Et In Arcadia Ego

Been in the grip of cousins for 48 hours now - Super Squirrel, aged 10, Spider Monkey, aged 5, and Noisy Cricket, aged almost-2.

They've gone out for the day to give me a chance to work. The temptation to just watch Doctor Who is incredible.

Update on this morning's post: my sister has gleefully got in on the reality-bending. She thinks the Tommy Westphall theory is nuts, but she must have been kinda inspired for the idea she contributed this afternoon.

Torchwood was on, so I joined her to laugh at it, but was foiled because it happened to be one of my genuine favourite episodes: "Adam", in which the team is infiltrated by a man who can manipulate memories. Hilarity, and mucho angst ensuses, but my sister's stroke of genius is that potentially anything in that episode is dodgy. She identified the low-light of the episode, Jack's maudlin flashback - "it was the worst day of my life!" the Man of Plywood describes the massacre of his entire village, as if he'd missed the bus. Once he realises what Adam is, Jack is sorely tempted to ask him to unlock those memories he's supressed. Oceanic's idea is that, actually, it's part of a larger trap by Adam, and those very memories are also fake.

Pretty smart, fairly likely - and this is an especially alluring theory, because it calls into question the existance of Jack's brother Gray, and potentially removes from canon that awful season finale where Gray turns up, pretending to be a fascinating arch-nemesis, when in actual fact he's a wooden whine with a 30 year grudge against his brother on very shaky ground.

Hell, it potentially invalidates the second half of the season, and everything that comes after. Do characters who die in Adam's fake-memory season 2 actually die in real life? We can only wonder. Aw, we love Torchwood really. I'm looking forward to the week-long five-part miniseries. I'm looking forward to pointing, and laughing, for 45 minutes every day for a week. Then saying nasty things about it on my blog. It's a love-hate thing: we watch it cos we're desperate and the Mother Show isn't on air, then punish it for not being Doctor Who. Also, it's crap.



We're off to see relatives tomorrow: the worst of both worlds. It's my time off, so I want to either be totally self-denying and workworkworkworkwork till my hands bleed - or totally selfish, say by locking myself in a garret and finishing any one of my numerous projects. Any other time spent is time spent in limbo. My relatives must think I'm a real sulky sod, but it's because when I spend time with them they have me at my worst possible period. I'm not free to devote three hours to restructuring a single paragraph of prose (or rather, I am free, but I'd feel bad doing that - self-loathing!). I'm sans friends, and boy do I get disproportionately unhappy without them. And finally, no piano. It's only a small thing, but boy does it grate on me. In other words, I'm in a constant state of moping, I don't enjoy it and they surely can't. It's not that I don't want to spend time with them, goodness knows I do. I suppose, on my terms. My terms include friends, literature breaks and a piano. In other words, three methods to ignore them entirely.

Boy, is that bitter! I don't mean it nastily. I do want to spend time with my relatives. It'd just be nice if their presence didn't bar me from those few comforts that make me a sane and sociable individual. In any case, I'm back in Hampstead on Tuesday and will be spending the week chained to a desk, but it'd be nice to see people. It'll be like prison, with visiting hours, and profundis will be Realism in Cinema and Gladiatorial Games.


This evening has been brightened by me watching - enduring - the first two episodes of Blake's 7. Wikipedia describes the show as memorable for it's "dark tone, moral ambiguity and strong characterisation." So I should have been prepared, but something about the fact it was made in the 70s, combined with the fact my dad has been describing it as "tackier than Doctor Who".

Oh my. I know that too much of the aforementioned show has softened my resolve, made me really sensitive to violence because it's so tame, made me genuinely shocked by unpleasantness because it's so friendly. But it struck me at once how nihilistic the whole thing is. It starts with our hero being party to mass murder, and it's unpleasantly shot for retro television, yet via one of the most terrifyingly corrupt and efficient eeeevil dictatorships I have ever seen, it's only the beginning of 100 minutes of good, clean fun: multiple betrayal, manipulation, multiple paedophilia, downright cruelty, attempted (or in any case, threatened) rape, a 98% death count for named characters, even ones you think are going to make it onto the regular cast, and a total lack of joy.

