TV Blackpool won the Championship League play-off this afternoon. I don’t know anything about football and indeed could care less about it most of the time, but I can totally understand the thrill which the fans of the winning club must have experienced at the final whistle because I suspect (though obviously can’t confirm so bear with me here) it’s much the same as I feel at the end of a particularly good film and for the purposes of this blog, an entertaining slab of Doctor Who (which a cup final success similar to a season ender though we won’t be able to test that out until the Pandorica opens). At the very least it must have made up for the closure of a certain exhibition recently.
Which is my way of saying that contrary to the Twitter reaction (you know who you are) tonight’s closing title squeeze was greeted with applause from me which considering my historic enmity with writer Chris Chibnall and director Ashley Way (who was also on early Torchwood and so will be forever guilty by association) was rather a surprise. I’ll admit to being charmed from top to bottom and though I’ll also admit to a couple of retrospective reservations (which we’ll come to) this was more or less everything I’d want and expect from an episode of Doctor Who. We're even still in the countryside.
Before you ram issue 413 of Doctor Who Magazine down my throat (or some other orifice) and shout “What does that make The Caves of Androzani?” I will add that so far this isn’t the best story ever and no matter how good episode nine is it still won’t be. City of Death wuz robbed. But what it does deliver is a good old fashioned love letter to the Pertwee era and a reminder that even in this new(ish) version of the franchise with Steven Moffat’s fairy tale noodlings burrowing through it, that he’s still interested sometimes in offering a good old fashioned alien invasion story with a moral pulse, a tribute to the Silurian’s original creator Malcolm Hulke (albeit with a shorter miniskirt than Katie might have risked).
There is just something very comforting about an episode that throws out all of the post-modern tricks we’ve become accustomed to and goes about the business of showing us as traditional a Who story as possible that unlike The Waters of Mars which reported the standard Proppian/Dickian/Daviesian elements as a way of foregrounding the impending doom of the Doctor’s alien morality, just wants to leave us entertained. For all the lush photography and rustic charm with a few obvious exceptions, parts of this episode look like we should be viewing them through the same gausy quality of episodes which now only exist in off-air NTSC copies down to the BBC Micro inspired graphic of the lizard's flatulence propulsion.
Just once the Eleventh Doctor is allowed to gradually follow the mystery, from the initial clue of the blue grass, through to breaking into an industrial building then gaining the trust of some scientist who’s experiment has rattled the cage of something other, with his companions becoming separated so that they can discover some bits of plot (nice moment for Rory in the grave) before falling into some peril (literally in Amy’s case) and taking refuge in a church up some other devil's end. Arguably we have seen set ups in other episodes built on the Doctor’s own curiosity (notably The Beast Below), none of them as been quite this bald in execution. About the only deviation is the Pertweevian cliché of the Doctor's perennial capture being turned on its head with his antagonist finding herself in the cell instead.
Dr Nasreen Chaudhry and her new boyfriend Tony seem designed to merge the main early 70s bystander character types, like Ruth from The Time Monster finding something in common with Bert from The Green Death. Of course, if this was a proper homage there would be a stereotypical Tory presence on hand tutting as the drilling was stopped for whatever reason (though given that this story is set in 2020 and depending on your optimism at the present climate it might as well be a Lib Dem – Chris Hulme’s in charge of the environment now after all). Their role is arguably substituted with the fantastically named Ambrose whose collection of domestic weaponry is meant to suggest she’ll be the one to go Stahlman in the next episode, though it's clearly a front and Rory will be the on wielding the axe.
Despite what some fans my suggest, we haven’t seen enough of the new Silurian/Eocenes yet to really judge. One of the b-list monsters along with the Sontarans, their reputation has grown large enough for us to forget that they’ve only appeared in two television stories and only one good story at that. For fans I’d argue, it’s Hulke’s Target novelisation which has sealed their reputation and perhaps their infrequent contradictory appearances in spin-off media, including The Coup, that amazing preview that came free with DWM for the audio UNIT spin-off in which a new knighted Brigadier attempts to help them be mankind’s first contact with alien life, only to have humanity dismiss them as men in rubber suits!
a new knighted Brigadier
Understandably the redesign, neatly another new branch of the species so as not to tread on what’s gone before employs the Star Trek/Frontier in Space appliance of allowing us to see the actor’s faces. Taking into account the compensating mask which will no doubt come into play more in the next episode as way of cutting down on make-up requirements (and to give Forbidden Planet a bumber Christmas), that does mean that they may lack the enigmatic features of the likes of Ichtar and the wonderfully impractical flashing light but allows them a much wider range of emotions as seen in the interrogation scene we’ll discuss later. They’re also more agile. The scenes in the graveyard are gripping stuff, their Raston Robot like silhouette a perfectly alien shape against the stone and greenery. Plus, doubters at least the reinvention of the Myrka hinted at in Confidential didn't come to pass.
It’s not all that straightforward though, with Moffat’s hand can be seen elsewhere. As well as the idea of an every day piece of landscape become a portal of doom (and having had my own adventures I can tell you being pulled into the earth is no fun so exactly like being born), the spectre of older Amy and Rory on the hill are an incursion from the main story arc and ripe to reconfigure the story from an alternative viewpoint, perhaps shot in similar style to a similar scene between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger in the film version of The Prison of Azkaban (somewhat oddly since Rory is probably fulfilling the Ron Weasley role in the rest of the series) were the two watched their recent past spinning out unable to interfere.
All of the talk of fixed points in history in the trailer for Cold Blood suggests were heading back into time in flux “This is The Waters of Mars, really…” territory next week, which brings me to that retrospective reservation. The deleted scene, the one revealed in Doctor Who Confidential which if you didn’t see it shows the Doctor and Amy’s walk to the mine. Something has clearly gone awry if the first cut of an episode is fifteen minutes too long (did no one notice at the scripting stage?) and one casualty was what looked it should have been one of the best scenes of the season (and certainly would have made up for the paucity of Amy in the rest of the episode – was the she biggest causality of the cutting massacre?).
In the clips we saw, the Doctor and Amy are simply talking and laughing and joking about and talking about the main arc and Rory in the TARDIS in a way that they haven’t really since the first episode of this series. The performances are relaxed and fresh and lensed in a beautiful mix of steady-cam mid-shot from the front and heading off into the distance from the back. In this kind of show, these are the kinds of character scenes which people remember far longer than a bit of running (cf, the domestic chat between the Doctor and Rose in The Impossible Planet) and though I understand why such a long sequence had to be chopped for timing at that point in the episode, it’s a pity that it couldn’t have been tucked in somewhere else by way of a flashback.
Nevertheless with the strength of the writing elsewhere, there were enough other good character moments for the Doctor to go some way in making up for this aboration. If Chibnall’s interpretation sailed very close to the Tenth axis with a few of His catchphrases creeping in (“I love a mine.”/“You are beautiful!”), he did give Matt Smith another opportunity to demonstrate his facility for working with children (“No, they’re afraid of me.”), his fallibility in letting the child spin off on his own and the very calm unwrapping of a villain’s armoury of bullshit we’ve already seen in The Vampire of Venice, his cross-legged, calm, unflappable intelligence more than a match Alaya’s thorn in the paw pretence, quietly elucidation her options but knowing full well, based on previous experience that she has war in her heart and that if he’s not careful it can’t end well.
Unlike this episode. Since the more typical traditional body horror of Amy’s upcoming prospective dissection may have proved too much in these sensitive times (that infamous clip of Whitehouse commenting on The Deadly Assassin having gone airborne), the chosen, more nu-Who cliffhanger with its reveal of the lizard city, like a golden version of the Gungan city (if I can risk jinxing things with a comparison like that unless the next episode reveals a giant Silurian/Eocene leader with I’M BRIAN BLESSED!’S voice) is just the kind of epic imagery beloved of the comic strips (and the novels – can anyone confirm, since I haven’t read it, if this is what Hulke had in mind in The Cave Monsters?) and with its lava pools a reminder that they’re very much not from the amphibious end of the species. If the designs in the next episode can extrapolate this vista properly, we’re in for a treat.
Next Week: Into the pit. No, not that one.
Elsewhere I've reviewed tonight's Doctor Who. Paradoxically I loved it because of its over-familiarity. I'm weird.
Review: Ashes to Ashes. The finale.
