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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

CLUED-UP!

Here are the answers to yesterday's cryptic crossword clues...

Colin Dexter's favourite clue was:

Nothing squared is cubed
(3 letters)

the answer to which is

OXO

'O' signifying nothing, squared (times 2, or 0 x 0),
cubed = oxo as in the famous stock cube

and Sandy Balfour's choice:

I say nothing
(3 letters)

which gives

EGO

'I' is the whole word, 'ego'; 'say' gives 'eg'
(as in e.g., for example, or 'say')
and
nothing is, once again, zero or O



Well done ROB for being the first to correctly guess both clues, followed closely by SHEILA who was also the first to solve Gill's favourite cryptic clue posited in yesterday's comments: HIJKLMNO (5 letters) which was 'water'. Why? 'H' to 'O' or H2O! Brilliant! All we need now is the answer to Rob's 'Spokeswoman in aircrash' (5 letters) Any answers, anyone?

In the meanwhile, here's another puzzle - a seasonal one that is ideally suited to this busiest of times, since it is absolutely self-solving!



Happy Holidays!

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Tuesday, December 15, 2009

A FEW CROSS WORDS

I recently heard a discussion on on the wireless about cryptic crosswords and how to solve them with reference to a new book on the subject by Colin Dexter (creator of the crossword-loving Inspector Morse) and another crossword-booker, Sandy Balfour.

They were both asked for their favourite cryptic clues and here they are from Mr Dexter:

Nothing squared is cubed (3 letters)

and from Mr Balfour:

I say nothing (3 letters)

Answers (if you're not crossworders) tomorrow...


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Saturday, December 12, 2009

BILLING EBENEZER

I've always been intrigued by what makes a good film poster and whether that sometimes differs from what makes an effective film poster...

In my book (or, I suppose, on my wall) an iconic movie poster is, well, ICONIC...

I mean, consider any of the following. The merest glance and you know just about all you need to know about the movie on offer...








One image said it all. We all knew where you were with posters like that!

So, how come there have been so many posters going around for Robert Zemeckis' version of A Christmas Carol?


It started, many months ago, with this 'teaser' poster...


Since when there's been this one...

And this one...


And this one, which - like its predecessor - features a historical detail strictly for the cognoscenti - the Westminster Clock Tower ('Big Ben') under builder's scaffolding: Dickens' novella was written in 1843, the year in which building commenced on the famous clock tower...


As well as this is one which is, undoubtedly, the most stylish offering, though possibly not quite mass-market enough...


And, depending on where you are the world, you might see it advertised like this...


Hmmm...

The trouble is, of course, if a movie is iconic then the poster tends to become iconic, too; but it doesn't work the other way around: an iconic poster does not an iconic movie make!

When it comes to A Christmas Carol, as several of you commented the other day, there are already several iconic film versions of Dickens' classic, including this much loved one...




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Thursday, December 10, 2009

THE MAN WHO DREW POOH (and MOLE)

Today is the 130th birthday of Ernest Howard Shepard, the artist and illustrator who captured in line those now immortal creations of A A Milne and Kenneth Grahame who resided, respectively, in the 100 Acre Wood...


...and along the willow-shaded banks of the Thames...


Shepard died in 1976 in his 96th year and lies at rest in the graveyard of St Peter's Church, West Sussex...

Click on image to enlarge

His simple stone engraved with a painters palette hanging on a willow tree flanked by Mole and Toady.


Images: Illustrations by E H Shepard; Shepard's grave photographed by Charles for Wikipedia



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Tuesday, December 08, 2009

WAX TREATMENT

The other week we went (with Roger and Sheila) to the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy which features the work, 'Shooting into the Corner', in which, every 20 minutes, a canon is fired which discharges 'shells' of red wax though one of the RA doorways.

When the exhibition began, it looked like this...




Now it looks a whole lot messier...

Bloodshot IV

The young man responsible for firing the canon on the day of our visit (not the one in the film above), sat behind the stacked up shells of wax intently reading until the time came to fire the next missile, which he undertook with an imperious toss of his hair and the melodramatic flourish of a seasoned post-modern existentialist that was ludicrous but, also, happily hilarious.

Target

Another chunk of way having hurtled through the gallery at 50 miles an hour and splattered against the wall of the farther room. After which, the arty-artilleryman made a theatrical exit, returning to his book which was, in all likelihood, one of the lesser-known works of Kierkegaard.

