Lockdown Links 2.2

Covid-19: Liverpool mass-testing finds 700 cases with no symptoms:
"Public Health England director Dr Susan Hopkins said nearly 100,000 people had been tested over the last 10 days. She stressed that these positive cases would have not been detected otherwise."

Ga. secretary of state says fellow Republicans are pressuring him to find ways to exclude legal ballots:
"Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.), to question the validity of legally cast absentee ballots in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state."

A holiday diamond in the rough: An oral history of The Family Stone:
"The star-studded cast revisits the making of their 2005 angsty Christmas classic."

Not My Job: We Quiz Comic Chelsea Peretti On The Chelsea Football Club:
"We've invited comic, writer and actor Chelsea Peretti — you may know her as self-involved administrator Gina Linetti from Brooklyn 99 — to answer three questions about The Chelsea Football Club, the English soccer team. Peretti's latest film is called Friendsgiving."

Keen to make new friends? Here are simple three techniques to try:
"I would love to have a friend who is like-minded and can give me their opinion when needed. Plus, my eldest child is going to start school next year, and it would be lovely if I had someone to share school tips with me."

Julia Stiles is “extremely embarrassed” by her stint on Ghostwriter
"A working actor since she was 11, Julia Stiles has spent literally all of her adult life in the public eye."

Been getting a lot of questions about the recent sale of my old masters. I hope this clears things up: 

"I just wanted to check in and update you guys. As you know, for the pastr year I've been actively trying to regain ownership of my master recordings. With that goal in mind, my team attempted to enter into negotiations with Scooter Braun."

Universal Strikes Deal With Cinemark Allowing Movies to Premiere On-Demand Early:
"Under their terms, any movie that earns more than $50 million in opening weekend ticket sales has to stay in theaters for at least 31 days, or five weekends. All other titles can be made available to rent on digital platforms after just 17 days."

Three Studios, Three Strategies: How COVID-19 Turned Film Releases Into a Free-for-All:
"Studios were always competitors, but after the pandemic are they all in the same business?"

Academy Museum Gives Debbie Reynolds Her Due as a Costume Conservator:
"When the “Singin’ in the Rain” actress was alive, the film academy turned up its nose at her fabled costume collection. Now it has gone to her son with hat in hand."

She's back and it's about COVID-19.

TV News comes that Doctor Who is back in production but thanks to the all important COVID filming protocols we're now down to just eight episodes next season.

"Talking about the new series, showrunner Chris Chibnall says: “In this strangest of years, the Doctor Who production team have worked wonders to get the show back into production. We’re thrilled to be back making the show. Given the complexity of making Doctor Who, and with new and rigorous Covid working protocols, it’s going to take us a little longer to film each episode, meaning we expect to end up with eight episodes, rather than the usual eleven. But rest assured, the ambition, humour, fun and scares you expect from Doctor Who will all still be firmly in place. For everyone around the world, this is a challenging period - but the Doctor never shirks from a challenge!”"

The press release is ambiguous about the duration of those eight or if they include a seasonal special or indeed when they'll be broadcast but at least we know a few television adventures are going to be banked. For obvious reasons there's also no news at all about whether it will just be Yaz travelling with the Doctor but given the shorter season that would make sense. Either way, the tv end of the franchise back up and running.

Lockdown Links 2.1

 

How long will our DVDs and Blu-rays last? 

"We’re big fans of physical media here for our movies at home – but as Brendon reports, it’s not without a few problems."

‘Fantasia’ Turns 80: Why Its Technological Achievements Can’t Salvage Its Shortcomings: 

"Walt Disney approached ‘Fantasia’ much the way Peter Jackson did his ‘Hobbit’ movies or Ang Lee ‘Gemini Man.’"

[Film Stories] 

Stanley Kubrick and Kirk Douglas wanted Doctor Zhivago movie rights: "Director wrote to Boris Pasternak in late 1950s, previously unpublished material reveals." [The Guardian] 

Rugby School to sell 'rare' Shakespeare and Dickens books: 

"A "rare" Shakespeare book being sold by Rugby School is estimated to fetch up to £50,000 at auction." [BBC News] 

Netflix's 'Dawson's Creek' Theme Song Closes Tortured Saga: 

"Netflix started streaming all six seasons of the WB's "Dawson's Creek" for the first time. It was like the '90s all over again! But with one big difference: The old theme song, Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait," had been replaced by Jann Arden's "Run Like Mad." [Huffington Post] 

Pepe the Frog: Feels Good Man: 

"A Storyville documentary. Pepe the Frog started life in 2005 as a cute cartoon character in an online comic. Today, he is known as an international hate symbol after being hijacked by the alt-right." [BBC iPlayer]

Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden.

