The Christmas Moment.

Christmas Most years at around this time I have a Christmas moment, a dislocated feeling, a bit warm but always with deep recognition, that Christmas is coming. It's either a snatch of music or seeing a decoration in the street or hearing two people talking about a present they're going to buy or a festive film on television (here's what happened in 2012). Sometimes it's simply a commercial which on the one hand leads to a sense of betrayal because the Christmas moment has been manufactured, but now and then it's just what I've needed. See if you can spot the moment during this Wes Anderson directed H&M advert when the Christmas moment happened:



On one level this feels like one of those YouTube "What if?" parodies (What if Wes Anderson Directed X-Men? etc). What if Wes Anderson directed a Christmas advert for a clothes company? But at this point Anderson seems entirely cognisant of his stylistic tropes to the point that he takes advantage of the viewer's understanding of them to intensify the effect, especially the camera pan which replaces a shot/reverse shot. But it works otherwise. I've shown this to someone who has never seen a Wes Anderson film before and she was enchanted.

Cartoon Cocker.

Film The Playlist offers this trailer for the Criterion Collection edition of Wes Anderson's The Fantastic Mr Fox featuring an animated Jarvis Cocker, which oddly enough is less animated than the real thing.  Click there for information about the extras and whatnot.

Review 2013: Not The Doctor: The Wes Anderson Collection.

Film The Wes Anderson Collection is a new book from the writer and critic Matt Zoller Seitz and illustrator Eric Anderson which tells the story of the film maker Wes Anderson through a collection of essays, interviews, diagrams and reproductions of archival materials from his films. There are excerpts from the book at Variety and at Vulture (what looks like the entire chapter about The Royal Tannenbaums).  The accompany the publication Seitz posted a series of short documentaries to his blog at Ebert.com in which he deconstructs each of the films, highlighting what he believes to be the important elements, tracking developments in Anderson's style and noting footnotable items like cameos and film references.  Unafraid to be critical and notice when the films haven't quite gelled with the public, they nonetheless capture the essence of one of the singular voices in cinema, whilst simultaneous capturing some of that style in their use of font, editing and music. Watching them over some soup before attending work over a couple of weeks in October reminded me of why I went to film school in the first place and how much I wish I was still there.

Wes Anderson's new film.

Film Post-modern noodling perhaps, but this new creation from the Anderson/Copolla axis is richer and more involving than some major motion pictures. There's also something comforting about still being able identify some film directors by their style even in the commercials work, that auteur theory isn't dead.

Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Midnight in Paris (2011)

Then  After waiting and waiting and waiting for a British blu-ray release of Midnight In Paris, I eventually bought a dvd from ebay, accidentally because I thought I was using a discount code but the code failed to work. I’ve then sat on it for a couple of months, well, it’s sat on a shelf waiting until the end of the Olympics then the innumerable other some would say “projects” others might say “displacement strategies” were completed. But after receiving a copy of Woody Allen: The Documentary from Lovefilm by accident and knowing that was released after this, and since the copy of Tinker Tailer Solidier Spy then sent me is covered in scratches and unwatchable I decided that life’s too short, whatever works, and watched it tonight.  As usual, the following assumes you've seen the film already.

Now  This is probably entirely the wrong time to be writing about Midnight in Paris. For a start, the clocks are going back tonight so we’ll be having two midnights, but I’m in such a good mood, so pleased that one of my favourite directors is still capable of producing such a clever, thematically interesting, beautifully shot and properly funny (something which wasn’t the case for his last film) that’s still making me smile even as I type. When Midnight in Paris was being garlanded with awards and nominations, I did consider if there’s was a certain amount of condescending sympathy about it, that perhaps they’re simply recognising that Woody’s managed to produce something at least slightly above his usual latter average.

Well, yes, no, yes. I was wrong. From the introductory shots of Paris designed to educate the audience with his protagonist Owen Wilson’s Gil’s view that the city is at its most beautiful when its raining, we’re in the hands of the man who so deftly communicated the scene changes in Everyone Says I Love You and the then contemporary nostalgia of Manhattan. All of the elements of Woody’s style which seemed so studded and calcified in You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, long scenes taking place in masters, the overlapping improvised dialogue, the massive cast of relative famous actors providing tiny cameos in non-New York locations become strengths again. This is the Woody Allen of old. Just like his character, the Paris air’s brought inspiration.

But interestingly, he manages all this by repeating the fish out of water storyline which he’s returned to throughout his career, of a character flirting or becoming addicted to some cultural aspect not their own. Going backwards, it’s what fuels Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Match Point, Celebrity, Bullets Over Broadway, Alice, The Purple Rose of Cairo and arguably Bananas. But unlike most of those films, there isn’t a tragic underpinning; while Gil loses both of his loves in the end, it’s about him gaining an education, he doesn’t really have to or even fight to keep his 1920s sojourns and there’s no suggestion at the end that he can’t go back there or won’t, even if he greets midnight on the other side of town from the portal position.

The key, I think, is that he keeps the story focus on Gil. Some of his more recent films have bloated because he’s cut away to the supporting characters. The Midnight In Paris version of that would have been to see the affair between Rachel McAdams’s Inez and Michael Sheen’s Paul (ironically since the actors are partners in real life) but with the exception of Inez’s father’s hiring of the private detective, Gil remains the audience’s viewpoint character, so we’re kept on the journey with him, never quite sure until some way into the film, if his time travel experience is some mental collapse or boozy dream. Like him, we just deliriously go along with it, typified by the moment when Woody cuts to a close-up of Gil letting the experience take hold.

Unlike Gil, we’re enjoying the double pleasure of not just meeting the 1920s Parisian icons, but the actors playing them and then marvelling at how perfectly cast they are. Of course Tom Hiddleston’s playing Scott with Alison Pill as Zelda. It’s amazing Adrien Brody hasn’t already starred in a Dali biopic (and really should on the strength of this). Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein? Of course she is. Bates incidentally previously appeared in an Allen film as a prostitute in Shadows and Fog, a film which though stylistically and thematically different, shares Midnight In Paris’s idea of a protagonist becoming lost in the streets after dark.

Like some of Woody’s other genre pieces there’s also little discussion of the mechanics of time travel. The car pulls up, Gil gets in, meets TS Elliot or whoever and is taken back in time. Sometimes he’s able to shift about unaccompanied in that time period, sometimes it disappears from him. But the diary indicates he is time travelling as does one of the director’s masterful jump cut jokes towards the end (up there with the cut to Rebecca Hall in the back of the plane in VCB). Does Gil change history? It doesn’t matter. How is he able to just bump into famous people? Not important. Plus, like Groundhog Day, it’s a strictly agnostic divine interventionist film, no Clarence the Angel pulling the strings.

The PI subplot is about the only moment which suggests changes made in editing.  It's introduced as though its going to be an element of tension, that perhaps the revelation will cause Inez's father to come between Gil and his time travelling antics.  But it does end in a joke.  Similarly the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway rather fall out of the story too, but there is a feature of Gil shifting between these "personalities" as he goes on his journey, each providing him with some new insight.  As ever, Woody's not provided a commentary and his interviews don't really tackle such technical aspects so we'll have to speculate as to what was intended.

I’ve not mentioned Marion Cotillard yet. She’s luminous, just as she always is. But what’s interesting is how her character Adriana has functionally a very similar role to the one which appeared in Inception. In that film, she was the catalyst for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb to break free from his dream world (aurally aided by La Vie En Rose sung by Edith Piaf who she played in the biopic of the same name). In Midnight in Paris, Adriana’s shift backwards to the Belle Epoque is what drives Gil to realise that the 1920s nostalgia trip he’s on might seem more exciting than 2010, but that actually what he should be doing is trying to make his modern life as satisfying by doing the things which make him happy. Whatever works, if you will.

Plus the layers of time travel suggest the layers of dreams in Inception. Obviously I’ve considered which period I’d like to travel back to and for a long while I wondered if I shouldn’t have been born in the 60s. But I also realised that I’m living at just the right moment. Having been born in the 70s, I’ve been able to watch the information age from its earliest moments in the 80s, through the development of the web, to that connection becoming hand held to everyone having access and being just old enough to keep in touch and be interested. If I’d been nearly forty-eight right now, that might not necessarily be the case. Plus I’d have to be fifty-eight now born in the 50s I’d properly enjoyed the 60s. Ack.

Time travel for me would be a tool. I wouldn’t want to live in the Elizabethen/Jacobian period, especially since I wouldn’t be a nobleman, but it would be useful to visit and grab copies of some of Shakespeare’s lost plays and fill in some of the gaps in his biography once and for all. And that’s what’s also interesting about Midnight in Paris. Gil’s no academic. He’s more interested in these figures as people rather than the ends of academic research. He’s not wanting to publish papers about these people and only really uses what he’s learned to embarrass Paul in the art gallery. Plus he’s never tempted to take advantage of his abilities to make himself rich, “only” to use his knowledge of Adriana’s feelings to seduce her.

