Elsewhere I've reviewed tonight's Doctor Who, an exercise in absolute torture as usual. I'm finding it harder and harder to write though I do think I've managed to explain in this case why some of the direction is so flat in comparison to other episodes -- it's supposed to be -- which isn't an argument I've seen in any other reviews yet ...
Carry on Cleo
Film When Corinne Marchand's title character in Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962) first appears, it's in full frame close up, her porcelain features filling the frame, melting the heart of this viewer (at least). It's a startling image not least because the preceding shot, of a table top in which the Tarot cars of a fortune teller predict Cleo's fortune is in full colour. We're intrigued.
What follows is an hour and a half of similarly surprising images as we follow Cleo about the Left Bank of Paris as she awaits the results of a biopsy across a ninety minute period almost in real time. We discover that she's a singer who's accepted that much of her perceived talent is derived from her looks, yet we can't help wondering if her beauty and mostly superficial personality aren't a bridgehead to something deeper.
The film slips as Adrian Martin notes at Criterion between fiction and a documentary record of Varda's home during an uncertain period:
I can now see that Richard Linklater directly references it in both of the Before Sunsomething films (particularly the final fifteen minute love affair and indeterminate conclusion) and how the so-called modern Mtv shooting and editing style of Bay and Greengrass can be found in the car scenes here - except in this case, Cleo isn't chasing some generic villain carrying a mcguffin but her own destiny.
What follows is an hour and a half of similarly surprising images as we follow Cleo about the Left Bank of Paris as she awaits the results of a biopsy across a ninety minute period almost in real time. We discover that she's a singer who's accepted that much of her perceived talent is derived from her looks, yet we can't help wondering if her beauty and mostly superficial personality aren't a bridgehead to something deeper.
The film slips as Adrian Martin notes at Criterion between fiction and a documentary record of Varda's home during an uncertain period:
"... it is as jazzily photographed and busily edited as any more conventional narrative film. Rather, Varda seizes the kind of immediacy and tension associated, at the start of the sixties, with the cinema verité documentary movement and uses it to create a new form of fiction. Unlike traditional story films, which skip everywhere in both time and space, Varda gives us a gauntlet: every second piling up, every step traced out. And she picked the best possible site for this gauntlet walk: the Left Bank of Paris is preserved for us in all its early sixties vibrancy and diversity. Indeed, Varda once described the film as “the portrait of a woman painted onto a documentary about Paris.”One of the greats which I've been saving for quite some time but watched tonight to cheer myself up at the tail end of a cold/man-flu, its influence has seeped directly and indirectly into dozens of other films in the half century since release so much so that our sight-seeing not just the geography of Paris, but the history of cinema.
I can now see that Richard Linklater directly references it in both of the Before Sunsomething films (particularly the final fifteen minute love affair and indeterminate conclusion) and how the so-called modern Mtv shooting and editing style of Bay and Greengrass can be found in the car scenes here - except in this case, Cleo isn't chasing some generic villain carrying a mcguffin but her own destiny.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)
Then I first saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona in screen nine of the Odeon at Liverpool One on the 13th February 2009 at 3:10pm, sitting in Row C, Seat 10. That’s right. I still have the ticket. Or receipt as they have there. Or more precisely a scan of the receipt:
My attendance was in a rare professional capacity to produce this formidable review for Liverpool Confidential, formidable because it’s about as comprehensive a survey of a Woody Allen film I think I’ve produced:
”Barden and Johansson are eye-catching enough, but the emotional heart of the film is Hall, whose face ripples constantly with expression. Vicky is between temptation and outside expectations, the heart and the head at war. […] Hers is the character most of us identify with and by the time Vicky falls under Juan Antonio's spell, the film has us in its clutches too. We’re constantly aware that this is the hardly-feminist account of an artist wrapping the hearts of three women around his paint brush, but all the while we’re beguiled.”The description of the kids walking out is true of course, and that was after they’d played with their mobile phones for a bit and chatted to each other. Sometimes I wish that when the BBFC awards certificates, it would take into account the audience a film is clearly aimed at as well as the literal content. Though quite how a film with these sex scenes attracted a 12A anyway I’m not too sure.
Now Since my Liverpool Confidential review is so wide-ranging even to the point of emphasising Rebecca Hall’s contribution to the film (which we'll talk some more about in the next paragraph), there doesn’t seem to be much point in restating any more of that text or repeating any of the poetry. If anything, I’m more impressed with the film, and watching it within context, it’s clearly his most confident piece since Melinda and Melinda in terms of editing and construction without any of the uneasiness that greeted his London films and with due respect the achievements of Melinda and Anything Else, clearly his best film in the noughties (a position that will no doubt keep changing).
The reason that Hall’s character stands out is because she visibly has the most screen time, which simply increases the disingenuous of the poster where he photo doesn't appear and she's relegated to a secondary layer in the billing. Though the story moves away for Scarlett’s dalliances with Penelope and Javier, it’s Rebecca who has the objective view of their three way relationship and her performance that guides our opinion of it. She’s also the character with the funniest lines; early on when Javier propositions the two girls, she seems to physically imitate Woody and that continues into the next scene where she’s shown cowering at the back of the plane. It’s extraordinary.
Given the lack of a release yet for Whatever Works in the UK (I'd like to see it first at the cinema), this is effectively the end of this odyssey for now, much to your relief I’m sure. But unlike the Hitchcock retrospective, I don’t want to attempt a proper summation because Woody’s career continues. I still stick by my theory that with Melinda and Melinda, the director, just as he did between Love & Death and Annie Hall, was completing one section of his career ready for another and even taking some elements of Scoop into account, each of the films which has followed could not necessarily described as Woody Allen films were it not for the credits and that seems to be a deliberate decision, commercially or no.
