like similarly successful artists across the years, the impulse to create overwhelmed the potential for leisure.
Bate’s motive here (just as it was in the RSC complete works completed simultaneously) is mythbusting, though he comes not bury Shakespeare but to praise him. Taking Jacques’s seven ages of man speech from As You Like It as a backbone (“All The World’s A Stage…”), he traces through Shakespeare’s life extrapolating him onto those ages, but rather than offering a straight biography, he instead charts his external world, his historical context, gathering the collective miscellany of experiences he must have had in order to write the plays, poems and sonnets.
For example: many biographies give short shrift to his school days; they aren’t well documented and often there’s a preference to motor on to the juicy gossip, his marriage to Anne Hathaway and thence to London. Instead, Bate, using what evidence is available and applying a curriculum from a similar school, conducts a forensic year on year investigation into how Shakespeare may have been educated listing the books he must have studied and then, and here’s where it gets interesting, demonstrates how that learning blossoms within the plays, notably Plutarch (Anthony & Cleopatra, Coriolanus).
From there he sets about attempting to construct the personal library Shakespeare must have kept, suggesting books he must have read in translation and in their own language providing yet more examples from the texts, even to the point of suggesting which edition of the bible he would have had to hand, the heavily annotated Genova. The point he returns to again and again, is that far from the words and ideas popping into the bard’s mind, he was instead a literary magpie, grabbing snatches of language and ideas and themes and slotting them in to fit his own aims.
In other words, he was a writer. The effect should be to decrease our appreciation of the man and his work because it slowly becomes apparent that his original thought was rather less and the legend suggests. But curiously it simply increases our appreciation because though Shakespeare would often take old plays and texts and rewrite them, hammering in all of these allusions, the taste with which this was accomplished and the psychological, thematic and dramatic depth that shimmers through them is breathtaking.
And so Bate continues, explaining how the court scenes will have been influenced by his own brushes with Stratford law in cases related to land rights and how sexual scandal, which appears to have been rife in town, bubbles under in the likes of Measure for Measure. We’re given a thorough description of his contemporaries, his rivals and friends and so the circumstance in which many of the plays would have been written or revived, forever underscoring that though Shakespeare was the greatest writer of most times, he was also a businessman.
Though the cover suggests that it’s from the popular history genre, Bate never shies away from intellectual rigour; in places it reads like one of Stephen Fry’s deviations on QI, as he enjoys the opportunity to demonstrate the depth of his knowledge and simply lets fact after fact spill out on top of one another. Sometimes that can lead the text into areas that are difficult to pursue without a strong knowledge of the text (most impenetrably in a passage about The Tempest which I read twice and still couldn’t quite follow).
But turn a few pages and there’s something new; a useful discussion of the sonnets which, simply by unfurling the publication history (posthumous, exploitative) untangles the idea that in their present form they tell a biographical story of the artist’s amorous extra-marital entanglements, suggesting that there may have been more than one boy, who the dark lady might be and that in any case that these poems may not have been expressing Shakespeare’s own feelings but those of a fictional construct no more realistic than Romeo, Juliet, Hamlet or Falstaff ...
links for 2009-07-12
- "We all know that advert that is on every fucking dvd..."
- James Moran, Torchwood writer talks about the "fan" reaction. Ianto Jones was a *television* character for goodness sake.
- My (only?) favourite Tory talks about the why.
- Professor David Reynolds reflects on the experience of writing and presenting his 90-part history series.
links for 2009-07-09
- Gary Ross is rewriting Spider-Man 4. Wow. Having had to study his work at university, he's essentially made a career out of 'reimagining' Frank Capra's filmography. Spider-man seems closest to 'John Doe'. At least we can rest easy about it being half literate.
- These seem to be straight documentaries rather than something presenter led which is a bold step for the channel -- this looks like the kind of thing which you'd expect to turn up on BBC Four or at the very least BBC Two. It certainly makes a change from the usual routine of Rolf Harris patronising us for half an hour. But which end of peak time will it be?
- Random if amusing speculation. Despite an annoying start Chrissie turned into one of my favourite Whoniverse characters. Any woman who thinks a cherry necklace is acceptable is ok in my book.
- "The next best thing to being at the match, npower Cricket in the Park allows you, your friends and family to have the best day out of the summer watching the live Ashes action on a big screen with thousands of other fans ... plus much more."
- Includes a hilarious comment from Kevin Smith on the subject of the failed Clerks tv pilot: "Keri Russell was in it as some chick who worked in a tanning parlor that was also in the strip mall. I was, like, ‘There’s no tanning parlor in the strip mall!’
- "The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you." Having had some nice comments about the Torchwood reviews which I thought were the rubbish late night meanderings of a tired illiterate this is something I have to keep remembering. But do I really want to be the Lester Bangs of the Whoniverse?
- Calvin Harris asked to open jam jar as part of ITV's Wireless Festival. Predictable non-hilarity ensues.
- "Here we are. Gathered together in the very lecture theatre where Henry Morton Stanley once told an enraptured world of his momentous meeting with Dr. Livingstone. Charles Darwin was a member and gave talks in this same hall. Sir Richard Burton lectured here and John Hanning Speke … spoke ..."
- Last week, The Stage's TV blog offered some excellent Torchwood related content. In here, Scott describes the rationale and comments on the web reaction.
unable to get my bearings
Art On Tuesday I visited the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester.
It’s the first time I’ve been to that end of the city since I left university in 2006. Walking up Oxford Road from the station, I remembered Graduation Day, standing outside the main hall in my gown and mortar board waiting to go in and meet Anna Ford. Seeing the name of my course base, the various buildings where I attended lectures and seminars, I felt, well alright, I felt like I’d come home. I hadn’t realised how much I missed the place, even though I hadn’t lived there, just commuted. It was more to do with the person I was within those buildings, learning, working towards something. It would be nice to have that back some time.
Past the university and into the precinct beyond and into the Gemini Café for lunch. I’ve been told this café is world famous, and I suppose it must be considering how many international students have drifted through the doors. It is as you’d expect – 60s brown rigged tables and chairs bolted to the floor, surrounding a giant kitchen dishing out everything from pizza to carrot cake. The first and only other time I ate there was in the first week, with a group of people from my faculty, when friendships were being made and I realised that, because I wasn’t living there, it wouldn’t really be with me (and so it turned out). I was adventurous and ordered a fry-up. Having skipped breakfast, I devoured the bacon and sausage, wondered why they’d put the fried egg onto the plate upside down. I also drank a large mug of black coffee.
Which is where the trouble started.
I don’t know if it’s my age, but my caffeine tolerance has collapsed. I’m drinking tea as I write this and feeling a little bit tingly. This was, a strong, sterrrong cup of coffee. Stronger even than the kind I make at home using my cheap Argos filter coffee maker. Rich, full of flavour and totally toxic.
By the time I entered the gallery, I was why-errd.
