Scene

scene WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

TV

GAY BUT NOT TOO GAY: IS TV REALLY THAT EQUAL?

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DEATH’S GRIP OR SAVING GRACE: AMAZON’S FUTURE IN SELF PUBLISHING

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NEW TAKES ON OLD FAVOURITES: THE BIGGEST REMAKES TO LOOK FORWARD TO

FEATURE: LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

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Scene

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

THIS_ISSUE

Congratulations! You, dear reader, have found your way to Scene, York Vision’s Arts Magazine and a one stop shop for all your cultural needs this year. Let us, your Scene Editors be amongst the first (well, first few hundred anyway) to welcome you to York for another academic year.

Boy, have we got a cracker of a first edition for you. In the spirit of the new term and the new year our theme this edition is what’s new, what’s coming up, and what to expect in the future. You could even say that we’re looking at what’s fresh, but we’re not. We couldn’t possibly condone the use of such a terrible, terrible pun in the pages of this quality publication.

Yes, I’m aware that’s what this newspaper called its Freshers’ magazine... oh just leave us alone, alright!

MUSIC

FEATURE: Emerging York (p3) INTERVIEW: These New Puritans (p5)

FILM

FEATURE: New takes on old favourites (p6) TOP 5: Miscasts (p7)

FEATURE

Scene Cryptic Crossword

What else is new? (pp8-9)

TV

FEATURE: Gay, but not too gay (p10) PREVIEW: Reign, The Tomorrow People, Dracula (p11)

BOOKS

REVIEW: The New Middle East (p12) FEATURE: Amazon’s Future in Self-Publishing (p13)

TECH

FEATURE: Creating a Techno-Ghetto (p14) FEATURE: Pimp your laptop (p14)

STAGE

QUIZ: Which Performance Society are you? (p15) PREVIEW: Drama this term (p15)

Across 2.

Video game franchise’s fifth instalment again steals the show 4.

The cast of this upcoming show always look forward to the

near future 5.

Beloved rom-com director returns, and about time too 7.

This duo form the name of one of York’s performance societies 8.

James Cameron blockbuster is physical manifestation of a god

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Down 1.

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Actress makes royal mistake according to our film review Shared word in both Tech section article and Elvis song South American River is big place for self-publishing New Batman star could be a potential miscast Recently released film in something of a hurry Model show celebrates tenth birthday this year This TV character is one part former British PM, one part luxury New York hotel

SCENE TEAM Scene Editors Tom Davies Karl Tomusk

Music Editors

Film Editors

TV Editors

Books Editors

Tech Editor

Stage Editors

Milo Boyd Martin Waugh

Katie Molloy Katherine Hibberd

Sarah Cattle Angus Quinn

Morenike Adebayo Oona Venermo

Mike Dunnett-Stone

Rosie Litterick Kathy Burke

Deputy Film

Deputy TV

Deputy Books

Deputy Tech

Deputy Stage

Deputy Music Louisa Hann Phillip Watson

Max Sugarman

Zena Zarjis

Bertie Baker-Smith Bethan Forrest

Jack Bradshaw

Rory McGregor Sam Thorpe-Spinks

Scene front cover image credit: Girl with a Pearl Earring, Sanghyuk Moon, http://sanghyuk.com/

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EMERGING YORK

For what it lacks in size, the York music scene redeems itself with its huge variety. From local musicians playing in the corners of pubs to larger bands at The Duchess, there really is something for everyone.

Here’s Vision’s guide to the emerging music scene in York, for bands and upcoming club nights.

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orth Yorkshire’s only contemporary New Orleans inspired brass band. Admittedly that’s quite a niche accolade, but don’t let that detract from the appeal of this 7-piece. After a summer of touring and festivals, New York Brass Band return to York for a rare hometown gig.

sychedelic four-piece La Petite Mort (meaning ‘The Little Death’ aka an orgasm) have a sound that is hard to pin down, with influences as varied as ‘70s psychedelic rock to hip-hop. It’s perhaps better to describe this band by the ambitious sounds they conjure up; their mesmerising guitar solos may seem overindulgent, but this is a band that know exactly what they’re doing – progressive and surprisingly refined, another first class live experience.

LA PETITE MORT

(Fibbers, 4.10.13)

GIN & JUICE GIN & JUICE

OSCILLATE

4/10/13 9/10/13 MANSION FIBBERS

4/10/13 MANSION

RNB/HIPHOP

HOUSE/DNB/GARAGE

NEW YORK BRASS BAND

(Fibbers, 2.10.13)

ORIGINAL FLAVOUR PRESENTS...

11/10/13 FIBBERS

FEAR OF MUSIC 6/11/13 FIBBERS

DISCO/ELECTRO/SYNTHPOP

HOUSE/DNB/GARAGE

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ndie rockers The Glass Caves may seem familiar; in fact you’ve probably already seen them play. One of York’s best busking acts, these guys play just off Parliament Square on a Saturday. Following their EP launch this summer, The Glass Caves have their eyes to the skies and with such a catchy sound are bound to go far.

THE GLASS CAVES

(Fibbers, 18.10.13)

ork’s punk offering comes from local trio Fawn Spots. Their own brand of lo-fi punk-pop is energetic and infectious, a live experience not to be missed. They have just signed up to indie label Critical Heights, check out their split EP with Cum Stain.

FAWN SPOTS

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Reviews EDITORS’ CHOICE

PLACEBO LIVE LIKE LOVE

BY THOMAS SHUTT 4/10

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elancholy, vitriol and something close to lyrical genius have always been the three touchstones of Placebo which, since their astonishing self-titled debut in 1996, have always separated them from the swathes of generic alt-rockers that flooded that decade. As they entered the noughties, the band managed to carve out a niche for themselves with their unique brand of drugs-and-depression rock and, though evolution has been clear in each subsequent album, they have wisely never strayed too far from their tried and

LIVE: THE 1975

BY JECENTHA SHUNMUGAN

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oon after The 1975 scored a number one album in the first week of release, I had the opportunity to see them live in action. As a relatively new fan, I was unsure what to expect from their show. So, with patient curiosity I waited through the support, feeling the crowd warm in anticipation of the headliner.

It was not until The 1975 came on-stage that the buzzing atmosphere inside the intimate and cozy venue of Newcastle’s Student Union really exploded. Their opening song, ‘The City’ immediately revealed why they’ve sold out their entire tour, flawlessly depicting the amazing stage presence of front man and vocalist, Matthew Healy, who was constantly moving around the small atmospheric stage, drawing in the crowd and enticing them to jump with him. Their set was always going to be quite short, a set list filled with the songs from their debut album. The crowd, packed with people of all ages, seemed to know every word to every song despite the album having been out for less than two weeks.

The band ended their set on their undeniably catchy song ‘Chocolate’, their first successful single which hit the top 20 within a few weeks of its March release, and so obviously the most appropriate song to end

tested formula. However, with the release of their newest album Loud Like Love, something terrible has happened, Placebo have cheered up.

If one was willing to look past the godawful album artwork and the nonsensical album name and endure the actual music, one could perhaps manage to salvage a few passable tracks from the slagheap of cheesy piano riffs, unnecessary textures and insipid lyrics that engulf the majority of the music. ‘Scene of the Crime’ eschews said features for a more solid and slightly heavier rock sound, and the enjoyably caustic lyrics of ‘Rob The Bank’ are driven by a much more uncluttered, visceral sound. ‘Begin The End’ is by far the strongest track on the album, as a glower-ballad that relentlessly builds up to a catharthis that never arrives.

These are not bad songs by any means, but are most definitely back-catalogue fodder.

Not even the best tracks on Loud Like Love come anywhere near close to songs ‘Pure Morning’ or ‘Song to Say Goodbye’.

Bizarrely, the most tragic tracks (and not the good kind of tragic) on the album are the lead singles. ‘Loud Like Love’ is so upbeat it comes off as infinitely laboured, and the lyrics that begin ‘Too Many Friends’ (My computer thinks I’m gay/I threw that piece of junk away/On the Champs Élysées) are so ridiculous they almost seem like self-parody.

None of the other songs are really worth a mention as they all seem near indistinguishable from another and generally come across as either insincere or hopelessly over-embellished. All in all, while Loud Like Love may showcase a new, happier and more hopeful Placebo, it unfortunately leaves the fans feeling quite the opposite. their show on. However, the crowd was not satisfied. Two fan favourites, ‘Sex’ and ‘You’ did not feature in their initial set, compelling the crowd to chant “we want sex” continuously until the band reappeared to finish their set off perfectly. This was perhaps the best moment of their show. It showed how genuinely surprised and enthralled The 1975 were at the response of their loyal fans, with Healy even telling the audience how “humbling an experience” it was to be playing to them.

BY THOMAS SHUTT

I

4/10

t’s ten years since vibrant debut Youth and Young Manhood, five years since they were wrongly written off by indie snobs for being too commercial, and three years since the genuinely piss poor fifth album Come Around Sundown killed the buzz. So where do we find the Followills in 2013?

Well, it’s definitely an improvement on the last one, but only just. While Caleb’s distinctive vocals still drip like treacle over the knife sharp guitar work, there is a debilitating lack of genuine fire in the heart that characterised their first four albums.

