Bye Bye Lovefilm.

Film This afternoon I cancelled my Lovefilm-by-post account, almost twelve years to the day from when I originally signed up for what was originally the ScreenSelect service on the 29th February 2004.

I've already written at length about the implications of this on the favourite film of 1960 post, with some facts and figures.

As I said there, being subscribed to three subscription streaming services and also having access to iPlayer and YouTube and Vimeo and ... simply made being sent dvds through the post seem gratuitous.

I need to get around to watching all those Netflix exclusives.  And Amazon Prime exclusives.  And whatever else there is on NowTV.

An update:

The last film I watched was as Osama, Siddiq Barmak's 2003 film about the implications Taliban rule in Afghanistan has for the life of a twelve year old girl. Often visually beautifully, it's also unremittingly grim but it seems fitting that my final hire should be something I wouldn't otherwise necessarily watch and is from a list (#1001films). I've worked my way through a fair number of lists of films I wouldn't necessarily watch across the years.

The final film I received was actually The Saragossa Manuscript but after belatedly looking at the duration and some reviews decided to send it back unwatched anyway. Which I've also done a fair few times over the years too.

None of which is to say I won't ever sign back up again. Popping the envelopes in a post box on my way to the supermarket wasn't much of an event. 

Nevertheless, It's going to be strange not receiving replacements.

For twelve years I've been in the rhythm of watching and posting these shiny discs, of almost always having post, and this is another activity which is going online.

On the upside I'll be able to choose what film I'm watching next in the evening.  On the downside I'll have to wait even longer for that film to be available to me (assuming I wait for it turn up on a subscription streaming service and don't simply rent a stream or some such).

Plus the danger is that I'll be more conservative with my choices and spend all my time watching Anna Kendrick films.

We'll see.

Frames.

Film Like David Bordwell, I've been watching a lot of 1940s films lately and wondered often why the title sequences often appear in a little box, frames with back on all sides. In another of his ongoing series of investigations into composition, he offers this explanation:

"Later filmmakers mostly stayed away from corners and edges. You couldn’t be sure that things put there would register on different image platforms. When films were destined chiefly for theatres, you couldn’t be absolutely sure that local screens would be masked correctly. Many projectors had a hot spot as well, rendering off-center items less bright. And any film transferred to 16mm (a strong market from the 1920s on) might be cropped somewhat. Accordingly, one trend in 1920s and 1930s cinematography was to darken the sides and edges a bit, acknowledging that the brighter central zone was more worth concentrating on."

This was doubled down on later when tv screens would cut off the edges of the frame and so credits had to appear in a box so they could be legible in all conditions.

Eclectic Doctor Who Method.

Doctor Who : Eclectic Method's 50th Mix from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.

The Oscars 2016. Results.

Film Thanks to my current contract with the devil, I was able to watch the Oscars live for the first time in I don't know how long (over a decade at least) via the NowTV streaming app. Apart from not having to spend the following morning trying to imagine what the ceremony had been like via The Guardian live blog, Buzzfeed and dodgycam YouTube footage which has never been a proper substitute, it meant I could enjoy Chris Rock's performance and the reaction to Chris Rock's performance on social media in real time.

Straight afterwards, I think we agreed that he nailed it, offering the Oscars own equivalent of the Newsnight episode criticising Newsnight's own failed journalism.  A few question marks later.  Was it necessary to make fun of the #AskHerMore campaign in what seemed like a proffer of false equivalency?  Isn't it also true that although lynchings are rare, that Black people have other problems as serious to complain about right now?  Also why the exclusivity, isn't #oscarssowhite about the fact that all races are under-represented and stereotyped in Hollywood and beyond?

But the fact that people are asking such questions, debating the implications of the opening monologue is a major step up from what's previously been a space for fluff and jokes about how many people Jack Nicholson has slept with.  Plus the thank you scroll now pretty much asks awards winners to utilise their platform for campaigning and political ends which also has to be a good thing and I think pretty much every post-win speech included the representation of some cause or other in a show which despite dwindling US ratings is still watched by a massive global audience.

Anyway, here's a survey of how well I predicted the winners.  You'd forgotten about that, hadn't you?

Best original screenplay
SPOTLIGHT - WINNER!
I said: Ex Machinca

Best adapted screenplay
THE BIG SHORT - WINNER!
I said: The Big Short

Best supporting actress
ALICIA VIKANDER, THE DANISH GIRL - WINNER!
I said: Alicia Vikander

Best costume design
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best production design
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best make-up and hair
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared (although I was joking) (I think)

Best cinematography
THE REVENANT - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best editing
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best sound editing
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best sound mixing
MAD MAX: FURY ROAD - WINNER!
I said: Mad Max: Fury Road

Best visual effects
EX MACHINA - WINNER!
I said: Star Wars

Best animated film
INSIDE OUT - WINNER!
I said: Inside Out

Best supporting actor
MARK RYLANCE, BRIDGE OF SPIES - WINNER!
I said: Stallone

Best documentary
AMY - WINNER!
I said: The Look of Silence

Best foreign language film
SON OF SAUL - WINNER!
I said: Didn't. Shrugs.

