Hadley Freeman on Love Actually.

Film After a slightly confused (slightly?) column about trans identity at the weekend (see this Twitter thread for key objections), Hadley Freeman's back re-iterating many of the same points from my old Love Actually post (which is here in case you haven't read it):

"My best friend and I went to see it on the day it opened, excited as babes on Christmas Day. We loved Notting Hill, and we adored Four Weddings and a Funeral, and sure, they were basically odes to the Oxbridge-educated, but they had charm and clever scripts. And those movies only had one plot line – this new one had nine! That meant it would be nine times as awesome, right? Wrong. We emerged from the cinema with faces frozen like Munch’s Scream, and silently went our separate ways. We called each other later to check in on one another, like victims of a terrible disaster."

Unlike Hadley I actually liked Love Actually at first. Saw it twice at the cinema, asked for the dvd at Christmas (etc etc) and it wasn't until I studied it for the dissertation I noticed how disdainful it is. Let's see if the Comic Relief sequel acts as a corrective.

My Favourite Film of 1907.

Film It’s 1907 and here’s singer Jean Noté performing the French national anthem with synchronous sound. The Jazz Singer’s generally thought of as being the first sound film, and although it’s true that it was the first to utilise a technique which was commercial repeatable, the director Georges Mendel achieving a similar effect over a decade earlier. One can well imagine if this was shown in cinemas, the audience taking to their feet and singing along. Just remarkable.



But this still isn't the earliest. William Dickson was experimenting with sound in the mid-late 1890s.

"one of Scotland's best-kept secrets"

Logan: 11 Revelations From Director James Mangold:
“I gave them many escape valves. We take place in 2029, and X-Men Apocalypse ends in 2024. There’s five blank years there that are wide open to seeing how things got from here to there. Or else you could do what I would advocate, which is imagine a different world and create a new movie, and you don’t need the permission of the other movies.”

What bookstore employees do behind your back:
"With noise at a premium in libraries and bookshops, much of any fun to be had there needs to be visual."

Bothy-bagging: Scotland's best-kept secrets revealed:
"Bothies - remote shelters in the wilderness where walkers can spend the night free of charge - have long been one of Scotland's best-kept secrets. A new book has revealed the location of 80 of the mountain huts. For more than 50 years the Mountain Bothies Association (MBA) has maintained an eclectic network of shelters across the wilderness areas of Scotland."

Steven Moffat speaks with TV Drama about his work on the hit drama series Doctor Who and Sherlock:
"A lifelong Doctor Who fan, Steven Moffat began writing for the series when it was reintroduced in 2005 after 16 years off the air. Five years later he was elevated to head writer and executive producer of the iconic British sci-fi hit. At the same time, Moffat was working with fellow Who writer Mark Gatiss on making a contemporary drama based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s quintessentially British detective Sherlock Holmes. Over the course of just 13 episodes in four seasons, Sherlock became a worldwide viewing phenomenon and racked up a Peabody and multiple BAFTA and Emmy wins."

Phoebe Fox: 'I'm always playing bloody aristocrats!'
"In Simon Godwin’s riotous, rowdy new Twelfth Night at the National Theatre, Phoebe Fox wanted to give her Olivia a bit more to do. “There’s a whole scene in a drag club and a massive fight breaks out,” she explains cheerfully. “On the sly, I said to the guy who choreographed the fight, ‘Look, I know I’m nobility, so I wouldn’t, but do you think I could get a punch in there?’” He happily obliged. “So I walk in, deck a girl, and then start speaking. I loved that.”"

London Calling: Zebras.

Life  Here's a cautionary tale about planning ahead and checking destination details.  Yesterday was my monthly visit to London.  The day in summary: Abbey Road (see below), 221b Baker Street, Notting Hill for Portobello Road and the book shop from the film Notting Hill, what remains of BBC Television Centre, Westfield shopping centre and Brick Lane.  Find above my evening meal, the most expensive burger they have on the menu at Ed's Easy Diner back at Euston Station.  The NUS extra alumni card allows you to get 50% off food.  I shall not be eating properly again for a week.

To Abbey Road and the chance to visit a Beatles landmark that isn't in Liverpool and experience what it must be like for tourists to take the bus out to Penny Lane and discover with some disappointment that it's just a suburban street (and that the lyrics of the song are really describing the bottom end of Church Road and the junction with Smithdown Road).  As expected Abbey Road is just a suburban street.  Nevertheless it's still exciting to see an iconic cultural landmark.  I'll get to the Tower of London eventually.

After a glance at the tube map, it seemed logical that Abbey Road, home of the zebra crossing on The Beatles album cover and the recording studio would be next to the DLR station called Abbey Road. I was even quite proud that I managed to work out a route from Euston which meant I didn't need to repeat my DLR journey from last month and mostly utilise the Northern Line instead. On the way there I began listen to album itself and was full of excitement as I skipped up the steps from the platform the station only to be confronted with this:



Stop giggling Londoners.  No actually don't.  It was my own fault.  On the upside TfL are kind enough to provide this punning sign knowing full well that there are enough stupid people in the world who (a) have looked at the actual album cover thought this suburban area would be anywhere near dockland and indeed that all of the musicians would actually travel out to the Dockland to work and so (b) made this journey.

