Sport There we go again, another multi-sport event put t' bed. When the London Olympics completed I wrote this lengthy obituary, something which I don't propose to do for the Glasgow Commonwealth Games. My sentiments aren't that different. My favourite wins are still those in which the athlete was surprised by their success, which notably happened in the race events as they pushed on ahead of the Australians and Jamaicans. My enmity towards Gary Linekar as a presentational force remains undiminished. As exciting nights of competition drew to a close in the pool or on the track, he was always there at the end to suck the atmosphere from the screen like the televisual equivalent of the DJ playing St Elmos Fire at my 18th birthday party (which to be fair I did select) clearing the dance floor.
Once again I woke up this morning not really knowing what to do with myself, not having a whole day's worth of sport to navigate, chasing vicarious achievement for the home nations. The BBC Sport app on my iPad whose schedule has been invaluable for the past week and a half has already updated, replacing much of the Games coverage with a live blog of the football transfer window day. Mostly I've been watching the World War I commemoration services which have been a sobering contrast, though thanks to the iPlayer I do plan to catch up on a couple of events I missed even though I know the result, Laura Trott's gold in the cycling points notably and the rhythmic gymnastics. That's my other main "takeaway" from these Games, a new appreciation for gymnastics.
Social media's been strange during the Games. During the Olympics, the Olympics was the subject. But the majority of the people I follow have generally got on with their lives, barely mentioned these Games even when the same athletes they were so very excited about last time were competing. Even on Bolt nights. I didn't see much outright hostility, other than during the closing ceremony which was as messy as closing ceremonies tend to be and, rightly, over the number of Commonwealth countries which have deplorable anti-LGBT laws often in places where equality has been fought for a won for other reasons. I still tweeted away, especially during our unsuccessful netball campaign but even more than usual it was like texting into a vacuum. The interaction which made the Olympics generally wasn't there.
So yes, another multi-sport event put to bed. Doctor Who's back in a couple of weeks with all the chaos and mayhem inherent in that, already beginning to swirl thanks to the leaks, the cinema release of the first episode, the usual hullabaloo. As always I make my usual promise to myself to try to follow some of these sports between Games but I don't know. Will I choose whatever's being shown on the red button (where so many of these sports end up) rather than watch a film? We'll see. I would like to revisit Glasgow now in the wake of the games. The couple of hours I spent there on a coach trip a decade ago clearly wasn't long enough. I think I'll leave it until some of the buzz has died down though. Except if it's anything like Manchester, that could take quite some time...
The Films I've Watched This Year #28
Film Idling the other evening between Commonwealth Games events I typed "opening ceremony" into Youtube. As well as discovering the Olympics channels archives whole matches and sessions from the London games after clicking on full coverage of the Danny Boyle spectacular, I found a wealth of similar events from across the world both on their own associative channels and the less official. I expect if you're the kind of person I am, you could become quite addicted to discovering the introductory evening of the Asian Games in Doha in 2006 or Barcelona 1992.
Presumably this was a valuable resource for Boyle and co and for David Zolkwer, the creative director of the Glasgow 2014 ceremony (who's primary decision must have been "How early do with deploy Barrowman?"). Having seen enough of them live, there's clearly going to be a genre-like aspect to them, similar themes and ideas which appear in all of them beyond the necessary. Many is the history of the nation we've seen inscribed through modern dance, the legendary rock singer making a cameo appearance. Boyle and Zolkwer included these elements but with a twist. Wonder what we'll get tomorrow night.
Running with Scissors
Noah
As Charlie "Ultraculture" Lyne's otherwise exemplary review of the dvd in today's Guardian demonstrates, like Bee Season, The Juror and August Rush before it, Noah is one of those films which if you're tasked with describing it to a friend who hasn't had the pleasure makes you sound completely mad. I've tried. I got as far as "there are these angels which have been banished to Earth and become Rock Lords" before I realised that I was beginning to disbelieve exactly what I'd seen, even though I had in fact seen it. But unlike those three spectaculars, but like Darren Aronofsky's equally bonkers The Fountain, it's a film I want to see again.
Partly it's because for all its run time and epic scale, it's a fairly simplistic story that looks backwards to the biblical epics of old. Man is tasked by his God to build what must be a dimensionally transcendental boat in order to save all of nature from flood which is about the wash the smear of the humanity from the Earth, The smear doesn't like the idea and wants in, but the flood comes before they can do much about it. Then Noah's handed a series of choices which challenge his faith in the Father, his family and a few other fs and if you paid attention in RE at school you know the rest.
The photography is remarkable. Pulling everything from renaissance paintings to Ralph Bakshi animations to indeed the London 2012 opening ceremony there are moments of both transcendental beauty and horror. Next time I see a Andrew Graham Dixon figure who may even be Andrew Graham Dixon remarking on how cinematic a Hieronymus Bosch painting is, I'll be able to nod sagely because now I've seen it filmed. Probably a bit spoilery but the shot of the last vestiges of humanity clinging to a rock are imprinted now. I don't think I've seen anything quite so beautiful and hopeless in film before.
What's also gratifying is the how the film bothers to take a view on God within the narrative. All too often biblical epics in an attempt to provide inclusivity prevaricate on the existence of a creator, often undermining the narrative. Noah's quite clear on this. Within this setting God exists. It's source material says so, and so the film does too. This frees Aronofsky up to explore the nature of faith and see above. When the various miracles happen, when the flood comes, there's no doubt as to the cause. Given the amount of religion there is in the film, I'm astonished as to why anyone with faith could object.
Where Aronofsky cleverly leaves some ambiguity is as to when or where this is happening. There are sequences which could imply that what we're seeing is happening in the far future or some alternative reality or the kind of realm of legends inhabited by Camelot, Star Wars, Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. He also embraces the theological theory that physics and natural selection could be the tools with which God created the heavens and the earth, that the seven days are as much about poetry and storytelling as the literal truth of the kind which leads to "museums" about creationism. Perhaps that's why.
I began blogging because I did.
