My Favourite Film of 1941.

Film The only occasion I saw Citizen Kane in an auditorium was in screen six of the then newly refurbished Odeon cinema on London Road in Liverpool.

For a period they decided they were "fanatical about film" and in order to somehow demonstrate this, they decided to run a series of repertory screenings during weekday afternoons and one week that included a print of Citizen Kane. My guess is it was on tour from the BFI although I can't easily find any evidence of this.

Having already watched the film a few times, I still wanted to see it projected and having enjoyed  The Blair Witch Project (despite the booing of fellow audience members) which had been presented in its correct aspect ratio was pretty hopeful Kane would receive the same treatment.

It wasn't. Soon as the film began with the top and bottom actually being project on the ceiling and floor of the screen with the middle of the image on the screen, I knew I was sunk.

There were about ten people in the screen (an audience which explains why these screenings were discontinued pretty quickly) and no one moved.

I did. I ran to the back of the screen and out the door but there was no one around and the long walk to the foyer would have meant missing a whole chunk of the film.

So I slunk back in my chair and watched it as is. At a certain point an usher did visit briefly but not long enough to notice that anything was wrong even as Orson Welles's artificially bald pate disappeared off the top of the screen. Greg Toland designed the look of Kane to highlight the ceilings. On this day it didn't matter.

Afterwards I went to the box office to complain. The person at the counter didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Just suggested I filled in a comments card, which I did with many forceful words, then asked to speak to the manager.

After explaining the business to the manager I was still met with a blank face. The manager who didn't understand anything of anything I was saying to them, of aspect ratios and matting and ceilings, said simply that it was "projected in that way because it was how the film had been supplied to them" and that was that. They did give me a refund, so there is that.

Fifteen years later (at least) (I don't quite remember when this incident happened), I wonder about the extent to which this has changed.

Apart from ITV and some of the minor freeview channels, films tend to be presented in their correct aspect ratio on television and in streaming services.  99.9% of the time this is also true of blu-ray or dvd (even to the point in some cases of preserving IMAX sequences and cutting between the two).

The Grand Budapest Hotel, a hugely popular film, even plays around with aspect ratios as it portrays different time periods.

How much has this educated audiences to aspect ratios and the importance thereof?

I don't know.  Kane's an old film and the academy ratio is rarely utilized in film now apart from in artsier cases.  Plus it requires the viewer to know which ratio a film was originally shot and edited in and even as such works are pillar boxed on widescreen televisions, do people really know how that should be replicated in cinema screenings?

I tend to be so attuned to this that I can usually tell if a film's been cropped for television to fit the 16:9 frame but it doesn't seem to bother others.  It's perplexing.

38 Maxine Peake

Theatre Let's begin at the ending or indeed further than the ending into the credits which include the following statement: "The text of HAMLET was created for the 2009 production starring Jude Law and directed by Michael Grandage which played London and New York".  Does this happen much?  It's certainly the first time I remember seeing a production in which, rather than the director and possibly actors taking a view on the text of the play themselves, effectively pulling something prepared earlier from the shelf.  To an extent, doesn't this mean that you're interpreting someone else's interpretation rather than Shakespeare's own words?

The statement appears on the Royal Exchange's own website and was presumably in the original programme, but deliberately ignoring such things before watching any production so as to preserve some surprises, I had spent the duration considering the bold textual choices of stage director Sarah Frankcom when in fact it's Michael Grandage's thought process which should be considered.  It's certainly made me retrospectively rethink my opinion on the production and the role of the actors and director.  Without having seen Grandage's production, how am I to know how much of what I've just seen, such as cutting Fortinbras, was down to the current director and how much is a simple replication of 2009?  Yes, I could go glance at some reviews, but one shouldn't really need to.

So it's to Grandage we look for the choice to shift "To Be Or Not To Be" far later in the play to just after the closet scene, making it a meditation on that act as much as Hamlet's own mortality, though chilling emphasis given on the latter due to the Prince brandishing the revolver which did the deed, weakly pressing it to his temple.  It's fine and I'd be interested to see how it fits in the original staging.  But this textual purist is also bound to say it's not what Shakespeare wrote and unbalances our understanding of his psychology at that moment and the extent to which his feigning madness and shifted off into something else, which is something I'm not sure this production ever really takes a view on.

The one big textual decision which can be attributed to Frankcom is also wrapped in the casting which is to regender a large number of roles to female, most prominently Polonia, Marcella, Rosencrantz and the Gravediggers with pronouns necessarily edited to compensate.  Sometimes a syllable is dropped so "gentleman" becomes "lady" and in one case an extra joke is added as Hamlet on first seeing the Gravedigger initially hails "Whose grave's this sirra?" without reaction before quickly changing it to "Whose grave's this madame?"  For the most part it's invisible and only now and then does it disrupt the rhythm of the pentameter but not the extent of creating too much of an imbalance, an imperfect if necessary solution.

The dynamics do change.  As with Julie Taymor's film of The Tempest, the connections between Polonia and her children reverse with Laertes becoming the favoured of the two, the relationship with Ophelia markedly resembling that between Lorelai and her mother in Gilmore Girls, especially during the embarkation scene which is set around a dinner table similar to the one which Rory's forced to eat at every Friday night.  The style of Polonia actress Gillian Bevan's hair even resembles Emily Gilmore actress Kelly Bishop.  Bevan's the standout of the production actually, dominating the stage, with the advise scene become a moment in which genuine wisdom is being imparted, albeit with Laertes forced to listen as a condition for receiving her credit card.

Although I've seen criticisms about the decision to not regender Hamlet too, but because Peake's blistering in the title role, suspension of disbelief is easy.  Aspects of the performance are problematic, with moments in which Peake is working against the text, or parodying its more masculine aspects, but for the most part its a study in grief, how someone has to deal with so many changes in the house within this foreshortened timescale.  There's a telling look from Peake when she's asked or more likely ordered to stay at Elsinore rather than return to college which shows that an escape plan has been snatched away, underscoring the notion that "Denmark's a prison".  Hamlet's being held against his will.

Nevertheless there is a sense in places that some decisions were never quite worked out in rehearsal in favour of the grander set pieces.  As well as whether Hamlet's actually mad or not, his relationship to Kate West's Ophelia's also poorly developed, the nunnery scene feeling very make-do and actually oddly rushed through.  Similarly his friendship with Horatio, so rich in other productions never quite gels.  This isn't a plea for some LGBT+ shading but the text calls for certain things and the performances don't quite rise to them.  Although it's also true that in the film version, the editing always favours Peake and so it's possible elements of either of their performances have been lost.  The full power of John Shrapnel's Claudius isn't demonstrated until he's alone and commanding the space, his motivations unspooling like Richard III.

