16 David Meyer

Hamlet played by David Meyer.
Hamlet played by Tony Meyer.
Directed by Celestino Coronada.

Balanced precariously between art piece and feature film, Celestino Coronada’s Hamlet is not for the faint hearted. Sometimes described as ‘The Naked Hamlet’, it cuts the poetry to ribbons has little regard for the story (Ophelia’s madness is shown even though Polonius’s death isn’t) and instead sets about emphasizing every shred of the apparent homoerotic and incestuous subtext present in the play almost to the point of parody -- no sorry -- crashing straight into parody and galloping even further. It’s one of the most difficult interpretations of the play I’ve had to deal with so far and between my shouts of ’Oh come on’ and ‘Oh for goodness sake’ (substituting the g-word for the f-word more often than not) it’s the first time since the abbreviated National Youth Theatre Production that I was happy to get to the end of it.

Obviously it’s of its time and that being the case I’m very pleased that was too young to notice what that time was like. The mood is set from the off when Hamlet is shown nude on a slab being visited by his father, also bollock naked, to deliver the story of his murder. It’s not clear whether the man is supposed to be a ghost or in his son’s dreams but what is clear is that implication is that something rotten was going on in the state of Denmark even before Hamlet Snr’s murder. From then on we’re greeted by an approach to the play which is on the one-hand sub-Jarman on the other sub-Passolini (the film is dedicated to Pier) and is mostly the kind of thing which would be shown late on Channel 4 when it first started, probably with a red-triangle slapped on the front and as a lead in to Naked Yoga.

Funded by the Royal College of Art in London and filmed on a shoe-string in a darkened studio with the acoustics of a community centre (throughout you can hear doors opening and closing and people chatting off camera) there isn’t much room for scenes changes and most of its costume design and presentation takes elements of the burlesque and camp, silk costumes in primary colours (when people are wearing them) and hair and make-up perhaps influenced by Restoration stage craft, mixed with the sensibilities of the seventies. Frankly, Quentin Crisp as Polonius looks like Batman’s Joker all green hair and white face paint and Barry Stanton's Claudius seems to have wandered in from Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Relax video.

There is a good idea at the centre of all this though. Coronado’s casting of the brothers Tony & David Meyer (which means I can add two Hamlets to the list this time) allows them to emphasize the dual nature of Hamlet’s character playing the obviously mad and feigning madness versions off against one another and sometimes they appear in a scene together, fighting each other for supremacy. In this production ’Now is the very witching time of night’ becomes a two-hander the two actors demonstrating that Hamlet is very much in two minds. Unfortunately this is all undermined because clearly one of the brothers (it’s difficult to tell which) is clearly a better actor than the other and they also both have the extra weight of having to portray Laertes and it all becomes desperately confusing.

Given the circumstances of the production, you can’t really blame the actors for being inconsistent and just plain bad but the the Emmy, Bafta and Oscar winning Helen Mirren saddled with playing both Ophelia and Gertrude (that duology again, hey) is just awful, blankly regarding the other actors and doubtless wondering what made her sign up to this. Quentin Crisp looks equally bored and it’s unfortunate that with all of the emphasis on symbolism and imagery that the director has forgotten to take care of his cast. Coronado is more orgasmic over the possibilities inherent in the then new video mixing technology with a montage sequence which resembles a Top of the Pops Pans People filler directed by Ken Russell and each and every scene features some kind of super imposing of one character over another. This was a year after the premiere of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody video and it shows.

Obviously this was not created as an exercise in drama -- like Stoppard’s fifteen minute distillation, the audience isn’t supposed to be able to follow the narrative in a traditional way. It’s the filmic equivalent of an academic essay written for the International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies and I'm sure just that kind of essay could even be written about the film explaining the emblematic relevance of everything. In the end though, the whole fancy leaves a nasty taste of misogyny in the mouth; the inference is that none of this craziness would have happened if Gertrude and Ophelia hadn’t been quite such tasty propositions and although the thing ends with the naked bodies of the two acting brothers (one playing Laertes this time not that it matters by then) writhing around one another as the duel is substituted for some Greco Roman Wrestling in one of the worst examples of confused homo-erotic testosterone since Kirk fought a shirtless clone of himself in the Star Trek episode The Enemy Within. Mirren is variously uncomfortably stroked, massaged and snuffed, her make-up smudged all over her face in some kind of ur-version (or more precisely ugh-version) of torture porn. Dreadful.

