Soup Safari #73: Broccoli and Stilton at the The V&A Cafe.

Lunch. £5.75. The V&A Cafe, Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Rd, London SW7 2RL. Phone: 020 7942 2000. Website.

My Favourite Film of 1925.

Film When Sight and Sound published their top 10 greatest film list in 2012, there were a number of changes in comparison to 2002 in the critics, the most remarked upon being the swap over at the top with Vertigo knocking Citizen Kane off the top spot after half century having shifting slowly up the list since its first appearance in 1982. Here, conveniently are all of the list for successive years. See if you can spot the other huge moment:

1952

Bicycle Thieves
City Lights
The Gold Rush
Battleship Potemkin
Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
Louisiana Story
Greed
Le Jour Se Lève
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Brief Encounter
The Rules of the Game
Le Million

1962

Citizen Kane
L'Avventura
The Rules of the Game
Greed
Ugetsu Monogatari
Battleship Potemkin
Bicycle Thieves
Ivan the Terrible
La Terra Trema
L'Atalante


1972

Citizen Kane
The Rules of the Game
Battleship Potemkin
8½
L'Avventura
Persona
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The General
The Magnificent Ambersons
Ugetsu Monogatari
Wild Strawberries

1982

Citizen Kane
The Rules of the Game
Seven Samurai
Singin' in the Rain
8½
Battleship Potemkin
L'Avventura
The Magnificent Ambersons
Vertigo
The General
The Searchers

1992

Citizen Kane
The Rules of the Game
Tokyo Story
Vertigo
The Searchers
L'Atalante
The Passion of Joan of Arc
Pather Panchali
Battleship Potemkin
2001: A Space Odyssey

2002

Citizen Kane
Vertigo
The Rules of the Game
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
Tokyo Story
2001: A Space Odyssey
Battleship Potemkin
Sunrise
8½
Singin' in the Rain

2012

Vertigo
Citizen Kane
Tokyo Story
The Rules of the Game
Sunrise
2001: A Space Odyssey
The Searchers
Man with a Movie Camera
The Passion of Joan of Arc
8½

That's right. After appearing in every list since the 1952, Battleship Potemkin's finally dropped out, having fallen into the 11th place in the top 100. Admittedly this was close, just one vote below 8½ but given how far up the list relatively it was in previous years this is still a magnitudinal shift especially considering in 2002 it managed to hold in there during The Godfather blip.

There's a couple of reasons, I believe. Firstly, Man with a Movie Camera had recently been rereleased in a couple of restored editions with decent soundtracks so it was at the surface of people's minds. The Passion of Joan of Arc had also been recently released on a superb Criterion edition. A restored Potemkin wasn't to be released until late in 2012 after voting ended.

But I also think that unlike the other films on the list, with the exception of Joan, it's not an easy film to love. The whole rest of that list has titles which aren't just spectacularly ahead of their time in some way, but also at a basic level very entertaining. Any of those films bare repeat viewing just for the sheer pleasure of it.

Whereas Potemkin is a film to be admired on a technical level, academically studied, but it's not something that you'd want to watch over and over because you like the characters, it's designed not focus on any, or the story, the resonance of which is more historical and only emotional if you're politically invested.

Yet, for the odessa steps sequence alone, it's my favourite film of this year because so much of later cinema, especially action cinema springs from it, and sometimes it's ok to simply admire a work for its artistic brilliance even if it's not something you'd want to watch every night. Having said that, in writing these paragraphs, I'm very tempted to watch it again very soon.

Clinton Landslide.

Politics Back in April, Nate Silver decided to throw caution to the wind and discuss what would be required for a Hillary Clinton landslide, what the electoral college map would look like depending on how many points ahead she'd be on election day. Without jinxing things too much - a month is still a long time in politics, it's still worth reading if you're in the mood for some schadenfreude:

"Democrats have long talked about turning Texas blue — or at least purple — but the truth is they haven’t come anywhere close. Obama lost Texas by 12 points in 2008 despite his near-landslide margin nationally, for instance. But Clinton has a number of factors that could work in her favor. We estimate that about somewhere between 37 and 40 percent of Texas’s electorate will be Hispanic, black, Asian-American or Native American, depending on turnout. A high proportion of its white population has college degrees. And Trump has run afoul of locally popular politicians, such as Ted Cruz and George W. Bush. Previous polls of Texas had shown Trump with only a mid-single digit lead there, although a more recent survey had him up by 11."

Cut to tonight and ...

