Penniless Islington poets

[alexsarll]

I note that there was again a new moon on Monday, but what with the torrential rain, I completely missed it. Sorry, Duran Duran.

Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire by Iain Sinclair
Sinclair's latest psychogeographical report comes from his home borough, and as such is uncharacteristically personal. The tour of forgotten streets, secret histories and local characters one expects from him is present and correct, but there's also more about family and home, the children growing up as the area falls prey to the twin scourges of decay and corrupt, mismanaged 'regeneration'. The Olympics are a particular bugbear here, shoddily totalitarian and insensitive, their site's blue fence symbolic of the erasure of history, community, Hackney, benefitting only politicians and "investors prepared to mortgage a city's future on the demolition and ransacking of a mythical past". One contributor to this "fractured narrative of manipulated facts, poorly recorded and inaccurately transcribed interviews" warns that "careers have been destroyed by writing about Hackney" but this impassioned and uncharacteristically accessible work, which sacrifices none of his poetic verve, deserves to take Sinclair to a wider audience.
And what are the odds on reading two books in a row where a minor character is trying a Pierre Menard-style rewrite of works by Joseph Conrad?

Got stuck into some free DVDs from the old regime last night. I'm sure I caught some as a child, but only on Monday night did I sit down to watch Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes. Everyone says the performance is pretty much definitive, and I'm not going to argue - cadaverous, inhuman, brilliant - but here's what intrigues me: having messed up and thought Casebook was the first series, I started there, with 'The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax' in which Holmes has a bit of an off day. More of an off day, in fact, than in the original story, and it gets to him more. The first episode of the first series was in fact 'A Scandal in Bohemia'. Now, simply because of the name and the brevity this was the first of the original stories which I read, but it is deeply unusual in that Holmes has a seriously off day. ITV was, in those days, still capable of producing decent dramas, but is this a precursor of the nasty tendency now to need to 'humanise' your leads right from the start? Which is not just an ITV thing - consider how the very first House saw him break his resolution never to speak to the patients (one reason I abandoned that show so promptly - others include hypochondria, and Hugh Laurie's accent).
Nonetheless, considerably truer to Doyle's writings than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, which I also attempted, where a bunch of Australians and Yanks plus one token bumbling Brit get trapped on a plateau with dinosaurs who really make you realise how far CGI has come in the past decade, plus all manner of other nonsense - the first episode has lascivious Roman-style lizardmen who would have been right at home in Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E Howard, but are really not Doyle's kind of thing. Passably entertaining nonsense which is itself demonstrably superior to the sappy, try-hard gloop that is Kyle XY, one of the worst SF series of which I have ever had the misfortune to see five minutes. And to put that into context, I managed a whole episode of Merlin. If anyone wants the first season DVD of Kyle XY, it's yours, though I will judge you for that.

Theory: anyone who has seen or indeed owned a lava lamp would be significantly less disturbed by the bubbling chaos of Azathoth, Nyogha and their ilk than people of Lovecraft's generation.

Comments

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

Jeremy Brett = so hot right now.

Then again I sort of think that about everyone in Merlin apart from Will Mellor out of Hollyoaks playing evil Prince Valiant. I must lovefilm the episodes I missed.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I think I went to school with a kid called Will Mellor. Parents ran Goose Fair. I might have the name wrong though, I often do. Isn't Anthony 'Stewart' Head in something new this week also?

Brett = very cool indeed, but I shall not be fighting you for his hand.

[atommickbrane.livejournal.com]

I dunno - freeview box broken so my TV viewing has slumped to QI and whatever else will behave nicely on the iPlayer (and the obligatory j-drama viewings which if anything have now INCREASED).

My theory = every person who plays Sherlock Holmes is hottt, Basil Rathbone, Jeremy Brett, Rupert Everett, Tom Baker (um - *would* but 'hott'? hmm), cor blimey eh new husband list ahoy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_played_Sherlock_Holmes

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Edward Woodward? In 1990?

And what about Basil The Great Mouse Detective, you closet furry?

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Del got me the mega box-set of the Brett Holmes for Christmas and I've watched about half of it (just polishing off The Case-book Of... now). It really is the definitive Holmes adaptation - I can't think of anything they could have done that would have significantly improved it. Both the Watsons Brett was paired with were a bit wishy-washy, but such is the nature of Watson (apart from Ian Hart's spiky, acid take on the character in the most recent TV outings).

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

Oh, and also it is SO SLASHY. The Holmes/Watson relationship left Del squealing with the glee of a slasher that has found a new toy.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

There was a Doctor Who book which managed to liven Watson up, but only by getting them off to an alien planet where all Holmes' expertise counted for naught...

This is the same mega-box, which I was lucky enough to get for free - the dying days of our department at least coincided with the festive promo boxes.

Slashwise...I'm not seeing it, but then my slashdar needs pretty blatant signals to get it active (ditto my gaydar, really) and the two of them spent much of this episode apart.