Best original score
ENNIO MORRICONE, THE HATEFUL EIGHT - WINNER!
I said: Star Wars.

Best original song
WRITING’S ON THE WALL, SPECTRE - WINNER!
I said: The Hunting Ground

Best director
ALEJANDO GONZALEZ INARRITU, THE REVENANT - WINNER!
I said: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Revenant

Best actress
BRIE LARSON, ROOM - WINNER!
I said: Brie Larson

Best actor
LEONARDO DICAPRIO, THE REVENANT - WINNER!
I said: Leonard DiCaprio

Best picture
SPOTLIGHT - WINNER!
I said: The Revenant

Twelve on twenty-one after predicting Mad Max would sweep the craft categories. About the usual then.

The Art of Jessica Jones.

TV The Art of the Title has an interview with the creative team behind the Jessica Jones title sequence:

"I am based in Manhattan and my windows look out to a very classic New York-style building, so I was naturally inspired by all the changing activity and vignettes within those rows of windows — the patterns of light, colour, narratives, and graphic silhouettes. It is pretty amazing how much you can see and the number of windows out there with wide open shades. Though I’ve never witnessed half of the activities Jessica sees, I could understand our innate fascination with the rear window and that discomforting pleasure when catching a small sliver of a private act. So when I was brought into the Imaginary Forces LA studio for the project, I used all that as my personal inspiration to create my paintings."

In the post-television binge watching world, the best way to know if a title sequence works is if you sit and watch it through episode after episode.  Jessica Jones has one of those.

My Favourite Film of 1957.

Film Rather than even attempt to describe the way in which The Seventh Seal effected on first viewing, because I'm unable to capture the feeling in words that transcend cliche, I've decided to try and reinterpret the film by collecting a series of cultural artifacts instead. I'm sure Ingmar Bergman would be very pleased that I'm about to turn what some would view as his greatest achievement into a listicle.

(1)  My first encounter with Chess was through a set which my owned as a child and which was in the sideboard in the front room along with a giant wooden board.  But it wasn't until Play Chess, the BBC's children's programme broadcast mornings during school holidays in the early 80s that I really understood what all the pieces were for and the complexity of the game.  Here's a podcast from TV Cream which includes a short piece about the programme which certainly offers a flavour of what it was like at 25 minutes and 45 seconds. "Welcome to two weeks of programmes packed with Chess."

(2)  Someone has attempted to analyse who really had the upper hand in the Chess match on a page also worth visiting for the rebuke in the comments.  "For a start, Block and Death would have been playing by the rules of chess as they existed in the medieval era and not those of the modern period"

(3)  Of all the speeches in the film, one in particular has stayed with me.  It's Block on memory:

"I shall remember this moment: the silence, the twilight, the bowl of strawberries, the bowl of milk. Your faces in the evening light. Mikael asleep, Jof with his lyre. I shall try to remember our talk. I shall carry this memory carefully in my hands as if it were a bowl brimful of fresh milk. It will be a sign to me, and a great sufficiency."

Except, of course, it's impossible to keep anything in our hands permanently. All memories eventually slip away from us, just as his milk will surely dribble through the gaps in his fingers or evaporate away. [imdb]

(4) The first night I encountered in life was through the story of St George and the Dragon in school. The key source for the story is the Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine which is abstracted and elaborated here.

(5) This.  All of this:



(6) Not uniquely my first glimpsing of The Seventh Seal was on the cinema screen during The Last Action Hero. It's a remarkable moment in retrospect and signals that the film is much more interesting in retrospect than the critics of the time and audience gave it credit for, largely because of the poorly conceived marketing campaign. In this Oral History, the screenwriter David Arnott explains that Death's appearance was more clearly explained in an earlier draft:

"A perfect example of how, in rewriting a script, certain things stay that don’t make sense anymore is how in our draft you both understand what became of Danny’s father and see the villain character set Seventh Seal’s “Death” loose in New York City. When it’s set up properly, you would understand a moment where Death comes into the theater, Danny pulls the gun, and he says, “Forget it, I’ve had it up to here with you, Mister, who stays and who goes. Well, I’m telling you this one stays, “ meaning, “You took my dad, but you’re not going to take my surrogate dad.” That could have been a real moment. Death is still in the finished movie as is the speech, but it makes no sense. It’s just there."

