Detained.

TV "A mixed reaction so far then." The parish circular's letters page this month is almost completely filled with reader commentary on Class, mainly the first three episodes and it's fair to say that as often the case with the mains series, the first impressions run from very positive to utter despair. The general consensus is that it isn't as good as either SJA, Torchwood or its obvious source Buffy The Vampire Slayer, barely feels like it's set in the Doctor Who universe, runs a bit rote and generic, all criticisms which even appear to an extent in one of the positive reviews, albeit to give the writer something to defend against.  It's notable that DWM itself isn't carrying reviews of individual episodes, although that was also true of the other spin-offs which in some cases even waited until a shiny disc release.  Perhaps they've decided to wait until the television broadcast.

Here we are at episode six so it's about time to grab the confession stone and say how I'm really feeling about the show.  Despite being relatively positive about the first three episodes, the subsequent two parter simply didn't work for me and numerous problems are piling up in the negative column.  Apart from Tanya and Quill, I simply don't like any of the characters enough to make the emotional connection of wanting to see what happens next with them.  Also, what's the point of setting the thing in the Doctor Who universe if you're not going to make a virtue of its rich heritage?  For a show call Class, only two and a half episodes have been about the school with its panoply of story opportunities.  None of the actual plots have been that interesting and almost all of them feel like a rehash of something else without  the necessary clever spin.

There's nothing especially wrong with doing a detention episode; most teen shows set in high schools get around to it eventually.  As here, they tend to be a way of knocking out a cheap installment because it's all set in a single place be it a library or classroom, and in putting all of your characters in a room and forcing them to talk, you can effect change in the relationships going forward.  One of the best episodes of Dawson's Creek was their detention episode, Detention, a loving homage of The Breakfast Club (as these things usually are) in which all of the emotions which had been bubbling under rose to the surface.  My So-Called Life also managed to sneak one into its slender episode count and even though that has Rayanne inadvertently handcuffed to the wrong bed instead, the results were the same as the friends rally together.

The set up is relatively ingenious, with the aforementioned sentient mineral forcing everyone to go a bit Edge of Destruction oscillating between blind panic and wanting to murder each other in between confessing their darkest thoughts.  In most shows, a longer lead time manufactures incident which leads to such thoughts amongst the regular characters which will inevitably spill out due to being stuck in a confined space together all day.  Here the stone force them to confess their secrets in a much shorter time with a modicum of plausibility.  Transferring them all to another dimension without an exit creates an extra level of claustrophobia, just like a prison, of being stuck in a place for an eternity with people you can only barely stand the sight of.  Or travelling to London and back on by train as is the case with me once a month at the moment.

But as anyone who's watched large section of the Davison era without the dvd commentary turned on will know, watching people who say they're friends but really aren't bicker incessantly isn't especially entertaining, especially if they're not particularly witty by design.  However much you can withstand Detained presumably depends on how much you're invested in the characters and since as we've discussed Tanya's about my limit, I could really care less about the emotional lives of the others especially since the confessions they make aren't particularly revolutionary or unexpected.  The writer is so desperate to see his characters in conflict, he daren't have April and Ram confess actual love for each other and give us a warm tickle and a reason to root for them.  In his universe, everything has to be hard.

Plus as we've discussed, because the audience is having to constantly fill in the blanks in some of these friendships the emotions wrought here don't ever quite hit as hard as they should.  When Tanya describes how she feels about herself in relation to the older teens, we haven't seen this lot working as a group for long enough across these episodes to see the dynamics of that unfold.  They only realised they were friends at the end of #1, they're barely together in #2 and the structures of #3, #4 and #5 keep all of them relatively isolated.  We haven't even had a simple scene of all of them hanging in a coffee shop or in the school canteen.  In rushing to hit these emotional beats, the writer hasn't done the necessary narrative spade work, so interested is he in making Quill the most autonomous and interesting figure in a show which should be about the kids.

Which leads us to next week which looks to be mainly a spectacular Quill showcase which will explain (a) why she locked them in detention and (b) where the budget of this episode went much as Midnight then Turn Left did back in the day.  We've returned to what looks like double banking, folks.  Again, it seems like another episode not utilising the school rendering the notion of setting it in Coal Hill entirely superfluous.  See above.  Hopefully it'll be anomalously amazing even if it has nothing much to do with what we expected this series to be about given the Doctor's own mission statement right up front.  Will we finally meet the Senior Partners School Governors and will they turn out to be some classic Doctor Who monster in an attempt to steer the ship back into port?  My money's on the Monoids.

Soup Safari #74: Potato and Leek at Tate Britain.

Lunch. £6.65. Djanogly Café at Tate Britain, Millbank, Westminster, London SW1P 4RG. Phone: 020 7887 8825. Website.

London Calling: The Mother of All.

Politics At just the moment when it feels like politically the world is going to crap and I'm going to be spending my forties wondering exactly what went wrong, I decided to kick against the doors of democracy, metaphorically rather than actually and visit the Houses of Parliament. The initial plan for yesterday was to walk first through Tate Britain's hard chronological display of British art then have a wander around the local area.  But after eating dinner at the Pizza Express in Millbank and realising what time it was, this quickly transmuted into dashing up to Parliament so I could stand outside Westminster Clock at six o'clock and listen live to Big Ben and his bongs, which I've heard over the radio so many times after PM on Radio 4.