After adding an extra hour's travel time there and back again, I did eventually make it to Abbey Road turning the corner just as the final track of the album, The End reached its conclusion a coincidence you could just plan.  This was my first listen right the way through and although it's enjoyable for the most part, it mirrors most pop records in that its obvious to see why those songs were chosen for singles.

The Studios own website have a CCTV camera set up so its possible to see yourself cross the road and so here's the back of me dodging traffic:



There's a lot of traffic dodging, a constant stream of tourists to the spot and most of them, at some point, walk into the middle of the zebra crossing to create the pose made famous in the publicity campaign for the last series of Doctor Who. After watching the mess of honking horns and near death photography for a while, a tourist couple asked me to take their photograph, which I obliged, standing in the middle of the road just long enough for them to get into the position. Then they offered to do the same:



No, I have no idea either. Or who she is. But that's rather the problem. Everyone wants to have their picture taken alone but there are too many people so you end up with shots like these.  But enjoy my normcore and scruffy hair nonetheless.

The crossing works in reverse to how its supposed to.  The traffic doesn't stop until someone is actually walking across it.  Presumably if the cards actually stopped and waited for people to cross or get their picture taken as per every other zebra crossing, they'd be there a very long time.

My Favourite Film of 1908.

Film Here’s a comment from underneath this YouTube bootleg of Segundo de Chomón’s La maison ensorcelée (potential English titles, The Witch House or The House of Ghosts or The Haunted House). Scrainbow1234 says, “4:50 inception lol” which is shorthand for noticing the similarity between the way in which the entire house shifts backwards and forwards taking the people and contents with it and the famous corridor action sequences from Inception.

Having watched the scene through a couple of times, I’m fairly sure they were shot in a similar way, the entire set on a “gimbal” with people on either side shifting back and forth causing the floor to up tip backwards and forwards. But I’m still not quite certain. There’s something about the way the bed moves and the actors which means that I’d also theorise that it’s the camera which is moving and the bed is being shifted back and forth by wire or the acrobatic talents of the people. Or both.

But I like not knowing. It makes the scene much more compelling. As discussed a couple of weeks ago, digital verisimilitude has led some films and filmmakers to become far less compelling that they might have been or once were. We assume everything is digital so we’re less wowed by the ingenuity of film makers despite the fact that often just as much ingenuity is required in order to create the rendering and textures.

That’s certainly impacted on my enjoyment of horror films. More often than not, I find myself unfrightened for much of the time because I know full well that the monster or action on screen has been designed and created, I’m unable to embrace my suspension of disbelief. Jump cuts are idiotic. Sometimes I’m even annoyed when the horror intrudes when I’m enjoying the company of the characters or the setting so much. It Follows. The Conjuring. The Visit.

Only now and then is there a film which creeps me out precisely because I can’t account for what I’m seeing. The artifice is still there and probably intellectually I know that it’s all fake, all of it, but there are incidents which don’t seem to fit, weren’t anticipated and my brain does what it should do and freaks out. The emergence of the antagonist in Sinister, the middle section of Silent House, The Awakening, Unfriended, As Above So Below. The VVitch

La maison ensorcelée isn’t scary at all, but despite its often humorous intent it is creepy because of the element of surprise, the unexpected and the sense of it being an artefact of an earlier era. Director Jennifer Kent thought as much too and included a section of this silent in The Babadook, another film which did manage to scare me because of its weirdness. If only more filmmakers realised that it’s never about the CGI monster. It’s about us.

"a forum for anonymous rage"

Mary Adams and other BBC female pioneers who inspired my love for Natural History:
"If you ask someone to describe what a wildlife filmmaker looks like, I suspect they’d paint a portrait of a man with a beard and a big camera wearing camouflage gear. But I’m a wildlife filmmaker - I’m a petite, 38-year old woman, and there are plenty of others like me."

Death threats and angry chefs – when restaurant reviews go wrong:
"Eating nice food for a living sounds great, but there are downsides: from being unmasked to finding out, after you’ve published a glowing review, that there were rodents in the kitchen. The UK’s top critics spill the beans."

Thor: Ragnarok actress Tessa Thompson talks redefining Valkyrie:
"EW talked to Thompson about reimagining the role, training like Linda Hamilton, and finding the right sized cape."

'Buffy' at 20: Joss Whedon Talks TV Today, Reboot Fatigue and the Trouble With Binging:
"The internet often appears to exist for just two purposes. It provides a forum for anonymous rage and, maybe less frequently, it can be communal spot by the pop culture fireplace — where people can warm their hands at the embers of nostalgia. On Friday, it will probably bend toward the latter."

Art of the Title: My So-Called Life (1994)
"Go now, go."

"a cheerleader going into an alley"

Buffy the Vampire Slayer at 20: the thrilling, brilliant birth of TV as art:
"Twenty years on, the brilliance of Joss Whedon’s funny, tragic seven-season synthesis of most film and TV genres, literary conceits and pop cultural tropes remains undimmed."

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a feminist parable for everyone – including me:
"Anthony Stewart Head: Twenty years after we started, I see that our series gave flesh (and horns) to the demons we all face in life: teenage Buffy’s storylines transcended age or gender."

And here are some archive links from this blog. This blog is old. The first three were written after transmission.

