Jennifer Lawrence's Box of Lies.

"If it's not the truth, you're a sociopath."

The Films I've Watched This Year #17

Books Yes, well, no, I didn't, not really. This week's been a hermitage week and so to make things extra specially different to usual, I decided to read some books instead of watching films across themed days. Monday was music, Tuesday was theatre, Wednesday was television, Thursday some film and Friday has been what it has been.  As well as the Arden edition of A Jovial Crew which I reviewed the other day, the other items were Hanif Kureshi's diary about the making of Sammy and Rosie Get Laid from some Granta edition, the RSC's King Lear for kids and the documentary and performance content from The Shakespearean London Theatres (SHALT) project's YouTube channel which I know all stretches the definition of what a book is but I needed a break after bashing my way through an actor's autobiography.  You'll see which.  Back to normal, back to work, after today, though frankly it's going to be difficult.  The whole thing has been blissful.  Though I probably do still need to take a week away.  I haven't had a holiday since 2009.



There's something quite discombobulating about reading a nostalgia piece which is just slightly outside of your field of reference especially when it's from someone who would then go on to be squarely within that nostalgic margin. The first half of Louise Wener's memoir Different For Girls covers her teenage years, which weren't spectacularly different to most people, recording the top 40 from Radio One with a finger poised on the pause button to cut out the DJ, having to choose between moonboots or a Human League album due to budgetary considerations (I did much the same with computer games and Kylie Minogue) and attending a David Bowie concert. Except for most of us these are steps towards become workers in the customer service industry. For Wener, they were the research and inspiration for becoming a pop star and ultimately led to her becoming the lead singer of Sleeper.

Which leads to a second half which is the very definition of "a think piece about a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom" and entirely aware of it (one of the chapters is even called "Almost Famous").  After noodling around in venues for a while, Sleeper are eventually signed to a record company for a horrendous "slave" deal and then find themselves on the crest of the wave they called Brit Pop trying desperately to break an America that doesn't understand them and touring Europe as interrelations within the band fall apart due to Wener breaking up with the guitarist then becoming involved with the drummer.  How much of this is news to fans of music from the period I'm not sure, but as with Sheryl Garrett's Adventures in Wonderland, it's a useful way for me to fill in a gap in my own history, of a period in cultural history I entirely missed because I was still listening to Debbie Gibson tunes and shit.

Wener's trick, and what sets it apart from what you might expect from a rock biography is that she writes about the whole thing in the same way, approaching Saturday jobs and presenting Top of the Pops with the same brutal honesty.  All the while she's entirely cognicent of her and the band's own limitations and that for all their hard work, they'll never quite reach the heights of Oasis or Blur but that to an extent they don't really want to.  Wener has a surprising awareness of how it all what went wrong, that the horror of touring and publicity left little room for finding a proper inspiration for the third album which was mostly written on autopilot and recorded with a different bassist and although it included the odd good song that led to some critical plaudits, was always going to disappoint especially as the Brit Pop cycle was coming to an end.  Middle level bands like Sleeper and Shed Seven would be the casualties and as soon as the first single tanked, they knew it was time to cut their losses.

One of Wener's big disappointments was that the band wasn't subversive enough that they weren't the sort of group like L7  or Hole, who'd do naughty things on The Word.  Nicholas Cook's Music: A Very Short Introduction is exactly that in book form.  Instead of offering what you might expect to be a short history of music, Cook instead decides to metaphorically throw the whole notion of musicology under the bus, listing in some detail and plenty of relish its failings as a discipline and how, in deliberately calcifying it through an elitist approach that deifies composers and patronises laypeople, is ultimately hurting our appreciation of music and Western classical music in general.  People familiar with the treatment of other cultural institutions will find suitable comparisons here.  Just as the editorial history of Shakespeare's texts has always threatened to engulf the purpose of the plays through discussions of his intent, so dozens of editions of Beethoven and Chopin's scores have led to wildly differing appreciations of what they were attempting to do.

Nonetheless, Cook has managed to offer a few nuggets to this layman.  As well as the news that Beethoven's 9th is argued over with as much rigour as Hamlet's various editions, there's the elucidation that the difference between Mozart and Beethoven is that the former's work favours the individual, whereas the latter is interested in the overall sound and so consequently are less arguably less enjoyable to play.  There's also a certain confirmation of how unfair we tend to be on pop stars who can't sing live, failing to notice the distinction between pop and rock music, each designed for their own particular set of purposes but neither really "authentic".  As Wener's book demonstrates, she and her guitarist effectively manufactured Sleeper by putting an advert out for a bassist and drummer and when they were signed, they hung around in the studio for six months working out their "sound".  Just because there were more voices in the creation of The Spice Girls, the process wasn't that different.

More brutal honesty in Simon Callow's Being an Actor.  Subsequently updated many times, this version I read this week is the first edition, published in 1984 covering his years in drama school, through his jobbing period and mix of critical acclaim and drubbing on the stage of the National.  He's till flirting with television (his appearance as Raymond Craft in Crown Court isn't mentioned) and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls is still ten years away.  Most of it's about what you'd expect, the period as a youngster when he submerged himself in a persona called "Simon Callow" whom he later realises is a bit of an asshole, through realising that he can act before deciding on several dozen occasions that he's going to be found out to entirely failing to join Ken Campbell's Science Fiction theatre because he realises they're all completely mad.  It's impossible to read without the great man's voice in your head.  The latest edition's available as an audiobook.  That must be a time.

As with all this week's books, the best moments are when the writer breaks from expectation and heads into emotional dangerous areas, and in Callow's case that's his disembowelling of not just his own technique but how it's impacted by poor direction.  There are thrilling passages in which he remembers rehearsals by the moment as directors with controlling tendencies simply want him to do it their way then can't really understand why, at the end of the rehearsal process, the production has no life to it.  Sometimes he simply gives himself over to it then takes the negative notices on the chin, sometimes he fights against it, but the there's a general sense that he prefers directors with flexible visions, willing to collaborate and who understand, or at least agree with Callow, that an important part of the process is realising who this character is that he's playing and how for a story to work, they almost have to exist in a way which makes the text and that story inevitable.  Phew.  In the main though, most of his acting chums are marvellous.

