what I didn't realised I was doing
Life Just wanted to thank Annette (who I wrote about here) who because of the time difference between London and her part of the world, stayed up until three in the morning to watch me live on the plinth and has pointed out what I didn't realised I was doing at the time. If I'd only known I had a global audience!
bastard.
London Henry VIII was a bastard. Not in the literal sense (even though there was a lot of that about in the sixteenth century) – his father was Henry VII, his mother Elizabeth of York. But after seeing the span of his reign at the exhibition in the British Library, the only way to express what I think of him, in the modern vernacular, is that he was a bastard. Apologists might suggest that the pressure of power, the weight of the Tudor legacy, the need to consolidate his family’s position on the thrown are what led him to work his way through six wives, to force his people to throw out their way of life, to gratuitously spend his wealth on a massive scale to create palaces that would generally sit empty and remove the head of anyone who happened to look at him sideways. But I’m not convinced. In recent times, I’ve been considering whether we wouldn’t simply be better off being rules by a monarchy and how at least you knew were you were with them. Henry VIII is a five hundred year old demonstration of this being a very bad idea.
Guest curated by television’s Dr. David Starkey, the main draw of the exhibition is that it collects together the real documentation related to that reign, a reminder that most of the events in everything from Shakespeare’s All Is True to The Tudors really happened. We see the notes scribbled between Henry and Anne Boleyn during services, the divorce papers from Katherine of Aragon, the material which led to the dissolution of the English church from Rome, innumerable peace treaties and, by the way, the chain Henry is seen wearing in the famous Holbein painting, a version of which is also included. The attention to detail stretches to the floor, where labels mark where each artifact fits in the king’s biography, we’re stepping through history. I gasped, I grinned, I knew I didn’t have long enough, I bought the catalogue.
Guest curated by television’s Dr. David Starkey, the main draw of the exhibition is that it collects together the real documentation related to that reign, a reminder that most of the events in everything from Shakespeare’s All Is True to The Tudors really happened. We see the notes scribbled between Henry and Anne Boleyn during services, the divorce papers from Katherine of Aragon, the material which led to the dissolution of the English church from Rome, innumerable peace treaties and, by the way, the chain Henry is seen wearing in the famous Holbein painting, a version of which is also included. The attention to detail stretches to the floor, where labels mark where each artifact fits in the king’s biography, we’re stepping through history. I gasped, I grinned, I knew I didn’t have long enough, I bought the catalogue.
Elsinore 3D
Shakespeare 4 Kidz' Hamlet to become 3D film: "A musical version of Hamlet by theatre company Shakespeare 4 Kidz is to be turned into a 3D film, as part of a deal that will see six of the organisation's plays adapted for the screen."
But I was alone.
London Time to write about what happened in London when I wasn’t on the plinth. Readers who yawned at my interminable Stratford-Upon-Avon story will be pleased to know that I’ve decided that on this occasion brevity is the soul of wit and to deliberately give the following short shrift. This is just the tip of a massive ice-cube but I enjoyed myself so much that on this occasion I don’t want to spoil things by over analysing. Not everything in life means something. Some things. Some things which happened on this trip in fact, but not everything. For the interested, if I learnt anything in those three days, it’s that London can be a beautiful, exciting, kinetic, energetic place but which I can imagine can also be a dark, scary, lonely isolating condition if you’re not careful, and don’t have the kind of personality which can fight against it.
The J W Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts has been greeted with some rather sniffy one star reviews from the (as it turns out) unpopular press and it has to be said, as I passed between rooms, between bursts of the audio tour, I did hear some so-called art experts deconstructing the works, casting about for as many synonyms for ‘kitsh’ as they could find. Of course, even though I appreciate this stuff isn’t to everyone’s taste, they’re wrong. Apart from the skill in Waterhouse’s execution in producing these scenes, his ability to create drama and surrealism is astounding. Take St Eulalia (1885) in which the martyr lies slain on the snow covered floor as the populace look on in horror, her naked form both sensuous and horrible at the same time. That’s a pattern repeated throughout the exhibition in which your male gaze is focused where you’d expect and then suddenly you find yourself blinking when as you realise what the painting is really about.
If there’s one repeated feature of my visits to museums and art galleries in the North West, it’s that the designated Waterhouse in a given collection is always on loan and the retrospective is one of the reasons. Sure enough, in amongst the pieces borrowed from the Tate, the Royal Collection and Tim Rice, there was (amongst others) Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid’s Garden from the Harris Museum in Preston and Destiny from Towneley Hall in Burnley. Also on show were a couple of pieces from National Museums Liverpool so familiar it was like greeting an old friend in unusual surroundings (not the only time that happened during the trip) as well as Hylas and the Nymphs in which Hercules’s companion is seduced by seven identical young ladies which I had a poster on my wall during my teenage years. Yes, indeed. But keep in mind I also had Kylie and Debbie Gibson up there too. I was post-pubescently conflicted.