"Man is by nature a political animal." -- Aristotle

TV Just to let you know that the rather marvelous, sadly canceled Party Animals will be getting a repeat appearance on BBC Four from this Thursday 11th October at 11pm so that all but the three of us who missed it can catch up with one of the best shows of the year. I previously wrote about it here and here, but please be weary of spoilers particularly in the second link which is a review of the final episodes.

"Evolution is gentics plus time." -- Professor Steven Jones

This afternoon I attended a lecture at Liverpool University given by Professor Steve Jones from the Department of Biology at UCL with the title ‘Why evolution if right and creationism is wrong.’ It’s part of a series of talks being organized by the Department of Philosophy on the subject of ‘Thinking about Mathematics and Science’. Just to add to the eclecticism, they’re currently appearing in a lecture theatre in the Law Building, a modernist wooden paneled room set out like a court room, with definite witness boxes, jury benches and a very grand set of chairs at the front where the judge probably sits.

I’ve always thought of Jones as being one of those celebrity professors in the same bracket as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, a household name with books and television and radio productions with his name on them. So I was amazed to hear that no one I mentioned the talk to had heard of him, which possibly says more about me than them. But I did want to go along to see the man essentially doing his day job, lecturing to students (although the talk was open to all). He was a highly entertaining speaker, offering photographs from bushorchimp.com to demonstrate the similarity between humans and primates.

Despite the surrounds, he wasn’t about to put creationism on trial as such -- this wasn’t going to be an academic version of Inherit The Wind. He even opened the talk by saying that the Old Testament was probably the first genetic text book, full of evolutionary questions such as the development of ancestry. Instead he simply dismissed it out of hand, talking about how the story of Adam and Eve is just one of countless thousands of creation myths all of which are perfectly interesting but unlike Darwin’s theory cannot tested against available data.

He also agreed with my argument from the turn of the year that ‘intelligent design’ is simply an annoying way of trying to rationalize the current unknowns in science and that it’s barmy to teach it on the same level as evolution in schools -- he called it ‘creationism with a college education‘. He said essentially that you could, as I once did, believe that all of science was sparked by a God, but that had nothing to do with the science itself -- the two are entirely different entities and that to talk about the philosophy of science doesn’t work.

This simplifies a one hour lecture and a question and answer session down to its fundamentals but Professor Jones covered more ground as he demonstrated how evolution works, using the spread of the AIDS virus as an example. I’m not even going to try and pretend I understood all of this (the last time I looked at a science text book was at the age of sixteen) but I think what he was essentially saying was that the reason that AIDS has spread in humans rather than chimps is because at least physically we’re far less evolved than they are -- there are elements of their immune system better suited to coping with an influx of the virus -- we’re essentially the primate that didn’t evolve.

But the fundamental difference is that we’re intelligent enough to be able to cope with the appearance of the virus because we have the capacity to research and discover ways of treating patients so that they live far longer, we’re clever which is why we’re largely able to survive. Unfortunately, we’re also economically evolved and if I understood the inference as he talked about the plight in Botswana were the average life expectancy has dropped by forty years because AIDS is so virulent and isn’t being treated by the expensive drugs available in the rest of the world. What he did say though was that some members of that population have stronger immune systems than others, so, to use his example, sex workers can have the virus and it doesn’t present itself even as their clients contract pneumonia.

He spoke too of language development, explaining that Darwin could have been influenced by Sir William Jones, a language expert working in the late-Eighteenth century who was the first to infer that all language has a common origin (in much the same way that all life must have developed from somewhere). There was a startling audio clip of the Queen talking to her fellow countrykids during the second world war at the age of sixteen and then of her grandson Harry at the same age, her cut glass receive pronunciation giving way to his posh-mockney. When I originally went to college I remember our hall president noting that within a week or two everyone would be talking in the common student accent -- now it seems everyone is slowly affecting those speech patterns as well.

Eventually, at the close of the Q&A (after I’d asked why humans aren’t described as having breeds to be told that its because we can all make love with each other perfectly well from the Eskimo to the Aboriginal) an argument sprang over the question of whether creationism should be taught in schools. Surprisingly, Profressor Jones said that he thought that it should, but then tempered that admission by saying that it should only be at the opening of a science course to say ‘at one point we thought that the world was only 6000 years old -- now we think it’s something rather different’.

On the way home I did wonder why we are given religious education in school in this day and age at least as a separate subject. Then it occurred to be, that its actually a simplified version of a Theology and Philosophy class, getting kids to think about the big questions in a small way, just as all of the other subjects are simpler versions of the larger subjects they become at university level. Instead of Wittgenstein and Socrates though, in school they have a stricter context and at the same time (assuming things haven’t changed too much since I went to school) introduce children brought up in one faith into the ideas and teachings of others.

