On Pitch Perfect 2.

Film Last night after watching Pitch Perfect 2 and tweeting that I'd watched Pitch Perfect 2, a friend asked if I'd posted a review anywhere because she wanted to know what I thought and having yet not had the time but not wanting to disappoint her, I spent the next half hour having an opinion. Given that it's a good four or five paragraphs of words and sentences, it seems a waste not to put it here in some form and so here it is, my insta-reaction to Pitch Perfect 2, cleaned up somewhat for grammar and sense. It's a bit rough, and the Sixth Doctor wouldn't like the number of times the word 'I' is used. It's also full of spoilers for this and Rocky so don't venture below if you haven't seen either films yet. If you haven't seen the film yet, I'd recommend it. There aren't many female led films of this kind and there are moments of pure joy amid the obvious cash grab of making a sequel to a film which was already perfectly fine.

Anyway:

On Pitch Perfect 2: I enjoyed it. I love musicals anyway and will tolerate all kinds of shenanigans in relation to weak storylines and gaps in logic if the songs and dance numbers are good enough which they are here despite the contemporary propensity for shots lasting nano-seconds so that its nearly impossible to take in what are clearly highly choreographed and highly rehearsal sequences. I even cried at the end when the legacy of the Bellas appeared on stage even though it defies all logic that they’d all pitch up in Stockholm and also be the finale if the German group were supposed to be the returning champions.

I tend to prefer films with female protagonists, especially if they’re about friendships (cf, Frozen). At a certain point I grew tired of films by men about men doing men things. This was directed by Elizabeth Banks and although the credits indicate a fair amount of men in the crew everything about the music was also female led. Plus the male characters, despite the odd moment of agency, are very much secondary characters and every shift in a relationship in a scene is presented from the female POV and there's no desperation to shoe-horn in a male figure designed to relax why-exes. These are humans and that's quite enough.

There are plenty of moments of pure cinematic joy, like the slow motion shots of the Bellas in the water park and the routines of Das Sound Machine with their wall of verbal sound and extraordinary dexterity (which actually makes the Bellas's win at the end somewhat ludicrous.  I was half expecting the Rocky approach especially since the film also ditches the sports-films structure of the first.  Some of the running jokes work really well, like Kendrick's inability to say horrible things to the lead singer of this rival band played by Birgitte Hjort Sørensen.  It's also clever to have Hailee Steinfeld's character effectively filling in Kendrick's role from the first film and making her distinctive enough that it doesn't feel like a retread.

Nevertheless half way through I realised it doesn't quite cure its unexpected sequelitis in that the first film was a pretty complete story in and of itself and with no real narrative to speak of going forward doesn't quote manage to find its characters something convincing to do or a decent enough challenge. Most unplanned follow-ups have to deal with this if the source material isn't already inherently serialised and it's rare that they manage to produce something cohesive especially if it doesn't have a specific lead character. City Slickers 2 definitely can't deal with the fact that the whole first film was about trying to make Billy Crystal's character smile again and has to then create a spurious reason for him to be sad again instead.

PP2 also suffers from the problem of one or two of its actors becoming more famous in the meantime / because of the success of the first film and so Rebel Wilson’s given a romantic subplot bits of which are genuinely funny (the moment with car) but would have worked better, just as it did in the first film as part of the crowd. Kendrick’s story feels entirely “manufactured” and in parts feels like it was written in such a way as to deal with her schedule clashing with a different production rather than the needs of the story. In a couple of her scene it’s almost as though she’s not interacting with the other characters on screen having been shot against a green screen and CSOed in later. I have no idea if this is true, but there are some weird shots at the car show were the lighting on her face doesn’t seem to match and she doesn't touch anyone.

But most "importantly" some of the elements which seemed sweet and campy in the first film have become forced. At times, it’s difficult to know if the off-colour jokes are being pushed for irony or whether they’re actually are the thing you’re apparently supposed to assume are parodying the propensity for that sort of thing. Is it ok to have so many “fat” jokes if they’re about Rebel Wilson and if her character’s name is Fat Amy? Is having a character whose only dialogue is about having a grim South American past ok? Homophobic undertones? The flat out racism and notable sexism of the hosts?  The CinemaSins video above is recommended for its survey of the key issues. It's noticeable that the host Jeremy and his writers have become increasingly intolerant of sexism in films over time and embarrassed of their own early running jokes in that vein.  They really hate this.