It’s like a picture that’s been photocopied a few too many times. It’s a problem that is symptomatic of the whole album. While they try in vain to evoke their greatest moments, there is nothing here that can come close to the dizzying heights of zeitgeist seizing ‘Sex on Fire’.

It does have its moments, though. A decent opening salvo raises hopes somewhat; while the ironically titled ‘Comeback Story’ is the standout track. It comes with that echoey string section and that distinctive melancholic reverb that had them filling arenas a few years ago. So while there is some faint evidence of the earlier fire breathing KOL, the album is far too fleeting and the rest is a bit flat and, well... airy.

STAGE

Days Are Gone

BY LOUISA HANN

D

8/10

espite their laid-back, girls-nextdoor qualities, HAIM are a band much-needed by the music industry today. The number of allfemale bands is still infinitesimally small compared to their male counterparts, with new bands such as Warpaint and HAIM very much the minority. It is in this way that the high quality of HAIM’s debut album, Days Are Gone, goes a long way to proving that girls really can play guitar.

In some ways the album feels very much influenced by the classic and ‘80s rock of the past, as if the three sisters invented their sound while cruising through their dad’s old record collections, but it is this which makes them all the more endearing. Songs such as ‘Don’t Save Me’ and ‘The Wire’ are purely joyous songs, with the girls’ passion for creating music shining through.

Clear-cut vocals and well thought-out melodies are consistent throughout, proving that the band are not merely one-hit wonders. The final song on the record, ‘Running If You Call My Name’ is an excellent end to an excellent album, with its heartfelt and catchy riffs. ‘Days Are Gone’ may not be ground-breaking technically, but it will surely get people talking and raving about these three sisters from LA.

LIVE: DRENGE

BY MILO BOYD

C

onsisting of guitarist and vocalist Eoin Loveless and drummer brother Rory, Drenge have pushed their way through a heavily festivaled summer with an almost vitriolic punk/rock fusion. Although yet to garner the mainstream success connected with high album sales or a hit single, the live intensity of this stripped bare duo forces heads to turn.

Oiled and slightly battered by the decreasingly ironic moshpit induced by support act and locals Slaves, the atmosphere within the slanty L shaped room of The Forum grew until Drenge emerged to unrestrained roars of appreciation.

Within the first moments of bellowing

guitar and pulse re-regulating drumming it is evident that Drenge exceed their minimalist set up in terms of vigour, enthusiasm and sheer noise.

Sandwiched between the egg boxed ceilings and sticky floors, Eoin’s style is reminiscent of The Smashing Pumpkins’s Billy Corgan, minus 50% of the rock and roll dick-swinging, twirls of finger-plucking complexity rising above slurred power chords. Across the stage Rory offers a similar mix of proficiency and unconsidered rage, thundering through singles ‘Blood & Milk’, ‘Dogmeat’ and ‘Bloodsports’ with an increasingly wide snarl.

While the set may have been a short one,

clocking in at just under an hour, it is testament to Drenge’s unrivalled enthusiasm that the crowd rises with them in absolute unison.

From the quieter moments of social observation that flow naturally from the Sheffield natives to the outright musical fuck you of ‘Face Like A Skull’, their desire to be in that exact moment shone brightly in a genre over-shadowed by the once greats.

Whether a flash in the pan product of youth and dubious political benefactors or the start of a long, prosperous career, it simply did not matter as Eoin’s still jerkily playing body was carried in reverence across the crowd.

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These New Puritans

BY OLIVIA O’DWYER

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rom the release of their debut album Beat Pyramid in 2008, These New Puritans aimed to distance themselves from their post-punk counterparts.

The Southend Scene from which they rose to prominence, one that had driven Jack Barnett to announce that he was embarrassed to be in a band, had moulded them to create scintillating music. This did not become apparent until the band’s exhilarating follow up album. 2010’s Hidden featuring a bass-woodwind ensemble, Taiko drums, and a children’s choir, bridging the gap between antagonistic art-punk and the beautifully formed neo-classical Field of Reeds.

The album, most faithful yet to drummer George Barnett’s vision and arguably one of the year’s most acclaimed, sees the band take on classical composition. Barnett tells me he merely sees the classical notation he learned for Hidden as a “tool for bringing his ideas to fruition”. The band’s leader and producer Graham Sutton worked with over 40 musicians and singers on the album, released in June of this year.

As I first stood listening to Field of Reeds, it’s elegance hung eerily in the darkness. I was alone, at nightfall, in a 17th century building. I was severely unnerved; it could not have been more perfect. We may have found a suitably jarring soundtrack for another remake of Walton’s 1979 When a Stranger Calls. Or at least this is what I was thinking as I backed into a murky corner of the room. As the tension culminates at the end of ‘Dream’ however, I was reminded more of Bernard Herrmann’s thrilling scores. The likelihood of this album developing a similarly cultish following? Likely.

The likelihood of it making you peer edgily over your shoulder? Likely.

The orchestral gusto that Jherek Bishcoff dedicates to composing pop music for the 21st century, Barnett uses to thrust TNP far into the distance. Its depth is both encapsulating and unsettling. ‘The Way I Do’ launches into the shrouded expanse, commencing the hunt for a darkly seductive sound. Barnett leads us like Charon through the black waters, Steve Reich and Talk Talk reaching us as echoes from the shore. The quiet grandeur of it all conjures

a up a sense of ancient strife and lamentation as we are braced by George’s familiar ‘call to war’ drums, made more sparse yet powerful for the album. The percussion, rather than providing the foundations for Field of Reeds, was added last to allow for the evolution of a haunting sound without punctuation.

Barnett heightens this pervasive feeling of anxiety, singing ‘There is something there’ in ‘Fragment Two’. The hawk used in recording for the album’s title track circles like Prometheus’s vultures, gliding effortlessly through the air, saturated with Adrian Peacock’s bass tones (the lowest in Britain).

You can almost fall into the tracks, hearing the musicians move as they prepare to play.

You can wander the rooms of the Funkhaus Nalepastraße, one of the largest integrated studio complexes in the world, and where TNP recorded the album. This post-war studio in Berlin stands isolated from its environment, the architects deliberately designing entrances and driveways that evade you.

It is all rather bewitching.

Barnett is a responsive and thoughtful interviewee, patient given my complete inexperience and relative inability to conduct conversations over the phone.

“We played only one British festival this year: Number 6 in Portmeirion, where that guy got shot,” Barnett says grimly. “We mainly played festivals abroad: America, Japan, Poland. The production, facilities and staging at British festivals are fairly shoddy in comparison, perhaps due to oversubscription,” he offers.

After briefly musing over seeing Tom Daley on the television, Barnett decides that Britain is a “strange place”; one that is not particularly engrained within the band’s identity. This response is to be expected, typically given when attempting to define the band’s projects within a particular genre or scene. You can see why, “We are moving away from what our peers are doing,” he says.

Barnett explains that it was enjoyable to work again with André De Ridder, who conducted TNP’s Hidden Live tour with the Britten Sinfonia in 2010.

“He really knows the music,” he says, “we are really lucky”. Here Barnett is not

only referring to the specialism and experience of those who surround him, but the autonomy and freedom they allow him. “This freedom is a real privilege. Our label trusts us 100% and we are grateful for this” This position Barnett describes is incredibly rare within a music industry often characterised as sensationalist, short termist and vacuous. I ask him about this.

“We scraped in just before the collapse,” he says, referring to the difficult economic environment in the last couple of years.

“There is greater conservatism now; people are less willing to take risks. We would never have existed if we were starting out in the current climate, it’s just kids with money. We feel removed from this musical landscape; you have to mean it 100%” You do not mean to say though, that the British music scene is devoid of any genuine feeling?

“No, we toured with East India Youth this summer, and they were great. There’s also some really exciting stuff going on in the contemporary British Jazz scene at the moment”. Those of us who have been delving deep underground hoping to find music as poignant and stirring as Field of Reeds can’t help but breathe a massive sigh of relief.

How did the band’s formative years serve to create such a strong feeling of individualism and creativity?

“I remember going to gigs from Southend in the van; we’d play Junk Club, Chinese restaurants and indie discos. It was noisy obtuse music that no one could dance to,” he says fondly. “From our first to second album we still felt a degree of expectation from our audiences, but we have lost this now.”

He is right; predictions aside we can now only expect something innovative and honest, something that is rare in the modern entertainement industry. I ask him about future projects for TNP? “We are working on an animated video for which I wrote the script. We have tonnes of new ideas, but no budget, and animation allowed us liberation. I was really into drawing from a young age, but I had to specialise; not everyone can do everything, all of the time .

“In this time where the expert is frowned upon and the amateur is constantly praised, I believe if you want to do something well, specialism is very important. I would also love to do a soundtrack for a film, but you’d probably have to ask George [Barnett] about that.”

Is there anyone in the music industry you would particularly like to collaborate with in the future?

“Um, well in today’s Guardian, Elton John praises Field of Reeds... That’s pretty cool.”

So if you’re not willing to take my word on this, for goodness sake please take Elton John’s. These New Puritans play Leeds Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen on Saturday 19th October 2013.

“THERE IS GREATER CONSERVATISM NOW; PEOPLE ARE LESS WILLING TO TAKE RISKS. WE WOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED IF WE WERE STARTING OUT IN THE CURRENT CLIMATE, IT’S JUST KIDS WITH MONEY.”

