So, another week is upon us, dear blog fiends and the weather at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House has taken a turn for the ... 'I can't make my mind up if I'm going to be roasting hot, with a distinct autumnal nip in the air or aal wet and drizzly, like. So I think I shall do all of them, one day each'. Which was unexpected but, really, shouldn't have been. This is Britain, dear blog reader, this sort of malarkey goes on all the time.
As the current cost-of-living crisis starts to really bite hard, it appears that one chap in East Yorkshire was mad as hell and wasn't going to stand for it any more, taking matters into his own hands. Confused? Let the Grimsby Telegraph explain further. 'A drinker staged a one-man rooftop protest at the spiralling cost of beer and [the] cost-of-living crisis in a two-hour stand-off with police. The customer at the County Hotel in Immingham was sent "over the edge" when his barman told him his pint would be going up in price by twenty pence next week to £3.40. The man clambered onto the roof of the three-storey hotel and shouted about his anxiety over the cost-of-living and how he was "under pressure" to meet bills. More than a dozen police officers attended the stand-off and talked the man down after his protest. Owner of The County, Willie Weir, said he had sympathy with customers. But with increased energy costs he will be putting prices up. He said he remained serving the cheapest pint in the town.' This blogger has so many questions at this juncture. Not least of them being 'you seriously think £3.40 a pint is expensive, mate?' That's cheap in most parts of the country.
Anyway, let us kick-off the latest From The North bloggerisationism update, dear blog reader, with a link so that you can spend a delightful hour in the most excellent company of That There Mister Gaiman (and a really annoying American interviewer, admittedly). Which is never a chore for anyone.
Speaking of Neil his very self, there's been the standard array of usually half-way decent think-pieces on The Sandman published this week, perhaps the pick of which is by Andrew Anderson of Collider, Neil Gaiman's Willingness To Reframe His Characters Helped The Sandman Succeed. That one is highly recommended, as is The New Statesman's Diversity Is Part Of The Very Soul Of Neil Gaiman's Sandman. At the other end of the spectrum, Small Screen's Edward Lauder is somewhat guilty of putting the cart, somewhat, before the horseshit with The Sandman Season Two Details Revealed By Creator. That'll be the second series that hasn't, actually, been confirmed yet, presumably? Some people on the Interweb have claimed that Gaiman 'confirmed' a second series in a recent media interview but he didn't, he merely confirmed that they want to make a second series and that if Netflix don't pick up their option they will try to get it made by someone else. But, unless Neil is planning on paying for it himself, it's still going to depend on someone actually putting up the money to produce it (given that the first series, reportedly, cost one hundred and fifty million bucks, there might not be as many takers as some fans seem to imagine.) The same website's Hannah Saab, meanwhile, has written another lengthy piece on Ten Characters Who Could Appear In Season Two. Again, just to repeat, that's the series two which hasn't been confirmed, yet? Blimey, they're quite a bit eager for more Sandman over at the Small Screen website, are they not? This blogger's with you, guys, but it might be an idea, just for the moment to calm-the-fek-down and wait for an announcement before you start drawing up your wishlists for which bits of Seasons Of Mist and A Game Of You you'd like to see adapted.
Netflix has released its latest weekly viewing metrics and, with it, confirmed that The Sandman has crossed a major viewership milestone. According to the streaming service, the series was watched for a total of 53.79 million hours in the week from 22 to 28 August, pushing it over three hundred million hours watched in total since it premiered. About twenty five of those hours, incidentally, were here at The Stately Telly Topping Manor Plague House. So, this blogger will happily accept his own, small, share of this record-breaking malarkey. Viewership for The Sandman has been extremely strong since it debuted on 5 August, with over sixty nine million hours viewed in the first three days, rising to more than one hundred and twenty seven million hours in its first full week. In total, The Sandman has been watched over three hundred and twenty eight million hours thus far. With just a few days left on its 'first twenty eight days' window it seems unlikely that The Sandman will make Netflix's all-time Top Ten English-language TV shows list. The threshold for entry is high as the lowest series on the list (The Witcher) has over four hundred and eighty million hours. Despite this, Neil Gaiman has suggested that the production is 'on track' for a renewal and has also said that The Sandman could transfer to another streaming service should Netflix not pick up its option. And, if they can find someone with very deep pockets to actually pay for it.
