The Prisoner

As as huge fan of the original 1960s television series The Prisoner I have been looking forward to the new version with Sir Ian McKellan as a white-suited Number 2. Was it worth the wait of over 40 years?
Sadly, not really. But it was never really going to capture the eccentricity of the original, set around the curious North Wales village of Portmeirian.
Watching the new version one realises how important design was to the original. The village was unusual, the villagers dressed very much the same in blazers, straw hats, capes, etc, and the props had the same type-face and branding.
The setting was very much a personality of its own.
By placing the new production in a desert setting - actually Namibia - it loses a lot of that personality.
The nearest it comes is with the triangular design of the residents' houses although the residents themselves dress as if living in modern day small town America in a variety of clothes. It lacks the unusual intimacy of the original.
That series first shown in 1967 had a bumpy start and many viewers did not understand what it was all about, a view many shared throughout all 17 episodes.
So I decided not to comment until I had seen at least two episodes of this new one. I am now beginning to "get" this one but that does not mean I am particularly enjoying it.
It lacks a theme tune, the background music is a sort of anonymous ambient electronic score which is quite irritating, the direction is all over the place with too many jump cuts backwards and forwards in time and the dialogue sounds like it has been dubbed on later with everyone whispering their lines.
As Number Six - the central character who wakes up in a village from which there is no escape and where everyone has a number- Jim Caviezel is no Patrick McGoohan, the actor who first played the role.
McGoohan who created The Prisoner was a bit of a blank canvas but he had passion and presence. Caviezel is just a blank canvas, mumbling his way through the dialogue and looking a little bored.
They seem to have given him a girlfriend this times, Number 313 played by English actress Ruth Wilson who has yet to register a distinct personality.
The saving grace is Sir Ian whose Number Two is delightfully menacing and would have easily graced the original. Instead of giving him a dumb butler he has a pretty boy son who rarely speaks and just stands watching his dad.
Back in the 1960s, each episode had a social theme, be it education, Big Brotherism, scientific progress or duplicity. So far, the new Prisoner is just about his desire to escape and discover what the hell is going on.
I will stay with it as there are only six episodes in this version and maybe it has a proper and understandable ending, something denied first time viewers.
Yes, I intend to give it the benefit of the doubt just as fans did for the original back in the 1960s.
I confess I did begin to warm to it a little more after the second episode but it remains a confusing mess artistically and the desert setting is already becoming a bore.
I will write on this subject again after further episodes.

Blockbusting

George Lucas's Blockbusting

When the ultra-fussy film director Stanley Kubrick had problems devising a prehistoric set for his 1968 space movie 2001, he got help from an unlikely direction.

The production tea boy Andrew Birkin had an idea, caught the overnight train to Liverpool and photographed the dunes at Formby.

It was just the design reference Kubrick needed and the director was so impressed that he immediately promoted his tea boy to effects coordinator and special assistant.

This is just one of thousands of tales from George Lucas's Blockbusting, a decade by decade survey of Hollywood movie production and distribution.

The basic premise was to take 300 best-selling films and look at their production problems and financial gain and loss.

It's a huge brick of a book running to 944 pages with each film getting a double page spread, statistics on the left, production stories on the right.

Between the films there is a lot of other information covering each decade from 1900 to 2005.

The design means that it is a book you can dip into now and again and each time you find fascinating information.

At random I can pick the 1935 David Copperfield produced by David O Selznick. He fought hard to make the film - MGM executives thought the subject "too highbrow" - and had to drop his original casting of Charles Laughton as Mr Micawber when the actor proved unhappy in a comic role (W.C.Fields got the role and did a great job). Then cinema owners complained that its running time of 2hours 13mins was too long.

But the public loved it and it became one of MGM's biggest grossing films of the year.

Cecil B. DeMille also had to fight for his 1925 silent classic The Ten Commandments when it went over budget. Paramount executives wanted to curb expenses so DeMille offered to buy the film himself for $1million. The execs got cold feet, allowed DeMille to continue and ended up with one of the biggest financial successes of the silent era.

