the iconic original cover for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

Books In one of those strange coincidences which happen, from time to time, in the week the Matisse art book exhibition opens at The Walker, I’ve been sent a review copy of Derek Brazell and Jo Davies’s Making Great Illustrations, a collection of interviews with contemporary artists working in similar fields. While it's still too early, with a couple of exceptions, to tell whether any of the illustrators featured will have the same cultural impact as Matisse, or to be fair would ever claim to be aspiring in that direction, it’s still useful to see how in some ways, sixty years later, the profession of creating art books and art for clients in the advertising and publishing industry hasn’t changed that much.

Like Matisse, these artists are very careful to make sure they’re able to pursue private projects even whilst they’re slaving away for commissioning clients and find some demarcation between the two (the few exceptions being those creating books and graphic novels where both impulses are intertwined like Matisse's own later work). They all have stories of working for clients who’re more interested in asserting control over the work rather than offering useful suggestions but similarly they’re all able to talk about clients who value their creative impulse understanding that they’re only able to produce their best work when left to use the brief as a starting point.

To my surprise there are loads of illustrators whose work I recognise. Emma Dibben is the key illustrator for Waitrose and her goache and ink drawings define their food range and its their distinctiveness which makes it my supermarket of choice. I’m gratified to know that she will refuse a job if she feels the food has been sourced unethically. Jeff Fisher produced the iconic original cover for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and he’s an example of an artist who’s become subtly pervasive across different subjects. Children’s illustrator Quentin Blake is perhaps the best known thanks to his work with Roald Dahl, and as he says, often his drawings are more introspective than the text.

On top of that, there are some real discoveries. Catalina Estrada’s fashion designs which smash together Japanese iconograohy with a Spanish sensibility are enthralling and utterly wearable and only make me curse once again the uniformity of male dress. In a similar tone, David Downton’s spare, abstract fashion illustrations have been employed when a client wants something different to a more typical photograph and is perhaps best known for his painting of Cate Blanchett which graced the fiftieth anniversary issue of VOGUE. Mairan Bantjes’s textual experiments have led to a table created to support Doctors Without Borders, a message urging donations laser-etched into the wood.

Illustrators should gain insight, empathy and a rich seam of passive advice within the deftly distilled thoughts of these artists. There is some repetition, but quite often the repetition in and of itself is interesting. Each interview includes a location note and almost every artist has moved from their birthplace, having had to go where the work was or now comfortable enough to be able to choose their place of work. There’s a sense of ambition on display here, that you have to make yourself noticed. Which I suppose is a lesson even those of us who’ve never been that visually creative can learn from.

Making Great Illustration by Derek Brazell and Jo Davie. AC Blacks. 2011. RRP: £35.00. ISBN: 978-1408124536. Review copy supplied.


[A blog by the authors covering the writing process is available here].

Review 2011: Call For Entries: The Opinion Engine 2.0

WILL WE EVER WAKE UP

It's that time of year. Again.

Each December, as some of you will know, I try to write (or ask you to write) a series of posts grouped around a single theme or mode. Sometimes these are epic projects that cover the entire month, otherwise it's simply something to fill the days between Christmas and New Year.

This year I want to try to be epic. Yet again.

What I would like is for you to suggest topics for me to offer an opinion about.

Could be anything. Something cultural, a film, a book or some music. A current affairs story. A person. A concept. Even just a word.

You can be as specific as possible, phrase the suggestion as a question. Or simply a sentence or a title.

There are no restrictions although I reserve to the right not to use it or to ask you to come up with something else if I simply can't find the inspiration or feel as though I've covered it already somewhere in the past nine and half years of my blog. Unless I've changed my mind. I do that a lot.

Some readers will notice that this is essentially also what I did last year when it worked well enough, so I've decided to repeat the exercise.  Even this introductory post is almost exactly the same. 

You will of course receive credit for your suggestion and links to your website/twitter account/anything you're trying to publicise.

I want to try and post something for every day in December so want to start writing now so that I have something "banked".

You can contact me through the usual virtual channels:

EMAIL

TWITTER

FACEBOOK

Thanks.

I've got another year of Doctor Who ...

TV Oh dear, Matt's past tensing. Eccleston fans will know what that means:
"Well, hopefully soon, you know. I've got another year of Doctor Who, but then I'm certainly going to come and give it a shot, come and hang out in LA... as you say, people like Andy [Garfield] have come over, and he's a mate of mine. I'm very proud to see him doing Spider-Man, 'cause we did a play together, and, you know, Spider-Man now. It's incredible. And he'll be brilliant, he'll be so brilliant."
That still, potentially, (depending on this stuff) puts him into 2013 and it seems right that there should be a regeneration in the show's fiftieth year. But we'all had been led to believe he'd be sticking around for at least a couple more years.

I bet he just means, film another year, move to LA and hang out then come back and film another. Yes, I'm sure that's it. Or it will be once he and Moffat and everyone else connected with the show have had to endure the same question for the next twelve months. "So I just wanted to ask, is Matt leaving at the end of the next series?"