Meanwhile, by a considerable distance, the single most absurd opinion-piece on The Sandman comes from Wired UK and some laughable plonker of no importance who believes that The Sandman Is Almost Too Faithful To Its Source Material. Which, oddly, is something that no one ever says about, I dunno, Hamlet for instance. Or, pretty much any other text which gets transferred from one medium to another. 'It's too much like story it's based on.' Uh? Sorry, run that one by this blogger again, please. Middle Class hippy Communists, dear blog reader. Don't you just lurv 'em?
And now ... House Of The Dragon: The Rogue Prince. Six months after Rhaenyra is named heir, Daemon occupies Dragonstone, supported by thousands of loyal guards. Meanwhile, Prince-Admiral Craghas Drahar, The Crab Feeder, menaces The Stepstones. The Small Council presses Viserys to remarry and propagate his royal line with, you know,his royal rod. Rhaenyra's suggestion to show force against Craghas is dismissed and she is relegated to selecting a new knight for The King's Guard, choosing the unpopular - but pure-dead sexy - Ser Criston. As Alicent continues 'comforting' Viserys at her father's urging, Lord Corlys, husband of Princess Rhaenys, proposes his twelve-year-old daughter, Laena, marry The King. Daemon has stolen a dragon egg to goad Viserys into a confrontation, but Otto Hightower goes instead. As batshit-crazy bloodshed looms, Rhaenyra flies to Dragonstone on her dragon and retrieves the egg from her uncle. Her disobedience angers The King, prompting a heartfelt discussion about Queen Aemma and his remarrying. Ultimately, Viserys announces that he will wed Alicent, shocking and angering both Rhaenyra and Corlys the latter of whom seeks out Daemon to form an alliance. 'He didn't choose me, he spurned Daemon.' Starting with a jolly familiar theme tune followed by a nasty attack of the crabs, this blogger is still struggling to get quite as excited about House Of The Dragon at this stage of its development as he was with its predecessor. But the acting it terrific. Most terrificest of all the terrifics being Yer Man Smudger managing to inject great subtlety into his nostril-flaring and casual egg-tossing. Really nice direction, too (that candlelit sepulcher sequence, the misty entry into Dragonstone and the subsequent bridge stand-off) and with plenty of squirming maggots and snippy crabs. This blogger likes the characters, he likes the look, he likes the feel of it, but it's going to take a few more episodes before he can judge it properly. He did enjoy Mysaria describing herself as 'a common ore'. Iron, presumably? Also, how can one not admire a drama with a Unit Production Manager called Karen Wacker?
Of course, as with the first episode, various organs of the media found some issues to try and create a bit of controversy out of. Like, viewers 'feeling uncomfortable' (it's okay, it's only some Middle Class hippy Communist at the Independent finding a few punters on Twitter who claim to be doing so). Or, the opening sequence 'dividing viewers' (it's okay, it's only our old fiends at the Metro - so, not a real newspaper, then - finding a few punters on Twitter who claim to be doing so). Or, the idea of a proposed underage marriage (it's okay, it's only some glake at the Daily Scum Express finding a few punters on Twitter who claim to be shocked - and stunned - by the very suggestion). To which, we say
In what is, perhaps, the least surprising TV news of the the year, following the successful launch of episode one last week, it has been confirmed that House Of The Dragon will be returning for a second series. See, Netflix, that's how you do a renewal announcement, in case you'd forgotten what one was like.
Moving on, now, to another From The North favourtie, Doctor Who, the Den of Geek website's Laura Vickers-Green has written a very comprehensive - and really rather good - piece, Doctor Who Sixtieth Anniversary Rumours: Sorting The Fact From The (Fan) Fiction. Which manages to do, pretty successfully, exactly what it says on the tin. A necessary warning - as you might expect from the title, this is really (potentially) spoiler-heavy. So, as they always say on The News just before Match Of The Day 'if you don't want to know the score, look away now.'
According to Wales Online Anthony Hopkins Hints At Possible Future Role In Doctor Who. Entirely feasible, of course, albeit the story appears to be based entirely on one - highly euphemistic - posting on Instagram. Time will tell, this blogger supposes. It usually does.
In an interview with the Daily Scum Express Annette Badland has recalled her experience of filming the first episode of Russell Davies' Doctor Who revival in 2004 and wondering if fans would 'like or despise' it. In actual fact, because this blogger feels like being a bit anoraky at this point, the episode to which Annette is referring, Aliens Of London was, indeed, the first episode of the series into production though it was actually the fourth to be broadcast. Just, you know, because this blogger has a reputation to uphold.