Today, as the book makes clear, big box office does not always mean high profit thanks to all the cash spent on advertising and other post production deals. A profit and loss account for the 1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit shows that it made £349 million at the box office but actually ended up with a net loss of $19 million.

Just as important are the rising salaries of the actors. When Sylvester Stallone made the first Rambo film in 1985 his salary was $3.5 million. Three years later by the time of Rocky IV, his salary was $15 million. Stars also had their own staff who needed paying: When Demi Moore appeared in the 1995 flop The Scarlet letter, her support staff (assistant, chef, trainer, makeup artist, hairdresser and three nannies) picked up $877,000 from the movie budget.

Today, it's all about franchise movies, films that create other films with all the merchandising that goes with it - examples are Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

A couple of things to be said about Blockbusting: it is an American book and concentrates almost entirely on American production and distribution. But what America does today, the UK generally does tomorrow so although the book goes up to the end of 2008, it is already reporting the growth of 3D screens.

And while Lucas gets his name in the book title, it has actually been edited by film writer Alex Ben Block with contributions from a host of others.

Is it a worthwhile buy? Put it this way, I purchased this myself from my local Waterstones and paid full price. While some of the graphs and profit and loss accounts left me a little confused, I found the whole book fascinating. It also gives plenty of space to the silent cinema, one of my favourite eras.

* George Lucas's Blockbusting is published by itbooks and George Lucas Books at £19.99.

The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie at the Liverpool Playhouse

I had not intended to review this production from Shared Experience as I went to see it for pleasure but in honour of my first blog, here goes.
It is a play I have seen many times over the years and, to be honest, I have never seen a bad production. No play is actor-prooof, but this one gets pretty close.
The semi-autobiographical early drama from Tennessee Williams follows a few days in the life of a dysfunctional family.
The mother Amanada Wingfield has been deserted by her husband many years ago and lives with her crippled daughter Laura and warehouse worker son Tom.
Tom (based on Williams himself) has dreams of becoming a writer while daughter Laura is crippled not only physically but mentally with an overbearing shyness.
The mother, who talks constantly of the many men who courted her in her youth, is now determined to find a man for her daughter.
No one is happy although the mother has a false sense of gaiety, earning money by selling subscriptions to a romantic magazine over the telephone. Tom escapes his dull, routine life, by visits to the cinema and bars.
All this is explained in the first half of the play while the second is devoted to the arranged visit of a workmate of Tom's to the family home. Mother sees him as a possible suitor for Laura (the so-called "gentleman caller" ) while Laura is petrified when she discovers he is a chap she used to idolise at High School.
The man himself ,Jim, just thinks he is popping by for a visit, not even knowing Tom has a sister.
Of course, the meat of the drama is in this second half as all four characters connect in different ways.
But Williams was able to interest us in his characters in that first half exposition - and how brilliantly he did it.
Tom acts as a narrator, talking directly to the audience in a very intimate way.
Williams likened his play to a film and interestingly this production uses a back screen on which old blurry, black and white movies play, sometimes Westerns, sometimes romantic dance scenes.
It seems unnecessary but it works here although I was not sure about bringing some of the characters from the past on stage in mimed performances including the missing father. Perhaps a play about memories which this is should remain no quite so boldly stated.
Whatever, it does not take away from the essential substance of Williams's play which is about how family life can be damaging to all involved.
Imogen Stubbs as the mother is younger and better looking than actresses in other productions I have seen. This caught me off-guard at first but thinking of it, she was still old enough to have grown-up children and there is no reason why she has to be an old crow. So it was a different performance but one that still made sense and Ms Stubbs is a fine actress and created her own Amanda.
Emma Lowndes caught the fragility of the shy Laura, a girl whose life revolves around her collection of glass animals. Her sad-eyed expressions were truly heart-wrenching. Patrick Kennedy provided a solid Tom and Kyle Stoller gave the gentleman caller more personality and energy than I have seen before, bringing the rather anonymous character alive.
So, an excellent production, nicely staged. The play has always been my favourite 20th Century drama and Shared Experience did not let me down.
I would rate this 9/10

Hello

Hello. This is my first attempt at a blog. Hopefully you will find me in the future, giving my views on everything from theatre and films to jazz and politics