By the time I'd reached Parliament this had turned into a question "I wonder if you can visit the public gallery in the Commons?" which after speaking to a policeman on the gate and then a steward who handed me a giant laminated green ticket found an answer in the positive.  While the chamber is in session it's entirely possible to simply ask for entry and assuming they believe you to be of good character, carrying no knives or pepper spray, visit our key place of government and watch proceedings live.  So after standing on the street and listening to the epic spectacle of the massive clock singing, which was just as a breathtaking as I'd always suspected, I joined the short queue snaking downwards to the reception were the security checks are carried out.

After my belongings had passed through the x-ray machine and I'd stepped through the metal detector, I took the short pathway up to the larger building and not predicting the geography stepped straight into Westminster Hall.  You know the slight moment of disorientation you feel whenever you unexpectedly see a famous person in a context other than on a screen or in a photography or both?  My gasp was loud enough to echo around its walls.  "Westminster Hall!" I said out loud, arms outstretched.  "Westminster Hall!"  A steward approached and asked if I needed any help.  I told her I was visiting the public gallery of the Commons and she gave me a green slip on which I would declare my intention to disrupt proceeding and directed me towards the large steps at the far end.

Anyone who's seen the innumerable documentaries filmed in this space and The Complete Walk's  version of Richard II will know just how vast this space is, and unlike religious architecture, almost unbroken by furniture with the potential to diminish the spectacle.  Even having seen the former at state events, it's impossible to imagine its stone walls ever being full.  There were perhaps at least a hundred people in there last night milling around, waiting for various events and yet this looked like a small gathering.  As the Parliament website explains, the hall has been rebuilt and restored numerously since opening in 1097 and the result is frankly awesome and impossible to describe as this paragraph has demonstrated.

The walk to those stairs towards the chamber appeared to take little time.  Unfortunately, only as I reached the bottom step did I realise I needed to visit the toilet and found myself asking the two policemen with large rifles (only the second time I think I've seen guns in real life) where the bathroom was.  At the other end of the hall near the gift shop which meant I'd be making that walk a couple more times.  On the upside it also meant I visited the gift shop and bought a jar of jam and a Christmas present.  It's worth pointing out that this shambling about always happens when I visit tourist spots.  Usually when I reach a Tate or V&A it's at least half an hour before I even look at a painting.

Back across the hall, up the stairs and some more stairs and yet more stairs, more security checks and eventually I'm standing in the public gallery at the House of Commons.  The seating is slightly disorientating.  The front couple of rows aren't accessible from the back but it takes a little bit of mental somersaulting to notice and so you're stuck searching around the seating area trying to find a way through.  Eventually I took a seat at one corner with an angle across the all too familiar commons chamber, which is protected by large sheets of what looks like bullet proof glass that also has a noise cancelling effect.  Fortunately audio from the space is piped through speakers on the back of the benches, near invisible behind brass grills which seem otherwise decorative.

There are screens fixed to the wall above the public gallery relaying the feed which also is also broadcast on BBC Parliament, mainly concentrating on whoever's speaking.  The chamber was pretty empty, the bill under discussion is Technical and Further Education Bill proposed by Justine Greening, the The Secretary of State for Education.  When I arrived, David Rutley, Tory representative for Macclesfield was speaking although I was too busy simply enjoying being in the space and watching the routine of the chamber to listen.  As you enter, you're handed a card which explains some of the traditions on one side and the geography of the space on the other, although we're sat too far back to see anything but about a quarter of the space, certainly not the bar of the house.

Architecturally the public gallery is the same as the chamber.  For some reason, I'd expected wooden benches ala many courtrooms, but the seating is just the same as in the chamber, which gives the space a sense of unity.  Worth noting that the chairs aren't especially comfortable and like you often see with MPs who're there for a long session, I found myself sitting diagonally with my arm across the back.  Which isn't to say there isn't plenty of legroom, but not enough to cross your legs and it's  impossible to sit backwards which is philosophically important, I suppose.  Would we want our MPs to forced to sit to attention or have the facility to recline.  Not that the MPs did seem to be paying much attention anyway.  Many of them were sat looking at their iProduct screens.

But don't ask me what this Bill was about other than something, something education.  There was some "Order! Order!" when one of my favourite MPs, Lucy Powell, heckled her way into Hansard:

David Rutley

Progress in technical and further education and in apprenticeships is vital for the life chances of those seeking first-time employment. I therefore strongly support the Bill. I support it because it seeks to open clear, defined, aspirational paths to success, and it has the potential to help create much-needed parity of esteem between academic education and technical education, as has been talked about during the debate. That is ​further evidence that we on the Government Benches are the real workers party and that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills is at the vanguard of that movement.

Lucy Powell

There is nobody behind him, though!

David Rutley

Let us move on—[Interruption.]

Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)

Order. We cannot have sedentary remarks and remarks from behind the Chair. That is simply impossible.

