"The extra who is playing the florist [in the beginning of the film] is pregnant. We put a little pad in her tummy. And one of the things you will see later in the movie is when Meg is buying flowers at that florist, there’s a little sign in the window that says, “It’s a girl.”"I wonder what the film must look like to later audiences, where the process of email amounts to wading through pages of messages from Amazon trying to sell you things and in my case PR emails for London galleries I'll never visit. The closest we have now are Facebook messages and Twitter DMs, but neither, I suspect, prompt the florid paragraphs which we and the characters in the film used to write.
You've Got Mailed.
Film Vanity Fair has an affectionate oral history of Norah Ephron and You've Got Mail, a film I've grown to love across time. Her attention to detail was extraordinary:
Laugh test.
Film Find above the trailer for director Ann Fletcher's new comedy Hot Pursuit. Don't watch it though - it probably gives away most of the story which is that Reece Witherspoon plays a cop who has to courier mob witness Sofía Vergara across country. In a normal world this would look like average fare but here we are, two female leads in a comedy directed by a woman, admittedly with two male credited screenwriters but nonetheless. For some context, Fletcher's also a prolific choreographer, her past triumphs including working with Joss on Buffy's Once More With Feeling and three episodes of Firefly.
A short note on Dimensions in Time and canonicity.
TV Gen of Deek has an exhaustive blog post about the joint history of Doctor Who and Eastenders. Everything is going swimmingly with an exhaustive description of Dimensions in Time before it has this to say about it:
But then, of course, in Doctor Who there is no such thing as ‘canon’. Unless there is.
"Don’t worry kids though, it’s not canonical."If you say so. I've never thought it wasn't. As the TARDIS Datacore explains, There's a reference to it in the Virgin New Adventure First Frontier which suggests the Doctor was well aware he was walking around in a soap opera. If you accept that the Eastender therein was some kind of Auton simulacrum (explaining Pauline) or some such, it's perfectly fine. Even if you don't, it could be the usual time differential business which leads Doctors to forget some moments when they have met up (ala The Day of the Doctor). Either way, it may be rubbish, but it still counts.
But then, of course, in Doctor Who there is no such thing as ‘canon’. Unless there is.
My Favourite Film of 2009.
Film One of the key locations in Glorious 39 is Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk. Here's a contemporary local news clip which talks about the making of the film. The Glorious 39 piece begins two minutes in (after a piece about another country house which is going through just the sort of stresses that might themselves have appeared in a Stephen Poliakoff tv series):
As the expert in the clip describes, one of the key shots in the film is in the opening sequences as DP Danny Cohen's steadicam swoops through the medieval abbey, its giant incongruous, breathtaking arches standing impenetrably against the newer house. Like that house, Glorious is a newer addition to the landscape of a family which has existed for many year but, which like the abbey, is apparently standing firm but crumbling.
We need to talk about Peter Parker. Probably.
Film Well that's quite a few days. Big Finish licenses from nuWho, Australia confirmed for Eurovision and now Spider-Man to appear in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In terms of personal wish lists at this rate, by the end of the year, Mutya Keisha Siobhan will have an album out by the end of the year and Marco Polo will be released on dvd. The Doctor Who one. Even this list doesn't look so stupid now:
The Beatles are added to Spotify.
Taylor Swift does Glastonbury.
Greens overtake the LibDems in Parliament.
The next series of Doctor Who is better than the last one.
Spider-man joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That's my list of annual predictions from the beginning of this year. The way of the wind and it is blowing the least likely item's probably Doctor Who being any good this year. Former festivalphobe Swift's playing the Big Weekend. That has to be a prelude to something.
Either way yes, hello Spidey and welcome to the same filmic reality as Groot, Trevor Slattery and Fitz/Simmons.
There's loads of speculation across the echo chamber of the many news websites with advertisers and an SEO commitment but we don't really know a lot yet. We know that he'll appear in an already announced film first before starring in his own property in mid-2017 pushing back all the other films already announced that aren't The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I'm going to be in my mid-forties before this release schedule ends now. Let's not think about that.
But other than that. Shrugs. Not a sausage. Here's what I think:
For all my bitch and moaning about how perfect he is, Andrew Garfield will not be retained. My taste would be for the earlier Sony films to be co-opted into the MCU for all their creative problems, but it looks like that story won't be completed. Felicity Jones will not be Black Cat now. Unless she is. But imagine how he feels right now. This guy. The guy who turned up at Comic-Con and did this:
Not that you couldn't retain Andrew Garfield. You could approach the next one as a semi-continuation, taking the imaginative leap that those events happened just in slightly different way, ala The Incredible Hulk and somewhat Superman Returns. Or if they really wanted to spend the money, producing special new version of the Sony movies with more MCU content shoehorned in. Or just keep him, whatever.
Ah fuck it. Andrew Garfield and everything else is gone. They're burning it all down. Shame.
But who for Parker now? An unknown presumably though that's not always the approach in the MCU. Eddie Redmayne's not a stupid idea, I suppose, but they may want to cast an American. Zac Efron? (I'm really bad at this). Whoever it is, clearly the brilliant thing to do would be not to announce his casting then have that moment in Civil War when Spider-Man removes his mask and that's the moment when we all find out who's playing him.