Mackowiak says these Trump comments lower his electoral floor all the way down to 30%-32% or lower, imperiling GOP control of the House.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) October 8, 2016

If you’re asking me if I think there’s a chance now that @hillaryclinton wins Texas, the answer is yes. Can’t believe I typed those words https://t.co/mwBCyC0v35

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) October 8, 2016

At the end of his piece, Nate says:

"There have even been a couple of national polls that showed Clinton with a lead in the mid-teens. But my powers of imagination are limited. Other than losing North Dakota to go along with South Dakota, or perhaps the statewide electoral votes in Nebraska to go along with the congressional district ones, it’s hard for me to envision Trump doing any worse than this — unless he really does shoot someone on 5th Avenue."

Not quite that, but metaphorically ...

Class War.

TV Find above the first proper trailer for Doctor Who's new spin-off Class, uploading to BBC Three with two episodes on the 22nd October and heading off for another six weeks after that. It's about what we expected, The Sarah Jane Adventures with the tone of Torchwood. Usual business about cautious welcome, though I hope it's more of an ensemble than some of the establishing shots imply and it's not a male protagonist and bunch of co-stars.  Clever of writer Patrick Ness to address head on all the potential comparisons with other genre cousins, knowing full well that he's essentially using a well worn premise in the Whoniverse.  Hell, even Torchwood had its rift.  Find below a specially shot teaser with the Doctor smashing the fourth wall:



Before you ask, yes, yes I am. Or at least I'm planning to ...

Dear Barack.

Politics Back in 2008, I wrote an open letter to new US president Barack Obama, asking him for one favour. To be his own man. Eight years later, Lindy West now writes to him in The Guardian thanking him for doing just that:

"Thank you for modelling competence, humour and grace for your constituents, whether they appreciated it or not. You were held to a higher standard, with more gratuitous obstructionism than any president in history, and you didn’t just meet that standard – you transcended it. You chuckled through racist death threats and “terrorist fist jabs” and secret-Kenyan-Muslim-lizard-people-Satan’s-gay-butt-priest bloviations long after any average person would have thrown a chair through the window of a Jamba Juice and take to the wilds until death. Laughing at your enemies, holding on to your identity undimmed and letting your anger out when it really matters – those are lessons that have helped me, personally, in a very direct and tangible way."

He's going to be missed.

Museum Peace.

Audio Originally published in the Short Trips anthology Dalek Empire, then recorded and released as a subscriber only special, Big Finish have now decided to include James Swallow's story in their new Short Trips Rarities strand. Hopefully the other two will emerge later. With the company producing so much material, it's impossible to keep up with everything and so having not gotten around to the Dalek Empire series yet, I wasn't even aware until checking the TARDIS Datacore later that the key figure here, the old soldier Kalendorf was a major character there or that he and the Doctor would have met before in some earlier story. But the writing is compelling enough that their reactions to each other and their shared visit to a museum commemorating the Dalek conflict passes quickly, playing like one of DWM's Brief Encounters.  Nick Briggs's reading is about as you'd expect, although he makes Eighth rather more northern than my ears hear when McGann's playing him, the accent wandering between Liverpool and Manchester. Placement: published in 2006, this was arguably Big Finish's first cheeky reference to the Time War, with Eighth in the depths of trying to decide whether to sacrifice Gallifrey to beat the Daleks, as per the suggestion of Dalek and Parting of the Ways. The description doesn't quite match the Night of the Doctor version and although it's tempting to make it about The Ancestor Cell instead, I'm inclined to make it the earliest story in the Time War era, as though he's questioning the extent of his potential involvement.

Research Tools: Copac.

Books Sometimes a book vital to your research won't be in your university library and so you'll have to resort to an interlibrary loan. Most universities charge for the service and so before you go through the process of requesting items, it's always good to know if they're even available in this country.

Welcome to COPAC.

COPAC is a unified catalogue or database of everything available in UK and Irish academic, national and specialist libraries.

So you can search for the title of the book you're looking for and find out if another library has a copy.

For example, COPAC tells me that Lance Parkin's Doctor Who novel The Dying Days is available at the British Library, National Library of Scotland, Oxford University and Trinity College Dublin.

Safe in that knowledge you can go through the rigmarole of an interlibrary loan.

But there's also the added bonus of seeing if another university in your area has a copy so you can simply visit them in person and usually they'll allow some form of access to see the item, saving time and money.

Research Tools: Box of Broadcasts.

