2013 — 3 December: Tuesday
Goes the day well? Yep, now that I've finally managed to stop the noisy death-rattle1 from the defrosted freezer. I prefer it when my domestic kit stays within the bounds of its original design function.
I varied my current fairly unrelenting (but surprisingly enjoyable) video diet ("Friends") yesterday evening by downloading and watching the "Culture Show" in which Victoria Coren Mitchell explored the story of PL Travers and her entanglement with Walt Disney over the making of a film version of "Mary Poppins". Oddly, it provoked in me some irritation and no particular desire to see either that film (which I saw, once, in the cinema when it first came out) or the new one "Saving Mr Banks". Though I have no doubt Emma Thompson will do her usual splendid job, since she is essentially without fault.
Nearly seventy years ago...
... Raymond Chandler — a writer I admire highly enough to have attempted a parody of his style — had already encapsulated some aspects of the fraught relationship between writers and within the film-making process generally:
I hold no brief for Hollywood. I have worked there a little over two years, which is far from enough to make me an authority, but more than enough to make me feel pretty thoroughly bored. That should not be so. An industry with such vast resources and such magic techniques should not become dull so soon. An art which is capable of making all but the very best plays look trivial and contrived, all but the very best novels verbose and imitative, should not so quickly become wearisome to those who attempt to practice it with something else in mind than the cash drawer. The making of a picture ought surely to be a rather fascinating adventure. It is not; it is an endless contention of tawdry egos, some of them powerful, almost all of them vociferous, and almost none of them capable of anything much more creative than credit-stealing and self-promotion.
And I'm pretty sure Hemingway had something to say about driving up to the city limits, tossing your screenplay over the fence, and (pausing only long enough to pick up your fee or, perhaps, not even that long) departing again like a bat out of hell.
Is it just...
... the way my brain is wired, or is this:
... an odd set of stories to suggest as links from a silly science piece2 about how brains are wired?
Much as I...
... admired "Drive" and much as I admire both Ryan Gosling and Kristin Scott Thomas, I was put off Nicolas Winding Refn's new release before I'd even finished reading the synopsis on the back of the DVD. So, not for the first time, I left Asda empty-handed. I'd also been looking casually round for possible Xmas items but everything somehow managed to look tacky. Very tacky. [Pause] I shall nip over to see Roger & Eileen for a cuppa and a biccie this afternoon. We can moan about being grumpy :-)
As I grilled...
... my lunch, all I could hear from the radio news was the sound of the UK's educational chickens coming home to roost. Who would have thought that just a couple of generations of stupid — or do I mean "inspired"? — political fiddling would have this result? It's from page 29:
In fact, though I blush to admit it, my own education leaves me baffled as I struggle to make much (or, indeed, any) sense of the latest OECD report. Nice fonts, though! Particularly the one they use for the page numbers, last seen as subtitles in "Avatar".
I've decided to...
... try another of David Crane's TV shows, having been enjoying "Friends" so much:
I figure I can risk a tenner for another 430 minutes or so of moving pixels. Although, of course, I may just discover why it was so cheap.