More than most filmed production, it seems as though the reaction to seeing the piece in situ could have differed to on television (or indeed at the cinema which was where this recording was originally designed - it's even described in some publicity as "Hamlet The Film".  Although recorded in front of an audience (and can't we, cough, here, cough, it, beep, beep) they're largely invisible within the darkness of the space, with lighting which keeps the illumination of the actors to the minimum required for a given scene.  Like the television version of the RSC production of Macbeth with McKellen and Dench, the characters emerge and disappear into to the black, and there's rarely sense that anything exists beyond.

Some of the staging is beautiful and beautifully shot.  When Hamlet meets the Ghost of his father (doubled by Shrapnel), lightbulbs are lowers from the ceiling creating an orange glow across the actors faces familiar to anyone who's seen the interior of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (it's notable that light bulbs were also a feature of Adrian Noble's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream representing the Forest of Arden).  A camera has also been mounted in the gods, so scenes often begin from above or punctuated by overhead shots to emphasise the action.  When Hamlet rips up Ophelia's remembrances and throws them at her, it's in slow motion.  The home viewer is in a privileged rather than audience position.  During fishmonger, Polonia even breaks the fourth wall.

For all that, Yorick is a mess.  The performances are fine, great even.  Grandage's script privileges us with a rare viewing of both gravediggers and all their banter, both female with the key clown played with a very good scouse accent.  One of the few occasions I laughed here was during the back and forth with Hamlet in relation to whose grave it is.  But Frankcom has gone symbolic, with dirt or some such replaced with a jumble of clothing with Yorick's skull represented by a cardigan with knot in the middle (pictured).  When Ophelia's funeral arrives, her body is represented by the blouse she was wearing during the madness scene and its lain on the ground, the whole business just looks silly, plus it feels wrong that Peake be denied the opportunity to play with an actual skull.

Ultimately not the best production I've seen but it thrums along to its own rhythm.  It takes a special production for me to really become involved in the story any more having seen it so many times, and although there are too many Brechtian distancing effects on this occasion, the compensation of hearing the text performed well is its own reward.  Having Peake play Hamlet doesn't feel controversial and she's more convincing than many of her male counterparts.  Ideally in future there'll be much more gender neutral casting across all productions so long as there's enough leeway in the text and Hamlet's the most accessible of the lot.  Now I'm imagining what Catherine Tate, Gugu Mbatha-Raw or even, yes, Romola Garai would do with the role.

Art Museum.

Books  In case you've been wondering why I've been a bit absent from around these parts this past couple of weeks, assuming it's even been obvious, it's because six months after buying it at a bargain price from the local Costco, I've finally been working through the Phaidon coffee table book Art Museum. As described on their website, Art Museum "is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 992 oversized pages of nearly 2,700 works of art" which in chronological terms is roughly eight days of reading from about nine to five with the knowledge that you'll only absorb about ten percent of what you've read or seen.

Structured to resemble a building and almost as big, the Art Museum book replaces page numbers with rooms and chapters with themes attempting to mimic a visit an art gallery the size of a planet beginning with prehistoric cave paintings and ending at roughly the publication date of the book.  These are peppered with "exhibitions" in which single or groups of work are highlighted, for example, to demonstrate how an aspect of art like portraiture developed during a particular period.  Each theme is introduced by a block of text not unlike that which appears on the wall at the entrance of a display and each piece is accompanied by the sort of explanation you'd see on a label next to the work of varying length and detail.



Reading and glancing through the history of art in just over the week (give or take gaps here and there for work, eating and sleeping) has been an exhilarating, a mass of human creative achievement passing across my eyes like a malfunctioning Generation Game conveyor belt set to super fast.  On the first day I'd already reached the turn of the first millennium and by the end of the first week seen myself into the twentieth century, connections between eras and forms both subliminal and explained in the text left and right or top and bottom, with constant reminders that artistic creativity is in a constant state of evolution and not a linear development.  Just because someone discovered how to use perspective on a two dimensional surface, not everyone had a reason to utilise it.

For all that, despite this being a book rather than a building, museum fatigue did set in pretty quickly on the first day.  Like a real museum or exhibition, breaks became important, moments to savour what I'd seen before setting off into the next section which eventually coalesced or timed itself around roughly every ten "rooms".  As a side note, one of the great frustrations of visiting larger museums, especially if you're only in town for the day is an inability to see everything.  I once tried to see the National Gallery in an hour.  I spent so much time in the newly opened Sainsbury Wing, I barely had time to run over and have a glance at the Rembrandts.  At least having this particular museum in book form meant I take my time if needed.

I'd like to say that the experience illuminated some eras in a new way, caused me to reconsider some of my likes and dislikes, prejudices perhaps, but for the most part I left having had my appreciation for some artists maintained and my lack of interest in others confirmed.  One of the great themes of the book is how religious verver has been the engine of art history which means there are pages and pages and pages of annunciations, nativities and crucifixions with some artists being considered experimental because they've delved into old testament stories.  Sometimes I longed for the genre paintings and landscapes, my eyes metaphorically running across the room to see images of ordinary people going about their business.  Usually in darkness or snow or both.

Inevitably much of the book isn't just a history of art, it's the history of civilisation.  In earlier centuries, the introductory text acts as a history lesson putting the objects in the room in their historical context with kinds and epocs passing by within pages, family legacies and allegiances never quite managing to stick.  Almost everything is interrelated.  There are fascinating passages which show how western painters were influenced by the small amount of imported artwork from the far east and vis-versa and how the natural development in some countries was snuffed out by invading armies in some cases to such a degree that it's now impossible to date what's left and develop a meaningful history of that culture's early development.

Having spent all of this time between its pages it's impossible for me not to find flaws, not least, the mechanics of reading this huge volume, too huge for the lap and too big even for the coffee table.  Eventually I found myself sat on an office chair at the dining table with the back of the book pivoted upwards by a pillow so I could see both the explanatory text at the top of the page and all the art, with the curtains closed so as not to create glare on the glossy pages (if only this was possible in actual art galleries when lighting interferes with the viewing of paintings with necessary glazing).  I wondered throughout hour the publishers themselves coped with this.  Did they have a lectern made?  Did they try and read it cover to cover themselves?

Plus there's the constant sense that you're not seeing the artwork at its best, which of course you're not because with the exception of some of the photographs, for all the book pretends to be an art museum it can't replace the originals.  A vast percentage of the book is filled with images of sculpture and decorative arts and with few exceptions, it's impossible to really gain much more than a glimmer of visual insight into what's being presented, especially in the ethnographic portions where dozens of pieces are strewn across the page in tiny proportions.  The quality of some of the images too is shockingly poor, the publishers presumably having sourced them from a third party rather than photographing the artwork themselves.  In some cases that misrepresents what we're seeing.  Examples of embroidery or mosaic look more like paintings.