Cannon Fodder
There were lots of intriguing exhibits on show which we weren't able to photograph, but which are glimpsed in this film...



The important thing about Kapoor is to respond to and enjoy what he does whilst, at all costs, avoiding the inevitably pretentious statements that art-fancier's attach to his work and with which the accompanying guide is liberally laced. To wit...

The drama of 'Shooting into the Corner' takes place in a space set apart, rather like a boxing ring, a ritual arena in which a symbolic act of violence is allowed to occur... The world also merges the boundaries of painting and sculpture. With connotations of action painting and references to artists such as Jackson Pollock, Kapoor implies that the very act of making a mark is violent. And yet, out of this violence, something of beauty arises. Blah-blah, blah-blah-blah...

The question that exercised us during our visit was how the Royal Academy cleaners are going to get rid of all the wax that Mr Kapoor has splattered all over the interior of Burlington House.

Ever the librarians, Sheila and Roger tracked down an answer in the pages of The Guardian. The answer is, apparently, orange-oil. Which is great to know, except that with the amount of wax they've got to contend with, Londoners are going to be lucky if they find any oranges in their Christmas stockings this year...

Anyway, outside the RA is one of Kapoor's most exciting sculptures: 'Tall Tree and the Eye'...

Bubbles III
Dwarfing the bronze statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Kapoor has constructed a tower of gleaming bubbles (or, bearing in mind the season, baubles), each reflecting the surroundings - including the other baubles and their reflections - and which is, quite simply, the best Christmas Tree in town this year...

Sir Joshua and Mr Kapoor I

Bubbles VI

Bubbles & Flag II

See it before the exhibition ends in three days time, on 11 December.

And view more images of Kapoor's sculpture in my flickr set, Arty-facts.

LATER: By the way, for 'canon' (above) please read 'cannon'. I decided not to correct this error as it would make nonsense of Sheila's comment (below)!

Images: Brian Sibley and David Weeks, © 2009

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Monday, December 07, 2009

PROGRESS AT LAST!

Those nice people at the BBC website have heeded my complaint about illustrating my radio dramatisation of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (currently accessible from Radio 7 via iPlayer) with a picture of the first Pilgrim Fathers...

Click on images to enlarge

Those transatlantic tourists - an understandable error occurring, as it did, in the run up to Thanksgiving - have now happily made way for by an illustration of the maidens residing in the House Beautiful (Discretion, Prudence, Piety and Charity) getting Christian geared up in the Whole Armour of God before heading off on the road to the Celestial City...


This military attire comes in rather handy when, not long afterwards, Christian runs into a demonic creature named Apollyon...


Of course, the didactic nature of Bunyan's book is not to everyone's taste, but I think (hope) that my version - told, as it is, within the context of Bunyan's own trials and imprisonment, captures the spirit of his Christian apologetics while opening up the story to a slightly more contemporary interpretation.

Anyway, many thanks for the amendment, BBC: it is much appreciated!

I could, of course, quibble about the difference between what the website describes as a 'parable' and (what The Pilgrim's Progress actually is) an 'allegory', but that would be lacking in, if not piety, then at least discretion, prudence and charity!

Sunday, December 06, 2009

GOD HELP US, EVERYONE!

Some of you - aware that I have a predilection for a certain seasonal classic by Chas Dickens Esq - will have been waiting for me to blog about the new Jim Carrey-in-(more or less)-all-parts version of A Christmas Carol...


As you probably know, I have seen and heard, in my time, a great many versions of A Christmas Carol on stage, film, TV, radio and recordings: the much-lauded Alistair Sim movie; Patrick Stewart's one-man theatre show, Bill Murray's pastiche, Scrooged; musicals, operas and ballets; updated versions, Americanised versions, black, Jewish and female versions (the gay interpretation must be soon!); versions featuring the Muppets, the Flintstones and the Jetsons, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Mr Magoo and even - heaven help me - Barbie!

I have even (modestly) added to the canon with a stage adaptation of my own, a radio programme and a book - A Christmas Carol: The Unsung Story - cataloguing the history of Dickens' little classic and what we have done with it since.

The only people who know as much as me about A Christmas Carol are my good friend Boll Weavil (who shares this seasonally adjusted obsession) and my long-suffering David who has loyally looked at and listened to most, if not all, of the versions in my not inconsiderable collection! In fact he once spent a car journey listening to Miriam Margolyes rattle through the unabridged text at a rate of knots (in order for it to be able to fit onto a double-cassette) while I slept though the entire performance in the passenger seat!

