You're a beautiful woman probably...

Sadly, I think a lack of imagination has meant a serious drop in standards and attitudes in "horror" films. I do love old horror/fantasy films (Terence Fisher's expression was “adult fairy tales”) but want to be uplifted – film should be an emotional experience, but not one that makes you want to slash your wrists. I don't think it's a coincidence that many of the films covered and praised in podcast s and on line ( Night of the Demon, The Devil Rides Out, The Wicker Man etc) are retrospective, and more than thirty years old. Just to establish where I'm coming from, can I say that I really liked Witchfinder General, Hellraiser and Candyman , all of which were gruesome films. One of my favourite horror films is Brian DePalma's Carrie , because it's psychological horror. What distinguishes all of these from lesser films is character and plot. I actually read a review of Carrie on IMDB where the (amateur) reviewer rubbished it because there wasn...

Not since Tony Blair joined forces with George "Dubya" Bush have I been so disappointed in a person's misguided choices as I have since Steven Moffat took over the reins of Doctor Who. What happened to the genius who gave us the hilarious Coupling, and wrote Who stories like The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead ? If you look back through this blog you'll see that I've sung his praises . By writing Who and Sherlock simultaneously, it seems he just bit off more than he could chew. Good storytelling is the bedrock of a programme like this and, for me, that has just not been there. This season (and, sadly, most stories since Mr Moffat took over) have fallen into two types: "edited highlights" (the plot escaped the writers, and the episode came over as a series of extracts - more like a trailer than a coherent story. Examples: Before the Flood, The Woman Who Lived ) and Laboured centre pieces (instead of a plo...

The Confessions Of A Society Photographer by Allan Warren My rating: 2 of 5 stars An "self portrait" so sketchy that it barely qualifies for the title. Maybe it's better described as a memoir than an autobiography. What we get is interesting but superficial, lacking in detail and background. We hear something of what (and, occasionally, who) Mr Warren did, but he is so reticent that the book comes over as little more than a "tease". It's not so much the lack of "gossip" as the fact that there isn't much in its place. I first read this on borrowing it from the library in the 1970s, when it was originally published. Re-reading it this year when I got hold of a secondhand copy, my overwhelming impression was lack of substance - particularly after reading some in-depth biographies of more illustrious people in the media. The illustrations are nice, but I wanted more detail and a bit more depth - more of what Allan Warren himself is about. The ...

It's amazing how many producers of these seem to forget the name. As podcasts are (by definition) for mobile devices and therefore meant to be listened to on the move, the likelihood is that there will be background noise from traffic, etc. For safety reasons, the volume shouldn't be turned up so loud that this is drowned out. If the listener is on a bus or train, things are often no quieter. For these reasons, it's essential that the volume of a podcast should be "normalised" (i.e. the peaks should be at the maximum allowed undistorted level) and its dynamic range should be severely curtailed - that is, there should be very little difference between the quiet and the loud bits. I probably have hearing that is just below average in efficiency and I've lost count of the number of times the podcast was so quiet that I couldn't hear most of it (even when turned up to full volume on my phone), or had a section with various speakers muttering inaudibly in t...

Incidentally, it's CapALdi, as in "Paypal", not "Capauldi" as in "Paul McCartney", as you often hear. In the 70s, Peter got irritated at people mispronouncing it; he's probably used to it by now!

Another photo to accompany my bit from yesterday. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of these occasions where it doesn't look as if I'm about to vomit. Maybe it's not a bad thing, then, that the image quality is so poor...

The name at the top of the bookmakers' lists this summer for the next Doctor Who was Peter Capaldi. I was interested to see the list but pooh-poohed this, as it seemed the production team were set on casting only young actors - I think it was even said at one point that only someone in their 20s could keep up with the pace of production. I was delighted to hear back in August that the rumours were, in fact, true. The choice pleased me for two reasons - firstly, as a long-term fan of the programme (except for the awful period in the 1980s when the production went badly astray) I wanted to see a Doctor with the authority that only an older man could have; secondly, I knew Peter back in the 1970s as a fellow fan - we're the same age and I've followed his career since the 1980s. I had met Jon Pertwee a couple of times, during the making of Death to the Daleks and Planet of the spiders , and got to know Peter through the Jon Pertwee fan club (started by an old school friend, ...