About I began blogging because I did. I've written lengthy rationalisations all over the place but in the end they come down to because it seemed like a good idea at the time and no one else in Liverpool seemed to be doing it (though as I found out a couple of years later there were a couple) (Imperial Doughnut).
Partly it provided some structure to the day having something to do at bedtime. I was only able to get online for about three hours after 9pm at night due to a family agreement that we'd get the internet so long as I didn't dial-up during the prime time for phone calls and BT surftime was limited to evenings and weekends anyway.
I've now been doing it for a third of my life. It's at the stage where ending it is very tempting but self defeating. I'm still getting plenty of opportunities because of the blog, and it provides a purpose when purpose is otherwise lacking. I wish I hadn't felt quite so isolated right at the beginning, when I was apparently part of a scene and didn't properly know.
Fennel tea please.
[context]
Partly it provided some structure to the day having something to do at bedtime. I was only able to get online for about three hours after 9pm at night due to a family agreement that we'd get the internet so long as I didn't dial-up during the prime time for phone calls and BT surftime was limited to evenings and weekends anyway.
I've now been doing it for a third of my life. It's at the stage where ending it is very tempting but self defeating. I'm still getting plenty of opportunities because of the blog, and it provides a purpose when purpose is otherwise lacking. I wish I hadn't felt quite so isolated right at the beginning, when I was apparently part of a scene and didn't properly know.
Fennel tea please.
[context]
Bit Touching?
Music Looks like MKS are recording again, whatever that means. Through the magic of Twitter and Keisha retweeting things we have this:
This Instagram featuring music which sounds new though its vintage isn't clear and ...
Can we get together properly this time? Please?
Harmonies harmonies harmonies today with @siobhandonaghy @MutyaBuena @keisha_buchanan bring on tomorrow's sesh!
— One Bit (@onebitmusic) July 31, 2014
This Instagram featuring music which sounds new though its vintage isn't clear and ...
Just a normal convo this morning with Mutya lol http://t.co/XDvUyXm8P1
— Keisha Buchanan (@keisha_buchanan) July 31, 2014
Can we get together properly this time? Please?
The Feeling Listless Soundtrack 1.0:
Stray Thoughts.
Written by Eleanor McEvoy
[from: 'Eleanor McEvoy', Geffen, 1997]
Music I lost my mobile phone on the train to work this morning. I’d moved it into my fleece pocket in case it rang so that I could hear it and as I alighted at the station I felt into my pocket for my season ticket and realised the phone wasn’t there. I dashed back onto the train to where I was sitting and it wasn’t on the seat and the lady who was sitting there wasn’t too forthcoming as she read the newspaper I’d left on the table. I was distraught. It felt like I’d lost a part of my life – as though there was a gap in my mind somehow.
On the platform I ran to the stationmaster. No one had handed it in. Then it occurred to me – I knew the number. He drew out his phone and I dialed the number. I listened. It rang. And rang. Then my own voice spoke, my answering service like a plea in the darkness ‘Hi! It’s Stuart. You know what to do…’
Where was it? Who had it?
I headed into work, stopping off at a telephone kiosk on the way to call the number again. It rang again, but less than last time. I met a former manager. We chatted on the walk up to work. I managed to keep the conversation going but all I could think about was the phone.
In work I took the nearest phone and called the number again. By this time, my hands were shaking. Someone answered.
‘Hello?’ I said. ‘I think I lost this phone, and you’ve picked it up.’
‘Actually,’ said the voice, ‘I’m the guard on the train – your phone was handed in by an elderly couple.’ I remembered them, sitting opposite me, his cloth cap, her bright yellow coat. I’ll never say anything bad about pensioners again.
The guard sent the phone back to Lime Street on the next train and I picked it up tonight, offering the somewhat appropriate password, ‘Thomas The Tank Engine’. When it was back in my hands, I kissed it lightly. I’ll never lose my phone again.
Something I neglected to mention. This is the day that everyone decided to call my mobile phone. Which was sitting in the lost property office at Lime Street Station. So everyone who called, from my Mum and Dad, to my friend and his friend spoke to the old gentleman in the lost property office, bewildering all of them with his gruff voice and tales of my lost phone. Apparently when my Mum called later on to find out when they close (yes, that’s right) he sounded as though he was about to throw it under the rails if anyone rang again…. Incidentally my ringer is ‘Enola Gay’ by OMD – I hope he’s never been in a war …. [Originally posted 28th December 2001].
[Commentary: I think at this point I was just plucking out any old posts to go with the tracks, unless the above is suppose to constitute "stray thoughts". Certainly actually having Enola Gay as the track here would seem to be more apt. This is the first Spotify embed. Sorry. The version on Youtube is awful. The version on the original mix cd was the b-side to McEvoy's Apologise single and acapella. Imagine this without the bagpipes, essentially.
The anecdote is entirely true and as a result I still have the telephone number of a public telephone box on Oxford Road in Manchester stored on my sim card. I'd call it now and then for fun at night to see if anyone answered and now and then someone did. I always remember the glee of answering a ringing call box and the people who answered always seemed amazed and delighted. Haven't tried it in a while. Such things have lost their novelty.]
My first three blog posts.
About A Twitter conversation which led to this post at Mike's blog about longevity has reminded me that I need to do something about my archives which for the past few years have seemed a bit misleading because the first three posts from 2000 are from the pre-feeling listless days. So I'm going to put them into draft and post their content here instead. Here then is my first attempt at a blog:
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Published on 19/11/2000:
Before getting myself ‘on-line’ I hadn’t realised actually how difficult it is to build a website. I mean you visit the web café at your local library or a Cyber-café, and you visit these sites and just feel yourself yawning at how mediocre they all seem. Until you actually try and do it yourself. So you’ve got a modem. Yes. And you’ve got an idea. Yes. Have you got the software? Well I’ve Word 2000. (pause) Not an ideal choice, but since you don’t want to fork out £400 for Dreamweaver, it’ll have to do. Have you got any web space. About 10 meg. (pause) Really. You’ll have to be a bit frugal. So not photo galleries. Won’t need them. What’s your idea? It seems a lot of unusual things happen to normal people like me, but these get lost eventually. I think it would be great if people had somewhere to send them so everyone can read them. (pause) O.K. A bit odd, and slightly new age, but it might be fun. What now? Well go and create the thing. Right. (four weeks later) Finished. Better get it uploaded to the ftp site . . The what? And so it goes on). I’ve got nothing but admiration for everyone now. So don’t worry, the site will improve. I just thought it important to start collecting stories now. So why haven’t you clicked on the menu yet?
