Category: Entertainment

Both the UK and the Netherlands are toying with the idea of introducing a citizenship test for immigrants. Last night, one of the Dutch TV channels had a programme: De Nationale Inburgering Test (the national citizenship test). It was the same format as the BBC’s "Test The Nation" – two presenters introduce a series of multiple choice questions for those watching at home and in the studio, and there are six different groups in the studio audience plus a group of celebrities. So the Dutch version had groups such as Chinese (from Chinese takeaways in the Netherlands), Antilleans (from the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean), royalists, students, Zeeland (a province of the Netherlands) and workers with asylumseekers.

 

The 36 questions were in three main categories: Dutch life, norms and rules, and Dutch history. If you answered at least 80% of the questions correctly (i.e. 29 correct answers), then you could consider yourself as having passed the citizenship test.

 

Well, despite having lived here for 23 years, I only managed 24 correct answers – so I’ve failed the test (does this mean I get deported, or am I going to be put on a list of potential terrorists, because I clearly don’t fit in with the Dutch way of life?). At least I know that Martin didn’t do much better – he only got 26 correct answers, and he’s Dutch!

 

However, the real kicker was that none of the studio groups, on their group average, managed to pass the test – even those consisting of native Dutch people. That also went for the viewing audience who followed the test on the Internet, or who texted in their answers via SMS. And the group that did the best (while still not passing)? The Chinese, of course. Only one slice of the studio audience managed to actually pass the test – the older women – everyone else failed. Let’s face it, it’s clearly just too difficult to live here…

 

 

People do the strangest things. Such as bid for a single cooked brussels sprout on eBay. But at least the proceeds are apparently going to charity, so I can turn my disbelief back a notch or two. While we’re talking about eBay, the Banterist has an updated version of "A Partridge in a Pear Tree" that is appropriate for the occasion.

 

(hat tip to Tom Reynolds at Random Acts of Reality for the sprout)

For over one hundred years, King William’s College on the Isle of Man has set a quiz for its pupils at Christmas. I never went to King William’s, but my cousin did. And every Christmas, the entire extended family would sit around scratching their collective head trying to come up with the answers to this notoriously difficult quiz.

 

If you’d like to have a shot, then the Guardian has published this year’s quiz. Just don’t expect Google to be any help whatsoever.

John Patterson’s review of Terence Malick’s new film: The New World makes me want to see it. Another "When It Changed" moment – this time captured on film. Malick’s earlier Days of Heaven was a wonder, so I think I will like this new one as well. I see that the review singled out on IMDb categorises The New World as "pretentious drivel", "absolutely painful" and "virtually no dialogue" and suggests that you "rent Disney’s version of Pocahantas [sic] instead". That’s good enough for me, I’m sure I will absolutely love Malick’s version.

Hah, kids have it too easy these days. If you’re going to a fancy dress party dressed as Frank-N-Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, here’s a readymade costume for you. In my day, I made my own version. Hopefully, the only photos that survive are safely in my possession, under lock and key.

 

(hat tip to Boing Boing)

Samorost 2 is out. It’s a quirky little adventure game constructed using Flash technology. Has a sort of Jan Svankmajer or Roland Topor feel to it. The first part can be played online (although the servers are currently experiencing a heavy load from the interest), or both parts can be downloaded for a modest sum and played on your PC or Mac.

There’s quite a good article in The Economist this week that traces the history of the last few years of computer animation. The history starts, a little late in my opinion, with Toy Story (1995). I think that there’s a case to be made that the first full-length feature film to make extensive use of computer animation was Tron (1982).

 

The article also asks the question: "will computer-animated humans ever look realistic on the screen?". I think the answer is almost certainly: yes, it’s only a matter of time. But the article doesn’t mention what is probably the main barrier to progress: the "uncanny valley".

Another fun test that probably means nothing, but passes the time… I certainly don’t feel androgynous – but I do fancy Neo’s leather coat and dark glasses, even though I know they’d make me look a complete prat…

 

 

I was speaking to my brother yesterday and he told me that Ken Mackintosh had died aged 86. Ken Mackintosh was a popular saxophonist and band leader. He and his band often played at the Villa Marina in the Isle of Man, and spent several summer seasons on the island. The trombonist of the band, Gordon Langhorn, stayed in my parent’s hotel (the Ivanhoe, on Loch Promenade, demolished in 1998), and through him, my parents got to know Ken. I think I met him a number of times – but my clearest memory of him is when I was seven. He came to visit me in hospital, following an operation. I suspect that I remember it most clearly, because he brought me a toy aeroplane – a Vickers Viscount, which I subsequently played with incessantly. 