Jeffrey Stepakoff's memoir, Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing actually follows a similar trajectory of college dawdling before deciding on a career and then success though without quite the level of self-doubt, largely because once he's on the gravy train of working on US network television as a writer, although some of the shows he works on were so cancelled they didn't even receive UK distribution (C-16 FBI? Hyperion Bay?).  Mostly it's a manifesto, written in the moment when traditional scripted fiction television found itself in the quagmire of having to justify its existence in the face of "reality" television, which as Stepakoff notes was just as scripted and in much the same way but had producers and editors thinking up storylines and hoping the dialogue would come.  Across the decades he covers, he tracks the period when writers were kings and development contracts led to million dollar paychecks even if shows never made it to air to, well, not.

As the title hints, it's Stepakoff's attempt at offering a an Adventures in the Screentrade for television writing, and arguably it's when he's actually describing the process of writing and what it's like to be in the rooming churning out these scripts that the book pings not least the horror that was producing Dawson's Creek once Kevin Williamson had left.  As he says, the first season is a golden thirteen episodes of television, some of the best teen drama every produced.  But it's a complete story and after that there wasn't a motivating element so it simply became soap opera, which is an interesting distinction, which Stepakoff acknowledges, but it did leave us viewers, as it meandered onwards, wondering quite what to make of it (as these posts from this blog while it was transmitting attest).  His argument is that when Pacey and Joey kissed it saved Dawson's Creek because it made the show about something again, which is arguably true but also led to it becoming horribly maudlin and even Proustian at times even after Busy Philipps joined.

Robert McKee would presumably describe the kiss as an "inciting incident" and it certainly was that though for the whole thing to really work in metanarrative terms it should have occurred at the end of the first season.  But McKee's Story doesn't much cover television other than to suggest what not to do in a film screenplay in terms of character and structure, though he also suggests they're one in the same thing anyway.  He does that a lot, tells the reader not to do something then a hundred pages later offers some examples of when it's perfectly ok or when it works, that, although he doesn't ever specify this, there are exceptions that disprove a rule, which you would think is problematic in a book which is supposed to be offering rules for writing a film screenplay.  No wonder Charlie Kauffman's character of Charlie Kaufmann in Adaptation is so bloody confused and manic by the end.  What is a screenwriter supposed to do when a four hundred page writing manual essentially boils down to two words,  "avoid cliche"?

In offering reasons why I finally read Story, Adaptation would be one.  Another would be so that I can say that I have, even though to say you've done something is no reason to actually do it.  Museums and archaeological sites are filled with tourists who've little to no interest in what they're seeing but are ticking the Mona Lisa or Stonehenge off a list (annoying the shit out of the people who actually do want to be there in the process).  Having spent the best part of a day working through the thing, I certainly wouldn't say I was equipped in any way to write a screenplay, though perhaps it shouldn't considered a failure in that regard since I wasn't going to write one anyway.  I do wish I'd glanced at it in 2006 when I was writing my dissertation though, since the section about multiplots, what I called hyperlink films, would have proven invaluable even if I think he misses the point by just saying they're a bunch of subplots without what he calls a "central plot".  In most cases, they're either a group of "central plots".

None of which is to say he didn't offer some insights.  He agrees with me that all films need some kind of mystery and intrigue and that too much exposition all dissipates rather than increases interest.  I'm always especially grumpy when films begin with back story, often with main characters as children since more often than not this doesn't provide much that couldn't be best served by simply showing the characters as adults, though as McKee notes if its a natural part of the story's structure, for example, The Last Emperor or I'd argue in Your Eyes, it's perfectly fine.  There's also an excellent section explaining why some films feel flabby in the middle - it's because the writer is letting duration dictate the plot rather than the other way around and is inventing incident that has nothing to do with what the protagonist wants.  Oh and he also led me to realise that Joss Whedon's way into scripting The Avengers was to make Nick Fury the central character and make all of the turning point actions about him.

Through a Glass Darkly
The Act of Killing

McKee also led me to finally watch what is my film of the week, Ingmar Bergman's bleak chamber piece about the spirituality and mental illness, which the script consultant for Barbie as the Island Princess (no, really) uses to demonstrate how character motivations work within a scene.  As with all films which treat the viewer as an adult, it's impossible to really discuss after a single watch, so tightly woven are the themes and so subtle the acting.  McKee describes a water motif which I missed completely, so involved was I in the story, though as he says the very best films stand up to multiple watches for just these reasons but also that it's important the symbolism is so overt that it becomes amusing (apart from the occasions when the symbolism is being particularly forefronted for a reason) (see what I mean?).  The real magic was in how I watched the film.  Having realised I needed to see it before reading a section of the book but not owning a copy, I checked Amazon Prime Instant and there it was with eleven other Tartan releases.

The modern world continues to astound me.

The Feeing Listless Soundtrack 1.0: That Day.

Written by Natalie Imbruglia & Gary Clark
[from: 'White Lilies Island', BMG, 2001]

Music I feel strangely ambivalent about today. I'm aware that when I go places there isn't someone with me holding my hand, but this year it just feels like something other people do. Perhaps it's because for once I'm not in love with someone -- in previous years I've been looking dewy eyed at the girl from afar or good friends with them just to be around them for much the same reason. But this year no one. I know it's my situation. My life's on pause -- I'm like Campbell Scott in the film 'Singles', forever locked in a room (in my case metaphorically) wigging away, waiting for the next thing to happen. Which doesn't mean to say that if I got a serious valentine later I wouldn't be interested. My shoulder is looking out of practice -- it looks like it needs someone to lean against it soon. [Originally posted Valentines Day, 2002]

[Commentary: Another old blog post. Sigh. Oddly enough, I subsequently wrote a much longer, more coherent piece about That Day which I posted on flickr with an image of the cover and is a useful counterpoint to the above paragraph. As Natalie says, "It's ok, it's all ok."]

A Jovial Crew (Arden Early Modern Drama). Edited by Tiffany Stern.

