The Farmstead

So, because YouTube has everything, I've been watching the opening run of Eastenders from 1985:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bGM5mPSm70&list=ELFFKbjbgS4RY&index=1

It's actually bloody epic. Heaven knows if it is, but it seems a hell of a lot more accurate about East End life than Eastenders has been for a long time. Everyone's all cold and the houses are all run down and if people aren't worrying about social change they're worrying about where their next bit of cash is going to come from. And you can just feel the creaking joints of the underclass where even if they don't like each other, they're all in it together (and living on top of each other) and no one likes the police because there's no one who isn't touched by something that isn't just a little bit shady. And Nick Cotton's bloody trousers!

Just finished episode 4 and my Eastenders knowledge is a bit patchy, so I can't quite remember the fallout of Den and Angie... But at the moment they're the most amazing thing ever.

It's all a bit stagey in the way of vintage Beeb, but I would just lap up the contemporary equivalent of this. Plus I think the ratio of minority characters to white characters is the same as it is now, which considering thirty years has passed says something about something. (Definitely can't help but feel "What's pease pudding anyway?" "Some kind of English dhal." is far more interesting dialogue than that time six months ago or whenever that Shabnam was ranting on eternally about how Masood couldn't get with a white woman.)

Anyway, like a lot of stuff from the 80s, it just feels like it's been made by people who have something really important to say and who won't rest until you listen. I love that stuff. Watch it!! /Reminisce!!

ION my stupid wanker internet keeps dropping for no other reason than TalkTalk are bastards.

So, people will tell you to watch this show because it's deep or a thriller or the acting's great or whatever. All of these things will make it sound a bit heavy and hard work and slightly worthy and you'll think, hmm, maybe if there's time on a Friday evening and, hmm, I suppose it's on BBC3... But I will tell you to watch this show because it's BLOODY HILARIOUS. The accents are dodgy as heck; the science is more than a little bogus; we yet again face the myth that PhD students lack any and all commitments so are essentially free to do whatever the narrative requires based in their luxe accommodations. It's also thriller-tastic. But that does not take away from the sheer jokes which meant I had no regrets when I caved last Friday and watched the whole lot from ep 3 to ep 10 in one sitting. There are clones! That pretend to be other clones! And are really sarcastic about the other clones' choices! And there's Felix. Who is just a boss.

Watch it and talk to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

aka the latest Simon Pegg-Nick Frost venture.

I actually really enjoyed it, a hell of a lot more than Hot Fuzz and probably a lot more than Shaun of the Dead. Should be asleep, so this will be short. ( Read more... )

Oh, and we saw a trailer for the new Sandra Bullock buddy movie with Melissa McCarthy. It looked absolutely aces. Miss Congenality 2 is the most underrated two women buddy cop film ever, but I think this should be pretty excellent too. And earlier today I watched half an episode of Orange is the New Black. That seemed quite good, and I was promised somewhere good characters. The lead seems a bit of a cliché, but I'm hoping she grows into it a bit and the show doesn't keep her forever as a poor little misled flower.

I'm very behind on the internet at the moment - sorry about that. That time I took off for my arm caught up with me and I spent last weekend working... Term time comes with too many seminars + semi compulsory socialising, which I had forgotten.

Anyway, this series of The Thick of It has been a bit strange. ( Read more... )

Has there been a better thing on television in a long time? I really don't know because this is just so clever. I can't even sum it up, just...

OK, so we start with the industrial revolution, with all its dark satanic mills and dreams for the future - are we Blake dreaming of a world without industry (just cricket), or Caliban!Brunel dreaming of a world of noise and riches? No matter the answer we go through to the 50s (ish) anyway, getting noise and darkness and yet achievement, the Olympic rings wrought out of steel.

We then get to 'Second to the Right and Straight on till Morning': the NHS, children, fantasy literature and the moment between sleep and waking - still caught up in dreams and nightmares. Through jazz and the outfits this is also definitely pitched as a historical transition between the Industrial Revolution and the digital age pageant later. It's like an investigation of what the Industrial Revolution produced - the end of infant mortality as a fact of life (labour, if we imagine child labour, transforms into children being looked after in bed and at GOSH) plus the rise of literacy. Put these two together and the main threat to childhood shifts from actual death to fantasy figures, Voldemort like a pantomime grim reaper and Mary Poppins the image of childcare and education. Everything ends happily like a fairy tale; 'childhood' as a safe bubble away from work and threat is banishable even as a nightmare. But this is even undercut by the nurses doing folk dances, as if they're pretending to still live in the idyll. Which we know has gone.

