World Cancer Research Fund advises people to limit consumption of beef, pork and lamb and avoid processed meatThis article titled “Cut red meat intake and don’t eat ham, say cancer researchers” was written by Denis Campbell, health correspondent, for The Guardian on Sunday 22nd May 2011 23.06 UTCCancer experts have issued a fresh warning about eating red and processed meat after “the most authoritative report” on the subject blamed them for causing the disease.The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) is advising people to limit their intake of red meats such as beef, pork and lamb, and to avoid processed meat such as ham and salami altogether. “Convincing evidence” that both types of meat increase the risk of bowel cancer means people should think seriously about reducing how much they eat, it recommends.The charity kickstarted a global debate in 2007 when it published a study which identified meat as a risk factor for a number of different forms of cancer.WCRF-funded scientists at Imperial College London led by Dr Teresa Norat studied 263 research papers that have come out since then looking at the role of diet, weight and physical activity in bowel cancer. An independent panel of leading cancer experts then reviewed their conclusions. “For red and processed meat, findings of 10 new studies were added to the 14 analysed as part of the 2007 report. The panel confirmed that there is convincing evidence that both red and processed meat increase bowel cancer risk,” said the report .“WCRF recommends that people limit consumption to 500g (cooked weight) of red meat a week – roughly the equivalent of five or six medium portions of roast beef, lamb or pork – and avoid processed meat,” it added. About 36,000 Britons a develop bowel cancer every year, and some 16,500 die from it. It is the UK’s second biggest cancer killer after lung cancer.About 17,000 cases a year (43%) could be prevented if people ate less meat and more fibre, drank less, maintained a healthy weight and kept active, the WCRF says.Its 850-page report, releasedon Monday, is “the most authoritative ever report of bowel cancer risk”, cancer prevention experts claim.Professor Alan Jackson of Southampton University, the chair of the WCRF’s continuous update project expert panel, said: “On meat, the clear message that comes out of our report is that red and processed meat increase risk of bowel cancer and that people who want to reduce their risk should consider cutting down the amount they eat.”Growing concern about red and processed meat prompted the government in February to advise consumers for the first time to consider cutting down. That came after the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN), experts who advise the government, examined the evidence on the subject. It decided that those meats probably increase the risk of bowel cancer.People who eat 90g or more a day should cut down to the UK average of 70g, SACN recommended. It advised having smaller portions or eating those meats less often. A 70g serving could be three slices of ham, a lamb chop or two standard beef burgers.WCRF’s review has also firmed up from “probable” to “convincing” its view of the protection against bowel cancer afforded by eating foods containing fibre, such as wholegrains, pulses, fruit and vegetables.Milk, garlic and dietary supplements containing calcium also “probably” reduce the risk, the expert panel concluded.But farmers’ leaders denounced the WCRF’s new report and accused it of deliberately choosing the first day of National Vegetarian Week to publish it in order to maximise publicity for conclusions which the charity first reached years ago.Chris Lamb, a spokesman for BPEX and EBLEX, which represents England’s pig, beef and lamb farmers, said: “Average consumption has been in or around 500g a week for a few years. The vast majority of consumers aren’t exceeding this and don’t have to worry about [this]“, he said.The risks identified by the WCRF were unchanged, he stressed.Lamb argued it was unfair for the WCRF to highlight meat as a contributory cause of bowel cancer when the main risk was to people who are generally unhealthy, for example by consuming too much food, alcohol or fizzy drink.“They aren’t assisting consumers. Consumers eat and enjoy meat as part of a balanced diet, and meat plays a valuable part in that balanced diet”, said Lamb. “If you eat or drink anything in excess it’s a danger. Therefore, if you can pick on meat in order to get headlines, then you aren’t actually helping consumers.”Professor Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer for England, said red meat can form part of a healthy, balanced diet. “It is a good source of protein and vitamins and minerals, such as iron, selenium, zinc and B vitamins,” she said, “but people who eat a lot of red and processed meat should consider cutting down. The occasional steak or extra few slices of lamb is fine but regularly eating a lot could increase your risk of bowel cancer.”Bowel Cancer UK chief executive Deborah Alsina said: “The report significantly adds to the available evidence into the increased risk of bowel cancer from eating too much red and processed meat; and strengthens the evidence of how eating food with fibre in it protects people against the disease.Hazel Nunn, a senior health information officer at Cancer Research UK, said: “With barbeque season just round the corner, this is a timely reminder that how much alcohol you drink, how active you are, your weight, and how much red and processed meat and fibre you eat can all have a bearing on your risk of bowel cancer.”• Growing numbers of lung cancer patients are having life-saving operations thanks to advances in surgical techniques. The proportion of patients with the disease who undergo surgery has risen from one in 11 in 2005 to one in seven last year, according to a study by the NHS Information Centre. Lung cancer kills more people than any other form of cancer. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogCut red meat intake and don’t eat ham, say cancer researchersRelated posts:Alcohol to blame for 13,000 cancer cases a year in UKTurkey Ham?World Development Report: Why no mention of Paris?
