alexsarll: (crest)
Alex ([personal profile] alexsarll) wrote2009-05-12 11:02 am

Never had the house looked more noble and humane.

All those Sam Tyler references in Ashes to Ashes had me thinking, whoever's mysteriously contacting Alex...could that voice be John Simm doing posh? It could, couldn't it? And then the trailer for next week blew my theory apart. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted, and now I'm back to having no idea at all where they're going with this, but being confident that it will be somewhere good. And I've been reading a 2000 issue of Select which I found while clearing out my desk, all articles about 'what are MP3s?' and *video* reviews and interviews saying how Embrace's second album will take them to the next level, and this isn't even from so very long ago - I moved to London in 2000 - and it makes me more than ever think that after Ashes to Ashes is done, the nineties are now strange and distant enough for Dead Man Walking to be a perfectly viable series.

Speaking of changing eras, I read Virginia Woolf's Orlando yesterday, and what a glorious confection of rhapsody, absurdity and time it is. Yes, it's 13 years since I got into the band of the same name and followed up plenty of the other reference points, but I'd seen the film and I don't like reading books too soon after seeing the film, even in cases like this where knowing the plot is a fairly abstract concern. It's the starring role The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has now found for Orlando (the androgyne, not the band, though that I would also love to see) which had me investigating, because the infuriating braggart of '1910' is not at all how I remembered Tilda Swinton in the film. And indeed, is not what I find in Woolf's original. I think Moore and O'Neill have the promiscuity and the rough-housing down better than Swinton, but she has that distracted quality which they've lost. And while inserting side adventures during and after the novel's timeline works perfectly, I question whether LoEG has not done a certain damage to the premise by making Orlando an ancient who fought at Troy and Actium; one of the features which I feel most strongly in Woolf's novel is the sense of Orlando's rootedness in the English countryside, the ancestry which ties Orlando to the soil regardless of gender or distance. And it's a shame, because the way in which Woolf's Orlando moves so self-consciously yet seamlessly from age to age - a gigantic cloud rolling in as the 18th Century gives way to the 19th, for instance, and England suddenly, gradually growing damper - is just the sort of play on the eras' conceptions of themselves and each others to which the League project draws such delightful attention*.

In much the same spirit of meditative Englishess as Orlando, I finally watched Cloudspotting, which I apologise for not plugging while it could still be caught on iPlayer. I've raved about Gavin Pretor-Pinney's Cloudspotter's Guide here before, I'm sure, and the new appreciation it gave me for the beauty which floats above us most every day. But the concept works even better on TV, with the BBC's archive of near Miyazaki-quality flying footage to plunder, and Pretor-Pinney himself so naturally and thoroughly engaging, like a cross between Jim Broadbent and Mark Gatiss, except more fun. One credit did surprise me, though: Script editor: Steve Aylett.

Never got around to writing about that Keith TOTP/Glam Chops show last week, did I? In part because I only wrote about them a week or so earlier, and not much changed except that Eddie was drunker and Glam Chops have a new song called 'Thunderstruck'. Which kicks arse. Oh, and I finally watched a Gregg Araki film, Mysterious Skin. Which was much as I expected in terms of tormented small-town US gayness, but all that UFO stuff and missing memories made me think of Velvet Goldmine and Flex Mentallo, which can never be a bad thing. Also, it has Dawn from Buffy as an off-the-rails fag hag with great eye make-up! It is, alas, let down by the standard problem afflicting any film which addresses wrongcockery - even in a world where cinema can convincingly show us an army of thousands of orcs and undead rucking in front of Minas Tirith, if you're showing a kiddy-fiddler on film, the effects and editing have to be so clunky as to make entirely clear even to madmen and magistrates that the child was not on stage while the nasty man said the rude things.

*Of course, nerd polyfilla is easily applied here: in the League world Woolf's book is known by the title which is in any case its full title here: Orlando - A Biography. Woolf was one of those eminently readable but maddeningly agenda-led biographers, who in satirising the conventions of biography, ran roughshod over a real life rather than a fictional one.

[identity profile] angelv.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 10:13 am (UTC)(link)
Ashes to Ashes was so bloody good last night wasn't it. Apart from the Scottish bird who was annoyingly-faced and had a stupid voice. Not as annoying as Alex's daughter's face though - I would be glad to be rid of her if I had been shot. We always switch off before the trailer (o noes spoilers!); how many more episodes in this series?

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 10:17 am (UTC)(link)
Well, unless you had also concluded that the voice might be John Simm doing posh, I hope I haven't spoilered you on owt!
The Scottish woman was annoying, but I don't mind that in a character who's *meant* to be annoying, only in ones I'm meant to like. Which, yes, would be a problem in the daughter if we ever saw any more of her than the odd vision.
I think this was the fifth episode in an eight episode series, but if you get chance to flick through a Radio Times you'd be able to confirm or deny that.