Strolling up the road to the gallery which isn’t that far away from the café, I felt perfectly fine, but as I stumbled up stairs into the foyer, I could sense something was wrong and by the time I was inside, reality seemed to have disassociated itself. I wasn’t high, at least I don’t think so. It was more in the region of being wide awake and half asleep both at the same time. I knew what I wanted to do, absorbed everything that was happening in my surroundings, functional, able to think about my ‘condition’ but not in a position to do anything about it. I could tell that I must have had an aura by the wide-eyed, slightly scared look the girl working in the shop gave me as I shuffled in looking for change for the lockers so that I could store my coat and bag. It’s impossible to describe any of this without sounding melodramatic or unlikely, but when you’re talking to yourself and having to think whole seconds before asking someone a question and these aren’t your normal modes of behaviour, you know that something has gone wrong, and there’s nothing to do but enjoy the experience.
According to Edward Morris’s book, Public Art Collections In North West England, as with the Lady Lever in Port Sunlight, the gallery is named for its patron Sir Joseph Whitworth, a local engineer famous for standardising the design of screw threads and revolutionising the making of gun barrels. When he died in 1887, Whitworth left his technology and art collections to the city on the understanding that they built some architecture in which to house them to do some public good. The council wanted nothing to do with it, more interested in building some architecture for their own collections, which left the status of the estate in jeopardy. Still, land was bought and the Trustees commissioned the present building, and by 1908, Manchester had a second gallery for the public. Bequests flooded in from throughout the country, but as is often the case, funding dried up and eventually in 1958, the University of Manchester (which had nicely filled up the rest of the local area) acquired the place, remodelled the interior, and developed its new dual purpose as public art space and teaching tool.
The shift in architectural styles certainly didn’t help my condition. The exterior, designed by JW & J Beaumont, is of the style you’d expect from that period, all columns, red brick and neo-gothic styling. The interior, apart from some structural holdovers at the entrance, looks like it was copied from the rejected design for the lair of a 60s Bond villain, with modernist wood panelling throughout, apart from an extension in which mixes a white box aesthetic with the original back wall, its now salmon coloured brick as much a feature as the paintings hung nearby. It’s the kind of mishmash I love in an art gallery, where part of the excitement is simply wondering where a doorway, stairs or corridor will take you next, and what treasures will be there. I’ve visited before, but my caffeine confusion and generally poor memory meant I only had a hazy notion as to where everything was and the display policy didn’t help either.
Like Oldham Museum, so that the Whitworth can give a fair presentation of its collection within its relatively small display space, instead of a permanent display, it has a rolling programme of themed exhibitions. Even though they have a rather extraordinary collection which includes works by Turner, Watts, Picasso, Blake, Riley, Moore, Hepworth, Hockney and Lanyon, they’re not all on display at the same time. Not only does this mean that the less well known perhaps but just as interesting parts of the collection are revealed, it’s audience can never be bored because there’s always something new to see. Later on in the visit, I saw a rather wonderful collection of prints and drawings by Walter Crane who defined the iconography of the union movement; a show of works paintings by Lynn Hershman Leeson and monoprints by Tracey Emin and ‘Putting on the Glitz’ a display of outrageous wallpaper in primary colours and gold leaf and art deco narratives pulled from the walls of old hotels.
Initially unable to get my bearings, I decided to begin with the main reason for my visit (other than ticking the gallery off the list), the touring Subversive Spaces exhibition which I’ve already mentioned on the blog and in particular the new installation from Gregor Schneider, Kinderzimmer. As the publicity describes, the artist has taken the usually sunlit South Gallery and “attempted to create a replica of a nursery that was part of a village demolished to make way for an opencast mine near where the artist lives in the Rhineland.” It’s a popular work. Visitors are only allowed to enter the space on their own and are handed raffle tickets with an appointed time on them in order to gain entrance.
When I ambled up to entrance at about a quarter to twelve I was told that all of the tickets had gone until 2:30. But I persisted, assuming that someone would surely forget to turn up and the invigilator luckily realised that because the school group which had block booked ahead of me had left early I could go in right then. He warned me that it was very dark inside, that it wasn’t for everyone and that if I felt uncomfortable, I should shout and he’d be in with a torch. I thanked him and shook his hand. To recap, I’m on a caffeine buzz, feel like my heads about to explode and I’m about to be deprived of one of my more useful senses. And I shook his hand. I’m a firm believer that even art galleries and especially installations can be spoilt, so if you’re intending to visit, I’d stop reading here for a couple of paragraphs so you can experience it for yourself.
As for the rest of you: just past the small tunnel that led from the entrance I found myself staring into a void. Schneider has somehow managed to create a space that feels completely safe and dangerous at the same time, rendering a sighted person blind even though their eyes are wide open, unable to see anything, not even their own body. Just about. Slowly as I edged forward, involuntarily giggling and say ‘Oh my god’ over and over under my breath like a cheerleader being chased through the woods by a slasher in a slasher film, I noticed a rectangular light ahead. Edging closer I realised it was a door. Not knowing if it was the exit, I looked about for some other light and noticed some shading to the left. Walking towards it, I realised it was the reflection of a window onto the wall.
Through the window is a brightly lit room, the nursery presumably, covered in pink wallpaper. It is sparse except for a mattress on the floor and the kind of place you’d expected to be locked in if you were being forced to go cold turkey for an addiction to something stronger than coffee. I could see the door and decided I wanted to go inside. Picking my way backwards, my hand out at right angles stroking the wall, which was covered in black felt presumably for safety, I realised Schneider’s design circumvents our normal perception of space and that the entrance to the room to the window had been shortened by the lack of light; I’d walked further than I thought, which meant that I might not be looking at one room. When I reached the door and entered, it was completely empty. The mattress had gone. There were two rooms. “Wow.” Suitably impressed and knowing that my time was at an end, I made my way, as safely as I could, to the exit, where another invigilator was waiting to usher in the next victim.
The mistake? That was my first exhibit. The rest of the visit happened after I’d had my perception shot to pieces and somewhere between that, the caffeine and the nagging mood of nostalgia the rest of the visit was somewhat wasted on me. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t latch onto anything, blundering around hazily in a daze knowing that I was in now in no condition to appreciate my environment. The last thing I needed to see at that moment was something like Calin Dan’s Sample City video which features the artist strolling about a city with a door strapped to his back or Anna Gaskell’s dissonant photographs of contortionists seemingly deceased on the floor of a stately home. Elsewhere in the gallery I stood for ages trying to focus on Ian Stephenson’s Screen Painting I, an insane example of pointillism, which looks like the kind of work a child might make if they could glue hundreds and thousands to a canvas or what might happen if you could shake a George Seurat painting like a magnetic beard game and watch the figures and landscape merge into one.
I was perfectly fine about ten minutes after leaving the gallery, at exactly the moment I misjudged crossing the road and was nearly run over by a bus. I did consider returning, but decided I needed to put some distance between me and that room in terms of distance and between me and the gallery in time. I certainly won’t wait two years to return, but at least until there’s some new exhibitions. I’ve already made a list of things I’ll need to do to survive: be as awake as possible, get a bus up Oxford Road and definitely not drink any coffee beforehand. Or at all, ever again. Well, maybe sometimes, but certainly not before entering a darkened room. Unless it’s my bedroom. Isn’t life complicated?
