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Post by crowblack on Jul 14, 2023 14:57:17 GMT
The film slate for the rest of 2023 will be unaffected They can't have the cast doing red carpet premieres, the round of publicity interviews, fan conventions and the like though. Would the studios want to launch them without that? And there's the whole employment knock-on from that of photoshoots, magazine interviews, fashion spreads...
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Post by crowblack on Jul 14, 2023 13:45:28 GMT
It might give some overlooked TV shows a chance to shine too - and I wonder if Netflix are now regretting their stupid decision to axe the UK-made Lockwood and Co after one, well received, series?
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Post by crowblack on Jul 14, 2023 13:34:47 GMT
They're halting filming on Ridley Scott's Gladiator 2 too, which has been filming on massive sets in Malta with a European/UK & US cast. They had already reportedly delayed the start date of filming to accommodate Mescal's Streetcar West End run. Given the heat round the Med right now, a pause might be a relief!
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Post by crowblack on Jul 6, 2023 14:47:58 GMT
Haven't heard anything, but did see another trailer from their Twitter account this week.
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Post by crowblack on Jul 4, 2023 20:51:42 GMT
The super BBC film 'Eric and Ernie' is repeated tonight on BBC4 (hopefully on ipleyer too)
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Post by crowblack on Jul 3, 2023 19:58:43 GMT
I interpreted it as clinical depression or a similar mental illness coming from within himself - he's very withdrawn and comes across as depressive, shown balancing precariously on a balcony rail, walks into the sea, and at one point says he's surprised he made it to 30. That the daughter has the treasured rug at the end suggests he's died and she has kept it as a memento
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Post by crowblack on Jul 3, 2023 8:41:18 GMT
Prompted by this thread, I've just watched Aftersun through Mubi. Great performances but agree that dialogue was hard to hear: this isn't an accent issue, but when dialogue is rare and supposed to be important, it helps if you can understand what's being said! It was atmospheric but tbh I found it slow until the latter half, when more of a sense of dread came in. We had many difficult holidays, and I know what it's like to be a kid stuck somewhere strange with a distressed parent and no money, but the scenario in the film didn't ring true for me: how many 11 year old girls are upbeat, chirpy and content sitting around a poolside at a budget hotel in the middle of nowhere for a week with their sad dad, away from friends, liveliness, music, telly, mags, news? And if the father is poor, too skint even for the budget hotel's perks, he will not have £850 for a rug. That's a lot of money now - even more in the 1990s. This feels like a plot element here is the rug in the woman's flat in the present day, an heirloom presumably because he committed suicide by a filmmaker who I presume doesn't know what it's like to really live, struggling, on a low income. It's good to see a promising new filmmaker emerge and glad a low budget film is getting a lot of fuss, and I'm interested to see what she does next, but hope it doesn't have Barry 'snail's pace = arty' Jenkins as producer again.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 30, 2023 11:41:32 GMT
Well, this is definitely telling me not to book a hotel unless I pay even more for a cancellable rate. I haven’t been down since Sept 21 and it’s looking like Miss Scherzinger might have to get through her run without me! If you're able to travel at very unpopular times of the day/weekday you may be luckier for cheaper tickets (sorry if that's stating the obvious).
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Post by crowblack on Jun 30, 2023 8:49:13 GMT
Resurrecting this thread. What the actual F is going on with Avanti West Coast? Do they want people to use their trains or not? Just doing some experimental searches in Trainline for 12 weeks in the future to see prices for Manchester/London to see what to expect when I book for Sunset Boulevard in November. You can’t book a return ticket and even singles are showing as limited availability three months ahead of the date of travel. What’s going on? Travel experts… help! Note: don’t suggest a coach. I can’t do 5 hours on a coach 😕 I haven't been able to attend any of the London shows booked since the pandemic, almost all thanks to Avanti (one was Avanti plus flu). When they are running, the weekend timetables have been very last minute and there don't seem to be any cheap seats, or if there are they must go instantly (I signed up to notification emails but didn't get them).
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Post by crowblack on Jun 28, 2023 9:38:55 GMT
A reverse example is that Arthur Miller was ignored in USA for many years around the 1970-80s and found it hard to get his new plays produced while his reputation was still high in UK. It was wall-to-wall Arthur Miller in my all-girls school (I'm still p-ed off about this: other 20thc dramatists are available!).
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Post by crowblack on Jun 27, 2023 16:44:19 GMT
Howard Brenton another but I don’t think either are quite as lionised in Europe as Bond is. At one time the RSC used to champion that type of British playwright who had limited purely commercial appeal, Peter Barnes, John Whiting. Now no-one does. Yes, I just missed the RSC Red Noses, but saw the War Plays in the Barbican pit when I was a teenager with Ian McDiarmid and Gary Oldman in the cast (it was the production film director Alex Cox saw when casting Sid and Nancy).
