The campaign starts here.

It was with mischief in my heart that I responded to the wonderful DenOfGeek.com’s emailed request for Catwoman casting suggestions should the iconic feline fatale make a return to the big screen as a Batvillain following the massive success of second Christopher Nolan Batman film The Dark Knight. What, I thought, would be a typically Nolan-esque move away from the cliches associated with the role?

Catwoman, as we saw in poor old Halle Berry’s greatest misfire to date, has plenty of potential to be a misguided fancy-dress spectacle attempting to indulge the leather-clad end of one’s fantasy spectrum, rather than grappling with anything so difficult as a plot, and ending up failing on both counts. So, what are the bare bones of Catwoman as a serious character once we eliminate - as surely we must - the cheesecake aspects? Revenge, strength, pitilessness, an equal for Batman. .. Obviously, there’s a feline element, which for some reason makes people picture busty brunettes with dark soulful eyes. Physiologically at least, this makes no sense. Cats, unless they’ve been spoiled by well-meaning owners, are lean creatures, with, more often than not, green or blue eyes.

So I went with Tilda Swinton. Here’s the excerpt from DenOfGeek’s article (in full behind the link):

Tilda Swinton
Catherine Bray has an off-beat suggestion for Batman’s adored malfeasant. Tilda Swinton is no stranger to fantasy film, with The Chronicles Of Narnia and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button under her belt… “Bit left-field this,” says Catherine, “but Tilda Swinton would make a striking choice. Six foot tall, alienesque, radiating cruelty and moving far away from all the clichés. Pfeiffer did the Soho S&M version to perfection; time to take it somewhere stranger. Fanboys looking for a cosily cute Little Miss Whiplash figure to flog themselves silly over would probably bitch and moan, but since when have Nolan’s Batman pics been about pleasing predictable fetishes?”

As I say above, I’m not at all against the BDSM incarnation of Catwoman when done properly; it’s just that it has been done. It’d be like casting a cackling middle-aged rogue in the Joker role. Jack Nicholson’s all over that. So the smart money goes elsewhere. Cast soulful Heath Ledger: it might just work. Hence the crazy - or is it? - Tilda idea, which over on Fark.com has generated predictable “but she looks like a man/doesn’t have tits/scares me” comments, but also a surprising amount of support too. Good to see some people getting beyond the idea that the perfect Catwoman = whoever-I-fancy-in-leather. (Incidentally, scriptwriters trying to write Sexy instead of Believable is why all female superhero movies so far have been complete gash. Sure, cast a good-looking or at least striking actress - this is Hollywood - but write as if you were writing a normal superhero film, people. Maybe Joss Whedon could get onto it if he’s not too scarred from the Wonderwoman experience)

DenOfGeek also emailed Tilda Swinton’s agent about this, who apparently replied that as she was filming in Italy they couldn’t get hold of her for a comment, but said “I am personally delighted by the concept! Thanks for your support. And good taste!”

My hearing has just about recovered from the aural assault that was Birmingham’s Supersonic festival in the Custard Factory, curated by the wonderful ladies of Capsule and ably headlined by Battles and Harmonia. I’m not going to do a round-up of everything I saw, as we’ll be sticking one of those on 4Talent this week, but I just wanted to post now about something that absolutely blew me away. It wasn’t even a band, funnily enough, but the screening of 1922 silent film Nosferatu with a live soundtrack.

Nosferatu is a powerful argument in favour of unofficial cover versions. It is, essentially, a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, with superficial changes rarely running deeper than a bit of substitute nomenclature - a Count Orlock in lieu of Count Dracula here, a Hutter replacing Harker there - it’s very much the same story, slightly streamlined and relocated to plague-sticken Germany. Bram Stoker’s relatives spotted this sleight-of-script at the time and hot-footed it to their lawyers, forcing Prahna Films, for whom Nosferatu was their debut film, to file for bankruptcy and shut up shop, never to film again.

A shame, and it’s especially lucky that the legal team’s quest to destroy every print failed. This classic made my Supersonic festival. If I wanted to be pretentious about things for a moment - and why wouldn’t I? - I’d make a case for Nosferatu bearing a similar relation to other versions of the vampire myth (Stoker’s novel, Christopher Lee’s portrayal, Anne Rice, the execrable Ford Coppola epic) as Supersonic does to other more mainstream festivals. Bear with me…

Nosferatu…
… is loved by a smaller but more committed audience
… is aesthetically sensitive without encouraging aesthetes
… burrows its way under your skin and stays there
… adores the unheimlich
… requires patience at times
… incorporates elements of the absurd to humourous yet disturbing effect
… mingles the unintentionally camp with the seriously creepy
… will at times leave you unsure whether to laugh or gasp, but even as you walk away, you’re aware you’ve witnessed something rather wonderful and definitely different.