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The Impossible

The Painted Veil King Kong

Diana

Dream House

The Ring

2002

Naomi Watts’s career-o-graph

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New takes on old favourites Familiarity is comfort. In times of austerity it’s no surprise to find Hollywood returning to the old safe franchises, mining the past to secure a hit. Thom Shutt gives us a run down of some of the biggest come backs to look forward to over the next few years.

F

irst up is the return of Harry Potter. Well, sort of. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the story of Newt Scamander and, according to Ms Rowling herself, is “neither a prequel nor sequel to the Harry Potter series, rather an extension of the wizarding world”.

Although she doesn’t seem overly fussed about returning to Potter in novel form, J.K. Rowling is scripting this one which bodes well for quality. Plot-wise all we know is “Newt’s story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry’s gets underway”, which is nice. There’s no news on director or cast yet, though a 2016 release is likely.

Sticking with fantastic beasts, Jurassic Park 4, now titled Jurassic World, is in pro-

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duction after years of development. Goodwill for the original Dino-romp is infinite and the creative team here are top notch.

Although original honcho Senor Spielberg is taking a back seat, newcomer Colin Trevorow, known for directing acclaimed indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed is a safe bet.

In regards to the plot, there is no official news aside from original star Sam Neill calling it a “total re-jig”, implying we’re either getting a reboot or new story set in the same universe. The petition to bring back Jeff Goldblum starts here.

Speaking of Goldblum, big news on mega destructive franchises as Independence 2, nicknamed ID4-EVER (cringe) is also a-go-go. Original director and master of smashing things up Roland Emmerich (The Day after Tomorrow, White House Down) has bigged this up for a while now with no luck. But now Big Willie Style himself has hopped on board, this is getting fast tracked for release on July 4th 2015.

On a lighter note, the wonderful folk at Pixar are deep in production on Finding Dory. Dory is one of the more compelling and lovable characters from a studio who excel at compelling and lovable, and given their recent success with Monsters Univer-

sity and Toy Story 3, we can expect this to be wonderful. Bad news though, it isn’t out until summer 2016.

Onto Star Wars Episode VII. While the prequels may be average, the franchise is now free of George Lucas’s iffy decision making. Disney are investing in quality for the new trilogy with Toy Story 3 scribe (and Oscar winner) Michael Arndt on scripting duty, and Star Trek wunderkind J.J. Abrams directing part one. Details are thin, but the confirmed return of godlike genius John Williams bodes well, as does the almost certain return of stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill as older incarnations of Han, Leia and Luke. With Benedict Cumberbatch also rumoured to be playing the villain, the Force is strong with this one. Expect it Summer 2015.

Before slipping back in the Falcon, Harrison Ford takes a rare comedy turn in this winter’s hugely anticipated Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. Relocating the anarchy of the first film to New York, this will continue where the last film left off.

The big one next year is X-Men: Days of Future Past (Released May 23rd). Supervised by original director Brian Singer,

this crunches together the time frames of the original X-trilogy and recent First Class whilst bringing in fan favourite villains, the Sentinels. The word is positive, with a cast to die for and a possibility it may be the last time we see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine on our screens, which is sad.

Further in the future, James Cameron’s Avatar 2 hits the cinemas in 2016, and rumours hint that old Terminator pal Arnold has been cast as the big villain. Finally, speaking of Arnie, the aging Austrian Oak is on somewhat of a comeback bender at the moment, starring in both Terminator 5 (July 4th 2015) and another Conan the Barbarian film (ignoring the recent reboot).

Miscasts With the strong resistance witnessed after the recent casting of a certain Mr Christian Grey, Katherine Hibberd looks at 5 actors who didn’t quite fit the bill.

Anne Hathaway as Emma Morley

Hayden Christensen as Anakin

Skywalker

One Day captures the relationship between a publicboy smoothie, and left-wing aspiring academic Emma.

Anne Hathaway’s Yorkshire accent is so terrible it ruins any chance of a successful performance. She’s also too conventionally attractive and lacks the gawky edge to Emma’s character.

To be fair, the story line was ridiculous, and the script was terrible. The “I hate you” scene always comes to mind. That being said his acting results in Anakin Skywalker coming off as a whiny, overdramatic adolescent. His attempts to portray a dark character result in much unintentional hilarity.

Ben Affleck as Daredevil

George Clooney as Batman

Batman? If we were to judge Ben’s superhero abilities based on his performance in Daredevil, things aren’t looking great. The stuntman did a good job when it came to the action scenes, but in terms of acting Affleck’s overconfident nature didn’t match Matt Murdoch’s emotionally-withdrawn character.

Clooney’s smooth and laidback presence is the polar opposite of Batman’s persona.

His acting came off as gimmicky, and the whole film was a shambles. And don’t get us started on those nipples. Why were those necessary? Perhaps with a better script Clooney could have got in touch with his dark side.

Sofia Coppola as Mary Corleone

Dad and director Francis Ford Coppola decided to keep it in the family and cast Sofia as Michael Corleone’s daughter in The Godfather Part III. Her performance was wooden at best. Some of the cringiest cases of bad acting are bad death scenes. This one is terrible, if you haven’t seen it it’s worth a YouTube.

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iana puts me in exactly the same frame of mind as The Iron Lady did, but the entire mismanagement of the central character of the biopic is all the more offensive here because people actually liked Diana.

The film bends over backwards to portray Lady Di as the ‘People’s Princess’. This is the Diana Spencer who walked through minefields to make the world listen, raised funds to help combat the spread of AIDS and won people’s hearts. The only testament to her bitter battles with bulimia and self-harming is a few minuteslong recreation of an exert of her infamous 1995 interview with Martin Bashir. The whole subject matter then quickly dropped. This is a true shame, considering the pedigree of the director in dealing with the psyche and inner workings of public figures. A more measured, rather than superficial portrayal could have been wonderful, but sadly the potential of the subject character is squandered.

Instead the central thrust of the film focuses upon a blind, chemistry-devoid and frankly stifling realisation of Diana’s relationship with surgeon Hasnat Khan. The whole thing reeks of rom-com cliché, as she meets him by chance at a hospital and within a few minutes has invited him over for supper. She struggles to make him

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Diana

dinner and eventually sends out for a Burger King, because that’s what he likes. It’s truly excruciating. It also isn’t helped by the fact that Naveen Andrews’s interpretation of Khan is entirely unlikeable.

If you didn’t already sympathise with Diana going into the film, Khan being generally unlikeable and irritating will make you leave feeling for her. The whole pointlessness of the storyline is summed up ably in Naomi Watts’s only stellar performance of the entire romantic plot. In a confrontation with Khan, Diana raves at him about how pointless it was of him to pursue the relationship if he couldn’t deal with her profile, and then laments the fact of how she can enjoy the love of the world, but not the one man who matters. It’s a rare and frustrating glimmer of what might have been done with the film if it had been better written and directed.

Watts’s interpretation of Diana is actually flawless. She has the iconic restrained smile to a tee, and in the scenes based on actual events she excels. There’s a particularly tender moment when she’s travelling through Bosnia at the time of the Bosnian Wars and makes her motorcade stop at a small cemetery as she comforts a lone mother mourning her son. There are also a few moments that feel very real when she raves

About time

Rush

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bout Time, directed by Richard Curtis and starring Rachel McAdams and Domhall Gleeson, is a romantic comedy about a man who learns he can travel back in time and uses this power to meet the love of his life. Although the concept is interesting and a refreshing change from the standard rom-com formula, the film fails to deliver and does not fulfil its potential.

The storyline is very choppy and there is no consistent thread for the viewer to follow. The film could have been split into three different films because of the amount of unrelated subplots which just peter out and are left only half resolved. Every time I thought I knew what the film was supposed to be about, there would be a new major storyline to keep track of.

The characters are just as badly thought out. The protagonist, Tim, is difficult to like, and his shallow, borderline psychotic obsessions with every pretty girl makes it difficult to believe in his relationship with Mary. Even more infuriating is Tim’s younger sister, the ridiculously named Kit Kat, whom Tim describes as “a thing of nature”. She’s supposed to be this wonderful dainty fragile free spirit, but I found her pretentious .

Although the film was marketed as a romantic comedy, actual comedy is thin on the ground. With a thin plot and one-dimensional characters, you would think that Curtis would at least have attempted to make the film kind of funny so that there would be something for him to fall back on. But alas not.

About Time is worth a watch if you enjoy sentimental tearjerkers, but if you like your films with a coherent narrative, a decent script and interesting characters you should avoid this.

Zena Jarjis

BOOKS

about the little contact she is allowed with her sons by the Palace. Curiously there’s little emphasis on her rather strained relationship with the Royal Family, likely a result of the film’s setting three years after she separated from Charles.

This could have been a moving portrayal of Diana, but instead, the only moving parts of the film are those lifted from real life. The swarms of paparazzi following Diana and Dodi Fayed off the coast of Sardinia and the final few scenes set in Paris are deeply moving. Sadly the film’s imagined content is pitiful, and doesn’t get off the ground. It’s painful to watch and completely bland. This film has likely done a huge disservice to the woman Diana was, instead relying on her public image of a woman determined to save people’s lives in a vain attempt to save the film. So much more could and should have been done with Diana Spencer than this bland and ultimately offensive portrayal.