David Rutley

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Lucy Powell 

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to put it on the record that it was I who was speaking from a sedentary position. The Minister is indeed at the vanguard, but the only other discernible member of the Government is the Minister for the Armed Forces, who is standing behind the Speaker’s Chair.

If only all of life had a Hansard and everything you say one day could be accessible on the internet the next. You'd never need to remember anything.  Although wasn't there a Black Mirror once about just this?  Ok forget it.

Once you've sat down, there isn't an awful lot to see that's new if you've spent much time watching BBC Parliament.  People shuffle in and out of the space constantly, both in the chamber itself and the public galleries, guided tours and groups of college students on what must be Politics courses.  Most don't stay very long and neither did I, about ten or fifteen minutes.  But there's something about being in a space, smelling the air, creating a memory.  I can't deny despite my slightly frosty attitude to the main parties that I wasn't a bit starstruck on seeing Greening herself, Powell and Tristram Hunt in the chamber, not to mention Robert Halfron who was so impressive in Michael Cockerell's BBC documentary, Inside the Commons.

The House of Lords wasn't in session last night so I didn't get the chance to also see the snoozers.  After leaving the Chamber I wasn't sure where else was open and quickly discovered not much after I attempted to walk towards a door only to quickly be chased after by a security guard who directed by back up towards Westminster Hall just in time to hear the seven o'clock chimes from inside the building, which didn't vibrate in the way I'd expected it to.  Nevertheless, whenever I watch those feeds now, I'll have an idea of how it feels, rather than having to imagine it.  The closest I thought I'd ever get was visiting the set used for television's First Among Equals and other projects at the old Granada Studios Tour in Manchester, yet there I was in the real thing last night.

My Favourite Film of 1920.

Film  My first experience of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was at the Liverpool Biennial 2006 when I was working as an invigilator at Afoundation in Greenland Street building, in the furnace section of what’s now Camp and Furnace, or the big room with the long tables and caravans.

Goshka Macuga’s Sleep of Ulro installation included a giant wooden architectural construct directly influenced by the sets in the film, particularly in the studio bound moments when Caligari is apparently being chased across the landscape.

At The Furnace, visitors could run up such a space then find themselves trapped in a dead end, much like the structures on screen.  The piece required many invigilators, because of safety concerns, although it was almost impossible to keep our eyes on everything.

Culture 24 has a much longer review with images here and there's a shot from above at Getty Images which provides an even better idea of the scale of the piece about how it mimics the architecture within the film.  There's even more at /seconds.

Brave-ish Heart.

TV One of the problems with antidepressants, at least the anti-depressants which I've been prescribed is that they leave you with a generally pleasant feeling all of the time. In a week when the emotional reaction should be sadness and anger, my mouth has continued to be slightly pointing up at edges, each new twist of the metaphoric political knife making an impact on the factual storage areas of my brain rather than the emotional centres.  As the election results inevitably revealed themselves on Tuesday night (inevitable because its 2016), I was generally just numb and in subsequent days, I've found myself laughing at barefaced cheek of the everything.  I want to roar like Katy Perry but instead, I'm rolling my eyes, shaking my head and moving on to the next thing.

Another side effect, not including the grogginess, intermittent nausea, headaches and diarrhea is that it's short circuited my reaction to film and television.  Dramas which are supposed to be sad or scary barely register as such because I simply can't cry, which is a strange given that before this, tears were my favourite release.  The nearest I've come to wet face was watching Spock die in The Wrath of Khan the other week, but there's a good chance I was simply pretending or at least, feeling sad for not feeling sad enough.  You could argue this is a small price to pay for not enduring the horrors of an anxiety which have gripped me for nearly a year, only just about able to commit to being human some days, but I gave up drinking so I could be sure of my own sense of self and now this.

As a result, I'm second guessing my reaction to Class or at least this two parter.  On the one hand I'm enjoying it while it flickers away in front of me, but not to the level of caring much about the characters or becoming engrossed in the storyline.  Everything looks spectacular and shiny but some of the scenes seem to proceed far further than is required in enunciating the action, speechifying to a level of redundancy and a general sense, as with the first half, that the writer had an idea of what was supposed to happen in the episode but couldn't quite manage to calculate how to construct it within the constraints of budget and time and having to service his range of characters.  In other words, why aren't I enjoying this more?

The blossom story hits against the usual shared universe problem of having us wonder why, if this is threatening the planet, neither UNIT or Torchwood or indeed the Doctor aren't on top of it.  At a certain point I wondered if Ness was going to confront this head on and have them indeed dissipate without the kid's participation as a way of reflecting what it must be like to be in that world, with global terrors coming and going.  But on reflection that would have been undramatic within the sphere of a show which is trying for the most part to remain self contained.  It's never a threat which quite has time to establish itself though, the half-hearted body horror never really expressing how it must be affecting the wider population.

