"narrative history series"

Radio Four controller Gwyneth Williams brings news of schedule changes. The World at One is being extended by fifteen minutes with the "narrative history series" (The Making of Music, A History of the World ...) moving to fill up the hour and a regular science slot on Tuesday mornings.  This American Life's poor cousin Americana axed.  The methodology seems to be to bring the channel more in line with other BBC networks in offering recognisable blocks of content, certain types of programme appearing in regular places.

prepare to enter a trance-like state of self-loathing

Books Caitin Moran’s position in the history of the press reaction to new Doctor Who can’t be underestimated. That this successful tv columnist with years at The Times and before that Melody Maker had outed herself as a fan and was writing passionately about the franchise’s inherent cool, went some way to helping to transform the reputation of the programme and giving it an acceptable face for those who might otherwise have sneered at even the concept of watching a sci-fi drama series on a Saturday night.

That’s largely how I heard about Moran and why I decided to follow her on Twitter, and not having seen her most recent columns since the paywall, why I probably ended up reading How To Be A Woman. That and the dozens of positive reviews. Part memoir, part feminist tract, its rather like reading Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation with sections of Bitch edited in at relevant points and although it has some of the same esteem issues, it’s determinately far funnier than either.

Beginning with the bullying meted out to Moran as a pre-pubescent tomboy, we’re guided through her bodily changes and onanistic experiments and her experiences with men folk and babies, scaling Maslow's hierarchy like a sherpa on a completion bonus. She aims to demonstrate how difficult the status of womanhood has become increasingly harder as women have themselves begun to accept as the norm the very narrow set of images created by marketers and the rest of the media.

With only Wurtzel's books, Laura Mulvey, Annette Kuhn and various Guardian columnists as my previous experience of such things, I can't say whether Moran successfully rewrites Germain Greer's The Female Eunoch as the advertising suggest.  It's certainly increased my admiration for women, simply because of the psychological baggage they seem to have to carry around with them because of assumption we men have and continue to make about them, describing them as them as though they're an entirely alien species.

Moran really knows how to service an anecdote. The chapter on weddings is a tour-de-force of colourful detail from the shades of dresses to the wine stains in the carpet. She lays the most disappointing elements of her personality bare, disappointing to her, and at times she comes across as a marauding Withnail with two X chromosomes, various tolerant Marwoods making sure she reaches home in one piece, dealing incessantly with inadequate men.

If you are a man with even a hint of feminism running through your veins, prepare to enter a trance like state of self-loathing for your entire gender. We do not come off well here, for the way we treat women by confirming gender stereotypes, double or triple glazing the glass ceiling and for years assuming that because there don’t appear to be many women around with a voice it's because they don’t have much to say, rather than the truth which is that we’ve gagged them, unconsciously other otherwise.

Yet there are plenty of moments in which it’s apparent that we share plenty of foibles. If I’m anything to go by, men too construct epic impossible fantasies about relationships with casual acquaintances that aren’t just about sex. We too walk around shops for hours on end failing to find clothes we might actually enjoy wearing (which is why my whole existence revolves around a white t-shirt and jeans). We also often feel that society has boxed us into a corner.

"It will remain for British authorities"

Journalism Carl Bernstein looks for Watergate comparisons in the #notw scandal:

"The circumstances of the alleged lawbreaking within News Corp. suggest more than a passing resemblance to Richard Nixon presiding over a criminal conspiracy in which he insulated himself from specific knowledge of numerous individual criminal acts while being himself responsible for and authorizing general policies that routinely resulted in lawbreaking and unconstitutional conduct. Not to mention his role in the cover-up. It will remain for British authorities and, presumably, disgusted and/or legally squeezed News Corp. executives and editors to reveal exactly where the rot came from at News of the World, and whether Rupert Murdoch enabled, approved, or opposed the obvious corruption that infected his underlings."