And I love it. There's something very...well, non-rubbish about it. Ignoring some shoddy modelwork, and you do have to, the world is brilliantly drawn. It feels very real. And it works: when two NPCs discuss loudly and in public about how they're going to bring down the government, he actually takes notice. And because seemingly everyone in this world except Blake is a sour bastard, he then notifies the authorities, and everyone gets killed. I've just sat through 100 minutes of the hero, failing, failing, failing, failing. In fact, I know the ultimate spoiler about this show - and that alone is reason to keep watching. In other words, it understands irony and isn't afraid of being downright cruel. It's also shot very intensely. Yet the fact it's an old series make these things more shocking, because you know a new series has virtually no limit when it comes to sex, violence, swearing, even special effects. I've always been more intrigued and impressed in older works, because you do expect them to be tamer.

So why are we watching it? Well I do love my retro telly, and even though I'd just as enthusiastically watch Space: 1999 or Star Trek, this is fondly remembered by my dad. But Blake's 7 is special - it was created by Terry Nation, our own personal Davros and creator of the Dalek race, albeit in fiction. And there are literally hundreds of crossovers, be it in cast, crew, props or plots. Even in the first episode I spotted a futuristic sofa which the Sixth Doctor had sat on in Timelash. That episode stars Paul Darrow (a.k.a. Avon) in an appallingly hammy cameo, but I've heard it rumoured the entire thing was vengeance for an even hammier cameo by Colin Baker in Blake's 7. That'll be one to watch. There's a healthy fan theory they exist in the same universe, and one I support so far. Obviously, there are strong stylistic similarities, especially the cross-pollination of props and costumes, and in the way it is shot. I've found where to put it too - Frontier in Space has a human Federation with a president, like the one namechecked here. And Caves of Androzani, god those gun runners, are also straight out of this universe. To be honest, I didn't think retro telly got any nastier than that episode. It does: it's here, and roll on boxed set!

In this issue: why I'm enjoying Galactica, Starbuck vs. Cavil: the ultimate showdown, why A-Team is smarter than it looks, and Tommy Westphall's Universe explained

Bad dreams.

I've been thinking about Galactica again this morning. I've suddenly taken a shine to it, not sure why. Perhaps it's because Season 4 has so much more Cylon-y goodness - when she's not being use purely as a pair of walking breasts (hello Season 1?), Six has some fascinating scenes and developments. Perhaps it's because the plot is winding to a climax, and they've cut all the trivia. Perhaps because the "kids" were always more trivia? Perhaps, after 90 hours of television, because I've got to know the characters better than some members of my family?

Perhaps it's because I've been waiting for 14 episodes for Tigh to do something, and last week he finally did it, and I wasn't disappointed in the slightest with the results? And this coincided very neatly with Gaius finally getting on with a scene I've been waiting for since episode one.

Like Law and Order, another one of Oceanic's favourite shows, Galactica has a big split between what my brain has termed the "kids" and everyone else. Like Law and Order, the Police and Prosecutors interact all the time - but sometimes it'll be heavy for one, and sometimes heavy for the rest. I've never been that interested in the "Law". Sure, I like the Chief, and I like Callie, and Helo is great, and Starbuck is possibly the best female character of all time in a contest of one. But compared to what's going on with the President, the Admiral, Gaeta, Gaius and Tigh - well I can't match the enthusiasm. The "law" are important, for balance, to give a more human story. But "order" has all the characters I like, and most of the interest. Interestingly, Apollo has moved into "order" recently and become more interesting as a result.

In any case, it's been a fun morning. I've been reading the Aeneid - in Latin - but with a translation close by for the knotty bits. I'm some 8 pages in, when I came across this line from Aeneas to his disheartened companions:

"o passi graviora, dabit deus his quoque finem."
"You who have suffered worse, this also God will end"

It instantly reminded me of Galactica. Earth is the mythical home of humanity, and my dad was quick to point out it was strange to have such an advanced society still having polytheism was bizzare. In any case, I'm not yet sure whether they're going to inspire the Ancient Greeks or the other way around, but it struck me that if their gods are Athena, Apollo, Zeus, and the names of their planets derived from constellations, which in turn derive from Latin (and some of those from Greek, such as Taurus, but many are basically Latinate), those wretched Scrolls of Pythia are probably written in Greek or Latin. Which suggested me an intensely nerdy translation project over the summer, to translate all the Pythia quotes.

