Review 2002 review: Life.

Volunteering at the Commonwealth Games.
My computer was broken throughout the games and this looks like an attempt to make up for and it really does, from the description of the atmosphere, the anticipation, to expressing one of the few moments in my life when I’ve felt contented within a group and my growing admiration for netball (see above), which is still in place. With money an object the only way that I could have volunteered for the London Olympics would have been the football at Old Trafford, but with little certainty about working patterns and knowing that I might actually want to watch the games, I didn’t apply. That’s still the dichotomy of this kind of volunteering, that you’ll end up missing whatever event your volunteering for.



Visiting Paris.
This was the first time I’d been abroad in over a decade and the last time I left the country, barring visits to Cardiff and Belfast, money always being an object. Which means that even after ten years, those three days remain vivid despite having spent most of them in agony due to wearing the wrong shoes. Sitting in that café is probably my favourite memory. My plan was to move to Paris if I hadn’t been accepted onto my MA course and recently I’ve wondered if that might not have been the better option however unrealistic it seems now. But that was in 2005 when everything seemed possible and we had little clue of the financial canonball which was about the blow a hole in the wall of all our hopes.



The Death of Buffy.
Not my greatest three paragraphs by any means, but a decent reminder that for all the many amazing stories in subsequent seasons and comics, emotionally Buffy’s character arc completed at the close of her show’s fifth year. Rewatching the entire series in 2012 in conjunction with all of Joss Whedon’s other television work, while it’s impossible to say he peaked in this first five years, it’s certainly the longest sustained period of quality, even taking into account the shakier, college years elements of the fourth season. Now we await his SHIELD adaptation, and the extent to which his auteurism will infect the next phase of The Avengers films. If his first film is any indication, he may be on a roll again.



Blogs!
The transient nature of the internet, and the decline in the amateur blogosphere means that most of these sites have closed. From the highlighted five only John still has Sore Eyes and Boing Boing bounces. In Passing just has a text basic page suggesting it will be back up in 2008 (archive image). There’s more of a to do in the links at the bottom and I still read most of them, though the Gawker in that moment was far more New York centric and Cameron Crowe hadn’t made Elizabethtown (thank goodness We Bought A Zoo suggested a potential return to form). Supermodels Are Lonelier Than You Think! seems quite quaint now in comparison to the gossip blogs ten years later, though for the life of me I can’t imagine why I was reading it then anyway.



Five lists of five things I also loved
I have no memory of reading Mark Lawson’s The Battle for Room Service: Journeys to All the Safe Places, though I did meet him twice in the intervening years. Rescue Me with Sally Philips is still an underrated gem. My attempt to look cool in the list of music is entirely counteracted by not having listened to most of them since. Three out of the five websites are still posting, with the contents of OffTheTelly still online (thank goodness). The interesting thing about this first five predictions is that three of them eventually came to pass, but fortunately for some of humanity but unfortunately for everyone it’s neither of the bottom two. But notice: Buffy, Doctor Who and Shakespeare. Twas forever thus.

Review 2002 review: Film & Music.

Shallow Hal / Gosford Park / Kissing Jessica Stein / Changing Lanes / Baise-Moi
These weren’t my favourite five films of 2002, just those whose reviews I thought were worth reposting.  Of the five, it’s Kissing Jessica Stein I keep returning to, because of the characters, because of the atmosphere and because it’s hilarious.  Next along is probably Gosford Park, though we last spent time together while I researching my MA dissertation in 2005 when I was trying to decide if it was a hyperlink film or just a simple ensemble film and how it compared to Robert Altman’s other experiments with huge casts and improvisation.  Shallow Hal’s the only film on the list I haven’t returned to, though it reminds me I need to get around to watching Dumb & Dumber one of these days.



Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis covering Rolf is still a seminal light entertainment moment, though since then he’s been very busy indeed all things considered.  There’s his musical collaborations with Richard X, Charlotte Gainborg and Nancy Sinatra, contributions to a Harry Potter soundtrack, film cameos, and his radio show on 6Music.  If Jarvis is still best known still to a certain portion of his audience for what’s described as the “BRIT Awards incident” when he stormed the stage during Michael Jackson’s surreally messianic performance of Earthsong, my favourite memory will always be watching him talking to the moon and stars at the V96 festival in Birkenhead, an otherwise rowdy audience transfixed by the moment.



Late Junction
As this entry says, Late Junction did indeed lead me to attending evening classes in World Music, its history and apparatus.  I suppose like any personal fad, like French New Wave later, it seeped into my general appreciation of culture.  There’s something invigorating about submerging yourself in a single interest for a time, becoming an expert of sorts and although your interest fades as something else temps you away, it’ll still be there at the back of your mind or as is the case my music collection which was injected with dozens and dozens of rough guides to so called “world music” which were on offer at HMV during just the right period.  Of all of them, I still return to the France related cds.  Unsurprisingly.



TATU
Isn’t that awful?  Not that Tatu video which is the perfect synergy of catchy pop song and unrepentant titillation but this leery post which disproves the rule that this blog was always better when it first began.  The Altman anecdote is true, the memory is still vivid, as is the rest of it I suppose, but the paradoxical mix of prudery and prurience is simply embarrassing even if thematically it manages to mention similar faux-sapphic endeavours.  Perhaps that indicates I was being ironic, but given that I can’t even remember writing the thing, just as I can’t remember writing most of this blog, I’m unwilling to give the younger version of me the benefit of the doubt, especially since he forced me to watch all six seasons of Lost.



