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New Bill Drummond participatory performance piece, running November-December on Kingsland Road - anyone else interested in attending?
Next Wednesday, ITV are showing a modern take on Frankenstein by Bodies' Jed Mercurio. The comparison's not exact, but if you think roughly in terms of Jekyll, you'll get there. After watching the first half, I was itching to plug it to all and sundry. It's incredibly well-timed, bouncing off the (arguable, possible) creation of artificial life into Jon Gibbs' prize-winning picture of lightning hitting a windmill at Scroby Sands. The cast is excellent, including Cherie Blair from The Queen as Frankenstein, that bloke from Drop The Dead Donkey, Servilia and Anthony from Rome, and Errol from Fifteen Storeys High. The monster's design is cunning, playing the same trick Dagon pulled when it based the Deep Ones on octopodes rather than fish, making the comfortably monstrous truly uncanny again. The sets and atmosphere have something of the same near-future despair as Children of Men, and the skies (post-volcanic storms such as those prevalent around Mary Shelley's writing of the original novel) are brilliant.
And then I got chance to watch the second half and...maybe it's my own fault for breaking the mood, but the magic was gone.
Every now and then I read a Graham Greene; I opted for A Gun For Sale this time mainly because I'd read a JM Coetzee piece claiming Brighton Rock as its sequel, and the idea of a famed book being the sequel to a less-known one interested me*. Finding an edition with an introduction by a fellow I used to know was a bonus, though personally I'd prefer to give away rather less of the plot, and restrain myself to saying that the book's conspiracy thriller plot is startlingly modern. Though perhaps it would be truer to say, in the field of human failure, we've yet to produce a writer who's advanced past Greene.
I had never really thought of the industrial Midlands as a territory of Greeneland, but really that was foolish of me; they're awash with the broken and the bitter and the compromised, bully boys "living in their vulgar, vivid way for five years before the long provincial interment of a lifetime".
Even with the humourless prigs up in arms about any chink in the smoking ban*, and the poisoning of hearts and minds against alcohol well underway, I was still quite amazed by the latest news from the fat front:
"In this environment it was surprising that anyone was able to remain thin, Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council said, and so the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence had to be abandoned for good."
If you're going to take that line, if you're going to abandon any belief in personal choice or free will or human willpower, then surely it is inconsistent to persevere with democracy? How can the British people possibly be trusted to choose their leaders but not their lunch?
Plugging the NME's predictably dire 'Love Music Hate Racism' CD (if you loved music, you wouldn't be putting out CDs with The Enemy and both ex-'Libertines' on), Kele from Bloc Party says "there are lots of people who would be happier if I wasn't in this country". True, but that's got nothing to do with the colour of your skin, Kele - they just heard your album.
*As much as anything because it would spite the sort of lit-crit snobs who disdain sequels. Turns out it's more of a spin-off, but I suppose one shouldn't expect a Serious Writer to be competent in the use of such terms.
**And I think it's worth mentioning here - you know how one of the justifications was to protect those obliged (by our archaic unemployment laws) to work in pubs? The other night I passed a pub whose staff were enjoying the time-honoured afterhours staff pint. Two of them were also savouring fags; the others' faces betrayed no sign of discontent with this.
Next Wednesday, ITV are showing a modern take on Frankenstein by Bodies' Jed Mercurio. The comparison's not exact, but if you think roughly in terms of Jekyll, you'll get there. After watching the first half, I was itching to plug it to all and sundry. It's incredibly well-timed, bouncing off the (arguable, possible) creation of artificial life into Jon Gibbs' prize-winning picture of lightning hitting a windmill at Scroby Sands. The cast is excellent, including Cherie Blair from The Queen as Frankenstein, that bloke from Drop The Dead Donkey, Servilia and Anthony from Rome, and Errol from Fifteen Storeys High. The monster's design is cunning, playing the same trick Dagon pulled when it based the Deep Ones on octopodes rather than fish, making the comfortably monstrous truly uncanny again. The sets and atmosphere have something of the same near-future despair as Children of Men, and the skies (post-volcanic storms such as those prevalent around Mary Shelley's writing of the original novel) are brilliant.
And then I got chance to watch the second half and...maybe it's my own fault for breaking the mood, but the magic was gone.
Every now and then I read a Graham Greene; I opted for A Gun For Sale this time mainly because I'd read a JM Coetzee piece claiming Brighton Rock as its sequel, and the idea of a famed book being the sequel to a less-known one interested me*. Finding an edition with an introduction by a fellow I used to know was a bonus, though personally I'd prefer to give away rather less of the plot, and restrain myself to saying that the book's conspiracy thriller plot is startlingly modern. Though perhaps it would be truer to say, in the field of human failure, we've yet to produce a writer who's advanced past Greene.
I had never really thought of the industrial Midlands as a territory of Greeneland, but really that was foolish of me; they're awash with the broken and the bitter and the compromised, bully boys "living in their vulgar, vivid way for five years before the long provincial interment of a lifetime".
Even with the humourless prigs up in arms about any chink in the smoking ban*, and the poisoning of hearts and minds against alcohol well underway, I was still quite amazed by the latest news from the fat front:
"In this environment it was surprising that anyone was able to remain thin, Dr Susan Jebb of the Medical Research Council said, and so the notion of obesity simply being a product of personal over-indulgence had to be abandoned for good."
If you're going to take that line, if you're going to abandon any belief in personal choice or free will or human willpower, then surely it is inconsistent to persevere with democracy? How can the British people possibly be trusted to choose their leaders but not their lunch?
Plugging the NME's predictably dire 'Love Music Hate Racism' CD (if you loved music, you wouldn't be putting out CDs with The Enemy and both ex-'Libertines' on), Kele from Bloc Party says "there are lots of people who would be happier if I wasn't in this country". True, but that's got nothing to do with the colour of your skin, Kele - they just heard your album.
*As much as anything because it would spite the sort of lit-crit snobs who disdain sequels. Turns out it's more of a spin-off, but I suppose one shouldn't expect a Serious Writer to be competent in the use of such terms.
**And I think it's worth mentioning here - you know how one of the justifications was to protect those obliged (by our archaic unemployment laws) to work in pubs? The other night I passed a pub whose staff were enjoying the time-honoured afterhours staff pint. Two of them were also savouring fags; the others' faces betrayed no sign of discontent with this.