Update! 24/10/2011 Yes, indeed, he's gone. From Radio Times:
"Speaking in an interview in the new issue of Radio Times, he told Gareth McLean, “When I finish [Doctor Who], I’ll be…” before checking himself and continuing, “Well, I don’t know how old I’ll be, but by the end of next year I’ll be 29 so…”
He would have been no good on Spooks would he?

Update!  28/10/2011  Or is he?  New comments promoting the Season Six shiny disc release at the Press Association:
"We work very long hours every day for nine months. The schedule is pretty brutal, but I'd never complain about it. I love playing this role, and I don't want to give it up any time soon," he continued.

"I feel very lucky. In the current climate for actors, I'd never say, 'This is too much' - quite the opposite, in fact. I'd say, 'Bring it on'."
David Tennant said he didn't want to give up Doctor Who after he'd announced he was leaving because he'd decided it was time to go.  We'll see.

Update! 29/2/2012 He's changed his tune a bit in this report from Daybreak:



To paraphrase: he's not going to stop playing the Doctor any time soon.

The Walker’s new exhibition [...] The Art Books of Henri Matisse

'The Art Books of Henri Matisse'

Art Yesterday I attended the press launch for The Walker’s new exhibition and the experience was literally, and to use a description they’ve been far too tasteful to put in the publicity materials, like walking into the pages of a book. The Art Books of Henri Matisse displays sixty three illustrations on leaves which were originally part of four volumes published between 1932 and 1950 during at the peak of the artist’s career. In a bit of a coup, they’re a loan from Bank of America Merill Lynch’s art collection as part of a kind of community outreach programme which has seen this exhibition tour and other major shows across the world. Here’s another one in Paris.

We begin with a short primer which includes the nugget that he only began painting at the age of twenty when his mother gave him a paint box. The wikipedia elaborates on this with the detail that he was convalescing after an attack of appendicitis and that it felt like “a kind of paradise”. Even though he was disappointing his father, he pressed ahead with becoming an artist and if the late photograph featured, by Cartier-Bresson of Matisse working at home, his room filled with doves flying loose is anything to go by, the lifestyle consumed him. He sits with his fist around the body of one of the poor birds, calmly sketching away.

A Matisse landscape from the Walker’s collection is also included, an impressionistic, a nondescript thing which demonstrates why he only really found fame at the turn of the last century when he began to follow fauvist ideas. These books are part of the onrush of work which developed from that as, like many artists of the period, he took advantage of printing technology to disseminate his material to a middle class audience greedy to demonstrate their cultural credentials but unable to afford his canvases. With the scarcity of paper and small print runs, these were apparently still much sought after and it’s the mission of the curatorial collaborators to convince us why.

Opposite the biography is a short display explaining the four main techniques Matisse employed in his work with examples of four printing plates: Linoleum (lino) is easy to cut and shape and offers nice clean lines, pochoir (stencil) which he used to create bold abstract shapes, etching on copper and lithograph, the results of which gave impression of crayon drawings. There’s also a display cabinet containing the tools which were required in these processes all of which were clearly very tactile but whose nature also must have informed Matisse’s artistic choices. Perhaps what makes him a “great” artist was his decision engine.

The bulk of the display is the four books themselves. Originally produced as loose leaves, they’re easily frameable but inevitably the gallery environment changes them and our experience of what Matisse was trying to achieve. These are not the complete books, so the sense of creative or narrative flow the artist would have built into them is lost, as are the juxtaposition of images from page to page, the symbolic repetition of colour. You’re also unable to contemplate them in quite the same way, especially if like me, you’re the kind of person who’s easily distracted from concentrating on anything by your fellow humans with their walking around and breathing.


 The Private View.

That accepted, it’s impossible not to enjoy the prints as individual objects, even Posesis de Stephane Mallarme from 1932, the most “book”-like of the four publications, in which Matisse’s creations are visually most separate from the text, each appearing on opposite pages. The press notes explain that Matisse was in Tahiti (see, the lifestyle) when his Swiss publisher Albert Skirta asked him to create etchings for this publication. Over the next year and half, and with his eye most interested in women and nature, he produced dozens of suggested drawings of which twenty-seven were eventually chosen.

Translating Mallarme’s poetry was a consideration at the planning stage for the show but it was ultimately decided that since the text is deliberately obscure, meta-physical, an English version would be too much of an interpretation and couldn’t ever reflect the sense. Interestingly, that’s generally what Matisse is attempting visually, translating the text through the prism of his own imagination. There are caricatures, of Edgar Allen Poe and Baudelare, but mainly we see the beginnings of some of the motifs which would reappear throughout his career, especially the abstract, cluttered group of naked females.

Next in the room, travelling in a clockwise direction, is Pasiphae, Chant de Minos (Les Cretois) from 1944, a joint project with the French author Henry de Montherlant in which Matisse illustrated a contemporary retelling of the origins of the Minotaur myth. Even without an inability to understand the text, the highlights of the narrative punch through in the drawings influenced by Greek vase paintings, King Minos defying Poseidon and refusing to sacrifice the white bull, his wife being put under a spell and to fall in love with the animal, their deed and the half man, half beast who was the product.