Television And so the finale of Ashes to Ashes was broadcast tonight bringing to a close five years worth of drama begun in Life on Mars. As expected it was a brave, exciting piece of storytelling and if I was slightly disappointed because it didn’t go for the genuinely life affirming happy ending of Alex awakening and being reunited with her daughter (why do so many dramas always have to be so bittersweet?), it did manage to resolve the story in interesting and surprising ways and provide a satisfying conclusion to Gene Hunt’s story too even if closing on a close-up of his face rather than Alex's seemed to be a shade too much like the Star Trek: Enterprise approach (I'll leave that reference hanging).
Across this series, the actors have been gifted a near impossible task by the writers, charting the development of their characters growing self-awareness whilst simultaneously indicating the seeping in of the attitudes of their respective times with Ray in particular reverting to his more racist and sexist earlier state. With this final episode, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster and Montserrat Lombard were finally able to shed their stereotypical characters and give them real depth with Shaz's breakdown in particular a heart stopping moment. Arguably it's been more of an ensemble piece than before, with Shaz especially gaining in strength as Alex broke down though it's to Keeley Hawes's credit that Drake still went into that good night/smoke filled pub with dignity.
Matthew Graham has given an interview to The Guardian explaing the symbolism of that pub and much more besides (the Metro has an even more succinct version). You probably won't believe this, because I didn't bother to post it here so can't quote it as proof, but the explanation of the world and Gene Hunt's place within it was exactly as I guessed it would be at the close of the first/third series. The differences were that I thought Hunt was just as metaphysical a figure as Jim Keats turned out to be and that the only copper that was being helped along was Sam and then Alex with everyone else a construct or indeed a "figment" as she described them for much of the first season. That would explain why it seemed to continue to exist when Sam wasn't there at the close of series two.
Some questions were still left dangling. Are all of the police officers in this world like Ray, Chris and Shaz including the crazy perm guy who looks like a stereotypical 80s copper? The new Skip's blank reaction to Ray's new gun suggests that they're not, just key figures like Viv (who it seems was sent to hell by Keats). In which case why are some of them like Sam, Alex and the iPhone guy aware of the change in location and time but not others, including for all those years, Gene? Was Gene's story about were he sent Sam (and Annie?) during his date with Alex his sub-subconscious's way of rationalising the real truth of them going to the pub? Is their heaven an eternal lock-in were the final round is never called? What if you don't drink?
Across this series, the actors have been gifted a near impossible task by the writers, charting the development of their characters growing self-awareness whilst simultaneously indicating the seeping in of the attitudes of their respective times with Ray in particular reverting to his more racist and sexist earlier state. With this final episode, Dean Andrews, Marshall Lancaster and Montserrat Lombard were finally able to shed their stereotypical characters and give them real depth with Shaz's breakdown in particular a heart stopping moment. Arguably it's been more of an ensemble piece than before, with Shaz especially gaining in strength as Alex broke down though it's to Keeley Hawes's credit that Drake still went into that good night/smoke filled pub with dignity.
Matthew Graham has given an interview to The Guardian explaing the symbolism of that pub and much more besides (the Metro has an even more succinct version). You probably won't believe this, because I didn't bother to post it here so can't quote it as proof, but the explanation of the world and Gene Hunt's place within it was exactly as I guessed it would be at the close of the first/third series. The differences were that I thought Hunt was just as metaphysical a figure as Jim Keats turned out to be and that the only copper that was being helped along was Sam and then Alex with everyone else a construct or indeed a "figment" as she described them for much of the first season. That would explain why it seemed to continue to exist when Sam wasn't there at the close of series two.
Some questions were still left dangling. Are all of the police officers in this world like Ray, Chris and Shaz including the crazy perm guy who looks like a stereotypical 80s copper? The new Skip's blank reaction to Ray's new gun suggests that they're not, just key figures like Viv (who it seems was sent to hell by Keats). In which case why are some of them like Sam, Alex and the iPhone guy aware of the change in location and time but not others, including for all those years, Gene? Was Gene's story about were he sent Sam (and Annie?) during his date with Alex his sub-subconscious's way of rationalising the real truth of them going to the pub? Is their heaven an eternal lock-in were the final round is never called? What if you don't drink?
"a thrilling piece of radio drama"
Radio It was a thrilling piece of radio drama and one which the listener really needed to experience as it was broadcast in order to gain the full effect. At a few minutes to eight this morning I was idling away at my computer attempting to gather back together all of the download This American Life podcasts that Spotify had very kindly thrown to the edges of my hard disk when the Gracenotes process in the new version had set about trying to relabel them as music files.
As ever my radio was tuned to Radio 4, to the Today programme and Diane Abbott MP, Labour back bencher and pundit on various Andrew Neil presented politics tv shows was being introduced to give her views in relation to her party’s leadership campaign.
Always attentive to criticism of the Labour party I turned half of my attention away from trying to find out the episode numbers for “The Inaugural Show” and “Numbers”. Within moments the rest of my attention joined it.
Naughtie was arguably giving her a fairly soft interview as befits someone who’s already a pundit at the BBC, and Abbot was offering an opinion I’d heard from her at the weekend of the all white middle-class shortlist and how little it seemed to recognise the diversity of the party and the wider country. Then Naughtie "fed" her the killer question: “So what are you going to do about it?”
At which point – well you can hear the interview now and I’d urge you to give it four minutes of your attention.
As you can hear, apparently unheralded and with little warning, Abbott announced her own candidacy of for Labour leadership. It’s missing from the clip, but on my digital radio, I’m sure I could hear an audible gulp from Naughtie as he realised the scoop has landed in his (and the programme's) lap.
He then offered a beautifully timed hesitation as the prepared lists of questions found itself in the circle shaped filing cabinet situated underneath the desk and he was being called upon to improvise.
We don’t know if there was indeed any advanced warning in the Today office of the announcement (though audible evidence is to the contrary). But audio evidence suggests that it was a shock to the presenters which means that Abbott had gone through the front door of the BBC, several researchers and sat down without saying a word and giving every impression that this would simply be some end of hour, pre-pips filling.
Her voice is clearly dry as she speaks. In her first answer she mistakenly suggests one of her rivals, John McDonnell has dropped from the race, a sign of nerves and one which had to be clarified later in the programme and permanently on the Radio 4 website.
"So many people have asked me to put my hat in the ring and I have finally agreed to do so" she says like someone who's been persuaded to put on another of her famous dinner parties.
During the interview, his co-presenter Evan Davis tweeted the news and Abbott’s name was trending on Twitter (aided it has to be said by the manic retweeting of a Diane Arbus quote in the US). Fall out coverage can be found on The Guardian’s page devoted to the politician, including a clearer statement of intent from the MP herself.
I don’t know anything about politics but I think that she may well have a chance and at the very least has shaken up the campaign. Should she be leader going into an election, depending on policy she could well act as a catalyst for disaffected soft Lib Dem voters annoyed by the coalition to swap allegiance to Labour in a way the Brownites and Blairites might not.
It says something about Naughtie’s professionalism that, after a high pitched "well", he drew the listener into the process of the interview ("two minutes ago there were five people running and now there are six" and "I'm just wondering what to ask you next") before apparently pulling those devised questions from the bin and modifying them for the change in circumstances.
He asks his interviewee about policy differences with the other candidates and whether this is a serious challenge and if she believes she has a chance at winning (plenty, yes, yes) before closing the interview (with some audible giggles from Abbot “and if any other Labour MP is listening and fancies doing something similar, you know where to find us. Thank you very much.”
On a day when we're all be urged to scrap our analogue radios in favour something digital, it's heartening to know that one of the original FM/LW/MW broadcasters still has the capacity to surprise and be surprised itself in the process.
As ever my radio was tuned to Radio 4, to the Today programme and Diane Abbott MP, Labour back bencher and pundit on various Andrew Neil presented politics tv shows was being introduced to give her views in relation to her party’s leadership campaign.
Always attentive to criticism of the Labour party I turned half of my attention away from trying to find out the episode numbers for “The Inaugural Show” and “Numbers”. Within moments the rest of my attention joined it.
Naughtie was arguably giving her a fairly soft interview as befits someone who’s already a pundit at the BBC, and Abbot was offering an opinion I’d heard from her at the weekend of the all white middle-class shortlist and how little it seemed to recognise the diversity of the party and the wider country. Then Naughtie "fed" her the killer question: “So what are you going to do about it?”
At which point – well you can hear the interview now and I’d urge you to give it four minutes of your attention.
As you can hear, apparently unheralded and with little warning, Abbott announced her own candidacy of for Labour leadership. It’s missing from the clip, but on my digital radio, I’m sure I could hear an audible gulp from Naughtie as he realised the scoop has landed in his (and the programme's) lap.
