UNVEILING BECKS

One of my regular reader-correspondents cheekily asked the other day when I was going to blog the latest David Beckham posters for Georgio Armani... I won't reveal the identity of this lascivious individual, but suffice it to say it was not the Duchess!

Anyway, since it is always my aim to satisfy my readers' desires, here is one of those posters being unveiled at Macy's, Union Sqaure, San Francisco...



OK? Satisfied now?

CHANGING MEDICATION

I recently mistyped Paracetamol as

Pracetamol

Spell-check kindly offered me the correction...

Peacetime

Which is not a bad approximation of what Paracetamol offers the pain-sufferer!

Talking of tablets...

I've just been put on a new medication the possible side-effects of which include: difficulty finding words, difficulty with thinking, memory impairment and confusion (nothing new there then!), panic attacks, hallucinations and abnormal dreams (does anyone have normal dreams?) and... er... changes in SEXUAL INTEREST----

WHAT??

Oh, my god! Not WOMEN!! Not my time of life!!

UN-BIRTHDAY

Ooops!! Thanks to those who have kindly wished me a Happy Birthday but it's not actually my birthday, today... I was writing an advance blog using Blogger's Sheduled Post system which - notionally - permits you to predate your posts.

For some reason, however, Blogger (which is presumably on the blink) decided to post my birthday blog for 14 July a full two weeks early!!

Anyway, your good wishes were, of course, gratefully received and will be kept and opened on the appropriate day!

NEWS FROM NARNIA

It was a strange weekend: on Saturday I noticed, splashed across the front page of the Daily Mail, an announcement that the paper - in association with the BBC - was marking the opening of the Walden Films/Disney movie, Prince Caspian with a free copy of an audio-book version of the story for EVERY READER!

"Ooo, that's good!" I thought. Then I realised that the audio-book on offer was --- none other than MY OWN BBC radio dramatisation!

So, nice of the Beeb to tell me about this... Even nicer of them to give away these CDs rather than sell them so that the dramatist and cast could earn a few pennies from the sale!!

Oh well... Needless to say, I've sent for my freebie: grateful to have something since I obviously won't have to bother about checking the next BBC royalty statement!

Do me a favour and make sure you send for your free copy: let's cost the BBC as much as we can!

And do note, won't you, that they're "also giving you the chance to get the other two books in the trilogy - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Voyage of the 'Dawn Treader' - for the exceptional price of just £12.99."

Funny that, I didn't know it was a trilogy - in fact, I always thought there were seven 'Chronicles of Narnia'. Good job the authoritatively researched journalism of the Daily Mail was there to put me right...

Then, on Sunday evening, I was prattling away on the subject of C S Lewis and the books (and films) about Narnia on BBC Radio 4's kid's programme, Go4It, with presenter Barney Harwood and three young Narnia fans.

Happily, since the show was pre-recorded, I didn't know about the great BBC/Daily Mail Give Away and really enjoyed being quizzed by the bright, inquisitive youngsters. All of them - I'm pleased to report - had, at some point, tried to find their own way into Narnia through a wardrobe or, in one case, an airing cupboard!

If you - or your kids - missed the broadcast, you can Listen Again (at least for the next seven days) on the Go4It website.

As for the latest Narnian film: it has Peter-Jackson-Wetaesqaue special effects (battlefields covered with bristling legions of digital warriors and trundling siege machines) and its undeniable kinship with The Lord of the Rings films is enhanced by the stunning New Zealand locations.

When the trailer's narrator tells potential viewers, "Everything you know is about to change", he is not far off the mark since the film invents several new dramatic highlights, including an elaborate nighttime attack on the villain's castle that has no basis in Lewis' book and a spectacular return of the White Witch which is a wild extrapolation of the original text.

Then there are the numerous tweakings of character relationships - tensions between the High King Peter and Prince Caspian, a hint at burgeoning romantic feelings between Susan and the Prince, but there is also an almost breathless sense of excitement, wonder and pure magic that serves C S Lewis' intentions well and which, mercifully, is not totally subjugated to the demands to make what is, essentially, a children's story into a epic fantasy-spectacular for movie-goers of all ages.

Anyway, if you haven't already seen it, you'll get a sense of what's in store from the trailer...

