#james mellor

[mariocki]

New Scotland Yard: The Wrong-Un (1.7, LWT, 1972)

"What happens to them if they do get away with it?"

"Nothing, really; transfer to different prisons, serve their time. The system goes on."

"And stays the same."

"Yes."

"All a bit pointless, isn't it?"

[fattomatoz]

• Lost hearts (1973) Dir. Lawrence Gordon Clark

[brb-on-pluto]

Mr Bates vs The Post Office (2024)

Directed by: James Strong

Written by: Gwyneth Hughes

Genre: Drama | Based on Real Events

Staring: Toby Jones | Julie Hesmondhalgh | Monica Dolan | Shaun Dooley | Ian Hart | Will Mellor | Lia Williams

Runtime: 200 Mins

Rating: 8.9/10

Watched: 01/01/2024 - 04/01/2024

■■■■

I have never been more angry at a woman, person or company as I am at Paula Vennels and The Post Office.

The amount of people who will never get justice from the lies and sentences pushed by the Post Office.

This happened during my lifetime, my 10th birthday being a date directly referenced in the series. And I had no clue this travesty of justice was happening.

Great acting by all in this series omg - so so good.

Toby Jones was incredible. All the actors were. The friendship between Alan and Jo was so well done.

Oh, and the events depicted are still ongoing - Justice for the SubPostmasters.

[elenichr]

Year of Lists

June Books

Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors *3/5 - I expected more from this. I loved Cleopatra and Frankenstein. The characterisation is very good and the start is promising, but it just gets boring. I feel like there was so much more that could be done, both with the plot and with the exploration of themes.

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown *4.5/5 - the rating is a bit of a fuck you, like the book is a bit of a fuck you. There are many problems but it's certainly worth the read. Molly could sit alongside any great literary character and hold her own. She's one of those characters that stay with you as if they've lived - and in a way they have. The book is bold, loud, tenacious, and funny.

And it became increasingly clear that all Leroy and I had in common was a childhood full of ice cream, raisin boxes, and a mattress full of holes. But then I had never thought I had much in common with anybody. I had no mother, no father, not roots, no biological similarities called sisters and brothers. And for a future I didn't want a split-level home with a station wagon, pastel refrigerator, and a houseful of blonde children evenly paced through the years. I didn't want to walk into the pages of McCall's magazine and become the model housewife. I didn't even want a husband or any man for that matter. I wanted to go my own way. That's all I think I ever wanted, to go my own way and maybe find some love here and there. Love, but not the now and forever kind with chains around your vagina and a short circuit in your brain. I'd rather be alone.

James by Percival Everett *4/5 - Beautiful writing, nuanced reimagining. Looking forward to reading more Percival Everett.

Brutes by Tate Dizz *2/5 - it starts off strong with language that forces you to slow down, like a sticky, sweaty summer haze. And then it fizzles out, kinda stays at that. The use of the plural is refreshing, dizzying, unnerving. It could have made a cracking short story. It fails as it tries to be more. Length doesn’t add to it, it takes away.

[downthetubes]

“Moonsleepers” Dan Dare art by Keith Watson offered at auction

An upcoming auction of “Books, Documents and Manuscripts” from Nottingham-based auction house Mellors & Kirk includes two pages of Dan Dare art by the late Keith Watson

[putoutallthestars]

🌰🌰 🍓🍓 🍒🍒 red is the colour (or so they say).

[panelshowsource]

who do you think is an underrated panel show guest? like someone who doesn’t appear on them very often but should

ohh fun question... y'know the thing about panel shows these days is they're sooo so so comedian-centric and really a lot of the same people again and again — which i'm not complaining about! i think they're the funniest people in the room and understand the dynamic of a panel show better than anyone else 99% of the time! but when it comes to people i find underrated in the most exciting way it's usually the semi-rare non-comedian who just...gets it. like, back in the day it was people like john barrowman, martin freeman, josh groban, mark ronson, chris o'dowd, christopher biggins, professor green, a couple of the spice girls (they actually run in comedian circles, interestingly)... they just fit into these shows and dynamics so well!

most of the people who have really surprised me in this regard in the last 5 or so years (bc i don't wanna reach back to, like, 2012 for this hahaha) have been on celeb juice or something like graham norton, the last leg, etc. for example, i had no idea will mellor could really hang, take jokes, dish out jokes, and do physical comedy until i saw him on juice. i think that kind of discovery is so fun!