Sadly he misses the clearest comparison from his end. Nick Davies's dogged investigation at The Guardian, an investigation almost entirely unreported by the rest of the press up until this week when it's being publically praised by actors, politicians and fellow journalists mirrors Woodstein's own Watergate investigation which was considered equally eccentric at the time. I like to imagine Alan Rusbridger giving Davies a pep talk similar to the one Jason Robards as Post editor Ben Bradlee gives the fictional version of them at the end of All The President's Men.

Ben Bradlee: You know the results of the latest Gallup Poll? Half the country never even heard of the word Watergate. Nobody gives a shit. You guys are probably pretty tired, right? Well, you should be. Go on home, get a nice hot bath. Rest up... 15 minutes. Then get your asses back in gear. We're under a lot of pressure, you know, and you put us there. Nothing's riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country. Not that any of that matters, but if you guys fuck up again, I'm going to get mad. Goodnight.

Here's Davies talking about the story, which includes a rather startling section about David Cameron and George Osborne which I've not seen elsewhere:

"my full name, Sarah Palin"

Politics Time Magazine meets another Sarah Palin, a 20-year-old University of Texas at Austin junior:

"How often do people mention Palin to you?
Ever since 2008, all my friends have called me by my full name, Sarah Palin. I rarely get called just Sarah. Every time she opens her mouth, I get attention. And now everyone's making the same joke — asking me if I'm going to run in 2012. I'm like, Wow, that's really original. I definitely haven't heard that one before."

I went to post-graduate college with an Emma Thompson who was funny about it and a David Dickinson who seemed oblivious.

"a salacious rag"

Journalism Worth linking what with current events (see my Twitter feed for up to the minute vitriol and invective), Adam Curtis on the rise of Rupert Murdoch or as he describes it 'A Portrait of Satan':

"The News of the World was a salacious rag, but it was run by Sir William Carr who was a member of an old establishment family. He had already received a hostile bid from the publisher Robert Maxwell. Carr hated Maxwell because he was not British (he was Czech).

Then Murdoch arrived. He wasn't British either, but he told Sir William he would buy the paper but they would run it jointly together.

Maxwell warned Sir William not to trust Murdoch. He told him - "You will be out before your feet touch the ground".

Sir William replied - "Bob, Rupert is a gentleman"

But Lady Carr began to worry. She took Rupert Murdoch out to lunch in Mayfair. She reported that he had little small talk, no sense of humour and that he had lit up a cigar before the first course.

Brian May was asked for his commentary on the closure of The News of the World during The One Show earlier. He said, I'm paraphrasing, "They put a camera through Freddy's toilet window when he was dying (of AIDS).  So I have no sympathy for them."

as with the previous series

Radio As you might know, there'll be more radio Torchwood broadcast next week in the run up to the opening UK broadcast of Miracle Day on Thursday. You might also like to know that as with the previous series, there will be podcasts for people who're at work or want to save themselves some pennies on the inevitable later commercial release.

You can sign up to the podcasts here.

"tweet about lunch"

Social Networking Grace Dent's 100 things about me and Twitter most of which are universally applicable:

"45. I bloody love Twitter "pun" games. I'll play them until the bitter end, when my puns need brackets to explain and no one replies.

46. I get arsey when non-Twitter people say Twitter is just people discussing their breakfasts. Only an idiot tweets their breakfast.

47. I do sometimes tweet about lunch.

48. Twitter has made me seriously wonder if chronic pedantry is a social illness. People are crucified by their need to correct commas.

49. I think if you cancel an appointment with me due to being busy or ill you should have the common sense to stop fucking tweeting.

50. I believe 3,000 followers is the point at which lots of tweeters start behaving like utter maniacs. "3,000 follower syndrome" is a worrying medical condition.