He then offered a beautifully timed hesitation as the prepared lists of questions found itself in the circle shaped filing cabinet situated underneath the desk and he was being called upon to improvise.
We don’t know if there was indeed any advanced warning in the Today office of the announcement (though audible evidence is to the contrary). But audio evidence suggests that it was a shock to the presenters which means that Abbott had gone through the front door of the BBC, several researchers and sat down without saying a word and giving every impression that this would simply be some end of hour, pre-pips filling.
Her voice is clearly dry as she speaks. In her first answer she mistakenly suggests one of her rivals, John McDonnell has dropped from the race, a sign of nerves and one which had to be clarified later in the programme and permanently on the Radio 4 website.
"So many people have asked me to put my hat in the ring and I have finally agreed to do so" she says like someone who's been persuaded to put on another of her famous dinner parties.
During the interview, his co-presenter Evan Davis tweeted the news and Abbott’s name was trending on Twitter (aided it has to be said by the manic retweeting of a Diane Arbus quote in the US). Fall out coverage can be found on The Guardian’s page devoted to the politician, including a clearer statement of intent from the MP herself.
I don’t know anything about politics but I think that she may well have a chance and at the very least has shaken up the campaign. Should she be leader going into an election, depending on policy she could well act as a catalyst for disaffected soft Lib Dem voters annoyed by the coalition to swap allegiance to Labour in a way the Brownites and Blairites might not.
It says something about Naughtie’s professionalism that, after a high pitched "well", he drew the listener into the process of the interview ("two minutes ago there were five people running and now there are six" and "I'm just wondering what to ask you next") before apparently pulling those devised questions from the bin and modifying them for the change in circumstances.
He asks his interviewee about policy differences with the other candidates and whether this is a serious challenge and if she believes she has a chance at winning (plenty, yes, yes) before closing the interview (with some audible giggles from Abbot “and if any other Labour MP is listening and fancies doing something similar, you know where to find us. Thank you very much.”
On a day when we're all be urged to scrap our analogue radios in favour something digital, it's heartening to know that one of the original FM/LW/MW broadcasters still has the capacity to surprise and be surprised itself in the process.
Advertising The new Spotify Open logo ...
Almost totally looks like The Criterion Collection logo. At a different angle. And in a different colour.
Almost totally looks like The Criterion Collection logo. At a different angle. And in a different colour.
Music And so the "Sugababes" go on the counter offensive, offensive in this case, being the operative word. Last year, Mutya from the real Sugababes filed for copyright ownership of the name. At the time, the "Sugababes" claimed the record company already had that right despite all evidence to the contrary. Now, unsurprisingly, as BBC News reports:
They appear to be using the Bucks Fizz defence:
My expectation, sadly, is that the judge will rule in favour of Island despite Mutya prior claim based on their original childhood group name (which was THE Sugababes) because there is at present only one group recording under that name, the promised reunion having not materialised. This is not a like the Liberty case, there will be no name change, even though Sugafree is still available ...
"the current line-up - Heidi Range, Amelle Berrabah and Jade Ewen - have filed a notice of opposition, as have their record company, Island Records."Important reminder of who's actually in the group there (elaborated upon further into the article -- it's like a wikipedia entry down there).
They appear to be using the Bucks Fizz defence:
"In a letter to the EU body, Universal's Island Records said that because of the "similarity of the goods and services" provided by the applicant - Buena - "there is a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public".I think the public are already confused; any new fans created on the back of Sweet 7 (there must be some, there is one good track on there) who decide to investigate the group's back catalogue are presented with a range of albums with an assortment of different faces on them -- they're the noughties equivalent of the Top of the Pops compilations and often just as saucy.
My expectation, sadly, is that the judge will rule in favour of Island despite Mutya prior claim based on their original childhood group name (which was THE Sugababes) because there is at present only one group recording under that name, the promised reunion having not materialised. This is not a like the Liberty case, there will be no name change, even though Sugafree is still available ...
Review: High Kicks & Low Life: Toulouse-Lautrec prints at the Walker Art Gallery.
Art I spent this morning amongst this selection of surprisingly rare poster art in lithograph form mainly from the mid-1890s. Like anyone else who’s visited Paris I have a Toulouse-Lautrec postcard on my wall but I’ve always been very aware of him. My secondary school art sketch book contains a rather duff pencil copy of one of his Yvette Guilbert portraits (one of the examples in this exhibition I think) so I must have seen this work in my teens and his famous portrait of Aristide Bruant with the bright red scarf was the model for Tom Baker’s first costume in Doctor Who.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s technique is deceptively haphazard. At a distance many of his images don't make much sense. Only on looking more closely do you see that what he's doing is creating startling impressions of movement using single, deliberate lines. But the forms are all there and clearly defined and haven’t quite reached a Picasso level of abstractness, were the position of objects becomes irrelevant. Often prints like Divan Japonais or May Belfort will be dominated by a single colour but some, like Marcelle Lender en Buste (pictured) include eight different shades which at that time required eight different stones and an intense level of concentration from the printer so that the mix of red, pink, orange and green did not lose definition.
As ever, it’s only when confronted with a brace of a man’s work that you can really appreciate his accomplishments. Like the best of the post-Impressionists, he’s somehow able to capture the essence of a scene and the people within it without slavishly presenting every aspect. Over and over again he places dancers like Jane Avril at the centre of the picture, in vivid motion or calm rest, in evening ware and surrounded by elements of whichever club or theatre is being advertised including a somewhat sleazy bearded man of some description. The viewer is immediately transported to that place and in hindsight, time.
Perhaps the most impressive and suprising images are those created for Elles, a collection of drawings of the local prostitutes. As the accompanying information notes, he deliberately ignores the lascivious in favour of presenting those moments the men that visit them don't see, the preparation for their call, applying make-up, straightening hair, the sagged shoulders and disappointment of the final cash transaction and the moments before going to bed. I hadn't otherwise considered that a figure like Lautrec might have been an early feminist, but the empathy presented in these drawings suggests that might just be possible.
Toulouse-Lautrec’s technique is deceptively haphazard. At a distance many of his images don't make much sense. Only on looking more closely do you see that what he's doing is creating startling impressions of movement using single, deliberate lines. But the forms are all there and clearly defined and haven’t quite reached a Picasso level of abstractness, were the position of objects becomes irrelevant. Often prints like Divan Japonais or May Belfort will be dominated by a single colour but some, like Marcelle Lender en Buste (pictured) include eight different shades which at that time required eight different stones and an intense level of concentration from the printer so that the mix of red, pink, orange and green did not lose definition.As ever, it’s only when confronted with a brace of a man’s work that you can really appreciate his accomplishments. Like the best of the post-Impressionists, he’s somehow able to capture the essence of a scene and the people within it without slavishly presenting every aspect. Over and over again he places dancers like Jane Avril at the centre of the picture, in vivid motion or calm rest, in evening ware and surrounded by elements of whichever club or theatre is being advertised including a somewhat sleazy bearded man of some description. The viewer is immediately transported to that place and in hindsight, time.
Perhaps the most impressive and suprising images are those created for Elles, a collection of drawings of the local prostitutes. As the accompanying information notes, he deliberately ignores the lascivious in favour of presenting those moments the men that visit them don't see, the preparation for their call, applying make-up, straightening hair, the sagged shoulders and disappointment of the final cash transaction and the moments before going to bed. I hadn't otherwise considered that a figure like Lautrec might have been an early feminist, but the empathy presented in these drawings suggests that might just be possible.
Politics Just one final quiz on the subject of the election. Without resorting to a web search, can you tell when Nick Clegg gave this interview to the BBC's Today Programme?
I'll post the answer here at midnight.
Answer: 5th January 2010 -- and he'd be giving the same interview for the next four months ...
I'll post the answer here at midnight.
Answer: 5th January 2010 -- and he'd be giving the same interview for the next four months ...
miniblog archive
Amy's Choice.
TV I stopped eating cheese recently. It was a health decision, but I quickly regretted it because I also stopped dreaming. Well, ok, I'm probably still dreaming but my vivid memories of the land of the subconscious have disappeared. I'm bereft. My recurring nightmare of searching a fictional metropolis for the perfect film is gone and I’ll never discover if it is, as I suspect, directed by Cédric Klapisch and starring Jean Seberg. Slowly, I’ve begun to ration some cream cheese back in but I know the more vivid images won’t return until I’m piling cheddar between two pieces of toast and microwaving for half a minute.