Books With students either starting out at university or returning after the summer break, Liverpool suddenly seems like a busy place again, I thought it might be fun or useful to have a short series of ideas for sources that might prove useful in research. Having an Information Studies means you never quite give up on keeping connected to such things and it feels wrong not to put this knowledge somewhere.

Box of Broadcasts, then.

Box of Broadcasts is a massive streaming database of everything broadcast on much of Freeview television and BBC Radio since 2007.  Literally everything.  Every film, documentary, play, concert, game show, soap, drama and comedy.  Everything.  Apart from, oddly, the red button service.

Plus ten foreign language channels.  Plus a whole bunch of archive material mostly about Shakespeare starting in 1990 onwards.

And if you're a student or staff member at an academic institution you have access to the lot, providing you have the correct log-in information.  Essentially if you can log-in to a computer on campus or an email account, you have access to this.

Box of Broadcasts is here.

You'll have to register initially, but after that you just log-in each time using your institutional log-in.  Anywhere with a web connection and a browser.  Even works on tablets and phones.

There are two key access points.  An EPG like guide which you can scroll backwards, or a search box which has numerous advanced search options.

The legal proviso is that it be used to educational purposes.

How does this benefit researchers?

Volume.

Between BBC Four and BBC Radio Three and Four there'll be literally thousands of programmes on hundreds of topics.

One of the most difficult problems at university is getting an overview of a topic with a sound academic foundation or finding an angle on a subject and although a lot of this stuff is also available on the BBC website, it's much, much easier having it all in one place.

Isn't that amazing?

My Favourite Film of 1926.

Film The Adventures of Prince Ahmed is the oldest surviving animated feature film. Argentinian animator Quirino Cristiani is known to have produced animations earlier than Ahmed director Lotte Reiniger, but they've been lost.

Working backwards through time in selecting these films, I'm slowly hitting the milestones or at least the eras of the milestones, the first colour films, the age of sound, and soon feature films, commercial films and experiments in moving images themselves.

But because I'm working backwards they also feel like the last of their kind.  This is the last possible animated feature film I can select, The Wizard of Oz the last colour feature film, Grand Hotel the last sound picture, and I have an idea what the last film will be but let's not spoil the surprise.

At what point should I stop?  The first commercial film?  No, that feels too late.  Lantern shows?  No that feels too early.  I do have an end date and indeed an end film in film in mind but filling the spaces between will be a real challenge.  Rocky times ahead.

* * * * *
Putting that shop talk to one side, what of the film itself? My single viewing was during my MA Screen Studies course, a screening in a seminar room from the BFI dvd. Although I'd read the brief synopsis, nothing prepared me for the magical radiance of the images and story and how so much potential beauty is lost when such things are produced in a computer.

Earlier in the year, Google celebrated the life of Reiniger with one of their Doodles, in this case a video piece which is still available on their YouTube channel:



Cynically, however lovely this is, I assumed that it must have been produced in a computer to give a sense of what the films were with much less effort. Imagine my surprise whilst researching this blog post in finding this making of video in which its revealed the artist mimicked the techniques of the original director in order to create this tribute:



"I just cut these out" she says as we survey a silhouette I don't think most of us would be able to produce as neatly or under the kinds of deadlines she must have been up against. On reflection, of course it had to be traditionally animated to give it the right atmosphere. To do anything else would have been a disservice.

Doom Coalition 3.

Audio Well, that's much, much better. As you'll remember I wasn't monumentally impressed with DC2, describing it "as a group of episodes which exists because it's time for some more Eighth Doctor adventures, rather than because there are any especially interesting stories to tell". Although some of my criticisms of that previous installments still stand, especially in relation to how the companions fit within the overall superstructure of the series, this is a more entertaining set of episodes mostly because there's a greater sense of forward movement in terms of where the story arc is heading and also because River Song has effectively become a full time player bringing a whole different energy to events. Plus it's regained its sense of fun, helped immeasurably by the chemistry between the main cast. Eighth and River Song are a great fit, coming across more as equals than she ever did with Eleventh. But, and although it's true the opening installment assuages this slightly, I do wish we could return to the old four episode monthly installment structure for the Eighth Doctor last seen for the Mary Shelley stories. As was discovered in the BBC Eighth Doctor novels, having epic, universe saving adventures can become tiring after a while.