But unlike Hitchcock, Woody doesn’t seem to have in his head a concept of a “Woody Allen” film and that’s what he’s deliberately disregarding. Hitch often said that such and such a film, The Wrong Man, for example, wasn’t really a Hitchcock film. Woody clearly has an idea of how movies should be made and of his own limitations, but I don’t think he has the same idea others may have of what a “Woody Allen” film is like, something to work towards or disregard, he's not aware of his own auteur status. He simply feels like he’s gone as far as he can in one direction and is trying something new, his workload and continuing ability to be bankrolled and attract a good cast allowing him to experiment.
None of his previous ensemble appear in these later films. Most of his standard elements of style are absent. Sight unseen you might consider the possibility that Vicky Cristina Barcelona was directed by a much younger man or woman, or at the very least a European director. It certainly has more in common with the Bertolucci of Stealing Beauty and The Dreamers than the Woody Allen of Curse of the Jade Scorpion or even Hannah and Her Sisters. The dialogue is less mannered, there’s an easy poetry visually and linguistically and it’s the first of his films to feature scenes in a “foreign” language as the academy would have it, and I don’t mean the Queen’s English.
Of course, on viewing Whatever Works, which is his brief return to New York, I could be proved wrong. But this year’s fall release, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger was filmed in London again (with the brilliant detail of Lucy Punch replacing Nicole Kidman in a prominent role). His 2011 project temptingly has Marion Cotillard playing a Muse according to the imdb. But none of them sees the return of anyone from the old ensemble and the signature jazz tracks which were recognisably his mainstay are gone – even in Whatever Works judging by the soundtrack album which is available on Spotify.
What I will say, is that watching all his films so far in such close proximity has only increased my admiration for his work and its consistency. Even his worst film, Hollywood Ending, has some excellent relationship scenes and at his best he’s clever, intelligent, romantic and charming and probably the Shakespeare of American filmmakers in terms of variety, poetry and thematic depth within certain specific limits. If my favourite films are still the earlier pictures from the late seventies and earlier eighties, because I grew up with them, my fondness for the later work, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Everyone Says I Love You, Deconstructing Harry and yes, Vicky Cristina Barcelona has increased. Now, what's next?
New Politics.
New Politics Throughout the campaign one of my mantras was "Vote Clegg, get Clegg" and unbelievably that is what's happened. Of course, I hadn't considered that we'd also get Eric Pickles, Theresa May, Ian Duncan Smith and bloody Michael Gove but somehow watching a giddy Vince Cable stepping up Downing Street to collect his job as Business Secretary went some way to cushioning the blow. Some. Way.
Yes, it's strange to see Nick standing behind a lectern next to David Cameron with the latter not deliberately misinterpreting his policies and it will be difficult for him to have to defend some of the more um, expressive, Tory policies in Prime Minister's Questions when the new PM is off abroad or ill. But he'll also technically be in charge of the country for a few stretches. Give or take, some give and take.
David Laws as Secretary to the Treasury, Osbourne's number two with Vince breathing down the new chancellor's neck too. That should make the budget make for interesting reading/listening. Danny Alexander as Scottish Secretary with David Mundell as his deputy. Chris Huhne possibly as Environment Minister in charge of a programme which includes the eradication of the extra airport runways in London.
The lambs and lions may be lying together but strangely this doesn't feel like the end of days. As requested in his statement last night, I'm going to trust Nick and the Liberal Democrats. Reading the coalition agreement I can't really believe how many Lib Dem policies are potentially going to implemented. The section on Civil Liberties is a jaw dropper. Stephanie Flanders has a run down of the tax policies.
What I will say, is that trust can only go so far. There's nothing in this document about culture or non-environmental science. It's in these areas I'd look to the Lib Dems to also have a hand in shaping policy, in not standing by and letting Murdoch's claws crush our rich media landscape for his own ends. In other words, if they fuck with the BBC, I'm going to the Greens.
Yes, it's strange to see Nick standing behind a lectern next to David Cameron with the latter not deliberately misinterpreting his policies and it will be difficult for him to have to defend some of the more um, expressive, Tory policies in Prime Minister's Questions when the new PM is off abroad or ill. But he'll also technically be in charge of the country for a few stretches. Give or take, some give and take.
David Laws as Secretary to the Treasury, Osbourne's number two with Vince breathing down the new chancellor's neck too. That should make the budget make for interesting reading/listening. Danny Alexander as Scottish Secretary with David Mundell as his deputy. Chris Huhne possibly as Environment Minister in charge of a programme which includes the eradication of the extra airport runways in London.
The lambs and lions may be lying together but strangely this doesn't feel like the end of days. As requested in his statement last night, I'm going to trust Nick and the Liberal Democrats. Reading the coalition agreement I can't really believe how many Lib Dem policies are potentially going to implemented. The section on Civil Liberties is a jaw dropper. Stephanie Flanders has a run down of the tax policies.
What I will say, is that trust can only go so far. There's nothing in this document about culture or non-environmental science. It's in these areas I'd look to the Lib Dems to also have a hand in shaping policy, in not standing by and letting Murdoch's claws crush our rich media landscape for his own ends. In other words, if they fuck with the BBC, I'm going to the Greens.
New World.
Politics I've been watching BBC News almost solidly for days. These are historic moments and when I'm reading the book or watching the documentaries about all of this in future years I want to be able to remember what it was like to experience these dramatic political changes as well as the hindsight. With very little information to go on, just whispers in the ears of political correspondents, the coverage has largely consisted of a stream of politicians old and new offering their opinion on which form the coalition should take like a very slow, broadcast piece of qualitative market research, punctuated with statements from participants that say very little.
