And a Very Happy Nineteen to the Dozen

Yes, that’s the date today: 19/12.  One day till the shortest day and one week exactly till Christmas!!

And am I ready?

Eeek!

This week on the iPlayer I have once again watched ‘Film 2013’ and concluded that it ain’t what they say, it’s the way that they say it.  Come back, Barry Norman! I hear myself crying (and why not?)  The whole programme has been sofa-ed: it’s been smartarsed; it’s been kohled and mascara-ed and chatted and packaged in a ‘don’t-let-the-viewer-switch-channels’ panic.  Claudia Winkelman comes across like a ’60’s diva; all mascara and kohl and very little self-confidence, while her guests rattle off smartarse comments at nineteen to the dozen (see how I worked that in there?)  Still, it does all make some kind of sense and if you can disentangle what they’re saying from the way they’re saying it, it is worth listening to.  Viz. this week’s review of the Hobbit, summed up in the words ‘this isn’t a Tolkein trilogy, it’s a Peter Jackson trilogy.’  That one has disappeared from the iplayer, alas, and I have yet to catch up with this week’s which reviews the latest (yawn) ‘Anchorman’ and more interestingly a remake of ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03m3vh3/Film_2013_Episode_15/

‘Mastermind’ continues to be compelling, even hosting a special ‘Dr Who’ edition where the chair was filled, predictably, by a succession of geeks; three men and one woman.  Endearingly they focussed on the old Dr Who’s; and although the woman didn’t do brilliantly in the first round, she won in the end as the others were terrible at general knowledge!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0078vwn/Mastermind_Doctor_Who_Special/

‘Last Tango in Halifax’ continues to fascinate, though I haven’t quite finished this episode:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03mf7p4/Last_Tango_in_Halifax_Series_2_Episode_5/

And finally, thanks to both Jane and Peter for cheering me up yesterday.

Kirk out

PS  Seen anything you like on iplayer?  Let me know

Yellow Dwarves

No, this isn’t a post about The Hobbit; it’s about Mark.  Mark really is something else – first of all this morning, he complains about the sun; then he tells me he’s ‘put a chad on the asteroid’.

And why did he complain about the sun? I hear you cry.  (Well, I don’t – but let’s assume I do.)  Was it too bright?  Too low in the sky?  Getting in his eyes?  Not hot enough?  Not clear enough?  Nope.  None of the above – he was annoyed at the sun because of the way people describe it.

What – as in, hot, bright, yellow, blazing, golden?  As in, deliciously warm, beneficent, busy old fool, unruly?  As in, this sun of York?  Nope.  As in ‘a yellow dwarf.’  Apparently that description (think ‘Red Dwarf’ being named for a small reddish star) is quite inaccurate and it’s just terrible that you can only describe astral bodies as dwarves or giants and not something in between.

So, having got that off his chest, he followed it up with ‘I’ve put a chad on the asteroid.’  Weary as I already felt, I knew I wouldn’t be able to rest until I understood, so I gritted my teeth and asked.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘a chad – that thing with a face and two hands…’

‘I know what a chad is!’ I interrupted him, my teeth now gritted so hard it was astonishing that I could utter a syllable.  ‘What asteroid???’

‘The one I put on my video yesterday!’ he said.  I think such an ‘it’s-bleeding-obvious’ tone of voice ought to be punishable by death.  Anyway, here’s the asteroid:

http://homeedandherbs.blogspot.co.uk/

and now you have it: there’s a chad on Mark’s asteroid and we’re all describing the sun wrongly.

Bonkers and Curly-Haired

This could easily be a description of Mark but isn’t.  So, speaking of this sun of York, I finally caught up with the Channel 4 prog on the last Plantagenet.  It was very interesting, not least of all because this is happening not a mile from where we live – it was weird to see all these so-familiar locations on TV, almost as though they’d filmed it in our living-room.  Though it was a serious and informative documentary they still couldn’t resist playing up the telegenic angle: the programme featured a woman from the Richard III society who seemed completely out of her box: she actually cried when the skeleton was found to have scoliosis, so fixated was she on proving him to be sound in spine as well as in morals.  If it had been her father they were exhuming, she could hardly have been more emotional.  And alongside her was a grinning bloke with unfeasibly curly hair who didn’t have much to contribute but looked dramatic: needless to say the camera hovered around these two more than it focussed on the serious archaeologists.  Though, to be fair, Richard Buckley (whom Mark knows slightly) had quite a lot to say.

