"Time and again I tell myself I'll stay clean tonight..." -- David Bowie, 'Ashes To Ashes'

TV What to make of tonight’s final episode of Ashes To Ashes? Eight weeks ago I wrote that this was “a far clever, far more complex prospect than the earlier series” and whilst I stand by that, whether it was as entertaining is another matter. As with Life On Mars, the problem the series has perennially faced is being a high-concept fantasy series and a cop show, never quite able to commit to either and ultimately falling through the cracks. In some of the worst episodes, we’ve seen a detective story peppered with random dream sequences and reminders of the clown, but in the best, Alex’s predicament has come to the fore along with attempts at building momentum for tonight’s climax.

And yet in the end, producers Kudos fumbled. On the one hand, the visit from Lord Scarman (deliciously played by Geoffrey Palmer) was well handled and as funny as anything we’ve seen before, the hero polemic from the Gene genie instantly clappable. Except, having waited eight weeks to see Alex fighting a life and death battle to stop her parents from dying, there was no urgency, the character and programme pottering about the subject in a series of disjointed scenes. Clearly the idea was not to do the expected thing of having a proper investigation, Alex box ticking much as she did in the first episode.

The two storylines simply didn’t mesh, rather like those episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the Enterprise found yet another special spacial anomaly whilst Data learned a lesson about humanity. Scarman deserved a whole running time to himself as did the resolution of the ongoing story; instead they stole from each other and ultimately came out the weaker for it.

Plus – how much more interesting would it have been if Alex’s mother had lived but the officer from the future hadn’t returned home, suggesting something much wilder? I did gasp when it was revealed that her father had been the clown all of these weeks, but mostly because I'd not been able to make the connect between two images that have been right in front of me. Oh yes, explosions are lovely as were the scenes between young Alex and Gene, this seemed as usually to be looking at things from a moment to moment basis rather than the larger picture.

Perhaps I’m just disappointed that Sam Tyler didn’t make a late appearance as I predicted. But really there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Again I ask – if this all is in Alex’s head, why do we keep getting scenes from other character’s point of view? At first I thought it was part of some larger scheme, but I’m actually starting to conclude that it’s the producers not really thinking about their concept as much as they should and simply working to the needs of production and giving their cast something to do.

But then I look at the enigmatic dialogue, the times in which Gene seems to be totally aware of Alex’s predicament but unable to say and I wonder if in fact there really is something more interesting going on which is yet to be revealed as they take advantage of knowing that a second series is in the offering. Something I’ll definitely still be watching, if only because Keeley Hawes is still a rose and looks great in red.

Slipping backwards

Radio Torchwood to make radio debut on Radio 4. This Broadcast story is behind a free registration wall but they say:

"The network has commissioned a 45-minute standalone episode of the Doctor Who spin-off for its Afternoon Play slot. The episode is timed to coincide with R4's news and documentary coverage of the launch of the world's largest particle accelerator at the Cern physics laboratory in Switzerland."

To be written by Joseph Lidster and Mr. Barrowman et al have signed to appear. Wacky -- Torchwood in an afternoon timeslot when everyone's at work. Luckily, a podcast and cd will be available later.

But is it canon? [via]

Monuments Another Lisa pours scorn on the reporting of frankly bizarre plan to increase the size of the viewing platform at the top of the Eiffel Tower: "The problem with this report is that it may be completely false. Either the Times got their information wrong (from the Guardian or other sources they may have used), or the powers that be at the Eiffel are trying to hide this decision for the moment, because since the initial report came out, several updates were posted at the Times web site as they back-pedaled to say that (1) the design had not been officially confirmed, (2) the Eiffel officials denied the Guardian's entire report, (3) the architectural firm took back their official announcement but maintained they were still a candidate even while the Eiffel people claim no such competition exists!"

Comics More on the cultural vandalism front: artist Brian Bolland has recoloured his artwork for The Killing Joke, Alan Moore's classic Batman graphic novel and the edition will be the only version available. Bolland says that he's creating his original intentions but I can't see much difference between this colourising Citizen Kane.