All of this does touch upon some deeply held beliefs. Jones notes that one of the reasons that he is skeptical about religion (he’s an atheist) is because gene research has actually found a part of our make-up which means that we have tendency for religious belief, and why would we have that if God exists? But even he concedes that we need to at least have an awareness of religion because it’s part of society and we’d have to be entirely ignorant if we decided to try and stop ourselves from being exposed to it, even if it’s to understand the opposing view. As he says, you can’t refute that The King James Bible is an amazing piece of literature.

Ultimately, the lecture didn’t change any of my own beliefs but at least confirmed that in some cases I was on the right track. I won’t be changing what I’ve written on Facebook under the Religious Views heading to something other than ‘Questioner‘. I really can’t explain why, despite my misgivings about monotheistic religions why I’m often awed in churches. As I’ve said before though it could simply be that I’m taking in the human achievement that’s led to the creation of even the smallest of medieval churches and their historical legacy.

After all, I felt much the same way as I sat in that lecture theatre today with its Scandinavian-style wood panelling -- but perhaps I was just feeling a bit nostalgic, it being the first time I’d sat in an ampitheatre of learning since I left university for the second time last year. I can’t ever deny to myself that I’m never happier than when I’m learning and I suppose if Professor Jones can go, as he described, from working at Unilever to becoming one of the foremost thinkers on Biology, that scarily enough my academic journey might not be over just yet.

Eye of the Gorgon (Part One)

TV Well there I was feeling rather ashamed for not contributing to this season of Stripping Down, when this week’s The Sarah Jane Adventures does the job for me. Who would have thought that there would be a massive reference to the Sontarans in the spin-off in the same week that a giant shot of Stinx, Binx or Minx whatever his name is illustrates the front page and somewhat confirming the possibility that the potato heads are going to be reappearing next year?

I’m sure it’s a coincidence. Not for one minute do I imagine that Russell had to call up Emma Thompson’s mum and say ‘Phyllida love we need you back in for a reshoot. We just found out that Damon Querry’s selected The Time Warrior for the new Stripping Down session on the Behind The Sofa blog and I want to frighten the shit out of the them all for what they said about Torchwood. Plus I’ve decided we’re hold back on the revenge of the Krynoids until the fifth series so we‘ll have to change that bit of dialogue. Yes, right oh. Marvellous. Hoorah!’

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Eye of the Gorgon: Episode One

Less showier than the last fortnight’s sort of series opener but nonetheless enjoyable, Gorgon showed the first signs of growing pains. These generally located around the scenes related to Maria and her parents which in some senses were of the kind you’d expect to find in CBBC dramas and had little to do with the main plot. Character building is important and similar scenes occurred throughout the first few seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and as eventually happened here, the parent did become embroiled in the story, mostly by being effected by whatever supernatural entity is being fought that week - see Bad Eggs as a rather unfortunate example.

In this case, perhaps writer Phil Ford, a veteran of the likes of The Bill, Bad Girls and Waterloo Road (not to mention Captain Scarlett) slipped into the kind of voice used in those shows, and felt that in order for that rather special cliffhanger to have any resonance Alan’s character needed to be built up, for us to be sympathetic to him. The problem is in order to do that, he skipped over a potential rule of showing Maria’s parents outside of her point of view and in a rather long scene about the reasons and consequences of their divorce that mostly seemed to be taking up screen time better served by building the central mystery and the more genre related material. Perhaps the episode ran short and these were the two actors who were available to fill the time, but I do think the show has to decide who the most important characters really are.

I think that cliffhanger would have worked perfectly well if all we knew about the bloke is that he’s Maria’s father -- that’s why it’s shocking. But it is very difficult as an adult to gauge what’s important in children’s drama and it is perhaps a bit unfair to be having a go at the show for something which might just be a fundamental need in something which is being made now for a far younger demographic. Perhaps everything needs to look like Tracey Beaker these days. I don’t know. But I will say that for all that they were very well played, with Yasmin Paige’s moody meltdown a particular highlight reminding me of similar outbursts of aaaaaaaaaah! when I was her age.

The rest of the episode enjoyed a far slower pace than the opening two stories, slowly developing its story rather than simply using some sledgehammer exposition. It’s the first story which hasn’t immediately been about the kids (despite Clyde being the one to suggest they investigate); in another reality it could have Sarah Jane and the tin dog visiting the old people’s home at the start and being given the talisman. In fact, the kids fulfilled a far clearer ‘companion’ role, getting into scrapes, being kidnapped, not doing what they were told leading to everyone falling into a trap.

