prolific.org » tv show

My uncle’s ‘book without a title’

Caroline — Sat, 28 May 2005 01:41:16 +0000

Last year my uncle featured in a TV show about ‘miracles’. He told the story of how he found a photograph of himself in a book he picked up from an antique shop, while on holiday in England. It’s a true story. This month the show is letting viewers decide which stories should be repeated in a clip show to introduce the new series.

Do me and my kin a favour and vote for ‘De foto’ on the ‘Wonderen bestaan’ website. You’ll find the poll on the right hand side and ‘De foto’ is the last option in the poll (which doesn’t give it much of a chance of winning!).

It’s a great story and my uncle, who is an author and lyricist, does a great job of telling it (well, duh, he does readings and theater shows for a living). In short: About 20 years ago he was on holiday with his girlfriend L. and another couple. It was a miserable day and he hadn’t even wanted to go to England anyway. When they stopped for lunch, they came across an antique shop.

My uncle had a thing about ‘a book without a title’. He had been talking about this obsession during the trip, of wanting to find this ‘book without a title’. His friends had said books without titles didn’t exist.

Looking through the books on the shelves in the antique shop, he didn’t find anything he wanted. But there was one more book, sitting on a table. Picking it up he saw the book’s cover didn’t have any marking or lettering. It was a book without a title! And when he opened it, he found a picture of himself taken when he was a young man.

Cue theme of the Twilight Zone. Vote now. Vote often.

Keep Angel alive

Caroline — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:53:18 +0000

While a continuation of the TV show is unlikely, showing the WB and Fox that there is a strong demand for quality television may have some effect on future programming. And perhaps it will encourage suits to fund TV movies, DVD series or other outlets for Angelverse stories.

George Michael: Patience

Caroline — Thu, 18 Mar 2004 01:47:28 +0000

George Michael’s Older (1996) is in my Top 10 favourite albums. So there. Now that that’s out of the way let’s tackle the long-awaited new album.

‘Precious’ won’t make my top 10 because it’s not really an album. It’s a collection of songs that goes on a little too long, has two old singles on it and sounds just a tad dated. So it’s good old fashioned George Michael schtuff then? Yes. ‘Amazing’, the single, has grown on me, ‘My Mother Has A Brother’ is the touching stand out ballad, but it’s the 7 minutes and 36 seconds long dance floor dark horse ‘Precious Box’ that I’ve been playing on repeat. This despite the fact that it sounds like a theme tune for a mid-90s TV show about the hard-core dance scene in, I don’t know, Sheffield. Yes, it’s got under my skin, as George himself sings in this tribute to… what? Satellite TV? You tell me (lyrics). At the end of the album, George bids the business that comes with music farewell. Here’s to many many future downloads. He may be ‘Through’, but he’s not finished.

Guardian review

Interview w/ Jo Whiley March 10, 2004

Older & Wiser: The George Michael story (BBC Radio 2 )

The museum and the bride

Caroline — Sat, 24 Jan 2004 05:23:53 +0000

Ever since I got a bigger telly and find myself with a little more time to spare, I’ve been spending more time on the couch, rediscovering TV.

Most of my TV intake is very deliberate. I have a few series I watch religiously. I stick to the USA schedule, download the episodes and watch them either on the computer or (after burning a VCD) on TV. But lately I have been enjoying documentaries on the box. I stumble upon them while channel surfing.

This week’s eye opener (we couldn’t stop talking about it at work) was a VARA programme called ‘De Filippijnse Bruid’. The maker, Michiel van Erp, follows a Dutch half-wit from Brabant, Willie, during his search for a Filipino bride. It was almost too embarrassing to watch this fumbling, stupid man trying to court his much smarter, sadly determined wife-to-be, Layla.

There were many moments worth talking about. The image of a middle-aged, smug modern-age slave trader talking about his own wife sticks: “What’s the difference between a Dutch wife and a Filipino wife? When we have dinner, my friends get up and get their own food. When they get back, I’m already having mine. That’s because she got it for me. They like to please their man.”

And then there’s the scene where Willie asks the girls he meets: “How you vin my?” He wants to know if they like him, if they think he’s handsome. But he’s hardly able to articulate it in Dutch (his mumbled words are subtitled), let alone in English. Amazingly, the woman understands the question. ‘OK.’

Tonight I viewed the BBC’s ‘Dan Cruickshank and the raiders of the lost art’. Cruickshank visits the plundered Iraqi museum in Baghdad and tries to find out what really happened to the lost treasures. Who exactly looted the artifacts? Was the museum staff involved? It looks like it, but we get no answers.

As a TV show, I preferred the first documentary. Cruickshank seems a little condescending towards the viewers and is more concerned with artifacts than he is with people. Van Erp’s more human and genuine, even when it would be so easy to humiliate both bride and groom. He never asks after the money involved.

Let’s look at what the two networks do with their content on the web:

That’s eight pages for the museum, a couple of paragraphs for the bride. The BBC focus on text – an image here or there would have livened it up while the only redeeming factor for VARA is their archived video stream, which allows me to view the show in full whenever I want to. But what I want is background information. What happened to Willie and Layla?

Van Erp’s documentary is one of a series and identified as such. Unfortunately the image heading the series’ page is confusing – it relates to another show in the series. There is no added information, no links and no context.

The BBC have archived the information thematically. Although Cruickshank’s piece doesn’t even refer to its TV counterpart, it puts the information in its historic context.