Another thematic point of interest is how Gil’s companions treat Paris. Essentially their attitude is that it’s nice but you wouldn’t want to live there. Paul does treat it as an academic challenge. Inez prefers to live in Malibu yet is apparently interested in bettering herself by following Paul’s every word (though that’s possibly simply because she’s attracted to him). Inez’s parents enjoy everything the city has to offer and yet don’t like the French in general, the father portrayed as a right wing tea partier in one of Woody’s most political moments in some time. They’re almost analogue of how some US critics and audiences have been treating this European sojourn.

There's also much said about literature and the process of writing.  This is the film at its densest and perhaps one of the film's pleasures is the inbuilt need to rewatch and concentrate on these details.  Much of what's said, we must presume is taken from the relative writings of the various icons, the implication early on being that they're spouting what Gil's read through the idealised versions of themselves.  But what I draw from it is that if you're going to be a writer, you shouldn't be scared of what you write.  I've always worked from James Blish's question, "Who does it hurt?" Perhaps I shouldn't be to afraid to hurt people if I'm seeking a clearer truth, mostly myself.

What would be interesting to know is how the French reacted to Woody’s treatment of their language. One of the problems with his London films was that he could never quite get the local version of the language to flow quite right, the British actors often making a meal of the text. In Midnight in Paris, the text flows both ways, and there are some scenes played in florid French. Were these translated? There is a pattern in Woody’s European films that the best are about the US experience abroad, with Scoop especially being the best of the London films because of that. Perhaps Woody himself has noticed this. To Rome With Love also has some stories that follow this model.

Let’s cover some of the usual bases. Once again if you close your eyes, you can imagine some of his old repertory acting these lines. Wilson is Woody’s most obvious avatar in years. Rachel McAdams is in the Mia role. Michael Sheen’s essaying the role of Tony Roberts, even to the extent of growing a beard which mimics the one Roberts has in Play It Again, Sam. The music, rather than relying heavily on Parisian sounds, returns to his standards, with Cole Porter even becoming an important character point for Gil. Supporting artist Maurice Sonnenberg returns as “Man at Wine Tasting”, his seventh appearance in a Woody Allen film, though other than Bates he seems to be the only returning cast member.

Much like his London films, Woody’s cast some very well known local actors in tiny roles. Well, ok not Carla Bruni, who’s pretty good as the Museum Assistant (her only acting credit) and worked well in building some publicity during filming. But there’s Audrey Fleurot from Spiral as a 1920s partygoer, Gad Elmaleh as the PI, Olivier Rabourdin as Gaughan and if you glance through most of the casting on the IMDb you’ll find actors with massive long lists of screen credits in tiny roles. Like Mark Gattis in Match Point, they’re clearly just happy to have a Woody Allen film on their list of credits and a French person watching this will probably have same reaction we do to seeing Alexander Armstrong in the back of shot.

Crew wise, Darius Khondji returns as cinematographer from Anything Else and in the gap has amassed a pretty eclectic CV which includes Chéri, Funny Games U.S., My Blueberry Nights, Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, The Interpreter and Wimbledon. Alisa Lepselter’s back as his editor which she’s done since Sweet and Lowdown, though interestingly she’s not credited on To Rome With Love. Financing continues the trend of independence, with some money interestingly dropping in from what looks like Catalan government’s cultural department. It’s distributed by Warner Bros in the UK too which is a forming trend, as is their under releasing of a lot of films in high definition format.

Interestingly, for most territories, Woody’s involvement is front and centre. In the UK, You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger’s silhouette poster with the Windsor font was replaced with something far more generic and the director’s name didn’t appear anywhere but in the credits at the bottom. This time, Windsor’s back, we’re told, at that it’s written and directed by Woody Allen pretty prominently and the mood, Owen Wilson walking against Paris with weirdly a Van Gogh sky feels very “high brow” and particular even if a bit pecular since he’s one of the few painters who isn’t even mentioned in the film.

Midnight In Paris is now, I think, the highest grossing of his films in the US.  The film was famously released with his usual minimum distribution, but word of mouth grew and the film was effectively rereleased on nearly a thousand cinemas.  For whatever reason, the film managed to break through the usual prejudices and barriers, perhaps partially on the strength of Owen Wilson's performances, his best outside of a Wes Anderson piece, but mostly because it's so damn good.  It's done well enough that Woody's Untitled Project for this year was shot in California.  It’s once again possible for a distributor to make Woody’s participation a benefit. Good.

Plus corridors, corridors, corridors.

TV Earlier this evening, at about tea time, I visited our usual Fish and a Chip emporium. After ordering, I nipped out to the pillar box to post a dvd back to Lovefilm (Maaasshhhette!) and when I returned I leaned against the counter and must have looked a bit bedraggled. I’ve been growing my hair long again and it hasn’t quite reached the stage of sitting properly so the fringe sometimes falls forward across my face. The lady behind the counter asked what was wrong, and smelling the salt and vinegar and curry sauce in the air, I simply said “I’m just hungry.” I may have sounded like The Wire.

The lady stepped forward, pulled out of the foil trays in which their pies are usually served in, steps over to the chip warmer and shovels some into the tray. I’m embarrassed of course and tell she doesn’t have to, but all she says asks is “Salt and vinegar?” I reply in the affirmative, politely, and after shaking and spraying it with condiments, places the tray at my eye level, finally reaching for and skewering a small plastic fork vertically into the top. I thank her again and then begin munching and as is always the case with chips from this chip emporium they’re gorgeous.

Right now, that’s exactly the experience of watching Doctor Who each Saturday night with Moffat et al as the woman in the Chip shop, offering before us an always unexpected special treat. Never mind last week’s astonishing episode, here’s another one. By turns funny, creepy and exciting, Toby Whithouse’s The God Complex is the final instalment of what we can now see as a trilogy of surrealist fantasies of the kind which you can’t imagine any other broadcaster offering up on a Saturday night in this timeslot. #ilovethebbc

As with both of the previous episodes, it's possible to list the story’s influences. Whithouse himself has presented a hotel filled with nightmares in his own Being Human and having those nightmares feeding back into the consciousness is almost a running joke on Buffy The Vampire Slayer (like everything else). As was unexpectedly noted in closing dialogue of explanation they’re chased by Nimon redux (squee), sapping of belief was almost the reverse of the main central chapter in the “Repelling the curse of Fenric for Dummies” and the effects of the bliss pure Star Trek V.

Plus corridors, corridors, corridors. Shifting corridors.  And stairs.  Though not to the point of recursive occlusion. Whithouse is also tapping into our own fears of disorientation, of not being able to control our space or at least the spaces we’re existing in. Anyone who’s experienced Liverpool’s unending road improvement schedule with its ever changing traffic management can seriously relate. The hotel is clearly supposed to evoke the film version of The Shining, especially when said bliss envelops the victims and they find themselves in the spiral of repetition.

Whithouse’s script respects those sources but makes some significant choices which break away from potential cliché. For a start, the nightmares aren’t milked. They’re rarely scary in similar efforts, which is why the Elm Street film series so quickly turned to satire and King so often chooses universally creepy figures like clowns. So Whithouse largely uses them as a trigger for the horror of the “rapture”. Joe's is already in situ and the rest are barely glimpsed and deliberately chosen to only be significant to the victim and mostly stereotypical.

The master-stroke is not giving us the nightmare which most other series would be so pornographically desperate to show us they’d put it in the trailer. Quite rightly, the Doctor’s apparently unaffected by the brainwashing and opens the door just out of curiosity. The sound of the cloister bell, a sigh of resignation, then closed again. What did he see? What can scare a man who’s barbecued his own race in order to destroy something even scarier, who’s cheated death, so, so many times. My guess? Himself. But the contents of that room have to be returned to.

What does the Doctor believe in? When he’s asked directly by Ida whilst dangling in The Satan Pit he doesn’t answer the question, says that he hasn’t seen everything, that he doesn’t know, before plunging into the black. You may remember other examples. If he has any kind of faith, it’s probably in the humanoid spirit, which was what made Midnight a tragedy because he was only able to bring out the worst in those units. Perhaps the real answer is obscured like so much else by the question inherent in the title of the series.

Unless it’s faith in his subjects. In Fenric it was his companions, his list from Susan upwards warding them off. That seems simplistic, but the scene in which he shook Amy’s faith in him underscores of late the near religious fervour he can engender, never mind a lonely God, he’s David Koresh in a box, as Davros suggested his disciples willing to die for him. The intercutting between Karen and Caitlin underscores how he views Amy, that she’s still the little girl he met when he was still cooking and what we saw was her understand that was the still care.

