Tim Worthington's Newsround: movies

Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

Looks Unfamiliar #25: Tim Worthington – People Don’t Really Go On About Psychedelic Blue Peter

Looks Unfamiliar 25 - Tim Worthington

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to. This time the guest is Tim himself, who talks to Stephen O’Brien about the fact that almost literally nobody he has ever met has heard of The Only Way by Lisa Stansfield, sixties crime caper movie The Brain, Jackanory‘s adaptation of Starstormers by Nicholas Fisk, the ‘There Were Three Of Them, In A Boat…’ Public Information Film, the original version of I Was Made To Love Magic by Nick Drake, trashy teen novel Secrets From The School Underground, early Mark Radcliffe vehicle Skyman, and forgotten ‘fourth’ Trumptonshire series Rubovia. Not to mention a certain less than reputable film that used to show up on German cable channels late on Saturday Night. Along the way we’ll be finding out whether Kim Wilde Doing Abba is preferable to Abba Doing Kim Wilde, watching the Welsh Brass Eye, hearing about when Billy Elliot exploded (and even then wasn’t as good as Musical Youth), and getting annoyed at a fictional schoolboy’s opinions on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. And if you’re listening, Ian Radio 4 Extra, sort those repeats out!

You can get my new book, Can’t Help Thinking About Me, from here.

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You can find more editions of Looks Unfamiliar here.

Looks Unfamiliar is hosted by Podnose.

Support Looks Unfamiliar by buying one of Tim's books! Can't Help Thinking About Me is brand new and features loads of brand new material, including plenty about Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley, and you can get it in paperback here or from the Kindle store here.

Looks Unfamiliar #11: Lisa Parker And Andrew Trowbridge – He Looks Like A Normal Boy With A Nose

Looks Unfamiliar 11 - Lisa Parker And Andrew Trowbridge

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever does. Joining Tim this time are podcasters Lisa Parker and Andrew Trowbridge, who relate their not especially shared memories of Big John Little John, Virtual Murder, Matchbox Cascade, the Bobby Brewster books, Enid Blyton’s Mr. Pink Whistle, and the Jaws game. Along the way we’ll be finding out how to re-enact Total Wipeout in the comfort of your own home, how many voices ‘Radio’s Man Of A Thousand Voices’ really had, and why The Clown from Camberwick Green could never qualify as a master of disguise.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE - SUBSCRIBE IN ITUNES - RSS

Looks Unfamiliar is hosted by Podnose.

Support Looks Unfamiliar by buying one of Tim's books! The Camberwick Green Procrastination Society is available in paperback here, from the Kindle Store here, or as a full-colour eBook here. And there's several other books to choose from here...

62-39 Was His Number

According to Smash Hits, Elvis Presley made about three million films, all of which were called either Elvis Has A Kiss-Up In Hawaii or Elvis Says It's Swinging, Pops. And, if you watched BBC1 during the school holidays, didn't you just know it.

Presumably as much on account of their cheapness and indeed sheer volume as it was due to tweedy old shirts behind desks thinking that Elvis was what 'young people' liked, Double Trouble, Fun In Acapulco, Girls! Girls! Girls! and all two thousand nine hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety seven others of them, some of which Elvis probably didn't even realise he'd actually made, rolled round again and again and again alongside Why Don't You...?, The Monkees, King Of The Rocket Men and all of the other decidedly convenient holiday morning entertainment staples. Oh and Play Chess.

You'd be forgiven for assuming that youngsters came to resent this hip-swivelling intrusion into the schedules where the cheap swines could at least have put on Help!... It's The Hair Bear Bunch! or something, but actually they proved quite popular; hardly surprising when you consider that the movies had the same sort of combination of pop-fuelled hi-jinks and exotic retro allure as The Monkees and The Banana Splits. They were of course especially prevalent around the Christmas holidays, to the extend that an entire generation now associate sleigh bells and tinsel with a glorious technicolor Elvis in a loud Hawaiian shirt even by Hawaiian shirt standards being comforted by some youngsters on the stairs after momentarily losing the girl of his dreams.