Also presently at the Royal Academy is the Summer Exhibition, a show so volumous that you could easily spend a day looking around. I allotted myself about half an hour (first day, tight schedule), hardly enough time to absorb much of anything. At one point I found myself staring at a dyptic of canvases, primary colours and wavy lines. There was something very curious, very impressive, very interactive about it, despite it simply being a two dimension object. I wanted to tell somebody. But I was alone. After a while, two rather elegantly dressed women stood just behind my shoulder. One of them looked familiar but I didn’t think much of it then. I heard them trying to interpret what they were seeing. Of course I immediately thought of this classic scene from Doctor Who:
After a bit I turned to them:
“Would you like to know how this works?” I said.
”Pardon?”
”Would you like to know how this works?”
“How do you know?”
”I just know.” I tried to create a twinkle in my eye. I didn’t, but then I’m not David Tennant.
“How does it work?”
“If you stare at the wavy lines for long enough the image is imprinted in your eyes, then if you look right new colours emerge…” They really did.
“Ooooh.” They said in unison, “Thank you we’ll try that…”
I strolled away. Then I thought about whether it is a good idea to bother fellow patrons in art galleries like that and who the lady reminded me of. Moments later I realised. It was Eleanor Bron. The Eleanor Bron who made the cameo with John Cleese in Doctor Who all those years ago. I've checked my memory against the internet, and found this photograph. It was definitely her. Blimey.
The J W Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts has been greeted with some rather sniffy one star reviews from the (as it turns out) unpopular press and it has to be said, as I passed between rooms, between bursts of the audio tour, I did hear some so-called art experts deconstructing the works, casting about for as many synonyms for ‘kitsh’ as they could find. Of course, even though I appreciate this stuff isn’t to everyone’s taste, they’re wrong. Apart from the skill in Waterhouse’s execution in producing these scenes, his ability to create drama and surrealism is astounding. Take St Eulalia (1885) in which the martyr lies slain on the snow covered floor as the populace look on in horror, her naked form both sensuous and horrible at the same time. That’s a pattern repeated throughout the exhibition in which your male gaze is focused where you’d expect and then suddenly you find yourself blinking when as you realise what the painting is really about.
If there’s one repeated feature of my visits to museums and art galleries in the North West, it’s that the designated Waterhouse in a given collection is always on loan and the retrospective is one of the reasons. Sure enough, in amongst the pieces borrowed from the Tate, the Royal Collection and Tim Rice, there was (amongst others) Psyche Opening the Door into Cupid’s Garden from the Harris Museum in Preston and Destiny from Towneley Hall in Burnley. Also on show were a couple of pieces from National Museums Liverpool so familiar it was like greeting an old friend in unusual surroundings (not the only time that happened during the trip) as well as Hylas and the Nymphs in which Hercules’s companion is seduced by seven identical young ladies which I had a poster on my wall during my teenage years. Yes, indeed. But keep in mind I also had Kylie and Debbie Gibson up there too. I was post-pubescently conflicted.
Also presently at the Royal Academy is the Summer Exhibition, a show so volumous that you could easily spend a day looking around. I allotted myself about half an hour (first day, tight schedule), hardly enough time to absorb much of anything. At one point I found myself staring at a dyptic of canvases, primary colours and wavy lines. There was something very curious, very impressive, very interactive about it, despite it simply being a two dimension object. I wanted to tell somebody. But I was alone. After a while, two rather elegantly dressed women stood just behind my shoulder. One of them looked familiar but I didn’t think much of it then. I heard them trying to interpret what they were seeing. Of course I immediately thought of this classic scene from Doctor Who:
After a bit I turned to them:
“Would you like to know how this works?” I said.
”Pardon?”
”Would you like to know how this works?”
“How do you know?”
”I just know.” I tried to create a twinkle in my eye. I didn’t, but then I’m not David Tennant.
“How does it work?”
“If you stare at the wavy lines for long enough the image is imprinted in your eyes, then if you look right new colours emerge…” They really did.
“Ooooh.” They said in unison, “Thank you we’ll try that…”
I strolled away. Then I thought about whether it is a good idea to bother fellow patrons in art galleries like that and who the lady reminded me of. Moments later I realised. It was Eleanor Bron. The Eleanor Bron who made the cameo with John Cleese in Doctor Who all those years ago. I've checked my memory against the internet, and found this photograph. It was definitely her. Blimey.
links for 2009-08-13
- Lovely interview, sounds exactly as you'd hope she would. Compares radio studios to Forbidden Planet.
- "A group of farmers' wives in a remote village in Turkey have transformed their community through theatre - and it seems Hamlet is just the start."
- Why couldn't I have been born with Stephen Fry's memory? I read incessantly, but retain so little.
links for 2009-08-12
- "Julianne Moore as Scarlett."
- Various BBC Radio presenters gather to play Fauré's Dolly Suite including Zeb Soanes and Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Rather lovely. Additionally, why isn't Jon Jacob presenting television?
- Or why there are so many rubbish films about now. The article is short and lucid, but the comments are the highlight as people are given the chance to finally vent about how alienated some of them feel by their tastes.
- Yes, that's better. Much, much better.
