Always looking for the new and different, I am extending this blog’s ‘Links for the weekend’ (see tomorrow) with a complementary post that features just videos. Which doesn’t mean that I won’t include videos in the ‘Links’ but rather that this will provide me with a focus to look out different kinds of stuff. Some of the videos will be topical (like the Quentin Tarantino interview below), while others may be quirky choices from long ago that I happened across during the week. Wherever possible, I will embed the videos here, but on occasions I will include links to sites that do not allow this. I will also aim to include things that are going to stay around, so this is not the place for time-restricted BBC iPlayer tips. As for the detail above of Paul Emsley’s new portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge, unveiled yesterday at the National Portrait Gallery, see no 10 below. read more »
Hard though it is to believe, it is nearly seventeen years since we went backstage at the Royal Opera House in the BBC fly-on-the-wall series The House. Michael Kaiser, who later became general director of Covent Garden, summed up reactions to the series: ‘The House only confirmed the general belief that the Royal Opera House was, at best, incompetent, and, at worst, completely devoted to the needs of the rich.’ Seventeen years is a long time in the media (and everywhere else), and how different was the backstage picture on offer in Royal Opera LIVE broadcast online on Monday. I live-blogged the event in a post that has proved pleasingly popular, but – not least because this felt like a game-changer in the ways cultural organisations work with the media – I want to return to it here and offer further thoughts. read more »
20:16 I’m won over – not by the switching at The Space but by the view of the performance that the ‘mix’ channel offers. (Suzy Klein, incidentally, doing a great job.) And with that, I think I’m going to sign off and enjoy the rest of the stream – the end of Die Walkure is, after all, among the most beautiful twenty or so minutes of music ever composed. Thanks to the Guardian, The Space and most of all the Royal Opera for a fascinating day – I’m going to mull on all this and post some more considered thoughts tomorrow.
20:09 In the accompanying audio, Suzy is talking with director Keith Warner, who is providing the kind of commentary that we’re accustomed to getting on DVDs. That’s worthwhile – and I’m warming to the visual mix with the cues and backstage shots. The workings of the show are being exposed in a way that I’ve never seen before. Definitely worth the effort.
One of the things you quickly learn as a producer is not to use ‘Happy Birthday to you’ in a film. Remarkably, the song remains in copyright, and as a consequence, you need to secure clearance for its use and pay a fee. In You say it’s your birthday in 2011 Paul Collins for Slate questioned whether the copyright claim really stands up – and pointed out that the original tune, ‘Good morning to all’ (above), written by Louisville kindergarten teachers Patty and Mildred Hill, has long been in the public domain. Now – and how great is this – the Free Music Archive and Creative Commons have launched a contest to replace the song with one that can be licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution license. If you fancy having a go, you have until 13 January to submit an entry. As for the rest of my new year links, which follow across the jump, h/ts, among others, to @filmstudiesff, @KnightLAT, @mia_out, @adrianmartin25, @brainpicker, @alexismadrigal and @tiffanyjenkins. read more »
Once again it’s the time of the year when I look back to see what lay ahead for viewers fifty years ago. Twelve months ago I posted The TV year ahead… 1962, and our blog archive has my post about the television year that was 1960 as well as the one for 1961. Today let’s imagine it is 4 January 1963 and anticipate what television has in store over the coming months. Yes, I know, we can hardly contain our excitement about the first television appearances of The Beatles and, in the autumn, the premiere episodes of Doctor Who. But there are other debut pleasures too, including The Human Jungle and Space Patrol. World in Action starts in the coming year too, and the life of the Independent Television Authority will be extended until 1976. October will bring the good news that excise duty of £1 on the UK television licence fee is abolished, although at the same time the cost of the fee itself will be increased by that same £1 to the princely sum of £4. read more »
At the end of each year our friend and colleague Michael Jackson – formerly Chief Executive of Channel 4 and now living in the United States – compiles a list of films he has discovered and appreciated in the previous twelve months. He sends it to friends and kindly lets us syndicate it here. As before we have added some links and clips, plus UK availability.
Michael: As a kind of alternative holiday card this is my annual list – now five years old – of the best films I saw for the first time this year culled from the seemingly infinite catalogs of films from the hundred year and more history of cinema – films that are part of a shadow universe of repertory cinemas, Turner Classic Movies, DVDs and Netflix. I know it’s possible to get carried away with enthusiasm for a new discovery – but I hope you’ll find at least a couple of films here that you are happy to see for the first time or to re-discover.
The most popular strand of this blog is the ‘Links for the week’ feature that I aim to post each Sunday. Although I pick up my recommendations from Twitter and Facebook as well as my general reading around the web, many of the links that I include come from a core of blogs that I find particularly valuable and that constantly engage and enlighten me. So for this final ‘Links’ post of the year I thought I would highlight twelve of those blogs and pick out a single post from each from 2012. Normal service will be resumed next Sunday. Happy New Year! read more »
Following is my contribution to the week of top tens, and the last of this half-dozen offerings. Again – apart from the first – this in no particular order. Many thanks to Keith, Linda, Todd, Simon and Louise for the earlier posts – and to you for reading; these blogs have proved pleasingly popular through the week. Happy New Year – and very best wishes for a stimulating and productive 2013.
1. Olympics opening ceremony
So much has been written about this spectacular – and I have no doubt that there is much more analysis to come. We linked to thirty of the best articles that appeared in the immediate aftermath (here, here and here), and each conveyed an aspect of its unique combination of poetry and politics, of history and the present, of spectacle and awe, of thought and emotion, all on the grandest scale and the biggest stage. Bravo, Dabby Boyle and all your colleagues, bravo, bravo. read more »
Our top tens of the year continue with the selection of our head of business development, Louise Machin. The final choice follows tomorrow.
Louise: In no particular order, this is my top ten list of things I enjoyed especially in 2012. Several of them are highlights drawn from a month-long road trip to California taken in August with my husband and three small boys, which was a fabulous experience for all of us.
1. Lotte Mullan, Green Note in Camden, London
My friend, Lotte sings so beautifully and it was a real pleasure to hear her play Green Note in April. The song I have selected speaks movingly about self-esteem and is from her first self-released album, Plain Jane.
Our cultural top tens for the year continue with this selection by our colleague at Illuminations Films, producer Simon Field.
Simon: This is not so much a top ten, but more a selection of memorable events and experiences over the last year from January through to December. (The image above is of No. 2 below.)
1. James Benning’s Small Roads and Heinz Emigholtz’s Parabeton – Pier Luigi Nervi and Roman Concrete
In a year when I visited fewer festivals than in previous years, two complementary highpoints from the festivals of Rotterdam and Berlin by two film-makers whose work I try to follow and which these days is most reliably caught at festivals. Benning’s is a characteristic study in landscape, of roads in the American west and south in different weathers, making subtle use of the digital which he has now embraced after years of commitment to 16mm. (For more, see Robert Koehler’s review for Variety.) Emigholtz’s film is part of his remarkable on-going series of detailed studies of major buildings by modern architects from the well-known like Adolf Loos and Louis Sullivan to the less familiar, like Bruce Goff and Rudolf Schindler. They are subtle and constrained works concentrating on the visual with sync sound, no commentary. (Neil Young reviews the film from Berlin for The Hollywood Reporter.) read more »
