Browse content similar to 02/03/2012. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
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On the review show tonight, John Carter, Disney's new 3-D sci-fi | :00:30. | :00:34. | |
epic, transports an American civil war veteran to Mars. A successful | :00:34. | :00:38. | |
launch, or crash landing? Here on earth, John Lanchester's | :00:38. | :00:44. | |
new novel, Capital, tells the story of the financial crash, via the | :00:44. | :00:51. | |
inhabitants of one London street. TV drama, White Heat, looks at | :00:51. | :00:54. | |
seven generations through a group of students. | :00:54. | :01:03. | |
We mark the 70th birthday of the legendary Lou Reed, his journey has | :01:03. | :01:10. | |
taken him to Metallica. With us are my guests. | :01:10. | :01:13. | |
And the playwright Liz Lochhead, who is also Scotland's national | :01:13. | :01:19. | |
poet. As ever, we want to hear what you | :01:19. | :01:23. | |
think too. Send us a tweet if the fancy takes you. | :01:23. | :01:32. | |
We begin with a trip to Mars, hardly has a 3-D reissue of Star | :01:32. | :01:40. | |
Wars: The Phantom Menace has gone and the next start of another | :01:40. | :01:44. | |
Disney franchise. John Carter comes from a pop novel, but no expense | :01:44. | :01:49. | |
has been spared in bringing it to the big screen. | :01:49. | :01:56. | |
Set on the mysterious and barren planet of matter zoom, John Carter, | :01:56. | :02:04. | |
a civil war veteran, inexplicably transported to an alien world, | :02:04. | :02:08. | |
imprisoned and vofrld in a conflict that forces him to question his own | :02:08. | :02:13. | |
priorities and loyalties. It is based on the novel A Princess of | :02:13. | :02:19. | |
Mars, by the man best known for creating tarz zan. That was part of | :02:19. | :02:23. | |
an 11-novel series. It marks the centinary of John Carter's first | :02:23. | :02:33. | |
:02:33. | :02:36. | ||
appearance in 1912. Tain John Carter, Virginia -- | :02:36. | :02:43. | |
Captain John Carter from Virginia. Virginia? My name is John Carter, | :02:43. | :02:46. | |
I'm from Virginia. Virginia. Following in the footsteps of | :02:46. | :02:55. | |
blockbuster hits, Avatar, the Prince of Persiania, the adventures | :02:55. | :03:02. | |
are brought through IMAX, and 3-D and animation. The man best known | :03:02. | :03:06. | |
for work on toy story, and including well known names, such as | :03:06. | :03:12. | |
William Dafoe and Dominic West. The lead role is taken by a relative | :03:12. | :03:15. | |
newcomer, Taylor Kitsch. You are ugly, but you are beautiful, you | :03:15. | :03:21. | |
will fight for us. The film may hold the record for | :03:21. | :03:28. | |
the longest development period of any movie at a whopping 69 years. - | :03:28. | :03:35. | |
- 79 years. Prepro duction for a film version began in 1931, had | :03:35. | :03:39. | |
that borne fruit t could have become the first animated feature | :03:39. | :03:47. | |
for Disney, beating Snow White And The Seven dwafrs. Disney has spent | :03:48. | :03:57. | |
�300 million on this latest IMAX experience, is it worth it. | :03:57. | :04:03. | |
Andrew Stanton is a begin with Pixar, they let him loose with this, | :04:03. | :04:09. | |
he loved the books, did it show? Well, it showed in that he had | :04:09. | :04:13. | |
clearly lavished an enormous amount of care and attention. Not to | :04:13. | :04:18. | |
mention you could have run a war on what this movie cost to make. Even | :04:18. | :04:22. | |
reading the production notes and realising they got, and they | :04:22. | :04:26. | |
studied medieval swordsmanship, and all kinds of stuff. The level of | :04:26. | :04:31. | |
detail they put in it ought to be a masterpiece. Unfortunately it isn't. | :04:31. | :04:36. | |
It is enjoyable in lots of ways. It is a find of magnificent and also | :04:36. | :04:41. | |
rather ridiculous romp. It is visually spectacular, but, for me, | :04:41. | :04:47. | |
well, first, it is way too long, but the 3-D ruins it. So that what | :04:47. | :04:50. | |
should be incredibly spectacular, because it is all proper scale | :04:50. | :04:55. | |
stuff, and they have got these amazing landscapes and amazing | :04:55. | :04:59. | |
buildings and creatures, in 3-D it looks like plastic, they look like | :04:59. | :05:06. | |
models being moved around. It isn't proper 3-D, that is proper to | :05:06. | :05:09. | |
notice. Avatar was a terrible film, script and acting, it worked | :05:09. | :05:13. | |
because you sat there in the seat like a 15-year-old doing your first | :05:13. | :05:19. | |
trip, trying to touch these things. The John Carter was made post | :05:19. | :05:22. | |
production, this was something where clearly the studio executives | :05:22. | :05:27. | |
were getting worried it wasn't 3-D because it was the next big thing. | :05:28. | :05:32. | |
Post-production they go in and alter depth of field. It is a | :05:32. | :05:36. | |
different treatment. For me, absolutely, it doesn't save what is | :05:36. | :05:42. | |
a forgettable film. I saw it in IMAX, it was really weird. It was | :05:42. | :05:45. | |
simultaneously flat and clunky, that is not just the technology or | :05:45. | :05:50. | |
look, that was the dialogue, the story, everything about it for me. | :05:50. | :05:54. | |
What was the narrative and stone of it? I couldn't understand it -- | :05:54. | :06:04. | |
:06:04. | :06:05. | ||
tone of it? I couldn't understand it. Sfs simultaneously -- it was | :06:05. | :06:11. | |
simultaneously rubbish and ridiculous. I read the stories as a | :06:11. | :06:15. | |