If, like me, you always had a secret desire to have your very own Robby the Robot (the real star of Forbidden Planet), then the Hammacher and Schlemmer catalogue has just the thing for you. It’s a handmade, accurate, and life size (it’s 7 ft tall) replica of the original.

 

Just two slight problems. One being the price tag (a cool $49,999.95). The other being the fact that although it can "rotate its head and spin its planetary gyro stabilizers", it can’t actually move around. I’m sorry, but for $50,000, I think that’s the least it should be able to do… 

Yesterday, I sat down to pen that most dreaded of all missives (apart from perhaps a tax demand) – the annual Christmas letter. This species of letter is much maligned – with some commentators, Simon Hoggart in particular,  mining its rich seam for easy laughs. And yes, it is true that some letters are toe-curlingly embarrassing. But, we scribes are doing our best to reach out and touch the hearts and minds of those who have at least some tenous connection with us in an attempt to keep that connection alive.

 

Look at it this way, at least the Christmas letter comes but once a year. The mutterings on this blog comes practically every day, and it’s out there on the world wide web for the whole world to read, not just a tiny coterie trapped by a mailing list into an inner circle of letter-writing hell. 

OK, sometimes, I admit, marketing can be creative. This cross between Orff and Peter Jackson is very, very good.

 

(hat tip to Tom at Idiolect)

Programme schedules for Thursday nights on BBC TV now bring three half-hour comedy programmes back-to-back. There’s a joke somewhere in there about London buses…

 

Last night I sat down to watch all three, curious to see whether I’d last the course, and also curious to see how alike, or different, they would be to each other.

 

First up was Little Britain. I have to say, this was the first time I’d ever watched it all the way through, although obviously I’d seen snippets elsewhere and heard the catchphrases: "Yeah but, no but, yeah but…", "I’m the only gay in this village". At the end of it, I wondered why Little Britain is so wildly popular. Thin (catchphrases do not, by themselves, good comedy make), misogynist and racist were the typical words running through my head. I found it profoundly unfunny. I thought it must be me, but I see I’m not the only one. Little Britain seems to be often compared (favourably) with The League of Gentlemen. There’s no contest, as far as I’m concerned; the LoG was furious, dark, unsettling, and it had great writing to power it along.

 

The next bus to come along was The Worst Week of My Life. I liked this much better. It feels curiously old-fashioned – a comedy of errors with more than a whiff of a Brian Rix farce. The actors are good and the material is not at all bad. I laughed.

 

But the best was the last: Sensitive Skin. A jewel of a bittersweet comedy over on BBC2. It is obviously considered a minority interest, because it doesn’t have its own web site on the BBC web pages. A fine pair of actors (Joanna Lumley, Denis Lawson) and including masterful performances last night from David Warner and Jonathan Miller. Superb.

 

Update: Vindicated. It’s apparently not just me; Nick over at The Sharpener also thinks that Sensitive Skin deserves more recognition than it’s getting.

I’ve come across some weird games in my time, but this one is not only passing strange, but strangely educational.

So here’s a gift idea for you. Tasteful, doncha think? I’m sure, as the blurb says, that it would be a conversation starter at any gathering – as in "who let that loon in here?" or "I wouldn’t be seen dead wearing a man like that".

 

(hat tip – in more ways than one – to Twisty Faster)

…I am a free man. If that phrase strikes you as a plea against ID cards, then you’re probably too young to have seen The Prisoner – one of the seminal TV series of the 1960s. The Guardian reports today that the series is to be remade. I hope it works out as well as the remake of Doctor Who, which has been an undoubted, and well-deserved, success.

These were created by a Swedish designer. They’ve sold out. It’s very much the sort of thing that would appeal to the Dutch, who tend to have a fairly earthy sense of humour. I fully expect to see serried ranks of the toys in Dutch stores in time for Sinterklaas.

Today’s ScaryDuck is a classic. My schooldays were never such fun…

There’s a nice opinion piece by Simon Jenkins in today’s Guardian. He asks how it is possible that the same institution – the BBC – can simultaneously release work that is superior and perfect in every way (Bleak House), and work that can best be likened to a great steaming pile of horse ordure (Rome). It’s a question that has been occurring to me also with depressing frequency of late.

 

Oh, and last night I watched the final episode (in this series, at least) of Spooks. I haven’t been watching it, but how could I pass up on a plot that suggested that Princess Diana was in fact murdered by British security forces, as tinfoil hat-wearers have suspected all along. It was a wonderful MacGuffin, and a cracking good episode. And I don’t think that I’ve seen a better cliffhanger of an ending since the end of the first series of House of Cards.