THE CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS Now not a Major Motion Picture

BaA - UtIS - 12. The Frog Prince

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 16:27:54 +0000

For an explanation of this series of posts see here.

OK. I’d given up on this series and indeed writing on this blog partly because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of Blog an Album, but mostly because I haven’t been bothered enough. So with only a few hours of the year left I’ve decided to wipe the decks clean ready for the next. This either means that I’ll suddenly become a prolific blogger in 2010 or this will be last entry for a while... again.

Anyway frogs and princes don’t often come into my life which is probably a big part of why I haven’t had any inspiration for this entry. I now realise that all I needed to do was to pop my favourite film into the DVD player and give it another watch. Chariots of Fire is a strange film in many ways, though that isn’t a criticism, in fact far from it. It has a prominent Christian character who is neither a lunatic or homicidal or both and thus it bucks the trend of so many film and TV portrayals of devout believers (see the BBC mini-series Paradox for a recent example).

I first encountered it as a kid of about 7 or 8 and it must have gripped me. I don’t recall that first viewing, but I do recall my Canadian primary school teacher Mrs. Isaacs showing it to us at school when I was 10. I didn’t watch it again until I was a student after I’d picked it up on DVD for a fiver. Since then it has become my favourite film and is an inspiration to me every time I watch it.

But what of the frog and the prince I hear you say, what have they to do with this triumph of British cinema? Those familiar with the film will recall the famous (though fictional scene) where the British Olympic Committee try to persuade Eric Liddell to run on a Sunday. Featured as a member of the committee was the then Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII who is portrayed marvellously by David Yelland. Early in the scene the idea that they could try to persuade the French authorities responsible for the Olympics to move the heats for the 100m is roundly condemned by the cantankerous Lord Cadogan who uses the phrase, “...going cap in hand to the Frogs...” If one accepts this racial slur then it can be quite sure that the Prince met some ‘Frogs’ during the course of his time in Paris. Due to the French Revolution there hasn’t been a ‘Frog’ Prince since before 1789.

BaA - UtIS - 11. Broken Toy

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:03:13 +0100

For an explanation of this series of posts see here.

I bet you thought that I’d forgotten about this series and given up.

Well I finally found something to go with this title to blog about: Tesco Self Service Checkouts. Like many things these came into popular usage whilst I was away in Russia and I’d not had much experience using them before yesterday. On the face of it they’re a good idea, until they go wrong and there has to be someone there to help out all the hapless customers who fall foul of the system. The whole system works on the basis of scanning the barcodes yourself and then putting the scanned goods into a packing area that weighs what you’ve put there to make sure that you’re not cheating the system. The problem comes when you have a few crinkled barcodes that won’t scan and then have to type in the number by hand which for some reason doesn’t work for a pleb like me but will for a shop assistant (I swear that I typed it in right). I soon realised that I’d have been much quicker going through a traditional checkout and now have a lot more respect than I did before for check out people.

BaA - UtIS - 10. Try Again

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 23:54:11 +0100

For an explanation of this series of posts see here.

I’ve been attempting to grow beards now for about 6 years and some of my early efforts did look rather terrible. I thought when I last grew one almost a year ago that there probably wasn’t going to be much improvement in filling in the patchy bits. However this time round here does seem to be a bit more hair growing in my filtrum (that’s the dimply bit between the nose and the top lip).

The worst bit is on the left where the tash doesn’t join up properly with the cheek bit making it all look a bit lopsided. It’s never going to look properly symmetrical as you can see from the photo that all may hair goes clockwise around my face.

Oh well, I’ll just have to keep trying again.

BaA - UtIS - 9. Crystal Ball

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:55:56 +0100

For an explanation of this series of posts see here.

LoveFilm is great as it’s allowing to catch up on films that I missed whilst I was in Russia and also to dip into cinema history and have a “basinful of anywhere I fancy.” As you can see from the image I’ve been catching up on the Harry Potter films having seen The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix during the last week. I’ve only read the first book so each of the stories has been new to me as I’ve watched it.

In the Harry Potter universe, prophecies (it’s not clear where they originate from) are stored in crystal balls in a large room within the Ministry of Magic. The evil Lord Voldemort is trying to get hold of a prophecy concerning himself and the eponymous hero in order to triumph in his war against the goodies of the story. He fails of course and the crystal ball is destroyed, but not before Harry discovers what it is and presumably over the course of the remaining two stories has to live in the knowledge of it.

Seeing this got me thinking about prophecy and the way it is portrayed in films and TV. There are plenty of examples from the evil Emperor in Return of the Jedi (who gets his prophecy wrong due to his overconfidence) to the Oracle in The Matrix (whose prophecy turns out to be a trap for humanity). In the recent series of Doctor Who Dalek Caan prophesied the death of one of the Doctor’s companions only for Russell T. Davies to chicken out and have Donna’s memory wiped.

There’s also the kind of foreknowledge that comes with time travel and trying to avoid some unpleasant future that you’ve already experienced. The First Doctor story The Space Museum being a prime example of this.

This train of thought lead me on to thinking about Biblical prophecy which is a rather different animal. Sure there is an element of future predicting involved, but in the Bible prophecy is more about what God has to say to us right here and right now. I think that’s why I find the prophetic books of the Old Testament so hard to read because I’m reading them out of their historical context. Elijah and Elisha make more sense because their stories are told in the context of an historical narrative. When it comes to Isaiah, I’m only really familiar with all the stuff that God has to say about Jesus. It’ll take some study, but I’m willing to go there because I want to understand the whole narrative of God’s word.

BaA - UtIS - 8. The Iron Sea

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:58:40 +0100

For an explanation of this series of posts see here.

So we’re back to the Terminator series of films for this entry. Now I know that the bit at the end of T2 doesn’t exactly contain an Iron Sea in that it’s not iron and it’s not a sea, but a pool of molten steel is about as close as I could get.

The photo at the top of this post shows the moment where Arnie’s hand slips under the steel and also Simon Pegg’s parody of that scene in the very first scene of Spaced. I’ve a feeling actually that it was the parody that I saw first and therefore it didn’t have the required impact at the time. In it Simon Pegg’s character Tim is trying to convince his girlfriend (who is in the process of dumping him) that he can be emotional by citing the fact that he cried during the thumb scene in T2. On the face of it a scene about a robot being lowered into some molten steel doesn’t sound like it would be that emotional, but in the context of the film it does just that.

One of the great things about T2 is that it takes the villain from the first film and makes him into the hero whilst creating a new villain that is a lot scarier. By the end of the film Arnie’s T-800 has become a robot that you want to survive. Then as the realisation dawns that he has to be destroyed there comes that lump in throat inducing moment that Spaced references.

I think that because I knew it was coming, when I finally got round to watching the film it didn’t quite make me cry, but I would have liked it to have done so. I can kind of echo Arnie’s line, “I know now why you cry, but it is something I cannot do.”