Film-TV
Section:
This being
a campaign site to promote
the region as a media
centre, we now have a
set of web pages addressing
the issues raised in our
earlier coverage of the
local film-tv production
scene.
There's a chronological
listing, a production
history, a locations map,
and full-page separate
features covering a film,
film-maker, or location
of particular local interest.
Terence
Stamp as Sergeant Troy
demonstrating his swordsmanship
at Dorset's Maiden Castle,
in Far From The Madding
Crowd, 1967.
Latest item: Pathé
Film Archive Online.
Meryl Streep on the Lyme
Regis Cobb in west Dorset,
with the Undercliff wood
section of the Jurassic
Coast visible in the background.
Peter O'Toole, Petula Clark, and the boys of Sherborne School in the 1969 Goodbye Mr Chips, scripted by Terence Rattigan and filmed at Sherborne in north Dorset
Local-Literature Section
This
section of the website
covers writers and works
with a strong connection
to the south-central region.
(Latest Update: See The
Film/TV series, Read The
Source Novel.)
Jane Austen: An Unrequited
Love, by Poole-based biographer
Dr Andrew Norman, is the
latest Austen biography,
and uncovers new information
about her private life.
Thomas Hardy with
his bicycle: when the
bicycle first became popular,
allowing country folk
to travel more easily,
Hardy began to assist
in the early promotion
of Wessex as "Hardy
Country," which would
become the basis of regional
tourism when the automobile
arrived.
About Us
South Central MediaScene serves to promote the south-central region's media profile. It's an independent site [no funding etc], and not a business.
For earlier blog entries, see:
South Central MediaScene 2009
South Central MediaScene 2008
South Central MediaScene 2007
South Central MediaScene 2006
South Central MediaScene 2005
In Their Own Words: British Novelists: The current 3-part BBC4 documentary series "looking at the story of the British novel in the 20th century, told by those who know it best - the authors themselves," compiled mainly from archived interviews with 20th-C British novelists, features a number who had local links.
In Ep 1, 'Among The Ruins (1919-1939)', we hear from Virginia Woolf, who spent time before WWI at Studland with others of the Bloomsbury set, such as EM Forster (who also appears). DH Lawrence, from whom the episode title derives as the label for the interwar year ('We are among the ruins', he wrote), holidayed on Wight in 1909 and spent time in Bournemouth in 1912 for health reasons, leading to his Wight-set novel The Trespasser. Evelyn Waugh spent time locally pre-WWII, largely in the Poole-Wimborne area, among the visiting Bright Young Things, and later returned in WWII to be billeted at a Dorset stately home (shades of Brideshead). PG Wodehouse spent youthful weekends in West Dorset with a wealthy family related to the royals, the Bowes-Lyons, several of his novels having West Dorset settings.
In Ep 2, "The Age of Anxiety (1945-1969)", we have Tolkien (who had a bungalow in the area and died here) denying his work is merely an allegory of WW2; SF novelists like John Wyndham, whose classic Day Of The Triffids is set partly in Dorset and Wight, and of course the Angry Young Men, including John Braine, whose 1957 Room At The Top, currently being adapted as a BBC drama, has a key episode set in Dorset. The Cold War spy genre is represented by Ian Fleming, who went to school in Purbeck, and John le Carré who was born in Poole (which he never talks about, due to an unhappy childhood). Iris Murdoch, who often visited other Dorset-based writers and set her 1968 The Nice And The Good on the west Dorset coast. We also get William Golding, the Wiltshire schoolmaster turned author who drew on his time living in Salisbury for his 1964 novel about building a cathedral, The Spire. Ep 3, "Nothing Sacred (1970-1990)," is not yet transmitted [tx M 30/8/10].
For details on the authors' local links (not mentioned of course in the BBC series), see our webpage listing 100 local-interest writers (well, more like 90-odd writers at present – it’s a work in progress, with some entries awaiting verification of details). The series is on 900pm Mondays, and on iPlayer for 3 wks after each tx date: Ep 1 "Among The Ruins (1919-1939)" ; Ep 2, "The Age of Anxiety (1945-1969)" ; Ep 3, "Nothing Sacred (1970-1990)" The BBC site also has links to full length versions of the interviews, plus others, here.
2010 Airshow: The area’s biggest annual media event, the Bournemouth Air Festival, is on Thur 19 - Sun 22 August. Local airshows actually go back 100 years - in fact the first UK international airshow was here in 1910; this was also the occasion of the first airshow fatality, the Hon. Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame, the first pilot to fly across the Channel both ways nonstop, and founder of the firm whose aero-engines later went into both WWI and WWII warplanes, including the Spitifre, Hurricane, and Lancaster. Returning media ‘stars’ include the Red Arrows [Fri/Sat/Sun], the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight [Fri, Sun], this year celebrating its 70th anniversary [see item below], the 'Sally B' B-17 last Flying Fortress bomber [Sat, Sun], and the Avro Vulcan [Sat], the RAF's 1960s nuclear bomber of the type that appeared in the James Bond film Thunderball. Various other attractions are returning (luckily there is no sign of the "Roar On The Shore" display which caused so much adverse coverage last year). Video footage of the various turns will no doubt again appear on YouTube as well as on the official site, with DVDs available soon afterwards.