April and Ram's trip the Shadow Kin's homeworld coalesced better, partly because of the inherent retreat to a more Whovian structure of a Doctor-figure talking a companion through the world on which they've landed.  Some of the humour felt more belaboured than usual - it's inconceivable that April wouldn't know what Lord of the Rings is, even if (and I can't believe I'm saying this) it was released around the time she was born.  When they reached the Shadow King's lair, it wasn't quite clear how the battle was to be structured and there was much standing around waiting to fight, swords aloft almost as though the characters were waiting for the parallel storyline to catch up with them before heading off into the fray.

Nevertheless you can't criticise the ambition.  As with previous episodes, and as I said last week, it's packing a lot in, like an old WB show's narrative in warp speed.  On top of this the Prince's moral decision about the fate of his own kind and the interloper from Wolf Ram & Hart the "board of governors" and Quill's potential chance to remove her Behavior-Modification Circuitry whatever it inside her head which makes her enslaved to Charlie.  It's a brave choice to retreat to the sensibilities of early First Doctor and be faced with alien characters who don't especially feel like they have a duty to keep mankind safe, such things only really being a result of wanting to remain healthy themselves or protecting their immediate loved ones.

A couple elements of the writing left me a bit squinky.  Despite what I said last week about the show not having a typical white cis male character, it is disappointing this week to have the trope of a gay character threatened even if it doesn't lead to the nauseating prevalent cliche of having them die in the regendered equivalent of fridging.  Then there's having April, for all her talk of having her own strength, albeit augmented through alien intervention eventually being talked into deciding not to kill the Shadow King by her abusive father apparently having to remind her of how she only became that way due to how he treated her and her mother.  The potentially more exciting approach would have been for her to ignore his advice and kill the King anyway.  But having set up the tone of the show and the characters, Ness has to write himself out of a cover in a less than satisfactory manner.

Glancing across other reviews indicates that the general sense is that was sub-par in comparison to previous episodes, so it's quite reassuring that this isn't just the drugs talking and that I haven't missed some vital connection.  The performances remain superb overall, especially Sophie Hopkins, who lends April a real sense of awe, her eyes positively agog at what's happening to her, the power coursing through her.  Ditto Katherine Kelly, who finally revealed the anger and grief burning in Quill's soul.  But perhaps in trying to break out of the more modest ambitions of previous installments and creating something epic, the show loses some of the intimacy which could make it distinctive.  A show called Class should be spending more time at school.

Seating Arrangements.

Film Judd Nelson on how everyone chose where to sit in John Hughes's The Breakfast Club:

"As they were building that library in that school’s gym, they built a rehearsal space for us. It was really an empty room taped out with the same dimensions of the library. And they had the tables all there. And he had us sitting at the same table. All of us. And I was like, “I don’t want to sit with them.” And he was like, “What do you mean?” And I go, “I do not want to sit with them, you know?” And he goes, “Where do you want to sit?” And I knew from the script that I come in after [Anthony] Michael [Hall], so I go, “Wherever he sits, that’s the seat I want.” And he smiled and he looked at Michael, and he went, “Is that okay with you?” Michael went, “Fine.” And [Hughes] just went, “Okay.” And then Ally [Sheedy] said, “I don’t want to sit with them.” And he went, “Where do you want to sit?” And she goes, “Way in the back.” He says, “Fine.” And Emilio says, “Well, I’ll sit with Molly.” And we were like, “Yeah, of course you will.” And it had already begun. The rehearsal had already begun."

Review 2016: 216: Call for Entries.

About I've never done this before but I'm changing the theme for this year's Review 2016.

Now that we know for sure that the world is a divided, broken place, how about we do this:

How about we make a list of good things which happened in 2016?

216 of them.

How about we take the zero out of 2016 and find out what's left?

Tweet, facebook or email a single sentence. Could be something which has happened to you or something which you've enjoyed. Something about a song, a film, a book, a meal, a friend.

If you like, I'll credit you at the bottom with the number of your contribution and a link to your website/social media account of choice.

I'll post it at New Year. Have a go at giving us some hope going into 2017.

Thanks.

Who did Taylor Swift vote for?

Politics There's no real plan to blog the US election. But one "interesting" question is why Taylor Swift has been quiet during this election. Of all the celebrities you might expect to have been intervening it's her, especially when you consider how dominant Beyonce and Katy Perry have been.

Quarter of an hour ago, her instagram account posted the following:

Today is the day. Go out and VOTE 🇺🇸

A photo posted by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift) on Nov 8, 2016 at 8:01am PST

She performed at the 2008 Republican convention but apparently voted for Obama.

Which is probably why she hasn't revealed how she voting backed a particular side at a rally.

Unlike Perry or Beyonce, Swift's popularity probably breaks across both party lines which is difficult in such a partisan country.  Saying she's a Republican immediately alienates her Liberal fans (not to mention some of her celebrity friends).  Appearing at a Clinton rally could lead to her receiving a measure of the treatment the Dixie Chicks have received.

So for entirely understandable reasons she's kept shtum.

That means I can assume she voted for Hillary and carry on enjoying her music.

Updated 17/11/2016 She voted for Hillary. I can start listening to 1989 again guilt free.

My Favourite Film of 1921.