Season Five Review:
"The actual teaser was an actualization of the idea which Creator Joss Wheadon has sited as his reason for creating the film and show – a cheerleader going into an alley and able to surprise her attacker with her funny and martial arts. As the scene played out it was clear that the world was on her shoulders."

Season Six Review:
"The seasonal structure of the series is actually fairly brave. A main arc based about a 'big bad' which runs through all twenty-two episodes, weaving its way through the stand alone episodes. It's a middle ground between the Classic Star Trek model in which the reset switch in the characters is effectively pressed at the end of each episode no matter how life changing the moment and The X-Files in which a conspiracy story carried on interminably for nine series and still wasn't resolved. It gives the seasons a form very similar to film, albeit over a much more extended period. By having a massive foe it also offers a good shorthand of good guy / bad guy for casual viewers."

Season Seven Review:
"Then the season plot kicked in and things began to go all floopy, the balance thrown asunder. Xander started making big speeches. Willow began to worry about her witchcraft and the burden of responsibility again weighed heavy on Buffy's shoulders. The obsession with Spike showed itself again, the premise of the show being stretched again as the VAMPIRE who had KILLED PEOPLE was kept alive because he was a main character who was popular. The fact that all the fun had left him seasons ago when he was neuter didn't matter. I'm not anti-Spike. He's a great character. I'm just anti-whattheydidtohim."

rewatching all of the television series on which Joss Whedon has had overall creative control
"My expected appreciation curve for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer was that after a barnstorming first three seasons, the show would become a rather patchier affair in which individual piece of classic television usually written and directed by Whedon himself (Hush, The Body, Once More With Feeling) provided a scaffold for less compelling overall story arcs and baddies, with the Nerd Trio in Season Six, and Season Six actually the nadir."

Mystery Music March in April: Once More With Feeling – The Cast of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer:
"I just love Once More With Feeling. Fans of musical theatre probably look down their nose at it and can see the broad shoulders of the giants it’s balancing on but the only musical I can sing along to from top to bottom and which (and I do think this is important) has an emotional content I can relate to. The problem I often have with musicals is that no matter how good the book, or how much empathy can be generated through the touching emotional break, the songs themselves are meaningless outside of their context."

"inspiring women"

F-rated: IMDb introduces classification system to highlight work by women:
"Rating awarded to Frozen, American Honey and others, as database adopts system to raise profile of movies written by, directed by and starring women."

Ten Modern Women who helped to change the world:
"On International Women’s Day a new book, Modern Women: 52 Pioneers casts a light on inspiring women who have helped change the world for the better. BIDISHA picks out her personal top ten and talks to the author about the challenges women still face."

Lisa Scott-Lee interview: “We said — it’s twenty years of Steps, what can we do to make it special?”
"Are you hoping for B-List at Capital?"

The 1947 Fuel Crisis and the BBC:
"It now seems like an incredible tale from the dim and distant past, but because of a national fuel shortage during the harsh winter of early 1947, the BBC Television Service and the Third Programme, precursor to Radio 3, closed down for several weeks to conserve electricity."

And then the Strangest Thing Happened: What is Adam Curtis doing?
"WHEN ADAM CURTIS’S NEW DOCUMENTARY HyperNormalisation premiered on the BBC’s online iPlayer service last fall, the journalist Chris Applegate compiled an Adam Curtis Bingo card that circulated widely on Twitter and Facebook."

When is Logan set?

Film Just returned from seeing Logan. I don't quite have a coherent opinion about it yet, although my suspicion is less impressed than some, but it'll be interesting to know how that changes after a second viewing when I'm more prepared for the tone and the surprises are anything but.

With everything which happens, it's probably worth returning to the X-Men chronology questions which this blog has been wrestling with in recent years and exactly which order in which the Fox MARVEL films are supposed to be viewed.

As such this will necessitate spoilers, so here's the Deadpool mini-feature, which oddly enough didn't appear in front of the screening I attended. Perhaps it was just a US thing. Anyway ... enjoy this gap for glancing away ...



Brutal. Not as brutal as Logan though.

Anyway, previously we discussed although it seems like the best way to watch the films is by following Logan's consciousness as it bounces around time:

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men
X-Men 2
X-Men 3 (or whatever it's called in your end of the world)
The Wolverine
First Class
X-Men: Days of Future Past
X-Men: Apocalypse
Fan4stic
Deadpool

Although as I later discovered after actually watching the films in this order parts of the rebooted films negate Origins even though it's set before them.  Shrug.

Incidentally, this guy at Cinefix pretty much follows this template then makes the mistake of assuming the Logan who turns up at the end of DoFP has lived through all the years again, when in fact its some other version of him, the one who's a berserker in Apocalypse, who then has his brain wiped over by the original Logan when his consciousness returns from the past into the altered future.

So where does this leave the film Logan?

[Brief sidebar.  In the original timeline, Logan was perfectly healthy right into the future whereas here he's noticeably older and dying of adamantium poisoning.  Is it possible that because he was freed in Apocalypse in a different way and possibly earlier to that established in the other films it was before the end of his treatment and not given the necessary ability to counteract the cumulative effects of having the metal in his body?]