101.  Don't joint Twitter unless you have a lot of faith in your internal-censor.

I'm trying not to get too wound up

Life Sigh, there are plenty of things I could say about the present big story, and have said via the Twitter feed, but I'm trying not to get too wound up, trying to calm down, trying not become too self righteous about something I don't have any control over even though I know that it effects just about everything that happens in this country, via its political connections.

So instead I thought I'd show this nice photo of a rainbow I took earlier during a hail storm. That's a hail storm.  In July. Goodness.



I've never been this close to a rainbow before, especially never looked down on one, like standing in the middle of a lens flair or a soap bubble. The coloured halo also seemed to be moving closer, at least until it dissipated.

"white polka dots"

TV While the Murdoch empire stops me from seeing Kate Winslet in Todd Haynes's Mildred Pierce until the dvd release in six months, I can at least gawp at the clothes:

"When we first meet Mildred she is baking in a dark blue housedress with white polka dots worn beneath a gingham check pinafore. As presentable as Mildred may appear to our eyes, she would never have dreamed of leaving the house in this ensemble. Despite limited means this was still a period of formality. Even Mildred’s neighbour, Lucy Gessler (Melissa Leo), dons an upturned brim cloche before strolling across her garden to snoop."

They're also used to good effect on the cover of this month's Sight and Sound Magazine which has an excellent piece inside comparing the new mini-series and its approach to adapting the James M. Cain novel in comparison to Michael Curtiz's 1945 film, the shift in genre away from noir.

"shots needed"

Film Kim Newman reviews Transformers 3:

"There ought to be a way to make a live-action film about giant shapeshifting robots that’s either a) fun or b) awesome or preferably c) both. After three tries, it’s blatantly evident that Bay can only just about manage b) long enough to provide the shots needed to cut into a trailer."

There was. It's called Transformers: The Movie. "One shall staaand. One shall faaallll."

"Effing scary, but fine."

Life Inspired by TV Cream who have posted their first attempt at creating a television listing, I thought I would publish this early attempt at blogging. Actually it's the text from a letter I wrote from university to an old school friend in February 1994 when I was nineteen years old.  Written originally on a PC and printed out (I must have produced two copies), a print out which I've now just sat and typed back in again having found it recently.  Which rather demonstrates the resilience of paper as a storage medium over digital.

But it has all of the hallmarks of this blog with embarrassing stories and reviews (one of which, for the film Like Water For Chocolate is essentially just a synopsis of the plot so if you haven't seen it yet, and I recommend you do, I'd skip that whole paragraph).  Plus note I didn't see fit to ask my friend how he was or reply to anything in the letter he must has sent me first.  Some of it is quite poignant, some of it I'd entirely forgotten and would be a odd precursor of things to come and some of it is just ...

----------------------

Dear [name withheld],

Tired. Stretch. Barf.

Sorry, but that's my attempt at reactive poetry. I know it isn't that good, but I was looking for a way to start this letter. I know its taken me a while to write but you know how it is - things to do, places to go, people to see (rubs chin with tips of his fingers).

There was a massive fun fair in town, and after dropping a video off at the city site library I decided to go on. Big mistake. The first couple of rides were fine. Effing scary, but fine. But the second two. Now, I've never chucked my lunch (and isn't that a nice turn of phrase?) before on rides, mostly because it isn't usual for me to go on them. But this particular one was a doozy. It not only span you round by an axle, but each axle had four cars on it which span also - so you are spinning in two different directions at once - thus was too much. I don't think I hit anyone.

But after this I got the bus home - big mistake number two. We are going out of town and next to the uni and this guy from our hall and his girlfriend get on. As the bus pulls out, my tummy decides it has had enough. I open the window and fountain appears from my mouth, hitting a passing sports car. Eventually I have to rush off the bus and throw into a bush. I am now known in the hall as "Spuey" (so funny I nearly top myself).

