'huge, queer and tawdry' but 'much admired by the public'

So that was Christmas. Wondering whether to take the decorations down today or tomorrow; will Sunday evening or Monday morning have its inherent melancholy more heightened by the task? There were moments when I felt suitably festive - a binge of spooky BBC festive classics and mulled cider, seeing the Covent Garden lights and the miniature (but still pretty enormous) London made from lego in a walk-through snowglobe, the afternoon party with so much booze and so many small people one could barely move - but it always seemed to dissipate again. I suppose the late getaway, with the added stress of the transport Christmapocalypse, was always likely to shred that careful accumulation of misty goodwill.

I don't appear to have updated on my general movements since mid-October, either. Homerton, for instance, turns out to have some OK pubs and bars now, even if they are fuller still of beards than other areas of East London (the Islamic Republic possibly excepted).
The Museum of Childhood - wonderful, if it didn't have so many live children on the loose. Lots of toys one remembers fondly, at least one I used to have and knew even at the time was a bit shit, but the item that transfixed me most was that fabulous mother=-of-pearl Chinese diorama, like blue-and-white porcelain's pattern somehow brought into fragile, solid life.
My year's ticket for the Transport Museum has now expired, but I did manage to get in a visit without the Cthulhuchild who - fond as I am of him - does just tend to want to play on the trams and buses. Whereas solo, I can look at vintage posters and disused typefaces and letters from Victorian commuters, which for some unaccountable reason are things of no interest to toddlers.
The Inns of Court in autumn are fabulously autumnal. And do me the service of saving me a trip to Cambridge, because they feel so much like a college I never quite got around to visiting, and so the nostalgia is less pointed than if I went back now to one of the ones I did.
The Earl Haig Memorial Hall in Crouch End has finally opened up, its imperialist trappings intact, but now host to all manner of entertainments for the slightly-less-manic-than-we-were local. Perfect timing, really, given all the attention its namesake will be getting this year.
Lance Parkin, my favourite Doctor Who writer, launched his very good biography of Alan Moore, my favourite comics writer, with a live interview (and film screening, and so forth). The footage is here, though I've not listened to it myself in case I am too embarrassingly audible as the one person thoroughly amused by the line "What can Brian Lumley teach us?"

The slightly too pat, but still moderately fun, revenge-on-idiots comedy God Bless America appears to be the only film I've seen in ages, until I finally got round to Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa last night. Which was...quite good? Fairly amusing, surprisingly engaged with the very real plight of local radio in the 21st century, but not half so side-splitting as I'd been given to understand. There was also the Doctor Who anniversary, of course, which for all the furious initial back-and-forth on other, more rapid-response sectors of the Internet, seems to have bred a fair degree of consensus. With which I agree: 'The Fiveish Doctors' was amazing, ditto An Adventure in Space and Time bar Reece Shearsmith. The Day of the Doctor was a stunning achievement in making concentrated fanwank a coherent and exciting show for die-hard and casual viewer alike, which made the saggy mess of The Time of the Doctor all the more disappointing. But thank goodness it all came right at the end, and hurrah for Capaldi.

The Doctor Who Christmas special became a tradition out of nowhere. But more than that, the Doctor Who Christmas special starring David Tennant and written by Russell T Davies became a tradition. All five of them, same team. Charitably, two and a half of them were good. One was the worst Doctor Who story ever. Could Moffat and Matt Smith follow that and do it better?

Of course they bloody could. Best Christmas Who ever. It helped that when it wasn't ripping off Moffat's own first professional Who, 'Continuity Errors', it was reworking Paul Cornell's 'The Hopes and Fears of All the Years. But with the exception of that slightly vexing swerve at the end, it was otherwise a thing of utter beauty, unashamedly soppy but never schmaltzy, smart without confusing the casual viewers. In other words: utterly, near-perfectly Doctor Who.

Merry Christmas.