True, the new version looks more realistic (whatever that means) and in keeping with the latest methods in comic art, but I always thought the point of the book was that it looked like the comic books of the time, bright colours included, but had a much starker, darker level of storytelling, particularly in the portrayal of The Joker. To my eyes, that loses its impact in the new imagery. I wonder what Alan thinks about this.

Life Lisa notices the brain freeze which also seems to have infected me lately. Another under-graduate reference, but during a course on Information and Society, the lecturer predicted that as computers and specifically the internet became more sophisticated (this was in 1995) people would begin to rely less on their own brain capacity and instead on the systems around them. In effect, people would stop retaining information because it would instantaneously be available anyway.

Which is of course exactly what's happened. Everyone who uses the internet for research is effectively a librarian, doing the very subject searches which information specialists used to train years for (and I did). I don't imagine the brain drain will stop soon either. Within a few years, everyone'll be able to afford a PDA (or similar) and have the Wikipedia (or similar) in their pocket ready to answer any or all questions.

“We stick to the same guidelines as the television series"

TV Just in case you missed it, here's a link to the excellent article from The Times last week [paywall] about Doctor Who novels and the publishing thereof. There are some amazingly business sensitive details, such as how much the novelists are paid and more of exactly the kind of information you wished would turn up in an average Doctor Who Magazine interview:

"In one of this year’s stories, Revenge of the Judoon, the Doctor originally fought to save Balmoral and Edward VII with the help of Winston Churchill. Unfortunately the TV people liked the idea, and thought they might keep Winston in reserve for a future episode. So the author, Terrance Dicks, had to make do with a cameo from Arthur Conan Doyle instead."

From BBC Doctor Who News: [original link broken]

"We're delighted to officially announce that Series Four of Doctor Who will commence with Partners In Crime at 6.20pm on Saturday 05 April 2008, BBC One."

That seems very early -- but remember when the series was on at that time anyway? Also, turns out that first episode title is also an Agatha Christie title reference. If she'd also written a novel called The Sontaran Stratagem it would look like a was pattern forming.

Liverpool Life Yes indeed, Sefton Park does look like an asteroid has hit it. Walking past the work area a fortnight ago, I was creeped out by the very sinister dark blue wall which is currently ringing the area which reminded me of photographs I've seen of the various similar constructions which have divided other areas for political reasons. At least ours seems to be for a nice reason.

Politics I'm currently listening to the Carla Bruni back catalogue (both albums) since she's in the country and having dinner with the Queen. What? Her husband's with her? Rats. The Guardian have live blogged events but the coverage has been far wilder than I think there's ever been for a state visit from a French President. Clearly this has something to do with it but it's really not often that an international politician visits these parts with a spouse quite this pretty.

Previously: Mystery Music March: Carla Bruni’s quelqu'un m'a dit

TV A Spooks spin-off's been announced and it's post-apocalyptic: "Spooks: Code 9 has just started filming, and is set in the year 2013. London has been evacuated following a nuclear bomb, and the country's power base has shifted north. In the wake of the attack, MI5 must restructure and establish new field offices all over the UK, working to gather info from the heart of local communities."

Assuming the two series are set in the same universe, doesn't that mean, in the unlikely event that the parent series lasts for another five years the two will have to join up? Also, having understandably ignored Spooks for years despite the futuristic technology, surely SFX Magazine will have to cover this? It is set in an alternate future ...

Film I read a fairly horrifying statistic today and I’m going to reproduce the relevant passages in full hoping that the publishers of The Movie: An Illustrated Guide don’t use their time travelling lawyers to sue me from the past. Italics are mine for emphasis:

“The end of the war found Japan, the last Axis enemy, in a desperate situation. Most cinemas were closed, and though the studios had remained theoretically open, the shortage of materials and equipment was acute. The whole country was place under the regulations of the Supreme Command Allied Forces in the Pacific (SCAP) whose officers drafted and implemented rules about which films should and should not be made.

