Do You See

Best Ever Doctor Who Cliffhangers As Chosen By Me

Whatever happens next Saturday, now is a time for rejoicing as “New Who” delivers its first bona fide, ZOMG, who saw that one coming REAL ACTUAL CLIFFHANGER. Not that the new series hasn’t been jam-packed with moments that would have made magnificent old school episode climaxes (just imagine Professor Yana’s pocketwatch, or the in-your-face Weeping Angel, or the empty TARDIS in “Father’s Day” with the eeeeowwwwwwwwwww end of episode noise…) But often the new series cliffhanger has been a clumsy beast, generally through trying to pack too much in: either having every character menaced at once, or having the monsters yell their playground-ready catchphrase a few times too often, or by simply diluting the shock with parallel threats. Take this season’s “Silence In The Library” - a good cliffhanger to be sure, but if they’d just stuck to the “Donna has been turned into a computer terminal” one, left the lumbering skellington suit out and cut down on the repetition it would have been several times more effective.

Anyway, they’ve finally got it right, so to celebrate here’s my own list of Who cliffhangers that stick in the brain. Some of these are, I believe, canonically accepted as awesome, others more obscure. The list draws heavily on ones I saw as a kid, the prime time to be shoXoRed by a Who ending… and yes, there will be spoilers!

… read on …

Would You Rather Be Called Toilet Cleaner?

I am probably not alone in the UK to having The Wizard Of Oz as one of my first film memories. Not at the cinema of course, but rather on television at Christmas, one of those yuletide traditions which I never questioned*. It may be where I got a fondness for musicals for, but it is absolutely where I got my fondness for supersaturated Technicolor films from. The Adventures Of Robin Hood shares a soft spot for many of the same reasons.

All of this is in some way an excuse for liking “the already decided to be a flop” Speed Racer. … read on …

Japes From the Vine : NSFA

I had considered tagging this link Not Safe For Work, but truly it is Not Safe For Anywhere. One of my favourite parts of watching the Daily Show is when they show the ridiculous graphics and bombast of American election reporting. And then, on a night like last night, with a few council elections I have to shake my head at the nonsense that now presents itself as election coverage here. David Dimbleby has now ossified in his role as presenter, snappy, rude, not listening to anyone and making jump-cut links whenever he decides and usually when the gallery aren’t ready. I am used to that. What I am not used to yet is Jeremy Vine, who has taken over Peter Snow’s role as the man with the graphics. Snow had a way with stats, and an expansive excitement in the ways that new technology could help explain in layman’s terms how an election was progressing.

Vine is just a twat. No, sorry that’s a bit harsh. ON TWATS. Sorry, I still haven’t recovered from this bit of footage which was on at about 1am last night. … read on …

Do Polar Bears Dream Of Bickering Humans?

I don’t know why I am still watching Lost. It makes me feel terrible about my own ability to follow a narrative storyline, and how easily my buttons are pushed but the simplest of TV trickery. I have never believed that the writers have really known where the whole things was going from the beginning, though I have based this belief on the fact that the writers of 24 don’t know how their series will end - and there are only 24 episodes of those. Lost, with its endless pointless mysteries, time wasting flashbacks (and now flash forwards) and bunch of on the whole unlikeable characters should have driven me off by now. Take the Lost “numbers”. Important in series one and two, they haven’t been mentioned since, and I still can’t see a way of their quasi-mystical importance being explained. Do I think there will be anything like a satisfactory conclusion to the mess which is now taking in time travel, faking the death of hundreds of people and massive conspiracy theories? Nope. Yet I keep watching.

Of course the show trades on its mysteries, though the web of unexplained nonsense is so tangled that I believe nothing coherent will really come out of it (its at least one persons dream*). But this has been further confirmed by USA Today running a competition for viewers to submit what they think is going on to the producers to be graded. … read on …

more reasons (as if anyone needs em) to despise nick broomfield

i: yes this was entirely my fault for sitting down in front of a “michael barrymore: what really happened” documentary…

ii: viz that i (and all viewers) have to endure jacques peretti constantly concluding that “no one can possibly know what really happened” ftb HE THE GREAT JACQUES PERETTI cannot get someone to confess all on-camera after a rigorous interrogation of duration 23 seconds

iii: to be fair the depth of JP’s bad faith is by no means of broomfieldian dimension, and he spent a fair part of the show angst-ing at the awfulness of it all: which if yr generous you can interpret as “i JP am ashamed of myself for plunging this low”

iiia: but basic rule — … read on …

P-1? P-2. P-3.