Was it thematically critical of faith in general, that faith will get you killed if you're not careful?  Not unless you modify that to faith will get you killed if you're trapped in a mad hotel etc.   When Rita confirms to the Doctor that she's a Muslim he's genuinely excited by the prospect.  As Gridlock and Last of the Time Lords demonstrate, this is a show that positively adores faith even if its just a machine for binding people together to create hope.  Amy tells Gibbis that the Doctor will get him out alive.  Despite the alien's ambiguous morals, he does.  End of.

Perhaps the most shocking moment in the episode is the rawness of Rory's joke about wondering if when the Doctor talks to someone, he should advise the next of kin.  Perhaps an indication of the slight fracture in their relationship after The Girl Who Waited, it references back to a similar moment in Whithouse's The Vampires of Venice.  The process is to underscore Rory's disturbing lack of faith, the thing which is keeping him alive, but it tempers the resonances noted above.

If you want my real guess for how his story this season will resolve itself, never mind Miracle Day, the Doctor will somehow make the universe forget him. Moffat’s already hinted towards a shift away from his god-like status, if the Silence don’t know who he is, why would they attack him so how could he die? Unless that’s how “silence will fall”. Everyone he knows, all the lives he’s touched in his history will forget the name Doctor and he’ll be really all alone without his reputation to assist him, a stranger to River, to UNIT, to all his friends.  QED.

The script is also a textbook demonstration of how to create characters we care about and more significantly that we care about when they die (downwards glance). If Howie is bit too Whizz Kid for my tastes, Rita is beautifully realised clearly meant to evoke all of the nuWho Doctor’s previous companions with her sharp wit and willingness to speak to the Doctor as an equal. The tea references make me chuckle now that I'm researching this paragraph because Amara Karan is I think the first actor in the Whoniverse to have worked with Wes Anderson. In The Darjeeling Limited. Playing a character called Rita.

Making his third appearance in the Whoniverse, after turning up in Mark Gattis’s audio Phantasmagoria and the Doctor Who Night skits also with Mark Gattis is David Walliams, almost unrecognisable as Mark Gattis, sorry Gibbis, making the most of a character which could just as well have been created by Douglas Adams. An alien who wants to be oppressed is just the sort of twisted logic he would have loved (see the Dish of the Day) my favourite line being the row of trees being put in so that the invading army can keep in the shade as they’re marching to the capital.

And again, another beautifully directed episode. Nick Hurran’s had an interesting career. According to the imdb, his first work was on Telly Addicts, before moving into sitcom with a dozen episodes of Never The Twain, then Big Break, Boon before oscillating between tv drama and film, the auteur behind some of my guilty pleasures like Virtual Sexuality. He was last on The Prisoner mini-series and now here he is creating visually stunning Doctor Who that as it transpires was the source for much of the preview trailer for this half of the series.

The most striking element is that he and the DP aren’t afraid to rest on close-ups. That was a feature last week too, even in action sequences we’re right up in actor’s faces, risking a lack of narrative clarity in favour of seeking a character's thought processes. The shots of the Doctor in particular seem like some of the closest, his strange congregation of features both enigmatic and reassuring, demonstrating how carefully thought through Matt’s performance actually is, now and then revealing the flashes of fear which provide the Time Lord’s motivation.

But as the night continues and the episode recedes into my memory (until the blu-ray release) we can’t complete our acquaintance without reference to the conclusion. Imagine for a moment if this was Amy and Rory’s final moment in the series. External forces like interviewers with microphones at conventions and twitter chatter have put paid to that, but how beautiful would it be if, just once, the Doctor chose to leave his companions behind. Not out of failure, not like Adam.  Or obligation like Sarah Jane.  But because he knows that eventually something will happen to them and he can’t stand by and let it.

To an extent it is an empty gesture because we know Amy and Rory will be back, they’re just taking a week off because of the Cardiff double banking quandary. Plus the Doctor’s faced worse things than the hotel of doom with its horny Minatour and not thought it prudent to drop his plus ones and twos off just in case, y’know. However well written and acted this scene, this can’t be the end for them unless the referencing of the 60s episode drifts backwards from The Mind Robber to Dodo’s exit in The War Machines.

The ambiguity is what’s compelling here. The words not spoken. Like the best drama, we’re asked to fill in the gaps. He knows now that he’ll be travelling to his death and somehow that these versions of his friends won’t be there. Amy understands that she’s already met this future Doctor; she knows that at some point he’s going to have some wild adventures with her daughter, perhaps with everyone finally on the same page. Worse episodes, worse series would have barrelled towards melodrama. But he doesn’t mention it to her, she to him or indeed she to Rory.

Now we’re in the end game, a cyber-Cordon episode representing part of the two hundred years traffic, the old creature trapped in the maze of the universe and time, with a thousand pieces of spin-off fiction to fill in the rest of the gaps. Then presumably a return to the beach in Utah and the final showdown with the Silence. Treat, after treat, after treat. Generally unexpected, always welcome and in a week when another corner of the Whoniverse made some us feel very tired and a bit tetchy, a reminder that there is still a reason to keep the faith and praise him like we should.

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About River Song * but were afraid to ask.

TV Let’s Kill Hitler or and I'll doubtless be the fluftiest person to make this joke or use it as a headline “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About River Song* but were afraid to ask” had a lot to live up to, years worth of speculation and jokes and mythology and questions, oh so many questions to be answered. Actually, it would have been classic Steven Moffat to leave us all waiting for another six episode or even years before revealing any of this but with the revelation (or “revelation” depending on your level of smugness) at the close of A Good Man Goes To War (or Love & Death) it was entirely unlikely that this episode would actually be about killing Hitler. Well not in actually. Metaphorically perhaps …

What it was about, apart from you know the plot and everything else which we’ll talk about in the next paragraph, was Moffat demonstrating why Doctor Who is the greatest drama show on British television right now. There is nothing like it. Even when it fails, or at least loses its way a bit, and I glance wearily at my review of Curse of the Black Spot as I type this (or at least my memory of writing it) it’s still like nothing else on television. It’s sci-fi, it’s fantasy, it’s (in this case) historical dramedy, it’s a romance, it’s a philosophical meditation on the nature of being and that ignores the fact that most comedy series would kill to be as funny as this. And it’s published on a Saturday night for a family audience. Magnificent.

The intricacy with which River’s story has been set up and executed has been extraordinary. As we know from various sources, Moffat was scripting The Forest of the Dead at the same time as putting his version of the series but just imagine the deviousness of having her die at the close of that story then revealing she’s a timelord and then explaining why she couldn't then regenerate later and as I suspect knowing that we’d all sit around offering our intricate explanations of same. That Amy and Rory have known her far longer than their first meeting, that she’s been with them all their lives albeit in a different frame apparently knowingly stimulating the former’s memory of the mad man in a box and the latter’s libido.

Like some of the great children’s writers Moffat understands that kids aren’t stupid, they only turn out stupid if their brains aren’t stimulated and one of the hallmarks of his version is that he doesn’t just want them shouting Exterminate! in school yards, but also huddled together unknowingly going over quantum mechanics, falsidical and veridical paradoxes (and whatever other illustrative terms I could hoover up from the wikipedia because I not with the science) as they try to rationalise and untangle the lives of River Song and the Doctor. At a time when, if Eric Schmidt’s correct, art and science are being separated in school teaching (which isn’t anything new, it’s the reason I’m not with the science), Doctor Who is atomically slamming them back together again.

It’s also astonishingly rich, as I’ve said before burning through story and ideas that would have sustained whole seasons, indeed whole runs of other shows. Just as in A Good Man Goes To War we were introduced to characters we were desperate to see for longer than these forty-five minutes, Mels, the unearthly child, introduced in a sequence apparently styled on the work of  Waris Hussein and Wes Anderson ('Lil Rory!), went far too quickly. Nina Toussaint-White burns brightly in this tiny role, succeeding in being totally alien to us but utterly familiar, Moffat’s writing too allowing us one of those rare moments when we’re allowed to be ahead of the characters, so as to create the sense of anticipation in the upcoming "revelation".  Plus I could really relate to Rory in these flashbacks.  Various reasons.

Alex Kingston’s performance as the still cooking Melody is nothing short of magnificent, River already running through her but polluted by her programming, capturing the fiery brilliance of the post regenerative fervour, of everything being different but the same and wanting to know what her new body is capable of, all the while in a battle of ways with the other Time Lord in the room. Then, slowly, the Doctor’s presence cleanses her soul, as the person we know from our earlier encounter washes across Kingston face, the potential darkness still bubbling underneath but the ultimate expression of the his capacity to make people better themselves, in this case so she can’t disappoint him when they next meet.