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Post by crowblack on Jun 19, 2023 11:34:56 GMT
I think Norris has done a decent job in difficult circumstances. It's a very changed landscape, with obvious pressures like Covid and austerity plus social media cancel culture and pile-ons meaning that constant looking over your shoulder with both new and old work that is impacting the arts these days, and operating at a time of 'peak TV' which is taking some great established and upcoming actors away from theatre. Fwiw I am glad we are hearing more diverse voices, and I don't come away from plays at the NT that deal with difficult complex topics feeling I've been hectored and lectured for 2 hours rather than seeing a well constructed and entertaining play, in the way I do from some other London theatres.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 17, 2023 15:31:44 GMT
I think NT Live and NT at Home have really taken off under Norris. Was a time, in the recent past, the only recorded material went into the V&A archive and you'd have to book a computer screen in west London to watch it. Yes, it's been very welcome. I remember having lengthy arguments on this site where posters kept telling me how very unlikely an at home streaming NT Live scenario would be, but then along came Covid and here we are! Friends and family with limited mobility and/or income have been able to see plays they would not otherwise be able to access physically at all, and living in the NW of England and with soaringly expensive and very unreliable transport to London it's been a godsend. We've watched and discussed plays together on 3 continents for our international book group. It's no doubt introducing a new generation to plays through the chance to see TV and movie star actors in earlier roles, and hopefully will encourage these youngsters to make real theatre visits in the wake of that.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 11, 2023 9:48:34 GMT
I wish we did have ID cards in the UK - Blunkett tried to bring them in in the early 2000s but was thwarted. Almost all other European countries have them and it would be less intrusive than being asked to show the ticket office a letter detailing your health issues as I have sometimes been asked to do when going into a theatre or gallery (it would also make human trafficking and exploitation more difficult!).
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Post by crowblack on Jun 2, 2023 19:36:43 GMT
[Deleted because it was personal about my experiences as a disabled person and the blanket notion of privilege]
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Post by crowblack on Jun 2, 2023 19:20:12 GMT
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Post by crowblack on Jun 1, 2023 22:36:58 GMT
Not working for me either, but you can google it and it comes up.
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Post by crowblack on Jun 1, 2023 21:35:55 GMT
There's an interesting piece by Alexander Cohen in the Jewish Chronicle on this.
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Post by crowblack on May 31, 2023 15:31:23 GMT
(in fact you had noticed that you “tend to see more black people” at productions that may resonate with black people, so by definition the rest of the time it isn’t the case!) It's not unexpected - a play like Albion will attract a white middle class audience and I didn't find it very resonant, Allelujah was one of the most elderly audiences I've sat in, The Inheritance the only time I've been to a play with no queue whatsoever for the women's toilets. If you want to attract a particular / more diverse demographic, programme a variety of plays that appeal, at prices that feel less 'Waitrose'. I prefer inclusion to exclusion as an approach though.
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Post by crowblack on May 31, 2023 12:22:23 GMT
When you go to a show by a black writer or team, dealing with subjects that may resonate more with black people's lived experience, you tend to see far more black people in the audience, wether that's in London or Manchester or wherever in the UK. Britain seems to be doing pretty well, much better than the USA - many of my friends & some relatives - most of them, in London, are themselves of or in mixed heritage relationships, with parents and children the same. We have very diverse faces on TV, film and stage (and politics!) - and are now remaking classic period dramas to be more inclusive.
So is there a need to import an initiative from the far more toxically divided USA, one that's based on the idea that all and any white people have an oppressive 'white gaze' that black people need to be segregated away from to feel safe when watching a play? Is that theory true or helpful in bringing people together or making people feel confident interacting with each other in society? It's the language behind this, the blanket idea of whiteness as some sort of original sin or inherently oppressive and scary, rather than viewing people as individual human beings with their own distinct stories and attitudes and relationships.
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Post by crowblack on May 28, 2023 8:41:31 GMT
Manchester's Royal Exchange did have a photo guide to coming into the building but I can't find that on the website any more. That was useful - in fact it would be helpful if more theatres could put walk in / arrival / using the building videos on their websites.
Another issue is flagging up intervals / play length - many people for various reasons find sitting for a long period uncomfortable. If some director thinks the artistic integrity of the play requires an unbroken 2 hours plus, then a pauseable streaming or access / interval performance should be made available too.
Relevant to all theatre users but particularly those with mobility issues is end times: if it's an unusually long show, please bring the start time forward as getting to the last train, getting out of the building takes longer for us.
