Category: Link Page 16 of 54

Free Music Downloads, Without The Guilt Or Fear Of Legal Reprisals

On 22/07/2009

I think I’ve mentioned Adam and Joe’s 6music podcasts here before – they’re very funny, and free, which never hurts.

Over summer, their show’s on holiday, but like true professionals they’ve ensured service continues, and so they’re currently running a series of podcasts which include the silliest songs from their weekly Song Wars feature. And they explain how the songs came to be, and that sort of thing. I recommend you have a listen by going here. They are very silly men.

Even better, you can download the songs themselves, shorn of all the chat and creative insight, from their blog, which is here.

No, I’m not on their payroll or on commission or anything, I just think their stuff’s funny, and thought I’d share. Despite what you may have heard, I’m nice like that.

You May Find The Image Accompanying This Post Offensive… Or Deeply Erotic. Or Both.

By John

On 21/07/2009

In Film, Link, Uncategorized

I wasn’t a fan of his Ali G character (mainly because it seemed to end up being the item it seemed intended to parody), but Borat made me admire Sacha Baron Cohen for his sheer willingness to make himself look stupid or just awkward for the sake of a joke. Which is something I always admire.

But I’ve just found out that in his latest film Bruno, he taunts members of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Oh, Mr Baron Cohen, assuming you’re on some kind of points, you will be receiving some of my money soon. I say bravo.

(Don’t You Dare Close Your Eyes)

By John

On 19/07/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, Link, Music, Uncategorized

It’s an obvious target, granted, but I still find the reviews for this item – particularly the first one – rather amusing.

And what the jiggins is going on with the third item that customers also viewed? Very odd.

Even Better Than Christopher Cross Or Edward Woodward

By John

On 18/07/2009

In Film, Link, Uncategorized

I think this chap has one of the best names I’ve ever seen.

Whaddaya mean, I’m easily pleased? Tch, you’re harsh sometimes.

It Has Been… Oh, Nearly Three Decades Since I Should Have Made This Confession

By John

On 15/07/2009

In Link, Personal, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized

Back in 1981, I was a contestant on the children’s TV quiz show Runaround. That’s right, m’dears, at the tender age of 10, I first saw the heady heights of fame… or, at least, was on a networked TV programme.

For those of you who don’t remember Runaround, it was essentially a multiple-choice quiz; a question was asked, with the possible answers shown on the wall at the far side of the studio. When the host – Mike ‘Frank Butcher off EastEnders‘ Reid shouted “G-g-g-g-g-g-g-go!”, the contestants would run across the studio and stand in front of the answer they thought was correct. After a few seconds in which you could change your mind, the answer was revealed by a light being shone on the contestants who’d got it right. If you got it wrong, you went into the ‘Sin Bin’, and were out of the game until… er, I forget, but if you got it right, you picked up a coloured ball. The contestant with the most balls at the end of the show was the winner.

Look, I know it sounds basic, but it was a simpler time, all right? We didn’t have crack cocaine and Nintendo iPlaypods, we had to make do with simpler pleasures.

Anyway, this was all filmed at the Southampton studios of now-defunct regional broadcasters Southern Television. To get contestants, they’d come to nearby schools and ask a number of questions – I, strangely enough, got in because I was able to show I had a name beginning with a certain letter of the alphabet, and also had a particular number of pets at home. I didn’t lie about either of these things, but I probably could have. Still, they weren’t looking for Mastermind contestants, I guess, just kids who could read and run, so the entry requirements weren’t too stringent. Eventually, they had enough contestants from the school (four or five, I think), and a date was set.

The day itself was pretty exciting – we were given a bit of a tour of the building (peeping into a room where they were recording something for How), and taken down to the studio where we’d be filming that afternoon. It was a pretty big studio, and so they filled it was coachloads of schoolkids from the surrounding area, including the schools the contestants were drawn from. Then there was a bit of hanging around, and we changed into our specially-personalised Runaround t-shirts and went down for the filming. To say I was excited was an understatement.

At the start of the show, the contestants (the four or five from my school, plus an opposing team from another school, though it was more about trying to win for yourself than any kind of team effort) would run out through a tunnel-shaped opening, and so as the filming began, we were lined up in the tunnel. And this is the point where I make my torrid confession, here on the interweb, to you. Have you ever been in a TV studio, maybe to watch the filming of a show? Well, if you have, you may have seen a lot of the cameras have small spiral-bound pads clipped to them, giving the camera operators a rundown of the places to focus on, etc. In the tunnel before the show started, there was a camera, and on the running order there I could see that for the first question (about how many days there are in July, I think) answer B was circled.

Yes, I’m not proud of it, but I went for B on the first question, and it was indeed correct. I cheated. Not a good thing…

… but there was pretty much instant karma, as I quickly got the next question wrong and spent a lot of time in the Sin Bin, and didn’t come anywhere near winning, so verily cheats did not prosper that day. And rightly so. Who knows how different it might have been if I’d got the first question wrong?