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Cut red meat intake and don’t eat ham, say cancer researchers
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May 23 2011, 4:36am | Comments »
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Game facing 60% drop in profits, warn retail analysts
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/26/game-facing-60-drop-in-profits-warn-retail-analysts
The computer game retailer Game, is expected to publish results badly affected by the rise of digital downloads in the same way as music filesharing has hit record shops.
This article titled “Game facing 60% drop in profits, warn retail analysts” was written by Andrew Clark, for The Observer on Saturday 23rd April 2011 23.06 UTC Britain’s leading computer games retailer, Game, is likely to reveal a plunge in profits of up to 60% this week as electronic entertainment enthusiasts shun high street shops in favour of digital downloads. Game, which is expected to name former Ladbrokes boss Chris Bell to replace its soon-to-retire chairman Peter Lewis, is forecast by analysts to deliver profits of £37m-£39m for the year to January, a dramatic drop from £90m a year ago, in spite of the success of hit games such as Call of Duty: Black Ops and Fight Night Champion. In common with music specialist HMV, the company is facing fundamental structural challenges as sales migrate onto the internet. In a strategic review in February, Game promised a “step change” in its own online offering, pledging to triple digital sales to £300m by 2013 to offset weak trading at its 1,300 shops. Analysts at Deutsche Bank have suggested Game could be a takeover target for US retailer Gamestop, which has a handful of shops in Britain and is rumoured to be considering expansion.
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April 26 2011, 12:48pm | Comments »
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TV review: Jamie’s Dream School
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/04/13/tv-review-jamies-dream-school-2
Some sort of review of the final episode of jamies dream school which aired tonight.
This article titled “TV review: Jamie’s Dream School” was written by Sam Wollaston, for The Guardian on Wednesday 13th April 2011 21.00 UTC Last week on Jamie’s Dream School, (Channel 4) Angelique said: “You’re a prick, mate” to Alastair Campbell. To be honest I was worried about Angelique at the start, so it’s nice to see her growing in confidence and getting the hang of things, as well as showing she’s a shrewd judge of character . . . Oh, you have got to be having a laugh – he’s only gone and banned her from the Downing Street trip. “I think calling a teacher a ‘fucking prick’ as you storm out of the class is not really an acceptable way to behave,” he says, sanctimoniously. Well, a couple of points there, Alastair. You’re not really a teacher – you’re a spin doctor. You’ve spent your life being rude to people, so maybe you should learn to take a bit too. Also, Angelique didn’t say “fucking prick”. You added the F-word, so go and wash your filthy mouth out. And one more thing: she did kind of have a point. But he’s not going to back down, because that would show weakness. It’s not all bad news, though, because Angelique’s going to get him. “Watch how I behave today in his lesson,” she says. “He thought last week was bad; he’s going to cry today.” Fight, fight, fight . . . Oh, the head intervenes, persuades Alastair to perform a spectacular U-turn and let Angelique go, but she does have to behave. So we don’t get to see her make Alastair Campbell cry. Boo! But then she is going to Downing street, so maybe she’ll make David Cameron cry. Or at least call him a prick. Yay! To be fair to Campbell (why are those words so hard?), he is one of Jamie’s better recruits. Not only are his classes good, but he also has a nice rapport with the kids, engages with them and clearly likes them too. Plus he realises that Jamie’s Dream School is much more dream than school and has little bearing on what does or can happen in a classroom. And that when it’s over it’ll be – to quote the great words of another member of the Dream School staffroom – back to life, back to reality. So off they all go to Downing Street and sit round the cabinet table. Oh, please let them run the country, just for one day – I like Henry’s idea of a skunk tax instead of the public sector cuts. He’s done the maths too – says it’ll bring in £1.6bn a year, and that’s just from him. In bounces the PM. “Hi, everyone, how you doing, hi Jourdelle, hi there,” he says. Not many people called Jourdelle at King Henry VI’s Dream School, his alma mater, I shouldn’t imagine. Jourdelle wants Cameron to guess how many GCSEs they’ve got between them. “I don’t know,” says Dave. “And I’m not going to guess, I don’t want to . . . er . . .” Oh, go on Dave, say something embarrassing, like “disrespect you”. But he saves himself just in time, gets Jourdelle to tell him. Damn. Harlem wants to ask something. “Harlem, take it away,” says Dave, relaxing into semi-youth-speak. Take it away, eurgh. But it’s just a bit cringey, rather than proper embarrassing. And they’re way too easy on him. Nothing about how can he possibly understand when he’s from where he is, or about whether he knows about skunk from back in the days with the Bullingham bredrin. Henry doesn’t even have a pop at Sam Cam (though to be fair to Henry, if she’d made an appearance he most probably would’ve done). The real disappointment is Angelique, who’s taking this good behaviour thing way too far. She doesn’t storm out, or make Dave cry, or even call him a prick. Angelique! What’s going on? You’ve let Jamie’s Dream School down, you’ve let your classmates down, you’ve definitely let yourself down, but most of all you’ve let the whole bloody country down. To be fair to Angelique (where’s all the magnanimity coming from today?) she does redeem herself outside No 10, showing that even if she’s not calling anyone a prick today, she can at least still recognise one. “Oh my God, it’s George Osborne,” she says. But then Henry goes and trumps her by getting the chancellor to unwittingly sign his legalise-skunk petition. Today – the last day – was Henry’s day; excellent work, well done.
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April 13 2011, 4:22pm | Comments »
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Folk’s man of mystery: is Cecil Sharp a folk hero or villain?
Songwriters are given a week to write a bunch of songs about Cecil Sharp. The eight folk-music songwriting ‘celebrities’ include Leonard Podolak from The Duhks, Steve Knightley from Show Of Hands, Jackie Oates, Kathryn Roberts, Jim Moray, Caroline Herring
This article titled “Folk’s man of mystery: is Cecil Sharp a folk hero or villain?” was written by Colin Irwin, for The Guardian on Thursday 24th March 2011 22.30 UTC It sounds like some hideous TV reality show dreamed up by Simon Cowell and Andrew Lloyd Webber during a night on the lash. Dump eight folk-music celebrities in a secluded house in Shropshire and give them six days to create from scratch a suite of songs to be performed in front of paying audiences in Shrewsbury and London and then recorded for a live album. Careers have been destroyed on less whimsical ideas. The subject of their mission is Cecil Sharp, the great song collector whose work in the early years of the 20th century helped lay the foundations of the modern folk revival. Visiting them on day three at their remote hideaway – a rambling farmhouse near Church Stretton – you anticipate plenty of carnage: frayed tempers, blood on the carpet, egos splattered on walls, creativity-devouring levels of tension in the air. But no, instead, they are … dancing. Part of their brief is to incorporate Sharp’s collecting trips to the Appalachian mountains, and Leonard Podolak, an extrovert, shaggy-haired Canadian taking time out from his band the Duhks, is using this as an excuse to lighten the mood and teach the others some audience-rousing step-dance moves. “It’s going pretty well,” says Steve Knightley, frontman with Show of Hands and unofficial father of the house. “We came in on Friday, had a Chinese takeaway, listened to a talk about Sharp, got drunk and started work.” It sounds as if Knightley almost cracked it on that first night. “The women all went to bed and the rest of us sat in the kitchen strumming and talking, and in the space of that time Steve wrote three songs one after another,” says singer, writer and multi-instrumentalist Jim Moray in wonder. “He’d play a chord and off the top of his head sing something, anything, and say: ‘I’ll just record that on my phone.’ Some of the words are nonsense and don’t gel, but he goes back and develops it. I can’t do that. I can’t sit there free-associating nonsense, because I feel so self-conscious about it. But Steve has that confidence in his own ability to do that.” Operating under the umbrella of the Shrewsbury folk festival, where the Cecil Sharp Project will be staged at the end of August, project director Neil Pearson’s choice of artists reflects personal taste as much as any scientific assessment of personalities. “I had a long list of about 40 artists who I thought could make it work. I approached 10 of them first of all, and the eight who said yes are the eight we have here.” “I’m not getting involved in the creative process at all,” says Pearson, who masterminded a similar project to mark the bicentennial of Charles Darwin’s birth, two years ago. “The only thing I’ve said is that I’d like them to start and end with ensemble pieces. The rest is entirely up to them. I’m very confident the musicians we have will come up with something special.” Considering the time strictures, they do all seem remarkably