Nick's Blog
I'm The King Of The Blogs!
31/3/2010 @ 15:13
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A person creates a blue skinned representation of themselves in order to interact with a magical and wonderous place filled with simple creatures who live in harmony with their environment.
That synopsis applies equally for Avatar AND In The Night Garden.
James Cameron really doesn't have many original ideas, does he?
Cops n' Bloggers
26/3/2010 @ 22:30
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So farewell then, The Bill. ITV's #1 police drama is no more after 27 years. I'm saddened by this because I've been watching the show since it began and although it's long since been cutting edge or supremely relevant it was still good entertainment and a good way to spend an hour in front of the telly.
And for those of you who weren't there at the beginning and who think the show is a cosy soap opera in uniform, let me tell you it was cutting edge when it began. The use of glaringly overlit video, the shaky hand held cameras and over the shoulder style of shooting, it was all there long before America got hold of the technique for "NYPD Blue". It felt like docudrama back then and it was unlike anything else on television...ah, the days when ITV could come up with something original.
Then it went to a twice weekly soap opera format...that didn't make for great storytelling but it did have an ace up its sleeve in terms of casting: Chris Ellison as Inspector "Bent" Burnside with the steeliest eyes in showbiz. Fortunately, that format didn't last and it settled down to a once weekly hour long show which allowed it to have longer stories and more character development before the decision to go all Hi-Def and post watershed on us.
The Bill just isn't post-watershed: It's a police procedural which is as sexy as a pair of Y-Fronts. It's not about the glamourous and vacuous posing of a CSI, it's more about a bunch of ex-EastEnders regulars looking harrassed on a sparse and overlit set whilst the cameraman struggles with the aperture of his video camera. But it did have a semblance of reality to it. If I call the police I'm more likely to get visited by cops looking like Smithy or Tony Stamp than Horatio Caine and Marg Helgenberger. And when Tony Stamp left The Bill, the show lost it totemic figure. Tony was the last sane ordinary bloke in a world gone mad and you latched on to him like a bit of sturdy driftwood in a shipwreck.
I am going to miss The Bill, Jack Meadows, Mickey, Smithy, Sierra Oscar from 191, The Larkmead and Jasmine Allan estates, and the whole "let's not cut but instead follow the characters around the corridors" style of shooting. The Bill: 1983-2010...off to TV heaven you go.
Evil of the Bloggers
18/3/2010 @ 16:24
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IN RETROSPECT: Russell T. Davies recalls his time as producer, director, script editor, chief writer, wardrobe supervisor, head chef and lead actor had the BBC not stepped in and demanded a proper actor for Doctor Who. As Davies has stepped down from all those roles, here he is to share some of his favourite memories of his time at the helm of Britain's #1 sci-fi show.
LOVE AND MONSTERS: I LOVE this episode! We couldn't have Davy and Billie as much because they were off doing one of Moffatt's po-faced efforts but the fantastic Marc Warren landed on my lap (not literally, shame) and we cast him as the main focus of the story where he ends up seeing his girlfriend turn into a living paving stone. And that's the kind of left of centre thinking we love on the show: Why can't a man and a paving stone love one another? Why should we constrain ourselves with merely staying within a comfort zone based on gender or being the same species? Love is universal, whether it be man, woman, man, robot, man or concrete. This was the kind of ground breaking stuff Star Trek was doing 40 YEARS AGO and here's me doing it now! FANTASTIC!
THE RETURN OF THE AUTONS: Everybody remembers how scary the Autons were first time around with Pertwee but I think Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks missed a trick by making them oh-so serious and scary. Kids these days aren't going to be frightened by an inflatable chair; if anything's going to get you in the 21st century it's going to be your wheelie bin. When Mickey is eaten by his own bin, I added the belch as a little in joke and as a wink to the audience. Did you see it? Did you see the little wink from me to you? HA-HA! I LOVE IT! Dancing with the audience is what I call it...will it be deadly or funny? YOU JUST DON'T KNOW WITH ME! I'M MENTAL! Ha-ha! You see, Moffatt doesn't get that and I'm ALWAYS on at him to lighten up.