Which isn’t to say you can’t criticise this genesis of the character. When the last episode aired, I was introduced to the concept of “fridging” in drama, of a character’s pregnancy as plot device. Amy did have her baby snatched from her and although she unknowingly still watched her child grow and mature, she has still suffered the kind of loss most women couldn’t get over. There are plenty of ways of rationalising the psychology of that within this format and indeed, in the moment when the Doctor begged his emergency system for comfort he acknowledges that he’s broken Amy, just as he has Rose, Martha and Donna (and wasn’t that great?). Perhaps cutting her off from the normal flow of maternal emotions. I don’t have an answer.

It is interesting that in that moment as the Doctor lay on the floor Moffat chose to recall that guilt and it's a mark of Matt's performance at this point that he was able to play this emotional holdover from before he was born (almost).  In the past few days BBC America have published a clip of the actor answer the question of whether he considers how the actors who'll come after him will play the role and it's interesting that presumably none of the actors have, as he says, they've all gone with the spirit of whatever's been put in front of them, even Eccleston who apparently didn't even know who he would be regenerating in too.  But it's worth saying that you couldn't imagine any of the previous actors playing the slapstick tragedy of the Eleventh Doctor in his top-hatted final moments,  knowing that his only hope is to convince Melody to make a supreme sacrifice.

All of this against the backdrop of 1938 Germany, with the ironic justice of Cardiff’s Temple of Peace being employed as the Reich Chancellery and backdrop for the epicentre of the story (a venue so familiar it's rapidly becoming the nu-Who equivalent of a quarry, albeit with the Portland stone at the end of its manufacturing process rather than the start). Amazingly, Moffat and co manage to keep this visit light, more Indiana Jones or Allo Allo than Downfall (for want of another touchstone), though it’s impossible not to pull out the new cliché when it comes to talking about Who that it looks like a feature film because it does, Richard Senior in directing his first whole episode taking full visual advantage of the large spaces on offer.

The closeting of the Fuhrer is a brilliant bait and switch and let’s face it he deserves nothing more (certainly not playing the Doctor, Mr Davies) which hasn’t stopped him from bestriding the spin-off fiction becoming a key player in the Seventh Doctor and Ace’s fight against the Timewyrm early in the New Adventures, with the Sixth Doctor becoming embroiled in the circumstances of his real death not to mention all the messing about with the timelines in a Big Finish series. Albert Welling didn’t have to do too much behind the moustache but his timing on seeing the TARDIS was impeccable. How long did he spend in the cupboard? Did it just serve to increase his anger making Silver Nemesis too all the more inevitable?

Then there’s the manic genius of the Teselecta, whose anagrammatic name has to be a reference to the car scene in the aforepunned one of the Woody Allen’s early funny ones (“I'm not getting shot out of that thing. What if he's masturbating? I'm liable to end up on the ceiling”). True, the clearer reference is Meet Dave, a film I’m still yet to brave because of the post-Norbit presence of Eddie Murphy with its human shaped space machine but the idea that Moffat could be going anywhere near that gives me the wiggins. So I’ll prefer to assume that he had Burt Reynolds preparing an erection in his head. Oh dear. Now I have a completely different image in my head. Now you do too. Sorry about that.

Um, where was I up to?  Where are we up to? With the source of River just about mapped out, we still don’t know precisely who the Silence are, other than that they’re not just the skull men in suits, but a larger collective. We now know that someone will ask a question and that “silence will fall” and that the question is a mystery that will require deep thought, though hopefully not that Deep Thought otherwise it’s a good job the Doctor has a time machine ("How long?"). We know that the Doctor has downloaded the Testicle’s records and knows when he’s going to die, but he's keeping his knowledge from his travelling companions and thanks to the Radio Times we know the title of the final episode of the series. I can’t wait to get there.

This Blog's 10th Birthday.

About It has been ten years since I began posting here and to celebrate I asked Annette, who last interviewed me five years ago about the history of the blog, to return to talk about another five. Luckily, it was an offer she didn't refuse ...

It's so hard to believe it's been five years since our interview. I was happily surprised to be asked to think of a few more questions to celebrate this milestone.

We'll be doing this again in another five years I expect.  Sorry.

What do you think is the biggest change in the blog from then to now?

Migrating the Doctor Who gubbins over from Behind The Sofa has changed the tone somewhat, I think. In the early years, I was always a bit reticent about posting Doctor Who related posts and whatnot, just the odd review here and there. But once the show came back to television, it suddenly felt right. Then Behind The Sofa began and I largely moved any writing about the franchise to there with links through when necessary.

I was always very conscious that this blog had to be more accessible somehow because the audiences seemed different. But now that Doctor Who is a popular success and people are actively seeking the history of the franchise, both in dvds and spin-off media, I feel freer to be as fannish as I like. Plus people have told me they like it when I make some arcane reference because it gives them somewhere to go. I suppose I'm mainly ruing the day I promised myself I'd review anything new that's broadcast. As you can probably tell, I'm putting off the K9 series for as long as possible.

Other than that, having had a glance at July 2006, when the last interview was posted, I don’t think the content is that different, writing about pop culture discoveries, disappointment at how boring it all is. The biggest change probably is that since Twitter, some links and opinions which might otherwise have been posted directly in-line are added to the miniblog in the sidebar or simply stay in Twitter.

That's something I've been trying to get back out of the habit of because Twitter is far more ephemeral and one of the great applications of the blog is as a giant memory bank for stuff which has happened. At it's core, it's still a diary of sorts. I don't think that element of blogging has changed. Perhaps I just need to regain some of my confidence and learn to write faster.

You wrote a nice synopsis in your Review 2010 of how blogging has changed in the past ten years. You wrote, “It's become aggressively difficult to be truly original anymore.” Can you talk about that a little bit more?

When I began blogging, there didn't seem to be that many and there especially weren't many in Liverpool (in hindsight I've discovered a couple who began before me although their posting schedule is rather more sporadic). Back then, everythingwas new. Even links to pages at more traditional websites seemed fresh as though adding that link to a blog was an act of Columbus-like discovery. When I wrote a review of some new film or described a train journey, it still had an element of reportage, of offering something the mainstream media and other bloggers weren't.

Perhaps there's an element of a change in perception more than anything else in this, but now it feels as though I'm one of many hundreds of people crowd emphasising a link. In describing a train journey, the elements of that journey aren't going to be that much different to another even though it was my experience of it, even though no two anecdotes can be the same because they’ve been experience by different people. We’re all, I think, in a deadly spiral.

Yes, that's a good metaphor. There is just so much content out there now. Chances are, someone is writing about the same thing you're writing about, and doing it better, which is sort of maddening.

Which is why I've decided since writing that post you mentioned, is that it doesn't matter. The whole point of a web log from the start was to record our contact with the (god I hate using this phrase in this context) virtual world and as I said then, no two blogs are alike because they reflect the personality to the writer.

The Doctor Who reviews are a typical example.

In the week after each episode is broadcast, literally hundreds of opinions are posted on-line, from professional reviews down to someone fitting their thoughts into a hundred and forty characters on Twitter. There shouldn't be any such thing as an original idea under those circumstances.

Yet time and again I'll find something I hadn't thought of or in writing my review realised in hindsight (because I tend not to look at anyone else's review before hand -- that's creativity death) I've hit upon a different angle to everyone else because of the experience I've brought to it.

Agreed, I've stopped caring, too. So what if someone else writes a much more insightful review of Mad Men, or of a book I read or movie I saw? I think it's interesting to have a record of the things I read or watch. I also enjoy finding things to post about that are off the beaten path and have been overlooked, even in the vastness of the Internet. Also, on the blog I can be as personal as I want, not be stuck with the professional snarkiness that a lot of blogs have.

Exactly. There has been a move towards reacting negatively to almost everything creative which is always the easiest option. I reviewed a Doctor Who cd a couple of weeks ago, and it wasn’t bad, just terribly ordinary. But I agonised for hours over how to put that into words and be constructive whilst still being true to my opinion knowing there’s always a chance the author might find it. It would have been very easy to be sarcastic but sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a point to that.

Sometimes it can also be incredibly difficult to get the most of the web because you have to spend so much time mentally filtering out the bile which emanates from every corner. Postings on the really popular blogs rarely have anything like a proper intelligent discussion underneath. Usually it’s a sea of insults, flames and arrogance often by people who’ve skimmed the text or in some cases only read the headline and passed assumptions.

I tested this out on Behind The Sofa once. I posted a review of a masterpiece which began with two paragraphs of obvious negativity and clichés and closed with same but with the proper review in the middle (with an indication within the text about what I was doing for the readers who’d properly read that far). Sure enough, as expected, there were a couple of commenters who insulted me and who fairly obviously hadn’t followed the thread of the review.

How do you keep the blog fresh, for yourself and for your readers?