This establishment of childhood and safety then inevitably spreads to produce Youth Culture as a whole in the digital age, which gets it's own celebration in 'Frankie and June Say Thanks, Tim'. (The whole ceremony is about handing over to the next generation; the narrative of the show is about how that happened with cultural authority.) But even that's shadowed by this tension between illusion and reality (all the dancing backdropped by fictional representations of life that is constructed media culture, embellishing on children's literature), and this sense of darkness. I can't catch all the lyrics in the chronological montage, but it's so heavy once you get past the romance:

( My sketched transcription... )

So even with this massive upheaval, from rural idyll through industrial pain through childhood's invention and welfare and Teh Yoof taking control; the shift in power from Top Hat Man to Multicultural Dancing Everyone, we're still caught up in this dark, fearful, shifting space between reality and illusion, dreams and hope and dissatisfaction. (The defiance in this section - And we don't care / I just think I'm free / We will be victorious - only comes to segue into uncertainty - Change and decay in all around I see; O Thou who changest not, abide with me.)

... So, that's just how I read it (expressed very badly). But I can't help but think it's one of the most interesting national portraits I've seen in a long time. I like this bloke Boyle... :D

(God, I have do something today... Why haven't I done anything?)

I have written a couple of fics for The Awesome Ladies Ficathon and Art-a-thon, which I shall bring over later, but you should check it out and comment and prompt and write and artify and everything!

Secondly, is anyone watching Dead Boss? This is the latest sitcom that's keeping me entertained and it does it very well. It's a murder mystery+prison comedy about one Helen, who has been wrongly imprisoned for the murder of her boss. Many, many amusing characters - my favourites are Mrs. Bridges, the dead boss's widow, who is a sort of EastEnders-style arch villain (but clearly a red herring) and also Helen's sister Laura, who has basically taken over her sister's life now she's in prison and wants to be played by Beyoncé when Helen gets out and they sell the film rights of her story. And it has Jennifer Saunders in!

Thirdly, I was soooooooo wrong about Burial (at least the recent stuff, I haven't relistened to see if I was wrong about the early stuff), and have been in love with certain tracks the last few days. This is the latest one: Four Walls, done in collaboration with Massive Attack. Commit about three minutes to it (at least until the proper vocals kick in) and you will (hopefully!) see why:

Just watched the series finale of Hustle, in both the UK and the US sense of the term as far as I'm aware and... Damn, that is how you do a finale. All right, so most of the time the show's complete fluff pulled together from caricatures and dodgy monologues, and you can only really get away with breaking the fourth wall if you've been doing it a little bit on and off all along, but it was very, very excellent: Adrian Lester at his Shakespearean best and an almost balletic montage from Emma at one point. Good times.

Was far, far better than I was expecting it to be. (I liked the first of the last series, didn't much like the second, thought the third was so-so.) It was excellent, in fact. If we do not get more Irene Adler I will feel cheated in the extreme. So there!

1) Wow, it has been a long time since I've watched American TV. All the rolled Rs and round, high-in-the-palate vowels are really discombobulating. Still, my ear acclimatises very quickly.

2) I have seen Sleeper far more times than any person should see a single episode of TV. I'm so un-swept-up in it that my eyes pick up the join between every single shot and every single continuity blip - and yet it is still my most favourite episode of the series.

3) Every time I watch this run of episodes I think I'm going to have to watch hard for the Spuffy, because everybody knows it only comes in minor flashes... And then I remember that the pair of them flirt or chat like buddies or reference their relationship in every single scene they have together, and it's all good again.

4) Anya is very, very excellent, especially in Potential.

5) Xander is great (especially when you skip back to the menu before the closing scene of Potential, because I don't care how much better it was than I remember, that speech is on my cringe list), especially when shaking his head with a fond exasperation at Anya.

6) I actually like the potentials when there are only five or six of them. They should have kept it like that. Rona amuses me at this stage in the game - and, yeah, I thought this last time and I'm thinking it again: I like Kennedy; the world has ended.

7) Andrew... Why do we always have to fight?? Seriously, he cracks me up, no repentance.

In brief, as I explained to my cinema mates, this film gets a thumbs up. Why?

- The ratio of dragons:airtime was very good.
- I had a laugh (even when there weren't jokes).
- Narcissa Malfoy owns my soul.

Oh, and

- John Hurt! Never leave me.

Feel free to ask me what I liked less, but I'm happy to leave it there.

(Re life, am busy: moving house and organising a month-long trip to France from mid-August, but I soldier on.)