Film Little did I know it at the time but my first taste of Charlie Chaplin was through The Kid, a heavily influenced thirteen episode BBC children's television comedy series broadcast in 1987 as part of The Album, a Clive Doig conceived strand. Starring actor Steve Fairnie and sharing the title of of of a film released in 1921, the central character sported very Chaplinesque facial hair and attitude and as a fan site dedicated to his work explains:

"The programmes gave Fairnie the chance to shine in a new environment, drawing on his love of mime, slapstick and visual humour. The Kid himself could be categorised somewhere between Jacques Tati and Charles Chaplin, while the supporting cast were a timeless combination of goodies and baddies. The setting was an eerily unreal row of colourful terraced houses while a peculiar fluorescent pink three-wheeled car was used to get around."

They've made all thirteen episodes of the series available on YouTube and although Chaplin is only a small part of the mix, as is his film The Kid, I know now why, on seeing his films later, they seemed so familiar in tone.

Star Trek Human Longevity Theory.

TV As an apology for inferiority of tonight's distracted Class review, here's a special bonus post about Star Trek instead.

One of the elements of Star Trek going forward has been the longevity of some of the characters, who seem to have lived or are living way past the expected norms.

Human longevity has already increased due to medical advances and to be sure that would presumably continue into the 22nd, 23rd and 24th centuries. Apart from McCoy reaching 137, Picard is still in fine fettle in Nemesis at the age of 74 giving no indication of retirement. Despite being half-human, Spock Prime managed 162. His father Sarek went at 203. Between Encounter at Farpoint and Nemesis, Riker's only supposed to have aged fifteen years.

Only some of which can be explained by medical advances.

Here's my theory.

Warp travel.

The theory goes, traveling beyond the speed of light would mean an astronaut would stop aging, time continuing around them, as demonstrated to great effect in Interstellar.

Imagine what travelling at warp speed does.

What if, during the various spurts of warp speed star ship crews experience, time stops inside the ship? What if, as a result, they stop aging during those periods which has a cumulative effect on their longevity?

Of course it doesn't quite work. Time passes within the confines of the ship and chronologically matches whatever's happening outside. In the speed of light theory, the traveler doesn't notice that time has passed on the outside of the ship.

But it's possible there's some technological compensation for that which can't take into account human biology.

Still, the upshot would be the longer you spend travelling in space at warp speed, the longer you'll live.

Co-Owner of a Lonely Heart.

TV Sorry if I'm a bit distracted. As I write, the FBI Director has published another letter admitting that contrary to the buzz surrounding his correspondence from a week ago, his assessment is that the agency's attitude to Hillary Clinton hasn't changed since their original judgement in June. That although she used poor judgement in setting up the private email server, that she didn't commit a crime. Well, thanks a bunch mate. On the upside it's before election day so the voters can factor it in and it won't be hanging over her should she win on the 9th. On the downside we don't know what damage it's done in relation to early voting and the overall trend in the polls. Would they have been in this state if the original letter hadn't been released anyway? We'll never know.  I can't believe this is the agency of Mulder and Scully, of Cooper, of Starling, Dunham and Canton Everett Delaware III.

If only my passion in following the US election was mirrored in this week's Class.  Reaching the mid-point of any series leads to an assessment of what the show means to you and if it's been worth your time.  To an extent this is unfair in the UK, because a mid-point for most series is just four episodes in.  Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation recently reminds me that their episode four (assuming you follow Encounter At Farpoint's production codes) is the racist Code of Honor in a show which didn't become the well loved series we think of until its third series.  But Class is part of the ongoing Doctor Who production schedule, so it's not coming from a standing start as we might consider the first series of the revival or the 2010 series.  Like Torchwood and SJA, it's a reflection of something which already exists.

So far, I've been relative to very positive, but this fourth installment doesn't quite hang together.  As Buffy discovered it's always narratively "dangerous" when you divide yourself between two antagonists in one episode especially when they're as potent as this.  Both Alice's affliction and the man-eating blossoms are strong enough to carry their own episode, but stuffing them together and then spreading the lot across two episodes is risky and I'm not sure it quite worked.  They're integrated well enough with characters commenting on one while dealing with the other, but as TNG often discovered when ramming together unconnected A and B plots (typically something like the Enterprise discovering a cosmic anomaly while Data discovers something about humanity in his own time), you run the risk of not giving either the attention they deserve.

There's an especially difficult period in the middle when the action cross cuts between April and Ram's post-coital embarrassment, Quill and the new Head Mistress's summit and Charlie's revelations to Matteusz in the school yard (along with Tanya's scolding) and the pacing slows to a crawl, all three scenes feeling much longer than they possibly need to be.  Nothing seems to be accomplished my throwing between the three and I wonder if more could have been accomplished by presenting them sequentially since there isn't much to thematically connect them.  This kind of micro-criticism is born of trying to work out exactly why I didn't enjoy this as much as I probably should.  It's fine.  It's not Torchwood, but it feels less cohesive than SJA.  But all of the shows which it claims to mimic had off episodes so it shouldn't be unexpected.