It’s the first time I’ve been to that end of the city since I left university in 2006. Walking up Oxford Road from the station, I remembered Graduation Day, standing outside the main hall in my gown and mortar board waiting to go in and meet Anna Ford. Seeing the name of my course base, the various buildings where I attended lectures and seminars, I felt, well alright, I felt like I’d come home. I hadn’t realised how much I missed the place, even though I hadn’t lived there, just commuted. It was more to do with the person I was within those buildings, learning, working towards something. It would be nice to have that back some time.
Past the university and into the precinct beyond and into the Gemini Café for lunch. I’ve been told this café is world famous, and I suppose it must be considering how many international students have drifted through the doors. It is as you’d expect – 60s brown rigged tables and chairs bolted to the floor, surrounding a giant kitchen dishing out everything from pizza to carrot cake. The first and only other time I ate there was in the first week, with a group of people from my faculty, when friendships were being made and I realised that, because I wasn’t living there, it wouldn’t really be with me (and so it turned out). I was adventurous and ordered a fry-up. Having skipped breakfast, I devoured the bacon and sausage, wondered why they’d put the fried egg onto the plate upside down. I also drank a large mug of black coffee.
Which is where the trouble started.
I don’t know if it’s my age, but my caffeine tolerance has collapsed. I’m drinking tea as I write this and feeling a little bit tingly. This was, a strong, sterrrong cup of coffee. Stronger even than the kind I make at home using my cheap Argos filter coffee maker. Rich, full of flavour and totally toxic.
By the time I entered the gallery, I was why-errd.
Strolling up the road to the gallery which isn’t that far away from the café, I felt perfectly fine, but as I stumbled up stairs into the foyer, I could sense something was wrong and by the time I was inside, reality seemed to have disassociated itself. I wasn’t high, at least I don’t think so. It was more in the region of being wide awake and half asleep both at the same time. I knew what I wanted to do, absorbed everything that was happening in my surroundings, functional, able to think about my ‘condition’ but not in a position to do anything about it. I could tell that I must have had an aura by the wide-eyed, slightly scared look the girl working in the shop gave me as I shuffled in looking for change for the lockers so that I could store my coat and bag. It’s impossible to describe any of this without sounding melodramatic or unlikely, but when you’re talking to yourself and having to think whole seconds before asking someone a question and these aren’t your normal modes of behaviour, you know that something has gone wrong, and there’s nothing to do but enjoy the experience.
According to Edward Morris’s book, Public Art Collections In North West England, as with the Lady Lever in Port Sunlight, the gallery is named for its patron Sir Joseph Whitworth, a local engineer famous for standardising the design of screw threads and revolutionising the making of gun barrels. When he died in 1887, Whitworth left his technology and art collections to the city on the understanding that they built some architecture in which to house them to do some public good. The council wanted nothing to do with it, more interested in building some architecture for their own collections, which left the status of the estate in jeopardy. Still, land was bought and the Trustees commissioned the present building, and by 1908, Manchester had a second gallery for the public. Bequests flooded in from throughout the country, but as is often the case, funding dried up and eventually in 1958, the University of Manchester (which had nicely filled up the rest of the local area) acquired the place, remodelled the interior, and developed its new dual purpose as public art space and teaching tool.
The shift in architectural styles certainly didn’t help my condition. The exterior, designed by JW & J Beaumont, is of the style you’d expect from that period, all columns, red brick and neo-gothic styling. The interior, apart from some structural holdovers at the entrance, looks like it was copied from the rejected design for the lair of a 60s Bond villain, with modernist wood panelling throughout, apart from an extension in which mixes a white box aesthetic with the original back wall, its now salmon coloured brick as much a feature as the paintings hung nearby. It’s the kind of mishmash I love in an art gallery, where part of the excitement is simply wondering where a doorway, stairs or corridor will take you next, and what treasures will be there. I’ve visited before, but my caffeine confusion and generally poor memory meant I only had a hazy notion as to where everything was and the display policy didn’t help either.
Like Oldham Museum, so that the Whitworth can give a fair presentation of its collection within its relatively small display space, instead of a permanent display, it has a rolling programme of themed exhibitions. Even though they have a rather extraordinary collection which includes works by Turner, Watts, Picasso, Blake, Riley, Moore, Hepworth, Hockney and Lanyon, they’re not all on display at the same time. Not only does this mean that the less well known perhaps but just as interesting parts of the collection are revealed, it’s audience can never be bored because there’s always something new to see. Later on in the visit, I saw a rather wonderful collection of prints and drawings by Walter Crane who defined the iconography of the union movement; a show of works paintings by Lynn Hershman Leeson and monoprints by Tracey Emin and ‘Putting on the Glitz’ a display of outrageous wallpaper in primary colours and gold leaf and art deco narratives pulled from the walls of old hotels.
Initially unable to get my bearings, I decided to begin with the main reason for my visit (other than ticking the gallery off the list), the touring Subversive Spaces exhibition which I’ve already mentioned on the blog and in particular the new installation from Gregor Schneider, Kinderzimmer. As the publicity describes, the artist has taken the usually sunlit South Gallery and “attempted to create a replica of a nursery that was part of a village demolished to make way for an opencast mine near where the artist lives in the Rhineland.” It’s a popular work. Visitors are only allowed to enter the space on their own and are handed raffle tickets with an appointed time on them in order to gain entrance.
When I ambled up to entrance at about a quarter to twelve I was told that all of the tickets had gone until 2:30. But I persisted, assuming that someone would surely forget to turn up and the invigilator luckily realised that because the school group which had block booked ahead of me had left early I could go in right then. He warned me that it was very dark inside, that it wasn’t for everyone and that if I felt uncomfortable, I should shout and he’d be in with a torch. I thanked him and shook his hand. To recap, I’m on a caffeine buzz, feel like my heads about to explode and I’m about to be deprived of one of my more useful senses. And I shook his hand. I’m a firm believer that even art galleries and especially installations can be spoilt, so if you’re intending to visit, I’d stop reading here for a couple of paragraphs so you can experience it for yourself.
As for the rest of you: just past the small tunnel that led from the entrance I found myself staring into a void. Schneider has somehow managed to create a space that feels completely safe and dangerous at the same time, rendering a sighted person blind even though their eyes are wide open, unable to see anything, not even their own body. Just about. Slowly as I edged forward, involuntarily giggling and say ‘Oh my god’ over and over under my breath like a cheerleader being chased through the woods by a slasher in a slasher film, I noticed a rectangular light ahead. Edging closer I realised it was a door. Not knowing if it was the exit, I looked about for some other light and noticed some shading to the left. Walking towards it, I realised it was the reflection of a window onto the wall.
Through the window is a brightly lit room, the nursery presumably, covered in pink wallpaper. It is sparse except for a mattress on the floor and the kind of place you’d expected to be locked in if you were being forced to go cold turkey for an addiction to something stronger than coffee. I could see the door and decided I wanted to go inside. Picking my way backwards, my hand out at right angles stroking the wall, which was covered in black felt presumably for safety, I realised Schneider’s design circumvents our normal perception of space and that the entrance to the room to the window had been shortened by the lack of light; I’d walked further than I thought, which meant that I might not be looking at one room. When I reached the door and entered, it was completely empty. The mattress had gone. There were two rooms. “Wow.” Suitably impressed and knowing that my time was at an end, I made my way, as safely as I could, to the exit, where another invigilator was waiting to usher in the next victim.
