TV After the shock emergence of a blu-ray edition of Doctor Who's The TV Movie we awaited news of the which special features would be included.
Now the official merchandising website has obliged and well, yeah.
With the exception of the welcome inclusion of Night of the Doctor for completionist sake, they're exactly the same as the special edition dvd release from 2009.
Plus it is an upscaled version of the programme itself rather than some newly prepared version.
It's pretty inessential if you already own these things.
Still buying it.
What's the strategy here?
The release of Spearhead from Space made sense because it was originally filmed on 16mm and so there was the potential to create an HD master.
But everything else in the classic series is either on videotape or has some scenes on film which have been restored and inserted in the past.
If this sells (and given the fact that it's simply replicating the earlier release) will we be seeing more of these older stories with upscaled video and film material reinserted at a higher imagine quality?
Won't that jar even further?
Will we all want to replace our dvd collections with such a thing?
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Exhibition Research Lab.
"Get some Mellow. Makes you feel all bendy and soft all day long."Art Well, this adventure was quite the challenge. When I attended the exhibition the other Monday, the video section, an important rosetta stone explaining the context of the rest of the work wasn't working and on asking at reception in the building no one seemed to know how it should be turned back on. I tweeted and phoned Biennial and someone very kindly texted me later to tell me the video was back on but I was home by then. Returning the subsequent Thursday, the image was playing but no sound. The receptionist came and after trying to turn the projector on and off again, passed me the remote, I offered to have a look, and after fiddling with it for a bit managed to get the sound booming out of the speakers.
-- Pharmacist, "Gridlock"
The introductory video is a vital component of Suzanne Treister's HFT The Gardener (transcript here), setting up the fictional conceptual scaffold on which the rest of the show hangs, albeit on buffet tables covered in glass. Through a hypnotic series of images we're introduced to former stock market trader Hillel Fischer Traumberg, who after a hallucinatory experience on the trading floor decides to turn his back on the business world to become an "outsider artist" hooked on shrooms and other forms of mind-altering drugs who utilises mathematics in order to find tangible connections between potent plants and company trading stocks. In other words, it's ten minute video designed to allow the artist to place a pair of metaphoric quotation marks around what's to come.
Across the rest of the exhibition we're presented with the "results" of "Traumberg's" "research". There are "gematria charts" in which various FT Global 500 companies are represented by a series of brightly coloured psychoactive plants. There are diagrams which explains how these two entirely disparate entities could be mathematically connected. "Outsider artworks", drawings depicting the 92 psychoactive plants with their traditional uses and illustrations of their mental effects, like a Rock Family Tree of psychedelia. Paintings of the visions he "shared" with "shamans" throughout the world. Video stills and photos which have been used during the introductory film. Plus a series of "glitch graphs" which are supposed to chart the active compounds in psychoactive plants.
All of which synopsis should indicate that I wasn't that much inthralled by any of this. Some of Triester's other project seem very intriguing, but The Gardener hits a nexus of subjects with which I'm less impressed. The heroic city trader. The mind altered outsider artist. The notion of setting up a fictional artist and then working within the rules of their artistic expression as a way of expressing your own interests. Never quite being sure if the thing I'm looking at is supposed to be satire. Whilst sections of it are well executed and I could imagine someone else finding much to think about, and I did see one visitor on the Monday who was very excited despite the video not working, I faded pretty quickly into a miasma of why questions on the Thursday in an empty gallery space and no one to discuss the implications. If ever I needed an invigilator to talk to, it was here.
Oh well, you can't like everything... After this I think I need somewhere that is truly tranquil, peaceful, restful. A panacea for the cares of mind. Or somewhere fun. How about B ...
Bluecoat.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Hondo Chinese Supermarket.
"You are not the only remarkable thing on this earth, Jack. Consider the jellyfish. The species turritopsis nutricula is considered to be immortal. Its cells undergo a process called transdifferentiation. Quite simply, it can revert to a younger state and grow old again. And then repeat. Without limit. It’s possible there are individual jellyfish on this planet that have existed for thousands and thousands of years."Art In an early incarnation, back in the 60s, the building which now houses the Hondo was the offices and warehouse for a wholesale company where my mother worked, something she'd tell me stories about growing up each time we headed up Upper Duke Street. Although the supermarket has been in place for many years now, the remnants of its former uses remain in its shell. The warehouse at the back is still a warehouse.
-- Olivia, "Torchwood's Miracle Day: End of the Road"
Part of the Chinatown episodes, obviously, there are two pieces inside. Sitting on a shelf in amongst the merchandise and next to a screen displaying footage from a security camera, a flat screen television plays Ian Chang's Something Thinking of You, which utilises algorithms and artificial intelligence to show a creature evolving of their own accord within a digital forest environment, a polygonal snake resembling a dragon.
Unfortunately when I visited it didn't seem to be doing much, just rolling around the landscape, which resembles an alien rainforest, creating rendering glitches in its wake. Eventually it stopped dead underneath a tree and remained there for minutes. I stood patiently waiting, dodging now and then to allow people to leave the supermarket (the screen is opposite one of the counters and near the exit) but nothing much else happened.
Available to take away from the counter is a colourful free sheet containing another of Lu Pingyuan's charming stories, The Two-Sided Lake which appears in English and Chinese on reverse. Or Chinese and English on reverse if you will. A short story about a diver who emerges unexpectedly from a lake in near a small village in China, it somehow manages to inadvertently reference Torchwood's Miracle Day although we can be pretty sure that wasn't the artist's intention.
Exhibition Research Lab
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Pullman Hotel.
"The great god Vulcan must be enraged! It's so volcanic! It's like some sort of... volcano! All those people!"Art What amounts to be my 500 year diary for this journey, the Biennial booklet, isn't clear about how to access this example of their annual commissions programme. There's mention that the film is shown at end of each screening during their film programme but nothing which attaches it to this location. So I got in touch:
-- Caecillius, "The Fires of Pompeii"
@feelinglistless You can watch an artist film by Raphael Hefti. Just ask at reception. More info here: https://t.co/p6O8hIUjaJ— Liverpool Biennial (@Biennial) July 31, 2016
The link indicates that if you ask at reception "they will guide you to a room where it is being shown".
The reception is near the entrance, a staff member and a laptop. When I asked, she turned to a colleague who said something about the remote control not having batteries and then about the room having been book, but I was quickly ushered to a giant plasma screen in a nearby lounge area, and Sky News was turned to a channel dedicated to showing Raphael Hefi's An Alumothermic Reaction Producing Liquid Steel, Filmed at 2000 Frames per Second, 2016 and here I sat on a very comfy sofa watching this fifteen minute film amid the clinking of glasses in the bar being prepared on one side and clients checking in on the other.
The film was shot in the Kings Dock. As part of a live performance, to quote the booklet, "a huge pile of sand worked as a makeshift foundry, and with a technique usually used to repair high-speed railway lines [...] The welding process melts steel very quickly: lava-like flows of molten metal poured down the sand. finding final form as the material cooled down. Heft references heavy labour and iron casting, the backbone of contemporary infrastructure: processes that have long histories but that usually remain hidden."
The images burn off the screen, the white heat of the raging metal flowing through dunes and out of silos in an enthralling beautiful expression of humanity's control of the elements, albeit with the usual caveats about us being a general blight on gaia. There's no particular narrative as we're shown various elements of the process and ferocious temperatures bend towards abstraction, like the rushes from a Godfrey Reggio movie (Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi) without the customary Philip Glass score, replaced by "natural" sounds.
The website has much business about the technicalities of capturing the images, "using a 150lb, 4k resolution, ultra-high definition camera that captures 2,000 images per second, the artist collaborated with the film crew to test the possibilities and technical properties of the equipment, exceeding the parameters it has been designed for. Some parts of the equipment even melted in the process." This is unsurprising and a demonstration of how nature finds a way. I'm amazed there's no mention of injury. As shown, these elements seem as though they'd continue forever if prompted.
Actually watching this in the atrium added to the atmosphere, what with the screen hanging in a recess on a wall with a surface resembling bronze. Watching it on a much larger screen, a cinema version is being shown at FACT every Thursday at 6:30pm, must be an even more involving experience although it's arguably just slightly too long, the host of images just slightly losing their power within the repetition. Or it's possible I was simply distracted, wondering what visitors were making of this art work as they made sure they had a bed to sleep in that night.
Hondo Chinese Restaurant.