Which isn't to say I wasn't hooting in places.  The copulation connection between April and the Shadow Kin king was unexpectedly hilarious, notably when he asked his potential consort for a cuddle, although I agree with Clint Hassell in retrospect that it does undercut the emotional undercurrent of the human coupling.  The scenes between aliens bespoke of similar moment in times past when the Ice Warriors, Zygons or some other fibre glass or rubber creatures would discuss their plans, guest actors trying desperately to give their character some individuality despite essentially wearing the same costume.  Every now and then it wasn't entirely clear which of this beasties was talking, partly because of the blurring imagery and low lighting choice which while probably gladdening Mat Irvine, made it difficult on occasion to see what was actually going on in this interstella Mordor.  I hadn't realised he'd murdered his potential mate until he spoke to her prone body.

Plus as a fan of a particular type of action film, I can't say I'm not taken with April's sword wielding antics, especially given Sophie Hopkins's multi-layered performance, oscillating between tentative femininity and full on Amazonian goddess.  But as has been seen previously, the strength has always been there, the actions of April's father forced that upon her.  Her predicament has simply magnified.  That stops the writer from the potential criticism that the only reason she's become cable of all this is through absorbing a man's power.  As we've already discussed, all of the characters work against their stereotype but it's also true that there isn't a standard white, cis, male figure, there hasn't been an effort to pander to that particular age group.  Not many US shows in this genre have been capable of that.  If all of the characters keep gaining special powers, this is threatening to turn into posh Misfits.

So perhaps my unease is simply the usual business related to having to write about the first part of a story.  Gen of Deek offers the alternative that it's almost as though we've skipped through a bunch of episodes to get here, that this has all the hallmarks of a series finale and we're only at episode four, "there should have been at least one misguided comedy romp, a crossover ep, a guest star vehicle of dubious merit, and a handful of filler episodes" and I'd concur with that too.  If the joint heart story is resolved next week, are we to assume that the final run will be about discovering who Wolfram & ... sorry the Board of Governors are and whether Charlie is in fact an embedded antagonist ala Willow in s6 of Buffy?  If he does decide to try and resurrect his people via humanity, what about all the Zygons?  Will they be inhabited too?

"I first watched Gilmore Girls around the same time I first saw my mum cry ..."

TV Lovely profile of Gilmore Girls by Abigail Radnor in The Guardian:

"I first watched Gilmore Girls around the same time I first saw my mum cry. I was 21, newly returned to Manchester after a year spent studying at an American university, and I was, as my mum would say, “full of it”: overflowing with excitement and not shutting up. She was driving and I was in the passenger seat; I had just picked up a set of photographs of the best year of my life, and was using them as visual prompts to enthuse about the friends I had made, the places I had been, the ludicrous frat parties I had gone to. Mum was silent for the most part, until she burst into tears. I was dumbstruck. There is nothing more terrifying than seeing the strongest person you know overcome by sadness. Eventually she said, “I am just so jealous”, words I could never have imagined she would say."

I had wondered why, other than budget, the new series was four 90 minutes episodes. Turns out the Palladinos like Sherlock.

The Real First UK Television Broadcasts.

TV Although the launch of television broadcasts is celebrated on the 2nd November each year, there were a number of unofficial test transmissions beforehand, providing an diet of documentaries, film and comedy. Andrew Martin writes on the BBC Genome blog:

"Compared to the regular programmes that started later, there was a high proportion of film in these experimental shows: indeed the first item broadcast, on 26 August 1936, was a Paul Rotha documentary film, Cover to Cover.

"This was followed by the first proper live programme, with singer Helen McKay. This was interrupted by a technical fault (as the start of the transmission had also been). It was followed by an excerpt from the feature film First a Girl, then another outing for Miss McKay preceded a longer programme of film excerpts, including Charles Laughton in Rembrandt, and Paul Robeson in Showboat.

"And that, lasting a little over one and three-quarters hours including tuning signals and breakdowns, was the first day of high-definition television."

Romola on supporting Parents In Performing Arts.

Moccasins and Suspenders.

Commerce On Tuesday I visited Leeds for the first time since 2003, when, you'll remember, my mission was to visit all halls and houses I lived in during my undergraduate degree. This occasion was to see For All Time: Shakespeare in Yorkshire at the University of Leeds's Brotherton Library, a small display of items from their special collections including the First Folio (which I've added to the list here).  There's also a copy of A Yorkshire Tragedy, attributed to Shakespeare on the title cover but actually, analysis suggests, by Thomas Middleton.  Imagine having your work out there with someone else's name on it (although there's a fair few screenwriters for him this is their career).  Middleton would also rewrite Shakespeare plays; it's thought the versions of Macbeth and Measure for Measure we have are his adaptations.

The exhibition only took about half an hour so I spent the rest of the day walking the city centre, something I neglected to do thirteen years ago, not wanting to spoil my memories from the mid-90s, the version which appears in these old videos.  In the fundamental ways, it's exactly the same, the overall structure of the city just the same.  But there are still signs of modernisation and homogeneity, with large sections of the shopping centre having been demolished to make way for giant shopping malls, some architecturally gorgeous palaces, some giant, soulless edifices.  Independent shops do endure at the fringes, so I was able to do some Christmas shopping here and there, unusual items not available elsewhere, from shops which don't have outposts in Liverpool.