The UN Concert to celebrate the giving of the Nobel Peace Prize (or something like that)
Reading through that oddball collection of stars it doesn’t seem any less bonkers than the various ceremonies at year’s Olympics and with some of the same acts.  Looking at the video, it's even worse than I remember.  The UN Peace Prize Concerts now have their own website.  In 2011 it was co-hosted by Helen Mirren and Rosario Dawson and featured amongst others Evanescence, David Grey, Janelle Monae and Ellie Goulding.  This year its Sarah Jessica Parker and Gerard Butler introducing Jennifer Hudson and Kylie though its fair to say the linguistic variety of the acts has increased over time.  Sadly I’m going to miss it live because Sky Arts have the rights but luckily there is a YouTube channel, where we can also enjoy 2010’s performances from Florence Welch and Barry Manilow.



Everything Else
Or, the stuff he should have been writing about.  Was Jade Goody going to be releasing a single?  John Major had an affair with Edwina Curry?!?  What striking about this is how clued in I appear to be.  Lord knows how.  I stopped being interested in the lifestyles of the sometimes rich and relatively famous years ago, apart from politicians, journalists and royalty unless Marina Hyde or Hadley Freeman are writing The Guardian’s Lost in Showbiz column and I certainly watch far less music related television even Later …  I tried listening to NOW 83 the other day most of which was new to me.  There are only about five decent tracks and one of those is Stooche’s cover of TLC’s Waterfalls, because it’s practically a rerecord.

Tomorrow: Blogs and Blogging.

Review 2002 review: People.

People Review 2002 ran right through Christmas week of that year from the 24th to New Years Eve and mostly consisted of a fairly standard retrospective listing people, then moments, then films then everything else, what I thought were the notable cultural highlights of the year. Now that this blog has some longevity (roll on the 15th birthday), I’m in a position to look back a whole decade to the person I was then writing that first review and what I was blogging about. I didn’t realise they’d be annual until two years later when I was working on my third, though as we’ll see in two years, that wasn’t just a December project. Here begins what I hope will be an annual review of annual reviews to go along with the usual annual review. Here follows a review of Review 2002. A post at a time.  With illustrative clips.



Paula Radcliffe
My comments about Radcliffe’s run in the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002 could be repeated almost word for word about Mo Farrah’s performance at the London Olympics 2012, except that of course he was able to execute his entire strategy in both of his races whereas as you can see Paula wavered a bit just to add some excitement. In the event due to injury, Radcliffe herself was unable to have similar Olympic glory, her only next major gold medal in the Marathon at the World Championships in 2005. Nevertheless when she pulled out of the London with a foot injury, it was major news story, at least until the gold rush began in earnest. She still hasn’t officially retired so you never know.



Peter Jackson
For some reason I assumed The Hobbit began its release schedule next year, which made the posters and trailers a nice surprise. This is being written before the release date of course, so we don’t know if Jackson has “done a Lucas” or been able to recreate the magic. Because The Lord of the Rings is magic, timeless and everything you’d hope a fantasy film to be. When rewatching the extended versions earlier this year, it was with a sense of nostalgia and not a little sadness.  I cried through the closing credits of Return of the King when it was originally released, seemed so full of hope and with a plan. Now I’m entirely hopeless and have no plan at all so I cried again but for entirely different reasons.



Avril Lavigne
This lengthy evisceration of the first few seconds of the promo for Lavigne’s Complicated is entire justified but as is probably apparent from the closing few lines masked a deep admiration for the singer. Across the four albums released in the ensuing decade, she’s demonstrated that it is possible for popstrells to retain some longevity without wavering from formula, and still produce some decent singles, unlike say, Alanis Morissette who some considered to be her notional forerunner and has slowly driven off the creative cliff. I’d probably rather listen to the several dozen regional variations of Avril’s Girlfriend than Alanis’s Havoc and Bright Lights which takes her approach to making lists to a whole new level of tedium.



Mark Kermode
Ah Kermode. This was the year I discovered Kermode and I’m still listening ten years later. His approach has probably influenced my Doctor Who review more than anything else, especially since, if recent experience is a barometer, I’ve entirely forgotten how to review films, which is a bit unhelpful considered I have a film studies degree (though in fairness I was trying to be nice). Now that my connection to film release schedules has been all but cut, I generally tune into his Friday radio show because of the Grumpy Old Men like chemistry with Simon Mayo, though it’s impossible to really judge who is Walter Mattheu and who Jack Lemmon. I suppose it depends which of those has the flappiest hands.



Trinny Woodall
This before she appeared in Who as a psychotic android. Her selection then was pure lust, probably, the whole rest of the paragraph designed to fill the space that would have otherwise been filled with a photograph. Her wikipedia entry is fascinating, charting the slow decline of their UK televisual careers leading to much international travel, ending with the sentence, “a close friend of Elizabeth Hurley, Woodall agreed to perform a sangeet dance at the Hindu wedding celebrations of Hurley and Arun Nayar in March 2007, dancing with Hurley and six others, including Janet Street-Porter.” She subsequently wrote a column for the tabloid that shall not be named which makes her persona non grata to me now. Sad. #justiceforthe96

Tomorrow: Film and Music in 2002.