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/richard-iii-the-king-in-the-car-park/4od

It brought back so many memories of my own archaeological experiences, digging ditches in an iron-age barrow.  Anyway, I think it’s brilliant that they’ve found him and that there’s so much interest in him world-wide.  This will really put Leicester on the map and I’m sure the city is going to make the most of it.

Kirk out

PS just looked on freecycle and I see someone is offering a ‘used mirror’.  Hmm – does it not work so well if you’ve already looked in it?

Hop it, Hobbit!

If The Life of Pi hadn’t turned out to be in 3D we could never have considered going to see The Hobbit – but 3D gives me a headache and so, rather than turn around and trudge back home in the rain, we took the plunge and bought two quite breathtakingly expensive tickets to see Tolkein rendered into film.  And how was it?

Well – good in parts I suppose.  The good bits included Martin Freeman.  He was exactly my idea of what a hobbit ought to be, and showed a range of expression I haven’t seen before in him – and which was entirely lacking in the other characters, even Gandalf.  So without Martin Freeman I would not have survived the three hours or so of this film.  Ian McKellen was good as Gandalf, but once he’d dispensed smiling wisdom and sober thoughtfulness, there was little left for him to do but dispense them again as and when required, giving a good, throaty growl from time to time to express thoughtfulness (or so I surmise).  Still, he was at least convincing in the role, as was Sylvester McCoy as Thingy the Black – or Brown, I cba to remember; a birdshit-splattered colleague.  Gollum was very well done, as was Bilbo’s hobbit-hole and the Shire.  But…

I’m sure when I read the book all those years ago I had a clear idea of what it was all about: what the dwarves were going to do and why, where they were going and what for, and what they had to do when they got there.  But this film meandered plot-less for three whole hours! in a welter of set-pieces; orcs come and are driven off and come back again; a set of undifferentiated dwarves fall in a clump in a variety of spectacular ways, there are mountains and caves and gorges and fragile bridges and forests and I know not what – but we don’t have much idea of what it’s all for.  Sporn son of Sprain (or whatever the chief dwarf’s name was) strains his corrugator muscle to maintain a stern brow throughout whilst the other dwarves are undifferentiated and frankly a bit Snow White-ish at times.  Bilbo gets the Ring from Gollum and uses it to escape, but it’s never explained, nor mentioned again – in fact the whole thing resembles nothing so much as a computer game with good graphics* and seemed unable at times to make its mind up what kind of film it was, what with Harry Potter-ish spiders in the woods and troll-bogeys on Bilbo’s cloak.  Cate Blanchett was good as Galadriel but had only 3 minutes of time – and was the only female character; the elves were frankly boring and in the end I nearly fell asleep.

So don’t bother.  Unless of course you like films that resemble X-box games.

Hobbits notwithstanding, it was a goodish Christmas.  With both children at home we woke at the crack of 7.15 and opened presents in bed (I got a Carol Ann Duffy book and some socks with separate toes) then we had the usual Xmas fare with nut roast and sausages, Xmas pud and mince pies; the Queen’s speech went in one ear and out again  and after a short flahagarzzzz! we were ready for Dr Who.  An odd episode, I thought.  And so to Top of the Pops, biscuits and bed.

Boxing Day passed in a ferment of activity: I got up and did yoga in the park watching the sun peep over the roofs; then home for a fry-up and then a bike-ride up to Gilroes to visit the dead (they send their regards); thence into town for a chai latte and a crossword and home again in time for a mince pie before sallying forth to see the aforementioned Hobbit.

And that was Christmas.

Kirk out

*Mark said they weren’t that good