My Favourite Film of 1934
Film Chris Brown, the host of the History of Horror Podcast has been kind enough to write this guest post about my favourite film of 1934.
The Black Cat.
I don’t have a proper memory of the first time I watched The Black Cat. It’s likely to have been some point in my teenage years on a black and white, or possibly colour (depending on when it was), portable TV when I was rushing through as many horror films as I could, especially ones that were considered, to a point, controversial.
It was probably before I snuck a look at George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead, one night on Channel 4 and it changed how I saw the genre, less out and out atmosphere and more brutal confrontation.
It was certainly before I saw Night’s follow-up Dawn Of The Dead, which put me on course of a life writing and enjoying the genre generally, appreciating it’s vivid broad comic book palette and satirical undertones and, like a lot of horror fans, wishing that more horror films were just, generally, better.
Rewatching 1934’s The Black Cat recently it shuffled a little memory out of my mind though, a general feeling of unease. Sitting in my West Derby home and feeling that there was something off about the film. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the scene that stuck with me was near the end when somebody grabs a knife and begins to skin a character alive. These days, it’s all down to a game of chess.
The film sits at a strange time, being more deeply horrible than the majority of Universal’s horror output at the time. The special effects heavy The Invisible Man from the year before was more an adventure film and a year after James Whale directed the iconic Bride Of Frankenstein, with all its gay subtext, incredible set-design and barmy use of humour.
The Black Cat is less melodrama, more hysterical psychodrama, with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, stalking each other around a modernist mansion desperately waiting to off each other. Their hate is total and filled with menace. It’s so much more aggressive and troubling in tone than other films from the time.
As a story it’s very simple, a castle where an evil satanist (played by Karloff) is visited by a witless couple and a man after revenge (Lugosi).
Despite some serious missteps (a yellow-face goon is used as muscle) it’s really a game of chess which is truly the most horrible element. Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Lugosi) insists on a game with Hjalmar Poelzig (Karloff) all for the body and soul of an innocent woman, Joan, who is captive in the building.
The idea in the film is to create tension but the incredible arrogance and audacity of the two men is staggering. They play a game over the life of another like it’s property. Joan, the woman is question, isn’t privy to the reasons behind the match and even interrupts them.
Both men, by the end, are distinctively portrayed as monsters, driven by their own selfish goals. Joan is just another female victim in all this, buffered by powers beyond her control and knowledge.
In Kier-La Janisse’s book House Of Psychotic Women, she explains that domestic abuse can be pulled through as a theme in horror generally. In Paranormal Activity (2007), for example, Katie is tormented, not just by the demon in a physical sense, but also by her boyfriend Micah. Micah is so keen to play his own game of “chess” with the monster, despite Katie’s repeated requests to stop, he angers the demon and makes things a lot worse. His abuse is to disregard his girlfriend in favour of his own selfish goals.
In The Black Cat women are trophies, literally kept in cabinets around the building (part of Karloff’s character’s religious cult. The film’s monsters are blind to their misogyny and the audience are dragged into wondering who we are really meant to root for, if anybody.
Its nihilism is its power and, even when order is returned, as it must with Universal monster movies, the audience is left wondering at what cost. More than 30 years before the bleakness of Night Of The Living Dead bluntly leaves its audience in the horror, The Black Cat played heavily with similar levels of darkness.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Granby Workshop.
"You know, there is no means whereby I could prove to you that that crystal is any different from any other piece of quartz, and yet it is unique. As you say, ridiculous!"Art Like the Homebaked Bakery in 2012, Assembly's Granby Worskshop is an example of community project as artwork. From the website: "Liverpool Biennial has commissioned Assemble to create a new artwork on the occasion of the International Festival for Business (IFB) 2016. Granby Workshop, a social enterprise collaboration between the residents of Granby neighbourhood in Toxteth and artists collective Assemble, presents a showcase of their work outside the Exhibition Centre Liverpool during the three-week festival in a new commission."
-- The Master, "The Time Warrior"
The artist's intervention in the process is that all the object being created are unique, embracing "chance and improvisation". A sign was commissioned for the launch of the IFB 2016 and these tiles have been installed on the wall of the workshop and that is what I travelled out to Toxteth to see. Of course, thanks to the randomiser this meant I had to travel past a couple of other shows which I'll be returning to later in the year. But choosing this route means that I'll be able to address each of the pieces as separate experiences rather than have them become submerged into one another.
After parking the TARDIS in the knot of a nearby tree trunk, I set about viewing the titles, a nine-by-nine grid which seems to be the selection on the left of the image reproduced in the booklet and on the website. These are white surfaces covered in abstract shapes, like Matisse cut-out with more colourful gradation. There doesn't appear to be an intent to illustrate anything in particular but its impossible for the brain not to infer trees, hammers, bird's wings, the shapes of continents or some kind of misshapen planet. Importantly they are all different. A factory manufactured version would create uniformity by repeating the shapes across a bathroom. Not here.
Pullman Hotel.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
The Oratory.
"Listen!"Art The Oratory is one of Liverpool's hidden jewels. Sitting in the grounds of Liverpool Cathedral it must look like some old mausoleum, and only when it's open does it show its true purpose and if nothing else, the Biennial provides people with the opportunity to see inside for an extended period. Back in 2010, the Biennial held a press preview at the Oratory showcasing transcendent Laura Belem’s The Temple of a Thousand Bells, in which what must have been that many small, glass objects were hung from the ceiling whilst a story was told to us. That wasn't first visit. My first visit was part of the Art Collections project and you can find a detailed review of the statuary and the building's history on this very blog.
-- The Doctor, "Listen"
Although there's work from other artists around the edges of the interior of the kind which is threaded through all of the many venues, the key focus is on a giant flat screen television presenting Lawrence Abu Hamdan's Rubber Coated Steel, in which the artist (who we previously encountered in Derby Square) utilises the mechanism of a gun range to illustrate a subtitled but not heard transcript of a trial in which he successfully proved that two Palestinian boys were shot by real bullets rather than rubber rounds. As the visual evidence is presented to the court demonstrating the difference in sound between the two, they're brought forward on the clips usually filled with the targetable torso or else video footage.
The Biennial booklet suggests "it's a work about aesthetics, politics and the potential violence inherent in both noise and silence", which, I'd suggest, includes the inherent biases we have in interpreting both we see and more importantly hear. If we're conditioned to assume we're hearing a rubber bullet then that's what we'll hear. If it's a live round, then that instead. Those in the court admit that they can't tell the difference and without the sound wave patterns Hamdan submit, it wouldn't otherwise be clear at all. It's an enthralling piece which demands our patience, because we can only see the words of the court transcript and so we're constantly having to dart our eyes between what's being "said" and what's being "shown".
Not that I thought this first time around. As is often the case with video art, I can in the middle and didn't have an understand on the context. Plus three security guards were being shown around the building by a fourth and at the vital moment when the artist's own voice emerges from the speakers to provide some necessary context, the guard decided to raise his voice so he could be heard over the sound of the artwork. All of which distraction led me to feeling a certain tedium as the legalise played out. Like many of the Biennial presentations, there's a clear narrative which simply doesn't work if you enter in the middle. But after deciding to watch the whole piece again from the beginning, I managed to grasp what was being presented and was mesmerised.
Granby Workshop
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Exchange Flags.
"Gracious. During all my travels, I don't think I've ever come across this. Magical. Isn't it extraordinary? I say, are you there Chesterton? Chesterton. What are you doing, dear boy? Fiddling and gaping over there. Come over here and learn something."Art The TARDIS lands near an unusual artifact, a wooden structure covered in clay which resembles the back end of a Zarbi burrowing in the block paving. As you can see from his tumblr, the artist Sahej Rahel, creates artifacts and objects influenced by science fiction and fantasy as though they've then subsequently become lost for thousands of years and become fossilised. There are tables filled with items at Cains Brewery in this vein, set out like the results of some archaeological dig and in Exchange Flags here's what could be the uncovering of the remnants of some Pompeii level disaster.
-- The Doctor, "The Web Planet"
The Oratory.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Everton Park.
Art As well as the territory of this year's Biennial, the accompanying booklet also highlights "annual commissions", artworks created by the Biennial as part of their community outreach. Koo Jeong A's Evertro is a key of example of the approach, a fully functional "wheels" park just on the edge of Everton's lung for the use of local people which also fits within the artist's usual interests and processes.
