Gemma Arterton's latest project as producer as well as actress, features Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia Woolf (stepping in for Romola Garai who was originally attached) (good lord). She's playing Vita Sackville-West. It's based on Eileen Atkins' play Vita & Virginia.
"While many accounts of Woolf turn towards her troubled later years, this film shows her at her most vibrant, according to Arterton. “She wrote such vivid stories, full of inspiration and energy and creativity and humour and wit,” she says. “I don’t know if we’ve seen that side, because the fascination with her is always the end of her life, which is sad, I think. They were only lovers for a small period of time, but they were great friends.”" [Screen Daly]
Monopoly Walk:
Old Kent Road, Whitechapel & Kings Cross Station.
Travel Yesterday during one of my monthly London trips, I began walking the Monopoly board, or rather the places listed in the Monopoly board as a reason to visit some of the less obvious places to visit in the city if you're a tourist. I've begun a Twitter thread for the occasion:
This won't be every month. If I discovered anything yesterday, it's that with time this precious and tickets to the capital still this expensive even at thirty odd pounds return I'm probably best concentrating on see the world's treasure houses rather than the inside of an Aldi in a different part of the country (they all look the same you know).
Mural depicting the History of Old Kent Road
The most delightful and unexpected surprise. On the corner of Old Kent Road and Peckham High Road is what was once the North Peckham Civic Centre when when it opened in 1966 included on its exterior walls a mural by artist Adam Kossowski depicting the history of Old Kent Road from its Roman origins through the the 1960s, from patricians to pearly kings and queens. I did take some photos but none of them are as good as those you can find on an average Google image search. Historic England has a long entry about the murals and Exploring Southwark a tldr with more pictures.
The obvious surprise is how it's almost a pictorial depiction of Shakespeare's history plays with Henry V and the Jack Cade rebellion from Henry VI. The Old Kent Road itself doesn't appear to have been mentioned in the Complete Works, but it does demonstrate that however run down it is now, at one point the road was a key thorough fair and a vital route in and out of the city. That said, I did witness a rebellion in that Aldi because they'd run out of change and the staff weren't being allowed to go home because they were too busy and the next shift didn't start for hours.
The Whitechapel Gallery
Closed on Mondays. But it was still nice to stand outside and look through the window. They seem to be between exhibitions. Elsewhere, I enjoyed a decent bowl of Lentil soup in the public library and found a blu-ray copy of Atomic Blonde for £3 in a charity shop so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.
Ffestiniog Railway
Currently on the concourse of Kings Cross Station, Ffestiniog Railway have installed two steam locomotives and a passenger carriage to publicise the destination. Ian Visits has a short piece about the, well, visit, with a shot of an engine being driven into place. As you can see I was very pleased to be there:
— Stuart Ian Burns is (@feelinglistless) February 12, 2018
— Stuart Ian Burns is (@feelinglistless) February 12, 2018
— Stuart Ian Burns is (@feelinglistless) February 12, 2018
This won't be every month. If I discovered anything yesterday, it's that with time this precious and tickets to the capital still this expensive even at thirty odd pounds return I'm probably best concentrating on see the world's treasure houses rather than the inside of an Aldi in a different part of the country (they all look the same you know).
Mural depicting the History of Old Kent Road
The most delightful and unexpected surprise. On the corner of Old Kent Road and Peckham High Road is what was once the North Peckham Civic Centre when when it opened in 1966 included on its exterior walls a mural by artist Adam Kossowski depicting the history of Old Kent Road from its Roman origins through the the 1960s, from patricians to pearly kings and queens. I did take some photos but none of them are as good as those you can find on an average Google image search. Historic England has a long entry about the murals and Exploring Southwark a tldr with more pictures.