The overall impression is that as I suggested pictorially yesterday, after years of obscurity, of being laughed at and satirised in parliament and ignored in the media, the Liberal Democrats are now in the position of deciding if a figure like Alan Johnson or Ben Bradshaw keeps their job, with both speaking in a conciliatory manner about people and policies they publicly despised a week ago. A key example was Michael Gove on Newsnight last night revealing that the 10k tax break is one such sweetner being agreed to, with Kirsty Walk rounding on him and asking how the Tories would find the £17 billion to pay for it!
"Scrap Trident?" she asked.
This is a new world.
The overall impression is that as I suggested pictorially yesterday, after years of obscurity, of being laughed at and satirised in parliament and ignored in the media, the Liberal Democrats are now in the position of deciding if a figure like Alan Johnson or Ben Bradshaw keeps their job, with both speaking in a conciliatory manner about people and policies they publicly despised a week ago. A key example was Michael Gove on Newsnight last night revealing that the 10k tax break is one such sweetner being agreed to, with Kirsty Walk rounding on him and asking how the Tories would find the £17 billion to pay for it!
"Scrap Trident?" she asked.
This is a new world.
Politics Gordon Brown resigns. Perhaps Nick Clegg's pre-election message should have been ...
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
"Strike me down and I will become more powerful than you can ever imagine."
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Cassandra's Dream (2007)
Then Even though Scoop was overlooked for a cinema released, Cassandra’s Dream had a relatively smooth passage into cinemas, perhaps because crime thrillers are easier to advertise. Having waited six months to see it, I then waited another six months for the dvd which I saw in January 2009. I didn’t like it. And said so. A lot:
”But Cassandra’s Dream is rubbish. It might even be offensively bad.”Now I don’t think I need to quote much more from that review. You can go and read it for yourself. I took umbrage with much of the film only singling out Hayley Atwell and Vilmos Zsigmond’s photography for praise. I hated the structure, the scripting, the dialogue and the performances. I speak of clockwatching and booing and whilst it doesn’t stoop to the level of my Company Men response in terms of cheap jokes I’m was very pissed off. Indeed.
On second viewing I’ve been trying to work out exactly why I my reaction against the film quite so fierce. It’s not rubbish. It’s not “offensively bad”. Cassandra’s Dream certainly better than some of the ITV Drama Premieres it sometimes resembles and whilst it’s true that it’s near impossible to be sympathetic towards these brothers, that’s also true of Macbeth. Morality plays and tragedies are supposed to illuminate the extremes of human weakness and it does that admirably.
Having watched Hitchcock’s Frenzy in the meantime and a couple of seventies exploitation thrillers, I can see the influence of those, consciously or not with big scenes played against small crusty rooms, in dirty garages and racetracks. As possibilities open up to the brothers, so the landscape changes, the room increase in size and the drinking establishments become more upmarket and such things seem to expand and contract depending upon which brother is ahead.
Philip Glass’s music is excellent too; there is touch of the Bernard Hermanns about the main theme as filtered through Jerry Goldsmith’s score for Basic Instinct. Woody rarely uses original scores on his films; here it pays dividends naturalising some of the scenes and allowing him to cut the action as he sees fit rather than around the score which was the case in Match Point. As he says in this rather good interview about the film, he wanted to simply compliment the action (rather than, I suppose, trying to add an extra thematic layer).
My initial problem with the film, as best I can gather, was this: if you were to strip the titles and hand it sight unseen to someone and ask them who directed it they would most likely guess at a British director, they could not say Woody Allen. Because it’s set in London, because it’s as close as he’ll get to a traditional thriller, because the dialogue though heightened sounds like it was written by someone else, possibly Pinter, because even though on close inspection you can identify some stylistic similarities, it has as much to do with the Allen’s auteur style as Topaz had for Hitchcock.
But it’s really not that ghastly. Not really.
The Vampires of Venice.
TV In these uncertain times for the nation, when frowning men in suits are walking from cars into buildings and back again and no one has a fecking clue about the future of the country, weekly events like Doctor Who come into their own. We should just be thankful perhaps that the hand over of power at the top of our favourite franchise ran so smoothly by comparison. If it had been like the current constitutional negotiations, we might have seen Moffat attempting to form a coalition with a different Nick (Briggs), the latter demanding the resurrection of the Voord as a red line deal breaker (though presumably without a couple of thousand people turning up at Upper Boat demanding an adaptation of The Fishmen of Kandalinga -- from the 1966 annual).
The Vampires of Venice is particularly welcome because it is so comfortingly familiar, drawing together old and new series traditions to produce a supremely entertaining forty-eight and a half minutes. If ever there could be an episode designed to convince fans that the show is just the same as it always was, it would be this Hammer infused gothic horror adventure with creepy candle lit corridors in foreign climes, mythic creatures revealed to be aliens with a leader given to portentous speeches prophesising doom for her people. The title even evokes Vampire In Venice, the spaghetti horror from the 1980s with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu.
You can almost imagine Philip Hinchcliffe watching the episode over a sherry at the retirement home for old Doctor Who producers and with a slight chuckle in his voice pointing to the plasma screen and muttering “That’s it! That’s it! If only I’d had the budget … Bob? Bob? Are you there?” “Calm down Mr Hinchcliffe. It’s only a television programme.” “But look Bob, they’re finally doing that version of Lust for a Vampire we were talking about, and at six o’clock in the evening! And it looks like a feature film!” “It’s not Bob, Mr. Hinchcliffe, it’s Olla. Have you taken your diabetic pills today?”