Life   Here we are then.  He's gone.  Or will be in three months.

Having been watching CNN solidly for three days, of course the moment happened when I wasn't in the house for various reasons.  As is so often the case these days the news came via a tweet, or rather a stream of tweets as various news organisations called the race, once Joe's lead in Pennsylvania reached over thirty thousand.

My expectation was that it would be an anti-climax after all of the waiting and the surety of the moment.

It was not.  It was one of the happiest moments of my young life and I'm 46 now.

The past four years have been exhausting.  Waking up each morning and glancing through twitter and discovering what this attention sponge has said or done overnight, his every move sucking the joy out of everything.

Listening to his voice.  Seeing that face.

He won't be gone.  Not yet.  The prospect of the next three months are terrifying as he does all he can to burn the house down.  He won't go quietly and given the number of votes he won either way, he won't be completely gone from culture.  

His supporters will still be out in force, angry about the libtards stealing the presidency from him.  Or at least they will until the next shiny moon of toxicity drifts into view.

But more importantly, mainstream news organisations just won't have a reason to cover everything he says.  For the most part, once he's not POTUS he'll be shouting into a metaphorical void and then hopefully, eventually, solitary confinement with its literal emptiness.

Plus once he's not a head of state, Twitter will be in a position to ban him.  Finally.

But, despite everything else happening in this shitty world, 2020 has given us something back.  

Perhaps Brexit can be reversed too and we can finally put 2016 behind us.

The Twenty-First Book I've Read This Year.

Books   None of you will remember my startled tweets of a few years ago on seeing A Star Is Born and how sections look like Loose Cannon reconstructions of missing Doctor Who stories.   A quick glance online revealed this was an attempt to restore scenes from the film which had been cut during the initial release, this new version having become the de facto version on shiny disc releases.  Ronald Haver's brilliant book is the story of the tumultuous making of the picture and his later attempt at producing that complete restoration, his search for missing footage and how this version of the film is as good as its going to get.

Although Haver does cover the gossip about Judy Garland's behaviour on and off set, much of the main section of the text describes the technical nitty-gritty of film making, the lighting, costume and photography.  There are staggeringly detailed and completely fascinating discussions about the development of various screen ratios and how the film began in production on a cheaper Cinemascope knock off, Warnerscope, before that footage was scrapped and reshot in the more superior format.  Similarly, Technicolour was not the original choice but the results were just too good to pass up which is why the film now has such a ravishing image.

On completion, A Star Is Born was just over three hours long and even at that length beloved by audiences and critics on initial release.  But the bottom line men at the studio complained that it limited the number of showings per day and outside the supervision of the director George Cukor and any sense of film editing, went in an gutted the release prints to remove key blocks of scenes (including whole songs) reducing the running time by half an hour.  Instructions were sent out to cinemas to replicate these changes and the cut footage was sent back to the studio for destruction.

A young Haver saw the shorter version and then spent the rest of his life on a quest to see the longer version, assuming it must be out there somewhere.  With some friends and the eventual backing of the studio, he searched dozens of film vaults and connected with private collectors and although the key sequences were lost, he did find a complete audio track for the full version which became the basis for the reconstruction, a miraculous achievement in 1983, long before digital restoration.  This is a first rate book for anyone interested in filmmaking history and the fight to preserve that history.

Oh Koquillion.

TV Oh Koquillion.

You might look like some kind of all purpose wheel replacement device sold at Halfords, but you're also the best monster in Doctor Who history.

Which is why it's a shame that you're not included in the new BBC Books publication The Monster Vault and indeed your lack of presence is a massive spoiler for your source story to anyone who hasn't seen it.  

How I wish you'd been given the full page painting and voluminous text treatment anyway to give old school fans a wry smile and to double the surprise for newbies taking the pilgrimage for the first time.

But I understand why.  Such projects already have a limited enough pagination and to go all that trouble for an inaccurate wheeze doesn't really make sense.

So by way of a replacement, here's an explanation as to why you're my favourite monster, lightly edited for its third appearance on this blog.

Across its two episodes, the otherwise unassuming 1964 adventure The Rescue was responsible for a number of firsts for Doctor Who.

The first introduction to a replacement companion, the Doctor’s grand daughter Susan having been left behind in the wake of The Dalek Invasion Of Earth the week before.

The first episode to appear in the top ten most-watched programmes of the week, which really is quite something when you consider this was at the height of Dalekmania.

The first planet visited by the Doctor that he’s claimed to have visited before. Apart from Earth.

The first occasion the Doctor explains how the TARDIS moves. We’re told for the first time that it doesn’t just land, it “materialises”.