You can probably infer the flipside: more mainstream festivals and vampire myths are a little slicker, concerned with seduction and appearance, dangling a membership to a supposedly exclusive club you’re not so sure you want to be joining. I’ve nothing against that either, as I nurture something of a taste for a dash of manufactured pop in my musical cocktail (as anyone who’s my friend on Last.Fm may know), but it’s absolutely crucial to have both.

I’d seen Nosferatu before, a long time ago, on a small screen, and without live music, and honestly, this was in effect a different film. Congratulatory caskets of unconsecrated earth go to Grandmaster Gareth (Misty’s Big Adventure) and Matt Eaton (Pram) for their work on the stunning score. Max Schreck would be proud of you.

(Addendum - while I’m on the subject, there’s some other vampire-focused ramblings of mine over on wonderful website Den Of Geek reviewing Dracula’s Daughter)

Rather looking forward to this whole Twittering-from-Glastonbury endeavour for 4Talent with Oxfam. I’m actually geekily excited about it on its own terms (because I haven’t consistently microblogged from a big event for four days before - what if my phone dies/is lost/breaks?), but also pleased that we’ve tied it into a decent competition i.e. to win a ticket to Bestival and help present a podcast from said festival with my good self. Hope the winner is a personable type. There’s certainly a risk I might end up having to supervise a complete tool.

In anticipation of all this, I did a practice live Twitterfeed from a documentary pitching course last Friday to the main 4Talent Twitterfeed, which seemed to go well, so fingers crossed for this one. The documentary course was a good ‘un too; held at the Oxford Film and Video Makers place on Catherine Street in Oxford, near where I used to live - packed with useful stuff.

I’ve uploaded many of said tips to 4Talent in bite-sized audio file chunks, for anyone who’s interested in the wonderful world of documentary making.

Here’s a sample. Your speaker is tutor Sally Webb of BBC and NFTS credentials - click the link to hear her talking about the need to know your market before you pitch:
know-your-market

Well then, off to Glastonbury. Haven’t been since 2005.
I plan to be more sober this time around. Not hard:

I wonder if this post (featuring - ooh - an audio extract from a speech I gave today; scroll down if you can’t be bothered with all this “text” nonsense) will seem like it’s contradicting a previous entry about old media vs new media? It isn’t though; that was about the contrast in working practices behind the scenes within the old/new media, rather than the ever-increasing equality in content value between the two, and hence my argument today: there is no “versus”.

Reading that opening paragraph back, I’m not sure it’s exactly a candidate for zingy openers of our times. Let’s start again: PRINT VS ONLINE: THE SMACKDOWN! Place your bets now and book a ringside seat, for one of the most FICTIONAL BATTLES in moderrrrrn public relaaaaaaations!

I spent this morning speechifying at a Regional Press Network gathering of press officers at the Hippodrome, where I was asked to be this month’s guest speaker. The topic was online journalism, and I covered a range of things from basic practice for press officers not used to engaging with online outlets, to a couple of bits of search engine optimization trickery.

The one thing I really hoped the assembled PRs would take on board was my contention that press officers (and journalists) need to stop thinking of online and print as competing models in which online is a second class citizen. To use a dietary metaphor, it’s like suggesting that protein and carbohydrate are in competition. People consume both, but they work in different ways; consuming a mixture is best, and one isn’t “better” than the other, unless you’re deluded enough the think the Atkins Diet is a good idea.

This is, of course, speaking from a content point of view; if you bring revenue streams, be it ad sales, cover price, or whatever, into the equation, competition is undeniably a factor. But that’s not something writers - or press officers - need to be thinking about in the context of placing their work with the right outlets. The mindset I’m arguing against here is the press officer who says to the editor “why is this article only going online?”, meaning “isn’t it good enough to go in the magazine?” Presumably this mindset is in turn driven by out of touch clients who are more impressed by print campaigns than online.

On that note, here’s a short (under two minute) audio extract from my speech, where I explain why we put some content online and some in the magazine, and why that has nothing to do with the “status” of said content. (Incidentally, I’m not keen on the word “content”, but until someone comes up with a better umbrella term for text, audio, video and images, I think we’re stuck with it):

AUDIO
Regional Press Networks meeting speech extract, ‘Online Or Print?’, © Catherine Bray, 2008
Clicky clicky:
onlineprintcath
(Do let me know if this link isn’t working)

Dear Surface Unsigned,

Does your lawyer look a bit like this?