[…]

Meanwhile the SCAP authorities industriously burned negative and prints of some 225 forbidden films, which included works by outstanding directors like Kinoshita, Ichikawa and Kurosawa.”

The statistic is repeated with greater detail in an article specifically about Japanese cinema from the period:

“Japan had tended to depict its long tradition of a highly structured, feudalistic society very firmly in its films. Prior to the war many films had been made which roused and reinforced the people’s loyalty to the Emperor and the ideals of the nation. During the war such movies had become more overtly propagandist, and it was these to which the new American censors turned their attention. Of the 554 films from the war years, 225 were judged to be feudal or anti-democratic and were ordered to be destroyed. The Occupation forces not only censored complete films, but also kept a watchful eye on new scripts, Kon Ichikawa’s puppet film Museme Dojiji (1946, Girl at the Dojo Temple) was burned simply because he had not submitted the script for approval.”

Isn’t that horrifying? That’s cultural vandalism, plain and simple, and ironically of the kind with the allied forces were supposed to be fighting against in other parts of the world. It’s not unheard of for an occupying force to take control of the local media; it’s quite another thing to go around burning negatives of pieces of art simply because you ideologically disagree with them. Propagandist or not, these films were still important historical documents and lets not forget the work of directors who would go on to become part of the classic cinema canon. You burnt Kurosawa? How would you like it if someone took a torch to John Ford’s Stagecoach, made at roughly the same time. Unthinkable.

My first university dissertation discussed art censorship and I wrote about Heroic Realism in Nazi Germany. These are generally giant kitsch canvases of very Aryan gentlemen standing in fields with hoes or at war, the very model of the super race. They’re rubbish and creepy, but the last thing I’d suggest would be their destruction; store them in a deep bunker somewhere perhaps but they’re a perfect way of revealing the worst excesses of an ideology developed by a very small man (with potentially just one testicle) and did when they were displayed alongside the work of Jewish painters from the period at an exhibition in the mid-90s.

Inevitably, the wikipedia offers some idea of the Kurosawa material which was lost.

“After his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata, his next few films were made under the watchful eye of the wartime Japanese government and sometimes contained nationalistic themes. For instance, The Most Beautiful is a propaganda film about Japanese women working in a military optics factory. Judo Saga 2 portrays Japanese judo as superior to western (American) boxing,”

Which don’t exactly sound as though they would stand alongside Rashomon in terms of significance, but they would still have some scholarly interest, in the same way that you can’t completely disregard Hitchcock’s early work, before he discovered the thriller genre.

We were supposed to be the good guys. But then there was the nuclear bomb too.

Food Chez pim endures the worst meal of her young life: "Finally installed at our table, I was more than ready for some serious nourishing. The table was quite precious, each place setting with its own directed light, illuminating the plate as though it was artwork. Beautiful plates they were, and I was ever so hopeful of beautiful food that would soon fill those plates, and my belly. Alas it wasn't to be, at least not yet. Instead we were presented with a manifesto. Don't ask me what's in it. I just couldn't be arsed to pay attention. It began with some absurd notions about god and creation and whatnot. I put it aside, thinking I'd read it when I got back, perhaps after some food and drinks, a lot of drinks."

"Don't know much about history..." -- Sam Cooke, 'Wonderful World'

Politics Whilst the fact that Suzanne Shaw didn't know who the US Presidential candidates were is shocking (as Keris says "But that surely means she hasn't read a newspaper, watched the news or looked at a news website for - what? - three months? Six months?") what's even less impressive is that she thought it ok to actually admit to not knowing. Something I learnt from an early age is that, with the exception of conversations in education establishments, if you don't know something and it seems like something you really should know, do not, that is DO NOT admit to not knowing it.

Depending on how the question was phrased, Suzanne could have said "Well I've been too busy with the ice dance to keep up with the policies" or "I was always brought up on the premise that you shouldn't talk about religion or politics" or if she was in a particularly smart mood "since it's in the US, my opinion doesn't mean that much anyway..." all of which would have hidden the fact that really she had no idea what the interviewer was talking about. Besides, I probably have more of an idea about global politics than British at the moment. Don't dare ask me to name anyone in our cabinet... oops ...

