Moustache-growing season

This month I have been growing a moustache for Movember to raise money for research into prostate and testicular cancer. I’m so grateful to everyone who’s donated to me. My ‘tache has raised £110 so far and I’m going to keep growing it in the hope of raising that figure a little in the next few weeks. If you would like to sponsor me, you can do so by clicking here.

For those so inclined, you can also  read my article The Eloquence of the Cinematic Moustache by clicking here. And here are some photos charting the month’s progress!

1st Movember

10th Movember

15th Movember

25th Movember

When I started growing this month, I was aiming for the full Sam Elliott:

Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski

I haven’t quite achieved the lustrousness of Sam’s face fungus, but I’m happy enough:

Nicolas Pillai in The Big Lebowski

30th Movember

Here’s that link again: please donate!

 

From Dungannon to Dublin

Swans at Dungannon Park

 

Waterfall at Dungannon Park

 

Paddy says goodbye

The Mourne Mountains

 

Roisin and Molly Malone

Muldoons and me

Irish Film Institute

 

A cute puppy

 

Powerscourt

End of an era (almost)

It’s been a looong time since I blogged. This past month has been taken up with putting the work of four years together and making it into a thesis. Well, I submitted it last Thursday and I’m here to tell you it felt pretty good and that I hope to be posting far more regularly from now on…

As a reward, Roisin and I took a weekend off at my parents’ house by the sea in Sandgate. The weather was perfect and the annual Sea and Food Festival was taking place. On Saturday night we sat on the seafront and watched a beautiful firework display. Each shower of sparks was reflected on the choppy waves. I felt perfectly happy.

Doctor Who series 6 (part two)

Tom Steward blogs at Watching TV with Americans.

The Impossible Astronaut

Anticipation ran high for this opening two-parter following publicity images of Matt Smith in a Stetson on the American frontier and an internet prequel featuring a 1969 Richard Nixon recording strange phone calls from a frightened child. The stage was set for a fun western-themed story along the lines of the William Hartnell serial The Gunfighters, and a return to the historical (which the previous season had veered towards with Vincent and the Doctor) populated by some fascinating figures (Nixon, Armstrong) and culturally cataclysmic events (the Moon landing, Watergate).

To paraphrase an expression popular in America in 1969: ‘they blew it!’
Writer Steven Moffat was completely uninterested in the period he had perfunctorily plonked his story in, giving viewers scant historical context save for a few garbled soundbytes about Nixon’s legacy, and paying only saliva service to the western setting and iconography, with the shot of The Doctor as a cowboy reclining on a Cadillac (somehow) shorter in the final edit than in the 60-second trailer.

So many precious minutes were wasted on a comically lukewarm opening montage of The Doctor getting into various bawdy and slapstick scrapes throughout history. I hope these vignettes will be followed up on in the latter half of the series but suspect they’re frivolous window-dressing for Moffat’s inability to give us a coherent introduction to his stories.

The other major problem was the laboured and smugly self-conscious reference away from the episode’s self-contained storyline towards ongoing story arcs. This demonstrated a detrimental lack of faith in the effectiveness of the plot and seriously delayed its development, meaning that the action had barely got going before this first episode had ended. The murder of The Doctor by a mysterious being in a NASA spacesuit capped off a plethora of false starts, reducing the introduction of villains The Silence to a mere footnote, lacking the suspense or anticipation to help them reach their terrifying potential.

Fighting against the narrative first gear, Smith did a wonderful job conveying the melancholy wisdom of his future self (that boy can do old!) and his and Arthur Darvill’s (unfortunately clipped) character-crystallising exchanges were superbly witty and subtly executed.

Day of the Moon

Part two of this double-header clarified how Moffat’s oblique storytelling had become simply incompetent. Some narrative ellipsis was necessary in a story involving aliens that people forget once out of sight and to delay the resolution of a narrative mystery. However, the time ellipses in this episode spiralled way out of control. A three month gap between this and the previous instalment undermined the impact and purpose of the preceding cliffhanger. Further jumps in narrative continuity acted as smokescreens for the potholes in narrative cause-and-effect and plot development.