(7) Which isn't to negate Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey which I also saw beforehand. But here's William Sadley playing Death before the film in a 1985 sketch show called Assaulted Nuts opposite Elaine Hausman and Tim Brooke-Taylor for a second at the end (of all people).



(8)  The Juggling Information Service website has numerous interviews with practitioners from twenty years ago. Here's one practitioner Sara Felder about what attracted her to juggling:

"I think for a lot of us juggling has saved our lives. You know for a lot of people. For a lot of us it was something that we found that we had an affinity towards, or attraction towards, or there was some attraction there that was maybe one of those things where, 'Gee, if I could only do that...' For them I think it was very similar. I find, kind of, the more desperate the situation, the more meaningful it is. So here were people who had failed a lot in their lives and were used to failure, and so for them the idea of succeeding was extremely meaningful. I mean I think succeeding is meaningful to all of us, but in that context it was really meaningful, and they would work at something pretty hard and get it and really create beauty in a pretty ugly place."

Here she is in 2012 at a show.

68.

Film Avengers: Infinity War will have 68 characters according to The AV Club which seems like a lot, although the average MARVEL film usually has that many characters, taking into account day players and the like.

If these are all substantial roles, in other words the lead and supporting characters from previous MCU projects, my guess is that this is going to be more akin to a hyperlink drama or something in the realm of a quasi-disaster film, cross cutting between groups of characters affected by whatever's happening to Earth and galaxy, crosscutting between, for example, whatever's happening on Asgard to New York to Wakanda to Xandar (or wherever the Guardians of the Galaxy are) with everything eventually dovetailing for the sequel.

The really interesting question is how Phase 3 deals with their being a couple of stand alone films, including the Ant-Man sequel, in between.  Previously the films have worked as a kind of series, referencing each other with even the first Ant-Man film hinting towards Captain America: Civil War.  But it's possible that they'll be flashback's I suppose or the second Infinity War won't dovetail directly on from the end of the first film.

Anyway, none of this stops me from believing that Phase Four, due to end when I'm fifty, isn't going to be a version of Secret Wars, with a cunning way of dovetailing the MCU and the X-verse in a similar way as the recent comics event merged the 616 with its Ultimates cousin.

"a recherché treat"

TV Screen Plays: The Theatre Plays on British Television Database has soft launched, a searchable resource collecting information about plays broadcast on television between the last thirties and mid-60s (the full data will be available by the summer). Luke McKernan has a review:

"Nowadays theatre on television is a recherché treat, generally reserved for the occasional outing on BBC Four. In the first three to four decades of British television, theatre was a mainstay of broadcast output. In part this was due to a BBC that believed that theatre was elevating, something to be transmitted to the masses because it was good for them. Television was a looking glass through which to discover the better arts."

Of course I've gone straight in and found appearance from the Doctors.

William Hartnell - Seagulls over Sorrento [excerpt] (1953)

Patrick Troughton - four whole pages worth of productions starting in 1947 with Edward II.

Jon Pertwee - Toad of Toad Hall (1946), The Wandering Jew (1947), Ranch in the Rockies [excerpts] (1952), Dick Whittington and His Cat (1958).

Tom Baker - The Millionairess (1972)

Everyone else is to young. We'll return to this when the full database has been posted.

Astroturf and manipulation of media messages.

On Deadpool.

Film Under usual circumstance I only produce these enthusiastic post-film reactoposts for productions of the MARVEL cinematic universe but now The X-Men cinematic universe has finally found its feet (give or take a four stick) and with Deadpool being what it is I thought I'd apply some random thoughts to a computer screen. This is not a review, especially since it's going to include spoilers of the kind you really wouldn't want to read before seeing the film. So if you the person I was this morning still planning on waiting for the shiny-disc release for various reasons before intoning "oh fuck it" very loudly and going anyway, keep this bookmarked for six months. Or add it to your Google Calendar as an alert because you will have forgotten I've written by then. Hell, I will have forgotten I've written by then.

Venue

As ever my original plan was to see Deadpool at Picturehouse at FACT in Liverpool, but having skipped the release week because of half term, being a 15 certificate and all, then checking on waking this morning I discovered it had been supplanted from a lunchtime screening this week to late afternoon when I'm usually half asleep due to hunger and replaced on the biggest screen by Triple 9 which has wait for the Amazon Prime UK stream in six months written all over it thanks to its 56% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.  The only other alternative in central Liverpool is the Odeon and given that pretty much every previous visit to the Odeon has been a rotten shame, I decided that I'd wait for the dvd or blu-ray just as I have for every X-Men related film film The Last Stand (and pretty much every other film released in the past ten years to be fair).

