Reality Check Parkinson. Last Night. Michael Parkinson has been a chat show host for years (apart from that gap in the 1980s) and in his time has interviewed some world renouned people. He's known for collecting guests with something in common and last night it must have seemed like a winner. Err... The first real guest, Martine McCutcheon, former soap actress, treading the boards intermittently in 'My Fair Lady'. As you would expect, bit of flirting, the usual. Then we have Terry Wogan, chat show host, Mike's golfing buddy, presenter of Children in Need (his presumed reason for being there) and The Eurovision Song Contest. It was clear from the start that this wasn't the Tel who introduces 'Aunties Bloomers'. From nowhere he turned into a stand-up comic, a likable Bob Monkhouse, with a ready wit and jokes galore. Wind him, up let him go, and considering everything I was laughing. I was laughing at Terry Wogan, the epitomy of Radio Two and pullovers. How? And then my eye boggled out of my head... 'Now my next guest has been voted the sexiest woman in the world, she's an actress and singer ... Jennifer Lopez ...'

I'm sorry, what?

Alright ... it wasn't a complete shock ... it had already been mentioned a few times before hand in the previous interviews. But I didn't quite believe it ... rather like you never completely believe the light in a fridge goes off when you shut the door. Now I don't know how often 'J-Lo' appears on US chatshows, but her appearance in the UK are few and very far between. But sure enough, there she was launching into a production number which just seemed too big for Studio Two at BBC Shepherd's Bush. It was an intermittent tune, the backing vocalists doing much of the work. But it still looked wrong. Oh well, I thought, at least they arn't going to talk to her but ...

Sure enough, she paced uncomfortably over towards the craggy face of Parkinson, his mouth grinning like the entrance to a cave. Terry, who'd interviewed a galaxy of stars on his own chat show during the 1980s looked for all the world like Lester Burnham in the scene where he's introduced to Mira Savuri in 'American Beauty'; Martine was obviously a bit star struck. And there they sat for moments. What was Lopez doing here? Shouldn't she be out clubbing or something. What could Parkinson possibly ask her?

Then the interview began. Well sort of. Given someone that he has an actual interest in, Parkinson can get under the skin of some actors. But here there was too much of a generational gap. Like Lester, Parky didn't seem to know how to relate to her, or how to get her to talk. His almost first question was about what it was like to be in car boot with George Clooney for a day. J-Lo took a moment to remember that film she was in four years ago, with some guy who was just George and not all that famous then. He wanted to know all about the arrest, about Sean Coombs, about growing up in projects; but the interview style was too bland; too obvious. He asked about whether how her parents felt when they heard -- Lopez looked at him, as if to say, 'How they hell do you think they felt?' and gave little away. The embarassing moment during the Woody Allen interview, when Woody got testy over Mike's incessent questions about Mia was immediately brought to mind. She just wanted to talk about her music and films -- like some tabloid hack he wanted to talk about seedier sides of her past. It's too soon Mike. Wait a few years until her fame has faded a bit.

Things proceeded in the same fractured style as this review. He resorted his usual desperate measure of 'It's been reported that ....' type questions, quoting some fiction, easily parried with a 'not true'. He seemed suprised that Lopez wasn't going to be an obvious star (hasn't endured 'Anaconda', I suppose). Then he brought up the subject of her arse (very original). She was gracious and sparkly, and won a fan here, at least for the person if not the music. To some extent I can believe she hasn't changed too much from that 'girl from the Bronx' which she described herself as -- if I had her money I might go a bit overboard as well on appearance riders. Mike drew in McClucheon, to talk about their similar backgrounds, which also didn't fit. Terry didn't fit in the middle there either. Nothing fitted within this fitful interview. Which felt like it was finishing from the beginning. Which exemplifies all good Reality Checks -- elements which on an initial glance seem similar will in fact explode on contact. A bit like anti-matter.

Title bar Bit of a mystery this week ... see if you can guess whose eyes they are ... I'll tell you at the end of the week ... a clue ... he's master of a spectacle which is one of the only American exports never to take off in the United Kingdom ... and it's not Hootie and the Blowfish ... don't phone, it's just for fun ... although you could ICQ (134358633), AIM (feelinglistless) or Yahoo (feelinglistless) and answer and I'll tell you if you're right ...

Biography The original version of the site (before the weblog, before the portals) was Reality Check. The idea wasn't at all simple and so I didn't have much of a chance to run with it. In nutshell I suppose, it was 'Cultural review from another reality'. It was the juxtaposition of elements from seemingy opposing end of culture in a small or large scale for slightly bizarre effect. For example, the previously mentioned Louise Rednapp cover version of 'Stuck in the middle with you'; Dame Edna Everage appearing in Ally McBeal; all of those Japanese ads with quite well known actors advertising convenience products; politicians appearing in pop videos for Bananarama. It sort of made sense at the time so I thought I'd bring it beck now, in a slightly simplified form. After all, I'm supposed to be 'culturally reviewing'. So....