The obvious surprise is how it's almost a pictorial depiction of Shakespeare's history plays with Henry V and the Jack Cade rebellion from Henry VI. The Old Kent Road itself doesn't appear to have been mentioned in the Complete Works, but it does demonstrate that however run down it is now, at one point the road was a key thorough fair and a vital route in and out of the city. That said, I did witness a rebellion in that Aldi because they'd run out of change and the staff weren't being allowed to go home because they were too busy and the next shift didn't start for hours.
The Whitechapel Gallery
Closed on Mondays. But it was still nice to stand outside and look through the window. They seem to be between exhibitions. Elsewhere, I enjoyed a decent bowl of Lentil soup in the public library and found a blu-ray copy of Atomic Blonde for £3 in a charity shop so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.
Ffestiniog Railway
Currently on the concourse of Kings Cross Station, Ffestiniog Railway have installed two steam locomotives and a passenger carriage to publicise the destination. Ian Visits has a short piece about the, well, visit, with a shot of an engine being driven into place. As you can see I was very pleased to be there:
Ruth Wilson is about to take part in very a personal passion project.
"But in April, she finally begins filming a long dreamed of project: a drama for the BBC and PBS in America that will tell the story of her paternal grandparents. In Mrs Wilson, which is written by Anna Symon and directed by Richard Laxton, she will play her grandmother, Alice, who only discovered after his death that her husband, Alexander Wilson, was a bigamist. (After Alice’s death, Wilson’s father found out that Alexander, an MI6 officer who wrote spy novels, had in fact been married not twice, but four times; none of his wives and various children knew of one another.) “It has been such a long process,” she says. “Getting a committed answer from the BBC took a while. But that might be a good thing. We’ve had time to talk to everyone, to make sure they feel OK with it.”" [The Guardian]
"But in April, she finally begins filming a long dreamed of project: a drama for the BBC and PBS in America that will tell the story of her paternal grandparents. In Mrs Wilson, which is written by Anna Symon and directed by Richard Laxton, she will play her grandmother, Alice, who only discovered after his death that her husband, Alexander Wilson, was a bigamist. (After Alice’s death, Wilson’s father found out that Alexander, an MI6 officer who wrote spy novels, had in fact been married not twice, but four times; none of his wives and various children knew of one another.) “It has been such a long process,” she says. “Getting a committed answer from the BBC took a while. But that might be a good thing. We’ve had time to talk to everyone, to make sure they feel OK with it.”" [The Guardian]
Daniel Kaluuya played Barclay in Doctor Who's Planet of the Dead. Wow:
"For the best part of two years, Daniel Kaluuya has lived and worked in the US, where his elevation to fame – sudden, unexpected, by turns gratifying and alarming – has made him look differently on his native UK. “I think there’s more room in the US to create something and see what happens,” the 28-year-old says, while unwinding after a photoshoot in New York, where he is taking a break from LA awards shows. (A week after our meeting, Kaluuya is nominated for an Oscar for Get Out; the film was also nominated at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards.) “While in England, I feel, there’s The Way and if you don’t fit in with The Way, then you don’t fit in. A lot of people think their way is The Way. I think my way is a way. And you’re imposing your way on to my way, and I’m like: no way.” [The Guardian]
"For the best part of two years, Daniel Kaluuya has lived and worked in the US, where his elevation to fame – sudden, unexpected, by turns gratifying and alarming – has made him look differently on his native UK. “I think there’s more room in the US to create something and see what happens,” the 28-year-old says, while unwinding after a photoshoot in New York, where he is taking a break from LA awards shows. (A week after our meeting, Kaluuya is nominated for an Oscar for Get Out; the film was also nominated at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards.) “While in England, I feel, there’s The Way and if you don’t fit in with The Way, then you don’t fit in. A lot of people think their way is The Way. I think my way is a way. And you’re imposing your way on to my way, and I’m like: no way.” [The Guardian]
I want my CRT. The Verge offers a history of the tube television and the people attempting to preserve it.