Monumental artworks are presented across a two page spread which towards the centre of the book means a lot of visual information is lost down the spine, which is especially problematic in the case of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or Guernica.  I can see how this was the prefered option because of the impossible logistics of having extra leaves attached to some pages or putting the on a single page and losing definition instead.  It's an impossible situation.  My preference would have been to split the image in two with a clear line down the middle where the sections could be joined up in the middle across the spine if necessary.  Not perfect either but at least all of image's information would be present.

It's frustratingly orthodox in its presentation of art history itself.  Although it's true that the Western white male has for the most part been the prevailing voice because he's been allowed to shout loudest, even when female artists have been of key importance in some areas they've been ignored.  Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun, court painter to Marie Antoinette is missing with only her husband warranting a mention and Anne Vallayer-Coster is gone too.  No Bridget Riley.  When they do appear they're represented by single piece, which is also true of some of the men, but why are Cindy Sherman or Louise Bourgeois the only woman artist to merit a page of her own?  Just a page mind.  Why not Georgia O'Keeffe or Paula Rego or Marina Abramović?

Some of the artworks chosen to represent artists and eras are frankly bizarre.  According to interviews they've deliberately tried to find unusual work that aren't that easily accessible, which is laudable, but given that it has a dual function as an educational tool why omit Leonardo's The Last Supper or represent Magritte with images that don't feature bowler hats, apples or a pipe that isn't a pipe?  Why is so much of the non-Western and non-Continental European world treated as a historical document when contemporary art thrives outside London and New York?  Granted even with nine hundred odd pages there are bound to be omissions but if the idea is to illuminate unseen areas, surely Hammershoi deserves better than a single image.

Oh and some of the proof reading is up the wall.  All too often the main text gets the numbering of the items of the page in the wrong order or in one case, I think, refers to an artwork which isn't there.  The text also sometimes refers back to works on earlier pages and these can be incorrect and although its usually obvious which work its actually referring to, given the RRP of the book, £80, such mistakes should not happen.  I was at a newly opened exhibition recently and two of the labels and their connected objects had been transposed.  It was obvious which matched which but you still had to take a moment to work it.  When I told the curators (because you know I told the curators) they said, "Oh we hadn't noticed" and had a general sense of shruggary.  This is that in book form.

But for all that I enjoyed almost every minute of it and I did find new paintings to love.  There's Agnolo Bronzino's Eleanor of Toledo one of the most expressively beautiful portraits I've ever seen which I'd have another peak at before heading off back into the book each day.  Jan Troorop's The Three Brides, a rare shift into deco from an otherwise impressionistic artist.  The genius of Giotto, who in the fourteenth century was creating images which feel entirely cinematic.  The book also manages to somehow render Yves Klein blue with what feels like the correct luminosity across a single page, seemingly a single colour at first glance but with all the gradations obvious in the printing.

There's been a lot of moaning in here and for things beyond the book's control.  For much of the time I was genuinely giddy, especially when I came across an artist I particularly love or there was an artwork I've seen in an actual gallery space, usually Tate Liverpool.  At the end my interest in visual art is reinvigorated and I feel emboldened that when I next visit a real art gallery it will be an even more meaningful experience because I'll be able to put the paintings and sculpture into some kind of historical context, however hazy.  Luckily with the Liverpool Biennial beginning next month, I'll soon be able to put that into practice.

Emmy and the Doctor.

TV Crikey, this is a turn up:

"BBC America’s “Doctor Who” has been submitted for Emmy consideration for the first time ever. Now that the American cabler has come aboard as a co-producer, the venerable Brit series is finally eligible for consideration. Although it was not submitted as a drama series, star Peter Capaldi is on the lead actor ballot, showrunner Steven Moffat and director Rachel Talalay are on the writing and directing ballots for the episode “Heaven Sent” and the series is a possible nominee for costumes, production design, prosthetic makeup, and visual effects."

The most deserving of episodes too.  Here's what I said at the time:

"Heaven Sent is the best episode of this series and indeed of the Capaldi era, I think we’re quite comfortable in saying that. This is Steven Moffat on top form with a simple question ("What if the Doctor was trapped in a castle which acted like the the shack on the poster for The Cabin In The Woods?"), rich with ideas, of potent imagery, stunningly realised by Rachel Talalay, composer Murray Gold channelling everyone from Beethoven (the Allegretto in 7th) to Paddy Kingsland (Castrovalva) and Peter FUCKING Capaldi. Few series have the sense of jeopardy in relation to shifting quality and after two distinctly average instalments dropped us back at the metaphoric base camp, now we're back at the top of the mountain."

I still stand by that. Let's hope the Emmy voters agree.

Cooked.

TV The BBC Genome blog regularly interviewed television and radio presenters with huge footprints on the scheduling archive database, a bit like the AV Clubs random roles column. This week it's Sue Cook and it's a good insight on the process of being hired to present at the BBC in the 80s:

"In the mid 70s, a new invention arrived on the scene – the telephone answering machine. Shortly after joining You and Yours, I bought one. The first day I set it up, I came home in the evening to find a message from the deputy editor of Nationwide, asking me to come over to Lime Grove to interview for a job as one of the show’s film reporters. I was offered the job and jumped at it. A few months later, Sue Lawley took maternity leave with her second child on the way. Again to my amazement, I became one of the presenters, alongside Frank Bough, Bob Wellings, Hugh Scully and John Stapleton. It was a job I loved until the show was deemed to have reached its sell-by date in July 1983."

Now arguably much of the BBC's factual output is Nationwidesque in some way.

36 Stonyhurst College

Shakespeare There's always something inherently disappointing about book exhibitions or exhibitions of books. All the visitor can ever see are the two pages selected by the curator assuming they haven't decided the cover isn't the more interesting aspect of the artifact. With its utility lost, all we're left with is frustration as the point of its existence, to impart knowledge or entertainment become secondary to the fact of its existence in and of itself.

We want to pick them up and hold them, turn the pages, read them if possible and although in some cases the pages have been scanned and are available to be seen on some app or website, that's no substitute for the smell of an old book, the texture of the leifs.  Which is impossible because for the most part these are precious volumes too delicate to survive this behaviour and so they remain behind their glass display cases, sometimes illuminated by a spotlight, frozen like taxidermic animals.

Except today I visited an exhibition in which despite those frustrations, I wasn't disappointed and was more than slightly moved.  As part of the commemorations of Shakespeare's death.  Blackburn Museum has pulled together copies of the first four folios and are displaying them together in their manuscript room.  Despite having seen copies of all four volumes separately at some time, this felt like a pilgrimage I had to make.

