i09 has some interesting back history of Doctor Who and how difficult it was to get the show made:
Also, at the panel, Hussein and William Russell talked about how the first Doctor, William Hartnell, wasn’t just a cantankerous old man — he was also a very traditional Englishman, who wasn’t used to the idea of women working outside the home. And he didn’t know what to make of Hussein, “an East Indian who spoke posh English,” said Hussein. Thus, Hartnell took a lot of convincing that an East Asian man and a young woman were going to be up to their jobs. The first lunch Hussein and Lambert had with Hartnell, he seemed reluctant to take on the role, and they almost gave up. In the end, they decided to have a second lunch with Hartnell, at which it became clear that the actor wanted them to prove their qualifications.
i09: The creators of Doctor Who were a scandal
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/xuIWravY1Hw/
Danny Chaoflux on the similarities between The Invisibles by Grant Morrison and the Cartoon Network show Codename: Kids Next Door.
1: The leader, bald, wears shades, really into spy stuff.
2: Inventor/Shaman, always cracks jokes, “the weird one”, overweight [ie: Future Fanny].
3: Shes nuts.
4: Street thug with thick accent and hoodie.
5: Cool headed, laid back tomboy, specialty is stealth and investigation.
Theme : Worldwide loose knit cells operate in secret to protect and encourage freedom from tyranny.
The Antagonists : ‘The Old Gods’ and their lesser manifestations.
This has been brought up a number of places on the internet, but I wanted to shop an image to go along with it paired with a breakdown.
Sure you could say its a blatant rip off, but I think its more interesting to think of it as a starter set of key memes.
Stop Making Sense: Invisible Babies = Codename: Kids Next Door
Official Codename: Kids Next Door website.
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/BFQ-nyPCFWo/
This is an amazing treatment of The Wire a Victorian novel instead of an HBO t-series:
There are few works of greater scope or structural genius than the series of fiction pieces by Horatio Bucklesby Ogden, collectively known as The Wire; yet for the most part, this Victorian masterpiece has been forgotten and ignored by scholars and popular culture alike. Like his contemporary Charles Dickens, Ogden has, due to the rough and at times lurid nature of his material, been dismissed as a hack, despite significant endorsements of literary critics of the nineteenth century. Unlike the corpus of Dickens, The Wire failed to reach the critical mass of readers necessary to sustain interest over time, and thus runs the risk of falling into the obscurity of academia. We come to you today to right that gross literary injustice.
The Hooded Utilitarian: “When It’s Not Your Turn”: The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire”
(Thanks Jillian!)
Apparently this essay is being turned into a book.
It’s part of a The Wire Round-Table at the site The Hooded Utilitarian.
Also included in the round-table is this essay on women in The Wire, which claims, quite rightly, that “The Wire is singularly unconcerned with how women fare in these institutions, the fates they face, the options open to them.”
See also:
When did TV become art?
Vice Magazine’s interview with David Simon
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/o9ehC0Ij8Zs/
Who knows if this will ever make it out of production hell:
As readers of Dodgem Logic #2 will know, photographer Mitch Jenkins took a striking series of portraits of performers at a Northampton burlesque review. He decided to film a 10-minute short featuring the dancers for his showreel and, wanting to help out a friend, Moore offered to write a shooting script. It was called “Jimmy’s End”.
As soon as word got out that Moore was writing something for film, people quickly got interested. Jenkins and Moore were approached by Warp Films (producers of Shane Meadows’ This is England and Chris Morris’ Four Lions), who offered to fund a feature version of the film.
These discussions grew to accommodate the idea of spinning off a Channel 4 series from the film, in the manner of This is England ’86. Moore said that initially he’d been dubious about how the story could be extended in this way but had now figured out a longer ongoing narrative.
Bleeding Cool: Jimmy’s End – Alan Moore’s New Feature Film And Spin Off TV Series
(via John Reppion)
From http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Technoccult/~3/8eOc5PjO1Us/