100000% the uk drag girls (the viv being the one we see the most, love her to death and GET HER ON TM!!) NEED to be on more panel shows, jordan north (and get william hanson on SOMETHING this MINUTE), shirley ballas, ronan keating is actually a laugh, a lot of the reality show people (MIC, TOWIE, etc) who do what they do because they don't take themselves too seriously really do Get The Vibe (this is how we got rylan hellooooo), maggie aderin-pocock is an angel, ore oduba, jordan stephens, judge rinder hmm

comedians-wise (ik the drag girls often are comedians, but otherwise), people we've seen a little bit who we should be seeing more of in the name of comedy — alasdair beckett-king, kiri pritchard-mclean, paul foot, larry dean (whoever has the ‘X days since panelshowsource has mention larry dean’ sorry but you gotta reset), glenn moore, amy gledhill, morgana robinson

+ they're not underrated per say but just people i'd like to see again/continue seeing more often include ivo graham, guz khan, chris addison, holly walsh, robert webb, elis james, catherine tate, jess hynes, josie long, peter serafinowicz, humphrey kerr (we haven't seen him in a minute but i always thought he could have developed more of a place in panel show culture), and ffs can we bring back angus? should we? but could we? can we? just for one episode idk? also graham norton get your ass on tm this INSTANT new years

these types of asks always drive me crazy for the rest of the week bc i'm like "ahh i forgot ____!!!" hahahah but lmk what you think too!

[oscarwetnwilde]

James Wilby as Clifford Chatterley in Lady Chatterley (1993) and James Wilby in an interview on him playing the role:

The People - Sunday, 30 May 1993:

Lady Chatterley’s vicious husband Sir Clifford made James Wilby bad-tempered, foul-mouthed, and a nightmare to live with. “I was taking the part home with me and refusing to come out of character,” admits Wilby, 32.

He realised he was going to have to live with a monster the moment he immersed himself in the part.

“He was wounded in the war and paralysed from the waist down,” Wilby explains. “But I felt no sympathy for him. He is vicious, manipulative, small-minded, yet incredibly intelligent. "He has no compassion and actually encourages his wife to have an affair with Mellors so he has an heir to his estate. “The role not only caused me stress and drained me physically and mentally, but made me feel deeply unattractive sexually. I know my wife Shana found it hard to kiss me. "I’d be rude to her about silly little things. If I found there was no coffee in the house I’d shout and swear at her and I must have been an absolute pain to live with. I had a permanent scowl on my face for five weeks. "But I knew I had to do it. At the time I still had scenes to shoot and I couldn’t risk slipping out of character. If I’d been anything less than convincing in the scenes I still had to do, the audience would have picked up on it and I’d have been furious with myself. "I know it caused tension between Shana and me but if you’re going to do a job properly, you have to be prepared to put yourself out. If not, it’s time to give up acting.” When Wilby worked with Angelica Huston on A Handful Of Dust, she had complained to him about the behaviour of Jack Nicholson, her then lover while he had been making the movie, The Shining. "Because his character had been evil, he behaved like a bastard, she said. So at least I was in good company! During the five weeks between the bulk of my filming and the few scenes right at the end of the shoot, Shana had to resort to humouring me rather than get into arguments.” To make matters worse for Wilby, his wife, a picture researcher, was five months pregnant with their second child, and having miscarried the previous year there was a fear she might do so again. “It was a very difficult time for us and I’m fortunate that I have such an understanding wife,” says Wilby. “Especially when I was shutting myself away until two or three in the morning so that I was absolutely certain that I was going to be able to go into the studio the following morning and deliver something that was believable and complete. But I can almost believe Shana was glad I was shutting myself away because I was behaving so badly.” Just learning Sir Clifford’s speeches demanded enormous concentration from Wilby. “My character’s part is actually bigger than that of gamekeeper Mellor's in terms of words. When Clifford opens his mouth, three paragraphs spill out, not just a sentence. "And he has this ridiculous small moustache. Ken Russell the director, insisted I grew one of my own and it came to symbolise everything I hated about my character and the effect he was having on me and my marriage. "I couldn’t wait to get it off and there was ceremonial shaving on the set at the end of the shoot,” he says. For DH Lawrence the story exemplified the class war in Britain. Clifford is from the landed gentry so he thinks himself superior to people like Mellors. “He calls Mellors a half-tamed animal with a gun and he means it," says Wilby. “Lawrence actually wrote three versions of the book- Lady Chatterley; John Thomas and Lady Jane; and Lady Chatterley’s Lover- and Clifford becomes more vicious as the books go on. The BBC version is an amalgam of all three books.” Wilby finally shed Sir Clifford when he went on a yachting holiday in the Mediterranean with three friends after he had finished filming Lady Chatterley. “Shana was going to come, but because she was pregnant she decided she couldn’t risk it. It was the best thing I could possibly have done. It was physically very demanding and I sweated Clifford right out of my system.”