The First Folio is on loan from nearby Stonyhurst College, bequeathed to them Lord Arundel a former pupil of the school.  This isn't the first First Folio they've owned.  As the BBC's reported, a copy found in a French archive during the preparation of an exhibition there was revealed to have been left there during a school trip back in the mid eighteenth century.  That book is featured in BBC Radio 3 documentary which visits Folios and considers their history.

The Second, Third and Fourth are in Blackburn Museum's own collection. Blackburn rope manufacturer Robert Edward Hart collected hundreds of ancient manuscripts which he gave to the museum in the mid-1940s for the enjoyment of the local public. The Hart Collection turned my head when I was last at Blackburn as part of the public art collection tour and even without the Shakespeare's displayed nearby, despite the frustrations listed above it is spectacular.

Seeing the four of them together is a remarkable experience, the publication history of the Folios in four glass boxes with the tops of the books pointing towards the middle.  The First (if you'll excuse the nicknames) is open on Martin Droeshout's portrait of Shakespeare and the title page, the second on Milton's epitaph, the third on the opening page of Pericles to highlight its addition in that volume and the Fourth on the title page proclaiming the inclusion of seven new plays.

Each is accompanied by an explanatory label.  The Third is especially rare because plenty of the original copies perished in the Great Fire of London.  There's also the matter of how that and the Fourth have the apocryphal additions all of which, with the exception of Pericles, do not show any sign of having been written by Shakespeare no matter what it says in big bold letters at the front (though given their attribution during his lifetime you can see why they'd be mistaken) (ish).

These Folios despite their posthumous publication, retain a certain awe, because of what they mean, relics of an earlier age, remarkable objects.  What I did notice is how similar they are despite there being fifty years between the First and Fourth.  The quality of printing and the page are roughly the same despite the gap between spanning the same chronological real estate as the whole history of Doctor Who.  We didn't even have home computers in 1963.

Near the beginning of my visit, the curator of the exhibition was attending to the display cases and was chatting to two older female visitors and because I genuinely didn't know, I asked her if she knew if the later folios were still sold as piles of pages by the bookseller to be bound by the purchaser themselves or if they were being hard bound by then.  She wasn't sure, but them the other visitors were intrigued as to where the question came from.  I explained.

Then, they wondered, did I know anything about Shakespeare's family which led to some consideration of whether Shakespeare's family originated in Lancashire.  I busked.  I didn't know.  But that led on to more questions about whether Shakespeare himself had visited the area and I led into the missing years and the possibility he was part of a touring company which led on to another question about iambic pentameter and then another and ...

In my element, the information flowing out of me, as the questions turned from facts to opinions.  What's your favourite play?  Do you agree with modern dress?  Do you think the Globe production of The Merchant of Venice should have the conversion scene added.  At one point I was explaining the origins of Hamlet's bad quarto, words, words, words, years of reading about Shakespeare becoming words, words, words.

It felt great and even though I'm really no expert, I had to look up Martin Droeshout's name before slotting it in above, there's something quite empowering (and I know that's not the right word but I'm a bit tired) about finding out that you're actually capable of talking about a subject within which you're interested and seemingly in a way which hopefully isn't boring.  "You should be here all the time" they said, "In case people have questions."

The Bard at Blackburn: A Unique Display of Shakespeare’s First Four Folios runs until 31st August. Admission Free.

Mi Madre Cocina Mejor Que La Tuya.

TV The Guardian has a piece listing European television shows and friends, there are few formats here which wouldn't work spectacularly well in the UK. Blokken's a perfect Richard Osman vehicle. Alt For Norge looks like something Channel 4 could put into the Gogglebox slot and here's the BBC's new Saturday night show:

SPAIN: Mi Madre Cocina Mejor Que La Tuya

Hosts Sergio Fernandez and Maria Jimenez Latorre.

That boasting title – My Mom Cooks Better Than Yours – adds a gladiatorial edge to this culinary challenge show, which recently became a sizzling sensation in Spain. Each contestant has their dear old ma on the sidelines to offer advice while they cook up a dish against the clock. If things go badly, the matriarchs can wham a “panic button”, allowing them to don their apron and wade in, at the dual cost of speeding up the timer and infuriating their offspring. Who doesn’t love family tension kept at a roiling boil?

The VHS Awakens.

Film The official Star Wars website has an interview with Greg Grunberg which includes the revelation that VHS lives - as a way of showing films on an airline:

StarWars.com: Being in Star Wars and being such a big fan from the very beginning, do you actually ever reach a point where it feels real? I mean, you see yourself in comic books and in action figure form, do you ever fear that it all might be a big elaborate prank?

Greg Grunberg: Yeah, it’s weird, I’ve had films available on planes before that I’ve done, but I was recently flying back to L.A. from London and they’re showing Star Wars, and I actually tweeted about this because they were showing a VHS copy of The Force Awakens!

StarWars.com: What?!

Greg Grunberg: Yes! . . . But I couldn’t believe it, so I text J.J. a picture of it and said, “Do you judge an airline by the technology they use? And if not, maybe you should.” But anyway, I have a picture on my Twitter stream and it’s with my face on the screens in the background as Snap Wexley! And that’s when it really hit me that, wow, this is real. And again, I’m not a star of the movie, but to get an action figure, a Pop! toy, to be in the comic book series, it’s just so cool.

Delta Airlines -- keeping the low-grade image quality dream alive.

My Favourite Film of 1942.

Film It's I Married A Witch, but let's take stock.

When I began this project, back in January 2015, I knew there'd be a point when my ability to anecdote around films would become appreciatively more difficult. Honestly, I thought it would be once I'd breached the year of my birth barrier, but due to catch up and actually having seen a fair few films in my forty odd years that wasn't the case through the rest of the seventies and into the sixties.

But the slowdown has come and here we are in 1942 with I Married A Witch, a film about which I have absolutely nothing to say.

The Wikipedia page makes Veronica Lake sound like a total nightmare and also tremendous fun entirely in keeping with her on-screen character, something which her co-star and crew totally failed to reconsile.

Yet I have no words. I saw it on the iPlayer last year after a broadcast on BBC Two one weekend morning in their classic film slot. I loved it to bits and have fond memories.

Here's an introduction from Joe Dante.  No one liked Veronica Lake it seems.



Looking towards the next forty odd years and so forty odd weeks of entries, I'm beginning to wonder about the extent to which I'm going to sustain this or try your patience.

Next week's film is obvious and you can expect some funny discussion of aspect ratios and the one after that is inspired by something in this post.  Everything is linked together.

Apologies for this fortnight's freak out.

"Photographs are unreliable souvenirs."

Dating Stand down. If you're a long term reader you'll know that the emboldened keyword in front of this sentence indicates this isn't going to be a personal blog post. Remember those? Oh the good times when no one was reading this blog and I could say things about things. Sigh.