ROSE LUVS DOCTOR: Rose, I flippin' love her. LOVE HER. Greatest companion ever and we got Billie Piper to play her! I KNOW! Flippin' brilliant I am! And she's the one who's going to break his heart, she's the one, this humble shop girl with the big overbite. The best thing about re-shaping something like Dr. Who into something even more iconic than it was is the chance to add romance so I wrote in lots of scenes where you can sense they're going to get their kit of and start shagging there and then at the feet of the TARDIS console but you don't actually see that, no...but you get that sense though, all the time, every minute, every scene. Sexually charged is what I call it. You wouldn't get Billy Hartnell and Anneke Wills doing that back in the day. No, you can't see Hartnell getting naked on the TARDIS floor, tastefully lit, as Polly starts slowly taking her clothes off whilst Chesterton looks on. Couldn't do it early on a Saturday evening so we have to IMAGINE it with our MINDS. The Doctor, probably Davy Tennant, and Rose who represents the inner TV producer and writer in all of us (certainly me!) sharing a tender and naked moment whilst Captain Jack looks on....wouldn't let me film that, would they? Ha-ha! Only joking. You have to pay everyone extra for nude shots. ON DOCTOR WHO'S BUDGET!
POP CULTURE: When Star Trek came out (whoops, not literally...naughty me!) it was always breaking new ground and commenting on society. "Spock's Brain" was a warning about unethical and needless surgery and "And The Children Shall Lead" a scathing attack on the dangers of New Maths. So when I went to the head of BBC Drama and said I wanted to bring back Doctor Who, I insisted that it had the same social relevance for today's generation that Star Trek had back then. But as we live in a post-modern celebrity obsessed zeitgeist society you have to handle the commentary a bit differently. You can't reference gun boat diplomacy, racism, playing God, genetic alterations, being overly reliant on computers and peace anymore because that's been done and the kids won't get it. But they get Britney Spears and they get netspeak so I made sure every episode had something that your average 14 year old would understand. Who's to say that in 100,000 years "Toxic" won't be regarded in the same way as Mahler's "Song of the Earth"? And when the Master sang in "The Sound of Drums" that was just a PERFECT moment of the zeitgeist intersecting...erm...well, something. Plus, I FLIPPIN' LOVE THAT SONG, ME! I could just see the faces of all those old Who fans who have the image of Roger Delgado as the Master in their minds being confronted by a peroxided John Simm singing! I KNOW! Classic! And I don't worry when people say that in 10 years these references to Big Brother and The Weakest Link will mean nothing; the Zeitgeist isn't a fine wine that needs storing...it's a hungry monster that goes gobble gobble gobble and that's why I LOVE feeding it!
STRETCHED FACES: I LOVE the concept of stretching someone's face and calling it a monster. You don't need to know the details on how a stretched face can live and still call itself human but in the world of Doctor Who it can happen. Well, in my Doctor Who it can. I didn't think much about how a paving slab with a stretched human face in it could live...you just say it can and the audience has to jolly well accept it. Plus the stretched face is like a cloth and people are seeing the Virgin Mary in cloths all the time so what I'm saying is that Zoe Wannamaker is the Virgin Mary. SHE'LL BE SO CHUFFED TO HEAR THAT! HA-HA, I LOVE IT!
THE FUTURE: Well, we'll just have to see how sourpuss Moffatt will do. I was always on at him to lighten up and would love sneaking up behind him and giving him a noogie to see if that would put a smile on his face but he'd always be worrying about things such as dramatic impact and plot development. I always told him to worry about the witty dialogue first and worry about the plot later because this is Doctor Who where you can do literally anything and turn convention and expectation on its head. Have an alien who talks out of its arse? You can on Doctor Who. Turn the human race into one legged, 6 eyed squeaky voiced molluscs? You can on Doctor Who. You can even ditch the science fiction and focus on the lives of the aunts, uncles and family aquaintances of the companions because IT'S DOCTOR WHO and you can do anything! If I had stayed on the production, I would have done an entire season as one of those old interactive fantasy stories where you chose your own adventure only it would be entirely from the companion's point of view which is placed just 4 inches below the Doctor's ass! I KNOW! I'm completely mental, me!