laidback, gathering in little clutches around the house. Fuelled by a constant flow of iced coffee, Leonard Podolak is a loud and relentless force of nature, carrying his laptop around to treat housemates to his favourite YouTube clips, banjo glued to his arm, shouting, “I’m a Cheatham County chitlin-cooking lover …” at the top of his voice to anyone within earshot. Chitlins are a dish made from pig’s intestines, and he’s trying out a song that confronts the dietary limitations encountered by the vegetarian Sharp on his journey into the Appalachians. In the kitchen, meanwhile, some more genteel interaction involves Jackie Oates and Kathryn Roberts practising glorious harmonies on Seeds of Love, the first traditional song collected by Sharp. He heard it sung by a gardener, John England, while taking tea with his friend, the Rev Charles Marson in Hambridge, Somerset in 1903. In another room, Moray fleshes out a guitar arrangement as Knightley toys with darker images of Sharp on his deathbed, haunted by the ghosts of the singers from whom he’s collected music demanding the return of their songs. The subject of Cecil Sharp has long divided folk-song scholars. The popular image is of a charming eccentric cycling around Somerset knocking on people’s doors persuading old ladies to sing him their lovely old songs so he could save them from extinction, and preserve them through his books and lectures to provide a formidable harvest for future generations to enjoy and plunder. The conflicting modernist view is of a controlling manipulator who presented a false idyll of rural England by excluding anything that didn’t fit his agenda, moulding himself as an untouchable icon of the folk-song movement in the process. Either way it’s a compelling story. At a time when other folk song collectors such as George Butterworth were dying in the trenches during the first world war, Sharp was on a mission in the US, battling ill-health exacerbated by the oppressive climate as he obsessively attempted to unravel the heart of the old world in the purity of folk songs he found in the new. “It is strenuous work,” he wrote. “There are no roads in our sense of the word … I go about in a blue shirt, a pair of flannel trousers with a belt, a Panama hat and an umbrella. The heat is very trying …” And that’s about as much as he reveals about himself, frustrating the songwriter in Knightley, who considers Sharp a far tougher nut to crack than Charles Darwin. “With Darwin you had world-changing views, with all the reaction to that from the religious side, plus the geography, the travel, the exotic flora and fauna … and no music to distract you. With Sharp there’s this great body of work, and nothing about the man.” This may in no small part be due to Maud Karpeles, Sharp’s faithful assistant on those epic expeditions into the Appalachians, who fiercely protected his legacy following his death in 1924, writing an anodyne biography that depicted him as a saint. “What we all really want to know is: did Cecil shag Maud?’ says Knightley to nervous hilarity in the house, with enough secretive giggling over hastily written lyrics and nascent choruses to suggest such lascivious suggestions are indeed being considered as an irreverent song topic. “Sharp was definitely all about the work,” says Moray. “His diaries are informative, but they just say things like ’2pm: dinner with Miss Hamer. 6pm: theatre.’ If he had ulterior motives – whether political or whatever – they weren’t mentioned or documented. Most people have arrived at this idea of him being a controlling, sanitising man, but I don’t think it was malicious or sinister. I just think he was very driven. I don’t believe he was rewriting history the way some people imagine.” Hailing from Canton, Mississippi, Caroline Herring knows all about Sharp’s US collecting trips. “The ballads I’ve heard since childhood, like Fair and Tender Ladies, Barbara Allen, Knoxville Girl, make up the standard bluegrass tunes I first played. I jumped at the chance to come here. A folk music career in the US is not always showy and sexy, so it was a dream to come over here and work with these musicians. I go online at night and read about how they’re all stars and come back down and have pancakes with them in the morning.” It was Herring who picked up on the fact that at a time when 13% of the population in the Appalachians was black, Sharp wilfully ignored them. He collected only two songs from black singers, one of them being Barbara Allen, learned from “Aunt” Maria Tomes, an 85-year-old former slave he found smoking a pipe in a log cabin in Nellysford, Virginia in 1918. Suitably inspired by this footnote, Herring and Knightley start working up a vehement blues telling Aunt Maria’s story. Exhausted, they all gradually drift off to bed, half-written songs and scraps of tunes spinning round their heads. Yet deep into the early hours, the group’s two main mischief makers, Podolak and Cutting, are still swapping tunes, jokes and video clips before deciding to make a pancake mix for breakfast. When he surfaces a couple of hours later next morning, Podolak says he still couldn’t sleep. “When I went to bed I wrote this brilliant three-part tune entirely in my head, but I was too tired to get up and now I can’t remember any of it. I wish I had one of those frickin’ iPhones.” You wonder if Cecil Sharp might have thought the same. The Cecil Sharp Project performs at Cecil Sharp House, London, on Saturday and Sunday.
