Monday night was Alphabeat, Tuesday night was Oklahoma! at Leeds Grand, for a slight change of pace, with no lack of camp... The last musical I saw at the theatre was Blood Brothers in London, starring Melanie C, in November last year, so it's about time I saw another one! We saw that Oklahoma! was playing so we thought we'd give it a shot, knowing nothing about it other than the title song, and Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'. It turned out to be a good choice.
I'd heard of Marti Webb, who played Aunt Eller, but I was excited on buying the programme to discover that Mark Evans was playing Curly, the male lead! He came second to Jade Ewan on last year's Your Country Needs You, so he almost represented the UK at Eurovision and narrowly missed out on the ignominy of being a Sugababe... He was also very attractive and had a great voice, which he showed off to the full in Oklahoma! (along with his strangely scrawny-but-muscular body during a fight scene that had the Grand audience all a fluster). Marti Webb was good in the matronly role of Aunt Eller, although she didn't get enough chances to sing.
The plot was a bit of a typical boy-chases-girl fairytale, set in 1907 in Indian Territory that is soon to become the State of Oklahoma! The reason for the setting was not readily apparent, as there was little mention of politics, so I suppose it was picked to allow Rodgers and Hammerstein to write a cowboy musical. I enjoyed the humour and the songs were all performed with gusto, although some were more memorable than others - the numbers involving most of the cast were the best and most energetic, much of the dancing was spell-binding and I watched agog as people were picked up and thrown around.
- Act I
- Overture - Orchestra
- Oh What a Beautiful Mornin' - Curly
- The Surrey With the Fringe On Top - Curly, Laurey, & Aunt Eller
- Kansas City - Will, Aunt Eller, Male Ensemble
- I Cain't Say No - Ado Annie
- Many a New Day - Laurey and Girl ensemble
- It's a Scandal! It's a Outrage! - Ali Hakim and Ensemble
- People Will Say We're in Love - Curly and Laurey
- Pore Jud is Daid - Curly and Jud Fry
- Lonely Room - Jud
- Out of My Dreams/Dream Ballet - Laurey and Dream Figures
- Act II
- Entr'acte - Orchestra
- The Farmer and the Cowman - Andrew Carnes, Aunt Eller, Curly, Gertie Cummins, Will Parker, Ado Annie Carnes, Laurey, Ike Skidmore, Cord Elam and Ensemble
- All Er Nuthin' - Will and Ado Annie
- People Will Say We're in Love (Reprise) - Curly and Laurey
- Oklahoma! - Curly, Laurey, Aunt Eller and Ensemble
- Finale Ultimo (Oh What a Beautiful Mornin' and People Will Say We're in Love) - Company
I was a little concerned by the morals of the story, however, and found the leads, Curly and Laurey to be fairly bland characters. There is a 'baddie' character of sorts, Jud, who is the lonely farm-hand who dotes after Laurey, and is treated badly by everyone else. He's eventually killed and no one really cares, which is a shame as I think the character was just misunderstood and cast aside for being slow. That said, it was a rousing musical and I'd like to see the Hollywood version now, and more from Mark Evans too!
It's only about 6 months since we last saw Alphabeat at The Cockpit, and since there setlist was the same as last time, but in a different order, there's not much I can add to my last review! This time around they replaced Heart Failure and Ain't Nobody with Fantastic 6 and Heat Wave and moved the new singles to the end, otherwise there were the same call-response bits for the crowd, and the same manic dancing from the lead male. None of this is a criticism though, they were excellent once again!
- Fantastic 6
- Always Up With You
- Go-Go
- 10,000 Nights
- Chess
- What Is Happening
- Heat Wave
- Hole In My Heart
- The Beat Is...
- Boyfriend
- Touch Me Touching You
- The Spell
- DJ
- Fascination
Always is a Steven Spielberg film that is no where near as well known as Jaws, Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park - I'd only heard of it vaguely and knew nothing about it, but since Spielberg movies are usually worth watching I recorded it when it was on TV a few months back. It turns out that Always is a comedy-drama-romance set in the world of aerial firefighters, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman.
I wasn't sure what to expect from this cast, especially during the first 30 minutes which was by turns cheesy, action-y, and often very funny. Some of the scenes of Dreyfuss wooing Hunter's Dorinda (apparently that's a name...) reminded me of Hot Shots! in the soft focus photography and slapstick delivery. But then Dreyfuss' plane explodes mid-firefight and the movie turned into something else. It was clear from how happy and loved up Dreyfuss and Hunter were that it couldn't last, but I wasn't expecting that! And then I wasn't expecting Dreyfuss to appear onscreen again, talking to Audrey Hepburn(!) and becoming a sort-of ghost.