Doesn't the weekend seem a long time ago now? Even more so for the approximately 50% of people I know who were in chalets, falling in love with Frightened Rabbit, I suppose. But London had its share of inadvisable festive drinking too. Red absinth was a bad idea. I've also finally been to the new pub at the end of the road, the Stapleton. Which is a lot less depressing than it was in its previous incarnation as the Larrick, but then you could still say that if they'd replaced the Larrick with a concentration camp where the furnaces were soundtracked by Avril Lavigne. The Stapleton, on the other hand, is Actually Rather Nice, strangely cosy for such a large space, helped by the most enormous Christmas tree I've seen indoors in ages.

Otherwise: viewing! I have another DVD rental trial thanks to Aug, and while I'm startled at some of the films that aren't available (I'm not talking obscurities either, but stuff starring Liz Taylor, or Orson Welles, or directed by Cronenberg) they did start well by sending me Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Which I want to say is a great film, but that would in some ways be untrue. It has a particularly annoying use of that crappy fake night-time effect you see in old colour movies, where they film through sunglasses and hope you won't notice the shadows. And the entire supporting cast is rubbish. But that sort of works, because be they wise antiquarian, or land speed record holder, or great bullfighter, none of them is anything in the face of myth. And Ava Gardner, as Pandora, and James Mason, as the Dutchman van der Zee, have all the grandeur of myths. As they dance around each other in the dream-like, vaguely Felliniesque port of Esperanza (no, the names aren't subtle) they are simply mesmerising, and everything around them partakes of that and becomes so too. Meaning that a film about the cursed immortal van der Zee's quest to escape this world has a camera that's utterly in love with it. Flawed, but well worth seeing.

I've been meaning to watch lesbian cult classic The Killing of Sister George for about a decade, and it was worth the wait. They don't make battleaxes like Beryl Reid anymore.

While I no longer hate Colin Baker Doctor Who like I used to, I still can't deny that most of his TV stories were rubbish. Vengeance on Varos is an exception. Mostly. Shown in 1985, it's a prescient vision of a society sedated by watching people tormented on TV (Jason Connery is a bit wooden in the victim's role, though still considerably more lifelike than Gillian McKeith) while rations are cut. The rulers are powerless figureheads, while unaccountable corporations grow fat through the insistence that there's no other way, and if their demands aren't met they'll simply leave. Admittedly, some of the enactment of this theme involves the old Who standby of wandering around corridors, narrowly avoiding a series of baffling and inconsistent traps, but the sentiment and vision are there, and so is most of the script. Excellent work from Martin Jarvis as the poor bloody Governor, too. He almost makes one feel sympathy for modern politicians. Almost.

On Wednesday I went to Catch, which has changed a lot in the past few years, to see a show headlined by Tim Ten Yen, who hasn't. The bill also featured a band called Hot Beds, who had a song about how Christmas now starts in October which worked both as a critique of festival creep and a big overwrought festive ballad which they can get away with playing outside December because it's about precisely that. Good work. I was, however, primarily there for the 18 Carat Love Affair who, as well as the usual delights, deployed a top hat and ace new track 'Dominoes'.
Catch might not be quite as typically, terribly East London as it used to be, but Friday found me in an even more atypical East London venue, in that it was seven storeys up (I think that's even higher than Collide-A-Scope) and done up like some kind of voodoo surf kitchen. Even before I started drinking, I saw a pink elephant trot past; fortunately, investigation confirmed that others could see it too and it was in fact a small child wearing a pink elephant head. Probably. It says a lot about The Deptford Beach Babes that they find places like this to play. That's a compliment, by the way.

As Peep Show bows out (and was this series the best extended advertisement for contraception ever aired?*), the comedy baton is handed over and The Thick of It returns. The new choice of minister interests me; Chris Langham having been, shall we say, rather too open-minded about acceptable sexual behaviour, they've this time opted for Rebecca Front, who if anything has the opposite problem; we should probably expect a Jan Moir cameo before season's end.