child, it should have been great, the writer is one of the great | :06:15. | :06:21. | |
American novelist, and drawing on a number of films I love, Flash | :06:21. | :06:26. | |
Gordon, Indiana Jones, every time you got an echo of a film you | :06:26. | :06:33. | |
wanted to watch that instead. little bit of John Ford, a bit of | :06:33. | :06:41. | |
Apocalypse Now, I wanted to put # This is the end | :06:41. | :06:51. | |
:06:51. | :06:52. | ||
# My only friend. I think he's wonderful actor some of them, what | :06:52. | :06:57. | |
were they doing in it? The script he's given, he says something like | :06:57. | :07:01. | |
what's the point in my having this thing if I don't get to use it. Who | :07:02. | :07:07. | |
is that directed at. The thing about a lot of Andrew stantton's | :07:07. | :07:14. | |
work, Finding Nemo is a fantastic music, tonally spot on, this is all | :07:14. | :07:22. | |
over the place. You have this clumsy, playing for laughs. There | :07:22. | :07:26. | |
is love stuff that isn't, the father daughter thing, the mirror | :07:26. | :07:30. | |
images of the father daughter? couldn't make head nor tail of it. | :07:30. | :07:35. | |
I was with a real audience, they gave us popcorn and water when we | :07:35. | :07:41. | |
went in. I thought I was there for four hours. It feels incredibly | :07:41. | :07:48. | |
wrong. When you go into a film and they say this is the film and this | :07:48. | :07:57. | |
is this lot, and this is that lot? This is not just from the Princess, | :07:57. | :08:01. | |
there are other series, there is so much they have reached into the | :08:01. | :08:05. | |
future of the novels to put in there it felt like it was too much | :08:05. | :08:13. | |
of a fan's Labour of love. When you talk about Ryder Hagg er it was a | :08:13. | :08:23. | |
pre-runner to Raiders of the Lost Ark. What is Hollywood doing here, | :08:23. | :08:30. | |
$250 million. When you look behind the film you can see so much of the | :08:30. | :08:34. | |
mechanics of Hollywood going on. This is a film that has been | :08:34. | :08:38. | |
inherited by the new head of Disney studios. He is already trying to | :08:38. | :08:44. | |
wash his hands of it. He had already committed himself to it to | :08:44. | :08:48. | |
the half time slot in the superbowl to advertise this film. They are | :08:48. | :08:51. | |
now trying to reposition it as this underdog film, it will be | :08:51. | :08:56. | |
championed by the real fans. That may work. It is not going to work | :08:56. | :08:59. | |
$400 million, which they need to break even. I think just about 20 | :08:59. | :09:04. | |
minutes from the end, after the scene with the white apes, it | :09:04. | :09:07. | |
kicked in, there was a pacing that was much better. Maybe I knew it | :09:07. | :09:13. | |
was coming to the end? The white apes, that is a truly spectacular | :09:13. | :09:17. | |
scene. It is a futuristic gladiator. Within you think what went into it, | :09:17. | :09:21. | |
they did a lot of the stuoints themselves, Taylor Kitsch must be | :09:21. | :09:27. | |
the fittest man on the planet. looked like the guitarist from | :09:27. | :09:32. | |
Suede, he's not a superhero. Kitsch by name and nature. I thought about | :09:32. | :09:37. | |
the whole thing. I did like the idea that he's not a superhero, | :09:37. | :09:42. | |
kids go to film and they expect the superhero. He was a reluctant, he | :09:42. | :09:46. | |
was an old fashioned goody. That thought that was really interesting, | :09:46. | :09:52. | |
if you look back to the book, it is 1912 just before the explosion of | :09:52. | :09:55. | |
modernism, this is Edgar Rice Burroughs saying here we have an | :09:55. | :10:01. | |
old fashioned decent civil war hero, who can still cut it in the | :10:01. | :10:07. | |
terrifying, interGAL labgtic future. John Carter is released next Friday. | :10:07. | :10:11. | |
The novelist John Lanchester deserved a media for manage to go | :10:11. | :10:14. | |
explain the latest global financial crisis in words anyone can | :10:14. | :10:19. | |
understand, in his splendidly titled book, Whoops!: Why Everyone | :10:19. | :10:21. | |
Owes Everyone and No-One Can Pay. That work was a spin-off for his | :10:21. | :10:26. | |
research for his new novel, that used the events of 2008 through the | :10:26. | :10:32. | |
eyes of a disspirit group of Londoners, including an artist and | :10:32. | :10:37. | |
a Polish plumber. Capital sees London as the microcosim of modern | :10:37. | :10:41. | |
Britain, money, property and the diverse populus who pursue it, | :10:42. | :10:46. | |
collide in a door-stopping 600-page analysis. One of the things that is | :10:46. | :10:49. | |
interesting about London is the way global themes press on it, things | :10:49. | :10:53. | |
that happen in the world are brought to bear, and acted out in | :10:53. | :10:57. | |
London. In terms of finance, terrorism, inequality, all those | :10:57. | :11:03. | |
things. The fact that people want to come and live here in the UK, | :11:03. | :11:06. | |
more generally in London in particular, it is an incredibly | :11:06. | :11:09. | |
important thing for the texture of life in Britain. One of the most | :11:09. | :11:13. | |
basic divisions of any society in the world, places people desperate | :11:13. | :11:17. | |
to get away from, and places people are desperate to get to. We are the | :11:17. | :11:22. | |
second kind of place, I wanted that reflected in the book. Lanchester | :11:22. | :11:29. | |