Is this just Spider-Man or is it the whole thing? Can aspects of his mythology now reintegrate with the MCU? Will we have the Daily Bugle in the Netflix series set in New York? Let's hope so. Would make sense.
Are we going to get another version of the origin story, for the third time in just a decade an a half? Probably not. Unless we do. My guess is that even if its not a backdoor TAS3 somewhat like The Incredible Hulk and somewhat Superman Returns there'll be an expectation that the audience gets it already and the salient points will appear in the credit sequence or flashbacks. Forbes suggest Batman Forever as the template. Let's not get carried away.
For all that, will it even be Peter Parker or will it be Miles Morales? My guess is it'll still be Peter. He's still the brand name most widely associated with the character. Clearly the MCU approach and the more interesting, fresh choice would be Miles but it seems very unlikely. But we also live in the world were a Guardians of the Galaxy film had almost the greatest box office take of all time so, well, shrugs.
For now, let's just all bask in the glory of this old Late Review transcript in which Germaine Greer, Charlie Higson and Michael Gove review the first of the Raimi films. Take it away Govie:
The Beatles are added to Spotify.
Taylor Swift does Glastonbury.
Greens overtake the LibDems in Parliament.
The next series of Doctor Who is better than the last one.
Spider-man joins the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
That's my list of annual predictions from the beginning of this year. The way of the wind and it is blowing the least likely item's probably Doctor Who being any good this year. Former festivalphobe Swift's playing the Big Weekend. That has to be a prelude to something.
Either way yes, hello Spidey and welcome to the same filmic reality as Groot, Trevor Slattery and Fitz/Simmons.
There's loads of speculation across the echo chamber of the many news websites with advertisers and an SEO commitment but we don't really know a lot yet. We know that he'll appear in an already announced film first before starring in his own property in mid-2017 pushing back all the other films already announced that aren't The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I'm going to be in my mid-forties before this release schedule ends now. Let's not think about that.
But other than that. Shrugs. Not a sausage. Here's what I think:
For all my bitch and moaning about how perfect he is, Andrew Garfield will not be retained. My taste would be for the earlier Sony films to be co-opted into the MCU for all their creative problems, but it looks like that story won't be completed. Felicity Jones will not be Black Cat now. Unless she is. But imagine how he feels right now. This guy. The guy who turned up at Comic-Con and did this:
Not that you couldn't retain Andrew Garfield. You could approach the next one as a semi-continuation, taking the imaginative leap that those events happened just in slightly different way, ala The Incredible Hulk and somewhat Superman Returns. Or if they really wanted to spend the money, producing special new version of the Sony movies with more MCU content shoehorned in. Or just keep him, whatever.
Ah fuck it. Andrew Garfield and everything else is gone. They're burning it all down. Shame.
But who for Parker now? An unknown presumably though that's not always the approach in the MCU. Eddie Redmayne's not a stupid idea, I suppose, but they may want to cast an American. Zac Efron? (I'm really bad at this). Whoever it is, clearly the brilliant thing to do would be not to announce his casting then have that moment in Civil War when Spider-Man removes his mask and that's the moment when we all find out who's playing him.
Is this just Spider-Man or is it the whole thing? Can aspects of his mythology now reintegrate with the MCU? Will we have the Daily Bugle in the Netflix series set in New York? Let's hope so. Would make sense.
Are we going to get another version of the origin story, for the third time in just a decade an a half? Probably not. Unless we do. My guess is that even if its not a backdoor TAS3 somewhat like The Incredible Hulk and somewhat Superman Returns there'll be an expectation that the audience gets it already and the salient points will appear in the credit sequence or flashbacks. Forbes suggest Batman Forever as the template. Let's not get carried away.
For all that, will it even be Peter Parker or will it be Miles Morales? My guess is it'll still be Peter. He's still the brand name most widely associated with the character. Clearly the MCU approach and the more interesting, fresh choice would be Miles but it seems very unlikely. But we also live in the world were a Guardians of the Galaxy film had almost the greatest box office take of all time so, well, shrugs.
For now, let's just all bask in the glory of this old Late Review transcript in which Germaine Greer, Charlie Higson and Michael Gove review the first of the Raimi films. Take it away Govie:
It's for teenagers, because it has a genuinely, I believe, sophisticated morale structure than most films aimed at that age group, and without it being explicitly Christian, I do think it has that theme running through it.It's worth reading for Higson's rebuttle. Well played Higson.
When the Green Goblin takes Spider-Man up and shows him New York City and says, "My boy, this could be yours if you join me in this wicked project" is reminiscent of the Bible.
And the final scene is the renunciation scene. It's an affirmation of celibacy and vocation.
Big Unit Finishing News.
Audio Of course the biggest news of the day was Big Finish's announcement that they'd licensed Kate Stewart to appear in a series of UNIT boxed sets with Jemma Redgrave signed to reprise the character, the first time they've specifically been able to make something using material from the new series that wasn't a BBC Audio(Go) commission.
Look at that cover. Look at it.
Some notes:
(1) Pertwee logo.
(2) NuWho Auton design.
(3) Doesn't that look like Captain Jack's jacket?