Then after eating my breakfast of porridge whilst watching Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend and before sitting to check my emails, I made the previously mentioned audible expletive and decided to take the train to the Vue cinema at Birkenhead to sample its charms.  It was perfectly fine.  Tickets cost an old school £4.99 in the afternoon, half the price of the FACT and Odeon.  The auditorium was adequate although the seats are amazing close to the screen and the safety lights directly above the first three rows were on all the way through the film which meant the dark scenes had a slightly beige hue.  Otherwise it was well projected and the sound was loud enough to make the chairs vibrate.  There were about ten of us in the screen including a group of youngsters (!) who talks loudly through the preamble adverts and trailers but sushed for the film apart from the moments when they weren't supposed to.

Wade Whimsey

One of the key elements of the pre-publicity for the Deadpool, the viral marketing, the press interviews all of that, has been about the extent to which the meta-fictional post-modern elements would be reproduced on the big screen with some worrying that it would become blunted too much by the needs of being a film within a much larger franchise and also being inclusive for as wide an audience as possible.  Despite not having read Deadpool comic from cover to cover in my life (something which will now change as the graphic novels section of Liverpool Central Library embraces me again), I understood that this is what made the character unique and liking that element a lot in other films because of its theatricality, I was keen to see just how far Reynold et al would stretch things.

As far as they could, I think is the answer, to an extraordinary degree actually given that for all its budget and certification this is a relatively wide release.  His revealed level of awareness seems to stretch to knowing that he's a comic book character in a film adaptation within a franchise which has taken a few continuity knocks over the years with enough in-verse jokes about the treatment of the character in the past to be satisfied enough that the spirit of the very first trailer of Deadpool sat in the chair making jokes has been carried into the film.  To a large extent much of the heavy lifting is done by the opening "credits" sequence which masterfully points out all of the tropes of the kinds of things you'd expect to find in one of these films.  That's about as close as Deadpool gets to having Randy from Scream show up to explain everything while it's happening.

But there is a sense of film pulling back slightly on the more avant-garde elements, this isn't A Cock and Bull Story with superheroes, Deadpool doesn't stop the action in the middle in order to address the audience perhaps through an insert within an insert and it doesn't address within itself the fact that it's presenting yet another origin story perhaps because Kick Ass and its ilk have staked out that territory.  Plus it has to modulate itself: too "inside", too many jokes and you risk alienating the large percentage of the audience who haven't read the comics and there was certainly a potential version of this film which would have had Deadpool winking at the comics fans in particular at the expense of the people who'd wandered in because of the superb viral marketing campaign.  I think it walked the line beautifully, the post-credit sequence being the perfect example.  Wow.

Ryan Reynolds

Glancing backwards through his back catalogue about the only two films in which Ryan Reynolds is physically on screen for any length of time that aren't Blade:Trinity I've enjoyed have been Definitely, Maybe and The Proposal and it's entirely possibly it was because of his co-stars.  He's not an actor I've particularly understood, and in the case of Fireflies in the Garden, I stopped watching precisely because he was so expressively bad.  Perhaps I needed to see more of his earlier work, the Van Wilders, his eighty-one episodes of Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place to understand what he was trying to do.  But he persists in appearing in films which I'd actively avoid in the past.

Now here he in Deadpool, in a passion project and he's blood brilliant.  We all know the story of his disappoint about not being able to do the character justice in the Wolverine film (see above) and I do love that like Russell T Davies in relation to Doctor Who, it took someone with a certain notoriety to turn a much loved pop culture icon finally into the thing it's supposed to be.  Initially the expressive line-readings feel a bit Ross, but eventually you realise that he's speaking in comic speech bubbles, that there's an imaginary exclamation mark at the end of most of the dialogue and that he quite specifically dials it down whenever he's out of the mask so it's very much part of Deadpool's act.

Morena Baccarin

Morena Baccarin is extraordinary.  It's often said that film actors and actresses aren't what they once were, but it's also forgotten that many of them, especially in the studio system, appeared in many more different types of roles and films across their careers.  Katherine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell would appear in three or even four projects; some worked in quality terms, some didn't, but both of those actresses turned out enough classics for them to be well thought of all these years later.  Plus there was an even greater amount of product which meant that there were more actors working and even more of those were considered "stars".  As films have become more expensive and there are less of them, there are less opportunities for what could be well thought of actors to be given the opportunity to appear in more places as the same actors tend to appear.

Meet Morena Baccarin, who as Deadpool demonstrates has all the makings of a major actor, notably comic actor but tends to spend her time on television playing either frosty villain types or as per Homeland the grieving wife figure.  Whilst it's true that's somewhat where she is in Deadpool, the canvas is much larger and for whole sections she's able to demonstrate the comic timing I don't think she's been allowed to since Firefly (though I notice now she was in Spy last year which I'm waiting to see).  Her comic instincts here are really special and is more than able to hold screen on the few occasions when Deadpool isn't there and I'd argue is the reason so many of those earlier romcom scenes are so watchable.  In an ideal world she would have headline Joss Whedon's Wonder Woman as well has appeared in a string of thrillers and romcoms.  As it is I'm now considering returning to Gotham.

