30th May 2013
To Richmond Theatre for Headlong’s smart and stimulating adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull (until Saturday, then Bath and Derby). As directed by Blanche McIntyre, a fine cast including Abigail Cruttenden, Alexander Cobb and Pearl Chanda deliver John Donnelly’s remodelled text with passion and panache. This is a Seagull that, in part by developing a dialogue with Hamlet, foregrounds the play’s strong sense of the stage and of story-telling. (There’s a very good set of resources from Headlong’s website here.) It is the second modern staging of the play that I have seen in the past year and the fifth exceptionally fine Chekhov production. Which has prompted me to muse on the playwright, on television, on language and on onanism. read more »
28th May 2013
After a good few months of preparation the Royal Shakespeare Company reveals today that it is to begin live cinema broadcasts of selected productions from Stratford-upon-Avon. The first screening will be of Gregory Doran’s production of Richard II with David Tennant on Wednesday 13 November; at least two further productions will follow in 2014. You can register for further information here and also find out which cinemas are currently confirmed, although many more will be added over the coming months. And did I mention I’m producing the broadcast? For this I’m working not directly with Illuminations (although my relationship with the company remains as strong as ever) but for the RSC where I am also newly installed as the company’s Media Associate. I am very very excited about all this. Across the jump is an edited version of today’s press release – and you can confidently expect to follow the production’s progress in future posts. read more »
27th May 2013
I have spent the evening in the front row of Screen 4 at Clapham Picturehouse watching the Royal Opera House live broadcast of Rossini’s La donna del lago. I thought it truly splendid, and the best ROH broadcast that I have seen to date. By way of instant reactions, across the jump are 10 immediate observations and thoughts. read more »
26th May 2013
Another great selection from our colleague Todd MacDonald, who also features this weekly choice on his personal blog.
First up we have a video that I first watched once it won the Vimeo Awards Grand Prize in 2012. It really is one that delivers on repeat viewing and exemplifies the age-old mantra that the simplest ideas are often the best. The Everynone team have a broad collection of similarly enticing videos on their website including Moments which I cannnot even begin to understand the approach to its execution. Once you start to get a feel for Everynone’s work, all of the films maintain the idea of simplicity but you begin to wonder how they all came together when the range of material required to achieve them is so vast. Truly great work.
Symmetry from Everynone on Vimeo. read more »
25th May 2013
The question is, Is this the end of television as we know it? Henry Jenkins at Confessions of an aca-fan asks it with more acuity than most, highlighting a video (that I have embedded below) of an hour-long panel discussion at the recent research summit organised by the Annenberg Innovation Lab. If you want to understand something of this year’s seismic changes in television (or at least in the current American mode of the medium) then the contributions are well worth a watch. Jenkins also helpfully provides a host of links explicating some of the key shifts. On this topic, see also Google has a Trojan horse to disrupt TV – really, really big data by John Paul Titlow for read write. After the video, stay tuned for the usual mix of top clix (including a wonderful Hamlet mash up), with thanks this week to @JackofKent and @Chi_Humanities.
read more »
20th May 2013
… and one that I just don’t understand – but we’ll get to that. The re-hang of Tate Britain is complete and unquestionably and unreservedly is a cause for celebration. The main circuit of the galleries is now a walk through 500 years of British art, arranged in a rigorous chronology, and then there are break-out spaces with smaller shows. The main perambulation will remain largely in place for a good while, but the ‘In focus’ exhibitions will change regularly. On the basis of a first visit last Saturday, when the galleries were pleasantly busy but a long way off the crammed conditions at Tate Modern, my sense is that the place and its art has never looked better, more enriching and more stimulating. Brava, director Penelope Curtis, and bravo head of displays Chris Stephens, and their many collaborators. There is much I want to post about, but I thought as an opener I would simply celebrate some things I admired and appreciated in just a small number of spaces – the galleries devoted to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s as well as the two new Henry Moore rooms. read more »
19th May 2013
No doubt about the key cultural event of the week: the opening of the completed re-hang of 500 years of British art at Tate Britain. Tomorrow’s post will be 10 things I already love there – like the revelatory juxtapositions that puts a Lowry from 1948 alongside a Freud from a year earlier – and today’s first clutch of links is dedicated to the reactions of others. In the ‘pro’ camp is the Telegraph’s Richard Dorment (‘gloriously, satisfyingly, reactionary’) and Jackie Wullschlager for the Financial Times (‘a vibrant intellectual reappraisal’), but the response of Laura Cumming for the Observer is more mixed, while former Tate education officer Bridget Mackenzie is damning in Wordless at Tate Britain. You can get a sense for yourself from this Guardian picture gallery. Other links from the week are below, with thanks for recommendations due to @KeyframeDaily, @melissaterras, @emilynussbaum and @TylerGreenDC. read more »
18th May 2013
Another of our colleague Todd MacDonald’s weekly selections of interesting and intriguing videos…
Todd MacDonald: It’s all about in-camera techniques and masking tape this week, starting with some beautiful footage of London in 1927 – IN COLOUR!
London in 1927 from Tim Sparke on Vimeo. read more »
15th May 2013
By making available in perpetuity programmes without too many rights issues, the online BBC archive collections are proving to be invaluable resources for researching television history. A parallel archive release from BBC Four (oddly unlisted on the main archive index page) is a treasure trove of early programmes about archaeology, most of them from the 1950s and ’60s. Many of the films in this new group star the avuncular and mustachioed Sir Mortimer Wheeler who in the 1920s and ’30s, long before he became a television pundit, was a key figure in establishing a scientific basis for archaeology. Wheeler’s post-war television tourism in the classical world appears disarmingly primitive when compared with the CGI-heavy pilgrimages of today. But it allows us to trace with striking clarity the emergence of the television form of the presenter-led journey. This would flower at the end of the 1960s in Kenneth Clark’s landmark Civilisation (1969) and more than forty years on from that series remains dominant in factual television today. read more »
13th May 2013
Todd MacDonald’s choice of interesting new videos is a couple of days late this week but as he explains that’s the company’s fault, not his.
Todd MacDonald: This week I have been shooting films a lot more than watching them and as I write this, I am sitting in the cafe of The Hepworth Wakefield preparing for another. We are here to document an afternoon of performance entitled The Ultimate Form by Linder Sterling. The event promises to be an exciting collaboration of creatives including award-winning choreographer Kenneth Tindall, dancers from Northern Ballet, original composition by Stuart McCallum of The Cinematic Orchestra and costumes by fashion designer Richard Nicoll. You can watch the Illuminations trailer for The Ultimate Form here. Now, here are my selections for the week… read more »