"Look for the bare necessities...." -- Baloo, 'The Jungle Book'

Film Watching The Jungle Book today for the first time in about twenty-five years I was surprised by how simple the narrative structure actually is. After the prologue in which Mowgli is brought up by the wolves (after the implied death of his parents, the background painting of the broken boat as economic a bit of storytelling as you’re likely to see anywhere) it’s largely just about his passage from the jungle to the man village. Almost like a variety show, each of the different animals shows up and does their turn, perhaps with a song, before shuffling off ready for the next one, sometimes collaborating on various tunes. Disney dumped Kipling and the work of original adaptor Bill Peet (who had in mind an adventure film) in favour of a concoction which he thought should favour character over plot.

Usually I get quite annoyed by episodic film structures because done badly they tend to drag; much as I love Time Bandits, it can seem at times like a bunch of television episodes strung together. Film review maverick Mark Kermode jokes that the likes of The Ice Age represent ‘the death of narrative cinema', and it is fairly amazing how many recent releases do set off their characters and premise, noodle about for an hour of incidents before desperate grabbing for a conclusion twenty minutes before the end. Arguably, for all of its innovations, There Will Be Blood does exactly that, with vignettes such as the introduction of his ‘brother’ eminently droppable from the story, no matter how much it apparently says about the main character.

What saves The Jungle Book is the quality of the songs, all of which I know word for word anyway after listening to the record hundreds of times as a kid, and the quality of the character animation – as one contributor notes on the dvd it’s amazing how something drawn can have that much weight and can be giving such a loose and colourful performance. But the story has a metaphoric significance too -- it’s about our own journey from childhood to adulthood, Mowgli leaving the talking animals to join his own people. The girl he meets at the end, sweet and romantic as she is, represents the introduction of responsibility and that makes the climax very sad indeed. Except, since composer George Bruns layers her song, ‘My Own Home’ on the soundtrack right from the beginning, it was inevitable from the opening moments, the music arguably tying the film together more than the script.

Adrift.

TV PC Andy!

PC Andy for me symbolises why I still don't hold Torchwood, despite the general upswing in quality this series, with quite the same affection as other genre series (and yet here I am reviewing it week in and out. I'€™m strange). I've been really ill this week and cheered myself up rewatching Firefly for the umpteenth time. It just lacks the sense of fun a figure like this police officer can bring. PC Andy and his double act with Gwen was one of the very best things about the very first episode of the series (insert CSI quote about kebabs here).

Noticing the appreciation of viewers, other programmes would have capitalised on the character and developed him, taking as many opportunities as possible to bring him into stories, a much needed injection of local humour and real world cynicism as the Torchwood team po-facedly saved the world. Instead, we'€™re at episode ten of the second series and he'€™s only just made an appearance, and I can't think of a preceding story which wouldn't have been improved immeasurably with his presence.

As expected he largely steals the episode. If the fat jokes were an attempt to make the character less appealing it didn'€™t really work; Tom Price is too light an actor and his chemistry with Eve Myles to potent for us to hate him too much. Watching the two of them together, I can'€™t help but wonder if a more entertaining series wouldn'€™t have been just these two knocking around Cardiff investigating spooky goings on, Hot Fuzz meets The X-Files. The scene in which Andy was left on the quay holding the teas was possibly the saddest of the series.

But this was also a very sad episode. Writer Chris Chibnall should be applauded for creating a story which could only have worked within the Torchwood universe, and the idea of the rift causing a statistical bloat of missing persons in Cardiff was a good one. The problem the series often has is working through the stock plots which every genre series does (expect body swaps and the Groundhog Day one next year) but this was uniquely of the series, right down to the message that the so-called real world and spooky-dos can'€™t mix. A sense of mystery was quite well built, as was the general sense of paranoia inherent in Gwen discovering that she still doesn'€™t know everything about her employers (although quite why the island didn'€™t crop up as a problem whilst Jack was away isn'€™t clear).