(4) How will this sound? Like the recreations of 70s Fourth Doctor stories, will these attempt to do the sound of the new series, music and all? How about the tone of the scripts?
(5) Will they refer back to earlier UNIT series? Kate's Dad was a huge figure in the series which ran in the early naughties. You can listen to the prequel for free on Sound Cloud here. When the synopsis talks about her UNIT team, will this be Colonel Emily Chaudhry et al or will they be really daring and Yates back? In the Big Finish continuity he's back in active service. When will it be set? Can Osgood return?
(6) Could this be a prelude to something else? Eccleston stories are clearly out of the question but could David Tennant return? Matt Smith? Cor.
The BAFTAs 2015. Again.
Film For all my bitching and moaning and thinking and praying, with the end of the BAFTAs in actuality and the start of the edited highlights only overlapping by about twenty minutes, I was only spoilt via social media for three categories, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Picture, but I didn't care. Because it was Boyhood, because it was for once the film I wanted to win everything, it just meant I could have a big cheer early in the evening and another one later.
Criticise Stephen Fry all you want but other than Norton I can't think of many other presenters who quite fit. He's generally loved by the people in the hall and while its true we'd love to have someone as edgy as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler presenting doing that sort of material, Mail related fear means the BBC wouldn't dare. Even when Ross presented it briefly, the results were hardly the Comedy Awards. No Garai moments this year either.
No Rock and Roll Fun has a perfect review of the Kasabian incident. These opening musical numbers are becoming increasingly problematic; Bafta lacks a Best Song category but for some reason they give us a track anyway and usually from someone with little or no connection to the film industry and in a ceremony which is already being edited down to fit the timeslot. Surely the time would be best spent giving out an otherwise squeezed award like Best Animation?
There were less of those this year, I think. Best Film Not In The English Language turned up in the main body for the first time in a while, so Mark Kermode wasn't called upon to incongruously hand it out. I was pleased Ida won. I've not seen it but I've otherwise been a fan of Pawel Pawlikowski especially since he was the reporter who was being cued in during the autocue balls up on The Late Show which appeared on the A-Z of TV Hell ("Pawel Pawlikowski reporting... err...")
This was the Tweet of the night:
Having ignored the shorts, my guesses ended up with 8/16 thanks to a late surge in the squeezed categories at the end with all The Grand Budapest Hotel wins (which was my default choice in categories where Boyhood wasn't nominated or I hadn't seen any of the other films). Which is better than usual. About the only category I was cheesed about was Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Jack O'Connell seems like a talented chap but a win by Gugu would have been more symbolic.
Nevertheless, Baftas garlanded Boyhood in all the right ways and that we now live in a world were Patricia Arquette is a BAFTA winner is all to the good. Hers was an attenuated speech about how some careers seem to become golden in retrospect, fitting with the theme of the film which to an extent is all about the careers of the actors across those twelve years, ebbing and flowing in between that other single endeavour.
Then there was Ellar Coltrane's speech. Of all the actors in the piece. he's arguably the one who was most vulnerable since he was the one put in that central position for all those years and in whom the whole project rested. If he had decided not to continue the film would have ended, yet he carried on even when he wasn't happy and if there'd been justice he'd have been nominated in the best actor categories at the major rather than minor awards and won a few of them.
That's that for another year. Will they finally be live next year? Don't know. One approach could be to make sure the show itself ends before the BBC show starts so that everything can effectively reset on the Twitters (as happened last night to a degree when some news feeds effectively pretended they were reporting on the wins during the tv broadcast even though they were technically repeating themselves). We'll see.
Criticise Stephen Fry all you want but other than Norton I can't think of many other presenters who quite fit. He's generally loved by the people in the hall and while its true we'd love to have someone as edgy as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler presenting doing that sort of material, Mail related fear means the BBC wouldn't dare. Even when Ross presented it briefly, the results were hardly the Comedy Awards. No Garai moments this year either.
No Rock and Roll Fun has a perfect review of the Kasabian incident. These opening musical numbers are becoming increasingly problematic; Bafta lacks a Best Song category but for some reason they give us a track anyway and usually from someone with little or no connection to the film industry and in a ceremony which is already being edited down to fit the timeslot. Surely the time would be best spent giving out an otherwise squeezed award like Best Animation?
There were less of those this year, I think. Best Film Not In The English Language turned up in the main body for the first time in a while, so Mark Kermode wasn't called upon to incongruously hand it out. I was pleased Ida won. I've not seen it but I've otherwise been a fan of Pawel Pawlikowski especially since he was the reporter who was being cued in during the autocue balls up on The Late Show which appeared on the A-Z of TV Hell ("Pawel Pawlikowski reporting... err...")
This was the Tweet of the night:
Well..he's done it again!#EddieRedmayne gets #Bafta4BestActor!Who'd av thort eh?1st play with #yourstruly.12yrs on?x pic.twitter.com/WZLV1UrlQF
— Louis Emerick (@thelouisemerick) February 8, 2015
Having ignored the shorts, my guesses ended up with 8/16 thanks to a late surge in the squeezed categories at the end with all The Grand Budapest Hotel wins (which was my default choice in categories where Boyhood wasn't nominated or I hadn't seen any of the other films). Which is better than usual. About the only category I was cheesed about was Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Jack O'Connell seems like a talented chap but a win by Gugu would have been more symbolic.