 Apart from work, and enduring the usual forty-five minutes of desolation and loneliness at Saturday tea time because there's no new episode of Doctor Who again, one of my Saturday rituals is The Guyliner's Table Manners/Impeccable in which he "reviews" The Guardian's Blind Date column working through over the answers of the participants and offering a critique. It's clever, witty and thoughtful.

The upshot is that I haven't read the actual Blind Date column itself first, if at all, in months because in providing commentary he also injects a greater element of jeopardy and depth to what usually look on the page (or screen) and if you're not clued in on such things (which I'm not) relatively benign blandisms.

By the time they get the kiss the question, we're either nodding sagely in full understanding of why this would be the case or heartbroken, devastated and there'll be an animated gif of Dawson Leery sobbing to share in our grief.

This week's is something special and although you probably have to have been reading these reviews for a while to appreciate the full implications of it, it's also probably an excellent place to start.

"It is a beautiful day in Chicago. Temperatures in the upper 70's."

Film Fans of the old Now and Then documentaries on the Doctor Who dvds and of Ferris Bueller's Day Off will like this AV Club article. On Ferris's school:

"The railings got an upgrade, and in a sign of the times, there’s now a security camera mounted on the wall. The principal surely would have loved to have that kind of surveillance at his disposal in his day—perhaps he could have pored over the parking lot footage and discovered the true identity of the doting “father” who pulls up in a vintage sports car and greets Sloane with a deep, passionate kiss."

It's incomprehensible to me that Northbrook haven't acknowledged the tourism opportunities of keeping the "Save Ferris" sign on the water tower. The heartless wenches.

Sunset at the Villa Thalia at the National Theatre.

The National Theatre were kind enough offer a ticket for the press night of Alexi Kaye Campbell’s new play, Sunset at the Villa Thalia (illustrative image © Manuel Harlan). Geographically challenged and unable to attend, friend of the blog James Cooray Smith went instead and offers this review:

Theatre  I’m a sucker for a production that takes place on a single set. Alexi Kaye Campbell’s strong new play Sunset at the Villa Thalia not only does that, and very effectively, but also obeys classical ideas of unity of action, time and place for much of its running time. (There is one, very effective, moment where it goes all Time And The Conways on us). This is clearly deliberate.  The setting, a Greek island on a single evening in 1967 (Act One) and then another in 1976 (Act Two) is an appropriate one for a play that works in such a manner.  At one point the play’s anti-hero Harvey (Ben Miles) points out to his friends, and thus the audience, that they are very close to place where classical theatre was born.

Harvey is an American, a CIA spook, in Greece ahead of, and anticipating, the Colonels’ coup of 1967 which, it seems he has done something to help bring about. He’s having a drink with his wife June, (a nuanced, hilarious, sad Elizabeth McGovern) and two new friends Charlotte (Pippa Nixon, strident and sympathetic) and Theo (Sam Crane, bookish and relatable), a younger English couple, an actress and a writer respectively, who are renting a house on a small Greek Island for the summer.

Before long, Harvey has gamed Charlotte and Theo into buying the house they rent from the owners, who are intending to emigrate to Australia within days. With his easy, coercive manner, surface reasonableness and kiss curl, Harvey initially seems - in a superb piece of symbolism - like a malignant Clark Kent. But Harvey is not malignant, nor is he a hypocrite; he’s merely delusional about America’s role in the world and his role within it. Yet he also has powers of insight, as well as persuasion, asking the other characters and the audience pertinent questions It’s a towering, persuasive, detailed performance that’s the best thing in Miles’ career. (He also convincingly ages a decade between acts with changed posture and a pair of Nixon sideburns.)

The first half, then, is essentially perfectly shaped and perfectly delivered by the cast. The second half, in which Harvey and June visit Charlotte and Theo again nine years later, as they prepare to sell the house, could do with some very small cuts. A brief discussion of ‘cultural appropriation’ feels more of 2016 than plausibly of 1976, and the point has already been made through action. A final argument between Charlotte and Theo is again mere repetition, spelling out explicitly things the plays has already told us, sometimes more than once, and drawing too much attention to how the house and its history and the black ops in which Harvey has been involved mirror each other. By this point every member of the audience either understands the metaphor or never will. It doesn’t need spelling out quite so prosaically. The actors and the play have, as Harvey argues he has done in many of the world’s ‘trouble spots’, already done the dirty work so the rest of us don’t have to.

Sunset at the Villa Thalia runs until 4th August 2016.  Click here for details.

The Curse of the Fugue (Big Finish Audio Short Trips)

Audio A pleasingly small scale adventure in which the Doctor drops Lucie off in the year of my birth (1974) amid the blackouts to help investigate something strange happening in relation to an old woman with many secrets.  The answer is unlike something you'd find in Agent Carter, wartime secrets as a result of alien intervention and although there's nothing here which really stretches much further than could be created on television, everything happens in and around a single house, that simply adds to the sense of authenticity.  The writer Alice Cavender also nicely captures the TARDIS team, especially the magnesium spark chemistry between the two characters.  The headline here is the return of Sheridan Smith to Doctor Who and although she's a bit unsteady initially in the textual reading, just as India was when she began with the Short Trips, almost as soon as she's asked to voice Lucie again everything snaps into place and we're back.  There's one especially great moment when she's allowed to go full throttle into some piercing anger and we're reminded of just how good Sheridan's performance was back then.  It would be fascinating at some point if Big Finish put together a boxed set ala the Sixth Doctor's swansong with one story working its way through the Eighth Doctor's era, so we could he McGann and Smith interacting together one more time.  Placement:  Feels more like somewhere in the second season of With Lucie stories.

My Favourite Film of 1943.

Extracting the BBC Genome: Shakespeare at the BBC: Hamlet.

Shakespeare With the Shakespeare Festival still in full swing at the BBC, I thought it would be an idea to see how often some of my favourite plays have appeared on the BBC, which is now somewhat possible thanks to the BBC Genome. We begin with Hamlet, because having seen a fair few of them now, it would be nice to see which ones I'm yet to catch up with.

Find a list below.  Since they're all Hamlets, I've highlighted the transmission details.  They're all with BBC selected casts unless otherwise stated and I've just included the first transmission details - Gielgud's 1948 effort was repeated numerous times in subsequent years.  I've also only included complete or near complete productions.  Including excerpts would make this list five times longer.

Note that I've also included data from outside the Genome in relation to the World Service because due to the vagaries of how the database was set up - utilising Radio Times data, for some reason there are gaps specifically the version starring John Duttine.  But I'm adding him back in for completions sake.

Notes:  The first film Hamlet to appear on the BBC was the Kozintsev version.  The Olivier didn't appear until 1973.  Cedric Messina, who produced the Michael Redgrave version on the Third Programme in 1960, was the producer of the 80s TV adaptation with Jacobi.  The Ian McKellan broadcast was a complete surprise.  I wonder if it's still available.