Architecture One of my favourite film going moments was see 'Its A Wonderful Life' on the giant screen at the ABC Cinema in Liverpool, a big 'ol barn of a screen filled with glorious architectural motifs. Sadly it was the last film which was shown there before it shut down. And it's fallen derelict over the past few years, a sad, wreck of a site, and one of the first things people see in Liverpool as they leave the main railway station. Now there's a plan to turn it into a drop in centre for the 'pool's bid to become the Capital of Culture for 2002. Well at least someone will be using it for something...

ISP Thousands of users (including David at I Love Everything) have had difficulty connected over the past few days via BT. Personally, I've never had any problems connecting via BT Surftime (he says touching digital wood).

TV Whenever the ITN are covering a news story concerning something at the BBC, you can always see the glint in Trevor Mcdonald's eye and a smirk in his tone. Not so at the actual BBC, who stoically reported the supposed gaff by Kate Adie as a main news story the following day on the same news programme and in this article looking at the frankly barmy decision by ITN to axe a hundred and thirty staff, mostly in the foreign news section (yes -- great time to pick). This piece could have taken a superior tone, but instead offers 'just the facts'. Admirable.

Journalism When CHUD's editor couldn't take up an unexpected invite to the 'Oceans Eleven' press junket, he sent his brother instead. The resulting article is a bit more entertaining than the usual fair: "Ten minutes pass, and still no Clooney. Garcia is obviously bored and starts talking to everyone, "Why don't we start without him?" Hands fly into the air. Damon makes his second joke at Clooney's expense, "When he gets here, no one ask George any questions for five minutes. He'll get nervous". Again, everyone laughs. Then a commotion starts in the hall. He's on his way."

Sculpture New Scientist reports that in Switzerland there is a plan to recreate the fifty metre tall buddha's blown up by the Taliban last March, proving that no art is simply transient: "This will be a symbol of the rebuilding of Afghanistan," says Bernard Weber of the New Seven Wonders Society, which is coordinating fundraising for the project. "It will send a clear signal that in future an act of intentional destruction cannot erase the memory of those things which are valuable to humanity and its heritage.

Item! We can call off the search penis has found a vagina. To cut a long story short -- the original vagina, Andria took exception to John's new site design, the crux of the matter being an upturned cross which didn't quite play with her religious sensibilities. They had a disagreement, and since things hadn't been going well for a while, she left the blog. Which led to John's desperate plea a few days later: "Wanted: One vagina. No experience necessary. Must be originally female. Must not be religious." After a few unusual propositions, he's found someone else. There's a film script in there somewhere I'm sure...

People Continuing tonight's film theme, 'Sidekick' round up and update their 'Hey, Who is that Guy?' columns with a long, exhaustive and exhausting article. Interestingly many of the actors listed, whilst almost unknown at the time of the original article have gone on to become household names (Russell Crowe) or at least deeply recognisable to a particular audience (Jean Reno, Steve Zhan, Gina Gershon). The Steve Buscemi section is particularly good -- this is someone who is living the Bollywood ethic of appearing in as many films as he possible can -- nine in 2001 alone. Perhaps the IMDb should be be charging him for clogging up their servers...

Review! Once, not too long ago I was asked to list my top five film directors. The list went something like Woody Allen, Steven Soderberg, Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater (see below) and Ed Burns. I think I'd just seen and fallen in love with 'The Brother McMullen' and decided that we had a new generation Woody Allen on our hands. Then I saw 'She's The One' and bumped him for Whit Stillman. But I'll give anyone the benefit of the doubt and looked forward to his next film -- which then appeared on direct-to-video here I think. Then I saw the trailer for his new one "Sidewalks of New York" and wondered what I ever saw in him. In the revival of my old Review! feature I present CNN's Paul Clinton opinion which actually includes the subheading "Derivative filmmaking": "Also no exception is the presence of Burns' greatest weakness -- Burns. In his films Burns' characters are (apparently unwittingly to Burns himself) arrogant, self-involved and smirky. In all his films -- which of course he writes -- he obviously thinks his characters are the most likable, best looking, and intelligent people on screen. Everyone else, especially all the men in his films, are unredeemable jerks."

Blog! What do you do if you're the editorial team for a well known daily newspaper and you find lots of interesting articles from rival newspapers and websites, but you're honour bound not to link to them from your own paper's website? You start your own weblog. The writers of The Guardian's Online section have put together onlineblog using all of the tools available to the rank and file weblogger (Blogger, Blog Back). It's not too clear how much they have to adhere to the newspaper's editorial policy -- is this a personal website run by the people or some viral marketing for the paper? As the blog develops we'll probably see less of the expected self-linking the journalists' own articles at the Online website and more of the sort of personal writing and editorial found on the post from Tuesday November 20th ... marvellous ...