As the Cinefix guy notices if the end of DoFP is set in 2023 and Logan is set in 2029, that means that within six years everything goes to shit for the mutants, Richard E Grant's doctor has done for them through the food supply in a way which the sentinels didn't quite manage in the original.  Plus there's a suspicion that Xavier's accidentally destroyed the school and killed the X-Men through his mental earthquake shock thingy.

Oh fuck is this a depressing film.

But there's nothing in here to say that any rewatch of the series shouldn't end on Logan.  Various bits of film mythology are mentioned but interestingly everything is suggested.  Nothing is specific.  None of the other X-Men are named.  Not even Jean.  Or the events which led this Logan to being in this body with Xavier aware of the change.

Oh fuck this is a depressing film.

Because that means that whatever happens in the next X-film and anything else in this 'verse, we know that none of it matters.  However much Brian Singer or whoever wants to guide the story towards the epilogue of DoFP, six years after that Xavier's going to be murdered by X-24 and Logan will die defending his daughter.  I did warn you.

Some have suggested that it's set in the original timeline which doesn't make much sense given that everyone was going to die anyway until Wolverine succeeded.  Plus the information in here doesn't tally with what's in there.

The other possibility is that it's a What If? type story or that its set in a kind of "real" timeline in which the other films have the same veracity as the comic books which are mentioned.  But that's not really satisfactory either.

Fox has effectively murdered one of its major franchises just as it was getting going again.

Which isn't to say I wouldn't be interested in seeing another film set afterwards with all of these genetically engineered mutants on the run in Canada.

My Favourite Film of 1909.

Film There’s a spectacular moment during Charles Kent’s eight minute version of A Midsummer Night Dream which I’m still yet unable to explain. When Oberon tasks Puck to seek the flower which will the source of the night’s romantic farce and his servant says he’ll “I'll put a girdle round about the earth, In forty minutes” (not that the intertitle says this), the nymph is shown floating quickly into the sky then briefly speeding across the spinning earth before landing where the plant must be. Then the action is repeated as Puck makes the return journey.

The incident takes seconds, but even watching the shoddy capture of the film from the Wikipedia page, I’m enchanted. Perhaps the child is being whisked upwards on a wire. Perhaps we’re seeing a double or triple exposure when they’re circumnavigating the globe. But even now, I want to believe. With the rest of the film looking like it could have been filmed in some ancient time, I want to believe that what I’m watching is documentary evidence of fairies even if the effect is about as convincing as the papercuts of fairies at the bottom of a garden.

Special effects are rarely this awe inspiring of late. Watching the average film, even outside the sci-fi genre is to see a screen filled with computer graphics utilised to create the most mundane objects and vehicles. That has the effect of making the viewer assume that everything they’re seeing outside of the actors had their origin inside a computer which means that quite often the film makers then have to release set footage to show that actually a large proportion of what we’re seeing was created practically.

There’s not much which can be done about this now. When the remake/prequel to The Thing is shot with some perfectly reasonable and often brilliant practical effects but the studio orders they replaced with inferior digital effects because it’s what the audience expects (leading to the film being thoroughly trashed precisely because of how awful those intruder effects look) there’s no real chance of going back. I actually quite liked that film by the way and would be eager to see the version which hasn’t been visually bowdlerised.

There are exceptions both CGI and practical. Ant Man’s decent into the micro-verse. The corridors of Inception’s dream sequences. Every part of Gravity. But so inured are we wanting to see something extra special that when Doctor Strange didn’t quite deliver on showing us something we hadn’t seen before or rather that wasn’t simply another painted landscape we were disappointed especially given the hype about the visual leap of what we were about to see. When we see Rogue One, we’re somewhat impressed but quick to say, it’s fine but it’s not quite right. Not yet.

None of which is meant to denigrate the artists who work on something like Gods of Egypt; they’re creating the best work they can within the time and budget, directorial expectations and technological limitations. But I do miss the time when you’d see something happen in a film and be not quite sure how it was achieved, that there wasn’t a catch-all explanation however accurate that was. Say what you like about the remake of Point Break, but did you know that most of those stunts were filmed in actuality? Remarkable.

"the brink of de-extinction"

The unexpected emotions of a second pregnancy:
"My husband and I are sitting side-by-side on the sofa, silently staring at the wall. A few minutes ago, I waved a positive pregnancy test at him. He said “Well, then”, I said “yep,” and that’s about when the wordless wall appreciation began."

Sheryl Crow Talks Return to Nineties Roots on Upcoming LP:
"A little over three years ago, Sheryl Crow took her career in a radically different direction with the release of her debut country LP, Feels Like Home. Despite a relentless touring schedule and promotional campaign, the album didn't make much of an impression with country fans and no single placed higher than Number 72 on the Hot 100. "It was still a great experience and I learned a lot," says Crow. "But I gotta say that the country market is commerce at its most fully realized. Right now, I want to have an experience that feels detached from anything in commerce."

Nice try, Virgin Press Office, but…
"The thing about the Press Offices of TV companies is that they want you to write nice things about their programmes. To do that, they give you nice things, hoping to persuade you."

Billion-Dollar Baby: Resurrecting the Mammoth:
"The woolly mammoth is on the brink of de-extinction, but is it worth the cost to bring it back?"