Although perhaps not - because even if the planet names, and presumably therefore the names of the tribes, even if they come from Latin - the Pythia herself is most definitely a Greek. It's not only Galactica who can pinch from the Ancients - the Timelords significantly inspired Greek society. Old High Gallifreyan has a definite resemblence to the Greek alphabet, and many of their words and ideas are Greek. In particular, Academy, Arcadia, Capitol and Panopticon derive from Greek - and the Pythia, who is a figure involved with Ancient Gallifrey, is likewise.

Suggesting that any scrolls written by a Pythia, in any continuum, are likely to be Greek before they're Latin. Although again it's not that simple - Castellan is a Latin term, and Ulysses a Roman name. I wonder where Valeyard came from? Wikipedia doesn't know.

I've yet to work out the relationship between Greece and Rome, but it's a hard one because they're close yet far. For example, Aphrodite was a lot more fun than Venus, who as the mother of founder Aeneas had to be a lot more serious and matronly than her Greek counterpart - "Venus Genatrix"

In any case, to tie this all together, it leaves a further question - are the Cylons Timelords? Interestingly, the 12 tribes of Israel were arranged around what we now call the zodiac, which reminded me instantly of Kobol's 12 tribes.

This was all set off by The A-Team, which I stuck on to get over the aforementioned uncomfortable dream. I think it's smarter than it appears. In any case, it's a light-hearted fun reaction to 'Nam. It'd certainly make an interesting addition to any essay on fiction of that period. There's a real anti-authority thread running through it, literally every week it's corrupt governers, corrupt cops, corrupt establishment figures of all kinds - with basically vigilantes, on the run from the law, as our heroes. Plus, Murdoch is crazy. In a comic way, true, but it's a light twist on all the post-traumatic-stress fiction that came out after the aforementioned war. I don't know enough about American history or American literature to define what I'm talking about, all I know is it slips right in. Because there's something dark lurking straight under the surface, and I can't define quite what it is.

In any case, today's episode was fun. One of the young extras was played by the actor who'd later become the villainous Cylon Cavill in Battlestar Galactica. This lead to much amusement, about how their "plan" involved infiltrating the police of 1980s America. With the amount of disguise and double crossing that goes on in that show, it does make a sort of sense that every time an ex-Cylon actor appears in anything else, there's a possibility that character is also a Cylon, either pretending or unaware. In a Tommy Westphall's Universe sort of way.

This was especially fun because Dirk Benedict, who plays Face in The A-Team was the original Starbuck in the original Galactica. Starbuck vs. Cavill! Oh yeah! Especially fun when they actually ended up in a fight together.

And now we're going to talk about Tommy Westphall's Universe. Pay attention, because this is real brain-pain territory. As someone who has a very skewed vision of what is/isn't real, this theory fascinates and scares me in equal measure.

Tommy Westphall was an autistic child, and minor character, on the show St. Elsewhere. The show ends with a very strong implication that the entire series was merely in Tommy's imagination. Which is a valid plot kink. Unfortunately, characters from St. Elsewhere have since crossed over into other TV shows - for example, two doctors have since appeared on Homicide:Life on the Streets. This strongly, indeed, irrefutably suggests the two are in the same universe, so if you take the snowglobe as proof that St. Elsewhere was all imaginary, the illogical extention is Homicide is also part of Tommy Westphall's dream.

I do believe the theory has got out of control - the multiverse site claims there are 280 crossovers, but some are more tenous than others. For example, to get Doctor Who into Tommy's brain, they merely have to play Kevin Bacon thus:

St Elsewhere's Westphall, Craig and Auschlander visited Cheers' bar

Cheers spun-off Fraiser.

John Larroquette Show's John Hemingway called into Fraiser's show.

John Larroquette Show referenced Yoyodyne. Yoyodyne was also a client of
Angel's Wolfram & Hart.