Yes, Surface Unsigned’s PR team have been busy. I do love stuff like this. I won’t add to the wise words of those better qualified than I to unpick this one, but the bare bones are that a company sent a fairly nonsensical legal threat to a blogger, and obviously it’s always funny to see a larger organization attempt to use heavy-handed tactics and subsequently get egg on their face.

Of course, you’ve got to sympathise with anyone working for Surface Unsigned who genuinely cares about music and has nothing to do with the approach their “lawyers” have taken here, as the brand is likely to be associated with this for a long time to come. It is not, after all, quite the same as the Nicholas Hellen bun fight, where it’s the name of the chap responsible for the bullying tactics employed which is now mud. It would be good to know specifically who was responsible for the letter sent to Danny.

I’d also be interested to know the thoughts of bands with experience of working with Surface Unsigned.

* * * * *

This is the second internet smackdown I’ve been avidly following in the last week or so. Alex Larman, a university chum with whom I edited the culture section of the uni magazine in the heady days of my wasted youth, has been fighting with David Baddiel. It’s fairly polite man-of-letters stuff, with Alex blogging unfavourably on the Guardian about BBC4’s The Book Quiz, which used to be fronted by Baddiel. Said presenter has popped up to answer the criticism in person, on the Times Online blog, though spends most of the article being amusing about some other chap in a review of the show Alex linked to.

Baddiel gets Alex’s name wrong throughout, conceivably a veiled comment on the fact that this internettual Alex Larman/Larmar character, IF HE EVEN EXISTS, OMG, is not important enough to spell correctly, but hopefully more a case of slapdash fact-checking. Or perhaps we sniff conspiracy, and Larman/r is a pseudonym for a gloating Mark Lamarr, who of course fronted the rather more successful arts-meets-larfs quiz show Never Mind The Buzzcocks. And according to my mate Fayed, Prince Philip rigged the Book Quiz’s ratings as well. Get me the Daily Express “news” desk, and fast.

I wonder how much BBC4 spent on two series of the Book Quiz? I would rather see a two-part, hour a-piece adaptation of Baddiel’s novel Whatever Love Means, which is actually rather excellent. Of course, digital channels need “content”, requiring them to spread those commissioning budgets as thinly as possible. Out with the expensive one-off dramas, in with the cheerily cheap panel series.

At least none of Baddiel’s representatives wrote to Alex to inform him they would shut down the whole of the Guardian forever and ever to infinity times a million if he didn’t retract his libelous, defamatory, copyright-infringing and downright naughty comments, but then if you’re as crap a lawyer as Surface Unsigned apparently employ, you’re probably not going to get much work from David Baddiel, The Times Online, or indeed full stop.

To end inelegantly on a mostly unconnected note, I’ve been blogging on the Guardian myself about Barack Obama’s speeches.

Yesterday, the second of two school visits I’ve now done for the Trading Places scheme organised by Oxford University took place. It involved going to talk to and do a bit of a workshop on media careers with a class of teenagers (13 - 14 yrs), alongside Syed Ahmed from The Apprentice in Birmingham (yesterday), and with Nabil Elouahabi (Tariq from Eastenders), in Manchester last month.

Trading Places is one of those schemes which probably risks coming across as patronising, but in lieu of any better ideas or wider changes in society is a well-meant and necessary attempt to bridge gaps created and maintained by tradition.
The specific aim of Trading Places is to attract the brightest ethnic minority students to apply to Oxford University, and the broader goal (one with which it’s hard to quibble) is to simply encourage bright students from backgrounds which have little tradition of applying to top universities in general to consider where a degree might take them.
I found out about the scheme in an email from the Oxford Careers Service which said that they were looking for alumni who ideally fulfilled the following three criteria:

1) That they had been state-school educated
2) That they had gone on from Oxford to an “interesting” career to which 14 year olds might relate
3) That they be from an ethnicity currently under-represented at Oxford University (from what I recall of my time there, this would include anyone who wasn’t white)

I got in touch to say I’d be happy to help, but warning them that I didn’t fulfill all the criteria. Since they did pick me, a white journalist, I’m presuming they weren’t flooded with offers of help from ethnic minority state-school educated rockstars and astronauts. I wonder whether this is because the state-school educated ethnic minorities of Oxford, an already smallish group, a) never heard about the scheme, b) don’t actually fancy being the poster child for state-schooled ethnic minority success (fair enough), or c) are too busy flying to the moon and interviewing superstars for MTV.
The day was a success, I think. I tried to convey that you don’t have to have it all worked out at 14, 18 or even 21; I hadn’t realised I wanted to work as a writer or editor until the summer I graduated. I’m pretty sure they understood what I was trying to say: university buys you time in this respect, rather than wastes it. And I tried to dispel the idea that if you do go to a well-respected university, it means you’ll be slaving away nine to five, 24/7 studying non-stop for three years. Erm, unless you take a science degree. I also talked to them about 4Talent Central and good ol’ Hotdog magazine.
Syed presented what I guess might be called the flip-side, stressing his years of hard graft in places like McDonalds (trivia of the day: he earned five stars at Maccy Ds) and suggesting they begin planning their lives now in order not to be left behind. Horses for courses, I suppose.