Angus Quinn

here have been very few good motor racing films in history, the lamentable Driven being the nadir of the genre. So director Ron Howard is really trying his luck here as he attempts to bring a real life motor-racing rivalry to the big screen.

Based on the famous 1976 season, Rush centres around the rivalry between playboy Englishman James Hunt, a man legendry for his drinking and womanising as much as his driving, and Niki Lauda, a cerebral and slightly unfortunate looking Austrian, who had a total dedication to his craft.

In contrast to most films, we don’t have a hero and villain despite the personality clash. Both drivers are portrayed fairly with positive and negative traits on full display. The film remains faithful to real life events as much as a Hollywood blockbuster possibly could.

Although the rivalry between the two men is played up a bit too much and there are inaccuracies that may raise the hackles of die hard F1 fans, there’s enough here to keep both hard core fans and casual cinema-goers happy.

The star of the show is undoubtedly Lauda, played brilliantly by Daniel Bruhl whose portrayal is eerily accurate in both appearance and mannerisms. Chris Hemsworth is also excellent as Hunt, but it’s Lauda who’s the unexpected emotional centrepiece of the film, with his amazing recovery from a horrific crash at the Nurburgring really bringing the viewer around to his side.

While by no means perfect, some of the racing didn’t always appear realistic, and some of the dialogue could be clunky, Rush remains the most realistic and honest motor-racing film for decades, and one that can be enjoyed by all cinema-goers.

James Scott

Hawking

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awking is a very intimate film. Cowritten and narrated by the man himself, the film follows a conventional chronological path from his early days slacking off at Oxford, to his motor neuron disease diagnosis in parallel with his scientific breakthroughs, right through to his current standing as a global superstar.

This kind of thing is the usual preserve of BBC 4 or late night Channel 4, so the fact that it has a cinematic release shows the high regard with which he is held. Indeed his fame is one of the key focus points, and Hawking is admirably frank about his fondness for the limelight, he himself raising the question of whether he is famous just as much for his disability as for his science. We never do get an answer from him, though.

Much time is given to trumpeting these achievements, mainly through stories recounted by his contemporaries.

Unfortunately, there’s not much time for anything more than simplistic descriptions of the theories, which is a bit of a shame if you were hoping for a bit more nitty gritty science.

Where the film really shines is in the more intimate moments, either showing the affection his assistants have for him, or in the interview with ex-wife Jane. It’s also hard not to feel admiration for the man in allowing some of the less than flattering aspects of his daily routine to be filmed. It humanises and gives depth to a man who is often seen as a mystical figure.

In the end, it’s a compelling and heartwarming portrait of a remarkable man constantly fighting death, while being at the forefront of science at the same time. It might lack a bit in the finer details, but it is admirably honest and hard to criticise.

Thom Shutt

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e live in an exciting time.

Watches are phones.

Phones are computers.

Ben Affleck is Batman. No matter where you look in the world of arts or technology, everything is new, and new is good. In fact, we make such a big deal out of anything new, whether it’s Avatar in 3D or Jay Z giving out a million free copies of his album (or, indeed, Jay Z dropping the hyphen from his name), that we lose perspective on art itself. Is striving for newness really that important?

Let’s be honest, most of the time when we talk about something being new, it isn’t. At best, it’s a development or continuation of something that came beforehand. The Matrix, for example, saw the Wachowskis create a stew of philosophy, one part Judeo-Christian tradition and Western literature, two parts Eastern religious thought and anime. When Radiohead released In Rainbows, letting people pay however much they wanted, they were simply popularising a longexisting pricing model. In the end, neither Keanu Reeves nor Thom Yorke invented the wheel; they just bolted on an engine and added an ostentatious bumper sticker.

But there’s nothing wrong with that. We tend to like wheels that are hooked up to engines. Sure, we’re constantly exaggerating how new and original our favourite artists are, but that doesn’t negate what they’re producing. There are critics out there that complain that Inception is merely a rip-off of the Japanese film Paprika. While that might arguably be the case, Inception did open up a whole new world to an audience that was not necessarily familiar with the Japanese counterpart. It might not have been entirely new, but it did influence popular culture in ways Paprika could only dream of. Yes, there is a terrible Inception joke in there somewhere.

So is there any point in trying to achieve newness if experience shows it’s nearly impossible? If it’s newness for the sake of newness, no. If artists are looking to create something timeless, focusing on

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KARL TOMUSK and TOM DAVIES discuss the future making it new will only date it later on. Let’s look back at The Matrix.

On the one hand, visually, the film did things that very few had done before, and the term “revolutionary” was thrown around without hesitation. But that’s not why we remember it over a decade later. We remember it because, at its heart, it was a story about self-discovery, overcoming hardships, and finding love. It was a movie that appealed to our humanity and posed questions about our existence. In short, it was a great film. If we stripped away everything that was “new” and “revolutionary,” it would still have been a fantastic story.

topher Nolan’s decision to shoot an unprecedented amount of footage (for an action film) in IMAX lends itself to the scale and sheer spectacle that The Dark Knight was aiming for. It wasn’t an entirely new concept by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a step forward and created a more immersive experience for cinema-goers.

Music does this constantly.

Every so often, new genres evolve that resonate with certain groups of people in a way that other music hasn’t. When Black Sabbath released their eponymous debut album and, to a greater extent, their follow-up Paranoid, they didn’t

And that’s why Avatar, after the awe of seeing it in IMAX wears off, gets described as a remake of Pocahontas with more aliens and a strong emphasis on obtaining unobtanium.

If, however, the film had been a montage of action sequences that pushed the visual boundaries of cinema for two hours straight, there would be nothing timeless about it. In a few years, someone would come along and make something even more modern, and we’d no longer find it relevant in any way. That’s why the original Matrix is something of a modern classic and its sequels are often relegated to an unfortunate footnote. And that’s why Avatar, after the awe of seeing it in IMAX wears off, gets described as a remake of Pocahontas with more aliens and a strong emphasis on obtaining ‘unobtanium’.

While newness for its own sake is generally a terrible idea, when done correctly, innovation can enhance the experience of art stupendously. Take The Dark Knight; it’s a terrific adaptation of various incarnations of Batman, and as a film, it’s enjoyable whether you’re watching it in a cinema, on your laptop, or on a black and white TV with your great-grandparents.

Seeing it in IMAX, however, is the pinnacle of that experience. Chris-

single-handedly build heavy metal from scratch. Other bands were experimenting with similar sounds and influences at the same time, but Ozzy Osbourne and his band put together records that went on to influence hundreds of bands and millions of fans. Their brand of heavy metal wasn’t just new; it was new and it meant something to their listeners. And that’s why people still listen to those albums forty years on, even if they’re not particularly revolutionary anymore.

In fact, a lot of people these days wouldn’t even think of listening to Black Sabbath were it not for the Internet and its impact on music.

My iTunes library is what it is today largely because of what the Internet has let me discover. With artists embracing services like Spotify or Pandora, uploading videos to YouTube, and posting albums to Soundcloud or a whole horde of sites that host free mix tapes, millions more are able to listen to and even participate in their musical output. The fact that there is a forum available for every niche genre out there is a testament to how the Internet can bring listeners closer to music in every form. We discover it, we download it, we buy it, we consume it, we discuss it, and we make it. The Internet has given a greater platform to both the artist and the fan, and we’re better off because of it.

And, as most fans of any TV show now know, pushing for innovation has led to better television in a better package. In a recent article in Newsweek, Vince Gilligan, su-

preme overlord of the fan favourite cum possible cult that is Breaking Bad, explained that twenty years ago, fans of TV shows only saw, on average, one in every four episodes.

Producers and writers were forced to structure shows that were very episodic; every episode had its own plot and viewers easily understood what was happening without having to watch the rest of the show.

It made for easily-consumable TV that was a perfect accompaniment to a microwave dinner for one, but it lacked development and continuity.

With the advent of DVD boxsets, TiVo, and now Netflix, writers for television know that they can serialise their projects. They can make dynamic, complex characters with long story arcs that span whole seasons. They know fans have easy access to every episode and can still remember where the show previously left off.

True, there are plenty of critically-acclaimed shows, especially sitcoms and crime dramas, that still retain a classic episode-centric structure. They’re shows that work well with those constraints. Fortunately, though, not every show has to restrict itself like that anymore,

and as a result, we now have iconic characters such as Walter White, Tony Soprano, and Omar Little.

The pursuit of innovation complemented the evolution of TV impeccably without overshadowing its actual content, which is what everyone striving for newness in the arts should be doing.

There is no doubt tha been forced to yield over the last decade So, for better or worse, what IS new in the arts world, and crucially, what can we expect to see in the future? What high tech gizmos and tomorrow’s world-esque gadgets will shape our experiences of film, TV, music, books, video games and theatre? Well, we may be a long way from time travel and teleportation, but in the liberal arts, there’s certainly a fair amount to get excited about.

In a recent article for Tribeca Film, Andrei Severny grandiosely proclaimed that “The Movie Theatre of the Future Will Be In Your Mind”. Certainly a dramatic state-

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e of the Arts and whether new really is always better the major technological advancements of the 21st century.