SING A SONG OF SEVEN

I was recently tagged by Good Dog as follows:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now.

Musically speaking, I'm not exactly known for being 'right into' anything - except a lot of very diverse classical music which I've discounted here - but I'm going to have a go!

So, here goes.............

First off is a reasonably contemporary performance (and the only one in my seven!): Jamie Cullum playing and singing the Stanley Adams-Maria Grever number, 'What A Difference A Day Made'.

I was hugely excited when I first heard Cullum's debut album, Twentysomething, and whilst his subsequent albums have rather failed to live up to my expectations, I still love his free-fall piano playing and that incredible voice - youthfully hopeful, smokily mature - which combine to create a mood that is both aspirational and nostalgic...

Next, and inevitably, is a Disney number! I often listen to Disney songs and I once made a BBC radio series about the studio's musical output. I have many favorites including (obviously) 'When You Wish Upon A Star' from Pinocchio and the entire original soundtrack from Mary Poppins which I play whenever I am feeling really depressed because it unfailingly lifts my spirits...

This is the title song from The Three Caballeros (1944) written by Ernesto Cortázar, Manuel Esperón and Ray Gilbert and featuring the Dinning Sisters, Ethel Smith at her famous electric organ (yep, you read that correctly) and the voice talents of Clarence Nash as Donald Duck, José Oliviera as José Carioca (he's the Brazilian, cigar-smoking parrot) and Joaquin Garay as the Mexican rooster, Panchito.

It's a memorable song filled with infectious energy and I can never hear it without smiling and seeing, in my mind's eye, those exhaustingly mad-cap visuals...

Now a duet between two of my favourite vocalists and musical legends: Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand.

Performed on The Judy Garland Show in 1963, Judy (aged 41) sings 'Get Happy', counterpointed by Barbra (then just 21) singing 'Happy Days Are Here Again'. Pure and enduring magic!

Camp? Well maybe just a tidge...

Let's get macho for a moment! Here's the cheese-grater voice of Tom Waits with a 1999 performance of 'Innocent When You Dream'.

I first heard this song when it was used in the 1995 Wayne Wang/Paul Auster film, Smoke, starring Harvey Keitel, William Hurt and Forest Whitaker. I bought the film soundtrack, played this one number to distraction and then set off in search of some more idiosyncratic numbers by Tom Waits.

The song is from his 1989 album, Frank's Wild Years and is called 'Innocent When You Dream' or 'Barroom'.

Some people probably find Tom too downbeat, melancholic -- OK, let's admit it, depressing! -- but I love that growling voice and the caustic sense of tragedy that runs through all his songs...

Now, in total contrast, here's a song by a performer I've 'discovered' only comparatively recently - the American singer and pianist, Blossom Dearie.

I love the languid, laid-back, late-night-café feel to her singing. This song, written specially for her by Michael Preston Barr and Dion McGregor, is from Ms Dearie's 1958 album Give Him the Ooh-La-La and was featured in the 2003 film My Life Without Me.

It is called, 'Try Your Wings'...

I have a passion for musicals (ancient and modern) and I could easily just have picked seven show songs including just about anything by Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, Jerry Herman or several dozen others - but, if I'm honest, probably nothing by Andrew Lloyd Webber!

Anyway, what I have picked is a song from one of my top-listed musicals (though there are those who argue that it is a modern opera): Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece, Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Recently Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter played Todd and his accomplice, Mrs Lovett, in Tim Burton's film version, but as much as I enjoyed it (which was a lot) the movie and the soundtrack album have sent me back to the original 1979 cast recording by Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou.

Here (from the 1982 National Tour of the show) is the wonderful Angela, here with George Hearn, singing my favourite song from the musical - the brilliant closing number to Act One: 'A Little Priest'...

For my last song, we stay with opera (or, more precisely, operetta): I frequently listen to recordings of songs by Gilbert and Sullivan - as opposed to Gilbert O'Sullivan - which have been part of my life since childhood. I was in school productions of The Pirates of Penzance (Third Policeman from the Left) and H M S Pinafore (Captain Corcoran) and, having a courtesy 'aunt' who was a member of the Kentish Opera Group, got to see a number of other Savoyard operas including The Gondoliers and The Mikado.