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 11:26 am (UTC)(link)
I thought he was supposed to sound Norn Irnish? The man with the roses, I mean...

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 12:46 pm (UTC)(link)
I wasn't quite sure what the accent was meant to be, which was part of why I was prepared to believe it could be someone faking it for reasons unknown.

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Aye, it quite possibly is. It would be awesome if it were JS, now I have to have another look at the trailer to see why it convnced you it isn't (because I hadn't thought of the possibility before the trailer so didn't get dissuaded about it, like)

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:38 am (UTC)(link)
Have you seen it yet? Pretty conclusive, I feel.

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:50 am (UTC)(link)
Damn, I forgot, J was being a sod last night and didn't go to bed until a millionty o'clock and then I just watched Kyle XY for a bit and went to bed.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
Hahahaha you watch Kyle XY.

[identity profile] puzzled-anwen.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 10:07 am (UTC)(link)
I know. I watched the first few episodes because I was really bored and kept thinking "but seriously, what's the point of this? why am I watching it??" and now I've been sucked in. It's totally rubbish brain-gum, but luckily there only seem to be 12 episodes in the series so I've nearly finished... Hell, I watched The Class... Now there's some pointless TV. This is the trouble with on demand, once you've watched the good stuff you end up watching the filler because it's still better than watching actual on-telly-right-now stuff with adverts and not being able to pause (except for Ashes to Ashes and Dexter, but those are both on replay anyway) when someone upstairs yells that they need the toooooooooooooileeeeeeeeeet... I still watch very little TV, though, so I think it works out ok.

[identity profile] exliontamer.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 01:43 pm (UTC)(link)
Psst, I was watching it on iPlayer so I remember it was listed as the fourth episode.

[identity profile] xandratheblue.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 11:29 am (UTC)(link)
Since I finished TLEG 1910 I've been wanting to read Orlando, especially since I was probably the only person on my English Course to enjoy "To the Lighthouse."

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 12:49 pm (UTC)(link)
That's the only other one of hers I've read, and I enjoyed it but it did seem somehow insubstantial, like light on water - she has a brief dig at it herself in Orlando.

Oh, and the Sheen Road almshouses crop up again towards the end!

[identity profile] xandratheblue.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 01:28 pm (UTC)(link)
You're still not going to make Sheen seem remotely palatable to someone with no money, no friendly contact for miles and no interest in drinking away one's liver, no matter how many awesome people briefly visited it around 100 years ago

(edit - pushed wrong button)

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)
And in any case, there's no real indication that Orlando ever visited there him/herself, just that Orlando inadvertently inspired their foundation.

[identity profile] exliontamer.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 01:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I loved last night's Ashes To Ashes, but took exception to the use of the Associates to soundtrack underage-girl grooming parties.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:41 am (UTC)(link)
If only they'd done that plotline in Life on Mars, they could have used Gary Glitter and everything would have been fine.
The main musical surprise for me was the use of Bauhaus' cod-reggae track which, while I'd not normally say it was one of their better ideas, did work surprisingly well in context. Next week: trapped in the primitive world of 1982, can Alex make fishcakes?

[identity profile] alexdecampi.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 02:36 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm getting tired of Alan Moore's schtick, I have to say. 1910 was rather dull, Orlando rang wrong for me too, and I didn't even buy Black Dossier as I was put off by the massive amount of text bits and the 3D bit. I want a comic, not a novel.

Also, OI ALAN: "Mack The Knife" was written in 1928.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:54 am (UTC)(link)
But when was it *set*? He's found wriggle room there before.

I didn't mind the text aspect - I'd loved the back-up features in the first two volumes. And given my general dislike for the term 'graphic novel', it amused me to have a year where the two best ones - Black Dossier and Alice in Sunderland - were so clearly not novels.

[identity profile] oneofthose.livejournal.com 2009-05-12 06:52 pm (UTC)(link)
I want them to do another series where Gene is in a coma and wakes up in the mid 90s. And they can call it 'Hallo Spaceboy'.

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 09:43 am (UTC)(link)
See, between that and 'Dead Man Walking', there are two nineties Bowie singles which would be perfect for the next iteration, so they pretty much have to do it. Or Alex and Sam teaming up in Strangers When We Meet. But I do feel that Seven Years in Tibet would be a format change too far.

[identity profile] icecoldinalex.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 10:43 am (UTC)(link)
a big crossover with the US "it's really in space" Keitel version, perhaps?

I'm Afraid Of Americans

[identity profile] barrysarll.livejournal.com 2009-05-13 10:50 am (UTC)(link)
I was going to suggest that Gene get into Zen and retire to Bromley, but a TV series called The Buddha of Suburbia would just be silly, wouldn't it?