Critic Cal

A tipsily cheerful, older-than-me chap in the pub where I go to write recently informed me that, d'you know, he'd walked past my table a couple of times and  he couldn't decide whether I was a man or a woman! To be fair to my new friend, I wasn't dressed as a woman. I wasn't dressed 'as' anything. I was just there in jeans and a conference hoodie – ideal for the (coldish) weather and the errand-y to-dos on my list, but hardly apt to give a person curves they don't already possess. My medium-length hair had been styled by the elements, my complexion was as even and clear as OK-ish hydration and cleansing would have it, and I hadn't so much as sketched a single facial feature. And yet, here I was outside the confines of my own home and apparently quite comfortable to be seen in public. It does seem like more the sort of thing a man would do... Not that all men choose to present themselves 'as-is', but at least it's socially acceptab...

There's stuff that you can say in dance that you just can't say with words. 'Course, when I say "you" I mean "humankind as a whole"; I can't speak for you personally, and for myself, there's nothing much that  I can say in dance, full stop. My attempts on that front are best compared with those of a unilingual Brit in a foreign country -- "no hablo español". Although, just as the accent and pronunciation of said Brit act as case-in-point, so a terpsichoreal rendering would doubtless lend my own confession the more conviction. "Je ne ne peux pas parler danser" indeed. Anyways, I digress. Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake , as well as being a beautifully impressive feat of skill and art, was also engagingly emotionally expressive. The story (much as it seems a shame to, after all, translate it into words) is of a young prince floundering under the weight of expectation and obligation accompanying his privileged birthright. He...

Having read countless books of chivalry of days of yore and having filled his head with errant knights and ladies fair and noble deeds and devious enchanters ... in late middle age it dawns on  Don Quixote  that this is in actual fact his destiny. It is for him, and him alone, to bring knight-errantry and all the glorious feats and romances entailed therein bang-up-to-date for 17th century Spain. So he sallies forth -- accompanied by skeptical but willingly-deluded faithful squire Pancho and scrawny, disobliging noble steed Rocinante, to the great dismay of his housekeeper and his niece and in spite of the best efforts of his friends the barber and the local priest. His desire for adventure overwhelms him to the point where he is bound to find it even (or especially) where it isn't. And so, he battles fearlessly with monstrous giants (windmills), liberates oppressed captives (convicted criminals), triumphs in bloody combat with devious night intruders (hanging wineskins), take...

" I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me." ( Tristram Shandy , Gentleman. [1]) Lately, it would seem, babies have been popping out all over the place. Social networking keeps me updated of their arrivals and progress -- often in minu...

Online privacy (or rather, the lack of it) has been making lots of people cross recently, with Facebook and Google the objects of particular wrath. Most of us who do the whole 'social network' thing have a lingering sense that we have probably given too much away already and are conveniently resigned to the fact that it's too late to do anything about it now. Contact details, relationships, evidence of wild nights out (which canny employers may correlate with lapsed productivity), preferences and consumption readily monetised into advertising and endorsement (" if you're not paying for it, you're the product "). All of which amount to an amplified, more broadly dispersed, and more succinctly codified representation of the public-facing 'you'. It becomes increasingly difficult to manage 'who sees what', particularly when you factor in the potential for other people's online activity to misrepresent or distort your 'image'. ...

The big TV channels have been tweaking the format in relay for some years; finally, after numerous iterations, the BBC have hit upon the ultimate reality TV contest…expertly crafted to provoke maximum despair; a sitting quarry for all that pent-up frustration (which I would doubtless be tempted to unleash all the more loudly and frequently if only I had Charlie Brooker's vitriolic eloquence). I'm talking about The Voice . That's what it's ALL about, apparently. In a remarkably groundbreaking and radical move, they've decided to make their latest search for talent about…well…talent. Blind auditions! Wow! We are in post- SuBo Britain now people -- a new era has dawned, and there's no going back. Gone are the days when we didn't realise that even people who looked slightly odd might be able to do something impressive…something powerful enough, even, to bring a conservative tear to the heavily-mascaraed eyes of female TV judges, to 'go viral' across ...

Interesting how science fiction so often proves an ideal platform for investigating reality. I guess because we get to set the ground rules ourselves, almost like experimental test conditions. In practice, it is hard to identify one's own worldview; it is hard to be consistent within it; it is hard to coexist with people whose worldviews are different. Science fiction sneaks under the radar of our presuppositions by legitimising a suspension of disbelief. That the world in question is invented removes any ambiguity about the rules under which it operates, supplying fictitious but well-defined premises from which to explore all sorts of interesting 'what ifs'.[1] I was delighted by ' Moon '; as playful and thoughtful a sci-fi film as you could hope for. Plenty deep, but completely unpretentious. [2] A brief synopsis, I suppose, to begin…(see the Wikipedia page for more but there's a fair old number of spoilers in there). Sam Bell is nearing the end of a 3-ye...

I *love* Masterchef: I love seeing people excel at what they do, I love the human interaction and moments of genuine affection, and I love salivating over plate-upon-plate of delicious looking food (normally whilst eating some toast-based creation of my own). But as a series progresses each episode becomes more and more frequently punctuated by contestant sound-bites expressing ever-increasing fervour and obsession. To quote: "every single cell of my body is dedicated to Masterchef right now" …and that's only 5 minutes in to episode 4. The competition to express the most intense and all-consuming emotion and commitment becomes at least as fierce as the competition to present the best plates of food. It appears to be mandatory to love cooking to the exclusion of all other interests, to the neglect of your family and friends, to the jeopardy of your health and mental stability… and this 'passion' is presented to the audience as something inspirational, to be laude...

(Black Mirror, Channel 4 2011) OK, last of the TV 'events': I'm really not a big TV watcher but I can't talk about Sherlock and This is England without mentioning Charlie Brooker, diagnostician extraordinaire. The prognosis he offers is pretty grim…though surely the only rational one within the worldview he presupposes (which is expressly atheist and, I would suspect, rather coherently so given his evident thoughtfulness). I knew Black Mirror had got to me when I tried to watch a bit of Masterchef the other day and couldn't look at poor old 'John and Greg' without thinking of the excruciating reality TV-ruled dystopia of episode 2 ("15 Million Merits"). Boy was it bleak…and convincingly so. A particularly low point was watching the hero's impassioned and hard-won opportunity to 'tell it like it is', all the while anticipating the inevitable synthetic affirmation of 'the judges' and eventual compromise. Brooker follows in a...