Category Archives: Something for the weekend

Something for the weekend

17.12.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

George Whitman died on Wednesday. He was 98 and the legendary proprietor of the most romantic bookshop in the world, Shakespeare and Company on the Seine in Paris. Do read James Campbell’s Guardian obituary, and also Jeanette Winterson’s short tribute. Like many another, long ago thanks to his generosity I slept a couple of nights in one of the beds among the shelves. I remember it was the best of times (to be young and in Paris was very heaven) and the worst of times (the bedbugs were truly vicious). Thanks to the invaluable Brain Pickings, I was charmed by the Spike Jonze animated short Mourir auprès de toi (co-directed with Simon Cahn and made with designer Olympia Le-Tan) that is set after hours in Shakespeare and Company (that’s a framegrab above). Across the jump, you’ll find – as usual (at least I can keep up with the weekend blogs, if not the weekday ones) – nine other recommendations for alternative viewing online.
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Something for the weekend

10.12.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

I know, I know – we’ve all seen too many time-lapse films over the past couple of years, but this one really is pretty special. The High Dynamic Range imaging by French photographer Tanguy Louvigny illuminates the French countryside in astonishing ways – and his short compilation is the perfect antidote to a gloomy December day. Thanks to the invaluable Open Culture site for alerting me to this – and for explaining a little of how Louvigny achieves these truly remarkable moving timelapses (he built his own robotic three-axis motion system). Across the jump, nine further free and legal online alternatives to the final of some kind of talent show that I believe is taking place this weekend.
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Something for the weekend

3.12.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

We have highlighted the excellent Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire website before. But there’s a further excuse now with the publication of two new books linked to its project: Empire and Film and Film and the End of Empire, both edited by Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe. Also, drawing attention to its very good freely accessible print of Basil Wright’s still remarkable Song of Ceylon (1934, above), started under the Empire Marketing Board and finished by the GPO Film Unit, offers a link back to this blog’s discussion of the GPO’s films from the 1930s. There’s much else to explore at Colonial Film, including numerous other films in full and extensive notes about films from and about the Empire. Below, nine further recommendations for alternative weekend viewing freely and (mostly) legally available online.
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Something for the weekend

26.11.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

Launched this week, with 200 hours of  freely accessible streamed video, is the immensely welcome new website of the East Anglian Film Archive. The archive’s collection (about which there is more here) features films from 1896 to the present; among the highlights of the available selection are programmes from Anglia Television and the BBC’s output for the East of England. There are countless treasures – to some of which we’ll return in future weeks – but today’s choice is the cherishable Introducing Anglia, the first programme shown by the new regional ITV station on 27 October 1959. Host Drew Russell, with the accent of a mid-Atlantic Scotsman, cues up delights to come, including what he calls ‘a torrid love scene’ from the rehearsals of Anglia’s first television drama The Violent Years starring Laurence Harvey and Hildegard Knef (we see a rather less-than-torrid kiss). There’s much here of interest for the television historian, as well as a good deal of innocent amusement, not least courtesy of children’s television presenters Roger Gage and Susan Hampshire (long before The Forsyte Saga) singing ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’. Below, nine more treats freely available online as alternatives to ITV’s offerings more than fifty years on.
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Something for the weekend

19.11.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

It’s been something of a crazy week – and I’m acutely aware that I’ve neglected the blog. We’re finishing off my colleague Linda Zuck’s film for More 4, Vic Reeves’ Turner Prize moments (to be broadcast on 4 December), and preparing for an announcement of a new Shakespeare film for television this coming Thursday. There are iPad apps to which we’re contributing, another big performance film (hopefully) for the end of next year, and much more besides. Not to mention the continuing research work on the Screen Plays: Theatre Plays on British Television project. Apologies – I’ll do better next week. Meanwhile, here’s the weekend’s usual list of free (and largely legal) recommendations of alternative online viewing. First off, don’t forget the first and second episodes of The Killing, Series Two, above, at 9pm on BBCFour tonight and on iPlayer afterwards – nine more below.
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Something for the weekend