Absent Friends

Arguably the highlight of the set largely because it sets aside galaxy destruction in favour of the Doctor investigating a problem on a small scale in the old style and has deepcut implications for his companions. As well as allowing us a window into Liv's past, there's also Helen catching up with herself which leads to the Doctor confirming my old theory about the Whoniverse that the Doctor and is companions can't change history if they're aware of the original outcome. If the Doctor had managed to stop Rose Tyler stumbling into her flat in Aliens of London he could have slipped back a year and have her visit her Mum before she was even reported missing. But as he explains, now that she's run headlong into her own future, those events are now set in stone. This fan of Koquillion is also especially appreciative of the ultimate explanation of why everything which looks strange is in fact exactly what it appears to be and not the red herring were clearly supposed to believe it is. One slight continuity question: the Doctor gifts his companions chip and pin debit cards in 1998 which seems extremely early and we know they're supposed to work because Helen uses hers for train travel.

The Eighth Piece

Ambitiously structured story redolent of some of the 90s novels from Virgin and the BBC in which Eighth utilises a very Seventh tactic for slightly more benign means in what's effectively a retelling of the Lost in Time episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Cross cutting between the eras is achieved with minimal fuss and it's never confusing, even if the ultimate reason for the mcguffin's existence never quite coalesces. Unlike the previous box, this Doctor is a much more active, investigatory figure who clearly has a lot of faith in his TARDIS to return and pick up his companions at the correct moments. Embedded in here is an utterly compelling performance from John Shrapnel as Thomas Cromwell, the cold, controlling and intellectually vital figure pictured in the Holbein paintings. Top marks to the producers for discovering a rational reason why the Doctor won't recognise River Song in the future and for keeping it just in character -- hopefully it'll be utilised in the upcoming second River Song boxed set so she can have whole conversations with Sixth and Seven as well.

The Doomsday Chronometer

Big Finish repays its loyal listeners with an audio character gag which only makes sense if you've heard to Fifth Doctor portion of Classic Doctors, New Monsters. Is it the same actor? Sounds like him. How funny.  That whole section, with River and Helen flitting around time and space is an utter blast, its experimentation with the narrative structure very Moffat era and unlike anything I've heard in Big Finish before.  If anything though the installment suffers from too much happening syndrome, with barely much time to quite appreciate the implications of what we're hearing before another plot thread is applied and again, the threat of the clock never quite feels properly established.  Despite having River's presence, it's still very strange when she poignantly  references something from the revival right in the middle of what's still technically the classic era.  Her sheer awesomeness is over balancing things not least because Alex Kingston is well into the swing of audio now, her performance indivisible with the television series.

The Crucible of Souls

The Eighth Doctor's referencing of the Battle TARDISes as a programme from his past pretty much disregards the idea that all these audios are still happening in the three year Greenpeace gap at the start of the EDAs.  The TARDIS Datacore has finally adopted my structure of books/comics/audios as his biographical order, I notice, so perhaps that's gained currency.  Hasn't there been another occasion when a Doctor's companions mistake some other figure as being the regenerated Doctor?  I'm wracking my brain, but other than the River Song story Signs, I can't think of anything in particular.  Help needed.  Pretty decent finale overall, which explains why Robert Bathurst was in what seemed like a pretty nothing role and he tops off what is a pretty incredible cast overall.  My only fear now is that the final Doom Coalition box doesn't somehow lead in to the Time War set which is due for release this time next year.  Even though we know the Eighth Doctor's fate now, there still seems to be plenty more ongoing stories to be told before all of that descends.

Lots and lots of sequels.

Film A couple of decades ago when Empire was still a relatively new publication, before YouTube, they'd give away free VHS tapes filled with trailers for upcoming movies. Here's the '97 edition being sold on ebay, with Baz's R+J, Michael, The Phantom, Ken's Hamlet, the Ransom remake and Mars Attacks on the cover. Frequently this would be the first time most of us would know half of these films existed, one notable example being The Juror with Alec Baldwin and Demi Moore which looked cheap and deranged and so it was when I eventually saw it a couple of decades later.

I'm reminded of happy times devouring these old tapes on seeing Empire's webpage offering a forward chronology for film releases heading into the end of the decade.  There's a few items that I'd entirely missed like La La Land, a musical starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and that Edgar Wright has a new film coming too.  Much of the list isn't otherwise unknown, mostly consisting of franchise releases, remakes and sequels.  I'm going to be in my mid-forties by the time this future film narrative plays out.