Clubbing Last years' series of Channel 4's 'Faking It' threw up a classical trained musical student who in three weeks was taught to DJ so convincingly that someone who had been in the business for twelve years could not tell, the implication being that this is one of the easier professions. Tell that to the students as the Hong Kong DJ School, were the organisers claim they can creat magic in an even shorter time: "Wen and fellow DJ and business partner Tszpun this month opened Hong Kong’s first DJ Training Centre, a $500,000 facility inside the converted Kwun Tong Ferry Pier, having raised funds by organising Club Progressive parties for up to 10,000 people in the room above. The co-founders and other local DJs intend to pass on the tricks of the turntable trade to a new generation of Paul Van Dyks and Fatboy Slims with a 16-hour course that includes six hours of lectures." [from TotallyHK]

Absence I haven't posted for a few days and it seems wrong -- like a performer not returning from the interval of a show, or reading a book and finding that back is filled with a hundred empty pages. I suppose I'm trying to limit my workload. For a time I was posting each night and the routine was become unbearable -- home from work, eat dinner, watch something on tv for an hour, write the weblog go to bed. I realised I could post more in one day in two or three because I wouldn't be jaded and my work and words would be better (although apparently my sentence structure goes to pot the later I write, and looking back at some previous entries I can see Anna's point). So here we are now. Although you haven't missed much -- just the minutia of life we all experience. And the usual paranoia about the state of the world.

Holidays "And might I just say ... a Happy Thanksgiving to you all at home...."

Film Also from Empire -- unknown film makes box office history: "What first appeared to be some kind of computer error turned into startling fact as figures rolled in from across the globe. In Taipei, the film took $1.1 million in 16 theatres and an estimated $2.3 million in Taiwan. "I just turned up at the cinema and thought the title was interesting," said one cinemagoer caught coming out of the film. "I really fancied an independent, art-house movie and having never heard of this I thought it would be ideal. It was amazing! I can't believe how far they managed to stretch that £4000 grant from the BFI."

Wars He's at it again. According to Empire Magazine, Lucas is filming yet more scenes to insert into the sacred trilogy to make them more cohesive with the new trilogy. So I've got to bloody buy them again!?!

Blog! And so to anatomy. The Breast Chronicles is probably as Beavis might have said in the mid-nineties 'The greatest thing I've ever seen.' It is weblog simply, completely, perfectly about breasts. And before the sniggerers amongst you go click, be warned -- it's an intelligent exploration not some seaside smut. You won't find old shots of Barbara Windsor or Melinda Messenger. You will find another example of how the recent crisis has effected everyone is some...small...way: "Unfortunately for the women of Denver, Colorado, the airport there has upped security so strongly after the recent horrific terrorist attacks, that their super-sensitive metal detectors are, well, a bit too sensitive! Writes Patricia Calhoun, "Dare to wear an underwire through security, and you're likely to get a pat-down more intimate than anything you experienced on prom night. And without a corsage or dinner first".

Film Watching 'The Blair Witch Project' again the other night after leaving a safe distance from that disasterous time I saw it at the cinema (when the audiences chatted and walked out through out screwing the tension somewhat) it occured to me how much I prefer the intimacy of low budget film making to the gloss of the big budget. Dogme 95 were right in many ways ... an orchestral score and glossy photography only really detract from the story. As one commentator pointed out in the previously linked Guardian articles, the studio process only serves to rip the heart out of the best stories. And so it's good to hear someone like Richard Linklater returning to the cheaper end of film making with his new film 'Tape' created in a single room with three actors and a digital camera. Annlee Ellingson's short interview with Linklater emphasises the technique, and offers a short lesson in the advantages.

Sport Also in Samoa, we find that no one is immune to brawls at football matches....

Columnists My general indifference to newspaper columnists has already been well documented, but I can't help bringing the state of the art in the Somoa Observer, where Pio Teofilo of East Timor who gets to grips with weighter issues than the usual 'my car won't start' / 'I'm looking a bit fat this week' stories which proliferate the Saturdays and Sundays: "Dear brothers and sister in Christ, well looking back to our journey of this year #1 of the prophesied timing, as I have been going on. There will be three more fortnights to the end of the year, after this one. And I am pretty sure we would all agree that there had been some steady positive progress all along the way, one way or another. One thing for sure thought, Samoa we are so blessed to be born in to the most wonderful and peaceful place on earth. I have no doubt of saying that after being to various countries like for now I am writing this script from Timor -(East)." Well you've got to admire his conviction....