In the eight years since the Mallarme, his artistic confidence has also grown taking full advantage of being as much part of the publication process as the author by over seeing such details as producing lithographed designs for the opening capital letters. Some of the illustrations are initially difficult to distinguish forcing us to look ever closer until we realise that it’s a female form.  Pasiphae in-flagrante? Such was his poise that he was even capable of reducing a human form to a single line, as he did with one image of Minos, then imbuing it with great emotion, the king screaming, having realised what his wife has done.


Le Cheval, l'ecuyere, et le Clown (The Horse, the Rider, and the Clown)
© Succession H. Matisse / DACS 2011

Jazz (1947) show his ability and philosophy move another step on, as illustration and text become equal partners and though he was even less interested in having the subject matter match, aesthetically the effect was and is perfect. There’s no particular narrative to speak of, just a set of images experimenting with colour and stencilling, each a work of art which could be complete in and of itself more clearly than many of the other sheets in the exhibition which must be what makes them so immediately accessible. It includes one of Matisse’s most reproduced images, Icarus, floating in a royal blue night sky filled with golden stars, a red circle representing his destination.

This is a collection often as straightforward as cave paintings yet also infinitely complex because of the chosen colours, because of the shapes, which despite seeming haphazard and random have to have been deliberately designed due to the printing process.  A controlled hullabaloo. Plus after a series of images in the other books which have to be titled after part of the accompanying text because they lack their own, there’s something relatively comforting about returning to a world were titles less enigmatically reflect their content.  The Wolf.  Pierot’s Funeral.


Frontispiece From "Poemes de Charles D'orleans"
© Succession H. Matisse / DACS 2011

Produced concurrently with both of these was Poemes de Charles d’Orleans (1950) whose publication was saw the end of a nine year odyssey which began while he was bed-bound in occupied France. He was an admirer of d’Orleans's poetry and during three arduous years he created 54 full-colour lithographs to accompany the 15th-century text, which he also reproduced in his own hand, in a similar technique to Jazz though it's clear that for various reasons, Matisse wanted to venerate the text rather than distract from it, returning to the simpler shapes of his Stephane Mallarme work.

The result is nothing short of magnificent, drawing inspiration from illuminated manuscripts yet making them totally contemporary and they're just as fresh sixty years after publication. There’s a repetitive use of a green fleur-de-lys motif which evokes tapestries of the earlier period and 15th century portraits translated into line drawings, which again initially seem primitive and defy the laws of what a less forgiving teacher might consider well proportioned but could actually be different eras of art history touching.  Many of those old pictures were equally inconsistent about such things.

The exhibition ends with examples of artist books from the Walker’s collection, from photographer Edward Ruscha, Gilbert and George, Tom Philips and Jess Nutall. Tactile objects necessary held behind glass, they’re an excellent example of the difficulty of showing artist books and how much has been gained in taking the Matisse works out of their usual environment. You might even wonder what it would be like to display other books in this way, all of Pride and Prejudice or a Booker prize winner spread across a series of rooms forcing us to walk from one read page to the next, dozens of people reading the same book together.

Until 15th April 2012.  More details here.

[The Independent has a gallery of images from the exhibition].

Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners



TV Of all the actors who might have been cast as Tim Rice, the almost similarly named Tom Price wouldn't have been my first guess, but there he was in last night in BBC Four's Holy Flying Circus in a perfectly observed performance, wordlessly failing to properly referee the epic exchange between one third of the Pythons and Malcolm Muggeridge on Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. All of which was fine. But did anyone else shout "It's PC Andy!" when he first appeared on screen. Because however rubbish much of Torchwood is, Andy has been one of its best creations.

As I notice below in this old review, Andy doesn't appear in Small Worlds, but that's the least of its crimes. As you can see, after giving Cyberwoman a mixed response, this is when the wheels really came off and whatever hopes I might have had for the series were driven straight into and sunk in Cardiff Bay. As you can see, I was even concerned about what effect it might have on series three of Doctor Who but since that brought us Blink and Martha Jones amongst other things, it just probably demonstrated that Russell T Davies, as he'd admit himself later, wasn't paying enough attention to what this sister series was doing.


Another dispiriting fifty minutes in the company of Torchwood. I mean I've been largely positive about the series up until now, but this was a mess, and everything you could fear that show might descend into being. I really, really left tonight's episode afraid for the safety of Season Three of Doctor Who. They're different series, to be sure, but the same production team were happy to see tonight's drama broadcast as is despite the litany of problems. Why is it for every very cool moment, there's some bit of dialogue, or acting, or direction that makes you want to throw a pillow at the screen?