Chinese studios to take on Kurosawa script:
"Chinese studios announced on Wednesday in Beijing that they are going to make a film out of a script by late Japanese film master Akira Kurosawa. Huayi Brothers Media and CKF Pictures will collaborate on "The Mask of the Black Death," a posthumous script by Akira Kurosawa, who died in 1998 and made many influential film classics such as "Seven Samurai" (1954) and "Ran" (1985)."

"the turn of this decade"

Lost and Found: My 1994 Story:
"The first months of 1994 found me slogging through East Village snow drifts in New York City. I was living in a friend of a friend's sublet in Alphabet City, which was just then finding its tentative way from smackhead rookery to bourgie boutiqueland. Those cold, chaotic streets mirrored my internal landscape: the demise of a long love affair had left me enervated and unmoored. I was also jobless, with my first big TV presenting job on Channel 4's pop culture car crash The Word now in my rear view mirror."

The Voyager Golden Record Experience:
"We at Damn Interesting have put together an online simulation of what an alien civilization might see and hear upon decoding one of the records, assuming that their seeing and hearing abilities are similar to our own. For the best experience, a laptop or desktop screen size is recommended. We share these sounds and images under the “fair use” exception to copyright law due to the historical significance of the media. You can launch the interactive now, or read on for more background and technical detail."

‘Sense8’: Netflix Reassembling Cast After Options Had Expired, Raising Prospects For Season 3:
"Season 2 of Netflix’s sci-fi drama series Sense8, from Lana and Lilly Wachowski and J. Michael Straczynski, is set to debut May 5. It comes almost two years after the first season premiered on June 5, 2015, a year and nine months after the series was renewed for a second season, and eight months after the second season wrapped its marathon filming in more than a dozen locations across four continents."

The History of the Comic That Inspired Logan and Revolutionized the Marvel Brand:
"It’s hard to pick which scene in “Old Man Logan” is the wildest. The epic tale was first published by Marvel Comics in the pages of X-Men spinoff series Wolverine at the turn of this decade and is a huge influence on this weekend’s superhero tentpole picture Logan. It remains as shocking today as it was when it came out, a decade ago."

The New 'DuckTales' Cartoon Starring David Tennant Looks Pretty Dang Fun:
"Now that we can see a little of what Tennant, Bobby Moynihan, Danny Pudi, and Ben Schwartz have in store for us we're feeling ready for this duck-blur of a nostalgia trip."

"The world was a bit simpler when I was a kid."

British Sell-A-Con:
"The world was a bit simpler when I was a kid. I was brought up in Stafford, which is in the West Midlands. Which meant that the Midlands Electricity Board provided our electricity. and Stafford is in England which is a part of Britain and so, naturally, British Gas provided our gas. And British Telecom provided our telephone line. Simple."

What’s in Subway’s chicken? Hint: Maybe only 50% chicken:
"Subway says its chicken should be 99% chicken and is looking into it."

My Black Is Not Your Black, And That’s Okay:
"As a 30-something year old black woman, I pride myself on having embraced my differences. This was not so much the case back in my mid-20s when I was struggling with my so-called “otherness” during a time when most people were trying to figure out who they are. I don’t eat fried chicken (anymore, at least). I do yoga. I obsess over Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. I can express at length the differences between Aerosmith and Guns ‘N Roses. Kayaking and wine tasting are two of my favorite things to do. I have never once used the words “cray” or “twerk” in conversation. In fact, I’m still a bit foggy on what those words are even supposed to mean."

A Victorian Era Criminal Leads Police On A High Speed Bicycle Chase:
"In September of 1896, British newspapers reported the remarkable use of a bicycle in a New Jersey murder case. The case involved two men who had both emigrated to America from London in the early 1890s. One of these men was a farmer named Mr. Haggett who settled down with his family on a farm near Somerville. The other man was a fellow named Mr. Clossen who Haggett employed as a farm laborer. Sometime in 1896, Haggett caught Clossen stealing. In consequence, he not only fired him from his job, but also refused to pay him the thirty dollars in wages that Clossen believed he was owed."

A Hello Kitty Plane Exists And It's Adorable:
"Book your tickets! There’s a Hello Kitty jet and it’s beyond cute. Taiwanese airline company EVA Air teamed up with toy manufacturer Sanrio to design a "magic jet," totally decked out in our favorite cartoon kitty. Not only are the exterior of the jets themselves decorated with cute Hello Kitty images, absolutely everything on board, from tickets to toilet paper, are Hello Kitty-themed."

"ride-hailing platforms"

Anybody but Griffith:
"How did the norms of storytelling technique develop between 1908 and 1920? More specifically, I hoped to trace out an array of stylistic options emerging for the feature film. What range of choice governed staging, framing, editing, and kindred film techniques?"

Wrongbestfilmgate was a moment of pure chaos – my night of shocks at the Oscars:
"The Guardian film critic’s first Academy Awards ceremony delivered selfies, supercharged excitement and an upset that left everyone dazed."

Challenging sexist jokes can be difficult - but this is why we must speak up:
"Last week, I found myself battling a sexist joke for the first time in my adult life. Yes, battling! The joke wasn’t made towards me, per se, but was actually made in the body of an article written by a male writer…which somehow felt worse. I won’t get into details here, but I’ll just say that this joke was about sexually harassing women in the workplace. More specifically, that we would enjoy being harassed — if our male coworkers could simply muster the guts to do so."