Which isn’t bad considering its overall fan appreciation status. In Doctor Who Magazine’s 2009 survey, The Rescue came 127th.

Which is odd considering it contains one of the show’s best monsters and an amazing twist, which I’m about to give away so I’d urge you to look away now if you haven’t seen it yet. Yes, this is a spoiler alert for a 60s story.

He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not (Time Lord Victorious).

Audio  Judging by the added content, the fact this even exists is a miracle.  Recorded during lockdown with all of the actors in isolation, it's to their credit and Scott Handcock the director that it didn't once occur to me that this wasn't all created during a typical Big Finish recording day on either side of a massive lunch.  The logistics of this are mind-boggling, especially when characters who're supposed to be in love are emitting such chemistry.  

With Brian the Assassin Ood from The Knight, The Fool and the Dead also in this new Big Finish series we're clearly on the road to explaining why the Eighth Doctor cropped up at the end of that novel, with the current Ninth Doctor strip in the parish circular setting up his side of that reveal.  Having originally been a bit skeptical of this whole endeavor as a mild case of franchise hubris, the ingenuity of exec producer James Goss and his umbrella story has sucked me in.

Carrie Thompson's script is also incredibly strong.  The Doctor, perhaps still hiding from the Time War, can't seem to be able to land in any of this old haunts and when he finally ends up in what he thinks is going to be a beautiful tourist attraction, it turns out to be a dust bowl, populated by the tropes of a spaghetti western.  Cast as the man with no name he stumbles into town to try and save a couple of the run from their home and Brian's murderous orders to kill one and kidnap the other.

Comparisons with A Town Called Mercy are inevitable, although the Doctor is on a much clearer moral foundation and even specifically says he doesn't like guns which delights the younger version of me.  The parallel story adds depth.  Has the Tenth Doctor somehow changed history and Eighth is experiencing the ramifications?  How does that effect the Time War?  See what I mean?  I'm fully on board now.  I might even end up buying the Titan comics.

Placement: Before The Knight, The Fool and the Dead.

The Knight, The Fool and the Dead (Time Lord Victorious).

Books As many of you will know, Time Lord Victorious is a cross-platform Doctor Who festival spread across various ranges and licencees. In essence it's the Eighth Doctor era but with a more cohesive structure and narrative thronds weaving in and out various audios, books and comics. Individually they're supposed to make sense but the user gains a richer experience from listening and reading it all.

Steve Cole's novels seems to be at the epicentre.  In the aftermath of The Waters of Mars, the Tenth Doctor runs from his mistakes into the Dark Times and discovers a race of beings, the Kotturoh are travelling the galaxy rewriting the DNA of other races to some master plan, potentially being the source of the very concept of death as its expressed in the Doctor's own time.  He decides to stop them.

From the beginning we can tell that something has broken inside the Doctor, that without anyone to stop him, his usual benevolence has become infected by malignancy.  He's sharper, more cantankerous, less patient and more than ever willing to trying to bend reality to his will if he believes its for the good of the cosmos and damn free will.  In his head, the ends justify the means.

He's become the kind of figure that David Collings inhabited in the Big Finish Unbound story Full Fathom Five.  Still the Doctor, but something is off and we can only imagine how Tennant would have played it, this whole portion of his life having almost been skipped over on screen ten years ago.  So it's quite a bold step to make it the premise of a story which is ostensibly for children.

The Eighth Doctor's participation is limited to a flashback interlude perhaps set during the Big Finish strand of stories (I presume, I'm saving them) then a huge, barnstorming appearance at the end.  Judging by his costuming on the cover of this book's sequel (coming soon!), it's his Time War iteration so he's traveled from one universe wide wave of destruction to participate in another.  Busy life.

Steve Cole was series editor during Eighth's formative prose years and it's a pleasure to see him write the character again, coming across as a more meditative soul than his counterpart from four incarnations hence.  He's more clearly defined here and closer to his Big Finish counterpart than in some of the short stories of recent years, which just demonstrates the co-ordination at play across this whole project.

Placement: Just before the first Big Finish Time War series?

Molly Haskell on Women.

Film  After seeing a recommendation on the brilliant Be Kind Rewind YouTube channel my latest read is From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in the Movies by the film theorist and critic Molly Haskell.  Haskell's best known for defining the "women's film" genre and this book is laser focused on not just how female characters developed but also how Hollywood abused the actresses playing them.