As Hunter mourned and time moved on a year, John Goodman has taken the training school job that was originally ear-marked for Dreyfuss, and among the ranks is Ted Baker (Brad Johnson), a none-too-bright hunk who has fallen for Dorinda. It turns out that Dreyfuss' purpose back on Earth is to be a guardian angel or spirit guide for Baker, to impart his flying wisdom and skill. It was clear that Dorinda and Baker would eventually end up together, but not how it would all tie up.
Dreyfuss is an unlikely romantic lead, so it made sense that he was only one for half an hour before becoming more of a comic lead. His spirit character could talk to humans, but could not interact with them - and they only heard him as an interior thought, so no one knew he was really there - this wasn't Ghost or any number of science-fiction type ghost movies, the death was handled quite sweetly and compassionately. Holly Hunter convincingly portrayed a grieving lover who eventually learns to move on, although I thought it was a little dodgy that there were so many similarities between Dreyfuss and Johnson's characters, so that she was dating Dreyfuss all over again.
I think sometimes the tone was a bit muddled and the humour occasionally overpowered the heart - the film is more than the sum of it's parts though and I enjoyed it. It was very evocative of sugary 1950s movies, and in fact was a kind-of remake of A Guy Named Joe (1943), and the fashion and look was very 1980s. The star of Always for me was John Goodman - he does heartfelt and humour with such ease, he's always a pleasure to watch.
Desiring a quick fiction shot before my holiday this weekend I picked up another in the series that also brought me Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon, and like those others, I was mildly disappointed. The connection between these books is that they (along with others including Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep, The Grifters, The Pianist and Minority Report) were all turned into 'classic' movies, and of the 4 I've read so far from this collection (including The Postman Always Rings Twice) I've seen none of the films, so I've come to the books knowing little of what to expect. I don't like reading blurb directly before embarking on a new book too.
So I wasn't sure what to expect from Hombre. Turns out it's a western. Now, I don't mind the odd big screen western, but I've never read one before, and after this I'm not sure I want to again (though I think The Grifters is one, as I think John Wayne was in the film). Hombre was short and lacking on incident, and a little bit boring. I had to force myself to pick it up and finish it. Oh I'm sure it's a classic of it's genre, it just didn't do much for me. It was all a bit obvious - the narrator, who's no literary masterpiece and has a very basic way of relating events, tells of John Russell, a man who has become a legend from the back of the events described within the book. The plot runs something like this: unlikely group travel on stagecoach, it's held up and a woman is kidnapped as ransom for stolen money, the group follow the robbers and foil their plans. That's about it. And John Russell, the man who has lived (voluntarily) with Indians, is the enigma at the heart of it all, quietly running down the kidnappers and picking them off. Yawn. It probably works brilliantly on screen, not so much on paper.
This was another late-night-on-Channel-4 recorded film, complete with sign-language interpretter and blissfully few ad breaks to fast-forward through. It turned out to be a forgettable but enjoyable bit of fluff, with a fairly starry cast for an American movie about gay relationships, including Zach Braff (sporting a dodgy blond dye-job), Timothy Olyphant, the dad from Frasier, and Dean 'Superman' Cain.
It's a couple of weeks since I saw it and there's not a lot I remember about it, which speaks to how good it really was. I don't think it was either funny enough or romantic enough to be subtitled: A Romantic Comedy' though. There were chuckles, and some interesting attempts to comment on gay stereotypes in Hollywood movies (such as gays always dying of AIDs) which were then brushed aside to show gay gym bunnies and drag acts. A nice idea, but without the witty script and well-rounded characters to dispel many gay movie clichés.
For a gay movie there was disappointingly little in the way of gratuitous nudity or even topless shots! Olyphant's character had a cute love interest, and Dean Cain reminded me how hot he was, but otherwise the sex was written out of the movie, presumably to be more palatable to US audiences, since this appeared to want a mainstream release rather than straight-to-DVD for gay film festivals. It was good, but there have been better gay movies before and since.
I recorded the Channel 4 drama, Mo, earlier in the year, and got round to watching it last night. It's a biopic of Mo Mowlam, starring the ever-wonderful Julie Walters in the title role. The film explores Mowlam's cancer diagnosis and her subsequent failure to disclose it to anyone outside her husband, including Tony Blair, her boss when she was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Walters was reassuringly brilliant as Mo, and once she was portraying her with Mowlam's unmistakable rounder figure and wispy hair (both results of Mo's battle with her cancer) she was almost undistinguishable from the real person. Mo Mowlam was a very well respected figure in British politics, and she was instrumental in bringing about some sense of order in her time running Northern Ireland, and it is sad to note how her illness and treatment by her party forced her into a decline, leading to her untimely death in 2005.