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Post by crowblack on May 26, 2023 23:18:58 GMT
I don't know how much of an issue collapses in toilets are Drugs, drink etc are obviously more 'nightclubby' issues, but collapse is also an issue with disability, older people, heart attacks. I've been in a theatre venue recently where an older woman has required assistance out of a cubicle by other toilet users (this was in a venue that has since then made that toilet 'unisex'). The fully enclosed toilets on trains have emergency buttons inside for this. It's how Elvis, Evelyn Waugh, George II, Catherine the Great (allegedly - and not by horse!) and a major character in the most talked about TV show at the moment died (I've just discovered there's even a Wikipedia page on it - quite a lot of assassinations too, but they don't really count for this discussion!)
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Post by crowblack on May 26, 2023 21:57:32 GMT
As has been reported, safety concerns have to be taken seriously. The infrastructure and facilities need to be improved and expanded in most public buildings and that isn't always easy. The Photographer's Gallery has a good set up - individual self contained cubicle rooms situated with doors opening on to the staircase with sinks, mirrors and dryers in each and a clientele who are very tidy users. I appreciate this set up is unlikely to be possible in the cramped space of a theatre and there is the additional safety issue which is that floor to ceiling doors prevent you knowing if a user has collapsed inside.
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Post by crowblack on May 26, 2023 21:14:31 GMT
As far as I'm aware, there have been no incidents thus far at the Southwark Playhouse of anyone's safety being compromised, at least not in a way that could be blamed on how they label their toile There have been lots of incidents reported in other venues, though, including the recent conviction of an actual Met Policeman for filming women in unisex shop cubicles. Last month a teenage girl was raped in the mixed sex toilet of a young people's venue in my home town (the rapist, seen on cctv, is also a young man). I saw a 20-something male filming in toilets in an arts venue near us in 2019, and my relative was watched in a museum toilet - an arts venue again (this was a few years ago - he stuck his head beneath the partition - these days he could have just used his phone camera!). There's an idea that people who use arts venues are above that sort of thing, but the Royal Court toilets (mixed sex now) have a warning in them that thieves operate in the building - if you acknowledge that thieves do come in off the street to prey on customers, why assume no one else enters the building with ill intent?
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2023 21:01:39 GMT
A recording of the Lowry performance is made available to stream on demand for a time.
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2023 19:45:46 GMT
But on the other hand you could argue that plenty of women in the audience are fine with it - I know many who are, and their voices are just as valid as yours. Teenage me might have thought it was fine and dandy and hip and cool but older me, the one who was sexually assaulted in a shop, been filmed by a male in an arts complex toilet, and whose close relative was watched by a male while using a museum toilet is less sanguine about it. And then there's the whole wet seat, floor, smell and urinals issue. Anyway there's a whole other thread on this if you're interested. Simple solution - make the men's unisex or create a third mixed sex space so you and your friends can use that and keep the women's single sex for those of us for whom it matters.
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2023 19:27:16 GMT
I think given that a large number of people working in theatre management are indeed women, the statement that these actions have been undertaken without consulting women is entirely false. Many women have been leaders in this movement. The handful of women in positions of power in theatreland (with their 'luxury beliefs') are not the ones using these toilets in the theatre intervals - that would be the audience, and we were not consulted. They were imposed on us. That thing called 'consent' forgotten. The Old Vic specifically fundraised with the words "more female loos" and when the refurb was done they were mixed sex instead ("Old Vic launches public fundraising campaign to increase women’s loos" The Stage 15/11/2018). And we weren't even allowed to discuss that - activists piled threats onto The Stage when they tried to run a for and against article and they caved in and pulled the article.
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Post by crowblack on May 24, 2023 17:38:03 GMT
It's interesting that this initiative is coming from theatre, a sector which in the last 5 years has been in the forefront of removing - without any consultation with women - the single sex safe spaces that existed for the safety, privacy and dignity of women, and even deleting an article from The Stage that articulated the dismay many women feel about this. I trust the theatreland voices supporting this 'black out' initiative will also listen to women's concerns going forward.
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Post by crowblack on May 21, 2023 21:45:52 GMT
UK theatre’s absolute obsession with all things American is odd - they’d no doubt be quick to condemn American cultural imperialism in other contexts but they (and audiences) seem happy to be subject to it in the theatre. I agree, it's weird - these are fascinating times politically in the UK and theatre should be nimble enough to interrogate that and commission local writers dealing with resonant subject matter (especially as American giants now dominate our cinemas and TV production), but instead many London theatres for some years now seem more interested in staging work from the USA, as though you could simply read across from their very specific, and more divisive, political situation and ideologies to ours.
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Post by crowblack on May 20, 2023 20:10:19 GMT
I didn't see the show but there are images and a few bits and bobs of mobile phone footage on Twitter. Was there a good reason for the walls, rather than, say, just using something like a scaffolding cube to give the impression of a room so more people could see the actors?
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