Except of course, mythic creatures that aren’t all they seem employing fairy tale fantasy elements to mask technology infuses the Moffat era too; interestingly a combination of the preview in the parish newsletter and Doctor Who Confidential suggests that writer Toby Whithouse had a pretty free hand in crafting his story, but with its lush Croatia in for Venice architecture, giant fangs and lashings of the uncanny it fits perfectly with the past five episodes evening including a variation on the now familiar crack. It’s the oh so quiet. Sshh. Ssssssh. So peaceful until …
As an aside, Venice isn’t, surprisingly, a regular stop for the Doctor and this is his first television visit. Spin-off media offers two visits; Big Finish’s The Stones of Venice in which the Eighth Doctor and Charley stop the city from sinking despite the best efforts of Michael Sheard and the bonkers Virgin Missing Adventure The Empire of Glass in which author Andy Lane has the First Doctor and Steven Taylor mixed up with Galileo and William Shakespeare as a spy, which presumably explains the photo on the Doctor’s library card (squee). Aside over (since I'm now having to ditch all my choice State of Decay comparisons).
In developing the piece Whithouse appears to have looked to his own earlier episode School Reunion for inspiration. Like Krillitanes, these perception filter employing fish from space are a disenfranchised people attempting to absorb the local culture by inhabit a school, the Doctor sharing portentous conversations with an intractable, sinuous leader whose pack is unexpectedly destroyed through a suicidal explosion that the timelord finds himself leaping to escape from. No former companion to distract us this time, of course, though at least we can now induct Russell’s adaptation of Casanova into the Whoniverse as an unofficial spin-off.
Whithouse also has to deal with the companion's boyfriend again. The production team and Arthur Darvill try their best not to make him Mickey 2.0 – his knowledge of the TARDIS for example, and eventual camaraderie with the Doctor, but some of the scenes here couldn’t help but sound like light rewrites of Boomtown, in which the companion’s partner has to jealously deal with his partner’s dazzling new best friend and her time spanning adventures. The difference will presumably be that his and Amy’s future happiness is a key element of the ongoing arc story though it’s worth asking what Pond was doing at home on the night before her wedding when Williams was at his stag party. Does she have any other friends?
Back at the retirement home, Derick Sherwin is quietly pleased that some of his era seems to have seeped through too. Apart from a recognizable companion structure – a science geek and a Scot (albeit with a reversed gender make-up), Matt is at his most Troughton in this episode, hopping about the internal structure of the TARDIS, his hands forever moving in unusual ways, his voice cheerfully disappearing into anecdotes and making inarticulate noises during a solution which was the stuff of a season five four parter, battling extraordinary elements (foam or in this case rain) before saving the world with the simple flick of a switch.
Sherwin might also appreciate the imaginatively old school approach to reproducing Venice as revealed in Confidential and how despite the budget they still had to resort to a cardboard cut out and a paddling pool across a cobbled courtyard to create the impression of a gondola drifting up a canal. In his book, What is cinema?, film critic Andre Bazin talks about how the best film makers understand that it’s the illusion of reality created in the frame that counts and the suspension of disbelief was total here (unlike the dome the Doctor had to shimmy his way up at the end though my digibox is particularly unforgiving to any kind of CGI element).
But the 60s episodes were never this funny (sorry Dennis and John). From the Doctor’s cake burst in the teaser (leading into the titles with the kind of comic beat not seen since the other first series) to the sight of the gondolea wearing Rory’s stag t-shirt, this is an episode unafraid to be a romp. There’s a Gallifrey Base thread developing which lists all of the best lines (and a flame war about the innuendo – yes, really) and though nothing quite touches City of Death, you have to love the confidence of the series to be able to chuck in "Blimey, fish from space have never been so....buxom" or “Yours is Bigger than Mine?” “Let's not go there!”
If there’s a problem, it’s that for a show about vampires (sort of), the episode isn't that scary. Helen McCrory has a certain camp serpentine Joan “He’s good for families” Collins steeliness but her character Rosanna Calvierri’s real alter-ego just looks like a well designed alien. If her Oedipal relationship with her son is creepy, her daughters are simple eye-candy and less sinister than a bar invading hen night. And the execution by aquatic predator worked better when Spielberg was directing it. Perhaps like The Brain of Morbius, appropriating the imagery of Hammer and the like is one thing, delivering it to a family audience, and now getting it past BBC standards, is something else.
Only as Amy was led into the green light and Calvierri’s transformation process did I get a tinge, but even that scene ran up against the syncopated shooting and editing style which I’ve noticed in all of these episodes, were the action is sometimes obscured by the camera shooting from an unexpected position, or the cutting in and out of shots early with apparently important lines given off screen or as was the case at the close of this episode with the moment of silence not given room to breath. It reminds me enough of Gilliam’s work in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to suggest that it’s a deliberate choice, and it doesn’t ruin the episode, but just sometimes it can be distracting.
Then again, at least it's not like many "classic" series episodes where you could guess which direction the actor would be walking by the camera Ron Jones or whoever decided to cut to and the reason for shooting abroad was entirely dependent on the cheapest air fairs. But in the old series you wouldn't have expected John Nathan-Turner to going swimming in the seas around Lanzarote dressed only in a pink bikini so that Nicola Bryant knew what to expect when she was forced to do it, like the swan attracting executive producer of the current show. Perhaps for all its formal similarities, The Vampires of Venice differs from tradition in just the right places.
Next week: How Do You Want Amy?
The Vampires of Venice is particularly welcome because it is so comfortingly familiar, drawing together old and new series traditions to produce a supremely entertaining forty-eight and a half minutes. If ever there could be an episode designed to convince fans that the show is just the same as it always was, it would be this Hammer infused gothic horror adventure with creepy candle lit corridors in foreign climes, mythic creatures revealed to be aliens with a leader given to portentous speeches prophesising doom for her people. The title even evokes Vampire In Venice, the spaghetti horror from the 1980s with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu.
You can almost imagine Philip Hinchcliffe watching the episode over a sherry at the retirement home for old Doctor Who producers and with a slight chuckle in his voice pointing to the plasma screen and muttering “That’s it! That’s it! If only I’d had the budget … Bob? Bob? Are you there?” “Calm down Mr Hinchcliffe. It’s only a television programme.” “But look Bob, they’re finally doing that version of Lust for a Vampire we were talking about, and at six o’clock in the evening! And it looks like a feature film!” “It’s not Bob, Mr. Hinchcliffe, it’s Olla. Have you taken your diabetic pills today?”