2LO London, 15 February 1924 19.30
Radio.  Hamlet unknown. Produced by Sydney Russell. Company is the B.N.O.C.

5WA Cardiff, 29 May 1924 19.35
Radio.  Hamlet unknown.  Directed unknown.

2LO London and 5XX Daventry, 18 July 1928 21.35
Radio.  Hamlet played by Gyles Isham.  Director unknown.

National Programme Daventry, 5 June 1932 16.15
Radio.  Hamlet played by John Gielgud. Produced by Barbara Burnham.

National Programme Daventry, 16 December 1934 17.30
Radio.  Hamlet played by Stephen Haggard. Produced by Barbara Burnham.

Regional Programme London, 2 January 1938 21.05
Radio.  Hamlet played by Leslie Howard. Produced by Barbara Burnham.

BBC Home Service Basic, 6 October 1940 21.25
Radio.  Hamlet played by John Gielgud. Produced by Barbara Burnham.

BBC Home Service Basic, 8 April 1946 19.20
Radio.  Hamlet played by Barry Morse. Produced by Howard Rose.

BBC Television, 7 December 1947 20.30
TV.  Hamlet played by John Byron. Produced by George More O'Ferrall.

Third Programme, 26 December 1948 18.00
Radio.  Hamlet played by John Gielgud. Production by John Richmond.

Third Programme, 23 October 1960 17.40
Radio.  Hamlet played by Michael Redgrave. Produced by Cedric Messina.

BBC One London, 19 April 1964 20.05
TV.  Hamlet played by Christopher Plummer. Directed by Philip Saville. A BBC-Danmarks Radio recording. [review] [amazon]

BBC Home Service Basic, 20 January 1965 14.20
Radio.  Hamlet played by Michael Bryant. Produced by Robert Gittings.

Network Three, 18 September 1966 18.10
Radio.  Hamlet played by Kenneth Griffith. Directed by John Gibson.

BBC Radio 3, 30 March 1970 19.30
Radio.  Hamlet played by John Gielgud. Produced by Bennett Maxwell. Recreation from vinyl records.

BBC Two England, 11 September 1970 20.50
Film.  Hamlet played by Innokenti Smoktunovsky. Directed by Grigori Kozintsev. [review] [amazon]

BBC Radio 3, 31 October 1971 18.50
Radio. Hamlet played by Ronald Pickup. Produced by John Tydeman. [review] [amazon]

BBC Two England, 23 September 1972 21.05
TV. Hamlet played by Ian McKellan. Directed by David Giles. Prospect Theatre Company.

BBC Two England, 22 September 1973 20.45
Film. Hamlet played by Laurence Olivier. Directed by Laurence Olivier. [review] [amazon] [free legal stream]

BBC Two England, 12 March 1978 22.35
Film. Hamlet played by Nicol Williamson. Directed by Tony Richardson. The Roundhouse Theatre Company. [review] [amazon]

BBC Two England, 25 May 1980 19.15
TV. Hamlet played by Derek Jacobi. Directed by Rodney Bennett. [review] [amazon]

BBC World Service  4 September 1983 
Radio.  Hamlet played by John Duttine.  Produced by Colin Davis. [review]

BBC Radio 3, 26 April 1992 19.00
Radio. Hamlet played by Kenneth Branagh. Directed by Glyn Dearman. A Radio 3/Renaissance Theatre Company co-production. [review] [amazon]

BBC Two England, 7 December 1992 19.25
Animation. Hamlet played by Nicholas Farrell. Produced by David Edwards. [review] [amazon]

BBC Two England, 30 October 1994 22.25
Film. Hamlet played by Mel Gibson. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli. [review] [amazon]

BBC Radio 3, 12 September 1999 19.30
Radio. Hamlet played by Michael Sheen. Directed by Jeremy Mortimer. [review] [amazon]

BBC Knowledge, 6 March 2002 21.00
TV. Hamlet played by Adrian Lester. Directed by Peter Brook. Theatre de Bouffes du Nord. [review]

BBC Radio 4 FM, 30 June 2007 19.00
Radio. Hamlet played by John Dougall. Directed byu Eoin O'Callaghan. Tom Stoppard adaptation. [review]

BBC Two England, 26 December 2009 17.05
TV. Hamlet played by David Tennant. Directed by Gregory Doran. Royal Shakespeare Company. [review] [amazon]

BBC Radio 4, 24 March 2014 14.15
Radio. Hamlet played by Jamie Parker. Directed by Marc Beeby. [amazon]

Further details of all these productions can be found at An International Database of Shakespeare on Film, Television and Radio.

Dr. Love Actually.

Film Some time today, Neil tweeted me a link to a rangey interview with US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy which wanders about across a range of topics including, oddly his favourite film, which a press release told them was E.T. Sadly, it isn't:

"It is a movie I like a lot, but it’s not my favorite movie. There are two movies I wrote down. I’m going to give you two. It’s a bit of a dodge, but I’ll give you two. And one of them is a recent movie that came out, “The Martian,” with Matt Damon, our local Boston hero. And the other is an older movie with Hugh Grant, called “Love Actually.”"

Oh dear. I'll give him The Martian. It was one of my favourite films of last year is sure to be looked at fondly for years to come. But, ugh. He continues:

"I’ll go on to further embarrass myself and admit that it’s one of the very few movies I actually own. I’m just digging a hole here."

Yes, yes, you are.  But go on.

"The reason I enjoy it so much is that it’s about love, as well. Love is the oldest medicine that we have. We focus so much on new drugs and new therapeutics and sometimes in an effort to bring in the new, we forget about the old. That’s true with technology, it’s true with medicine, it’s true with so much else."

Which doesn't say anything about the actual film. He could have said exactly the same about When Harry Met Sally and retained some credibility.

"We fixate on Facebook and forget the importance of face-to-face conversation. We text people and forget the importance of hearing their voice. But when it comes to healing, love is a powerful source of healing. As powerful as our medicines are, when a patient doesn’t have a source of love in their life, it makes it difficult to heal. These old medicines, of which love is the most important, are very powerful."

Yes, yes it is. But it doesn't say what you specifically like Love Actually. I find that rather telling. If only the interviewer had pressed him further. Instead they segway into police brutality.

Bye, Bye BHS, Goodbye.

Commerce Of all the shops that have gone into receivership recently, BHS is oddly one of the names which I've no particular affection for.

There are some brands like Woolworths, C&A and Borders which were part of life's landscape, whereas BHS was just always sort of there.

I've no loving anecdotes or stories. I bought the green jumper I wore to the first Liverpool Twestival there. I'd always try to get in a few days before Christmas to see if any of the generic presents had been reduced enough to make them worth buying.