And now, for the latest piece of facetious horse-dung masquerading as 'news' published by the Radio Times (which, of course, used to be run by adults), Doctor Who Fans Name Catherine Tate's Donna The Greatest Companion. Did they? What, all of them? And, in other 'news', apparently shoppers have voted sliced bread as the greatest ever bread-based product, beating crumpets into second place. Waffles were third. Do you ever get the feeling, dear blog reader, that you are the only sane person left on a planet full of bloody oafs and morons?
That's TV has announced that it is set to broadcast four episodes of Till Death Us Do Part which have not been seen on British TV for more than fifty years. The channel - which specialises in classic TV - will be showing reruns of the sitcom as part of its upcoming Alf Garnett Season, which will begin on Sunday 4 September. The four episodes are Intolerance (series one, episode four), In Sickness & In Health (series two, episode eight), State Visit (series two, episode nine) and The Phone (series three, episode one). Many of the sitcom's twenty six episodes from 1965 to 1968 no longer exist in the BBC's archives, having been wiped during the early 1970s. The public appeal campaign the BBC Archive Treasure Hunt continues to search for lost episodes. In 1997, the previously episode Alf's Dilemma was found in a private collection and was subsequently broadcast on UK Gold. In Sickness & In Health and State Visit were returned by a film collector in 2009. The Phone exists in a domestic telerecording whilst Intolerance was recovered in August 2016 and was screened at the BFI's annual Missing Believed Wiped. Written by Johnny Speight, Till Death was 'a milestone in television comedy, a critical reference point in the debate on "taste" and a social document in its own right.' It was hated by Mary Whitehouse are her ilk, was said (by Prince Philip) to be the Queen's favourite TV show and worried some within the BBC once it was discovered that many of the audience were laughing with the ignorant, bigoted, racist views of its lead character, Alf Garnet, rather than at them, which was Speight's intention. It starred the late Warren Mitchell, the late Dandy Nicholls, the late Tony Booth and the late Una Stubbs. You knew all that, right?
As noted in the last From The North update, via Keith Telly Topping's recent essays on British post-war B-movies, The Pleasure Girls, Hell Is A City, Cup Fever and, most recently, Face Of A Stranger and Yield To The Night, From The North has been in danger of turning into a film blog which sometimes discusses telly. Rather than the other way around which is, in theory, its raison d'être. And, as discussed last time, there still seems little reason to stop such doings any time soon. So, for this week's 'Talking Pictures TV made me do it' From The North vintage movie review, dear blog reader, Keith Telly Topping looks at Hell Drivers.
During the bone-chillingly cold January of 1957, the B-roads between Hillingdon and Slough witnessed some truly hair-raising scenes as a number of truck drivers terrorised the locals in their race to deliver loads of gravel at speeds that invited the question 'who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?' This rather un-British behaviour (at least, away from Brand's Hatch and during what might be considered a more gentle, pre-Top Gear era) was staged for the filming of Hell Drivers. The tale of an ex-con, Tom Yately (Stanley Baker) who returns from, ahem, 'a period abroad' and tries to go straight. But who finds himself sucked into a world of corruption and violence when he takes a driving job at a haulage company. Filming had started on New Year's Eve 1956. The vehicles used in the movie were the Dodge 100 Kew parrot-nosed truck, with a tipper body with which every boy that owned a reasonable collection of Dinky toys over the following decade will be very familiar. The trucks had been loaned to the production by the firm of WW Drinkwater of Willesden, in what may be one of the earliest examples of product placement in British movie history.
Hell Drivers was a very personal project for its director, Cy Endfield. Having been named as a Commie at a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing and subsequently blacklisted in Hollywood, Cy moved to Britain in 1953 where, under various pseudonyms (to avoid complications with releases in the US), he continued his career. Three of his early films in the UK - The Limping Man (1953), Impulse (1954) and Child In The House (1956) - listed Charles De La Tour (a documentary filmmaker) as co-director. This was because the Association of Cinematograph Technicians insisted that Endfield, who was not yet a member of the union, could only direct in the UK if he had a British director on-set with him. Now fully unionised, Hell Drivers was to be the first project that Endfield released under his real name and it earned him his first BAFTA nomination, for Best British Screenplay which he wrote with John Kruse, based on Kruse's experiences driving lorries for his local authority in London. The film was something of a departure for British cinema. Endfield created a raw masculinity rarely seen on British screens at the time, an antidote to the atypical English gents seen in recent Rank offerings like Genevieve (1953) and Doctor In The House (1954). Made independently, but funded by Rank, Hell Drivers established Endfield as an accomplished action director who went on to make great movies like Sea Fury (1958), Jet Storm (1959) and, most famously, Zulu (1964).