Cosmic blast from the past:
"Three decades ago, a massive stellar explosion sent shockwaves not only through space but also through the astronomical community. SN 1987A was the closest observed supernova to Earth since the invention of the telescope and has become by far the best studied of all time, revolutionising our understanding of the explosive death of massive stars."

A Better Way to Fight Discrimination in the Sharing Economy:
"The sharing economy has a discrimination problem. Studies have shown that the sharing economy isn’t as open as we think: People of color are discriminated against on platforms such as Airbnb, Uber, and Lyft. A study of ride-hailing platforms found that black passengers were subjected to longer wait times and higher cancelation rates than white passengers. A study of Airbnb found that guests with African-American-sounding names were 16% less likely to be accepted by hosts than guests with white-sounding names."

Meet TV's First Non-Binary-Gender Character: Asia Kate Dillon of Showtime's 'Billions':
"Asia Kate Dillon uses the pronouns "they, their and them." Because, like their onscreen character Taylor Mason on Showtime’s Billions, Dillon self-identifies as nonbinary. And thanks to this groundbreaking role, these are pronouns that more people will hopefully feel more comfortable using in the very near future."

"a stalwart in genre projects"

Julie Benz on her numerous TV deaths, from Dexter to Buffy The Vampire Slayer to Angel:
"Julie Benz got her start as an actress when she was still in her teens, shifting back and forth between movies and TV and racking up a wide variety of credits in a relatively short amount of time. But it was her work with Joss Whedon—first on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, then on Angel—that put her on the map. Since then, Benz has remained a stalwart in genre projects, appearing in sci-fi series (Defiance) and superhero shows (No Ordinary Family). She’s also earned considerable acclaim for her stint on Dexter and has also turned up in more than a few horror films, the most recent of which, Havenhurst, is out now."

Social Media Are Driving Americans Insane:
"If you pull out your phone to check Twitter while waiting for the light to change, or read e-mails while brushing your teeth, you might be what the American Psychological Association calls a “constant checker.” And chances are, it’s hurting your mental health."

Emma Thompson: 'Too soon' to do Love Actually sequel after Alan Rickman's death:
"Emma Thompson has spoken for the first time about why she isn't taking part in the upcoming Love Actually sequel."

The Worst Mission Statement Of All Time:
"It might not mean that much to you, but 55 Regent Street is one of London’s most iconic retail addresses. It’s the building facing Piccadilly Circus, formed of a wedge between Regent Street and Piccadilly. [...] It was the department store Swan & Edgar until 1982. Later it was Tower Records, then the Virgin Megastore, until that become Zavvi. Now, it’s a clothes shop called The Sting. And in the window of The Sting, on the Piccadilly side, is displayed the worst mission statement of all time." [via]


Bar's ban on men chatting up women: is it feminism gone too far, or Don Draper redux?
"A bar in Australia’s capital city Canberra has banned men from approaching women."

My Favourite Film of 1910.

Film Few genres are as time sensitive as the Christmas film. There's something inherently strange and unseasonal about watching a festive favourite at any time outside December up to the first six days of January. Indeed, in truth, once Boxing Day is finished, the shine is already off as the sentiments which the story is probably trying to communicate feel hollow somehow especially if like me you couldn't really enjoy Christmas as much as you'd like due to catching the lurgy which was floating around for 2016. The last thing you want is to see lots of shiny happy people having a marvellous time (at least by the end, Capra) when you're stuck in bed unable to eat anything solid.

A Christmas Carol (of which the Edison edition is my film of the year) is no exception.  I try to watch an adaption of Dickens's story every Christmas and although, because of the sheer number of different examples, I've attempted to indulge as late as the Summer because there aren't enough years in a life, the juxtaposition of sun outside and snow on screen simply doesn't work.  It's almost as though the emotional tug of the tale requires the viewer's shaky emotional state around Christmas time in order to work its magic.  Perhaps we're at our most philosophical at the turning of the year, and a story designed to play into our own feelings of regret in order to create empathy for its protagonist is best viewed then.

Television series seem to have a counter effect.  In the age of the boxed set and binges, especially when watching something from network television, we'll inevitably stumble upon a festive edition and in the best of examples it puts us right in the mood, makes us feel Christmassy for the duration, reminds us of what we like about the season.  True there's the inevitable emptiness afterwards when we realise that the actual event is still nine months away, but the next episode is usually at the push of a button and we know that there'll probably be another festive edition within a dozen or so episodes.  Or sooner in the case of modern Doctor Who.

"He walks in war ...."

TV With all the Star Trek I'm watching at the moment (three hundred episodes to go), I'd almost forgotten Doctor Who's back in April. Here's the latest trailer which looks to be a bespoke piece of a kind we haven't seen in a while suggests the sense of reboot and presenting something new, perhaps taking on board Tom Spilbury's criticism in the club magazine about the "same old, same old" feel of the publicity campaign for the last series (whenever that was).

Not an awful lot to be said other than just how much it evokes wilderness years Who with the dynamic shots of Nardol's dufflecoat and Bill with the tracksuit over stripy top and bow in her hair. Seems like they're both going to be companion's throughout which also somewhat brings back the classic show's notion (continued past 1989) of throwing a bunch of random disparate souls together on the time machine and seeing how they interact. Could be refreshing, especially is Matt Lucas's character becomes more than just comic relief.