Like most of culture or indeed everything with a history, theatrical history tends to be considered in chunks which in the case of early modern drama for some of us means Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline periods but for others is before, during and after Shakespeare’s career. As a result, the fine grain detail of the moments, especially at the fringes, in the wake of epochal changes can be lost. Bog-standard histories will often group the death of Shakespeare in 1616 and the closure of the theatres in 1642 in the wake of the English Civil War together almost as connected events even though there’s clearly a good few decades worth of fascinating events to discover in between.

The latest Arden Early Modern Drama, as with many of the editions in the series seeks to demonstrate that an awful lot did happen in that gap with Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew, which was the last play staged before the theatres closed. If like me, you’re shelving this series in publication order, this is the edition which will presumably sit at the end of the series and stay there. As the editor Professor Tiffany Stern poignantly explains, Brome, knowing that this would be the last play performed by his company, Beeston’s Boys at the Cockpit Theatre, made sure there were enough parts for everyone, from veterans to youngsters, over thirty speaking roles, and enough spectacle to grandly fill the space one final time.

But it’s also a summation of the preceding decades of theatrical history. In crafting his story of a bored nobility seeking adventure amongst vagabonds, Brome was influenced by the work of his mentor Ben Jonson, parodying pastoral comedies (notably I think As You Like It in general story terms though Stern doesn’t mention this) whilst also drawing from near contemporaries, notably The Spanish Gypsy, a collaboration between Middleton, Rowley, Dekker and John Ford. The language of the plays too, recalls earlier eras, with the cant vocabulary of the beggars sometimes just slightly out of phase with modern coinage due to some extent Brome borrowing from earlier plays.

Ironically, given his theatre’s alternative name, the Phoenix, once the playhouse’s re-opened the play itself became a key influence on theatrical history. Chopped about and rewritten as was the custom in the Restoration period, with chunks of the text replaced with songs (expanding on or substituting the six which are already included), Stern argues that The Jovial Crew (as it had become by then) ultimately became the model for The Beggar’s Opera, the two becoming inseparable until Gay’s 1728 piece carved out its own place. But the play is rarely if never produced on this original form. Even when the RSC mounted a production (with The Beggar’s Opera as a sibling), Brome’s words were extensively substituted and rewritten.

Now the play is commemorated in this fine edition, the first, it’s suggested by the bibliography and the editor’s preface, properly edited version of the text in over forty years. Perhaps understandably, Stern’s introduction keeps to the usual formula of examining the plays characters, politics, themes and language in the first section, then sources, then interweaving the publication and performance history, this being an example of a work in which the two are inextricably linked. For clarity, Stern’s biography of Brome which makes the case for his independence of his from Jonsons, is hidden away in appendix 3 after a glossary of “cant” terms and an investigation of the play's songs.

The general sense one has from this Arden edition is that it finally refocuses and steadies a work that has been in flux from the moment it was written. Brome himself even included updates and rewrites to include more contemporary allusions when the play was published ten years later. Which isn’t to say that Brome has fallen into complete obscurity. As Stern acknowledges, the valuable Brome Online page also has edited versions of all the texts, along with video excerpts from rehearsals of the plays and a thorough staging chronology. But in producing this handsome edition, another punctuation mark in theatrical history is emphasised and how lucky we were that it was a comma rather than a full stop.

A Jovial Crew (Arden Early Modern Drama). Edited by Tiffany Stern.  Bloomsbury. 2014. RRP: £10.99. ISBN: 978-1904271772. Review copy supplied.



Here's an interview with Tiffany Stern about the other end of the period and the opening of the playhouses in London.



Also from the Shakespearean London Theatres (SHALT) project, a short documentary about Christopher Beeston, the owner of the Cockpit where A Jovial Crew was premiered.

"It seems there are no manners at the BBC."

BBC has no manners says correspondent to the Liverpool Echo who thinks it's still run the same as it was in the 1940s pic.twitter.com/4o9Df1zMbj
— Stuart Ian Burns (@feelinglistless) May 10, 2014

TV Just tweeted this (as you can see). To be fair to the person whose name I've obliterated this is almost how the BBC was run back in the decades I'm being sarcastic about. Here's a paragraph from the Wikipedia which boils down the first chapter of David Attenborough's Life On Air memoir to the essentials:

"After leaving the Navy, Attenborough took a position editing children's science textbooks for a publishing company. He soon became disillusioned with the work and in 1950 applied for a job as a radio talk producer with the BBC. Although he was rejected for this job, his CV later attracted the interest of Mary Adams, head of the Talks (factual broadcasting) department of the BBC's fledgling television service. Attenborough, like most Britons at that time, did not own a television, and he had seen only one programme in his life.  However, he accepted Adams' offer of a three-month training course, and in 1952 he joined the BBC full-time. Initially discouraged from appearing on camera because Adams thought his teeth were too big, he became a producer for the Talks department, which handled all non-fiction broadcasts. His early projects included the quiz show Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? and Song Hunter, a series about folk music presented by Alan Lomax."

Of course this is lovely in its way and if only we lived in a world were this would be possible, that someone could write on behalf of their grandson who could then be given a chance.  But then, I expect, we'd all be writing.

Maxine Peake on Hamlet.

Peake is due to play Hamlet at Manchester's Royal Exchange.  Here she talks to Creative Tourist about the why question:

“Male actors I know who’ve played Hamlet keep saying what a huge responsibility it is to play that part. But, even though I’m petrified, I’m not a man so I don’t feel that sort of responsibility”, she argues. “I just feel excited and, if we fail, we fail. But it’s about having a go, about saying we can do it.” Peak is adamant that this part has got absolutely nothing to do with gender-swapping for shock’s sake. “When there are all-male companies doing Shakespeare, no one minds and no one should bat an eye if a woman plays Hamlet or Henry V,” she asserts. “We’re actors doing a part and, on stage now in 2014, it’s about time there was a freedom to do that. When else are female actors going to get an opportunity to do those great speeches? So far, men have had all the fun!”