Finding the wheels park was surprisingly easy, a 19 bus to a stop outside Everton Park, a walk to the concrete pathway which presents on the most picturesque views of the city, followed by asking for directions from some overalled gentlemen in a white van directing me to wander down the hill towards St Anne's Street. Afterwards, it was easier to continue walking on into town than back up to the bus stop. And cheaper.
Typically, I visited the sculpture at its least presentable moment, what with its key asset being an ability to glow in the dark and finding myself standing on the edge in the early afternoon. But it still feels like a more developed, thought through design than you might expect from a skate park, with definite curves and triangles and death defying dips in the middle. Walking the park and stepping between the shapes I pondered how dangerous it must be,
The only visitors were two boys on bicycles, just at the moment when I was trying to take some photographs of the site. They'd not seen this public information film. Luckily I have.
"Hey, mate, are you playing Pokemon?" they shouted.
"No." I replied abruptly.
"Do you play Pokemon?"
"No."
"What are you doin'?"
"Taking photographs."
At which point I gathered my things and ushered myself away as quickly as possible.
Exchange Flags.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Derby Square.
"Doctor Who is required! Bring him here!"Art What to photograph in Derby Square? With the TARDIS landed, do I turn my camera to the Victoria statue or the Law Courts? The description in the Biennial booklet mentions the latter directly, so here they are looking like part of the landscape from an off-Earth Pertwee story. Which is quite apt because Lawrence Abu Hamdan's Hummingbird Clock, three sets of white tourist binoculars resembling CCTV cameras trained on the Town Hall and its clock, with their buzzing electrical current could be part of a UNIT viewing and listening post quite rightly out in the open for everyone to see.
-- WOTAN, "The War Machines"
The visual joke is obviously a take on "who watches the watchers" with the Town Hall notionally being the centre of government in the city, although it's the police control room which has the power to view citizens as they go about their business. Two views are fixed on the clock and the Minerva statue on the roof. The other can be shifted left and right although at such angle that all it can glimpse are the edges of tree branches and nondescript chunks of building. The only distinct image viewable is also the clock.
The Humming Bird Clock refers to what the Biennial booklet says is "a new kind of public time piece that exists physically and online" (online here in fact) (fair warning that website contains strong humming from the start). As the text on the object explains the National Grid gives off an almost silent humming the disruptions in which have been used by security services to check if a recording has been altered by matching the time and place with this noise. Hamdan's piece online and on the street is an attempt to create a sort of public domain version.
Like the Mariana Castillo Deball's To-day 9th July 2016, this contribution to the Monuments from the Future episode is interactive and as I sat pondering where to be put my camera, I noticed a huge number of people, children and adults looking through the viewfinder, reading the text, perhaps wondering what the digital read out on the front meant. There's already some graffiti, someone's been at it with a pink marker writing slogans, initials. But this is a very bold place to put a piece of public art at one of the nexus points in the city
The objects are also giving out hum, but mixed with the usual bustle of the city, buses and chatter, the lunch eaters sat on the benches nearby didn't seem unduly irritated. In the evening silence, especially after midnight, the effect must be stranger, more ominous. Rather like the surveillance we know is taking place surrounding our lives, it's easy to block out its existence, forget like the noise in daytime. It's only when that surveillance makes itself known, through some news item breaking the silence do we appreciate how far its encroached on our lives.
Before leaving, I attempted to recreate the shot in the booklet of the Town Hall clock. Remarkably. by holding my iPod's lense up to the viewfinder on the binoculars and setting it at the correct angle, I was able to see the image on the generic fruit based mp3 player's screen in all three instances. Indeed the resulting photographs are crisper than what I was able to see with my naked eye. Which either means machines have overtaken humans as the dominant species on the planet, or I need to go and get my eyes tested.
Everton Park
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Epic Hotel.
"It seems to me there's so much more to the world than the average eye is allowed to see. I believe, if you look hard, there are more wonders in this universe than you could ever have dreamt of."
-- Vincent Van Gogh, "Vincent and the Doctor"
TV I'm standing outside the Epic Hotel glaring at a sign.
With no visible way of entering the property, I'm now trying to discover where exactly the Biennial piece might be.
There's a direction on the front of the property to visit Seel Street for access, and yet the map very clearly states that the visitor needs to be on Duke Street.
Just as I'm about to pull away, a smartly dressed woman with long dark hair approaches carrying a Biennial booklet.
Now she's glaring at the sign too.
We agree that we should probably walk to Seel Street and see if we can get any help there.
As we begin to stroll up Duke Street, she decides to stop and photograph some fly posters and graffiti, so I continue but go completely off course, turn back into Wolstenholme Square instead of walking further up Slater Street and turning onto actual Seel Street.
If you're from Liverpool, you'll know this is entirely foolish.
Ironically, it's here that Nation used to be and I would have visited anyway if the fire hadn't led to the Mark Leckey video being moved to the Blade Factory.
Realising my error, I begin stepping backwards up towards Slater Street.
My one off companion for this adventure is coming towards me, so I hold my hands up in a "hold on" gesture.
I begin rifling through the Biennial booklet looking for the office's telephone number.
My companion waits nearby fiddling with her phone as I'm connected to the office.
After one voice I'm passed to another, who at first doesn't seem to know which piece I'm talking about.
So I turn to the relevant page in the Biennial booklet and begin reading.
See if you can spot the moment when the penny drops.
"Lu Pingyuan has written a series of stories that can be encountered across episodes, and in the Biennial’s book. One describes a two-sided lake that a diver uses to swim between continents, and another tells the tale of little Kiki whose origami figure comes to life as a disgruntled artist. A third, which can be seen painted on the side of the Epic Hotel ..."
There is more text but I didn't need it.
Thanks, I say, so that's what it is.
I tell my companion.
She says as I did, "Oh that!"
So we walk back down into the Wolstenholme Square, stopping for more photographs, this time of Jorge Pardo's Penelope sculpture, originally created for the 2006 Biennial, then cutting through a car park and back on to Duke Street.
There it is on the side of the building, this Lu Pingyan piece which describes some business about Vincent Van Gogh and cloning.
The Biennial website has a photograph with a tree obscuring some of the text so you'll have to visit if you want to read the rest of it.
We'd both noticed it on the way down to the hotel but thought it was some form of derelict advertising which can often be seen on old buildings so didn't pay it any mind.
With a tree obscuring some of the text we crossed the road so we could read the rest of it.
After that my companion offers some thanks for my help.
"I don't think I was much help" I tell her, before offering directions up to FACT.
Luckily she has the map in the Biennial booklet so doesn't have to rely on my directions.
Sometimes I wish I read the Biennial booklet before seeing a piece.
But I like surprises.
After taking the above illustrative photo in the kitchen catering supply shop opposite, I'm off to my ...
Next Destination:
Derby Square
My Favourite Film of 1935.
Film Perhaps it's my age but I always have tremendous difficulty remember Abbie Oakley star Barbara Stanwyck's name.
It's an affliction which has festered for a few years now. I've sat looking at the spine label for Lady of Burlesque, seeing her face but unable to actually usher forth her name. Minutes have gone by until I've reached for an iProduct for a quick search.
I've always been someone who's good with faces rather than names. In the past I've shared small talk with people who clearly know me well enough to be able to ask specific questions about me and I haven't a clue who they are immediately.
Conversational busking has become a key part of my skill set, asking generic questions until they reveal something which jogs my memory and they usually do. But there have been occasions when I've reached the end of a conversation, said my best wishes and then remember who they were half an hour later.
Which obviously also leads me to admit that there are times when I've never remembered.
Working in customer service situations doesn't help. Serving dozens if not hundreds of people a day means that faces lodge themselves in there. I'm entirely certain I've had conversations with people I only otherwise know because I've sold them something or imparted information.
There is a recognised disorder called Face Blindness. Here's a piece from CBS's 60 Minutes about it include an interview with portrait painter Chuck Close.
But it's not that or at least not as acute. I remember the people I should remember or my brain knows it's important to remember.
I also have a problem immediately knowing the difference between left and right. Apparently I'm not alone in that.
But of all the actors, why do I blank on Barbara Stanwyck's name so much I just had to check the top of this post to remind myself of who I was writing about?
No idea. None. If anything it's distinctive enough that it should lodge in my brain.
I'm sorry, who are you?
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Welsh Streets.
"Ogri, come. I command you."Art Back when I was signing on for Income Support or whatever each contemporary government was calling unemployment benefit, my route walking to the job centre on Park Road was down High Park Street, which meant I passed the so-called Welsh Streets fortnightly on a Monday. Then these were thriving suburban terraced streets not that I paid much attention what with wanting to get to the signing on desk at the given time and always running late for.