The girl situation is the same as usual (that bad eh?). A mixture of unavailable and unusual. There is one girl - Katrine. She seems to the think the same way I do. ('We dream the same, dream we want the same things -- ooh!"). Thing is, she's French. But having said that we don't seem to have any problem communicating. Like me, she can think of a lot of things to do other than drinking, like just talking with friends, making food, reading and watching movies. I just know she's got a boyfriend in France. Having said that, she did say I was probably the only English person who talks to her so I guess this is in my favour.

Friday, and I've got my tux. This is quite possibly the most expensive night out of my life. £56 for the tux. £23 for the ticket, and I guess £10 for the night. This had better be worth it (it probably won't).

I've been seeing some really nice movies lately. "Like Water for Chocolate" for example, a Brazilian movie about a girl who has to battle against family tradition. Every youngest girl like her must never marry and look after the mother. The Story is very tragic in nature, as everyone slowly dies, but with a slightly quirky sense of humour. The real shock being at the end when she and her once intended husband finally get together to make love, and its so food her ides in her arms and in the style of R+J she commits suicide so that they can be together eternally.

I also sat through "The Three Musketeers" a film which was such a wasted opportunity. I smell an overzealous editor, with a knack of getting rid of much of a film's character content in favour of swashing the buckle. That said, Chris O'Donnell isn't a bad Dartanion (despire being a French man with an American accent), and there are some nice one-liners from the barely sketched in Porthos and Aromis.

I've also been watching loads of Woody Allen movies lately, and I think they've been having a strange effect on me. At the weekend I bought a rye loaf, and nearly got some bagels -- this could be N.E. fever, but I started to read leaflets about stress and depression and say things like "Eat something". And my wearing my jacket more often.

Speaking on Northern Exposure, it's back on again on Mondays at 10pm. So there isn't a bad week on TV -- NE on Monday, Quantum Leap on Tuesday, Star Trek (for now) on Wednesday, Red Dwarf on Fridays and the New Adventures of Superman on Saturday (if you haven't seen it yet, I strongly recommend it -- it's kind of a cross between the movies (action) Northern Exposure (character development) and a hint of Moonlight (general weirdness)].

Its hit dinnertime and I'm hungry, and there are probably people waiting with more important things to do with computers, so this is Stuey signing off. Hailing frequencies closed.

Seeya.

Ensign Stuart I. Burns
Starfleet Academy Library Cadet.

 --------------

as Paul Morley would rave later

Meme I reveal when I got it wrong (inspired by):

Pop:
Fiercely loyal to the original line up of the Sugababes and Siobhán Donaghy in particular, I attended the next album, Angels With Dirty Faces, the first with Heidi Range, with caution, and hated it, the vocal harmony which had made One Touch sound so unusual completely gone. But I saw the error of my ways fairly quickly. There are some duff tracks, Just Don't Need This a warning of the rubbish that was to come later, but as Paul Morley would rave later, track one, Freak Like Me is one of the best pop records of all time, a post-modern fusion of Adina Howard and Gary Newman.

Film:
For nearly a decade, I'd decided Curse of the Jade Scorpion was a low point in Woody Allen's career but as I outlined whilst watching his entire career in order, that opinion changed to "I found it really very engaging indeed", which is quite something for me. It's rare that my initial reaction to a film will change much in the intervening years and most often from positive to negative rather than in the other direction.

Books:
I'm so poorly read and the books I have read have been within such a narrow wavelength that I can't really comment on anything for the purposes of this exercise other than to say that my teenage brain didn't have the capacity to really appreciate Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse when I was forced to study it for A-Level and it wasn't until years later I understood the capacity of stream of consciousness to mimic the kinds of random thoughts we carry with us in every given situation.

Theatre:
I nurtured a passionate hatred for King Lear over many years but then saw a recording of a Shakespeare production in Central Park with James Earl Jones in the title role and finally realised what others found so profound (if you're not careful old age is index linked to a loss in dignity and your kids will never treat you with the respect you think you deserve) which went some way to showing that our impression of some plays, whoever the author might be, is always affected by the quality of the version we're subjected to.