Plus they've included links to the trailers.  Unlike back then, I'm warier of watching such things because too often they're essentially a synopsis of the film.  The Passengers promo says, way, way too much, I think.  Nevertheless, doesn't the Resident Evil trailer look fabulous? I mean, yes, expectations lowered because it is a Resident Evil film.  But having enjoyed pretty much all the preceding installments, I'm really, really looking forward to finally being able to buy a complete boxed set.

Will & Grace & Hillary.

Politics The cast of Will & Grace re-unite for a pro-Clinton infomercial. As ever it's sporadically funny. But the real marvel is the set which somehow manages to almost recreate something which stopped existing ten years ago. Comparing it to footage of the original series, almost all of the original background furniture returns as well as the brick-a-brack, right down to the framed photo of Grace on the shelf behind the couch and the mirror about the fireplace. Some pieces have moved, which is to be expected after ten years. Real fans will be able to say how canonical this is with the finale of the series, but notice also how easily the cast pick up their characters all these years later entirely as though they never left.

Hope Listed.

Shakespeare The BBC reports the Theatre and the Hope, or rather the surviving sites of those Elizabethan playhouses have been put under listed status and protection:

"Duncan Wilson, chief executive of government heritage agency Historic England, said: "The archaeological remains of the first and last Elizabethan playhouses to be built in London give us fleeting glimpses of a fascinating period in the history of theatre.

"They are where some of the world's greatest stories were first told and it is wonderful that they remain today, bearing witness to our fascinating past.

"Their cultural importance, particularly their connections with Shakespeare and Marlowe, means they deserve protection as part of England's precious historic fabric."

After what I've heard about the changes made to the fabric of the Globe recreation, one might wonder if it not be an idea to give that building similar protections. Meaow.

The Torchwood Problem 2.0

TV Digital Spy is reporting the "air" or rather upload date for Doctor Who spin-off Class and a bit of the mission statement which involves the Doctor appearing in the first episode. Creator Patrick Ness has stressed recently that this isn't a family show that it's directly for BBC Three's key demographic.

Welcome again to the Torchwood problem which is simply that we have a spin-off show for a programme ostensibly made for a family audience, which is designed to welcome in children and whose tone is no way designed to cater for that audience.

Then, Russell T Davies was clever enough to realise that having the Doctor show up in this show for older audiences was a poor idea for just this reason, because of pester power.  I argued that having Captain Jack and Martha Jones in their did much the same thing but nevertheless.

Apparently loads of children have seen Torchwood, presumably helped by the slightly edited early evening repeats during the second year back in 2007.  Yes, 2007.  We're all so, so old.  Torchwood is ten years old this year.  Sorry about that.

Obviously its up to parents to decide what their children can tolerate but I don't think I'd show Torchwood to anyone under the age of at least fifteen and hence the Torchwood Problem.  Gosh this is all a bit Mediawatch UK isn't it?

Class is supposed to be designed for a YA audience which is the age group of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, a younger demographic than Torchwood was designed for.  But I do think we're still in a bit of a grey area here.

Am I wrong?  Perhaps I am.  I have no children, I'm just thinking notionally about age groups and the kinds of material a figure like the Doctor can appear in.  There's something quite precious about him being a hero for the family.

My Favourite Film of 1927.

Film  If there's a film from the silent era which continues to be an influence on pop culture, it's Metropolis.  I've seen it innumerable times in countless versions, from a very rough edition given away on VHS by Empire Magazine, to the even worse version knocked out originally on dvd by Eureka, to their superb restoration which turned up on a free dvd with The Observer (or what it the Telegraph?) to the even more print which toured the country with the newly recorded soundtrack which I saw at the Cornerhouse in Manchester.

But what of the people who've made it?  I've scoured the internet, well ok, been Googling around and found the following.  Even if you ignore the rest, I'd recommend the first link which is a thorough investigation into Lang's whole career selecting key films, by Noel Murray formerly of The AV Club.  Of the rest, all I can say is that it's interesting just how under represented the performers are in these films at least in terms of none Wikipedia sources.  There are German webpages but even then they don't appear to be too complex.

The sprawling, obsessive career of Fritz Lang (director):
"Film historian David Kalat once proposed rules for a Fritz Lang drinking game: Whenever a Lang film shows an angry mob or a woman in a nightgown, everybody takes a shot. Unlike many of the major auteurs of the first half of the 20th century, Lang didn’t bury his motifs for critics to unearth decades later. He moved the camera and used lighting expressively, and employed overt visual symbolism even after he transitioned from silent films to sound. Over and over, Lang made movies about the madness of crowds, the indelible stain of guilt, the influence of the powerful, and yes, the way people look beneath their clothes—literally and metaphorically."