Except of course, mythic creatures that aren’t all they seem employing fairy tale fantasy elements to mask technology infuses the Moffat era too; interestingly a combination of the preview in the parish newsletter and Doctor Who Confidential suggests that writer Toby Whithouse had a pretty free hand in crafting his story, but with its lush Croatia in for Venice architecture, giant fangs and lashings of the uncanny it fits perfectly with the past five episodes evening including a variation on the now familiar crack. It’s the oh so quiet. Sshh. Ssssssh. So peaceful until …
As an aside, Venice isn’t, surprisingly, a regular stop for the Doctor and this is his first television visit. Spin-off media offers two visits; Big Finish’s The Stones of Venice in which the Eighth Doctor and Charley stop the city from sinking despite the best efforts of Michael Sheard and the bonkers Virgin Missing Adventure The Empire of Glass in which author Andy Lane has the First Doctor and Steven Taylor mixed up with Galileo and William Shakespeare as a spy, which presumably explains the photo on the Doctor’s library card (squee). Aside over (since I'm now having to ditch all my choice State of Decay comparisons).
In developing the piece Whithouse appears to have looked to his own earlier episode School Reunion for inspiration. Like Krillitanes, these perception filter employing fish from space are a disenfranchised people attempting to absorb the local culture by inhabit a school, the Doctor sharing portentous conversations with an intractable, sinuous leader whose pack is unexpectedly destroyed through a suicidal explosion that the timelord finds himself leaping to escape from. No former companion to distract us this time, of course, though at least we can now induct Russell’s adaptation of Casanova into the Whoniverse as an unofficial spin-off.
Whithouse also has to deal with the companion's boyfriend again. The production team and Arthur Darvill try their best not to make him Mickey 2.0 – his knowledge of the TARDIS for example, and eventual camaraderie with the Doctor, but some of the scenes here couldn’t help but sound like light rewrites of Boomtown, in which the companion’s partner has to jealously deal with his partner’s dazzling new best friend and her time spanning adventures. The difference will presumably be that his and Amy’s future happiness is a key element of the ongoing arc story though it’s worth asking what Pond was doing at home on the night before her wedding when Williams was at his stag party. Does she have any other friends?
Back at the retirement home, Derick Sherwin is quietly pleased that some of his era seems to have seeped through too. Apart from a recognizable companion structure – a science geek and a Scot (albeit with a reversed gender make-up), Matt is at his most Troughton in this episode, hopping about the internal structure of the TARDIS, his hands forever moving in unusual ways, his voice cheerfully disappearing into anecdotes and making inarticulate noises during a solution which was the stuff of a season five four parter, battling extraordinary elements (foam or in this case rain) before saving the world with the simple flick of a switch.
Sherwin might also appreciate the imaginatively old school approach to reproducing Venice as revealed in Confidential and how despite the budget they still had to resort to a cardboard cut out and a paddling pool across a cobbled courtyard to create the impression of a gondola drifting up a canal. In his book, What is cinema?, film critic Andre Bazin talks about how the best film makers understand that it’s the illusion of reality created in the frame that counts and the suspension of disbelief was total here (unlike the dome the Doctor had to shimmy his way up at the end though my digibox is particularly unforgiving to any kind of CGI element).
But the 60s episodes were never this funny (sorry Dennis and John). From the Doctor’s cake burst in the teaser (leading into the titles with the kind of comic beat not seen since the other first series) to the sight of the gondolea wearing Rory’s stag t-shirt, this is an episode unafraid to be a romp. There’s a Gallifrey Base thread developing which lists all of the best lines (and a flame war about the innuendo – yes, really) and though nothing quite touches City of Death, you have to love the confidence of the series to be able to chuck in "Blimey, fish from space have never been so....buxom" or “Yours is Bigger than Mine?” “Let's not go there!”
If there’s a problem, it’s that for a show about vampires (sort of), the episode isn't that scary. Helen McCrory has a certain camp serpentine Joan “He’s good for families” Collins steeliness but her character Rosanna Calvierri’s real alter-ego just looks like a well designed alien. If her Oedipal relationship with her son is creepy, her daughters are simple eye-candy and less sinister than a bar invading hen night. And the execution by aquatic predator worked better when Spielberg was directing it. Perhaps like The Brain of Morbius, appropriating the imagery of Hammer and the like is one thing, delivering it to a family audience, and now getting it past BBC standards, is something else.
Only as Amy was led into the green light and Calvierri’s transformation process did I get a tinge, but even that scene ran up against the syncopated shooting and editing style which I’ve noticed in all of these episodes, were the action is sometimes obscured by the camera shooting from an unexpected position, or the cutting in and out of shots early with apparently important lines given off screen or as was the case at the close of this episode with the moment of silence not given room to breath. It reminds me enough of Gilliam’s work in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to suggest that it’s a deliberate choice, and it doesn’t ruin the episode, but just sometimes it can be distracting.
Then again, at least it's not like many "classic" series episodes where you could guess which direction the actor would be walking by the camera Ron Jones or whoever decided to cut to and the reason for shooting abroad was entirely dependent on the cheapest air fairs. But in the old series you wouldn't have expected John Nathan-Turner to going swimming in the seas around Lanzarote dressed only in a pink bikini so that Nicola Bryant knew what to expect when she was forced to do it, like the swan attracting executive producer of the current show. Perhaps for all its formal similarities, The Vampires of Venice differs from tradition in just the right places.
Next week: How Do You Want Amy?
I'm very tired.