I don’t know and I'm not sure the filmmakers do either. I didn’t laugh in these places mainly because I wasn’t sure what I was laughing at. Having the whole story kickstarted by the shame of Fat Amy ripping her leotard in front of the President and the world doesn’t seem in keeping with the first film and a push towards a wider audience. Except it's confusing because the film was notably popular with and made for a predominantly female audience and did huge business, so either I'm not in on the irony, or understand the irony and it's just not my sort of humour or that it's just simply problematic and everyone should take a long hard luck at themselves.  I tend to have similar issues with Seth MacFarlane films, especially when he's making rape jokes.

I see that they’re making a Pitch Perfect 3 even though again, there is not story especially since they’re core gang is supposed to have graduated by now. My guess is it’ll be about Kendrick trying to get the group to make it in the music business which will probably lead to more cameos and some of the product placement that weighed this down. What I’d like to see is more characterisation of the rest of the group, giving them more to do than be punchline machines although I understand that that to an extent the series is supposed to be about Kendrick’s character. All of which said I like most of the these actors well enough to turn up for it – or at least watch it when it's added to a streaming service.

An A-Z of BBC Three.

TV Just before BBC Three didn't properly leave television, the BBC iPlayer was updated to include an A-Z list of programmes for a given channel.

When the channel stopped linear broadcasting, the link to a live stream was taken down from the BBC Three iPlayer page, a module which also included a link to this handy A-Z list.

But it still exists.  It's here.

This list will become increasingly useful as the programmes broadcast in the channel's final month drop off and we'll be able to see how much new content is actually being added or "broadcast" though it's noticeable already that online only programmes have a far longer window for watching, anything up to a year so it'll always look relatively busy.

"Interesting" sidebar:

For all the other channels, the a-z link is structured thus:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone/a-z

But the BBC has an extra layer:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/bbcthree/a-z

The BBC One link 404s if you add the /tv/ bit back in just as the BBC Three link does if you take it out.  I wonder why.

Jaimie Alexander on Wonder Woman.

Film Brief, and I'm sorry, sponsored interview from Variety in which the perfect choice for Wonder Woman (before she was effectively Remmington Steeled from the role) says as much then precedes to shit talk the potential employer:

"Not at all. I’m excited to see what she’s going to do with the role. I was one of a few people that were an obvious choice for Wonder Woman, but it was never going to happen. I’m contracted with Marvel and it would (be) strange. Sif, in her way, is Marvel’s Wonder Woman. They’re both ethereal and have armor and a sword, and have special abilities; the physicality of the role is very similar. The thing I really enjoy about Marvel is that they start with a character first and all the explosions and costumes, the glitz and glam, are secondary to who the actual character is deep down. That’s something I haven’t really been able to find with DC Comics. I know that’s a bold statement, but it’s been my experience."

Pretty much convinced me that once Thor's done, they should continues that corner of the franchise with a series of Sif films. They wouldn't even need to produce a new poster. This would do it.

Leonard Nimoy in Vincent.

Theatre Added to Amazon Prime yesterday was the extremely rare ($117.99 on dvd from Amazon.com) recording of Nimoy's one man show about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. The style is similar to the various Simon Cowell staged biographies of Shakespeare and Dickens.  Nimoy's approach (inspired by an earlier play) is to assume the character of the painter's brother Theo, explaining the important his sibling's work to an imagined theatre filled with his family. friends and peers, utilising the letters collected by Theo's wife after both of their deaths.

Watching it tonight, I was struck with just how gifted Nimoy was, making his wariness at become synonymous with the Vulcan, as mentioned in this textual explanation for the play, at that time somewhat understandable.  This would have been between the Motion Picture and Khan, when having reluctantly returned to the role having refused initially when Trek was going to revive as a television series, he obviously saw the potential for typecasting to continue.  Though a glance at the imdb indicates on screen at least he didn't play many more characters than Spock in this period.

If you don't have Prime you can hire the stream for £3.99 (£1.99 on YouTube) and it's definitely worth it even if you're just interested in the history of arts television.  As well as a recording of the stage production, Nimoy appears as himself inside his dressing room apparently before and after the performance to provide further exposition on Vincent and Theo of the kind which which wouldn't have worked in the context and footage of the various locations mentioned in the play such as Vincent's cell at the asylum and his final resting place, that appear to be clips from this thing.