Anyway...

When you have experienced that much Humbugging, it's hard to be neutral about a new adaptation especially one that is created by Robert (Back to the Future/Who Framed Roger Rabbit/Forrest Gump) Zemeckis, using his now preferred medium of motion capture animation (as seen in Polar Express and Beowulf) as well as being projected in motion-sickness-inducing 3-D and with Jim Carrey playing Scrooge at various ages through his life and the three spirits who haunt his Christmas Eve.


I saw this new Carol - 'Disney's A Christmas Carol', by the way - at London's IMAX several weeks ago in very agreeable company (David, Irascian and Polkadotsoph) but felt it would be indecent to blog about such a totally Christmassy Christmas film before bonfire night and Poppy Day had been and gone... But, with just a little over two weeks to go to Christmas, I can put off the task no longer...

By now, you may well have read, heard or seen the fairly uniformly negative reviews of this movie and, indeed, it is not above criticism. Personally - apart from being something of a Carrey-phobe - I am not a lover of mo-cap other than as part of the creation of such characters as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings and find that when 'real' people are animated using this method they invariably tend to have the appearance of rather bad waxworks, so there is something creepy (presumably unintentionally) about Gary Oldman's not-quite-look-alike Bob Cratchit and (below) Colin Firth as Scrooge's genial nephew


I am reminded of some of those illustrators who slavishly base their pictures on photographs and, as a result, tend to produce something that looks neither illustrative or lifelike.

In the case of A Christmas Carol, it is, perhaps, ironic - for a process that seeks to replicate the human form - that it is the highly caricatured Scrooge that works best in terms of believability.

Perhaps we are so used to suspending our disbelief when watching animated films that they simply too disorientating when they stray too close to reality...

On the plus side, the film is - for the most part - extremely faithful to Dickens' text, to the extent of including scenes and dialogue usually stripped away by the dramatists and screenwriters intent on interpolating their own 'reading' of the characters.

But the heart of the story - the tale of one man's reformation from squeezing, wrenching, gasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner to a man born anew on Christmas morning - needs, in theatrical presentation, some sense of understanding of why Ebenezer Scrooge became the man that he was and why, in being shown ghosts of his past and shadows of the future (as well as the present being enjoyed and celebrated by others) he relents and mends his ways. That subtlety is unfortunately absent.

The trailer, as you can see here, suggests an 'all-action' movie, but then Hollywood expects nothing less...




In reality, much of the film is a series of static, wordy (often ponderous) tableaux infused with, by and large, a well-observed evocation of Victorian London - avoiding the over-tinseled Christmas embellishments of several film versions of the book - and interrupted by exhilarating (or nauseous-making, depending on your fondness for roller-coasters) episodes involving dizzying expeditions over the London rooftops: skimming church spires, chimney pots and weather vanes.

These sequences are staggeringly enhanced by the all-stops-out 3-D effects confirming that, for the foreseeable future, 3-D is not some passing a fad. Curiously, however, the single most effective moment was, perhaps, the simplest: the sense of being in the midst of falling snow.

All of that said, there are some wonderfully realised moments such as the arrival of the ghost of Jacob Marley, a lurid, icy green vision of terror that captures Dickens' taste for Grand Guignol.


So, it's another Scrooge for the book (if I ever get to update it) and whilst I still find digitally-created humans a tad too creepy to believe in, let alone like, I am sure that this form of animation will continue to be refined and developed so that, in years to come, people will look back at this Disney-Dickens version of A Christmas Carol as being another milestone in the refinement of a medium that - in over a hundred years - has never once stopped evolving.

You will find an interesting take on the moral taught by this new Christmas Carol on my friend John Wilkinson's website WalesHome.org.

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Saturday, December 05, 2009

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WALT!

Walt Disney was born 108 years ago, today: 5 December, 1901...


MICKEY HAPPY RETURNS!

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Friday, December 04, 2009

CALL THAT PROGRESS?

They've done it again! The BBC! Shoving out some of my old programmes on Radio 7 without even the common decency to tell me they were repeating my work for which, I might add, they pay a minute pittance that makes peanuts look like a banquet!

This time it was my three-part dramatisation of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress which I only discovered had been revived because a listener kindly wrote to express his appreciation -- thank you, Mark W!