There was a naked man on the fourth plinth
Life There was a naked man on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square when I was going to bed on the night I got back from London (Tuesday). As I said in the blog post I wrote while I was up there, I felt just as exposed on Monday morning, though obviously without the police asking me to cover myself up and passers-by chanting obscenities. Having cultivating what I like to think is a certain level of mystery on the blog and elsewhere online for the past however many years, there I am in a video on the web (if you’ll pardon the depressing self absorption and brutal honesty), waddling about, with bad hair, the sun bouncing brightly off my forehead, wittering to myself about the clothes I’m wearing, in a t-shirt big enough that the dozens of helicopters that hover across the capital could have used me as a marker during that hour if their navigation systems had malfunctioned.
That’s not me is it? Really? REALLY? That explains ... everything…
And the crucial thing is I’ve done it and I’m very pleased and feel very privileged that I’ve done it and the ancillary broadcast is besides the point and it was at the nucleus of three very happy (if not entirely uneventful) days in London. I’ll talk about the rest some other time. The plinthing experience begins an hour and a half before the “show”. You’re welcomed into the portacabin offered a drink and given some forms to sign, from Sky Arts for use of your image and from Artichoke the company producing One & Other agreeing that they’ve done everything to safeguard your safety so if you hurl yourself off it’s not their fault (incidentally, Artichoke were also behind La Machine, the giant spider that trampled Liverpool underfoot last year).
The fourth plinth was originally designed by Sir Charles Barry for an equestrian statue in the 1840s, but a lack of funds led to the construct remaining notoriously empty for nearly a century and half. From 1998 onwards, artists have been commissioned to fill the space which has led to site specific pieces from the likes of Rachel Whiteread, Mark Quinn, Mark Wallinger and now Antony Gormley. The expectation might have been that Gormley would produce another in his long line of body casts in bronze, like the Angel of the North or like the statues in Another Place on Crosby Beach. Instead, as a new way of investigating “the distinction between what we look like and who we are” he is asking volunteers to each stand on the plinth for an hour, twenty-four hours a day for one hundred days and Sky are filming the results.
What’s important about the initiation process is that you’re made to feel special, that your contribution is important. The helpers who welcome you into Antony Gormley’s world all make a point of introducing themselves, are chatty, genuinely seem pleased to see you and want to make sure you enjoy this strange and rather wonderful experience. Without them, I can honestly say it wouldn’t have been the same. We chatted about the project, about the other plinthers, about the media reaction (that it has in general misunderstood what the project is about and I agree with them) and what the legacy might be. I won’t say too much more about them because they deserve their anonymity (especially since now and then I think they too go up on the plinth if someone doesn’t turn up and those hours don’t appear on the website).
After the forms, there was a safety briefing (no glass, no naked flames) and an interview. As part of the project, Artichoke have been asked by the Wellcome Trust to collect the testimonies of all of the plinthers to create an aural history archive so that the twenty-four hundred of us taking the stand/plinth, aren’t simply anonymous faces and that our contribution isn’t just visual. I’m not entirely sure how useful my contributions will be. After some general queries (name, date of birth, job) and what I’d be doing on the plinth (and so why I write this blog), the focus careened to who I am as a person, what experiences I think made me who I am today. It was eight o’clock in the morning. I went for a ramble. I explained that I didn’t think there was just one thing, or a couple. I said that probably we inherit some things from our parents, behaviourally and genetically, but that I was sure that there wasn’t a single turning point, but suggested that One & Other could turn out to be it.
Then, after having my photograph taken (a moment which as ever featured me trying to solve the puzzle of which is my left and which my right), being fitted with a microphone, it was time to go to the plinth. As you may have seen from the video, you travel across the square on the cherry picker, before being lifted aloft, which could make you feel like a may queen or you’re on your way to an execution depending upon your emotional history. The picker lifts up and over the protective safety net and then after sharing a few words with the previous incumbent (a lady called Jane who’d worked on a sketch of London’s brilliant parade), a wait for a requested safety pole to be added (because I didn’t have a chair), I’d stepped off onto the stone top. Ian Jones was already there and you can see me saying hello on the video and everything else.
With a microphone on, the first impulse was to talk. I notice that not all plinthers have them, or take them off, but knowing that I would be reading out those blog entries I kept it were it was and just started wittering on, mostly nonsense but very much on the understanding that I was broadcasting rather than talking to myself, presumably friends who’d tuned in and as I said “the twitter hecklers” though checking back I notice I didn’t have many of those. I’ve gone back and checked. Beforehand @davegorman was watching to see what I might do (which is a surprise – how does he know who I am?), @damonquerry was nice enough to post a screen grab and noticed my shameless plugging of Behind The Sofa, @mumsrgreat luckily (for her) couldn’t get sound and wondered what I was reading out (here and here) and @neilperryman later said he hoped I was going to do more than put on sunscreen (a highlight I’m sure you’ll agree).