I didn’t have the balls to tell him I’ve never seen any of The Apprentice.

Caution: not-exactly-revolutionary insights ahead…

You know what I love about working in new media more than anything? It’s not the aesthetic. Gadgetry and computers, even those hailed for their clean design, aren’t beautiful. Or not to me. I can respect the way a nice bit of kit has been designed, but it could never make my heart sing, in the true sixth-form poetry sense of the phrase. Even at a more mundane level, give me a dustily comfortable study heaving with leather-bound books and battered oak-paneling over a tooled-up media suite humming with the glare of progress any day of the week. And I’m certainly not in love with the burning eyeballs, cramping fingers and Steptoe spine that are a heavy day’s work’s legacy, though that’s hardly new media-specific.

No, what I love most about online journalism is the sheer speed and accessibility, the chance to just get on with it, have an idea and make it happen. Yesterday afternoon I was proofing for publication on 4Talent Central an interview that journalist Karen Krizanovich had done with the annoyingly multi-talented Andrew Collins, presenter of Radio 4’s Banter, writer of Where Did It All Go Right?, ex-editor of Q magazine and, recently, co-host of a series of podcasts with the excellent Richard Herring, wackily entitled The Collings & Herrin Podcasts.

These are nice podcasts. People should hear them. Andrew describes them as “our own sideways look at the news. Our fervent wish is to recreate our now legendary news reviews from my now-defunct BBC 6 Music show, except without the indie records interrupting us, and without the need to temper the content for fear of offending a Sunday afternoon BBC radio audience. We don’t get paid, and they are free to listen to, it’s all done for the love of laughter.” It would seem to make sense to link to these podcasts from the article, no? Better still, why don’t we host one direct as a sample for the readers?

Granted, I have about as little experience of working in the Old Media as eternal trainee Jimmy Olsen - and he’s fictional - having spent but two years on an old-school film magazine without a website (the much-missed - er, by me, anyway - Hotdog magazine). But even in my ignorance, I do know that it wasn’t really the monthly magazine cultural ethos to go from this initial thought at about five in the afternoon, to heading over to Andrew’s blog, contacting the man direct, asking if we could host his podcast, to him checking whether that’s ok with other folks, to me uploading the podcast and sticking it on our frontpage next morning.

This is a slightly different type of example of course, but I remember that trying to organize a competition to win DVDs, t-shirts and assorted branded tat in Hotdog used to seem to take a minimum of a fortnight, from initial email to press officer, to permission forms, promo images, faxing legal agreements, passing assets to a designer, tweaking copy, proofing PDFs, obtaining approval… god, it brings me out in a giant yawn just thinking about it.

Of course, in this example you’re dealing with huge companies who “need” to make sure they’re “on brand” and other such tedium, in the grand cause of increasing the audience numbers for films of variable quality, while the other is simply downloadable audio files featuring established media pundit types in a not-for-profit scenario.

So perhaps it’s about the money flying around, or lack of it, not the medium. And that’s fine. If big corporations want to hinder themselves by slowing everything down, that’s their absolutely their right. But if people like Andrew and Richard want to make their own lives easier by letting grubby web monkeys like myself promote their for-the-love-of-it work for free, that’s, to me, actually rather wonderful.

As stated in this episode, if anyone would like to buy out Andrew and Richard’s podcast series, they’ll happily look at all offers, starting at c. £5 mil or near offer.

Sarah’s been getting righteous on 4Talent Central.

“The gaming industry seems to be concerned that women aren’t spending enough money on games. How can it appeal to them? Well… there are some pretty obvious places to start. And what’s the point of a panel discussion about the issues relating to women in games if everyone’s too afraid of the word “feminism” to criticise anything?”

Full article here.