-- Vivien, "The Stones of Blood"
Returning other day, I was shocked to see, despite hearing, that they're marked for demolition, every house empty and boarded up, one street painting completely black, every house top to bottom. The result is eerie, as though some fantastic or even apocalyptic event has befallen the local population forcing them to leave their homes. There is a pilot scheme to refurbish some terraces but the overall feelings is of intruding into a space which humanity has vacated.
Which makes it the perfect setting for Lara Favaretto's Momentary Monument - The Stone, a giant, monolithic hollow granite boulder which has landed in the centre of Rhiwlas Street, perhaps the most apt of the Monuments of the Future. Boulder implies an ovular object, but this is a large rectangular shape, one side smooth, the other three carved with a brick shaped pattern and the overall effect is as totemic as the black objects of Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick and just as forbidding.
To turn into Rhiwlas Street and be confronted with the monument is a disorientating experience, in that way that the best Biennial public art has been over the years, placing the inexplicable in explicable places. Even though you're aware this is an artwork created with human thoughts and hands, it's nevertheless entirely alien, just the sort of probe we might imagine the Lemurians from Yin-Ju Chen's Extrastellar Evaluations (at Caine's Brewery or FACT) might send. Or an Ogri.
Favaretto has created similar pieces elsewhere. This article has a similar piece created for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo back in 2009. Like that commission, The Stone in Toxteth is temporary. The slot on the front allows visitors to make a donation to charity (on this occasion Asylum Link Merseyside), money which will be collected by demolishing the boulder at the end of the Biennial (which is apt given the possible fate of the surrounding streets). I liked the way my change jangled as it hit the interior floor.
Because of its transient nature you have to see this piece now. One of my great regrets was not being able to see Rachel Whiteread's House when it existed. But be warned, it's very photogenic, which is presumably why it's been utilised to illustrate this Biennial in many publications and as the main graphic on their Twitter profile. So if you haven't seen it yet, I'd strongly recommend you avoid spoiling the moment of initial contact, turning the corner into the street to see it in the stone for the first time. It's breathtaking.
Epic Hotel
"That plant, that plant that people line up to see even though it smells like dead fish."
TV You will have seen the trailer for the Gilmore Girls revival. I would have posted it here already but it was everywhere. But just in case, or so you can watch it for the three hundred and twenty third time:
Not since The Sirens of Time ... anyway ... the key element which has been remarked upon script wise is how its designed to underscore that this is a story set in the now, referencing Amy Schumer and John Oliver. But mores to the point, in the middle of Lorelai's bit, Rory dives into her iPhone and searches for information about what the bad smelling plant is, which does feel weird if you've just ended a binge of all seven seasons and the last time you saw these characters Rory's grandpa was trying to find a decent wifi signal in his house by holding his laptop behind a plant, everyone had only just graduated to "burner" mobiles and people still used pagers.
Anyway, the point of me writing this about a coincidence. Rory gets her answer, presumably from the wikipedia: "Corpse flower" and she does this on almost the same day that an example of the species is in a blooming cycle at New York’s botanical garden in the Bronx and sure enough Lorelei's quite correct. People have queued up to see this oddly beautiful monstrosity and The Guardian was there to find out if indeed it does smell like a dead fish:
Not since The Sirens of Time ... anyway ... the key element which has been remarked upon script wise is how its designed to underscore that this is a story set in the now, referencing Amy Schumer and John Oliver. But mores to the point, in the middle of Lorelai's bit, Rory dives into her iPhone and searches for information about what the bad smelling plant is, which does feel weird if you've just ended a binge of all seven seasons and the last time you saw these characters Rory's grandpa was trying to find a decent wifi signal in his house by holding his laptop behind a plant, everyone had only just graduated to "burner" mobiles and people still used pagers.
Anyway, the point of me writing this about a coincidence. Rory gets her answer, presumably from the wikipedia: "Corpse flower" and she does this on almost the same day that an example of the species is in a blooming cycle at New York’s botanical garden in the Bronx and sure enough Lorelei's quite correct. People have queued up to see this oddly beautiful monstrosity and The Guardian was there to find out if indeed it does smell like a dead fish:
"“It smells like lettuce when you take it out of the bag,” a woman yelled from the crowd of onlookers in the Enid A Haupt conservatory. “It smells like the aquarium. Like the penguin enclosure,” another added. The odor came in waves as onlookers jostled for the best spot to take photos and selfies with the giant flower. Some left holding their noses."
The Sontaran Ordeal (Classic Doctors, New Monsters: Volume One).
Audio Here we are then, the first complete audio adventure starring a Time War era Eighth Doctor (his cameo in The River Song Diaries accepted) and an indication of who he is by then what he meant in Night of the Doctor when he said "I help where I can." The Eighth Doctor we have here is more or less the figure wandering around The Doom Coalition, albeit with the slightly blase attitude of someone stuck in a horrific situation they didn't create (depending on your view of Genesis of the Daleks) but trying to make the best of it, like one of the surgeons in M*A*S*H* and McGann's clearly thought carefully about how he should tweak his portrayal. There's a slight bitterness in his tone. The story itself, a disgraced Sontaran soldier counter-intuitively trying to stop an invasion in order to uphold his race's key statutes is something which could probably have been told with any of the other Doctors in another era, but placing it within the time war adds urgency and impetuous due to the extrapolated line from The Sontaran Stratagem of the "galaxy's greatest warrior race" being frozen out of the largest war in history. Dan Starkey's on hand to, I think, provide his best ever performance as a Sontaran, breaking through the comic relief slot in which he's usually placed. The presentation of the Time War, of whole histories changing irrevocably over and again is remarkably in sync with the Natural Regression short story in The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who, and again the Doctor meets the tragic consequence of it in a temporary companion, superbly captured by Josette Simon, whose reaction to him is the exact opposite to what we expect. Placement: The Time War is well under way by now so between River Song and Natural Regression.
"He's back and it's about £19.99..."
TV In the believe it when we see it slot, a pre-order page has turned up at Amazon related to a blu-ray release of Doctor Who's TV Movie on 19 September 2016.
If you can detect a note of caution, it's because ...
(1) Over the years the Doctor Who Restoration Team have explained how complicated it would be to remaster the TV Movie for blu-ray. Even though all of the rushes still exist, ala Star Trek: The Next Generation, they really didn't have the budget to go back and re-edit the whole thing and remake the necessary special effects. Or the time.
(2) The BBC hasn't released a dvd of "classic" Doctor Who since the grudging release of The Underwater Menace last year and to suddenly have this pop into the schedule now seems out of the character.
(3) There have been no announcements. In the past Doctor Who Magazine would have had a preview at least this close to a release (usually).
(4) It's listed as being published by 2Entertain which has only really existed as a spine logo for years so anal fans like me can have everything matching on the shelf.
(5) Some have speculated it'll just be an upscale of existing restored prints. But again that seems unlikely and out of character.
On the positive side, the TV Movie is twenty years old this year. But wouldn't you think they'd have this ready for the anniversary of the actual broadcast rather than several months later?
Nevertheless, I've pre-ordered it anyway. We'll see.
Update 30/07/2016 The Merchandise Guide has added a page for this but it could just be a reaction to the Amazon page.
Update 02/08/2016 So I asked the party newsletter and ...
That was subsequently backed up by BBC Worldwide talking to Doctor Who News. Two disk release, no news of extras, but you have to imagine one of them will be Night of the Doctor. My guess is it'll otherwise be a retread of whatever was on the dvd release, unless they've licensed Bidding Adieu or some Big Finish material. Unless they also take the opportunity to include both the uncensored and broadcast versions.
If you can detect a note of caution, it's because ...
(1) Over the years the Doctor Who Restoration Team have explained how complicated it would be to remaster the TV Movie for blu-ray. Even though all of the rushes still exist, ala Star Trek: The Next Generation, they really didn't have the budget to go back and re-edit the whole thing and remake the necessary special effects. Or the time.
(2) The BBC hasn't released a dvd of "classic" Doctor Who since the grudging release of The Underwater Menace last year and to suddenly have this pop into the schedule now seems out of the character.
(3) There have been no announcements. In the past Doctor Who Magazine would have had a preview at least this close to a release (usually).
(4) It's listed as being published by 2Entertain which has only really existed as a spine logo for years so anal fans like me can have everything matching on the shelf.