Among my first EPs were selections of songs from these operas and I learned several of the 'patter songs' by heart and have never forgotten them. In fact, if you'll pardon the name-dropping, I once performed this next song as a duet - albeit in private! - with Magnus Magnuson!

I love Gilbert's witty tongue-twisting lyrics and Sullivan's incomparable melodies, but as I wanted to end up with something that was pure FUN, here's a slightly abbreviated version of Ko-Ko's song, 'Tit Willow', from The Mikado --- as performed on The Muppet Show by Rowlf and Sam the Eagle...

So that's seven favourites and now I have to tag some others...

Who shall it be? Hmmm...

Well it'll have to be those with blogsites - although you really don't have to add all those YouTube links: the songs and singers will suffice - so here goes:Bentos (Bentos Animation); Ryan (Holy Embers of Dreams); Doug (Dog Rat); Bela (Slap of the Day); Andy (Andy's Animation)

And if any 'blogless' readers would like to tell me what they're listening to, I'll happily pass on your play lists and offerings can be checked out under More Thoughts below...

I can't find a currently available version of the Muppet Show version of 'Tit Willow', but the song was on Muppet Hits Take 2, so look out for it in charity shops and at boot fairs!

PASS THE PLANKTON

Just heard on BBC Radio 4:

"You're listening to Saturday Live: the essential plankton in the food-chain that is public service broadcasting..."

Er... Right... OK...

SECOND STAR TO THE RIGHT & BEYOND!

HAPPY 70th BIRTHDAY

to my friend

KATHRYN BEAUMONT

Kathryn has the distinction of being the only voice-artist to speak and sing for two of Walt Disney's animated heroines.

She was Alice in the 1950 film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland and Wendy in Disney's 1953 movie version of Peter Pan.

I first met Kathryn, some years ago when I was making a BBC radio series entitled Disney's Women and - I'm very happy to say - we became excellent friends.

Anyway, to those films that were to ensure Kathryn of immortality...

Like all much-loved movies with which we have grown up and know practically by heart, it can come as something of a surprise to find that they might easily have been very different to the way we know them now.

Many films go through a process of refinement during the filmmaking process, but this is never more true than in the case of animation, where a film can be in production for years - sometimes even decades.

Take Alice: at various times from 1932 onwards, Disney was toying with making a feature length film of Lewis Carroll's book and for a while was thinking of having a live-action Alice in an animated Wonderland.

Among those considered, over the years, for the role of Carroll's dream child were the already mature Mary Pickford and Ginger Rogers and young Luana Patten who had recently appeared in Disney's Fun and Fancy Free and Song of the South.

As it turned out, it ended up as a fully animated film, and with the twelve-year-old British-born Kathryn providing the voice for Alice alongside such celebrated vaudevillians as Ed Wynn, Jerry Colonna and Richard Hayden.

What is less well known is that Alice was originally to have featured a song that is now totally associated with a later Disney film based on J M Barrie's play Peter Pan...

I'll let Kathy explain...

I rather like the original plan but then we'd never have had that haunting song about the magical conceit that the Second Star to the Right is the way to Neverland...

You can read more about Kathryn on this well-illustrated fan-site.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS to KATHY, ALICE & WENDY!

FREE WILLY

Jacques Yves Cousteau once said...

No aquarium, no tank in a marine land, however spacious it may be, can begin to duplicate the conditions of the sea. And no dolphin who inhabits one of those aquariums or one of those marine lands can be considered normal.

And that must, I guess, also apply to a fountain - even if it is decorated with - er - dolphins...


Image: © Brian Sibley, 2008

ART-BREAKING

Overheard recently in the showroom of a gallery specialising in exquisite (and exquisitely expensive) glass sculpture:

WOMAN (to Salesperson):
Yes, yes... it is very beautiful... But, you see, the trouble is, our cleaning lady is something of a one-woman demolition squad!



Sculpture (not the one under discussion, but exquisite nonetheless): 'Wave of Spheres' by J D C Roman at Luna Angelica

MR SIBLEY GOES TO WASHINGTON

Now that Hilary Clinton has finally bowed out of the race for the Democratic candidacy in this year's US Presidential Election, I can reveal that America does still have a choice other than Barack Obama or John McCain.

This recent telecast will explain...



Thanks to my Campaign Manager, Mandy Davis, aka Diva of Deception.