Uncategorized – Page 47

Bad Timing (No, Not That Film)

On 11/02/2009

Opening here in Blighty next week, then, is the film Confessions Of A Shopaholic, based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella.

Given the current economic climate, though, I can’t really think of worse timing for a film to be released… well, maybe Rambo III just tops it, but I’m sure you know what I mean. In fact, I seem to recall that they’ve re-shot the film’s ending to make it more acceptable in the current climate (then again, it’s co-written by Tim Firth, who’s not so shabby with words).

It’s often said that cinemas see a surge in attendance in times of depression or struggle, as people seek a bit of an escape from the realities of life; I’ll be interested to see if the Shopaholic film does well or not, as it seems to me that it may present a semi-escape, albeit one which is not so much rooted in reality but more a certain aspect of financial reality which may – for many people – be just starting to bite…

Entirely True : Overheard At Work Mere Minutes Ago

By John

On 10/02/2009

In Personal, Uncategorized

Colleague of mine on the phone: “Oh, hello, I gather you’ve got my wife’s merkin…”

A couple of us exchanged confused looks, and when he came off the phone, he explained he’d been calling the local garage.

Ah…

BAFTA Winners 2009 Announced

By John

On 09/02/2009

In Link, TV, Uncategorized, Writing

As you’ve probably seen by now, the BAFTAs were dished out last night – the complete list of winners is available on the BAFTA website.

Although I haven’t seen as many of the films as I’d like to have (yet), it strikes me as a pretty good mix of titles, and I can imagine it’s a particularly cheering night for the folks behind Slumdog Millionaire, as it looked for a while as if it was going to be a straight-to-DVD release; instead of heading immediately for the shelf, it now has a shelfload of awards, which must be even more satisfying for them.

And in what I think is rather unfortunate timing, the Grammy Awards were also handed out last night. These cover the period October 2007 – September 2008, which kind of explains why I was looking at some of the nominations and thinking ‘isn’t that a bit old to be in the running for an award?’

Dead Man Talking

By John

On 08/02/2009

In Link, Uncategorized, Video

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the work of the late comedian Bill Hicks, I urge you to search his stuff out; it’s arguably been elevated to an over-high level because he died prematurely, but he often makes very good political or philosophical points (which frequently still ring true today), and some very good jokes.

For those of you who know of his work and career and rate him very highly, as I do and I know Mr Peel does (and for the record we did so before his untimely demise; neither of us is overkeen on leaping onto wagons full of band), then you’ll know that in 1993, less than a year before his death, Mr Hicks performed on The David Letterman Show. His segment went down well with the audience, but was cut before broadcast because… well, it appears that Letterman and others at the network were concerned that some of the jokes about pro-life groups would offend, especially as just such a group was advertising in one of the show’s commercial breaks.

Hicks was very upset about this, as he’d considered Letterman a friend, and being bounced at short notice for a routine which had been approved in advance annoyed him a lot. I’m summarising here, of course – for a very thorough report, written at the time, see John Lahr’s New Yorker article here.

Anyway, in a pretty surprising and unexpected turn of events, last week Letterman not only aired the never-before-seen material, but also invited Mary Hicks, Bill’s mother, onto the show, and talked about it with her. And, perhaps most importantly, he apologised for the decision and the upset it might have caused. It’s easy to question his motives, but whether they’re pure or not, Letterman’s apology appeared to be accepted by Mrs Hicks, and of course comedy fans get to see this notoriously unseen material. So, assuming my techie skills are up to the job, in three chunks, here’s the show in question (I recommend watching parts 1 and 2 for context, but if you can’t wait, the ‘lost’ stand-up routine is in part 3):

As I say, it’s easy to question Letterman’s motives for doing this, but Mrs Hicks accepted his apology, and so it seems inappropriate for others to be angry on her behalf; it’s insulting to her judgment to do so, really. The ‘lost routine’ is nothing that I haven’t seen or heard elsewhere on one of his live films or CDs, but it’s interesting to see an item which caused such a fuss at the time, and in all honesty I never thought it would be aired, so it’s an unexpected treat.

Which, of course, I wanted to share with you lovely folks.

High School Musical 4, Really

By John

On 08/02/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, Link, Pictures, TV, Uncategorized

Following the – initially surprising – success of the made-for-TV films in the High School Musical series, Disney appears to be trying to capture that lightning in a bottle once again.

Hence Camp Rock, the asking-for-troublesome-titled film featuring the Jonas Brothers, beat musicians who are popular with ladies of a certain age.

But surely, given its title, it should have featured The Darkness?

The Reduction Of The Snark

By John

On 07/02/2009

In Pictures, Twins, Uncategorized, Writing

Normally in these posts where I point to items that look or are named in a similar fashion, I make some critical remarks… not this time, though, as I can recommend both of these books for useful tips on the craft of writing (specifically writing novels).