The episode didn't quite work thematically though. The idea that seemed to be that people whose loved one has gone missing are better off not knowing what happened to them, wallowing instead in the their hopes and memories. Jonah'€™s Mum says as much at the conclusion before she'€™s shown dumping her son'€™s possessions. But I can'€™t imagine that if you asked people in the real world the same question that they don'€™t dream every day, even if they'€™ve come to the conclusion that indeed their relative or friend has died, of having some kind of closure so that they can move on. Granted, for fantastical reasons, this was slightly different, and more horrific, but it seems to be a more realistic final speech would have had Nikki being thankful for the opportunity.

The other problem was that sometimes the storytelling wasn'€™t quite as surprising as it could have been --€“ as though Chibnall had certain images or ideas plotted in his head then had to fill in the gaps but couldn'€™t quite come up a really innovative way of doing it. Example: when Gwen and Andy turn up for the missing persons group meeting, its no surprise at all that hundreds of people turned up because in theory there isn'€™t a story otherwise. Wouldn't it have been more impressive if no one really had shown up but the writer had managed to construct a reason for Gwen to investigate the missing persons anyway? Similarly, the only reason Gwen visited the island was because Ianto had slipped her a clue again because the story would have stopped otherwise. A far more potent approach would have been to make Gwen proactive, perhaps using her Torchwood clearances to steal the information.

Still, Adrift was well acted, particularly by Ruth Jones and Robert Pugh as mother and son and directed by Mark Everest, particularly during the Hub scenes in which Gwen suddenly seemed distanced from her workplace. The facility on Flat Holm (redolent of similar establishments from the Pertwee era of Doctor Who) was realistically designed and keyed in with the rather used look of the rest of Torchwood Cardiff - anything cleaner and more well equipped would have attracted the interest of the authorities. It's just a pity that more couldn't have been found for the ensemble to do but I suspect this double banked with next week's Gwen-lite episode were everyone else gets something to do. And I can'€™t really hate any episode that manages to reference Field of Dreams, the baseball movie it's ok to love. Other than Major League. And The Natural. And Eight Men Out. Oh forget it.

Next week: It'€™s Firefly'€™s Out of Gas. Or Friends's The One With The Flashback.

Elsewhere Finally on the mend then. The channel of communication between my brain and fingertips has been reconnected and typing again suddenly feels very natural, not that you could tell from this rubbish review of a half-decent episode of Torchwood. As promised, I'm going to leave the music thing until April, the 14th I'm thinking, when I'm back in the blogging mood properly again -- which leaves some of you plenty of time to get your pieces in should you still want to.

"Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man" -- Francis Xavier

Meme I hardly ever get tagged with these meme things. I'm sad enough to usually just do them anyway, so it would be wrong not to follow Kristine's lead. It's interesting to note that since I last did the five things you didn't know about me meme, another three slots have been added, and like Kristine it seems like a cop out just add another three to those. And so, since I've been away for so long, here are ....

8 things you may not know about me

(1) I haven't seen any of the Rocky films. Or Rambos.

(2) I'm deformed. My little finger on my left hand is about twenty percent too small.

(3) I really fancy this woman:



She's Ruth Gibson and she does the answer machine message for Orange, and has one of the sexiest voices I've ever head. Seriously, you would have thought adding credit to your mobile phone account could be that pleasurable? The picture is from her appearance on The Culture Show on BBC2 during which she told a very funny story about trying to convince a pensioner that she didn't take all of those phone calls. Perfect.

(4) I'm really crap with Excel. I've done courses but the most I can get it to do is add up and not very successfully.

(5) Only one song released in the past five years is guaranteed to make me burst into tears and that's The JCB Song by Nizpoli. I'll be writing some more about that at some point I expect.

(6) I hate people who fidget with their hands. I sat next to a man in a suit on the bus today who spent the whole journey making a fist relaxing his fingers then making a fist again. It's very difficult to concentrate on anything with that happening in the corner of your eye. I expect he was practicing.