[materialsscienceandengineering]

AI chips could get a sense of time with memristor that can be tuned

Artificial neural networks may soon be able to process time-dependent information, such as audio and video data, more efficiently. The first memristor with a "relaxation time" that can be tuned is reported today in Nature Electronics, in a study led by the University of Michigan. Memristors, electrical components that store information in their electrical resistance, could reduce AI's energy needs by about a factor of 90 compared to today's graphical processing units. Already, AI is projected to account for about half a percent of the world's total electricity consumption in 2027, and that has the potential to balloon as more companies sell and use AI tools. "Right now, there's a lot of interest in AI, but to process bigger and more interesting data, the approach is to increase the network size. That's not very efficient," said Wei Lu, the James R. Mellor Professor of Engineering at U-M and co-corresponding author of the study with John Heron, U-M associate professor of materials science and engineering.

Read more.

[justforbooks]

The actor Brigit Forsyth, who has died aged 83, made her name as Thelma in the BBC television series Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? One critic described Thelma as so prim that she could turn the lifting of a lace curtain into an art form.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’s creation, which ran from 1973 to 1974, was the sequel to the popular 1960s sitcom The Likely Lads, which starred Rodney Bewes and James Bolam as Bob Ferris and Terry Collier, two single north-east England factory workers who share a flat and the same interests – women, drink and football.

Thelma Chambers was brought in as a girlfriend for the upwardly mobile Bob, now in the white-collar class with a house, car and annual holiday on the Costa Brava, scoffed at by Terry, who clings on to his working-class roots. Thelma and Bob were married halfway through the two series of the show.

“Up until then, I had done a lot of drama on telly,” said Forsyth. “If I wasn’t being murdered, I was murdering somebody or I was a disturbed art teacher. I was playing quite a lot of deranged people, so comedy was a nice change.”

She created laughs again with the sitcom Sharon and Elsie (1984-85), in which she co-starred as the middle-class Elsie Beecroft alongside Janette Beverley as the more down-to-earth Sharon Wilkes, two employees in a greetings card manufacturing company.

But Forsyth’s own favourite television part was Francine Pratt in Playing the Field (1998-2002), the on- and off-pitch women’s football drama created by Kay Mellor. Her character, who hates the game, is married to the Castlefield Blues’ sponsor, played by Ricky Tomlinson, and keeps him happy in return for designer clothes and other luxuries.

“I have never played awful glamour before,” she said. “I had a blond wig, six-inch heels, makeup and my bosom hitched up high.”