Feminist Film Theory

Best break this out separately.  For all that said, Morena's is the girlfriend role and is dressed very fashionably in a great many scenes often in leather.  But I'd argue that the amount of skin on display is balanced between both of the leads at least in that middle portion with Reynolds looking pumped.  Um.  In the riotously meta-fictional version of the film, Deadpool himself would possibly have addressed the inevitable damseling of Vanessa, but ultimately she does break out of her captivity, albeit with the help of Deadpool's sword, which is then she ultimately uses to save him, as far that goes when he's practically unkillable.  It is notable that Vanessa is herself a mutant in the comics though given everything else happening in the film, that might have been considered overkill.  Plus she's a shapeshifter as per Mystique and a power borrower like Rogue so that's another reason why they wouldn't have pursued it.

The Cinematic X-Verse

Remarkably, ignoring Fan4stic in a way I think we must do (despite Deadpool's likeness appearing therein), apart from epilogue to Days of Future Past, this is the first new film set in the rebooted X-verse although that's somewhat complicated by having what amounts to a totally different Colossus walking around, Daniel Cudmore having been replaced after all these years by a figure who's visually and audibly closer to the comics if not necessarily in temperament, a directorial decision which the rights owners went with.  Cudmore was apparently offered the role but turned it down because he was going to be dubbed anyway which is understandable given that he's such a busy actor capable of opening films (buuurrrnnnn) but makes a hash of things a bit.

Are we now supposed to assume they're the same bloke?  Is he seeing Kitty now?  The business is slightly complicated by the fact that the DoFP epilogue is supposed to be set at the same point in the future as the stuff in the past (as per the holographic alarm clock) which makes Deadpool a prequel to that.  As a Who fan, I'm all for working for the needs of the story rather than having to deal with creative choices of someone else when creating your own work, and this version of Colossus does at least have a personality but you sort of do feel that if the X-verse is going to be a thing moving forward, a Kevin Feige figure has to step in, even on projects like Deadpool, just as they do with Guardians of the Galaxy or Ant-Man and make it cohere now.

Success, My Lord.

What are we to draw from the film's success.  For a start it's another example of the audience proving that it's desperate for clever entertainment and is entirely capable of watching something which doesn't head towards the lowest common denominator.  As expected said studios have interpreted this success the audience wanting more R-rated comic book films rather than realising that the sex and violence and swearing aren't the only motivation for people turning up, it's the intellectual stimulation amid the sex and violence and swearing.  Expect the next Wolverine film to be R-rated.  Still don't expect any of the MCU too, with the Netflix material quite happily covering the mature end of that universe with SHIELD as the more mainstream family orientated counterbalance (sort of).

Irrelevant sidebar:  that's not true in any way of course and I still wishes that MARVEL would produce the MCU equivalent of The Sarah Jane Adventures of The Clone Wars perhaps starring Squirrel Girl or Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (even if that books in its early days) or ideally Power Pack.  A series of half hour live action episodes, twenty-minutes with commercials, produced for Disney XD.  They do make all of those cartoons of course, but the difference here would be that there'd be the potential for the show to crossover and reference the rest of that universe and narratively interact with it as per SHIELD and the rest.  Logistical nightmare to be sure, but it would be an excellent way of including these younger characters who don't quite fit elsewhere.

Back at the X-verse, the upshot of Deadpool's success is that Fox can happily move forward with projects which don't have X and the name of a particular gender in the title opening up access to the range of characters like Negasonic Teenage Warhead who don't otherwise fit those other kinds of films, at least in a form which fits.  The other implication is that they're also unlikely to do a Sony and lease the mutants back to the MCU so they'll be moving on with The Inhumans as the methadone like substitute, which is fine because with the X-Men in the MCU there'd be no particular reason to create a film which features LockJaw.  If you'd told me in my mid-teens that by the time I was in my mid-forties that would actually exist, I would not have believed you.

The End

So yes, I enjoyed it to bits and so much so I considered going to see it again straight afterwards, especially at that price but decided to let it marinate during the months wait until the BD release.  I've seen a couple of people online argue that without the Deadpool schtick that it's an otherwise quite average comic book film, but just as classic musicals often have weak stories supporting brilliant songs and people watch murder mysteries because they want to enjoy the deductive process even though it's really just the same process of collecting clue and asking secondary characters questions, so Deadpool is about giving a stand-up comic in spandex material to work with, setting up those pretty genric situations but having someone who's aware of just how pretty generic those situations are and poking fun at them.

Romola on the cover of the Radio Times.