Weyland-Utani is also a client of Angel's Wolfram & Hart. Weyland-Utani made
some of the weapons usedby Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds in the Battle of Serenity.

In the Red Dwarf episode "Psirens", the crew of the Red Dwarf come across a
space ship graveyard which includes a Weyland-Utani ship

The TARDIS from Doctor Who appears in the hangar bay of the Red Dwarf -
it can be seen during the launch of Starbug

They forget to mention that it's accepted fan speculation that Blake's 7 exists in the Whoniverse,
for various reasons I forget. I buy all this. I certainly feel the Doctor can exist in any continuum
he wants to exist - the TARDIS is a crossover device extrodinaire, we've seen it cross
paralell timelines before, and furthermore Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS actually does intrude on other fictional texts all the time while fully being aware they're fictional.

Arguably, we imagine things about people all the time, and they still have real lives outside of our dreams - Brian Wetherstone, philosopher, points out we can dream about meeting Gordon Brown without invalidating his entire existance. Yet St. Elsewhere doesn't define what is or isn't real - so if he's dreaming about two doctors, then that's fine and Homicide happens (as far as fiction can happen.) But potentially they don't exist at all. And in that case neither does Homicide, he's imagining the lot. Just because McFly endorse Saxon in Doctor Who, doesn't mean they were created by the production team, and in turn by Tommy.

Oh yes, Wikipedia links to several websites all saying the same thing: this is bloody nuts. And arguably, there is something bonkers in proving that a bunch of fictional TV shows are even more fictional than they were before, but I think that's mostly because the implications are so terrifying.

Because there is a very solid crossover with Law & Order. In which Michael Bloomberg plays city mayor. A role he also inhabits in real life.

Suggesting that we too are part of Tommy's dream. Perhaps the worst bit is, I don't find that idea even remotely alarming...

Pretty poem. It reminds me of Ballad of Reading Gaol.

Sing to me! Ah, remember how
Poor Heine here in Paris learnt
Watching me play at the fall of day
And following where the music went,
Till that old cloud upon his brow
Was almost smoothed away.

"Do roses in the moonlight flame
Like this and this?" he said and smiled;
Then bent his head as o'er his dead
Brother might breathe some little child
The accustomed old half-jesting name
With all its mockery fled.

Like summer lightnings, far away,
In heaven. O, What Bohemian nights
We passed down there for the brief year
When art revealed her last delights;
And then, that night, that night in May
When Hugo came to hear!

"Do roses in the moonlight glow,
like this and this?" I could not see
His eyes, and yet--they were quite wet,
Blinded, I think! What should I be
If in that hour I did not know
My own diviner debt?

For God has made this world of ours
Out of his own exceeding pain,
As here in art man's bleeding heart
Slow drop by drop completes the strain;
And dreams of death make sweet the flowers
Where lovers meet to part.

Recall, recall my little room
Where all the masters came that night,
Came just to hear me, Meyerbeer,
Lamartine, Balzac; and no light
But my two candles in the gloom;
Though she, she too was there,

George Sand. This music once unlocked
My heart; she took the gold she prized;
Her novel gleams no richer; dreams
Like mine are best unanalyzed;
And she forgets her poor bemocked
Prince Karol, now it seems.

I was Prince Karol; yes, and Liszt,
Count Salvator Albani she
My Florian--all so far
Away!--My dreams are like the sea
That round Majorca sighed and kissed
Each softly mirrored star.

O, what a golden round of hours
Our island villa knew; we two
Alone with sky and sea, the sigh
Of waves, the warm unfathomed blue;
With what a chain of nights like flowers
We bound Love, she and I.

What music, what harmonies
Glad triumphs of the world's desire
Where passion yearns to God and burns
Earth's dress out with its own pure fire,
Or tolls like some deep angelus
Through Death's divine Nocturnes.

"Do roses in the moonlight glow
Like this and this?" What did she think
Of him whose hands at Love's command
Made life as honey o'er the brink
Of death drip slow, darkling and slow?
Ah, did she understand?

She studied every sob she heard,
She watched each dying hope she found;
And yet she understood not one
Poor sorrow there that like a wound
Gaped, bleeding, pleading--for one word--
No? And the dream was done.