I don't know how fresh it really is. I've been feeling a bit jaded lately and that's reflected in the blog and I suspect this answer. Like I said in that recent self-pitying post, I'd hate to think it's just been reduced to product reviews and links but then for all I know, that might be what people want to read. Should I care what people think? I'm not Gawker. I'm not in this for the page views even though psychologically that somehow still manages to be at the back of my mind. Am I posting about this because I’m really interested or because I think people will like reading it? If I am keeping it fresh, it's because I keep striving to find some new mode or because my interests keep changing and developing and there's always something new to react to. Can I throw it back in your direction? Do you think it's still fresh?

I do think the blog has changed. Like you said earlier, I think it's a more specialized on a few topics, not so much a general interest blog any more. But I like your attitude about “projects” for the blog. It does take effort to keep things fresh. If you just post randomness or only when you feel like it, chances are you will give up on it.

Hmm, that’s interesting. I wonder when that happened. I genuinely hadn’t noticed. I know there is a lot more Shakespeare and Doctor Who on there, for reasons we’ve discussed related to archiving and cross posting. You’re making me think I need to try harder.

Related to that, I thought your Review 2010 was some of the best writing I've seen on the blog. Really on point about a lot of things.

Thank you. That’s very kind.

You wrote in the Review 2010 piece that personal blogging has become “rather old school.” Do you think social media is the main reason for the decline of personal blogging?

Many people in the media talk about how radio is an instantaneous medium, that you can have an idea and it can literally come straight out of their mouths into a microphone, whereas most television has to be crafted. Of course, some radio programmes take as much effort as television and some television is broadcast live, but there's a fair comparison with blogging and twitter.

Twitter feels more immediate and because you're writing to a captive audience of followers many of whom you actually know, there's a greater likelihood of a discussion. As I said in that post from a few weeks ago, there's an effort to blogging, of sitting down for half an hour and turning out five hundred unpaid words on a topic (or in my case often two thousand five hundred), which isn't required with Twitter. I wondering now if I would have even started a blog now, or just relied on the Twitter feed. I honestly don't have an answer. I think I just began writing this (meaning the blog) at the correct moment.

And do you think a new generation may rediscover blogging at some point?

Not sure. Don’t know. I'd like to think so. But I'm taking a very grim view on this based on these experience of watching some of the old school stop work and migrate to twitter, some even deleting their blogs (after hopefully backing them up). LiverpoolBlogs is jumping and I'm adding new blogs every other week or so of one form or another.

If I was to sit down and write a thesis, perhaps something I'd also consider is whether blogging existed initially because it was insanely difficult for most amateurs to post anything to the web but text. In 2001, although some video and picture sites were available but not a lot of people, at least in the UK, used broadband and it took hours to upload anything via dial up.

Interesting thought.

Now that web is visually rich, someone is more likely to post photographs of a holiday and that's the sum total of the creativity rather than, as used to be case, having to sit down with a keyboard and describe everything, which otherwise leads on to anecdotes and other business spilling out.

I've never thought that someone describing their experience is more interesting than showing me a photo of it and we're back to the radio analogy. The pictures are never as amazing as the version you have in your head. So blog posts filled with pictures can be the new media equivalent of the old slide shows at friend’s houses.

If blogging does become a thing again, on mass, and amongst young people, and not just in terms of embedding elements on Tumblr, assuming it isn’t already (I’m so out of touch), there would have to be a reason for it, and people would have to be keen to do it knowing that they’re not wasting their time.

But if the recent fake lesbian bloggers controversy demonstrated anything, it’s that long form personal blogging isn’t dead yet, even if the long form blogging is fictional. There was still the appetite from readers for that kind of content. Perhaps what we’ll see is a smaller number of blogging but bigger readerships.

Yes, I think it's still possible for a blog to catch fire these days. However, I think blogging is now a writer's medium. It doesn't have the same social function it did years ago, in the days of LiveJournal, MySpace, etc.

No, you’re right, that’s definitely been replaced by social networking. When blogging was first being discussed in the media, many of the subjects when asked why they began said it was so that their family and friends knew what was happening in their lives, to save them on sending out emails or multiple letters. Now all of that can be achieved through status updates and photo uploads.

Do you still read any of the same blogs you did ten years ago (if any of them still around :-))?

Some are. I still read Metafilter and I love that it mostly hasn't changed its design in the meantime, still the blue even after twelve years, simply bolted on extra sections like Ask (which has arguably eclipsed the "main" page). I noticed Lily Tao's having another go at Girlhacker's Random Log. Rebecca Blood posted something again in the past couple of weeks, and Darren's still running LinkMachineGo. SoreEyes is still up too. Kottke. There are loads of others I've picked up over the years, even that were posting before I was.

But it really is the link blogs which have properly survived, or still post very regularly and plenty of London bloggers like Diamond Geezer who manages to turn out lengthy posts every day. The long form blogs that I used to read have certainly fallen away, although something else to consider is that a lot of those old writers are now getting paid to write for a living. Some of them have become editors. Who'd have time to write a personal blog on top of all that?

Clearly I'm going to be in all sorts of trouble for those two paragraphs because of someone I haven't mentioned (ducks).

What are your must-read websites these days?

Since the advent of RSS feeds and Google News, the way I consume the web has changed somewhat. I read loads of blogs and websites and it seems unfair to list some and not others (!). The miniblog probably keeps track of most of them, it's my version of the blogroll in that it links to elements of the kinds of blogs I'm reading. That's why I try to keep it so long in terms of screen acreage. Plus I've always found properly blogrolls difficult to maintain.

I'm utilising Google News more and more too, setting up RSS alerts for subjects I'm interested in. I recently realised that if you look for the search terms just in the title, because of the SEO requirements of websites, you're more like to get articles just about that topic rather than just random articles mentioning it in passing. Well, hum. There’s far less brand loyalty than there used to be though I do still tend to rely on The Guardian even though I’m increasingly disagreeing with its way about things.

Your year-end reviews are a tradition I look forward to every year.

[For readers who haven't been around for all of them, here are the topics:

Review 2010: The Opinion Engine (readers ask you to write about something)


Review 2009: Subjectively Speaking (chats with readers via social media)

Review 2008: "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself (or You) a Letter" (Open letters to reader-suggested people)

Review 2007: All Roads Lead Home (readers write about their hometowns)

Review 2006: Answering reader questions about anything

Review 2005: Readers writing about something they've always wanted to do and finally did

Review 2004: What I watched (series of looong lists)

Review 2003: Panel of interesting people answer questions about the previous year.

Review 2002 (technically doesn't have a proper name): the year in culture: people, moments, film, music, etc.

Review 2001: none, as far as I could tell ]

What got you started with it and why have you continued with it? Also, what's been your favorite year-end review?

You're right, none in 2001 and I'd forgotten about "Moments" in 2002.  I've retrospectively gone in and tagged those.

Here's what got me started with it. Laziness. The idea was to get other people to write the blog so I could have a couple of weeks off over Christmas. But of course, nothing is that simple. Even in 2003 there was a ton of administration required in reading back through the year and choosing the people to email, choosing the questions then editing the posts so that they made sense. But in doing all of that I realised how rewarding the process was, and although 2004 was a bust (and a time consuming one but we talked about that last time) I decided to carry on, asking for guest posts one year then writing it all myself the next with input from readers.

Mainly the reason I carry on with the Review 20something series is that it focuses the mind, forces me to do something. Like plenty of writers, I think some of my best work is when I've been given a topic to work from, find an angle on it. In 2006 someone asked me about the pedestrianisation of Norwich city centre which was an Alan Partridge reference but led to me actually deciding what I thought about pedestrianisation and the general blanding out of city centres. In 2010, Alison just fed me the name "Shanghai" which span off into my first proper piece of Doctor Who fan fiction (which I realised later stole the Beep The Meep gag but that's Doctor Who for you - no good idea goes unrecycled).

Since 2006, which I think was the best of the years I've written, I'd be lying if I said the process hasn't been harder. People have less time for this kind of a frippery and despite all the call for entries, even in 2010 when I made the idea as loose as possible so that people could essentially submit the first thing which came into their head, it was difficult to gather a selection of topics to write about.

Luckily a couple of people submitted half a dozen and I added some of my own (My year in... that sort of thing) so I made it through to the end of the month, but it still felt like cheating. Lord knows what I'll be doing come December. I'm marinating as we speak. But there will be something. It's part of the blog now and that's also reason enough to continue with it.

I enjoy it as a tradition for that time of year, like a holiday party. It's a nice way to reflect on what's happened that year.

That’s one of the interesting aspects too. Sometimes even though it’s called Review 20xx the topics don’t seem like they’d immediately lend themselves to talking about the previous twelve months, yet somehow they’ll usually be dragged back to that.

Shakespeare and Doctor Who: Why do you think you're a fan of both?