Blogfinger
11/3/2010 @ 23:08
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MANY WAYS JAMES BOND CHANGED THE MOVIES
For most, the James Bond movies are a lot of fun and escapist entertainment. But did you know they changed how movies are written and made in ways that aren't screamingly obvious. There are motifs and effects in the movies you watch today that can trace their origins back to the Bond movies. Here are some of the ways how...
THEY CHANGED THE IMAGE OF WOMEN IN MOVIES.
Before 1962, Hollywood had established what kind of woman was lead material, especially in terms of looks. The look that had dominated the 40s and 50s with full lips painted a vivid red, big breasts, hourglass figures and hair that had been welded into position was how producers in America and the UK saw their leading ladies. There were even specialist image consultants and schools to get every actress under 40 to look like that. Then along came Ursula Andress in Doctor No. She was not built with an hourglass figure and her lips weren't doing an impression of a fresh water trout. On top of all that, she had shoulders you could iron your shirts on and...gasp!...wore very little make up in that movie. And they had the audacity to put her in a bikini with a freakin' knife attached! And with that, the old Hollywood rulebook on women's image went out of the window. Now beauty came in all sorts of shapes; within a couple of years, there was no standard body type in the movies.
THEY INTRODUCED REALISTIC VIOLENCE.
Since the early 1930s, there existed in Hollywood something called the Hays Code which regulated everything put on screen from sex (basically no), how you held a cigarette (lest you get accused of being gay), language (nothing stronger than a jeepers creepers) and the amount of violence you could show. In fist fights, everyone waited and took their turn to be hit. Sometimes the sound effect matched up with the punch and sometimes the punch actually connected.
Then in 1963 there came the fight scene in From Russia With Love, with James Bond and Red Grant trying to kill each other with a savage frenzy. Here you had Sean Connery and Robert Shaw, two men in the prime of their lives and built like bodybuilders, clawing, gouging, kicking, throttling and pulling every dirty trick in the book to smash the other into oblivion. And in a train compartment no less, a space where cat swinging is definitely off the agenda. So the next time you're sitting there enjoying Matt Damon use his super-Bourne skills to kill someone with his bare hands, thank From Russia With Love.
THEY PUT BRITISH FILM TECHNICIANS ON THE MAP.
The British have always had very good film technicians and studios but for decades they were content to work on low key black and white films where everyone is terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly vexed about something or other. Hollywood wasn't exactly beating a path to Pinewood Studios to make their movies before the Bond pictures. But Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, the producers of the Bond movies, wanted to use British crews and film in Britain but have the movies look better than American action movies and the techies rose to the occasion. Since the early Bond movies, Hollywood has shot the Star Wars movies, the Indiana Jones movies, the Alien movies and anything else that requires a grand scale of complex settings in the UK and British cameramen, sound recordists and editors have been in demand ever since.
THEY CHANGED THE WAY WE HEAR FILM MUSIC
Movies have always had memorable themes but before Bond, few incidental scores stayed in the mind. That's because the credits, where you would hear the theme, were quite simple affairs and incidental pieces were broadly categorised as happy, sad, triumphant, dramatic, etc but not memorable or hummable...Bond movies, under the direction of John Barry, changed all that.
The space music from "You Only Live Twice", the boat chase theme from "Live and Let Die", "Bond 77" theme from "The Spy Who Loved Me"; these are instantly recognisable themes and if you catch yourself humming something John Williams wrote for Star Wars or any of Jerry Goldsmith's scores you have John Barry to thank. In Bond movies, the score takes centre stage alongside the stunts and has made the role of the composer more important.
THEY MADE FRANCHISE MOVIES RESPECTABLE
There were serial pictures before Bond but mostly they were cheap B movies designed to entertain the kids before the big movie started. Even though Flash Gordon, The Falcon and the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies are fondly remembered, they were used as fillers by the big studios.