"CRTs were once synonymous with television. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American households had one. But at the turn of the millennium, their popularity rapidly decayed as LCD panels flooded the market. Even though CRTs comprised an estimated 85 percent of US television sales in 2003, analysts were already predicting the technology’s demise. In 2008, LCD panels outsold CRTs worldwide for the first time. Sony shut down its last manufacturing plants that same year, essentially abandoning its famous Trinitron CRT brand. By 2014, even stronghold markets like India were fading, with local manufacturers switching to flat-panel displays." [The Verge]
"CRTs were once synonymous with television. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American households had one. But at the turn of the millennium, their popularity rapidly decayed as LCD panels flooded the market. Even though CRTs comprised an estimated 85 percent of US television sales in 2003, analysts were already predicting the technology’s demise. In 2008, LCD panels outsold CRTs worldwide for the first time. Sony shut down its last manufacturing plants that same year, essentially abandoning its famous Trinitron CRT brand. By 2014, even stronghold markets like India were fading, with local manufacturers switching to flat-panel displays." [The Verge]
A selection of Soviet era Star Wars posters, few of which actually illustrate the films:
"Yuri Bokser and Alexander Chantsev created this poster, along with three others (all below), to commemorate the lifting of the ban. Some critics have described Star Wars as a ‘space Western’ but Bokser and Chantsev make visualised the idea. Perhaps they were just ahead of the curve, though – the bounty hunter Cad Bane wears the Star Wars’ version of a cowboy hat on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series and there was a kind of horse-racing in The Last Jedi." [BBC]
"Yuri Bokser and Alexander Chantsev created this poster, along with three others (all below), to commemorate the lifting of the ban. Some critics have described Star Wars as a ‘space Western’ but Bokser and Chantsev make visualised the idea. Perhaps they were just ahead of the curve, though – the bounty hunter Cad Bane wears the Star Wars’ version of a cowboy hat on the Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series and there was a kind of horse-racing in The Last Jedi." [BBC]
Welcome essay from Mona Eltahawy about teaching girls how to rage:
"One day when I was four years old, a man stopped his car on the street under my family’s balcony, pulled his penis out of his pants and beckoned for me to come down. He did the same to my friend who had been talking to me from her family’s balcony across the street. I was so small that I needed a stool to see my friend from above the balcony railing. I was enraged. I waved my slipper at him to frighten him away." [NBC News]
"One day when I was four years old, a man stopped his car on the street under my family’s balcony, pulled his penis out of his pants and beckoned for me to come down. He did the same to my friend who had been talking to me from her family’s balcony across the street. I was so small that I needed a stool to see my friend from above the balcony railing. I was enraged. I waved my slipper at him to frighten him away." [NBC News]
Margot Robbie receives the Harmony Cousins treatment in The Guardian and she sounds like incredible company:
"When Robbie got her gig in Pan Am, which was broadcast for a few months before its cancellation in 2012, she found it “lonely. You were supposed to be all segregated into different departments, which felt weird. I remember knocking on other people’s doors and saying: ‘Uh, do you want to hang out?’ ” She liked the informal nooks where the runners and makeup deputies and third-rung assistant directors (the third ADs) killed time. “I don’t know, I was closer in age to them. They seemed more like my friends from back home.”" [The Guardian]
"When Robbie got her gig in Pan Am, which was broadcast for a few months before its cancellation in 2012, she found it “lonely. You were supposed to be all segregated into different departments, which felt weird. I remember knocking on other people’s doors and saying: ‘Uh, do you want to hang out?’ ” She liked the informal nooks where the runners and makeup deputies and third-rung assistant directors (the third ADs) killed time. “I don’t know, I was closer in age to them. They seemed more like my friends from back home.”" [The Guardian]
This Collider article repeats what I've been saying for years. Streaming is no substitute for a physical disk.