The mistake? That was my first exhibit. The rest of the visit happened after I’d had my perception shot to pieces and somewhere between that, the caffeine and the nagging mood of nostalgia the rest of the visit was somewhat wasted on me. Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t latch onto anything, blundering around hazily in a daze knowing that I was in now in no condition to appreciate my environment. The last thing I needed to see at that moment was something like Calin Dan’s Sample City video which features the artist strolling about a city with a door strapped to his back or Anna Gaskell’s dissonant photographs of contortionists seemingly deceased on the floor of a stately home. Elsewhere in the gallery I stood for ages trying to focus on Ian Stephenson’s Screen Painting I, an insane example of pointillism, which looks like the kind of work a child might make if they could glue hundreds and thousands to a canvas or what might happen if you could shake a George Seurat painting like a magnetic beard game and watch the figures and landscape merge into one.
I was perfectly fine about ten minutes after leaving the gallery, at exactly the moment I misjudged crossing the road and was nearly run over by a bus. I did consider returning, but decided I needed to put some distance between me and that room in terms of distance and between me and the gallery in time. I certainly won’t wait two years to return, but at least until there’s some new exhibitions. I’ve already made a list of things I’ll need to do to survive: be as awake as possible, get a bus up Oxford Road and definitely not drink any coffee beforehand. Or at all, ever again. Well, maybe sometimes, but certainly not before entering a darkened room. Unless it’s my bedroom. Isn’t life complicated?
call myself a film fan
Film I have an confession to make. I didn't watch the Baftas on television last week. I know, call myself a film fan. But I have an uneasy relationship with these awards ceremonies at the best of times. It's hardly ever the best film, because the best film is never nominated. The actors and actresses never come off as anything but smug. The proper craftsmen are always shunted around and not given enough 'thanking time' even though they do most of the work. The presenters generally generate nothing but nervous laughter from the audience unless they're Stephen Fry.
Sometimes I find all of this charming and revel in the sheer ghastliness of it all but last week I wasn't in the mood. Plus I hadn't seen most of the films and didn't fancy having to mute the sound every five minutes so that nothing was spoiled. Much better to viceriouslty soak up the atmosphere of the event from the post-ceremony reports like this charming one from Andrew Collins, who was covering the show for Bafta itself interviewing the winners. He's not seen the tv coverage either -- though having actually been there, he's probably got an excuse. The full set of his interviews are here.
Sometimes I find all of this charming and revel in the sheer ghastliness of it all but last week I wasn't in the mood. Plus I hadn't seen most of the films and didn't fancy having to mute the sound every five minutes so that nothing was spoiled. Much better to viceriouslty soak up the atmosphere of the event from the post-ceremony reports like this charming one from Andrew Collins, who was covering the show for Bafta itself interviewing the winners. He's not seen the tv coverage either -- though having actually been there, he's probably got an excuse. The full set of his interviews are here.
I felt very welcome.
Liverpool Life I’ve just got back from the first hopefully semi-regular Liverpool Twitter Festival at the Leaf Café on Parliament Street, and you know what? I had a wonderful time. We’ve talked before about my general reaction to these kinds of gatherings in which I’m faced with lots of people I don’t know. What energised me this time was that the majority of people were like me and besides, we did sort of know each other through the web application which inspired the event (or in the case of a few people we knew each other very well already).
This wasn’t an intimidating brace of strangers. I felt very welcome. On entry we were given the option of a id label which meant we could all identify one another through out Twitter usernames; that meant at the beginning of the evening there was the repeated sight of people craning their necks like meerkats trying to read the writing on the labels, but this settled down as names were put to faces and people who’d never met could at least begin a conversation with ‘Do I follow you?’ or ‘We follow each other.’
In that way it was a bit like a school reunion, as we asked one another what we were doing for a living, where we were living now and how we’d travelled there. Except this wasn’t a group of people you spent six or seven excruciating years with during your teens and you were still somehow umbilically connected to for the rest of each other's lives, but folks you genuinely wanted to spend time with and perhaps fill in the gaps between what little you'd already learnt through those updates of a hundred and forty characters.
A couple of people recognised me from my photograph and still more from my usernames. Some said they read this blog or knew of Liverpool Blogs. I met Adrian who I’ve known on and off online for years (see here and here) and who thought of @merseyshipping. I finally saw Alison and Laura and nattered with some of their colleagues from the Liverpool Daily Post, including David. There were a few people I also wanted to talk to that I recognised, but the night felt too short. Hopefully next time.
The Leaf Café is a lovely clean cosy venue with excellent food – well the sausage butties which constituted my tea were nice. There was an auction and raffle for charity (in aid of charity:water) of which two of the star attractions were a book and socks from @stephenfry. The socks went for more. I pushed the bidding up on a print from Pete Carr (whose photos of the event are here – see if you can spot me). But in the end all were too rich for me. The entertainment was supplied by a clutch of bands including the excellent 6ix Toys, though I felt slightly sorry for them because we were all fascinated by a nearby machine that blew bubbles if it detected the hash-tag.
I think you know you’re having a good night when you find yourself shouting ‘Bubbles!’ in unison with others.
Thanks Mandy and all!
the porcupine pincushion
Obituary Oliver Postgate has died.
Oliver informed my childhood through programmes like The Clangers and Ivor The Engine and it’s his voice I remember hearing the most next to Mum and Dad before the age of five. Bagpuss was always my favourite, the acoustic opening, the sepia photographs, Emily, the expectation of what would be found in the shop window for her to repair and even when you knew them all, the porcupine pincushion, the ship in a bottle, you’d still be trying to guess which one it would be. The best character outside of the old saggy cloth cat was Professor Yaffle, a wise old woodpecker (ironically made from wood), based it is said, on Bertrand Russell.
Postgate only ever produced a dozen or so episodes of each during the 1970s but at least two generations of kids grew up watching them as they were endlessly repeated over the next couple of decades. It must have seemed to some like he was still working on them, but by then he’d moved on to other things – to politics and the anti-nuclear campaign – and he was even blogging for the New Statesman up until February 2008. He also auditioned to play the Voice of the Book for the film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy which I’m sure would have made that film better (with due respect to Stephen Fry who took the part instead and tried his best).
But it’s the work he did through Small Films which is his main legacy, and this intro ...
... which will probably be revisited by everyone of a certain age today as we remember what it was like to be five years old again.
Oliver informed my childhood through programmes like The Clangers and Ivor The Engine and it’s his voice I remember hearing the most next to Mum and Dad before the age of five. Bagpuss was always my favourite, the acoustic opening, the sepia photographs, Emily, the expectation of what would be found in the shop window for her to repair and even when you knew them all, the porcupine pincushion, the ship in a bottle, you’d still be trying to guess which one it would be. The best character outside of the old saggy cloth cat was Professor Yaffle, a wise old woodpecker (ironically made from wood), based it is said, on Bertrand Russell.