uses characters extracted from ark types of the capital Anne's urban | :11:29. | :11:37. | |
dwellers, from -- capital's urban dwellers, from artists to traffic | :11:37. | :11:40. | |
wardens. The street was lived by people it was built for, the | :11:40. | :11:44. | |
aspiring not too well off, the houses were the backdrops to their | :11:44. | :11:47. | |
lives, they were an important part of life, but they were a set where | :11:47. | :11:51. | |
events took place, rather than the principal characters. Now, however, | :11:51. | :11:55. | |
the houses had become so valuable to people who already lived in them, | :11:55. | :11:58. | |
and so expensive for people who had recently moved into them, that they | :11:58. | :12:06. | |
had become central actors in their own right. The street isn't a real | :12:06. | :12:12. | |
street, it is a composite, there are all sorts of characters running | :12:12. | :12:16. | |
alongside, there are characters I would have struggled to write a | :12:16. | :12:20. | |
novel with, if you are in the book you get your moment. But you are | :12:20. | :12:24. | |
left thinking they exists before and their lives would carry on | :12:24. | :12:29. | |
after. Although they share a common threat, Lanchester's cast barely | :12:29. | :12:33. | |
connect, despite their proximity to one another's lives. There is | :12:33. | :12:39. | |
definitely a theme that people's lives barely brush each other. We | :12:39. | :12:44. | |
live in such close proximity, but barely know who each other is, even | :12:44. | :12:49. | |
in small places. There is something troubling about the mixture of the | :12:49. | :12:54. | |
physical proximity, verging on intimacy, and complete indifference | :12:54. | :12:58. | |
and unknowingness. Has Lanchester captured something which reflect | :12:58. | :13:01. | |
the state-of-the-nation and its inhabitants, and is London the best | :13:01. | :13:08. | |
lens through which to do so. John Lanchester was saying there | :13:08. | :13:12. | |
the whole idea is that people live in this close proximity and their | :13:12. | :13:16. | |
lives collide in some ways and yet they are so distant. Did he juggle | :13:16. | :13:20. | |
all these characters? I thought he did it magnificently well, I | :13:20. | :13:26. | |
thought it was an enormously engaging novel. It is a big book. | :13:26. | :13:30. | |
But you absolutely race through it. It is old fashioned and Victorian, | :13:30. | :13:33. | |
and state-of-the-nation. I think it is very interesting, because | :13:33. | :13:37. | |
actually what is really fascinating about the book is how London no | :13:37. | :13:42. | |
longer works as a microcosm for this country. It is a world in and | :13:42. | :13:46. | |
of itself. I think in terms of distilling something essential | :13:46. | :13:52. | |
about London life, I think he absolutely gets it. Alex is a | :13:52. | :13:59. | |
former trader, a City boy himself, and a central couple are Roger and | :13:59. | :14:02. | |
Arabelle, his acute observations about the rich in London, digging | :14:02. | :14:10. | |
out their basements and the lofts, the way they behave. I thought the | :14:10. | :14:17. | |
wife was one of the least developed characters? I have not met any | :14:17. | :14:23. | |
bankers' wives, I loved the book, I found it beautifully written and | :14:23. | :14:27. | |
absorbing. There is not a word overwritten in it. The characters | :14:27. | :14:33. | |
are beautifully portrayed, not all as good as each oh I loved it. | :14:33. | :14:38. | |
Roger is strangely compelling, but Arabella is the ark type, she | :14:38. | :14:41. | |
doesn't have a character. It is a blindspot, that one character for | :14:41. | :14:46. | |
me doesn't work. Where as the husband is so compelling and so | :14:46. | :14:50. | |
attractive. He does draw other characters in a very compelling way | :14:50. | :14:56. | |
that are woman, so Petunia who is dying, one of the best, most moving | :14:56. | :15:01. | |
passages is her death, and the daughter as well. I think that | :15:01. | :15:06. | |
Arabella, her stuff was a disgrace. I felt that he should have been | :15:06. | :15:16. | |
:15:16. | :15:16. | ||
accused, accuse him of missoggy if he wasn't -- missojy if he wasn't | :15:16. | :15:21. | |
so horrible to Roger. I thought the tone was all over the place. I did | :15:21. | :15:26. | |
enjoy it, I didn't think it was magnificent. It was laugh-out-loud | :15:26. | :15:36. | |
:15:36. | :15:39. | ||
at the beginning, the Oakss. don't think it is as funny. I don't | :15:39. | :15:43. | |
think it is as funny as the style. It is written as a comedy, but you | :15:43. | :15:47. | |
don't have the mixture of sympathy. It does, I don't think it is | :15:47. | :15:52. | |
written as a comedy, I think it is fatastically humane and | :15:52. | :15:59. | |
compassionate. The way he talks about Quentina, the traffic warden. | :15:59. | :16:03. | |
He's so good on children. Interesting what he does is he | :16:03. | :16:08. | |
takes all the different immigrants, so you have got the sen lease, and | :16:08. | :16:12. | |
his description of football -- seing lease, his description of | :16:12. | :16:18. | |
football is amazing, the Zimbabwean, from Lahore, you have all these | :16:18. | :16:22. | |
different groups coming in, and yet isolated within their own areas? | :16:22. | :16:26. | |
That is London. That, unfortunately, is London. It is not just London, | :16:26. | :16:31. | |
it is cities, it is life. But this idea of the melting pot, the fact | :16:31. | :16:35. | |
is that on the whole, immigrant communities tend to stick, all | :16:35. | :16:37. | |