TV:
Much like film, my initial reaction to television series and television people doesn't tend to change that much and when it does, it's because, at least in terms of long running series, the quality of the programme making has improved (see most of the Star Trek spin-offs in later series) (most) (not Voyager obviously). But to take a site-specific example, what I saw of Fawlty Towers years ago bored me senseless. Now having watched it again on dvd, I realise its genius. You have to be old enough to understand Basil's desperation and temper, I think.

"ugly"

Film Roger Ebert reviews Transformers 3:

"...is a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters and inane dialog. It provided me with one of the more unpleasant experiences I've had at the movies. [...] Note: Bay is said to have tried to improve the characteristic light level of 3D. In my screening, it was as dim as usual. "

The death of narrative cinema continues unabated.

in the hands of someone who didn't care for it

Film Mark Kermode reviews Transformers 3:



Here's the more visual opinion he mentioned:



From the moment in the first film when it became apparent Bumblebee wasn't to be a Beetle but a Camaro, I knew that one of my favourite franchises was in the hands of someone who didn't care for it or understand it and that kids wouldn't be getting the films they deserved.

"It’s not a reboot."

Comics I've been watching with distanced interest and not a little entertainment DC Comics's plans to relaunch their entire publishing line in September. Given, from what I gather speaking to clerks in comic shops, the tumbling sales in comic books in general, this feels very much like the kind of action a high street chain going into administration takes, closing a bunch of stores (in this case comics titles like Secret Six) and refitting the rest in hopes of brining in a new audience (HMV ditching music in favour of games and games zones for kids to play them in).

DC have been keen to stress this isn't a reboot, even though the continuity and mythology of many of the characters is being rewritten, whole storylines are being ditched and while on the one hand they're clearly trying not to make comics fans feel as though they've wasted their life reading years and years of stories which now don't matter in relation to their favourite character on the other that's exactly what it feels like.  Fans of Star Wars can certainly relate to this kind of slash and burn approach to continuity especially readers of Karen Traviss's clone trooper novels which she famously stopped writing when the animated series rendered them null and void.

In an attempt to reassure fans and comics shops, DC Comics have put out an FAQ which is being carried by a number of sites finally detailing their thinking behind the whatever it is and stressing once again that it isn't a reboot despite all of the evidence in everything else they write to the contrary:

"Why not call it a reboot?

It’s not a reboot. A reboot is typically a restart of the story or character that jettisons away everything that happened previously.

This is a new beginning which builds off the best of the past. For the stories launching as new #1s in September, we have carefully hand-selected the most powerful and pertinent moments in these characters’ lives and stories to remain in the mythology and lore. And then we’ve asked the best creators in the industry to modernize, update and enhance the books with new and exciting tales. The result is that we retained the good stuff, and then make it better.

This having already said earlier:

"With all of the titles starting at #1, our creative teams have the ability to take a more modern approach – not only with each character, but with how the characters interact with one another and the universe as a whole, and focus on the earlier part of the careers of each of our iconic characters. A time when they didn’t have as much experience defeating all their nemeses. A time when they weren’t as sure of their abilities. A time when they haven’t saved the world countless times. It’s this period that is rich with creative opportunity as we show why these characters are so amazing, so iconic and so special."

It's the kind of repetitious, circular logic Ed Milliband would be proud of and the problem is, like the high street stores which refit and relaunch, it's doomed to failure because even though they didn't use the shop the last thing they want is for it to change.  People like the reassurance of good old Superman or HMV being there even if in not reading the comic or visiting the shop they're the exact reason why it's failing.

While there's some curiosity, from what I read all this is doing is cheesing off the core audience, many of whom are talking about dropping well loved titles and catching up on everything they've previously missed from the old regime.  You mark my words, in a couple of years if not sooner, this reboot will be retconned away by another universe width event written by Grant Morrison with Crisis in the title.