The drama showed Mo as a loveable figure, but was unafraid to show how the illness took its toll, and also how Mowlam was affected privately. The film is filled with hilarious moments taken from Mo's real life, such as removing her wig at inappropriate moments, or swearing like a trooper - moments her brian tumour generated as they lowered her inhibitions. It was heart-rending towards the end when Mo questioned how much her popularity and persona was her and how much was her cancer. As a depiction of a politician at the top of her game this drama did a lot to excuse Mo's decision to hide her illness, and it also served to remind how few popular figures there are today in British politics. Are there any?
I thought that a nice family, Disney movie would be a good way to start my Sunday morning while I waited for Andrew to get out of bed, so I selected Bridge to Terabithia from the DVD recorder and settled back to be entranced with what I thought would be a Narnia-style fantasy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the movie was actually much better than I expected, but shocked to discover just how sad it got about 2/3rds in! Although there was a happy ending, events took a depressing turn, for a supposed kid's fantasy film.
For a start, the posters/DVD box misrepresent what the film is about. Far from being set in a magical world like Narnia, Wonderland or Middle Earth, it is entirely set on planet Earth, in the US (though filmed in New Zealand), and there's only a few minutes with any CGI creatures, and these exist in the imaginations of the lead characters. The 'bridge' of the title is an imaginary, metaphorical bridge between the real world and imagination, and Terabithia is a fantasy place made up Jesse and Leslie, a couple of outsiders who come together and learn how powerful imagination can be.
The undoubted star of the movie is the 11-year old lead, Jesse, played by 15-year old Josh Hutcherson. He just shines in every scene, and I found myself really carried along by his performance - he was even better than a rather flat Robert Patrick as his on-screen father. I think he'll be an actor to watch in future. His co-star, AnnaSophia Robb, is also great as Leslie, Jesse's new friend and route into Terabithia's fantasy world. There's no explicit romance for these two, they're just friends, and that's as it should be considering the age of the characters, but there is a real bond between them, so when that shocker comes it really hits you in the gut. Well it did me anyway.
Zooey Deschanel is as watchable as ever in a small role as Jesse's music teacher, on whom he has a school-boy crush. The rest of the cast are mostly kids and all are great, though a little clichéd in the school bullies they represent - but even then the story toys with the bullies and shows their (well one of them's) human side in a revelation that is a little shocking for a Disney movie. I think you forget what kids can deal with in films - something that's shocking for an adult a kid may take in their stride.
By the end I'd laughed and I'd had tears welling up in my eyes, and I had thoroughly and utterly enjoyed every minute of this charming and unexpectedly touching movie.
I've read the first couple of Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels (Knots & Crosses, Hide & Seek, plus the short stories collection A Good Hanging and Other Stories) and very much enjoyed his easy style and the fact that they're set in and around Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities. I've got both 10-book Rankin sets that the Book People has sold and I think the best way to begin such a series is chronologically, so I've broken away from Rebus and read Rankin's first published novel, The Flood.
This debut story is no detective mystery, and there's only a brief section based in Edinburgh, otherwise it's a completely different beast. I liked it, but it felt a bit throw away, without as much depth as a Rebus book. The story initially begins with Mary Miller's near-death experience that sees her hair turn white and her shunning within her Scottish town as a witch. She then supposedly gets pregnant by her brother at 15 and gives birth to a son, Sandy. Jump forward 15 years and we follow Sandy's awkward romance with a gypsy girl; Mary's awkward romance with Sandy's school teacher; the new vicar's arrival in town and subsequent interest in Mary; and the local sweet shop owner who likes to give Sandy free sweets for reasons revealed at the story's conclusion.
Sandy and Mary are interesting characters, but I didn't see what the point in the vicar was, other than to distract from the central mother and son duo. His story never really went anywhere, although I suppose it was a useful expositionary device to explore the history of Carsden, Mary's hometown. I wasn't sure where it was all leading, and there was a revelation at the end I wasn't expecting, but I enjoyed the journey. It was a quick read (I got through it in a week) and a satisfying one, yet not quite as good as Rebus.
At school I only read the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so I really didn't know what to expect from Northern Broadsides' masterful production of Mike Poulton's new edited version. I've seen Northern Broadsides do Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet (at Skipton Auction Mart Theatre), The Tempest, and Othello (at West Yorkshire Playhouse), so I knew I'd be in safe hands whatever the plot was. NB always put on a thoughtful, musical, comical and well directed performance, full of Northern voices (even if they are affected - see Brummie Lenny Henry in Othello) that I appreciate, being a Yorkshireman.