communities tend to stick with their own. That is one of the | :16:37. | :16:41. | |
points I think he makes in this novel. One thing I didn't quite buy, | :16:42. | :16:47. | |
it is great to have this idea of the street as a microkofpl, | :16:47. | :16:51. | |
allowing all these characters to -- microcosm, allowing the characters | :16:51. | :16:56. | |
to rub along each other. The idea of the capital city and capital as | :16:56. | :17:00. | |
money and property as capital, it is an interesting idea, I didn't | :17:00. | :17:04. | |
quite buy the absolute obsession with property prices. What did you | :17:04. | :17:08. | |
think about the overarching, as it were, the conceit about the fact | :17:08. | :17:12. | |
that what you had was these anonymous postcards coming through | :17:12. | :17:16. | |
the door, we want what you want, as being the thread through the book? | :17:16. | :17:22. | |
That's right. It is a sort of whodunnit, it is written in the | :17:22. | :17:29. | |
style of that, it would be a murder not either bit of vandalism or art. | :17:29. | :17:36. | |
We are given all the clues, so we can work out who did it any way. It | :17:36. | :17:40. | |
is kind of odd. I found the ending a bit more unsatisfying than the | :17:40. | :17:46. | |
beginning. I did enjoy it. I just didn't buy it 100% the way the | :17:46. | :17:52. | |
other sides. His prose is a little bit too work-a-day. You need | :17:52. | :17:55. | |
something, it was always going to be difficult to come up with a | :17:55. | :18:00. | |
conceit that unite all the characters in that way. It is a | :18:00. | :18:07. | |
flimsy one and dond hold the novel together. Sebastian Faulks does it, | :18:07. | :18:11. | |
with state-of-the-nation, it is strikingly similar to two novels, | :18:11. | :18:18. | |
Sebastian Faulks A Week In December, and Hearts and Minds, it is | :18:18. | :18:22. | |
overlooked but as good at these others. They bring together this | :18:22. | :18:24. | |
extraordinary ensemble of characters and show you both the | :18:24. | :18:28. | |
alienation, but in having these characters' lives interweave, they | :18:28. | :18:33. | |
also give life a pattern, they give the chaotic London life a pattern. | :18:33. | :18:39. | |
There is something charmingly hopeful about the novels. The other | :18:39. | :18:47. | |
novel Ian McKeown Saturday as well. We will talk about it again, but | :18:47. | :18:51. | |
trying to explain ourselves back to ourselves. I think you either, to a | :18:51. | :18:57. | |
greater or lesser extent, are horrified about what you saw, he | :18:57. | :19:01. | |
wasn't unsympathetic to it? banking stuff, it almost goes | :19:01. | :19:06. | |
without saying with Lanchester, the banking stuff is so spot-on. I used | :19:06. | :19:10. | |
to bridle against a quote of his when he said there is no drama in a | :19:10. | :19:16. | |
Credit Default Swap, yet what you have here, you have an amazing | :19:16. | :19:20. | |
novel about the credit crash. his best novel, do you think? | :19:20. | :19:24. | |
not nearly as good as the one I have been reading all week. It | :19:24. | :19:30. | |
engaged me enough and I wanted to know, I am reading Mr Philips. I do | :19:30. | :19:35. | |
find having all the comic charm, sympathy in it, that it's humane. | :19:35. | :19:41. | |
In a way that I didn't find this book perfect in its humanity, | :19:41. | :19:45. | |
actually. Interesting Mr Philips. thought it was a bit keen on types | :19:45. | :19:50. | |
rather than people. Not all the types fully, 100%, sprung to life, | :19:50. | :19:53. | |
for me. There are so many types, I don't | :19:53. | :19:59. | |
know if they could all spring to life. Capital is out now. | :19:59. | :20:02. | |
Coincidently a new BBC drama series is telling a story about modern | :20:02. | :20:07. | |
Britain about zooming in on a small scale. It is more ambitious than | :20:07. | :20:11. | |
its scope, over six hours, White Heat traces the lives of seven | :20:11. | :20:17. | |
flatmates through seven decades of love, loss and decaying, set | :20:17. | :20:20. | |
against the political and social backdrop of the times. What we do | :20:20. | :20:24. | |
is construct a model of living based on equality, based on the | :20:24. | :20:31. | |
welfare of the group, rather than the selfish needs of the individual. | :20:31. | :20:40. | |
Up to and including sex. When one of the former flatmates die, the | :20:40. | :20:44. | |
other six assemble in their former home for the first time in many | :20:44. | :20:48. | |
years. Told through flashbacks, it shows relationships forged | :20:48. | :20:52. | |
originally as students in the swinging 60s, their lives reflect | :20:52. | :20:57. | |
the issues of the times. Did you hear. It is said that Sir Winston | :20:57. | :21:03. | |
died shortly after 8.00am. Parliament will meet tomorrow to | :21:03. | :21:07. | |
authorise a state funeral, the first held for a commoner in this | :21:07. | :21:12. | |
country. Some commoner with his title and his country pile. | :21:12. | :21:16. | |
wanted to show how clear the delination appeared to be between | :21:16. | :21:22. | |
the younger generation and their parents, the post-war generation, | :21:22. | :21:28. | |
the clarity of that seemed to be so person sonfied in the death of | :21:28. | :21:35. | |
Churchill, by anchored it in 1965. To add to a starry class, including | :21:35. | :21:41. | |
Juliet Stevenson and Jeremy Northam, seven bright young things were | :21:41. | :21:46. | |
taken on to play the housemates, Claire Foy playing Charlotte, and | :21:46. | :21:51. | |