Published on 07/12/2000:
The panto season is in full swing. A quick glance of the What’s On brochures presents night after night of glimmering entertainment. At the Stafford Gatehouse, Hinge & Bracket are Queen Rowena Rat and Fairy Maybelle in ‘Dick Wittington (and his amazing cat)’ also featuring Lance from Neighbours as the eponymous Dick. At The Tameside Hippodrome we have the Gladiator, Hunter as Aladdin in ‘The Fourth Protocol’ (just kidding) with Irene from Home and Away as the Genie of the Ring and Frank Williams as Widow Twanky (you know, the Vicar from ‘Dad’s Army’. The Regent Theatre of Stoke-on-Trent pays host to the double decker pleasures of Russ Abbot as Doctor Dolittle and Paul Nicholas (of Just Good Friends fame) in ‘Peter Pan’. But perhaps the cream of the crop (not counting of course Julie Goodyear as the queen in ‘Snow White’ at the Manchester Opera House) is Aladdin at the Crew Lycium, offering such luminaries as TV’s Otis the Aardvark, Rod Jane and indeed Freddy (although not seemingly the original Freddy (oh Bunny), Greg Donaldson (you know THE BILL’s DC Tom Proctor), Emma Steadman (Bruce’s dolly dealer) and the unforgettable Hugo Myatt.
Published on 12/12/2000:
It’s Christmas, you know. Well almost. When I was growing up, certain things would flag it for me. At school the nativity play, then the carol concerts. Then there would be Christmas Fair at school. Then the Christmas Radio Time. Well at least that’s still around, even if its given into rampant commercialism, what with Harry Potter on the cover and everything – not that Santa in his big red Coca-Cola hood wasn’t an rampant ad for soft drinks of course. So without giving too much away (in case anyone reading uses the TV schedules as a tradition as well), what broad strokes have we to look forward in the coming weeks. I think the general consensus amongst the channels is ‘Another chance to see . . .’ which is a polite way of saying ‘We’re stuffing the channel with repeats because you’ll watch them anyway . . .’ At the proper millennium there also seems to be a hell of a lot of costume dramas around. I mean more than usual . . . should that have happened last year?
----------
That's better.
----------
Published on 19/11/2000:
Before getting myself ‘on-line’ I hadn’t realised actually how difficult it is to build a website. I mean you visit the web café at your local library or a Cyber-café, and you visit these sites and just feel yourself yawning at how mediocre they all seem. Until you actually try and do it yourself. So you’ve got a modem. Yes. And you’ve got an idea. Yes. Have you got the software? Well I’ve Word 2000. (pause) Not an ideal choice, but since you don’t want to fork out £400 for Dreamweaver, it’ll have to do. Have you got any web space. About 10 meg. (pause) Really. You’ll have to be a bit frugal. So not photo galleries. Won’t need them. What’s your idea? It seems a lot of unusual things happen to normal people like me, but these get lost eventually. I think it would be great if people had somewhere to send them so everyone can read them. (pause) O.K. A bit odd, and slightly new age, but it might be fun. What now? Well go and create the thing. Right. (four weeks later) Finished. Better get it uploaded to the ftp site . . The what? And so it goes on). I’ve got nothing but admiration for everyone now. So don’t worry, the site will improve. I just thought it important to start collecting stories now. So why haven’t you clicked on the menu yet?
Published on 07/12/2000:
The panto season is in full swing. A quick glance of the What’s On brochures presents night after night of glimmering entertainment. At the Stafford Gatehouse, Hinge & Bracket are Queen Rowena Rat and Fairy Maybelle in ‘Dick Wittington (and his amazing cat)’ also featuring Lance from Neighbours as the eponymous Dick. At The Tameside Hippodrome we have the Gladiator, Hunter as Aladdin in ‘The Fourth Protocol’ (just kidding) with Irene from Home and Away as the Genie of the Ring and Frank Williams as Widow Twanky (you know, the Vicar from ‘Dad’s Army’. The Regent Theatre of Stoke-on-Trent pays host to the double decker pleasures of Russ Abbot as Doctor Dolittle and Paul Nicholas (of Just Good Friends fame) in ‘Peter Pan’. But perhaps the cream of the crop (not counting of course Julie Goodyear as the queen in ‘Snow White’ at the Manchester Opera House) is Aladdin at the Crew Lycium, offering such luminaries as TV’s Otis the Aardvark, Rod Jane and indeed Freddy (although not seemingly the original Freddy (oh Bunny), Greg Donaldson (you know THE BILL’s DC Tom Proctor), Emma Steadman (Bruce’s dolly dealer) and the unforgettable Hugo Myatt.
Published on 12/12/2000:
It’s Christmas, you know. Well almost. When I was growing up, certain things would flag it for me. At school the nativity play, then the carol concerts. Then there would be Christmas Fair at school. Then the Christmas Radio Time. Well at least that’s still around, even if its given into rampant commercialism, what with Harry Potter on the cover and everything – not that Santa in his big red Coca-Cola hood wasn’t an rampant ad for soft drinks of course. So without giving too much away (in case anyone reading uses the TV schedules as a tradition as well), what broad strokes have we to look forward in the coming weeks. I think the general consensus amongst the channels is ‘Another chance to see . . .’ which is a polite way of saying ‘We’re stuffing the channel with repeats because you’ll watch them anyway . . .’ At the proper millennium there also seems to be a hell of a lot of costume dramas around. I mean more than usual . . . should that have happened last year?