Eric Pommer aka Erich Pommer (producer):
"Erich Pommer (July 20, 1889 – May 8, 1966) was one of the most influential producers of the silent film era, having been one of the most influential creators behind the German Expressionism movement as the head of production at Ufa from 1924 to 1926. Under his guidance, many of what critics consider the greatest movies ever made were directed, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922), Die Nibelungen (1924), Mikaël (1924), Der Letzte Mann/The Last Laugh (1924), Variety (1925), Tartuffe (1926), Faust (1926), Metropolis (1927) and The Blue Angel (1930)."

Thea von Harbou (writer):
"In his 1928 book on film directing and screenwriting, Russian filmmaker Vsevolod Pudovkin notes that many literary figures had difficulty adjusting to “the optically expressive form” of film. Thea von Harbou, one of three German screenwriters who Pudovkin singles out, stands alongside Carl Mayer as one of the most influential film figures in Weimar German cinema, which spanned the years 1919 to 1933. Including an excerpt from Harbou’s script for Spione (1928), an espionage adventure film, Pudovkin goes on to praise the novelist Harbou for her ability to work with the film medium. Indeed, it is Harbou’s awareness of the “possibilities of the camera such as shots, framing, editing, [and] intensification through visually striking details” that distinguishes her work. In the scene in question—one of the most visually dynamic in the film—Harbou conveys in words the sense of movement, speed, and sudden discovery surrounding a train wreck. Each shot, each significant gesture, is noted, and in this she exemplifies the way her husband and collaborator Fritz Lang once described the model screenplay: “To the last intertitle everything has to be ready before the cameras roll”."

Alfred Abel (actor):
"The actor Alfred Abel first tested other professional areas like a forest apprenticeship, a not finished gardener apprenticeship and a study for artistic drawing before he decided to become an actor. He made his stage debut in Lucerne/Switzerland in 1904 and in the same year he came to the Deutsche Theater directed by Max Reinhardt in Berlin, the metropolis of theater in Germany."

Brigitte Helm (actor):
"She was the most sought-after actress of the glory days of the German film industry, a tall blond beauty who starred in more than 35 movies and set directors against one another in the competition for her services. Ms. Helm was regarded as such a perfect embodiment of the era's ideal of cool sophistication that when she turned Josef von Sternberg down for the starring role in "Blue Angel," he had to settle for Marlene Dietrich."

Gustav Fröhlich (actor):
"Gustav Fröhlich was born an illegitimate child in Hanover, Germany, and was raised by foster parents. Before becoming an actor, he worked for a short time as an editor of a provincial newspaper and as the author of popular novels. During World War I he also volunteered for duty in occupied Brussels as a press supervisor."

Rudolf Klein-Rogge (actor):
"The screen's original Dr. Mabuse, Klein-Rogge excelled at playing sinister figures in 1920s and 193s German productions, and was a regular of Fritz Lang's Weimar films."

Gottfried Huppertz (original score):
"Gottfried Huppertz was born in Köln, Germany on March 11, 1887. There He studied music in a conservatory, and in 1905 wrote his first composition, a song titled "Rankende Rosen" (Tendrillar Roses), which he dedicated to his childhood friend Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Huppertz, around 1918Gottfried Huppertz in Fritz Lang's Dr. MabuseDuring WWI Huppertz worked as an opera singer and theater actor in Coburg, Freiburg and Breslau, and also wrote some music for the theater. In 1920 Huppertz moved to Berlin and began acting at the Nollendorfplatz Theater, and shortly afterwards met his future wife, Charlotte Lindig. During that period, Huppertz was also recorded singing two songs with other singers as promotion for the operetta "Verliebte Leute," which was released in 1922 on a 78rpm record."

Trolling.

Film Being slightly too old to care at the time, I never did own a troll, the only kind I really encountering as a child being the monstrosity that menaced the three billy goats gruff in a Ladybird book. So the fact of a film based on The Trolls entirely passed me by until this morning when a friend sent me a link to a cover of Lionel Richie's Hello sung by Zooey Deschanel (Spotify).

Like The Lego Movie soundtrack, it's a franchise album which punches well above its weight in talent and material thanks to having Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake as Executive Producers.  Mostly covers of really cool songs, there is some original material including an "I Want" song from Kendrick (Spotify), which has a chorus which sounds like Price Tag and a Millennial Whoop.