"Parents who think the new film of Maurice Sendak's picture book Where the Wild Things Are is too frightening for children can "go to hell", the author has said." It's a long time since I read the book, I'm not sure if I'm even that bothered about the film, but this piece gives me massive respect for the man.

Like most people, my first Nabokov was Lolita; for my second I took a recommendation and tried Despair, which almost finished him for me, but last week I finally had a third try and plumped for Pale Fire and, well, he's not a one-hit wonder. ( sufficiently pretentious that I felt a cut was in order )
Also, the last king of Kinbote's distant homeland, Zembla, is called Charles Xavier. The book came out one year before the debut of the X-Men, but somehow I can't picture Stan or Jack coping with Nabokov's prose.

*Though I have just found the perfect childcare solution.
**Well, the third canto has some moments of beauty, but otherwise we're in the authentically bathetic territory of the sort of sub-Frost American poet who gets good reviews of their collected works in the Guardian, but in which reviews the quoted excerpts convince you never, ever to read any of the work in question.
***OK, there's Angie Bowie's autobiography, but even that involved a ghostwriter whom I suspect of setting her up for a fall. Certainly, spending that much time in her company would make me want to do the same.

Had various things which I knew I'd remember to blog, and have now of course forgotten. So, the basics - am now redunded, exiting to tears, Prosecco and the best Christmas card ever (a 3D Santa's workshop!). Went for tea and Erte and then on to a young people's indie disco, an experience made enjoyable only by the young people, although this being a free night in Kilburn they were sharing the space with non-young Irish drunks, who to their credit were mostly exhibiting a confused tolerance of the event. Last night, the debut concert by The 18 Carat Love Affair, starring Steve 586 (who now looks like Matt Berry, and that's a compliment), Jim Rhesus and the newly de-Fosca'd hospitalsoup because otherwise she would find the number of bands of which she's member dropping to dangerously low levels. Way, way more together than any band has a right to be on a first gig, starting off with two songs sufficiently pop that I already felt I knew them just from having been there in time for the soundcheck, and then topping them with the set closer. Because being named after an Associates song is good, but why not then have a song whose lyrics all come from Doctor Who classic The Daemons too?
And then on to a Christmas party where I may conceivably have drunk too much.

Oh, and has anybody else been getting passive-aggressive mails from store cards which seem to have gone a bit bunny boiler?
( Read more... )

Am finally getting in the festive spirit, I think - I'll put the decorations up in a minute and then this evening it's Soul Mole. But in the meantime, think of this as Newsnight Review only with better comics coverage, or The Culture Show if that weren't just a sad comment on how far Lauren Laverne has fallen:

I must have visited the British Museum after dark before, but if so I've forgotten how much that suits it - with some galleries closed, no school parties and that sense of being hunkered in, you feel much closer to the past. Which leaves some areas almost too much - the Egyptian room in particular. Dropped in last night with an eye to catching the 'Statuephilia' works (and please, can whoever called it that be the subject of the next of the current series of press witch-hunts?), although the only one of which I was specifically aware was Marc Quinn's solid gold Kate Moss. Which, for the biggest gold statue made since the days of the Pharoahs, of an iconically beautiful woman in a more-than-suggestive position, is curiously inert. The Gormley angel on the way in is, well, the Angel of the North but smaller, so cheers for that, and Ron Mueck's giant head is a nice special effect misrepresented as art. I've not heard of Noble & Webster before, but their rather ghoulish piece is worth a look - and I won't say more than that because I think the surprise of the gradual recognition is a big part of its effect (skip the brochure description until after, if you go). The real stand-out, though, is the Damien Hirst. He's in my favourite room, which helps, and he's worked with it, almost snuck his gaudy skulls in to those bookcases which line that Enlightment room like it's the ultimate gentleman's study, which in a sense it is. For all the media fuss around him, Hirst does impress me in a way few of his generation manage - because for all that I couldn't tell you what the best of his work makes me feel, for all that I doubt he could either, it makes me feel something, something vertiginous and important. And that's what art is for, and why he'll be remembered and his work treasured after the hype and his peers are consigned to the art history books and back rooms.