TV For I think the first time since Emma. Churchill's Secret feels like something Channel 4 might have produced in the late 90s or BBC Two any time in the past few decades so it's quite odd to find it on ITV home of the psychological drama and cop show.  Presumably at this rate the next time Romola will be on the RT cover it'll be for the launch of the 2018 series of Doctor Who.

Hello Again, All Saints.

Music Here we go then, the first track from the All Saint's second comeback album and the single, One Strike. As PopJustice notices it sounds like the All Saints without sounding dated. But more than that, unlike Rock Steady, the last attempt which was the grower which didn't grow quick enough (on reflection it was probably ahead of its time), this manages, I think, to feel like a cohesive piece of work and party of the legacy.  Even if the first bit of the vocal sounds like Lily Allen's Smile.

Melvyn Bragg on Small Museums.

Radio Here, here. The best response we can have to this is to support them and to visit them and draw everything we can from them.

My Favourite Film of 1958.

Film Mon Oncle or My Uncle is the first non-English language film I ever watched. I think. Although the BBC imported plenty of European television series during the 70s and 80s, Heidi and the like, dubbed into English from their given languages, I can't think of a space or reason why I would have watched something feature length in my childhood or indeed even remember doing so.  So it's probably more accurate to say that Jacqui Tati's comedy is the first foreign film I remember watching.

Inevitably this was at school.  We'd be sat at the back of the language laboratory in a ring of chairs huddled around the department's own television during one of the double period of French towards the end of the year.  Do school's still have language labs?  This consisted of wooden cubicles and headsets with tape decks controlled from a console at the front of the class, attempting to drill languages into us through isolation techniques.  Not that it worked for me.  I was set four French then dropped both that and Spanish altogether at GCSEs.  I wasn't destined to be a protocol droid.

Unlike in English class, the film wasn't introduced to us in any meaningful way, we didn't really know what we were watching.  I didn't even know it was directed by Tati until years later.  But I do know we watched it several times so it's entirely possible that either (a) it was the French teacher's favourite film or (b) the only film on video the language department owned.  Either way it was probably the right choice since it doesn't contain an awful lot of dialogue even if it didn't really go much way to reflecting contemporary French society.

I haven't seen it since.  Always meant to, but somehow have ended up viewing Playtime on numerous occasions instead.  Nevertheless, for the purposes of this project it's important to note the milestones and here it is, Mon Oncle, my first piece of world cinema.  Which now leads me to trying to remember what was next.  Could it have been La Dolce Vita?  Really?  I must have seen something before heading off the university especially with BBC Two and Channel 4 unafraid to show world cinema.  I'll have a think and get back to you.

Annotations: Unfriended

Film  Unfriended is the 2014 horror film from Russian director Levan Gabriadze, in which the entirely narrative unfolds across the laptop screen of a teenage girl as she navigates through browsers and apps and interacts with her friends through Skype.

Although critical reaction was mixed, I appreciated the verisimilitude of how the action unfolded, with the director and writers utilising the kinds of glitches and such which all of us encounter when using computers in order to create suspense and sympathy for characters who're not much different to the usual cyphers who appear in these sorts of films.

Plus I was scared, which is rare for me when watching horror films.  My hand was over my mouth for quite a lot of the duration.

My recommendation is that you watch it on a small television or even a laptop in the best resolution available to maximise your suspension of disbelief (which must be incredible on a Mac).

Intrigued to see just how accurate the film is in utilise the web, I decided to plough through the film again, checking if the content existed in the real world and in what form and the results with some commentary is below.  Presumably if I'd done this exercise months ago the results would have been different.  But the ephemeral web is ephemeral.

For further information and an even deeper rabbit hole, visit the film's wiki which has in-depth biographies of all the characters and such.  The imdb trivia page is voluminous too.

Anyway, onwards.  Needless to say there are spoilers so I'd recommend you only look further if you've seen the film.

[Updated 7/5/2017: The film is now on Netflix in the UK which is why you may have stumbled here.  Please note that some of the links below are no longer working.  But I'll keep everything intact just in case they crop up again.]

Websites visited:

Live Leak: Laura Barns suicide:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cbe_1404939016

YouTube: LAURA BARNS KILL URSELF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ihE-GnEvqk

Facebook: Laura Barns
https://www.facebook.com/laura.barns.90

Unexplained Forums: Do Not Answer Messages From The Dead:
http://www.unexplainedforums.net/post/085124

Facebook: Reporting a hacked account for deceased friend?
https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=10151507244570670

Facebook: Memorializing accounts of deceased people.
https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143/?ref=u2u

Facebook: Memorializing an Account:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/305593649477238

The Fresno Star: Cyberbullying: Suicide of Laura Barns linked to anonymous online attacks
http://www.fresnostar.com/