The Bond movies moved the serial picture from B material to box office blockbuster. Nowadays the talk is always about "the franchise" and "sequels" and if you think that's a good thing, then thank James Bond.
THEY GAVE US PRODUCT PLACEMENT
To be fair, the Bond movies didn't invent product placement but Ian Fleming's novels might have claim to that. Bond movies don't just show you some product he's using, it's built into the script and character and we have the original source novels to blame. Fleming was always name dropping quality products and quite often he was supplied with the material: In the novel of Goldfinger Bond drives a battleship grey Aston Martin DBIII just because Ian Fleming had been invited to test drive one before he wrote the book. He drinks Dom Perignon and Bollinger because that's what Fleming liked. He wears a gold Rolex because Fleming and Cubby Broccoli did. And they were keen on us to know that they and James Bond did...so a lot of luxury goods have gotten some nice publicity over the years.
THEY ELEVATED THE STATUS OF STUNTMEN
The first stuntmen were generally required to fall of horses. Then the first golden age of Stuntmen arrived in the 1920s and people had a career in dangling from skyscrapers, getting their cars stuck in railway lines before being hit and doing scary ass things in biplanes. Then talkies arrived and stuntmen went back to falling off horses. The Bond movies made stunt sequences the big set pieces and so the second golden age of stuntmen was born. The first great car chases since the Keystone Cops came with Bond and all manner of vehicles have been used to give complete nutters..erm, I mean Stuntmen...free reign to dazzle audiences.
And the award for best blog goes to...
08/3/2010 @ 16:14
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I didn't watch the Oscars last night as I was far more tempted to watch "In The Loop" than to watch a list of thank yous and tears.
I did catch the results on the news and my, how the BBCs stock has fallen over the years. In the past, they would get interviews with winners and big stars but this time they had a hard time even collaring the scriptwriters of An Education for one. And when the on the spot reporter says "and there, in the background, you might be able to make out Alec Baldwin....here he comes...let's see if we can get a response from him.......no, he's gone" you know the Beeb are just the really poor kid allowed to sniff the dessert tray as it's wheeled past them. And because it was the "proper" BBC and the breakfast news, they kept referring to Inglorious Basterds as just plain Inglorious as if none of us ever saw the gazillions of posters for the movie up and down the country when it was on release.
Anyway, I'm glad Avatar didn't win because if it had it would have really dragged the awards down to the level of the Eurovision Song Contest in terms of credibility. As for the acting wins, it seemed like "OK, it's your turn to win" even though I'm a huge Jeff Bridges fan. Not an outstanding year in terms of the quality of the movies nominated but I think the best of an OK bunch won.
Rest In Blog
01/3/2010 @ 14:46
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Two of my friends died last week; Les Hedges and John Golden. I knew both from my geeky little hobby of wargaming and role playing games for many years and on another site I paid tribute to them and I thought it only fitting to do the same here.
"I'd like to pay a tribute to both John and Les Hedges, who died last week and who were both members of FGC at various times.
Both guys were fantastic gamers, especially RPGs but both had interests in board and miniature wargaming. These were guys who really created characters, not just a bunch of statistics designed to win fights. They would play almost any game, no matter how sloppy a rules system it was, as long as they could create an inventive character for it.
Les was like having Orson Welles in your group: Big, loud, opinionated but also very generous and encouraging. His characters were always full of personality and background and he would take risks by having some of them refuse to carry weapons but instead rely on charm and skills. D&D Forgotten Realms was his favourite game but he was brilliant at Traveller as well.
John's characters were quieter by comparison but no less well thought out. He preferred historical or hard sci-fi games especially Traveller, Privateers and Gentlemen and Call of Cthulhu. He wasn't afraid to give one of his characters a fatal flaw; some aspect of their past that would one day come back to haunt them.
When putting together a gaming group, I would always like to include one or other of them because I knew they would give so much to the game. At Les' funeral yesterday, everyone was talking about how inspirational he was as a player and friend. And that was another thing about them; they were both great company away from the gaming table.
Losing both in a week feels like being punched hard in the stomach. I'm going to miss them both."