Seeking alternatives, I’ve been considering a trip into the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Waking Life, but have mostly made do with the couple of odd episodes in the (now) final season of Heroes in which the guilt of Hiro and Sylar trapped them into their own subconscious trials and prisons (budget permitting). The problem is of course, like 80s horror Dreamscape, these are dramatic reconstructions of other people’s impressions of the dreamscape and require those things which our own subconscious aren’t very good at providing – a character arc, dramatic tension and a satisfying conclusion (ish, in the case of Heroes).
And so it is with Amy’s Choice a fairly eccentric episode of modern Who which against what you might expect from Simon Nye (who you would think would be more comfortable with future episode The Lodger for reasons that will become apparent) harks back to the old days, a homage to the likes of The Mind Robber, The Celestial Toymaker and Inside the Spaceship/Beyond the Sun/The Brink of Disaster/The Edge of Destruction/or whatever you like to call it and also attempts to capture the kind of off-beat weirdness witnessed in children’s television programmes were shot on video and Kate Winslet was still young enough to appear in them and also an approach to plotting familiar to anyone who actually understands what Charlie Kauffman is going on about.
The initial hook of having the Doctor meeting a current companion and her own plus one five years after their travels is rather brilliantly extrapolated. Given what we know about Amy’s connection to Ledworth, and Rory’s potential aspirations, their small idyll is entirely believable as is the Doctor’s reaction to her pregnancy with him bounding out the TARDIS as though minutes have just passed and then realising that he’s in the dullest part of the universe (quite something for him). Played for laughs and with genuine chemistry between the three leads, it refreshingly lacks all of the recriminations of Sarah Jane in School Reunion (and a dozen Big Finish reunions) about being left behind, reminding me of the Eighth Doctor’s re-emergence to Bernice in The Dying Days.
This opening section is crying out to unfold across twenty odd minutes with a cliffhanger ending in which the trio reappear on the floor of the TARDIS with the Dream Lord standing over them, in other words, with the classic four episode structure. But as is the way with new Who, we’re all too quickly whisked back to the console room and the possibility that their new life is a dream, their version of human John Smith’s perhaps. The confusing is nicely played here, taking full advantage of us having seen the Doctor skipping two years at the close of The Eleventh Hour to make the “future” reality entirely possible within the structure of the series (even if it does suggest that in future episodes that Amy will be chasing aliens between nappy changes).
Enter Toby Jones’s Dream Lord. Look at that, Toby Jones in Doctor Who! His oddly round yet still angular face looks like William Hague pushing himself through a rubber band and a brilliant bit of casting because we could imagine in a different universe were the Doctor could still be played by an older man, Jones would be just the man to do it. One of the best elements of the episode was in keeping the true nature of the Dream Lord hidden so that fans could spend much of the story assuming that he was somehow The Master, The Master or my guess, The Celestial Toymaker (it couldn’t be The Valeyard, of course, that would be silly, even though functionally they were doing much the same thing, expressing the Doctor’s id, and look at how I’m burying that in some brackets).
Then like the old Demi Moore film Passions of the Mind (oh yes), they’re left to investigate which of these “realities” is correct, a problem hampered by the need to also decide which of the menaces on offer, alien possessed pensioners or the TARDIS drifting into a cold star. The Dream Lord must be a fan of the Doctor Who Adventures because both of these stories look like the kind of thing which might be knocked out by Steve Lyons or @theolismith across eight pages and a cornucopia of exclamation marks. That’s not a criticism; both offer impressive imagery, of old people acting like yobs and breaking up the place and the frosted time machine drifting ever closer to its icy doom, like the splash pages that might appear opposite “Ten things you didn’t know about the Crespallions (“7: No one can remember which episode they appeared in”).
At this point, seasoned viewers of British sci-fi might expect director Catherine Moorshead to break out the wide angle lenses and gels and go to town with the off-kilter close-ups and unusual lighting. This version of Ledworth is the kind of weirdly deserted township in which nothing is at it seems and the normal becomes unreal. Doctor Who has had a few of these itself, in other words, The Android Invasion on telly, Eddie Robson’s Memory Lane on audio and Stockbridge in the comics. Similarly fans could be hoping the TARDIS scenes tonally mimic The Edge of Destruction in which despite the hulking great cameras, through some clever lighting, the console room became an alien place rather than a comforting symbol of safety.
There’s none of that here. Instead, Moorshead does something really quite interesting with the photography. She goes conventional. Though now and then in the village scenes we visit upon the odd shot which apes zombie films, notably one in which four of the pensioners slowly approach our heroes from across a field, despite the blue and green rinse brigade, Moorshead spends most of her time evoking Dangerfield, especially in the camper-van chase which also looks the fake credits for Monkfish from The Fast Show. That approach is repeated in the TARDIS scenes which aren’t much different to anything we’ve seen before; it’s just that there are more of them.
Along with a music track which with the exception of some brief snatches of a re-mumble of Jon Brion’s main theme for Eternal Sunshine is Murray Gold almost parodying himself, the effort is to make our heroes confusion about the dream worlds as understandable as possible by portraying those dream worlds as conservatively as possible in televisual terms, something this audience might be less likely to accept if they looked like they were directed by Bunuel or Spike Jonze. That’s very risky since it leaves the episode open to criticism for being “unadventurous” or “flat” or not making the most of the script (as I’ve already seen in a couple of early reviews). But if there’s anything I’ve learnt about this series, it’s that there are more “features” than “bugs” and everything is very carefully thought through (and should be at this late stage -- Amy's Choice was the last episode of the season to be shot and edited).
Like the title of the episode. For all the fantastical elements of both scenarios, it’s Amy’s desires which are being investigated, who and who’s world does she really want, Rory or the Doctor? It’s much the same choice offered to Rose but unlike her “Theres noffink letht for me 'ear” treatment of Mickey in The Parting of the Ways which has always seemed cruel and unusual to me, especially with Billie’s playing of the line, Karen’s understated tragedy as she watches Rory fade to dust and realising her love for him and the Doctor’s impotence is very powerful, more-so because it lacks the histrionics we might well have expected. Still, it is fairly predictable that the series might want to go the other way and allow her to have both, Rory embracing the adventure (Moffat seems keen to return the timelord to his original rampant asexuality).
All of which said, by the climax I was left a bit nonplussed. Sitting down to write this review I was all ready to suggest that despite all the hilarious jokes, and wonderful performances, Amy’s Choice isn’t bold enough, certainly not as bold as Buffy’s Normal Again in which by the conclusion we’re not entirely sure that the previous six season’s worth of episodes aren’t an extrapolation of a twenty-something girl’s feverish imagination and that the conventionality of some of the direction with its steadicams-a-gogo, had dragged the episode down too far in the other direction. But then I remembered the armies of kid-petrifying pensioners, the spooky shots of the Doctor and Rory frozen to the floor, the funny way the Dream Lord, a demonic rendering of the Doctor's own psychoanalytical concerns for goodness sake and is worth emphasising outside of brackets, zapped about Q-like and the whisk generator and realised that I may need to have look at this one again. In other words, I've talked myself into liking an episode whilst writing a review of it. Well played Nye and Moffat.
Next Week: "I sometimes wonder why I like the people of this miserable planet so much."
Seeking alternatives, I’ve been considering a trip into the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Waking Life, but have mostly made do with the couple of odd episodes in the (now) final season of Heroes in which the guilt of Hiro and Sylar trapped them into their own subconscious trials and prisons (budget permitting). The problem is of course, like 80s horror Dreamscape, these are dramatic reconstructions of other people’s impressions of the dreamscape and require those things which our own subconscious aren’t very good at providing – a character arc, dramatic tension and a satisfying conclusion (ish, in the case of Heroes).
And so it is with Amy’s Choice a fairly eccentric episode of modern Who which against what you might expect from Simon Nye (who you would think would be more comfortable with future episode The Lodger for reasons that will become apparent) harks back to the old days, a homage to the likes of The Mind Robber, The Celestial Toymaker and Inside the Spaceship/Beyond the Sun/The Brink of Disaster/The Edge of Destruction/or whatever you like to call it and also attempts to capture the kind of off-beat weirdness witnessed in children’s television programmes were shot on video and Kate Winslet was still young enough to appear in them and also an approach to plotting familiar to anyone who actually understands what Charlie Kauffman is going on about.
The initial hook of having the Doctor meeting a current companion and her own plus one five years after their travels is rather brilliantly extrapolated. Given what we know about Amy’s connection to Ledworth, and Rory’s potential aspirations, their small idyll is entirely believable as is the Doctor’s reaction to her pregnancy with him bounding out the TARDIS as though minutes have just passed and then realising that he’s in the dullest part of the universe (quite something for him). Played for laughs and with genuine chemistry between the three leads, it refreshingly lacks all of the recriminations of Sarah Jane in School Reunion (and a dozen Big Finish reunions) about being left behind, reminding me of the Eighth Doctor’s re-emergence to Bernice in The Dying Days.
