One for Ali. Still waiting for Backstreet’s Back to come on license.
Leave the first comment ▶Victorian Humor
Finally watched Topsy-Turvy, the film about the infamous duo’s creation of the Mikado, and the events leading up to it. While watching the film I was nervous about how many liberties had been taken with accuracy, but apparently a fair amount of research went into it. The film is jam-packed with excellent performances from all concerned, from Jim Broadbent and Timothy Spall through to Andy ‘Gollum’ Serkis. I’ve no clue how biographical the presentation of Gilbert, Sullivan, D’Oyly Carte, George Grossmith and so on are, but they seem just about believable despite the light-hearted nature of the film, fully reconciled to the Victorian era they exist in. Allan Corduner absolutely shines as Sir Arthur Sullivan, giving the part enormous warmth and humanity, and providing a superb counterpoint to Broadbent’s uptight Gilbert.
The portrayal of Victorian theatre and the creative process was particularly interesting for me, mostly for how little things have changed. Discussions on cutting songs or tweaking dialogue all feel very familiar at this point, through to cast members arguing with costumiers about attire, and a tired company receiving notes after a rehearsal, prior to heading home, err, to the bar.
The conversations between Gilbert, his wife, and his elderly father, while presumably a modern creation, do wonderfully capture the contemporary demeanour, and attitudes. Jim Broadbent manages to deliver the lines without any hint of caricature, but alas I have seen too much of the brothers Faversham, who parody such situations rather well.
About my only real criticisms are the slightly excessive length (coupled to some overly-sedate pacing) and the out-of-order depiction of certain popular numbers. It seems as if the film-makers were trying to cram in all the big-hitting numbers from the Mikado, but that didn’t fit with any sane narrative, so at a couple of points they cut from the gestation of the libretto to a fully costumed, set and choreographed performance, and straight back. It just about works, but it’s not elegant.
Leave the first comment ▶Ultraviolet
No, not the film, but slightly older Channel 4 TV drama from 1998. A six part mini-series about those pesky blood drinkers, classically British, with an excellent cast and extremely dark setting – no witty Joss Wheedon one-liners here. There’s a decent blend of science, action and drama – occasionally crossing the line into techno-babble, maudlin or silly car chases, but for the most part, appropriately scaled for the budget and scope of the show. The writer also directed the entire series (without apparently going crazy), resulting in a very tight, consistent feel – from set design and lighting through to dialogue and cast mannerisms. In this it avoids many of the pitfalls the irritate me about (say) Doctor Who – taking on big-budget ideas and executing on them badly.
Possibly the most interesting aspect is the complete (and deliberate) avoidance of the V-word – quite a feat really.
Leave the first comment ▶It’s hard work and sacrifice
My fault, mostly:
One comment so far, add another ▶Samhuinn
Had a minor role in this year’s Samhuinn performance by Beltane, as a torchie again. In a departure from previous years, we spent some time making new costumes, including fibreglass breast-plates which were a considerable amount of work (and mess, and nasty fumes). We also made new cloaks, which meant a large amount of (machine-)stitching. I’m sure the quality of my work would appall the Savoy costumiers, but none of the cloaks fell apart on the night.
Various people have asked for a plot summary, since the performance is pretty impenetrable without some background – personally I think printing a plot summary on the back of the fliers would help significantly, not sure who in the society can make that happening, though.
Anyway, here’s my attempt. Corrections welcome.
The summer king is having his last big party of the year. He’s getting pretty old and tired after a long summer of drinking, carousing and so on. But he’s going to have a great party all the same, with assorted entertainment from jesters (the guys in purple in and yellow), his musicians, dancers and so on. On his way to the party he’s joined by his dear, long-lost brother, the prince of winter.
After the above (summer) groups have done their performances, the red men and white women (from Beltane) get their turn. Like the summer king, they’re supposed to be old, worn out, but still up for one last heavy session. Particularly the red men. (The red men have their own drummers, the Beasties, but they’re all aligned with summer).