Yet again, this show is following the OldWho model. Which goes too for the idea of the Gorgon being an alien, influencing the myths of ancient Earth then appearing in the present looking to create havok if it didn’t succeed in gaining the mcguffin of the week? I did wonder though why the Nuns didn’t at least try to gain access to Sarah’s house whilst everyone was out in case the gang had left it behind. But then the sight of three nuns trying to break into a suburban home, even one with turrets, might well have attracted a bit of attention. That said, the scenes in which Sarah Jane described the Greek myths were rather lovely (and Reithian) and I remember my Dad doing exactly the same thing when I was young.

Then there was the aforementioned Sontaran reference which I’m sure only really had resonance to us old timers, and the kids with parents buying the dvds. I suppose you could argue that in this scene, we’re Sarah Jane and the target audience are Maria being told what she needed to know. Plus we've another slightly ambiguous Torchwood reference in the shape of Ghost Machine's concept for the area recording things happening within which can be played back later (see also Kneale's The Stone Tape). That said, at least it’s not the Torchwood reference I imagined initially, that Captain Jack had been married to Phyllida Law’s character Bea all of those years ago and this was another Small World.

Speaking of whom. it’s always surprising and lovely to see and actress of the calibre of Law appearing in this kind of show -- it elevates things somehow and made her character’s condition all the more real. Was I the only one reminded of Billy Hartnell though as she walked through the gardens with Luke in tow? Liz Sladen was given slightly more to do within the story this time and again didn’t disappoint, she really is a marvel and a commanding presence when required. Even taking into the account the audios and video, doesn’t it feel as though she’s been doing this week in and out since the grandmother series was originally on? Daniel Anthony’s Clyde has mellowed too and there’s a lovely little double act on the go with Tommy Knight's Luke -- I suppose that makes him Geordi to the star boy’s Data.

All that’s left to say as we wait for next week’s cliffhanger resolution is that it still remains a very good looking series. Those statues from the same alien artist behind the Blink angels. The totally unrelated Alice Troughton continues to the give the piece a scale which wouldn’t disappoint the mother series -- notice the hand held work as the kids slipped through the convent. As for that convent -- in case you don’t know it’s Cardiff Castle. I know that because I visited in 2005 -- that area where Sarah Jane confronted the Sisters is the library. It’s not authentic at all, a bit of a folly all told but absolutely beautiful and I hope we get to see more of it next week. The children’s play room which has fairy stories and ancient myths painted on the walls would be an opportunity missed.

Next Week: Stone the people.

15 John Dougall

Hamlet played by John Dougall.
Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan.

So from Hamlet in an hour, to half an hour and now a production in half even than that time. Tom Stoppard’s Fifteen Minute Hamlet is excerpted from his longer 1976 play, Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth, the former section of which is an intellectual exercise in demonstrating the schism between words and context. Three school children, speaking in a new language ‘Dogg’ attempt to put on a production of Hamlet, with this being their resulting production, a collection of excerpts from the major scenes and famous speeches mostly keeping the narrative sense of the piece. Unlike those other short forms though, this is played for laughs and no attempt has been made to construct a story lucid enough to be understandable a novice or someone approaching the play for the first time.

It would be pointless to list all of the omissions, except to say that The Players get but one line, there isn’t time to see Laertes off and that we hear more of mad Ophelia than Ophelia the sane. Rosencrantz and Guidenstern are only mentioned in Hamlet’s letter to Horatio reporting their death. Amazingly, he does manage to cram in Fortinbras though and spends a couple of minutes over the fight sequence, presumably because when staged this would still provide the thrilling conclusion on stage. It’s worth noting too that of the themes he chooses for his narrative through line (such as it is), the emphasis is on the quick marriage of Hamlet mother to his uncle -- many of the lines which aren’t ‘well known’ refer to that.

Then at close of the first run around (which actually lasts thirteen minutes), and after some appreciation from an audience, the play is repeated, in an encore lasting but a two minutes; a whirlwind, there’s scarcely time for anything but Hamlet gets most of the wordage and it only features the actors who would be on stage for the finale. I was reminded of The Last Night of the Proms, the ever quickening tempo during Pomp and Circumstance in which the conductor and orchestra are trying to catch the promenaders out.

This production was broadcast as part of BBC Radio's Three and Four’s Stoppard season in June and July 2007 and since it works so pacefully the radio, I can’t imagine how it might be accomplished on stage. Produced much in the same style as the BBC Millenium productions, weighted with atmospheric sound effects and orchestral music it’s certainly a passionate rendition and through Eoin O'Callaghan's direction importantly shows that in cutting, Stoppard still managed to give each of the characters and so the actors a moment to savour.

