Soderbergh In The Park To Stage Production Of 'Ocean's Twelve'
I think this is probably even funnier if you really do, like me, thing Ocean's Twelve is a work of experimental genius.
Extroverts, please speak up!
This seems to work for me on a case by case basis -- in some cases I can be very open and hello and how are you total stranger, but at other times, often if there I sense that everyone knows everyone else, I tend to be the quiet one. Museum private views are a nemesis. House parties are better.
Watchmen DVD May Be Even Longer Than 3 Hours
It's a Lord of the Rings style double dip.
Manchester and Liverpool: A different dimension
Simon Calder traverses the canal. Spends an entire paragraph extolling the virtues of Sefton Park, and he's right, it does look like an ear, even from where I'm sitting.
Countdown Launches Search for new Arithmetician
Seems as though they want to nurture another mathematician -- apparently they originally found Carol through a newpaper job add so they're trying the web equivalent. Application forms asks potential number pickers to describe why they they'll be the best person for the job in less than fifty words. If they google for an answer (it happens) they'll no doubt find this. Yes, that'll probably do it.
Bookstores in Tokyo
The Olympics with MST3k
For Neil. Not a spoof either judging by the comments.
Blonska thrown out of long jump
Old news just twenty-four hours later (the relays!), but I still love Kelly's attitude which is basically 'I told you so, nyer-nyer-nyer.'
Mobile phones go all superspy in Spooks Code 9
I can just about rationalise that after that kind of attack even the security services would be using whatever technology they can get their hands on, except the production team clearly want us to think that its all hi-tech (so therefore dated within five minutes).
Interview: Blockbuster CEO: Skeptics Aside, Confident Of Physical’s Digital Future
Or Blockbuster CEO: can't understand why people would want to watch old movies, and spends most of the interview demonstrating why Blockbuster are losing traction against Netflix in the US and Lovefilm in the UK. It's sad. He uses phrases like 'the long tail' but doesn't really seem to know what they mean and misunderstands the fact that these days it's so expensive to rent a film for a single night in his stores/shops that people are just going out and buying the things instead or happy to have the random alternative.
3, 2, 1 ... blogs relaunch!
Announcing some exciting changes to blogs and commenting
The Guardian reworks its blogging platform and finally updates its RSS feeds so that everything goes through the same pipe -- no need to subscribe to two or three different feeds for the same writer and looking stalkerish in the process.
Meet Leland Chee, the Star Wars Franchise Continuity Cop
Following on from my rant of the other day, here's an interview with the very man. His reaction to the question about Alan Dean Foster's novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye (written before the Endor Holocaust and in which Luke and Leia become very, very good friends) is priceless. I came away with the impression that actually it's not a useless job and that its a good thing that Lucasfilm at least pays some attention to this stuff even if there'll always be the spoddy uberfan who'll find something to complain about. 'But it's been established that the X-23b Land Fighter has four guns, yet in the new novel Engagement on Loobo Shopa (that title's copywrite me) it's described as having two. Fail.' etc.
LJ Kruzer > Since I Took A Taxi
Strange, dancie, techno but soothing. Thanks Robin.
No consumer advice is available for this work
Though I've not entirely forgiven the BBFC for giving The Dark Knight a 12A rating (really? the knives? the bit with the pencil?) this report page for a classification confirmation of Robert Altman's The Player placates me a little bit for the satirical usage of the words "The cast for this work includes" before going on to list what looks like every cameo...
At Beijing (or whatever I'm calling this now).
Lucy's made the final. As the BBC reports:
"In the women's K1 500m, Britain's Lucy Wainwright also qualified for the final, finishing second in semi-final one in a time of 1:52.580secs. [...] Wainwright, 30, made a slow start but was impressive in the closing stages."She goes at 09:20 on Saturday morning.
"Oh yes! Yes! I'm a huge fan of the Moomins. Have you read the Moomins?"
TV Wonderful interview with one Rona Munro, writer of Survival from one David Darlington. On the lesbian subtext:
"Anywhere is the place for a lesbian subtext! And again, it was the eighties, and we were all really conscious that there were certain elements missing from mainstream culture and, as far as possible, if you got a chance to chuck them in there, you were duty-bound to do it. The same as having an Asian character – it looks a bit clunky now, but at the time you actually had to fight for those things, and you could only do it – Alan Plater told me this trick later, and I'd inadvertently done it – he told me that basically if you say "This character's Asian" they won't let you have that character, but if you give a character an Asian name, a name they can't assume won't be anything else, then they'll get you an Asian actor, or a black actor, or whatever. And what's that? Fifteen years ago? Seventeen years?"
She wants to write another one ... [via]
"Anywhere is the place for a lesbian subtext! And again, it was the eighties, and we were all really conscious that there were certain elements missing from mainstream culture and, as far as possible, if you got a chance to chuck them in there, you were duty-bound to do it. The same as having an Asian character – it looks a bit clunky now, but at the time you actually had to fight for those things, and you could only do it – Alan Plater told me this trick later, and I'd inadvertently done it – he told me that basically if you say "This character's Asian" they won't let you have that character, but if you give a character an Asian name, a name they can't assume won't be anything else, then they'll get you an Asian actor, or a black actor, or whatever. And what's that? Fifteen years ago? Seventeen years?"
She wants to write another one ... [via]
Superlambanana-on-and-on #7
I don’t walk. Well, clearly I walk, I just don’t do it much for pleasure, and particularly up and down hills. I don’t have special shoes or much of a sense of scale. I’m too much of a city dweller I think, so though I’m ok on the flat, put a gradient in front of me and I'm a pathetic sight. Today, I walked. I walked up Moel Famau in North Wales, something I certainly wouldn’t have done unless, as you can see, there was a Superlambanana at the top. And I found out why I don’t walk. It nearly killed me. Photos at flickr.
That’s an exaggeration, hopefully for comic effect, but though I was relatively relaxed when I began, by the time I was half the way up the hill I was reduced to baby steps, desperately looking for the stones buried into the pathway rather than the shale lying on top just so that I wouldn’t slip. I’m unfit, I know, but this was serious, I was gasping. We’d taken the difficult route for speed and I decided that this had been a mistake. Then, surprisingly, my feet stopped hurting, I found out what passing through the pain barrier actually meant.
All very dramatic. But of course, every so often you turn around and see the view, the trees crashing through the landscape, the heather shimmering in the wind and you realise why you’re walking and you keep one foot moving in front of the other. People are constantly walking towards you and you greet each other and you decide that you’d really like to see what they’ve seen and it gives you a lift (even though its an actual mechanical lift you’d probably want more, Stannah or Schindler).