It's early days, we're still getting to know each other, but the first twenty pages are devastatingly good.  There's a passage in which she talks about how male critics tend to give films a pass if they fancy the actress and pages pretty much burn as you read them.  After lengthy quotes from Otis Ferguson's lubidinous prose about Margaret Sullivan, she takes aim at some of her other colleagues:

"For James Agee, it was after croaky-voiced actress, June Allyson, who could turn routine movies into musicals and musicals into masterpieces -- momentarily.  To Ferhuson's and Agee's crushes (which he shares), Andrew Sarris adds a passion for Vivien Leigh which led him to see That Hamilton Woman eighty-five times.  Vincent Canby has been known to make considerable allowances for the performances of Candice Bergen ..."

And so it goes on.  Andrew Sarris (who helped develop auteur theory) incidentally was her then husband, they'd been married for five years and this is just the sort of insight you might expect from someone who's seen a particular film just too many times.

But the best paragraph so far is on the second page and defines the work which Haskell is committing to.  It's quite long but worth repeating especially in the light of the current and past presidential elections and the treatment of female candidates by the media and opposition party.  

"The prejudice against women is no less pernicious because it is based on a fallacy.  Indeed, to have sanction by law and custom a judgement that goes against our instincts is the cornerstone of bad faith on which monuments of misunderstanding have erected.  We can see that women live longer than men, give birth and endure pain bravely; yet they are the "weaker sex."  They can read and write as well as men -- are actually more verbal according to aptitude tests.  And they are encouraged to pursue advanced education as long as they don't forget their paramount destiny to marry and become mothers, an injunction that effectively dilutes intellectual concentration and discourages ambition.  Women are not "real women" unless they marry and bear children, and even those without the inclination are often pressured into motherhood and just as often make a mess of it.  The inequity is perpetuated as women transmit their sense of incompleteness to their daughters.  But men, too, are victimized by the lie.  Secretly they must wonder how they came to be entitled to their sense of superiority if it to these "inferior" creature to home they owe the debt of their existence.  And defensively, they may feel "emasculated" by any show of strength or word of criticism from their nominal dependents."

That was written in 1973 and some of the language has dated.  But glass ceilings still exist.  Some women's careers still take a hit if they decide to have a family, perhaps even giving up their employment, their spouses still inoculated against such things.  Pay parity is still being fought for.  Fifty years on, the white male voice still feels loudest.  Especially in cinema.

Taylor Swift endorses Joe Biden. Properly this time.

Politics   Back on election day 2016, Taylor Swift posted a photograph of herself voting but despite the implications of the sweater she was wearing it wasn't until after election day that it was confirmed that she had voted for Hilary Clinton.  

In the documentary Miss Americana, we see the back and forth with her management over how political she should be with Taylor clearly very angry that she'd essentially been muzzled by nervous men not wanting have her image tarnished with right wing fans (even though her silence had led a whole lot of racists to believe she was on their side).

It's been a long four years on this occasion time, Taylor isn't being subtle about it:

I spoke to @vmagazine about why I’ll be voting for Joe Biden for president. So apt that it’s come out on the night of the VP debate. Gonna be watching and supporting @KamalaHarris by yelling at the tv a lot. And I also have custom cookies 🍪💪😘

📷 @inezandvinoodh pic.twitter.com/DByvIgKocr

— Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) October 7, 2020

The article in the magazine or at least what must be a preview of it is on their website and she says pretty much what we're all thinking.  We need this to stop.

How are we all?

Life One of the key blogging rules from back in the day was never to apologise for not posting for extended periods, just to blog. Which is correct, of course, so instead, I'll simply offer an explanation.  What with one thing and another, I haven't felt the ability or need to write anything here, which has been a problem for a good couple of years but has been exacerbated more recently by the slow apocalypse and my own slightly fragile demeanor.  One of the key elements of anxiety is fear and folks, I've been very, very frightened.  Petrified in fact.

This came to a head on Monday in the local Spar shop on a garage forecourt.  Regular Twitter readers will know I've been conducting something of a survey of the supermarkets in the area, trying to find somewhere close and safe so I can buy Mum her Liverpool Echo.  Up until last week, we were getting it delivered and because we live in a tower block that meant the flat's intercom ringing at any time between three and five in the morning.  After six months, not getting a full night's sleep was beginning to have adverse emotional effects.

Crazily this Spar seemed like the best option.  Although its small and the staff don't wear masks, there are plastic screens at the counter and the geography of the isles mean its possible to ditch along them if someone comes into the place not wearing a mask either, which happens frequently because for the most part its drivers paying for their petrol who can't be bothered keeping everyone else safe for the brief time they're in the shop.  Plus it has a large selection of groceries which is incredibly handy in such close proximity to home.

But all along I've never really felt properly safe in there, but put it down to not actually feeling safe anywhere outside my own home.  Each shopping trip has felt like being a strategy game, having to navigate social distancing from people who don't really care about such things.  Having to be constantly vigilant is tiring as is the feeling of being the only person taking all of this seriously even as the number of cases in Liverpool increases, feeling sometimes as though I'm being unnecessarily paranoid even though all evidence is to the contrary.