The big disappointment was the Kirkgate Market, which other than Morrisons was the place where I did most of my food shopping, eaking out a whole week's meals for £15.  The market was full, dozens of food stalls, the gift market including the stand which only sold tins, loads of clothes places and a general sense of visiting a typical city market but much, much greater.  Now that's all but gone.  Huge empty spaces, plenty of the stalls and shops are not let and there's a general sense of watching managed decline.  It's apparently in the process of being refurbished, but the addition of an event space just seems to be a way of filling an area which was once otherwise buzzing with commerce.

Kirkgate Market was the place were Marks & Spencers was originally founded back in 1884 (sort of) and recently, tying in with an exhibition which has opened at the chain's archive which is housed near Liverpool University, they've opened a pop-up stall inside the market, possibly on the spot where they were founded.  There's a small exhibition and they're selling the kinds of items which would have appeared back then, jams and pickles, tea and biscuits.  There's also a small cafe stand.  I thought you might like to see some photographs.



However tempted I was to buy some marmalade, I quickly remembered that it would be the same stuff on sale in Liverpool, so there wasn't much point in carrying it home.

Mila Kunis on Hollywood sexism.

Film Kunis writes on Medium about some of the male behaviour she's encountered during her career, even after becoming a successful producer. However shocking some of this, isn't unsurprising. I can't imagine how you navigate this and still remain true to yourself:

"In the process of pitching this show to a major network, the typical follow-up emails were sent to executives at this network. In this email chain, this producer chose to email the following:

“And Mila is a mega star. One of biggest actors in Hollywood and soon to be Ashton’s wife and baby momma!!!”

"This is the entirety of his email. Factual inaccuracies aside, he reduced my value to nothing more than my relationship to a successful man and my ability to bear children. It ignored my (and my team’s) significant creative and logistical contributions.

"We withdrew our involvement in the project."

You can imagine the producer's reaction. "What did I say? What did I say?" Kunis explains that he said it was just a "light-hearted comment" not really understanding that it's the fact that he would make that comment at all which is the reason why the actor/producer wouldn't work with him. It's about having a particular mindset which would lead to him thinking that was ok. The ultimate expression of it is to describe that tape as "locker room talk".

Happy Birthday Television!

TV The BBC website has published a history of television on the occasion of its 80th birthday, starting with John Logie Baird. So many interesting titbits:

"If Baird’s machinery looks rather improvised and Heath Robinson-like, that’s because it was. A friend described visiting his Hastings attic workshop and seeing an apparatus made up of an old tea-chest, an empty biscuit box, hat-boxes, cardboard, darning needles, and scrap timber - all held together with glue, sealing wax and string, and balanced on a washstand. By April 1924, though, this bizarre contraption did allow simple outline images of a Maltese cross and various letters of the alphabet to be transmitted two or three yards. And, after the inevitable flurry of press attention, Baird raised enough money to move his operation to London.

"The following year, the retail impresario Gordon Selfridge invited Baird to demonstrate the new ‘attraction’ at his Oxford Street department store. And a few months later, the Post Office licensed Baird’s fledgling company, ‘Television Limited’, to conduct short experimental transmissions from a succession of West End premises."

Baird's experimental transmitter was on the roof of Longleat, which would later house the hopes and dreams of many others.

On Cue-Card Guy.

Film The Atlantic has a well researched column by Megan Garber about how refracted through another prism, the behaviour of the male characters in some romcoms is that of the sexual predator. Somewhat inevitably but it needs to be said:

"The cue-card guy in Love Actually—his character is so roughly sketched that he is generally and correctly known simply as Cue-Card Guy—shows up at the door of his beloved, while her husband sits watching TV, to confess his love. There he is, at her home, without, the cards say, “hope or expectation,” for the purpose of … what? Confusing her? Making her feel good about herself? Convincing her that she should totally leave his best friend for her? Using her so that he may, himself, get some much-needed romantic closure?

"It’s unclear—opacity is the defining characteristic of Cue-Card Guy—but the movie suggests that it is probably the latter of these: “Enough,” Cue-Card Guy says to himself as he’s walking away from her house, “Silent Night” still blaring on his Doblerian boombox, having successfully passed his romantic frustrations on to the woman who is their object. “Enough now.”

Not to mention the number of romcoms in which the male character does something aggressively appauling to the woman who quite rightly moves on and then, what was up to that point a relatively balanced narrative in which both characters have agency, becomes about him trying to win her back, she becoming little more than object in an metaphoric/emotional recreation of the opening scene in Raiders of the Lost arc.

And yes, I'm entirely aware that my favourite film of all time, When Harry Met Sally, somewhat does this, including the run against time and the big speech.  But in that case neither character is really right or wrong, I don't think and Sally still keeps her agency.  Plus the film in general is about friendship rather than romance and you get the feeling that even if they were to divorce later they'd still remain friends.  Or rather that they get married because they're stuck together.

Review 2016: Review 2016: Call For Entries.

About The clocks have gone back in the UK, Christmas is close at hand, so it's time, as every year to look towards what's going to be happening on the blog this December.

