Five years ago, I flew to England to see the grand opening of something improbable: an attraction called Dickens World. It promised to be an “authentic” re-creation of the London of Charles Dickens’s novels, complete with soot, pickpockets, cobblestones, gas lamps, animatronic Dickens characters and strategically placed chemical “smell pots” that would, when heated, emit odors of offal and rotting cabbage. ... Today Dickens World survives largely as a landlord, collecting rent from the Odeon movie theater next door and the restaurants (Pizza Hut, Subway, Chimichanga) that surround it. (previously)
posted by Trurl
on Feb 10, 2012 -
41 comments
... it’s no exaggeration to say that LIFEFORCE tosses everything in but the kitchen in an attempt to entertain you. Actually, scratch that, it tosses everything including the kitchen sink. By the time the movie is complete, you may have to watch it again just to verify that you actually saw what you just saw. The movie is a mess of enormous proportions which I absolutely loved.* (previously) [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Feb 6, 2012 -
59 comments
Victorian Farm |
Edwardian Farm -- 18 hours of BBC experimental archeology/historical documentaries, online. Archaeologists Alex Langlands and Peter Ginn and historian Ruth Goodman spend two years living the life of rural country farmers.
posted by crunchland
on Jan 15, 2012 -
33 comments
[Absolute Beginners] has a glossy immediacy, and you can feel the flash and determination that went into it. What you don't feel is the tormented romanticism that made English adolescents in the 70s swear by the novel the way American kids had earlier sworn by The Catcher in the Rye. -
Pauline Kael [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Dec 12, 2011 -
15 comments
Peter Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" (NSFW) is not a movie in the sense that we usually employ the word. It's an experiment in form and content. ... The books, their typography, calligraphy and illustrations, are photographed in voluptuous detail. ... "Prospero's Books" really exists outside criticism. ... It is simply a work of original art, which Greenaway asks us to accept or reject on his own terms. -
Roger Ebert
posted by Trurl
on Dec 4, 2011 -
32 comments
Before the Second World War,
Rose Robertson did secretarial work. During the war, as part of her work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the UK, Robertson parachuted into occupied France to spy on German troop deployments and act as a courier.
Her acquaintance there with a gay couple in the French Resistance, and, after the war, friendship with gay lodgers, led her to found Parents Enquiry, Britain's first helpline to support parents and their lesbian, gay and bisexual children, an organization which she operated for many years.
[more inside]
posted by Morrigan
on Nov 7, 2011 -
37 comments
British Fantasy Award winner returns prize; Sam Stone hands back award after criticism of judging process. [The Guardian] "Controversy has riven the 40-year-old British Fantasy Awards, with the winner of the best novel prize handing her award back just three days after it was bestowed.
But the organisation and presentation of the awards has been drawing criticism since then, culminating in Sam Stone, the winner of the best novel award – named after American writer and editor August Derleth – announcing yesterday that she is giving it back.
The biggest attack on the awards was delivered by editor and anthologist Stephen Jones, who on Tuesday
posted a lengthy blog decrying the organisation of the BFAs and making several allegations against awards co-ordinator and British Fantasy Society chairman David Howe."
posted by Fizz
on Oct 6, 2011 -
27 comments
Hidden away in vaults and out of distribution for over forty years, Herostratus was in its own time largely misunderstood. After only a handful of initial screenings it virtually disappeared from public view altogether, remaining all but forgotten to this day. Yet while admittedly flawed, the film does offer a compelling critique of the failure of 1960s postwar idealism in Britain, an ideal portrayed as having degenerated into neurotic self-gratification. It is also of note as
Dame Commander Helen Mirren's first credited screen role.
(not safe for those sexually aroused by Helen Mirren) [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Aug 30, 2011 -
18 comments
"Little slices of glamour beamed directly into your home in half-hour chunks; a perky theme, flashy titles, charismatic host, inventive format, gags, quiz, games, raucous outro – the works! Incredibly plain people given a quick glimpse of the good life, to which the tanned, funny man in the nice suit held the door."
The joys of the 1980s game show.
[more inside]
posted by mippy
on Aug 4, 2011 -
4 comments
100 Firefights, Three Weeks: Inside Afghanistan's Most Insane Fight "In its first three weeks in Afghanistan’s Sangin district, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines got into more than 100 firefights and sustained 62 casualties. The insurgents managed to negate the Marines’ night-vision gear, and rendered their traditional close-combat tactics useless. Things got so bad, the 3/5’s superior officers even suggested pulling their troops back. That didn’t happen. Instead, the 3/5 went after the militants, hard. When the 3/5 came home, they told counterinsurgency historian Mark Moyar all about their deeply unconventional approach to what was already an unconventional war."