There was, however, one very notable exception to this. Jailhouse Rock never seemed to find its way into these repeat seasons, presumably due to a combination of its black and white nature (not that this ever stopped them flinging out endless Edgar Kennedy 'shorts' nobody asked for), the slightly violent theme underpinning the storyline, and the fact that it was somehow seen as more serious and 'worthy', and the preserve of brow-furrowed Whistle Test spin-off 'Rock Goes To The Movies' theme nights. As absurd as it may sound, you usually had to ask to 'stay up' to watch Elvis Presley's most famous film.

Now, however, you can just roll up to the cinema to see it. Jailhouse Rock is a staggering sixty years old - although, weirdly, now seeming far less culturally remote than it did back when Elvis films were a school holidays staple - and to mark this occasion has just been re-released in a restored and staggeringly high quality print which makes those crumbly photocopy-esque bits of footage they used to use in things like The Rock'n'Roll Years feel like they came from another film entirely. What's more, you can get an authentic flavour of those tabloid-alarming dancing-in-the-aisles times by watching it in a packed auditorium full of so many over-excited first-time-around Elvis fans that you start to worry that you're about to see a re-enactment of Monty Python's 'Hell's Grannies' sketch; fortunately there were no vicious gangs of Keep Left signs to go with them, but at least they might keep bloody quiet during the film.

Jailhouse Rock is a film that stands up far better than anyone might not unreasonably have expected it to. It may well have been a quick production-line effort rushed out to cash in on the international success of someone who said 'well' a lot whilst TV cameras studiously avoided showing anything south of his shirt buttons, but those are just the literal specifics of its circumstances. It's tightly directed with convincing sets, is underpinned with a rock-solid script where the numerous musical numbers actually form part of the storyline (and for different reasons each time too), and despite essentially playing an even more exaggerated version of his stage persona at the time, Elvis acquits himself well as an actor, to the extent that you sometimes lose sight of the fact that you're actually watching an Elvis Presley vehicle rather than simply a good film from the time. It's also worth considering the fact that it runs to an economical yet packed ninety minutes, and that the main plot is set up in less than three minutes; something to bear in mind the next time you're covertly looking at your watch while waiting for the latest film that everyone says you 'have to see' to actually get started.

There were funnier, weirder and more socially aware pop movies to come. There was a brutally effective inversion of the upbeat music biz shenanigans it explores in Slade In Flame, which is in many respects a much more interesting film. And there was Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter, which people still think you're making up if you try explaining it to them. Jailhouse Rock, however, remains a potent and effective - and surprisingly mature - effort from the very dawn of both pop music and youth cinema which probably few at the time would have expected anyone to care about even six years later, let alone sixty. Yeah, see you at the re-release of The Wayward Bus, then.

Of course, Elvis wasn't alone in those schedules, and there was also a similarly unending procession of George Formby films on hand for the schedulers to fill time with. It's no wonder Play Chess seemed so comparatively tolerable.

If you've enjoyed this article, you can find lots more about old films and early pop music in Not On Your Telly, which is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Looks Unfamiliar #7: Ben Baker - Just A Bit Massively Stereotypical

Looks Unfamiliar 7 - Ben Baker

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever does. Joining Tim for a second time is writer, broadcaster and quizmaster Ben Baker, who shares his not-widely-shared memories of Children's ITV magazine show Toksvig, the Whizzkids' Guide book series, sophisticated yet not exactly enlightened board game Mysteries Of Old Peking, short-lived pop-punk sensations Mo-Ho-Bish-O-Pi, drug-fuelled post-Tarantino shock-comedy Go, and the entirely sensible hobby of making your own TV listings magazines. Along the way we'll be taking some advice from a Charcoal Jeremy Beadle, finding out why Ben had to hide his secret drawings of the Yorkshire TV logo, why Sandi Toksvig was at risk of exploding at any moment, and revealing which Shane Meadows film is not as good as a hat.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE - SUBSCRIBE IN ITUNES - RSS

Looks Unfamiliar is hosted by Podnose.