Both developed gradually. Here’s how I became a fan.

Like everyone else I first encountered Shakespeare at school and like everyone else, the process of having to be taught Othello and Measure for Measure almost killed it for me because we weren’t really given much background as to their relevance just a straight read through of the text and some literary criticism by some equally old dead guys. As someone from the RSC said on the radio recently, it’s a crime that these texts which have to acted in order to fully gain their worth and be comprehensible are often read through in a start/stop manner in the classroom with verbal annotations from a teacher, which is how I originally experienced Othello sat next to a girl who I was madly in teenage love with so my mind wasn’t on the text.

Yes, that was my introduction to Shakespeare, too. Really is sad how school takes all the excitement out of it.

But also, like the lucky people, I happened to see some amazing productions which demonstrated that these weren’t just blocks of incomprehensible text, but mini-investigations into the human soul filled with proper emotion. Measure for Measure’s been filmed only a few times, but luckily, the BBC Shakespeare version is amazing. When Tim Piggot-Smith as Angelo, which he’s mostly played in a cold logical manner in public, has a private moment in which he talks about all of these feelings for Isabella which are welling up inside of him for the first time, I understood those emotions. They were the same emotions I had been having for girl I was sitting next to for Othello. That along with visits to Tate Liverpool and whatnot were opened my eyes to the world.  I felt myself becoming a more complex person right there. Not sure if it has lasted.

But I wasn’t a fan yet. Over the years I saw loads of productions, from a street Henry IV at the Edinburgh Festival to the Branagh films and really began to pay attention until finally I bought and watched my way through the whole of the BBC Shakespeare, began reading around the topic, watching and listening to more productions, studying adaptations on my post-graduate course after beginning the Hamlet thing as a challenge to myself until somewhere along the line I realised I was a fan in the traditional description of a fan sense. As to why I still am? I’ve probably become an elitist. I can’t stand most reality television any more, even in an ironic way, and Shakespeare feels like a fixed point that will continue to fight against, just by existing, the rubbish which is otherwise subsuming culture. Plus some passages have the ability to make me cry. Proper tears. Every time I hear the closing speeches of Midsummer’s Night Dream or ….

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

… I’m blubbing, blubbing even as I copy/paste that from another website.

*handing you virtual tissue* Wow, that is amazing.

Here is the short version of Doctor Who. I watched the show as a child, of course, but once it ended, everything was Transformers then Star Trek, so much so I sold off my Doctor Who stuff, including a couple of annuals I still kick myself about, including a Troughton era for a pound to a man who walked a way with a slightly startled look on his face. I understand why now. Luckily it was included as an extra on a dvd later, but that’s not the same thing. Rosebud. Rosebud!

Then I visited the exhibition in Langollen not long after the broadcast of the TV movie both of which rekindled old memories. Whilst I was buying a copy of The Keeper of Traken (of all things)  on VHS, the clerk told me that the show was coming back. I didn’t know what he meant, and still don’t but I suspect he was talking about the Big Finish license which happened a couple of years later. I began buying Doctor Who Magazine (beginning with an issue that had a roundtable with the likes of Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat about what they’d do with it if the show ever came back) and my Auntie recorded stories from UK Gold.

Then I bought some more videos for the stories she missed. Then I began listening to the Paul McGann audios which at the time felt like a proper continuation and began reading the novels and seeking out the spin-off material after reading about them in DWM and on Off The Telly. Which carried on for a couple of years, then the new series was announced and well, um where has the time got to?

Mostly I still enjoy Doctor Who because there is so much of it now, but unlike most franchises, none of it’s the same and individual writers or editors or producers can leave their stamp on it. There’s not a lot of similarities between the recent BBC audio Tom Baker shows by Paul Magrs and the Russell T Davies era on tv but they’re still the same ongoing story, with the same character, which is amazing. Plus, at its best it can jackdaw in bits of narrative and genre and mythology from everywhere else and be terribly clever and has a central character who thinks his way out of situations but who, despite essentially being a God within the universe, still remains vulnerable.

What Doctor Who and Shakespeare both also have in common is a production history. There are the anecdotes about actors and producers and artists, a sense of each imprinting their own ideas and developing various epochs and a genuine sense of something new to discover. I’m endlessly fascinated by this stuff, often even more so than watching the product itself. I’ve read dozens of books on both topics and there’s always something new to be said, even if it’s wrong, or at least I think is wrong. Plus both contain within them a sense of anticipation, what Russell T Davies calls “anticipointment”, that expectation that what you’re about to watch is going to be rubbish and the ensuing moments of elation when you realise some genius is at work.

Does that answer the question?

Yes, I especially like the comparison between the two. I just think it's unusual for a person to be a fan of both things. Actually I don't know if “fan” is really the correct term for someone who appreciates Shakespeare?

I’ve never been able to think of anything else and I think it fits my appreciation of Shakespeare at least because the way it manifests itself in much the same way as Doctor Who. I notice similar behaviours across both, like the collecting gene, making lists or developing an opinion about what is and isn’t in the “canon”. I’ve wondered lately what a Shakespeare Convention would be like. Old wags from the RSC turning up to offer anecdotes about their time with the company (“… and when I came out the entire cast of Pericles were wearing eye patches”), fans sitting around in tents watching tenth generation copies of some Old Vic performance recorded from the back of the stalls, tables filled with National Theatre programmes and other merchandising.

What's your measuring stick for success as far as the blog? Numbers, awards, reader reaction, purely personal satisfaction, etc.? Are there any honors, awards, or milestones that you are particularly proud of?

Actually, I don't think about it. Honestly, I don't think about it. It's nice that more people are reading than ever but as I said in that self indulgent post that's a -- insert cliche of your choice about something being good and bad. If anything I don't understand why people keep reading, why they're still reading. I don't take complements well, they tend to make me very self-conscious as though there's an ulterior motive behind them. When Creative Tourism added me to that top 25 along side all of those professional bloggers, that didn't make much sense since there were other blogs on the list with far bigger readerships and more importantly a greater passion for the subject. I even emailed them to check there hadn't been some mistake.

That's surprising to me. It seems like the blog has gotten quite a few good mentions over the years, which you definitely should be proud of. Numbers can be a trickier measure, though, since sometimes it's more about search engine keywords than anything else.

But you have to keep it all in perspective. Only a tiny percentage of bloggers end up turning their hobby into their work and you have to be careful not to let that become the primary goal. It’s nice to be linked, well, no it’s lovely to be linked, and for your work to be appreciated, makes the whole thing worthwhile, but I’ve ultimately realised that as with anything else, it’s being able to mix talent and ambition and be consistent in both of those things and that’s something I’ve probably always had issues with.

What has been the most fun experience you've had with the blog in ten years?

There have been many, many, many experiences, but here’s something I don’t think I’ve written about before. A particularly well connected friend was asked if he knew someone who’d be interested in writing a book about blogging and since I think I was the only blogger he knew he suggested me. It was what was then relatively big publishing house. So I received an email which led to the setting up of a phone call.

This was while I was working at Liverpool Direct, the council’s call centre, and it had to happen during my lunch hour. But I was trying to keep the whole thing quiet and couldn’t do it on the premises but it wasn’t until I was on the street I realised how noisy the street was, the cars, the pedestrians, and also how many people from work would be in the local cafes.

Then I remembered the Nat West Bank on Dale Street, around the corner from work, had a giant table. So I went and sat in there with a note pad for what was up until that point one of the most exciting phone calls of my young life. I was still only in my late twenties and this seemed like it would be the way to get on with doing something else with my life.

I rang them, I think, and spoke to a very nice lady. I was obviously nervous, but we talked through what it was she thought the editors were looking for and I jotted all of this down. We talked about my blog and what I knew about blogging, which was quite a lot at that point, and the whole process took about half an hour, during which time I was getting plenty of attention from the staff and customers.

I spent the next four days working on a synopsis and introduction – I think there was a very tight deadline – submitted it. Was rejected because even though I’d fulfilled the brief they thought it was too wordy, which it would be given the topic. The person I spoke to seemed genuinely baffled. But nevertheless, that was my one brush with book publishing.

I don't think you have written about that before. Sounds really exciting to get that kind of call. I wonder what would have happened if the book had been published? One can only imagine.

Yes and I don’t think the big publishing house ever did publish the book. Perhaps my submission even put them off the idea.

I think you definitely have a book in you, it's just a question of what it would be about...

Well, yes. Shakespeare and Doctor Who are very crowded markets. Way back when I did consider something based on my MA dissertation topic – hyperlink films – but I noticed someone lately has beaten me to it – though having looked at the book in question it doesn’t really seem to cover the topic properly. So perhaps there is still room for one more. It’s just a matter of having the time and inclination.

My tour of Liverpool with you was one of the most interesting days of my life thus far. Have you met many other people through the blog?