Endfield took a punt on Stanley Baker for the character of Tom having previously worked with him on Child In The House. (The pair became close friends, set up their own production company, Diamond Films and, of course, collaborated on a string of successful movies, up to and including Zulu.) This was the first starring role for the Welsh actor, whose stocky frame and boxer's face made him ideal casting. But the part required more than just a tough-guy. Tom is something of a mystery throughout the movie, his background unfolding slowly and his character gaining new facets as the jigsaw of his past is gradually assembled ('I wasn't framed and nobody talked me into anything. And the judge didn't give me a raw deal. Happy?') A sensitive side to his character emerges in his friendship with Gino (Herbert Lom), an Italian driver who distances himself from the callous, macho antics of the other men at the depot.
The rest of the gang are played by some of the best character actors that money could buy in the sort of cast that only Britain in this era could have so easily thrown together. Sid James, Gordon Jackson, Alfie Bass and a very young Sean Connery (in only his third film and, at the time, his hero Stanley Baker's lodger) along with Patrick McGoohan as the brutish foreman, Redman, a really nasty piece of work who rules the depot through a combination of intimidation and manic ultraviolence. The men move between the haulage yard, their shared lodgings and a truckers café, the Pull-Inn, a claustrophobic triangle which intensifies the atmosphere of simmering rivalry between them.
The rest of the cast was no less impressive. William Hartnell played the depot manager, Cartley - Red's partner in extremely criminal activity. Tom's younger brother, Jimmy, whose life-changing injuries their mother blames on Tom was played by another young up-and-comer, David McCallum. The latter met his future wife, Jill Ireland, on the shoot whilst she was playing the role of Jill, the waitress at the Pull-In. Others in the ensemble included Robin Bailey, Charles Lamb, John Horsley, George Murcell, Marianne Stone and Wensley Pithey all of whom were familiar faces from British films and television over the following decades.
The world in which the action takes place has, aptly, been compared to a US Wild West frontier town, a no-man's land where lawlessness reigns and the only rules are that there are no rules. The drivers are engaged in a constant struggle for power and position, with speed and strength the only measures of their manliness. The shadow of the war hangs heavy over these men - brawling, boozing, leather-jacketed cousins of Marlon Brando's Wild Ones biker counterparts in the US - forced by the realities of a failing peacetime economy down increasingly desperate routes in search of cash. Legal, ethical or otherwise. But, while these men are tough, the women in the story have to be tougher. Lodging house owner Ma West (the excellent Marjorie Rhodes) keeps them in order, chastising them like a class of naughty schoolboys.
Some of the dialogue strains too blatantly towards the clichéd ('don't you characters ever say "please"?' complains a fed-up railway-station ticket-seller), sometimes veering into the inadvertently humorous. There is one early sequence which is played, specifically, for laughs; Baker is put through his driving paces by a grizzled old lag (Wilfred Lawson) who goads him ever quicker round the treacherous dirt-road bends. It's a deadpan comic highlight, but the prevailing tone of the film is as dour as Baker's perpetual scowl. The only unconvincing note he strikes in the whole picture is when Tom has to burst out laughing at one point. As noted in this blogger's review of Hell Is A City, Baker remains the hardest film-star that Britain ever produced and much of Hell Drivers' appeal lies in watching him square up to McGoohan's swaggering, snarling alpha-male, a few inches taller than his rival and unnervingly convincing in his psychosis. 'I don't like yer attitude. Y've got a chip on yer shoulder,' McGoohan sneers. 'An' if I was to knock it off, yer 'ead might go with it.' Baker's pithy reply ('I'm the last man to want to walk around without a head') cuts brilliantly through the tension of the scene.
It's a fascinating clash of acting styles, McGoohan roaring gleefully over-the-top while the slower-burning Baker underplays cunningly. There's a genuine tension between them, steadily building towards a satisfyingly bone-crunching punch-up. Peggy Cummins, as the firm's secretary Lucy, by contrast uses her obvious charms to tame the men. With her short hair, jeans and checked shirt she could, indeed, pass for a Western-style heroine (harking back to Cummins' most famous role as a circus sharpshooter in 1950's Gun Crazy), yet she transforms into a bar-room beauty at the local dance, making an entrance in a dress which would turn heads in any Deadwood saloon. 'You think I'm flinging myself at you, don't you?' she asked Tom, who replies, between gritted teeth, 'you're doing a fair impression.' It's at the dance that the menace lurking beneath the truckers' clowning antics comes into sharp focus as the inevitable brawl erupts between them and the respectable, law-abiding local population and everything kicks-off, big-style.