Although there was no Barry Rutter, a stalwart of all 4 previous productions I'd seen (maybe he doesn't do non-Shakespeare?), the cast included a couple of familiar faces, from Corrie and At Home with the Braithwaites, and over a dozen other actors, young and old, every one putting in great, multiple performances. This version of The Canterbury Tales keeps some of the language of Chaucer, and is told in rhyme, and thus can be a little tricky to understand, but once I'd got used to it I really enjoyed the show. Plotwise, a group of random people are on their way to Canterbury, and to entertain themselves en route they each tell a tale, and these tales were acted out by the rest of the company, so that every actor played a few different parts, as travellers to Canterbury, then as characters in most of the tales.
The episodic nature of the source material and thus the play meant that some pieces were more entertaining than others. The Knight's tale was first, and I found it a bit boring and unimaginative, and was played pretty straight, so initially I wondered whether I was going to enjoy the evening. Thankfully, the Miller's tale dispelled any worries (which is good, as the two acts combined came to almost 3 hours, a long time to be bored - but then this was my last free ticket with the Under 26 scheme, so I couldn't complain) as it turned out to be a raucous, bawdy, hilarious tale of sex and betrayal - a theme that continued throughtout most of the other tales.
Once the comedy began it came it a torrent of sexual innuendo, double and single entendrés, and a healthy dose of physical comedy. The third tale, by the Reeve, was perhaps my favourite, featuring two young men and a greedy miller, plus his wife and daughter, and a nifty bit of bed-hopping and confusion. I should also mention how funny the naked puppets were in the Miller's tale - reminiscent of the puppet sex in Avenue Q! The other tales were: the Cook's tale, which is cut short for it's descent into vulgarity; the Pardoner and Summoner's tale, the former a camp, predatory queer character that stayed the right side of caricature to be palatable; the Squire has a garbled tale that is cut off in it's prime; the Wife of Bath gets a great soliloquoy before her tale of a knight trying to discover what women want; the Clerk of Oxenford's was odd and probably my least favourite, featuring a cruel Marquis who puts his chosen wife through hell for a reason that I didn't grasp; and the final tale, by the Merchant was a real winner, about a randy old knight who marries a young wife, goes blind, gets cuckolded, and then regains his sight to watch his wife getting seen to up a pear tree!
The Canterbury Tales on stage is necessarily a shorter prospect than Chaucer's original, but I'd be happy to see further tales expanded and acted out by Northern Broadsides. I particularly enjoyed their use of props and the movable stage this time round, but then they also make good use of their surroundings. The end of the play was a bit odd - it featured a song in Latin, at Canterbury Cathedral - but I suppose it made sense, even if it's not particularly an entertaining way to end proceedings.
Another late-night TV recording, and another 80-odd minute movie, Gumshoe is totally different to Invasion of the Body Snatchers - it's very English, very funny, and features Wendy Richard, Maureen Lipman and Fulton Mackay in supporting roles, along with a score from Lord Lloyd Webber - and it's also very good! Why these great films get relegated to graveyard slots I'll never know, although it's probably surprising Gumshoe got an airing at all due to the not-at-all sensitive language used to describe the film's only black character.
The casual racism (comparisons to monkeys, etc) is hard to stomach in these more enlightened times, and even considering in the context of the era in which the movie was made does not excuse the epithets, most of which are uttered by the hero, Albert Finney's titular (wannabe) gumshoe and working men's club comedian, Eddie Ginley. I feel it's important though, to acknowledge such failings, and not to dismiss the whole film because of them. Because the film itself is a well-crafted and features a complicated plot (that I'm not sure I followed all the way to the end) and a sparkling, sparky script.
Ginley is a constant joker who gets caught up in, well some sort of dodgy dealings to do with a kidnap, a murdered junkie, selling guns in Africa, and pretty much any hard-boiled detective cliché, for this is mostly a parody of the noir gumshoe genre. Witty and, I'd guess, rewarding a repeat viewing, Gumshoe has first class performances from all involved, particularly Finney, sporting a wealth of accents and comedic ability.
It's my experience that CGI does not a good film make, but it can help. I like to watch old movies that have little or no effects and rest solely on performances, scripts and good direction, so I was intrigued to watch the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I didn't know much about it going in, but once absorbed in the plot I realised that 'pod people' is a pretty common phrase that must have originated from this classic of the sci-fi genre.
The movie opens with an apparent madman relating how he got into such a state, and goes on to tell how Dr Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) returns to his hometown of Santa Mira, Calif. and slowly discovers that all is not well - it turns out that the residents of the town are being replaced by pod people - replicants grown from pods that appeared from outer space. He and his companion, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) must try to stay awake or else be turned into unemotional replicants themselves. I don't think it's ever explored why exactly everyone is being replaced - it confuses me as to why an alien species would want to colonise a planet... by becoming everyone on the planet - I just think, well why bother?