The episode’s opening montage was successfully exhilarating, largely down to the commitment of the performers and macabre twists in the telling rather than the tired content, a recycling of the ‘pretend death’ ploy which Moffat favours with incredulous regularity. This was epitomised by Karen Gillan’s near-asthmatic vocal performance following a chase across the desert, a tour-de-force typical of an actress who, like all great Doctor Who protagonists, can make you believe the unbelievable. The marks recording sightings of The Silence that cover the bodies of the protagonists like tattoos of hideous scars made for chilling viewing.

Though massively overdue, after the credits the show finally played its horror card, and very nearly took the haunted house. The visit to the creaky and creepy children’s home complete with abusive graffiti and deranged custodian was graceful in its slow and understated building of disquiet and fear. Again, most plaudits should go to actor Kerry Shale as the syrup-voiced Southern gentleman in mental distress Dr. Renfrew, whose trembling and traumatised appearance propagated the lingering feeling of unease. The episode (not for the last time this series) channelled The X-Files to gain legitimacy as TV science-fiction (particularly for American audiences who are simultaneously addressed here) but recognised only the superficialities (dark-and-smart outfits, magenta blue lighting), and barely qualified as pastiche.

Elsewhere, the history became pure pageantry, full of embarrassingly on-the-nose musical cues and dramatic ironies (‘say Hi to David Frost’) that compounded the thinly realised portrayal of the era. Smith continued to rally pluckily against the characterisation of The Doctor as a lothario, making clear to viewers through precise physical comedy his thoughtful interpretation of the character as sexually naive and alien to romance.

For a discussion of how this series-opener was shown on BBC America and spoke to American audiences, see the post from my blog here.

Beside the Seaside

Zig zag path

Leas bandstand

H. G. Wells

Sunlight

The Mysterious Cave

Sandgate

Dungeness

Desert

The Tall T

They Had Faces Then #7

“I think every intelligent woman should have a career.” – Bonita Granville in Nancy Drew Detective (1938)

I’m often surprised by my PhD. Last week I sat down to rewrite the introduction to my third chapter (on daughters and domestic space, Penny Serenade and Mr. Blandings) and I ended up singing the praises of Nancy Drew. I’ve only seen the first Bonita Granville movie so far, which is a lot of fun, largely thanks to Frankie Thomas ‘ long suffering turn as Ted Nickerson. That’s Frankie in the picture above with Bonita. He stoically goes along with Nancy’s plans, even when they involve him dressing up as a nurse. And as you’d hope, he gets chatted up by a gangster.

It seems that Nancy continues to be a role model to adventurous girls, at least in books. Did anyone go to see the recent movie? The trailer looks like a fairly lame attempt to appropriate the panache of Clueless, but I’d be willing to give it a shot if anyone wanted to recommend it!

Nancy Drew 2007:

Nancy Drew 1938:

Drawing the Brig

Blimey, it’s been a long time since I’ve blogged. March was a funny month – I’ve been trying hard to meet PhD deadlines, as well as doing some web writing for my university and trying to secure further work to keep me going until I submit my thesis.

In the past few weeks, I’ve also been feeling the need to do some drawing. When I was young, I used to spend hours filling sketchbooks with comic strips. It’s a habit I’ve fallen out of, and I’m a far less confident draughtsman these days. Still, yesterday I got Ego and Other Tails by Darwyn Cooke out of the library. I’d loved Cooke’s art on New Frontier and it inspired me to get out the pens this afternoon.

You might have noticed there was no tribute to Nicholas Courtney on my blog. I did try, but it was difficult to put my fondness for my favourite Doctor Who character into words.

As a first effort, I’m fairly pleased with this. I think the likeness is OK – now I just need to get more confident with shading!

Doctor Who and the Evil Crochet Genius

I know that a few of my readers will like these! Evil Crochet Genius has made a complete set of 11 Doctors, which you can see here. I’m especially impressed with the likenesses of William Hartnell and Colin Baker. Love those question mark collars…

They Had Faces Then #5

DeWitt Bodeen: “Although Irene Dunne once said that she felt her best performance came on about the third take, every take was consistent in timing and action. If she paused slightly to pick up an object, she always paused at the same place, picking it up in the same way with the same hand. Her precision was remarkable.”