Nevertheless, Baftas garlanded Boyhood in all the right ways and that we now live in a world were Patricia Arquette is a BAFTA winner is all to the good. Hers was an attenuated speech about how some careers seem to become golden in retrospect, fitting with the theme of the film which to an extent is all about the careers of the actors across those twelve years, ebbing and flowing in between that other single endeavour.
Then there was Ellar Coltrane's speech. Of all the actors in the piece. he's arguably the one who was most vulnerable since he was the one put in that central position for all those years and in whom the whole project rested. If he had decided not to continue the film would have ended, yet he carried on even when he wasn't happy and if there'd been justice he'd have been nominated in the best actor categories at the major rather than minor awards and won a few of them.
That's that for another year. Will they finally be live next year? Don't know. One approach could be to make sure the show itself ends before the BBC show starts so that everything can effectively reset on the Twitters (as happened last night to a degree when some news feeds effectively pretended they were reporting on the wins during the tv broadcast even though they were technically repeating themselves). We'll see.
How I'm coping.
Life A couple of weeks ago I asked a question. The question was about how, now that everything is available (pretty much) how do you cope?
I genuinely needed some advice. I even asked Metafilter too.
The result was a range of replies on Twitter, three whole comments on the post itself (which is some sort of record for this place) and tons of ideas on said community discussion board although in the end (after my clumsy editing of the blog post) they decided I probably need therapy.
After collating all of this, here's what I've done and am doing:
(1) Deleted online backlogs. Pretty much. One afternoon I went through Pocket, read a couple of the longer articles I'd been looking forward to about film and deleted everything else. Same for YouTube playlists. Just about.
(2) Film wise: one of the Ask Metafilter people said quite rightly that the pile of blu-rays I have are bought assets so I should prioritise them. So I am between ...
(3) Watching Lovefilm disc when they come in. Which seems counter intuitive but it gets me out of the "list" culture (Disney in order etc) and also takes the choices away from me to a certain degree.
(4) Box sets: if I've bought them, I should watch them. Still working through Alias. Then Yes, Minister. Then Northern Exposure. But slowly.
(5) Television: only if its something I'm genuinely interested in and make fewer appointments to watch. That's what catch-up is for. But if I miss something it's not the end of the universe. Plus television series, even the quality programmes, are ultimately in the end saying the same thing over and over again.
(5.1) Television documentaries as a format are broken. Too often we'll be forced to sit through hour long documentaries with about half an hour's material, even less, stretched to fill the duration, or even an hour's worth of research pondered through three hours because the structure is dictating rather than the detail of the subject. The problem is you sometimes don't realise that until half an hour in. Don't know what to do about that other than to stick with presenters I like or tested formats.
(6) Reading: books in the house, magazines I've bought (unless spoilers). I've dramatically cut down on the RSS feeds I read. Since I'll never know everything, I'm trying to learn that it's ok not to even try sometimes.
(7) One of the best pieces of advise I had was from the commenter mumoss on here:
"In the end, I've thrown up my hands and given up. Experience all you can, try not to get upset at what you don't. There's nothing you can do about it. Just try and be joyous that we live in a world where this is a problem. I'd rather have this issue than being bored for the rest of my life."
Amen.
The underlying problem is still there. If you're interested in everything, you can lose sight of what you're really interested in, but I'm hoping that will slowly emerge. Again.
I genuinely needed some advice. I even asked Metafilter too.
The result was a range of replies on Twitter, three whole comments on the post itself (which is some sort of record for this place) and tons of ideas on said community discussion board although in the end (after my clumsy editing of the blog post) they decided I probably need therapy.
After collating all of this, here's what I've done and am doing:
(1) Deleted online backlogs. Pretty much. One afternoon I went through Pocket, read a couple of the longer articles I'd been looking forward to about film and deleted everything else. Same for YouTube playlists. Just about.
(2) Film wise: one of the Ask Metafilter people said quite rightly that the pile of blu-rays I have are bought assets so I should prioritise them. So I am between ...
(3) Watching Lovefilm disc when they come in. Which seems counter intuitive but it gets me out of the "list" culture (Disney in order etc) and also takes the choices away from me to a certain degree.
(4) Box sets: if I've bought them, I should watch them. Still working through Alias. Then Yes, Minister. Then Northern Exposure. But slowly.
(5) Television: only if its something I'm genuinely interested in and make fewer appointments to watch. That's what catch-up is for. But if I miss something it's not the end of the universe. Plus television series, even the quality programmes, are ultimately in the end saying the same thing over and over again.
(5.1) Television documentaries as a format are broken. Too often we'll be forced to sit through hour long documentaries with about half an hour's material, even less, stretched to fill the duration, or even an hour's worth of research pondered through three hours because the structure is dictating rather than the detail of the subject. The problem is you sometimes don't realise that until half an hour in. Don't know what to do about that other than to stick with presenters I like or tested formats.
(6) Reading: books in the house, magazines I've bought (unless spoilers). I've dramatically cut down on the RSS feeds I read. Since I'll never know everything, I'm trying to learn that it's ok not to even try sometimes.