Here in the UK at least, we're always being told not to put used batteries into the bin, because then they will be sent to landfill and pollute the environment. Because of this, I've been collecting mine. I used to take them to our local Asda supermarket - just down the road - where the recycling bin was conveniently in the entrance, until it disappeared about a year ago. I've asked about it there a couple of times: the first time I was told it had gone off to be emptied and not come back; the second time I was told it might have been stolen. This week I tried Tesco, where no bin was visible and the Customer Service desk could not tell me whether there was one, asking me to ring back in a few days' time. I also tried Home Bargains, Superdrug, Argos and Poundland. None of them had any visible recycling bin. Poundland even had a sign saying "Recycle your batteries here" - but no bin and no-one to ask about it. Finally I went into Boots. Again, no bin, but a mem...

After listening to one of the fascinating 1951 Down Place podcasts about Hammer Films , I managed to borrow J B Priestley's book from the library. This is the original source for the excellent 1932 James Whale film The old dark house and the frankly awful reimagining from Hammer, released in 1963. The podcast confirmed that it wasn't worth my rewatching the Hammer version and that, basically, it was much more of a William Castle film than a Hammer Film. The book itself (called Benighted ) is a pleasantly old fashioned story (first published in 1927) that defines the mood and the plot of the earlier film very well. There are no ghosts or supernatural monsters here, or any implication that the book is that kind of story. The plot is fairly simple: a group of travellers is forced to seek refuge from a severe storm and flooding in an isolated country house, which turns out to be owned and populated by an eccentric family, some of whose members have "mental health problem...

I'm a huge fan of the HBO TV series Rome , for its superb look, brilliant performances and compelling plots. I was thoroughly immersed in both series and was sadly disappointed when sheer expense brought an end to it after 22 episodes. Purely because of this and a few favourable reviews, I bought the Blu-ray of the initial series Spartacus: blood and sand . I don't subscribe to any cable or satellite channels, so hadn't seen it until I got the discs. Rome it ain't. Yes, the plot becomes compelling after a while, but the scripts and performances are just not in the same league. Then there's the violence. Rome has some extremely violent scenes, but these almost always seem to grow out of the plot, and rarely seem gratuitous. The violence in Spartacus: BAS seems to be there almost for its own sake, and I'm disturbed that some people seem to like it for that reason alone. I used to be accused of being weird or sick for being a fan of horror films. To clarify, i...

I recently watched Brian DePalma's Carrie again and dug out an old review I wrote of it way back in the 80s. I thought that I might have been looking back with rose-tinted specs but, to my pleasant surprise, I was as impressed with the film as I ever was. It's certainly "of its time", as the fashions and attitudes take us firmly back to 1976 - but that doesn't seem to hurt it at all and, in my opinion, it holds up vastly better than most other films of the same vintage, and better than any of DePalma's other films. I've left the following (naive as it is) largely unchanged from when I first wrote it in 1987. In passing I dared to criticise the sacred Stanley Kubrick, and my opinion of his Stephen King adaptation is unchanged. Warning: it does contain spoilers. They’re all gonna laugh at you Brian DePalma’s Carrie examined by John H An ugly duckling schoolgirl assailed by the jeers of her schoolmates and the cruel repression of her religious maniac...

Great to hear Ravel's Boléro (possibly the most famous classical music crescendo) live at the Proms the other night. This is one of those pieces that needs to be played correctly. I'd be the first to admit that it can be quite boring if not performed well. First of all, it has to be done reasonably quickly: most versions are under 15 minutes - Riccardo Muti's recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra runs for 17 minutes 9 seconds, which is much too slow. Ideally, it's around 14 minutes. Ravel himself said the tempo mustn't vary at all but, in my opinion, maintaining a steady tempo throughout means the piece just doesn't work. As someone once pointed out, if the conductor does this, the performance actually seem to get slower. For the maximum excitement, the tempo needs to be edged up a little towards the end. The orchestra needs to put energy into the piece and (although it must tax the brass players in particular) sustain all the notes throughout, not allowin...

I mentioned some time ago paying a visit to London and being amazed at the V & A Museum . A flying visit on our recent trip confirms that it's not resting on its laurels and has an excellent new restaurant along with an air of efficiency and a feeling of abundance. In comparison, what a disappointment the Science Museum is! Apart from the general lack of thematic cohesion (very few of its exhibits seem to have clearly marked beginnings or endings, any clear chronological sequence or a definite theme other than that they're about (say) aviation), several exhibits are woefully out of date. The "flight" display, for example, referred to Concorde as if it were still a commercial airliner when, in fact, it made its last flight in 2003. As if this weren't bad enough, we could find nothing in the display on computing later than the 1970s! For a major national museum to ignore a whole chunk of history in this way is a huge let-down. Even if there are problems with ...