My second impulse was to pace, the third to wave and then make value judgements on people who didn’t wave back, the fourth to take some photos, the fifth ... you get the idea. I had my photo taken a few times and some people visited and unwittingly became part of the action, either because Sky filmed them or because I mentioned them in my blog post. Looking back, I’m surprised by how coherent that was even if the handwriting, punctuation and spelling is atrocious. I sadly don’t have any further “insights” other than what I said in my interview, that I’ve always had this horrible, possibly crippling, tendency not to do things, look for excuses and reasons not to do them, when that’s no way to go through life. Though I’ve been blessed with plenty of experiences, I’ve also denied myself a range of others, of the One & Other variety, which is something that has to stop. Just do them. It doesn’t matter and it also doesn’t matter what people think of you, should it be archived online.
You’ll hear me register some surprise at the forty-five minute mark should you get that far. Time slipped by. Before too long the cherry picker was heading in my direction and I’d stepped off again, to be replaced by Rachel who did some origami which she threw into the square. Back to the cabin via cherry picker and once I’d signed to visitors book (lots of uses of the words “wow” and “excellent” and “thank you”) it was all over, albeit with me retaining a certain sense of bewilderedness. My friend Leonie (who’s in the video) met me and we went sight seeing. Thank goodness. I expect that if I’d simply walked away alone, it would have been with a deep sense of anti-climax and the whole day would have been about that, but exciting events were to come, if not more so. But that’s a story, for, well, another time …
for symetry sake
Life Originally written Monday 10th August at about nine thirty in the morning ...
(click to read) (should you need to) (yes, I know it has two m's)
(click to read) (should you need to) (yes, I know it has two m's)
Spoilers ahead.
Film Almost as soon as Stage Fright opens with Jane Wyman and Richard Todd fleeing from somewhere by car, it cuts to an extended flashback with explains exactly how Wyman and Todd got themselves into this mess. For much of the film, our knowledge of the characters is tempered by the information we’re given, about how Marlene Dietrich’s actress asked Todd to cover for the accidental murder of her husband. Then in the final moments, the rug is pulled from under us when its revealed that everything Todd has said is a lie, that his narration was unreliable. It’s a revelation, not just to Wyman’s character who’s trusted him through much of the film, and to us too because it seems so unlike Hitchcock to employ an unreliable narrator.
Reflecting on the decision later, he thought he’d cheated the audience by creating surprise rather than suspense and some critics agreed with him, but with respect to the Master, he’s wrong (and should have more courage in his conviction) and they’re wrong too. We’ve come to expect this kind of unreliable narration in recent years – The Usual Suspects being the most prominent example. But to do it in this kind of setting is perhaps one of his greatest twists, and shows what could have been a different sort of director – the confidence trickster. Instead he became the suspense director – we find out about the switcheroo in Vertigo half way through the film so that it then becomes about Jimmy Stewart’s reaction. Psycho’s an interesting case, but I’ll talk about that when I get there.
my plinth debut
Elsewhere All being well, you should now be able to watch my plinth debut at my One & Other profile, assuming I didn't bottle it, wasn't late to sign in or that there wasn't some technical failure. Since I'm still away, I don't even know if this autopost has been published...
warmed up
Life Having not been away for quite some time, I'm back on the road (well train) again for the second time in almost as many months. One of the virtues of that is having some inclining of what's important in packing. This time I'm making do with just a backpack; I haven't had a chance to write about the bottom end of the previous week's holiday but dragging my suitcase on wheels about an ironically rainy Lemmington Spa was probably the low point of the week (same thing happened in Buxton -- I suspect fowl play from God for the complex relationship I have with him).
My latest backpack does indeed seem bigger on the inside, enough room for three t-shirts, enough underwear, a jumper, toiletries, alarm clock, radio, book, note book, camera(s), well everything. I took extra jumpers and pants and shoes to Stratford, but didn't need any of them. It's good to have some back-ups, I know, but in the end I could have bought clothes if I needed them and that's true here, one of the few benefits of town centres cloning from one another. The approach to belongings spies have, rings true for tourists too, I think.
I've only visited London twice before in this decade and since I seem to have picked up a few new readers recently (hello!), I thought you might be interested to read what happened. As you can see I do go for packed days. On one occasion it was a spare of the moment decision to go for a walk there; the other was a properly planned day. This time, I have everything just about planned out but with just enough wiggle room for any surprises. I won't really be content until I get Monday morning over with.
Thursday, August 25, 2005: "I went for a walk around London yesterday, mostly on the South Bank. So whilst Liverpool was apparently enjoying the loveliest day of the month, I was fighting my way across the Millenium Bridge, trying to hold my umbrella in such a way that the wind would pull it and my off the side into the Thames. It absolutely the worst weather, but that meant I wasn't getting the idealized version which appears in film and television."
Wednesday, September 13, 2006: "I love navigating the tube map - I know it must be a pain if you're a London resident, but finding where you are and where you want to go and then deciding the quickest route with the least number of changes is an exciting challenge - even if sometimes all you seem to be doing is following the arrows down stairs and escalators. The Jubilee line in particular seems close to hades."
(has it really been three years?)