Hell Drivers anticipated the social realism which was to dominate the British New Wave over the next few years (again, see Baker in Hell Is A City for another fine example of this trend) but Endfield was not merely interested in analysing the psychology of the Working-Class male as, say, Karel Reisz was in the, ostensibly thematically similar Saturday Night & Sunday Morning. This film is also a study of pack behaviour, portrayed as a petulant childishness which spills over into violence and crass pranks that escalate into lethal acts.
Endfield's decision to shoot the movie in black and white, rather than the showy Technicolor of many contemporary Rank films, was a calculated risk. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth (himself an expert in colour filming, later winning Oscars for Cabaret and Tess) created an effectively bleak, noir-ish mood with some beautifully subtle lighting. The scene of Tom and Lucy's first kiss, for example, is lit by a single naked bulb and is incredibly potent, whilst the candlelit conversations between Gino and Tom convey the intense nature of their friendship. Hell Drivers was shot in the VistaVision format, as was Marlon Brando's later One-Eyed Jacks. Indeed, Brando's movie was the last to be shot in VistaVision before the format would become solely used for special effect backgrounds. This method had been devised by Paramount in order to create widescreen images in much higher quality than contemporary alternative systems, primarily the anamorphic Cinemascope.
The film's biggest attraction - besides its extraordinary cast - was the thrilling action shots of the seven-ton lorries racing through the Buckinghamshire countryside, screeching around corners and running family cars off the roads and the (and, the word is used deliberately) explosive climax. Hell Drivers includes shots that look to integrate what may be models (but, one is never sure which is a tribute in and of itself) with real quarries and real - vertigo-inducing - drops. It has an incredibly efficient story - tightly wound - beginning with Tom at the depot gates, looking for a job. The firm are Hawlett's, the load is ballast. It's a dangerous business - 'they put a silver plate in his skull' - but that's not the only danger. The man who got a silver plate in his head 'couldn't handle the loads, not at the speed we want.' The only thing that is more dangerous than the roads at fifty miles an hour is Cartley's contempt. Speaking of contempt, Variety described the movie as 'a slab of unabashed melodrama.' But, it's not that or anything even remotely like it. It is, by contrast, a hard film, full of hard men. Barely suppressed anger, unfulfilled dreams, unrequited loves, the need for speed, the justice (or, lack of it) of a fist in the mush.
Tom takes a room in the boarding house full of his fellow drivers - including Red who is obsessed with retaining his record of eighteen runs in a day. The obsession becomes two-sided as Tom sets out to beat Red at his own twisted game in order to win the prize of a silver cigarette case worth two hundred and fifty smackers. 'Imagine what you could buy with that' dreams the fresh-faced Mister Connery. A whole shit-load of Vodka Martinis, dare one suggest.
Variety also described the acting as 'adequate, but uninspired' which, again, is one view of the film but not one that's supported by anything approaching fact. Baker gives a terrific, star-making lead performance. McGoohan is wonderfully bombastic and intense. The rest of the cast are all on fine form, especially Hartnell whose small-but-vital villainous role as the sinister Cartley is genuinely menacing. The driving footage is extraordinary and nerve-shredding; throaty engines, spewing smoke, loaded with gravel and charging along at improbable speeds. Just what you'd expect from a British New Wave, noir, action movie made several years before most of those genres (or, their creative limits) had been properly defined.
With all of that out of the way, now it's time for this.
Clash By Night (Montgomery Tully, 1963).
The End Of The Line (Charles Saunders, 1957).
The Night Visitor (László Benedek, 1971).
Mona Lisa (Neil Jordan, 1986).
Life In Danger (Terry Bishop, 1964).
Enter Inspector Duval (Marx Varnel, 1961).
Guilty? (Edmond Gréville, 1956).
The Passing Stranger (John Arnold, 1954).
Sea Of Sand (Guy Green, 1958).
Tread Softly Stranger (Gordon Parry, 1958).
And now, dear blog reader, this is what you've all been waiting for, apparently. Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s: Number Eighty Three: John Hurt: 'Well, it can't be Human, can it? It feeds on Human flesh!' The Ghoul.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s: Number Eighty Four: Christopher Lee: 'I've got to get hold of that skeleton somehow.' Hedger Wallace: 'There is the question of professional ethics.' Christopher Lee: 'Oh, indeed. That is why I shall have to employ someone for whom ethics have no significance!' The Creeping Flesh.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s (Or, In This Case, The Early-1980s): Number Eighty Five: Vincent Price: 'Don't interrupt me while I'm soliloquising.' House Of The Long Shadows.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s (Or, In This Case, The Late-1960s): Number Eighty Six: Boris Karloff: 'From now on, we are going to control your mind!' The Sorcerers. Dig the Modness, incidentally, of Ian Ogilvy's excellent Rubber Soul-style suede jacket.
