"Oh fuck, they're going to find me out."

Film As seveal hundred commenters underneath notice, this interview with a very funny Carey Mulligan fails to mention the important keywords, "Doctor", "Who" "Sally", "Sparrow" or "Blink" but the section about her acting style more than makes up for it:

"Some people are at peace with their work," she reflects. "I always think, 'Oh fuck, they're going to find me out.' I mean, I still have days when I genuinely cannot act. There's a scene in every film which I look back on and think, 'That was the day I couldn't act.' It's there in Never Let Me Go – that scene where we're on the beach and Keira gives me Madame's address."

"I remember it: she turns her head and looks away. "That's because I couldn't act!" Mulligan says triumphantly. "I'd love to say it was a creative choice, but it wasn't. So I'm going to look away and hide, so the audience won't see that I'm bad at acting, that I'm really shit."

So in Blink when she turns her head, it's not just the Weaping Angels she's afraid of ...

"shoving microphones down your top"

TV This is a guest post, from Shouting At Cows, by Rosa Wright, who came third in the 2010 series of the BBC Four quiz show Only Connect:

"Despite the whole sexy TV atmosphere of make-up artists and soundmen shoving microphones down your top we never really felt like we were being filmed. Once you get into the game you’ve no idea that there are cameras on and you can’t see yourself on any monitors – the first time we saw ourselves was the first time it was broadcast on the telly. You might get a glimpse of the autocue but you’re far too busy trying to work out what connects the Tardis to Mary Poppin’s handbag (both much bigger inside than they appear, if you’re wondering) to pay any attention."

Well worth the spoiler. I'm a bit behind. My PVR has eight episodes waiting.  Twisted flax please.

"There will be NO bonus tracks"

Music Portisheard have a new album coming and band member Geoff Barrow opens up a new philosophical question: does the lack of a gimmicky release process become a gimmicky release process in and of itself?

""There will be NO free downloads There will be NO bonus tracks There will be NO remixes There will be NO hidden footage"

Etc. Etc. Note there will still be digital downloads, just not locked to a particular retailer.  For this to be entirely pure we'd all have to go out and buy the cd (saving HMV in the process).

"sandwiches and pens"

TV At first I though this was a spoof. But no. This really is how BBC America are promoting Law & Order: UK. The final line is shamelessly amazing [via].

the BBC's last Expectations

TV BBC1 controller Danny Cohen is publicising some of the drama coming soon to the main channel with perhaps the most suprising inclusion a new Kudos series, Morton, by Frank Spotnitz which if it's the same bloke was an Exec producer and writer on many of Chris Carter's series including The X-Files, Millenium and the doomed Harsh Realms.  Interesting too to see Heidi Thomas of nu-Upstairs back with another six part period something or other.

The biggest disappointment is the appearance of another adaptation of Dickens's Great Expectations from Sarah Phelps who admittedly worked on a good Twist a few years ago. Disappointing because the BBC's last Expectations was the sumptuous Tony Marchant effort just over ten years ago, still young enough to have the new BBC logo on the front, with Ioan Gruffudd as Pip and and amazing Charlotte Rampling as Miss Havisham and which if it was broadcast now would, other than having been shot on film rather than HD sit perfectly well in the schedules.

In other words, this feels to me like the BBC making the same thing over again all too soon, when and I think you can guess where this is going, there are dozens of bits of theatre which haven't been reproduced in decades for television, work which is equally dramatic and interesting but because of the unnatural bias towards adapting prose into television which still continues to be a weird fit for me. But honestly it's a crime that we might never see Helen McCrory as The Dutchess of Malfi. Or whatever.

one controversy

TV It's not often that I'd link to a single short user comment at The Guardian, but it's impossible not to read this and realise that of course it is. The Charlie Brooker column above it is a welcome return to form too, and useful, since this is one controversy which passed me by.

The List: 23. Article published on the Liverpool Echo website.

Elsewhere I've written a guest post about Bjork's album Debut for Jade Wright's music blog, which means ...