Do you know of anything artistic knocking around at the moment called P1? Maybe a novel, or a collection of poetry. A play, preferably a good one, or maybe one of the English National Opera’s experimental jobs at the Young Vic? Why? Well I kind of want, in a male collectorish manner - to collect a full set of P1, P2, P3. And all I’m missing is P1.

Where P-2 is a dodgy two handed horror thriller film coming out this weekend. Staring Rachel Nichols (who I quite liked in Alias), it is a mash-up of a survival horror flick and Die Hard Inna - where the Inna is a parking garage. Level P2 no less hence the name of the film. Whilst I doubt it will be much good, I fancy a slightly brutal horror where the female lead uses her brains to get out of the situation. (And you can’t begrudge a film with such an awesomely stupid tagline: “The only thing more terrifying than being alone, is discovering you’re not.”

And P3 is the new Portishead album. … read on …

Not Brand Sex

Russell Brand isn’t the best thing about Forgetting Sarah Marshall*, but he is very good in it. And interestingly what is so good about Brand in thsi film is that he is so gosh darned nice. Which has made me think about the Brand brand over here if you will, and how he has turned from a likeable TV host into a very divisive celebrity in two years. And perhaps the secret of his success in Marshall (and lack of success in St Trinians and most of his other projects between this and Big Brothers Big Mouth) all boils down to the difference between what he is and what we want him to be.

Brand’s schtick is being the erudite dandy. The juxtaposition between his look, his language and the way he uses his language creates a comic persona. Which was absolutely perfect on a strange phone in show like Big Brothers Big Mouth, a show where people ring up about the minutiae of a pretty unimportant reality TV show and this conversation is spun out into half an hour. A DAY. … read on …

IN SALAD (of all the) NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM(s)

huntin for images of BRANES in pulp culture i came across THIS via boingboing: “In November 2006 Till Nowak created the image SALAD. For this image he created 12 digital vegetable models in 3ds max using photographic references. They were combined to become a tribute to the fantastic biomechanical creations of H.R. Giger and the vegetable portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.”

full size here

In Which The Last Mistress Does Nothing To Stop Other Mistresses Existing

I really enjoyed The Last Mistress, Catherine Breillat’s filmed version of d’Aurevilly’s novel. Look who am I kidding. d’Aurevilly means nothing to me, and I’ve never been a huge fan of Breillat’s sex comedies (such as the not that aptly named Sex Is Comedy). I’m here for Asia Argento, Dario’s daughter who is far and away one of the most unpredictably watchable screen presences of the moment. So whilst The Last Mistress may seem to be a pretty standard period costume drama, Argento being in it was more than enough to drag me along. And not only was I right to pick that, but the reason for it being any good at all is all down to Argento herself.

The key scene in The Last Mistress takes place just after a duel takes place. … read on …

stendernauts misled: it is to weep

p^nk s lord thingamajig is on the way to london fields lido and crossing hackney’s graham road where it meets mare street in the Easty East of End when a small but full car stops and a woman addresses him thru the window:

woman: excuse me do you know where albert square is?
p^nk s lord t: er d’you mean the real albert square or the one on telly?
woman: YES!
p^nk s lord t: ok but they aren’t the same! the one on telly isn’t a real place — it’s a film-set up in north london somewhere that they film on
anguished voice from deep inside car: what? but we’ve driven all the way from birmingham to visit it!
p^nk s lord t: ok well it is findable but it’s far from here and i don’t know the way
woman (despondently): ok thank you
*car drives off trailing collective thinks-bubble of baffled upset*
p^nk s lord t (thinks to self): oh dear i wonder if they meant fassett square — that’s what albert square is based on and it’s just round the corner