At this point things start to go wrong for the summer king – the stage is taken over the by the ice maidens, and then a charge by the wild hunt, who start terrorising the summer groups. The summer king is pretty upset by this, and the winter prince initially reassures him, right before he stabs him in the back, and steals his crown. This is all the cue for the wild hunt to start a full-scale butchery of summer. All of this wintery-ness is accompanied by the winter drummers (aka the processionals), who this year were wearing totally awesome ninja-like costumes.
At this point the winter king is pretty pleased with himself, but finally the Caileach, having sat and watched all of this in silence, intervenes (as mothers tend too), shoves the winter king off to the side (totally ruining his day) and brings the summer king back from the dead. She then sends him away – he’ll be reborn at Beltane in seven months time. So the winter king gets his crown and his day, but firmly under the auspices of mummy – no eternal ice-ages here, spring and summer will return in the future.
Leave the first comment ▶The special relationship
Joerg Haider, showing, even in death, that rabid, right-wing political extremism in no way precludes the man love. ((But clearly not to be admitted to whilst in, or angling for, positions of power, lest your supporters or colleagues get all twitchy)).
Leave the first comment ▶Skype profiles
Interesting use of capitalisation. Also, presumably the person responsible really does live in Stevenage – I can’t imagine anyone making that up.
'Please allow me to see you when you are online'
Quandry
I’m sorely tempted by several recently announced games – notably Little Big Planet and Mirror’s Edge. I’d also like to be able to play Singstar and maybe even Rock Band. And I should probably pick up Fable 2, if only to support Paul’s enduring torment.
Unfortunately, the preceding list contains some plainly platform-specific properties – Singstar is first-party, and so is Fable. And I really don’t want to buy multiple boxes to clutter up my front room. So I’ll probably buy either the PS3 or the Xbox, and then beg / steal / borrow the other to play the awkward game(s). Even worse, the obvious machine to buy then is the Playstation – since Fable is the kind of thing you finish, as opposed to Singstar.
Analysis of my logic, or counter-arguments, would be appreciated. The only good thing I can see from all this is that buying a PS3 makes Sony lose even more money.
5 comments so far, add yours ▶D90
Looks much as expected – the same screen and sensor as the D300, in a body which is basically identical to the D70/D80. Also includes the D300’s sensor cleaning and ‘Picture Controls’, but not the focusing system, which is a shame – but perhaps not surprising, since they need a reason for people to buy the D300. So it’s stuck with an 11-point focusing system – hopefully faster and more accurate than in my D70s, but it’s definitely not going to be as speedy, low-light capable and precise as the D300.
The headline feature is a continuous 24fps video mode at 720p resolution – theoretically you could use the body (with a suitable lens) as a cheap-but-decent-quality HD camcorder. Seems like a gimmick to me, but I know nothing about video capture – maybe it’s of sufficient quality (at the price point) to be a big deal, or maybe there’s a target audience for whom it removes the need to carry a separate camcorder.
4 comments so far, add yours ▶Ruby
In the course of assisting someone on the FlightGear forums with a problem, I sort of volunteered to write a custom exporter for SketchUp – using its Ruby API. Writing a 3D exporter isn’t quite the typical first project in a language, but it’s not exactly unfamiliar territory for me either.Â
Overall, Ruby is what I expected – very similar to Python, with some syntactic niceties and some oddities, and of course without the scoping-via-indentation that causes such ire. The standard library has some odd gaps (or perhaps I overlooked the classes I was supposed to use) but manipulating maps and arrays of mesh data is easy and tidy. There’s also a nice syntax for expanding variables in strings, which makes writing out text files pretty clean.
The SketchUp API itself is pretty reasonable, though there’s some weak points in the documentation. Fortunately other people have figured out the hidden secrets, making my life easier. Best thing so far – one call which supposedly takes zero args, actually takes a magic integer argument (in reality a bit-field I think) which controls which data is produced. This shows up as ‘7’ or ‘5’ in the .X and OGRE exporters I was learning from.
2 comments so far, add yours ▶
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