(5) Some have speculated it'll just be an upscale of existing restored prints. But again that seems unlikely and out of character.
On the positive side, the TV Movie is twenty years old this year. But wouldn't you think they'd have this ready for the anniversary of the actual broadcast rather than several months later?
Nevertheless, I've pre-ordered it anyway. We'll see.
Update 30/07/2016 The Merchandise Guide has added a page for this but it could just be a reaction to the Amazon page.
Update 02/08/2016 So I asked the party newsletter and ...
@feelinglistless @bbcdoctorwho It is real, yes. We're awaiting further details. We're not currently expecting a full HD version, however.
— Doctor Who Magazine (@DWMtweets) August 2, 2016
That was subsequently backed up by BBC Worldwide talking to Doctor Who News. Two disk release, no news of extras, but you have to imagine one of them will be Night of the Doctor. My guess is it'll otherwise be a retread of whatever was on the dvd release, unless they've licensed Bidding Adieu or some Big Finish material. Unless they also take the opportunity to include both the uncensored and broadcast versions.
This Blog's 15th Birthday.
About It has been fifteen years since I began posting here and to celebrate Annette, who first interviewed me on the 5th birthday and then the 10th about the history of the blog, wondered if I'd like to be interviewed about the next five. It was an offer I couldn't refuse ...
Wow, I never imagined when I did the five-year interview that I'd be doing another 10 years later! But it's great to have the opportunity. When you started the blog, did you ever think you'd still be writing 15 years later?
I know! No. I probably didn’t even think it would last a year. Not that long after it started, the next year, I lost access to my computer for months so updates were sporadic anyway – not that it matter because, as I think we've discussed before but for the benefit of new readers, I was busy with volunteering at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester.
Glancing through the sporadic posts from that period just shows how much the process of even accessing the web has changed. Then, I was offline for ten weeks with barely any access after a dodgy install of WinAmp on the PC I had and then having to wait for a new computer to be built for me. Partly that was to do with having limited funds, but nevertheless ten weeks without web access and I was fine about it. I’d like to think I’d be the same now, but in a world with laptops and tablets and ipods and free wifi, the point is I wouldn’t have to.
Yes, it's a lot harder for me to be off the web also. I was recently without internet access at home for nearly two weeks and it felt interminable. And true, the devices sure have changed from 15 years ago – back then you basically had to be on a desktop. Out of curiosity, do you usually post to the blog on a desktop or has that changed?
Well, it’s a laptop at the moment but the actual process hasn’t changed. I’ve tried blogging using an iPad mini but the process is much too fiddly and the website isn’t very mobile friendly. Even if bought a keyboard, I much prefer a mouse to shift the cursor around and I multitask too much.
It seems a lot of the chatter I hear about blogs lately is how to make money off of them – directly through ads, through guest posting or product placement, or just as a way to promote yourself or your products. It seems rare that anyone does it purely as a hobby anymore. Have you explored much of the business side of blogs? Is it still mainly a hobby for you?
For about two seconds. I did have a Google AdWords on the sidebar for a few months earlier in this decade but no one clicked and I was slightly embarrassed about it. Some people have suggested I set up a patreon but the whole idea makes me feel squeaky because if someone is paying you and you have a paying audience, there’s an implicit need to service that audience, whereas if, as you say, it’s just a hobby, you can post what you like. The closest I have is that wishlist support box in the top left which hasn’t worked at all, if I’m honest. Plus I’m a bit hazy on the UK tax rules in relation to having a PayPal tipbox or somesuch and I probably don’t have enough readers for it to matter anyway.
Ha, that wishlist has been there since I started reading, I think. I think “tipping” rarely works on blogs, though I wish it were otherwise.
Well, it depends how many readers a blog has. I wonder if it is possible to run a blog, just a blog and make a wage based on advertising and tips. Podcasts undoubtedly do and YouTubers. But blog, now? I don’t know.
How did you come up with the ideas for the blog projects “My Favourite Film of” and “Soup Safari”? “Soup Safari” seems like an odd subject to take on, food-wise, and yet I am totally sucked in by the pictures. “My Favourite Film” is fascinating to me because there is an almost inexhaustible number of angles to take on it as far as looking at old films and thinking about past experiences with viewing films.
Someone asked me about the Soup Safari last year and I wrote them a very lengthy explanation which at some point I was going to post but then decided to keep with the mystery. But since you asked and this is what it is, I might as well pop it here.
A couple of years ago when I was diagnosed with an inguinal hernia, or hernia of the groin, the first words out of the surgeons mouth during our consultation were, "When are you going to lose weight?" I'd been overweight for most of my life and he explained he wasn't prepared to do the operation until I'd put my body into a condition that would make the surgery much easier.
After some tears, the usual, I went home and set about working out how to accomplish this in the four months until the operation. I dropped the cereal in the morning replacing it with a Weight Watchers yogurt and some fruit and at lunch times cheese on toast or what have you would be replaced with tinned soup, and following the recommendations on the tin, half of the amount in said tin which is supposed to contain two servings.
The weight did indeed drop off. I'm compulsive and obsessive to a benefit when I want to be or as was the case needed to be and sure enough I lost lots of weight, certainly enough for the surgeon to agree to the surgery and a couple of years later the post-op pain has pretty much subsided and having lost all of that weight I've continued rather than put it back on an rather spectacularly dropped ten inches waist size. For the first time ever I can fit into a 38 inch pair of jeans.
Congratulations, that's quite an accomplishment!
Thanks. As well as still having not really gone back to drinking milk, sticking with black teas and coffees, I don't eat biscuits, chocolate apart from the odd cake a mostly in Weight Watchers portions, raw sugar hardly ever and although eating proper meals at tea time and porridge in the morning has slowed progress somewhat, I think it's probably fine to be more gradual now that it's changed anything much. As I write I'm wearing the first L t-shirt I've been able to wear in two decades.
Plus I stuck with the soup. Pretty much every lunch time and not just at home. Out and about rather than, as was the case before, heading straight to Boots or a sandwich shop, I'd find somewhere serving soup instead. This became a habit and I continued with it where possible. Unless I was in a rush in which case I'd be peering at the calorie content of the sandwiches and wincing at just how many hundreds there were in cheese. Oh I don't eat much cheese now either (if I can help it).
Searching for soups meant I was visiting cafes and restaurants I wouldn't previously otherwise visit and the results were more often than not fine and sometimes quite pleasant and I realised that this forcing me to visit the sorts of places I wouldn't previously have visited, preferring to munch through a cheddar and onion sandwich in a windy street instead. That was another benefit. Most of this soup is served indoors.
Then in September 2014, just after I visited the Lake District to see the Ruskin and Wordsworth Houses I realised that all my various blogging projects were coming to an end, notably the Public Art Collections in North West England and knew I wanted to start something else. But I also knew that I wanted something which was relatively low maintenance but wasn't as artificial, came out of something I didn't naturally anyway.
The soup. All the soup. So I began to collect photographs of the soup. I made myself a mental list of rules and then began last September near the one the one year anniversary of my hernia operation (although that was entirely coincidental) with Lunya which I chose because I'd just seen the owner speak at TEDx Liverpool and decided that if the project was to be about anything it would be about eating at all the places I'd always meant previous to go about eating at.
On a practical level too, soup tends to be the cheapest item on the menu which means that it's possible to visit relatively expensive restaurants, the sorts of places I wouldn't previously have thought would be the sorts of places I could afford to visit or have the wherewithal and having something approximating a meal at a relatively cheap price (even if there's always a moment afterwards when the waiter will ask, "Would you like anything else?" Sometimes twice.)
What are the rules?
Mornington Crescent.
Why just the photographs? Why not reviews?
I'm not Jay Rayner or Marina O'Loughlin or whoever. I can say whether I like a soup or not, if it tastes of the thing it's supposed to be, but what would be the point of that? I could talk about the whole experience but like I said earlier the whole point of this project is that it's low maintenance and in their own way the photographs speak for themselves, I think. It's cumulative. Um.
Yes, I think the simplicity is key to this series. What have you learnt so far?
That the project both is and isn't about soup. Considering that historically soup is the simplest of meals there are a multiplicity of ways in which it can be served and as I've visited these various places and taken the many photographs, what I've found is that I'm not really documenting the soup or even the experience as such but the potentially infinite ways in which this single food product can be served, the amount of thought which goes into its presentation. Or not.