claftclaftclaft as the handsome -- Sam Claflin as the handsome | :21:51. | :21:59. | |
landlord. So Charlotte, do you like what you see? I like. The thing | :21:59. | :22:03. | |
about casting young actors, you have to cast somebody with maturity | :22:03. | :22:10. | |
in their hds to get to their early 40s. Paula Milne's writing credits | :22:10. | :22:13. | |
span 40 years, she has written about women's lives and the issues | :22:13. | :22:17. | |
that concern them, themes that resonate throughout the series, | :22:17. | :22:21. | |
reiterating the 1960s battle cry that the personal is political. | :22:21. | :22:24. | |
lot happened to women in the second half of the last century. With | :22:24. | :22:29. | |
Chancellor lot, when she goes to get the pill, and she wears a | :22:29. | :22:34. | |
wedding ring from Woolworths, I too did that, as far as I can remember, | :22:34. | :22:39. | |
that is more or less what the doctor said to me. You wouldn't | :22:39. | :22:43. | |
credit how many girls come in wearing a wedding ring from | :22:43. | :22:47. | |
Woolworths hoping to get the contraceptive pill, they must think | :22:47. | :22:57. | |
:22:57. | :22:57. | ||
I'm a bloody half wit. This whole mid-life generation, telling us how | :22:57. | :23:07. | |
we got to be where we are, and people looking in what we went | :23:07. | :23:14. | |
through in the 1960s or 18970s? Absolutely brilliant, I thought if | :23:14. | :23:22. | |
I was not the target audience for John Carter, this was where I | :23:22. | :23:26. | |
supposed to be. You were in art school? I was in the first year of | :23:26. | :23:30. | |
art school the same as the girl in London from the north. There was a | :23:30. | :23:35. | |
scene with a tutor, you know she's painting student, there was a scene | :23:35. | :23:42. | |
I thought, that happened to me and my friend Doreen. Was this painting | :23:42. | :23:47. | |
themselves on the floor? The one where the lecturers is casual | :23:47. | :23:53. | |
sexist to her, she -- is casually sexist to her, she's half flattered. | :23:53. | :23:57. | |
Everything about it is brilliant, the art direction is brilliant, it | :23:57. | :24:03. | |
looks very real. Jeremy Northam, an MP himself, when he's in his son's | :24:03. | :24:08. | |
flat, he picks up a milk bottle and sniffs it before putting it into | :24:08. | :24:14. | |
his tea. Charlotte, she's watching television, just behind you see | :24:14. | :24:18. | |
Margaret Drabble and Joan Bakewell having the conversation about the | :24:18. | :24:23. | |
pill. It was painful it was so good. The characterisation was | :24:23. | :24:28. | |
extraordinary deft, wasn't it? the characterisation was deft. | :24:28. | :24:33. | |
Visually it is absolutely wonderful, and felt to me completely authentic, | :24:33. | :24:39. | |
I was small in the 1960s, but I thought it was visually fantastic. | :24:39. | :24:43. | |
I did think that Charlotte, for example, I mean it is difficult | :24:43. | :24:47. | |
with Claire Foy, because she has such a mesmerising face, you want | :24:47. | :24:51. | |
to stare at it, and her face dominates almost everything she's | :24:51. | :24:56. | |
in. I didn't get a huge sense of her as a character. I felt she was | :24:56. | :25:03. | |
a young woman kind of coming from a stifling background, discovering | :25:03. | :25:06. | |
feminism, and discovering the freedom they all wanted to find. | :25:06. | :25:09. | |
They didn't have a sense of actually who she was as a character. | :25:09. | :25:12. | |
But in a sense maybe what we have here, because we have six hours and | :25:13. | :25:17. | |
we have only seen the two episodes, sadly. The whole point is, she has | :25:17. | :25:20. | |
come from the stifling background and is finding her way, and | :25:20. | :25:26. | |
presumably just like Our Friends In The North, the characters will then | :25:26. | :25:30. | |
come forward. I think you will live the journey with these people. I | :25:30. | :25:36. | |
thankful low wasn't in the 1960s, but -- thankfully wasn't in the | :25:36. | :25:42. | |
1960s but this reminded me of This Life, the defining television | :25:42. | :25:47. | |
moment in my life. Never was I so angry just to get two episodes, I | :25:47. | :25:50. | |
could have watched it all the way through, it was gripping. The other | :25:50. | :25:53. | |
thing is, you are going to start to get a sense, particularly with the | :25:54. | :26:02. | |
archive, of what was going on then, Vietnam. Also the new rich boy | :26:02. | :26:05. | |
turning away from his promised career at Cambridge, and how | :26:05. | :26:10. | |
upsetting that is for the family? They do the parents very well. | :26:10. | :26:17. | |
Normally if you did the 1960s drama, it was as if we the generation that | :26:17. | :26:24. | |
came of age in 196 5, but Tamsin Greig, the mother, she's fantastic. | :26:24. | :26:29. | |
But all the parents were great. It was a sense, of course you burst | :26:29. | :26:32. | |
away from your parents, but you still loved your parents and still | :26:32. | :26:39. | |
cared. I just thought the depth. The generational change is exactly | :26:39. | :26:42. | |
what Paula Milne was saying there, the idea that was that post-war | :26:42. | :26:45. | |
generation of parents, when they were still very, in a sense, old | :26:45. | :26:49. | |
fashioned towards their children. One of the things I found | :26:49. | :26:53. | |
fascinating was the way it handled so subjectedly the intersection of | :26:53. | :26:57. | |