----------
That's better.
Mark Ayres Live!
Music Having been watching sport, I entirely missed the BBC Radiophonic Workshop's set in Glasgow as part of the BBC at the Quay festival. Luckily it's just been uploaded to the BBC iPlayer for us all to enjoy for the next three weeks. Click here. That's not all, BBC at the Quay has its own programme page with three other concerts available including Capercaillie.
Flounce.
TV Vicki C-M fronts BBC Four's latest trailer offering acres of nostalgia for her Balderdash & Piffle days. However much I love Only Connect, that she hasn't found another presenter led documentary series to front is a tragedy. Something like a history of the press would be perfect.
No wonder they're called Everyman Cinemas.
Film The Metquarter will soon have a three (four) (for events) screen cinema built in, brought to us by Everyman Cinemas, the operators of the Screen on the Green, the new venue at Selfridges amongst others. New cinema, more cinemas are always good, or tend to always be a good thing and I was right with it (even though it's not showing anything that different to FACT or the Odeon) until the final quote in the Liverpool Confidential article:
Everyman says its mission is to create “a truly unique and memorable cinema experience that exceeds expectations and reaches the highest standards possible in quality, comfort and entertainment … where you can you enjoy a cinematic experience, swap your soft drink for a nice glass of red wine and a slice of freshly made pizza and where the cinema feels almost like a home from home”.Yes, sorry, but fuck that. One of the reasons I've stopped going to the cinema as much is because of assholes treating the place as "a home from home". If I want "a home" I'll stay "at home". Plus given the cinemas will have capacity of 325 seats, the screens won't be that much bigger than the one I'm watching the athletics on now. Though I will certainly give it a go and report back, especially if they have an PR freebies....
"to democratise theatre"
Theatre Having been wilfully trying to narrow my interests in the hopes of some sanity, I missed this, as John Wyver suggests, game changing article from Michael Billingham about filmed theatre:
"It's not quite the same as National Theatre Live, where cinemagoers vicariously attend a single performance. Digital's Ghosts, I'm told, was shot over three successive evenings during the show's run at the Trafalgar Studios. But, whatever the process, the result is to democratise theatre. It's not just that the performance can be seen worldwide. The key point is that everyone now has the best seat in the house."As ever there are some wilfully stupid comments from people who clearly live in London and already have access to this material and can't appreciate what it must be like for those of us everywhere else in the world who wouldn't otherwise. There is of course the extra ring of people who would also like to see blu-ray releases or streaming access to the NT Live material, now that it has been filmed and there are HD copies in the archive, but that's a different battle.
Conventional Twitter List.
TV In the idle moments between the sports in which I'm really interested (in other words the sports which I just have on in the background) (bowls) I've been wickering away at a Doctor Who related twitter list, attempting to create a kind of digital Doctor Who convention. You may find it useful.
https://twitter.com/feelinglistless/lists/doctor-who
Essentially it's everyone connected with the making of the programme, some fandom and the like including spin-off creators and so forth. Now I'm off to watch the Badminton.
https://twitter.com/feelinglistless/lists/doctor-who
Essentially it's everyone connected with the making of the programme, some fandom and the like including spin-off creators and so forth. Now I'm off to watch the Badminton.
Wonder Woman's current representative.
Film Might as well just embed a tweet from the several hundred:
It's heavily, heavily photoshopped but Gal Gadot certainly looks the part and the costume is about as expected. This particular interpretation of DC utilises a more subdued colour scheme (see Man of Steel) and although this is no way how I wished Wonder Woman was appearing on screen for the first time, at least in terms of this photograph it could have been much, much worse.
Apart from Doctor Who which largely enjoys being a single story across two thousand fictional years and fifty actual, all franchise characters are imagined and reimagined, interpreted and reinterpreted and this is Zack Snyder and the film version of DC's version and hopefully (even though on the strength of Man of Steel I'm not positive) the script will serve her well.
This is the new Wonder Woman http://t.co/4vhzRIT5RW pic.twitter.com/oZ0MoLNtRj
— The Verge (@verge) July 26, 2014
It's heavily, heavily photoshopped but Gal Gadot certainly looks the part and the costume is about as expected. This particular interpretation of DC utilises a more subdued colour scheme (see Man of Steel) and although this is no way how I wished Wonder Woman was appearing on screen for the first time, at least in terms of this photograph it could have been much, much worse.
Apart from Doctor Who which largely enjoys being a single story across two thousand fictional years and fifty actual, all franchise characters are imagined and reimagined, interpreted and reinterpreted and this is Zack Snyder and the film version of DC's version and hopefully (even though on the strength of Man of Steel I'm not positive) the script will serve her well.
The Films I've Watched This Year #27
Film It's the Commonwealth Games. Just completed watching the Australia vs England pool match which with my miniscule understanding of Netball, I thought would see us slaughtered but ended up being a thrilling match that ended with a fumble from Jo Harten, a goal shooter who until that point had managed to get the ball into the net with great accuracy. But I was out of my seat. I was screaming. I was more excited about this netball group match as I was for the whole of the football World Cup, perhaps because I can see the skill, precision and tactics as the ball's passed with such rapidity across the court in a way which simply doesn't seem as athletic, as kinetic when men are kicking a ball around a pitch. Plus the whole thing is over in an hour or so with useful breaks every fifteen minutes.
Her
The Wolf of Wall Street
20 Feet From Stardom
Violet & Daisy
Her is a difficult film to watch in isolation if you've any idea of its history. Apart from its similarities to Electric Dreams (of which this is, as I suspected, essentially updated homage with Miles in love with the computer rather than his neighbour) but the fact that Samantha Morton, present throughout shooting was replaced with Scarlett Johansson. It's to Spike Jonze's fantasy romance and Johansson's credit that I did eventually manage to largely put this to one side, but there were still moments when I thought, how would Morton have played this? What the Morton line like that Joaquin Phoenix is reacting to here? What did Morton not do that Johansson is? Was it simply that Johansson's the bigger name and they were looking for a wider audience, was this a studio decision?
