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Post by crowblack on Apr 2, 2024 21:13:22 GMT
We've just started watching Shogun on Disney and it's very good so far - recommended, especially if you enjoyed Game of Thrones. It's also, with its 17thc Japan setting, a lot better looking than House of the Dragon. My only gripe is the subtitles - rather small on our 32" TV.
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Post by crowblack on Mar 29, 2024 18:56:43 GMT
I'm another who found this so disappointing, as a fan of Mantel's work - I don't know why they gave it to Peter Kosminsky to direct: he seems humourless and has favourite actors who he casts regardless, it seems, of their suitability here.
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Post by crowblack on Mar 14, 2024 9:29:42 GMT
I do think that someone will one day come up with a concept that allows the seating in these old spaces to be modernised sympathetically but in a completely innovative way. I’ve got a half-formed idea of how it could be done in my head, it includes the stalls being tiered up to the level of the front wall of the dress circle leaving the space which is the rear stalls free for toilets and bars. Like I said, half formed and I’m not an architect so it’s probably cobblers and it would reduce capacity so would never happen. The Coronet in Notting Hill (taken over by the former Printroom) has done a great job, I think - the stalls is now the bar and the circle is the stalls, with a good rake. It retains a fantastic crumbly period atmosphere. The capacity is small though - still, even though I love period architecture and even got a local building listed, as an old goth who used to wear real Victorian clothing in my teens, they really were tiny compared to the 21st c average sized body, and seating and toilets designed for late 19thc physiques and comfort expectations are absurd today. My brother is 6'2" and hates theatregoing in anything other than the most modern theatre - and even then asks me to book him aisle seats. Keep the decor but strip out and redo the seating.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 6, 2024 22:19:59 GMT
Patsy Ferran will be playing a Tudor court jester in the upcoming comedy series Fools - sounds like a great role for her.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 6, 2024 18:40:37 GMT
The theatre that managed this the best that I came across was the (now closed) newest version of Above the Stag in Vauxhall. One large room filled with cubicles with a sink in the middle. Then a separate room to the side with some urinals in it for those not needing a cubicle. Worked very well. (Although people who say women keep their toilets cleaner have probably never had to clean a public toilet...) It's still an enclosed space not overseen by staff or cctv. If you're in the venue at a quiet time it could just be you (a woman) and a man or men, or a man could follow you in, as happened to a teenage girl raped in the mixed sex toilets at a fashionable bar in my local city centre last year.
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Post by crowblack on Feb 5, 2024 23:06:04 GMT
Hum. I see from Twitter the Donmar have gone from their notoriously inadequate toilet provision for women to forcing women to share with men in entirely mixed sex toilets. How lovely. Not.
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Post by crowblack on Dec 4, 2023 12:37:45 GMT
I wonder if they read this thread?
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Post by crowblack on Nov 29, 2023 10:05:20 GMT
Wish (2023) - **I'm truly baffled. Why does it feel like this is Lin Manuel Miranda's fault? My brain literally could not settle on the visuals, some magical nostalgia but mostly awful? It's a wild thing to look at. A mixture of 2D and 3D animation styles that never really mix together in a pleasing way. A couple of the songs are good in their own right, but you know you are in trouble when what the best part of your apparent 100th anniversary celebration is the minimalist sketches of classic characters that accompany the end credits. We're hearing a lot about fears over Ai (which I share) but a lot of the fare, especially for children, that Hollywood churns out feels like it's already being produced by it!
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Post by crowblack on Nov 26, 2023 0:06:54 GMT
I do want to see this, but I may wait till the longer cut comes out on TV because I can't handle cinema volume (I take it this is noisy, what with all those cannons!). I generally like Phoenix, but he's an odd choice for Napoleon. Ah well - I'm very much looking forward to Gladiator 2.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 24, 2023 12:06:39 GMT
Just caught up on Censor (2021) on All4 (with one day left to view!) - interesting, atmospheric psychological horror set against the background of the video nasty era in the 80s. I had to close my eyes during the grisly clips in the opening sequences. It's a feature debut by a female director, Prano Bailey-Bond, lots of familiar brit faces popping up, strong central performance from The Virtues and Calm With Horses' Niamh Algar, lovely Gregory Crewdson style lighting. Downside is the All4 ad breaks breaking the atmosphere but hey, it's free.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 20, 2023 17:48:16 GMT
Btw, I still haven't received my membership card! The Sight and Sound subscription customer service is rubbish too - no response to emails, and phoning them directly got an unhelpful response.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 20, 2023 10:34:17 GMT
Is it me or does walking through a ‘war zone’ seem in particularly bad taste at this moment? Of course they would have planned and designed this well before the Israel Gaza conflict- but this would make me feel uneasy. It was planned and designed during the Russia - Ukraine conflict which is still ongoing and much bigger and no one has complained about that. Nor should they. It's not a play that takes war and murder lightly. In contrast, I thought the BBC's decision to schedule a TV comedy drama with torture scenes at primetime last night was a bad one - they should have delayed it & found a different slot (when a British hostage in Iraq was murdered, ITV cancelled a Carry On film that included 'comedy' beheadings).