Post-Event Update: Complaints continued this year about lack of up-to-date timetable info, the inclement weather leading to uncertainty over the schedule as most weekend events were cancelled at the last moment on health-n-safety grounds. Most of the estimated million attendees reportedly gave up and went home early, but those who stayed on hopefully were left up in the air (or rather, down on the ground looking up). This seems to have helped prompt the Council and Echo to provide more up-to-date info online this time, and concentrate less on promoting their printed brochure. The Council however took the day-after view of the "wash-out" that the rainclouds had a "silver lining" as the tens of thousands who optimistically remained were forced to spend extra money by going into restaurants, cinemas, bars, etc. For those who missed it or went home early, video coverage here.
Wessex At War update: The main items in the news here, as we pass the 70th anniversaries of Dunkirk [May-June] and the start of the Battle of Britain [June-Sep] .... A number of film and TV productions, from Overlord to Private Schulz, have in the past used Studland beach to represent either a Normandy beach or Dunkirk's, but there seem to be no new productions to be added to our existing "Wessex At War" web-pages on local-interest novels and screen dramas. The 1954 film The Dam Busters, which uses actuality bomb-drop footage shot in Dorset throughout, did get into the news over a remastered-DVD reissue in June, though without extras; there is still no sign of the remake being written by Stephen Fry and directed by Peter Jackson. A "Dad''s Army" bronze sculpture of Arthur Lowe being unveiled in Norfolk (where the 1968-77 BBC series was exterior-shot) got in the national news, but there seems to be no recognition, even locally, of the series' local inspiration component [details on web-page]. And there is still no major novel or screen drama in sight dealing with the development of radar in the Purbecks.
Battle of Britain commemorations have been more in the news, with a local attempt to restore the control tower as wartime fighter airfield RAF Ibsley north of Christchurch, on the edge of the New Forest, the site being now a flooded gravel quarry [with plaque]. News that President Obama's grandfather probably served at Ibsley and at nearby Stoney Cross airfield in the New Forest in the run-up to D-Day added a certain international filip to the campaign by the RAF Ibsley Heritage Trust historical group to restore the Ibsley control tower and establish a heritage trail. New Forest council officers are also planning a commemorative plaque for the Stoney Cross airfield site. Currrently, Southampton, where the Battle's iconic fighter the Spitfire was built and tested, is asking for ideas for a Spitfire memorial to be built there. There was a Spitfire flypast over Christchurch Bay July 9th (to commemorate 100 years of local aviation), but the chief memorial to the Spitfire itself in national consciousness is perhaps found the one found on screen. A Spitfire swooping over English downland is one of British cinema's most iconic images, and can be seen in films such as (the largely Dorset-shot) Overlord, and the (Dorset-set) The Land Girls. There are other iconic images in the 1943 biopic of Spitfire designer RJ Mitchell, The First Of The Few (US title Spitfire), which was location-filmed mainly at RAF Ibsley, a project we devoted a page to earlier [here]. The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, consisting of a Lancaster bomber, Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, plus an RAF Typhoon rocket-firing ground fighter [cf A Bridge Too Far] and the last flying B-17 [as seen in many US WWII films, e.g The War Lover, Catch-22], will be returning to the Airshow this year; schedule details in link in new entry above.
Bournemouth 200 - Time For The Renaissance?
Bournemouth Tourism has been sending out emails announcing “The Bournemouth bicentenery [sic] is now in full swing." The main events are still to come, as the official calendar [downloadable PDF] of events online shows. These are an official town history by local historians out in early May (from Dovecote Press in Wimborne) and a substantial archival website, a “virtual museum” called Streets Of Bournemouth, going online soon (courtesy of a £440K HLF grant). These will have a shelf life longer than the beach parties and other such events also planned. With the Crunch, public anger over political corruption, the IMAX, surf reef , and how the the town has been turned into ‘the British Ibiza’ (with a nightclub economy that turns the downtown core into a giant crime scene of public drunkenness and drug-taking), the Bicentenary might include some sober reflection on the future. Especially with electoral uncertainty now in prospect, it might be a good time to decide what kind of town Bournemouth wants to be in the future in terms of quality of life. That is, one with a more creative, bohemian future, rather than the present one of predominant philistinism. [read more]
How Do You Solve A Problem Like … An Ex-IMAX? With the controversy rumbling on, Bournemouth Council has set up a webpage for the public to see the proposed options. There was also, briefly, a linked sub-page where you click buttons to ‘Have Your Say.’ The cynical would say this was just to sidestep the fact a number of Facebook groups have already been set up to lobby for the same options, with the Echo reporting the relative memberships. The first group set up, which began with 19 members, was for saving the building (and the £5m+ it will cost to demolish it) as an art-house cinema and fringe theatre, while a second, the Imax Demolition Party [604 members], was then set up to campaign to demolish the existing building and replace it with – well we’re not sure yet, as long as it doesn’t block the scenic view of the Purbecks when you drive down Bath Hill. There is also a Facebook group proposing it become an Eden Project style botanical gardens.