Sure enough, at the top of the hill, with the rest of Denbighshire unfolding around me I knew it had been worth the pain, I’d done the right thing. And there was the banana, just on the edge of the summit, its technicolor designs contrasting against the green of the ground and the greys and blues of the sky. My Uncle and I sat on the edge of the Jubilee Tower nibbling a Snickers and taking in the view, at which point it really dawned on me why we’d taken the difficult, direct route to the top, the satisfaction of really having achieved something.
We took the same route downwards and saw other city dwellers making their way up a hill for the first time. Families with push chairs, teenagers in tracksuits, all of them, like I'd been still unaware of the danger ahead. One girl was lighting a cigarette, surely something she’d be regretting within minutes. Wwe greeted them all in a way which you simply wouldn’t or couldn’t in the city and I decided that's why people like to walk do it. The views are great and everyone is just so much friendlier than in town.
Whilst we're on the subject...
Anna and Bobbie are moving to San Francisco. Good luck, Guardianistas.
Anatomy of a panarama
Liverpool photographer Pete Carr has produced a typically atmospheric vista for the new Pizza Express at the Albert Dock. Here he tells its story. Many early morning starts.
La, lalala-lala. La, lalala-lala. La-la-la-lalala. La-la-lala-la-la-la.
Investigative preteens in a big red bus coming soon to shiny-disc.
Blonde Alanis.
The more I look at this photo, the more I feel as though reality as we know it is imploding.
Snopes: CNN/MSNBC News Alert -- Real Virus.
Why couldn't I have read this a week ago?
Crazy Like A Fox
Dippy title for a short interview with Rachel McAdams which explains something of the post-2005 drop in acting work. She simply didn't want to. Warning to fellow fan club member John -- the accompanying photos make her look like a feminised Gary Newman. Meanwhile, Juliette Binoche likes to dance.
I Sense a Disturbance in the Star Wars Canon
Of course in my short kvetch about Star Trek spin-off fiction I almost completely obscured the mess which is the Star Wars expanded universe and vitriolic debate thereof, which judging by this linked Wired article inspired by the new Clone Wars cartoon makes the discussion we Who fans have regarding UNIT dating look like a quick decision about where to buy a sandwich at lunchtime. As complex as a the plans for the Death Star, the Expanded Universe has levels of continuity from the films downwards that have suddenly been disrupted by the introduction of a new interim level to deal with this new cartoon and its successors. There's a whole weblog dedicated to this stuff and the detail involved is just scary. As I said in the comments there, in Who, everything is canon unless we don't want it to be -- there is enough temporal anomalies and timey-wimeyness to allow for three different reasons for Atlantis to fall or the Marie Celeste to sink or Sarah Jane Smith to clearly not be from 1980, even though sometimes she has to be.
Whilst we're on the subject, watch this:
Then this:
Which is rather like discovering the thing about Father Christmas. Either way, thanks to Damon and Iain for pointing it out. Possibly.
Anatomy of a panarama
Liverpool photographer Pete Carr has produced a typically atmospheric vista for the new Pizza Express at the Albert Dock. Here he tells its story. Many early morning starts.
La, lalala-lala. La, lalala-lala. La-la-la-lalala. La-la-lala-la-la-la.
Investigative preteens in a big red bus coming soon to shiny-disc.
Blonde Alanis.
The more I look at this photo, the more I feel as though reality as we know it is imploding.
Snopes: CNN/MSNBC News Alert -- Real Virus.
Why couldn't I have read this a week ago?
Crazy Like A Fox
Dippy title for a short interview with Rachel McAdams which explains something of the post-2005 drop in acting work. She simply didn't want to. Warning to fellow fan club member John -- the accompanying photos make her look like a feminised Gary Newman. Meanwhile, Juliette Binoche likes to dance.
I Sense a Disturbance in the Star Wars Canon
Of course in my short kvetch about Star Trek spin-off fiction I almost completely obscured the mess which is the Star Wars expanded universe and vitriolic debate thereof, which judging by this linked Wired article inspired by the new Clone Wars cartoon makes the discussion we Who fans have regarding UNIT dating look like a quick decision about where to buy a sandwich at lunchtime. As complex as a the plans for the Death Star, the Expanded Universe has levels of continuity from the films downwards that have suddenly been disrupted by the introduction of a new interim level to deal with this new cartoon and its successors. There's a whole weblog dedicated to this stuff and the detail involved is just scary. As I said in the comments there, in Who, everything is canon unless we don't want it to be -- there is enough temporal anomalies and timey-wimeyness to allow for three different reasons for Atlantis to fall or the Marie Celeste to sink or Sarah Jane Smith to clearly not be from 1980, even though sometimes she has to be.
Whilst we're on the subject, watch this:
Then this:
Which is rather like discovering the thing about Father Christmas. Either way, thanks to Damon and Iain for pointing it out. Possibly.
"Art is the daughter of freedom. " -- Friedrich Schiller
Art I finally managed to see the Klimt exhibition at Tate Liverpool or as they rather poetically describe it, Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design & Modern Life in Vienna 1900 (a title I’ll be returning to shortly). I’d been putting it off despite rave reviews -- this has been the gallery’s most successful show, with according to the attendant in the cloak room, fifteen-hundred people a day going through its doors. I hate busy exhibition and museums because you notoriously end up seeing all human life but not the art, yet with this closing in a couple of weeks I knew I had to just grit my teeth. In the end, the show wasn’t too busy, mostly because visitors might have stayed away since Tate Liverpool doesn’t traditionally open on a Monday. Still there were a fair few people trudging across the exhibition’s darkly carpeted floors but for the most part they behaved themselves and I found, at least for the time I was there, a good atmosphere.
Tate Liverpool’s flagship Capital of Culture exhibition might not be the best Klimt exhibition you’ll ever see, simply because that will never exist. His theoretically most famous painting, The Kiss, something which would naturally be the crowning finale of this kind of retrospective, is too expensive and fragile these days to be moved from its usual home of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna (not to mention that museum’s reluctance to loan out its most famous tourist attraction). So despite being the first exhibition to concentrate on the painter in our nation’s history, it’s necessarily incomplete and I wonder how many visitors will have been aware of the reasons (and I’m sure I heard someone in the gift shop, the only place The Kiss is on display, wondering why that painting wasn’t in what they’d seen before).