The Films I've Watched This Year #16

Film Evening.  Another short list, mostly because of Eurovision (which is even blander than usual this year with only about three songs with any kind of artistic merit) (The Netherlands entry's my favourite largely because of its spiritual similarity to The Broken Circle Breakdown) and wanting to finish off the eighth season of 24 which is still utterly stupid.  Now that I'm so near the end I feel like I have to see it through, especially since it's at the point where writer Manny Cotto has his Enterprise season four head on and is obviously doing stuff for the fun of it, trotting out some of the old favourite storylines from previous years and even some of the same characters in the way that fans who've taken over a franchise often do when they're nursing it through its death throws, just as a tribute.  If this was the kind of show which did ghosts and dream sequences, I'd almost expect a fever dream ala The Tudors in which Jack's visited by the many people who've died or he's killed in the process of protecting his country ("Dammit!) not least Nina Myers (though she's clearly there in spirit for various reasons anyway).  Nine episodes to go.

The other main piece of television this week was the utterly cinematic BBC Wales adaptation of Under Milk Wood starring a galaxy of local talent (available on the iplayer here for a couple more days).  Approaching the task of replicating a piece originated for radio on television and presumably with having to grab odd hours here and there with the busy participants, it cleverly makes such choices part of the artifice and asks the audience's imaginations to gather together the pieces, placing participants shot in obviously different locales in the same settings interacting with one another with wipes and fades and superimposing of shots creating dream-like quality that are utterly beguiling.  But despite the artifice, it's Dylan Thomas's words which are to the fore, the piece challenging the viewer in a way which few arts-based commissions have in recent times, just the sort of project we looking longingly into television history at, but on our television screens right now.  Only broadcast on BBC One Wales on Bank Holiday Monday in the early evening, it demands to be networked in the same slot, but I urge you to click the link above or find it on an app and wash yourself away with the words.

Halloween
Ocean's Eleven
Full Frontal
Married Life
Solaris
The Girl Chewing Gum

Arguably the best new film I saw this week was The Girl Chewing Gum, a twelve minute art film from 1976 currently on display as part of Tate Liverpool's Constellation's exhibition. Inspired by the scene in Trauffaut's Night and Day in which the director shouts directions from behind a camera to a scene to the scene's we watching, this sees artist James Smith apparently directing traffic as he orders cars and ordinary passers-by into frame ("Now could the trailer move ... now I want the children up to no good to cross the road..."), though we know from the artifice that such instructions have been dubbed on afterwards (and recorded in a field we see later). It's hilariously Pythonesque and also prefigures somewhat Marc Forster's Stranger Than Fiction, in which Will Ferrell finds his life narrated by Emma Thompson.  But the real draw for people with a certain interest set is the moment when the camera pans right to reveal a queue of families outside the Dalston Odeon, waiting, judging by the times on the billboard, to see The Land That Time Forgot on its original release (Oliver is also showing on the other screen).  Lucky kids.

Married Life is a surprising courageous piece of filmmaking but such virtues are hidden.  A melange of film noir, Sirkian domestics, Hitchcock and oddly a smattering of Rattigan and Coward, it sees Rachel McAdams as the object of affection between Piers Brosnan and Chris Cooper, the latter spending most its duration working up the courage to murder his wife (Patricia Clarkson) in order to be with her.  It's a useful, old school chamber piece, with McAdams underplaying in a role which generally requires her to smile winsomely.  But it's the special features section on the dvd that holds the real surprise as we discover three alternative endings of varying length as we see that director Ira Sachs in attempting to find a shape for the piece ended up hacking off and removing a whole ten minutes off the end in which the characters lives are seen ten years after the point at which the film currently ends with car crashes and court room scenes that look like they took at least three weeks and millions of dollars to shoot.  But the director realised that he didn't need them and that the point he was trying to make is all in Brosnan's voice over and the current final shot of the film.  Amazing.

The bank holiday and so lack of post presented the opportunity to work through some more of Steven Soderbergh's films in order.  Ocean's Eleven is just about perfect.  The more I watch it, the more I realise it's probably as important to me as The Godfather appears to be to others.  It's funny, sad, clever and the pinnacle of what modern Hollywood magic is capable of.  On the commentary, Soderbergh says that it was a very difficult shoot for him.  While he could tell the cast were really enjoying themselves, he was unsure whether the material he was getting would add up to anything.  But when he sat in the editing room it turned out to be the easiest of footage to watch and rewatch in the editing process.  That's the chemistry between the performers presumably, and the democracy especially since they're all pretty much equal partners even though in career terms they weren't in that place at all.  But it's also visually the perfect marriage of photography, the lustrous images of Las Vegas and David Holmes's score which despite hitting come of the cliches (Elvis) and creating a few new ones, never quite manages to totally glamorise the place.  It's not Leaving Las Vegas, but the seediness remains.

Then it's straight into Full Frontal, which, in the entire context of the directors career with Schizopolis, Ocean's Twelve, The Girlfriend Experience, Bubble and The Last Time I Saw Michael Gregg makes perfect sense.  Indeed it's practically Son of Schizopolis.  But at the time, critics hated it.  The old Rotten Tomatoes survey, "An confusing movie made worse by the poor camera work" isn't just grammatically suspect, it entirely misunderstands filmmaking.  Isn't it possible Soderbergh's shot it that way for a reason?  That he's contrasting the scuzziness of real life with the artifice of cinema?  They'd expected, I think, a Neil Simon-type sex comedy (which is how it was generally thought of in pre-production), but its actually something akin to Mike Figgis's Timecode with bits of a faux-indie relationship drama edited in.  Not knowing quite what to make of it back in the day, I ended up reviewing Rendezvous , the film within a film, though I entirely failed to mention the Terence Stamp cameo which in the wake of actually watching The Limey and having shared universes on the brain at the moment, is frankly brain splitting.

In the same year, Solaris was released.  On first viewing Solaris, my understanding of the ending, which I'm about to spoil so stop reading now if you haven't seen either this or the Tarkovsky version, was that a Solaris created copy of Chris had been transported back to Earth and he had then begat another version of Rheya.  Watching again at university in the wake of the Tarkovsky version, I was then corrected, I thought in that we're instead seeing Chris in Solaris ala 2001 being reunited with the copy of Rheya, not least because the action is a repeat of the opening of the film when he cuts his finger.  Now I'm convinced I was right the first time.  For a start, Gordon warns about the Solaris copies turning up on Earth and the effect multiplying.  But when Chris is in the kitchen and we cut to the action of him returning the ship as it falls into Solaris, the editing and sound are very similar to the moment earlier in the film when the Rheya "ghost" remembers the moment of the original's suicide.  This Solaris Chris, now on Earth, is becoming aware of his own facsimile status begating another Solaris Rheya as company in the process.  Their friends will be surprised ...