At the most basic level, all soup needs is a receptacle for it to be drunk from and a polystyrene cup is as good as anything. Except as I've discovered, for a hot, hearty, flavoured liquid, there can be a lot of other business and what I think makes these photographs interesting is comparison in the variety of ways and configurations of presentations that there are, except there is still the same basic dozen or so items which appear in each photograph which are:
Soup
Dish
Spoon
Plate for the dish to sit on
Napkin
Bread
Knife
Butter
Table
But there are additions. Most often the bread and butter sit on the same presentation plate as the soup dish but sometimes the bread has its own plate to sit on. Sometimes the butter comes in it's own little dish. Who makes these choices? Is it like a meme, do cafes and restaurants copy others in this regard or go with what they simply feel is common sense or they think will be most convenient for the customer.
Although, good lord, this is pretty facile in comparison, the effect reminds me of a culinary version of Bernd and Hilla Becher's collections of photographs of water towers or blast furnaces. Are they a sort of social document? You can't have this bowl of soup now, not that you can have any of them again because they're all unique incidents in time and space that only I've experienced, but the Cornerhouse is closed now, you can't go back there. But a photograph of their soup survives.
Ha ha, I've never thought of soup as a meme. In the U.S., there's not always bread and butter with soup – sometimes only bread and no butter, and sometimes it's just saltine crackers.
Also, I've discovered, not every restaurant serves soup. Somehow the alliterative title I chose for the series makes sense because I do sometimes have to really search out soup. Goodness knows what a waitress or maitre-d must think when I visit a place and on hearing they don't serve soup turn around and walk right out again. That's why I've been tending to save the food chains where possible. I don't want to be stuck in a place where none of the indies have soup and I've already visited an Eat.
How do you choose the places?
Generally it’s by destination. If I'm visiting a museum, I'll do their cafe. I ended up in Poundbakery because I was visiting a bank nearby. If there's no destination then I often work through everywhere in a particular street systematically. But I don't want to simply do all the same kinds of places so I try to have some variety and not just do all of the unique places first if you see what I mean.
How long will it continue?
Don't know. I quite like the idea of doing every possible place in Liverpool city centre but I'm a way to go on that, I think. Due to blog rules (or rather amendments to blog rules) there are things I can't and won't talk about and this is a nice way of at least documenting them and the period in which they're happening in a roundabout way so I can be at least reminded of the period even if I'll only have my own memories of the period otherwise.
“My Favourite Film of”?
The process of reviewing almost every film I watched in 2014 came to an end and then after deciding which was the best film of that year, I realized that I wanted to do something similar but which covered the whole of film history that was something like the Doctor Who project from 2013. Plus I needed a theme for the logo bar at the top of the page and this seemed like as good an idea as any. I didn’t want to actually review the films which seemed redundant when so many other outlets exists so I decided to write around them instead, talk about when I first saw them or highlight something unusual about them.
Some weeks are easier than others. The rule of not repeating directors means that admittedly sometimes I’m not always covering my favourite film of a given year and sometimes it’s the film which I have the most to talk about because of something significant which happened which is worth writing about within the limits of the blog. I was also interested in using it as an excuse to write some biography about the twenty-six years when this blog didn’t exist, somewhat influenced by the film which I decided was my favourite of 2014, Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell. But clearly less interesting.
Great film, I was excited to see that was your favorite that year. Really an interesting family mystery with a director who has the talent to make the absolute most of the material.
Yes, she does. I’ve since gone back and seen Mr. Nobody, the film she mentions that she’s in the process of making when she hearts some big news in Stories We Tell. In that she plays a manic depressive and so a difficult mother and that plays about with alternate realities and memories and works as a kind of fictional companion piece to her documentary. It’s not amazing but worth seeing at least for these reasons.
Is your “Playing the Dane” series the longest-running Shakespeare project? Which performance has been your favorite thus far?
It’s the only one, I think. If I have to nail it down, my favourite Hamlet has been Ken Branagh’s 1996 film because it’s most of the whole text presented lucidly and coherently with great performance and thanks to the 70mm camera work, an epic approach. But as I hoped at the start of the project, every Hamlet, even some of the duds, have memorable moments. My favourite performance in the central role is still Natalie Quatermass, star of a student group who presented it at the Crypt in Liverpool’s Metropolitan Cathedral, because of its honesty and sense of being in the moment. I just checked and she eventually went on to study Drama, Applied Theatre and Education at the Central School of Speech and Drama which I'm pleased about.
Ah yes, the female Hamlet. Very inventive.
Over time that project has transformed a bit. Initially I planned to cross the country to see Hamlets here and there but without infinite funds and the majority being in London, that wasn’t going to happen so now I’m sticking with “accessible” versions, on tv, in film and audio, embracing obscurities where possible. I’m a bit behind, partly because I needed to take a break. Sometimes if you love something it’s good to take a break and when you know the play backwards and forwards, you stop watching it for the drama and instead to see how it’s different to the last one which destroys the point for which it exists in the first place.
Do you generally like seeing Shakespeare performed in a non-traditional way, or do think it's a distraction? (I'm thinking the '90s “Romeo and Juliet” as an example.)
As I said recently on the blog when reviewing Russell T Davies’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I’m a bit of a purist in relation to the text when it's being performed in its natural habitat or on the radio when it’s pretty much all you have. Not in terms of costume or set dressing or whatever, it’s when a director cuts the text to fit an interpretation of the work which Shakespeare didn’t intend. As the RSC’s creative director Gregory Doran said recently at Hay, having a view on the text before starting work means you’re bound to start generalizing and ignoring what’s in the text. If you decide that Hamlet’s a domestic drama, you’re immediately stripping from the play the undercurrent of futility bubbling under the surface because no matter what happens Fortinbras is going to turn up at the end and take over.
But I do love a good film or television adaptation because you then have the scope to treat the text in the same way as someone who’s working with a classic novel or some other material, plus it has the scope like the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet or Joss Whedon’s Much Ado, to bring people to the text who might not otherwise have considered it. My first big experience of Shakespeare, the moment when I was properly excited was Branagh’s Much Ado, visiting the local multiplex on its opening day, first showing, alone in the cinema and the experience was magic. Patrick Doyle’s score is one of my favourite albums, especially the way Emma Thompson speaks “Hey, nonny, nonny” across the opening.
Which only goes so far, of course. The recent Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender is a disaster, trying do the Scottish play in a kind of Terrance Malik idiom which makes it impossible to follow as a piece of drama. Plus there are the occasions when a relatively obscure play, or at least one the plays which doesn’t already have a good, in-spirit adaptation which is landed with a travesty. Michael Almereyda, who brought us a really good Hamlet set in the 90s aristocracy of New York made a mess of Cymbeline as a predictable criminal underworld piece which has all the hallmarks of having been messed about with by the studio. In the UK, it went under the title, Anarchy: Ride or Die, which tells you everything.
Do you find that there is not as much of a loyal fanbase coming back to the blog day after day or week after week in recent years, versus, say, at the time of the last interview five years ago? It seems like there are so many outlets that emphasize individual posts now – social media, aggregators, Google searches – versus the experience of going to a homepage. (I have a confession to make myself – I read your blog almost exclusively through my Feedly app now. While I find it convenient, I wonder if it is discouraging for a content creator to not know about people reading your work through a channel like that.)
Having consumed content through RSS readers for years, I don’t have a problem with it at all. I would prefer to visit the actual web page because I like the sense of variety, of visiting the web rather than glancing at it all through the same prism, but it’s too convenient not to. Though I have taken to clicking through to a website anyway to read the content even if its all available so I can see it as intended, especially since often the graphics don’t appear in the reader version. But RSS feeds are on the wane anyway. Lots of website have gone back to e-newsletters.
E-newsletters are definitely an interesting trend. It's like we're going backwards in time...
As ever, I have only a very basic notion of who’s reading this stuff or how. It’s actually much harder now to see where people are clicking from, although I know that a larger percentage of them are from Twitter because whenever I tweet a link and check the Blogger metrics that individual post gathers readers. Feedburner tells me I have 245 subscribers but the majority of them are reading through an “unknown” reader, which is roughly equivalent to the old Google Reader number so for all I know they could just be uncancelled subscriptions lingering on a server somewhere.
I miss Google Reader!
Me too! I don’t know about a “fanbase” though. I don’t know how that works now. Do people visit the blog because of me or because there’s a post about something they’re interested in? Posts about certain things always have a much higher click rate than others. The visitor numbers still go crazy on the weekends after Doctor Who’s broadcast so clearly a few people like those even though I’m clearly running out of things to say and they’re much less articulate than they used to be. Unfortunately, I seem to be at my best when the show’s toilet.