The positives first. Captain Jack's mystery is developing nicely and the revelation that he was knocking around on the planet in the very early 1900s was a nice surprise and beautifully ambiguous in relation to whether those scenes happened before or after The Doctor Dances. The flashback scene was shot well too, and it wasn't made completely clear whose side he was on in the war. My impression is that they didn't and that in fact he was romancing the old fairy woman before he went travelling in the Tardis and looked her up when he reappeared on Earth just recently. Otherwise we're in Highlander/Angel/Eighth Doctor Earth-arc territory, which wouldn't be such a bad thing as confusing -- were two of them knocking around during World War Two? The touching scenes between Jack and his old girlfriend helped to fill out this background -- he obviously loved her very much.

It was a good premise too, building upon the famous hoax pictures, fairies being some elemental shadows looking for children to join with them. In fact one of the highlights were the exposition scenes in which those photos were debunked again and the nature of the beasts was revealed even if 'evil since the dawn of time' seems a bit incongruous in a series that was supposed to be priding itself on its reliance on the gritty urban landscape and crap which haunts those street. You can see the actual pictures and the camera that took them at the National Museum for Film, Television and Photography in Bradford and the facts mentioned here were completely correct. For all of his cleverness, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was seduced by the children's story. The eventual monsters were very pretty, perfectly painterly like those fairies, almost the product of some late Victorian painted picture book.

Shame it was dogged by some extraordinarily listless storytelling and poor structuring. As with The Ghost Machine, the teaser was good and the first few scenes in which Jack looked up an old friend were sweet (although would Gwen really have been that rude in the talk about the fairies with all the eye-rolling? Surely that's more like Owen behaviour? This inconsistency of character from episode to episode is really irritating). The chase through through Cardiff Market and the flower petals were pleasingly gruesome (even if that imagery wasn't satisfactorily explained).

Beyond that once and again, we were treated to the girl being threatened, the timeless ones using the weather to defend her, Torchwood noticing the weather fluctuation and then chasing it up. It was a bit like watching an episode of Treasure Hunt, without Wincy Willis, the magenta jumpsuits or cross looking pensioners in stately homes on a coach trip.

This isn't necessarily just a problem with Mr. P J Hammond's work. All of the episodes have suffered from this repetition of action in one form or another, almost as though no one can get a grip of those extra five minutes which have been added to Doctor Who's usual running time. They've also suffered from moments of threat going on far too long, the cutting back, over and over to something which has already been established, like the kids in peril in the wind, or the spooky monsters looking at our heroes from above. This stylistic holdover from the parent series and seems out of place in the 'adult' world.

Time which could better be spent charting Jack's passage through history or providing Tosh with some character development outside of an upcoming episode that will no doubt include all of her character development or giving the characters a believable social life was instead used in the company of a vast range of characters that were no doubt supposed to be normal but were instead, well, boring. The strategy of the series is for largely than life characters to brush up against the realistic, but that's no reason for the so-called 'real people' to have nothing in the way of interesting characterisation, or anything to make you actually care if they lived or died. Compare and contrast the sinister lump of a step-father here with any of Gwen's colleagues from the first episode and there are some massive inconsistencies at play. Normal doesn't have to mean dull. Look at Spooks.

In this vein, were we supposed to care for Jasmine, the little girl? The Chosen One (and really, people, you're invoking Buffyology here?) needed to either be a sweetheart, someone the audience could really get behind, or The Omen's Damien in a dress. She was neither, and although the opening near abduction scene was winceful and said lump probably deserved to die for hitting the poor lamb, she was largely left standing around grinning as the elementals snuffed out her enemies. The resolution was troubling too -- Jack essentially advocated that offering up the odd small child for sacrifice was perfectly fair if it kept the 'aliens' at bay. Err, right. And you're expecting us to like Captain Jack after this? I mean his story doesn't really resolve itself. Perhaps if they'd spinned it into something related to him trying and failing to be The Doctor but ... oh no ... this is all we've got time for ...

On the subject of characters, a continuing annoyance is the non-reappearance of Gwen's police partner from the first episode. By making the police's participation irrelevant, they've lost one of the characters who could have been a secret weapon throughout -- he was the source of the oft quoted CSI: Kebab joke and his good humour would have provided much needed levity, particularly in a story like this. Why not make him the person who picked up the mad childcatcher at Cardiff Market? Recurring characters are a good thing.

But this was an episode filled with mini-irritations. The close-up of the name of the street in which the Chosen One lives as though this was supposed to be a big important plot point. The over reliance on that music cue which ends loudly and abruptly to signal 'ooh sinister'. The caption on the flashback even though Jack's voiceover was actually telling us the time and place. Oh and Jack holding back vital information about the enemy they were fighting to create false tension and fake climaxes when he reveals some piece of information, even though most of it was probably jibberish. UNIT syndrome strikes the van too -- they're a secret organisation (outside the government etc) so we'll have the name of it carved in the side -- did anyone else find it's sliding appearance into shot retina searingly irritating? And hey, why not the Mara? What's to say the Krotons didn't have a hand in it also?

[Well alright that reference was nice, and PJ might not have included it as a direct Doctor Who reference, but you can imagine Russell squealing with glee when he read it).