London Calling:Clocks.

Life For the past six months or so I've been travelling to London for one day per month and visiting all the places which I've read about in books, seen in films, simply known about but never seen. As I said in the V&A post about one of these such days, it's because at the age of forty-two I'm not getting any younger and if anything were to happen to me, or lets face it at this point potentially all of us, I don't want it to be without having had these adventures. Plus for years I've complained about how so much of our cultural heritage is concentrated in London and realised that if it wasn't going to visit Liverpool any time soon, I'd best drag myself down there instead. "Down there." Such a Northerner.

One of the elements of these visits has been to purposefully not write them up as blog posts, a rule which I've already broken on a couple of occasions. Much of this had to do with not wanting to make the visit about what I'd subsequently scribble here, wanting to experience everything like someone who doesn't have a blog. But the problem is, this blog does exist and if when I look back at this time in a few years there isn't anything here, that negates the whole point of writing it in the first place. I'm grouping everything under how I'd describe them on a bucket list, which doesn't really exist other than as a set of random ideas for "things I haven't done yet".  Oh and purposefully just a paragraph or so each.  I still don't want to overthink things.

The Docklands Light Railway.

The idea of the DLR has fascinated me since seeing a report about its initial construction on, I think, Tomorrow's World.  On reflection and after having travelled on it, I can see that it's really just a glorified tram, but the idea of a near driverless train seemed entirely space age back in the 1980s.  The real novelty is being able to sit at the front where the cab would be and seeing the railway and oncoming stations from what would be a train driver's point of view.  A guard told me that he'd watched the area build up around the track during his years on the service.  My favourite moment was pulling in to Limehouse which has lost all of the character which would have inspired the Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng Chiang.

On part of the journey, an actual driver was sitting on the passenger seat across the way, controlling the train from a panel, although his entire job seemed to be to press one button on reaching a station to open the doors then another to let the train know that it could leave.  His eyes were permanently fixed to the front, deep in concentration, no sign of boredom or apathy.  Even with my sense of occasion, there's no denying that there's only so much of the same track you can watch.  Thank goodness for the moments when the carriage lurched upwards and sideways rather like a roller coaster to provide some extra excitement as it sped through the landscape between the locations its contrived to visit.

The Prime Meridian.

One of the three key reasons for this London visit was to finally see the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory.  Navigating to the line is part of an audio tour; you can't simply see it for free, it's part of an extended narrative about how we measure time and space across the globe.  It's smaller than I expected, at least the visual representation, a short strip of metal about fifty metres long in the courtyard outside one of the observatories.  Along the edge various cities are listed with their relative longitudes and distance from the equator.  For the most part it seems to exist to allow tourists to have a photograph taken with their feet straddling the east-west divide.  The real measurement, check and balance, is a laser projected from the rafters about forty kilometres across London.



Harrison's Longitude Clocks.

These clocks are smaller than I expected.  After having read Sobel's book about their creation and the various documentaries and dramas, these mechanisms had writ large in my imagination, but they're proportionally similar to a small microwave.  Which isn't diminish their beauty, these great technical achievements also translate into kinetic sculptures as the balances and wheels bounce back and forth.  They're presented within a larger display which rather emphasises the astronomical method as well it might and to an extent their total achievement is underplayed as are the reasons why John Harrison wasn't rewarded when he should (of Sobel's version of the narrative is to be believed) because of the sneariness of astronomers.  There also isn't any mention I could see of Rupert Gould's contribution in restoring the clocks to the condition in which they are now.

Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity.

Ever since seeing That Hamilton Woman and Vigee Le Brun's portraits, I've been fascinated by Emma, a figure who began life in poverty, managed to build her reputation to the point of becoming Nelson's mistress then returning once again to penury in her final years, dying at 49.  She was a remarkable woman, constantly re-inventing herself as a performer and somewhat politician turning men's frequently callousness to her advantage, packing so much into her short life.  This exhibition at the National Maritime Museum collects dozens of portraits by Romney as well as some incredible artifacts including the love letters, the antiquities she would have studies and Nelson's own uniform.  There's also a stunning ten minute presentation in which her "attitudes" are recreated by an actress in video on a stage.

The Cutty Sark.

Briefly.  As the posters advertising the friends programme for Greenwich Park explain, it's impossible to see it all in one day.  So I missed most of the National Maratime Museum (apart from Turner's painting of the Battle of Trafalgar), the planetarium and the Queen's Gallery and the interior tour of the ship.  But as I've learnt from previous visits, it's best to make a point of seeing the things I've travelled down to see first and then make everything else secondary.  The Cutty Sark probably does indeed deserves a whole day, but I was happy to walk past its exterior for now.  It's larger than I expected, having only otherwise seen it in helicopter shots during coverage of the London Marathon.  Perhaps once I've completed my personal A-List of London attractions I'll return.

Canary Wharf.