For the most, when putting out a digital begging bowl and ask if people would like to contribute guest blog post for the end of the year, I make a point of choosing a topic which has nothing to do with that year.

The reviews of the year on this blog have tended to be nothing of the sort.

Not this year. This is different. This year is 2016.

2016 has been so strange, so unlike every other year on record, with so many different things, sometimes positive, mostly negative, so much stuff, that it feels like just the right time to finally make the annual review on this blog, an annual review.

So the pitch this year is - I'd like to you write about something which happened in 2016.

Could be anything, big or small. Massive world event or something which happened in your own life. Could be a review of a book, some music, a film, something you've enjoyed. A holiday. A celebration.

As long as you like. A couple of paragraphs to something much longer and involved. No word limits.

Email them to stuartianburns@gmail.com with "Review 2016" in the subject. Email me first if you like or just surprise me.

As soon as possible but the deadline is really the end of the year.

I'll be happy to plug something in return at the bottom, your blog, Twitter feed, what have you.

Thanks.

My Favourite Film of 1922.

Film My first viewing of Murnau's Nosferatu was exactly eight years ago today and I can't think of a better way of celebrating than to repost, as a Halloween treat, the original story of that night.  Back we go to Thursday, October 30, 2008.

I don’t remember being as cold as I was earlier tonight. I know it’s the winter, and there have been a fair few times when I’ve sat on lonely railway platforms waiting for trains that might not come and I’ve shivered through minutes which seemed like hours but stations, even those open to the air still seem to have a warmth, even if it's because of the internal glow of knowing that home and a warm bed will be in the future. Tonight I stood for an hour and a half in the one place, my feet were numb, my cheeks raw and even hiding my wrists within my armpits underneath my coat didn’t work. I couldn’t move, but didn’t want to move and grim determination was forcing me to stay until the end.

Especially because as a film fan, there was no way I was going to turn up to watch Murnau’s ‘vampire’ film Nosferatu on the Big Screen in Clayton Square in Liverpool and leave in the middle (though some did). Tonight was the Biennial’s The Long Night, and galleries throughout the city opened their doors until late with events including poetry readings at FACT, a short film festival at the Open Eye Gallery and this Halloween presentation in one of the most public squares in the city. Of course I selected the outdoor option on a night like this. In case you need to picture the scene, the BBC Big Screen sits between a Tesco Metro and a Zavvi and is one of the main thoroughfares through to bus stops and Lime Street Station.

This is not the perfect situation in order to see any film, even if it is a silent and yet it’s also the perfect place because it’s so unlikely. As the crowd gathered, people dashing past with their shopping also stopped to look and asked what we were watching. Cars drove through, a large van at one point threatened to park directly between the viewers and the screen (you can imagine the jeers which greeted that possibility), various teenagers turned up and poked fun at the images or rode about on bikes.

Photographers queued up to take pictures of us, looking up at the screen on mass. I’ve seen spontaneous crowds develop in this same spot whenever a big news story breaks, but that’s different to our collective sense of purpose, of watching one of film history’s most unusual films in unusual circumstances. Which isn't to say that everyone stayed until the end; whilst some were doggedly sitting on the floor under blankets, others walked away visibly shivering.

It’s a measure of what the director achieved that somehow some of his images pierced through despite the conditions, the noise, the lights, the distractions. By cranking the camera in experimental ways so that Max Schreck’s movements in the title role become unnatural, despite the obvious make up, he’s a chilling presence, though the directors has already noticed that the best way to show your monster is hardly at all and to let the victim’s fear project the image of what their seeing and it’s that we’re repulsed by.

Taboos seem to stop Murnau from showing Nosferatu actually killing anyone, so the director instead emphasises the details of his killing and also introduced a plaque which spreads in his stead, allowing for lashings of coffin imagery and religious iconography. Considering the film was made in 1922 it still holds up remarkably well as a horror film, if not more so because the production design and values are alien to anything we’re accustomed to seeing a decade under a century later.

There's no doubt the temperature helped with the atmosphere too, as steam rose from our mouths, though I'd be lying if I said there was no chatting, especially at the points when the film repeats story information (we know what happened on the ghost ship, we saw it) or is just plain incoherent (who are all these new characters? What happened to Hutter?).

The new soundtrack provided by Liverpool group a.P.A.t.T. was a multi-textured accompaniment, which oscillated wildly but cleverly between a rural folksy sound to at one point, when the context within which that kind of beastie can exist in the real world is being explained by scientists, a dance piece with BBC Radiophonic Workshop influences. We saw the band as the film played, either cross faded with the action or in a small box at the corner of the screen.

I think I actually lost track of the story during one of these moments and the effect was rather like watching Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs with the whoopee making replaced by German Expressionist motifs. But it didn’t matter – this wasn’t a time to be investigating Murnau’s use of lighting, but just to be in a place, enjoying an experience so that one day I can say to someone as we’re passing through:

“You know what? I watched Murnau’s Nosferatu here one All Hallows Eve. It was freezing, and a truck nearly ran me over.”

You can see images of the event at Bren O'Callaghan's webpage.