the personal and political. This is a social history, it is doing | :26:57. | :27:01. | |
weighty things, feminism, abortion. But because it does it on such an | :27:01. | :27:04. | |
intimate scale, and because it is so beautifully acted and written, | :27:04. | :27:09. | |
you don't feel it as this clunking history lesson, you feel rather | :27:09. | :27:13. | |
than intellectually engaging with it. I think that makes it work. It | :27:13. | :27:17. | |
never feels forced. The only thing I felt, it is to do with the | :27:17. | :27:21. | |
paidsing and what luxury to have six -- pacing, what luxury to have | :27:21. | :27:25. | |
six hours, I felt tonally it was all similar in the first ep society, | :27:25. | :27:30. | |
it starts off with a sad, miserable scene in the flat, and one of the | :27:30. | :27:36. | |
flatmates has died, we don't know who yet. Then you have stifling | :27:36. | :27:44. | |
suburbia, miserable, silent, then rather miserable house share. | :27:44. | :27:49. | |
That is exactly what the shared flats were like. It was the | :27:49. | :27:55. | |
excitement. It was like going away from home? Having the chance to | :27:55. | :27:59. | |
throw off the backgrounds they had. But you can't. You can't that is | :27:59. | :28:03. | |
the journey to go on over this thing. Each of these characters is | :28:03. | :28:06. | |
typecast, she does it very nicely, she gets around that by the fact | :28:06. | :28:11. | |
that Jack has put this flat together as a kind of social | :28:11. | :28:17. | |
experiment. I with is a mess. Which is what you want from 18-year-olds. | :28:17. | :28:22. | |
What we are going to do is see what extent are they able to transcend | :28:22. | :28:30. | |
that typecast they have been given. Six hours, we only get six hours | :28:30. | :28:34. | |
looking at Danish drama? It was great to see something really good | :28:34. | :28:40. | |
and not read the subtitles. I think the BBC have learned from DR the | :28:40. | :28:45. | |
thighs who made The Killing, it is writer-led, it is an incredible | :28:45. | :28:48. | |
cast, original and amazing soundtrack. These are all things | :28:48. | :28:52. | |
you get in the Danish dramas. I think the BBC is following that | :28:52. | :28:55. | |
manifesto. I think they must have been fighting before that to get it. | :28:55. | :28:59. | |
I think that whole thing about what drama can do so well, exactly what | :28:59. | :29:04. | |
you are saying, it is not an intellectual exercise, you feel it. | :29:04. | :29:09. | |
Drama done well is breath taking in that sense. Mad Men, is what it | :29:09. | :29:14. | |
reminds me of. Without the gloss. Exactly, Mad Men glamorised a | :29:14. | :29:19. | |
period. What was well done is in no way was it glamorised. That New | :29:19. | :29:25. | |
Year's Eve party had the ring of trut about it, really. -- trut | :29:25. | :29:29. | |
about it. Everyone should see this, I honestly believe it is the best | :29:29. | :29:37. | |
thing on British TV for a long time. If you look at someone like Jack | :29:37. | :29:41. | |
Straw, it immediately takes you back to the student past, and | :29:41. | :29:45. | |
obviously, not the same experiences, but as you say, you remember people | :29:45. | :29:50. | |
having those kind of experiences? Absolutely. It was spot on. Paula | :29:50. | :29:54. | |
Milne herself saying about going to the pill and it being exactly like | :29:54. | :29:57. | |
that. The doctor says to her at the beginning, does your husband want | :29:57. | :30:01. | |
you to go on the pill. It will be interesting to people who are | :30:01. | :30:05. | |
younger than us, they will go that didn't happen. I didn't know that | :30:06. | :30:09. | |
happened, I found that astonishing. I didn't know you had to be married | :30:09. | :30:16. | |
to get it. No you had to pretend to be. A very big difference there, | :30:17. | :30:20. | |
White Heat starts on BBC next Thursday. | :30:20. | :30:27. | |
Today is the 70th birth dae of rock'n'roll legend, Lewis Allen | :30:27. | :30:34. | |
Reed, you will know him better as Lou Reed. | :30:34. | :30:39. | |
The avant garde Velvet Underground burst on to the New York scene, | :30:39. | :30:46. | |
managed by Andy Warhol, and fronted by a menacing Lou Reed, they were | :30:47. | :30:50. | |
instantly iconic. While their influence was felt today, they were | :30:50. | :30:54. | |
commercially unsuccessful. All that was to change for Reed, at least, | :30:54. | :31:01. | |
after one flop solo album, he teamed up with David Bowie to | :31:01. | :31:05. | |
produce Transformer, this created an embarrassment of riches, Perfect | :31:05. | :31:15. | |
:31:15. | :31:16. | ||
Day, Satellite of Love, and the the one he is best known, Walk On The | :31:16. | :31:21. | |
Wild Side. # Hey babe # Take a walk on the wild side | :31:21. | :31:31. | |
And the coloured girls go Mrb do #-do-do-do | :31:31. | :31:37. | |
How do you follow that, a career wrecking album called Berlin, about | :31:37. | :31:40. | |
loneliness, and the forced separation of a woman from her | :31:41. | :31:45. | |
children. # They are taking her children away | :31:45. | :31:49. | |
# Because they said she was not a good mother | :31:50. | :31:54. | |
Described as the Poet Laureate of sleaze, Reed's ambition to create | :31:54. | :31:59. | |
lyrics as literary in style as musical, has led him to cover some | :31:59. | :32:05. | |
particularly dark subjects. # You can hit me all you want to | :32:05. | :32:13. | |
# But I don't love any more In subsequent years Reed enjoyed | :32:13. | :32:16. | |
critical success with the album New York, and has been sought out by | :32:16. | :32:23. | |