With that in mind, Tate have repositioned the focus of the show to not simply present a history of a single painter's technique but also the context within which he was working, the music, architecture, fashion and attitude of Vienna circa 1900. In reality that means lots of furniture and models of buildings, dresses and photography. It’s fascinating stuff; the ambition of the Viennese Secession movement of which Klimt was a part was to create a kind of ‘whole art form’ in which no single media had precedent and all blended into one another, from the painting that hung in the house, through to the cutlery to the house itself. Wagner was the musical proponent -- in producing The Ring, he didn’t simply want to compose the score but also design the sets and costume and direct the actors.
Within the exhibition we find a desk in the shape of box with a section that pulls out to become a chair; cutlery which mirrors the detailing of the walls of the house in which they’re used, a tea set with handles that allow for coffee and milk to be poured comfortably and efficiently at the same time. It’s the reason that many of Klimt’s canvases are square, both portraits and landscapes, it’s because they fit better within the overall interior design of a room. I’m reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters when painter Max Von Sydow’s agent brings along some potential clients who want to buy his work. They want it by the yard so that it can fit best within the scheme, an idea Von Sydow’s none to pleased about because it insults his artistic integrity. Klimt on the other hand, understood market forces and created his work to fulfil them, at least initially.
This, then is not an exhibition to visit if you’re looking for wall to wall paintings by a particular artist, or for that matter to see an unbroken sequence of his work so that you can see how aspects of his style changed and developed. If there’s something I still came away not really understanding, it’s how he shifted from the earlier more pre-Raphaelitian courtly style through to the bolder, erotic images which he's perhaps most famous for. Clearly a decision was made by the curatorial team based on what was thought to be available which is fine but given the name on the poster I simply would have liked a clearer through line (though given that I was very tired when I finally dragged myself through the doors and could well have simply missed it amongst the labels and information boards).
There’s an earlier painting, Fable, which looks like the work of a completely different artist -- sight unseen you might guess it was by Collier or one of the British late Victorians. His heart clearly wasn’t in it, but there’s something of leap from that to the Beethoven Frieze with its imagery that crosses a randy Charles Rennie Mackintosh with Maurice Sendak's picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. That’s probably why I like his work so -- other painters often keep the same style but then apply it to different subjects. Klimt kept much the same subject but changed the way he represented it. One constant is hair. He seemed to be obsessed with it. In his early paintings he diligently worked to make sure every strand appeared convincingly, in later paintings the shapes became more abstract but the tresses flowed.
About the only proper connection I can make is that as time went on, Klimt became something of a lathario and the eroticism of the imagery certainly increased in tandem with the number of models which hung around his studio. The finale of the exhibition is series of drawings of ladies in a variety of positions giving themselves and each other pleasure. Despite only being simple line drawings, they were enough to have the painter branded as the pornographer of Vienna (even though the majority only came to light after his death). Other works, such as The Three Ages, alone might mark him as something of a misogynist with their wiry representations and Judith II/Salome (reputed to have ordered the beheading of John The Baptist). But I don’t think anything could be further from the truth, he was an interesting chap but I think he was just interested in showing women, good, or bad, or very, very bad indeed.
What ultimately pulls the exhibition together is the audio guide. A couple of pounds hire provides you with an iPod Touch loaded with a tour, this tour in fact available to download from the Tate website. Often these guides don’t work, either because you have to lug around a cd player dangling around your neck or one of those tall black wands which often crackle and can’t be heard over the din of the other visitors. The Klimt guide almost puts the visitor inside an Andrew Graham Dixon documentary, mixing audio-only explanations of the exhibits with related photographs (showing some of the paintings in their original context), music and video interviews with curators at the gallery of origin or family owners. The text is finely balanced too, intelligent without being sonorous, knowledgeable as well as humorous.
I did like the design of the exhibition too. The walls have been painted submarine grey which has the effect of making the colours within the paintings even more luminous. An earlier work, Two Girls with Oleander, with its golden back drop looked like the artist was achieving in a paint what he’d later do in genuine metal. The whites of Portrait of Marie Henneberg’s dress and Salome’s skin pop out too. If nothing else I’ve come away with a renewed appreciation of just how luminous a painter Klimt was; like medieval artists he understood that it was possible to be subtle even with the boldest of colours and that in the darkened rooms and hallways were some of his paintings would ultimately hang, it’s those qualities which would make them unforgettable.
Along with the nudity and scary eyes.
Tate Liverpool’s flagship Capital of Culture exhibition might not be the best Klimt exhibition you’ll ever see, simply because that will never exist. His theoretically most famous painting, The Kiss, something which would naturally be the crowning finale of this kind of retrospective, is too expensive and fragile these days to be moved from its usual home of the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna (not to mention that museum’s reluctance to loan out its most famous tourist attraction). So despite being the first exhibition to concentrate on the painter in our nation’s history, it’s necessarily incomplete and I wonder how many visitors will have been aware of the reasons (and I’m sure I heard someone in the gift shop, the only place The Kiss is on display, wondering why that painting wasn’t in what they’d seen before).
With that in mind, Tate have repositioned the focus of the show to not simply present a history of a single painter's technique but also the context within which he was working, the music, architecture, fashion and attitude of Vienna circa 1900. In reality that means lots of furniture and models of buildings, dresses and photography. It’s fascinating stuff; the ambition of the Viennese Secession movement of which Klimt was a part was to create a kind of ‘whole art form’ in which no single media had precedent and all blended into one another, from the painting that hung in the house, through to the cutlery to the house itself. Wagner was the musical proponent -- in producing The Ring, he didn’t simply want to compose the score but also design the sets and costume and direct the actors.
Within the exhibition we find a desk in the shape of box with a section that pulls out to become a chair; cutlery which mirrors the detailing of the walls of the house in which they’re used, a tea set with handles that allow for coffee and milk to be poured comfortably and efficiently at the same time. It’s the reason that many of Klimt’s canvases are square, both portraits and landscapes, it’s because they fit better within the overall interior design of a room. I’m reminded of the scene in Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters when painter Max Von Sydow’s agent brings along some potential clients who want to buy his work. They want it by the yard so that it can fit best within the scheme, an idea Von Sydow’s none to pleased about because it insults his artistic integrity. Klimt on the other hand, understood market forces and created his work to fulfil them, at least initially.
This, then is not an exhibition to visit if you’re looking for wall to wall paintings by a particular artist, or for that matter to see an unbroken sequence of his work so that you can see how aspects of his style changed and developed. If there’s something I still came away not really understanding, it’s how he shifted from the earlier more pre-Raphaelitian courtly style through to the bolder, erotic images which he's perhaps most famous for. Clearly a decision was made by the curatorial team based on what was thought to be available which is fine but given the name on the poster I simply would have liked a clearer through line (though given that I was very tired when I finally dragged myself through the doors and could well have simply missed it amongst the labels and information boards).