Presumably I'm not the first to say this, but however heartfelt and entertaining 20 Feet From Stardom is, in no sense should it have beaten The Act of Killing to an oscar. It's oranges and lemons, of course, comparing a premium rate Friday night BBC Four music documentary (where this will surely end up) with a historically rich investigation into the Indonesian genocide, the wrongs done to Darlene Love by Phil Spector barely on the scale to the mass killings by the awful pen portrayed in Oppenheimer's film. But like Secret Voices of Hollywood, in cultural terms this is still an important story as the people that are the aural scaffold of some of our favourite musical moments are finally amplified. Plus it managed to make me think warmly about Sting again for the first time in a while, which is quite an achievement.
Violet & Daisy's been unloved, not granted a theatrical release here, just 23% on Rotten Tomatoes but I do think it's rather better than all that, even if I also think A O Scott's NYT review probably gets the measure of it. Back in the 90s, this is just the sort of low budget, indie piece which appeared on the art house circuit and I'd end up blundering into at The Hyde Park in Leeds for the nine o'clock showing (just £1.50 on a Monday), in which genre characters would play off against each other in limited settings, where the filmmaker isn't trying to say anything especially new or important, especially since he's clearly likes French cinema a lot, but doesn't do anything especially wrong (cf, Living in Oblivion, Denise Calls Up, Mute Witness).
The advertising didn't really help, throwing together all of the otherwise minimal action sequences even though that's not really the genre its aiming for (and couldn't afford to be if it wanted). There are Tarantino overtones, but to criticise director Geoffrey Fletcher for offering a direct homage to Pulp Fiction almost twenty years after release while venerating Quentin for borrowing extensively from John Woo early in his career simply isn't unfair. Plus in exploitation terms having Rory Gilmore and pre-Hanna Saoirse Ronan as hitgirls facing off Tony Soprano is bang on. Orphan Black fans might also like to know this features an early appearance for Tatiana Maslany in which she doesn't have anything much to do but does it very well. My film of the week.
He's back and it's a pound!
TV Big Finish has reached its fifteenth anniversary and to celebrate they're providing a series of offers which includes, today, the first seminal series of Eighth Doctor stories, the very stories which turned me into a Doctor Who fan, for a pound each:
"We're making another free story available as a download today - the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard tale Living Legend, originally part of a cover-disc on Doctor Who Monthly. We'd like to thank Tom Spilsbury and all at Doctor Who Monthly for their agreement on this.Links to the plays are available at the Big Finish post and if you're a fan of the new series at least I'd urge you to hand over your four pounds. I wrote about Storm Warning here last year, but I'd suggest you listen to it first before wallowing in my nostalgia for it. "TARDIS manual, TARDIS manual, TARDIS manual..."
Also available as downloads for £1 each are the first four Eighth Doctor stories: Storm Warning, The Sword of Orion, The Stones of Venice and Minuet in Hell, and then two of his adventures from later in the range for £5 each on CD or Download - Time Works and Memory Lane."
The Feeling Listless Soundtrack 1.0: Minneapolis #2
[from: 'Eroica: Piano Improvisions', Virgin, 1990]
Music When I was a student (mid-nineties) I knew two things. The first was that by the year 2000 my life would be complete. The second was that club music in all it's forms was the work of the devil to draw the populace away from real music. And I pretty much kept that opinion for the rest of the decade. Then last year something strange happened. I was standing in record shop and the DJ began to play 'GrooveJet' by Spiller featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Here was a record almost designed to talk me around to the Ibiza way of thinking. A dance record with a good lyric and melody of sorts which also had the kind of structure I'd never heard before. I walked to the counter and bought the thing straight away - and listened to it five times as soon as I was home.
My distrust of dance music still exists, much of it seeming too easy for words. There are the exceptions - the crossover music which I now feel myself not only appreciating but going positively radio gaga over. I'm becoming particular impressed by R&B. During my long and delayed train journey home tonight, I was welcome of the company of Mary J Blige and her 1997 album, 'share my world'. I should not like this album. I mean it features R Kelly for god's sake. But here I am, listening to it again whilst I write this. I want to gas on about her vocal range (extraordinary) or the production (as you'd expect, with glimpses of genius) And as I 'groove' along to the track 'round and round' I've come to a startling conclusion, and believe me, this is something of a revelation...there isn't one type of music I don't like....
Actually that may not be true. I'd run a mile from Kenny Rogers, James Galway and in fact most people with beards. And I'll draw the line at boy bands. And Atomic Kitten (mention number three on this weblog - six to go possibly). But when it comes to everything else, I think I can - if not rave - at least understand. There isn't probably anything better at one o'clock in the morning having had many beers than throwing your weight around S Club 7's 'Reach for the Stars'. The rush of a Slipnot concert will be extreme. And quiet stylings of Vangelis lead you into believing that a calmer world is possible. The only boundary in music should be quality... [1st September 2001]
[Commentary: At the point when this was written, the blog was only two months old and many, many years before the invention of Spotify when and the exponential increase in the availability of music increased exponentially. As I've glanced through these old selections and choices, it's been interesting to me just how much my tastes haven't changed. In the main I still do only listen to female voices and soundtrack albums, with classical music and world music falling between the cracks and odd bits of pop music depending on who it is. Even with all of music available that's still where I head off to. Perhaps some folk and jazz here and there, but generally yes, nothing much has changed. I'm listening to the Mary J Blige album as I type, probably for the first time since I wrote the above and well, yes, it's fine and I can necessarily disagree with most of what's above but I'll still end up listening to Adele when I'm writing Doctor Who reviews.