What that means is that amazingly it is possible to say that none of the actors embarrasses themselves and that John Dougal’s is a very lucid Hamlet, brooding when he needs to be, his delivery of what’s left of ‘The Readiness is all’ just perfect. It does have a touch of the Olivier’s, but with so little time and so few words to develop a psychological profile for his version of the prince he’s bound to pick a tried and tested model. The cast work so well together, that it’s a shame that all we’ll ever hear of them is in this fifteen minute fragment -- I certainly would have liked to have heard what Jasmine Callan would make of Ophelia over a longer period, Nitin Ganatra’s Horatio too.

"It’s alarming how charming I feel…" --Maria, 'West Side Story'

Film Amazingly, saw West Side Story for the first time tonight and although my media buffeted attention span miniaturized brain thought it was just slightly too long (which would probably be less of an issue if I'd seen it in a cinema where it was originally intended to be seen) I absolutely understand why its considered a classic of its form. I've just discovered that the original stage production is fifty years old this year but everything about the music somehow remains fresh and modern. Here, Mark Steyn considers its origins:

"The year before West Side, My Fair Lady opened, cleaving to the rules of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical play and doing it so spectacularly that, afterwards, the form had nowhere else to go. West Side symbolised the possibilities of the future: New stories told in new ways. West Side doesn't have an opening number as such, just a wordless musical "Prologue" to accompany the Sharks and Jets as they dance out - or mime - their increasing hostility until, finally, the Shark leader cuts off the ear of a Jet. Never mind waiting for Pauline Kael to pronounce it dated, on its very opening night it risked sniggers: the gentlemen of the chorus nancying about pretending to be tough guys. But the audience bought it: Jerome Robbins, Broadway's master stager, proved you could tell a story about gang warfare through show dancing."

It certainly can. It's a bit of trust between the audience and the film or production -- that we're watching a fantasy set in a world with different rules about social interaction. This may be going a bit too far though.

" It is sobering to think that when Mozart was my age he had already been dead a year." -- Tom Lehrer

Music Posting brevity tonight can be explained by the fact that I'm watching opera's Die Zauberflote or Mozart's The Magic Flute. It's a 1991 production recorded at The Metropolitan Opera House in New York with designs by David Hockney. I'm really quite enjoying it, probably because it has the atmosphere of a Christmas panto, including a fairy tale princess in the shape of Pamina and the comedy relief bird, Papageno (who might as well be called Buttons) and a fairly rubbish adventurer. So far, it's the fairly simple tale of the adventurer falling in love with said princess on the basis of a painting and then heading off to a castle to save her, with titular instrument and the anthropomorphic fowl to help his quest. As it stands they've been sent into some kind of punishment room and I best get back to see if they survive...

"Gripping. It's not Jane Austen, it's not Henry James but it's gripping." -- William, 'Nottting Hill'

TV Cazz Blase makes a plea regarding television literary adaptations: "Don’t get me wrong - I like costume dramas. I just wish writers, producers and schedulers would be a little more imaginative in their choice of books to adapt. For starters, why the fascination with the Brontës, Dickens, Hardy and Austen? Even George Elliot and Elizabeth Gaskell only got a look in a few years ago, similarly Trollope and Thackeray."

"Oh, don't worry, he's absolutely harmless. All you have to do is sing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." -- Superintendent, 'Help!'

Film Another article from The Guardian's special classical music edition. Joe Queenan offers up a guide to the movie cliches:

"Cello Suites by Johann Sebastian Bach: From the moment this lugubrious music is first heard in Ingmar Bergman's Sarabande, you know that death, disappointment, despair and disaster are right around the corner. Death, disappointment, despair and disaster are always right around the corner in Ingmar Bergman films, but in this final work he's not even making an effort to sugarcoat the misery that lies ahead. Used in many other films, Bach's cello suites are the very last word in menopausal grief."

"'Me mam goes. She goes at Christmas. Apparently, she took me there once when I was a kid." -- Voxpop from article linked below.