It takes me no pleasure in writing this, since obviously everyone involved had the best of intentions and it makes me look like the judges who lambasted Carol Smilie on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday (I mean do they want Emma Bunton to win or what?). The cast were doing their best with the material and some of the direction was OK. But there are ongoing issues with the series, a kind of unsurety of tone and writing which is making it very difficult to watch, amplifying the faults rather than the successes. Fundamentally, the question must be -- was it scary? And unfortunately on this occasion, I'm sorry, no it wasn't. At least not in the way that was intended.

PS That Strictly reference dates this doesn't it? In the event Mark Ramprakash was victorious. Smilie was last seen punditing about the programme on The Alan Titchmarsh Show and advertising the Postcode Lottery.

Aaton, ARRI and Panavision

Film An obituary on the death of the movie camera. The three major manufacturers of motion picture film cameras — Aaton, ARRI and Panavision — "have all ceased production of new cameras within the last year":
"digital cinema will become so adept at mimicking the look of film that within a couple of decades, even cinematographers may not be able to tell the difference. The painterly colors, supple gray scale, hard sharpness and enticing flicker of motion picture film were always important (if mostly unacknowledged) parts of cinema’s mass appeal. The makers of digital moviemaking equipment got hip to that in the late ’90s, and channeled their research and development money accordingly; it’s surely no coincidence that celluloid-chauvinist moviegoers and moviemakers stopped resisting the digital transition once they realized that the new, electronically-created movies could be made to look somewhat like the analog kind, with dense images, a flickery frame rate, and starkly defined planes of depth."
How long before insurance negatives stop being struck and major films will only exist digitally? Or is that already happening?

six-inch heels and a thong

Theatre Woody Allen, Ethan Coen and Elaine May have collaborate on a portmanteau theatre production of three one act plays at a theatre in New York. The local Times has May interviewing the other two "in depth", which gives Woody the opportunity to offer some of his best material in years:
"Q. A miraculous being with divine powers appears to you and says, “You have a choice. You can be fabulously attractive and have an even better physique or you can reverse climate change.” What do you say to her?

ETHAN COEN Those are my choices?

WOODY ALLEN The question becomes moot since I am already more than sufficiently attractive. Of course the actual impact of my physique might not be apparent to the naked eye at first glance, but with some laser surgery or perhaps corneal transplants the viewer will be amply rewarded. The real question is, who is this miraculous being with the divine powers who has suddenly appeared and what is she wearing? If it’s six-inch heels and a thong the best idea would be to take her to a hotel room and see just how many other-worldly tricks she is capable of performing. As for climate change, all the good hotel rooms are air-conditioned.
Woody's play looks to have Steve Guttenberg as his avatar. That's amazing.

The Man Who Never Was.



TV Sob. For much of its duration The Man Who Never Was offers an excellent, fairly typical example of The Sarah Jane Adventures albeit with a slightly subversive undercurrent that allows for geriatric flirting and a nob gag. But then, oh then, the montage with its clips from most of the stories past, a glimpse of Maria, glimpse of K9, shot of the Tenth Doctor hugging again and, well, buckets. The show has always had a poignantly nostalgic undercurrent for fans of the classic series, indeed it was brought into being because of that. But this is about celebrating this corner of the Whoniverse, the attic, the family, and now it’s gone.

But this isn’t just the end of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but the premature end of the British Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, a project begun when he was given the go-ahead, in a corridor fittingly, to bring the parent show back from the dead. He’s made Torchwood’s Miracle Day since, but these episodes produced before that American folly, albeit executive produced from across the pond, are the final expression of the aesthetic and mood begun with Rose. That’s why the choice of David over Matt is interesting. Even more than Chris, he was Davies’s Doctor. Perhaps that’s also why the episode ends on what could almost be Rose’s opening shot running in reverse, pulling away from the Earth.

It’s also, and it’s impossible not to say this without some exhaustion, the end of one of the longest chronological unbroken runs of Doctor Who related first run television episodes in living memory, begun on 14th July with Episode One of Miracle Day. And if it feels even longer, it’s because the first chunk of Who season 6 ended just six weeks before. Accepting that gap we’ve been doing this since the 23rd of April and The Impossible Astronaut. That’s ages. That’s almost as long as a classic season, with a similar in built sense of anticipation of what the next serial will hold. I hope we’ve all savoured it, because unless Captain Jack really is back in January, barring a special, there’ll really be nothing of Who on television now until next Autumn.

Luckily, as I’ve already intimated, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the British Russell T Davies era and um, loads of stuff this year have all gone out on a high. Gareth Roberts’s The Man Who Never Was is amazing entertainment from beginning to end, blissfully funny, camp and forever undercutting our expectations in the way the best drama always should. Beginning as a gentle parody of the reaction of Apple fans to the latest e-book of Job from the technological simulacrum, the Steve parody is quickly exposed to be an actual simulacrum, controlled from below by artists of light, only for it be revealed that it’s all work of yet another dodgy human subjugating aliens and their technologies, James Dreyfus on Master-ful form, beard included.