This opening section is crying out to unfold across twenty odd minutes with a cliffhanger ending in which the trio reappear on the floor of the TARDIS with the Dream Lord standing over them, in other words, with the classic four episode structure. But as is the way with new Who, we’re all too quickly whisked back to the console room and the possibility that their new life is a dream, their version of human John Smith’s perhaps. The confusing is nicely played here, taking full advantage of us having seen the Doctor skipping two years at the close of The Eleventh Hour to make the “future” reality entirely possible within the structure of the series (even if it does suggest that in future episodes that Amy will be chasing aliens between nappy changes).
Enter Toby Jones’s Dream Lord. Look at that, Toby Jones in Doctor Who! His oddly round yet still angular face looks like William Hague pushing himself through a rubber band and a brilliant bit of casting because we could imagine in a different universe were the Doctor could still be played by an older man, Jones would be just the man to do it. One of the best elements of the episode was in keeping the true nature of the Dream Lord hidden so that fans could spend much of the story assuming that he was somehow The Master, The Master or my guess, The Celestial Toymaker (it couldn’t be The Valeyard, of course, that would be silly, even though functionally they were doing much the same thing, expressing the Doctor’s id, and look at how I’m burying that in some brackets).
Then like the old Demi Moore film Passions of the Mind (oh yes), they’re left to investigate which of these “realities” is correct, a problem hampered by the need to also decide which of the menaces on offer, alien possessed pensioners or the TARDIS drifting into a cold star. The Dream Lord must be a fan of the Doctor Who Adventures because both of these stories look like the kind of thing which might be knocked out by Steve Lyons or @theolismith across eight pages and a cornucopia of exclamation marks. That’s not a criticism; both offer impressive imagery, of old people acting like yobs and breaking up the place and the frosted time machine drifting ever closer to its icy doom, like the splash pages that might appear opposite “Ten things you didn’t know about the Crespallions (“7: No one can remember which episode they appeared in”).
At this point, seasoned viewers of British sci-fi might expect director Catherine Moorshead to break out the wide angle lenses and gels and go to town with the off-kilter close-ups and unusual lighting. This version of Ledworth is the kind of weirdly deserted township in which nothing is at it seems and the normal becomes unreal. Doctor Who has had a few of these itself, in other words, The Android Invasion on telly, Eddie Robson’s Memory Lane on audio and Stockbridge in the comics. Similarly fans could be hoping the TARDIS scenes tonally mimic The Edge of Destruction in which despite the hulking great cameras, through some clever lighting, the console room became an alien place rather than a comforting symbol of safety.
There’s none of that here. Instead, Moorshead does something really quite interesting with the photography. She goes conventional. Though now and then in the village scenes we visit upon the odd shot which apes zombie films, notably one in which four of the pensioners slowly approach our heroes from across a field, despite the blue and green rinse brigade, Moorshead spends most of her time evoking Dangerfield, especially in the camper-van chase which also looks the fake credits for Monkfish from The Fast Show. That approach is repeated in the TARDIS scenes which aren’t much different to anything we’ve seen before; it’s just that there are more of them.
Along with a music track which with the exception of some brief snatches of a re-mumble of Jon Brion’s main theme for Eternal Sunshine is Murray Gold almost parodying himself, the effort is to make our heroes confusion about the dream worlds as understandable as possible by portraying those dream worlds as conservatively as possible in televisual terms, something this audience might be less likely to accept if they looked like they were directed by Bunuel or Spike Jonze. That’s very risky since it leaves the episode open to criticism for being “unadventurous” or “flat” or not making the most of the script (as I’ve already seen in a couple of early reviews). But if there’s anything I’ve learnt about this series, it’s that there are more “features” than “bugs” and everything is very carefully thought through (and should be at this late stage -- Amy's Choice was the last episode of the season to be shot and edited).
Like the title of the episode. For all the fantastical elements of both scenarios, it’s Amy’s desires which are being investigated, who and who’s world does she really want, Rory or the Doctor? It’s much the same choice offered to Rose but unlike her “Theres noffink letht for me 'ear” treatment of Mickey in The Parting of the Ways which has always seemed cruel and unusual to me, especially with Billie’s playing of the line, Karen’s understated tragedy as she watches Rory fade to dust and realising her love for him and the Doctor’s impotence is very powerful, more-so because it lacks the histrionics we might well have expected. Still, it is fairly predictable that the series might want to go the other way and allow her to have both, Rory embracing the adventure (Moffat seems keen to return the timelord to his original rampant asexuality).
All of which said, by the climax I was left a bit nonplussed. Sitting down to write this review I was all ready to suggest that despite all the hilarious jokes, and wonderful performances, Amy’s Choice isn’t bold enough, certainly not as bold as Buffy’s Normal Again in which by the conclusion we’re not entirely sure that the previous six season’s worth of episodes aren’t an extrapolation of a twenty-something girl’s feverish imagination and that the conventionality of some of the direction with its steadicams-a-gogo, had dragged the episode down too far in the other direction. But then I remembered the armies of kid-petrifying pensioners, the spooky shots of the Doctor and Rory frozen to the floor, the funny way the Dream Lord, a demonic rendering of the Doctor's own psychoanalytical concerns for goodness sake and is worth emphasising outside of brackets, zapped about Q-like and the whisk generator and realised that I may need to have look at this one again. In other words, I've talked myself into liking an episode whilst writing a review of it. Well played Nye and Moffat.
Next Week: "I sometimes wonder why I like the people of this miserable planet so much."
Elsewhere I've reviewed tonight's Doctor Who, an exercise in absolute torture as usual. I'm finding it harder and harder to write though I do think I've managed to explain in this case why some of the direction is so flat in comparison to other episodes -- it's supposed to be -- which isn't an argument I've seen in any other reviews yet ...
Carry on Cleo
Film When Corinne Marchand's title character in Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) first appears, it's in full frame close up, her porcelain features filling the frame, melting the heart of this viewer (at least). It's a startling image not least because the preceding shot, of a table top in which the Tarot cars of a fortune teller predict Cleo's fortune is in full colour. We're intrigued.
What follows is an hour and a half of similarly surprising images as we follow Cleo about the Left Bank of Paris as she awaits the results of a biopsy across a ninety minute period almost in real time. We discover that she's a singer who's accepted that much of her perceived talent is derived from her looks, yet we can't help wondering if her beauty and mostly superficial personality aren't a bridgehead to something deeper.
The film slips as Adrian Martin notes at Criterion between fiction and a documentary record of Varda's home during an uncertain period:
I can now see that Richard Linklater directly references it in both of the Before Sunsomething films (particularly the final fifteen minute love affair and indeterminate conclusion) and how the so-called modern Mtv shooting and editing style of Bay and Greengrass can be found in the car scenes here - except in this case, Cleo isn't chasing some generic villain carrying a mcguffin but her own destiny.
What follows is an hour and a half of similarly surprising images as we follow Cleo about the Left Bank of Paris as she awaits the results of a biopsy across a ninety minute period almost in real time. We discover that she's a singer who's accepted that much of her perceived talent is derived from her looks, yet we can't help wondering if her beauty and mostly superficial personality aren't a bridgehead to something deeper.
The film slips as Adrian Martin notes at Criterion between fiction and a documentary record of Varda's home during an uncertain period:
"... it is as jazzily photographed and busily edited as any more conventional narrative film. Rather, Varda seizes the kind of immediacy and tension associated, at the start of the sixties, with the cinema verité documentary movement and uses it to create a new form of fiction. Unlike traditional story films, which skip everywhere in both time and space, Varda gives us a gauntlet: every second piling up, every step traced out. And she picked the best possible site for this gauntlet walk: the Left Bank of Paris is preserved for us in all its early sixties vibrancy and diversity. Indeed, Varda once described the film as “the portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary about Paris.”One of the greats which I've been saving for quite some time but watched tonight to cheer myself up at the tail end of a cold/man-flu, its influence has seeped directly and indirectly into dozens of other films in the half century since release so much so that our sight-seeing not just the geography of Paris, but the history of cinema.