For her--I am "wrapped in incense gloom
In drifting clouds and golden light,"
Once I was shod with fire and trod
Beethoven's path through storm and night;
It is too late now to resume
My monologue with God.

Well, my lost love, you were so kind
In those old days: ah yes; you came
When I was ill! In dreams you still
Will come? (Do roses always flame
By moonlight, thus?) I, too, grow blind
With wondering if she will.

Yet, Floriani, what am I
To you, though love was life to me?
My life consumed like some perfumed
Pale altar--flame beside the sea;
Yet stood and smiled and watched it die!
You, you whom it illumed,

Could you not feel it with your love?
Am I not starving here and now?
Sing, sing! I'd miss not smile or kiss--
No roses in Majorca glow
Like this and this--so death may prove
Best--ah how sweet life is!

Early morning, so I'm still in my dream - which featured me and the Fifth Doctor, a room full of baddies and a physical fist fight between the two sides. 'Twas a pretty cool dream, because even though "Warriors of the Deep" stands as testiment that 5 is perfectly capable of beating people up (if he absolutely has to), this Pertwee-style diving in hi-yah!

Probably because I was working on my comic last night. Plot so far: the Master works out there is only one person he can rely on - himself. So he skips back through time and liberates his former selves, and the four of them unite to take over the universe. Four = Delgado, Ainley, Roberts and Simm. I decided the "corpse masters" were in no fit state to do other than rasp, and Derek Jacobi is only the Master for about three minutes. And not even in my mangled canon could I fish him out. Pity, as he's my favourite. It's brilliant, and I'm very proud of my grasp of the dialogue. The plot isn't bad either. The problem is, some scenes I can only make work in my head, and look strange written down. I'm also conscious that I hate Doctor Who novels for being angsty and violent, so am working very very hard to keep it tame and angst free. Yet remove the angst, you lose the drama and danger. Plus, at least one of the four Masters comes from a very bad place, and all he wants to do is hurt things. The chief problem is I'm not up to it, and even if he wants to remove the Doctor's fingers one at a time before toasting them on kebab skewers while singing an aria, I'm not going to sit there and let him do it.

And indeed, that's probably where the dream came from - because one of the scenes I've envisaged but can't draw is the Doc and one Master actually descending to physical violence. It'd never happen on TV, but it's meant to be strange. Putting it on paper is too strange, though, and might I add, way way too slashy. I freely admit that the slash exists there, so like the show, it's innuendo-y without actually directly confirming or denying anything. Script also includes the line: "The Master sent you flowers?". But it makes sense in context.

Russell T. Davies has this to say on the subject:

"You've got to be merciless. People will say 'You love your characters'. But nobody loves their characters that much. If you really write, and you love them, you are the God of them and you can kill them with the click of a finger. It's joyous to do so."

Good for you, Russ. I wish I had your nerves.

I watched and enjoyed the Doctor Who special. Some 12 hours after the rest of the country, which is a shame. More than perhaps any other show - except maybe the 9'oclock news - people sit down to watch it live. It is a television event, and one shared by so many different groups. I like the idea that there are families around the country experiencing at the same time as I am.

The internet is being over-critical, but I don't think that's fair. Yes, everyone prefers the smart-and-upsetting episodes - yet the power of, say, and "Earthshock" is that is comes as a shock. See Galactica, Hellblazer or Torchwood for an example of people getting this wrong: a gruelling experience every single week. For me, it quickly becomes wearying. Perhaps it's just because I engage too deeply with the fiction, and can't physically go through that many high-tension, high-emotion events?

It's a fantasy novel cliche, and whether it's true of real life is debatable. Yet in terms of fiction, light needs dark, dark needs light - they are what define each other. The "everybody lives!" end of Empty Child is only powerful because the Doctor usually gets extras killed off with alarming regularity. But the same goes for Warriors of the Deep, which features the Doctor getting some 200 humans-and-Silurians killed through a bad mix of compassion, doubt, good faith and bad conscience. It packs a punch through being suprisingly dark, just as Empty Child is suprisingly happy. Those two episodes which culminate in dead companions are only moving, intense because there are 31 other companions who left safe and in one piece.