This is an excerpt in Wired of Moyar’s
74-page after action report.
(pdf) [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jul 12, 2011 -
23 comments
Howjsay.com is a unique online speaking dictionary that offers clear pronunciations of
English words,
phrases,
slang terms,
technical terms,
brand names,
proper names,
profanity, and
many foreign words, including
common variations and
alternatives. Astoundingly, the sound files
are not computer-generated -- every single one of the site's
138,152 entries are enunciated in the dignified tones of British academic and polyglot
Tim Bowyer, who has
steadily expanded its glossary over the years using logs of unsuccessful searches and direct user suggestions. The site is part of Bowyer's
Fonetiks.org family of language sites, and is also available as
a browser extension and as a mobile app for
iPhone/iPod and
Blackberry.
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 23, 2010 -
27 comments
Friday Frivolity: A
highlight reel of clips from the BBC show
Walk on the Wild Side, featuring voiceovers for animals so you finally get to know what's really going on in all those nature documentaries. This
BBC playlist has previews for a lot of the individual episodes. (I got region-blocked on a few of those videos, but most seem to work fine.)
[more inside]
posted by kmz
on Dec 17, 2010 -
13 comments
Chai Why? The Triumph of Tea in India : "But whereas I initially supposed tea-drinking to be as Indian, and perhaps as old, as the Vedas, I have come to know that it is, in the
longue durée of Indian history, a very recent development; one that (in many parts of the country) did not much precede my first visit, or that even followed it."
posted by dhruva
on Apr 19, 2010 -
18 comments
UK Space Agency launched with
a logo that "looks uncannily like the logo for the British Rocket Group, a scientific body from Doctor Who." It's mission is
to develop British space technology, "[b]ut this will have to be done through
unmanned space activities, because for the foreseeable future the UKSA will not have enough resources to reverse the decision,
taken by the Thatcher government in the 1980s, that Britain will not pay for manned space flights... planned expeditions to the International Space Station will be funded by the country's partners in the European Space Agency."
posted by kliuless
on Mar 24, 2010 -
35 comments
Space: 1999 (1975-77) is a British sci-fi series, the last production of
Gerry and
Sylvia Anderson who were first recognized for their work in "
Supermarionation." This series saw the end of the couple, with Sylvia Anderson leaving the show at the end of the first season. She was replaced by
Fred Freiberger, who brought in some Star Trek sensibilities and attempted to cater the show more to the American action-adventure audience. A third season was planned but not produced, and left the series unfinished, ending on an episode that was "
like bad Shakespeare, or worse, bad Star Trek." Fans still support the show in many forms, even creating a semi-official fan-produced mini-episode entitled
Message from Moonbase Alpha to bring some completion to the series, which was shown on September 13, 1999 at the
Breakaway: 1999 convention. Another group of fans has recently taken to
updating the whole series, to
bring Space:1999 into the future.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 13, 2010 -
91 comments
The Works of
Swede Mason: "
Jeremy Clarkson," "
Get in the Back of the Van," "
Jungle All The Way," "
Bill Wyman's Metal Detector," "
Put the Lotion in the Basket, *" "
Got The Sucka," "
The Gobshite, *" "
Squashed Thingy," "
Spare Me The Madness," and the pair of tracks based on
Neighbors deaths "
Coffee And Croissants" and "
Todd....Dead."
[more inside]
posted by flatluigi
on Oct 13, 2009 -
14 comments
Conquerors 2009 “There are many underhanded ways of making your conker harder. The best is to pass it through a pig." World Conker Champion – Charlie Bray. The World Conker Championships are on this weekend.
All the action from last year.
previously [1] [2]
In other news,
a cure for bleeding canker has been found, with a welcome side effect, leaf miners don't like having garlic breath.
posted by tellurian
on Oct 8, 2009 -
19 comments
Charlotte and Branwell Brontë wrote many of their stories of Angria on tiny sheets of paper in nearly microscopic handwriting. This particular example consists of four sheets of notepaper folded into sixteen pages. The individual sheets are approximately 4 ½ inches long and 3 5/8 inches wide, and the entire text contains about nineteen thousand words.
posted by Joe Beese
on Sep 18, 2009 -
20 comments