Life I'm very tired. Yesterday, as ever, I worked the election as a poll clerk. There weren't any queues at our station, though the turnout seemed unusually high so we phoned for extra ballot papers (even though ultimately we didn't need them). As ever it was a singularly frustrating experience as I watched democracy happening but without any sense of the outcome. People did comment on being first time voters or the disaffected returning to do their duty which gave me a bit of hope that something different was happening. This time.
And it was. And here we are. The best moment of the day was explaining Bigotgate and electoral arithmetic to a couple of police women who couldn't believe that there could be such a disparity between share of the vote and number of seats won. And so it proved. The worst moment was sitting at 4am, twenty three hours after I'd woken up realising that the situation I'd pessimistically predicted to some people earlier in the week had come true. A hung parliament and Nick Clegg in the horrible position of having to make a deal with the Lib Dems's mortal enemy.
It's horrible. People who didn't listen to what he'd been saying about supporting whoever had the mandate and/or believing the media version of it feel betrayed, not noticing how difficult it must have been to make that speech on the steps of party headquarters. The problem is, if he can't make a deal with the Tories and he does turn to Labour another group of voters will feel just as betrayed because we hate them too -- it's why we vote Liberal Democrat. Nick doesn't have a choice. He's been pushed into this by the British people. For the sake of the country he can't simply walk away, however entertaining that may be to watch.
The upside is that he'll also be in a position to push through some Lib Dem policies that might not otherwise ever be on the table. His four pledges which he repeated ad infinitum right up until Wednesday evening of which I think the most likely will be the pupil premium, the 10k tax break and proportional representation. If we're lucky we may also get cabinet posts. In other words, the Lib Dems will in theory be in an even more powerful position now than they would have been otherwise. So although he's not in power, and will severely piss off some of his supporters, by voting Clegg, we still got Clegg. In some form. Or other.
And it was. And here we are. The best moment of the day was explaining Bigotgate and electoral arithmetic to a couple of police women who couldn't believe that there could be such a disparity between share of the vote and number of seats won. And so it proved. The worst moment was sitting at 4am, twenty three hours after I'd woken up realising that the situation I'd pessimistically predicted to some people earlier in the week had come true. A hung parliament and Nick Clegg in the horrible position of having to make a deal with the Lib Dems's mortal enemy.
It's horrible. People who didn't listen to what he'd been saying about supporting whoever had the mandate and/or believing the media version of it feel betrayed, not noticing how difficult it must have been to make that speech on the steps of party headquarters. The problem is, if he can't make a deal with the Tories and he does turn to Labour another group of voters will feel just as betrayed because we hate them too -- it's why we vote Liberal Democrat. Nick doesn't have a choice. He's been pushed into this by the British people. For the sake of the country he can't simply walk away, however entertaining that may be to watch.
The upside is that he'll also be in a position to push through some Lib Dem policies that might not otherwise ever be on the table. His four pledges which he repeated ad infinitum right up until Wednesday evening of which I think the most likely will be the pupil premium, the 10k tax break and proportional representation. If we're lucky we may also get cabinet posts. In other words, the Lib Dems will in theory be in an even more powerful position now than they would have been otherwise. So although he's not in power, and will severely piss off some of his supporters, by voting Clegg, we still got Clegg. In some form. Or other.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Scoop (2006)
Then Scoop went unreleased theatrically in the UK as almost every subsequent review of Cassandra’s Dream and Vicky Christina Barcelona seemed to mention. There didn’t seem to be a particular reason for it other than a lack of imagination from distributors. They weren’t sure how to package a comedy thriller with supernatural overtones perhaps, despite the fact it stars Scarlett Johansson and the bloke who plays Wolverine and has a range of recognisable British actors in cameo roles, beautifully shot in our own country and it’s worth adding part financed by us through BBC Films.
The only reason I can think of is a certain nervousness still about putting out a film starring Woody himself, but even that doesn’t make sense since Anything Else at least graced the art houses. It certainly reviewed well throughout the rest of the world. The film belatedly turned up on BBC Two in 2009 at about the time Vicky Christina Barcelona was on release and a quick Twitter-check afterward suggested that people enjoyed it and a few even expressed a surprise that the film hadn’t graced the cinemas, wondering why they hadn’t heard of it before.
The upshot of all that was that after keeping an eye on the online shopping websites I managed to procure a Region Two copy through CD-WOW in 2007. On that occasion I said:
”Having obviously lived with the city for a while, Allen spends far less time here presenting a tourist view of London at least in terms of exteriors with only The Royal Albert Hall returning to create a thematic connection with the earlier film. It’s certainly an example of old fashioned film making with scenes and shots which run for far longer than contemporary audiences are used to in a comedy, with perfectly planned tracking shots and push ins -- I don’t think he uses a steady cam or hand held at all.”That’s me. Always looking at the technical achievements.
Now One of the problems with writing again about these films for which I’ve already posted a review, is that all of the mental notes I’ve taken whilst watching again have already been addressed. My previous post on the subject has already articulated everything I might have wanted to say, other than noticing a visual callback to Manhattan Murder Mystery in Woody’s card shtick during the poker scene and how many of his character’s catchphrases are repeated from Broadway Danny Rose.
It’s a more assured piece of work than Match Point. He’s back in the familiar territory of two New Yorkers against the world. He’s not having to work with a different vernacular for much of the duration with cultural references that are within his comfort zone (“I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism”). The film is looser, more relaxed, more watchable. It lacks depth of some of his nineties work, but as a piece of feel good comedy it works admirably. Certainly cheered me up.
The big surprise this time was to notice Romola Garai as Scarlett’s best friend. Since 2006, she’s taken a few high profile roles, most recently as Emma in a BBC tv adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma and in Stephen Poliakoff’s underrated Glorious 39 and I think has the potential to be the next Kate Winslet or at least the British Johansson. She doesn’t have much to do here other than be Scarlett’s facilitator and sounding board (“I can get you into a club to meet Peter” / “Are you sure that’s what you want to do?”) but even then she’s luminous.