The point is, Doctor Who needs these stopgap episodes, the Shakespeare Codes and Unicorn and the Wasps, to give the significant episodes their power, and with three hours of Tennant left on telly, it's going to be full-throttle emotional onslaught from here onwards. In addition, it's one of the brilliant things about this show that it can be something different every week, from real-life drama, gothic horror, icky horror, epic fantasy - right the way to daft comedic runabouts on the other end of the spectrum. It's occured to me before that the problems I have appreciating other TV shows might just be one of tone, because I'm spoilt by a show which can be different every single week. Particularly Galactica, now I've got to the end of my fourth season of them sitting around on the same six sets. Yawn, another Viper battle? Another emotional challenge for contemporary America? But it can't jump like we do.

My point is, Planet of the Dead wasn't trying to be intelligent or thought provoking - it was about a bunch of commuters crashing on Tattooine and featured the Doctor attempting to make alien technology compatable with a London bus, while eating an easter egg and flirting with Lara Croft. Yet if you accept its dramatic ambitions were small, you can't deny it did exactly what it was trying to do brilliantly. Full review on my blog: http://malcassairo.blogspot.com/


Other news? Still ploughing through that darn essay, and fanmixing. One of the things I truly adore about Spotify is that companies have uploaded their entire catalogues, which means some really odd stuff has slipped through. How else could I listen to "Moog Rock - Classic Hits"? Or "Balm of Gilead", a really limp rendition of Gospel songs by a gal with a guitar interspersed with maudlin facts about slavery. Other sources, and yes I admit ones of potentially shaky legality such as Youtube, always had the problem of relying on what the web could find - which meant hugely popular. Bad for me, who likes my music bizzare or obscure. Spotify might have weird absences like Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd and the Beatles. But it makes up for it by having the full back catalogues of other Genesis alumni - Tony Banks and Steve Hackett. Several albums worth of the wonderful Victor Borge. Lots of Rick Wakeman. And of the more mainstream crowd, all their demos and extra tracks which I never got due to sticking to albums. Banks'n'Hackett are my real treat, though, because as a family we have all their LPs and have yet to upgrade to CD.

As a student, I haven't been able to take any CDs with me to uni, certainly no LPs; and my mp3 memory is pitifully small. So it's great to look up whole albums which we have at home, and I had to leave behind. Furthermore, the oppertunity for finding single, rare tracks is wonderful. For years, I've wanted to hear Jeff Buckley's cover of "Back in NYC", but never known where to start. It's great, as good as the original. Or I've a strong dislike of Coldplay, but have a true fondness for "Violet Hill". After that, things like a nice interface and playlisting capabilities are just added bonuses.

Some people have raised the artists as an issue. My thoughts are they're likely getting more this way than through sheer piracy. Furthermore, Friend 2 introduced me to the program, and she knows her music and has a policy of buying albums of small bands to support them, so I find it hard to believe she'd do it if it was that bad.

Finally, my first Lord M watch has broken. It's slightly, but not much like the real thing - too small, opens in the wrong direction - I got it from "Pocket Watches of the World" magazine. Later, my friends teamed up to get me a proper one, and while that's not perfect either, the heaviness is better and it's engraved with his father's initials. But the broken-ness of the first one unnerves me a little, because if we're going to talk about the fictional watch in detail, it's broken and can't be wound. It was probably a metaphor for something at the time...

Second thought for the day - what do you think I was doing at 7:45 last night when Doctor Who was on.

That's right. I was watching The Book of Ebenezer La Page performed by our local am-dram club.

It was like spending two hours with your least favourite relative, as they recite banal experiences from their life. Scratch that - at least that has the personal dimension. Two hours with someone else's least favourite relative. From birth, to death, he sits in the corner of the stage telling us we had the day he got told on by a classmate, the day he dressed up for a parade, lots of news about his two aunts, who were Clarice and Cora from Gormenghast. Tiny disconnected anecdotes, none of which were particularly interesting or eventful. These short, half-minute scenes were acted out by the company.