Facebook: Jess Felton
https://www.facebook.com/jess.felton.7528

Facebook: Blaire Lily and Laura Barns:
https://www.facebook.com/Blaireandlaura/

Instagram: Val Rommel chat window:
https://www.instagram.com/p/hul_HKkVEd/

YouTube: fuck everyone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpZPLBqX_nU

Radio Labs - Police Scanner Codes
http://www.radiolabs.com/police-codes.html

Facebook: RIP Laura Barnes
http://www.facebook.com/RIPLauraBarnes

Facebook: You and Laura Barns
https://www.facebook.com/blaire.lily?and=laura.barns.90

YouTube: LAURA BARNS KILL URSELF:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-A0INsPUG8

YouTube: NSFW: Adam & Blaire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8_p3j-hqP4&feature=youtu.be

Chatroulette
https://www.chatroulette.com/

Commentary:

A sampling of searches for the YouTube sidebar suggestions indicates that none of them are real which should be obvious from their ludicrously high view count for what they are.

The first appearance of the LAURA BARNS KILL URSELF video has a URL which now goes to a page which says "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's Terms of Service."  See below for notes on the second instance.

There is also a Twitter account for @billie227 with a Skype icon as the avatar created three months before the US release date which posted mostly on the 15th January.

The Facebook link above is to a deleted page which was apparently online during the original festival screenings and friended guests.  Instead there's now a memorial page [https://www.facebook.com/Laura-Barns-850524571676524/] of such peak plausability it's impossible to tell which user accounts are real or fake and features a lot of confused people in the comments.

The Unexplained Forums isn't there but has a pending WHOIS page here.  Searching for some of the content text sent me to some very strange places.

When Blaire tries the Google search "report dead person facebook hacked" the results page is a pretty accurate fake.  In the real world currently it also leads to a top result called "Deceased friend account was hacked? How do I report it ..." which leads to a forum entry for someone with the same question but different content to onscreen.  Curiously the link she then uses with the URL "https://www.facebook.com/help/103897939701143/?ref=u2u" leads to this page and you have to click several times before you get the page for actually memorialising an account.   It's clear that Facebook's design has changed several times since 2013, with none of the URLs (as seen above) otherwise working now.

The Sarah Stoudemire profile offered is an example in the film's version of the memorialization application has a Facebook profile.  Her account was added in June 2013.  Make of that what you will.  A reverse image search on TinyEye doesn't show that the photos were copied from anywhere.

Googling "laura barns fresno suicide" presently has this Quora page as the top result.

You'll be unsurprised to know The Fresno Star doesn't exist.  I even looked at the Wayback Machine.  The link above leads to a holding page.

Jess Felton's Facebook page has gone.

When Blaire clicks on the Instagram link in the email it curiously redirects to a different image URL on Instagram.  Neither of them lead to an image.  The Billiee227 Instagram account as it appears in the Chrome tab has gone, but this is here without anything posted on it.  This tweet apparently shows images that were on the Instagram account when it was set up.

Amongst the usernames of people who comment on the photo is a "ricksalvarro" who was an accounting clerk on Angels and Demons.  The onscreen graphics must be filled with these kinds of in-jokes.

The Laura Barns "fuck everyone" video is now set to private.

If I was being especially thorough (hum) as well as checking the veracity of every single user name, I would have created a timeline or chronology for when all this stuff was supposed to have been posted to see if matches, just watch the attention to detail was like.   But there are just some things you have to let go.

The Police Scanner Codes page doesn't match the one in the film.  On screen it says:

10-55 Suicide
10-56 Coroner case

But on the actual page it says:

10-55 Coroner case
10-56 Suicide

Was the graphic changed to cover up an error during filming?

The Laura's surname is misspelled in the URL for the memorial page which is then corrected when Mitch (or whoever) is talking to Blaire in Messages - although clicking that link https://www.facebook.com/riplaurabarns goes to a different page with Laura's image on which has a timeline stretching back to late 2009, with odd screengrabs from Christmas themed computer games.  I wonder what those are.

The "You and Laura Barns" page has similar content in terms of photos to the earlier similar joint page but doesn't exist now.

The second appearance of the LAURA BARNS KILL URSELF video says "Published on Apr 3, 2013" in the film and is 1:11 minutes long.  The version in the real world which has the exact same URL is 2:30 long and was published 27 June 2014.  It's channel "laura exposed" has 3 videos in the film, in meatland its the only video.  That channel says it joined 26 June 2014.

The "NSFW: Adam & Blaire" URL from the film is now private.  But the actual video is here under a different URL which has a channel icon matching the Billie one from Skype in the film.  There are three channels called "bill ie" of different vintages.  Usual smattering of confused people in the BTLs.  This later instance was uploaded 21 Aug 2015.  Presumably a lot of this stuff was reposted as part of the viral marketing campaign although it's pretty spoilery.