Forsyth was born in Malton, North Yorkshire, to Scottish parents, Anne (nee Forsyth), an artist, and Frank Connell, an architect and town planner, and brought up in Edinburgh. She was mesmerised by Stanley Baxter’s performances as a pantomime dame at the city’s King’s theatre and, aged 18, landed her own first lead role, as Sarat Carn, on her way to the gallows, in Charlotte Hastings’s play Bonaventure with the Makars amateur drama group.

But when she left St George’s school, Edinburgh, her parents insisted she learn a skill, so she trained as a secretary. After a couple of jobs, she headed for London and Rada (1958-60), where she won the Emile Littler prize.

She began her professional career back in Edinburgh with the Gateway theatre company (1960-61) before moving on to the Theatre Royal, Lincoln (1961-62) and the Arthur Brough Players in Folkestone (1962). With other actors already named Brigit McConnell and Bridget O’Connell, she changed her professional name to Forsyth on her return to Lincoln in 1962.

At the Edinburgh festival three years later, she played one of the witches in a headline-making production of Macbeth. “That show caused an absolute uproar because they wanted the witches to have the bodies of young girls and the faces of old women, and they wanted us to have our top half naked,” Forsyth recalled. “But the Earl of Harewood, who was running the EIF at the time, said ‘No’. So they put nipple caps on us, which looked absolutely disgusting – and they used to drop off each night. It was absolutely hysterical.”

Later, in the West End, Forsyth played Annie in The Norman Conquests (Globe, now Gielgud, and Apollo theatres, 1974-76) and Dusa in the feminist play Dusa, Fish, Stas and Vi (Mayfair theatre, 1976-77). She put her TV breakthrough down to cutting her hair short. “It proved a tremendously lucky omen,” she said.

That break came with Adam Smith (1972), in which she played the younger daughter of the title character, a Scottish minister (Andrew Keir). The director, Brian Mills, then worked with Forsyth on the psychological thriller Holly (1972), when she took the part of a young art teacher kidnapped by a mentally unstable student. Forsyth and Mills married in 1976.

Television roles kept on coming. She was Veronica, one of the product-promotion team, in The Glamour Girls (1980-82), Harriet in the inter-generational sitcom Tom, Dick and Harriet (1982-83), and Helen Yeldham, a hotelier, in the 1989 series of Boon.

There were also appearances in soap opera: as GP Judith Vincent in The Practice (1985-86); Babs Fanshawe, Ken Barlow’s escort agency date who dies of a heart attack, in a 1998 Coronation Street episode; Delphine LaClair, a sales rep for a French company interested in buying Rodney Blackstock’s vineyards, for two short runs in Emmerdale (2005 and 2006); Cressida, mother of the millionaire Nate Tenbury-Newent, in Hollyoaks in 2013; and three roles in Doctors between 2000 and 2012.

Forsyth also played the miserable Madge, who frustrates her sister Mavis’s attempts at a relationship with Granville, in the sitcom sequel Still Open All Hours (2013-19).

A cellist from the age of nine, Forsyth starred as the real-life virtuoso Beatrice Harrison in a 2004 tour of The Cello and the Nightingale. Also on tour, she was a remarkably believable Queen Elizabeth II in A Question of Attribution (2000) and played Marie in Calendar Girls (2008). “I’m Mrs Frosty-Knickers, the one who doesn’t approve of it all.”

In 2017, she played a terminally ill musician in the stage comedy Killing Time, written by her daughter, Zoe Mills, who acted alongside her. At the time, Forsyth revealed that her maternal grandfather, a GP in Yorkshire, had helped dying patients to end their lives. Declaring herself a supporter of euthanasia, she said: “He bumped off probably loads of people with doses of morphine.”

In 1999, Forsyth separated from her husband, but they remained friends until his death in 2006. She is survived by their children, Ben and Zoe.