My latest backpack does indeed seem bigger on the inside, enough room for three t-shirts, enough underwear, a jumper, toiletries, alarm clock, radio, book, note book, camera(s), well everything. I took extra jumpers and pants and shoes to Stratford, but didn't need any of them. It's good to have some back-ups, I know, but in the end I could have bought clothes if I needed them and that's true here, one of the few benefits of town centres cloning from one another. The approach to belongings spies have, rings true for tourists too, I think.
I've only visited London twice before in this decade and since I seem to have picked up a few new readers recently (hello!), I thought you might be interested to read what happened. As you can see I do go for packed days. On one occasion it was a spare of the moment decision to go for a walk there; the other was a properly planned day. This time, I have everything just about planned out but with just enough wiggle room for any surprises. I won't really be content until I get Monday morning over with.
Thursday, August 25, 2005: "I went for a walk around London yesterday, mostly on the South Bank. So whilst Liverpool was apparently enjoying the loveliest day of the month, I was fighting my way across the Millenium Bridge, trying to hold my umbrella in such a way that the wind would pull it and my off the side into the Thames. It absolutely the worst weather, but that meant I wasn't getting the idealized version which appears in film and television."
Wednesday, September 13, 2006: "I love navigating the tube map - I know it must be a pain if you're a London resident, but finding where you are and where you want to go and then deciding the quickest route with the least number of changes is an exciting challenge - even if sometimes all you seem to be doing is following the arrows down stairs and escalators. The Jubilee line in particular seems close to hades."
(has it really been three years?)
a "not yet" list
Film I have a not list, or more accurately, a "not yet" list, of films which I know to be classics but which I'm deliberately ignoring so that I'll always have something good to watch. This week it was the turn of Ken Russell's crazy Altered States (which I'll talk about another time) and Poltergeist a funny, clever, scary, atmospheric, surprising piece of work that I now know has been imitated dozens of times.
I also now understand the question of authorship which has dogged the production since its release. Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Tobe Hooper is credited as director on the film, but sight unseen it has all of the hallmarks of a Steven Spielberg production, from the small child as point of view figure (especially in the opening sequence which apes Close Encounters) to the overlapping, easygoing dialogue between the leads and the camera work and shock editing.
Seeking confirmation online, I've stumbled across this page at a Poltergeist fan site which collects together raw quotes from contemporary and retrospective interviews, online postings from anonymous sources who claim to have been on the set, describing the working relationship between producer and director during shooting and post-production. It's a fascinating read, if only to see how some people dance about the subject whilst other jive right in.
From a journalistic perspective you could use these quotes to sway the argument either way, but even from the words of official sources, the process of clearly exceedingly collaborative. Paul Thomas Anderson aided Robert Altman on the set of his final film, A Prairie Home Companion, because otherwise the insurers wouldn't under-right the production otherwise. Similar measures occured during the making of Return of the Jedi with George Lucas helping Richard Marquand along with the special effects (as the special features on one of the many hundred dvd reissues explained).
Much the same working relationship can be inferred from this page, with both Steven and Tobe offering direction, shouting action and cut. Neither comes off well, and indeed it sounds like there was a fair amount of infighting with the cast and crew siding with one or other of the men. Here's Spielberg himself:
"Tobe isn't what you'd call a take-charge sort of guy. He's just not a strong presence on a movie set. If a question was asked and an answer wasn't immediately forthcoming, I'd jump up and say what we could do. Tobe would nod agreement, and that became the process of the collaboration. I did not want to direct the movie-I had to do 'E.T.' five weeks after principal photography on 'Poltergeist.'"And he has, though his methodology if the imdb is to be believed has been to simply stop writing (with the exception of a story credit on The Goonies and a rewrite on AI). None of this really matters of course, not after twenty-five years. In classic old Hollywood all kinds of films had multiple directors for one reason or another. What matters is the quality of the work, and as far as I'm concerned Poltergeist is a classic, however it was created.
"My enthusiasm for wanting to make 'Poltergeist' would have been difficult for any director I would have hired. It derived from my imagination and my experiences, and it came out of my typewriter [after re-writing the Grais/Victor draft]. I felt a proprietary interest in this project that was stronger than if I was just an executive producer. I thought I'd be able to turn 'Poltergeist' over to a director and walk away. I was wrong. [On future films] If I write it myself, I'll direct it myself. I won't put someone else through what I put Tobe through, and I'll be more honest in my contributions to a film."
Brian or Ducky or The Geek, Keith or Cameron
Film John Hughes has died. He was 59 and his heart gave out whilst jogging, which is a horrible way to go. Over the next few days there'll be countless obituaries far better than anything I could write at speed here. For some people of my generation he's a titan, introducing us to the American high school and like the best writers demonstrating that the emotions we were feeling were universal, that there was nothing happening in Shermer, Illinois that wasn't also happening in the hallways of our schools.