I can now see that Richard Linklater directly references it in both of the Before Sunsomething films (particularly the final fifteen minute love affair and indeterminate conclusion) and how the so-called modern Mtv shooting and editing style of Bay and Greengrass can be found in the car scenes here - except in this case, Cleo isn't chasing some generic villain carrying a mcguffin but her own destiny.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Then I first saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona in screen nine of the Odeon at Liverpool One on the 13th February 2009 at 3:10pm, sitting in Row C, Seat 10. That’s right. I still have the ticket. Or receipt as they have there. Or more precisely a scan of the receipt:
My attendance was in a rare professional capacity to produce this formidable review for Liverpool Confidential, formidable because it’s about as comprehensive a survey of a Woody Allen film I think I’ve produced:
”Barden and Johansson are eye-catching enough, but the emotional heart of the film is Hall, whose face ripples constantly with expression. Vicky is between temptation and outside expectations, the heart and the head at war. […] Hers is the character most of us identify with and by the time Vicky falls under Juan Antonio's spell, the film has us in its clutches too. We’re constantly aware that this is the hardly-feminist account of an artist wrapping the hearts of three women around his paint brush, but all the while we’re beguiled.”The description of the kids walking out is true of course, and that was after they’d played with their mobile phones for a bit and chatted to each other. Sometimes I wish that when the BBFC awards certificates, it would take into account the audience a film is clearly aimed at as well as the literal content. Though quite how a film with these sex scenes attracted a 12A anyway I’m not too sure.
Now Since my Liverpool Confidential review is so wide-ranging even to the point of emphasising Rebecca Hall’s contribution to the film (which we'll talk some more about in the next paragraph), there doesn’t seem to be much point in restating any more of that text or repeating any of the poetry. If anything, I’m more impressed with the film, and watching it within context, it’s clearly his most confident piece since Melinda and Melinda in terms of editing and construction without any of the uneasiness that greeted his London films and with due respect the achievements of Melinda and Anything Else, clearly his best film in the noughties (a position that will no doubt keep changing).
The reason that Hall’s character stands out is because she visibly has the most screen time, which simply increases the disingenuous of the poster where he photo doesn't appear and she's relegated to a secondary layer in the billing. Though the story moves away for Scarlett’s dalliances with Penelope and Javier, it’s Rebecca who has the objective view of their three way relationship and her performance that guides our opinion of it. She’s also the character with the funniest lines; early on when Javier propositions the two girls, she seems to physically imitate Woody and that continues into the next scene where she’s shown cowering at the back of the plane. It’s extraordinary.
Given the lack of a release yet for Whatever Works in the UK (I'd like to see it first at the cinema), this is effectively the end of this odyssey for now, much to your relief I’m sure. But unlike the Hitchcock retrospective, I don’t want to attempt a proper summation because Woody’s career continues. I still stick by my theory that with Melinda and Melinda, the director, just as he did between Love & Death and Annie Hall, was completing one section of his career ready for another and even taking some elements of Scoop into account, each of the films which has followed could not necessarily described as Woody Allen films were it not for the credits and that seems to be a deliberate decision, commercially or no.
But unlike Hitchcock, Woody doesn’t seem to have in his head a concept of a “Woody Allen” film and that’s what he’s deliberately disregarding. Hitch often said that such and such a film, The Wrong Man, for example, wasn’t really a Hitchcock film. Woody clearly has an idea of how movies should be made and of his own limitations, but I don’t think he has the same idea others may have of what a “Woody Allen” film is like, something to work towards or disregard, he's not aware of his own auteur status. He simply feels like he’s gone as far as he can in one direction and is trying something new, his workload and continuing ability to be bankrolled and attract a good cast allowing him to experiment.
None of his previous ensemble appear in these later films. Most of his standard elements of style are absent. Sight unseen you might consider the possibility that Vicky Cristina Barcelona was directed by a much younger man or woman, or at the very least a European director. It certainly has more in common with the Bertolucci of Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers than the Woody Allen of Curse of the Jade Scorpion or even Hannah and Her Sisters. The dialogue is less mannered, there’s an easy poetry visually and linguistically and it’s the first of his films to feature scenes in a “foreign” language as the academy would have it, and I don’t mean the Queen’s English.
Of course, on viewing Whatever Works, which is his brief return to New York, I could be proved wrong. But this year’s fall release, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was filmed in London again (with the brilliant detail of Lucy Punch replacing Nicole Kidman in a prominent role). His 2011 project temptingly has Marion Cotillard playing a Muse according to the imdb. But none of them sees the return of anyone from the old ensemble and the signature jazz tracks which were recognisably his mainstay are gone – even in Whatever Works judging by the soundtrack album which is available on Spotify.
What I will say, is that watching all his films so far in such close proximity has only increased my admiration for his work and its consistency. Even his worst film, Hollywood Ending, has some excellent relationship scenes and at his best he’s clever, intelligent, romantic and charming and probably the Shakespeare of American filmmakers in terms of variety, poetry and thematic depth within certain specific limits. If my favourite films are still the earlier pictures from the late seventies and earlier eighties, because I grew up with them, my fondness for the later work, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry and yes, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has increased. Now, what's next?
New Politics.
New Politics Throughout the campaign one of my mantras was "Vote Clegg, get Clegg" and unbelievably that is what's happened. Of course, I hadn't considered that we'd also get Eric Pickles, Theresa May, Ian Duncan Smith and bloody Michael Gove but somehow watching a giddy Vince Cable stepping up Downing Street to collect his job as Business Secretary went some way to cushioning the blow. Some. Way.
Yes, it's strange to see Nick standing behind a lectern next to David Cameron with the latter not deliberately misinterpreting his policies and it will be difficult for him to have to defend some of the more um, expressive, Tory policies in Prime Minister's Questions when the new PM is off abroad or ill. But he'll also technically be in charge of the country for a few stretches. Give or take, some give and take.
David Laws as Secretary to the Treasury, Osbourne's number two with Vince breathing down the new chancellor's neck too. That should make the budget make for interesting reading/listening. Danny Alexander as Scottish Secretary with David Mundell as his deputy. Chris Huhne possibly as Environment Minister in charge of a programme which includes the eradication of the extra airport runways in London.
The lambs and lions may be lying together but strangely this doesn't feel like the end of days. As requested in his statement last night, I'm going to trust Nick and the Liberal Democrats. Reading the coalition agreement I can't really believe how many Lib Dem policies are potentially going to implemented. The section on Civil Liberties is a jaw dropper. Stephanie Flanders has a run down of the tax policies.
What I will say, is that trust can only go so far. There's nothing in this document about culture or non-environmental science. It's in these areas I'd look to the Lib Dems to also have a hand in shaping policy, in not standing by and letting Murdoch's claws crush our rich media landscape for his own ends. In other words, if they fuck with the BBC, I'm going to the Greens.
Yes, it's strange to see Nick standing behind a lectern next to David Cameron with the latter not deliberately misinterpreting his policies and it will be difficult for him to have to defend some of the more um, expressive, Tory policies in Prime Minister's Questions when the new PM is off abroad or ill. But he'll also technically be in charge of the country for a few stretches. Give or take, some give and take.
David Laws as Secretary to the Treasury, Osbourne's number two with Vince breathing down the new chancellor's neck too. That should make the budget make for interesting reading/listening. Danny Alexander as Scottish Secretary with David Mundell as his deputy. Chris Huhne possibly as Environment Minister in charge of a programme which includes the eradication of the extra airport runways in London.
The lambs and lions may be lying together but strangely this doesn't feel like the end of days. As requested in his statement last night, I'm going to trust Nick and the Liberal Democrats. Reading the coalition agreement I can't really believe how many Lib Dem policies are potentially going to implemented. The section on Civil Liberties is a jaw dropper. Stephanie Flanders has a run down of the tax policies.
What I will say, is that trust can only go so far. There's nothing in this document about culture or non-environmental science. It's in these areas I'd look to the Lib Dems to also have a hand in shaping policy, in not standing by and letting Murdoch's claws crush our rich media landscape for his own ends. In other words, if they fuck with the BBC, I'm going to the Greens.
New World.
Politics I've been watching BBC News almost solidly for days. These are historic moments and when I'm reading the book or watching the documentaries about all of this in future years I want to be able to remember what it was like to experience these dramatic political changes as well as the hindsight. With very little information to go on, just whispers in the ears of political correspondents, the coverage has largely consisted of a stream of politicians old and new offering their opinion on which form the coalition should take like a very slow, broadcast piece of qualitative market research, punctuated with statements from participants that say very little.