A prequel to Only Fools & Horses, Rock & Chips was an interesting production, nothing much at all like it's parent show. In much the same way that The Green Green Grass doesn't capture the comedy genius of Fools, Rock & Chips wasn't particularly funny either, though it had its moments. This TV movie was played more straight and filmed like a drama rather than a sitcom, and there was no laugh track.
I think that by not trying to be Fools, Rock & Chips succeeded by being it's own entity, albeit one full of subtle references and familiar characters, plus a familiar actor in Nicholas Lyndhurst, playing the character that would be Rodney's dad. Drama fit well for the period in which it was set, in the early 1960's. Young Del Boy (James Buckley from The Inbetweeners) was relegated to a supporting role, while Rodney had not yet been born, and it was good to see a younger Grandad and Del's mates Trigger, Boycie and Denzil. The star of Rock & Chips was Del's oft-mentioned but long-departed (in Fools) mother, Joan Trotter. Kellie Bright played Joan in a wonderful, sometimes heartbreaking performance, as the long-suffering husband of useless Reg, who finds solace in the charms of Lyndhurst's Freddie Robdal.
I really liked the period setting of Rock & Chips and the fleshing out of Del and Rodney's background, and I thought Lyndhurst was great, and was responsibly for most of the big laughs. The whole thing wrapped up nicely too, with the family, baby Rodney in tow, moving into the flat in Peckham, in Sir Walter Raleigh House, which would later be renamed Nelson Mandela House by the time of Only Fools & Horses. The worst thing about the prequel was the name which didn't mean anything as far as I could tell. I'd be happy for John Sullivan to leave the Trotters' on-screen legacy alone now. Rock & Chips was a self-contained piece that doesn't need turning into a weekly series, especially if it is as pedestrian as The Green Green Grass.
As my adventures watching the James Bond series near an end (just Die Another Day to fit in) I thought I'd pull the massive hardback off the shelf and read about my favourite spy hero. The Legacy is an official history of 007, published with full involvement and cooperation of the team behind the series, and full of glossy photos of the movies, behind the scenes, the actors, and much more.
The authors take you from Ian Fleming's original novels chronologically through to Die Another Day, along the way detailing the history behind each movie, the creative decisions, the impact of Bond, and how the real world has influenced and been influenced by the most famous secret agent in history. The emphasis on culture makes this a very interesting read, as I learnt how the Bond films changed the British film industry (and not just through the construction of a number of massive soundstages), the blockbuster film industry, and even how the real life MI5 goes about it's business (the first female head of MI5 credits Judi Dench's portrayal as M with helping attain her position).
The collaborative efforts that Cubby Broccoli and his crew put into every movie shows that these movies were not put together by focus groups - it really comes across in the back stories just how each contributer to the Bond mythos cared passionately about this character and his world. Reading The Legacy (and listening to Bond soundtracks as I did so) has helped me to appreciate the worlds into which each movie was birthed, and it has left me wanting to revisit the series afresh, despite just having watched most of the films! I don't think I've read a more interesting or entertaining history of a TV or film product, and I look forward to starting Bond Girls Are Forever, the companion volume, also co-written by John Cork, very soon.
I was very impressed with The Escapist, a claustraphobic, edge-of-the-seat little thriller set almost entirely in a prison, and during the escape of the title. Brian Cox led the cast of British and Irish actors, including a cute Dominic Cooper, creepy Steven Mackintosh, and unfeasibly hot Joseph Fiennes, in a movie that I couldn't tear my eyes away from.
The plot of the film is simplistic - a group of 5 men escape from prison - but the execution is spot on, particularly the way the actual escape is intercut with 'flashbacks' to how and why the escape was conceived. There's minimal dialogue - during the escape scenes there is next to none, and Cooper barely opens his mouth - and little background to the characters, but each is fully formed and their motives and allegiances are neatly sketched out. It doesn't matter why any of these cons are in prison, so we don't find out, this is all about the here-and-now and the need to escape.
The flashback scenes gradually explain why Brian Cox wants to escape, and how he gets the other 4 escapees to go along and help him, whilst fleshing out their relationships and those with Damian Lewis' evil who runs the prison, and his demented, predatory brother, Steven Mackintosh. The scenes of the escape itself are fantastically tense and edited at a frenetic pace that had my holding my breath until the next flashback allowed me to breathe again. There were many little twists and revelations towards the conclusion, none of which I saw coming, and the massive twist that explains all that has come before is up their with Keyser Soze in The Unusual Suspects. A little masterpiece.