Music An interesting piece by Stephen Moss trying to discover why and if audiences are 'returning' to classical music suddenly became even more interesting, at least to me, when I read this:

"I went to two concerts in Liverpool. An enjoyable Grieg evening - the piano concerto and the incidental music to Peer Gynt - and, the following lunchtime, a recital by Boris Giltburg, the previous night's soloist. Giltburg attracted a small audience for his recital - perhaps 250 - and made a valiant attempt to drown out the pile-drivers that currently surround the hall. The Grieg concert drew the Liverpool Phil's most traditional audience. As I arrived at the hall, the coaches and mini-buses were disgorging groups of mainly elderly music-lovers. The Liverpool Phil has close links with Classic FM, and here was the tuneful fare that station prefers." [my italics]

I attended that recital -- and wrote a semi-review of it on here. It's intriguing that Moss only mentions what the audience looked like for the evening concert -- perhaps it's because or two-fifty were a far wider cross section -- older people certainly, but also students, people in my generation and slightly above, and not all as far as it's possible to tell these things 'white middle class' -- I'd consider myself 'lower middle-class liberal' for what that's worth. There were three girls from St. Hilda's School at the back too.

I've already bored you with my road to Damascus but that was why I was sitting at the front of that recital. But then I was listening to George Michael (and I should preface this by saying I've never been a huge fan) on Desert Island Discs this morning and as well as turning in a Radio One playlist as his selections, talked about how he became curious in music. It seems he received a bang on the head when he was young and it completely changed his interests. The Proms began just a couple of weeks after this happened to me. Connected?

"I go all in... what the hell!" -- Victoria Coren, 'Late Night Poker'

TV My semi-review of Tuesday's Screen Wipe has been linked by the BBC Four front page:



Seeing my words next to a picture of Victoria Coren is a very, very surreal experience.

"If we stay, death. If we go to Burma, death. We have no country to go to." -- Tuptim, 'The King & I'

Protest

"Typically, the subject being copied is terminated." -- The Terminator, 'T2'

Film Terminator 4 to be directed by man lacking in christian and much in the way of a surname. When all you can say is that at least it's not Brett Ratner or Uwe Boll ... I suspect Claire Danes won't be reprising her role.

"I've not read his columns, but I have to agree with him about the concept of heaven that is presented to us." -- Kat, Starbucks Gossip commentor

Commerce Blinks. Blinks again. Walks away unsurprised.

"We're gonna be big Stu, we're gonna be too big for Liverpool..." -- John Lennon, 'Backbeat'

Liverpool Life Some useful commentary from Liverpool Confidential on the announcement of some of the events which will be happening across 2008. Many exciting events, obviously and far better than most of us feared. I am disappointed to see that there's less of a film component but this is only the opening salvo and hundreds of other 'smaller' events will also be happening. Ian at Art In Liverpool has produced a user friendly month-by-month diary of them all which will be added to as the year progresses.

"Gosh, you've... really got some nice toys here. " -- Batty, 'Blade Runner'

Film Here's a wonderously specific article about the restoration of Blade Runner for the forthcoming dvd release: “I think The Final Cut is the best version of them all. The picture and sound on it are just astounding. We really put a lot of work into the restoration, and we transferred the actual original neg at 4K, and it just looks stunning. Even more stunning are the visual effects, which were originally 65mm elements, then scanned at 8K. It looks like 3D. It's so sharp, with all these details that I'd never seen before.” [via]

"No more enjoying the Doctor Who theme tune. No more '"You Have Been Watching". No more dramatic coda following the final credit." -- Charlie Brooker

TV Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe was an absolute corker tonight. The programme opened with Victoria Coren presenting what looked like a fairly traditional BBC Four documentary about corner, absolutely seriously describing to camera the (fictional) history of corner -- so she’s standing in front of some concrete and bricks and since I’m mesmerised by Vikki so much at the best of times, particular when she’s playing late night poker, I genuinely believed that this was going to be really quite interesting documentary about corners.

Until Charlie pushed her out of the way with a ‘Get lost Coren’ and a ‘Run credits’ at which point the man was squeezed in the new horrific house style that’s invaded the BBC so that he could essentially present a tv version of this rather good old column from The Guardian. He’s absolutely correct of course -- if television credits had always been like this we wouldn’t have been able to sing along to the lyrics of Rentaghost and for that matter, the death of Ronnie Hazlehurst would not have been greeted with the kinds of obituaries we’ve seen simply because we would not have been able hear his work quite so well.

Then, as Screen Wipe drew to a close (after an equally hilarious dissection of The Secret Diary of a London Call Girl which I’ve finally remembered to record tonight, y’know for later study) Brooker said that there would be a special next week about television news and that since they’d already run the credits that he would simply dump us back into BBC Four and the next thing we saw was that blanket trailer for Radio Week which seems to have been shown after every programme on the network for the past fortnight. It was just about one of the most exciting and surprising and abrupt things I've seen on television lately.