Postgate only ever produced a dozen or so episodes of each during the 1970s but at least two generations of kids grew up watching them as they were endlessly repeated over the next couple of decades. It must have seemed to some like he was still working on them, but by then he’d moved on to other things – to politics and the anti-nuclear campaign – and he was even blogging for the New Statesman up until February 2008. He also auditioned to play the Voice of the Book for the film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy which I’m sure would have made that film better (with due respect to Stephen Fry who took the part instead and tried his best).
But it’s the work he did through Small Films which is his main legacy, and this intro ...
... which will probably be revisited by everyone of a certain age today as we remember what it was like to be five years old again.
Lipnicki! He's old!
Enter the School of Life
Some bright spark has decided to turn this into a real bricks and mortar place offering courses and texts, a self helper's paradise, though there also seems to be the aroma of Lifehacker too.
Timeline of US Presidential Elections
... or the bullet points of North American history in one easy to digest page. Loads to take in, but I hadn't realised Nixon had won his second term on such a huge mandate -- McGovern only won 17 electoral college votes. No wonder the American people felt so betrayed by Watergate. See also these wikipedia pages dedicated to The West Wing elections in 1998, 2002 and 2006, which are almost as detailed as the one for the real thing.
Can a Soccer Star Block Google Searches?
"A spokesperson for Google Argentina labeled the lawsuit "completely illogical. It would be like suing the newsstand for what appears in the newspapers it sells. Or demanding the newsstand vendor to tear out offending pages from the newspapers. The lawsuits should be against the websites carrying the information, not us."
c64s.com - classic Commodore 64 games online!
A gaming nostalgia trip in one handy webpage, no downloads necessary. Includes Spindizzy!
Ah, sweet nostalgia!
I have a copy of Crush Groove for much the same reason. It's impossible to watch a film like that on dvd.
OCLC Claims Ownership of Data In OPACs
Which is a bit like the Wikipedia turning around and asserting copyright. Oh come on!
AE#10: Porous Masonry Walls
Stephen Fry once said that nothing man made is beautiful. Sometimes he can be wrong. Even with something as grey as concrete.
QMx announces the official Map of the ‘Verse
I have a fantasy that when the world does end, and someone else is excavating the remains they'll find these and think this is how we viewed the universe. See also Ptolemy.
'Jerry Maguire' Kid is All Grown Up
Lipnicki! He's old!
Sugar Water: Print, Profits, and “The Paper”
Highly underrated film that I don't think even had a theatrical release in the UK. It was old fashioned at the time of its release and in this web intensive decade probably seems arcane. The rest of the piece has some useful things to say about how newspapers will survive in the online era. They'll never completely die out I don't think. Like books, people like to hold them in hand, smell the paper and print and they're far easier to navigate than anything which might appear on a screen.
Some bright spark has decided to turn this into a real bricks and mortar place offering courses and texts, a self helper's paradise, though there also seems to be the aroma of Lifehacker too.
Timeline of US Presidential Elections
... or the bullet points of North American history in one easy to digest page. Loads to take in, but I hadn't realised Nixon had won his second term on such a huge mandate -- McGovern only won 17 electoral college votes. No wonder the American people felt so betrayed by Watergate. See also these wikipedia pages dedicated to The West Wing elections in 1998, 2002 and 2006, which are almost as detailed as the one for the real thing.
Can a Soccer Star Block Google Searches?
"A spokesperson for Google Argentina labeled the lawsuit "completely illogical. It would be like suing the newsstand for what appears in the newspapers it sells. Or demanding the newsstand vendor to tear out offending pages from the newspapers. The lawsuits should be against the websites carrying the information, not us."
c64s.com - classic Commodore 64 games online!
A gaming nostalgia trip in one handy webpage, no downloads necessary. Includes Spindizzy!
Ah, sweet nostalgia!
I have a copy of Crush Groove for much the same reason. It's impossible to watch a film like that on dvd.
OCLC Claims Ownership of Data In OPACs
Which is a bit like the Wikipedia turning around and asserting copyright. Oh come on!
AE#10: Porous Masonry Walls
Stephen Fry once said that nothing man made is beautiful. Sometimes he can be wrong. Even with something as grey as concrete.
QMx announces the official Map of the ‘Verse
I have a fantasy that when the world does end, and someone else is excavating the remains they'll find these and think this is how we viewed the universe. See also Ptolemy.
'Jerry Maguire' Kid is All Grown Up
Lipnicki! He's old!
Sugar Water: Print, Profits, and “The Paper”
Highly underrated film that I don't think even had a theatrical release in the UK. It was old fashioned at the time of its release and in this web intensive decade probably seems arcane. The rest of the piece has some useful things to say about how newspapers will survive in the online era. They'll never completely die out I don't think. Like books, people like to hold them in hand, smell the paper and print and they're far easier to navigate than anything which might appear on a screen.
I let it sink in for a moment.
I haven't used my mobile phone since cancelling my cards last Tuesday. The replacements are yet to arrive and as far as I could tell there was no other way to get credit onto the thing. Desperate to be connected to the voice world again, I strolled into an Orange shop today and asked the following question:
"Can I top up my mobile phone using cash somehow?"
"Well I could sell you a voucher." Said the man in black shirt.
I let it sink in for a moment. I always used to use vouchers. It says on the automated top up services 'press 2 to top up using a voucher'. How could I forget or ignore this? Sometimes I think the left and right sides of my brain have had a disagreement and I'm experiencing the fall out. Some unrelated questions:
What are you thinking Kelly Reilly?
And you Wahlberg?
Why can't the Sugababes be more like the All Saints?
Why can't all oddball celebrity child names be this clever?
Do they use dictionary themed toilet paper at the Grove?
What has Stephen Fry been putting himself through?
How does this work?
Why do so many evangelical teenagers become pregnant?
Why won't the government leave us alone for two seconds?
How easy would it be to send someone the other way?
How come this didn't take off here?
Is this it?
Why worry?
Why?
"Can I top up my mobile phone using cash somehow?"
"Well I could sell you a voucher." Said the man in black shirt.
I let it sink in for a moment. I always used to use vouchers. It says on the automated top up services 'press 2 to top up using a voucher'. How could I forget or ignore this? Sometimes I think the left and right sides of my brain have had a disagreement and I'm experiencing the fall out. Some unrelated questions:
What are you thinking Kelly Reilly?
And you Wahlberg?
Why can't the Sugababes be more like the All Saints?
Why can't all oddball celebrity child names be this clever?
Do they use dictionary themed toilet paper at the Grove?
What has Stephen Fry been putting himself through?
How does this work?
Why do so many evangelical teenagers become pregnant?
Why won't the government leave us alone for two seconds?
How easy would it be to send someone the other way?
How come this didn't take off here?
Is this it?
Why worry?
Why?
links for 2008-07-27
Made up
I was very pleased that Liz McClarnon became Masterchef champion, chiefly because she was such good value throughout, didn't cave under pressure and didn't come across as a complete ass (and that means you Andy, a man who once shared the screen with a fake duck). Terribly normal and unstarry and well, one of us really and very huggable.
Get with the programme
Rachel Cooke investigates whether the bottom has fallen out of the reality tv market. It's always seemed to me that the more willfully extreme and high concept these shows try to be, the less interesting they are in the long run.