Even before they were revealed as an oppressed minority, it was almost impossible not to find these Skullions (perhaps named for Porthouse Blue’s college porter) too threatening, with their Jawa cloaks and welding masks. But that’s important because we have to sympathise with their plight and the market in alien slaves shows, the earth is still a planet which is not only constantly visited but with the awareness of humanity.  Admittedly, Adriana, the character designed to subliminally hammer the point home about foreign workers being habitually employed in menial jobs, did seem to register some surprise at the appearance of the space ship on the roof so perhaps the effects of the cracks are still being felt. Lord knows what she'll be like when she's working for UNIT.

If this wasn’t planned as the series finale, it made for a fitting conclusion, not least because it also gave the whole ensemble a proper send off, even Luke, back from university for a visit having developed, away from Clyde’s guidance, the hipster look.  Luckily he can now just about carry off the scarf. As with Sky’s first story, this would have been another major turning point as Luke passed his mantle, and the rest of his bedroom on to his new little sister, the production team very carefully underscoring their differences (he’s massively observant and she’s electric) neatly bypassing the short circuit that usually develops whenever K9 and Mr Smith are in the same attic and human ingenuity becomes superfluous.

Good episode too for Clyde and Rani, forever now to be known as Clani (and luckily not Ryde which not only isn’t as catchy but has a whole set of other connotations). Their banter in particular is going to be missed, especially now that Anjli and Daniel have developed into such a good double act. Their chemistry is even voiced in scene here with an unusual call back to last week’s episode. Is Clyde now regretful of his behaviour with Ellie? Not sure. Perhaps in an unfilmed story, Rani’s jealousy was given greater weight and this comment was a bookend. Either way, the business in the attic, the goggles investigating the laptop and infiltration of the press conference another expression of SJA's filtering of 80s kids television for a new audience.

But this was also, and it’s impossible to say this without some sadness, an encapsulation of everything which was great about Sarah Jane and Liz Sladen. Part of the approach of the series has been to turn her into a Doctorish figure (as some clever person has said this week and (I’m sorry I forget who) that to some extent Sarah Jane will have been the Doctor for some kids just as Tom Baker or Peter Davison was for a lot of us). The battle of wills between Sarah and Harrison mirrored a similar struggle between Ninth and Margaret Blaine in Boom Town and infiltration disguised as a cleaning lady an old Third Doctor trick from The Green Death, albeit in a slightly less disturbing way.

Roberts’s episode also gives her the opportunity to flirt with Peter Bowles as an old boss and old flame in a piece of casting that also looks backwards as much to an era of television as Doctor Who itself, almost, like Nigel Havers, the production team taking advantage of the franchise’s new found popularity to take in actors who somehow never managed to appear on the show when it was last in full bloom. Bowles was of course marvellous, and it’s perhaps a pity he wasn’t given more to do, though in the alternative vision of the series, he might have been a returning character, which has to be the only reason you’d employ such a massive acting figure in such a tiny part. Unless you’re John Nathan Turner and trying to get Larry Olivier to essay the role of "Mutant" in Revelation of the Daleks (apparently).

Ashley Way began his television Who adventure at the same time as Roberts with the interactive Attack of the Graske with all of the Tardisodes for the 2006 season (remember those?) close behind. He directs The Man Who Never Was with his usual efficiency, making good use of whichever multiplex was employed for the Serfboard launch and loads of close-ups in the attic giving it a genuine feeling of size (though not that even he could making something of the episode’s one bum moment in which Clyde conveniently sits fidgeting with his hard won pen). The Sarah Jane Adventures was never quite as cinematic as its parent series, but given the tiny budget it’s obviously produced on, it always looked smashing.

Which is the problem. Even if I’ve managed to write the majority of this review in the present tense, The Sarah Jane Adventures is now in the past. There’ll still be the endless repeats on CBCC. The inevitable complete box-set. The spin-off reading. All of that will still keep it in our collective memories, still make it available for kids just becoming old enough to watch, a way for parents to indoctrinate their offspring at an earlier age, an age when they might not be ready for Scaroth and the Bandrills, let alone The Weeping Angels or Daleks.  Who knows perhaps in twenty or so years, those kids will be showing it to another generation.

That we can still think of it so fondly is a tribute to Russell T Davies for convincing the BBC to base a spin-off series for kids around a much loved character from his own youth, our youth, the BBC for financing it in a way which you can’t imagine another television company doing, and Elisabeth Sladen, Lis for starring and reminding us why we loved her back then and still do. Eventually it’ll just become another chapter in the rich tapestry of stories diverging from Doctor Who, some in books, some on cd, and sometimes, magically, on television. The Sarah Jane Adventures may be over, but we fans can take some comfort in that final caption: “And the story goes on … forever …” Because it will.

all about harmonies

Music Take this with a grain of sodium chloride, especially since Keisha denied it herself on Twitter in July (which was admittedly four months ago), but WhatYouGot say that the Sugababes (as opposed to the "Sugababes") are demoing some new material, having another go.  Very exciting if true, but there's been false rumours of this for months.