On the one hand, this is simply falling into the hands of the television net workers who frankly seem to want to abolish credits anyway; but he’s also demonstrated that actually you do need some kind of breathing space not just between programmes but also between programmes and programme trailers. There isn’t anything worse than watching a really effective piece of drama or documentary and having your attention shattered by someone shouting at you to watch something inappropriately different. But then, I’m awaiting the moment when film companies start to throw adverts for their future wares into the credits after a film. But there we have the power to walk out and here we the ability to turn off completely scuppering their whole plan, hah-hah.

Balderdash & Piffle

TV [spoiler] Balderdash and piffle I say, once more. Look at the source. [more inside]

[Links broken: From the comments -- "I can't even believe I'm giving this house room, but even narratively speaking it's a joke and would annoy me even more than Catherine Tate's appearance is bugging other people. It cheapens the close of Doomsday for a start, plus it doesn't strike me that Billie even wants to go back even for a short time. It'd be like Sarah Jane Smith turning up for Tom's regeneration in Logopolis. Yes, I know they asked Liz but she didn't want to do it and I suspect Piper would be anti too even to commemorate David's 'era'. Once again, balderdash and piffle."]

[Editorial intervention: Um, yes. Looks at shoes.]

Revenge of the Slitheen (Part Two)

TV I carried on watching CBBC after The Sarah Jane Adventures tonight so that I could catch the news headlines during Newsround (or nr as it seems to be called now). I knew that the Burmese horror might not be mentioned but I was interested to see how they’d treat the Tory party conference. During the seventies, I remember the John Craven version of this stuff being pretty literate and in fact I knew people who would actually get their news from the interestingly coloured shirted one sitting on the brown set. How times have changed. Instead there was a shouty young correspondent who looked bizarrely like a girl I knew at university (no not in that way) standing in front of the Houses of Parliament with the camera at a weird angle talking to me like I was four years old.

Now I know that nr is supposed to cater for a wide youth audience but this was literally ’Gordon Brown is the prime minister. He may call a general election because he wasn’t voted for by the over-eighteens as Tony Blair who used to be the prime minister y’know handed it to him. It all depends what happens in Blackpool where the Conservatives are meeting.’ Cut to some VT of Dave, Dee, Dozy, Mick and William Hague sharing some laughs around a breakfast table on the promenade. I was being talked down to, something I don’t ever remember Craven doing and in fact it was like a kids version of the old Alas Smith & Jones sketch, ‘And now some news for the elderly’ (‘Hello. Hello, yes. The prime minister, THE PRIME MINISTER, yes, nice woman, nice woman who runs the country, yes, well she says it’s all going alright basically, yes […] Well take care, I’ll pop ‘round again in the morning’.

The reason I’m mentioning all this is because it’s in stark contrast as to how well The Sarah Jane Adventures is pitching to it’s audience, packing in enough fun and action and jokes for the kids and actually a fair amount of comedy and … oh hold on I’ve forgotten to do something …

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Revenge of the Slitheen: Episode Two

… what was I saying? Oh right, a fair amount of comedy, surprises and call backs for adults. Even if I wasn’t a fan and therefore bound to watch anything the series currently with taxi cab logo is connected to, I think I would still want to tune into this and not be to embarrassed about it. Only now and then when a point is being stressed does it seem as though it’s anything other than a family show and couldn’t be broadcast in a later timeslot, perhaps on a Saturday night. Unlike the approach to politics in new new nr (which admittedly won back some of my respect for a viewer piece about eczema) it grants that the viewer has a modicum of intelligence.

The Slitheen youngster, for example, could have been the Scrappy-Doo of the clan, an irritating little shit undermining the genuine menace inherent in these maniacal beings. Instead as the episode went on, writer Gareth Roberts underlined that this was indeed a family to the point that when the inevitable happened at the conclusion it seemed genuinely shocking that our heroes would let the father and son die despite everything they’d done. Certainly it’s the same lesson that occurs at the conclusion of the TV Movie when the Eighth Doctor offers The Master his hand, but the explosion of Slitheen matter, a moment which previously in both their debut story and earlier in this episode has been played for laughs became genuinely shocking, the thematic implications of Boomtown taken to its deus-ex-machina-less conclusion, providing an unexpected depth which implies that actually this series isn‘t going to be going for the cute and funny all the time.