23. Article published on the Liverpool Echo website.

"So I go up to the next guy"

Commerce Predictably this interview with Mary Portas is essentially Absolutely Fabulous fan fiction as the precious walks within the world the rest of us inhabits. Example:

""I find myself becoming a bit Tourette's. I walk round going, 'I hate this, I hate this!' Normally I do a food shop at Waitrose, but the other day I had to go locally and the only one was a Tesco Metro. I went up to these guys, and they're stacking the shelves, and I said, 'Do you have any Yorkshire puddings?'" She affects gormless incomprehension and a foreign accent. "Pooding?"

"Now that gets me. You're not allowed to say that, cos it's politically incorrect if someone can't speak English – but he's just not going to know what Yorkshire puddings are! So I go up to the next guy, and he takes me over to the flans and the puddings. So then I'm walking round and I find myself going, 'I hate this, I hate you all, I hate the fact that I have to be here.' And I do become actually slightly quietly insane. I hate it so much. It makes me want to just cry with depression that we've got this bad. It's really, really tragic. I went into Homebase at the weekend and actually thought I was going to kill myself."

More than once lately I've been in a shop and asked for the location of something which has clearly been hidden at the back and been vaguely pointed in the direction of about three aisles none of which seem particularly hopeful and proved not to have the thing I was looking for. None of which makes me suicidal, just consider the idea that shops might as well be self service and have nodes like The Library in the Doctor Who story The Silience in the Library or explain why internet shopping is so much easier. I hope she's joking.

an actor's look

Film Each year, film lecturer Jason Mittell asks his students to remix films and apply different narrative. Not parodies exactly, these aren't The Shining remix over and over, but as he says "designed to teach through practice how the practice of editing for chronology, juxtaposition, and tone conveys story".

The results are excellent and suggests the group has impeccible taste including as they do new versions of Away From Him, Adaptation, The Prestige and the tv show Pushing Daisies.

Even though most of them don't work unless you've seen the original source material, it's a useful example of how much narrative and expositional information can be conveyed in an actor's look to just off camera.

my Dell Dimension C521 died

Life This morning, after being perfectly fine last night, my Dell Dimension C521 died. I press the small silver button on the front and although the amber light comes on, the machine makes a noise like a jet engine and goes no further.

I've no idea what's wrong with it, or why a computer that was only delivered in June 2007 should be playing up like this but if you have any suggestions, I'd be pleased to hear them.

I'm using the back up plan of my Compaq Mini netbook filling in the space which is left which is slower but at least I can stay connected with the world. Somewhat.

the blu-ray versions of the Star Wars films are now up for pre-order

Film And so the George Lucas colonises his next format with the blu-ray versions of the Star Wars films are now up for pre-order at your favourite film emporium in two flavours. The whole damn saga for £69.99 and the two trilogies in separate formats, the classic and the other one. Not much news on extras other than deleted scenes and two sets of commentaries which is presumably from the dvd and something else, something elusive.

The scones have gone

Commerce Apart from the coffee and the Very Berry Scone, there have always been two other things I've always liked about Starbucks. The logo and the mugs. The scones have gone (or at least the original version which I loved) and now ...

"Starbucks' familiar chunky white mugs will disappear from its British stores this year as part of a major rebranding exercise that will also see the American company drop its name from its well-known logo."

The new logo keeps the mermaid but now looks like something ICI might have tried in the 80s. Along with the replacement of the mugs, this erodes their brand identity to a somewhat horrific degree. Well played.

somewhat like the Guggenheim

Liverpool Life Pete Carr has photos of the interior of the new Museum of Liverpool. Looks somewhat like the Guggenheim. Or Tron.

heard a chair squeak

Music If you were listening to the lunch time concert on BBC Radio Three this afternoon (and you can again in the iPlayer) and heard a chair squeak during Shai Wosner’s solo rendition of Mozart’s Fantasia in C minor (K475) then you momentarily irritated by me readjusting myself in situ because I was at that concert whilst it was prerecorded yesterday afternoon in studio 7 of BBC Manchester on Oxford Road.

A free event as part of their Genius of Mozart season it was a chance to sit in close proximity with an orchestra and allowing a wall of live musical sound blow me over. Despite visiting BBC Manchester before for other events, I hadn't realised that they could accommodate this kind of recording or, as the photographic portraits on the walls of previous conductors and supporters and a giant banner above the entrance to the venue indicated that this was the "home of the BBC Philharmonic".