There’s an earlier painting, Fable, which looks like the work of a completely different artist -- sight unseen you might guess it was by Collier or one of the British late Victorians. His heart clearly wasn’t in it, but there’s something of leap from that to the Beethoven Frieze with its imagery that crosses a randy Charles Rennie Mackintosh with Maurice Sendak's picture book, Where the Wild Things Are. That’s probably why I like his work so -- other painters often keep the same style but then apply it to different subjects. Klimt kept much the same subject but changed the way he represented it. One constant is hair. He seemed to be obsessed with it. In his early paintings he diligently worked to make sure every strand appeared convincingly, in later paintings the shapes became more abstract but the tresses flowed.
About the only proper connection I can make is that as time went on, Klimt became something of a lathario and the eroticism of the imagery certainly increased in tandem with the number of models which hung around his studio. The finale of the exhibition is series of drawings of ladies in a variety of positions giving themselves and each other pleasure. Despite only being simple line drawings, they were enough to have the painter branded as the pornographer of Vienna (even though the majority only came to light after his death). Other works, such as The Three Ages, alone might mark him as something of a misogynist with their wiry representations and Judith II/Salome (reputed to have ordered the beheading of John The Baptist). But I don’t think anything could be further from the truth, he was an interesting chap but I think he was just interested in showing women, good, or bad, or very, very bad indeed.
What ultimately pulls the exhibition together is the audio guide. A couple of pounds hire provides you with an iPod Touch loaded with a tour, this tour in fact available to download from the Tate website. Often these guides don’t work, either because you have to lug around a cd player dangling around your neck or one of those tall black wands which often crackle and can’t be heard over the din of the other visitors. The Klimt guide almost puts the visitor inside an Andrew Graham Dixon documentary, mixing audio-only explanations of the exhibits with related photographs (showing some of the paintings in their original context), music and video interviews with curators at the gallery of origin or family owners. The text is finely balanced too, intelligent without being sonorous, knowledgeable as well as humorous.
I did like the design of the exhibition too. The walls have been painted submarine grey which has the effect of making the colours within the paintings even more luminous. An earlier work, Two Girls with Oleander, with its golden back drop looked like the artist was achieving in a paint what he’d later do in genuine metal. The whites of Portrait of Marie Henneberg’s dress and Salome’s skin pop out too. If nothing else I’ve come away with a renewed appreciation of just how luminous a painter Klimt was; like medieval artists he understood that it was possible to be subtle even with the boldest of colours and that in the darkened rooms and hallways were some of his paintings would ultimately hang, it’s those qualities which would make them unforgettable.
Along with the nudity and scary eyes.
No log-ins necessary.
Plugoo
I've installed this fancy chat box widget to the sidebar of the blog so that you can talk to me directly if I'm online and logged in to ICQ/AIM. No log-ins necessary.
So You Wanna Be a Track Star?
British sprinter Jeanette Kwakye 's colourful blog. Congratulations to her for qualifying for the 100m final and then managing a 6th place with a PB.
What Michael Phelps listens to on his iPod.
Not as unpredictable as you'd hope. Outkast and Eminem. So much for my "It's all about The Carpenters..." theory.
Kevin Smith Has Seen Watchmen: “It’s F**king Astounding”
Meanwhile, is it too long? It does seem odd that we live in a decade were Lord of the Rings can be as leisurely as a walk in the Pennines and TV boxset watching is the norm, yet studios get the jitters over the length of a superhero film, one which is in no way for kids. Why would anyone finance something on this scale and then not want its potential audience to see everything?
New scandal hits British Comedy Awards
Tape delay meant people were still paying to vote for an award even though it had already been presented.
Boring weekend ahead for Netflix users
"The company said it shipped no DVDs on Tuesday, some on Wednesday and none on Thursday." That sounds like my Lovefilm experience every week lately. The loss of the Sunday post means that if I post a dvd back on Saturday afternoon, it won't be picked up from the postbox until Monday which means it'll hopefully turn up at Lovefilm on Tuesday, they wait their usual day before send a new one out which means something might turn up the following Thursday, which too close to sounded like a Craig David single for comfort. And that's assuming that the post office deliver the thing the next day in both directions. One week, I posted something on Saturday then didn't get a replacement until the following Saturday...
No Penn students, ever.
Disappointingly I'm linking to Gawker. But it is a very good post explaining why a US magazine would not hire from a particular university. I wonder if there are any UK magazines with that attitude. "None from DeMontford, ever." etc.
The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull.
Actor Dane Cook isn't at all happy with the look of the poster for his film, My Best Friend's Girl, and not entirely because it looks like promo art for pretty much every film comedy Jason Biggs has every co/starred in. It's a funnier evisceration, though he has to hope that it's not more grinnable than the actual movie.
The AV Club interviews Naomi Klein
Klein's one of my favourite writers and the book is on the list; the comments from readers are fairly amusing at least at the beginning since most of them can't understand why the website is interviewing someone with an opinion about something other than whether the last film/television show they were in was actually any good.
Philip French reviews Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Mainly it's a synopsis, but the final line is classic French.
Synopses and Final Cover For Star Trek: Destiny Trilogy
I link just to make the point that given the criticism that Doctor Who's had recently for all the crossovers and spin-offs, that when the show went off air, with only a few examples it largely went to ground and produced a range of stories in keeping with what went before and were very circumspect about crossovers and 'fanwankery' and generally ignored the Daleks. To quote said synopsis:
This trailer for the next chapter of Heroes shows that Kring and the gang have decided to start making a different, better programme (with the characters actually using their powers). Though I always remember how good The Phantom Menace looked in the B-Trailer so these things are designed to deceive.
I've installed this fancy chat box widget to the sidebar of the blog so that you can talk to me directly if I'm online and logged in to ICQ/AIM. No log-ins necessary.
So You Wanna Be a Track Star?
British sprinter Jeanette Kwakye 's colourful blog. Congratulations to her for qualifying for the 100m final and then managing a 6th place with a PB.
What Michael Phelps listens to on his iPod.
Not as unpredictable as you'd hope. Outkast and Eminem. So much for my "It's all about The Carpenters..." theory.
Kevin Smith Has Seen Watchmen: “It’s F**king Astounding”
Meanwhile, is it too long? It does seem odd that we live in a decade were Lord of the Rings can be as leisurely as a walk in the Pennines and TV boxset watching is the norm, yet studios get the jitters over the length of a superhero film, one which is in no way for kids. Why would anyone finance something on this scale and then not want its potential audience to see everything?
New scandal hits British Comedy Awards
Tape delay meant people were still paying to vote for an award even though it had already been presented.