I might have watched Grange Hill, but in my heart of hearts it's The Breakfast Club or Pretty In Pink or Sixteen Candles or Some Kind of Wonderful or even Ferris Bueller's Day Off that reflected how I felt about school (or in the case of Weird Science wished I did). I was Brian or Ducky or The Geek, Keith or Cameron and probably still am, but Hughes showed there was nothing wrong with that, it was ok just to be friends with Claire, Andie, Samantha, Amanda or Sloane. They'll come around eventually (still waiting).
I might have watched Grange Hill, but in my heart of hearts it's The Breakfast Club or Pretty In Pink or Sixteen Candles or Some Kind of Wonderful or even Ferris Bueller's Day Off that reflected how I felt about school (or in the case of Weird Science wished I did). I was Brian or Ducky or The Geek, Keith or Cameron and probably still am, but Hughes showed there was nothing wrong with that, it was ok just to be friends with Claire, Andie, Samantha, Amanda or Sloane. They'll come around eventually (still waiting).
that’s pretty much what I was thinking
Film Under Capricorn is a mess. Some French critics (Trauffaut included) thought it to be Hitchcock's masterpiece and there has been some recent critical re-evaluation in relation to his use of long takes and how they express the inner life of the characters with their own spaces (wiki) which is all fine, but it's the first film since Jamaica Inn that I’ve simply wanted to give up mid-stream, uninterested in the characters, the story and impatient about the rotten, slow pacing. If I’m spotting a pattern in Hitch’s career, it’s that when he strays away from something with an overtly suspenseful scenario, he doesn’t seem to know what to do with the material. Much like Rope he uses ten minute takes, except here they feel like ten minutes because they simply don’t suite the domestic love triangle playing out before us. If he was trying to make us desperate for a cutaway but wanting to keep us painfully within the room, he succeeded.
Still, there is some curiosity value in seeing the subject of the formation of Australia turned into a film just over a hundred years after the original events in 1831, and how convicts were essentially being used a slave labour. These people lived in relatively isolation, ships taking months to travel too and from the motherland which is difficult for us modern apes to conceive of at a time when geopolitical information bounces around the planet instantly, and a quick glance at Google News can tell us the hot story in the Antipodean parliament. They wouldn’t have known that Darwin was heading in their direction on the historic cruise that would lead to his theory of Evolution, the Battle of Ostrołęka was happening in Poland and Victor Hugo was publishing The Hunchback of Notre Dame. They might have noticed The Sydney Morning Herald being founded. None of which has anything to do with the film, but that’s pretty much what I was thinking about as Ingrid Bergman went into another one of her alcohol induced fits.
As ever, Hitch knew when he’d produced a clunker and said as much again to a disappointed Truffaut in those interviews. He was apparently riding on a career high and had in his mind the moment when he and Bergman, who was the one who really wanted to do the picture, stepped onto the tarmac at Heathrow into the awaiting photographers, the most famous director in the world and the most famous actress. He’s sheepish about his own vanity and acknowledges that it had a knock on effect on the final product which was begun without a completed script which had elements he wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with them – which was risky considering it was a self-produced independent picture. The film sank at the box office and was repossessed by the banks leading to it being unseen for many years.
in the area
Liverpool Life Kerry Morrison of the Biennial is cataloguing human activity along the local portion of the Leeds Liverpool canal:
"I wanted to get a clearer and more fair picture of how the canal is actually used by people, so I devised a Human Activity Record data sheet – a means to record every activity that passes by me – not just the disturbing, the entertaining, or the eye catching – but the ordinary and everyday comings and goings of people along the towpath."She talks about finding a potato patch, which is something I remember find myself when I was young and playing about in the area on which the John Lennon Airport was built. Kerry's project will become a fascinating record of social and environmental history.
they're probably what's made me so intensely interested in everything
Life The Observer wasn’t my first Sunday newspaper. That honour goes to The Sunday Times, which I read right the way through my teens. I loved the Culture section and used to keep them, piled up under my bed, the library/hoarders gene already taking hold. But after Hilsborough and a recognition that the paper was being published by the same office as that which shall not be named, I just stopped. And the back issues went for recycling.
By then I was in my late teens and in my sixth form at school. One of the perks was that the newspapers would be delivered to the common room (dontchaknow) and each morning a group of us would try and do The Guardian crossword which is when I first started reading the paper. Despite wavering now and then, trying The Independent for a week or The Telegraph, I always returned. It’s political philosophy wasn’t always something you could agree with, but in everything else it spoke my language.
The Observer, once the GMG had bought it in 1993, became the natural Sunday extension and I’ve been picking it up ever since. Similar to The Guardian, it has an ability to somehow find something interesting to say about something, anything. But as a report on tonight’s Newsnight underscored, it is in fact simplistic to simply call it The Sunday Guardian; there are ideological differences and its tastes are perhaps even slightly more up market, more literary. Yet I’m as passionate about it as I am the daily paper and with the threat of closure perhaps even more so.
I think I can probably say that I wouldn’t be the person I am without having read The Guardian or The Observer; sometimes both can be precocious and do idiotic things, sometimes they get things very wrong, but before the web they were the way I discovered that there was more going on in the world than I could see in my daily routine, theatre, music, art, cinema, foreign affairs, tattle, tittle. Collectively they're probably what's made me so intensely interested in everything, and it’s true to say I learnt more from those pages than I ever did at school.