Cripes! To paraphrase the story about Mike and Bernie Winters, “there’s three of them”! (Can’t vouch for this third one, mind).

As This Post Demonstrates, 140 Characters Would Not Be Remotely Sufficient To Contain Me

By John

On 06/02/2009

In Link, Personal, Pictures, Uncategorized, venting

I suspect it’s part of the would-be contrarian streak in me, the part that likes to think it’s pointing out the nudity when everyone else is admiring the cut of his majesty’s new threads, but I tend not to get into things as quickly as other folks.

An example of this was my reaction to the film Pulp Fiction – at the time, everyone was raving about it so much that I actively waited until the attendant fuss had died down before seeing it. I have an almost instinctive mistrust of the ‘general opinion’ – possibly born of often feeling on the fringes of things at school and college – as well as a tendency to like things with some degree of longevity; I once blew a job interview with a well-known music retailer (at a time when I needed an income) by carelessly stating that I liked music by bands who had at least two albums in them “and not these horribly disposable and interchangable musicians who are here for a couple of singles, there’s a big fuss about them, and then they’re gone” (into that category I rather feel that Katy Perry may fall, and Lady Gaga too, but time will tell).

In all honesty, I think it’s because I don’t like to say things which I don’t mean, whether deliberately or not; returning to Pulp Fiction for another example, it was voted greatest film of all time in a 1996 Empire film poll, a mere two years after it was made, which struck me as recent memory playing a large part in the voting (and indeed, a decade later, it was no longer top of that poll, having been usurped by … er, another film from 1994 [The Shawshank Redemption]). And on a personal level that kind of thing tends to mean a slightly embarrassed admission that “maybe I was getting kinda carried away with things, caught up”.

That’s kind of normal on a personal level, though the more public one is in the initial proclamation, the more embarrassing the semi-retraction. Obviously, there are a lot of public figures who’ve found themselves in this sort of situation over the years (though politicians increasingly seem not to bother with this sort of thing, but that’s probably right as they make fewer, and less important, mistakes than the rest of us), and indeed there are some in the spotlight even as I type.

All of which is my typically verbose run-up to explaining why I won’t be joining Twitter in any kind of hurry. A couple of friends have urged me to join it with some zeal, and whilst I can see they’re enjoying it, and the service is clearly breaking through into the mainstream at the moment, I don’t see myself signing up in the immediate future. Maybe I’ll think about it once the fuss has died down and if all the people who I’d like to communicate with or ‘follow’ are still members in a year or so, but given how many people who urged me to join Facebook are no longer participants in it, I do wonder what proportion of my friends who are current Twitterers will be as active this time next year.

For those of you who are keen and eager for me to join, then, it looks as if disappointment awaits. If it’s any consolation, much of my scepticism comes from two people of my acquaintance whose Facebook exploits very much coloured my opinion of such matters (and if you wonder why I compare Twitter so much with Facebook, well, isn’t it just the Facebook status line? I think it is…). Let’s call them persons one and two…

Person One told me that I had to join Facebook, and that if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to contact her in any other way. No e-mails or anything like that, it had to be Facebook or nothing. Oddly dogmatic, as if she was on commission or something, and rather undermined by the fact that friends who do have Facebook accounts say that despite them sending her messages via that method, she still doesn’t respond for months at a time. Hmm, not the best advert.

Person Two, I have to say, is someone whose Status Updates are works of inadvertent comedy genius, in that they’re the very worst kind of information about her life. If she’s not posting cryptic comments such as ‘ah well, it’ll be okay’ which are presumably designed to elicit queries as to what she means, she’s posting the most insanely mundane items. The other week stated that she was ‘eating Weetabix’, which remained current for about ten hours, suggesting either a large bowl or a small spoon – or both. I’m painfully aware that many of my blog entries (certainly including this one) venture into self-absorption and the sharing of trivial minutiae, and I really don’t think I – or the world at large – would benefit from me having a new method of telling you what unimportant nonsense I’m up to.

Anyway, all of the above justification-stuff may have the tinge of the negative about it, so by way of trying to leave things on a more jolly note, I would politely point you towards the picture at the top of this post, which I think is a rather good gag on this matter, and also towards the silly reports about the way the musicmaker Calvin Harris has been known to update his status on Twitter. Quite similar to Person Two referred to above, I fear, though I think his tongue may be planted in his tweet, as it were…

I’m not ruling Twitter out forever, but at the moment? Nah. A quick search for my name on t’internet turns up my e-mail address if you want to get in contact with me, and those of you who have the number of my mobile phone (something else I resisted for a long time, incidentally) will be all too familiar with my gramatically-perfect text messages. For the time being, the world will have to content itself with these means of communication.