The Sorcerers is also notable, of course, for that scene in which Susan George's character plays seemingly the only record she possesses - Cliff Richard & The Shadows' 'In The Country' - about three times in a row. Almost certainly the only appearance of yer man Cliff in a horror movie. Unless, of course, one considers Summer Holiday to be part of the horror oeuvre. Which is a legitimately debateable point, this blogger feels.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s: Number Eighty Seven: Katya Wyeth: 'You want to get a fellah, don't you? Well, stop worrying, let them come to you!' Straight On Till Morning.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s: Number Eighty Eight: Paul Nicholas: 'Here's how they figure it, Gran. The Middle-aged are like customers in a swank restaurant sitting over a slap-up meal, see? Everything's rosy so why worry about tomorrow? But the young, well they're like hungry people standing in a queue outside, noses pressed up against the glass, waiting for a table.' Mona Washbourne: 'What do they say about the old?' Paul Nicholas: 'Well, they've finished their scoff, Gran. But they just sit on and on and on; just don't know when to get up and go.' What Became Of Jack & Jill?
A movie that was made at, roughly, the point in Paul Nicholas's career almost exactly midway between 'Over The Wall We Go' and 'Dancing With The Captain'. Insert your own punchline here.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s: Number Eighty Nine: Richard Widmark: 'Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!' To The Devil A Daughter. Almost certainly directed by Richard towards his agent when he actually read the script for the movie which, effectively, finished Hammer.
Memorably Daft Lines From British Horror Movies Of The 1970s (Or, In This Case, The Early-1980s): Number Ninety: Vincent Price: 'Can we truly call this a monster club if we do not boast amongst our membership a single member of the human race?' The Monster Club.
On a, somewhat, related theme, Kent Online's Brad Harper writes that Star Wars & Hammer Horror Actor Peter Cushing's Former Home In Whitstable Falls Into Disrepair. Helpfully, the author included a couple of the actor's best-known roles just in case anyone had forgotten who Peter Cushing was. 'Fans of one of Kent's most famous acting talents have raised fears his legacy is not being protected after his former home has been left to fall into rack and ruin.' There simply aren't enough uses of the phrase 'rack and ruin' these days, don't you think?
One of the downsides of Facebook, dear blog reader, is that when a photo which one of your Facebook fiends has posted shows up on your home page, it tends to be somewhat cropped, thus cutting off the top and bottom. Which can have the effect of causing considerable confusion. Case in point: This is currently occupying space in this blogger's Facebook home page. 'Colin Baker is an English actor who played ...' Who played what? 'A mean game of Monopoly®™, once, against Nicola Bryant and Brian Blessed'? 'Outside right for Raith Rovers during the 1969-70 season'? 'Geno Washington & The Ram Jam Band's Hand Clappin, Foot Stompin, Funky-Butt ... Live! LP all night till his distressed neighbours called The Dibble'? '... with himself'? Come on, Facebook, the public need to know these things. And, if any of you dear blog readers have a suggests as to what Colin Baker 'played', please do feel free to send them to From The North at the usual address.
NASA called off the launch of its new Moon rocket - the Space Launch System - on Tuesday. Controllers struggled to get an engine on the one hundred metre-tall vehicle cooled down to its correct operating temperature. They had previously worried about what appeared to be a crack high up on the rocket but eventually determined it was merely frost build-up. Once defrosted, one was sure that their technicians would be able to fix any remaining issues outstanding in a timely fashion. After all, it's not exactly rocket science, is it?
Still on the subject of space - whenever get get back there - here is something to stick into your toaster and see if it pops up brown.