Even if you didn't know about the lead times, it would be obvious that the conclusion of Marvel's Secret Invasion was plotted some time before the result of the US election. ( Spoilers, obviously - well, unless you read Thunderbolts )

Apparitions gets more splendidly mental by the week - even knowing that last night's episode would feature demonically-possessed foetuses at an abortion clinic didn't prepare me for the magnificence of ( spoiler ) And next week - Father Jacob has a gun! Fvck knows why.
Switched over for Star Stories (which still hasn't recaptured the charm of the first series) just in time to catch the end of a documentary about Health & Safety officers, and find myself in an awkward position. The show ended with the most stereotypical H&S bore you could imagine - think Steve Coogan's "in 1983, no one died" character, minus the verve and spontaneity - talking about how it was absurd to say Health & Safety culture had gone too far when people still had accidents; as far as he was concerned, and he said this explicitly, Britain would not be safe enough until there were no accidents. Now, this guy is at best horribly misguided, and clearly in need of a nailgun enema, right? But, he was upset to read a newspaper column in which he was being savaged by Richard Littlejohn. Health & Safety bore. Littlejohn. How do we resolve this so that they both lose?
Then, having abandoned Star Stories, instead watched The Devil's Whore, which really seemed to pick up this episode, possibly because we've got to the bit where it becomes clear that Oliver Cromwell was not in fact a hero of democracy but a hypocrite, an oathbreaker and a racist war criminal.

I love the Dexy's brass joy and heartfelt yelps of the Rumble Strips, and 'Back to Black' is one of my favourite Amy Winehouse songs, but the former covering the latter? Bit of a car crash, TBH.

Just returned from the Bankside 12th Night celebrations - unfortunate that the thing which best gets me in the relevant festive mood is the one marking season's end. It's vastly more popular than last time I went (I think I missed last year), but I still managed half-decent views of the Green Man's arrival and the wassailing, and was in a pretty good position for the mummers' play. There's a nagging sense in my mind of a half-formed connection between this and Popular last night - the Number One single as a British folk tradition, perhaps? - but I don't want to force it. Suffice to say, both were great fun. Highlight of Popular: 'Welcome To The Black Parade' into 'Boom! Shake The Room' (it may have a 100% strict concept, 'God Save The Queen' controversy aside, but how many nights can honestly equal that variety?). Highlight of 12th Night: the blithering arses next to me as the Green Man sails in justify their yapping by noting what I would otherwise have missed - there's a fragment of rainbow in the sky above us, and it's on a curved cloud. In other words - the sky smiled.
Post-mumming, took a look at the Tate's crack. I've seen better. Still, rather that than Catherine Tate's crack.

Don't know why I never got round to seeing Die Hard With A Vengeance sooner, given I love the first two, but the delay has made parts of it queasily prescient. Shots of the twin towers looming as New York is attacked I could have expected, but the real shocker...you know the plan Jeremy Irons and his accents are supposed to be undertaking, to beggar the USA? Dubya's pretty much managed that, hasn't he? And done it all while speaking in almost as silly a voice. Still, with Barack Obama's campaign regaining momentum, for now there's still hope. And in the Andes, two of the USA's hyper-rich are helping to fund an eye on the sky which will not only increase the sum (and accessibility) of human knowledge, but could well save us all from apocalyptic meteor impact. Isn't it odd how the merely super-rich seem content with vulgarity like diamond-studded mobiles and £35,000 cocktails, but the hyper-rich seem to rediscover altruism and vision? See also Warren Buffett.