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Post by crowblack on Nov 18, 2023 23:11:14 GMT
V. much looking forward to this. Seeing next week. Never watched the TV series, however. What could I do to best prepare. If anything. Thanks folks. The best thing to do is to watch the show, as suggested, as the production really will be difficult to appreciate without knowing the show. If you don't have the time, on YouTube, the "Man of Recaps" channel recaps the whole show in three wonderful humorous videos. He really is the best recapper in the business, as he never misses an important plot point and he's very funny. Typically you'd watch that channel to remind yourself what you've already seen, but in your case, if needs must lol. Do the recaps cover season 4 too? From the sound of it, that's very relevant here as it's when the supernatural villain Vecna - Henry Creel, as a boy - is introduced and shows a bit of his 1950s backstory that's expanded on in the stage play. If you have Netflix, you can fast forward to the bits with the adult characters to get a flavour of their relationships.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 17, 2023 23:47:42 GMT
wishing for a much needed climax which sadly doesn’t materialize. Maybe that'll come with the strike-delayed TV season 5?
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Post by crowblack on Nov 12, 2023 18:21:41 GMT
Its plays have challenged the artistic, social and political orthodoxy of the dayTbf it sounds like it is doing that, in that it's very atypical for the Royal Court and a lot of other new plays of recent years. It might be one of those things like The Greatest Showman or Dr Doolittle, hated by critics but enjoyed by audiences.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 11, 2023 18:14:57 GMT
I'd guess Mullarkey is being held to a different standard because his play is at the Royal Court, where saying something is more important than at the National lol. Yes - I'm not a fan of his writing (Pity was one of the worst things I've ever seen) but the Royal Court seems an odd venue for this, and the world events timing hasn't helped when you're staging something light and fluffy at this particular venue, where most plays foreground politics over character or plot.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 6, 2023 14:13:29 GMT
Bts video on Stranger Things (TV)'s Twitter today (because it's Stranger Things Day).
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Post by crowblack on Nov 6, 2023 8:13:39 GMT
We watched this again on BBC4 last night and enjoyed it more: mum in tears in Ophelia's scenes. It's on BBC iPlayer 'for over a year'.
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Post by crowblack on Nov 3, 2023 14:43:57 GMT
I don't seem to be able to post pictures on here, but Ralph Steadman's poster for the RSC's mid-80s Mother Courage is stunning -
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Post by crowblack on Nov 2, 2023 12:25:52 GMT
It wasn't showing in any cinemas in the entire region (NW of England) which was very disappointing. We are poorly served here when it comes to things like this, indie films, director's talks and the like. And don't get me started on the trains... Anyway, hopefully it'll come to NT at Home or a similar service at some point.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 30, 2023 21:00:34 GMT
There's a fascinating late 1960s documentary 'The London Nobody Knows' that turns up on Talking Pictures TV from time to time. Our guide is James Mason, and one of the first locations visited is the derelict music hall often featured in Sickert's paintings.
Theatre reviews in Punch and the like used to be accompanied by illustrations/caricatures by Ronald Searle and other top cartoonists of the day. They're an aspect of Searle's work that isn't as familiar as, say, St Trinians or Molesworth, but I think they're brilliant. There are a lot of them online now.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 30, 2023 7:43:44 GMT
I doubt I'll get to see this but who knows, maybe rewritten a lot it could make an interesting film. I liked the sound of it when discussed on Radio 4 Front Row but the snippet of dialogue they played was clunky. However, there have been a lot of plays in recent years that are unsubtly message-heavy but with little or no characterisation or plot, but haven't received the critical panning this has, which does feel rather sexist!