I’ll be honest: I’d have been skeptical if someone had told me a week ago that I’d soon be in love with a razor-wielding maniac. That was before I saw Sweeney Todd. Good lord, but I’m sure a psychopath shouldn’t be quite that attractive. All of a sudden I find myself questioning my previous disdain for those freakish American women who marry notorious serial killers on death row. Though it must be remembered that their homicidal hubbies generally don’t look even half as fine as Johnny Depp, or sport dashingly tailored leatherwear like it’s a second skin that’s been marinated in sweaty revenge. He can slit my throat and throw me in the incinerator any day of the week - it would totally be worth it for the physical contact.
Not sure how all this affects the clause in my current will that on death my body should be rendered in a hair product manufacturing plant and sent to David Tennant under the guise of the latest word in gel for the discerning Timelord who likes to use that bit too much product. Feel I’ve betrayed David in some way, sigh.
Enough of this macabre speculation! Disturbing lust aside, how was Sweeney Todd as a film? Even leaving Mr Depp out of the equation, I was incredibly impressed. I disagree with a review which maintained that Helena Bonham Carter can’t sing - it’s more that she’s not a trained pro, and thus her vocals express a bit of humanity and character: perfect for Mrs Lovett, who must surely take her place in the great pantheon of movie villains who are completely amoral - in the true sense of that word. Her genius is far removed from the cackling schadenfreude of folk who take pleasure in their victim’s pain; she’s simply spied an unmissable business opportunity, augmented in its efficacy by her passion for the demon barber and the fact that it solves his problems too. Respect.
I could write at length about the supporting cast, but of course Alan Rickman is beautifully wrong, and of course Timothy Spall is splendidly unctuous - no surprises there. Sacha Baron Cohen is fabulous too, although to say why would slightly spoil his plotline.
As an adaptation, it’s flawless: they’ve cut three hours of stage-time down to two hours of screen-time, and it actually feels like barely an hour and a half. Oh, just go see it, why don’t you? Even if you normally hate musicals - Sondheim’s songs flow seamlessly into the plot, rather like opera - there are no off-putting “Here is the dialogue. And now… [turn to camera] we sing!” moments. Top notch.

Still giggling over the demented but brilliant fan fiction that is Torchwood.

God, it was great. Really great. Although I could equally understand the viewpoint of someone who thought it was terrible.

The whole thing was precisely like someone told an over-excitable Buffy/Who fan who’d been watching a lot of Carry On films to outline their ideal episode. The result:

“Ok, so SPIKE comes through a mystical portal and there’s all this ROCK MUSIC, because he’s the COOLEST, OMG, and he does something evil and COOL, and yet AMBIGUOUS, like chucking a mugger off a multi-storey car-park, then he goes to a bar and has GUNS, haha lol@ bar clientele. [insert: fanboy pleasing but quite funny Star Wars ref]
Ok, so, then ANGEL CAPTAIN JACK comes in, all masterful and hott and his coat is BILLOWING and they walk towards each other, like, forever, with all this music, and you think they’re going to fight, but, no even better, they KISS, like, FOREVER, and THEN THEY FIGHT! And kiss, and fight. And then they have a drink, and fight, and kiss, and kiss, and drink and banter and fight, fight, gay banter, kiss, fight.
Then some other shit happens with the fringey lady and characters I don’t really care about, only with Captain Spike and Captain Angel making much innuendo, lolcore, and they are both totally gay for a mystical diamond or something, and they kiss, then there is peril of some kind, STILL MORE innuendo, KISSING, and SPIKE THROWS JACK OFF A BUILDING, OMG, but WAIT he is NOT dead, ahahaaaa and Spike is all oh noez, then more peril, more innuendo, something about a gay diamond trap bomb that might explode the world, but the mystical hellmouth rift thinger eats the bomb and saves Cardiff woo yay, then kissing, more fighting, more innuendo, and kissing, and SOME EMOTIONAL REVEAL OF JACK’S DARK PAST that means nothing as yet, but aha, you will tune in to find out, only not really, because it’s all about the SEXYSEXY SEX and no-one gives a monkey’s about the plot and probably Kenneth Williams will star as an alien orgy choreographer in the next episode because that is the only place left to go. Fin.”

If you did not watch it, it probably sounds like I am exaggerating, but this is not one word of a lie.

In the real world I would give it 6/10 (maybe 7) because it really is quite silly, but for sheer enjoyment I give the full Tufnel, 11/10, and in Torchwood world I’d GIVE IT ONE (hur hur hur, it sounds like she means sexy sex, hur hur, sex).

My only real beef was that they used Blur’s Song 2 for a fight scene - which is just not something that has come full circle yet (the last time it was remotely acceptable - and even then not really - was in the Charlie’s Angels remake, with Drew Barrymore deftly avoiding implied gang rape by Sam Rockwell’s boyband army with her awesome chair-fighting skillz). The time for irony will come, but for now this song in any action sequence is still just lazy cliche.