The Greasy Pole
Watching this episode of Yes, Minister this morning made me shiver. Here's a transcript from a key scene. Doesn't that remind you of something?
Censor Sensibility
Friz on Channel 4 sensor cuts. It is basically impossible to watch Friends during the day on any of the channels if you can even half remember the scripts; the crowd often seem to laugh at random and scenes end unresolved and incoherently. It's always been this way at Four. The pilot of Alias has its flashback structure unpicked to lessen the impact of the torture and Angel would often clock in at half an hour. But then, if they hadn't decided to show both at tea time instead of later in the evening, it might not have been such a problem.
Apollo 14 Moonwalker Claims Aliens Exist.
Of course they do.
Great Crested Newts
... in Calderstones Park, Liverpool
Going belly up
At the risk of linking to everything in The Observer today, here's Jay Raynor's review of a rib shop: "the Chicago Rib Shack stinks, in the way old fish that's been left on the parcel shelf of a locked car for three weeks throughout an Arizona August stinks. It's a waste of ribs, an insult to pigs and cattle. It's a sauce crime, and it's taking place right in the heart of Knightsbridge. Call the food police. Now! According to its own publicity, the Chicago Rib Shack isn't a restaurant, it's a national institution. Then again, so was Bernard Manning, and I wouldn't have gone round his house for dinner, either."
Well worth the wait
Stephen Fry's back and has the iPhone 3G in his sights: "A year of living with iPhone One has proved to me that the camera lens and its operation is good enough to produce better photos than phones with twice the resolution, that EDGE speeds allow swift email and full browsing in most areas of the country, that the Google Maps implementation and music, video and photo playback are stunningly impressive, and that other deficiencies are made up for by the sob-worthy beauty, elegance and lovability of another Jonathan Ive-designed Apple masterpiece."
Opening of The Apple Store Liverpool
In related news. Mike Thomas ends up talking to people who were tweeting about being there having noticed their messages on Twitter. Macenstein has photos. I did consider going, but then realised I'd have to get up very, very early, and the below was on and every dork has their priorities.
Finally, some excited reviews from bloggers who were at the Doctor Who Prom the lucky things:
Scholar's Blog: "I also spoke to Phil Collinson (outgoing Exec Producer) - poor bloke must have wondered who the hell the over-excited loony was who accosted him outside the RAH just after he and his party exited. I thanked him for his work on Who - because I know he's worked very hard on it. And he immediately diverted me into discussing the concert so I babbled like the fool I am and then wished him luck for the future."
Alipeeps: "The atmosphere was fantastic and prior to the concert beginning (and during the interval) they had a constant sound effect playing in the hall... the hum of the TARDIS.. the background noise that you hear in the control room scenes in the show. Such a cool idea and really added to the atmosphere. The TARDIS was set at the back of the stage, behind the orchestra (and on the "walls" next to it, were spray-painted the words Bad Wolf! :D)"
si_hart: "Great stuff but it wasn't half hot in there! My only regret was that I didn't get to say thanks to Murray Gold himself who was sat in the row in front of us. That would have been nice, but I did as I was told and went to sit down. Ah well."
Something I didn't mention in my Sofa review was that the original version of the theme was played at the end of the special episode and still managed to sound fresher and less dated that the Gold version which appeared at the climax of the concert.
I was very pleased that Liz McClarnon became Masterchef champion, chiefly because she was such good value throughout, didn't cave under pressure and didn't come across as a complete ass (and that means you Andy, a man who once shared the screen with a fake duck). Terribly normal and unstarry and well, one of us really and very huggable.
Get with the programme
Rachel Cooke investigates whether the bottom has fallen out of the reality tv market. It's always seemed to me that the more willfully extreme and high concept these shows try to be, the less interesting they are in the long run.
The Greasy Pole
Watching this episode of Yes, Minister this morning made me shiver. Here's a transcript from a key scene. Doesn't that remind you of something?
Censor Sensibility
Friz on Channel 4 sensor cuts. It is basically impossible to watch Friends during the day on any of the channels if you can even half remember the scripts; the crowd often seem to laugh at random and scenes end unresolved and incoherently. It's always been this way at Four. The pilot of Alias has its flashback structure unpicked to lessen the impact of the torture and Angel would often clock in at half an hour. But then, if they hadn't decided to show both at tea time instead of later in the evening, it might not have been such a problem.
Apollo 14 Moonwalker Claims Aliens Exist.
Of course they do.
Great Crested Newts
... in Calderstones Park, Liverpool
Going belly up
At the risk of linking to everything in The Observer today, here's Jay Raynor's review of a rib shop: "the Chicago Rib Shack stinks, in the way old fish that's been left on the parcel shelf of a locked car for three weeks throughout an Arizona August stinks. It's a waste of ribs, an insult to pigs and cattle. It's a sauce crime, and it's taking place right in the heart of Knightsbridge. Call the food police. Now! According to its own publicity, the Chicago Rib Shack isn't a restaurant, it's a national institution. Then again, so was Bernard Manning, and I wouldn't have gone round his house for dinner, either."
Well worth the wait
Stephen Fry's back and has the iPhone 3G in his sights: "A year of living with iPhone One has proved to me that the camera lens and its operation is good enough to produce better photos than phones with twice the resolution, that EDGE speeds allow swift email and full browsing in most areas of the country, that the Google Maps implementation and music, video and photo playback are stunningly impressive, and that other deficiencies are made up for by the sob-worthy beauty, elegance and lovability of another Jonathan Ive-designed Apple masterpiece."
Opening of The Apple Store Liverpool
In related news. Mike Thomas ends up talking to people who were tweeting about being there having noticed their messages on Twitter. Macenstein has photos. I did consider going, but then realised I'd have to get up very, very early, and the below was on and every dork has their priorities.
Finally, some excited reviews from bloggers who were at the Doctor Who Prom the lucky things:
Scholar's Blog: "I also spoke to Phil Collinson (outgoing Exec Producer) - poor bloke must have wondered who the hell the over-excited loony was who accosted him outside the RAH just after he and his party exited. I thanked him for his work on Who - because I know he's worked very hard on it. And he immediately diverted me into discussing the concert so I babbled like the fool I am and then wished him luck for the future."
Alipeeps: "The atmosphere was fantastic and prior to the concert beginning (and during the interval) they had a constant sound effect playing in the hall... the hum of the TARDIS.. the background noise that you hear in the control room scenes in the show. Such a cool idea and really added to the atmosphere. The TARDIS was set at the back of the stage, behind the orchestra (and on the "walls" next to it, were spray-painted the words Bad Wolf! :D)"
si_hart: "Great stuff but it wasn't half hot in there! My only regret was that I didn't get to say thanks to Murray Gold himself who was sat in the row in front of us. That would have been nice, but I did as I was told and went to sit down. Ah well."
Something I didn't mention in my Sofa review was that the original version of the theme was played at the end of the special episode and still managed to sound fresher and less dated that the Gold version which appeared at the climax of the concert.
Medicine Stephen Fry has posted x-rays of his broken arm. Nasty. "Quite a smash as you can see and it has taken me some time to recover both tissues and spirits."
