Channel Four, on the other hand, was showing The Young Poisoner’s Handbook with not enough cropping. Not only were the black bars visible above and beneath the picture, but also on the left and right sides. Tut tut.
Archive for the ‘pop’ Category
Some notes from Thursday
First up of the proper acts there was Jason John Whitehead who quipped to one heckler ”There’s observational comedy and then there’s observational”. Unfortunately that, to me, seemed to pretty much sum up his own act as well. He had the disadvantage of having been on the telly earlier, so I already knew some of his jokes. But he did have a funny voice, kinda like Jeremy Hotz.
The headliner for the night was Andre Vincent, who seemed to do most improvising of the lot. His stories were pretty standard fare too, and the gross quotient was high. He was nevertheless quite engaging and definitely worth the fiver I had paid to get it. The greatest problem was that his act didn’t really include anything memorable, so unless there’s a radical change of style (which is highly unlike), he will stay where he is now for til the end of time.
Alas, all was not lost even though the headliner wasn’t that good, for the funniest man on the stage that night was undoubtedly Noel James. I mean if you open your act by pressing your eye against the mic and saying ”I’d like to introduce my eye”, how bad can it be? The act verged on the surreal, full of wordplays both daft and smart. The one about his father working as a bootlegging mortician was rather good (”It was illegal. No undertaking on the motorway”) and the musical interlude rather not (”They said do a Beatles song. I said naa… naa nan nan nanananaa [to the tune of Hey Jude]”). I want to see more of this guy!
Incidentally, this explains the mystery of ”Whitehead, James”. See, I had jotted down the names during the night in order to remember who did what, but I couldn’t remember that the following day and therefore presumed it had to be the name of an interesting author. Silly me.
What’s hot
Comedy disability
In my case, examples of this would include the job title alivaltiosihteeri; any animal’s name prefixed by ex (as in ”an ex-parrot”); Mary, Queen of Scots; and the number 42.
What? You want to know why I thought of this? Well… in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie there’s a biology teacher who talks about an ex-frog. I thought it was funny.
Disney language
- Calling their movies ”classics” before they’ve even hit the theatres
- Calling their Digital Versatile Discs ”Disney DVDs”
- Unskippable commercials for ”Disney classics” on ”Disney DVDs”
DVD bits
- The Man Who Wasn’t There was known as ”unnamed barber movie” during shooting
- Billy Bob Thornton defines the Coen bros as people ”who just don’t suck”
- the interview of cinematographer Roger Deakins on TMWWT DVD is a wonderfully intresting piece of journalism that is horribly made, when usually it’s the other way round
- on the comment track during the credits Thornton talks to the Coens about meeting film editor Roderick Jaynes at a health store
Character-driven dramas
This revelation came to me when I was watching CSI, Boom Town, and Sopranos back to back. The first two series – should you not know – are prime time cop series with a high popcorn factor. They’re quite strict in their serial form: each episode has a strict and clear plot line that has to be ran through within the 50 minute time limit. Therefore each episode can basically stand on its own. Sopranos on the other hand doesn’t play by the same rules. Themes are given time to develop. Things and people are brought front only to be forgotten for a while, then they pop up again at the most suprising places, and yet never feel contrived but always essential to what’s happening. And the key to that is the simple fact that Sopranos scripts are clearly character-driven.
Let me elaborate on that. What I realized today was that the reason Sopranos can have long-running themes that feel natural is exactly because no big fuss has been made of them in the first place. Whereas in, say, Knight Rider or MacGyver every time KARR or Murdoch appeared you just knew it was going to be another one-off battle between the arch enemies. Not so with Sopranos.
Personally I feel that having a character-driven series makes even more sense than having a movie fashioned in the same sense. Arguably the extra time a TV show can afford over its run make the characters feel even more lifelike, and therefore we as viewers attach more emotions to them. But of course good movies do just the same thing in the shorter timespan that they have been allotted. Also note that this sharing of emotion – I’m hesitant to use the word ”empathy” for some reason – doesn’t have to be positive, but everything can be shared. Now think back to the last action movie you’ve seen: Did you really care about the protagonist’s fate at all?
(I’m thinking of Phone Booth here.)
Could that have been because of the way all that happened seemed to revolve around the action and therefore feel predetermined ? I think this is the key. If you accept the notion that someone else has already decided what’s going to happen (and obviously I’m ignoring the material fact that the film/play/tv show has been finished before you came to see it), it becomes hard to attach any affection to what’s going to happen. This seems to run counter to the perceived truths about the basic rules of drama, but I do think that if a scriptwriter puts the cast through too familiar challenges and changes, no one’s going to give a toss.
In the light of all this it’s remarkable how Sopranos manages to pull it off. There are the small setpieces that keep the insulated episodes running, there are the character traits that don’t have to be reinforces all the time but can be allowed to submerge and change, and then there’s the frosting: fantastic dialogue with depth and perception, not to mention killer oneliners (my favourite one in the last episode being Tony asking Anthony Jr ”What do you think kept the church standing?” and he answers ”Bricks?” ), beautiful cinematography, ingenious use of music, good acting, and all those things I’ve missed but without which the show just wouldn’t be what it is.
Sorry about the rambling. I think I’m a little out of control on this Sopranos thing.
Dude, what a bummer
Dumbo and PC
Microserfs
Basically what happens is that a bunch of friends who work at Microsoft in the early 1990s decide to change jobs after one of them starts up his own company. Some things go well, others badly. There isn’t much of a plot as such, and if the story has a moral it’s one of basic human values, not about the hubris of the Silicon Valley (as in Dot.Con).
The best thing from a nerdish point of view like mine is that the technology jargon never fails. I kept turning pages in anticipation of the moment when the author’s lack of knowledge finally shows (as it did in Dot.Con) but with Microserfs that moment never comes. I must have been two thirds through the book before I realized that I had finally stopped waiting for the embarrassment to happen and was properly concentrating on other things.
Definitely worth a read, at least to check out what you missed by ten years if not for anything else. I lapped the book up in one go last Friday so I guess that counts as something. Recommended.