The overall impression is that as I suggested pictorially yesterday, after years of obscurity, of being laughed at and satirised in parliament and ignored in the media, the Liberal Democrats are now in the position of deciding if a figure like Alan Johnson or Ben Bradshaw keeps their job, with both speaking in a conciliatory manner about people and policies they publicly despised a week ago. A key example was Michael Gove on Newsnight last night revealing that the 10k tax break is one such sweetner being agreed to, with Kirsty Walk rounding on him and asking how the Tories would find the £17 billion to pay for it!
"Scrap Trident?" she asked.
This is a new world.
The overall impression is that as I suggested pictorially yesterday, after years of obscurity, of being laughed at and satirised in parliament and ignored in the media, the Liberal Democrats are now in the position of deciding if a figure like Alan Johnson or Ben Bradshaw keeps their job, with both speaking in a conciliatory manner about people and policies they publicly despised a week ago. A key example was Michael Gove on Newsnight last night revealing that the 10k tax break is one such sweetner being agreed to, with Kirsty Walk rounding on him and asking how the Tories would find the £17 billion to pay for it!
"Scrap Trident?" she asked.
This is a new world.
Politics Gordon Brown resigns. Perhaps Nick Clegg's pre-election message should have been ...
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Cassandra's Dream (2007)
Then Even though Scoop was overlooked for a cinema released, Cassandra’s Dream had a relatively smooth passage into cinemas, perhaps because crime thrillers are easier to advertise. Having waited six months to see it, I then waited another six months for the dvd which I saw in January 2009. I didn’t like it. And said so. A lot:
”But Cassandra’s Dream is rubbish. It might even be offensively bad.”Now I don’t think I need to quote much more from that review. You can go and read it for yourself. I took umbrage with much of the film only singling out Hayley Atwell and Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography for praise. I hated the structure, the scripting, the dialogue and the performances. I speak of clockwatching and booing and whilst it doesn’t stoop to the level of my Company Men response in terms of cheap jokes I’m was very pissed off. Indeed.
On second viewing I’ve been trying to work out exactly why I my reaction against the film quite so fierce. It’s not rubbish. It’s not “offensively bad”. Cassandra’s Dream certainly better than some of the ITV Drama Premieres it sometimes resembles and whilst it’s true that it’s near impossible to be sympathetic towards these brothers, that’s also true of Macbeth. Morality plays and tragedies are supposed to illuminate the extremes of human weakness and it does that admirably.
Having watched Hitchcock’s Frenzy in the meantime and a couple of seventies exploitation thrillers, I can see the influence of those, consciously or not with big scenes played against small crusty rooms, in dirty garages and racetracks. As possibilities open up to the brothers, so the landscape changes, the room increase in size and the drinking establishments become more upmarket and such things seem to expand and contract depending upon which brother is ahead.
Philip Glass’s music is excellent too; there is touch of the Bernard Hermanns about the main theme as filtered through Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Basic Instinct. Woody rarely uses original scores on his films; here it pays dividends naturalising some of the scenes and allowing him to cut the action as he sees fit rather than around the score which was the case in Match Point. As he says in this rather good interview about the film, he wanted to simply compliment the action (rather than, I suppose, trying to add an extra thematic layer).
My initial problem with the film, as best I can gather, was this: if you were to strip the titles and hand it sight unseen to someone and ask them who directed it they would most likely guess at a British director, they could not say Woody Allen. Because it’s set in London, because it’s as close as he’ll get to a traditional thriller, because the dialogue though heightened sounds like it was written by someone else, possibly Pinter, because even though on close inspection you can identify some stylistic similarities, it has as much to do with the Allen’s auteur style as Topaz had for Hitchcock.
But it’s really not that ghastly. Not really.
The Vampires of Venice.
TV In these uncertain times for the nation, when frowning men in suits are walking from cars into buildings and back again and no one has a fecking clue about the future of the country, weekly events like Doctor Who come into their own. We should just be thankful perhaps that the hand over of power at the top of our favourite franchise ran so smoothly by comparison. If it had been like the current constitutional negotiations, we might have seen Moffat attempting to form a coalition with a different Nick (Briggs), the latter demanding the resurrection of the Voord as a red line deal breaker (though presumably without a couple of thousand people turning up at Upper Boat demanding an adaptation of The Fishmen of Kandalinga -- from the 1966 annual).
The Vampires of Venice is particularly welcome because it is so comfortingly familiar, drawing together old and new series traditions to produce a supremely entertaining forty-eight and a half minutes. If ever there could be an episode designed to convince fans that the show is just the same as it always was, it would be this Hammer infused gothic horror adventure with creepy candle lit corridors in foreign climes, mythic creatures revealed to be aliens with a leader given to portentous speeches prophesising doom for her people. The title even evokes Vampire In Venice, the spaghetti horror from the 1980s with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu.
You can almost imagine Philip Hinchcliffe watching the episode over a sherry at the retirement home for old Doctor Who producers and with a slight chuckle in his voice pointing to the plasma screen and muttering “That’s it! That’s it! If only I’d had the budget … Bob? Bob? Are you there?” “Calm down Mr Hinchcliffe. It’s only a television programme.” “But look Bob, they’re finally doing that version of Lust for a Vampire we were talking about, and at six o’clock in the evening! And it looks like a feature film!” “It’s not Bob, Mr. Hinchcliffe, it’s Olla. Have you taken your diabetic pills today?”
Except of course, mythic creatures that aren’t all they seem employing fairy tale fantasy elements to mask technology infuses the Moffat era too; interestingly a combination of the preview in the parish newsletter and Doctor Who Confidential suggests that writer Toby Whithouse had a pretty free hand in crafting his story, but with its lush Croatia in for Venice architecture, giant fangs and lashings of the uncanny it fits perfectly with the past five episodes evening including a variation on the now familiar crack. It’s the oh so quiet. Sshh. Ssssssh. So peaceful until …
As an aside, Venice isn’t, surprisingly, a regular stop for the Doctor and this is his first television visit. Spin-off media offers two visits; Big Finish’s The Stones of Venice in which the Eighth Doctor and Charley stop the city from sinking despite the best efforts of Michael Sheard and the bonkers Virgin Missing Adventure The Empire of Glass in which author Andy Lane has the First Doctor and Steven Taylor mixed up with Galileo and William Shakespeare as a spy, which presumably explains the photo on the Doctor’s library card (squee). Aside over (since I'm now having to ditch all my choice State of Decay comparisons).
In developing the piece Whithouse appears to have looked to his own earlier episode School Reunion for inspiration. Like Krillitanes, these perception filter employing fish from space are a disenfranchised people attempting to absorb the local culture by inhabit a school, the Doctor sharing portentous conversations with an intractable, sinuous leader whose pack is unexpectedly destroyed through a suicidal explosion that the timelord finds himself leaping to escape from. No former companion to distract us this time, of course, though at least we can now induct Russell’s adaptation of Casanova into the Whoniverse as an unofficial spin-off.
Whithouse also has to deal with the companion's boyfriend again. The production team and Arthur Darvill try their best not to make him Mickey 2.0 – his knowledge of the TARDIS for example, and eventual camaraderie with the Doctor, but some of the scenes here couldn’t help but sound like light rewrites of Boomtown, in which the companion’s partner has to jealously deal with his partner’s dazzling new best friend and her time spanning adventures. The difference will presumably be that his and Amy’s future happiness is a key element of the ongoing arc story though it’s worth asking what Pond was doing at home on the night before her wedding when Williams was at his stag party. Does she have any other friends?
Back at the retirement home, Derick Sherwin is quietly pleased that some of his era seems to have seeped through too. Apart from a recognizable companion structure – a science geek and a Scot (albeit with a reversed gender make-up), Matt is at his most Troughton in this episode, hopping about the internal structure of the TARDIS, his hands forever moving in unusual ways, his voice cheerfully disappearing into anecdotes and making inarticulate noises during a solution which was the stuff of a season five four parter, battling extraordinary elements (foam or in this case rain) before saving the world with the simple flick of a switch.
Sherwin might also appreciate the imaginatively old school approach to reproducing Venice as revealed in Confidential and how despite the budget they still had to resort to a cardboard cut out and a paddling pool across a cobbled courtyard to create the impression of a gondola drifting up a canal. In his book, What is cinema?, film critic Andre Bazin talks about how the best film makers understand that it’s the illusion of reality created in the frame that counts and the suspension of disbelief was total here (unlike the dome the Doctor had to shimmy his way up at the end though my digibox is particularly unforgiving to any kind of CGI element).