The growth of the internet, of smart phones and tablets and other such handheld equipment. This seems to create a faintly CyberPunk narrative so popular amongst satirists and doom-mongering journalists, that the arts as we know them may be about to change forever; that eventually CD shops will die out, that television channels will cease to exist and that all our cinemas will close.

more established organisations such as Spotify and Pandora. News such as the formation of these partnerships, and moves within the streaming industry seem to establish a pattern, that the battleground in the music industry is no longer between the streaming sites and the High Street, but that the streaming world has grown to the point where it is now a fully-fledged industry in its own right, battling and competing with itself. This, we can only hope, will lead to further

In the end, it’s unlikely that the world of the future will be any more than a continuation of the present.

ment, but of course he is a film journalist, and therefore it’s altogether likely that initial statement will be mostly sound bite hyperbole.

So is that true? Well, yes, of course. What does stuff like “Theme Park of the Mind” even really mean in a quantifiable sense?

But that doesn’t stop the futuristic

at the CD industry has considerable ground to online streaming. goodies in the article from being any less exciting.

In Yokohoma, Japan, Orbi, a first of its kind high-tech cinema has recently opened to the general public. Its technology combines the work of SEGA, the company that brought you Sonic the Hedgehog, and content from BBC Earth, feared stomping ground of the ethereal deity of nature television, Sir David Attenborough.

This epic scale cinema, with a screen of 131x26 ft. aims to give the viewer a immersive, multi-sensory experience of nature, exploring animals and plants through sight,

smell, touch and sound. Cool right?

This new super cinema shows a real concerted effort by the movie theatre industry to compete with their growing competition in guises TV, tablet and smart phone.

Moving on from that, there is now a wider discussion of the possibility of a seamless merging of the world of the film and the world of the viewer, the real and projected worlds coming together. This, many believe will lead to a total feeling of being “in” a film. There’s talk of a merging of gaming and movies, of flexible screens, motion controls, haptic – or tactile technology, smart glasses, virtual and augmented reality. No, it doesn’t make that much sense to us either, but it all sounds pretty exciting.

This science fiction-esque tale of the possible future of Cinema is of course framed as part of a wider debate on the effects of new modes of technology on the future of arts, a key talking point for anyone seriously studying this issue, and indeed the theme will feature strongly throughout the rest of this article. Cinema and film in general, like all other areas of the arts are seemingly losing ground and finding themselves under attack from

Responses like this from the cinema industry aim to show that this won’t happen. They seek to prove that they plan to evolve, to compete, to offer cinema-goers a unique experience they couldn’t get on their ipad or laptop. So in many ways, maybe, just maybe, the threats posed to our traditional arts institutions by new technology could serve as a good thing, creating an environment of competition which forces the old guard to change and adapt, and provide us with ever greater and more enjoyable experiences.

Looking past cinema, whose jargon fuelled pronouncements about their future could take up the rest of this article, the world of music has also been going through an agreeably more understated, but far more tangible revolution than the one being loftily prophesied by Mr. Severny and co. in the cinematic world. Streaming has been an ever growing beast these past few years, not just in music but in film, TV and gaming too.

However, it’s in music that its roots truly lie, and it’s in the music industry that its effects will likely be the most visible in the coming years. There is no doubt that the CD industry has been forced to yield considerable ground over the last decade to online streaming. No doubt there will always be a small market for owning a physical copy of music. But it’s likely streaming will be here to stay as the way the overwhelming majority of people access music.

Recent developments see the partnership of streaming service Radio and Cumulus Media, in a move which many commentators feel will allow smaller services like Rdio to compete with larger and

advancements in streaming, a better service and perhaps even more innovation to the way we buy and listen to music.

Video gaming, like film and music, has similarly seen online challenges to its traditional means of distribution. But in this case, platforms like Steam and opportunities to buy games on Xbox Live pose little threat to developers, at least in comparison to other industries.

Due to the vast popularity of console gaming, they aren’t particularly worrying video game stores on the high street, who are still doing steady business, supplemented by their online stores.

In gaming then, the pie is probably big enough for everyone (video games in the US totalled 14.8 billion last year, of which 8.8 was physical console sales, a 21% decrease, but still sizeable enough). This however, does not mean that the gaming industry is not competitive. Quite the opposite, it’s a proverbial shark tank for games and console developers alike. For this and other reasons, it’s in games where we tend to see the starkest advancements in technology and quality of expe-

rience. So what do we predict for video gaming in the future?

Well, aside from the next generation of consoles, of which we know little as of yet, and the release of GTA V, which many see as a harbinger of what the future of gaming can achieve, we can see video gaming going down a more social, casual route. With all of the major console developers now taking up the ethos behind the admittedly one-trick pony that was the Nintendo Wii, a canny move by a developer that couldn’t hope to compete financially with the ‘Big Two’.

Games are seen to be growing up, and while a significant earner in the industry will always be the teenage boy shoot-em-up demographic a la Call of Duty, video games now provide the sort of fun family, post-Christmas dinner entertainment that would have previously been taken up by Monopoly or watching The Great Escape. Video Games are also getting intellectual, with their interactive nature piquing the interest of many great writers and the like. Some observers have gone so far as to name video games ‘The future of storytelling’, and when summer blockbuster season rolls around once again, sometimes it’s not so difficult to believe them.

In the end, as we mentioned earlier, it’s unlikely that the world of the future will be any more than a continuation of the present. Andrei Severny’s theme parks of the mind aside, it’s likely that in 50 years you will still be able to buy a CD on your high street, that cinema will still exist in some shape or form, that you will still be greeted by the familiar site of someone reading a paperback on the tube.

Our personal prediction for the future, at least where the arts is concerned is a world of choice and ease of access for the masses to a wide variety of different and innovative means of enjoying the arts, and frankly, we’re rather looking forward to it.

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TELEVISION GAY BUT NOT TOO GAY

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Is TV really that equal? ANGUS QUINN investigates...

he sixth episode of Teen Wolf’s third season whipped up a scandal in the United States. To be honest it was fairly shocking.

A boy nearly sawed himself in half with a chainsaw, another boy almost drowned himself in a bath-tub and the whole thing was set in a motel that kept a record of the number of people who had committed suicide while staying there. And then there was all the racy snogging.

And gratuitous shirtless scenes.

Except, that wasn’t what was controversial. Two boys kissed!

Are you hyperventilating yet?

America was!

The fact is that the gay-kiss is one of TV’s few remaining taboos. Indeed, considering Teen Wolf’s straight couples have a decent snog session each episode, the fact Ethan and Danny make out for about a minute and half really shouldn’t be a problem. Sadly it is. True there have been some successful gay cou-

ples on television, with Naomi and Emily from Skins’s second generation immediately springing to mind, but they lack the global exposition afforded to larger US shows.

Pretty Little Liars in 2010 won praise for making one of the four series-leads, Emily, lesbian, and although her relationship is treated exactly the same as the other three girls, the intimacy of the relationship she shares with Paige is dramatically reduced.

To be fair, Emily didn’t get off to a great start with her first girlfriend being a drug addict and getting murdered in

the second season finale, but the other three girls do kiss their boyfriends a lot more, whereas Emily and Paige can go episodes without any contact.

It’s also disturbing to note that both True Blood and Game of Thrones, arguably the most graphically sexualised shows on television, won’t shirk from transmitting graphic rape scenes, but won’t even allow a gay couple a kiss on screen.

For any comparable portrayal of gay couples to straight ones, you have to look to LGBT shows like Queer As Folk or The L Word since the depiction in mainstream television is massively unrealistic.

The two shows arguably

most responsible for raising the profile of LGBT characters aren’t without their flaws either.

Modern Family and Glee are as guilty of self-censoring as teenshows Pretty Little Liars, Skins and 90210 were when they dealt with their own gay storylines.

Cam and Mitchell’s lack of on-screen affection might be explained away as Mitchell being afraid of public intimacy, but when you’ve gone as far as displaying a stable gay couple who have adopted a child, the lack of kissing is frankly bizarre.

As for Glee, while Finn and Rachel might have made out multiple times an episode in the first four seasons, the show’s key gay and lesbian couples, Blaine and Kurt, and Santana and Brittany, can only show a few smooches through the show in comparison.

TV has come a long way, but there’s no reason to be content with the current frankly unequal situation.

IS IT STILL ON TOP?

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SWEET! With gang-wars over maple-syrup, and quilts, Amish Mafia is supreme reality TV.

Nashville is a bitch-fest between Shania Twain and Taylor Swift.

Well characters based on them...

Bake-Off is back and there’s a bizarre schadenfreude in seeing people’s biscuit towers topple over.

MORENIKE ADEBAYO appraises America’s Next Top Model at ten...

ou wanna be on top? “So next 2.0,” declares a very low voice as Tyra Banks flashes the V-sign on the intro for the latest, and 20th Cycle of America’s Next Top Model.

I can’t believe that America’s Next Top Model (ANTM) is now celebrating its tenth year. Ten years! Ten years of models getting lost on go-sees, ten years of gleefully watching makeovers, and ten years of the great Tyra Banks declaring almost every city as the fashion capital of the world.

ANTM was the precursor to an epoch of profession-based reality contest shows, such as Project Runway, The Apprentice and So You Think You Can Dance? This being the tenth year of the show, it’s difficult to imagine Tyra and her everchanging panel of fashion cro nies coming up with anything essentially new.