Collider has an interview with Justin and Anna about the production process:

"TIMBERLAKE: So, my job for that was just hopefully to put our own spin on it, make it sound unique, and make it sound like it belonged in the scene, much like musical theater, almost. And then, I also wrote four original songs, specifically written for the movie. I’ve never done anything like that, either. Some of the music does sound very ‘70s. Overall, you’ll feel that a lot of the music definitely has a little bit of ‘70s funk to it, so that was definitely an inspiration for “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” as well. You get to see some of the animation and what they’re working on, so you get to see how big a moment is. When you finally get to see where the Bergens live, you hear The Gorillaz. You just want to sonically complement that."

Sadly this film itself looks like a fairly perfunctory quest narrative but you can't have everything.  [Thanks Talia!]

Life Props: Hillary Clinton Tim Kaine 16 t-shirt.

Politics A friend in the US has been kind enough to send me a Clinton/Kaine 16 campaign t-shirt.  As well as actually wanting to register my support from across the atlantic, it was also prompted by seeing a "Dole/Kemp" t-shirt in a documentary and deciding it might be nice to have a historic or historical item for the future depending on which way the election goes.

You might have noticed me tweet a photograph the first time I wore it.

#ootd pic.twitter.com/yXuGD4HqOW

— Stuart Ian Burns (@feelinglistless) September 12, 2016

This was the day I visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester and although I wasn't unaware enough that it might attract some attention not to include a spare t-shirt in my backpack.  In museum, and entire family passing by me in the railyard at the back kept their eyes fixed on my chest as I walked towards them. There were also comments. One of the invigilators said that she liked the t-shirt and another older woman who'd stood next to me during a presentation explained that she "admired my fashion statement."  Both were American judging by their accents.

In the days I've worn it since, the attention is always there.  The odd glance as I pass by, people reading my chest.  I've been pointed at from a car a few times.  I assume it's because of the t-shirt.  I hope it isn't something else.  Part of me wonders if I should wait until after the election before wearing it again when it becomes a blue t-shirt with words on.  But I genuinely want Clinton to win and wearing the t-shirt is a tiny way of showing that even if it probably has zero chance of changing the minds of any random US tourists who might notice it on their rounds about the city.

Soup Safari #72: Tomato and Pepper at The Bakery.

Lunch. £3.50. The Bakery, Atkinson Art Gallery and Library, Lord St, Southport PR8 1DB. Phone: 01704 533333. Website.

My Favourite Film of 1928.

Film Unlike some directors, and actors, Martin Scorsese is unafraid to give interviews. The IMDb lists three hundred and fifteen appearances by the man as "self" and that probably barely scratches the surface of how many time his opinion's been sought on a range of film related subjects which doesn't include the occasions when he's publicising his latest picture.  Search for him on YouTube and you could spend the next month just watching him talk about this and that and you'd probably come out the other end having had as decent a film education as those of us who went to college to do the same.

All of which is pre-amble to explain that although I have a snatch of an interview with him in my head, I can't remember where he said it.  My guess is it was either during an episode of Mark Cousins's Scene By Scene series or a South Bank Show from roughly the same time, either publicising the release of Kundun or Casino.  Or both.  In other words, I'm paraphrasing a memory which has been lodged in my braincells for a couple of decade but which had a profound effect on my attitude to film going forward.  Yet I can't remember the details of how it happened.  Was he sitting opposing Bragg or Cousins?  Nope, don't know.

He was talking about directing Sharon Stone in Casino and how she was having difficulty getting to grips with her role as hustler and former prostitute who marries Robert De Nero's Casino manager and how his strategy was to ask her to watch La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc and specifically the famous close up of lead actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti in the moment when Joan recants her testimony, which is one of the great masterpiece of silent acting.  Stone's performance is equally extraordinary in different ways and is one of the reason I prefer Casino to Goodfellas (although it's worth adding that I much prefer Martin's non-gangster pictures in general anyway).

But Scorsese's delivery service was more interesting.  Apparently at around that time he was amassing an archive of films for just this occasion, the main plank of which was on VHS, his methodology being to task his assistants with recording as many films as he could from television.  There wasn't much detail about this, that I could remember, but it was so that, if he did want to screen some segment or a whole film for a cast or crew member to prove his point he could just pull it from the shelf.  Note this was just before the advent of DVD and as is still the case now when there's still plenty of material which isn't purchasable.