The suspense over which LP by The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them) will be next to get the full remix-and-bonus-filled boxed-set treatment is over: It is, officially, Revolver. This blogger likes this news. Bring this blogger more news of this kind, please, as he thinks Revolver is the fekkin' gear, la. Apple Corps and Universal Music have confirmed this week that a deluxe celebration of the 1966 masterpiece - which, like The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them) box-sets that have preceded it, will include a Giles Martin remix - is in the pipeline for later this year. Start working out exactly how much you're going to have to forego in paying for food and heating to afford this one, dear blog readers. An official announcement of the project is not expected until September, at which point details about the deluxe package's contents and a release date will, hopefully, be forthcoming. Revolver had been widely speculated among fans as the next in the series. Previously, the box-sets and remixes in the series started with 1967's Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and continued chronologically with the White Album, Abbey Road and, last year, Let It Be. Having reached the end of The Be-Atles (a popular beat combo of the 1960s, you might've heard of them), if you will, long and winding road with the last release, it made sense that the series might go back to Revolver and, perhaps, work backwards from there, to Rubber Soul - although the keepers of The Be-Atles' catalogue always refrain from confirming plans much in advance. Some Be-Atlemaniacs had been skeptical, however, that Apple would be able to produce remixes of the pre-Sgt Pepper LPs which match what Martin and his team had already done with the latter part of the band's discography. This was due to the fact that the LPs through to 1966 were recorded as more basic four-track masters, where multiple instruments or vocals were often squeezed onto a single track. At a time when mono was still considered the standard, the stereo mixes prior to Pepper often sound strangely strange to the modern ears, with key elements relegated entirely to the left or right side of the stereo spectrum, which is why many Be-Atles fans relish finally getting a more holistic mix of Revolver and the LPs that preceded it.
Meanwhile, if you believe you can afford that in these dreadful cost-of-living-crisis times, dear blog reader, you should also know that a companion CD for the upcoming film Moonage Daydream will feature a collection of rarities and unreleased material from throughout David Bowie's career. He was a popular beat combo of the 1970s, you might've heard of him as well. The CD will be available on digital streaming services from 16 September, the self-same day that the film opens in cinemas. A two-CD version will follow in November, with a vinyl edition due in 2023. Highlights include a previously unreleased live medley of 'The Jean Genie' and 'Love Me Do' recorded at Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 during the final Ziggy Stardust concert and featuring Jeff Beck on guitar. The performances of this (and, a subsequent cover of 'Round & Round') was excluded from DA Pennebaker's film of the event, Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars: The Motion Picture and its accompanying soundtrack LP for reasons which have been long-debated but never confirmed, though it was reportedly at Beck's request. Other rarities on the CD will include an early version of Hunky Dory's 'Quicksand' and a previously unreleased live version of 'Rock 'n' Roll With Me', recorded in 1974. Directed by Brett Morgen, the filmmaker behind The Kid Stays In The Picture and Kurt Cobain: Montage Of Heck, Moonage Daydream is the first officially sanctioned cinema documentary about Mister Bowie since his death in 2016. 'Told through sublime, kaleidoscopic, never-before-seen footage, performances and music, Morgen's feature-length experiential cinematic odyssey explores Bowie's creative, musical and spiritual journey,' proclaims the film's press release.
The Monkees, one of the most popular beat combos of the 1960s (you might've heards of them), were reportedly the subject of an FBI file linked to the Viet'nam War. Micky Dolenz is now suing the agency to find out more. His bandmates, Davy Jones, Peter Tork and Mike Nesmith died in, respectively, 2012, 2019 and 2021. Portions of a heavily redacted FBI file, released in 2011, include reports of 'anti-US messages on the war in Viet'nam' during a 1967 concert. 'We know the mid-to-late 1960s saw the FBI surveil Hollywood anti-war advocates and The Monkees were in the thick of things,' Mickey's lawyer, Mark Zaid, told the BBC. 'This lawsuit seeks to expose why the FBI was monitoring The Monkees and its individual members.' The group, formed in 1966 for the TV show, became widely known for hits like 'I'm A Believer' and 'Last Train To Clarksville' (you knew that, right?) before breaking up in 1970. They had four number one LPs in 1967 - a still unmatched record (including one of this blogger's favourite records made by anyone, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd). It is so far unclear as to what it was about the band, specifically, that caught the ire of the FBI. Most of the seven-page FBI memo - first reported by Rolling Stain - was redacted. In one section of the file, an unnamed FBI 'source' who attended a 1967 concert by The Monkees snitched that 'subliminal messages' were depicted on screen 'which constituted left-wing innovations of a political nature.' Blimey. Of course, the irony there is that Rolling Stain - a 'serious' rock and/or roll organ of them media - never had a decent word to say about the band during their time together and sneering about their 'manufactured' origins continue to occasionally rear its ugly head in the ugly magazine to this date.
BBC News reports that Coldplay have added a second show in Cardiff, days after announcing a single date in the Principality Stadium. Haven't the poor people of Wales suffered enough over many years of English imperialism without having this inflicted on them as well?