[tintintin.livejournal.com]

It's mainly the Reichenback Falls stuff that pings on the slash scale, so the end of The Adventures Of... and the beginning of The Return Of... are the main bit for this.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. Not even opened that box except to try to get its components back in order, one of the trays was attempting escape.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

GPWM.

[charleston.livejournal.com]

I missed the new moon on Monday...

[charleston.livejournal.com]

except I didn't! 26th Jan you mean... blimey, that feels like a whole month away... I thought you mean there was another one yesterday!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I appear to have been confusing my diary's symbols for New and Full. ASTRO-FAIL.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I heard about the Meyer books - vampire novels which are chaste and by a Mormon who does not watch R-rated films - and thought, oh dear. Then I had the misfortune to actually flick through one of them and dear heavens, the prose! It was like fanfic, ONLY WORSE. And the message...all this True Love Waits crap is bad enough wherever it rears its head, but attaching it to the icons of transgressive sexuality that are vampires is simply not on!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have heard about this. Which is totally stolen from Poppy Z Brite, but at least she meant the whole sex = death thing in an entertainingly goth way!

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

No but you are a gay, which is sometimes enough in itself to break the Brite barrier.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

When someone tries to write vampire fiction and is proud of never having watched Hammer Horror films ten I think right-thinking individuals can be united in totally ignoring the results.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, theoretically such a person could be trying to get back to the original novels, or even the Universal films or Nosferatu, while ignoring later accretions...but yes, clearly this does not apply to Meyer.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

Brett's is the best of the TV/Film Holmes- and certainly one of the best versions of Watson- clearly a man with a brain, just not that of a finely tuned detective. 'tis a pity they didn't get through them all though.

Personally I love the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations. Clive Merrison is the only actor who has done all of Conan Doyle's original stories. They've started doing some new ones based on "cases mentioned in Conan Doyle's stories", with Andrew Sachs as Watson. (They haven't done "The Giant Rat of Sumatra", that is a tale for which the world is still not yet ready).

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I was rather puzzled to see that they never did A Study in Scarlet, but I guess the whole 'love among the Mormons' interlude would be a bugger to film.

I think from the early work of Peter Jackson, we can largely infer what went down with the Giant Rat of Sumatra. As for Sachs as Watson, clearly I feel they should pair him with Russell Brand as Holmes or failing that, as the oldest member of the Irregulars.

[davegodfrey.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would be that difficult it wouldn't be too difficult to get some replica wild west bits and bobs and put them in a quarry in Wales.

I think a more drama-related problem is that it marries off Watson- and I don't think Mrs Watson get much mention in the TV shows.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would only upset the above-mentioned slashers.

[srk1.livejournal.com]

I am in a minority (perhaps of one) in disputing that Jeremy Brett is the definitive Holmes. I find his performance too uptight and severe, not as humane as the character I interpreted from the books.

I think the problem with future dramatisations is with actors trying to do Brett-as-Holmes, rather than going back to the stories and looking at some of the character traits he underplayed.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I'm not a big fan of Brett as Holmes, but I'm probably not a big fan of anyone as Holmes, having been well into the books when I was a teenager.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Fair point - and if nothing else, the forthcoming Guy Ritchie film will probably not be guilty of this.

Only going from the one episode here, but there were definitely moments when it became clear that Holmes was more upset by events than he would let himself show, and that's very much how I read Holmes from the originals.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I thought Kyle XY was kind of sweet, but you have to watch a few episodes. And the actual plot doesn't kick in until about half way through the season. Pass it my way if you wish.

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Life is too short for me to sit through any more of his lobotomised Braff face as he learns Important Lessons while waiting for the plot to kick in. Even were I a vampire, life would be too short unless I had been reliably informed that said plot was at least as good as BSG. So you are welcome to the bloody thing, though when our paths shall next cross I do not know, given I cannot make your party.

[dickon-edwards.livejournal.com]

Mr Brett delivered an amazing portrayal of Basil Hallward, ie the portrait painter, in the 70s TV Dorian Gray. The one with Gielgud as Lord Henry and Peter Firth as Dorian, though he absolutely steals the show, cranking up the infatuation with Dorian... You can get it on DVD as part of a TV Wilde adaptations set. There's bits on YouTube. Obviously.

He was also Dorian himself in an early 60s TV version, now criminally wiped. Looking a bit like the Tenth Doctor: http://is.gd/j3Ct

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I could quite take him in another role - even after that one episode, he's so indelibly Holmes in my mind that it would be like any attempt to take eg James Gandolfini for any character but Tony Soprano.

[hoshuteki.livejournal.com]

I just saw this Iain Sinclair book in the shops today! I am well excited at the thought of it. I ♥ Hackney, though I have always been a bit wary of Mr Sinclair and haven't read any of his works (perhaps to my shame)...

[barrysarll.livejournal.com]

Well, he did dismiss Tubewalks, and if I hadn't already been an enthusiast when that happened, it could well have put me off making the attempt. The Hackney thing being the case, this is probably the best place to start, so maybe it was good that you waited!