And some might say – with good reason – that it’s more than enough.

Yes, I Fully Intend To Write The Theme Tune, And To Perform The Aforementioned Theme Tune. What Of It?

By John

On 05/02/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, Link, TV, Uncategorized

So, Minder returned to British TV last night. The original cast is long gone, to be replaced by some members of the Frat Pack or ex-cast members of Skins… well, by Shane Richie and another chap, anyway.

The thing is, Richie doesn’t play Arthur Daley, the character memorably ‘minded’ by two different bodyguards in the original run of the series, he plays Archie Daley, Arthur’s nephew. Fair enough, but back in the tail-end of the original series, when Arthur’s minder Terry left for Australia, his new bodyguard was his nephew, Ray Daley.

So Arthur’s got two nephews, both surnamed Daley. Presumably they’re both sons of the same father – Arthur’s brother, who asked him to take Ray on as his replacement minder. But if we’re to assume that both Ray and Archie are about the same age as the actors portraying them, they’re both the same age, as both Gary Webster and Shane Richie were born in 1964. And if they have the same father, they may well be twins (or perhaps have a very tired mother).

So why would Arthur’s brother ask him to take on one son as his minder, but not the other? Archie, it seems, takes after his uncle, so perhaps it was felt that he would be best kept away from him lest he should become too much of a sheepskin-wearing wideboy of the playground, but if Arthur was frowned upon as a potential bad influence upon Archie, that wouldn’t sit well with him being asked to take on Ray, would it ? And if they’re brothers, perhaps twins but even if not raised in the same environment, they’re bewilderingly different in demeanour.

If they’re not brothers, of course, that would explain how different they are in temperament, but having two brothers suggests a fairly extensive family background for Arthur, and this was something which wasn’t exploited to much effect in the original series, as far as I recall. There was, I seem to remember, a book recounting Arthur’s life (ah, here it is) – does anyone know if there was any reference to his family tree in it?

I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t watch the opening episode of ‘New Minder’ last night, as I wasn’t a huge fan of the original series, and the trailers made it look a bit too much like the Lock, Stock And… TV series* for my tastes.

But as one who takes a keen interest in narrative continuity and internal consistency, if any of you good folks watched it, can you let me know if they did anything at all to deal with this issue? To diehard followers of the show in the past, the continuity errors could be deeply troubling, and distract from their enjoyment of the show, and it’d be nice if there’d been a little throwaway reference to the family background as a sort of tip of the hat to the fans.

On the other hand, the above might just be a sarcastic dig at the exhumation of a once-popular show in a form which bears only scant similarity to its namesake, as opposed to, well, coming up with something original.

*Oh yes, I still remember that. Mr Ritchie (another one!), and its sponsors The Sun would rather it was dust and forgot, but I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday…

By Naming Things, We Often Come To Believe We Understand Them. Let Us, Then, Understand This Our Today

By John

On 04/02/2009

In Fish In A Barrel, List, Uncategorized

To me, it seems painfully obvious that what this world needs now is not love sweet love, but instead something much more important : a name for the time in which we’re living.

It’s a time of great economic, political and social uncertainty, and what’s more the weather’s cold and snow is getting in the way. During the similar period in the 1970s, some bright spark called it the ‘Winter of Discontent’ (quoting Shaky, no less), and summed it all up in a mere handful of words – genius, and that’s why the phrase is still used even today to describe that era. Not as often as ‘-gate’ is slapped on the end of a situation by lazy journalists, sure, but that happens more often than most of us blink, so the comparison’s probably unfair.

Anyway, before the last of the snow melts on this sceptr’d isle (see what I did there?), I think it’s time that we tried to capture the zeitgeist, and have a quick round of Name That Time.

I invite your suggestions, but in the meantime, here are mine:

– The Even Greater Depression
– The Big Freeze
– The Bank Nationalisation Programme
– The Winter We Most Needed Woolies
– Boys (And Girls) In The Brown Stuff
– I’m Ready For My Foreclosure
– At Last The 1929 Show
– The Day I Swapped My Mortgage For Two Goldfish

Think my suggestions are garbage? That you can do better? Then please leave your suggestions using the Comment facility!

But… Whuh… Huh?

By John

On 03/02/2009

In BBC, Fish In A Barrel, Link, Uncategorized

If you ignore the fact that the report returns to the Ross-Brand-Sachs issue like a dog to its own vomit, I think there’s a fair amount of amusement to be had in this story.

I think the phrase “[t]he BNP is technically an ethnic group” may be one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. Certainly brought a smile to my face (such as it is).

Category: Uncategorized Page 47 of 122