I’ve become used to sitting in my lunch break on a Sunday and reading the magazine and review sections; Victoria Coren’s column, Mark Kermode’s dvd reviews, Jay Raynor’s restaurant reviews, the film and music features by the Kates, Tims and Miranda Sawyer (sometimes), the longer researched newsier pieces by Simon Garfield or Elizabeth Day glancing on into the Media section to Peter Preston and all of the things which I peek at in between. They’re akin to human versions of the finger in the old lottery ads, pointing to subjects which we readers might find interested in, golden nuggets.
The idea of none of that being there fills me with dread. Yes, dread. Because without The Observer there wouldn’t be a newspaper worth reading on a Sunday or at the very least a paper I would want to read. The Sunday Times is still owned by Murdoch (and we’ll leave the inconsistencies about that statement for another time). I’ve tried both The Telegraph and The Independent having bought them to get whatever dvd was being given away that week, and the former just seemed terribly up itself and the other felt like it was trying to ape the other papers broadsheet and middle market rather than just doing its own thing.
Is it possible to write an obituary for a newspaper? Would it be too meta? The Observer hasn’t closed yet, that decision is still amongst the range of options available to Guardian Media Group to plug the £90 million hole in their profits, so perhaps we can at least describe the paper as being on life support. And I’m right at its bedside, holding its hand, ipod tuned to whatever was trending in the last Music Monthly to keep it cheerful.
By then I was in my late teens and in my sixth form at school. One of the perks was that the newspapers would be delivered to the common room (dontchaknow) and each morning a group of us would try and do The Guardian crossword which is when I first started reading the paper. Despite wavering now and then, trying The Independent for a week or The Telegraph, I always returned. It’s political philosophy wasn’t always something you could agree with, but in everything else it spoke my language.
The Observer, once the GMG had bought it in 1993, became the natural Sunday extension and I’ve been picking it up ever since. Similar to The Guardian, it has an ability to somehow find something interesting to say about something, anything. But as a report on tonight’s Newsnight underscored, it is in fact simplistic to simply call it The Sunday Guardian; there are ideological differences and its tastes are perhaps even slightly more up market, more literary. Yet I’m as passionate about it as I am the daily paper and with the threat of closure perhaps even more so.
I think I can probably say that I wouldn’t be the person I am without having read The Guardian or The Observer; sometimes both can be precocious and do idiotic things, sometimes they get things very wrong, but before the web they were the way I discovered that there was more going on in the world than I could see in my daily routine, theatre, music, art, cinema, foreign affairs, tattle, tittle. Collectively they're probably what's made me so intensely interested in everything, and it’s true to say I learnt more from those pages than I ever did at school.
I’ve become used to sitting in my lunch break on a Sunday and reading the magazine and review sections; Victoria Coren’s column, Mark Kermode’s dvd reviews, Jay Raynor’s restaurant reviews, the film and music features by the Kates, Tims and Miranda Sawyer (sometimes), the longer researched newsier pieces by Simon Garfield or Elizabeth Day glancing on into the Media section to Peter Preston and all of the things which I peek at in between. They’re akin to human versions of the finger in the old lottery ads, pointing to subjects which we readers might find interested in, golden nuggets.
The idea of none of that being there fills me with dread. Yes, dread. Because without The Observer there wouldn’t be a newspaper worth reading on a Sunday or at the very least a paper I would want to read. The Sunday Times is still owned by Murdoch (and we’ll leave the inconsistencies about that statement for another time). I’ve tried both The Telegraph and The Independent having bought them to get whatever dvd was being given away that week, and the former just seemed terribly up itself and the other felt like it was trying to ape the other papers broadsheet and middle market rather than just doing its own thing.
Is it possible to write an obituary for a newspaper? Would it be too meta? The Observer hasn’t closed yet, that decision is still amongst the range of options available to Guardian Media Group to plug the £90 million hole in their profits, so perhaps we can at least describe the paper as being on life support. And I’m right at its bedside, holding its hand, ipod tuned to whatever was trending in the last Music Monthly to keep it cheerful.
if you’re my kind of film fan
Film Before I begin, I should offer a warning. I know that only a small fraction of you will be interested in the following, and only a fraction of those will possibly find it useful. But I wanted to finally put this into words and have it somewhere useful where it can be discussed if required. Some of you will probably wondering about my sanity. I expect someone will probably stop reading the blog altogether. So let’s begin.
On classifying films.
Over the weekend I continued the arduous, not to mention rather boring process of cataloguing my dvds
If you’re my sort of film fan you’ll probably also have hundred potentially thousands of the things, shop bought and recorded from the television (dozens of old video tapes too), so many perhaps that you actually sometimes forget what you actually have. I know this afflicts music collectors too; I don’t collect music and I’ve somehow managed to amass three copies of Pet Sounds.