Boring weekend ahead for Netflix users
"The company said it shipped no DVDs on Tuesday, some on Wednesday and none on Thursday." That sounds like my Lovefilm experience every week lately. The loss of the Sunday post means that if I post a dvd back on Saturday afternoon, it won't be picked up from the postbox until Monday which means it'll hopefully turn up at Lovefilm on Tuesday, they wait their usual day before send a new one out which means something might turn up the following Thursday, which too close to sounded like a Craig David single for comfort. And that's assuming that the post office deliver the thing the next day in both directions. One week, I posted something on Saturday then didn't get a replacement until the following Saturday...
No Penn students, ever.
Disappointingly I'm linking to Gawker. But it is a very good post explaining why a US magazine would not hire from a particular university. I wonder if there are any UK magazines with that attitude. "None from DeMontford, ever." etc.
The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull.
Actor Dane Cook isn't at all happy with the look of the poster for his film, My Best Friend's Girl, and not entirely because it looks like promo art for pretty much every film comedy Jason Biggs has every co/starred in. It's a funnier evisceration, though he has to hope that it's not more grinnable than the actual movie.
The AV Club interviews Naomi Klein
Klein's one of my favourite writers and the book is on the list; the comments from readers are fairly amusing at least at the beginning since most of them can't understand why the website is interviewing someone with an opinion about something other than whether the last film/television show they were in was actually any good.
Philip French reviews Star Wars: The Clone Wars
Mainly it's a synopsis, but the final line is classic French.
Synopses and Final Cover For Star Trek: Destiny Trilogy
I link just to make the point that given the criticism that Doctor Who's had recently for all the crossovers and spin-offs, that when the show went off air, with only a few examples it largely went to ground and produced a range of stories in keeping with what went before and were very circumspect about crossovers and 'fanwankery' and generally ignored the Daleks. To quote said synopsis:
"On Earth, Federation President Nanietta Bacco gathers allies and adversaries to form a desperate last line of defense against an impending Borg invasion. In deep space, Captain Jean-Luc Picard and Captain Ezri Dax join together to cut off the Collective’s route to the Alpha Quadrant."To echo some of the comments at the linked article (a) since when was Ezri Dax a Captain? (b) the bloody The Borg again (c) I know shared universes often plough ahead and ours did but I don't see anything in here which hasn't already been done a hundred times by that franchise. It looks like I got out of Star Trek at just the right time. There really is something to be said for being monogamous about these things.
This trailer for the next chapter of Heroes shows that Kring and the gang have decided to start making a different, better programme (with the characters actually using their powers). Though I always remember how good The Phantom Menace looked in the B-Trailer so these things are designed to deceive.
Blog! Zoe Margolis writes movingly about her blogging experiences for The Observer:
But women have needs, and eventually I ended up bedding a series of Z-list (OK, perhaps M-list) celebrities who approached me through the blog and who I knew wouldn't spill the beans, due to our shared desire for privacy. Hotels were obtained, condoms procured, and an author, a rock star and a TV personality were all ticked off my nonexistent list. The excitement and novelty of these secret trysts soon wore off though; I began to realise that I did need external validation from someone - but of the emotional sort. The aftermath of losing my anonymity had left me feeling fragile: I needed to curl up in someone's arms, not just shag them senseless.Good to know she's getting her life back together.
Life As I've recently tweeted I'm currently having an issue with back pain. It began last night just before I went out and today it was excruciating. I think it's just general stiffness from sitting down instead of walking around a lot recently which is my fault but I don't think its anything more serious than that. It's felt a bit better in the past couple of hours but that could just be the Ibuprofen kicking in.
What it does mean is that I'm not in much of a mood to actually very much more than ironically lying down and watching a lot of sport. Excellent day at the pool, though it's a shame that one of my ones to watch James Goddard couldn't have got a better shot in the pool -- but he was rather stuck in the final with Michael Phelps so didn't really stand a chance. Still, another Olympic final in any career is no mean feat. Still Canoeist Lucy Wainright to go in the K1 500 beginning on Tuesday.
What it does mean is that I'm not in much of a mood to actually very much more than ironically lying down and watching a lot of sport. Excellent day at the pool, though it's a shame that one of my ones to watch James Goddard couldn't have got a better shot in the pool -- but he was rather stuck in the final with Michael Phelps so didn't really stand a chance. Still, another Olympic final in any career is no mean feat. Still Canoeist Lucy Wainright to go in the K1 500 beginning on Tuesday.
Candle & Coffee Cup
Took this photo at The Tavern on Smithdown Road last night. I like The Tavern -- it's the perfect place to go if you just want to have a chat about something; it's part bar, part restaurant which means the coffee is always freshly made and the piped music, usually blues or jazz, is never too loud. Plus as you can see it relies on candle light which means that you can feel as though your words are disappearing into the darkness.
"But really, would you really want to do that to yourself, really?"
Body-Mod: Elf Ears
Yes really, and there's no denying that the effect is beautiful and strange. But really, would you really want to do that to yourself, really?
John Oliver analyses Fox News
To an extent this is like shooting fish in a teacup, but Oliver does manage to land a few good shots including the material about the change in editorial policy depending upon who's in the White House.
Soapy Scenes
Jane Espenson visits a soap set. The actual production methods still seem to resemble the BBC drama department from the fifties through to the late eighties.
Bravo, Gustavo
Indeed, last night's Prom was one of the best of the season. I've not been writing about this season much because I'm sorry to admit I haven't been enjoying it as much as last year. Too much Messian and a general lack of really passionate music as far as my ears can tell. Well, there's always this I suppose!
Yes really, and there's no denying that the effect is beautiful and strange. But really, would you really want to do that to yourself, really?
John Oliver analyses Fox News
To an extent this is like shooting fish in a teacup, but Oliver does manage to land a few good shots including the material about the change in editorial policy depending upon who's in the White House.
Soapy Scenes
Jane Espenson visits a soap set. The actual production methods still seem to resemble the BBC drama department from the fifties through to the late eighties.
Bravo, Gustavo
Indeed, last night's Prom was one of the best of the season. I've not been writing about this season much because I'm sorry to admit I haven't been enjoying it as much as last year. Too much Messian and a general lack of really passionate music as far as my ears can tell. Well, there's always this I suppose!
I can't be the only one surely?