If you've enjoyed hearing Ben talking about the Whizzkids' Guide books, you might also enjoy this edition of Looks Unfamiliar with Darrell Maclaine talking about FunFax.

Support Looks Unfamiliar by buying one of Tim's books! Fun At One - The Story Of Comedy At BBC Radio 1 is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here. And there's several other books to choose from here...

Do Not Viddy This, My Brothers!

This is the story of how I didn't see a film.

A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick's controversial (not least with the author himself) 1971 big-screen version of Anthony Burgess' acclaimed novel, had caused a vivid furore on its release, and by the end of the decade had been withdrawn from UK distribution at the director's request. There have been wild stories of threats and protests outside the Kubrick family home from 'anti-violence' protesters, though it's also worth remembering that the film was used as a political football by moralising blowhards like pretty much no other before or since; including, to Burgess' great frustration, one James Wilson Vincent Savile. What an excellent arbiter of socially responsible behaviour he turned out to be. Anyway, whatever the reason, withdraw it Kubrick certainly did, and with home entertainment still really only in its infancy, this meant that - for UK audiences at least - A Clockwork Orange pretty much disappeared off the face of the planet.

As you can imagine, this made A Clockwork Orange a very intriguing prospect indeed to any self-respecting young student of the weird and lurid corners of cinema history. Surreally stylised and futuristic photos in books about 'Sci-Fi Films' were a nagging reminder of its tantalising unavailability. It stood almost alone as a movie that had been a huge hit one minute then basically erased from history the next, while older cousins and more verbose rock journalists hinted at a secret knowledge of it that you weren't allowed to share. Even the row about its content and suitability seemed more exciting than it maybe should have warranted. The fact that even if it had been available, I would have been too young to actually see A Clockwork Orange was neither here nor there - I was as obsessed with it as others were with A Nightmare On Elm Street or Predator. I read the book, I listened to the fantastic soundtrack album, I even cut out and kept a Guardian article about the RSC's stage adaptation starring Phil Daniels as Alex. There was just one small but significant flaw with this fanaticism - I hadn't actually seen the film itself.

There were rumours, of course, that it was widely available on 'pirate', but it always seemed to command the sort of sums of money that you didn't particularly want to be handing over to shifty teenagers on street corners, especially when you'd already seen the woeful quality of some of their more easily affordable wares. And so it was that, long after I'd seen Twisted Nerve, Peeping Tom, The Magic Christian, Supervixens, Cannibal Apocalyse, Vampyros Lesbos, The Trip, Monte Carlo Or Bust!, Psychomania, 200 Motels, Two-Lane Blacktop, Every Home Should Have One, The Rise And Rise Of Michael Rimmer and many other tantalisingly elusive doodles in the margin of cinema history, A Clockwork Orange remained my one big Halliwell-troubling box to tick. Yet despite the occasional frowning in a newspaper article accompanied by a badly-cropped version of that photo of Alex at the wheel of a car, it was still nowhere nearer becoming available.

Then, one day, a rumour began to circulate amongst members of a local Cinema Club that they were going to stage a secret - and not even remotely Kubrick-approved - screening of an under-the-counter print of the film to mark their tenth anniversary. Whether they ever actually intended to or not nobody really knows, as some ingrate prat promptly leaked the story to an illiterate muck-raking grief-porn-peddling chip-on-regional-shoulder local newspaper, who went predictably condemnatory crazy with the story - no prizes for guessing which photo they used to accompany it - prompting the cinema to issue a strenuous denial that they'd ever even considered it. Was this all a clever double-bluff, though? Was it worth running the risk of missing out on an actual chance to see it, and subsequently having to administer a self-kicking worthy of Alex and his Droogs? There was only one way to find out - to turn up on the supposed date and time and see if they were actually showing it away from prying smudgy-newsprint eyes.