Ha ha. That's so refreshing that you don't care more about click rates, audience and such. Perhaps that's the key to longevity on the web...
It’s also because I’m not selling anything I suspect. If I did have advertising or was making a wage from writing a blog, I’d be much more interested in what people would like to read and do more of that. But other than Doctor Who, I don’t know what people are particularly reading the blog for, which is for the best.
What's your attitude toward social media as of late? Do you think it's a help to the blog as far as promoting content, or a hindrance, as in you are spending time keeping up on social media that could have been spent blogging?
Well, like I said, a lot of people do click through from Twitter and Facebook so that’s good since it’s replaced RSS (assuming RSS was even a thing) as the primary way that people access the web. I don’t use Facebook much and would have closed my account, but I know there are people who keep up with the blog through there so I keep my profile going for that reason at least.
As we discussed last time, the newer social media has all but killed new old-form blogs. On the odd occasion I do visit Facebook, I do see writing which even ten years ago would have naturally fitted on blogs and tweetstorms are the same. I’m often seeing people posting screen grabs of text on twitter so they can get all their thoughts down and always think it would be easier if they had a blogspot.
True!
The problem with Twitter is the immediacy. It’s too easy to be able to retweet something of interest rather than write a blog post with a link and paragraph and if they blog’s changed much recently it’s that I’m posting longer posts rather than simply offering a link blog, probably because I assume all my readers are on Twitter and Facebook even though clearly that isn’t true.
Yes, if I see an interesting link Twitter is my automatic go-to. Before Twitter, my instinct was to copy-paste a quote and link to the article on my old blog.
There was a period when people automatically posted all their tweets on their blog on a daily basis which on some occasions meant you could watch the slow death of a blog, as proper posts gave way to these lists. I did go about copying anything I’d linked to in a week for a month or two but it seemed so terribly redundant. By the time I’d gotten around to it, most of the links were old news anyway. Let’s see what happens in the next epoch.
How do you feel about the end of year reviews? Do you still think they’re worthwhile?
Having been writing this thing for nearly a third of my life, it’s picked up all sorts of traditions including the annual review and feels strange that there wouldn’t be something at the end of the year. For ages, they would oscillate between me writing something then there be being a guest blog palooza but there’s no doubting that it’s getting harder mainly because we all have gotten older and amid everything else which is happening, who has the time? Or the inspiration?
But I do think they’re worthwhile even if they rarely fulfill the initial idea which was so I could take a break from blogging over Christmas thanks to the amount of organization involved sometimes. I’ve not gotten that quiet right. I’ve just decided when writing this what my review of the year is going to be, assuming I remember by then.
What are your thoughts on streaming services like Netflix at the moment? What do you think the rise of streaming has meant for film fans?
Netflix and the like are both magnificent and terrible. On the one hand it’s amazing to be able to watch film and television on demand and the push of a button, but the selection is tiny in comparison to the history of film and we’re forever at the mercy of release windows and licensing deals and the commercial decisions of people who aren’t us as to what it thinks we’ll be interested in. In other words it’s an even more focused microcosm of the whole film industry.
Recently I cancelled by Lovefilm-by-post service after twelve years of receiving dvds via rental which was a pretty big deal because I’m subscribed to Netflix, Amazon and NowTV, which are the UK services, providing access to about four or five thousand films and hundreds of television series. With the films I already own which go unwatched, plus the iPlayer, it was simply gratuitous to have the discs coming in the post too.
But a fair amount of choice has been removed. Whereas before, if I decided I wanted to catch up on some film noir or films featuring a particular actor, I’d load up the Lovefilm queue and go, now it’s whatever happens to be available on both services and in terms of the classic genres this means the most popular from each and in the latter probably the films I’ve already seen. Huge swathes of material isn’t available.
Good point – streaming services are now controlling what's available like broadcast did in the old days. I also canceled my DVD service on Netflix for budget reasons, but like you, I'm not super satisfied with the variety. It does seem ironic to have access to thousands of films, and yet I often find that there is nothing I am really excited about watching. Especially since I'm not a huge fan of Netflix-produced series.
Not even Sense8? Sorry, that’s not fair. Perhaps the situation’s different in the US.
It's not.
Ah, but it does mean your pattern of behavior changes and the variety of material you watch limits although I’m aware that it is probably increasing the range of film a lot of people are watching because, at least in terms of newer indie material, the likes of Netflix are providing an outlet for a larger range of material than broadcast television. There’ll be a lot of people whose field of vision is “Whatever’s on Netflix.”
Which is, to be fair, better than the olden days when it was whatever you were able to video from the television or travel to a video shop to hire. There are also paid options and Amazon’s been an especially good way of hiring films that aren’t on the other services or aren’t on the other services yet. But we’re a long way from Netflix and the other services being a substitute for the old methods even though it’s being treated as such.
That's true.
I do miss not receiving the dvds though, especially the random nature of it, being surprised with whatever was being sent out. At the moment, I’m watching @maft’s NewOn websites like a hawk and watching anything, which is about to expire as a way of taking the control out of my hands. Plus without Lovefilm-by-post or buying them (heaven forefend) this’ll be my last chance to see them until they turn up on television assuming I remember when they’re on.
In an ideal world we’d have a Spotify for film, everything potentially available for a monthly fee from a single source, a much bigger catalogue. I understand Hulu in the US is close to this with its inclusion of such things as the Criterion collection and various studio archive material. But yes, a streaming service with a similar catalogue to Lovefilm-by-post would be the bees knees. Instead we have a range of different services with different licensing deals and if you want anything art house it’s the BFI Player which has limited app options. Hmm.
I'm with you there – perhaps a service like that isn't too far away.
Mubi has a fascinating alternative model. They upload one film per day and then you have a month to watch before it drops off. They only have thirty films available at once but they’re all classics or art house, heavily curated and chosen by experts. They’ve recreated the old cinema repertory model as a streaming service. It’s £5.99 per month which seems a bit steep, but my guess is if you watch at least one film a week from the selection you’re more than getting your money’s worth. Plus most of the stuff on there isn’t generally available from the other streaming services, at least as part of a subscription. Although there is some, but I tend to check everything on findable.tv and if I have access to it elsewhere will leave it until it's going to expire their instead.
Here's something you wrote in a review of “Pitch Perfect 2”: “I tend to prefer films with female protagonists, especially if they’re about friendships (cf, Frozen). At a certain point I grew tired of films by men about men doing men things.” Can you elaborate a bit about that?
For years, decades, films have predominantly been directed by men and featured male protagonists especially in particular genres, almost every blockbuster, nearly every independent film with women as love interests or in supporting roles. If it’s not one man, it’s a gang of them. At a certain point repetition sets in and as you find yourself watching yet another man dealing with this problems either through gun play, cars, fists or in romcoms finding the right way to talk to a woman and it becomes just tedious.
This wasn’t always the case. Back in the 30s and 40s, there were a great many strong female roles and often as the protagonist of a film. But somewhere in the haze of the 60s such things became forgotten and by the so-called beginning of the blockbuster cycle of the 70s, most films were about men having men problems and women receded into the background into stock roles and the range of characters available to them diminished. When women did lead films, it was generally in a very small number of genres.
The original Ghostbusters should have had more prominent female casting. All those buddy films of the 80s should have had more women in the mix. Male police officers were more likely to be twinned with dogs than women. Why did Michael Douglas or Harrison Ford become the default lead in all of those erotic thrillers? Why were Glenn Close or Sharon Stone seen as antagonists, Anne Archer or Joan Allen the wives? Couldn’t all four have worked just as well in the lead role, and not just as a one off but as repeatedly as Douglas, Ford or Gere?
Recently that’s reached its apogee and it’s still considered a risk to have female protagonists in films outside of romantic comedies or melodramas with a few exceptions. Yes, it’s great that The Hunger Games exists but can’t be seen as sea change when there are so many other action films which still headline a male by default. As Hadley Freeman noticed in a recent interview with Melissa McCarthy, when New York Magazine looked for precursors, they were all men. This is not ok.
All of which preamble explains why in the main I tend to seek out films with female protagonists when flicking through the various streaming services and elsewhere. Sometimes the stories aren’t, tellingly, that different to what might appear in a film of the same genre with a male protagonist, especially in the b-picture action films. But more often than not, I’m seeing actresses which elsewhere have been stuck in supporting roles finally being given the opportunity to carry a film and doing it superbly.