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March 25 2011, 7:39am | Comments »
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Regional theatre should take more risks
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/23/regional-theatre-should-take-more-risks
Programming Barrie, Noël Coward or Daphne Du Maurier is understandable when times are tough. But if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future, it must look beyond plays of the past
This article titled “Regional theatre should take more risks” was written by Lyn Gardner, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 22nd March 2011 11.57 UTC A couple of years back, in a passionate post on this blog about regional theatre, the Royal and Derngate’s artistic director Laurie Sansom observed that “Regional artistic directors used to behave as if they were on Countdown: ‘I’ll have a Coward, please, a Shakespeare, a new play in the studio, and another Coward, please, Carol.’ These days, I can only imagine producing Noël Coward if an artist has a personal connection to the material and a burning desire to give it fresh theatrical life.” Two years is a long time in theatre. Since Sansom’s post on the vibrancy of programming in regional theatres, we’ve had an election, the formation of a coalition government that has no understanding of the crucial role theatre can play in its community both economically and socially, and the prospect of funding cuts. But it is clear that, long before the axes have fallen, many theatre programmes have taken on the look of a nervy Countdown selection. Perhaps it’s hardly surprising: just as hemlines go down in a recession, maybe artistic directors are inclined to look backwards rather than forwards. Perhaps even more importantly, it is a reminder how much confidence and psychology plays a part in creating the conditions necessary for a theatre to take risks, then reap the rewards. Back in 2001, the fact that there was money on the way (in the form of the £25 million that was injected into theatre after the Boyden report) created a sea-change in British regional theatre that was apparent long before theatres saw a penny of the cash. In the circumstances, then, perhaps it is no surprise that the seasons currently gracing our stages – in many cases programmed more than a year ago – reflect a certain nervousness about audience attendance, and suggest a headlong retreat into pre-Look Back in Anger drama. That impression may be somewhat skewed by the Rattigan centenary, not that I begrudge him his moment in the sun: Thea Sharrock’s timely (and award-winning) After the Dance at the National made as good a case for Rattigan’s rehabilitation as the Almeida’s revival of The Deep Blue Sea in 1993. But, even if you take Rattigan out of the equation, we’re still seeing a rash of Cowards and Priestleys, even the odd Du Maurier and W Somerset Maugham. Or how about Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton? Restoration comedy seems to be making a come-back too. I can’t recall so much interest in The Rivals since the 1980s. Of course there’s wrong with directors rummaging around in the theatrical attic and finding plays that glimmer in the dark. There are also horses for courses: Salisbury Playhouse, which recently saw a fine revival of The Constant Wife, may actually be the only theatre in the country where you could still do Somerset Maugham, and there is no one more qualified to do it well than Philip Wilson – who knows how to mine beneath a brittle surface and who, incidentally, has previously has proved himself a superb director of Coward. Sansom was right two years ago and he is still right now, in suggesting that it is a burning desire to give a play new theatrical life that makes it worth doing. The results can be transforming, as we saw in the 1990s with Stephen Daldry with An Inspector Calls, or have seen recently at the Finborough with a rare revival of Emlyn Williams’s Accolade. And David Grindley’s touring revival of Journey’s End demonstrates that even an old war horse can have real vigour and relevance. So I certainly don’t want to write off the plays of the past, but do want to point out that if regional theatre wants to safeguard its future it can’t play things too safe. It’s risk-taking that keeps theatre alive.