Anyway, back to Monday.  Having waited long enough for the maskless to dissipate from the queuing area, I stood in line on the spot designated on the floor by a large circle with the Spar logo on it.  Within moments a young man, earlier twenties. stands just a foot or two behind me.  Already a bit wound up by the sheer bigness of things, I turn to him and ask him to step back and make some distance.  He refuses, saying that he is distanced.  Which.  He.  Isn't.  

"Plus" I say, "You're not wearing a mask." 

He isn't but I don't know why I added this, because he knew full well.  At this point it's a choice not to.  Asking someone to wear a mask has apparently become a huge deal - people don't like being told what to do by total strangers even if it's in their mutual best interest, even though by not wearing a mask they could be giving me a deadly, airborne disease.

"You don't have to...!" He screams back.

I'm seething.  I'm next in the queue so I walk forward and plonk the newspaper and lolly ices I'm buying on the counter.  Meanwhile I can hear the man talking to someone else, "That nob head telling me to wear a mask."  The person he's talking to is wearing a face covering by the way.  They're inches away from each other.

I turn my head slightly.

"Because it's mandatory to wear masks in shops!" I yell.

"No one asked for your opinion." He hollers back.

It's not an opinion, I want to tell him, it's a fact, but think better of it.  My heart is pumping in my chest and I just want to get out of there.  After months of keeping my mouth shut, the damn has burst and I've become the person I didn't want to be.  For all I knew, there could be reasons why he personally couldn't wear a mask and Ive added to his nightmare.  Perhaps I should be posting this to Reddit.

After paying, I turn to look around and notice again the small size of the premises, how few people are wearing masks or social distancing and I realise I've been deluding myself, making excuses against reality.  This place really isn't a safe place to shop.  Nowhere is, unless everyone is following the rules.  There's always a chance of something going wrong, of spending just a little bit too much time breathing the same air as an undiagnosed super-spreader not wearing a mask.

When I was being signed off from the telephone CBT I received at the start of the lockdown, the psychologist said that she didn't really have anything to teach me because I already had most of the elements of knowing how to deal with the anxiety locked in, especially how to "solve" those problems which were causing me to tip over, but also how to do that in such a way that it doesn't stop being from gladding about.

This virus has rather changed that.  In this case, one of the ways to stop myself to becoming overwhelmed is to shop online and top visiting supermarkets, even small ones.  We did right the way through proper lockdown, but the ability to visit somewhere and choose things off the shelves offered a sense of normality when there's no such thing as normality right now.  The attitudes of others make that impossible.

Now I've found a couple of newsagents were the staff do wear masks and there's perspex shielding all around the till area, limit customers and who take card payments. It's still a risk, but a small one and we've agreed that's better than not having a full night's sleep ever.  Not to mention that it forces me to go out at least once a day and breath some fresh air, as best I can through the mask.

The other reason I haven't updated much is Blogger's horrible new interface which somehow makes the process of updating the blog a more laborious process.  For a few weeks the "legacy" interface was still available through a hidden URL but that loophole has been blocked and it now redirects to this supposedly tablet friendly nightmare which hates HTML.  Let's see if I can get this to post.  Stay safe.

The Secret History of Writing.

History The Secret History of Writing is currently on the iPlayer (although the first episode drops off in a fortnight). Across three episodes it describes the development of written language from symbolic to alpha numeric characters, the development of how those letters are captured on paper and in printing and finally how roman characters are slowly conquering the world. 

Typical of the show's casual revelations is why we call the edge of the book its spine.  This dates back to the original utility of vellum.  In the series we see the scraping and stretching process on the cow hide but despite the craftsman's work, anatomical features of the animal's carcass can still be seen on the surface including the spine of the animal.  It's at this point the pages are folded and hence the name we still use.

[iplayer]

The Nineteenth Book I've Read This Year.

Books The author of numerous much thicker books about Agincourt offers a quick but dense survey of Henry V's life, referring only briefly to Shakespeare when necessary to debunk some of the outrageous myths. The general sense is that as with most of his "history" plays, Shakespeare concertinaed events for dramatic purposes, with the wedding to Catherine happening some time after the key battle rather than as though she was simply a prize for his victory.  But overall in following the distillations of the same chronicles which are still the bedrock of historical research into Henry V, Shakespeare's play is more accurate than some of his other works.

Virtual Exhibition of restored elements of Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece.

Art  Free 360 version of the show at The Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent with versions in English for Adults and Children (which is presented in the first person from an actor playing the painter).  The exhibition starts here.A couple of comments.