A brief round-up of comedy shows I've been enjoying so far this year includes the new David Mitchell fronted series, The Bubble, in which 3 celebrities (comedians) are put in a house and cut off from the internet, TV, newspapers, etc for a week, and then presented with recent news stories with the aim of spotting the fakes. I'm a big fan of Mitchell's comedy style, and he's great on Would I Lie To You? so I was interested in this show from the off, despite the strange, labour-intensive nature of the show's set-up. The show's makers mock up news reports and headlines among hard-to-believe-but-true news stories so that the panellists can score points, or rather make us laugh, because the game is never the point is it really? The guests have been mostly pretty good, the first week was a bit of a slow-burn as the guests hadn't seen the show before and were a little hesitant, but Frank Skinner was great as usual. I worried that with Mitchell as host he'd get little chance to let rip and make me laugh, but my worries were dispersed once he himself had settled into the role. Due to the cost in mocking up news stories, I wonder if the BBC will be able to afford a second series? We'll see.
The latest, 'G' series of QI has pretty much ended as far as I can tell, save for a couple of clip shows. This one has been badly treated by the BBC - left until the very end of 2009, despite being filmed early that year, and then seemingly shunted about the schedules - particularly QI Xl, the 15 minute longer version that I prefer to watch - they should have just left it on BBC2 where it began if BBC1 was too packed with other shows. The show itself has been as informative and entertaining as ever, and I hope the 'H' series is allowed to go out uninterrupted, closer to the recording date.
Finally, not a panel show, but all comedy is Harry Hill's TV Burp, that's off the air now until the autumn! Well, apart from the Best of TV Burp compilations, which are just as funny how ever many times you watch them. I particularly the running segment about The K Factor, where the public submitted knitted items/characters to be judged by Knitted Simon Cowell and Knitted Cheryl Coles [sic], that culminated in the not live final with Peter the Duck crowned winner. The recurring Pineapple Dance Studios bit never got old either, with the extremely Camp dancer strutting about week after week - Harry didn't even need to make a joke about it, just let the clips play. There's nothing quite like TV Burp on TV, and when Harry's on form it's the best comedy show around, and (I've said it before) the only thing worth tuning into ITV1 for.
On my day off I decided to spend lunch time watching a movie, and opted for Slackers, a comedy that I knew starred Devon Sawa and that I'd recorded late night on Channel 4, which meant there were very few ad breaks, but also a little man signing in the corner for all the insomniac deaf viewers that TV caters for after midnight.
The movie is brief - about 80mins - and fairly sleight plot-wise, but I enjoyed it, possibly because there was no extraneous flab on the bones of the fairly pedestrian I-can-see-where-this-is-going-to-end-from-the-beginning storyline. What made the film enjoyable where the performances from the young cast and the off-beat nature (the latter illustrated by a fab cameo from a game Cameron Diaz). Jason Schwartzman plays a creepy, stalkerish nerd who's so much more interesting than most college nerds depicted in movies, and one who's interested in a girl. He's a freak though, so he's got no chance, and resorts to black-mailing cheaters and con-men college buddies Devon Sawa, Michael Maronna and Jason Segel into helping him get the girl. Predictably, cute, blond Sawa is the boy Jaime King wants, not the bushy-eyebrowed geek.
There are some lame gags - fart jokes are rarely funny - and some great ones too - Maronna's penis sings to him at one point, for no real reason. Most importantly Devon Sawa is hot. Ever since his tiny cameo as the human Casper at the end of the 1995 movie, I've had a soft spot for this cutie. So, I'm surprised to note from his IMDb details that I've only actually seen him in Final Destination and Eminem's Stan video besides Casper and Slackers, and it appears he's not actually done a great deal worth seeing, which is a shame. Anyway, he's lovely in Slackers, and it passed a good 80mins. I didn't learn any sign language though.
After watching Tim Burton's take on Alice in Wonderland, and in need of a shot of fiction while I finished China: A History I picked up Lewis Carroll's original stories off the shelf - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There - which I have packaged in one book with notes.
It's taken me about 5 days to polish off both Alice adventures, since they were written for a children's audience they're hardly heavy-duty. I liked them, they were a nice diversion but I fail to see what an adult audience can derive from them, other than the clever use of language, and the stylistic tricks and puns that Carroll clearly revels in. As I read the first book, I had the voices from the Disney animation running through my head, and I knew the story - other than the excising of characters such as the Gryffin, Dodo, and Nurse, the Disney movie is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, although with Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum with their Walrus and the Carpenter poem thrown in (and taken from the sequel). So there were few surprises there.
I enjoyed Through the Looking-Glass more, possibly because the story was new to me, although it still followed the episodic nature of it's prequel. It did have some sort of a plot though, as Alice moved through the Looking-Glass land (not explicitly the same place as Wonderland, although the Hatter and March Hare have semi-cameos) as part of an elaborate chess game to become a Queen. Both books suffer from the fact that they describe dreams - there's no attempt to suggest that these adventures actually happened.