As anyone who lived through the All Saints comeback will know, it's not just about getting the band back together, it's about the tunes.  I suppose the trick will be if they produce something genuinely interesting (ie, something which sounds like One Touch), rather than simply approximating what's already in the charts.

That album was all about harmonies.  Some of those please.

Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumper in WH Smiths

If you’re one of those people and looking to steal a very rare book, whatever you do, never, and this should be underlined and repeated, never, steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not because stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is necessarily that hard; if the heists detailed in Eric Rasmussen’s The Shakespeare Thefts are an example, it’s actually a relatively straightforward process to steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumper in WH Smiths, but security in some places has been strangely loose and based on much trust between a reference library and the person purporting to be an academic.

No, the problem with stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is that you’ll never be able to sell it on. Well, you might, on the black market, assuming you have the right contacts, but only for a fraction of what it’s actually worth. The problem is, at least for a prospective thief is that not only do Rasmussen and a team of researchers have a record of the location for all the couple of hundred or so Shakespeare First Folios in existence, they’ve also tirelessly created a descriptive record of them all so that if a Folio is stolen and then another Folio appears on the market, they can tell relatively quickly if they’re one and the same.

Soon this data will been published. It’s in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Index and although – based on the section quoted in this supplementary book – it’s going to be a fairly dry read it also provides added security to those owners who’ve agreed to have their Folio recorded. You may have seen the documentary on television last year, the story of how Raymond Rickett Scott carried a Folio into the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington claiming to have bought it in Cuba, and although it was missing its covers and first pages, they were very quickly able to identify it as the copy stolen from Durham University ten years before.

The Shakespeare Thefts is a cautionary tale and there are numerous other examples of less educated thieves who’ve fallen into the same trap of assuming that stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is just like any other rare book. But Rasmussen seeks to underscore the point by revealing that it's not simply the description of each book which identifies it, but it's provenance. They’ve been able to identify who originally purchased each of these Folios and the book's journey through time, some simply sitting on a shelf in the intervening years, some having escaped war zones, some even having apparently saved lives, taking a bullet themselves.

All of which is very exciting, but the book itself is something of a curate’s egg, not quite sure what it wants to be. On the one hand it is about the thefts of the folios and on the other it is about their history. Then there’s a third hand about the actual processes of recording the folios and some anecdotes about that and the inevitable forth about those Folios out of reach, locked away in private vaults with orders for them not to be seen the frustration of which Rasmussen returns to on a number of occasions. He returns to a few subjects on a number of occasions even repeating the same information. This is a messy book. 

Perhaps a more schematic approach would have helped. The Descriptive Index promises to have full provenance details and perhaps a better approach here would have been to simply pick the more interesting Folios and offered the story of those with an anecdote about its recording as this attempts to do in a few chapters. But that would also have a required a slightly more academic tone and the other slightly problem is Rasmussen (who amongst other things co-edited the RSC Complete Works with Jonathan Bate) is attempting to write for that market and the popular history section which in some cases makes it very readable but in others slightly insubstantial. I managed to finish the book in about two hours.

It's worth adding, I think, that these comments are based on an Advanced Reader's Edition ("an uncorrected version") received through Amazon's Vine scheme which has warnings all over it that the quotes should be checked for accuracy.  Interestingly although this copy has 214 pages, the published copy advertised on Palgrave Macmillan's website (and pictured above)  boasts 240 pages but given the size of the text here, unless the font's even bigger, there has to be more content.  So it's possible this might be an early text too and due for much editing before it hits the shops or online retailer attempting to do away with shops.  Expect this review to be edited when I have more news.

As it stands, what is here is never less than enthralling and the slightly random approach does give it the tone of an extended after dinner speech or spending an entertaining evening in the office of an academic after hours as they regale you with war stories or fishing tales, the Folio destroyed in fires or nibbled by rats. There’s an excellent short chapter about the preparation of the text for the recent RSC Hamlet with David Tennant, the production we didn’t see, and the appendix is as clear a description of the process of the original publication of the folios as I’ve ever read. Approach it in the right spirit and this is a thoroughly entertaining read.

The Shakespeare Thefts In Search of the First Folios by Eric Rasmussen. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. RRP: £16.99. ISBN: 9780230109414. Review copy supplied.

The Shakespeare Thefts: In Search of the First Folios. Eric Rasmussen.



If you’re one of those people and looking to steal a very rare book, whatever you do, never, and this should be underlined and repeated, never, steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not because stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is necessarily that hard; if the heists detailed in Eric Rasmussen’s The Shakespeare Thefts are an example, it’s actually a relatively straightforward process to steal a Shakespeare First Folio. Not quite sticking a Harry Potter under your jumper in WH Smiths, but security in some places has been strangely loose and based on much trust between a reference library and the person purporting to be an academic.