🔔 Brigit Forsyth (Brigit Dorothea Connell), actor, born 28 July 1940; died 1 December 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[weirdgirlification]

2023 books

favourites are bolded

1. diary of a void, emi yagi

2. heaven, mieko kawakami

3. a visit from the goon squad, jennifer egan

4. public library and other stories, ali smith

5. the catcher in the rye, j.d. salinger

6. play it as it lays, joan didion

7. the story of a new name, elena ferrante

8. those who leave and those who stay, elena ferrante

9. the story of the lost child, elena ferrante

10. the candy house, jennifer egan

11. a tale for the time being, ruth ozeki

12. i’m a fan, sheena patel

13. the lost daughter, elena ferrante

14. yellowface, r.f. kuang

15. the goldfinch, donna tartt (reread)

16. the picture of dorian gray, oscar wilde

17. the bloody chamber and other stories, angela carter

18. there but for the, ali smith

19. summer, ali smith

20. pale fire, vladimir nabokov

21. green grow the lilacs, lynn riggs

22. companion piece, ali smith

23. just kids, patti smith

24. cleopatra and frankenstein, coco mellors

25. the lying life of adults, elena ferrante

26. the secret diary of laura palmer, jennifer lynch

27. lolita, vladimir nabokov

28. idol, burning, rin usami

29. life ceremony, sayaka murata

30. the rehearsal, eleanor catton

31. idlewild, james frankie thomas

32. sea change, gina chung

33. chlorine, jade song

34. y/n, esther yi

35. hotel world, ali smith

[paperbaacks]

༊*·˚ — 𝚃𝙱𝚁 𝙻𝙸𝚂𝚃

(updated - 15/09/2024)

✧ — a study in drowning - ava reid ✓

✧ — blue sisters - coco mellors ✓

✧ — alone with you in the ether - olivie blake ✓

✧ — the guest list - lucy foley ✓

✧ — the house in the cerulean sea - t.j. klune (re-read) ✓

✧ — call me by your name - andré aciman (re-read) ✓

✧ — the family upstairs - lisa jewell ✓

✧ — the family remains - lisa jewell ✓

✧ — giovanni's room - james baldwin

✧ — cleopatra and frankenstein - coco mellors (partial re-read)

✧ — the virgin suicides - jeffrey eugenides

✧ — intermezzo - sally rooney

✧ — somewhere beyond the sea - t.j. klune

✧ — shuggie bane - douglas stuart

✧ — in the lives of puppets - t.j. klune

✧ — butter - asako yuzuki (translated by polly barton)

[colemckenzies]

Books I read in September ranked best* to worst:

Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke

The Marvellous Land of Snergs by Veronica Cossanteli

Amari And The Great Game (amari 2) by B. B. Alston (buzzword readathon)

I Want To Be Where The Normal People Are by Rachel Bloom

Food for Life: The New Science of Eating Well by Tim Spector

Judas by Jeff Loveness

Caught In The Act by Shane Jenek

Directed By James Burrows by James Burrows

Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors

Touch by Claire North

The Woman Who Didn't Grow Old by Grégoire Delacourt

I also DNFed A River Called Time by Courttia Newland. Can you tell I finished my dissertation.

[downthetubes]

Professional Cartoonists Organisation’s Cartoonists go to the Theatre exhibition opens in London today

Photo via Glenn Marshall Today, Monday 14th August, sees the opening of the Professional Cartoonists Organisation’s Cartoonists go to the Theatre exhibition at Charing Cross Library in London. In addition to the free exhibition, there will be workshops and the selling and signing of original works. PCO member James Mellor will give a free talk on Monday 21st August at 6.30pm. Booking essential…

[onenakedfarmer]

Currently Playing

Arnold Schoenberg GURRE-LIEDER

Edward Gardner

Alwyn Mellor, Anna Larsson, Stuart Skelton, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Klaus-Narr, James Creswell, and Thomas Allen

Bergen Philharmonic Choir, Choir of Collegium Musicum, Edvard Grieg Kor, Orphei Drängar, Students from the Royal Northern College of Music

Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra

[kinocube]

A pantasma e a señora Muir: recomendacións de Samaín

Ven chegando Samaín e o día de Defuntos, polo que queremos dar unhas cantas ideas para ir ambientando estes días. Ímonos centrar nun arquetipo arrepiante ideal para estas datas: a casa encantada. Adentrémonos nos muros destes lugares malditos para deixarnos sorprender.