(7) One of the best pieces of advise I had was from the commenter mumoss on here:
"In the end, I've thrown up my hands and given up. Experience all you can, try not to get upset at what you don't. There's nothing you can do about it. Just try and be joyous that we live in a world where this is a problem. I'd rather have this issue than being bored for the rest of my life."
Amen.
The underlying problem is still there. If you're interested in everything, you can lose sight of what you're really interested in, but I'm hoping that will slowly emerge. Again.
Editing Selma.
Film The Credits has an interview with Spencer Averick describing the process of editing Selma which has some useful material about how an editors choices influence the director and vis-versa:
And once production is over, how do you tackle all the scenes you’ve now strung together?Auteur theory tends to consider films in relation to the director or producer or even studio in regards to modes of production. Averick has only really worked with Ava DuVernay, but on a wider note, I wonder about the extent to which you can tell whose edited a film through watching, if there are particular editing styles.
Then I get back to LA and I have a week or two to continue editing by myself without Ava, to finish the editor’s cut, trying to keep up. When they shoot three scenes in one day, I’m trying to edit three scenes in one day as well, which is hard to do, so you fall behind. So those couple weeks after you get back is your time to catch up. By no means is the editor’s cut great, but the movie’s at least put together, although it’s long and it’s rough. Then Ava comes in after two weeks, she watches the editor’s cut, then we go from there. Then it was five months for the two of us. We had our producers, Plan B, Oprah, and Paramount in dialogue and giving us feedback as well. It’s a collaborative experience, but mainly it’s Ava and I together."
Soup Safari #16:
Chicken Noodle at the Soul Cafe & Bar.
Lunch. £3.95. Soul cafe & bar, 114 Bold Street, Liverpool, Merseyside L1 4HY. Phone:0151 708 9470. Website.
Gallifrey is Awesome.
Toys A short follow up to an earlier post. Back in April 2014, you might remember I phoned LEGO with a proposal:
"I've just phoned Lego. It was as you might expect an awesome experience. I mostly phoned Lego because I didn't want to have to try and fit the following into the comments box on the website and also to make sure that another person heard and to hear their reaction. Their reaction was that they thought it was a really innovative idea they'd not heard from anyone else. First of all I asked, "Have you heard of the television series Doctor Who?" He said that he had. Well of course he had. It's 2013 not 1994. Anyway, this is what I said next:Well, and I'm sure I had nothing to do with it but nevertheless, as you might have heard today:
"If Lego made Doctor Who Lego, then all Lego becomes Doctor Who Lego."
"BBC Worldwide and LEGO® have announced a deal to produce a range of Doctor Who Lego, based around a proposal made by fan Andrew Clark last year."So all Lego is Doctor Who Lego now and we all win. How this squares with Character's attempt to create a third-party non-compatible version we'll discover if anyone starts lawyering up, but I can't bare the excitement. Unless when it's finally released its poorly designed rubbish in which case we all lose. I have fears that they'll go for some nonsense riff on LEGO Friends because of the gender of the Doctor's usual companions but they wouldn't do that. Would they? Either way here's the announcement video which buries the headline and features an amazing pronunciation of The Avengers.
My Favourite Film of 2010.
Film Inception is one of the few films on this blog to have its own tag. When I saw it at FACT's Picturehouse in Screen One it was at a pretty full screening but with few distractions, I genuinely thought I was witnessing a tipping point where the distinctions between the old forms of "art house" and "Hollywood" had broken down even further, that we'd finally seen Last Year at Marienbad with action sequences.. While there have been examples of films which you can make similar crossover claims, Gravity for one, The Grand Budapest Hotel another, those old form genres and the inherent prejudices from both in audiences and production companies are still being maintained.
The Company of Friends: Benny's Story.
Audio Bless Lance Parkin. The opening narration to Benny's Story pretty much confirms the implication in The Dying Days, a whole twelve years after he wrote it, that the Time Lord and the archaeologist shared a "cup of tea" making her the only companion he's had that sort of relationship with (depending on how you view River Song). But it's not awkward, presumably because they're both adults, though Lisa and Paul make them brilliantly flirty anyway. The Doctor's asexuality across the series now all looks rather strange in retrospect particular the reticence over the Grace kisses, especially since he's clearly been married at least once and Susan has to have come from somewhere (unless looms, I suppose, but still). It's a bit of an orphan - there's no particularly useful place to put it narratively. For added confusion the Doctor references Brotherhood of the Daleks which featured 6th and Charley though he remembers it happening with someone called Mila substituting for the companion he hasn't met yet. As with Mary's Story, the possibility is left hanging at the end for more stories with Eighth and Bernice. Both of them are busy with other narratives at present but on the strength of this some further adventures would be most welcome.
Shada.
