Too good to wait until my Links post at the weekend:
Part I has been around a while (long enough to get more than 800,000 views);
Part II was posted in July. With thanks to @KevinTPorter.
(But I still really like The Newsroom.)
Header image: Aaron Sorkin speaking at the Oxford Union; © Pruneau / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0.
This is a little story about the joy of serendipitous discovery in the archives. I am working on a research paper about the ways in which Henry Moore and his works featured on television and in films during his lifetime. Central to the story of Moore on screen are the six films about the artist made by the great BBC filmmaker John Read, about which I have posted on several occasions including here. But for this paper I am undertaking a survey of as many of the other British films that I can find. The search took me yesterday to the always-welcoming and all-round admirable archive of the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green. On my list for viewing was Opus (1967), about which I knew precisely nothing. But what turned out to be a dazzling kaleidoscope of the arts in mid-’60s London was definitely the highlight of my day – before I later discovered it is available on a DVD set released by the BFI that was sitting at home in a (tall) pile waiting to be viewed. read more »
The RSC’s Richard II is two weeks into rehearsals and it is time for another production blog. The trailer gets completed by Dusthouse today and should be on view in cinemas and online at the end of the week. I will highlight that on the blog as soon as it is available to be shown. Dates and venues for cinema screenings in the USA and Sweden have now been announced (you can buy tickets here), with other countries to come very soon. And on Friday we released the second part of the production diary with Emma Hamilton, who plays the Queen in the production, reflecting on the first day of rehearsals. Above, is an image of Westminster Hall where the cast and crew went for a day out last Wednesday – and there are further reflections from the visit below.
So I was thinking I would find something a bit different as the lead for this week’s Links. Not Shakespeare again, nor movies or television. Then I read one of the scariest pieces of prose to have come my way in a very long time. Remarkably, it’s in the form of a Tim Flannery review of an academic volume in the latest edition of The New York Review of Books. Title: They’re taking over! Subject (I kid you not, and not least because I have been scared of them for decades): JELLYFISH. This is what the author of the book (and serious researcher), Lisa-ann Gershwin, says:
We are creating a world more like the late Precambrian than the late 1800s—a world where jellyfish ruled the seas and organisms with shells didn’t exist. We are creating a world where we humans may soon be unable to survive, or want to.
Be afraid, be very… Or just read on for some much more enjoyable links, with thanks this week to @MovieMail, @RalphRivera and @ThomasDixon2013. read more »
In March 1958, for the second programme of his ATV series Is Art Necessary?, Sir Kenneth Clark filmed at the British Museum with the sculptor Henry Moore. They did so at night, illuminating the ancient artworks, including the Elgin Marbles, with powerful torches. Many of the programmes in Is Art Necessary? survive in the archives, but seemingly not this one. Apart, that is, from a brief pre-titles sequence, with the two connoisseurs entering the museum. The complete film, far more than any other ‘lost’ trace of British television, is the single programme that I dream one day of discovering. read more »
Today was the Illuminations Summer outing. Seven of us went to see the Moore Rodin exhibition (on until 27 October) at the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green. The sun shone and the sky was blue, lunch at The Hoops Inn was rather special, the exhibition is terrific, and the grounds and studios are among the two or three best places to see modern art in Britain. Below are some further pictures, in addition to Three Piece Sculpture: Vertebrae, 1968 (above) and Large Reclining Figure, 1984 (below). But let’s just say here that it was pretty close to a perfect day.
OK, so I’m not the first person to notice this, but when I came across this clip last week I did find it fairly remarkable. HBO’s The Newsroom (above) which is a cable news drama written by the great and the good Aaron Sorkin, returned to Sky Atlantic last night. (For those of you just returned from Mars, Sorkin created The West Wing, wrote The Social Network and co-wrote Moneyball.) Yesterday’s show was S2 E1 (or the first episode of the second series) but last week to prep for that I was finishing the box set of S1. In episode 8 Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Solomon Hancock, a senior guy at the National Security Agency, meets clandestinely with news division president Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterson) in the New York Public Library. He wants to blow the whistle on the illegal practices of his employer…
The Royal Shakespeare Company’s Richard II cast is one week into rehearsals. Thoughts on the first day follow below, but first it’s my pleasure to introduce to you our Production Diary. Each week between now and the Live from Stratford-upon-Avon cinema broadcast on 13 November we are going to release a short video. Episode 1 features an interview with director Greg Doran (who is also, of course, Artistic Director of the RSC) and he does a very good job of explaining how the production diary will work across the next three months.
I am not sure if Jonathan Bate’s list of 100+ of the Best Books on Shakespeare has been around for a good while, but it’s new to me – and that feels like sufficient reason to feature it at the head of today’s Links. (Apologies by the way for absences in the past couple of weeks; I’m back for the start of the new term.) Bate is among the very best Shakespearean scholars writing today and one of the editors of The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works from Palgrave Macmillan (this is the one-volume edition I use most frequently, although nothing beats the individual volumes in the Arden series). He is also the author of The Genius of Shakespeare (1997), which if I had to recommend to someone just a single book about the Bard, this would be the one. It is described here as ‘a biography of the idea of Shakespeare and perceptions of his greatness’. Fortunately, we can all read many more than just one – and this list is a great place to start. There are many more links below, with thanks this week to @AndyKesson, @footage, @cinetourist, @KarlinMarc, @zilkerfilms, @filmstudiesff and @Z. read more »
Rehearsals for Richard II start tomorrow, so this week’s blog is, as it were, a little previous. (New readers should know that I am producing the Live from Stratford-upon-Avon cinema broadcast of the production on 13 November, and I am chronicling the journey towards that in regular posts on Mondays.) The past week has seen a lot of preparation across all departments but the company will only come together for the first time on Tuesday. As far as the filming goes, Chris McGill at Dusthouse has been editing the trailer, which is exciting, and we have been working with Greg Doran on the first of the production diary films. Look out for that on Friday. Also this week the RSC confirmed the full cast for the production, and I have included that, along with some further notes, below. read more »