Uns pequenos apuntes sobre o arquetipo poden axudar a comprender mellor a nosa selección. Primeiro, salientar que nos atopamos cun arquetipo moi antigo, tanto como que o historiador romano Plinio o Mozo xa nos conta a historia da dunha pantasma que habita un fogar dos vivos aló polo s. I. a.C. A casa encantada era omnipresente na novela gótica decimonónica e foi un dos primeiros intereses do cinema -tanto Méliès como Chomón utilizaron o arquetipo nas súas primeiras ficcións- á hora de espantar ou marabillar ao espectador. Porque, por suposto, este arquetipo está ligado ao cinema de terror, herdeiro do Gran Guignol contemporáneo á invención do cinematógrafo. 

O arquetipo da casa encantada é tan antigo, e con isto conclúo, que se converteu nun deses clichés case obsoletos dos que nos últimos tempos quedaron relegados case exclusivamente ao terreo da parodia. Sen desmerecer, iso si, daqueles que se atreven a reutilizalo, reconstruílo e dotarlle de nova vida. 

Un pequeno aviso, pois aínda que non escollimos explícitamente filmes de terror -cecais poderiamos definilas como horror- aínda que algunhas tocan temas difíciles ou formas duras para algúns tipos de espectador. Tentaremos avisar!

Desfrutade con moderación!

La Chute de la maison Usher (Jean Epstein, 1928)

Comezamos con cinema silente: unha etérea e poética adaptación do conto de Edgar A. Poe por parte do cineasta Jean Epstein, que se recrea na atmosfera de sono e pesadelo para reescribir esta historia, un dos piares fundacionais do xénero das casas encantadas. 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)

A Señora Muir merca unha casa que resulta estar encantada. Podería ser o inicio dun filme do xénero do terror, mais atopámonos neste caso cunha das máis belas e mellor filmadas historias de amor do cinema. 

The innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)

Deborah Kerr é brillante como a institutriz que entra coidar unhas crianzas orfas cun pasado traumático nunha mansión hermética. Unha espiral de paranoia baseada nun coñecido relato de Henry James no que sempre sobrevoa a dúbida: é unha causa sobrenatural? É unha manipulación? Volveuse a señora Giddens tola de remate?

Tw: Insinúase abuso e hai violencia, relacionado con crianzas. Bastante dura, pero nada explícita.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975)

Un clásico. Unha comedia pillabana, musical, caótica, que pon patas arriba os tropos do terror a base de revolución sexual. E, por suposto, unha gran mansión encantada onde teñen lugar os acontecementos. 

Tw: un chisquiño de gore, cecais un chisco de canibalismo. Todo no plano do humor negro, por suposto.

ハウス - Hausu (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

Nobuhiko Obayashi pasouse o cinema con este filme de terror totalmente over-the-top, que tamén parte da parodia do xénero do horror para contarnos unha fábula pantasmal moito máis profunda do que parece nunha primeira impresión. A casa encantada é un personaxe propio neste filme caleidoscópico e bastante autoconsciente

Tw: Hai gore, hai maxia, hai yokais. Tamén hai imáxenes un chisco estridentes para algúns gustos.  

Beetlejuice (Tim Burton, 1988)

Tim Burton desenvolve aquí os seus propios arquetipos persoais: unha familia tradicional suburbana americana enfrontada ás sombras, que neste caso son unhas pantasmas novatas nisto de encantar casas. 

Tw: nivel de sangue e vísceras menor que Sleepy Hollow ou Sweeney Todd, pero maior que Big Fish. De todas maneiras, os efectos especiais artesanais e estilizados impiden tomar o gore deste filme moi en serio. 

Até o vindeiro episodio!