Once again the episode was structured in a very old school way, with a ten minutes scene in which the aliens developed their plans and the Doctor, sorry Sarah-Jane and her companions, sorry, young friends worked out how they could be beaten. Mr. Smith (Blake 7’s fish tank computer Orac with a decent screen) is a useful narrative shorthand, but like K9, he’s not perfect, he can’t give an answer to every question immediately. As I’d feared last week, we were taken over some old expository ground, but as the infernal machine lost power just as it was about to reveal the Slitheen weakness, I wonder how many kids shouted ‘Vinegar!’ at the screen (I did). This beat worked either way because in the subsequent scene in which Clyde remembered something which was seeded in the previous episode there was a fair bit of excitement in watching the characters trying to work out the answer, both if you knew the explantion or not and demonstrated once again that Kelsey’s replacement does have a fair few more rocks in his head. But judging by his interigation of Mr. Smith, he does seem like he’s going to be a bit of a Turlough though with the potential to go rogue before find redemption.

The second half was the race against time, an attack on the Slitheen base with two bottles of vinegar and some wits, no less ludicrous a frontal assault than the kind which appeared in the classic series which usually involved Pertwee rolling up in a milk cart dressed an a cleaning lady or whatever. Their dash through the street demonstrated that either this series has some clever accountants or it’s not been a victim of BBC budget cuts just yet. Look -- a street full of cars and people! Well alright, the cars are at odd angles which is strange considering the power is supposed to have instantly rendered them inoperable and the people look nothing like the kinds of people you find in suburbia (unless those fashions are supposed to be a nod to that fact this series is set in the future, by the Whovian calender). But look cars! People! No quick cut from Sarah’s house to the foyer of the school. Actually some of the action in this story has been better directed than in the mother series and we haven’t even reached the Graham Harper one yet.

In the Doctor Who Magazine preview Russell T Davies said that he was concerned that the stories might be a bit small scale but in the end they all became epic and the Slitheen’s plan was the first demonstration of this. How fun that in this adventure, the problem at hand spanned the globe and even led to a dimming of the Sun! A similar threat in the closing episode of Torchwood seemed overblown and wasted but here it was handled perfectly well (Texan Slitheen!) and logically and in keeping with stories of the past -- where once it was Earth being crippled by the same three Cybermen now it’s apparently two male Slitheens and their spawn. Just as you were thinking -- actually Sarah-Jane, there a military organisation you know who could be helping out with this, she’s on the phone to them in the closing moments (’My love to the Brig…’ -- squee). You could gasp at a conclusion in which the whole plan is scuppered by a blast from the sonic-lipstick, but it gave Luke an important redemptive moment and a neat bit of alien avoiding action to boot (he’ll make a great Rugby player when he gets to college).

Ultimately though the episode was about the name within the title. Liz Sladen, given some breathing space, an attic to pace in or the arm of a couch to sit on, mesmerizes and commands in way I‘m not sure we‘ve seen before, even in her earlier ‘solo‘ appearances, the likes of Downtime or the Big Finish series. Watch the moment when she’s relating her life story to Clyde and talking about traveling in space and time; to some kids it’ll be a revelation, to others it’ll be a confirmation and to the rest of us, nostalgically reliving those old adventures through dvd, it’s a communion because we’ve been right there with her and you almost feel as though it’s Liz herself as well as her character thinking back over those old times. The character has very much come to terms with her own place in the universe and how the Doctor fits into that; she’s no longer resentful of being left behind, happy to be a defender of the Earth (and lord knows with the Torchwood approach to that, it’s going to need it). When she says that she hopes the Doctor returns, you wonder if a late season cameo isn’t entirely beyond the bounds of possibly. When asked about it in the pre-show publicity, Liz cheekily didn’t rule it out …

Next week: Things look decidedly mid-period Pertwee -- nuns AND a gorgon?

"Not weird weird, but like exciting weird." -- Stephanie, 'Grease 2'

Film Earlier on today I found out that Doctor Who fandom has no limit. The latest DVD release is The Key To Time, the boxset I was lucky enough to win a couple of weeks ago, is a limited edition of fifteen thousand individually numbered copies. In order to make some attempt at working out the sales, prove that it really is a limited edition and possibly as a way of keeping a record of who has which copy, visitors to the Outpost Gallifrey discussion board are actually posting the number on the side of the box (in between fretting that they'll sell out very quickly). At some point I suspect someone will start looking for patterns.

Anway, I thought that was the most fanatical thing I'd lately see online, and then I saw a fan site for the film musical Grease 2. This isn't just something knocked together on Geocities through. In all its pinkness, this is as much an act of love as anything I've seen online. The About page demonstrates that any film has the potential to strike a chord with anyone, even that sequel. At least it gave the world Michelle Pfeiffer and the subsequent piano scene in The Fabulous Baker Boys. It's just a matter of being in a particular mood at a particular time. Imagine my disappointment then on seeing that adventuresinbabysitting.com is a link farm [via].