The very first person was Suw Charman-Anderson (then she wasn’t double barrelled or married) who I met in Birmingham for a day because it was the most convenient for the two of us, at the mid-point between our homes. Since then, there have been loads. You. Ian from TV Cream. A girl who directed a Shakespeare production (who I haven’t spoken to since so it doesn’t seem fair to name her).

Social networking or as I describe it to my parents, the Twitter thing, rather led to an explosion of meeting people, though I wonder if that counts as meeting people through the blog, even though many of the people I’ve met at those events have read the blog. Hmm. But I think it’s good to be out there and proving that you’re real person even if you’re not sure you’re the person projected online.

As I said recently, I do get very self-conscious when people talk about the blog. I’ve never been very good with group dynamics in general anyway, I’m much happier talking to just one or two people. The problem with groups is that it’s impossible to have a whole conversation because you’ll always be interrupted. So many sentences and stories which I’ve never heard the end or completed myself over the years.

I am also very bad at talking in a big group. I usually just shut up and let others who are more outgoing do the talking.

I’ve done that too. Sometimes, perhaps because of my suspicion of people in general I’ll hang back until I have measure of who they are, decide whether I even like them before I try to put in an effort. People will talk if there’s a silence and if you become invisible to them you can find out who they really are. That’s happened recently and I realised that I disagree with them on a great many things. That sounds really Machiavellian doesn’t it? Oh well.

But there are also the moments when you find yourself faced with a group dynamic which is already very strictly defined and although quite often they’re very welcoming to begin with – perhaps because you’ve been introduced by one of their number – and you’ll feel part of the group to begin with. In the very worse cases there will come a moment when they become bored, consciously or unconsciously, with the new guy and you find yourself lost in the mess of in-jokes and nostalgia.

Looking back four and a half years later, what are your reflections on the experience of getting your M.A.?

During the five year plan – during the good old days when I had a plan – when I’d saved the ten thousand pounds which was going to change my life – I genuinely had two ideas. One was apply for an MA and the other was to move to Paris (or London or Edinburgh though most likely Paris). Nearly five years out without having found a proper use for the MA, in my darkest hours, I do wonder if I wouldn’t have been better off moving to Paris instead. Less qualified overall perhaps, and without having met Anna Ford in front a couple of thousand people but things would have been just different.

Moving back to the reality, I’m still very proud of the achievement, of having got to go to one of the traditional red brick universities, of having gone from failing my English A-Level to receiving that certificate and in a subject I love. At first it ruined my ability to watch films, now it deepens the experience. It’s also increased my ability to enjoy a much wider range of films, across history and continents and to an extent I’ve become immune to the excitement of seeing brand new releases. I’m more interested in just watching films in general. Not sure if that makes sense.

I was curious about this, since I have gone back and thought about why I got my M.A., and whether the experience was worth it since it's not really paying off in dollar signs. But yeah, in the end I think it was worth it, all that about changing the way you see the world, etc.

It’s true. If I’d never gone back to university, I would never have watched Tarkovsky’s films in an academic environment deepening the experience and providing a richer intellectual context than if I’d simply gotten around to it because they’d turned up on some list of lists.

Coincidentally I watched The Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Ring and Never Let Me Go this week.  One of the more important lines in the former is "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us" which is almost exactly what the latter is about.  It's something I'm trying to deal with right now. 

Is there anything you still want to try on the blog that you haven't gotten around to?

There are projects which need finishing especially the Public Art Collections in North West England visits which has been dragging on for far longer than I intended largely because with the exception of Liverpool and Manchester which I’m saving for the finale, I’ve reached the country houses and out of the way places which are difficult approach via public transport. Or in a day. Or both. I should get on with some more of that this summer, or at least try. I know. There is no try.

Other than that, it’s more likely that anything I’d like to try on the blog but haven’t is a reflection of anything I’d like to try in life but haven’t and that’s a longer more involved discussion related to my inherent lack of ambition, motivation and inveterate procrastination. Sometimes I even wonder if the blog is the reason why I haven’t done all kinds of things, even though I know that paradoxically it is the reason why I have done all kinds of things too.

What's next for you? Do you see this blog as part of that future?

Probably. I did at one point plan to stop with this anniversary, ten years being enough and all that, perhaps even just concentrate on blogging Shakespeare but then I’d always have the itch to write about something. It’s a difficult habit to break. Plus I still have that nagging hope that it might lead to something else, so it’d be a shame to smash a brick through what is hopefully a useful shop window even if its usually filled with glass rather than proper diamonds. But yes, like I said at the beginning of this, I expect we’ll be doing this again in five years.

Congratulations on ten years of 'feeling listless.' On a personal note, I think it was quite serendipitous to have found this blog in 2003. It's a truly unique space on the web, and it's been an honor for me to be able to contribute a handful of times over the years. As I wrote in 2006, there's “an infectious enthusiasm, a great appreciation of life and art, and a wonderful sense of fun and creativity that I love about it.” Still true. Thank you for allowing us to share in it these past ten years.

Thank you.

the inevitable Rachel in Blade Runner style photograph scene

TV On Monday, Adam Curtis’s new documentary series, All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace begins and in the past few weeks he’s written several column and given a few interviews previewing his new thesis which is that rather us controlling machines, machines control us. Or as Grace Dent so expertly describes today in her review of the first episode, when we sit at a computer, because of the several dozen applications which are open and which we’ve signed up to, we’re no longer in charge of our own destiny, we’re simply becoming components in a system and we’re all employed voluntary or otherwise to keep that system stable.

Anyone who’s worked in a call centre or indeed anything with some form of customer service element can relate and it’s a grim berth. In a sense, by creating social media accounts, be they of the updating or blogging variety or something graphical in Second Life, creating an actual avatar, what we’re doing is making the job of auditing just that bit easier (Google, after all, works by tracking the popularity of a website through the number of links we've made). But more than that, some of us, especially those of us who’ve been blogging for nearly ten years and effectively bringing some kind of order to both the web and the real world in linear reverse dated fashion, might wonder about the extent to which we’re no longer ourselves and have simply become a reflection of the machine.

As the brilliant 90s Guardian book alt.culture, pointed out, its subject, Generation X was demographically unique because advertisers couldn’t sell them products, the media-savvy part of their brain cynically broke through the message so that people only bought that which they really needed not what the advertiser tried in vain to convince them that they needed. I wore a polyester blue jacket, over tie-dyed shirt, odd socks and turned up jeans. I ate chicken in breadcrumbs with instant noodles. I didn’t drink. "I was an individual!" I laughed smugly, as I visited Morrisons every week and bought one of their fresh pizzas because they looked good in the advert.

Fifteen years later, I picked up a copy of Stuff White People Like and discovered that in fact, such barriers had been broken down and all of the things I thought made me an individual, like enjoying Wes Anderson films, acoustic covers, drinking bottles of water and threatening to move to Canada (or France in my case) were also enjoyed by a great many people. The obvious extension of that paranoia is that the reason I like hating corporations, self-deprecating humour, platonic friendships and public transportation that is not a bus is because the internet told me to, oh so subtly, through the articles read, the people friended, word of mouth.

The obvious extension of that then is that we’ve all essentially become gangers. Not specifically, we all still have something related to our own personalities and our own memories of having to wait for the damned bus only for it to packed in the morning and not being able to get a seat, but like the gangers we’ve become an extension of the machine which controls us and when we go off-line, a never occasion for those of us employing mobile technology but nevertheless, we’re carrying all of the elements of the subject that we’ve copied around with us, potentially unaware of what’s happened to us until it’s been pointed out to us, either by a Time Lord or reading books like Stuff White People Like.

What I’ve had to deal with having made this realisation is whether it matters, whether like the Joe Pantoliano nasty in The Matrix, we should really care that the steak that we’re chewing is synthetic or as in that case doesn’t exist as a physical object if it tastes so good. If I enjoy Wes Anderson films, yes, even The Darjeeling Company, should it matter that even if despite being an artist he’s still working for a coportationcreating the kinds of films that people like me like so that people like me will pay money to see them even if we wouldn’t seen dead at Vampires Suck which was also produced by a different part of the same studio for a different audience.

Ultimately, like the gangers once they’ve gotten over the shock of realising that they aren’t the person who remembers that morning’s breakfast but something else, probably not, because you ultimately have two choices. Embrace your pseudo-individuality but fight with every bone in your body or braincells in your head to retain something for yourself hoping against hope that the something you’re retaining for yourself isn’t also a reflection of the machine. Or go insane. I’ve chosen the former (not that these seven paragraphs are admittedly much proof) and wonder how many other people spent the morning reading the introduction to the Arden Shakespeare’s third series edition of Troilus and Cressida. For fun.

