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Post by sf on Aug 9, 2020 15:22:32 GMT
For contractual reasons, the reanimated corpses of Patrick Swayze and Jerry Orbach have declined to participate. There will, however, be a guest appearance from Jennifer Grey's original nose. Will the watermelon that was carried in also be making a return? It's probably been composted by now. Hollywood has no respect for aging performers.
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Post by sf on Aug 9, 2020 12:30:13 GMT
For contractual reasons, the reanimated corpses of Patrick Swayze and Jerry Orbach have declined to participate.
There will, however, be a guest appearance from Jennifer Grey's original nose.
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Post by sf on Aug 8, 2020 17:03:13 GMT
Valid points? By "it's the poor who'll suffer", what she really means is that the value of the companies they work for may drop. And of course a right-wing financier is always going to be my first port of call when I'm looking for advice on how to keep the workforce safe during a global pandemic. The first few comments I read* were all calling her out on it. When even Daily Mail readers think your views are unreasonable it's time to take a long look at what you've become. * It's the Mail. I'm always afraid that if I read too far my blood will start boiling. I wasn't brave enough to get into the comments section. It's too hot in here to wear rubber gloves.
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Post by sf on Aug 8, 2020 16:39:41 GMT
Valid points? By "it's the poor who'll suffer", what she really means is that the value of the companies they work for may drop. And of course a right-wing financier is always going to be my first port of call when I'm looking for advice on how to keep the workforce safe during a global pandemic.
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Post by sf on Aug 7, 2020 16:10:00 GMT
I was under the impression that free movement to the EU is unchanged until the end of the transition period, but why let facts get in the way of point scoring.. Indeed, and since I'm not in a position to move until the middle of next year, my point stands. ...is not a once-in-a-lifetime event, and freedom of movement was not mentioned on the referendum ballot. This government has chosen, for no good reason, to strip established rights from every single citizen, and those of us who didn't allow ourselves to be taken in by a stack of populist half-truths and dog-whistle racism are entitled to be very, very angry about it, and to continue to express our anger.
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Post by sf on Aug 7, 2020 15:44:59 GMT
25 degrees C maximum here for the next week. Cooler weather was one of the reasons I moved back up north.
Having only moved FROM the north at the end of last year, it's a little soon for me to consider going back.
On the other hand, right now Edinburgh - 23C today, high teens to 20C for the next two weeks - looks very appealing.
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Post by sf on Aug 7, 2020 15:04:39 GMT
If anyone know somewhere with a maximum summer temperature of 15 degrees... Luleå looks nice. Slightly warmer than that, but not too warm (this week, 20C-ish). Unfortunately my freedom of movement is being flushed down the toilet for no good reason other than to pander to racists, so moving there isn't on the cards. But I can dream.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 22:06:03 GMT
Canadian actor Brent Carver, seen in London as Molina in 'Kiss of the Spider Woman' at the Shaftesbury - and with a remarkable list of stage credits elsewhere, particularly at the Stratford Festival - died today at the age of 68 at his home in Cranbrook, BC. Very, very sad, and far too young. 68 is no age at all these days. He gave three of the finest stage performances I've ever seen - yes, Spider Woman at the Shaftesbury, but then as Leo Frank in Parade at Lincoln Center in 1999, and as the title character in Richard Ouzounian and Marek Norman's adaptation of Carol Shields' novel Larry's Party at CanStage in Toronto. Playbill - Brent Carver
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 19:56:54 GMT
The weather forecast for the next week makes me want to curl up & die. 30 degrees plus pretty much non-stop. Yep. I think there's going to be a lot of time spent working in my living room with the curtains closed and a fan aimed directly at me. Some people love this kind of weather; I am not one of them. I lived in Toronto for several years, and it's the winters I miss, not the heat and humidity in summer.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 17:19:55 GMT
There's a rather nasty - not to mention staggeringly arrogant - underlying assumption here which needs to be challenged. Plenty of people, whether they're considered higher-risk or not, who have chosen to stay at home have never stopped working, and have never stopped contributing.
That didn't come out how it was supposed to - all I am saying is there are massive sectors of commerce that are literally dying on their arses, and their employees are on the breadline. Should they or should they not have an opportunity to go out and provide for themselves and their family?
The trouble is, it isn't that simple - and that's a cynically loaded proposition, because we both know it isn't that simple. If it was only about weighing the risk to yourself, of course the answer would be an unequivocal yes. But it isn't, and whether people should have the right to choose to put other people at risk - people who may be more vulnerable than they are themselves - is a much more complicated moral question.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 16:01:00 GMT
However, I think the bulk of us healthy, not obese and robust individuals need to get back to work (and keep paying into the NHS for us all). There's a rather nasty - not to mention staggeringly arrogant - underlying assumption here which needs to be challenged. Plenty of people, whether they're considered higher-risk or not, who have chosen to stay at home have never stopped working, and have never stopped contributing.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 15:09:44 GMT
I find it quite disturbing how readily people are willing to attack performers for purportedly being insensitive in the past. There's a whole load of finger-pointing and "Look how sensitive I am, standing up for what's right". But what I'd like to know is: if it was so obvious that the performers should have known better, why weren't their attackers now saying something about it then?