Here's Nimoy himself just prior to his death talking about the play on the occasion of a New York revival, with clips of Jean-Michel "additional voices in Frozen" Richaud taking on the role:


Leonard Nimoy on Vincent from Jean-Michel Richaud on Vimeo.

The Doctor's message to South Africa.

TV This absolutely gorgeous trailer was produced for the South African broadcast of Series 7b back in 2013 [via and via]. The costume's an interesting mash-up and which suggests this was filmed quite close to Matt's final moments on the show. As a bonus, here it is again semi-dubbed into Polish and this I'm the Doctor supercut.

BBC Three's New Secret Schedule. An update.

TV Did you set your PVR? Did you? Did you see it?

As you'll remember the other day, I published, straight from the EPG, the fact of BBC Three still being broadcast on television but in the middle of the night with its new schedule.

Well, last night, at 2am, BBC Three effectively did go back air for two hours.

Here's what happened:

"BBC Three has moved online" said an announcer over the new BBC Three ident, "and you can continue to watch all your favourite BBC Three shows at bbc dot co dot uk forward slash BBC Three or on BBC iPlayer."

Then, counter to all that she continued, "Some Girls here through the night and this one contains strong language."

Cue the second episode of Some Girls with a massive translucent dayglo pink DOG in the corner of the screen saying that BBC Three has moved online with the URL below and so it went through the next three episodes.

After the final episode there was a trailer of Life and Death Row which cut to the "We've moved" test card with the yellow huskies or wolves or whatever they are.

So yes, BBC Three continues to broadcast for two hours in the middle of the night perhaps as a contact suggested on the Twitters, so that the channel can retain its EPG slot notably on Sky where there are rules about how much content must be supplied in a day.

Sidebar.  Although eps 2-4 of Some Girls were broadcast last night, they're still only available for six days on the iPlayer not the usual post-broadcast month.

I wonder how long this will carry on for and how far into the archive they'll plunge.

Spooks: Code 9?  Please?

Romola On Directing.

Film Future Doctor, Romola Garai is interviewed on the above (two year old) podcast about directing her first short film and her favourite directors.

She says lots of nice things about Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady which puts that on the list.

Oh and spends two minutes talking about my favourite, favourite film When Harry Met Sally. Calls it a masterpiece.  Squee etc.

Also turns out I've been mispronouncing Romola's surname for years. I've been saying it to rhyme with aye-aye, but as she illustrates it supposed to rhyme with Gary. Which obviously makes more sense.

BBC Three's New Secret Schedule.

TV BBC Three isn't closing.  Sort of.  Well of course sort of. It's going online.

Except, as mentioned at a516Digital, EPGs show that Freeview broadcasts of actual programmes are continuing between 2am and 4am in the morning from tomorrow night, my guess is because of an iPlayer requirements in relation the BBC Trust, the televisual equivalent of parliamentary trains or ghost trains. Who fans will remember this sort of thing from when podcast commentaries for new were broadcast on BBC7 also in the middle of the night (could also be a Sky EPG thing).

And so, for fun, here's BBC Three's secret schedule for the coming weeks.

Wednesday 17th February

2:00am Some Girls
2:30am Some Girls
3:00am Some Girls
3:30am Some Girls

Thursday 18th February

2:00am Some Girls
2:30am Josh
3:00am Josh
3:30am Josh

Friday 19th February

2:00am Josh
2:30am Josh
3:00am Uncle
3:30am Uncle

Saturday 20th February

2:00am Russell Howard
2:30am Uncle
3:00am Uncle
3:30am Uncle

Sunday 21st February

2:00am Don't Tell The Bride
3:00am Don't Tell The Bride

Monday 22nd February

2:00am Russell Howard
2:30am Russell Howard
3:00am Don't Tell The Bride

The line is drawn there for now. Set your PVRs etc. Be interesting to see if these have all the BBC Three idents, announcers and bells and whistles or of they're simply going to be programmes.

Updated 17/2/2016:  I've posted an update on this.

My Favourite Film of 1959.

Film Let's talk briefly about bad films.

The first time I read about Plan 9 From Outer Space was in The Golden Turkey Awards, Harry and Michael Medved's 1980 humour book which listed what they judged to be the worst films of all time across a range of categories, suggesting nominees and a winner. Most Embarrassing Movie Debut (Paul Newman in The Silver Chalice), Most Ridiculous Movie Monster (Ro-Man from Robot Monster), Worst Performance by a Popular Singer (Tony Bennett in The Oscar) and Worst Title (Rat Pfink a Boo Boo). The decision Ed Wood's film was a hold over from their early tomb, sorry tome, The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Both books were key parts of my early film education.