Anyway, whilst I didn’t win the top prize – a portable TV – when it came to the tiebreaker between two boys from the other school, I did have my first insight into the wanton trickery of the televisual medium; the tiebreak question was “What is the fourth month of the year?” and it took them about seven guesses to get it right, but when the show was broadcast, the boy who won appeared to have replied pretty much instantaneously. Oh, television editing, you are misleading.

My prize, for those of you who are interested, was a then-top-of-the-line digital watch; which meant that it told the time, date, and – brace yourself – seconds. About five years later, it was pretty much the sort of watch they’d give you free if you bought £5 worth of petrol, but that’s the march of progress for you.

So, having learned a salutary lesson about cheating, I made my way home, with my watch, Mike Reid’s autograph on the back of one of the question cards (we moved house several months later, and it was lost in the move), and of course my personalised Runaround t-shirt.

Speaking of which, writing about the experience has inspired me to dig out the t-shirt and put it on for old times’ sake. Of course, I was a lot smaller then, but let’s see if I can still get into it…

…Oh.

Looks like I’ve grown a bit in the last 28 years, then.

New BBC Roadshow Date – And Why One Shouldn’t Send Messages In Anger

By John

On 14/07/2009

In BBC, Link, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

In case you hadn’t seen the post by Piers on the BBC Writersroom site, there’s a new Writersroom roadshow being held – this time in Birmingham, on the evening of Tuesday 18 August. Full details can be read here – if you live in Brum (or close by), you might want to see about going along.

Speaking of writing and using the internet, what’s all this about people hassling writer James Moran online because they don’t like the way the story went in Torchwood? It seems he’s being accused of a homophobic element to the story, which seems a little odd when you consider it was co-plotted with Russell T Davies… but frankly that’s by the by; James has been very open and forthcoming in his online presence, and very enthusiastic about writing generally, and now it seems that people having a go at him is likely to cause him to withdraw somewhat, which I think is a shame.

I mean, I’ve seen TV shows where I haven’t liked the direction the story’s taken, but sending Twitter messages and the like to the writer (or one of them) is obviously excessive, and it’s pretty clear from James’s reaction that he found a lot of them rather insulting.

That’s going too far, and is a desperate waste of the potential for communication offered by developments such as the internet. I’m reminded of the people whose online hectoring led to the cancellation of a writing competition in future years back in 2007; remember, just because you have the means to tell someone (or indeed everyone) your current emotional or mental state, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

Oh, And It Features Music From Black Lace. I Kid You Not.

By John

On 13/07/2009

In BBC, Film, Link, TV, Uncategorized

I know that the TV excitement in the last week has mainly focussed on Torchwood, but I haven’t seen that yet (planning to watch it all in one big chunk), so I can’t comment.

However, one TV show in the past few days which I found rather exciting was the fourth episode of Psychoville, written by and starring two of the League of Gentlemen, and lo and behold this episode features a guest appearance by the other onscreen member (so, not Jeremy Dyson).

If you’ve ever seen the Hitchcock film Rope and marvelled at the long sequences between cuts, then this episode will impress you in the same way; from what I could see, there’s only one cut, at about the 20 minute slot, which is something you really don’t see very often in TV. The episode is very much like Rope in structure and content too, and is quite clearly a homage – in the proper sense of that word, not the cut-and-paste-swipe sense all too often used nowadays. That said, I reckon you could probably watch this episode without having watched those before it.

But John, you may be asking, how can I watch it now? The wonders of the BBC iPlayer, I say in reply, and point you to this link, which should enable you to watch the episode on your computer. Wonderful what they can do nowadays.

I have to say, I think Psychoville is a very solid show so far – the central mystery of it is unravelling well, and the cast of characters are suitably horrifying and/or funny (often both at once). Worth looking at the whole series so far if you’re not already following it, I’d say.

The Results Are In

By John

On 10/07/2009

In Link, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

So, I didn’t make it to the next round of the CBBC Competition. Ah well.

I did, however, get a friendly e-mail from the BBC Writersroom, saying that my script had made it through to the second reading stage, and encouraging me to send stuff to them in future, which was nice.

And, of course, it was good to find out either way, on the appointed day. Well played, BBC, I say.

But enough of me; you’re a bunch of talented sods out there, surely at least one of you has been asked to go along to the masterclass? C’mon, share the good news, that’s what the Comment function is for…

On Showgirls, And Marcus Aurelius, And How They Are Connected

By John

On 09/07/2009

In Film, Link, Personal, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

I referred to the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition Sketch the other day (in this post), and that led me to think about its appearance in the film Sliding Doors. Hey, that’s how my mind works.