musicians like The Killers to lend his critical and artistic cachet to | :32:23. | :32:29. | |
their work. His most recent collaboration is last week's Lulu | :32:29. | :32:35. | |
recorded with Metallica, and inspired by the expressionist plays. | :32:35. | :32:44. | |
Lulu is a fem fatal who meets a sticky end at the lands of the | :32:44. | :32:49. | |
Ripper. Reed is unrepentent claiming this is his favourite work | :32:49. | :32:55. | |
to date. At 70, the man who designed the avant garde era of the | :32:55. | :33:05. | |
:33:05. | :33:09. | ||
1960s and pushed his fans and talent too far some say. | :33:09. | :33:16. | |
When did you first come across Lou Reed? In the 1970s, Walk On The | :33:16. | :33:23. | |
Wild Side, Perfect Day. I saw him later on, first it was the records. | :33:23. | :33:27. | |
Transformer is a brilliant record, it still is, it is just magic. It | :33:27. | :33:31. | |
is not always good, but everybody should be remembered for their best. | :33:31. | :33:37. | |
You know things like Perfect Day and Walk On The Wild Side, some of | :33:37. | :33:44. | |
those early things are just magical. The Velvet Underground, Loaded, | :33:44. | :33:49. | |
these things in themselves, somebody reminded me that Brian Eno | :33:49. | :33:55. | |
said it only sold 10,000 copies, but it had huge influence over | :33:55. | :33:59. | |
everyone. Everyone who bought it formed a band. You forget now, | :33:59. | :34:04. | |
there was this, coming on to the modern period, there was this great | :34:04. | :34:09. | |
big gap in the middle where I completely lost touch with him. The | :34:09. | :34:14. | |
Velvet Underground stuff? The first album is astonishingly beautiful. | :34:15. | :34:19. | |
With Nico on it, it is an amazing thing to listen to. It was so | :34:19. | :34:24. | |
lovely, I think I probably last listened to it when I was 15 or 16. | :34:24. | :34:28. | |
You did a lot of things that period? I was a very busy boy back | :34:28. | :34:36. | |
then. They reissued Perfect Day, which led me back into it. Just the | :34:36. | :34:42. | |
glok speil of the beginning of Sunday Morning is a wonderful song. | :34:42. | :34:46. | |
I'm aparade we will go on to the other stuff t has -- I'm afraid we | :34:46. | :34:52. | |
will go on to the other stuff that ruined it to me. He had literary | :34:52. | :34:58. | |
ambition as a poet? I beg you to degrade me, is there something I | :34:58. | :35:02. | |
could eat, I am a secret lover, I am your little girl, please spit | :35:02. | :35:08. | |
into my mouth, I'm forever in your swerel, it is awful. I wish I | :35:08. | :35:13. | |
hadn't listened to it, Lulu, I won't listen to it again. The early | :35:13. | :35:18. | |
stuff was given. I don't think -- Different. I don't think he was a | :35:18. | :35:25. | |
poet, but a dramaist. He did study poetry, there was a deceptive | :35:25. | :35:31. | |
simplicity to the lyrics, these were vignettes of Manhatten life, | :35:31. | :35:37. | |
and they felt like real stories and characters. He lived in the meat | :35:37. | :35:42. | |
packing district before it was fashionable. That was the scene in | :35:42. | :35:46. | |
the 1960s. There is a definite sense of the beat poetry, the New | :35:46. | :35:52. | |
York poets, the idea of sitting back and taking in life. I actually | :35:52. | :36:02. | |
:36:02. | :36:03. | ||
think he is a poet. You credit him with huge influences? The Strokes | :36:03. | :36:12. | |
from REM, even earlier Patti Smith and The Ramones. The white Stripes | :36:13. | :36:17. | |
and David Bowie who rescued his career with him. I feel more | :36:17. | :36:20. | |
recently an influence of style rather than substance, many | :36:20. | :36:24. | |
wouldn't say they want to make Berlin. You want people to move and | :36:24. | :36:32. | |
change and people making music until they die, we saw Leonard | :36:32. | :36:40. | |
Cohen and he's in fighting form. think there should be mandatory | :36:40. | :36:50. | |
:36:50. | :36:51. | ||
retirement age when listening to Metallica. This is Iced Honey | :36:51. | :36:57. | |
Iced honey # Iced honey | :36:57. | :37:07. | |
:37:07. | :37:17. | ||
He absolutely, of course, like an adolescent child absolutely refused | :37:17. | :37:22. | |
to see there was anything wrong with that, and maybe were wasn't? | :37:22. | :37:26. | |
admire that about him. It is excruciating, although I have to | :37:26. | :37:31. | |
say me talking about heavy metal is like asking a High Court judge to | :37:31. | :37:37. | |
talk about emmem, it is not my cup of tea. Why should he carry on | :37:37. | :37:41. | |
doing the stuff he did, he did more than most of us do in a lifetime. | :37:41. | :37:44. | |
It is a great temptation for artists to do the same thing again | :37:44. | :37:48. | |
and again, if you look at the Chapman Brothers, they do the same | :37:48. | :37:52. | |
thing all the time. I think, good on him, that is the rock spirit to | :37:52. | :37:57. | |
be trying to do something fresh all the time. Personally I think it is | :37:57. | :38:04. | |
disastrous, I don't see there is anything wrong with the quest. | :38:04. | :38:08. | |
a big Metallica fan, they are two totally different styles. You have | :38:08. | :38:12. | |
this military, grinding guitar music, with his drawling voice over, | :38:12. | :38:19. | |
and it doesn't work. There is also on the album an astonishing kind of, | :38:19. | :38:26. | |
lament to late age erect tile dysfunction and there is something | :38:26. | :38:36. | |
:38:36. | :38:36. | ||