All of the results on the  "random chat video site" search exist.  Chatroulette doesn't feature in the top ten results any more, with RandomSkip, something specifically calling itself a "chatroulette alternative" taking its place.  Chatroulette was presumably chosen for the film because it's the one everyone knows.  Blaire must already be registered and logged in.  When I tried it for the purposes of this it asked me for all kinds of permissions and log-in details which is far cry from when it first started and there were simply a couple of windows and a chat box.  The person who agrees to help Blaire is Christa Hartsock (imdb, Twitter, official).

I haven't been able to find the final video.

Bookmarks and Open Tabs:

Gmail
Forever 21
Tumblr
Free People
Teen Wolf
Lyrics Mode: Johnny Cash - Spiritual 
Jezebel
Twitter
Pinterest

Commentary:

"Dasha Zelkin" whose name appears in Blaire's Gmail contacts along with the film's characters was a post-production intern of the film.  Was she signing her work?

When Billie opens the Laura video in multiple windows, the favourites on the bookmarks bar have changed.  The FaceBook and the Wikipedia have joined and there aren't any open tabs.  I initially thought it was because they'd switched to Safari, but it includes the Google apps icon.

History:

Cute Bohemian Accessories for Women at Free People 
Necklines - Accessories at Free People

Jewelry - WOMEN - Forever 21
Dresses - LOVE21 - Forever 21
Contemporary Flounced Watercolor Print Cami Dress - LOVE 21 2049258930

SongMeanings:  Johnny Cash - Spiritual lyrics

Commentary:

There's a potential continuity error in the on-screen graphics.  Blaire's Google history shows her search for the meaning of Cash's Spiritual and clicking on Song Meanings, but the open tab on Chrome indicates that she visited Lyrics Mode instead.

The necklines page at Free People now reroutes to the necklaces (and isn't clickable in this order) and yes, that is the very same dress Blaire (or the SFX people) will have visited - the product number and title are the same should you want to buy it for some obscure Unfriended cosplay.

Apps used:

Skype
Spotify
Messages

Commentary:

Whilst the characters are all asking who the anonymous box is in Skype, when everyone hangs up the second time in order to get rid of them, the username "billie227" is still shown or already shown as connected, even while Blaire is asking Mitch who they are and long before everyone expresses surprise when that username pops up.

Not sure what she's uploading to BitTorrent, "Saturd..." ay Night Fever?  ay Night Takeaway?  The Stockhausen Opera?  Some suggestions.

Trojan Destroyer doesn't exist.

When the screen alights on the trash bin, under SHARED items, "Bazelev's iMac" is seen.  This is Unfriended's production company.  Also listed "Indar's Mac" - Indar Dzhendubaev was storyboard artist on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, from the same production company.  Also "Nelson Grea..." which has to be Nelson Greaves, the writer.  Deliberate in-jokes or were these sequences actually produced by the art department on one of their own macs?

Torrented episode of Saturday Night Live which keeps getting stuck from deletion in Blaire's trash because she's partially watching it on Quicktime (until she quits out) is Season 39, Episode 4, which did indeed have Miley Cyrus as guest host.  The AV Club gave it a C-.  Here's the wikipedia page for the season. Here's a handy playlist of the featured sketches on YouTube:



Blaire has a HP LaserJet P2055dn Network Laser Printer.

The IMdb goofs page has many more continuity errors.

Music played:







Commentary:

Not able to find the original playlist on Spotify, this is a reconstruction. There isn't an album called Everybody Talks on Spotify. The Marley remix isn't in UK Spotify so I've included the original.  This is a really strong collection for what it's worth.

How You Lie, Lie, Lie isn't on The Very Best of Connie Conway vol.1 but Hidden Treasures. Which was released in 2015, which is unsettling. Also, it's not 3:01 as it says on screen but 1:43. That Spotify window looks odd anyway - its an album view but has the same song 35 times. There is a Tony Hernandez (as featured in the Who To Follow) section of that window who's an Executive Producer though he's not credited for Unfriended on the imdb. There are dozens of people called Tony Hernandez with profiles on Spotify.

Shakespeare Walk visits Liverpool!

Theatre Amazing news. The Complete Walk, a collection of ten minute chunks of Shakespeare plays filmed by the Globe is to visit Liverpool and they're currently searching for potential venues. From Liverpool Confidential:

"Each film will be shown in venues throughout Liverpool city centre and Culture Liverpool is inviting anyone who wants to stage one to get in touch.

"A full list of venues, opening times and the locations of each play will be released in March. If you are venue and are interested in hosting a film please email cultureliverpool@liverpool.gov.uk no later than 5pm Friday 26 February." it says."

Hello new blogging project, new blogging project hello.

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.