Except outside of their snark, there's an argument that Plan 9 From Outer Space isn't that bad in as much as at least it's entertaining. For all the cheap special effects, amateurish acting and applauling scripting, there are few lulls in its near eighty minutes even in the section in which the elderly Bela Lugosi has literally wandered in from another film (Wood utilised footage shot with the actor before he died and repurposed them in the later film). Having now seen a fair few B-pictures from the period with their poe-faced acting and clanky plotting not to mention equally amateurish special effects, Plan 9 at least has some atmosphere.

Which is sort of the problem. There's rather a lot of films with their one-star reviews and "worst films of all time" labels which objectively aren't. Scroll through Netflix and you'll find a stream of astonishingly average horror films with monosyllabic titles which fail at the basic level of actually being scary and so are pretty unwatchable on that level, and are bad. But none of them are really the worst because the people behind them aren't usually trying too hard. They have a script which has been good enough to pick up some financing and they've done just enough to get a return on their investment. The Cannon approach essentially.

It's important to add in here that I also don't tend include the comedies of Adam Sandler and his pals, Eddie Murphy, the Transformers films or any of that Kermodian rantable shit. Again, these things are awful, unwatchable tripe, but again the filmmakers have an audience and segmentation they wish to entertain and although there's always the argument that a lot of people might turn out for a film but not enjoy it (and yes, I've seen all of those Transformers films), and they are bad, they're not bad, bad. Artistically they achieve whatever it is the filmmakers have set out to accomplish even if the bar is lower than the lowest thing that's low and lower than that.

No, my argument is that for a film to be "bad" as in "the worst film of all time" it has to have been conceived with a certain level of hubris at some level (probably the studio) (most often this happens when there's been some studio interference) either because it was produced by someone who has otherwise turned out some good work or because the filmmakers genuinely believe they are producing a world turning piece of art but have failed to notice the results are laughable. Quite often these things actually get distribution. Some of them have appeared on over a thousand screens in the US.

Here then is short list of bad films released in my lifetime and that I haven't been able to blot out of my memory:

Love Actually
Fan4stic
Bee Season
August Rush
The Juror
Man of Steel
Film Socialism
Hector and His Search For Happiness
The Women
Cassandra's Dream
Angel (Ozon)

That's eleven.

Some of those are pretty obvious and I there's only the odd item which people would argue against.  A few more could have been added thanks to the Simon Pegg smugness scale in which the quality of a film tends to dip considerably depending how smug his character is, and although it was tempting to put How To Lose Friends and Alienate People instead, he's supposed to be a hate figure in that whereas we're very much supposed to like Hector even though he's a cretin.

All of these films are creative failures and near impossible to watch.  Bee Season has whole sections in which Richard Gere lectures people about Buddhism while Juliet Binoche plays a kleptomaniac.  The Women remakes one of old Hollywood's cleverest, funniest greats with some of our best contemporary actresses but has them play vapid, idiotic versions of themselves.  The Juror has one of the oddest final acts of any legal drama ever.

Somehow, for some reason, I watched these all the way through.  Partly it was an obligation, as part of a watching list or some such and sometimes as is the case with the utterly bizarre August Rush, about a Violin prodigy called August Rush, you have too keep watching because you have no idea where the story is going to end up because the script seems like it's been thrown in the air and filmed and edited in the order it fell to the floor.

But what do I know?  There are people who adore Love Actually.  There are spirited defenses of Fan4stic on Amazon.  New Yorker critic Richard Brody called Cassandra's Dream one of the best films of the 2000s.  Ozon clearly conceived Angel to be purposefully kitsch as a pastiche of particular type of film making.  Film Socialisme has won many awards.  I happen to think these films are bad, but some people clearly enjoyed them.  It's confusing.

Ride Through The Night.