No, not a box of matches but (now) the names of a pair of elderly detectives in a series of excellent and eccentric murder mysteries by Christopher Fowler . While there's an undercurrent of gruesomeness in all the novels (Mr Fowler has also written horror stories), there's definitely a great affection for, and observation of, his characters. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about the stories is the way they evoke the atmosphere of a mysterious and hidden London - uncovering things we didn't know about the capital and its often murky history: underground passages, buried rooms and convoluted crimes. I'm re-reading The Victoria vanishes at the moment and it's struck me again that these stories are so tailor-made for TV that it's amazing that they haven't already been done. The only potential issue I can see with a series is that elderly actors are apt to die, giving the makers recasting problems. Can I make one request to any TV producer that might happen t...

Just heard this on the radio. Looks like a great site to visit for anyone interested in both people and music. Maybe this is more of a Twitter-type post - will see if I can squeeze it on there as well...

This week we had the sad event of around thirty people from our (local government) service leaving simultaneously on voluntary redundancy, with more to go by June. It seemed odd without some of them, but their loss will only be felt properly in the long term. We're told that similar cuts will have to be made next year and the year after - which will undoubtedly mean compulsory (rather than voluntary) redundancies. Those of us who work in local government know that the impact on services of the cuts is already being felt. We're told that, with good management, the impact of these on frontline services should be minimal; we're not told how we can provide services of a similar standard with (in the long term) a possible 30% reduction in our budgets. Anyone with half an eye or half a brain can see that Britain's adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan are controversial. Are either of those countries really better off now than they were before our armed forces went in? Are w...

It seems only a few weeks ago that a slightly different flavour of this idea was mooted on "safety grounds", forgetting that the United Kingdom consists of more than London and the south east. Now it's dragged up again on the grounds that it would favour tourism. Do people avoid going to Greece and Turkey because their clocks are an hour different from France and Spain? Of course not. I seem to recall that the original idea was to stay on summer time throughout the year. As with the move to European time, this would make it darker in the morning and lighter in the evening. In London, sunrise in the dark days around Christmas would be postponed until 9.06am. In northern England, it wouldn't be until 9.30am and, in Aberdeen, not until 9.48! Understandably, people in the north don't want even darker mornings and wish the nation could be a little less London-centric...

Stephen Russell's TV play about the love life of Carry On and Sykes star Hattie Jacques was beautifully acted but, as Caitlin Moran cogently pointed out in her column in yesterday's Times , the relationships didn't really make sense. The same issue was there in the source material, Andy Merriman's biography , also called Hattie . We hear all about what happened, and that Hattie was a warm and loving woman, but this only makes the way she treated John Le Mesurier (and, by extension, her own children) all the more baffling. Maybe in future years someone else will come along and write another biography of Ms Jacques that throws more light on what, after 45 years, is still a mystery.

At last - a really good Doctor Who Christmas special! While a former Doctor Who writer would have just thrown them all in at random, Steven Moffat here has the clichés of snow, Christmas presents and Victoriana all present, but now with a plot to support them - a clever reworking of Dickens. Some striking and original images include fish flying through the sky and a "Santa's sleigh" pulled by a shark! Matt Smith is as good as ever, and Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill are fine in their short appearances. Michael Gambon here is so much better than in the Harry Potter films and the non-actress Katherine Jenkins is skilfully used in a story that handles its tragic elements with an impressive lightness of touch. Ten out of ten from me!

At the risk of increasing my reputation as a Scrooge, I have to say that this article in the Guardian made my blood boil with the unbelievable phrase "there is no downside to a proper winter". This journalist says that weeks of snow and ice in the UK, even as early as this, are a good thing, basically because it looks pretty and children have fun! Evidently she's forgotten the frustration of people who have to try to get around in these conditions, the number of people who will end up with broken limbs after falling on the ice, the people who will lose their lives in road accidents as a direct result of awful driving conditions, or the many who will suffer because they can't afford to heat their homes properly - particularly the elderly. Even worse, her article contains the phrase "and yes...I work from home now"! Words fail me.