"No, but really Stephen, what is it like, being famous? Go on." -- Stephen Fry
People I'm sure you've read this already, but just in case. It's Stephen Fry on fame: "Oh, very well then. I can only tell you what being famous as Stephen Fry is ‘like’, of course. I suppose there must be some elements to the experience that I have in common with other famous people, but in the end being famous as Stephen Fry is not the same as being famous as Carl Sagan or David Furnish or Vernon Kaye."
"I'm splitting chickens."
Life Sorry if I'm a bit drowsy today but I watched Comic Relief almost to the bitter end last night which is as late as I've stayed up in months. It's a certain sign of age that even just watching television into the wee small hours leads to aches and a lack of focus the following day. Despite what the string of celebrities said throughout, I'm not sure it was the best ever relying a bit too much on running clips from the Little Britain stage show and the admittedly funny Catherine Tate material. There wasn't anything that scaled the heights of the sudden appearance of TFI Friday channel hopping or the first Celebrity Big Brother.
The highlights? Well The Apprentice was wildly amusing and curious in its stripping bare of personalities -- obviously there's a question of how much was staged, but it confirmed everything you probably thought about the celebrities -- that Piers Morgan is an oil slick with the cold dead stare of a killer ("If you don't buy a ticket, I will ring the Mirror tomorrow with information about your life which will have serious consequences for your future should you have one"), Alistair Campbell's portrayal in The Queen was spot on -- ruinous overconfidence -- and Trinny Woodhall is like a benevolent force of nature. I think Cheryl Cole probably surprised me the most -- she seemed to have a level of irony I wasn't expecting -- there was a wonderful look to camera when Trinny said she'd learnt her excercise techniques from a Russian trainer she stays with in Austria.
The low light's included the Borat material which managed to shock but seemed stilted and wasn't helped by a bewildred looking stuttering Graham Norton. I'm not sure what was going on with the magicians in the Paul O'Grady section and Fame Academy got it's usual short shrift at its climax after weeks of build up. Oh and the Mr Bean thing is getting a bit tired now isn't it? But really everyone will probably spend the next few months talking about Tony Blair's appearance. Did you ever think you'd see the man who runs to country doing that!?! Forget Iraq, that's going to be his legacy, endlessly repeated in biography programmes for years to come. Expect some wag in the commons to say 'Am I bovvered' to him by the end of the week.
Dumped at about two in the morning was a good contribution from Armando Ianucci in the style of Time Trumpet in which the history of Comic Relief was transmogrified into a hateful place filled with such weirdness as Jonathan Ross pissing on the audience and Chris Evans pushing the head of an audience member into a vat of acid. Despite the presence of Adam Buxton and Emma Thompson amongst the regulars it was fitfully funny, but what it did demonstrate was how over the years the show has drifted from in studio material to clips particularly in the early evening and a presentational style far closer to what might be expected from US cable telethons.
In days past the show was still resolutely about the comedy, whilst nowadays that tends to only fill about a third of the material with the rest of the running time being taken up by appeals and celebrity versions of well known shows. Mostly entertaining to be sure, but overall the effect is less funny than I remember. Before the production was resolutely introduced by comedians, the likes of French and Saunders who were naturally funny, whereas that's also changed to appearances by Davina McCall and (ugh) Kate Thornton who are very good at shouting into a microphone but are hardly a substitute for Griff Rhys Jones (who was absent for the first time ever last night -- Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie were also awol perhaps for obvious reasons).
What hasn't changed though is the show's ability to highlight the state of British comedy at a certain point in time. Where once there was The Fast Show now we have Mitchell and Webb and The Mighty Boosh all dying on their arse in the studio by presenting material that was far too esoteric for the crowd -- not that they should feel too bad -- it happened to The League of Gentlemen last time. See also Russell Brand on his first presenting gig for the charity and by all accounts was the best of the night, turning his mistakes into comedy and lightly taking the piss out of the audience. Oh and Peter Kaye whose slot was far more inspired that the last with a studio filled with celebs and glorious juxtapositions -- I never thought I'd ever see Gary Wilmott, Dusty Bin and a be-kilted David Tennant in the same frame -- it looked like an illustrated guide to the history of Saturday night telly.
The highlights? Well The Apprentice was wildly amusing and curious in its stripping bare of personalities -- obviously there's a question of how much was staged, but it confirmed everything you probably thought about the celebrities -- that Piers Morgan is an oil slick with the cold dead stare of a killer ("If you don't buy a ticket, I will ring the Mirror tomorrow with information about your life which will have serious consequences for your future should you have one"), Alistair Campbell's portrayal in The Queen was spot on -- ruinous overconfidence -- and Trinny Woodhall is like a benevolent force of nature. I think Cheryl Cole probably surprised me the most -- she seemed to have a level of irony I wasn't expecting -- there was a wonderful look to camera when Trinny said she'd learnt her excercise techniques from a Russian trainer she stays with in Austria.
The low light's included the Borat material which managed to shock but seemed stilted and wasn't helped by a bewildred looking stuttering Graham Norton. I'm not sure what was going on with the magicians in the Paul O'Grady section and Fame Academy got it's usual short shrift at its climax after weeks of build up. Oh and the Mr Bean thing is getting a bit tired now isn't it? But really everyone will probably spend the next few months talking about Tony Blair's appearance. Did you ever think you'd see the man who runs to country doing that!?! Forget Iraq, that's going to be his legacy, endlessly repeated in biography programmes for years to come. Expect some wag in the commons to say 'Am I bovvered' to him by the end of the week.
Dumped at about two in the morning was a good contribution from Armando Ianucci in the style of Time Trumpet in which the history of Comic Relief was transmogrified into a hateful place filled with such weirdness as Jonathan Ross pissing on the audience and Chris Evans pushing the head of an audience member into a vat of acid. Despite the presence of Adam Buxton and Emma Thompson amongst the regulars it was fitfully funny, but what it did demonstrate was how over the years the show has drifted from in studio material to clips particularly in the early evening and a presentational style far closer to what might be expected from US cable telethons.
In days past the show was still resolutely about the comedy, whilst nowadays that tends to only fill about a third of the material with the rest of the running time being taken up by appeals and celebrity versions of well known shows. Mostly entertaining to be sure, but overall the effect is less funny than I remember. Before the production was resolutely introduced by comedians, the likes of French and Saunders who were naturally funny, whereas that's also changed to appearances by Davina McCall and (ugh) Kate Thornton who are very good at shouting into a microphone but are hardly a substitute for Griff Rhys Jones (who was absent for the first time ever last night -- Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie were also awol perhaps for obvious reasons).
What hasn't changed though is the show's ability to highlight the state of British comedy at a certain point in time. Where once there was The Fast Show now we have Mitchell and Webb and The Mighty Boosh all dying on their arse in the studio by presenting material that was far too esoteric for the crowd -- not that they should feel too bad -- it happened to The League of Gentlemen last time. See also Russell Brand on his first presenting gig for the charity and by all accounts was the best of the night, turning his mistakes into comedy and lightly taking the piss out of the audience. Oh and Peter Kaye whose slot was far more inspired that the last with a studio filled with celebs and glorious juxtapositions -- I never thought I'd ever see Gary Wilmott, Dusty Bin and a be-kilted David Tennant in the same frame -- it looked like an illustrated guide to the history of Saturday night telly.