The show has been through several incarnations of late. Cycle 17 featured an All-Stars cycle where past contestants competed against each other. Cycle 18, titled British Invasion, had contestants from Britain and Ireland’s Next Top Model com-

pete alongside 7 all-new American contestants. Cycle 19 was a special college edition, where all the contestants were of college age. This year sees the first cycle in which chaps are allowed to compete for the coveted title, much to the annoyance of this year’s lovely ladies.

Looking back at Cycle 1, it seems so fledgling and frail.

Many of the contestants didn’t seem to understand how to act in the confessional booth, which is something of a standard now in today’s reality shows.

The editing was straightforward and uncomplicated, unlike the super-choppy and dishonest patchwork storytelling we’ve come to expect.

Tyra Banks was intensely solemn, Jay Manuel seemed like an actual human, Janice Dickinson’s face was animate and rock-like all at once and Kimora Lee-Simons had impossibly high standards - were we ever so innocent?

It’s rare in a show that it hits its stride in the 15th Cycle, but ANTM proved its heavyweight potential when it aired its first High Fashion Cycle. The main prize was jawdropping - a spread in Italian Vogue, a huge step up from Seventeen, not to mention a contract with IMG Model Management.

The judging panel had also never

been stronger, with Andre Leon Talley, one of the most influential figures in entire fashion industry and Nigel Barker, one of the most notable photographers of the past twenty years. Alongside Tyra they sorted through one of the strongest cast of girls in ANTM history, finally settling on quirky Texan Ann Ward.

With the 20th Cycle, ANTM has once again found its stride.

Johnny Wujek delivers current and dazzling creative direction, Kelly Cutrone delivers acidic put-downs and one-liners that wreck the dreams of model-after-model and new hottie, male super-model Rob Evans adds a masculinity that feels necessary with the introduction of male-models. Tyra, is of course fabulous and her ever-changing weaves are a weekly highlight at panel.

So, happy ten-year anniversary, ANTM! Sure, the judges’ table is a constant game of musical chairs, and Tyra continues to spout senseless, ever more bizarre catchphrases (smize, booty tooch, H2T), but I for one will still be singing along to that jingle of a theme tune in ten years’ time.

Note to the Original Spice Brothers, adding spice to a British classic does not a cookery show make.

Suffering from insomnia? Try watching Brian Cox’s new show Science Brittanica for some zzzz.

Harrow: A Very British School left us throwing things at the television, it’s so excruciatingly proper.

SOUR!

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TWEET US: @YORKVISIONTV

BATTLE OF THE QUEEN BEES

GOSSIP GIRL’s Blair Waldorf and the OC’s Summer Roberts square up...

1. “Destiny is for losers. It’s just a stupid excuse to wait for things to happen instead of making them happen.” [WIN]

1. Best Quote

1. “I’m sweating to death, driving ten miles an hour on, like, a rickshaw, listening to this... music.”

2. Banishing Jenny Humphrey from the Upper East Side was a crowning glory. [WIN]

2. Best Moment

2. In L.A., Paris Hilton uses Summer’s own phrase against her: “Orange County? Ew!”

3. Blair’s scheming is flawless.

She’s never failed to outsmart an opponent when challenged.

3. Most Impressive Skill

3. Proving that popular girls don’t have to stick to the clique. [WIN]

4. “Forget running Anne Archibald’s charity. I’ll be negotiating peace in the Sudan.”

5. Chuck Bass, of course. While the relationship might have swung wildly in intensity, and even seen Blair marry the Prince of Monaco, in the end she came to her senses and realised that Chuck was the perfect fit for her. [WIN] Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), Gossip Girl’s calculating and manipulative, but damaged and vulnerable trust-fund princess. Dorota!

4. Best Comeback

5. Best Love Interest

4. “I wasn’t talking to you. And if you repeat anything you heard, I’ll kill you.” [WIN] 5. Seth! So adorable, geeky and fundamentally lovely. Finally taking a victory for the nice, dorky guy in Orange County.

Who could forget the Hot-Dog Stand Proclamation?

“Acknowledge me now or lose me forever.”

There was never any doubt who’d emerge victorious. Summer’s just a little too lightweight to go toe-to-toe with Queen Bitch Blair.

Summer Roberts (Rachel Bilson), The OC’s sassy and fast-talking It-Girl with a heart of gold and an eye for the beauty in a geek.

VISION’S TV PREVIEWS

ANGUS QUINN takes a look at the up-and-coming US shows...

REIGN

THE TOMORROW PEOPLE

DRACULA

From the network that brought you Gossip Girl and 90210… comes a period drama. Don’t let that put you off, though.

This is definitely more The Borgias than The White Queen.

Things kick off with Nostradamus, famed fortune-teller, giving Catherine de Medici some particularly gloomy tidings about the marriage of Cat’s son, Dauphin Francis to a wee bonnie beauty known to history as Mary Queen of Scots. He’s going to die. Don’t panic though because Sebastian, Francis’s best mate, played by period drama rogue Torrance Coombes, has his eye on Mary. Francis has his eye on another girl too, so Catherine shouldn’t be too freaked out. Added into that heady mix, Mary’s ladies are plotting to make her Court It-Girl, Nostradamus is generally waxing on about how terrible everything will be, and there’s an assassination attempt on the way!

This is actually a reboot of a 1970s British sci-fi show but the trailer wouldn’t give that away. Things open on what looks like a threesome. Then it emerges Stephen (Robbie Amell) has actually woken up in bed with a couple. Whoops! Apparently he sleepwalks. He has voices in his head, so everyone at school thinks he’s a weirdo. The voice makes him get on an abandoned subway where he meets Home & Away’s Luke Mitchell, who teleports him to an abandoned subway station, full of super-powered people that can teleport anywhere – The Tomorrow People. They’re basically Jedi, with no lightsabers and a little more teleportation. Stephen even does some force-choking in the trailer. Predictably the government’s a bit arsey about the whole thing and the currently unnamed archvillain looks to be a marvellous bastard of an enemy.

You can’t deny NBC have called in the big-guns for this new-take on the age-old Dracula story. Boasting a producer from Downton Abbey and a director from The Tudors, the show’s also helped by the choice of high-profile lead Jonathan Rhys Meyers as the eponymous Dracula. Set in Victorian London, they’re channelling the Jack the Ripper vibe with lots of candlelit balls and theatres, and foggy cobbled streets. There are also lots of unfortunate damsels in distress for Dracula to sink his fangs into, and intriguingly what may or may not be a reincarnation of his wife who was burned at the stake as a witch. Cheery. Add in the fact that Dracula’s seen taking on a Vampire Hunter as a lover in the trailer, and you have all the elements for a supernatural show that will survive long enough to assert itself in a supernaturally saturated market.

Awaiting UK Air-Date

Picked Up By E4

Picked Up By Sky Living

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BOOKS WHAT’S ON MY KINDLE...

Dave WASHINGTON THINGS FALL APART Chinua Achebe A literary masterpiece, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart investigates pre-colonial African culture.

A gripping novel, Achebe captivates the reader through his clever characterisation, whilst depicting religion, mythology and history of tribal Nigeria. Stunning!

THE RETURN Victoria Hislop Hislop’s moving tale of pain and passion, set in Granada, engrosses the reader through the atmospheric portrayal of the plot. 70 years earlier the city was ravaged by the Spanish Civil War, and as one visitor goes for a dance, she discovers much about her past.

sharpe’s waterloo Bernard Cromwell A superb historical writer, Bernard Cornwell is at his very best in writing Sharpe’s Waterloo, one of the final novels of his highly acclaimed Sharpe series. Following the life of fictional rifleman Richard Sharpe, culminating in Sharpe saving the day at the Battle of Waterloo.

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INTERVIEW: The York Stanza Poetry Showcase with Carole Bromley

he Ilkley Literature Festival this year celebrates its 40th anniversary, after delivering decades of compelling writing from different authors and poets.

As well as featuring some celebrity speakers such as Kate Humble (Springwatch), Duncan Bannatyne (Dragons Den), and poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Carole Bromley (pictured), a resident poet in York, will be leading a Stanza Poetry Showcase at the Ilkley Playhouse on the 7th October 2013.

I started off by asking about what inspires her when she writes. “I write about relationships, family, the past but I also love writing from paintings or

writing group for talented writers, who will showcase their work at the Ilkley Playhouse.

She added: “We have 38 members and meet once a month to workshop poems in progress.

Twelve of us will be reading for

five minutes each so the audience will get a taste of a variety of voices.”

On the matter of the future of poetry showcases, she said: “There are people who would rather have their eyes gouged out than sit through a poetry reading! I am not one of them.

“Every year I go the Bridlington Poetry Festival and also to events at Ilkley and Beverley.

“To listen to great poets from all over the world reading their work is a real privilege.

“So yes, I think poetry readings will always attract audiences. I certainly hope this one does!

Come along - you will be in for a treat.”

Angus Quinn

REVIEW: The New Middle East by Paul Danahar

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he period since the Arab Spring kicked off has been a time of momentous, exciting - and in some cases, baffling - change in the Middle East.

With events moving quickly, often for unexpected and apparently contradictory reasons, the whole thing becomes confusing for the man in the street.

However, fear not! The BBC’s former Middle East Bureau Chief Paul Danahar is here to put that right. As a highly knowledgeable journalist, Danahar utilises his connections with leaders, diplomats, military men and ordinary people to slice through the intractable background noise and stereotypes that pervade the region, and to illuminate the forces

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places.