Observant readers of this blog will recall that this has happened before with the self-same series - just over a year ago!

My version of Bunyan's famous allegorical story starred Anton Rogers, Neil Dudgeon, Alec McCowen, Anna Massey, Don Warrington, Peter Bowles and Derek Waring and there's still time to tune into the saga of Christian's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City taking advantage of BBC iPlayer.

However, I can't resist pointing out the total sloppiness of the BBC's on-line picture researcher who selected the image for their programme page...


This has absolutely nothing to do with The Pilgrim's Progress but shows, instead, the Pilgrim FATHERS landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620

Yes, John Bunyan was a Puritan, but he certainly wasn't among those, depicted in Charles Lucy's iconic painting of those 17th Century British tourists taking their first trip to the USA! There's a good reason for this, Bunyan wasn't born till 1628!

Still, I suppose those other pilgrims did view the New World as the Promised Land...

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Thursday, December 03, 2009

BALANCING ACTS

Time to reveal the results of the recent CAPTION COMPETITION which yielded a high turn out of quality captions making this a particularly difficult challenge for the judge, Polkadots & Moonbeams who, as usual, evaluated the entries without knowing the names of the entrants.

There were some recurrent themes such as sneezing and (not surprisingly) underwear, but there was great variety in the humour: surrealism, silliness, sexual innuendo and honest-to-goodness smuttiness!

So, here's a reminder of the image you were asked to caption...


And here are the RESULTS beginning with a very worthy set of (alphabetically ordered)...

RUNNERS-UP
Boll Weavil

"Just hold that a second. Now look! You can see my house from here!"

"Say what you like, I still prefer good old Missionary myself."

"I spy a David Beckham sock if I'm not much mistaken...."

David Weeks

Man facing the camera: "Don't tell me now that the lighting is wrong... with this blue-screen, nobody's going to care, anyway!"

Gill


Man standing on his feet: "Watch out lads, I'm going to sneeze!"

Good Dog

Edward wished he had stuck to reading out facts about the Empire State Building in the guidebook and had never noticed the piece in The New York Times announcing that not enough men do spot checks for any physical signs of testicular cancer.

“Next time it’s my turn to be Fay Wray!

Unlike the previous, unfortunately accident–prone contestants, Larry, Barry and Harry hoped that they would only be a big hit with the judges.

Rob Cox

Man at the top (thinks): "I'm taking all the risks here and getting none of the fun!!"

Sharon M

Guy at top (to guy with head up on right): "How come you always end up getting the b**w-j*b?"

Sheila


Man standing: "Hang on a minute, guys, I'm going to sneeze!"

Man doing handstand: "Lovely view from up here!"
Other two: "Mmm..."

Suzanne


"If this doesn't cure my back ache, nothing will!"

Horizontal guy: "Hey, great view from here, but I still can't see where your block is!"

"OK, so we've got the lift, all we need now is the music! Cop this one, Len Goodman!"


EDITOR'S CHOICE


Good Dog

Dermot had heard 5th Avenue’s new chiropractors were unconventional but this was just taking the piss.

Boll Weavil

Day Three of the '2010 Sibley Calendar' shoot and the poses get ever more bizarre....

Suzanne

"Whose bright idea was it, anyway, to play Twister?"

Pelva

"I'm going to sue Calvin Klein for danger money!"

Elaine


"Glad that Viagra works on other appendages as well."

HIGHLY COMMENDED

Good Dog

Although the view was spectacular, Gary was sure Larry and Harry were still punishing him for failing to arrange a fourth for bridge.

David Weeks

"OK, I'm looking closely, but I still can't tell which of these pants were washed in Persil."

Roger

"Give me an 'N'. Give me a 'Y'..." NYU Athletics team cheerleaders limber up.


THIRD PLACE

Andy J Latham

Guy at the bottom: "Christ, Dave, you bring us all the way up here and this is the view I get?!"

SECOND PLACE

Good Dog

After a busy morning stopping everyone from having fun, New York’s Health & Safety officers take the rest of the day off.

FIRST PLACE

Selected (in the words of the judge) for "wit, context and general pants-awareness"...

Boll Weavil

"Once it was enough to just wear a pair of underpants to get into the Sibley Blog!"


Thanks to everyone for joining in! Great entries all round! Note to self: Must have more caption competitions in 2010...

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