Theatre Advertising rules were recently changed in the UK so that critic quotes on posters had to reflect exactly what was originally written. In some cases, PR firms have responded by replacing well known wordsmiths with members of the social media class. Well. This New Yorker article about sleeping on subways includes a different, rather novel approach:

"A musical comedy called, simply “Subways Are for Sleeping”—one with impeccable pedigree, book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, music by Jule Styne, and starring Carol Lawrence—débuted on Broadway in 1961. (You can listen to the romantic song “Ride Through The Night.” above) The concept was that well-dressed homeless people, a self-chosen underground sect, secretly lived and loved on the subways. The show got so-so notices, and then produced one of the most notorious stunts in theatre history, when the incorrigible producer David Merrick placed an ad with quotes from all the leading newspaper critics of the day—it was a day when there were many—praising the show only for the world to discover that these were not the actual critics but fellow-New Yorkers with the same names: a sort of straphangers’ revolt against the professional reviewers. (Someone at Encores should revive the show for this New York moment. The score sounds terrific.)"

Lucie Miller returns!

Audio Big Finish's big announcement at Gallifrey One this year is the return of Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller for a Short Trip reading!

There's a huge piece about it including spoilery podcast on the website already.

Good lord this is exciting, especially since by the sounds of it, writer Alice Cavender has chosen a first person approach which means Lucie lives, at least for the purposes of this "missing" adventure, past Doctor story or whatever you tend to call these things.

Of course ideally we'd have her back for some full cast audios but unlike other incarnations, Big Finish is understandably less interested in jumping around inside the Eighth Doctor's chronology preferring to move forward. Or so I thought. Take it away Nicholas:

"It’s great to have her returning to Big Finish, and, who knows, perhaps these great Short Trips readings will lead to Lucie making a full-cast return to us one day. There are, after all, many opportunities during her long story with the Eighth Doctor that give us a chance to revisit her era and insert new adventures. But I can confirm there are definitely no plans to reverse her fate in To The Death.'"

So that's already a done deal then isn't it?  I can't imagine he'd mention it otherwise.  So another boxed set coming Nick or individual releases?  Same format as before?

Timmy Mallett explains Apartheid.

Politics The concept seems like it's going to be a weapons grade WTF installation, but somewhere in here what we find is a cross between a Comic Relief campaign film and the BBC Three approach to explaining a complex issue. Really interesting piece of television.

How Time Travel Works in the Star Trek Universe.

TV More specifically what seems like an excellent survey from Ars Technica of the mechanics of the Star Trek's time travel episodes during which it becomes apparent that like all shared franchise universes there's rarely any particularly consistent decisions about such but then heads of into some real science which suggests ... oh just read the thing.  This is from earlier to shield you from spoiling the ensuing engrossing text:

"... the TNG episode “Tapestry” has both a consistent effect and a changing timeline. Q gives Picard the chance to go back to his youth and make better choices. Once Picard realizes his error (getting into the fight with the Nausicaan and getting stabbed in the heart was somehow the best outcome for him), he’s given the opportunity to restore his original choices. This time, as he’s stabbed through the heart, he laughs. Interestingly, it had been mentioned in a previous episode, “Samaritan Snare,” that he had laughed when stabbed—indicating that his experience in the past had always been a part of Picard’s history."

Amazon Prime Studio Search.

Film If you have Amazon Prime Video thingy, one of the slight annoyances is that you can't search for films via studio. Or so I thought.

Just typed StudioCanal into the search box at the top and sure enough here's everything on there from StudioCanal.

This seems to work for any studio. Here's Fox Searchlight. 20th Century Fox. Universal. Warners. Um, Film Chest. Content Film.

Why is this useful? Well, the licensing agreement with StudioCanal in particular means that there's plenty of European, notably French films which haven't had a theatrical release in the UK on the list featuring directors and stars which have had hits on our art house circuit.

But this is the more mainstream, genre fare which doesn't tend to be released here because it's less marketable than similar US material which won't be subtitled. The comedy trailered above starring Fanny Ardant for example has only otherwise been seen in France, Portugal, Greece and Hungary.

Failure to 2001.

Music Try to keep with it [via].

"We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us."

Film Now that The Hobbit films have wrapped up, last month I decided it would be a good idea to slip straight into The Lord of the Rings trilogy in their extended edition. Not having my dvd copies to hand I thought I'd buy them on blu-ray instead.

There appeared to be two options.

The boxed set, which is the extended trilogy on blu-ray, but also the special features from the dvd version on repressings of the original dvds which I already own from buying the films ten years ago and nothing new. For £120.

Or the single disc releases and now here's the rub.

Checking Amazon I saw they had Fellowship and Return of the King for £3.30 and about £5 respectively but not The Two Towers. The Two Towers is listed as unavailable on Amazon.