"I started collecting DVDs in my senior year of high school, and continued to collect them throughout college, which, in retrospect, was not the smartest idea since at the end of every school year I would have to pack up boxes and boxes of DVDs to either send home or store with family who lived near campus. And yet I don’t regret collecting these DVDs because it gave me a valuable resource and a way to dive into movies. The age of DVDs was a bit of a renaissance for film fans since A) we finally got our movies in the correct aspect ratio as opposed to the days of pan-and-scan on VHS; B) there could be a wealth of special features that sometimes functioned like film school in a box; and C) there was an easy way to share movies I loved with friends." [Collider]
"I started collecting DVDs in my senior year of high school, and continued to collect them throughout college, which, in retrospect, was not the smartest idea since at the end of every school year I would have to pack up boxes and boxes of DVDs to either send home or store with family who lived near campus. And yet I don’t regret collecting these DVDs because it gave me a valuable resource and a way to dive into movies. The age of DVDs was a bit of a renaissance for film fans since A) we finally got our movies in the correct aspect ratio as opposed to the days of pan-and-scan on VHS; B) there could be a wealth of special features that sometimes functioned like film school in a box; and C) there was an easy way to share movies I loved with friends." [Collider]
Big Finish have brought the entire original Torchwood team back together and hopefully it'll be set during the half decent second series rather than the mostly rubbish first or be better than both as is customary with audio Torchwood:
“It’s been ten years since there's been an adventure featuring Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh and Owen,” says writer Guy Adams, “and coming up with something big enough – and complex enough – to need them was great fun. After all, taking down an entire religion isn’t easy. But if anyone can do it…” [Big Finish]
“It’s been ten years since there's been an adventure featuring Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh and Owen,” says writer Guy Adams, “and coming up with something big enough – and complex enough – to need them was great fun. After all, taking down an entire religion isn’t easy. But if anyone can do it…” [Big Finish]
Samantha Bee, one corner of my Oliver/Myers/Bee US satire info triangle, interviewed:
"“That’s the loudest, most unfiltered version of me that exists,” she says. “In my private life, I’m not like that at all. I don’t kick doors in and walk into meetings wowing everybody with my Entertainment Personality. It’s a wonderful 21-minute catharsis, once a week, but I don’t need to be that person in my day-to-day life.” Her 65-strong team of writers, producers, technicians and graphic designers is notable for its diversity: half of the staff are female and a third are non-white. “It’s not like we have solved the world’s diversity problem, but we do think about it all the time,” she says. “When we need to hire people, we think: let’s try to find a woman for this.”" [The Guardian]
"“That’s the loudest, most unfiltered version of me that exists,” she says. “In my private life, I’m not like that at all. I don’t kick doors in and walk into meetings wowing everybody with my Entertainment Personality. It’s a wonderful 21-minute catharsis, once a week, but I don’t need to be that person in my day-to-day life.” Her 65-strong team of writers, producers, technicians and graphic designers is notable for its diversity: half of the staff are female and a third are non-white. “It’s not like we have solved the world’s diversity problem, but we do think about it all the time,” she says. “When we need to hire people, we think: let’s try to find a woman for this.”" [The Guardian]
Ben Jackson's Racist Past.
TV One of my Christmas presents this year (last year now?) was the superb The Doctor Who Audio Annual: Multi-Doctor stories, in which a variety of stories from the old World Publications have been recorded in the style of the Target novelisations by various luminaries, usually a companion from that era.
The stories in the earliest books, from the 1960s, are notoriously off-piste in their characterisation of the Doctor and his companions as is demonstrated in the choice of 2nd Doctor story, The King of Golden Dead from 1968.
"Dr. Who" and Ben and Polly land in an Egyptian tomb, recently buried and none of them come out of it well in moral terms, the bad place beckons. The Doctor spends most of the "adventure" obsessed with trying to discover if its the final resting place of Tutankhamun, whilst trying to convince his companions not to rob the place.