Leo McCarey: “You can really call Irene Dunne the first lady of Hollywood, because she’s the first real lady Hollywood has ever seen.”

Quotes from Danny Peary (ed.), Close-Ups: The Movie Star Book.

 

London, via Bedford Falls

This weekend, Roisin and I travelled down to London. We had a lovely time but the snow scuppered our plans to a large extent. So this is a blog about making do, listening to mother and making the right decisions…

We had planned a few weeks ago that, on our last weekend before going off to our respective families for Christmas, we would travel down to the NFT to see It’s a Wonderful Life on the big screen! As you can imagine, we were both very excited. We’d both seen the film many times before but this seemed like such a nice Christmassy thing to do.

We set off early from Leamington on one of the beautiful Wrexham & Shropshire trains and the snow was already falling quite heavily.

Stepping off the train in Marylebone, we walked through a flurry of snow to Baker Street tube station. As we turned the corner, I looked up towards Regent’s Park and felt a pang of sympathy for the man in Victorian Bobby costume standing in the doorway of the Sherlock Holmes Museum!

We hurried through the busy underground station, but I stopped to take some snaps of the Sherlockian decor. I’ve always loved the decorative tiles at Baker Street, and the illustrative boards which decorate the platforms.

Roisin wanted to visit a clothes shop called Vivian of Holloway (she had a particular dress in mind) but when we got to the Holloway Rd, we found ourselves in the middle of a blizzard. It was difficult to see very far ahead of us, but we struggled down to the shop. Roisin had fun trying on some frocks with petticoats but eventually settled on a polka-dot number that makes her look a bit like Minnie Mouse! You can see some photos of her giving a twirl here!

When we emerged, the snowfall was lighter so we explored a bit further up the Holloway Rd. At this point, we were quite looking forward to a hot drink, so when we found a pub called The Coronet (converted from an old picture palace), we hurried inside! My photos don’t really do it justice but the facade and interior were still very impressive and there were lots of photos of Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire inside so I was happy!

We decided to have lunch in Holborn so got on the tube again. After a lovely walk through Bloomsbury Park Gardens, we stopped into an amazing pub called The Princess Louise. Sadly, they weren’t serving food that day but we warmed ourselves at the open fire and admired the building’s fantastic decor, all tiles and mirrors, a real Victorian Gin Palace!

Warming up at The Princess Louise!

We eventually settled on Nandos for lunch (I love their halloumi pittas!) and decided to spend the afternoon looking around the British Museum. While there, we walked by The Museum Tavern, origin of The Alpha Inn in The Blue Carbuncle, and visited Gosh! Comics which furnished me with Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s Snakes and Ladders for £2!

The Museum Tavern

The British Museum was far less crowded than is usual for a Saturday so we had a nice time roaming around. Roisin wanted to visit the medieval Europe section and we had a great time admiring the collection of pocket watches and antique timepieces!

We walked down through Soho to the Thames but the progress was slow-going. It was very treacherous underfoot and our feet were getting very cold! By the time we got to Trafalgar Square we were both eager to get over the river to our cinema seats. We were also promising ourselves a champagne cocktail!

Well, as you can see from the photograph below, we got our drinks! However, when we checked our train times home, we found that the train companies were starting to cancel journeys back to Leamington. We didn’t want to get stranded in London on such a cold night so, with much regret, we left without seeing the film. It was a difficult decision, but it was the right one!

Earlier in the day, I’d been absolutely sure things would go according to plan. Still, we made the best of it and, on the advice of my mum, bought some provisions for the train ride home! It was just such a relief to be sleeping in our own bed that night!

The next morning, we had a little Christmas celebration, exchanging our presents before parting. I got some lovely things: the complete Laurel & Hardy DVD Collection, the Douglas Wilmer Sherlock Holmes DVDs, some wonderful 1940s issues of Picturegoer magazine and a brilliant Roger Delgado T-shirt!

I AM THE MASTER AND YOU WILL OBEY ME!

So, despite the disappointment of not visiting Bedford Falls, we had a great time anyway! And I hope you all have a lovely holiday – Merry Christmas!