What's missing from the above is that about this time I was commuting to Manchester to the RBS call centre and had decided to expand my cultural outlook by reading Rolling Stone. This was before it still had large pages but way, way past its heyday, featuring the "girls" from American Pie on the cover. I remember finding the newsier items far more interesting than the music in the end, so it was probably ultimately my entry drug into US politics and rabidly following the presidential campaigns. Mainly it was a way of discovering what was happening in US culture when most of it was still inaccessible and not just a click away. Now it's entirely possible to follow the Chris Christie scandal on a minute-by-minute basis or listen to whatever's at no 100 in the Billboard Hot 100 without having to stay up until two in the morning for Casey Kasem and America's Top 10.]
Support.
Sport As a fair weather friend of sport, I'm always grasping around for who to support whenever there are athletes or teams which aren't British or English or otherwise reveal my nationalistic tendencies. After many years of study, I've finally decided on the following policy. Essentially, it's supporting the closest land mass.
(1) City. So Liverpool or if it's football Everton. Liverpudlian athletes if there's a group of people from the national team.
(2) County. Merseyside.
(3) Region. North-West for me. Unless it's Manchester United in which case you support whichever team is playing them.
(4) Country. England.
(5) Sovereign Nation - so during these Commonwealth Games, if it's Wales versus someone else, support Wales. Though I'll support Scotland over Wales because of my surname. Such things are very complicated.
(6) Continent. Europe.
(7) Hemisphere. Which is the Western Hemisphere or Northern Hemisphere for me, depending, which makes it ok to support the Americans.
(8) Planet. Just in case.
Which is fine. Except I was cheering Scotland's Hannah Miley earlier against the English swimmer. Also it becomes trickier if both nations are from the same continent at which point the whole thing becomes a nonsense as I choose France over Germany or Japan over China for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes I'll invoke a "commonwealth" rule. Oh and underdogs. Always support the underdogs.
(1) City. So Liverpool or if it's football Everton. Liverpudlian athletes if there's a group of people from the national team.
(2) County. Merseyside.
(3) Region. North-West for me. Unless it's Manchester United in which case you support whichever team is playing them.
(4) Country. England.
(5) Sovereign Nation - so during these Commonwealth Games, if it's Wales versus someone else, support Wales. Though I'll support Scotland over Wales because of my surname. Such things are very complicated.
(6) Continent. Europe.
(7) Hemisphere. Which is the Western Hemisphere or Northern Hemisphere for me, depending, which makes it ok to support the Americans.
(8) Planet. Just in case.
Which is fine. Except I was cheering Scotland's Hannah Miley earlier against the English swimmer. Also it becomes trickier if both nations are from the same continent at which point the whole thing becomes a nonsense as I choose France over Germany or Japan over China for arbitrary reasons. Sometimes I'll invoke a "commonwealth" rule. Oh and underdogs. Always support the underdogs.
Liverpool Biennal 2014:
The Bluecoat.
Art Here’s how I met Whistler’s mother. It’s Paris in 2001 (isn’t it always) and I’m visiting the Musee d’Orsay having entirely forgotten in the heat and having seen about a dozen other paintings of world importance that Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 is part of its collection too. Having completely destroyed my feet the day before doing the Doctor Who thing on the Eiffel Tower, I needed to rest my pins many times during that museum visit and having entered yet another small, packed room, noticed an empty seat and quickly sat down or as quickly as my feet would allow, sat down. After surreptitiously taking a drink of water, I glanced around and there she was, sitting, literally, on the wall to the side of me mirroring the position of the gallery bench, almost as though we were in audience.
The Musee d’Orsay in Paris is the kind of institution which has such an abundance of paintings of world importance that what would be put in the “average” position in a regional gallery is the sort of thing which would otherwise be given its own room in a regional gallery so here she was on a side wall, only really visible from this seat the visitor’s head cocked to the side. For minutes I sit scrutinising, dodging other tourists as they stand in the tiny space between the bench and the wall or almost in my lap trying to get the decent look which is only really possible from this position on this bench. Eventually my feet begin working again and I totter onward having become rather blasé about the occasion, which is just what happens when you’ve just recently seen about a dozen other paintings of world importance.
All of which makes it deeply unfair of me to say that the best artist I’ve seen so far at this Biennial is James McNeill Whistler because he’s James McNeill Whistler. But James McNeill Whistler is the best artist I’ve seen so far at this Biennial and it’s important to say at the outset that the existence of this exhibition is a blessing. As I have discussed and over-discussed at length elsewhere, Liverpool tends to be overwhelmed with exhibitions of post 1900 art, most often post-WWII art so the chance to see work which was created in the middle of the century before last outside of a permanent collection display, is, yes, a blessing. That in the unusual setting of the Bluecoat, which usually offers the most contemporary of contemporary art and exists due to the curatorial decision of Liverpool Biennial usually considered one of the most contemporary of festival is a brill curiosity.
But Whistler was a contemporary artist himself when the work was originally created and the big theme of the exhibition is justification. One room dedicates itself to the libel trial in which the painter sued the art critic (etc) John Ruskin, who’d taken umbrage at Whistler’s impressionistic artistic style and one painting in particular saying that he “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.” Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is daring stuff and you can see that Ruskin, and Punch who also took a dislike to Whistler judging by the many cartoons included in the exhibition unable to cope with the idea that more than one artistic tradition could co-exist, that this cloudy blue surface could have the same emotional depth and poetry as the fine detail of a pre-Raphaelite scene.
Whistler (spoiler) won his trial due to Ruskin not being able to defend himself and so unable to provide the necessary defence, he did at least do art history the favour of putting the artist on the back foot and forcing him to justify his existence or at least the paintings that sustained his existence. In an exchange from the trial, he’s asked by his inquisitor exactly why as per Ruskin, The Falling Rocket, "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" to which Whistler replies "No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime” thereby explaining for that time onward the worth of painting and sculpture which are about thought rather than action or at least in which on balance the ratio tips more towards the former than the latter.