You could even have done the life of a man where nothing happens in an intelligent way - twas Forrest Gump with fishing nets - but no. It was painfully, deliberately parochial. I don't want to be snobby about my island home, because it wasn't trying to be highbrow. It grated - yet I fully appreciated what they were trying to do. The story spans from 1880 to 1970, and I understood it as a portrait of an island as much as a man. Crabs, tomatoes, tourists. Both wars, the Occupation. Cracks about Jersey. As such, everyone was using their best "Guernsey accents" - which for non-locals, sounds something like a cockney Welshman might, with a few "cor"s and "eh"s thrown in for good measure. Ebenezer himself was a fun no-nonsense character - he actually reminded me of the "mystical Negro" cliche, dispensing his home-grown down-to-earth sensibilities with a crooked smile. Moral of the story: these young'uns don't know how good they have it! Everything's changing, but not for the best! Just like spending time with the family.

Yes, it was for us, not you. The biggest laugh of the evening involved someone taking a short cut around Chouet, the subtlety of which'd be totally lost on anyone who didn't live here. And me, because I'm unobservant and have no idea where Chouet is. In fact, I'm not sure you non-locals wold have seen the point at all. Every character, scene, scenario was very firmly linked to a place. Not Horace, but Horace from the Pollet. Not Raymond, but Raymond from L'ancresse. And the audience was packed out by merry old dears - my sister noted that she and I halved the combined age-average - who cackled raucously like a laughter track, at anything even vaguely humourous. By my book, there were some five good jokes - the regularity of the audience's reaction would put it on par with Airplane!'s 1.6 jokes a minute.

It says something that the original novel's "I would rather be a black man than a Jerseyman, me" was amended to "I would rather be a monkey than a Jerseyman, me": that's the type of evening it was, in that it was about a cosy perfect Guernsey through the ages, not a genuine all-angles portrait of how life used to be, warts and all. Even the jerrybag moment was played for laughs (jerrybag: nasty local term for girls who were friendly with the German soldiers during the Occupation. It still carries a lot of power and bad blood.)

It also says a lot: the program had the words of "Sarnia Cherie" in it, so we could sing along at the end. "Sarnia Cherie" would be our national anthem, were we actually a nation. As it is, it's a nauseatingly screechy dirge from 1911, written at a pitch that can only be sung by the aforementioned merry old dears. Yet like all anthems, it's not meant to be great music - the point is the way it grabs you by the heartstrings and gives them a sharp tug. Which it does, for me. And it was all very Dunkirk-spirit, to hear it being sung by the entire audience, especially after two hours of "aw, how lovely is our little island." I half expected to hear the Blitz going on overhead. Here's the nicest version I could find. The lyrics are on Wikipedia. Unfortunately, no version with vocals, so you can't hear fifty old women trying to make "verdure" scan.

And life continues to continue. The last 48 hours have been intensely bizzare - I have a fiction problem is all you're getting - so you'll mostly just get trivia instead.

This morning, I'm listening to Youth Without Youth. Ach, that film. Count off the points: Francis Ford Coppola, Tim Roth, existentialism, golden-colour-scheme and stunning music. How could I not want to see it? And I spent two years looking forward to it, and finally got it on DVD. We watched it at Christmas. It's still the butt of family jokes. It's about a dying lingustic professor who is hit by a lightningbolt, and starts getting younger - in the mean time, he's chased by Nazis who want his secrets, gains super-powers, along with a metaphysical double who appears in mirrors any times he feels like a chat about the nature of reality - and meets the exact double of his true love, who'd married another in their youth. At which point, you're probably saying "wow". I don't want to say it was a bad film, because there was clearly buckets of invention and talent. But the end product was a total mess - there were six great films, which had been muddled together into one, well, bad one. And yet...it wasn't a totally wasted experience. Because I enjoyed the direction and acting, I admired the weird stuff and thought it looked and felt lovely. In other words, I was satisfied with every reason I was watching it. It just fell to pieces as a coherent experience. Damn shame, and I'm still painfully disappointed.