Many things struck when I heard this.  Firstly how big an archive he must have.  Having collected lots of television on VHS even at that stage and knowing how much room all of those tapes filled in my room, just how did he have the space to put them all?  What about the cataloguing process?  If he's on set and decides that he wants to show Joe Pesci a scene from a William Wyler directed poverty row drama like Dead End, he's going to want that sharpish is everything simply stored in alphabetical order or was there a card catalogue.  How did he know what had been recorded?  Did the interns send him a weekly report?  Did he send them his picks from the newspaper.

But above all it was "that's so cool" and so began my collecting obsession and for the next twenty years as I set about amassing films.  Lots and lots of films.  Certainly more than I'll ever get around to watching.  If you're a long term reader and I mean really long, you'll have read about this when explaining how they're catalogued in 2009 (and yes, I'm still using chronological by year in which they're set) and when there was a near catastrophic disaster, which I explained in the review for the opening of Liverpool Biennial 2010.

Notice this was before I had home broadband and although Lovefilm existed and I was latterly receiving discs from them, like I said, not everything is available for rental plus purchasing can be very expensive.  But charity shops are charity shops and sales are sales and PVRs exist so it's actually relatively easy to amass a collection especially if you're diligent about it and prepared to the put the hours in.  Which I was and have.  It's possible to become very obsessive about collecting.

How often did watch?  Well ... like I said there's only so many hours available in every human life.  Although for a while I'd check the BFI's monthly listing for suggestions as to watch to watch next, utilising the Lovefilm subscription and the collection to simulate their seasons in my own home, obscurity and availability eventually led to this petering out.  Plus I'd have runs of really quite depressing films.

Plus then we did get broadband.  Which begat Lovefilm Instant, what's now Amazon Prime.  And Netflix.  And NowTV.  And mostly lately MUBI.  Catalogues of streamable films mostly in HD, mostly with better sound and picture quality to dvd.  Although there's some seepage, not everything is available all the tome, poor in some areas, there is still more than enough to keep anyone busy.

So lately I've stopped collecting as much.  Been more specific in what I'm looking for.  What's the point in buying all the blockbusters if they're available at the push of a button, especially if they're only going to be watched once?

Has Scorsese done the same?  Does he simply subscribe to the dozens of streaming services available in the US now, which also includes TCM and HBO?

Mores to the point what's happened to all of his VHS tapes?

Liverpool Biennial 2016: The Walker Art Gallery.

"There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, where the sea's asleep, and the rivers dream. People made of smoke, and cities made of song. Somewhere there's danger, somewhere there's injustice, and somewhere else the tea's getting cold. Come on, Ace, we've got work to do!"

-- The Doctor, "Survival"

Art Here we are then the final destination for my TARDIS in the official Biennial at the Walker, the final venue for so many of these projects.   As ever the main contribution is the John Moores Painting Prize and as ever I spent a lot of time shaking my head, rolling my eyes, sighing and wondering what the judges were thinking.  After the generous selection of portraits and landscapes and illustrative paintings, in 2016, we're back to swathes of abstraction interspersed with dashes of melancholia and nihilism.  Having come to terms with the fact that I'll never be entirely happy with the selections in these biannual exhibitions and least of all with the chosen winner, let's excavate what I didn't find unattractive.

One of the key connections between many of the works is control and attention to detail.  Gemma Cassey's Halves II (Continuum), the painting I chose for the people's vote, has minutely rendered wavy lines in acrylic so close together that it's almost impossible to see how they might be kept separate.  Not just horizontal; by cross hatching them with vertical lines, she'll able to create two tones intersected in the middle.  It's fascinating.  On a much larger scale but with similar restraint is Alex Rennie's Totem, in which splodges of black paint against a salmon coloured background somehow create a three dimensional space filled with columns with perspective, the seemingly haphazard stroke choices being nothing of the kind.

There are some landscapes.  John Stark's Beasts of England II shows pigs being reared in a wet, muddy field offering an apocalyptic farming vision.  The always good Nicholas Middleton is back with Figures in an Arch, a much smaller, simpler work than usual depicting a group of shabbily dressed people and a chest of drawers on the edge of a darkened tunnel looking into the unknown.  Mandy Payne returns too with another of her paintings of a derelict tower block, No Ball Games Here, an austere image of a concrete balcony over looking more concrete balcony albeit painted in pastel colours.  The overall impression you gain from this collection is far from optimistic.  Gathered together it's entirely apocalyptic.  Thank goodness the Doctor will always be there to save us.

Next Destination:
Everywhere.