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March 23 2011, 6:22pm | Comments »
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Million Dollar Quartet – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/03/million-dollar-quartet-theatre-revie
Review for The Million Dollar Quartet a rock musical based on an impromptu jam session at Sun Records studio on 4th December 1956 between Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins.
This article titled “Million Dollar Quartet – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Monday 28th February 2011 22.15 UTC 1956 was a momentous year: the Suez crisis, the Hungarian revolution, Khruschev’s denuniciation of Stalin. But it was also a time of cultural upheaval, and this exuberantly nostalgic show recreates the occasion on 4 December when Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins all converged on the Sun Records studio in Memphis for some impromptu music-making. Sam Phillips, who turned an old radiatior shop into the pioneering Sun studio and who hosts the get-together, is described by one of the group as “the father of rock’n'roll”; and Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux’s story records the poignant moment at which the sons abandon the father. Elvis has already been sold to RCA and become a Hollywood star, and the others now accept that it is time to move on. But, though the show pinpoints the eclipse of the Sun and the tensions within the group, such as Perkins’s resentment of Presley’s refashioning of Blue Suede Shoes, what we see on stage is a celebration; and, if you’re of a certain generation, it’s a joy to hear once again numbers such as Hound Dog, Great Balls of Fire and I Walk the Line. Obviously, the cast have to compete with our memories of the real thing, but Ben Goddard does a particularly good job of conveying the anarchic wildness of Jerry Lee Lewis. But Michael Malarkey as Elvis, Derek Hagen as Johnny Cash and Robert Britton Lyons, the one authentic American, as Carl Perkins offer substance as well as shadows. Bill Ward as the pathfinding Phillips and Francesca Jackson as Elvis’s squeeze, who offers a notably sultry, microphone-caressing version of Fever, add to the gaiety of a show that taps into all our yesterdays.
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Related posts:The Wizard of Oz – review Drowning on Dry Land – review The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – review
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March 3 2011, 11:54am | Comments »
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The Wizard of Oz – review
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/02/the-wizard-of-oz-review
The Guardian amongst others has published a review of The Wizard of Oz with Danielle Hope at the London Palladium. If you like The Wizard of Oz on film you will undoubtedly enjoy the stage version too. Red Shoes Blues sung by Hannah Waddingham as the Wicked Witch of the West is one of the highlights, and a new song with lyrics by Tim Rice: “She’s pretty, she’s clueless and I want her shoeless”.
This article titled “The Wizard of Oz – review” was written by Michael Billington, for The Guardian on Wednesday 2nd March 2011 00.53 UTC The Victorian theatre of spectacle is alive and well, and residing at the London Palladium. But although this adaptation of the Frank Baum book and the 1939 movie, with additional songs by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, is quite an eyeful, it’s somewhat lacking in humanity. I came out feeling blitzkrieged rather than charmed. The star of the show is undoubtedly the set and costume designer, Robert Jones. The Kansas cyclone that whisks Dorothy into a dreamworld is evoked through vorticist projections (the work of Jon Driscoll) that betoken chaos in the cosmos. The Yellow Brick Road is on a tilted revolve from inside which poppyfields and labyrinthine forest emerge. The Emerald City is full of steeply inclined walls suggesting a drunkard’s vision of the Chrysler Building lobby. And the Wicked Witch of the West inhabits a rotating dungeon that might be a Piranesi nightmare. Not since 19th century Drury Lane melodramas can London have seen anything quite like it; one has to admire the director and co-adaptor, Jeremy Sams, for marshalling the effects. But the story and the people get swamped. Danielle Hope shows a natural, easy presence as Dorothy, but can’t hope to compete with the scenery. Even Michael Crawford, playing both Professor Marvel and The Wizard, seems slightly subdued, and misses a trick by not highlighting the latter’s resemblance to PT Barnum whom he once played. Only two of the cast transcend the spectacle. Hannah Waddingham makes the Wicked Witch a pointy-chinned ogre who at one point flies over the audience’s heads with an elan that Spider Man might envy. David Ganly notches up a first by making the Cowardly Lion explicitly gay and announcing “I’m proud to be a friend of Dorothy.” Of course, there are the songs; it’s good to be reminded of such classics as Over The Rainbow, We’re Off To See The Wizard, and Follow The Yellow Brick Road. The additions by Lloyd Webber and Rice are also perfectly acceptable. Dorothy is given a good plaintive opening number, and Red Shoes Blues, sung by the Wicked Witch, has a pounding intensity. But, as a film scholar remarked to me, the movie was a story with songs rather than a full-blown musical. That delicate balance has been changed, and an essentially simple fable about the importance of individual worth seems overblown. I suspect in the end the show will be critic-proof and people will go to see both the winner of the TV talent contest and to luxuriate in the sumptuous visuals. But the paradox of the evening is that it suffers the same dilemma as the Tin Man: it might have been so much more if it only had a heart.