TV In the event, BBC Three's new Spooks: Code 9 wasn’t as awful as the pre-broadcast previews suggestions. It's not perfect -- the derivative nature of the material and being a pointless spin-off saw to that, but considering its bastard origin, after a few initial hiccups it turned into a half-decent piece of Orwell-lite, Whedon-lite entertainment with a half decent plot arc and some neat characterisation. It didn’t open well -- the too swift description of the catastrophe (which was very ironic in the light of the recent think tank announcement) then smash straight into spy craft with lots of quick cutting and shouting and pop culture reference was particularly dated and Joanne Frogatt seemed unsure how to pitch her performance at the leader Hannah, to the point of being irresistibly annoying.
But once she got the bullet (the unexpected death being a well worn Spooks tradition begun in fine style when Lisa Faulkner saw the wrong end of a chip pan), the mis-en-scene calmed down and set about defining the real ensemble and telling a proper story with long scenes full of acting. This isn’t an awful idea -- recent graduates and their fellow hoodlums working for the security services in a time of crisis and in the end, establishing the status quo up front rather than having an apocalyptic first episode added a much needed sense of mystery as the audience attempted to catch up on the intervening history. If it's possible, the series seems to have an even stronger political agenda than the main channel version, speculating on the lengths the security services would go to in protecting society, with civil libertarians becoming terrorists to get their point across.
It makes a change to have the maths geek in charge rather than at the bottom of the pecking order trying to prove to his boss how clever he is, and smart to make him the opposite of one Harry Pearce who seems to know everyone. As far as we can tell Charlie doesn’t know anyone and has to rely on his more connected deputy Rachel to do some of the dirty work. Some of the best scenes are between these two as the former quietly asks the latter for advise away from the hearing of the rest of the gang. Of course for us Doctor Who fans it’s interesting to see what Georgia Moffat did next after playing the Doctor’s daughter though saddled with a horrifyingly unconvincing character name (Kylie Roman) and bizarre red wig (that not her natural hair colour is it) she’s yet to really shine (apart from offering an admirable right hook at the start of the first episode).
The plots are typical Spooks fare except on a smaller scale -- discover who the shooter/bomber/traitor is and stop them. But because these agents lack experience their mistakes mean that the outcome isn't completely certain and as we saw they may not save the day. This neatly sidesteps the perennial problem of the parent series where the apparently very experienced adults drop a hundred IQ points in order for the plot to move forward. Setting the series in a fiction city and blurring the geography also means the audience is on the back foot even if the place is clearly being filmed in the oh so real Leeds. It’s actually easy enough to assume all this is happening in a different timeline to the other show, simply trading on the name, and format. The trick for the series, just four more episodes to go, will be in keeping the element of surprise and attempting to be different enough from its parent series.
But once she got the bullet (the unexpected death being a well worn Spooks tradition begun in fine style when Lisa Faulkner saw the wrong end of a chip pan), the mis-en-scene calmed down and set about defining the real ensemble and telling a proper story with long scenes full of acting. This isn’t an awful idea -- recent graduates and their fellow hoodlums working for the security services in a time of crisis and in the end, establishing the status quo up front rather than having an apocalyptic first episode added a much needed sense of mystery as the audience attempted to catch up on the intervening history. If it's possible, the series seems to have an even stronger political agenda than the main channel version, speculating on the lengths the security services would go to in protecting society, with civil libertarians becoming terrorists to get their point across.
It makes a change to have the maths geek in charge rather than at the bottom of the pecking order trying to prove to his boss how clever he is, and smart to make him the opposite of one Harry Pearce who seems to know everyone. As far as we can tell Charlie doesn’t know anyone and has to rely on his more connected deputy Rachel to do some of the dirty work. Some of the best scenes are between these two as the former quietly asks the latter for advise away from the hearing of the rest of the gang. Of course for us Doctor Who fans it’s interesting to see what Georgia Moffat did next after playing the Doctor’s daughter though saddled with a horrifyingly unconvincing character name (Kylie Roman) and bizarre red wig (that not her natural hair colour is it) she’s yet to really shine (apart from offering an admirable right hook at the start of the first episode).
The plots are typical Spooks fare except on a smaller scale -- discover who the shooter/bomber/traitor is and stop them. But because these agents lack experience their mistakes mean that the outcome isn't completely certain and as we saw they may not save the day. This neatly sidesteps the perennial problem of the parent series where the apparently very experienced adults drop a hundred IQ points in order for the plot to move forward. Setting the series in a fiction city and blurring the geography also means the audience is on the back foot even if the place is clearly being filmed in the oh so real Leeds. It’s actually easy enough to assume all this is happening in a different timeline to the other show, simply trading on the name, and format. The trick for the series, just four more episodes to go, will be in keeping the element of surprise and attempting to be different enough from its parent series.
Father Time.
Father Time is awesome. When the BBC held The Big Read in 2003 to find the nation's favourite books, I was unabashed in voting for this novel in the online section of the poll. Partly this is because spin-off novels tend to be ignored in such things as though its entirely impossible that they might be considered in the same breath as other literature even though, as SFX’s recent articles have uncovered its often more difficult to write within a shared universe than one of your own choosing, but mostly because as I said, it's awesome.In the end I was quite disappointed if unsurprised that my probably solitary vote did not lead to Parkin’s book receiving the advocate treatment with Paul McGann or whoever telling us in their allotted twenty minutes exactly why Father Time is awesome and so by way of a substitute I thought I’d offer my reasons instead and since this will involve spoiling a great deal of the book, you’ll have to click the link to read the rest. If you don’t want to spoil the surprises all I’ll say is that this isn’t just one of the best of the Eighth Doctor novels, but one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time. Period…
It’s quite surprising at the opening of the first chapter to find the author writing in the first person, like someone telling a story to us, consciously putting themselves into the narrative.
Even at its most experimental, the usual process in Doctor Who is for the author to make themselves subservient to the storytelling, rather like the invisible editing style of old Hollywood. Parkin is far more indie in his approach, quite comfortable in digressing into irrelevant little bits of character and description which, whilst not moving the plot forward, provide the kind of atmosphere which can sometimes be lacking. He’s using the format the best of its advantage, often nonchalantly changing the point of view mid-scene often in ways which heighten both tension and comedy. But -- and this is important -- it's never self-indulgent. When he notices that the story is most important, he instigates a more traditionalist style and lets that take precedence. Not once does it seem like he's simply falling into reinterpreting some familiar tropes. At the release of the film There Will Be Blood, critic Mark Kermode described it as rewriting the language of cinema as you watch. In Father Time, Lance Parkin rewrites the language of Doctor Who as you read.