As it turned out, I wasn't the only one who'd had that idea. A sizeable crowd had gathered outside the suspiciously darkened venue, made up primarily of studenty types holding cineaste-friendly impromptu discussions, nervy-looking lone gentlemen with an apparent disdain for washing their raincoats, and a small army of people in boiler suits and bowler hats. Oh, and a reporter, who was pleasingly blanked by everyone she attempted to speak to. As the night set in, the weather got colder, and it became increasingly obvious to anyone with a shred of sense that there was nobody actually inside the building, the Droogs seized their moment. A flurry of brolly-rapping on the determinedly shut doors and shouts to the effect of "but the slovo did viddy that the film would be on all horrorshow" did nothing to change the situation, so they started to indulge in in-character jostling of fellow would-be patrons instead. Once they began to loudly decry the arrival of 'the millicents', it really was time to give up and go home.

So, that's how effective banning films really is in terms of preventing copycat violence. Of course, there was also the time someone threw a full carton of Kia Ora at my head, but that's another story. And I actually saw the film that time too.

You can find more about my quest to see elusive films from the odder corners of movie history in Not On Your Telly, available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

ITV 59 - All Your ITV Favourites (And Eammon Holmes' Country Christmas Spectacular) Part Ten: Continuity Slides

Yes, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for, especially if you’ve absolutely no interest in base sarcasm with occasional factual accuracy about old-skool ITV presentation techniques but have still read nine lengthy (or, in some cases, not so lengthy) posts about it anyway – the final part of our Rifle Through ITV’s Big Bin Where They Threw All The Old Test Cards And Things Like That Once They’d Stopped Using Them. And that final bit of old-skool presentation? Why, it’s ‘continuity slides’ – in other words, those captions with a show title and accompanying photo that they used to flash up either side of ad breaks. And - as is par for the course for this sodding series, which has arguably proved for once and for all that the BBC is inherently better that its ad-laden rival - how many of the initially-thought-of list of examples do you think we actually managed to find? Clue: it’s not many…

Most of the time, you knew exactly where you were with ITV's continuity slides, and to be honest the above examples, from The Fonz to The Bloke Who Kept Impersonating The Fonz About Ten Years After Happy Days Had Finished, while certainly interesting to see, are so rational and reasonable that - you guessed it - it's not really possible to make any surrealist or sarcastic observations about them. Whatever The Crunch Bird is, though, it can fuck off.

Unlike the BBC, who would often keep using battered old continuity slides long after hosts, logos, timeslots and even entire formats had changed, ITV would regularly update their photographic placeholders and sometimes it's even possible to chart the evolution of long-running shows through their slides alone. Take, for example, Name That Tune, the seemingly erosion-defyingly enduring game show in which contestants would affect to be able to identify An American In Paris from a single piano thud; here we can see slides for the show both in its Peter Cook-presented days, and from its later rebranding as just plain Name Tune.

Sometimes, though, you do have to wonder exactly what impression of the shows they were trying to give. Witness the special edition of News At Ten On Ice, or the one for Spitting Image in the week that every public figure went on fire in the style of Bengal Matches. As for Home To Roost, presumably they just couldn't find any publicity photos in landscape format.

Sport, on the other hand, was always a bit more tricky, but luckily there was a steady supply of instantly recognisable off-the-shelf sporting iconography to reach for. Take, for example, the footballer modishly treated with a Computer-Pixel-stroke-Astro-Turf effect, Jake The Peg playing centre forward for United FC, and the edition of handily-titled Match Time coming live from the International Rubik's Clock Championship Finals 1986.