I am definitely in agreement there - “Zero Dark Thirty” comes to mind.
Yes exactly, and yet, in the mainstream it’s still being treated as a curiosity. We’re still in the veneration stage, congratulating directors like George Miller or Paul Feig for foreground female characters. Ideally we wouldn’t need to, they’d be treated like any other film, and if they failed or weren’t of good quality it wouldn’t be held up as proof that female led films don’t work, rather than simply that this particular female led film doesn’t. It’s insane how many shitty films some male directors are allowed to churn out while female directors are given once change to shine.
Yes. The overall lack of diversity in Hollywood in 2016 is shameful, but that is another story...
Yes.
Back in 2007 you did a “Forgotten Films” series that I really enjoyed. Following up on that, are there any standout “forgotten films” you've seen recently?
Advantageous, the psychological thriller, which was my film of the year in 2015. When asked to write about it on art website The Double Negative, I said: “Bought for distribution at Sundance by Netflix, ironically causing unfortunate obscurity, Jennifer Fang’s indie wonder Advantageous glimpses a dystopian future in which an older woman is given the choice of losing a job which guarantees her child’s future, or sacrificing her own identity. Tense, impressionistic, refreshing and warm filmmaking. Classic.” Essentially it’s the latter stages of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse in the style of early Wayne Wang or Ang Lee.
But the concept of the “forgotten film” has changed somewhat in between. If a film is available on a streaming service, can it be forgotten? Perhaps everyone has seen Advantageous despite its relative obscurity. Does it simply have to reside on a disc-based format? No one seems to have heard of Ten Inch Hero which is essentially Empire Records set in a sandwich shop featuring Clea Duvall, Elisabeth Harnois and Jensen Ackles. Or Uncertainty, a genre busting take on Sliding Door in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt ends up either in an action chase film or family drama. Will that do?
Yes, thanks, those all sound intriguing. Perhaps “often overlooked” is the right term?
I like that. But it is increasingly difficult now, especially when the number of releases seems to have increased exponentially for a film to stake its territory and find an audience, especially since the audience automatically skeptical about everything having been disappointed so often.
This is a bit of a personal question, but I am curious, and I know you'll be honest: What does it feel like to turn 40?
Weird because I don’t feel forty, especially since for various reasons I don’t have commitments of a lot of forty year olds, the need to become an adult. Although I can detect that the person writing this is more mature than the person who wrote this blog fifteen years ago, our world views haven’t changed and if anything I’m even more liberal than I was then (with a certain realism about what's achievable given the ignorance in society were constantly pushing against). But with life expectancy extending, there’s less of a demand for maturity I think, at least outside of work, no great rush to the end. To be honest, I don’t know how to answer the question. Ask me again in five years.
What are some of your most popular posts at the moment? Are there some posts from the early days that still get a lot of traffic?
The biggest, new post this month was the sweary one about the Superlambanana, which was anonymously picked up by BBC Radio Merseyside (in other words they did a story without mentioning me which was fine and exactly what I wanted) and it has since indeed been repainted. The old Scene Unseen about folding the painting in The Thomas Crown Affair has been resurgent too perhaps because it’s turned up on Netflix.
Luckily, the widget in the sidebar of my blog offers some easy answers for the rest. The mostest, mostest popular post is the Doctor Who watch list, mostly because it’s what appears at the top if you type those words or versions of them into Google, higher even than some of the official sites. Before that it was the coffee in tea bags review which is now second.
Wow, Doctor Who is no surprise, but coffee in tea bags?
Shrug, I know. People seem to like the idea, and it works in theory. I can see why people want filter coffee with the convenience of a tea bag. The process of cleaning the various coffee making paraphernalia is annoying. I use a lot of Starbucks Via for just this reason.
Are there any topics (people, shows, music, films, ideas, etc.) you wrote about in the early days of the blog that, if someone told you you'd still be writing about them 15 years later, you'd be shocked?
Not really, I think that for the most part the tastes you have in your twenties pretty much stay with you. There are topics which have fallen away. I barely cover music now, mostly because I don’t listen to a lot of music, or at least make a point of listening to a lot of music. When I’m about and about I’m usually listening to podcasts and audio plays and elsewhere because I’m easily distracted, I tend to prefer silence or ambient sounds.
Will there ever be a day when “Love Actually” is not rubbish?
No.
What's next for you, and what's next for the blog?
Blog rules inevitably lead me to not wanting to talk about the future. As for the blog? Well, the favourite film posts have at least another year to run so whatever happens there has to be a blog to house them. Although the whole thing will no doubt change again to encompass something else I’m interested in, the post frequency will oscillate, but I can’t see any reason to shut it down, not now.
Good to know. Definitely a comfort knowing one of my favorite blogs is sticking around!
For now.
Let me conclude by saying there was a post the other day that really reminded me of why I read feeling listless. It was the post about visiting the Ella Kruglyanskaya exhibit. It was about the last thing I expected to read about that day, but reading it was like inhaling a breath of fresh air - the unique perspective, that blend of curiosity and honesty and insight and enthusiasm about art/life that's apparent in a lot of your work. It certainly left me intrigued. I like that about the blog – on a given day you never know what to expect. Thanks for keeping your longtime readers on their toes, and I hope to be reading for many more years to come.
Thanks that’s very kind. See you for the twentieth?
I'll be here.
Liverpool Biennial 2016:
Blade Factory.
"Every story ever told really happened. Stories are where memories go when they’re forgotten."Art The original venue for Mark Leckey's Dream English Kid was supposed to be the Saw Mill, originally the entrance hall to Nation the building which hosted Cream. Sadly a week before the Biennial was due to open, a fire led to too much structural damage for it to remain a safe place to have an artwork so it's been moved to the Blade Factory, part of the complex which includes the Camp & Furnace bar and restaurant. Which means instead of finally stepping inside a building which I somehow managed to avoid in its heyday, I instead enjoyed a Proustian rush as I returned to the building which, when it was still owned by the AFoundation, I worked as an invigilator ten years ago, something I eventually revealed on this blog.
-- The Doctor, "Hell Bent"
Apart from the orange lighting which heralds the entrance to the display room, another Leckey piece titled SOX Lamps, the single other piece is Dream English Kid, a 22 minute repeating found footage montage. As the Biennial website explains: "In 1979, Eric’s nightclub in Liverpool hosted a gig by Joy Division that Mark Leckey attended in his youth. Recently, the artist located amateur footage of the event on YouTube. Realising that many of the personal memories that we have can be found online, Leckey began to assemble a film, Dream English Kid, that uses archival material from television shows, advertisements and music, to recreate a record of all the significant events in his life from the 1970s until the 1990s."
In other words, a more esoteric version of Terence Davies's Of Time and the City or the recent Arena documentary about 1966, with a more contemporary time frame which shifts from the mentioned shots of the gig at Eric's through film of the first test launches of media satellites, what look like clips from BBC's Threads, amateur material of Liverpool in the 70s and 80s and some repeated shots of a corseted lady in a dressing room. This is all accompanied by asynchronous sound, snatches of single bars from popular songs, a word or beat, pieces of voiceover evoking a particular time as well as the inevitably wheezing and groaning noise of the TARDIS (over black and white footage of a small boy playing in a garden - perhaps this is supposed to be Leckey himself).
The result is fascinating, just as all found footage concoctions tend to be, even if some of the connecting threads are even more maddening to comprehend than some of Adam Curtis's recent voiceoverless creations. Like Davies, in presenting elements from his own life, he's inevitably forcing us to juxtapose them with our own memories or feelings and although our fields of reference are slightly different, I was certainly sympatico with the way in which he evoked how our minds sift through memories when gripped with nostalgia or at least wanting to make a connection with the past, something which, visually is far easier thanks to the internet.
For years, I had the memory of a terrifying nightmare involving a giant blue man-shaped tiger which I'd experienced as a baby. Now, thanks to YouTube, I know it was only Animal Kwackers. If I want to see footage of Speke Airport in the 1970s, here it is. Liverpool City Centre in 1989? Ok then. You'll be surprised how little has changed. Clayton Square had just opened. What about the bus I used to get to school? Might as well call the thing ProustTube or some such. But as I was reminded in returning to the Blade Factory, the real places are usually still there if we want this blast of memories. Does Mark Leckey return to Eric's often?
Welsh Streets.
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