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March 2 2011, 2:14pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Radiohead: The King of Limbs – reviews
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/02/20/radiohead-thekingoflimbs-reviews
The release strategy and format of Radiohead’s albums have been talked about endessly but what do the reviews of the music have to day about it? independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/radiohead-the-king-of-limbs telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/8334723/Radiohead-The-King-Of-Limbs-review
Here’s my review: I like it. This article titled “Radiohead: The King of Limbs – review” was written by Kitty Empire, for The Observer on Sunday 20th February 2011 00.06 UTC In the end, it arrived early. Announced on Valentine’s Day – and, perhaps not uncoincidentally, the eve of the Brits – the eighth Radiohead album was eventually sprung on the world a day before anyone was expecting it. That was an act of mischievous digital benevolence so typical of Radiohead, a band rewriting the rules of pop engagement on the fly. Judging from their most recent black-and-white portrait, in which the band slope awkwardly at the bottom of an ancient tree, The King Of Limbs could, by rights, have been their acid folk album – one informed by the writing of Roger Deakin, perhaps. Indeed, seven tracks in, Give Up the Ghost – a mellow and mantric song strung on acoustic guitars and announced by birdsong – gives a hint of what might have been. By contrast, anyone following Thom Yorke’s recent Office Chart blog posts might have been expecting a record in thrall to dubstep, or even more obscure electronic micro-genres. Fulfilling that brief is Feral, a sinuous bass shakedown at the heart of this typically contrary, intermittently stunning, album. Yorke’s deep affinity with musical outriders such as LA’s Flying Lotus – upon whose album Cosmogramma he guested last year – is manifest. Bloom, the album’s opening track, is underscored by wild jazz polyrhythms. Well, this is a 21st-century Radiohead album; it was never going to be easy listening. In truth, The King of Limbs sounds a little predictable, certainly at first. It is very much the heir to 2007′s In Rainbows, imbued with some of the spirit of Yorke’s solo outing, 2006′s The Eraser. Which is to say, it sounds another death knell for fans of The Bends and OK Computer still hoping for a late recantation and a return to anthemic guitar rock. Guitars are very thin on the ground in Radiohead’s dark wood. The most traditional sounds here occur on the splendid Codex, in which a stately, distant piano bongs mournfully. Restless rhythms abound. But they never quite resolve into dance beats – despite Yorke’s brave moves in the video that accompanies Lotus Flower. It should have stopped traffic in Tokyo last Friday at rush hour, but because of crowd concerns, the screening on Hachiko Square’s giant video screens was pulled. Radiohead’s works reward close and long listening; this dense and knotted eight-track album is no exception. But one of its most instant delights was the sense of giddy communion last Friday, as fans and observers awaited, then savoured, the record in real time.
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February 20 2011, 6:07am | Comments »
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I posted to hubpages.com
Why I Recommend BabyFirstTV
http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-I-Recommend-BabyFirst-TV
My daughter loves to watch television. She loves Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street. I prefer for her to watch educational programming, and at ten months old, my daughter prefers educational programming.
We...
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August 19 2009, 4:27pm | Comments »
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