• When you magnify an item, it appears in the aspect ration of the item not matter the shape which means when you zoom in, it's within that window, which can be tricky to look at.  

• Also the tour includes the audio guide which suggests you press an A button for more detail.  Except that would be on the physical guide machine and isn't available virtually.

Other than that it's an excellent way of seeing an exhibition which most of us wouldn't otherwise have access to.  

There's also this curator's tour available:

What could happen during the Interregnum?

 Politics   This long read from The Atlantic outline the scary scenarios of what might happen after the US election now that we know that the current POTUS isn't interested in a peaceful transition of power:

"There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path."

Between COVID-19, the no-deal Brexit and this, the three month between the end of November and January are going to put Western civilisation at a precipice politically and economically and I don't know if any of us are properly prepared for it.

Polls. Polls. Polls.

Politics You will have seen perhaps that the Radio Times has published the results of a poll amongst Doctor Who fans as to who their favourite incarnations are. I'm on the fence as to whether this a good use of polling or bad use of polling since it didn't include everyone ignoring Jo and John because they aren't “actors who canonically held the role as the incumbent Doctor at one time or another”. But to be fair, there have to be limits. Where do you end? The Morbius incarnations would add at least another six and what can we say about them? 

Anyway, let's look at the topline numbers: 

 1. David Tennant 10518 / 21% 

2. Jodie Whittaker 10423 / 21% 

3. Peter Capaldi 8897 / 18% 

4. Matt Smith 7637 / 16% 

5. Tom Baker 3977 / 8% 

6. William Hartnell 1983 / 4% 

7. Paul McGann 1427 / 3% 

8. Christopher Eccleston 1144 / 2% 

9. Jon Pertwee 1038 / 2% 

10. Patrick Troughton 915 / 2% 

11. Sylvester McCoy 462 / 1% 

12. Colin Baker 359 / 1% 

13. Peter Davison 351 / 1% 

 Some comments: 

 (a) The most obvious change from similar polls in recent times is the emergence of Paul McGann in the mid-table because as The Guardian notes he has "also played the Doctor in an audio drama" which rather undersells how just how many boxed sets I've had to buy in the past few years in order to keep up with everything.  Yes, I know I'm behind with reviews, but with one thing and another, my mind has been elsewhere.  Night of the Doctor also has to be relevant -  it still has its semi-permanent berth on the iPlayer and probably turns up whenever viewers search for the rest of the show on there.

(b)  Davison at the bottom, which should please Colin, who is notoriously unhappy when he comes last in polls.  Just a few votes in it though.  All of the 80s incarnations are down there, which isn't easy to explain considering how much Big Finish material is pumped out for them.  Perhaps they would have done better with an alternative vote system.

(c)  William Hartnell's pleasingly high although I wonder how much of that is David Bradley transfer votes.

(d)  OK, yes, David above Jodie.  As Mark notes, Tennant has replaced Tom as the default Doctor which underscores just how popular the show was back then, by which I mean a decade ago.  The new Big Finish stuff will have helped, as well as the pre-publicity for upcoming Whovian arts festival Time Lord Victorious which puts David front and centre.  Plus he's the busiest actor on the list and rarely off the television in a variety of shows, so there's a constant reminder of just how good he is.

Do these polls mean anything?  Not really although the gap between Tennant and Davison is sure to come up at the next convention.  Find at the top Peter explaining what it was like to become David's father-in-law.

The Eighteeth Book I've Read This Year.

Books James Shapiro looks at key moments in the culture war still raging in the US and investigates how they were influenced by the canon. Much of it is hair raising. We discover that the abolitionist John Quincy Adams was incredibly queezy about Othello, a point which he expounded upon to Fanny Kemble, sister of Richard, at a dinner party, day (to paraphrase) that Desdemona got what she deserved for marrying an "n-word". That Ulysses S Grant almost went on stage as Desdemona in his younger days. How anti-English sentiment caused riots during a production of Macbeth in New York. That John Wilkes Booth believed himself to be a modern Brutus when he assassinated Lincoln who himself used to spend hours quoting a discussing Shakespeare with anyone who'd listen. There are also fascinating chapters about the making of Kiss Me Kate and Shakespeare in Love, rounding out with an essay about what happened when the assassination of Caesar in the Trump inflected Shakespeare in the Park production went viral (Shapiro worked as an advisor).  Marvellous stuff.

Does it Spark Joy?

Film If the lock down has taught me anything (a hundred and sixty eight days folks) (the furthest I've been since March is the top of Hardman Street), it's that I'll never see every film ever made.  Having accepted that, what to do about selecting things when when you're quite happy to sit through anything and then have to choose what that anything might be?