Watching all of Woody Allen's films in order: Match Point (2005)
Then Of all Woody’s films Match Point is the one with which I have the most complex relationship. Essentially I can’t decide if it’s a work of genius or utter rubbish and genuinely oscillate between the two with each viewing. I’ll let you know what I think this time in a moment. On first viewing, I said:
“Admittedly as the film begins and for about the first ten or fifteen minutes things do seem a bit queer. The clipped accents; characters talking in full sentences; the sometimes odd pronunciations. But somewhere in there I realised that actually what was happening is that Allen was imprinting a pre-sixties filmmaking style into the contemporary setting. Compare the work which is going on here with David Lean's pictures (particular Brief Encounter) or Gaslight productions and it all makes perfect sense. It could be argued that this is because those of the British films the director has been exposed, so of course that's what he'll be doing. But I think he's just decided to go in that direction. I think he could have produced something more akin to the Working Title or much more contemporary, but because of the type of story he's trying to tell he's gone for something akin to the earlier days of British filmmaking. Watched under those conditions, it's an excellent and probably refreshing piece of work.”
That cinema trip was horrendous. As I noted in this review of a Q&A about film exhibition, because Allen's had been sold as a mainstream thriller (the above trailer is hilariously inappropriate), within about ten minutes of the white on black writing, the frozen tennis ball and the portentious/pretentious opening dialogue the audience began chatting and despite shushing a few people there wasn’t much I could do. It’s another example of the exhibitor not having the balls to sell a film as it is and leaving those people who know what they’re getting to suffer the disquiet of those who don’t.
Within days of posting a review, my old friend Louise took the film to task for its realism, to which I countered that Woody is in the fantasy market to which she replied that at the very least “(you) need to get the logical, basic facts of a story right in order to show you respect the common sense and knowledge of your audience before you can take them beyond the relams of reality and what would happen in "real life", whatever that.” We agreed to disagree. I still think that even if a film isn’t in the sci-fi genre can still create its own internal reality from human interaction to environment even if they don’t match the norm and take some poetic license.
Now Formally my original review says everything I’d want to say. This time around I laughed at some unintentionally funny moments (like the cooing over Andrew Lloyd-Webber) but understood what Woody was trying to achieve in trying to wrap a morality tale around a thriller. Emma Brockes in this interview with Woody says “Match Point is his return to form”. But I don’t think it’s a better or worse film than Melinda and Melinda, but the change in venue gave many people the chance to look at his work with a fresh perspective.
I’ve subsequently discovered that Woody originally wrote the script to be shot in New York but rearranged it for London because of the BBC related financing which cropped up. Listening to the dialogue you can hear and see once again a repetition of the figures which have populated many of his films; Scartlett in the Judy Davis role, Emily Mortimer as Mia. Even with the Anglophile revisions it’s not impossible to imagine those actresses speaking this dialogue quite naturally.
The film is of course the first of Scarlett’s trilogy (so far) with Woody. Despite what you might be thinking, she an interesting sort of actress; on the one hand she can play the film star roles but just as often her work is more clearly in the realm of character. Her two films for 2005 were this and Michael Bay’s underrated The Island and then in 2006 we find Scoop, The Black Dahlia and The Prestige and they’re all very different performances, different again to both The Girl With A Pearl Earing and the film which most increased her profile, Lost In Translation.
In Match Point she’s called upon to be immediately sexy but with a certain bo-ho lustre, a counterpoint to Emily Mortimer’s representation of the established English rose. To an extent Nola is a fairly one dimensional figure; like Anglica Houston she has to give the impression of being unhinged but of having been led into that emotion. But one of my favourite Johansson scene is her slightly unhinged drunk moment in the pub where she unfolds herself and you’re not entirely sure she hasn’t embraced the method and had a couple before turning up in front of the cameras.
But I do have problems. The film drags horribly in the middle which is always a problem when Woody nudges over ninety minutes and he’s telling much the same story as Crimes and Misdemeanors which managed to cover the material in a third of the time. Character beats are often stated and restated for no good reason; Woody seems to be trying to make us understand why Myers would take the actions he does by showing us the generosity of his father in law and the position he’s found himself in, yet the opening hour of the film should still be half as long.
But Woody’s disregard of the traditional thriller structure does at least offer us the pleasure of that beautifully weird scene in which James Nesbitt (in the Woody Allen role) shooting up right in his bed from a dream because he thinks he’s worked out the process only to have his theory blown away by subsequent, circumstantial events. It’s a pity Woody wasn’t in the mood to spin-off Nesbitt and Ewen Bremner into Scoop or any of the later films like a kind of investigative Caldicott and Charters or Jay and Silent Bob. It would certainly have livened up Cassandra’s Dream.
Why you must vote.
Politics I originally posted this five years ago and even with the crazy manic election campaign we've just experienced, it's just as true now as it was then, if not more so:
Dear Disaffected Voter,
There was a survey today with said that only one in three young people will be making the effort to vote on Thursday. The turnout is generally going to be about 60%. My own consistency, Riverside, had the lowest turnout in the whole country. There are many millions of people in the land who just don't see the point in voting.
There'll be some of you who won't be voting because for some reason you simply can't. You recently moved house and didn't have enough to time to get your vote moved to your new house. You'll be on holiday and the whole postal voting thing couldn't be scheduled properly with while you're away. Those and a whole raft of perfectly good reasons. I'm not talking to you.
I'm talking to the rest. You'll be split into two camps. Those who can't be bothered and those who don't see the point. Yes, you. You idiot.
If you're insulted by that, you should be.