Due to their origins in another medium, lack of recognisable series iconography, and inevitable rights-hands-change-related loss of original promotional materials, films were trickier still and some ingenious solutions had to be sought. Like, for example, the bewilderingly sinister branding of whichever film they were actually showing under the umbrella banner 'Mel Brooks', the League Of Gentlemen-eulogised blanket coverage for Ghosts, Monsters And Legends-heavy oldies in a regular timeslot as 'Appointment With Fear' (though the contemporaneous 'horror film' slide featuring disparately-sized illustrations of Dracula, a mummy et al with the word 'BRRRRR' was sadly nowhere to be found), and the towel-throwing-in last resort of just showing a pile of unspooled film to denote 'movies' in general. Apparently Sitting Target is a 1972 UK crime thriller starring Oliver Reed, Ian McShane, Edward Woodward, June Brown and Tony Beckley, TV 'Harrison Chase'. Well yeah, that's obvious to the casual viewer.

There were times, of course, when for one reason or another an actual photo from the actual TV show just wouldn't do, and the tactics that were adopted to get around this often had interesting results to say the least. While World Of Sport sensibly opted for a non-canon-hued variation of the show's trademark stylised 'S' - Dickie Davis presumably having held out for a greater percentage on the rights to his face - Francis Wheen's heavyweight aahhhhh-as-you-like eight-million part history of the medium Television was rather bafflingly denoted by a cartoon bird looking through a Fox's Glacier Mint, and good ol' boy-friendly hoedown All Kinds Of Country by a Glam Rocker's discarded Rickenbacker. It's something of a relief, then, to find this perfectly sense-making example for Live From Her Majesty's, featuring regular headliners Those Musical Notes In 'Showbiz' Straw Hats. You remember them!

Needless to say, by the late eighties technology was getting ever swankier and the slides ever more swish and sophisticated, as illustrated by these tasteful and to-the-point ad-straddlers for long-running yet long-forgotten Telly Addicts For People Who Think The Doctor Whos Were In Order Jon Pertwee William Hartnell Sendhil Ramamurthy 'Belouis' Some' No Don't Argue With Me I Should Know I Used To Watch It Etc Etc We Love TV, 'light side of soccer' I-don't-know-why-you're-going-Saint-they-won't-be-picking-you-style-gag-heavy playground-imitatable pre-match punditry Saint And Greavsie, Kennedy-deliquiesced early afternoon proto-UKIPpery Daytime, and lost in the mists of time game show Concentration, as apparently presented by that bloke who's always on 8 Out Of 10 Cats.

Hang on a minute... Parky? What's he doing here?! Don't start adjusting your set just yet - unfortunately, despite extensive research, it's proved impossible to locate that sophistication-era slide for The Bill featuring Bob Cryer in front of rolling clouds, so Mr. Parkinson has generously agreed to appear as an illustration in its place. Anyway, that's the last we'll be seeing of him.

Meanwhile, over at Channel 4, there was never any such eccentricity. They did their research, they got their proper cast-featuring still from the shows, and they promoted them without a hint of absurdity, inexplicability or just plain lack of relation to any recognisable programme contents.

And, well, that just about wraps it up for our lukewarmly recieved jaunt through ITV's non-programmey bits of days gone by, which only involved minimal borderline libel of Walt Disney. Thanks for joining us in all the ident-mocking fun, or if you will all the non-'mock'-mocking fun, which I'm sure you'll agree ha

hich is why there wasn't any room to talk about that annoying Granada thing with the window clea

y sound at all, just the still picture of The Fonz, as if to say "(.....................)amundo", and they went straight into the ad break; presumably he was too 'cool' f

NMO THIS ITV MUST STOP

SOTP

PELASE RETURN TO BULLYING SELF-PROMTOION WITH IMEMDIATE EFFECT

HELLO AEREA M AN FROM TWITER

If you've enjoyed this article, you can find lots more about stuff you just don't see on television any more in Not On Your Telly, which is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.