Audio shada. Shada. SHADA! For a story which notoriously wasn’t completed on television, there are now a lot of alternative versions. Which is canonical now? All of them? None of them? In the context of this listen, the key moment for me turns out to be when Eighth mentions that he and Chronotis visited the Shelleys and Byron which either means they did after he dropped Mary off home, time’s been rewritten or the Doctor’s misremembering what happened in Mary’s Story, his mind replacing his older self due with the elder Time Lord due to Davros’s meddling as per Terra Firma. Unless I’m misremembering what happens in that story. Also although it was released after Neverland, it’s Lalla Romana’s first meeting with Eighth. I’ve always liked the way in adapting Douglas, Gary made sense of the Doctor returning to Cambridge to deal with unfinished business [my original review from back in 2003 is here and here's me writing about the Gareth Roberts adaptation in 2012].
Saving Mr Sorkin.
Film As expected I sobbed through Saving Mr Banks tonight although I was constantly distracted by the familiarity of one of the themes, an insistent piano rhythm. It's in here from about thirty seconds in.
A whole hour I sat wracking my brain, then I realised:
The Newsroom - Season 2 Title Sequence
I'm afraid you'll have to click that, I can't find an embedible version.
None of this should be too much of a surprise - the soundtrack to Saving Mr Banks and the title music for The Newsroom were both composed by Thomas Newman.
And I'm not the only one to notice.
A whole hour I sat wracking my brain, then I realised:
The Newsroom - Season 2 Title Sequence
I'm afraid you'll have to click that, I can't find an embedible version.
None of this should be too much of a surprise - the soundtrack to Saving Mr Banks and the title music for The Newsroom were both composed by Thomas Newman.
And I'm not the only one to notice.
With Mary Shelley.
Audio Well, then right then, here we go then, after all these it’s time to finally listen to all of the Eighth Doctor’s Big Finish audio stories in order (or as best as I can manage). Even though I hitched on with Storm Warning in 2001 when McGann finally signed with the company, I stepped off again at the end of the first season of the stories broadcast on BBC Radio 7 so like the novels and comics there are tons of new adventures ready to enjoy on top of the revisits. Like the novels, it’s been impossible not to stumble across some of the major events but there’ll hopefully be enough incidental pleasures along with being able to re-evaluate stories which I’ve not heard since their original release. The format for these review posts will be the same as the comics, which as I’ve discovered doesn’t leave much room for opinion over analysis, but we’ll see.
Thanks to Big Finish’s non-linear approach to production we begin with the Mary Shelley stories, developed as a prequel to the original releases building on the initial reference in the original first release Storm Warning as well as veiled material from the Dalek story Terra Firma. The studiousness of these back references mean that it’s not really the ideal stepping on position for new listeners, the franchise’s Byzantine approach to continuity meaning they’d otherwise have to deal with all the mentions of Samson and Gemma Griffin who were introduced as companions that predate Charley in that adventure (to help explain the mention of Sam in Minuet in Hell when the company decided they were creating a separate continuity to the novels before Mary’s Story went out of its way to confirm that yes, actually it is all the same continuity after all).
But in terms of trying to get the Eighth Doctor’s continuity straight, it works wonders. Even though this is supposed to be relatively early in terms of the audio adventures, the figure who appears in these stories is already a matured Time Lord, clear of purpose and psychologically complex with a bit of weariness. You could well imagine that he’s experienced the novels and comics first although its also important to notice that it’s the older version of him who mentions Destrii and Compassion in Mary’s Story leaving enough wiggle room for those who still want to have it that all of this happens in the notorious Greenpeace three months from early on in the novels. This entertaining version mixes everything together and probably would have been a fun way of going about things but I still feel that the different narratives from each company and media should be together.
If that’s the case where is he now? At a certain point he’s left Destrii and he’s travelling alone. Having heard future events already, we can say that once again Gallifrey’s changed, although there’s enough wiggle room in that once comic story too to suggest that it’s all been sorted out again in time for Shada and beyond, notably that Romana’s now the President as established in the Sixth Doctor story The Apocalypse Element (though I’m not sure how she’s back looking like Lalla Ward rather than the third incarnation from the books unless the Doctor did put the planet back together somehow in an earlier version, a bit like a computer returning to an earlier saved backup). None of this really matters I don’t think, though it’s interesting that even the messy version can’t quite square that. James Goss has also confirmed that the Juliet Landau version isn’t Romana III either. See what I mean? Byzantine.
What to make of Mary Shelley? All of the writers have obviously been concerned about simply "creating" Charley 2.0 so that as well as utilizing more archaic language and constant references to her future historic achievements and developing some jeopardy about the implications of her being missing from her own time period and the implications that has especially if she dies in the Doctor's company. One oddness is how little justification is offered either way as to why he would choose to take such an important literary figure on a trip like this with those kinds of risks other than that time hasn't been rewritten that a biography of Mary Shelley can exist in the TARDIS library. Some day perhaps we'll have a story which explores if that library changes whenever the Doctor has an effect on history.
There's also sense of her not really knowing why she's travelling beyond her initial curiosity though as The Silver Turk notices metafictionally we're essentially having a historic figure learning to be a companion with the twin thematic resonance in relation to how that compares to marriage (the Doctor is constantly being compared to Percy Shelley). To that end, she does now and then, as The Silver Turk also predicts falling into a fairly old school companion role of saying Doctor a lot and asking questions. The idea of Shelley keeping a journal (much like Izzy and Charley) does provide some opportunity to reveal her internal thoughts us, not that it provides much warning for the oddness of hearing her tell the Doctor she fancies him in so many words. His reaction's much the same as ours. "Huh? Oh, erm..." In so many words.