(7) The first book I read from cover to cover was Robert A. Heinlein's Have Spacesuit Will Travel

(8) When I was at primary school I'd sit making daisy chains with the girls rather than playing football with the boys. Give me a child until he is seven etc.

From Out of the Rain.

TV Often one of Torchwood’s problems is its inability to expand upon an interesting idea that’s tucked away amongst the generic nonsense that fill out the rest of an episode. The main plot here seemed like an attempt to bring the kind of characters from films like the German Expressionist silent The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to life and use them as a cause for murder and mayhem. The problem is that it all seemed rather inauthentic, as though PJ Hammond was imagining what those films are like without having actually seen them and using his own Chinese whispers version instead.

But lost in the midst of that was the idea that, undercover or not, Jack worked in a travelling circus as ‘The Man Who Couldn’t Die…’ shooting himself in the head on a nightly basis for the enjoyment of paying customers. That to me is far more shocking and horrific than the two constructs whipping around Cardiff city centre stealing people’s breath whilst philosophizing esoterically like a steampunk Roy and Priss from Blade Runner. A clever scriptwriter could use it to parallel some modern practice or an alien perhaps who’s being forced to do much the same thing.

The problem with From Out Of The Rain was that it lacked that kind of invention and went the easy route. Hammond himself admitted during Declassified that one of his mainstays is people going in and out of photographs so he thought he’d try it with film and whilst there’s nothing wrong with returning to the well, on this occasion it just seemed old. Buster Keaton was using the gag in the early part of the last century for goodness sake. Of all people I should be excited by the idea of old film holding secrets, but at the climax when Jack wondered in the Blink-a-like finale (serious, Moffat should sue) what else might be hiding in old film cans in people’s basements and attics, all that gave me shivers was the prospect that The Space Pirates might be found.

The episode felt like a hold over from the first series. Jack’s mean and moody? Tosh is hardly in it? Gwen’s acting like a giggling dimwit? Ianto’s crying? About the only character that’s clearly still dead is Owen, even though when the Ghostmaker tried to steal his breath and exclaimed with surprise that he couldn’t breath in the next shot we heard him breathing. Like many of those first series stories, this was essentially a thin chase plot, dipped in some style and served in false emotion. Only one life saved? No! Oh good it’s a small child! Look at the little poppet … flaaagahaagha ...

There’s no denying that Julian Bleach did his best to turn the Ghostmaker into a creepy figure, even to the point of renting out Paul Darrow’s voice for the duration. Some of the production design, particularly in the circus was really well conceived and atmospherically photographed. And the short scene with the old witness in the home particularly touching. Unfortunately, some by-the-numbers direction, annoying acting choices and incessant music undermined all of that and in the end, From Out Of The Rain, was something this kind of television should never be. Boring.

Next week: Good Torchwood returns. Hopefully.

Journalism Just to prove how hard blogging can be -- Confessions Of A Celebrity Blogger: "My first day, I blocked out an hour before the morning push was due and started scanning the photo sites Madame had sent me for a usable picture. Sifting through pages of blurry camera phone shots (if only Big Foot were considered a celebrity!), irrelevant and thankfully indiscernible nudie pics and thousands of inane comments took me forty five minutes and left me with an undated picture of Rihanna on a beach and an Angelina Jolie promo shot from her latest movie. But they were of a decent quality so I downloaded them and dutifully started the posts. Blankness. How was I supposed to know what Rihanna does at the beach?"

Life After a firm prodding from Stephanie, I thought I'd better break my silence. The reason for the lack of updates is that I've been poorly in bed since last Friday with a cold, but one of those really annoying ones which robs you of your senses and your motivation. Frankly, it has knocked me for six and ruined my holiday so far and I haven't had the inclination even to listen to music, let alone that lot. Trust me when I say I'll be back soon, I just need to remember how to do this. Expect Mystery Music March to continue in April when I've built the momentum back up and I've thought up a new name for it (Amazing Audio April? No?).