Undaunted I bought the other two anyway on the assumption I might able to find the other in a shop.

Oh.

I could not find the other in a shop. Tried HMV. Tried That's Entertainment. Tried Fopp.

Fopp finally informed me that the disc was deleted two years ago, a fact which they seemed somewhat annoyed about because they had dozens of copies of the other two films which were practically unshiftable.

I've emailed the WB's publicity to ask them about this.  We'll see.  They tend to ignore my emails.

Meanwhile, there are second hand copies available.  Here's one at CEX which looks like it's from the boxed set.  Plus I'll be able to rent a stream if I'm really desperate.

But I think I'm going to fight for one which matches.  Precious.

#xwatch

Film With a couple of X-Men related films in release this year I've decided to rewatch the previous releases in the only potentially sane way which is Wolverine consciousness order as explained in this earlier post.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men
X-Men 2
X-Men 3 (or whatever it's called in your end of the world)
The Wolverine
X-Men: Days of Future Past

As I said at the time, this leaves out X-Men: First Class and which I'd decided to tuck in after Origins.

Having entirely forgotten about the Xavier cameo and the business with Emma Frost in Origins and that it's set in the 70s, I really should have begun with First Class.

Except of course that this means that the cliffhangers from the end of that film don't get resolved until Days of Future Past. Except that you can't watch that before X-Men because it's both prequel, sequel and wipes out that continuity anyway and also reconfigures some of the continuity from the earlier X-Men films itself anyway.

So the ideal place for First Class is probably between The Wolverine and DoFP.

Except, when exactly are the younger Wolverine sections supposed to be set in relation to the continuity in Origins?

This does offer a decent chronological attempt to deal with the timelines, although its deliberately short on detail.  Essentially its meant to suggest that the Wolverine in DoFP has just left Stryker's team and is presumably on the run.  Except Stryker's now being played by a much younger actor which is probably why in the character's biog the two events are switched around.

In other words, even though the Singer prequels have wiped the slate clean in terms of building the universe, thanks to Origins the whole business of watching the damn things in any kind of sensible order is still fucked.

Oh yes, I know, you could watch them in release order but with Origins released between X3 and The Wolverine, you're on a hiding to nothing.

In the end I've decided to watch First Class before DofP because ... shrugs.

"this Faustian pact"

TV As the fog clears, I'm catching up with this and that and some of the that is this excellent piece from James Cooray Smith in the New Statesman about how Sky has to some extent ruined UK tv, hiding the best shows in the world in what amounts to the televisual equivalent of the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.

When Sky’s deal for American Movie Classics' Mad Men kicked in between series, the programme lost three quarters of its UK audience as it switched from BBC Four to Sky Atlantic. By season six, Mad Men was pulling in 58,000 viewers. Those are the numbers you’d expect for a channel rotating listlessly through music videos in the afternoon.

It was later estimated that, given the high cost of acquiring Mad Men versus the number of people watching it, each viewer was costing Sky around £5 an episode.

He'll be unpleased to know that I recently succumbed and joined NowTV so I could finally catch up with some of these shows (Elementary) and watch others during broadcast (Agent Carter, Supergirl) having had to deal for years with the wait for a blu-ray release and then Lovefilm-By-Post to send them to me.

But you can imagine the moral quandary inherent what with my anti-Murdoch boycott.  My key rationalisations for this Faustian pact is that I'm only spending birthday and Christmas money and buying NowTV boxes when they're discounted and utilising the vouchers which takes the cost of the service down to half price.  Yes, I know.  He gets you in the end.

Production Design In Formation.

Music Architecture and interior design blog Curbed has an investigation into the production design on the Beyonce video. Look away now if you don't want to have your illusions shattered:

"According to Tobman, who has worked with Beyoncé before, the challenge was to find a building in Los Angeles with a porch that resembled those found in New Orleans. Nothing like that appeared to exist, so the crew used the Fenyes Mansion, which houses the Pasadena Museum of History, and converted it into a Southern Gothic plantation. The property was an early site of film production in the region, first used by D.W. Griffith in 1912 for a film called When Kings Were the Law, later retitled The Necklace."

My Favourite Film of 1960.

Film As we discussed recently, having access to three different streaming services and my own collection means I can't justify also receiving dvds from Lovefilm-by-post and so once they increase the monthly subscription price I'll be dropping it.

This is a big moment for me.

As this blog reminds me, I originally signed up for ScreenSelect on 29th February 2002.