The Alice books were a nice, easy read, with some lovely language, which as an English student I did appreciate, I just think that you'd have to be a lot younger or academically studying the books to get the most enjoyment from them.
I've just solved a mystery. Neither me nor Andrew had heard of Oscar Wilde's play, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, a stage version of which we saw on Tuesday night. It turns out that it was a short story by Wilde, it was never a stage script by the famous wit. According to the programme, the play we saw was 'performed in a new and original version by Mr Trevor Baxter', and it's a credit to Mr Baxter that we had no idea that the script was not written by Wilde himself.
Crime is a very funny farce/melodrama in which Lord Arthur has his palm read, is told he will commit murder, and so to protect his fiance from himself, he decides to pre-empt fate by killing an elderly family member first. There's really not much more to the plot than that, but of course nothing goes as smoothly as expected. The morality of the murders is never explored, as this breezy comedy is about the farce, and the sparkling dialogue shared by the small company of actors.
Lee Mead, of Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat fame, was Lord Arthur Savile, and he was just fine - better than I had expected, which was a good thing as he only seemed to spend about 10 mins off stage during the whole performance. The other names I recognised were Gary Wilmot as Mr Podgers the fortune-teller or chiromantist (a palm-reader, apparently), and Kate O'Mara as Lady Windermere (of Fan fame) - the latter was particularly fabulous - when told that she was in danger on land or sea, Lady Windermere hatches a plan to spend the foreseeable future in a hot air balloon, with Mr Podgers reading her palm via telescope!
I liked the style of the show - it was presented as a play-within-a-play, with the set looking like a stage, place-cards announcing titles of scenes, and a violinist and pianist accompanying the on-set action all the way through. Occasionally the actors would break the 'fourth wall' and cue the violinist for a particularly arch line of dialogue, or as in the case of Lady Windermere, address her lines to the audience directly. The one fault in the production was the strange poetry that the characters recited at the front of stage during scene changes - I don't think they added anything, and were often drowned out by the violin or piano. That niggle aside, I had a great night at the theatre and had a much-needed laugh or several.
Andrew picked the DVD we watched the other night, and he chose A Fish Called Wanda, as he'd never seen it before! This shocked me, as I've watched it on numerous occassions, I thought it was one of those films everyone has seen - how presumptous of me. Anyway, it gave me a chance to re-evalute it afresh, as it's a long time since I've seen it.
I'd not appreciated how tightly plotted Wanda is - the double, triple, multi crossing by and of each character can take some following. As a result I think the first half hour is not as funny as the rest since the storyline needs setting up. I also used to think Kevin Kline was a bit OTT, but his character is just right, and not as irritating as I remember. It's funny how your tastes and opinions of a film can change as you get older.
Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis are very good, but the real comedy comes from the British side of the cast, particularly in Michael Palin's subplot which sees his character try to kill off an elderly witness, resulting in the animal-loving stutterer Ken killing the woman's dogs. John Cleese, who wrote the script, is reassuringly hilarious, and not afraid to get naked for his art! I also laughed out loud every time Maria Aitken and Cynthia Cleese had a scene - they played Cleese's wife and daughter, respectively (Cynthia being his real-life daughter) - as they had such wonderful lines.
Wanda is such a great British movie - small yet perfectly formed, with an emphasis on plot, comedy and character that many modern US comedies (your Scary Movies or Epic Movies) don't even bother with. It's a deserved classic.
Over the last 12 months I've read histories of Europe and London, and now I've just finished John Keay's China: A History, which I enjoyed thoroughly. It's strange to enjoy reading a non-fiction book so much I think, I read histories to learn and fictions to be entertained, but Keay really made what could have been a hard slog over a couple of thousand years of history into something I couldn't wait to read.
I've read lots about modern China in recent articles in The Week and Time magazines, and as far as I can see it's shaping up to be the next super power, so I wanted to learn more about this huge country, about which I knew embarrassingly little. Now I couldn't quote figures, dates and names about Chinese history after reading this book (my memory sucks) but I've got a great overview of what made China into a future world leader. The worlds of the emperors, both ancient and not-so-ancient were vividly brought to life through Keay's accessible prose - he made the often-similar sounding or confusing names of people, peoples, dynasties and places such as the Qing, Manchu, Song or Beijing, understandable. I found this history (for there's a reason it's called 'A History', as Keay explains in the introduction, there have been many histories written through the centuries, and as the adage goes, history is written by the victors, so writing a comprehensive history means teasing out the nuances and biases of the old texts) of China fascinating and compelling - it's amazing what effect internal and external forces have on creating (or destroying) cultures.