Well, in some cases, they were. The casting of Jonathan Pryce and Keith Burns in Miss Saigon (shamefully) passed more or less without comment in London, at least in the show's press coverage - I was 16 at the time, I don't think I was an unusually 'woke' teenager, and I thought the make-up and prosthetics were wince-inducing - but when Pryce was cast in the Broadway production (where they wouldn't have dared cast a white actor as Thuy, as they did in London) it (justifiably) provoked a huge row.
And re: the London production - if I, at 16, could see that some of the casting choices, and the makeup that went with them, were in questionable taste, somebody on the production team might have figured it out as well.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 13:30:00 GMT
For the apparently large section of the population that never wanted to do anything apart from sit in their pants and watch Netflix, I understand that this will be less of an issue. How incredibly condescending of you.
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Post by sf on Aug 6, 2020 12:36:46 GMT
And who wants to be the first theatre to do away with social distancing and two weeks later be named as the source of a major outbreak? Form a line, please!
...which brings up a couple of other issues. Insurance is a huge obstacle: theatres routinely carry insurance to cover losses should they have to cancel a performance, but in the middle of a global pandemic such insurance is going to be either almost impossible to source, or prohibitively expensive, or both.
And if theatres do gear up to reopen, which would involve significant financial outlay, and then have to close again because of a rise in the infection rate, the consequences would be devastating - more devastating for them than the consequences of having to remain closed until it's deemed safe to reopen without social distancing measures.
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Post by sf on Aug 5, 2020 12:46:19 GMT
Some nice songs, some great voices, but overlong and self-important and the dialogue was often terrible (my un-favourite memory is of Eve saying to Adam, "Was that another dinosaur, dear? They're getting to be such a nuisance!"). Overall, my memory of it is that it was very, very dull with a few nice things in it.
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Post by sf on Aug 3, 2020 18:24:47 GMT
So back to all of us who are alone being forced into effectively solitary confinement? Or do you mean people can mix with their own family but not others? Either way you condemn many, many people to a level of loneliness that some will find more unbearable than the risk of catching Covid. Certainly the government needs to be aware - more aware than they have been up to this point, because they've mostly left local councils and volunteers to do the heavy lifting - that isolation is very difficult for some people, and that there are people who need significant support under a stay-at-home order, whether because of underlying mental health issues or just simple loneliness. HOWEVER. There are times when it's necessary for people to make sacrifices for the greater good. This is one of them. I'm certainly not minimising how difficult isolation is - I do get it (actually, having been the primary caregiver for someone whose illness was such that there were long periods over the last ten years when I couldn't leave the house unless someone else could be there in my place, I get it better than a lot of people. That's a very, very lonely position to be in, but you do what has to be done) - but there are a limited range of options for getting covid-19 under control, and for the moment distancing is the best of them. And the best way of making sure other conditions get dealt with in a timely fashion, too, is to make sure medical personnel and facilities aren't tied up dealing with covid-19 patients. Nobody is being asked to storm a trench in a battlefield. As I said, I do understand that isolation and loneliness are serious issues, and that there are people who will need a great deal of support. That has to be kept in mind, and support must be provided to those who need it - but it's not a good enough reason for not, if necessary, imposing further preventative restrictions in order to protect sections of the public.
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Post by sf on Aug 3, 2020 11:55:18 GMT
These are ideas under discussion, rather than something that is definitely going to happen.
I think people should pay attention - and frankly, that a lot of people should pay a lot MORE attention, based on what I see when I go out - but there's no point in being unnecessarily alarmist.
And in any case I wouldn't believe anything printed in the Daily Mail, including the date, until I had it corroborated by a more reliable source.
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Post by sf on Aug 1, 2020 11:24:59 GMT
Fundamentally a lot of the UK still enjoy entertainment that is non PC - and a lot of the group see banning it as an attack o their views and lifestyle. Things have to be done delicately or the culture war will grow bigger and bigger.
A lot of people would probably enjoy watching a hanging. Doesn't mean we should bring back the death penalty.
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Post by sf on Jul 31, 2020 22:26:52 GMT
I think they fell into the trap of believing that blackface wasn't that big a deal any more, and what they were doing didn't count as blackface because it wasn't done in the style of the Black and White Minstrel Show, and that because they didn't think of themselves as racist, then it couldn't possibly be racist and so on. But even if they assumed it was all fine, then someone in the production team should have questioned it. That's not to relinquish them of the blame, and I'd hope that responsible comedians who enjoy edgy jokes also have the sense to employ someone who will give everything a once over to check for stuff that might cross the line. The same goes for Tracey Ullman in her HBO shows - although there wasn't the air of condescension when Ullman did it that I got from Lucas and Walliams, whose work I've usually found unpleasant.