The biggest idiots are the ones who can't be bothered. The ones who have the facility to vote, aren't impeded, but simply can't be arsed walking all the way to the polling station, even though there are enough of them that the local will be in the next street. Do you realise you're screwing things up for the rest of us? Here is a list of the knock on effects of you not showing up.
(1) It makes us all look bad. There are certain parts of the world were people don't have the choice of more than one party, for that matter the ability to vote at all. Not naming any names. In some of the these places people have been killed whilst they've fought to get the chance to choose who they want as a leader. By noting voting yourself, you're pissing on their fight because you're devaluing what they're fighting for. You're like Cameron's dad in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Lovely car parked up in the garage being wasted. Take it out for a spin once in a while.
(2) It's not a fair contest. I was watching the Olympics last year, and in one of the races a rank outsider won a gold medal. But he was seriously pissed off -- because the great runners in the sport hadn't been there to contest their title so it was sort of a default win. By not showing your support for a party, whoever wins won't necessarily have won because the country wants them to be there. It'll be because the majority of 60% of the country wants them there. Which isn't the same thing.
(3) It makes you look bad. If you can't be bothered spending twenty minutes of the day going into a room in a school somewhere to put a cross on a slip of paper, a process which has been made as easy as possible now (now that they even print the name of the party on the ballot paper) what frankly are you good for?
Now there are the rest of you who are making a point of not voting. My Father believes that everyone should be forced to vote by law, even if they show up and spoil their ballot paper. Within the current system it's your choice and right not to vote. So there will be a percentage of people who don't vote because they believe it's sending a message that you're unhappy with the political process in this country. There are a couple of flaws to this plan:
(1) Politicians won't give a shit about you. Because you didn't turn up at a polling station, come the day they don't even know you exist. If you don't like the political process the only way to develop it is to engage with politicians and ask for that change. Some of the parties have ideas for reform using systems such a proportional representation which means that every vote is counted.
(2) Your plan only works if no one votes. Like that's going to happen. No matter what you do, someone will be Prime Minister on Friday.
There are some, such as the 66% of students I mentioned earlier, who aren't voting because they say that the manifestos and party policies aren't offering anything to them. What doesn't occur to you is that manifestos are written to interest the various demographics of voters. So if you don't turn up, you're not a voter so why should they try and attract you with tailored policies? So effectively if enough of you people turned up and voted, it'd frighten the shit out of the politicians and they'd have to start listening and developing useful policies so that they can keep you on their side. There were no policies effecting women in manifestos until women got the vote. It's pretty much the same thing. You turn up, so will they.
I know this has been a bit freewheeling. If I'd wanted to I could have found a bunch of statistics and anecdotal evidence to back up some of these things. But I thought I'd go for the simple, direct approach because don't think I've said anything which you don't already know.
I'm just trying to give you a nudge.
Even if you turn up and vote for a man dressed as a banana you'll at least have the satisfaction of knowing when the announcements are made, someone who just wanted to have a bit of fun hasn't lost their deposit.
Just don't waste you vote. Pick a party and go.
And if the one you pick doesn't win, there's always next time....
Stu.
Elsewhere I've reviewed a production of The School for Scandal on The Hamlet Weblog (the church is getting broader).
Just for the record ...
Who's in it from Doctor Who?
Conrad Westmaas as Rowley
Was C'rizz in the Eighth Doctor Big Finish audios.
Just for the record ...
Who's in it from Doctor Who?
Conrad Westmaas as Rowley
Was C'rizz in the Eighth Doctor Big Finish audios.
The School for Scandal (Stage on Screen production)
They seek to replicate the experience of seeing the play, which in the case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal (which they've been nice enough to send me to have a look at) means including everything from the moments when the audience files in and out during the intermission to all of the bows at the end as well as the complete text of the play (or one of its versions – apparently there are several). The effect is rather like BBC Four’s experiments with the same format, the cinema projected live broadcasts of NT shows and many of the Hamlet productions I’ve reviewed for this blog, with a mix of close-ups and master shots taking in the whole stage.
The School for Scandal is a good choice for this format since it is essentially a proto-sitcom, the kind of farce that has to have been an influence on John Cleese in writing Fawlty Towers and Steven Moffat for Joking Apart. Two brothers find their morality exposed after a series of misunderstandings develop in an atmosphere of gossip and misanthopy in which reputations are broken and developed through the imaginations of an aristocratic society with little to do but mythologise. Like Sheridan’s earlier play The Rivals, hidden identities ironically lead to the revealing of emotions otherwise obscured by manners and propriety.
Stage on Screen’s approach isn’t to present a definitive version of the play; the costumes give the impression of late Eighteenth century attire but probably borrow more from the 80s new romantic reinterpretation, especially in a drinking scene which is very reminiscent of the promo for Adam Ant’s Prince Charming, which is also reflected in the mix of string and electronica on the soundtrack. The setting is a study; each scene backed by shots of old books perhaps to demonstrate how proper academic knowledge and literary fiction has given way to presumption and gossip in the atmosphere of this court.
Samuel Collings and Adam Redmore are such convincing brothers that at first I assumed one actor was playing both parts. Lady Sneerwell is a villain in the old sense, a kind of Iago-lite attempting to ruin lives for her own ends and Amy Rockson relishes the duplicitousness and makes such an impression in the opening scene that like a thought in the back of the mind, her presence is felt despite her absence for much of the production.
Not being otherwise too familiar with the play (in other words this is my first time), I can’t speak to how this compares to previous productions. Director Elizabeth Freestone’s approach is to offer the text at full speed challenging the audience to keep up, perhaps to give the impression, especially in the opening scenes, when character names and anecdotes are flashing about, of being at a party where you don’t know anyone and you’re expected to be entertained anyway. Slowly the pacing does recede as the story develops. The text is lucidly presented and like any period drama, more legible once you become accustomed to it.
The School of Scandal is available on dvd from Stage on Screen.
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