Links for 2007-01-22 [del.icio.us] - Rmail
Thrilling heart in your stomach psychological action horror film for 99.8% of its running time before fluffing it in the final moments. At least in the UK version. The US version apparently doesn't piss all over its audience quite so much.
We watched the tour guide trying to explain the intricassies of this -- perhaps he should have simply passed out copies of this.
Brilliant swashbuckler set just prior to the Spanish Armada with Errol Flynn as thy-slapping Sir Francis Drake. Total fantasy of course, but no worse for it with sea battles and sword fighting and romance and a rousing Queen Elizabeth II.
Great dialogue and performances somehow manage to overcome the film's bizarre story structure and plot; there was a hithertoo unmentioned second island? That's convenient.
"Discover more about Liverpool's musical heritage with our free walking tour as Pete Wylie explores the city's music scene from the 1960s to the present day passing clubs and venues in the World Capital of Pop."
Time Out have begun a series of articles by directors about their craft, beginning with Stephen Fry's perception of his perception of the process changed when he went behind the camera: "Your film is entirely made or unmade in the cutting room."
Offers the complicated and not so complicated answer.
And the second, even more entertaining article as the director of ‘Quadrophenia’, recalls working with Harvey Weinstein on his 1992 film ‘K2’: ‘Fuck it, I’d better call Harvey… I’ll call the editor first.’
Not quite the genius you would expect: "Worst building material EVER. Not enough holes for all the studs. Need rock hard pieces to erect something. Stalking is bad."
Museum curators are being hired as special constables might be a good thing. Calling the scheme 'Art Beat' really isn't. Do you think they've realised why that sounds so familiar yet?
Why it sounds so familar.
Hilarious spoof anti-piracy ad for people who listen to a certain type of film review.
Amazing new boxset of the very early British Hitchcock. Includes: "Champagne, Blackmail, Murder!, The Ring, The Skin Game, The Manxman, Number Seventeen, The Farmer’s Wife"
Don't do it.
Film Annoying old films you wished you'd forgotten don't get forgotten. They just get rereleased with a new title and using someone elses marketing ideas. Last year some time in an idle (and misguided moment) I sat through a really, really poor romantic drama called Londinium (2001) about a group of slightly self obsessed people in the capital of England (or y'know like whatever). The film featured people like with people like Colin Firth and Irene Jacob and was directed by on Mike Binder who clearly thought he was the next Woody Allen and like Allen cast himself in the film as the American. I'd recorded it one night over Christmas about three years ago because I quite liked the title and Irene Jacob who seems to have an inability to age. In fact she looked the same age here as she did in Three Colours Red fifteen years before.
It begins badly with some fairly obvious voiceovering and just heads downhill on a rocket pack with scenes that go on far too long, inconsistent plotting and performances so dislocated it's almost as though they are being provided in the same way that I believe some animated film voiceovers are recorded now, with the actors showing up when they have the time. It's a luscious looking film, so as always seems to be the way with these things, looks pretty but has nothing to say for itself. I somehow managed to get through to the end, largely to see what Jack Dee and Stephen Fry would be like -- and in fact they were the best value of all. Like all bad films I put it to the back of my mind, pretended it didn't happen and moved on with my life. Then tonight I saw this...
Since I'm analysing Love Actually for my dissertation I was quick to note the similarity of the fonts and the colour scheme and everything ... and that terrible new title which makes the film seem even worse than it probaby is if that's at all possible. If I was one of the Love Actually marketing people I'd be a little bit annoyed. I know that borrowing is a form of flattery but this is pretty ridiculous. Unless this was cooked up by the same people -- in which case shame on them for reusing what was such a prominent campaign and style. Here's a reminder...
Note that there's a quote that actually says "In the tradition of Notting Hill & Four Weddings". Here's a warning. Forget it. Even if you quite like the romantic doodlings of Mr Curtis and Colin Firth. Here's what the featured reviewer at the IMDb has to say:
It begins badly with some fairly obvious voiceovering and just heads downhill on a rocket pack with scenes that go on far too long, inconsistent plotting and performances so dislocated it's almost as though they are being provided in the same way that I believe some animated film voiceovers are recorded now, with the actors showing up when they have the time. It's a luscious looking film, so as always seems to be the way with these things, looks pretty but has nothing to say for itself. I somehow managed to get through to the end, largely to see what Jack Dee and Stephen Fry would be like -- and in fact they were the best value of all. Like all bad films I put it to the back of my mind, pretended it didn't happen and moved on with my life. Then tonight I saw this...
Since I'm analysing Love Actually for my dissertation I was quick to note the similarity of the fonts and the colour scheme and everything ... and that terrible new title which makes the film seem even worse than it probaby is if that's at all possible. If I was one of the Love Actually marketing people I'd be a little bit annoyed. I know that borrowing is a form of flattery but this is pretty ridiculous. Unless this was cooked up by the same people -- in which case shame on them for reusing what was such a prominent campaign and style. Here's a reminder...
Note that there's a quote that actually says "In the tradition of Notting Hill & Four Weddings". Here's a warning. Forget it. Even if you quite like the romantic doodlings of Mr Curtis and Colin Firth. Here's what the featured reviewer at the IMDb has to say:
"Londinium is a terrible, terrible film. Mike Binder thinks he is a Woody Allen for the millennium. He is not. Woody Allen's Bergmanesque films are funnier than this film.Really, don't do it. If you have to rent a romantic comedy about an American in London, get Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel and Lawrence instead. I know that's not well like either but at least it features one of Ray Winstone's best performances...
London is one of the greatest cities in the world, but you wouldn't get that if your only frame of reference was this film. It is a slur on its great name, and the writer/ director should never be allowed back within its walls as long as he lives.
All the people involved should be ashamed for being in this film. Particularly Stephen Fry and Jack Dee, two men who are very funny indeed and should know the difference between a comedy script and the steaming pile of effluent that masqueraded as a script for this film.
AVOID THIS FILM AT ALL COSTS. I HAVE SEEN IT SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO."
china
TV
Stephen: Hugh, my old china serving bowl, it seems that we're pretty much in the position of having to say "Here we are again."
Hugh: Stephen, my old styrofoam cushion whose wedge-shape guarantees relief from the misery of lower back pain, you've never said a truer word.
[Somehow I missed the news that A Bit of Fry and Laurie is being released on dvd. Re-reading the scripts I'm constantly amazed by how literate and funny they are. It'll be amazing to actually see them being performed for the first time in years. [via]]
Stephen: Hugh, my old china serving bowl, it seems that we're pretty much in the position of having to say "Here we are again."
Hugh: Stephen, my old styrofoam cushion whose wedge-shape guarantees relief from the misery of lower back pain, you've never said a truer word.
[Somehow I missed the news that A Bit of Fry and Laurie is being released on dvd. Re-reading the scripts I'm constantly amazed by how literate and funny they are. It'll be amazing to actually see them being performed for the first time in years. [via]]
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