My first, first, rental by post was a freebie of Le Regle Du Jour from The Guardian's dvd rental service.  Then, I'm now reminded by the voluminous blog post from the time, you paid for each rental separately, £3.75 and it took three days to arrive in a plastic snap case which had to be posted back to them afterwards.  The idea was to offer an alternative to the more mainstream fare at Blockbuster but now looks unsustainably expensive.  The old landing page indicates a subscription service was also offered, two at a time for £13.95.

Anyway, it was enough to indicate the benefits of not having to get a bus to the video shop and back and having access to a massive catalogue and I've used a dvd-by-post service continuously since, watching at least two to four dvds sent to me every week, a lifeline before broadband to a vast range of cinema.

In that original post, I listed the first fifty films I added to the service

A Bout De Souffle, Bande A Part, Le Mepris, Jules Et Jim, 400 Blows, Punch-Drunk Love, Down With Love, Great Expectations, Seabiscuit, Les Enfants Du Paradis, Three Colours Blue, Three Colours White, Three Colours Red, Whalerider, Dirty Pretty Things, La Jetee / Sans Soleil, Cinema 16, Norah Jones: New Orleans, The Hours, American Pie: The Wedding, Chain Reaction, The Mummy Returns, City Of God, Hulk, Malena, Irreversible, The Conversation, Arsenic And Old Lace, The Third Man, Blue Crush, Phone Booth, The China Syndrome, Wrong Turn, Two Weeks Notice, Sheryl Crow... The Videos, Welcome To Collinwood, The Thin Red Line, Perfect Crimes, Buena Vista Social Club, Wild Strawberries, Last Party 2000, 8 Women, U-Turn, Serpico, The Gingerbread Man, McCabe And Mrs Miller and Barry Lyndon

It's quite a mixture and indeed there's a couple I'd forgotten I'd watched this early despite having carried out a boring diary project that year in which I kept a check on when and how I watched everything, a diligent process which often took hours of wracking my brain, information which is now recorded by streaming services as a matter of course.

My guess is I glanced through that month's Empire Magazine or some such. It's certainly the case that this will be the first time I've seen all of these films, yes, even The Third Man and the Three Colours Trilogy even at the age of thirty. Many of them went on to become favourite films, especially amongst the French New Wave.

In subsequent weeks I kept a record of my interaction with the service.

Here's my excitement at receiving the first three discs, The Gingerbread Man, Chain Reaction and Perfect Crimes (which was an anthology series which included a half hour short directed by Stephen Soderbergh).

My initial review indicated that watched thirteen films in the first sixteen days, probably due to them sending three discs at a time and being capable of sitting through three things in the evening. I've also already noticed their old methodology of waiting a day before sending the next dispatch. But I seem very happy with spending £14.99 per month.

After a month, I began to notice the way the algorithm which selected the discs seemed to do so thematically, at that time sending all the Gwyneth Paltrow films. With the inventory now at its third company, this has still been the case. Have a hundred films in the list and it will still send you all French films together.

In May I was moaning about the post which had reduced to one delivery a day and was skipping the weekend altogether. Apparently I'd been getting through six films a week, which is huge.  I suspect it's because ScreenSelect worked on a Saturday and would send a new disc out which would arrive at home on Monday and also the post office would do Sunday morning pick-ups at postboxes.  Now if I post a disc on Friday it won't be turned around until Monday.  Post it on Sunday and it won't get back to them until Tuesday.  Sigh.

By July I'd stopped watching television.  That's pretty much still the case and now I don't even know when or where anything is broadcast.  I completely missed the start of the new series of SHIELD.

Then in November we cancelled Sky.  Ironically, it's now the very fact of receiving Sky through an app on my Roku 3 box which has led to the decision to cancel Lovefilm.

Am I concerned?  Yes.  If enough of us do cancel in March when the price increases, Amazon might decide to cut their losses and close dvds by post which means it won't still be there should I decided to sign back up.

But free time is limited.  The combined catalogues of Lovefilm, Amazon Prime and NowTV amounts to over six thousand items and even taking into account the dross and Disney repetition, that should be more than enough films and television installments to keep me busy especially with their rolling catalogues.  Yes, I'll have to wait three to six months or longer after the shiny disc release to see some films, but at this point I barely pay attention to release dates anyway.

Bye then, ScreenSelect and Lovefilm and err, Lovefilm-by-post.  It's been educational.