At some point in the past I had to make a decision as to the order in which I was going to store the dvds. The typical view is either genre or alphabetical order by director but me being me, this didn’t seem very satisfactory. In this post-modern world and having written a dissertation on the subject the idea of slotting films into discrete genres has to me become suspect at best – Star Wars of course being a western and Titanic, a romance.
Alphabetical has its virtues but it isn’t not very contextual. I like to be contextual.
When I was at library school in the mid-90s as well as learning all about now obsolete internet search engines and software (Web Crawler and Dbase 4) we where walked through the main classification systems, Library of Congress and Dewey Decimal, LCC and DDC. The first is more likely to be used in academic libraries, the latter in the public. If asked I prefer DDC – it has a clearer structure and everything has a place (visit the wiki links to discover their wonders).
In other words, thinking about classification systems isn’t something I simply began to do randomly recently. I was trained to, for good or ill. And though I wasn’t thinking about classification systems much for the whole of the next eight years, when I went to film school and was using an academic library again, I began thinking about classification systems again. And more specifically how rubbish libraries can be when dealing with films, mostly treating them as artefacts rather than works of art.
To cut a long story short, I decided to make up my own classification system, something which did treat them as works of art. I decided that to take the guess work out of the genre process and also to contextualise films historically, it was best to use a ….
Classification by year.
Or more specifically:
Classification by the year in which it’s set and put the films in historical chronological order.
Pure madness of course, not least because of the sheer man (or woman) hours involved in finding out the year in which a film is set and making value judgements if its not set in a specific year and then arbitrarily deciding on one.
This is how I’ve classified my dvds.
Films about real events are easy – because they have a specific date or group of dates to work from:
A Night To Remember – 1912
Julius Caesar -- 55
Films set within a decade over multiple years are fine too:
Most westerns – 1880s.
Trickier are portmanteau pieces and films with a decadal flashback structure; I used to call this the Forrest Gump problem. But recently I decided to simply use the year in which the umbrellas scene are set:
Forrest Gump – 1980s
How about films set in two decades? Value judgement time – what does this feel like? Titanic feels like a period piece and has the titular ship in its title:
Titanic – 1912
What if there isn’t a particular year. This is often the case in literary adaptation. But often they’re set in the time of publication:
Tess of the D’Urbevilles – 1890s
Fantasy? Take them out of chronology and pop them at the beginning:
Lord of the Rings – FAN
Films set in the future? If there’s a year or decade, keep to it:
Blade Runner 2019
This becomes tricky with films made in the past but now set in our past. Might as well be consistent:
1984 – 1984
2001 - 2001
2010 - oh
And so it goes on. There are plenty of individual hiccups but in the main, if you can be bothered, this works surprisingly well. Then, once it’s done you can reap the benefits.
Miraculously, perhaps unsurprisingly nearly all of the westerns nestle together, and the war films by theatre, and the costume dramas, and the sci-fi films set in the future and the sword and sandal and biblical epics and the gangster films and the noirs. Films about a period begin to interact with those made then. You can begin to see how historical periods that previously seemed discrete and unconnected occurred in parallel on the same planet, how clever Once Upon a Time in China or Shanghai Noon were in identifying that westerns would have been happening at the same time as some samurai epics and bringing those two mythic genres together.
This should make the task even more arduous, and it has, just a little bit, it's also made it more interesting. And intellectually stimulating.
I have the tv recorded films sorted into boxes, labelled. Fantasy. Pre-history to 1799. 1800-1899. 1900-1938. 1939-1945. 1946-1959. You get the idea. Everything in order, everything contextualised. If I'm in the mood to watch something set in the 60s, there they are. My librarian and cineaste genes lovingly massaged simultaneously.
And now that I’m entering them into a database, more easily indentified, the date of creation replaced by the date of context. The other film history flowing down the page in list view. The shop bought dvds are elsewhere, but now they too can have a contextual date swimming in the matrix. Not something you’d want to do for longer an hour at a time, but the gaming element leads to it sometimes tipping over into two.
As an addendum, you might be wondering where the Star Wars films finally pitched up. A quick hunt about online turns up the Star Wars Chronology Gold which through the careful application of an apocryphal story featuring some time dilation Indiana Jones turns out dates in the late eighteenth century.
Just in case you thought I was being obsessive …
the restrictions of the code
Film Mick LaSalle of GreenCine Daily offers a monumental essay into the lasting effects of the MPAA on filmmaking, and essentially explains why relationships in Hollywood films still persist in generally failing to represent real life:
"The irony of the Motion Picture Production Code is that this supposed vehicle for moral enforcement effectively curtailed the American cinema's moral questioning in whole areas of our national life – politics, religion, sexuality. We can never fully measure the Code's effects on social behavior, though women who came of age during the years of the Code often speak of the despair and loneliness of being surrounded by nonstop images of submission, conformity and surrender."It's very tempting to wonder how films might have developed artistically had the first flowering of independent artistry been allowed to flourish from its origins in the early 1930s, though it's worth adding that a number of great movies were made because of the restrictions of the code (Douglas Sirk's career?).
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