Anyone who visits as many exhibitions as I do will hopefully agree with me that we see a lot of crap art, utter, abject rubbish that not even a well worded explanatory label can morally justify. It’s a hazard of “culture” as defined by the section on The Guardian’s website that there’ll be a largish percentage of dreck, because there has to be, because “culture” thrives on mistakes. But, it could be argued, there might be less of it if artists were forced into a similar position as Whistler, of having to stand behind the work, of being able to not just explain what it means (assuming they can be bothered) but justifying what it’s doing in the world and how they hope it adds to human experience. In other words, why don’t artists (or indeed curators) have to face the same scrutiny and politicians and sports people?
The other theme of the exhibition is reproduction. Set designer Olivia de Monceau has been tasked with recreating Blue and Silver: Screen with Old Battersea Bridge (original at Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow) and a free-standing cross section of one wall of Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (original at the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.). The painting featured in the Biennial booklet, The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre appears in the form of a digital print on Foamex (because the notion of borrowing the original from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco with the connected insurance costs would presumably be prohibitive) and Ruta Staseviciute's recreation of Arrangement in Black (The Lady in the Yellow Buskin) (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The display also contains a number of good etchings including the atmospheric Two Doorways from his Venice set, with its mysterious figures in silhouette.
But arguably the best work in the exhibition is one of the smallest and a watercolour, one of the few occasions when the artist himself is directly present. Nocturne in Great and Gold – Piccadilly captures the metropolis at its most impressionistic, vehicles, buildings and people lost in the fog. Like Turner, like the Abstract Expressionists later, it’s a painting which initially appears indistinct but repays our time as the artist’s craft in suggesting details through apparently uncontrolled brush stokes, motioning towards emotional realism through the viewers memory of what it’s actually like to me in that kind of fog. Presumably the street scenes of Atkinson Grimshaw would have been more Ruskin’s sort of thing. But as I think we’ve somewhat forgotten ourselves now, it’s possible for both to co-exist.
Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock: 20 February 1885: Public Lecture (recording by Mr P Cock, 2014)
This is a lecture the artist gave at Prince's Hall, Piccadilly on as the title states, 20 February 1885. Here’s a transcript and here’s an essay by Oscar Wilde (who was in attendance) written in response. It’s featured in the exhibition in the form of an audio reading played through speakers in “The Vide” section of the Bluecoat, the concrete area just past the lockers and round the corner from the toilets and notice boards which is more often used for installation art. It’s not a video, of course, but I didn’t want to break format too much so I’m ushering this piece of audio into the project even though I’m not sure what’s primarily of the most importance, its existence as a thing or the content, Whistler’s words. There are also reproductions of those words on a coffee table in the space so I expect that’s the point.
Except I haven’t really had a chance to experience those words. When I arrived at 10:25, the recording hadn’t been turned on. I asked a volunteer about this and after I sat at the table, eventually someone arrived to go behind the scenes and begin the recording. The words played clearly from the wall mounted speakers, “It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before you, in the character of – The Preacher …” then a lift arrived with a friendly “doors opening”. A staff member walked out. Another lift. More people walking past. The other lift. Clatter. Folded up furniture being moved. Chatter. Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock: 20 February 1885: Public Lecture is being played in the second most trafficked area for humanity on the ground floor of the building besides the entrance hall.
Fairly quickly I picked up one of the transcriptions determined to read along and like the video pieces at other venues stick it out to the end. But Whistler is making an argument, essentially reading an essay, and that requires concentration, especially since the language is just slightly more arcane and alien to our ears, and it’s difficult to concentrate when life is happening all around. Of course this isn’t life’s fault. Life has every justification for doing whatever it is that it’s doing. But eventually I gave up not entirely sure what the point was and is in presenting the lecture in this manner. Headphones would limit the audience, but you could argue the audience for this is limited anyway, predicated as it is on a person sitting in a gallery space for half an hour, ad-hoc, listening to a lecture. Podcast?
The Musee d’Orsay in Paris is the kind of institution which has such an abundance of paintings of world importance that what would be put in the “average” position in a regional gallery is the sort of thing which would otherwise be given its own room in a regional gallery so here she was on a side wall, only really visible from this seat the visitor’s head cocked to the side. For minutes I sit scrutinising, dodging other tourists as they stand in the tiny space between the bench and the wall or almost in my lap trying to get the decent look which is only really possible from this position on this bench. Eventually my feet begin working again and I totter onward having become rather blasé about the occasion, which is just what happens when you’ve just recently seen about a dozen other paintings of world importance.
All of which makes it deeply unfair of me to say that the best artist I’ve seen so far at this Biennial is James McNeill Whistler because he’s James McNeill Whistler. But James McNeill Whistler is the best artist I’ve seen so far at this Biennial and it’s important to say at the outset that the existence of this exhibition is a blessing. As I have discussed and over-discussed at length elsewhere, Liverpool tends to be overwhelmed with exhibitions of post 1900 art, most often post-WWII art so the chance to see work which was created in the middle of the century before last outside of a permanent collection display, is, yes, a blessing. That in the unusual setting of the Bluecoat, which usually offers the most contemporary of contemporary art and exists due to the curatorial decision of Liverpool Biennial usually considered one of the most contemporary of festival is a brill curiosity.
But Whistler was a contemporary artist himself when the work was originally created and the big theme of the exhibition is justification. One room dedicates itself to the libel trial in which the painter sued the art critic (etc) John Ruskin, who’d taken umbrage at Whistler’s impressionistic artistic style and one painting in particular saying that he “never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.” Nocturne in Black and Gold – The Falling Rocket is daring stuff and you can see that Ruskin, and Punch who also took a dislike to Whistler judging by the many cartoons included in the exhibition unable to cope with the idea that more than one artistic tradition could co-exist, that this cloudy blue surface could have the same emotional depth and poetry as the fine detail of a pre-Raphaelite scene.
Whistler (spoiler) won his trial due to Ruskin not being able to defend himself and so unable to provide the necessary defence, he did at least do art history the favour of putting the artist on the back foot and forcing him to justify his existence or at least the paintings that sustained his existence. In an exchange from the trial, he’s asked by his inquisitor exactly why as per Ruskin, The Falling Rocket, "The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" to which Whistler replies "No, I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime” thereby explaining for that time onward the worth of painting and sculpture which are about thought rather than action or at least in which on balance the ratio tips more towards the former than the latter.