Studio 7 is a giant square auditorium with the audience in stadium seating on one side and the orchestra across a small stage opposite and somehow despite the large number of players and even greater number of listeners a very intimate atmosphere was created. The concert was presented by Catherine Bott, who stood at some microphones just to the side and read her announcements as live from an A4 print out which was an impressive feat in itself.  The audience sat in complete silence throughout.  This was clearly a group of passionate music fans.  Who also knew the rules.

There are two things you need to know about my experience. Firstly that I was a bit distracted because the other reason I was in Manchester was for some replacement fillings at my dentist on Oxford Road. He’d just finished work within half an hour of me sitting down so I spent most of the concert regaining the feeling in my mouth, my tongue fringed with pins and needles and prodding around my teeth getting used to the work which had been done. He’s suggested I give up sweet things. He’s probably right.

Secondly that I wasn't distracted enough from the virtuosity of the playing and the emotional embrace of the music.  Only The Magic Flute overture was familiar to me, with its impactful chords and pauses which seem designed to catch out an early clapper. During his solo, Wosner sat hunched over his piano and once again I was impressed with a musicians ability to remember a whole piece without need to refer to a sheet. The Piano Concerto No. 22 in E flat (K482) is unusually because it’s topped and tailed by a slow movement which somehow makes it feel more melancholic something that might have been reflected in the determination of the players.

At the end we applauded as though at a real concert (Was this a real concert? What are the rules?) and then an engineer appeared from the back and asked us to remain seated. There were to be retakes.  Wosner reappeared with conductor Antonello Manacorda and we heard a few bars here and there again. Presumably for technical reasons because their playing sound fine the first time. As I pondered what would have happened during the live broadcast which filled the slot the day before from the same vanue, and considered whether an hour was the perfect length for any concert, it was time to go.

detailed business evaluation

Commerce In my predictions for this year I suggested that "a major high street entertainment retailer will close". I was, of course, hedging my bets, not naming any names, but obviously I meant HMV. On Christmas Eve I visited the Bold Street shop in Liverpool, which as this Daily Post article explains was originally spawned in the old gas showroom as a temporary measure during the building of the Liverpool One shop but stayed open.  In previous years the queue has been around the shop (even last year when the new store was open) but on the 24th December I was served immediately.

I asked the clerk about that as he sold me a cheap copy of State of Play.  He said he was surprised and suggested the credit crunch and internet sales as the cause.  I asked him if he thought the business was in danger.  He pointed to the share price with has plunged from pounds to pence within a few months.  I asked him if they were Zavvi vulnerable and he said that they weren't.  Yet.  Now HMV group have announced the closure of forty music shops and twenty Waterstones and I think about that clerk and the similar conversation I had with the girl in Zavvi at about this time last year and how she thought her job was safe.

I did enough hand wringing last year across those death of Zavvi posts on the causes of that closure, the digital downloads, the online purchases, Spotify.  It's just shocking to some of us that such a venerable old name like HMV, the place were many of us caught our first taste of vinyl, bought our first cd (not me though -- my copy of Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet came from Our Price) or dvd.  I even worked for them briefly in the 90s and though it was one of the worst working experiences of my life I'd still be sorry to see the pink logo go.

My guess is, with apologies to be people who hate Robert Peston types, that if there's more than one location in the city, HMV will close the least eye-catching or profitable, so Bold Street's music shop will go and the Waterstones almost next door (originally a Dillons before they were absorbed into the larger chain which itself is now in trouble).  Smaller shops are always the first casualties of the war against closure, which is odd because it has to be the larger positions with larger shop floors that cost the most in rent.  Why not downsize, effectively mothball and wait for better market conditions?

My more detailed business evaluation is that HMV Group will eventually fail.  The closure of some shops is the first stage of a long restructuring process designed to protect its core assets.  They might offload the bookshops back to the man who gave them their name (he's not uninterested).  They may sell Fopp on assuming they're not included in the store closure plan.  They'll sell some more of their international appendages.  But unless they can convince people to come through their doors and pay more for product that can be bought cheaper and more conveniently elsewhere, Nipper's bark will be silenced very soon.