For those of you who haven’t seen this film (and I’ve only seen it once, at the time of its cinema release), John Hannah recites lines from the Spanish Inquisition sketch to a table of hysterically impressed friends, including Gwyneth Paltrow – in fact, his Python performance kind of forms part of his wooing of her character in the film. The people around the table are laughing a lot at this bit in the film, including women, which didn’t ring true for me, as I was the kind of spotty indoorsy teenager who’d learn Monty Python sketches off by heart, and as much as women like a laugh and like comedy, very few of them are particularly keen to hear you recite other people’s comedy material. Especially a sketch as reliant on visual aspects and incidental music as that one.

Anyway, as an aspect of the film in which we’re supposed to think Hannah’s character’s funny or likeable, it didn’t work for me. In a similar way, I once found myself watching Showgirls to see if it was as bad as it was said to be (it was), and about twenty minutes in (I think – it was just before the first ad break, and I switched it off then) there was a big song and dance number. The main character, played by Elizabeth Berkeley, watches this show on stage, and is utterly captivated by it. I, on the other hand, thought it was a pretty risible sequence featuring semi-naked people cavorting amidst model volcanoes.

I turned off the TV at this point, as it seemed pretty clear that the main character was going to be inspired to want to do this kind of dancing, and I would find myself laughing at it, and that would just be mean. Well, if I’m honest, I wouldn’t have minded a laugh, but as I was sharing a house at the time, I didn’t want anyone to come into the lounge and think I was watching it for the nipples instead of the giggles.

Hmm, those last three paragraphs make it sound as if I’m just having a go at other people to make my point (and I do have one), so let me share a similar confession about my own writing; some years ago, I wrote a novel (unpublished, and with hindsight that’s probably fair) called Fall From Grace. It was essentially a re-telling of the fall of Lucifer, set within a modern-day Evangelical Broadcasting Network – members of staff rebel against the existing regime, get kicked out, seek to take revenge, that sort of thing.

However, in order to make the rebels into underdogs, I needed the evangelical TV station to be successful, and try as I might I just couldn’t write the details of the broadcasts in a way that made this seem likely. Mainly because deep down I couldn’t see a way that, in modern-day England, such a venture would have enormous success – and as a result, the story pretty much asked the reader to take it on trust that, no, really, I promise you, it was very popular. Unfortunately, that creates a situation rather like this:

Reader: These religious broadcasts don’t strike me as that awe-inspiring.
Me: Well, they are. Trust me.
Reader: They wouldn’t convert me.
Me: Well, the people in the book are quite taken with them.
Reader: I don’t know why.
Me: Look, they’re really impressed. Take my word for it.
Reader: I suppose I have to, for the story to make sense.
Me: Yes, you do.
Reader: Hmph.

It doesn’t really matter if a story contains a minor element that doesn’t quite ring true, but if it’s a plot element or a catalyst or a personality trait which actually affects the direction of the story, there’s a more fundamental problem; like watching one of those fight scenes in films where the cuts are just so insanely fast that you can’t tell what’s going on until one person’s left standing and the others are on the ground, you end up just having to accept that it’s happened, even if you don’t know how or why, but of course it introduces a seed of disbelief into your mind, and much of the time stories require that disbelief, like the Brooklyn Bridge, to be well and truly suspended.

Otherwise, you end up just having to take other characters’ word for it; John Hannah’s character is funny, the show in Showgirls really is impressive, and in my personal example, millions of people do tune in every week to watch a religious TV show… and if you don’t believe what the story wants you to believe, or feel the reaction that you’re apparently expected to feel, you’ll be jerked right out of the experience of the story, and that’s never a good thing.

Looking at how this should be done, I watched the first episode of The West Wing again yesterday, and – possible spoilers ahoy – we don’t get to meet the President himself until very near the end of the episode. Instead of the viewer being told for the best part of an hour that he’s quick-witted, supportive of his staff, and articulate, we’re shown it – President Bartlet demonstrates this in a couple of minutes, and at the end of the scene (indeed the episode) you can see why his staff are so loyal to him. That, as Mr Punch would say, is the way to do it.

The Roman Emperor and philosopher Marcus Aurelius once said “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one”, and I think the same applies to aspects of plot or character as detailed above. Is a character meant to be funny? Show them being funny, not other people telling them they’re funny. Is something in a story meant to be amazing or startling, and send people’s lives in a new direction? Then the story needs to show it being amazing or startling.

In his (very good) screenwriting book Save The Cat, Blake Snyder stresses the importance of making the reader/viewer care about the main character as early as possible by having them do something funny, likable or heroic in the early scenes – by having them, as it were, ‘save the cat’ on page one, and I think he’s spot-on about this.

As is so often the case, I won’t pretend that I’m making a devastating insight about a requirement of writing here; however, I was quite pleased when all the above churned around inside my head, and I finally realised that all of the examples which sprang to my mind all point to one fundamental principle of writing: Show, Don’t Tell.