Anyone who visits as many exhibitions as I do will hopefully agree with me that we see a lot of crap art, utter, abject rubbish that not even a well worded explanatory label can morally justify. It’s a hazard of “culture” as defined by the section on The Guardian’s website that there’ll be a largish percentage of dreck, because there has to be, because “culture” thrives on mistakes. But, it could be argued, there might be less of it if artists were forced into a similar position as Whistler, of having to stand behind the work, of being able to not just explain what it means (assuming they can be bothered) but justifying what it’s doing in the world and how they hope it adds to human experience. In other words, why don’t artists (or indeed curators) have to face the same scrutiny and politicians and sports people?
The other theme of the exhibition is reproduction. Set designer Olivia de Monceau has been tasked with recreating Blue and Silver: Screen with Old Battersea Bridge (original at Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow) and a free-standing cross section of one wall of Harmony in Blue and Gold: The Peacock Room (original at the Freer Gallery of Art at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.). The painting featured in the Biennial booklet, The Gold Scab: Eruption in Frilthy Lucre appears in the form of a digital print on Foamex (because the notion of borrowing the original from the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco with the connected insurance costs would presumably be prohibitive) and Ruta Staseviciute's recreation of Arrangement in Black (The Lady in the Yellow Buskin) (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The display also contains a number of good etchings including the atmospheric Two Doorways from his Venice set, with its mysterious figures in silhouette.
But arguably the best work in the exhibition is one of the smallest and a watercolour, one of the few occasions when the artist himself is directly present. Nocturne in Great and Gold – Piccadilly captures the metropolis at its most impressionistic, vehicles, buildings and people lost in the fog. Like Turner, like the Abstract Expressionists later, it’s a painting which initially appears indistinct but repays our time as the artist’s craft in suggesting details through apparently uncontrolled brush stokes, motioning towards emotional realism through the viewers memory of what it’s actually like to me in that kind of fog. Presumably the street scenes of Atkinson Grimshaw would have been more Ruskin’s sort of thing. But as I think we’ve somewhat forgotten ourselves now, it’s possible for both to co-exist.
Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock: 20 February 1885: Public Lecture (recording by Mr P Cock, 2014)
This is a lecture the artist gave at Prince's Hall, Piccadilly on as the title states, 20 February 1885. Here’s a transcript and here’s an essay by Oscar Wilde (who was in attendance) written in response. It’s featured in the exhibition in the form of an audio reading played through speakers in “The Vide” section of the Bluecoat, the concrete area just past the lockers and round the corner from the toilets and notice boards which is more often used for installation art. It’s not a video, of course, but I didn’t want to break format too much so I’m ushering this piece of audio into the project even though I’m not sure what’s primarily of the most importance, its existence as a thing or the content, Whistler’s words. There are also reproductions of those words on a coffee table in the space so I expect that’s the point.
Except I haven’t really had a chance to experience those words. When I arrived at 10:25, the recording hadn’t been turned on. I asked a volunteer about this and after I sat at the table, eventually someone arrived to go behind the scenes and begin the recording. The words played clearly from the wall mounted speakers, “It is with great hesitation and much misgiving that I appear before you, in the character of – The Preacher …” then a lift arrived with a friendly “doors opening”. A staff member walked out. Another lift. More people walking past. The other lift. Clatter. Folded up furniture being moved. Chatter. Mr Whistler’s Ten O’Clock: 20 February 1885: Public Lecture is being played in the second most trafficked area for humanity on the ground floor of the building besides the entrance hall.
Fairly quickly I picked up one of the transcriptions determined to read along and like the video pieces at other venues stick it out to the end. But Whistler is making an argument, essentially reading an essay, and that requires concentration, especially since the language is just slightly more arcane and alien to our ears, and it’s difficult to concentrate when life is happening all around. Of course this isn’t life’s fault. Life has every justification for doing whatever it is that it’s doing. But eventually I gave up not entirely sure what the point was and is in presenting the lecture in this manner. Headphones would limit the audience, but you could argue the audience for this is limited anyway, predicated as it is on a person sitting in a gallery space for half an hour, ad-hoc, listening to a lecture. Podcast?
Cherbourg Cleaning.
Film For fans of this sort of thing, which is probably all of you, a short piece from Criterion about the restoration of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The videos features Agnes Varda and all the family, including Mathieu Demy, the French Andrew Collins it seems. Spoiler warning: it gives away the ending.
TODAYx.
Life Hello. I'm writing this from the future on the 26th September 2014 which is when I finally got around to writing about the TEDx Liverpool meeting which happened at the Everyman Theatre on this date.
I thought it would be a good idea to link to it.
Here it is.
Sorry it took so long, but I was waiting for all the videos of the various talks to be posted on YouTube and that took rather longer than I was expecting.
In case you're wondering, I did consider simply posting the whole thing in this past but since there's some retrospective stuff in there, it would be a severe disruption in the space/time continuum, probably.
Here it is again.
I thought it would be a good idea to link to it.
Here it is.
Sorry it took so long, but I was waiting for all the videos of the various talks to be posted on YouTube and that took rather longer than I was expecting.
In case you're wondering, I did consider simply posting the whole thing in this past but since there's some retrospective stuff in there, it would be a severe disruption in the space/time continuum, probably.
Here it is again.
Robot Ergon.
TV Robot Chicken have done Doctor Who and as is so often the case when they tackle anything outside Star Wars it's about as funny as a hernia (as I know from experience) making all the same mistakes as that stupid Extras thing with David Tennant of not actually referencing anything in particular from the show other than the relatively iconic stuff which wasn't even particularly amusing when Lenny Henry or French & Saunders did them decades ago. Oh and the obvious sense that they haven't watched the revival at all which makes them look even less relevant. Plus, Whizz Kid? Hello?
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