Last week, I told Calypso that actually all a film needs to do to have my full attention is to be beautifully shot with a tight colour scheme, and have great music. I am that easy to please, and oh I stand by the soundtrack: http://www.youthwithoutyouthmovie.com/

Click on -> soundtrack when you get there. Highlights are the main theme and Dominick's Nightmare.

>I love film soundtracks. They have to be right for the film, of course, but for me they should also be gorgeous in their own right.

Lets start with my favourite film composers - step up James Newton Howard: Unbreakable, Signs, The Village. Arguably it helps that he always collaborates with my favourite director - yet, arguably it's M. Night Shyamalan who is helped by Newton-Howard. The way he puts tunes together is the perfect back up for the beautiful moving stories he's trying to tell. Did I like The Village? Very much, but the music is above and away the thing I love best about it. I also like the Blood Diamond music. This man is good enough for me to give films an extra star. In fact, it's always a safe bet that I'll love the music of a favourite film. Most recently, he co-wrote The Dark Knight with Hans Zimmer, to staggering effect.


Harry Gregson Williams: Spy Game, Narnia. He comes second, mostly because he hasn't done so many films as N-H. Spy Game, like Signs and The Village, makes me blubber like anything - and the music is an important part of that. Spy Game was at one point my favourite ever soundtrack, and it's still a serious contender. Alas, I can't find any on Seeq, so you'll have to make do:


Ennio Morricone: isn't so much a favourite, as someone who I like all his films. Yes, the spaghetti westerns - Once Upon a Time in the West particularly. But also Legend of 1900, and that's very much helped by having Tim Roth on a boat with a grand piano for the whole running time.


And everyone else: Black Hawk Down is a true favourite soundtrack from Hans Zimmer. Made up mostly from jam sessions, it aims to replicate the streetfight between increasingly confused American soldiers in dusty Mogadishu by throwing traditional African beats and voices at electric guitars and rock music to see what happens. The results are intense.


Donnie Darko's original score is lovely, but then as soon as you add a piano to the mix I become unbearably biased. Incidentally, these pieces are some of the few which sound any good on Hampstead piano.



A bit of an odd one now - Battlestar Galactica. Oh, how I adore Bear McCreary's music for that show. It's one of the chief reasons I watch it, despite the fact I'm fundamentally opposed to what its trying to do. The soundtrack was one of the reasons I always enjoyed Heroes, but I physically don't have the effort to watch it any more. I'm not obsessed, and I've no one making me. I'm also a big fan of the Firefly tunes, which like many others on this list also involves warm strings with cold piano. Naturally, I enjoy the Doctor Who music - but only 50% of the time. Both new and classic can be broadly divided into awesome, and awful. Utopia and Planet of Fire: awesome. The Three Doctors: awful.





Tideland and Brazil are two favourite films, and I'm listing them together. Tideland is a piano thing again; but Brazil is a musical work of genius. I strongly recommend it to anyone considering a career in composing to see what can be done with a simple, irritating motif. He makes it sweeping. He makes it ethereal. He even rips off "Rhapsody in Blue":









Blade Runner, of course - I physically feel like I'm drowning in that soundtrack. And a new favourite, the original music for Watchmen, which is listed here due to it's obvious debt to Vangelis.

This list is sans Jackie Brown, Velvet Goldmine, Lost Boys because I'm only doing original scores. But Moulin Rouge is on the borderline, and it's not so much the songs they've chosen but what they do with them - those gorgeous new arrangements.



And Twilight. Yes, I know. No, I'm not changing my mind. In fact, I'll be talking about this film in a minute, but this is the ultimate expression of (what I feel is) great music redeeming anything. Anything at all. Our famille have oft noticed that film's debt to Galactica both stylistically and musically, and Galactica in it's turn owes a lot to the score of Black Hawk Down. Oh, Two Towers: Extended Version. And Youth Without Youth. And others I've forgotten, and will curse when I remember them later.

Of these, I only have 2 or 3 on CD. Partly because I never got around to it, partly because I'm cheap. But partly because I don't want to overlisten to them, particularly those ones which make me burst into tears, as it's an important part of the film experience for me.

Hrhm. Essay. Now. But anticipate my return next time I'm bored, bearing a quite literally, erm, glittering review of Twilight.