How do I fight against, as the video above calls it, choice paralysis?

There have been strategies, oh have there been strategies.

Not watching anything with less than 70% on Rotten Tomatoes was a first attempt.  Except the corpus is so overwhelming old, white and male, there are plenty of films which they simply don't "get" which have fallen below the freshness threshold.  Noah Hawley's Lucy in the Sky currently enjoys a 21% from 123 reviews on there and it's really quite weird and extraordinary and has a brilliant understated central performance from Natalie Portman.  So that was ditched pretty swiftly.

Then there was working through various lists, but inevitably meant that I missed out on newer releases.

Eventually, I've ended up with a rather systematic approach which allows some flexibility but also stops me from flailing around trying to decided what to watch next. 

The following does look very involved and it is to the extent that you might wonder why I don't just use that time actually watching films.  But again, this is infinitely better than choice paralysis and doesn't involve "lowering your expectations" as the video upside offers as a solution, which just seems like admitting defeat.

Let's use some bullet headings.

(1)  Only films reviewed in Sight and Sound or Empire Magazine in their main review sections.  That means that in the main they'll be theatrical releases, although it leaves some flexibility for prominent streaming releases.

(1a)  Apart from anything I've bought and haven't gotten around to watching yet.

(2)  A year at a time.  At the moment, I'm working through 2020 and when that's completed it'll be 2019, things missed and rewatching anything which I'd like to see again.

(3)  Only in high definition unless there's no other choice.  This seems pretty arbitrary, but I'd rather wait to see a film in its best possible picture and sound quality, even if that's streaming than through the standard definition haze of a DVD copy gifted to it on home release, which even with upscaling-on-the-fly (and sometimes because of it) looks less than optimal on my large flatscreen television.  That's unless there's absolutely no other way, of course.  I still have some films on VHS which haven't appeared on any format since.

(4)  Does it spark joy?   This is the newest step but I'm finally taking a Marie Kondo approach to films.  For the most part this takes the form of these yes and not lists.

Yes list:
Sci-fi / Fantasy / Horror
Period piece
Set in a major metropolitan area
Features an actor I like
Made by a director I like
Female led

Not list:
About someone dying from a disease
Has death of a parent as a motivating factor
About poverty and degradation
Mental illness and disability
Mafia / gangsters

There's a lot of soul searching and honesty in there, especially the not list which as you can see is mostly about trying not to see films which are likely to swing my mood downwards.  

On the one hand this makes me seem and even feel weak and prejudicial, but on the other, in order so that I can be there for my loved one, I need to take care of myself.  Perhaps this could have simply been listed as "depressing topics" but pinning it down like this means I have to face up to the reality of choosing not to watch these kinds of film.

The last point is simply because I'm tired of watching antagonists with non-redemptive story arcs.  

Of course there are exceptions both ways.  These are just guidelines.  They're open to change.

The upshot is that more than ever, I'm having to think about the films I'm watching to the point that I've made special justification field on the database I'm using as a universal watchlist.  You knew there'd be a database.  There's always a database.  Here are the films I currently have access to which I'm intending to see before I head off back into 2019 with the reasons why:

As you can imagine, that list used to be much longer, but if I couldn't type anything in that "spark joy" box, even after it had been filtered through the yes/not lists then it went.  "Hollywood" as a keyword seems like it could be used a broad excuse for watching crap and you'd be right.

Having read that back through it does also seem a bit "extra".  But I assume that these are the kinds of mental processes most people go through when choosing a film and that all I've done is put them down on paper.  Or at least that's what I'll keep telling myself.

Almost Hamlet: Ophelia (2018).

Film When this adaptation of Lisa Klein's novel was announced in 2016, it seemed initially like something of an outlier given that the cycle of Shakespeare related movies ended not long into the new century. But given the strengthening of the lead character's arc, it of course fits more properly the cycle of YA adaptations, a period take on the likes of Twilight, The Hunger Games and the Hermione Granger franchises.  This is Ophelia as self-actualised woman and a reframing of the play's revenge plot as an allegory on the destructiveness of toxic masculinity.

The film opens with a ten-year-old Ophelia joining Hamlet Snr’s court and becoming a maid in Gertrude’s household, moving up the ranks as a lady in waiting. From a young age she’s desperate to read Ovid and though she’s informed that she won’t get anywhere with men if they think she’s more intelligent than they are, it’s precisely her wit which leads to her gaining Hamlet’s attraction, the one thing which sets her apart from her bitchy court rival Cristina. Slowly events edge towards the action of Shakespeare’s play but it's quickly apparent that not everything will be as it seems.