Chinese Puzzle solved?

Film French Film First's Facebook feed has announced the UK theatrical distribution of Chinese Puzzle, the third film in Cedric Klapisch's Xavier trilogy (for want of a better description).

If you didn't want to know what happened after Russian Dolls before you saw this, it has a honking great spoiler in the trailer from the off, or at least it's a spoiler in the same way as founding out what Celine and Jesse had been up to before seeing Before Midnight. You might disagree.

Anyway, it has StudioCanal as its distributor which suggests a widish release and a decent home release afterwards not to mention streaming. So it'll be out there, which is the point.

Meanwhile the imdb page still suggests Kevin Bishop doesn't even have a cameo.  Poor Kevin.

Agent Carter continues.

TV Well this is excellent news and demonstrates just how complex and multi-platform MARVEL really want to go with the the cinematic universe. As well as renewing Agents of SHIELD, which is a thing in and of itself given the uptick in quality since it's found something to do with itself, ABC have ordered a series of Agent Carter starring Doctor Who's Hayley Atwell which will apparently be run in the SHIELD slot in the US somehow so that there won't be as many repeats or some such with the two series feeding off one another storywise.

Quite how Channel 4 will deal with this, assuming they bother to purchase the rights, is anyone's guess, unless the two are sold as a package to be transmitted in a block.  Plus you might wonder as someone at Whedonesque does, if in fact we'll get thirteen SHIELDs and thirteen CARTERs, sorry Carters which would seem like a good move.  One of the problems with SHIELD has been that it feels like a thirteen episode type series stretched out to twice its length, perhaps because of the need to play time and weave between the three cinema films.

Since we're on this, I did consider the other day how journalists have tended to think of the various MARVEL phases in terms of The Avengers films and how they'll be sustained once the first wave of heroes reach the end of their trilogies.  What they've not considered is the possibility that The Avengers itself will only have three films and beyond that MARVEL will move on to some other way of sustaining the momentum like a clearer crossover-type event that allows for any number of characters without a particular affiliation to appear.

Imagine perhaps three tentpole Secret Wars, Civil War or Secret Invasion films that feed into and out of films about other newly introduced characters or the "old guard" that haven't yet been given a name in the title like Black Widow, Falcon or Hawkeye.  Or some of The Avengers appear in some capacity, or characters which might not be able sustain a whole film given cameos.  Or from tv, Daredevil or the SHIELD agents.  Instead of a superteam, we're branching out into a hyperlink drama, ensemble film or disaster movies set in the MARVEL universe.

Jane Morris at the Lady Lever.

Art You won't remember because I barely do, but last year I wrote about the lack of local major non-contemporary art exhibitions. The announcement of Whistler at the Liverpool Biennial is welcome, but the situation hasn't changed much so I think it's important to publicise pre-1900 efforts as much as possible whenever they're around.

The Lady Lever Art Gallery, whose Burne-Jones exhibition sparked that blog post have another pre-Raphaelite related show from 20 June to 21 September 2014 (originated at Bradford Museums and Galleries) of paintings, drawings and photographs of the Pre-Raphaelite muse Jane Morris. Here are the important pieces of the press release:

Rossetti’s Obsession: Images of Jane Morris

Paintings, drawings and photographs of the Pre-Raphaelite star

On the centenary of her death a new exhibition at the Lady Lever Art Gallery explores the role of Jane Morris as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's chief muse and the embodiment of Pre-Raphaelite beauty.

Rossetti's Obsession: Images of Jane Morris opens from 20 June to 21 September 2014. Bringing together rarely displayed works, the exhibition focuses on Rossetti's fixation with Morris and his depiction of her as the ultimate femme-fatale.

More than 30 paintings, drawings and photographs of Morris, including a number which were used as studies for some of Rossetti's most famous works, feature in the exhibition.
Sandra Penketh, Director of Art Galleries said: “More than 150 years since the founding of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, this radical, vibrant movement still excites audiences today. Jane Morris as a model, muse, wife, lover and artist in her own right was at the heart of this explosive group which challenged the art establishment of the time. Her striking features, tumbling long hair and haunting stare appear in so many of Rossetti's finest works that they have become indelibly associated with the movement.

"The Lady Lever Art Gallery has one of the best Pre-Raphaelite collections in the world so we're delighted to tell the story of the relationship between two of the movement's chief protagonists."

Born Jane Burden, Morris came to the attention of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites in 1857. In 1859 she married William Morris, but shortly after began a long affair with Rossetti.

Sharing a deep emotional attachment, Morris and Rossetti's relationship was the source of many of Rossetti's mid-to-late paintings, regarded by many as being among the best of his career. The exhibition includes the studies Pandora (1878), La Donna della Finestra (1870) and La Donna della Fiamma (1870) from this period but it is the painting Proserpine (1882) which had the deepest resonance with the couple.

In classical mythology Proserpine (also known as Persephone) was condemned to spend six months of the year in the Underworld. While away the world turned cold and dark and crops did not prosper until her return, when the weather improved and the land was fertile again. This was a painful parallel for Rossetti who had just spent an idyllic summer with Morris but was to be parted from her again for the winter.

Rossetti's obsessive depictions of Morris often cast her in mythological roles. Tender drawings, include a number of her as Astarte, an Ancient Greek goddess and to Rossetti the ultimate symbol of feminine power. This series of pen and ink, pastel, charcoal and graphite drawings expose a seemingly exhaustive effort to capture Morris’ beguiling beauty and her hold on him.

The exhibition also gives a small insight into Morris's life away from Rossetti's gaze. A stunning tapestry (267 x 150cm), designed by her husband William Morris and produced by Morris and her daughter Jenny, reveal a skilled embroiderer and an important member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. It is also a rare example of the collaboration between three members of the Morris family.

In later photographs and a drawing of Morris by Evelyn de Morgan, the striking features which so mesmerised Rossetti 20 years earlier are still visible, but by this time her famous thick hair is white and the alabaster skin, lined. These final images of the exhibition no longer evoke the idealised images of youth, myth and femininity, but instead a real woman with depth and passions of her own.