The book is set in three time periods, at the beginning middle and end of the eighties, and it’s the first time we can really see the amnesiac Eighth Doctor develop over a sweeping period and I think it's the longest continuous period the Doctor's effectively involved in one story (he comes and goes in things like The Ark). The plot is fairly well described on the back of the book -- after helping to repel an alien invasion, the Doctor adopts an orphan, Miranda, who’s not of this world and may be of his and we see how he deals with fatherhood. Parkin’s backdrop is very much of the period, and the story takes place in a far more realistic setting than we’re used to. This is Thatcher’s Britain and the Doctor notices that the best way to protect his new daughter is to become a yuppie and take advantage of his skills in the prevailing financial upsurge. It’s the Whoniverse equivalent of Stephen Poliakov’s drama Friends and Crocodiles as we see the decade unfold around the time lord with him coasting its advantages and disadvantages, advising businesses on how to improve themselves so that he can purchase his own very big (secure) house in the country.
Pop culture references abound, most of them knowing and most of them right. Having grown up in that decade I grinned at mentions of everything from Star Wars to Star Trek to Buck Rogers via Phil Collins. He also wraps them into the context for the story. One of the alien invaders at the opening is clearly supposed to be the transformer Bumblebee and the close of the novel is set on the Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) by another name. When reflecting back on the decade its really this that I remember and not the political situation -- these are things which you sort of pick up later in life at college or watching documentaries on BBC Four. The novel effectively a quasi-historical Doctor Who story unafraid to set itself with a time period when the show was actually on the air and not simply produce a nostalgia and comics fabrication ala Remembrance of the Daleks or Ashes To Ashes -- this is exactly what Britain was like at the time
I managed to write in relatively glowing terms about a certain episode from the recent series of Doctor Who though in a minxian manoeuvre I failed to mention Father Time and also the fact that Lance Parkin not only went there first, he did a much better job of it. Watching the Doctor build a relationship with Miranda over a decade makes his attachment to her a far more realistic proposition which means when he does admit that fatherly love for her it's heart wrenching. It also allows Miranda to develop, from tweeny to teenager to young adult,
smarter than he friends yet going through the same growing pains. She’s also funny and a mirror image of her Dad, often seeing relationships as source of discovery more than anything else. There’s a wonderful moment when she’s in a clinch with a boy and has to decide if blushing would be too much -- she can actually control those emotions and wonders which of them she should be deploying at that moment. It's unfair to make the comparison, but much of the attraction of Jenny was Georgia Moffatt's, um, performance, whereas Miranda is dimensionally transcendental (sorry!).
Having helped originate the character in The Dying Days, it’s no surprise that Parkin should be able to recreate the man so intelligently. What is surprising is how the Doctor suddenly seems to have had his balls handed back to him, after spending the past four or five novels essentially being carried along by events. Much of this is because he’s not trying to defend the Earth especially -- all of his motives are about protecting Miranda and through this he becomes the hero we’ve all loved once again. Sure there are cherishable Doctorish moments, such as when he constructs a sonic suitcase which he hopes to miniaturise some day and offers to explain later when something seems like it would take too long to explain. He’s at his best when taking down the aforementioned transformer, he also pushes aside assassins from the future, and in a master stroke, when she’s captured and orbiting the Earth in a warship, steals a space shuttle so that he can go and meet and then, in a move which seems like the ‘I’m coming to get you speech…’ from Bad Wolf times a hundred somehow manages to take over the warship using just the sound of his voice. As I said, awesome.
We also finally get an idea of what its been like to have been living on the planet unaging for a century. We hear what happened when he woke up on the train carriage a century before and exactly why he hasn’t really become involved in world affairs even though as he muses he could have made it a better place. Elements of all of the previous novels are mentioned, including that reference to Claudia from The Stranger who we discover he met in 1976 when as he puts it “spending some time with a … friend” the cheeky pause telling you everything you ever need to know about that relationship should you never want to read about it on the page. Then, just as you think everything has settled down, he goes to visit Betty from Casualties of War in hospital and in a heartbreaking moment we realise that he’s kept in touch with her across the years and through her has realised that he can’t be of Earth because he hasn’t made the same ties as she has and that Miranda is his attempt to do just that.
I’ve come this far without mentioning the real companion of the story or his adversaries. Debbie Castle is Miranda’s teacher who eventually after losing her husband moves in with the Doctor. The nature of their relationship is generally hinted at though the impression is that she's very much fallen into the companion and their sparring is similar to the Doctor/Donna mode and like Tate’s character we see her develop emotionally across the novel from being in thrall to an abusive husband to becoming a confident, intelligent person and it’s a tragedy that events mean that she can’t continue past the end of this novel, especially since she is the most rounded of the characters we‘ve seen in the Earth arc. At the time of publication there was a, now sadly deleted, article at the BBC website which suggested what a set visit would be like if Father Time was being filmed. It suggested Minnie Driver would play Debbie, which is a perfect fit.
The alien adversaries from the future don’t want to destroy the Earth. They simply want to find and kill Miranda for the sins of her parents, more specifically her father and his genocidal tendencies (it's since been hinted by Parkin that he father might indeed be the Doctor, but some future incarnation of him). They’re grim because they want to kill a young girl and that’s more than enough. After the initial flurry of activity, which features a couple
called the Hunters, not quite human with the verbal wit of the Hale and Pace characters The Management (in a good way if there is one), they’re stripped back to Ferran, a young buck who wants to love Miranda as much as he wants to kill her. By the end of the book he’s grown up and totally mad, yet for a while he’s also rather sympathetic and as nervous as boys often are when trying to talk to girls. His conquest is based on love rather than property which makes it a very potent change, even if by the end he turns into the kind of raving loon which is usually needed at the epic conclusion of such stories.
I’ve noted in previous reviews how various elements and scene look like dry runs for the new series and like The Dying Days, Father Time also seems like its been carefully stripmined for ideas. Though Miranda’s journey has elements of Jenny’s story hotwired into them, most of the time its individual moments which seem slightly familiar, though the biggest comes in the closing moments when one of the pilot of the very bug ship muses as he sees the Doctor face fill the view screen: “The Pilot had heard legends of the Doctor - everyone had: how he’d destroyed planets, how he’d wiped out whole intelligent species, how he’d brought darkness to the universe, how he travelled through time and space wiping out his enemies and turning those he abducted into monsters and terrorists.” Sound familiar?
I suspect I’ve ultimately failed in the above to really explain why this is such an awesome book. It’s not so much the brilliance of these individual elements but the fact that they’re all interacting in the same story. Throughout you’re acutely aware that the writer having become so thoroughly conscious of the mythology that he’s able to ignore most of it and produce something that’s both nothing like any Doctor Who novel you’ve ever read and yet have Doctor Who running right through it. It’s intangible and impossible to really put your finger on why Father Time should be more successful than most other stories except
that throughout you feel as though it all means something, you’re never bored, that nothing looks like a perfunctory scene to get you to the next bit and that one every page there’s a moment which has you grinning or even laughing out loud.