“I recently won a prize with a poem about a stained glass window in the Minster for example and I won the Bridport Prize a few years ago with a poem sparked by a Magritte painting.”

The city itself has been an inspiration, as it has been her home for nearly 40 years. “York is a city I love. It is an inspiring and very beautiful place.

“I actually set readers of the blog I have been writing for the digital magazine YorkMix the challenge of writing a poem about the city and we had some really good poems sent in which you can still read on the archive.”

Two years ago, she set up the Poetry Society Stanza Group, a

shaping the Middle East Each chapter visits a different country in the region. It quickly becomes clear that although there are certainly similar undercurrents running between all the countries in the region, there are also significant differences.

Danahar goes into far greater detail than is usually the case in putting the current situation in each nation into a historical, political and economic context.

The overrunning theme is unresolved conflict. It is explicitly clear that in every flashpoint and conflict in the Middle East there are huge countervailing forces at work. Whether between the army and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, or the battle between

a hugely disaffected youth and their elderly rulers across the Arab world. Danahar explains that these forces have been suppressed for decades, and are only now beginning to be released.

It would be wrong to say that this is a seminal work on the Middle East. The New Middle East’s biggest weakness is that it has been written during a time of on-going, change, and thus, many of Danahar’s predictions will inevitably be proven wrong in the light of history. But the book never was intended to be the final guide to the revolution.

The real value of The New Middle East comes from its clarity and how effectively it conveys the incredible forces and dynam-

ics at play in the region. It shines a light on a extremely complex and misunderstood part of the world and at least provides some sort of anchor point for us to even begin to comprehend a fascinating period in history.

James Scott

SPOTLIGHT: York Festival of Storytelling with Helen M. Sant

elen M Sant is a local York storyteller and an organiser of the York Festival of Storytelling, which celebrates the tradition of story-telling through a diverse range of workshops and activities. I spoke to her to find out more about the event.

Bethan: What is the difference between books, drama and storytelling?

Helen M Sant: Books and plays evolved from storytelling, storytelling is the seed. Often people think ‘storytelling’ means reading aloud when actually storytelling comes in many different forms. When we say ‘storytelling’, we mean hearing something in the vocal tradition. The

descendants of this are plays and books. Interaction is a very important part of storytelling.

In the theatre, the lights dim and the actor shouldn’t make eye contact with the audience because it would break the escapism. Storytelling is the opposite of it, your audience engages with you. You experience the emotions of the story with them.

B: How did you get involved with the festival?

HMS: I was initially doing ghost stories over Halloween when I was asked by York City Council if I would do others that didn’t involve ghosts! I hated public speaking as a kid but I’ve always been drawn to theatre and spoken word. I had a natural apti-

tude for sharing these stories. I enjoy the spontaneity.

B: Why do you think we’ve lost the tradition of storytelling in England?

HMS: Edinburgh has an amazing storytelling hub. You immediately think that England has a reputation for being very stiff upper-lip, storytelling and listening to stories is all about letting go emotionally. For me, it’s really important that people can come to this festival, that they don’t have to have children or be children and everyone’s welcome.

B: This year’s theme is Story In Everything, how did you come up with that?

HMS: We touched on it at the last festival, we had medieval musi-

cians and a male classical dancer. There is a story in everything, in many different art forms and behind why people do what they do. We’re bringing the ideas out there, making sure that all forms of ideas will be extracted.

B: What’s some good advice for budding storytellers?

HMS: If someone was interested in words and performance my advice would be in training and looking after the voice.That comes with maturity and confidence.

The York Festival of Storytelling will be held from Saturday 26th October until Sunday 27th October at the Railway Institute, York.

Bethan Forrest

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TWEET US: @YORKVISIONBOOKS EMAIL US: books@yorkvision.co.uk

I Japanese post-modern literalist and winner of the 2006 Franz Kafka Prize, Morenike Adebayo looks at Haruki Murakami’s literary career

1979: Hear the Wind Sing

Murakami wrote his first novel, published in one of Japan’s most influential literary magazines, when inspiration struck whilst watching a baseball game.

1987: Norwegian Wood

A nostalgic story of loss and sexuality, this is the book that finally established Murakami as a household name in Japan’s premier literary circles

2008: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

As a keen marathon runner and triathlon enthusiast, Murakami discusses his long relationship with running in another of his finest pieces of work.

2013: Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage To be translated into English by 2014. Murakami is the favourite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which will be announced on 15th October

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Death Grip or Saving Grace: Amazon’s Future in Self-Publishing

t saddens me that there is an entire generation that will grow up not remembering life before Amazon, specifically, a life of independent bookshops. The ghosts that still inhabit our high streets are now little more than commercially-driven prostitutes for the big publishers.

The recent revelation of J.K. Rowling taking a low-key pseudonym in order to escape the fervent hype that surrounds her output, brought out stories of other authors who had resorted to such measures. Despite having successfully published other novels, large publishers were unwilling to gamble on a new author of clear talent.

The books that are promoted the most, unsurprisingly sell the most, and publishers are increasingly throwing their weight behind smaller numbers of titles rather than spread-betting, hoping for a massive return on the next Harry Potter. Independent bookshops have almost disappeared from our towns, largely due to the influence of online retailers such as Amazon.

However, is Amazon about to be the saving grace for the literati?

It’s no secret that the Kindle has divided readers. There are those who love its portability and privacy, whilst others revile its proprietary DRM content and the under-

cutting of smaller bookstores. Yet Amazon now has another market to corner beyond sales of printed and electronic content. Now, Amazon is about to take on the publishing market, extending its foothold into distribution and production.

Previously, self-published authors found that large companies owned the presses, and were prepared to charge over 80% of profit for their use. Therefore, these self-published works were largely reserved as vanity projects for the rich.

Amazon offers authors the opportunity to sell their work directly through the Kindle with a 70% royalty return, providing the book costs below a certain amount.

Amounts above that receive 35%, which sounds like a large drop until you consider that an author’s royalties through a large scale publisher are closer to 17.5%. The jump is motivated by Amazon’s need to keep the Kindle competitive, which when considering the lower price of Kindle books in comparison with published print editions, still benefits the author.

Let’s face it - competition does more than just change the prices of goods, it affects the quality of the output. In a market where publishers are looking to capitalise on the sale of already successful editions, there is no longer the impetus to

find new and distinctive works. In that way, the market can be seen to be getting narrower.

However, through Amazon’s scheme, everyone has a chance to have their work judged without the publishers effectively running a protection racket on their investment. It also encourages equality between provider and seller, rather than new authors signing their lives away for the sake of that aspirational publishing deal they have dreamed of for years.

Whilst I will never forget those first tentative steps into a public library, or into a small bookshop now long boarded up, I cannot help but feel a level of optimism. We can’t pretend that the cry of the big publishers that Amazon has readers in a death-grip is anything other than disingenuous. They, after all, have controlled content for years in the same manner, and inflated the price of books to a luxury rather than a solace for the soul.

This only hurts the quality of what we read and the way in which we are viewed as a consuming public.

The lowest common denominator is dictating the bottom line for all of us. And I can’t help but feel that Amazon, the Goliath of books, struck a deal for us Davids without casting a stone.

Bethan Forrest

Debut Novels FIRST TERM OF A NEW YEAR, MORENIKE ADEBAYO EXAMINES A SERIES OF DEBUT NOVELS

Burial Rites

We Need New Names

Ghana Must Go

Pig’s Foot

The Universe Versus Alex Woods

Shortlisted for the 2013 Guardian First Book Award, South Australian author Hannah Kent first heard of the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir on an Icelandic Rotary Exchange as a teenager. Kent movingly reimagines Agnes Magnusdottir’s story, as one of the last Icelandic convicts to go through the ordeal of capital punishment in Burial Rites.

Having won the 2011 African Caine prize for her short story about a starving band of Zimbabwean shanty street kids, Zimbabwe-born NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel is also about the absent childhood of Zimbabwe’s lost generation in an awful world of poverty and violence. The protagoinist is Darling, a 10-year-old child growing up under the rule of Mugabe.

“Afropolitan” is how Taiye Selasi describes the characters in her debut novel. This story centres on a broken GhanianNigerian family following the death of its patriarch. Moving through generations and across continents, Selasi’s novel is elegantly delivered, gripping and a sign of great things to come from this writer, who imparts much about African culture.

Trained in ballet from an early age at the National School of Ballet in Cuba, and appearing as a guest artist all around the world with many well-established ballet schools, Carlos Acosta’s turn to novel-writing could be seen as an unusual one. Nevertheless, Pig’s Foot as a debut novel is tempered with dark humour and a passionately magical history.

Quirky teenager Alex Woods is stopped at airport customs for carrying 113 grams of marijuana and an urn filled with ashes.

With a clairvoyant single mother and a bizarre friendship with a reclusive widower, his life is far from ordinary. A strong character created by Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods is a heartwarming tale with punchy plot.

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Top tech tweet of the week:

19 Sep Discovery News @Discovery_News Simulations show Elon Musk’s hyper loop could work. Hyper speed travel is on the way.

Creating a Techno-Ghetto Most people come to university with aspirations. Some of these are long term (having exciting job prospects after a few years of academic stimulation and whatnot) and some are more readily available to fulfil.