It's amazing how much Keay packs in to just over 500 pages, and my only note of negativity about the book is that the final chapters concerning the birth of Maoism and the People's Republic of China left me a little confused, but I've got a biography sat on the shelf to help me get up to speed. But I think that will wait until another day. I need a change of pace from massive history tomes, as interesting as they are. I see from the front of the book that Keay has written a history of India... I just may seek that out.
I read about the fascinating and barely believable true story of Steven Russell and the lengths he went to in his love for Phillip Morris in an article in The Week sometime last year, and I've been anticipating the movie version ever since, so when the Jim Carrey-starrer came out last month I was eager to see it.
I would add a caveat to the above - I was eager to see the film despite the fact it starred Jim Carrey. I'm not really a fan of his OTT comedy schtick. He's great in The Truman Show, all restrained, and I quite liked The Cable Guy, but Ace Ventura is hard going (I've not seen The Mask) and he ruins Batman Forever, so I was dubious. However, Carrey's performance as Russell was more Truman than Ace, more serious, but with a great comedy edge. And this was a good thing, since Carrey is rarely off the screen in this compelling, laugh-out-loud hilarious, and surprisingly moving film.
When Steven Russell eventually comes out, he realises that being gay is expensive, so he resorts to pulling cons to make money, and he eventually ends up in prison. This is where he meets Phillip Morris and falls in love, and pulls out all the stops to make sure the two stay together either in prison or out. If I hadn't read the article beforehand I'm not sure I would've believed half the things Russell did to survive - including faking his death from AIDs, a very delicate issue to bring into such a broad comedy. The writer/directors (of the deliciously black Bad Santa) handle the changes in tone wonderfully, although they're particularly adept at the comedy, as of course is Jim Carrey.
As good as Carrey is, the stand out in the movie is the Phillip Morris of the title, played with such warmth and heart by Ewan McGregor, who has never looked more beautiful, and who never lets his portrayal fall into parody (though neither does Carrey). There's a real spark between the actors that makes their on-screen relationship so believable, you really want them to be able to run off together. Which makes the inevitable real-life ending (which of course I already knew) so much more upsetting and feels like a massive injustice. Yes, Russell embarrassed the prison authorities and stole money, but he never killed or even hurt anyone, yet he's languishing in 23 hour solitary confinement for life.
The movie hasn't been released in America yet, due to the 'explicit' content, and cos they're so repressed. There is one moment that could be a bit too explicit for a cinema screen, when Carrey is seen having doggie-style sex with a sweaty man in his coming out scene - it's shocking to see how comfortable Carrey is with the role - imagine an A-list actor doing such a role 10 years ago in a 'slight' comedy such as this - but there's nothing to compare in the rest of the movie. Even Ewan 'Get my cock out in every other movie I do' McGregor keeps it in his pants, and his and Carrey's sex scenes take place below camera and only feature oral intercourse. At no point in the film is the fact that any character is gay a joke, the jokes happen anyway, the romantic leads here just happen to be gay (though it would be pretty hard to have the same film with a hetero couple - they wouldn't be in the same prison for a start). One of the few niggles I had was that Carrey's ex dies of AIDs, which smacks of gay cliché, but since this really happened, it's no such thing, and it is integral to a later con.
It's a shame that the US is proving resistant to I Love You Phillip Morris as the movie is a winning portrayal of gay love, and it also happens to be downright hilarious to boot.
After the Spaced boxset, we moved on to the Black Books DVDs, which apparently is considered a sort of sister-show to Spaced, so that was serendipitous.
I'd only seen snippets of Black Books when it was on Channel 4, and I liked what I saw, but I don't like to watch things unless I've been there from the beginning with the characters - I'm odd like that - so I got myself the boxset and then didn't watch it for aaaaages. The main draw to Black Books for me is Bill Bailey (Manny), he's the main 'known quantity' and I love his stand up, and I've also enjoyed Tamsin Grieg (Fran) in the (2nd) series of Love Soup, whereas I've only seen the very briefest bits of Dylan Moran's (Bernard) stand-up, and I wasn't that impressed. I was pleased to say that I enjoyed every bit of him in Black Books - which is a good thing since he co-wrote the whole 3 series of 18 episodes.
I wasn't expected Black Books to be so surreal, especially when the basic premise is three friends who are involved in the titular book shop... and that's it. I suppose that gives excellent scope for any kind of script though, and so surreal isn't so weird. Bernard is a classic misanthrope in the vein of Basil Fawlty, Fran is the ditzy best friend, and Manny is the hilarious, somewhat slow-witted sidekick. The friends drink, smoke, drink, quarrel, drink, and then drink some more.