12.11.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

Yesterday’s review of The Projection of Britain: A History of the GPO Film Unit attracted a lot of traffic (for which, much thanks). For those interested in British documentaries of the 1930s (and at other times too), the BFI’s recently launched The Reel History of Britain (still in beta) is a treasure trove of films available for free at full-length, including the two documentaries on which John Grierson took a director’s credit: Drifters (1929) and Granton Trawler (1934). But Grierson’s sister Marion was also a significant filmmaker, even if until recently she has been eclipsed by her more far more celebrated relation. The Reel History… features her fascinating Beside the Seaside (1935, above), made not for the GPO but for the Strand Film Company. There are numerous interesting angles to this, including W. H. Auden’s (minimalist) commentary and the camera’s delight in bodies in motion. Across the jump, nine more recommendations for alternative weekend viewing.
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Something for the weekend

5.11.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

Let’s celebrate some inspired joined-up thinking from the BBC music departments. Symphony is a new four-part BBC Four series hosted by Simon Russell Beale about the development of the central orchestral form. Part one, Genesis and Genius, is on iPlayer for a month. Along with it comes an extensive series of Radio 3 broadcasts and a wonderful Music Showcase selection of audio and video associated with the series (still in alpha). And then there’s a totally delightful video on YouTube of last Thursday’s ‘pop-up’ performance at St Pancras (above) by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Symphony Chorus of the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth – it deserves a million-plus views. There’s even a back-up OpenLearn site from the Open University (with a free introductory course to music theory). Let’s count all that as two of the choices for this weekend’s alternative viewing – and move on to another (unrelated) eight in the jump.
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Something for the weekend

29.10.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

The ‘YouTube film’ Life in a Day is up on YouTube now in a great print. For this ground-breaking project 4,500 hours of footage shot on 24 July 2010 was contributed as 80,000 items from people around the world and director Kevin Jackson carved out the impressive ninety-minute cut. On its theatrical release David Gritten for the Telegraph spoke with the director and the Guardian‘s Andrew Pulver reviewed the film. Andrew Schenker for Slant offered an alternative view: ‘Drawing on a horde of pedestrian user-generated content, embracing a faux-populism of the least committed variety, the film aims to celebrate a humanity that may embrace different customs and beliefs, but is essentially the same all over. In Macdonald’s project, what ultimately unites mankind is its banality.’ And in the rest of this post, more free suggestions for viewing alternatives this weekend.
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Something for the weekend

22.10.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

Now that I’m back online, here are this weekend’s recommended viewing choices. The visual arts event of the week was the opening of the Turner Prize 2011 exhibition at BALTIC, and there are brief interviews with the four short-listed artists on the Channel 4 web site. These are the shorts made by Tate, only one of which (with Tate branding) is so far also available via the gallery’s online channel as Turner Prize 2011 – George Shaw; in this, the artist speaks about his rigorously detailed paintings of a Coventry housing estate (detail above from The age of bullshit, 2010′; courtesy Wilkinson).
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Something for the weekend

15.10.2011 posted by Category: Something for the weekend
Something for the weekend

On several previous occasions we’ve highlighted Adam Curtis’ archive blog, The Medium and the Message (hosted – amazingly – by the BBC), but his two recent posts The curse of TINA and The curse of TINA, part two: learning to hug are perhaps his most dazzling to date. The first relates the tale of the rise of the modern think tank, and is a frankly incredible story of, as he says, ‘chickens, pirate radio, retired colonels, Jean Paul Sartre, Screaming Lord Sutch, [with] at its heart is a dramatic and brutal killing committed by one of the very men who helped bring about the resurgence of the free market in Britain.’ Learning to hug charts the rise of the television hug, embracing the Esalen Institute, the remarkable documentary Fourteen Days in May, Anna Neagle, Changing Rooms and Enoch Powell. Some of the film extracts are, simply, jaw-dropping. Nothing in today’s nine other recommendations comes close, but each has something rich and strange to offer.


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