With the Museums closing at five o'clock and a few hours to fill before catching the train home, I decided to visit Torchwood One or as close as possible.  As a receptionist at One Canada Square cautioned, apart from shops and restaurants there isn't much to do but after a visit to Pizza Express, I was quite happy to stroll about the place, looking into the windows across vast brightly lit foyers, usually populated by a solitary security guard behind a giant desk.  Although I've visited La Defance in Paris with its Grand Arch, this is the first time I've stood in front of a skyscraper or any building and not been able to see the top floors.  It's dizzying and claustrophobic.  How must it be to live or work in Manhattan with these edifices permanently obscuring the sky?

Most notably, Canary Wharf doesn't seem to have any litter bins.  After impulse buying a coffee from a cafe bar situated in the base of one of the buildings I eventually found myself with an empty paper cup and nowhere for it to go.  After not seeing anything on my route, I eventually decided enter one of the foyers and ask of they had a bin.  The next building was some kind of medical company.  I tried pushing the door but it was locked so rang the intercom, which was on a post nearby.  The guard walked slowly across the foyer and opened the door.  I asked him if he had a bin.  "No" he said.  "No bin at all?" I ask again.  "No." He repeated then shut the door in the my face.  Fortunately the bank headquarters next door were more accommodating ...

"gut the dog"

The Stealth Homophobia That's Slowly Poisoning Us:
"Equality for the LGBT community now faces its greatest but least visible hurdle yet, says The Guyliner."

Reflecting On One Very, Very Strange Year At Uber:
"As most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like. It's a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story that deserves to be told while it is still fresh in my mind, so here we go."

Crowdsourcing for Shakespeare:
"Around 1675, a woman named Margaret Baker wrote out a remedy for aches whose active ingredient was a puppy. “Take a whelpe that sucketh the fatter the better & drowne him in water till he be deade,” she advised. The reader should then gut the dog, fill its belly with black soap, “putt him one a spite & roste him well,” and apply the fat drippings to the patient’s skin, wafting the scent of warmed sage over him at the same time. “It will helpe him by the grace of god,” she concluded.

Oscar’s Siren song 3: A guest post by Jeff Smith:
"Our colleague and Film Art collaborator Jeff Smith is an expert on film sound, particularly music. He’s contributed several items to our site over the years (for example, here and here and here). Today he’s back with his annual survey of Oscar’s musical categories. He offers in-depth analysis of how the films’ scores and songs enhance the movies’ impact."

Why do all the women on Fox News look and dress alike? Republicans prefer blondes:
"From pundits like Ann Coulter to Kellyanne Conway, American rightwingers are a uniform vision of don’t scare-the-horses dressing."

My Favourite Film of 1911.

Films When Geppeto set about creating his artificial boy (as in Giulio Antamoro's adaptation), little could he comprehend, probably because he’s a fictional character, that centuries later, later craftspeople would be capable of producing near lifelike digital marionettes through photographic technology. But that’s what we witnessed this Christmas, when Grand Admiral Tarkin and other special guests appeared in Rogue One: a Star Wars prequel (story).

Which isn’t to say the results are entirely perfect. Beneath the digital Cushing mask, a real actor with an equally impressive stage and screen career, Guy Henry, provides the voice and motion captured performance providing an underlying sense of humanity, yet the results still tip into the uncanny valley. We’re not completely convinced that Sir Peter is back giving a performance, probably because it’s not easy to forget that someone has died.

Much as has been written about the ethics of this decision, of attempting to make an actor posthumously “live” again and give a new performance and I can understand why some would find it distasteful. My adoration for Audrey Hepburn leads me to conclude that the appropriation of her image for selling chocolate bars is an atrocity as is Gene Kelly’s reanimation for a car commercial (his meticulous choreography replaced with something else entirely).

In Ari Folman’s film The Congress, Robin Wright plays a version of herself in alternative future in which actors are able to sign away the use of their image for film work in perpetuity, even past their death, the version scanned and capture as part of the agreement allowing them never to age on screen. The difference there, I suppose, is that the actor agrees to the procedure, even if they regret it afterwards as they see their image used in projects they fundamentally disagree with.

Back to Star Wars and where I stand. I think it’s fine. But I think the ethical fine line is hair thin. In the case of Star Wars, they’re recreating a character, albeit in a near photo-realistic form, which is no better or worse than when the same being appears in the tv series, in Rebels or The Clone Wars. It’s all animation with someone other than Cushing providing voice work or a performance, fulfilling a particular narrative function.

The other potential approach would have been to have Henry simply playing Tarkin and expect the audience to simply accept that the same character was being played by a different actor, as per Saavik across the Star Trek movies. And although it’s true that digi-Tarkin still pulls the viewer out of the film because he doesn’t feel quite right, it does create a clearer sense of continuity with A New Hope.

But this is one of only a few examples where this would be acceptable. If Hammer suddenly had an uptick in budget and decided to create a new horror film starring Cushing, that would be a more dubious decision. Or if someone decided to create a new romcom with Emma Stone swapping meet cute with a young Cary Grant, or a western with Ryan Gosling sparring with John Wayne.

Not that there would be frankly much point. Film is built on renewal and change, the old guard giving way to the new, for better or worse and I’m not sure there’s even an appetite from the audience for this sort of thing. Given the choice, I’d much rather watch a Monroe romcom within which I can be sure she was creatively invested rather than some contemporary pale imitation. There are enough remakes and sequels which fit that category already.