If your short term objective is simply to turn your newfound student hovel into the holy grail of home gadgetry, the Mecca of mechanical wizardry and the ultimate student techno-ghetto then look no further.

Vision has got you covered.

Let’s skip over the boring stuff. I’m going to assume that you have some sort of computing device that’s capable of playing music (this is the 21st century after all), so the big question is: how are you going to play that music? There are a number of good options for this one.

Option 1 is for those who have visions of their room becoming some sort of underground rave bunker, the sort of place where people head to instead of going on a night out.

This noble aim requires the purchase of some serious speakers to back up your claims to big-dog sta-

Pimp My Laptop

tus, so if you’re willing and able to spend thousands on accomplishing this task, then the world’s your oyster.

If fleshing out your room with gizmos wasn’t enough, we’ve got more suggestions on how to enhance your student experience thanks to the mighty USB drive. No, we’re not talking about fancy memory sticks. This is much more important than that.

If not, then Phillips make some excellent iPod docks for under £100 which will pump out enough bass to keep you happy, but not enough to completely alienate the neighbours before you’ve even spoken to them.

Option 2 is more of a talking point during pre-drinks, and the novelty factor of some Las Vegas themed ‘light show’ speakers is not to be undervalued. With three jets of illuminated water housed within the casing, these slightly budget blasters bounce water around to the beat of whichever chart banger tickles your fancy.

Turn your new-found student hovel into the holy grail of home gadgetry.

While they’re not going to blow your mind with extreme quality or sound clarity, you can pick them up for less than £40. Bargain.

Next on the list of gadgetry ‘musthaves’ is something to help pass the hours between lectures. A mini air hockey table is bound to fit this category rather nicely, and who doesn’t like pinging a plastic puck back and forth with newly formed lifelong friends?

You can get your hands on one of these in a variety of places, and it’ll set you back just £20-£30 for a reasonable one. Don’t be expecting the same experience as a proper arcade machine though - this is definitely a novelty item.

Finally, after all the madness of mini air hockey and water-jumping speakers, you’re going to need something to make sure you’re up in time for lectures. Normal alarms just don’t quite cut it any more the snooze button is just too enticing - so why not mix things up with something a little more challenging?

For £25 or so, you can get an alarm clock that runs away from you when it goes off. So if you’re the sort of person who is a sucker for “oh, just another five minutes”, then this will sort you out good and proper.

There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Three simple items to kit your new room out with. Now how about some serious laptop accessories?

iOS: What’s New? iOS 7 is the biggest thing to happen to the iPhone operating system since its original launch back in 2007. What’s new about it, and is it a welcome change?

The answer to the first question is simple. The changes are mostly in the look and feel of the product.

Gone are the lined yellow pages of the old ‘notes’ app, the green felt of game centre and the 3D red bobbles for notifications.

In their place is a slicker looking, cleaner feeling 2Dish approach to iconic design. The 3D effect is much more nuanced in the new OS, being made out of multiple stacked

2D layers rather than the simplistic vanishing point feel of the previous iteration. The parallax effect on the home screen is a pretty neat addition to the whole modernised feel.

“In many ways, it’s like an outlandish shirt. ” On top of this comes the new translucency effect. It looks great in the messaging apps and is used subtly in a load of other places. Facebook have already updated their iPhone app to bring in this translucency to the News Feed, and it won’t be long before other mainstream apps fol-

low suit.

In short, the new design is slick. For those of you who don’t like it, give it time. In many ways, it’s like an outlandish shirt. It’ll grow on you as you become accustomed to it. In a week’s time, you’ll find that earlier apple OS’s feel dated.

If you haven’t updated, you’re also missing out on a host of new features like the Control Centre. A swipe from the bottom up brings up access to some major settings such as brightness, wifi, volume control and most importantly, a torch!

About time too! Can it really be that hard, Apple?

Picture the scene one term from now: you’re flustered, panicked and short on time. You know you should have written that essay over the Christmas holidays, but you just didn’t get round to it. The delights of an all-nighter beckon.

In such a predicament, a cup of hot coffee is a necessity. But there’s nothing worse than going to take a sip of brown nectar and finding a lukewarm mug of sludge. Fortunately, the USB slot has got your back. Hats off to whoever came up with the USB coffee-warming plate. Superb student satisfaction for under a tenner.

“Yo dawg, I heard you like laptop USB accessories...”

Not everyone always wants a hot drink though. When you’re reaching the end of your essay, what you really need is some inspiration which often takes on the guise of a can of cold beer. So, next to your coffee warmer, why not plug in a mini-mini-fridge? That’s ideal!

Both of these will undoubtedly up your laptop based productivity, but there’s more to life than cracking out an essay in a few hours.

So much more, in fact, that someone came up with the utterly ingenious idea of a USB whack-a-mole. Xzibit would be so proud of that brainwave.

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York University’s Opera Society aims to make opera more accessible to students who want to enjoy the art form together.

This includes DVD nights, trips to the opera, singing classes and putting on opera performances and concerts throughout the year. This is a society both for opera virgins and opera lovers alike!

TheatreGoers

For someone who prefers to take a seat anywhere from the Upper Royal Circle right down to the stalls, this is the society for you.

TheatreGoers frequent York’s theatres, but also organise ‘Big Trips’ to see productions in cities such as Manchester, Edinburgh and London to fulfil all your theatre needs.

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Audience for me every time..

Jeeves, fetch my gown, it’s opera time.

Opera Society

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THE CRUCIBLE

THE LEADER

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Past Performances include

Peter Pan Pantomime.

THAT FACE

WOULD YOU ROMEO AND JULIET 7 RATHER BE I LOVE YOU, YOU’RE PERFECT,NOW PART OF A CAST CHANGE 8 OR STAND UP MADNESS OF GEORGE III 9 ALONE?

PantSoc

Welcome to PantSoc! This is the ideal choice for you. PantSoc (Pantomime Society) is one of the University’s largest societies and never fails to deliver impressive performances. The society puts on three student written pantomimes every year, combining dancing, singing and acting. This society is inclusive and fun, and if it’s backstage that you’re interested in as well as the limelight there are many opportunities at PantSoc.

HAY FEVER

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DO YOU PREFER TO SPEAK OR SING YOUR LINES?

Sin g? righ ! Yea t. . h

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I’m son a na g b tur ird al

Safety in numbers

ARE YOU INTO ALL TYPES OF THEATRE, OR IS IT A NIGHT OF THE OPERA THAT YOU PREFER?

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ARE YOU A TALENTED PERFORMER, OR AN AUDIENCE DWELLER?

For those of you who love the spotlight and prefer to stand alone, ComedySoc is for you.

This is a really friendly society, offering many opportunities to its members. As a member of this society you can write, perform, produce, and watch all forms of comedy. There is a performance most Wednesdays in V/045, so come along!

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Pirates of Penzance The Yeoman of the Guard

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Stand up suits me fine

Past Performances include

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Gilbert & Sullivan Society Ahoy there! It looks like the Gilbert & Sullivan Society would make an ideal choice for you. No audition necessary for chorus members but don’t be afraid to try for the bigger roles! The society perform two Gilbert & Sullivan musicals a year along with one other production, so you’re sure to find something to meet your musical and dramatic demands.

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I love the spotlight!

PERFORMANCE

With so many fantastic performance societies to choose from, it can be difficult to make the right choice. We’ve created the ultimate guide to all things performance at the University. So whether your place is centre stage in the limelight or in the back row of the audience, take the quiz, and see which one’s for you.

I love it all!

Your guide to

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DOES THE IDEA OF WEARING TIGHTS AND PERFORMING TO THE CRIES OF “HE’S BEHIND YOU” APPEAL? NO!!!

DramaSoc

DramaSoc is perhaps the most active performance society at York. Whatever your aspirations, the chances are DramaSoc is a good place to start. With shows every week, there’s something for everyone! For this term’s schedule, see the right hand column.

Past Performances Include

God of Carnage, a play which made it to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer.

Still not found quite what you’re looking for?

You could always start your own society. The chances are that if you’re interested in it, someone else will be too. The best advice we here at Stage can offer is that if in doubt, sign up!

All these societies will be more than happy to welcome new members - you can find them all at Freshers’ Fair. It’s easy to think you won’t have the time and be discouraged from joining too many, but most of these societies will offer the chance to come along for free for the first few sessions, so you can really see which society is best for you. Good luck!

All of these fantastic performances can be found at the Drama Barn on the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of their production week. Tickets are usually on sale during the week from Vanbrugh Stalls for a low price. For more information, go to: www.yorkdramasoc.com

HOW TO GET INVOLVED

Auditions take place from MONDAYTHURSDAY WEEK 2, 6pm- 10pm. Keep an eye out for posters around campus and make sure you don’t miss them! Weeks 2,3 and 4 are already cast, but be sure to audition for the rest of this term’s productions!

WEEK 5: The Leader. Auditions are in W/035.

WEEK 6: The Heiress. Auditions are in W/035a.

WEEK 7: Romeo and Juliet. Auditions are in W/035c.

WEEK 8: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change. Auditions are in the Dixon Studio (Mon/Tues/Wed) and W/222 (Thurs).

WEEK 9: The Madness of King George III. Auditions are W/035d.

Remember - nothing ventured, nothing gained. Good luck!