But the 60s episodes were never this funny (sorry Dennis and John). From the Doctor’s cake burst in the teaser (leading into the titles with the kind of comic beat not seen since the other first series) to the sight of the gondolea wearing Rory’s stag t-shirt, this is an episode unafraid to be a romp. There’s a Gallifrey Base thread developing which lists all of the best lines (and a flame war about the innuendo – yes, really) and though nothing quite touches City of Death, you have to love the confidence of the series to be able to chuck in "Blimey, fish from space have never been so....buxom" or “Yours is Bigger than Mine?” “Let's not go there!”
If there’s a problem, it’s that for a show about vampires (sort of), the episode isn't that scary. Helen McCrory has a certain camp serpentine Joan “He’s good for families” Collins steeliness but her character Rosanna Calvierri’s real alter-ego just looks like a well designed alien. If her Oedipal relationship with her son is creepy, her daughters are simple eye-candy and less sinister than a bar invading hen night. And the execution by aquatic predator worked better when Spielberg was directing it. Perhaps like The Brain of Morbius, appropriating the imagery of Hammer and the like is one thing, delivering it to a family audience, and now getting it past BBC standards, is something else.
Only as Amy was led into the green light and Calvierri’s transformation process did I get a tinge, but even that scene ran up against the syncopated shooting and editing style which I’ve noticed in all of these episodes, were the action is sometimes obscured by the camera shooting from an unexpected position, or the cutting in and out of shots early with apparently important lines given off screen or as was the case at the close of this episode with the moment of silence not given room to breath. It reminds me enough of Gilliam’s work in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to suggest that it’s a deliberate choice, and it doesn’t ruin the episode, but just sometimes it can be distracting.
Then again, at least it's not like many "classic" series episodes where you could guess which direction the actor would be walking by the camera Ron Jones or whoever decided to cut to and the reason for shooting abroad was entirely dependent on the cheapest air fairs. But in the old series you wouldn't have expected John Nathan-Turner to going swimming in the seas around Lanzarote dressed only in a pink bikini so that Nicola Bryant knew what to expect when she was forced to do it, like the swan attracting executive producer of the current show. Perhaps for all its formal similarities, The Vampires of Venice differs from tradition in just the right places.
Next week: How Do You Want Amy?
The Vampires of Venice is particularly welcome because it is so comfortingly familiar, drawing together old and new series traditions to produce a supremely entertaining forty-eight and a half minutes. If ever there could be an episode designed to convince fans that the show is just the same as it always was, it would be this Hammer infused gothic horror adventure with creepy candle lit corridors in foreign climes, mythic creatures revealed to be aliens with a leader given to portentous speeches prophesising doom for her people. The title even evokes Vampire In Venice, the spaghetti horror from the 1980s with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu.
You can almost imagine Philip Hinchcliffe watching the episode over a sherry at the retirement home for old Doctor Who producers and with a slight chuckle in his voice pointing to the plasma screen and muttering “That’s it! That’s it! If only I’d had the budget … Bob? Bob? Are you there?” “Calm down Mr Hinchcliffe. It’s only a television programme.” “But look Bob, they’re finally doing that version of Lust for a Vampire we were talking about, and at six o’clock in the evening! And it looks like a feature film!” “It’s not Bob, Mr. Hinchcliffe, it’s Olla. Have you taken your diabetic pills today?”
Except of course, mythic creatures that aren’t all they seem employing fairy tale fantasy elements to mask technology infuses the Moffat era too; interestingly a combination of the preview in the parish newsletter and Doctor Who Confidential suggests that writer Toby Whithouse had a pretty free hand in crafting his story, but with its lush Croatia in for Venice architecture, giant fangs and lashings of the uncanny it fits perfectly with the past five episodes evening including a variation on the now familiar crack. It’s the oh so quiet. Sshh. Ssssssh. So peaceful until …
As an aside, Venice isn’t, surprisingly, a regular stop for the Doctor and this is his first television visit. Spin-off media offers two visits; Big Finish’s The Stones of Venice in which the Eighth Doctor and Charley stop the city from sinking despite the best efforts of Michael Sheard and the bonkers Virgin Missing Adventure The Empire of Glass in which author Andy Lane has the First Doctor and Steven Taylor mixed up with Galileo and William Shakespeare as a spy, which presumably explains the photo on the Doctor’s library card (squee). Aside over (since I'm now having to ditch all my choice State of Decay comparisons).
In developing the piece Whithouse appears to have looked to his own earlier episode School Reunion for inspiration. Like Krillitanes, these perception filter employing fish from space are a disenfranchised people attempting to absorb the local culture by inhabit a school, the Doctor sharing portentous conversations with an intractable, sinuous leader whose pack is unexpectedly destroyed through a suicidal explosion that the timelord finds himself leaping to escape from. No former companion to distract us this time, of course, though at least we can now induct Russell’s adaptation of Casanova into the Whoniverse as an unofficial spin-off.
Whithouse also has to deal with the companion's boyfriend again. The production team and Arthur Darvill try their best not to make him Mickey 2.0 – his knowledge of the TARDIS for example, and eventual camaraderie with the Doctor, but some of the scenes here couldn’t help but sound like light rewrites of Boomtown, in which the companion’s partner has to jealously deal with his partner’s dazzling new best friend and her time spanning adventures. The difference will presumably be that his and Amy’s future happiness is a key element of the ongoing arc story though it’s worth asking what Pond was doing at home on the night before her wedding when Williams was at his stag party. Does she have any other friends?
Back at the retirement home, Derick Sherwin is quietly pleased that some of his era seems to have seeped through too. Apart from a recognizable companion structure – a science geek and a Scot (albeit with a reversed gender make-up), Matt is at his most Troughton in this episode, hopping about the internal structure of the TARDIS, his hands forever moving in unusual ways, his voice cheerfully disappearing into anecdotes and making inarticulate noises during a solution which was the stuff of a season five four parter, battling extraordinary elements (foam or in this case rain) before saving the world with the simple flick of a switch.
Sherwin might also appreciate the imaginatively old school approach to reproducing Venice as revealed in Confidential and how despite the budget they still had to resort to a cardboard cut out and a paddling pool across a cobbled courtyard to create the impression of a gondola drifting up a canal. In his book, What is cinema?, film critic Andre Bazin talks about how the best film makers understand that it’s the illusion of reality created in the frame that counts and the suspension of disbelief was total here (unlike the dome the Doctor had to shimmy his way up at the end though my digibox is particularly unforgiving to any kind of CGI element).
But the 60s episodes were never this funny (sorry Dennis and John). From the Doctor’s cake burst in the teaser (leading into the titles with the kind of comic beat not seen since the other first series) to the sight of the gondolea wearing Rory’s stag t-shirt, this is an episode unafraid to be a romp. There’s a Gallifrey Base thread developing which lists all of the best lines (and a flame war about the innuendo – yes, really) and though nothing quite touches City of Death, you have to love the confidence of the series to be able to chuck in "Blimey, fish from space have never been so....buxom" or “Yours is Bigger than Mine?” “Let's not go there!”
If there’s a problem, it’s that for a show about vampires (sort of), the episode isn't that scary. Helen McCrory has a certain camp serpentine Joan “He’s good for families” Collins steeliness but her character Rosanna Calvierri’s real alter-ego just looks like a well designed alien. If her Oedipal relationship with her son is creepy, her daughters are simple eye-candy and less sinister than a bar invading hen night. And the execution by aquatic predator worked better when Spielberg was directing it. Perhaps like The Brain of Morbius, appropriating the imagery of Hammer and the like is one thing, delivering it to a family audience, and now getting it past BBC standards, is something else.
Only as Amy was led into the green light and Calvierri’s transformation process did I get a tinge, but even that scene ran up against the syncopated shooting and editing style which I’ve noticed in all of these episodes, were the action is sometimes obscured by the camera shooting from an unexpected position, or the cutting in and out of shots early with apparently important lines given off screen or as was the case at the close of this episode with the moment of silence not given room to breath. It reminds me enough of Gilliam’s work in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to suggest that it’s a deliberate choice, and it doesn’t ruin the episode, but just sometimes it can be distracting.
Then again, at least it's not like many "classic" series episodes where you could guess which direction the actor would be walking by the camera Ron Jones or whoever decided to cut to and the reason for shooting abroad was entirely dependent on the cheapest air fairs. But in the old series you wouldn't have expected John Nathan-Turner to going swimming in the seas around Lanzarote dressed only in a pink bikini so that Nicola Bryant knew what to expect when she was forced to do it, like the swan attracting executive producer of the current show. Perhaps for all its formal similarities, The Vampires of Venice differs from tradition in just the right places.
Next week: How Do You Want Amy?
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