A programme of free talks, tours and family events accompanies the exhibition.

A touring exhibition from Bradford Museums and Galleries

The exhibition opens at the Lady Lever Art Gallery as the gallery embarks upon exciting plans for the future.

Following initial support* from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), National Museums Liverpool is hoping to make £2.8m improvements, which will see 500 square metres of gallery space transformed and returned to its original architectural splendour.

The scheme, which promises a revamp of more than a quarter of the venue, would also see more than 1,700 items of fine and decorative art redisplayed and new educational resources developed for local schools and groups.

Sandra Penketh said: “The redevelopment will restore the South End galleries to their former glory and breathe new life into the world-class exhibits.
“As we work on fundraising for the project and developing our plans we are keeping Lord Lever’s original aims for the gallery at the forefront, ensuring the gallery continues to inspire future generations for another 100 years.”

For more information on the project and how you can support it visit our website:

www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/leverplans

Lady Lever Art Gallery
Port Sunlight Village
Wirral L62 5EQ

Admission FREE
Open 10am-5pm every day

Information 0151 478 4136

Website www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk
Twitter www.twitter.com/leverartgallery
Facebook www.facebook.com/ladyleverartgallery

The Feeling Listless Soundtrack 1.0: Baby One More Time.

Written by Martin
[from: Galstonbury 1999]

Music I’ve a confession to make. I’ve a feeling I’ll be buying Britney Spears version of ‘I Love Rock and Roll’. It’s not a great song, and she does it very badly. But it’s to go in a collection, you see. Of weird cover versions. It’s never been clear why some artists go so far out on a limb sometimes to show that they do have a wide musical interest – or why others would try and pretend they’re still cool by keeping up with the youngens. But as someone who’s sat through all ten verses of Bob Dylan’s version of ‘One Man Went To Mo’ I can tell you this. They’re bloody good entertainment, and this track demonstrates, the really good songs can stand any treatment. The crowd you can here in the background of this track probably wouldn’t be seen dead in HMV buying Spears first album, yet here they are, singing word perfect to their indie heroes. The reason is – it’s a bloody good song. That’s why she picked it. That’s why they’re singing it. End of part one. [Originally written over twelve years ago]

[Commentary: I have a confession to make. I never did buy Britney Spears's version of 'I Love Rock and Roll'. In a break from tradition let's talk about the video:

(1) BBC Choice logo. BBC Choice. Sigh.

(2) At a certain point Hit Me Baby One More Time was a "new song" from America.

(3) The lame South Park reference.

(4) For a long time, this was the only track of Travis's I ever listen to that wasn't Driftwood. Despite owning a copy of The Invisible Band LP, I don't ever remember listening to it all the way through.

(5) Most of the kids in this audience are now middle aged.]

Women in Film. A Study.

Film One of my current minor addictions is watching full length recordings of film related Q&A type events from film festivals and the like. Some of the best are from tiff, or the Toronto International Film Festival and their YouTube channel has hundreds. The above hour and a half is a series of lectures then Q&A are about women's film festivals and their place in the feminist movement asking the question, somewhat rhetorically it has to be said because the answer is obvious, exactly why women's contribution to film isn't more prominent.

At the risk of offering some spoilers, two interesting points are raised:

(a)  How are we supposed to respect a collective history when we treat it so badly?  Essentially the problem one has if one wants to track the history of women in film and particularly in relation to the contribution of film festivals is that the sheer ephemeral nature of the things means that the granular detail in the form of fliers and administrative material is unavailable.  Plus even when stuff does exist, there simply isn't the funding available to pay for archivists and librarians to work through and catalogue the material and cross reference it in a meaningful way.

(b)  People who should be promoting women in film are as bad as everyone else.  The Criterion Collection, which sets itself up as a kind of museum for film contains less than ten films directed by women and that's a percentage reflected across boutique publishers.  You could argue that it's also a reflection of the percentage of film released by women and that in Criterion's case at least it includes Varda, Denis, Anders and Dunham (but no Coppola or Polley), oh and that women's voices don't stop and start at direction, but it's disappointing how easily the status quo is reinforced.

"Tell me." "I don't know, Jack." "TELL ME!"

TV Five best things about 24:

(1) Tamzin Sylvester

(2) The cougar, which gave me an excellent way of describing filler plots in shows whose seasons should really be half the length they are and are putting up false drama to kill time. "Oh no, it's another cougar."

(3) The look Chloe gives when it becomes apparent she's the cleverest person in the room and no one will listen to her.

(4) Being in the middle of a session and realising that you're inadvertently watching an episode at the right time of day and the digital clock next your television even matches the countdown into a commercial break.

(5) It begat Homeland.

"I’m not competing with myself."

Books Elizabeth Wurtzel's spoken to Buzzfeed on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of Prozac Nation. She says she's happier:

"I’ve calmed down. Looking back, I was engaged more in dramas than I was in relationships. I’ve spent a lot of my life being in it for the plot, and I don’t do that anymore. I’m satisfied. I’m not competing with myself. I accomplished things I wanted to do, so everything I do now is because I want to, not because I’m trying to prove something. And I think it’s a fundamental difference between men and women and feminism can’t solve this. Like, there are hardly any female billionaires out there because there’s a limited amount of money you can spend in your lifetime and there aren’t many female CEOs because there’s no pleasure in being a CEO. And women get that and women want to do interesting things. I think it shows women’s good sense that we’re less ambitious because a billion dollars is all ego, there’s nothing you can do with it. And good for women for saying, “Who needs that?” What I wanted is an interesting life and what I’ve had is an interesting life."

"The name is definitely a marketing problem."

Radio The Guardian interviews Ira Glass on the occasion of the broadcast of This American Life in the UK. Here's what he thinks is happening with the choice of episodes:

"The name is definitely a marketing problem. I think you can tell we had no intention of being an international show. And there's no one in Britain who's like, ‘You know what I don't get enough of? American culture.’