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Post by crowblack on Oct 26, 2023 8:22:04 GMT
It's a really bad era for men's fashion, though, going by the red carpet, fashion week and 'oh god, look what they've made me wear' fashion shoots with actors. Shorts with socks and clumpy shoes on adult men - Monty Python Gumby, suits and trousers so badly cut and badly fitting and in such horrible materials they look like sized-up 1990s Ken doll outfits. The colours are horrible too - burned orange leatherette, olive green, maroon with white saddle stitching, no. There's a Paul Mescal one for Interview where he's dressed like a kinky sex Nazi in a 1970s exploitation film (god knows what's going on in that stylist's head!). I remember the 1970s but this is worse (first world problems, I know, but a few people in my family work in fashion, modelling, shoots etc. so it's something we enjoy watching: really naff examples go on the fridge)
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Post by crowblack on Oct 24, 2023 12:04:44 GMT
They should be protesting 'lifestyle'. The Halloween or Christmas aisles in supermarkets, spider outfits and reindeer antlers for dogs, out of season fruit and veg flown in from halfway round the world. 'World T shirt day' in November (world jumper day, that should be!), teenagers who wear something for an hour then chuck it in the wash. Turn your central heating down a notch or two. Stop flushing chemicals down the drains. Fast fashion. All disposable tat. Packaging. Highlighting the appalling human rights records of many of the places profiting from oil. But not ruining the special events that many people less well off than many of the Jocastas and Mungos doing this turn up to ruin.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 22, 2023 18:51:17 GMT
It's also a film about female agency directed by a man (or maybe that explains why it's so bawdy!). I read the novel recently and I'm curious to see how it's been translated to the screen, though don't want to spoil the very vivid 'book in my head'. Tbh I'd have preferred to see a female director taking this on or a male directing the unreliable male narrator section of the novel and a woman taking the helm for the latter part. Or maybe it'll surprise me and actually do this? .
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Post by crowblack on Oct 19, 2023 18:03:26 GMT
It carries associations of being cattle, livestock, a dancing bear - a nose ring is traditionally something the farm animal or performing animal's owner uses to drag it around on a rope, often to market or the town square. It's painful so the animal - even something as impressive as a bull or bear - is forced to do the owner's bidding. Clothing can and often does carry cultural associations and for nose rings, in the West, these are negative and submissive. It can also make the wearer look like they have a constant bogey that needs wiping. Funny you say that because the greatest trend pushing women to be meek and submissive are trad-wives dressed modestly brainwashing teenage girls on tiktok and Instagram I wasn't aware it was a competition.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 19, 2023 18:01:43 GMT
I can also understand how the idea of body piercing (i.e. willful self-mutilation) could be off-putting. What I don't understand is how ears are ok, but apparently septums and toes -- never seen those; did the OP mean tongues? -- are not. That just reads to me like a prejudice towards difference. Could not ear piercings remind of the ear tags that cattle have? An ear stud could, just as ludicrously as the bogey idea, remind of a dollup of leaking ear wax. A pierced earlobe isn't interfering with a vital part of your body though. The nose is there to breathe through, catch scents sand smells and to filter and catch dust and germs. It's highly sensitive. To stick a great big ring through it, especially in a period when we're even more aware of airborne illness, is daft. And tongue piercings - they damage teeth, damage your tongue. Even with the 'bog standard' ear, it can go wrong: I remember when my teenage cousin did it and her ears were suppurating with pus for ages. There are plenty of other ways you can make a statement without actually damaging your body and the way it functions healthily. (On a related note, I'm always surprised by actors who get big tattoos when they're already into their careers - what a faff that must be for the make up people!)
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Post by crowblack on Oct 19, 2023 10:23:29 GMT
I'm sure women everywhere are devastated to hear this It carries associations of being cattle, livestock, a dancing bear - a nose ring is traditionally something the farm animal or performing animal's owner uses to drag it around on a rope, often to market or the town square. It's painful so the animal - even something as impressive as a bull or bear - is forced to do the owner's bidding. Clothing can and often does carry cultural associations and for nose rings, in the West, these are negative and submissive. It can also make the wearer look like they have a constant bogey that needs wiping.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 12, 2023 18:16:20 GMT
I think it was the hobby horse of a man called Andrew Adonis. He's still on Twitter and comes across as detached from reality, recently tweeting that China manages to get these things done - yeah, when you're a dictatorship with poor human rights and can just order whole towns and villages out of your project's pathway.
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Post by crowblack on Oct 11, 2023 15:48:43 GMT
Hoard is absolutely wonderful - I loved it! It's a first feature by Luna Carmoon who is an amazing young woman, self taught, working class, devours films, and if you've been missing the sort of pure unfiltered cinema of the days of Ken Russell, Nic Roeg, this is a treat (her shorts Nosebleed and Shagbands are online, if you want a taster - and she sprayed us with a blast of milk, sweat, blood and sperm perfume before the show!). It has already picked up a bunch of awards. The cast were there (and sitting around me), including lead magnetic newcomer Saura Lightfoot Leon, Joseph Quinn bringing in the Stranger Things fans who probably won't have encountered anything like this before, Hayley Squires coming in at the end to join the Q&A after her show at the NT next door finished. And yes, looks like the Hollywood strike has given this more room - it was the cover feature of last week's Time Out.
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