A pretty quiet week for comics, but there were excellent new issues of Buffy (the first slow, character-centred episode of Whedon's Season Eight, but worth the wait) and Moon Knight. I still don't know what part of writing Entourage has equipped Mark Benson with a knack for brutal vigilante thrillers, but between his Punisher annual and this, I'm impressed. Just a shame about the art. Otherwise, it's Warren Ellis' week; Ultimate Human may not be the obvious title for a series marketing would probably rather have had as Ultimate Hulk Vs Iron Man, but fits the story Ellis has started telling, one of the happier vehicles for his recurrent fascination with the nature of posthumanity. Thunderbolts, on the other hand, is leaving the smart politics aside for the moment and concentrating on insanity, treachery and Venom eating people. Which also works.

Well, that was more like the real meaning of Doctormas, wasn't it? ( Read more... ) No 'The Hopes And Fears Of All The Years', probably not even a Christmas Invasion, but not a disgrace like last year either. And what do you know, in the trailer at the end, Tate even managed a couple of lines that didn't make me want to tear my ears off!

Also: Merry wobs to you all, even the heretics like half my family who ignore the real meaning of the season and don't watch the Doctor Who special.

Oh, Internet, I really thought we had something! In spite of the slash and the spoilers and the people on the BBC's Have Your Say pages, I liked you, and part of that was because you always told me about the new stuff first. But the news that Pixar are doing a John Carter of Mars trilogy? Well yes, you can give me a link now, but I learned about this from some dead trees! What do you have to say for yourself?
What's that? You have some spoiler-free mini-episodes of The Wire?
Oh, dear Internet - how could I ever have doubted you?

Hyde Park Winter Wonderland didn't leave me feeling massively festive, but I think the weather may have been to blame for at least part of that - rainy but warm is surely the antithesis of all that is meteorologically christmassy? I was more impressed by the impromptu excursion afters to Itsenaisyyspaiva which if you didn't know, and I didn't, was the 90th anniversary of Finnish independence. Good night; global warming, Eschaton and Putin permitting, the centenary should be awesome.

An edited Torchwood transmission for the tinies? This strikes me as a bad idea. Either you're saying that the adult content is tacked-on - a few swears and breasts thrown in to spice up a Doctorless Who spin-off - or you're going to end up with disjointed stories that don't make any sense, like those godawful teatime transmissions of Angel on Channel 4. Neither is good.

Those of you on the SB board will already have seen this, but for the benefit of everyone else - my albums of the year. There was some really good stuff out, but nothing as OMG THIS IS AMAZING as the top albums of last year, where stuff like Amy Winehouse, The Long Blondes, Muse and Neil Diamond genuinely startled me with sheer radiant magnificence.
( My Top 40 Albums Of 2007 )

And remember, kids - last Black Plastic of the year tomorrow - don't miss out! Or get sufficiently drunk and engrossed in Graham Greene beforehand that you end up in a small home counties station which later investigation suggests doesn't actually exist!

I may have spent Friday night walking with gods and monsters, and yesterday on the psychoactive lemonade with the chattering classes, but it's still 'Time Crash' for which I'll remember the weekend so far. Hell, even remembering it's getting me all misty-eyed. 'You were my Doctor.' Sniff.

I've had a great idea for a film, except because I watched it in a dream, now I'm vaguely concerned it might already have been done: Father Christmas invades the USA. I don't know what happens with Canada - non-aggression pact, presumably - but he sweeps down from the North Pole and soon subjugates the majority of the US (I didn't see this bit, but presume that with his manufactories on a war footing, and the FTL superstealth sleigh, it wouldn't be too hard). And I have no idea why he was doing it - was the film a 'real meaning of christmas' story, a political satire, or just crazy for the sake of it? I don't know, I didn't see the whole film. I just remember him in a khaki camouflage version of his outfit, in a Patton stance.

Why I shall not be going to the Tutankhamun exhibition.

Much-hailed talk of a 17% fall in heart attacks in Scotland since the smoking ban revealed as at best exaggeration, at worst another outright lie by the neo-puritans:
"It is conceivable, although perhaps unlikely, that the smoking ban had no effect at all...what appeared to be hard medical evidence now looks more like over-hasty and over-confident research, coupled with wishful political thinking and uncritical journalism."