But what those seven paragraphs also demonstrate is that despite Moffat consciously coming up with the idea of ripping off Avatar, as explained in this interview, writer Matthew Graham’s approach to not going away and doing that is working at a higher thematic level than his previous disaster Fear Her. There were no “Not you too, Bob” moments here in what was a gripping forty-five minutes of drama, which, despite having a whiff of last year’s stodgy Silurian two-parter in terms of the human approach to trying to deal with something you don’t understand leading to war (electrocute it) , had enough dark corners and questions about the human psyche to keep us glued.

Perhapssurprisingly of all, it’s also to the most “traditional” bit of Who since the show came back. We say this quite often, but consider how the episode begins with a lengthy prologue scene without the TARDIS crew leading to a console room scene featuring some unrelated games, the ship bouncing into the adventure via some special cataclysm, only for the crew to effectively be captured by some relatively two dimensional human contractors and heralded towards the moral dilemma at the heart of the story. Look also at how once Auton, once copied himself Rory disobeys the Doctor and the human leader is revealed to be a ganger at about twenty-two and half minutes into the episode. Scream...

Remove the physical contact and you have a story from the Davison era with better lighting. You could also argue, given how Smith seems to be at his most Troughton here, that it’s one of those Davison era stories which consciously apes Season Five, Warriors of the Deep and Frontios and its ilk though directed by someone whose previous experience is Spooks rather than Juliet Bravo. You could further add that some elements of the Doctor’s behaviour especially the veiled references to having seen the ganger technology or even having been to this island before, and not telling Amy everything have about them the sinister mystery of McCoy.

You would not have seen anything like this in the Russell T Davies era. The Impossible Planet comes close, but that stopped off for chats about the Doctor and Rose being stuck there and trying to make a life together. Even with the TARDIS steeped in acid, there’s no question of that. The Doctor is just trying to fix the problem at hand, Rory’s gladding about after some local skirt and Amy’s generally left to ask for some exposition, screech, and also look good in a skirt and glad about too after her husband. Like I said, without the physical contact, in the classic scenario she’s basically Tegan or Polly, he’s Turlough or Ben. Or whoever.

It’s the kind of story which picks one thought, one idea and goes with that. Unlike the existential crises of clone Martha in The Poison Sky or the human Doctor in Journey’s End or the enslavement of the Ood which were just one element of a story with multiple strands, this so far, give or take Rory’s wandering eye, has decided to keep to that single notion, albeit with the requisite reminders of the ongoing storylines. Graham’s script also needs us to believe in this pseudo-science; the cloning tank in The Sontaran Stratagem was just a thing required to do another thing so that another thing would happen. The Rebel Flesh is also about the thing and what the thing does.

And it just works. That lighting does help, taking full advantage of the stonework in the atmospheric locations to create shadows for both sides to hide from us and each other, eavesdropping when necessary. These multiple tourist attractions were perfectly chosen right down to the fitted bathroom and provided an incongruous place to have an acid works (cf, Euro Sea Gas in Fury of from the Deep for comparison) and some relatively advanced cloning technology. The make-up for the gangers too is beautifully realised, recalling the Gelfling puppets in The Dark Crystal, faces that aren’t quite human yet somehow sympathetic, quite rightly given the title of the next episode, “The Almost People”.

Superb performance too. It’s difficult to single anyone out at this early stage with just two episodes, sorry one episode, gone, but Mark Bonnar’s reaction to himself (or his character) dealing with the same emotional connection to his son and indeed the emoting of the emotional connection to his son was especially poignant and along with the inevitable Rachel in Blade Runner style photograph scene for Sarah Smart chemically explained to us what was at stake for the gangers just as it did for the speck of humanity on this rock. Raquel Cassidy was well Raquel Cassidy, and great to finally have some kind of Party Animals reunion.

There were many great moments, not least the shoes, which is one of the funniest single shot gags since Eccleston's reaction to hearing Margaret Blain taking the window route in Boomtown. Yes it is. I also adored those opening console room scenes, which like a K9 chess games or Romana costume change offer a glimpse into what it’s like to exist on the TARDIS between adventures, that travellers in the forth dimension need to take a break sometimes. These television spaces can never be the same as the ones in the Eighth Doctor novels, big enough to store a mini or house a butterfly collection, but they underscore that this isn’t just an intergalactic taxi but also a home.

Yet having written all of this, I can’t help the nagging suspicion that with all it's trad era trappings, that like The Darjeeling Company, The Rebel Flesh has been deliberately created to confirm to us old school fans that it is the same old show just in case the opening two parter suggests something else. The fans who remember the unusual face like Cactus Tom in Meglos, might have read Nick Wallace’s leighth-era novel Fear Itself which also dealt with the concept of avatars and that all I’ve done in writing this review and mentioning those things is fallen into the trap Curtis warns us about codifying everything and creating order. But somehow, I don’t care.

the Nam June Paik retrospective at Tate Liverpool

Art Like the art forms they contain, some exhibitions offer an instant hit, a legible blast of culture but others require some thought, for you to spend time with them, work with them even, in that way that sometimes happens when you you’re placed in a awkward social situation with a stranger and have to seek some common ground. That’s how I felt this morning strolling about the first half of the Nam June Paik retrospective at Tate Liverpool. I’d originally been invited to the press showing but couldn’t make it after life intervened, but the press office were good enough to provide me with a ticket.

If strangers can be categorised, Paik is something of a friend of a friend. His influences and collaborators are very well known: John Cage, Joseph Beuys and Karl Stockhausen and later Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson and Merce Cunningham. But though he was right at the centre of the New York scene in the 60s this is an example of the Tate using its prominant place within the art world, between obvious blockbusters (Magritte is next) to educate us on those figures who demand to be known too. Stretched across two spaces at Tate and completing at FACT on Bold Street, this collects together over ninety works, many appearing in the UK for the first time.

My first impressions were overwhelmingly negative, the brain splitting video wall of his Internet Dream (1994) with its confusion of clips from old Hollywood films, news items and general technicolour blah bearing down on me, a screen showing Korean adverts for western products and a massive projection of a Joseph Beuys concert skip edited so that eye isn’t given a moment to rest. I sighed. I felt like I was being screamed at and I’d not reached the fourth floor yet. Listening to the mp3 guide helped, with its short introduction to the artist, and eventually as I strolled about upstairs, I think we came to an understanding.

What eventually became my access point was that Paik really was, as this video shows, a technological innovator and experimenter. At a time when people were still coming to terms with television sets as an ordinary domestic items, he was already pulling them apart to see what else he could make them do other than show television broadcasts. In Magnet TV (1965), he was placing the giant hunk of polarised metal on top of a set to see what patterns the cathode ray tube might make. He co-created the Video Synthesizer (1969) which attempted to produced a visual equivalent of the sound instrument, which later gave rise to cellos built from sets whose images change with the stroke of the bow.

In other words he was pushing the available technology to do things which it really wasn’t designed to do yet. Like the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, who produced what sounded like electronic music using audio tape, Paik was looking ahead of his time and creating what he was using what was available to him. He said that in the future everyone would have their own television station and we children of the internet finally do on YouTube. But Paik even demonstrated what he meant. On the day he bought one of the earliest video camera, a Sony Portapak, with all of the world to shoot, he chose to record the most mundane thing he could think of - himself buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket.

So the exhibition is worth visiting for a trip back in time before flat screens when televisions were more present, when a call to the television repair man included the magic of a kingdom of glass and wires behind the screen, rather than, as happened to me yesterday when the man visited to look at my LG LCD, the disappointment of a couple of printed circuit boards. Most of Paik’s work isn’t just the film itself but the technology displaying them, or in the case of the Buddhas creating them, the original video cameras trained on their marble and bronze torsos, the results displayed in the space. Live.

When you do visit, I really would recommend you listen to the accompanying free mp3 guide. Intelligently written in the style of a Radio 4 programme, it features contributions from curator Sook-Kyung Lee and members of the artist’s family. Much of the work on display is an echo. It's documentation for a previous happening or once interactive works (like the Magnet TV) which are now too fragile to be touched. It’s in these sections that the mp3 guide so ably fills in the gaps, especially in relation to Paik’s collaboration with the cellist Charlotte Moorman with whom he created Opera Sextronique, a performance piece which led to her being arrested in New York.



I genuinely think we parted on good terms, Paik and me. The exhibition closes on a stroll through a TV Garden (1974), some Video Fish (1979) and with the chance for us meet members of Paik’s Robot Family (1986-93) and by then Paik definitely wasn’t the stranger he’d been at the start. I’d realised that Internet Dream was his attempt to come to terms with the inevitable information overload which the web would bring and had brought and that if we’re uncomfortable when confronted with that he achieved his aim. He was a visionary.

Nam June Paik is at Tate Liverpool and FACT Liverpool until 13 March 2011. Admission details available here.