It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later | Theatre review | Culture | The Guardian

Technically speaking, this is a review of Daniel Kitson’s show from the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from Summer 2010. I saw the same show last Friday, staged at the National Theatre, but couldn’t find any recent coverage so this will have to do:

“This is not a love story,” insists Kitson at the outset. Yet in its ripe, swelling humanity and its compassionate eye for all that is both good and sad in human existence, it very much is. It is a love letter to the human race, and all of us who lead ordinary, quiet lives and yet still leave our mark on the world, whether it is in a simple exchange at a bus stop or a tree planted that grows to maturity long after we are forgotten.

Over the past ten years, I’ve been fortunate to see Daniel Kitson perform about four times. It’s not been a deliberate following on my part; the opportunity to see him comes up and every now and then and I usually say yes. Last year I saw him on stage by accident, supporting Belle & Sebastian in Bournemouth, and didn’t realise who it was until much later.

The benefit of this is that, one of the few times in my life, I think I’ve witnessed firsthand the evolution of an artist. He started out doing stand-up (and won a Perrier Award for his efforts), did loads of experimental stuff in the middle, and now he’s fully transitioned into storytelling.

I’ve also watched him grow older, and fatter, and hairier. And of course, I’ve grown older too. There’s nothing profound to add to this, other than that creative progression, just like ageing, is a fine thing.

Source Code – review | Film | The Guardian

Having seen this film, I was left in the paradoxical state of scratching both my head (puzzled) and my chin (thoughtful). Quoting this review from Peter Bradshaw, only because of some unusually insightful comments towards the end:

Source Code is glitzy and hi-tech in a 21st-century way, but also has something from an earlier age: it is a story from the Twilight Zone, with hints of Philip K Dick, and traces of the television world of The Prisoner and The Fugitive. With its weird deployment of playing cards in one scene, Jones has channelled The Manchurian Candidate – perhaps specifically through Jonathan Demme’s Iraq-themed remake – and the overall effect is smart and to the point.

In its own way, Source Code also aspires slightly to the status of comedy, and Colter’s increasingly wan and desperate conversations with Goodwin from his mysterious pod reminded me a little of David Niven’s radio conversations with Kim Hunter’s June in A Matter of Life and Death – as he plummets to his certain death, Niven’s character exploits his prerogative as a dying man to flirt with this radio operator.

The script is pretty muddled, so the film doesn’t entirely make clear whether the plot revolves around time travel or parallel universes. Perhaps it’s both? But it is commendable for throwing hard science-fiction elements into a mainstream Hollywood popcorn flick, and doing it well.

Also, while there is an obstensibly “happy ending”, if you dwell on it for longer than five minutes then you realise that the conclusion is rather sinister. To say much more would give the plot away, so go see and judge for yourself.

The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress - NYTimes.com

Move over Minecraft, here’s the new indie cult sensation in gaming:

Dwarf Fortress is barely a blip on the mainstream radar, but it’s an object of intense cult adoration. Its various versions have been downloaded in the neighborhood of a million times, although the number of players who have persisted past an initial attempt is doubtless much smaller. As with popular simulation games like the Sims series, in which players control households, or the Facebook fad FarmVille, where they tend crops, players in Dwarf Fortress are responsible for the cultivation and management of a virtual ecosystem — in this case, a colony of dwarves trying to build a thriving fortress in a randomly generated world. Unlike those games, though, Dwarf Fortress unfolds as a series of staggeringly elaborate challenges and devastating setbacks that lead, no matter how well one plays, to eventual ruin. The goal, in the game’s main mode, is to build as much and as imaginatively as possible before some calamity — stampeding elephants, famine, vampire dwarves — wipes you out for good.

Confused? Dwarves. In Fortresses. That all you need to know.

Peter Ackroyd to write a biography of England - Times Online

This project was first announced in April 2007:

Having written bestselling biographies of Dickens, Shakespeare and his native city of London, Peter Ackroyd is embarking on his most ambitious work yet. This week, during the London Book Fair, he announced his plans for what he describes as “for me, a profoundly important project – no less than the biography of England in six volumes”.

Ackroyd, who, aged 56, is the author of more than 40 books (including several novels) and a reviewer for The Times, has signed a multi-million pound deal with Macmillan to publish all six volumes, the first of which will be delivered in 2011. Details of the project, to be entitled England: The Biography are sketchy at best, as Ackroyd’s agent Sonia Land explains: “Most authors submit some material – a first chapter and contents, for example – but for this there is no real proposal. Peter has an idea in his head and the publishers accept that he’s going to produce the goods.

“The work will begin before 1066 and each volume will focus on certain trigger-points in history, but you never know with Peter … When he wrote London: the Biography nobody knew quite what he was doing, but then it turned out a bestseller. One hopes that England: the Biography will be the same kind of surprise effect.”

I’ve got an uncorrected proof copy sitting on my desk, 129 days prior to publication. Perfect holiday reading!