"The shows that the BBC chose are really traditional, documentary with a capital D, 'we-are-serious-journalist' stories. The first one includes a story about the Holocaust, because everybody knows that that's a classy story to put on the radio. They are feeling protective of us, [worrying] that their audience will notice that the tone is different and jauntier and more conversational, and not understand the seriousness of intent underneath it. I appreciate that whoever is programming for the BBC is trying to protect us."

He's in The Independent too saying many of the same things:

"This is a beach-head from which to proceed," Glass says of his UK plans, his familiar nasal tones coming through loud and clear down the phone from New York. The BBC has cherry-picked 13 episodes from TAL's 524-strong archives; the first, which is classic TAL, featuring a heart-tugging story about the Holocaust, airs at 11am today. And the stories are not just American."

The UK doesn't have its own page yet (presumably because this is just a taster series) but I'll put a link here just in case.

The Films I've Watched This Year #16

Film Short list this week because I was (a) ill with the tummy bug which has been going around (really do try and avoid this one, it's very, um, liquidy) (I lost half a stone in two days), (b) watched the Don Giovanni from the Royal Opera House from BBC Four on Sunday (because the only way to support Tony Hall's art initiative is to watch some of it), (c) finished off the incredibly stupid seventh series of 24 ("Dammit Tony!") and (d) began the even stupider series eight ("Dammit Renee!") then (e) tonight sat down with the not strictly a film because it was made for Court TV, Guilt By Association.

Guilt By Association continues my old blog commitment to trawl through actress Rachel McAdams's back catalogue.  It's a 2002 campaigning "film" about mandatory minimums, the US law which in drugs-related cases means everyone gets the same sentence even if they all they did was take phone messages and even if they didn't know that the caller was a dealer or customer.  Mercedes Ruehl stars as a widower with two kids who knows her boyfriend is dealing "a little pot on the side" but not knowing the extent of his business finds herself facing twenty years in the women's penitentiary.

Essentially it's what you'd imagine Orange is the New Black would be like ten years ago.  Lesbianism is implied once and only as a "kind of hospitality" and there isn't much room for gallows humour.  McAdams plays one of the few friends Ruehl has, a suicidal young woman who also picked the wrong boyfriend ("I didn't know the chemicals could be used to make methamphetamine" she says) and generally spends most of her section of the film looking pasty and crying (as you might expect given the circumstances).  She's transferred out of the jail before we find out what happens to her character.

Bits of this are unintentionally funny not least the overwrought opening in which a domestic scene straight from A Christmas Story is invaded by police extras in armour who look like they've stormed into the wrong film from 24 (cut to digitally zoomed close up of Ruehl's astonishment face as she's pinned to the ground) and the man playing the Georgia lawyer who fights for her pardon sounds like he's learnt his accent from watching Matthew McConaughey films.  Nevertheless, thanks to Ruehl good performance, the conclusion is still extremely effective for what this is.

Pacific Rim
Traffic
The Usual Suspects
The Burning Plain

As long as you watch Pacific Rim in the spirit of what it is, which is Guillermo Del Toro directing a Westernised anime on a massive budget in live action, it's extremely good fun.  Pity a lot of critics and most of the audience seemed to miss that.  As a good installment of Battle of the Planets or Pole Position it really works.  Del Toro wanted to make a film about Mecha fighting Kaiju.  He made a film about Mecha fighting Kaiju.  He even calls them that in the bloody film.  Yet everyone seemed to go in expecting something, what, more complex?

I'm on the defensive again.  But honestly, how can you not love a film which essentially has Idris Alba doing Luther but in command of giant robots?  Has Ron Perlman doing that?  Has Burn Gorman of all people recreating Lee Evans's performance in Doctor Who's Planet of the Dead in a film which essentially recreates the plot of Doctor Who's Planet of the Dead?  Yes, it's stupid, yes, as the Cinema Sins video notices the whole thing could have been resolved without the need for the Mecha in the first place but damn if the flashback dream sequence doesn't redeem everything.

Like this week's trailer choice, The Burning Plain's a bit of a monster to write about in terms of spoilers.  How much to reveal?  How much is too much?  Have you heard of it?  I hadn't until I realised it was in Jennifer Lawrence's back catalogue and she's in there with Kim Basinger and Charlize Theron playing, erm, roles.  It tells the story of some people and there are some things which happen because of a burning.  On a plain.  The title has a number of meanings.  Is that too much?  No I think that's enough.  Don't look at the Imdb or the Wikipedia whatever you do.

All of this is because the film's main power is due its flashback structure which plays on how much knowledge we have of the characters and how well we pick up clues to locales and action in realising how they're connected to one another and where they all fit together within a definite timeline, sometimes deliberately misleading us.  It's written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu's collaborator Guillermo Arriaga which explains its spiritual similarities to 21 Grams, Amores Perros and even Babel which also work best when the viewer having as little knowledge as possible beforehand.

Lawrence is arguably as compelling here as she is later in Winter's Bone but it didn't make her a "star" yet presumably because the film as a whole wasn't well received.  Rotten Tomatoes shows an amazingly harsh 35% with spoilery reviews from critics who to a person give away one of the films central mysteries and entirely dislike the puzzle structure because it appears to make them think too much.  Even Ebert, bless him, missed the point, which I won't reveal now.  Maybe some other time.  But needless to say of the slim pickings this week, this is the one I'm recommending.

Having had to watch Traffic multiple occasions for my MA Screen Studies dissertation, the prime example of hyperlink cinema that it is, it's near impossible to enjoy it as a simple piece of entertainment now, though on this occasion, as part of watching all of Stephen Soderbergh's films in order, I did notice that the patter between Luis Guzmán & Don Cheadle's cops clearly glances back towards Out of Sight, Catherine Zeta-Jones is pretty much playing a middle-class Erin Brockovich and the Dawson's Creek junkies material is even less convincing now.

The Star Wars Canon Explodes. Again.

Film Yes, alright James, it's "canonical". But I couldn't think of another post title. A couple of days ago, someone tweeted Del Ray Books, the US publishers of the Star Wars novels to check:

@kyle_newman @HolocronKeeper The novelizations of the seven films--including The Clone Wars--are canon.
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) April 30, 2014

Which is fine. Makes sense. Except until, as theforce.net and its commenters notice there's stuff in those novels like Owen Lars and Obi-Wan being brothers which are flat out contradicted internally within the books, plus there's a bunch of stuff which refers to the EU which has just been tossed into the Sarlacc Pit. The beleaguered social media attendant, when faced with this logic banthadepositstorm ended up issuing this clarification:

To clarify, movie novelizations are canon where they align with what is seen on screen in the 6 films and the Clone Wars animated movie.
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) April 30, 2014

In other words, no, no the novelisations aren't canonical unless you draw a line through anything which isn't actually in the films. Um.