They used to have a festive shop in the old Clayton Square which one year was completely sold out so all of the shelves were filled with pillows for sale.  Hundreds and hundreds of pillows.

I also had a discussion with a manager about soup recently, which I recounted in a tweetstorm.

Presumably there'll be the usual closing down sale with customers shouting at employees who're about to lose their jobs because the products are either sold out or not as cheap as they judge they should be.

Department stores are particularly difficult when they shutter because there'll be legacy employees who've been there for years and invested a lot of years into the business and will now find themselves having to find work elsewhere in a dwindling retail market.  Hopefully Marks & Spencers or John Lewis will recognise their worth.

Goodness knows what'll happen to the actual shops.  The location on Lord Street in Liverpool is huge and spread across two buildings and in a prime location.  We don't have a Waitrose yet, but this is in an awkward position.

Bye, Bye BHS, Goodbye.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

Journalism Following on from my nostalgia burst the other day regarding The North-West Enquirer on the occasion of The New Day closing comes news that someone else is having a go at publishing a paper for the whole of the North West.

As Roy Greenslade explains:

 "From 20 June, the Carlisle-based CN Group will distribute a title called 24 - The North’s National across a swathe of the north west region, running south from the Scottish border county of Dumfries and Galloway to Preston, Lancashire.

"Some 95% of the editorial content for the 40-page paper will be drawn from the Press Association, which issued the press release announcing the launch. The cover price for the Monday-to-Friday title has been set at 40p."

Does this mean that it'll simply be republishing wire copy in much the same way as some of The Guardian seems to recently in the news section or will the Press Association be preparing copy specially for its innards?  Will it be tailored for the local audience or simply feature national and international news?

Plenty of PA's work is showcased through their twitter feed and Snap.PA.  Will this be a paper version of that?

Intriguing.

A Midsummer Night's Dream.

TV There's a rather brilliant example of someone being put in their place in the Q&A with Russell T Davies and Maxine Peake conducted by Clemency Burton-Hill at the Hay festival ahead of last night's broadcast of A Midsummer Night's Dream on BBC One (available here). Early in the session, Russell repeated the explanation for some of the cuts to the text he's made for this new adaptation, specifically the references by the female lovers Helena and Hermia to killing themselves or being killed should they not receive the love affair they want. It's the Elizabethan equivalent of saying, "I'd just die if ..." in modern parlance but given the context of the production and who some of the target audience were, Davies decided that it was best to leave it out, because he was putting his name to it and he wouldn't put his name to something which jokes about women's suicide.

Near the end of the session an older woman pipes up: "You've taken out references to women killing themselves for love, so what's your ending to Romeo and Juliet?" There are laughs in the audience, quite a lot of the audience actually, except then Russell does an interesting thing. He doesn't laugh. The attitude he selects is furious, or at least furious within this otherwise polite event: "I find that question really trite, because I did a really serious thing in taking those lines out because the play is not about suicide. That's a fleeting referential ..." he interrupts himself so he can address the audience member directly then, "... they're fleeting, they're just character beats, they're not important, they don't change the plot, they don't become the plot, they're not important in any place. Romeo and Juliet is entirely about that moment and therefore of course I'd keep that the same and I'm disappointed in the question frankly because I think I did a very proper thing and you made light of it."

Just before the broadcast, I tweeted about how I'm a bit of a Shakespeare purist, about how the text is all and if you don't have the text, you don't have the play and that to cut it would be cultural vandalism. If you're cutting because you think by removing text and/or changing words you're making it accessible, you're cheating because you don't have the talent to take the text as is and make it as readable and understandable as it can be, as it was presumably four hundred years ago and can be with the right director, good cast in a decent venue.  I also added that it's absolutely fine if what you're producing is an adaptation, notably if you're shifting the text out of its source context and into a different arena. As Russell himself says elsewhere in the Q&A, however nice the poetry, there's no point within a dynamic television adaptation of having long descriptions of actions or introductions designed for the Globe's bare stage if you can simply show it.

Which is why, despite my purism, I agree with Russell on his reasons for cutting those lines and tutting along with him at that woman's attitude. His superb adaptation of the play with its many deviations from the text, is his adaptation of the play. He's not trying to pass the thing off as a sympathetic version of the text, it's clearly a re-imagining and re-interpretation with a very lucid set of logical decisions on how to cut the text and although in an ideal world there would have been more of it, the BBC having given him a longer timeslot to play about with, I had absolutely no problems with the choices he made. With the plays being four hundred years old there are a few things which can give one pause, even this genius couldn't foresee how social attitudes would change. Taming of the Shrew and A Merchant of Venice are not favourites of mine for just this reason. The former promotes domestic violence and the latter's racist.

Perhaps it helps that I've seen a lot of different versions of most of his plays now so despite my purism, I'm more relaxed about how it can be tossed about outside the theatre.  It is true that earlier screen versions are more protective of the text.  Russell cuts "How now, spirit! whither wander you?" and the ensuing scene which is pretty sacred ground, because as he says, it's perfectly obvious who these two are, where they're going and what they're doing.  The business with the Indian boy is gone too.  Yet both (I think!) are in the Michael Hoffman directed Hollywood version from 1999 which is only about half an hour longer.  The cuts here are sympathetic enough that I don't think were were too short changed on the whole, combined with the imagery everything in this version of the story was perfectly lucid, especially, and here we arrive at the reason I'm writing this review in the first place if you're a Doctor Who fan.

Hello, and welcome because if it's good enough for the parish circular to be writing behind the scenes articles about this production, it's probably right that I should include it in my promise to review all screen Doctor Who.  As Doctor Who Magazine explained and as the credits underscore, this was essentially filmed within an extra production block at the end of the ninth series of Doctor Who.  Same set designers, costumers, special effects team, cast by Andy Pryor and with music by Murray Gold.  We also have an explanation for why Who could afford the Trap Street from Face The Raven - they ammortised the cost with Dream because here it was again.  Is it also the same street which appeared in The Husbands of River Song, I wonder?  I really do have to get around to watching the season nine boxed set.  I just have another four and a half seasons worth of Gilmore Girls to get through first.

Anyway, yes, this felt very much like, if not a Doctor Who spin-off, something set in the same universe.  Apart from the totalitarian regime, there's the manifestation of Theseus and Hippolyta whose bondage would be just the sort of mystery the Time Lord would become involved in, entirely unhappy that someone would be treated this way, with a scratching one the sides of his brain about the consequences of setting her free, something his companion would end up doing anyway before the story's out.  The woodland folk are notionally the monsters until he discovers that they have in mind a rescue mission and regime change, he'd be all for it (whilst simultaneously using the TARDIS to discover exactly how their science works so as not to contradict Clarke's Law and actually have magic in the Whoniverse).  I'm glossing yet it's notable that Russell decided to take his adaptation in this direction.

