Category: Entertainment

Well, the hubby’s away tonight, so I thought I would again indulge in a film on the trusty DVD player. This time, my choice was The Time Machine. No, not the George Pal version from 1960, but the version from 2002, by Simon Wells – the grandson of H. G. Wells.

Ooh, but I did enjoy it!

Not that I wish to deprecate the George Pal version. I have very fond memories of it. For my 11th birthday, my parents treated me – and all the children who were invited to my 11th birthday party – to a showing of the film in the Regal Cinema in Douglas. Gosh, it was magical – the curtain gradually rising, before the blackout, to reveal worlds that we could never have imagined – that was so, so extraordinary! It honestly does still bring tears to my eyes. A slight pause, while I blow my nose and wipe away the tears for my parents to whom I owe so much. And I don’t mean that in any facetious sense. I truly do thank the universe for their presence in my life. They did their best, and I’m truly grateful for it.

Anyway.

Sorry – again a pause to wipe the tears.

Simon Wells’ version of "The Time Machine". Well, actually, I enjoyed this as well. I confess that I have never read H. G. Wells’ original version, so perhaps it was not "true to the original". Having said that, I think that Simon Wells turned in a very credible rendering.

The whole drive of the need to invent a time machine, being powered by the loss of the love of the hero’s life, Emma, was very good.  

And, perhaps it was just me, but the realisation of the world of the Eloi in this version was as though the world of Riven had come to life. OK – shallow, I know, but that’s how it seemed to me.

And I just adored Orlando Jones’ camp rendering of a know-it-all piece of database software. "Live long and prosper", indeed!

Back in March, I mentioned "The Institute for Backup Trauma", a commercial starring John Cleese as Dr. Twain Weck. It’s apparently won a "Telly Award". Not surprising really, it’s a very well done spoof. 

Very, very black humour. Watch this film about Finland’s rarest exports.

Update: Sorry, the movie’s now been removed from that link. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the IMDb entry for Rare Exports Inc.

Update 2: Hang on, maybe this link will still work…

A running motif through the new Doctor Who series has been references to "Bad Wolf". The Beeb’s even set up a web site devoted to this great piece of viral marketing. It’s no use asking me – I haven’t a clue. All I can say is that Russell T. Davies had better reveal all this coming Saturday, or he’s going to be hunted down by angry fans…

He and his team have done a great job at re-inventing a classic series. Kudos!

And what’s that all about at the end of the disclaimer on the Bad Wolf site:

If you’re concerned by the thought that the universe has been irrevocably altered by an enormous experiment in neuro-linguistic programming, then just tell yourself "The Bad Wolf is not real. The Bad Wolf is not real. The Bad Wolf is not real."

Hmm, what’s the old spell – first revealed in the Hunting of the Snark by the Bellman: "What I tell you three times is true".  For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

Just caught up with last night’s Doctor Who. Simply stunning. A witty script riffing on today’s TV fashions (The Weakest Link, Big Brother, What Not To Wear) building into an enormous cliffhanger to set the scene for next week’s final episode in this series.

I don’t mind admitting I found it scary stuff… Can’t wait for next Saturday night!

Update: Russell T. Davies writes about the revival of Doctor Who in today’s Guardian. 

Dylan Evans is a Senior Lecturer in the University of the West of England in Bristol. He’s also written a number of articles for newspapers on a variety of subjects. I first became aware of him after he wrote what I thought to be a pretty silly article in the Guardian in which, while he states he is an atheist, he did a good job of (in PZ Meyers’ words) "sucking up to religion". Go and read the original article, and Meyers’ rebuttal of it to decide for yourself. You might also take in Salman Rushdie’s eloquent demolition of Evans’ arguments while you’re at it.

Now, Dylan Evans has done it again with another article in The Guardian, this time attacking Beethoven: "Beethoven was a narcissistic hooligan". The article strikes me as being just as silly and meretricious as the earlier article on atheism. I expect Evans enjoys upsetting the apple cart. It’s a pity his first name isn’t George, because then I could do my Joyce Grenfell impression of a schoolmistress and say: "George, don’t do that…"

So Anne Bancroft has died. Yes, of course she was great in The Graduate, but for me, the role that I will always remember her for is that of Ma in Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy. She and Fierstein played the cat and dog roles of mother and son to perfection, with affection. One of my favourite films.

Today’s entry in Improbable Research reminds me again of Mike Stanfill’s great animated version of Tom Lehrer‘s song: The Elements. If you haven’t seen it before, click the link.

And thinking about Mendeleev’s Periodic Table of the Elements reminds me of another humorous take on it: the Periodic Table by Creationists at the reDiscovery Institute.

I’ve put this under the category of "Entertainment", but it deserves connections with other categories. Now read on…

I mentioned "The Shining" in my post on the "Wollemi Pine" last month. BTW, I have to get back to you about the outcome posed in that post. I promise I will do so… 

Anyways-up, to quote Julian and Sandy, my husband is out this evening, so I thought that I would put the DVD of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining on the DVD player.

Gawd, it is so brilliant! Kubrick was a master. I was listening to the audio feed of an interview with Phillip Pullman at the Hay festival yesterday, and he made a point about the modern novel being aligned with Cinema. It is very true – he describes how his masterpiece: His Dark Materials reads like cinematography – close-ups, long-shots, and the like. Whereas the "voice" of the traditional fairytale is very different. And he used other examples of his writing to illustrate this. And it was true, they had none of the close-ups or voiceovers of what the hero/heroine is thinking. The difference is staggering when you hear it or see it – and I hadn’t really appreciated it before.

And what struck me, which I hadn’t thought of before, is what is exactly so powerful, and so right about Kubrick’s vision of Stephen King’s novel is that it is exactly filmed as a fairytale, and not really as a modern piece of cinema or the modern novel. There is no deep introspection as to why these people behave the way they do, they just play out their parts in front of our eyes, the way a Grimms’ fairytale conjures up the action in our imagination.  

Brilliant.

And, I must comment over the styles of the actors. Jack Nicholson gives (to my senses) a really over-the top interpretation of the role of Jack Torrance. It’s OK, and perhaps it’s what Kubrick wanted. But when I see Philip Stone in the role of Delbert Grady, and I cannot think otherwise than this, this is how it should be played. Supremely understated, yet with the underllining of faint, yet absolutely bottomless, evil. Stone is just perfect in the role.

Wow – get it while it’s hot. Audio streaming of events from the Hay Festival.

In the long gone days of my youth, I was romantically involved with a young man who moved in the circles of the Fashion Industry, Fashion Designers and their clotheshorses, sorry, models. I always found it a very bizarre world, and still do.

To be sure, every now and then I see a garment and think that it has beauty of its own, but most of the time I see things like this and wonder WTF they are thinking of. Even more bizarre to think that there will be people willing to pay good money for this.

Of course, moving further along the spectrum of bizarrity, we reach items such as living works of art, such as Leigh Bowery (although he’s now dead, alas). And then, strangely, I find I have respect for people such as him. I need to analyse this a bit more.