The other clear link between these stories is how they're supposed to suggest it's Mary's travels with the Doctor which ultimately influence her literature with lots of little nods here and there ala Timelash and The Shakespeare Code (and it's not often you'll see those two referred to in the same sentence even though they're both doing roughly the same thing). All four stories are to some extent about extending life through artificial means though in none of them is it clear that Mary's immediately thinking of them as literary sources even as she writes in her journal. Julie Cox's powerful performance reveals to us a woman who's already exploding with imagination so there's never a chance of diminishing Mary's later achievement, she's already thinking along these lines.
The Company of Friends: Mary’s Story
The Eighth Doctor finally meets Byron and doesn’t think much of him. Or Percy Shelley who also receives a suitably rough ride. There’s a certain element of justifying and explaining why Mary would join the Doctor on his adventures at the end of the story, but it’s refreshing that what is one of the iconic moments in the Eighth Doctor’s adventures is treated with such little reverence, the historical figures portrayed as such feckless idiots, the alternative never quite sitting well. To a degree it’s a pre-cursor to Night of the Doctor as a celebration of the incarnation, hearing McGann listing most of his multimedia companions, right down to Ssard from the Radio Times strips in a similar way to his dying moments before his regeneration. The writer, Jonathan Morris of course wrote one of the also referenced Trix’s best original appearances in The Tomorrow Windows.
The Silver Turk
Sock-faced Cybermen! As projects go this is pretty niche. Recorded two and half years after Mary’s Story but continuing directly on you might well ask who it’s for other than listeners gasping to hear the McGann in a typical format story longer than fifty minutes. Plus it’s a spiritual sequel to writer Marc Platt’s own Spare Parts and it’s refreshing to have real Mondasian Cybermen who can construct whole sentences at a time when the television series has all but reduced them to barely conscious puppets not unlike the wooden marionettes featured here. The other clear influence is Hammer horror though unlike the Hinchliffe years this has some full on, blood curdling scares of a kind that would cause an automatic 18 rating from the BBFC. Clearly Cardiff’s become slightly more relaxed about such things which is all to the good. Not all merchandise should necessarily be aimed at children surely?
The Witch from the Well
Doctor Who does the Witchfinder General via a Moffat loop and trying desperately not to have too much Python. After a slightly subdued turn last time, McGann is incredibly energised here in that way Big Finish Doctors often are when they’re having a ball with the guest cast (mainly chosen by Barnaby Edwards from his Globe Theatre co-horts) and loving the script (a spectacularly assured piece by occasional writer Rick Briggs). He’s tiggerish, his line readings are just right and seems to remember the attitude of the version of the character who appeared in the earlier plays. In the bonus section he talks at length about how he realised that his Doctor doesn’t have one particular attitude, but that there will always be a sense of cloud, an undercurrent that suggests that there’s something in his past that he can’t quite ever forget.
Army of Death
For a legend like the Doctor to exist, especially in more contemporary instances of the franchise, every now and then you have to tell a story which speaks to the legend which isn't about anything other than fighting monsters, toppling unfair regimes and protecting the innocent. Storming cast includes David Harewood (just before Homeland) and one Mitch Benn who sounds like he's having a ball, bless him. Eighth is in "nostalgic" mood too, randomly referring to the Whomobile and The Deadly Assassin in a way which is not usual for him. With so much happening Mary Shelley's story falls through the cracks a bit, though it's a surprise to see that the partnership isn't definitively concluded at the end. Once again we're left with a gap for our imagination to fill with more adventures (and perhaps also Big Finish with future audio dramas).
Thanks to Big Finish’s non-linear approach to production we begin with the Mary Shelley stories, developed as a prequel to the original releases building on the initial reference in the original first release Storm Warning as well as veiled material from the Dalek story Terra Firma. The studiousness of these back references mean that it’s not really the ideal stepping on position for new listeners, the franchise’s Byzantine approach to continuity meaning they’d otherwise have to deal with all the mentions of Samson and Gemma Griffin who were introduced as companions that predate Charley in that adventure (to help explain the mention of Sam in Minuet in Hell when the company decided they were creating a separate continuity to the novels before Mary’s Story went out of its way to confirm that yes, actually it is all the same continuity after all).
But in terms of trying to get the Eighth Doctor’s continuity straight, it works wonders. Even though this is supposed to be relatively early in terms of the audio adventures, the figure who appears in these stories is already a matured Time Lord, clear of purpose and psychologically complex with a bit of weariness. You could well imagine that he’s experienced the novels and comics first although its also important to notice that it’s the older version of him who mentions Destrii and Compassion in Mary’s Story leaving enough wiggle room for those who still want to have it that all of this happens in the notorious Greenpeace three months from early on in the novels. This entertaining version mixes everything together and probably would have been a fun way of going about things but I still feel that the different narratives from each company and media should be together.