Is it just this blogger or does anyone else, whenever they hear the question 'where do they/we/he/she/it go from here?' on the TV - in any context - have an automatic reflex-action of answering, 'is the down to the lake, I fear?' Just yer actual Keith Telly Topping, then?
Next ...
And now, dear blog reader, the usual From The North Headline Of The Week awards. And, the nominations are, the Northern Echo for Calls To Fix 'Cum' Road Sign On Cumbria & County Durham Border. Well, that's just wrong on so many levels.
Signs not saying what they're supposed to seem to be something of a running theme, this week. Takes, for example, Wiltshire Live's Mixed Reaction After Walking Festival Banner Was Crudely Defaced. Well, that's also wrong on ... no, sorry, this blogger can't get morally outraged over that. Because, well, because it's funny.
Next, dear blog reader, how about Stoke On Trent Live's 'Britain's Most-Tattooed Man' Disgusted After Kicked Out Of Supermarkets. Not a single supermarket, please note, but supermarkets. Perhaps he's a cereal offender?
Major chain stores seem to be doing their very best to screw up some people's lives this week if Kent Online's Tonbridge Mum Angry After B&M Refused To Sell Her VK Alcohol While With Fourteen-Year-Old Daughter is to be believed. The 'fuming mother,' the accompanying piece claims, 'has slammed B&M for "ruining her birthday."' Ruining it . By keeping her sober, seemingly. There should be a law against it. Incidentally, dear blog reader, 'slammed' is tabloid-speak for 'criticised' only with somewhat less syllables.
Now, dear blog reader, how about the Daily Record's Scots Woman Terrorised By Squirrels In Lofts Fears Rowdy Rodents Will Burn House Down. Arsonist squirrels? Are any of us, truly, safe in our beds.
Edinburgh Live, sadly, has this to report; Edinburgh Chip Shop Runs Out Of Deep Fried Mars Bars Due To National Shortage. Scotland has fallen. Sort that out, Wee Jimmy Krankie.
Then there's the Yorkshire Evening Post's Scientist's Study Shows That Eighty Per Cent Of Leeds Buses Are Late. It's nice to see that these particular scientists are spending their time (and, presumably, our taxes) on really important stuff instead of trivial nonsense like trying to solve Climate Change or proving the existence of alien life.
Meanwhile, dear blog reader, thanks go to the Gruniad Morning Star for Rise Of Tubeless Toilet Paper A 'Complete Catastrophe', Says Blue Peter Star. A gheadlin e that has everything.
But the clear winner of this week's award is the Dorset Echo for Man Dressed As Big Bird Sets Off Firework Inside Weymouth Property. Well, we've all done it, be fair. It's the accompanying illustrative image, however, that makes it art.
And so, with the terrible inevitability of the terribly inevitable - we come to the part of From The North dedicated to this blogger's on-going medical doings. For those dear blog readers who haven't been following this on-going fiasco which appears to have been on-going longer than ... The Great Wall Of Byker, it goes like this: Keith Telly Topping spent some weeks feeling rotten; had five days in hospital; was discharged; received B12 injections; then more injections; somewhat recovered his missing appetite; got a diagnosis; had a consultant's meeting; continued to suffer fatigue and insomnia; endured a second endoscopy; had another consultation; got (unrelated) toothache; had an extraction; which took ages to heal; had another consultation; spent a week where nothing remotely health-related occurred; was given further - painful - B-12 injections; had an echocardiogram; had more blood extraction; did another hospital visit; saw the insomnia and torpor continue; returned to the hospital for yet more blood letting; had a rearranged appointment to get his latest note from his doctor; suffered probably his worst day yet in terms of fatigue. The depressing, fatigue. The never-ending fatigue. The horrible fatigue. You feel me?
Earlier this week, this blogger received his next trio of medical appointments arranged by telephone. His latest three-monthly B-12 injection on Friday, back to the RVI for more blood tests next Wednesday (at some Godforsaken hour of the AM) and then back to the doctors for a general check-up and the latest 'he's still not very well' note next Friday. And they still haven't a bleeding clue what is causing all of this. (Well, anaemia, obviously. But they haven't got a clue what's causing that!) Life, eh?
The next time that any of us here in the West feel like having a right good whinge about our 'lack of freedom' to say and do whatever the Hell we want to (within, of course, the boundaries of the law as it currently stands), here's something rather sobering to, perhaps, think about.
And finally, dear blog reader, a man in Manchester has, reportedly, purchased on an 'uge billboard advert for a psychic with no contact information. Presumably working on the assumption that any genuine mediums will 'know where to apply.' This blogger likes the cut of this chap's jib.