Eventually an antagonist arrives in the form of some contemporary grave robbers attempting to find a way through which leads to a conversation in which, whoevers writing this, takes Ben's already pretty stupifying cockneyness into the teritory of a racial slur when describing their potential assailants:
Did you spot it? The only reason I noticed it is because I'm reading along with the annuals so I can enjoy the illustrations with the narration. For the most part the readings are accurate, a missed paragraph here, misunderstood letter or punctuation there.
On this occasion the script is rewritten for Anneke Wills who may not even have been aware of the original text. Instead she says, "If there's so many take to his lark of robbing tombs of the mummies ..." which is perfectly fine and gets the point across even if the whole thing is entirely out of character for Mr Jackson.
When plenty of us folk were complaining about the treatment of the First Doctor in this year's Christmas special (last year?) with anachronistic language being used in an out of character way all of it was sexist, none of it racist.
But notice that back in the 60s, the use of this word was considered fine in a children's annual, admittedly not put in the Doctor's mouth. Perhaps a realistic depiction of Ben would have included this word, but it still jars, since it still feels fundamentally wrong for a character in this series who's supposed to be the hero.
That's the 60s annuals for you.
The stories in the earliest books, from the 1960s, are notoriously off-piste in their characterisation of the Doctor and his companions as is demonstrated in the choice of 2nd Doctor story, The King of Golden Dead from 1968.
"Dr. Who" and Ben and Polly land in an Egyptian tomb, recently buried and none of them come out of it well in moral terms, the bad place beckons. The Doctor spends most of the "adventure" obsessed with trying to discover if its the final resting place of Tutankhamun, whilst trying to convince his companions not to rob the place.
Eventually an antagonist arrives in the form of some contemporary grave robbers attempting to find a way through which leads to a conversation in which, whoevers writing this, takes Ben's already pretty stupifying cockneyness into the teritory of a racial slur when describing their potential assailants:
Did you spot it? The only reason I noticed it is because I'm reading along with the annuals so I can enjoy the illustrations with the narration. For the most part the readings are accurate, a missed paragraph here, misunderstood letter or punctuation there.
On this occasion the script is rewritten for Anneke Wills who may not even have been aware of the original text. Instead she says, "If there's so many take to his lark of robbing tombs of the mummies ..." which is perfectly fine and gets the point across even if the whole thing is entirely out of character for Mr Jackson.
When plenty of us folk were complaining about the treatment of the First Doctor in this year's Christmas special (last year?) with anachronistic language being used in an out of character way all of it was sexist, none of it racist.
But notice that back in the 60s, the use of this word was considered fine in a children's annual, admittedly not put in the Doctor's mouth. Perhaps a realistic depiction of Ben would have included this word, but it still jars, since it still feels fundamentally wrong for a character in this series who's supposed to be the hero.
That's the 60s annuals for you.
Detailed analysis of the sound editing in Olivier Assayas's Personal Shopper:
"The most effective tool in Assayas’ gilded box are the noises of indiscernible origin ginned up by his foley team. While most of the e-ink related to this film has been understandably spilt over the much-ballyhooed sequence in which KStew gets cyber-bullied over the course of one working afternoon, the most crucial scenes come a bit earlier, when she spends the night in Lewis’ former home. Here Assayas inserts sounds while only suggesting their point of origin to force us into surrogacy with Maureen as she futilely grasps at understanding. The hand of a director can be as light as any ghost—to the point of imperceptibility." [The AV Club]
"The most effective tool in Assayas’ gilded box are the noises of indiscernible origin ginned up by his foley team. While most of the e-ink related to this film has been understandably spilt over the much-ballyhooed sequence in which KStew gets cyber-bullied over the course of one working afternoon, the most crucial scenes come a bit earlier, when she spends the night in Lewis’ former home. Here Assayas inserts sounds while only suggesting their point of origin to force us into surrogacy with Maureen as she futilely grasps at understanding. The hand of a director can be as light as any ghost—to the point of imperceptibility." [The AV Club]
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