rather brave about it. Those kinds of collaborations, you do want that, | :38:36. | :38:42. | |
there is a great Robert Plant, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant | :38:42. | :38:48. | |
together, fantastic. Some of the stuff that Elvis Costello did was a | :38:48. | :38:51. | |
great collaboration. You do want different. The problem with this | :38:51. | :38:55. | |
was some of it ofn't different enough and the voices were fighting | :38:55. | :38:59. | |
each -- wasn't different enough, and the voices were fighting each | :38:59. | :39:03. | |
other? You did feel, to me, I listened to this and then I went | :39:03. | :39:08. | |
back and listened through his back catalogue, it made so much of his | :39:08. | :39:13. | |
earlier stuff sound like average pub rock. You think? I really | :39:13. | :39:18. | |
didn't know that middle period at all, and when I listened to it I | :39:18. | :39:25. | |
really didn't like it, I'm afraid. Magic and Loss was beautiful, that | :39:25. | :39:34. | |
was 1982. The Blue Mask wasn't bad. I'm afraid we forgot to post a | :39:34. | :39:41. | |
birthday card, but we send him best wishes for Perfect Day. To coincide | :39:41. | :39:45. | |
to a Picasso exhibition, they have been playing host to the English | :39:45. | :39:52. | |
ballet, doing workshops and doing the daily class in the middle of | :39:52. | :39:59. | |
the national gallery. We went to see what happens when paint meets | :39:59. | :40:07. | |
plie. When we had an exhibition looking at Picasso's presence in | :40:07. | :40:12. | |
Britain. Talks began with the English ballet, to celebrate the | :40:12. | :40:20. | |
visit in 1919, when he came to study with the ballet. What a great | :40:20. | :40:26. | |
opportunity Tate Britain to collaberate with the ballet who are | :40:26. | :40:29. | |
preparing for their own season. working on a new piece that I have | :40:29. | :40:38. | |
done, it is called face-to-face, it is based around one of Picasso's | :40:38. | :40:43. | |
paintings. It is a painting of one of his sculptures, it had such | :40:43. | :40:47. | |
fantastic shape and movement in the piece. There is four people in it, | :40:47. | :40:50. | |
the two girls represent the painting, and the two men are | :40:50. | :40:57. | |
almost the artists and sculptoring at the beginning, and half way | :40:57. | :41:02. | |
through the music changes and the dancers come alive. I imagine as an | :41:02. | :41:05. | |
artist you get lost in the piece, you try all different things and | :41:05. | :41:09. | |
then suddenly it comes together, and then that is it, don't touch it | :41:09. | :41:14. | |
any more. The main thing is the stage area and having enough space. | :41:14. | :41:18. | |
Although the room is huge, as a dancer you don't realise how much | :41:18. | :41:25. | |
space we use and consume. We dance on a sprung floor, we can't just | :41:25. | :41:35. | |
:41:35. | :41:35. | ||
dance on concrete. As we have collaberated before with | :41:35. | :41:39. | |
Michael Clarke's dance company at Tate Modern several years ago, this | :41:39. | :41:43. | |
is an important opportunity for Tate Britain to partner with dance | :41:43. | :41:48. | |
organisations around Britain. It is a unique opportunity for us to | :41:48. | :41:52. | |
celebrate Picasso's pinnacle moment and the work he created here in | :41:52. | :41:56. | |
London. It is a challenge but fantastic place to dance, hopefully | :41:56. | :42:04. | |
we will be here again soon. English National Ballet are in | :42:04. | :42:08. | |
residence at Tate Britain for two more days, there is a couple of | :42:08. | :42:14. | |
places in the adult participation class on Sunday, Alex wants to sign | :42:14. | :42:19. | |
up. The Picasso exhibition continues until July. Visit the | :42:19. | :42:22. | |
website for more details on the programme. My thanks to the panel, | :42:22. | :42:27. | |
next week I will be joined by AL Kennedy, Marcel Theroux and John | :42:27. | :42:34. | |
Mullan to watch Stephen Mangan as Diark Gently, and the talk about | :42:34. | :42:43. | |
the new film version of Bel Ami. We end with some music from the BBC | :42:43. | :42:46. | |
Introducing scheme, Gabrielle Aplin is playing on Monday in Glasgow and | :42:46. | :42:55. | |
come up early to make her TV debut with her own composition, Home. | :42:55. | :43:00. | |
# I'm a Phoenix in the water, and the mission that's learned to fly | :43:00. | :43:05. | |
# And I have' always been a tortoise | :43:05. | :43:11. | |
# With feathers for the sky # So I'm wishing | :43:11. | :43:17. | |
# Wishing further # For the excitement to arrive | :43:17. | :43:21. | |
M it's just I'd rather be causing the chaos | :43:21. | :43:24. | |
# Than laying at the sharp end # Of this night | :43:24. | :43:29. | |
# With every small disaster # I'll let the waters still | :43:29. | :43:36. | |
# Take me away # To some place real | :43:36. | :43:40. | |
# Because they say home is where your heart is set in | :43:40. | :43:44. | |
# Stone is where you are going # When you are alone | :43:44. | :43:49. | |
# Is where you go to rest your bones | :43:49. | :43:52. | |
# And it's not just where you lay your head | :43:52. | :43:59. | |
# It's not just where you make your # As long as we're together | :43:59. | :44:09. | |
:44:09. | :44:15. | ||
# It doesn't matter where we go # Oh oh | :44:15. | :44:19. | |
# They say home is where your heart is set | :44:19. | :44:24. | |
# In stone is where you go mlk when you're alone | :44:24. | :44:29. | |
# Is where you go to rest your bones | :44:30. | :44:33. |