Director Claire McCarthy and screenwriter Semi Chellis keep very close to the book (which I reviewed here).  As there, the events of the play are for the most part kept off screen, although like the book, Ophelia often hides behind tapestries and around corners so that she can witness plot points which will pertain to her own story arc, keeping everything from her point of view.  But unlike a Tom Stoppard play, they're not simply filling in the gaps or presenting parallel action, the events of the play are significantly rewritten with new characters introduced and motivations disambiguated.

As Ophelia says in her opening narration, ".. it is high time I should tell you my story, myself" which implies in this version of Elsinore, when Horatio was called upon to tell Hamlet's story, he filled in the blanks with wild stories of ghosts, portraying his friend as the hero and sidelining the female participants, who in Ophelia's case is the one to tell Hamlet, soto voce in the "nunnery" scene about his uncle's murderous betrayal.  Tonally, it's also very post-Game of Thrones retelling with Gertrude given a touch of the Cersei Lannisters which Naomi Watts clearly relishes. 

Although the novel was more generally influenced by fashions and furnishings of the late-Victorian or early Edwardian painters, the author featuring an image from W.G. Simmonds's The Drowning of Ophelia on her website, the film is instead set in world straight out of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, the opening with a recreation of Millais' Ophelia, Daisy Ridley floating serenely on the surface of the water after violently poising herself.  Ridley sports bright red Rossetti hair, and some frames seem designed to replicate a Burne Jones, Holman Hunt or most often Waterhouse's  paintings.

As with the novel, the film is perhaps less comfortable when it has to directly recreate scenes from the play as the text has to be rewritten to accommodate the cod medieval idiom of the rest of the dialogue.  Dropping Shakespeare directly into these moments would have been clunkier, but listening to a rewrite of the most famous phrases in the English language is impossible without thinking about the originals.  Polonius's proverbs in particular suffer largely because the Shakespearean has itself has so richly shaped our language.

It's impossible to be po-faced about any of this.  Shakespeare didn't originate Hamlet, his was an iteration of a much older legend and although this is closer to his play, like The Prince of Jutland (the one where Christian Bale eats a tree), everything is up for grabs, these are just story points available to be shuffled around.  Anyone complaining that Shakespeare's text is tossed out of the window won't also have come to terms with the fact that Ophelia is a severely under female role, especially in comparison to other areas of the canon.

Not unlike Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, there is a slight element of sadness that there isn't also a straight production of Hamlet with this cast also in the world.  George MacKay catches the impulsive youthfulness of Hamlet which is often missing elsewhere, and Devon Terrell brings a real sense of warmth and friendship to Horatio.  But Ridley particular seems like she would really stand out even in a full production of the play, capturing Ophelia's passion, impulsiveness and intellect, traits so often missed by directors and casts who focus on the title character's struggle.

Heinz 57.

Food Genuinely the first occasion when I heard the phrase "Heinz 57" was in relation to a mongrel dog which a friend of a friend of the family owned when I was much, much younger. It's not until later, in a supermarket filled with products covered with the wording that I realised the connection and where the phrase originated.

 In an idle moment, I thought I'd check what those 57 varieties are.

Snopes suggests that there never were 57 varieties but that Henry Heinz saw an advert on the side of a train for a company offering 21 different types of shoe:

"... struck by the concept, and recognizing that catchiness and Heinz resonance were far more important qualities for a company slogan than literal accuracy, Heinz cast about for the perfect number to use for his own company’s version of the phrase. Settling on fifty-seven, Heinz soon put the number to work, and within a week the sign of the green Heinz pickle bearing the words “57 Varieties” was everywhere Heinz “could find a place to stick it.” He soon ordered the construction of a six-story, twelve-hundred-light display featuring a forty-foot pickle; installed at the intersection of 5th Avenue and 23rd Street in New York City, this electric marvel dazzled New York residents and tourists until 1906."

But this Wikipedia page randomly includes, without explanation, a section called 1934 cookbook products which lists what the 57 varieties might have been:

"Heinz Oven-Baked Beans – Pork and Tomato Sauce
Heinz Oven-Baked Beans – Pork no Tomato Sauce
Heinz Oven-Baked Beans – Tomato Sauce no Pork
Heinz Oven-Baked Red Kidney Beans
Heinz Cream of Asparagus Soup

Et cetera. Drilling down into the reference section reveals they're taken from the The Heinz Book of Meat Cookery, a photo of which can be seen on this ebay entry, presumably to add some authenticity to the claim.  Sadly most of those products are no longer in production.  Although as Snopes says, Heinz now produce over a thousand products, so you can pick and choose which once you'd like to include.

Which answers my question.  There never were just 57 Heinz varieties.  Except there were.  Sort of.