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Post by sf on Jul 31, 2020 12:00:45 GMT
This is a ridiculous response, they are blaming the provider and exonerating the customer. The virus is spread by people not wearing masks and/or distancing. Multigenerational households are just the early warning system, what happens there, will be followed elsewhere weeks later. They are not the driver of transmission, they are the victim. They need to come here up North and see how the pubs are not able, or are unwilling to, enforce regulations, how shops, transport and takeaways cannot implement a rule when they have little legal power,
Exactly. When the new restrictions in Oldham came in a couple of days ago, Twitter was full of people blaming Muslim-majority areas of the town (that is, Clarksfield, Glodwick, Westwood, Werneth, Coldhurst) for the rise in transmission rates, pointing the finger at multigenerational households and asking why the restrictions also had to apply to whiter and wealthier areas like Saddleworth and Royton and Shaw. The answer is simple: the issue is how the virus was introduced into crowded multigenerational households in Glodwick and Clarksfield and Westwood - very likely via Muslim taxi drivers picking up asymptomatic drunk white idiots from the rat-run of bars down Yorkshire Street, or via customers in shops and takeaways. And then once the virus is introduced into crowded multigenerational households, of course it spreads quickly. I understand why Oldham council identified certain (Muslim-majority) parts of the town as being areas of particular concern, but that doesn't tell the whole story - and in a place where I'm afraid a disproportionate number of white people are quite unpleasantly racist, it's inevitably going to lead to unhelpful scapegoating of communities that almost certainly did not cause the problems they're dealing with.
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Post by sf on Jul 30, 2020 23:34:41 GMT
Suspect the government has panicked that it might get attacked on the right for not cracking down before EID. At best a religious festival is a tertiary factor. You act as soon as you can when the figures come in . If you don't your opponents start calculating how many people you killed by delaying. And if the government had acted as soon as they could when the figures started heading upwards again, that would be a reasonable explanation. Given that the case numbers have been climbing in nine out of ten boroughs in Greater Manchester, I do find it interesting, as someone who lived in Oldham until the end of last year, that Oldham council were a couple of days ahead of the government (and the Mayor of Greater Manchester) in stepping in to take measures to bring the infection rate down.
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Post by sf on Jul 30, 2020 22:53:30 GMT
Won't banning people meeting in their homes just lead to much fuller pubs, thus defeating the entire point? Possibly. It also says something about this government's - how can I put this? - cultural sensitivity that they announced this measure about two hours before the beginning of Eid. I'm not suggesting additional measures of some kind are not required, but this really doesn't seem to have been thought through at all. And - re: Eid - the numbers have been tracking the same way for long enough that it would have been considerate to give the many, many families in the region planning celebrations a little more notice that their plans might have to change.
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Post by sf on Jul 29, 2020 22:26:44 GMT
Danny Dyer was mates with Harold Pinter??? He was.
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Post by sf on Jul 29, 2020 16:28:00 GMT
His salary is probably what you said even more so he could stick his hand in his pocket and lead from the front. Perhaps he prefers to give privately, rather than to be perceived as exploiting charitable donations for their publicity value? The point of giving to charity, after all, is to do good, rather than to show off.
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Post by sf on Jul 29, 2020 15:12:57 GMT
"Leaner" Smaller orchestra, smaller cast, scaled-down set, same ticket prices.
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Post by sf on Jul 29, 2020 12:48:35 GMT
Good news if you loved this show as much as I did: it seems they're recording a cast album.
If I had to be picky, I'd say I slightly preferred a couple of the Sheffield cast - but it's wonderful that a show like this is getting recorded at all, and I'll be first in the queue to buy it when it's released.
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Post by sf on Jul 28, 2020 20:45:48 GMT
Reading the actual article in the Evening Standard it does't come across as "It's gone forever". To me it reads as more of a legal repositioning to put everything in a known state rather than have it all suspended in uncertainty. But he doesn't half come across as petulant. What does he expect the government to do? Take away the virus and replace it with a more convenient one that's better suited to the needs of his business?
He reminded me of a line from Rita Rudner's ancient BBC sketch show.
"I want to be rich. Really rich. Some people get so rich they lose all respect for humanity. That's how rich I want to be."
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Post by sf on Jul 28, 2020 15:15:12 GMT
That's a great list, but most of those started their careers decades ago. Not one of your initial parameters. And many of them were comic actors in movies rather than mixing straight and comic roles All of them have done notable work in straight dramatic roles. But even those names don't appear in as much 'everyday' work as the UK comics that I recognize. My mistake. I thought you were interested in a conversation, rather than merely in having your perceptions confirmed.
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Post by sf on Jul 28, 2020 12:07:40 GMT
Well... Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Bette Midler, Whoopi Goldberg, Lily Tomlin, Robin Williams, Melissa McCarthy, Steve Carell..
I don't think it's that unusual for American comedians to move into dramatic roles, although I do agree performers get pigeonholed more in the US than they do here. My sense is that it's less of a leap here for comedians to move into things like documentaries, at least on mainstream networks - but that may partly just mean I haven't seen those programmes, because one of the big differences between TV in the US and TV here is that the big US networks mostly don't show documentaries in prime time, whereas BBC1 and ITV1 do.
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Post by sf on Jul 25, 2020 18:07:50 GMT
How on earth will they ‘police’ this? Ineffectively. Other countries have managed it. Here, the will just doesn't seem to be there.
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