It turns out that the Blake’s 7 revival, which had promised Paul Darrow’s return to the role of Avon (before Darrow dropped out and the television project was aborted), is taking the audio route: perhaps taking a cue from Big Finish’s work with Doctor Who. Alas, there will be new actors playing Blake and Avon (played respectively by Colin Salmon and Derek Riddell). But several writers involved with Doctor Who (including Marc Platt and Ben Aaronovitch) have penned scripts.
Inland Empire
I saw Inland Empire over the weekend and I’m still mulling it over. And I don’t know if I can offer an equitable assessment of the film until I’ve seen it again or at least thought more about it. I’ll only say that any film that leaves me almost totally stripped of brain and emotion is doing something right. And I’ll have more to say on this later. In the meantime, one of the more ruminative reviews I’ve read is Manohla Dargis’s. I agree with Dargis when she writes, “‘Inland Empire’ isn’t a film to love. It is a work to admire, to puzzle through, to wrestle with. Its pleasures are fugitive, even frustrating. The first time I saw it, I was repulsed by the shivers of Lynchian sadism, a feeling doubtless informed by my adoration of the far more approachable, humanistic ‘Mulholland Drive.’ On second viewing, though, ‘Inland Empire’ seemed funnier, more playful and somehow heartfelt.”
I Don’t Think the Monkeys on TV Really Went Away
Why Vox is Worthless to Any Thinking Blogger
Maxine Clarke: “I concluded that Vox must be going for the ‘young’ market — free (unlike Typepad), easy to use, high-level modules that don’t allow much personal variation on a basic theme, and don’t let the blogger remotely near the html code (total contrast with Blogger’s ‘let it all hang out’ approach). This impression is to some extent confirmed by the latest upgrades: you can now customise your banner design, and, with a complete straight face, Vox provides a question of the day for those inconvenient occasions when ‘you don’t know what to blog about’.”
Did Desai Win the Booker Too Young?
Daily Times: “Winning one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards put her in a pantheon of celebrated novelists, but Indian Booker prize-winner Kiran Desai worries she may not have another book in her….And for now, as she travels between literary festivals, she says has nothing left to tell.”