Happy New Year, LJ
Jan. 4th, 2011 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllJust when the prequel webisodes and the first half of the series opener had me worried that the new series of Primeval was a bit straightforward compared to the inspired lunacy of last series, that skating so close to cancellation had them scared - they had the character played by Hannah from S Club distract a totally enormous and temporarily non-extinct dinosaur by playing 'Don't Stop Moving' really loudly at it. Excellent. But it still feels very odd that the only exciting original programming on TV all week is two hours on ITV1.
So, New Year's Eve. I've not been to anything but a house party since the Islington Bar glory days of Stay Beautiful, or to anything which required public transport for nearly as long, and I think maybe I had the right idea. I like Bevan 17, I like the No Fiction resident DJs, I even liked the odd singer-songwriter/accordionist/beatboxer opening act who seemed even more out of place than I was as they did a surprisingly good cover of 'So Long, Marianne'. But the crappy 8 bit duo in between who spent 15 minutes fiddling about as though it was going to make them sound any less piss-poor, and the Whip's DJ set of headache electro, and the boozed-up populace of Kilburn who just wanted somewhere to get lairy, and the hordes of mad-eyed partyers on the Tube of whom half seem only to go out on this one night...no thanks. I'm still not sure if I was actually ill or just in some form of existential shock, but having only had two pints while out, by 2am I was in bed, and on New Year's Day I felt considerably worse than if I'd been overdoing it round a friend's house the night before as per usual. But I do like the way the unusual shape of the weeks this time round has stretched out the holiday season - it has less of a direct effect on me than on a lot of people, but the sense of a proper extended break, almost of carnival, is contagious.
Mark Gatiss' history of horror reminded me that years back, m'learned colleague![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dr_shatterhand had recommended I watch seventies Brit horror The Blood on Satan's Claw. Gatiss brackets it alongside Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man as 'folk horror', and I'd agree with the first half of that; as far as I'm concerned The Wicker Man isn't horror at all, but an Ealing comedy by another name. This, though...this is definitely horror. Sometime in the early 18th century*, somewhere in the English countryside, a demonic relic is unearthed and the village children's games turn sinister. Very gradually, at first, yet it's still terribly sinister, and I love that - it reminds me of Arthur Machen's 'The White People', or the final Quatermass, or Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss from before his Mythago books got dull, when they still captured all the strangeness and terror of myth. What could have been a Merrie Englande fiasco is instead just grotty enough and grey enough to feel like the real countryside on its off days, as the diabolic forces bubble up from beneath.
(Added points of interest for Doctor Who fans: sh1t eighties Master Anthony Ainley plays the vicar, and sixties companion Zoe aka Wendy Padbury is the centrepiece of a ritual gang rape scene which, alarmingly, was apparently pretty much improvised on the spot)
*The blurb says the 17th, but a Jacobite character toasts James III, so no.
So, New Year's Eve. I've not been to anything but a house party since the Islington Bar glory days of Stay Beautiful, or to anything which required public transport for nearly as long, and I think maybe I had the right idea. I like Bevan 17, I like the No Fiction resident DJs, I even liked the odd singer-songwriter/accordionist/beatboxer opening act who seemed even more out of place than I was as they did a surprisingly good cover of 'So Long, Marianne'. But the crappy 8 bit duo in between who spent 15 minutes fiddling about as though it was going to make them sound any less piss-poor, and the Whip's DJ set of headache electro, and the boozed-up populace of Kilburn who just wanted somewhere to get lairy, and the hordes of mad-eyed partyers on the Tube of whom half seem only to go out on this one night...no thanks. I'm still not sure if I was actually ill or just in some form of existential shock, but having only had two pints while out, by 2am I was in bed, and on New Year's Day I felt considerably worse than if I'd been overdoing it round a friend's house the night before as per usual. But I do like the way the unusual shape of the weeks this time round has stretched out the holiday season - it has less of a direct effect on me than on a lot of people, but the sense of a proper extended break, almost of carnival, is contagious.
Mark Gatiss' history of horror reminded me that years back, m'learned colleague
dr_shatterhand had recommended I watch seventies Brit horror The Blood on Satan's Claw. Gatiss brackets it alongside Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man as 'folk horror', and I'd agree with the first half of that; as far as I'm concerned The Wicker Man isn't horror at all, but an Ealing comedy by another name. This, though...this is definitely horror. Sometime in the early 18th century*, somewhere in the English countryside, a demonic relic is unearthed and the village children's games turn sinister. Very gradually, at first, yet it's still terribly sinister, and I love that - it reminds me of Arthur Machen's 'The White People', or the final Quatermass, or Robert Holdstock's Lavondyss from before his Mythago books got dull, when they still captured all the strangeness and terror of myth. What could have been a Merrie Englande fiasco is instead just grotty enough and grey enough to feel like the real countryside on its off days, as the diabolic forces bubble up from beneath.(Added points of interest for Doctor Who fans: sh1t eighties Master Anthony Ainley plays the vicar, and sixties companion Zoe aka Wendy Padbury is the centrepiece of a ritual gang rape scene which, alarmingly, was apparently pretty much improvised on the spot)
*The blurb says the 17th, but a Jacobite character toasts James III, so no.
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