I heard Vincent D'Onofrio use the words out of nowhere

TV You might remember how, during A Christmas Carol, this year's Doctor Who Christmas special episode, my emotional investment was tainted by having all of this stuff about the series rattling around in my brain. Kyle Anderson at Nerdist has written a far long article on the topic, explaining in some detail the origins of the "Blinovitch Limitation Effect” in the fiction of the series and why some of us were so perturbed first time around:

"In the 1972 story “Day of the Daleks,” a concept is offered up to explain why it’s a bad thing for a person (or object) to physically interact with itself should it travel in time and cross its own timeline. Should one do so, they would cause a paradox resulting in the destruction of the universe or the sudden death of puppies or something else awful. The fictional name for the concept the story’s writer gave is the now-famous “Blinovitch Limitation Effect.”

So ingrained a piece of Who-lore is Blinovitch, it's even been employed or homaged in non-Who texts such as Brad Anderson's Happy Accidents (and imagine how excited I was when I heard Vincent D'Onofrio use the words out of nowhere in this US indie film which is about a hundred miles away from Saturday teatimes) (other instances are included on the theory's (oh dear lord) wikipedia page).  I once also heard someone using it in an argument against time travel as though it was real thing with a scientific basis.  I didn't correct them.

Doctor Who, with its nearly fifty years worth of continuity baggage will inevitably contradict itself and that's ok.  It should.  Elements are established, re-examined and established again with each new author stamping their own identity on it.  Only a small number of viewers proportionally will have cared about these things and it's only our geek training which causes us to bawk when one bit of fiction contradicts another even if it has nothing to do with the story at hand.  Just relax and enjoy the adventure.  Barring cheap tricks.

"What about Merlin?"

TV Another preview. For Chris Chibnall's Camelot.



It's a good cast. The production design is movie quality. Let's hope it's the Chris Chibnall of the half decent Law and Order remake writing rather than the Chris Chibnall of Torchwood's first season. See if you say "What about Merlin?" at the same points I did.

"you'd rather like this movie"

Film Woody Allen's latest, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, seems to have a release date for the UK, 18th March, just six months after its limited US run. Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian lists it as his choice for 2011 and offers a lovely little preview:

"Fans should come to this film with a thought experiment: what if you didn't know it was by Woody Allen? What if this unassuming film was not required to bear the heavy burden of his reputation, and that of an army of pundits who have staked their own reputation on declaring Allen should quit? My guess is that you'd rather like this movie: it's a funny, offbeat exercise in irony that doesn't require any great emotional investment."

Having spent a large chunk of last year watching all of Woody's films I agree with the spirit of what Bradshaw is saying here. That his latest work might not always scale the heights of his heyday but at least they have something interesting to say and are better than most of the crap we're otherwise being fed from the US through the multiplexes.

"remain loyal"

Film Watching as much "world cinema" as I do, I'm always very grateful for the efforts of translators in producing subtitles. Some are clearly better than others, and sometimes I can tell that my enjoyment of a film is being impacted by this extra creative voice between me and whatever the makers of the film have meant. There are some outrages. In La Haine, when Asterix is clearly being heard as a password, the subtitle says "Mickey Mouse" then mention of the diminutive Gaul is meant give a particular cultural resonance and noticing the difference pulls you out of the scene as you ponder the mismatch.

In this fascinating interview, Federico Spoletti, the founder of Sub-ti, a subtitling company that specialises in film festivals explains that subtitlers aren't simply translating transcribers. They're caught between their own "respect (for) the accuracy of their translation, the director who wants to remain loyal to the original dialogue of the film, the distributor who may want to revise the language itself and the subtitler who would like to reduce the text to ensure enough reading time on screen for the subtitles themselves" and they often have to do this within just a couple of days looking at a low quality version of the film which is difficult to see.

scrabble around

Blog! Darren, who prompted me to scrabble around for a useful or interesting opinion about Alan Moore towards the end of last year, has begun a blog dedicated to the writer. A Moment of Moore promises to "publish something related to Alan Moore every day" and has so far included frames from Halo Jones and V for Vendetta.