If that’s the case where is he now? At a certain point he’s left Destrii and he’s travelling alone. Having heard future events already, we can say that once again Gallifrey’s changed, although there’s enough wiggle room in that once comic story too to suggest that it’s all been sorted out again in time for Shada and beyond, notably that Romana’s now the President as established in the Sixth Doctor story The Apocalypse Element (though I’m not sure how she’s back looking like Lalla Ward rather than the third incarnation from the books unless the Doctor did put the planet back together somehow in an earlier version, a bit like a computer returning to an earlier saved backup). None of this really matters I don’t think, though it’s interesting that even the messy version can’t quite square that. James Goss has also confirmed that the Juliet Landau version isn’t Romana III either. See what I mean? Byzantine.
What to make of Mary Shelley? All of the writers have obviously been concerned about simply "creating" Charley 2.0 so that as well as utilizing more archaic language and constant references to her future historic achievements and developing some jeopardy about the implications of her being missing from her own time period and the implications that has especially if she dies in the Doctor's company. One oddness is how little justification is offered either way as to why he would choose to take such an important literary figure on a trip like this with those kinds of risks other than that time hasn't been rewritten that a biography of Mary Shelley can exist in the TARDIS library. Some day perhaps we'll have a story which explores if that library changes whenever the Doctor has an effect on history.
There's also sense of her not really knowing why she's travelling beyond her initial curiosity though as The Silver Turk notices metafictionally we're essentially having a historic figure learning to be a companion with the twin thematic resonance in relation to how that compares to marriage (the Doctor is constantly being compared to Percy Shelley). To that end, she does now and then, as The Silver Turk also predicts falling into a fairly old school companion role of saying Doctor a lot and asking questions. The idea of Shelley keeping a journal (much like Izzy and Charley) does provide some opportunity to reveal her internal thoughts us, not that it provides much warning for the oddness of hearing her tell the Doctor she fancies him in so many words. His reaction's much the same as ours. "Huh? Oh, erm..." In so many words.
The other clear link between these stories is how they're supposed to suggest it's Mary's travels with the Doctor which ultimately influence her literature with lots of little nods here and there ala Timelash and The Shakespeare Code (and it's not often you'll see those two referred to in the same sentence even though they're both doing roughly the same thing). All four stories are to some extent about extending life through artificial means though in none of them is it clear that Mary's immediately thinking of them as literary sources even as she writes in her journal. Julie Cox's powerful performance reveals to us a woman who's already exploding with imagination so there's never a chance of diminishing Mary's later achievement, she's already thinking along these lines.
The Company of Friends: Mary’s Story
The Silver Turk
Sock-faced Cybermen! As projects go this is pretty niche. Recorded two and half years after Mary’s Story but continuing directly on you might well ask who it’s for other than listeners gasping to hear the McGann in a typical format story longer than fifty minutes. Plus it’s a spiritual sequel to writer Marc Platt’s own Spare Parts and it’s refreshing to have real Mondasian Cybermen who can construct whole sentences at a time when the television series has all but reduced them to barely conscious puppets not unlike the wooden marionettes featured here. The other clear influence is Hammer horror though unlike the Hinchliffe years this has some full on, blood curdling scares of a kind that would cause an automatic 18 rating from the BBFC. Clearly Cardiff’s become slightly more relaxed about such things which is all to the good. Not all merchandise should necessarily be aimed at children surely?The Witch from the Well
Army of Death
Geoff Boyle on Digital "Film"
Film DoP Geoff Boyle (Wallander, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li) on shooting with digital cameras and how they've replaced celluloid: "People obsess about 'Does it look like film, is it as good as film...' Who gives a shit?" [via]
The Defence of Monaco.
Film Grace of Monaco is in no way the disaster you've been told it is. It's just that it tosses out historical accuracy in favour of pure melodrama, has the aesthetics of a perfume commercial and is attempting to recreate a particular tone of film typified by the late fifties technicolour cinemascope of 20th Century Fox. Brad Stevens offers a lengthier defence at Sight & Sound:
"All the film’s motifs and concerns can be found in its exemplary opening shot, which seems to begin with the camera retreating down a road. This is soon revealed to be an image projected on a screen in a Hollywood studio where Grace Kelly is shooting High Society (1956). As actors and technicians applaud, Grace leaves the set, Dahan’s camera following her from behind. Only after she has entered her dressing room and positioned herself before a mirror do we finally catch a glimpse of Grace’s face, and we see it only via a reflection. Grace’s aristocratic power and control are emphasised by the way she hands some flowers she has been given to an assistant, then begins removing her coat, which is immediately grabbed by another assistant."It's worth noting I really enjoyed both Diana and W.E. for similar reasons.
Creative Commons.
Politics Diamond Geezer visits Parliament. The view from the public galleries:
"I really shouldn't need to tell you all this, because goings on in Parliament are broadcast live on their own dedicated TV channel which you could easily watch, but don't. Instead let me tell you a little more about what the cameras don't see, or at least which the director chooses not to show. MPs are allowed to use smartphones and tablets in the chamber and will often sit there checking the BBC news webpage or tapping furious messages. A more traditional means of communication is also available, with a clerk popping into the chamber on a regular basis to deliver, or to collect, written messages. I noted that anyone who spoke on the official record received a delivery shortly afterwards, and also that speakers generally stayed to listen to the speech immediately after theirs before nodding to the Speaker and exiting the chamber."
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