Sunday 20 June 2010

Things I've noticed lately

What have I learned in the past months?
I've noticed that blog posting is less 'hot' than it used to be. Can it be that people are running out of things to say, or has their attention swung to this thing called Twitter?
I've noticed that Entertainment Programmes about authors and books keep showing up on tv lately. After the wonderful Mills & Boonfest, the Enid story, Rankin interviews and a couple of authors whose names escape me at the moment, last night it was the turn of the Lady Chatterley Trial.
It was on very late, understandably, and many folk may have missed it. I caught it by chance because I watched the last of the wonderful Swedish Wallander series, and LC followed on afterwards. I'm old enough to remember the hoo-ha about the LC trial at the Old Bailey and how shocked everyone was - and how swiftly copies sold after the book was declared OK for public consumption! Wonderful actors inlcuding Twister from Candleford as the judge who kept twisting his mouth when the naughty words kept popping out in the courtroom. Good old Bishop of Woolwich, Lovely Richard Hoggart (was that David Tennant?) and brave Allan Lane for publishing it.

The world has gone mad over football - football, for goodness sake, when Wimbledon is coming up on Monday for a wonderful fortnight. Obviously I want Rafa to win.

I've noticed how disgustingly graphic some tv programmes are these days - everyone seems fascinated by death and how people died. Not only in crime thrillers like Luther (which I didn't see; the write up in the Radio times was enough to put me off) but in documentaries, too. I watched the first few programmes connected to the forensic staff of the university of Dundee but finally gave up as they lingeringly dwelt on the details of each skeletons demise. Reconstructions of the 'victims' always look astonishly alike to me, but I drew the line at the ads for the leprosy victim.

And I grow increasingly tired of having a camera man who gives me every possible profile, full face, and everything-in-between-shot (upside down, and revolving, sometimes) of the prettiest female they can find in the programme. While driving, while eating, while reading, while ....
Enough is enough. Give me landscapes, or let me look at whatever it is the programme is about inside of shooting the main subject glancingly, or while the camera turns a full circle or suffers from clutch judder.

I seem to have gone on a rant. I do apologise!

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