Plus almost every cast member has previously appeared in Who, either on television or for Big Finish or in the case of Matt Lucas, both.  There's Wilf, Dr Constantine, Nardole, Hydroflax, Jo Nakashima, Moran and Gobernar.  Even Kate Kennedy, the revelation of the night and I think of the best Helenas I've seen, was in this month's main range release opposite Colin Baker (as Heather Treadstone).  It can't be long before Maxine Peake turns up in Who and if Romola isn't free, Peake would be extraordinary playing the Doctor, assuming she doesn't mind putting her career on hold for three or four years to commute to or live in Cardiff for nine or ten months in the year.  Yes, that's never going to happen.  Side note: John Hannah had a weird six months consisting of this and his guest spots on Agents of SHIELD.  The man is never out of work, even if the majority of that work is in bit-parts which are way beneath him.

Having such a strong cast also aids Davies's textual brevity endeavours.  The Rude Mechanical scenes are shorter with the dialogue becoming something heard far off by the forest residents, the main rehearsal scene reduced to its most important points before Bottom goes donkey.  But because it's Lucas and Wilson and Cribbins and Elaine Paige (in a stormer of a Shakespearean introduction) we're immediately drawn to them and want to be in their company, helped markedly by the decision to make them very much friends, Lucas's Bottom a popular figure who just wants to do his best for the company and production rather than the ignorant, arrogant person who's so often illogically at odds with them.  Davies doesn't have room however to explain the oddity that two of them are initially cast at Pyramus's parents but represent wall and moon in the final production.  It's just something which happened in rehearsal probably.

As for the other departures?  I'm angrier with the press for revealing them ahead of time.  One must always be cautious of the surprisingly gay trope, or whatever you call the moment which sometimes occurs in drama when characters formerly presumed to be straight decide to experiment for shock value at the end of an episode.  Russell is playing with our expectations, preconceived gender notions and provides a perfectly reasonable rational for such.  Yet the papers, full of mock outrage or at least mild surprise decided this was the aspect they'd focus on after the preview screening and so the film lost a little of its power on first viewing because of the expectation of what was to happen at the end, what was such a beautiful moment.

In the end, this version of A Midsummer Night's Dream wasn't just about what was removed but what was added.  Something which never quite sits well is how in most productions, because it's in the text, Demetrius's infatuation with Helena is as manufactured a facade as the results of the potion Owen throws about in Torchwood's Everything Changes.  In some versions, both he and Helena are infected which still doesn't feel right.  Here Davies smartly takes a moment to have the love spell removed after which Demetrius finds that he still love Helena as much as she loves him.  It's a small thing and it shows the level of thought Russell has put into this production and I wonder how many subsequent production might copy it.  Even if some theatrical traditions were broken with last night, perhaps there'll be some which are newly made.

My Favourite Film of 1944.

Film My first viewing of Olivier's Henry V, or rather the opening section of Henry V to be more accurate was during those English film viewing sessions I've mentioned before. The teacher utilised the stunning scenes set in the recreation of an Elizabethan theatre to give us a flavour of what it must have been like to see the in original production (as the director himself intended), this being many years before the opening of the recreation of the Globe on the South Bank.

A few years later, one of the school assemblies was dedicated to a public speaking competition which that year involved a select group of students reading Once More Unto The Breach from memory. Somehow, through no fault of my own, I was roped in as an alternate in case one of the main participants decided they were going to be ill that day. There were two problems with this (1) there would have to be some acting involved and (2) I have absolutely no ability to remember poetry.

Oddly, I wasn't that afraid of getting up front of the school despite having spent most of my school career being bullied and this being just the sort thing which would give those shits a vast amount of material. Being a closet extrovert, in primary school I'd also been chosen to appear in plays during assemblies and although I don't remember being any good, I do remember getting into trouble improvising around a script for an adaptation of Pandora's Box and embarrassed the girl who was playing my wife, "My love". She didn't like that much. We were ten.

Plus on reaching sixth form, one my prefect duties was to provide the bible reading during assemblies, something I'd end up doing for days on end, partly because there wasn't anyone else foolish enough to do it, but also because it meant I didn't have to sit with the aforementioned bullies during the hymn singing and prayers. The last thing you want to do with people you actively hate is worship a deity with them.

Sidebar: I was no more religious then than I am now. I dabbled in my first year of secondary school, attending bible study and the like but was never really convinced. But there was nevertheless something quite thrilling about standing up in front of fellows, sounding out "Today's reading is taken from such and such a gospel" (it was always such and such a gospel) "chapter five, verse three to twenty-seven" and then heading off into the Good News Bible.

Assemblies including this competition took place in the main school hall, a giant box of a room with a balcony, a main stage which included an organ and a lot of dust.  When you gave a reading in there, from a lectern at the side of the stage, you really felt like you could command the audience.  Pity that the rest of the time you had to sit on that stage in full view of everyone waiting for it to end.

So I was fine with the standing up in front of people bit and the reading flowery language bit, but could I remember that damn speech? Here's what I remember now. I'm free-typing this so apologies if the metre isn't correct:

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once
Or build the wall up with our English dead
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as
Modest stillness and humility.
But when the blasts of war blow in our ears
And imitate the actions of a tiger.
Stiffen the sinew, conjure up the blood.
Disguise fair nature with heart favoured rage
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect.
Let is pry through portage of the head like a brass canon.
On, on, you noblest English, who's dah dah dee dum
Something, something past change.

And yeah, that's where it all enters a mist as potent as that which hovers over the Agincourt battlefield in most post conflict renderings. Here's the full version. As you can see I shortened and garbled it with all lackluster charm of the goons who helped the printing bootleggers to turn out the pirated copy of Hamlet we now call the Bad Quarto.

Anyway, I hatched the expected plan of having a copy of the speech to hand should I end up being called upon, entirely happy to read the thing instead since there was no practical reason why I should win the thing anyway and if anyone did decide to say anything afterwards I'd could at least ban them from the Computer Club, of which I was the senior prefect (not really) (I had no power).

The morning arrives and luckily all of the other participants were in attendance.  Which isn't to say I wasn't still made to sit with them on the front row even though there was no possibility I was going to be called upon to actually speak.  Presumably it was in case one of the others fell off the stage (this was a posh school) or were taken ill on the short walk up the stairs.

I barely remember the actual competition.  Now that I type this, I seem to recalling having a duel role as prompt and so followed the speech through each time rather than looked at the stage.  Out the corner of my eye I did see a lot of gesticulation, arms being waved aloft the air.  I think one of my classmates even had a prop sword.

I don't remember who won.  I expect it wasn't Shakespeare.