At time of publication it must have seemed revolutionary, with this very emotional version of the time lord risking everything to save one person, someone he loves, and yet to an extent that what we’ve now been seeing week in and out on a Saturday night. Then, just as the book should be slowing down, there’s a scene which acts almost as one of those mid-season trailer suggesting treats to come which also offers the Doctor that grain of hope he’s been waiting for -- that come 2001 many of the questions about himself and his place in the universe will be answered. No wonder, in what turns out to be my favourite moment, when offered the find all of this information out about who he is and what his future holds via a giant futuristic library he decides that since he’s come this far to do that would be cheating. In other words, no spoilers…
More on the mystery film reviewer
Film A quick update on yesterday's post: Caroline and Herb have been through the post-its and translated everything where possible. Thanks very much. I get the impression from their efforts that this is someone with a real sense of humour and also female, not just because of the handwriting but also their apparent love for Ethan Hawke.
There's also a stonking clue as to the writer's identity spotted by Herb. On the review for Exotica, our film fan says: "Discovered at Cegep with Serge Pallascio. A work of art, in my opinion." Herb, who's Canadian says "The Cegep mention leaves a big clue as to where the person is from. It's a post secondary part of the school system in Quebec. "
But here's where it gets really interesting: Serge Pallascio is a journalist, in Quebec, and according to this archive edition of the college newspaper from The University of British Columbia was arrested in 1970 during a governmental shut out. A bit more digging and we discover that he's still a freelancer variously writing for various magazines. Is he a friend of our mystery person or even a teacher who's also still writing on the side?
There's also a stonking clue as to the writer's identity spotted by Herb. On the review for Exotica, our film fan says: "Discovered at Cegep with Serge Pallascio. A work of art, in my opinion." Herb, who's Canadian says "The Cegep mention leaves a big clue as to where the person is from. It's a post secondary part of the school system in Quebec. "
But here's where it gets really interesting: Serge Pallascio is a journalist, in Quebec, and according to this archive edition of the college newspaper from The University of British Columbia was arrested in 1970 during a governmental shut out. A bit more digging and we discover that he's still a freelancer variously writing for various magazines. Is he a friend of our mystery person or even a teacher who's also still writing on the side?
'Sarah Polley = Lucy M. Montgomery'
I was passing through Oxfam today and found myself flicking through a film review book. This isn't something I'd usually do, since I've monogamously been reading the Time Out Film Guides for over a decade and although it's always good to have a second opinion, Time Out has always seemed to chime exactly with mine. But something drew me to The New York Times: The Best DVDs You've Never Seen, Just Missed or Almost Forgotten and I think it might have been, after looking at the back of the cover, because it was an American book which had somehow found itself deposited on Bold Street in Liverpool.
Glancing across the pages I discover just how curious it was. Sporadically, across the reviews are post-it notes, which seem to have been left there by the previous owner, sometimes in English, sometimes in French, offering pithy opinions or comments about each of the films. Picking a couple at random: Doug Lyman's Go attracts 'Sarah Polley = Lucy M. Montgomery', Dead Man Walking 'Intressment' and Bring It On 'Best DVD? OK! Ils font aucime discrimination!!! xxx' or something like that, the handwriting is often a bit unclear. It's wonderful and strange and mysterious and I've uploaded pictures of every single note to flickr so that you can read them yourself, and if you know some French, perhaps you could try and offer some translations in the comments there. I'd love to know what some of them actually say.
A boring post about what I was doing last night. And tonight for that matter.
Life At about 10:40 last night I screamed. Actually, it might have been more of a yelp, but I certainly came out in a cold sweat, and was saying the 'no' word over and over and wondering what the hell I should do. I, or rather my computer had been infected with this:
I searched the web and found a fix and managed to delete everything it told me too, even entering the registry and deleting things there and though the scary wallpaper went and the wierd processes filled with strings of unfriendly characters were deleted, yet every time I went online, the connection would fire up and I'd be paranoid.
Such is my nerdiness I didn't sleep much last night, but today having spoken to someone with more of clue of what's going on with these computer whatsits than I do -- and searching Google News and discovering it's not just me in this I calmed down, the colliwobbles went and I realised two things:
(1) I bought half a terrabyte on Saturday. I can back up my files.
(2) It's about time I did a cold reinstall of Windows. As I think I indicated the other day, my computer is the digital equivalent of home -- it just keeps gathering stuff.
So that's what I did. Backed up what I needed and reinstalled the XP. Time consuming, but did let me sort out a few things, like removing the useless partition Dell had included and some of the other crapware that was preinstalled and I've never been able to do much with. It's also even faster. Yet it doesn't quite feel the same yet. Give it time.
"BOGUS ALERTS pretending to have been sent from US TV news network CNN are spam that lures wibblers to over 1,000 hacked websites that are pushing fake, malware-infested Flash Player software, Internet security watchdogs have warned."I'm ashamed to admit I was taken in. I was very tired having just watched the double bill of BBC Three's new show, Spooks: Code 9 (commentary soon), I clicked the link in the email, went to the bogus CNN site, clicked the download Flash link and within seconds, my wallpaper had turned blue, there was a scary warning in the middle and I was aperplectic.
I searched the web and found a fix and managed to delete everything it told me too, even entering the registry and deleting things there and though the scary wallpaper went and the wierd processes filled with strings of unfriendly characters were deleted, yet every time I went online, the connection would fire up and I'd be paranoid.
Such is my nerdiness I didn't sleep much last night, but today having spoken to someone with more of clue of what's going on with these computer whatsits than I do -- and searching Google News and discovering it's not just me in this I calmed down, the colliwobbles went and I realised two things:
(1) I bought half a terrabyte on Saturday. I can back up my files.
(2) It's about time I did a cold reinstall of Windows. As I think I indicated the other day, my computer is the digital equivalent of home -- it just keeps gathering stuff.
So that's what I did. Backed up what I needed and reinstalled the XP. Time consuming, but did let me sort out a few things, like removing the useless partition Dell had included and some of the other crapware that was preinstalled and I've never been able to do much with. It's also even faster. Yet it doesn't quite feel the same yet. Give it time.
It's Ninth Vs. Tenth
TV It's the multiple Doctor story we've all been hoping for. Well, not really, but as The Flick Filosopher MaryAnn notices, Chris & Dave acted together in Michael Winterbottom's miserablist film drama Jude. Also starring Dexter Fletcher and James Nesbitt, so it's really a Davies vs. Moffat casting orgy.
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