No, the problem with stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is that you’ll never be able to sell it on. Well, you might, on the black market, assuming you have the right contacts, but only for a fraction of what it’s actually worth. The problem is, at least for a prospective thief is that not only do Rasmussen and a team of researchers have a record of the location for all the couple of hundred or so Shakespeare First Folios in existence, they’ve also tirelessly created a descriptive record of them all so that if a Folio is stolen and then another Folio appears on the market, they can tell relatively quickly if they’re one and the same.

Soon this data will been published. It’s in The Shakespeare First Folios: A Descriptive Index and although – based on the section quoted in this supplementary book – it’s going to be a fairly dry read it also provides added security to those owners who’ve agreed to have their Folio recorded. You may have seen the documentary on television last year, the story of how Raymond Rickett Scott carried a Folio into the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington claiming to have bought it in Cuba, and although it was missing its covers and first pages, they were very quickly able to identify it as the copy stolen from Durham University ten years before.

The Shakespeare Thefts is a cautionary tale and there are numerous other examples of less educated thieves who’ve fallen into the same trap of assuming that stealing a Shakespeare First Folio is just like any other rare book. But Rasmussen seeks to underscore the point by revealing that it's not simply the description of each book which identifies it, but it's provenance. They’ve been able to identify who originally purchased each of these Folios and the book's journey through time, some simply sitting on a shelf in the intervening years, some having escaped war zones, some even having apparently saved lives, taking a bullet themselves.

All of which is very exciting, but the book itself is something of a curate’s egg, not quite sure what it wants to be. On the one hand it is about the thefts of the folios and on the other it is about their history. Then there’s a third hand about the actual processes of recording the folios and some anecdotes about that and the inevitable forth about those Folios out of reach, locked away in private vaults with orders for them not to be seen the frustration of which Rasmussen returns to on a number of occasions. He returns to a few subjects on a number of occasions even repeating the same information. This is a messy book. 

Perhaps a more schematic approach would have helped. The Descriptive Index promises to have full provenance details and perhaps a better approach here would have been to simply pick the more interesting Folios and offered the story of those with an anecdote about its recording as this attempts to do in a few chapters. But that would also have a required a slightly more academic tone and the other slightly problem is Rasmussen (who amongst other things co-edited the RSC Complete Works with Jonathan Bate) is attempting to write for that market and the popular history section which in some cases makes it very readable but in others slightly insubstantial. I managed to finish the book in about two hours.

It's worth adding, I think, that these comments are based on an Advanced Reader's Edition ("an uncorrected version") received through Amazon's Vine scheme which has warnings all over it that the quotes should be checked for accuracy.  Interestingly although this copy has 214 pages, the published copy advertised on Palgrave Macmillan's website (and pictured above)  boasts 240 pages but given the size of the text here, unless the font's even bigger, there has to be more content.  So it's possible this might be an early text too and due for much editing before it hits the shops or online retailer attempting to do away with shops.  Expect this review to be edited when I have more news.

As it stands, what is here is never less than enthralling and the slightly random approach does give it the tone of an extended after dinner speech or spending an entertaining evening in the office of an academic after hours as they regale you with war stories or fishing tales, the Folio destroyed in fires or nibbled by rats. There’s an excellent short chapter about the preparation of the text for the recent RSC Hamlet with David Tennant, the production we didn’t see, and the appendix is as clear a description of the process of the original publication of the folios as I’ve ever read. Approach it in the right spirit and this is a thoroughly entertaining read.

The Shakespeare Thefts In Search of the First Folios by Eric Rasmussen. Palgrave Macmillan. 2011. RRP: £16.99. ISBN: 9780230109414. Review copy supplied.

tones of gray and beige, bare materials

Psyschology I'm a huge fan of modernist architecture. While I understand the general view that it's bland, functional, featureless and inhuman, the very best examples can also offer a haven of placidity, quiet and orderliness in opposition to the chaos which engulfs our daily lives. But in this year old post, Psychology Today wonders if it can actually make us depressed (reacting to the Unhappy Hipsters tumblr which is now a book):
"Modern design was born out of a desire to leave behind the ornamentation and excesses of 19th century Europe. In essence, it's a stripped back, pared down style of design, favoring clean, often angular lines, neutral colors in tones of gray and beige, bare materials, and a general sense of spareness and minimalism. (I'm generalizing here for the sake of discussion — not all modern architecture is about cold gray cubes. Volumes have been written highlighting examples of brightly colored, joyfully curvy modern furniture and dwellings. Dwell itself attempts to celebrate this side of modernism. But the prevailing experience of modern design for most of us in the mainstream is stripped down, hard-edged, and cool verging on cold. Or as one Unhappy Hipsters caption reads, "still, gray, and gravel-strewn.") Though these aesthetics are often intended to create a sense of zen-like tranquility, the result is frequently closer to melancholy isolation, which is what Unhappy Hipsters is lampooning. The question is, why?"
Personally, I think that if you are depressed the architecture of your living environment will either help or hinder, but it won't every be the cause of it. Not really.