To be fair to @DelRayStarWars, they're not entirely incognizant of the irony inherent in their job. Example:

@swarm87 @theforcenet We'd prefer instead to say that Chewbacca is officially alive. We at Del Rey like to skew positive.
— StarWarsBooks (@DelReyStarWars) April 30, 2014

Bless.

"The real winner is the pie."

TV Sometimes watching a main news programme on any of the channels, for all the dayglo sets and sunny dispositions of the presenters can be a depressing shame. The BBC utilises The One Show as a kind of silo for the stories which they don't deem cutting edge enough for the 6 or 10 o'clock, but there's a general lack of balance and a sense that unless someone's died, seriously injured or a politician it's not news.

Ironically BFBS News, currently on the Information TV channel on satellite offers a counter approach. While it's true it offers its fair share of what you'd expect, there's also a useful genre of sunnier stories, in which service personnel are seen doing good turns or with good things happening to them.

Presented generally by Kate Gerbeau (formerly of Five News and Watchdog and formerly Kate Sanderson until she married the man synonymous with the Millenium Dome), there's just a greater sense of offer the whole human experience.  It's very rare that the kinds of things which do balance the main news like arts and culture updates are pushed out of the edges as they often seem to in the mainstream.

Here's a link to a classic piece of BFBS whimsey from last night. It's about the Great British Pie Awards, an event with the 6 or 10 or national BBC News in general would never cover and worth watching at least for the resident expert whose intense interest in both the competition and pies makes it impossible for you not go want to go out and buy once straight away. As he says, "The real winner is the pie."

The whole programme is available to stream here as are all of BFBS's programmes.

Painshill Suffra.

Film To local news and a report that Painshill Park in Surrey is being utilised as a setting on Suffragette:

"Mike Gove, chief executive officer of Painshill Park, said: “We were delighted to chosen as one of the settings for the filming of the Suffragette movie. With 158 acres of diverse landscape garden, Painshill is a fantastic film location which can be used for both modern and period productions.”

It's worth clicking this for the final paragraph which makes the thing sound like a Bourne film.

The Feeling Listless Soundtrack 1.0: Just Like Fred Astaire.

Written by James
[from: 'Millionaires', Mercury, 1999]

Music  He sweated everywhere. Jeans, T-shirt, Jacket all wet with the salty liquid, soggy with no clear way of drying himself out in this atmosphere, humid and steamy. The bench at the edge of the makeshift dance floor was low and uncomfortable. His knees were in front him, higher than his waist, his hands resting on them, his feet tapping in time with the drum-ridden rubbish that was being played, rubbish which had been in the music chart at sometime. Although not a drink had passed his lips all night, he couldn't think straight. He was tired, excited and jealous all at the same time.

Next to him, a bespeckled man glasses was comparing tongue length with a half- burned blonde. His eyes were close, as though he didn't want to realise that she was only kissing him between sips of lager and puffs of a half burnt cigarette, both of which she held with the hand that wasn't making the lonely dance under the T-Shirt of her 'stand' for the evening. It was a compelling sight. The other side, a woman a few years older than him, in a large, floppy maroon hat, seemed as bored as he was as she glanced at her watch. It was close to midnight. This was her celebration after graduation, but the friend she had come with had disappeared into the crowd with an ex- boyfriend. He thought better of striking up a conversation - the idea of screaming some half-hearted questions about courses over the loudspeaker which hovered above them, wasn't very appealing. He continued to sit and sweat.

Cigarette smoke wafted through the air, mixing with the fibres of his clothing. He thought of the launderette visit which would follow on the Monday, and the owner, who sat strangely, in the shadows, making dribbling noises occasionally. Unknown to him, the graduate had also been there once and a faulty machine had eaten her favourite leggings. Which why she was wearing odd ones tonight - pink and black, green and yellow, they clashed desperately, but worked - somehow.

She got up and disappeared into the dancing mass, as did the tonsil twins, still joined at the mouth. He waited hopefully for some Rock. He could Mosh very well, but anything would be better than this hell on vinyl which was making his heart beat irregularly. He crossed his legs, closed his eyes and placed his head on the wall of the stage. He was going to ride this out.

When he opened them, time seemed to have stopped, all movement being held stationary, apart from one thing. Just in front, glazed in blue light, danced an apparition. Her body seemed to become the source of the music, not just ebbing and flowing with it. Nothing about her was that different from her fellow dancers. She was quite short - shoulder length brown hair. A stripy-blue tank top extenuated a ... generous figure. Though he was all too aware of her, she was only aware of the music - her feet sliding her across the dance floor, until the world she lived in eclipsed a party light.

It felt uncomfortable and excited. He knew he was staring, but his eyes would not leave her. What was she thinking? What memories were hidden under the hair which was hovering her hair and rapidly covering her whole face. He ran his fingers through his hair and she repeated the action, the strands disappearing behind her shoulders.

The drums ended, the synthesizers died. Time began again. The small pocket of reality she occupied that he had invaded disappeared. She smiled at some at some friends at the other side of the hall and disappeared into the crowd. He smiled broadly and stood up to rejoin his friends, who were crashing into each other drunkenly on the other side of the hall. He tried to join in, but it was only half-heartedly. The reality he had just experienced, which he had not asked for was infinitely better than the reality had chosen [Originally written over a decade ago].

[Commentary: The "gift" which keeps on "giving". For some unaccountable reason this is now the fourth occasion this has been posted on the internet, once on the website which came before this one, then in 2003 when I was desperate for something to publish one night then again during Review 2006 as part of an answer about my sexuality.  I'm not sure there's much else to say about it other than that the memory is still vivid, or at least the perfect version of it which is reflected above.  The piece was originally written in the late 90s too.  Some of the punctuation is horrendous.]