The Council’s official shortlisted options embrace these and a few others, like a downtown “arts space” or a building with an “Art Element.” (Notice the odd terminology – this should not be taken to mean a proper arts centre of the sort long campaigned for which could turn around the town’s rather philistine image. Reportedly, some of the money being used to compulsory-purchase the building’s business-tenant leases was set-aside from an earlier abortive plan for funding an “Arts/Cultural scheme in the town center.”)
The official shortlisted options being considered are: a water park; interactive arts, museum and entertainment [sic]; tropical gardens; a spa; performing arts space /amphitheatre; family play park; boutiques and bistros. (Other proposals like an ice rink and a swimming pool to replace the one closed in the BIC have now been excluded, despite the fact the Facebook group for the latter proposal had over 2,000 members.) Though the building was privately paid for to begin with, civic costs are already mounting - £7 million to buy the building, around £5m more to knock it down (though I think they could get volunteers from the Imax Demolition Party to do much of this), £2.5m in legal fees to get the tenants out, and an unknown number of millions to create the new facility to be decided upon by June.
With a local rep company [Milton Musical Society] doing a musical about the Titanic backed by Bath Travel, perhaps the long running saga could be turned into a fundraising musical comedy pastiche, “IMAX The Musical,” with heart-warming songs like “Tomorrow” set to the tune from Annie (“The Council will keep everyone happy /Tomorrow”) or from The Sound Of Music, “The Sound Of Money Going Down The Drain” and “How Do You Solve A Problem Like An Ex-IMAX?”
However, Sheridan Millennium Ltd, who hold a 150-year lease to operate a cinema here, but failed to make a go of it before, say they do not want to vacate and are still proposing it could be an IMAX cinema again, due to the new interest in the format generated by the Hollywood hit Avatar (I commented how unrealistic this is in a previous post ). The Council’s “water park” option sounds like the plan Sheridan say the Council discussed with them for an indoor wave-machine facility, so it may be this is already favoured, especially as the artificial surf reef, much-heralded as a European “first,” has apparently turned out to be more like an underwater speed bump. (The Council is keeping details of the inquiry into this matter from the public.)
This option for the Waterfront (don’t say IMAX) Building could also tie in with the College’s new “Watersports Academy”, offering a venue for this (now that the College lost millions over its now-abandoned plan to demolish both its Bournemouth and Poole campuses). This follows in the wake of the Olympic Watersports Academy in Weymouth set up for 2012, but the College also have a new “Surf Academy” (“a great opportunity for youngsters looking at going into the ever expanding surf industry”), with course modules in “surf fitness, nutrition, psychology, contest techniques and tactics.” Other less official proposals have surfaced here: both the University and College, having got rid of most of their experienced lecturers over the last few years, and now facing further budget cuts and policy reversals which make a nonsense of earlier restructurings, could use it. The huge ex-IMAX auditorium area could be a lecture theatre delivering a “virtual education,” with computerised presentations on windsurfing theory (or whatever) by a CGI lecturer-presenter, or “avatar” ...
Dennis Wheatley Rides Again, online: The Dennis Wheatley feature in Fortean Times Magazine, which we mentioned in some earlier coverage in our Literary section, a tiein with a new bio of this once locally-resident writer, known in his heyday as 'the Prince Of Thriller Writers', is now archived online, here: The Devil Rides Out. [you have to click on their 'See All Articles' ist as the direct URL just redirects to the index]
IMAX Redux? Bournemouth is in the national press again over the long-running IMAX debacle, which has been in the headlines for at least ten years now for one reason or another. Right after Council leaders rushed through a surprise vote to buy and largely demolish the Waterfront building as a view-obstructing seafront eyesore, IMAX leaseholders the US/Ireland based Sheridan Group announced they were re-opening it, perhaps as early as Easter, to exploit the new market demonstrated by James Cameron's Avatar, which is being shown at some theatres in 3-D IMAX. [more]
See The Pulp Film Adaptation, Read the Better Book Dept: The new BBC HD screen version of The Day of the Triffids shown over New Year’s and just out on DVD has marginal local interest in itself (it abandons most of the novel’s local settings), but it does draw attention to the more thoughtful novel. [more]
The
Moonraker (1957)
is finally being released
on DVD
January 18th (by Optimum),
a Technicolor swashbuckler
fondly remembered by many
as an attempt at a "British
western." (Its roots
are in the many British
TV series of the era about
noble outlaw heroes like
Robin Hood, and true to
form, it comes complete
with old-fashioned ballad.)
Directed by David MacDonald,
it has a largely local
setting, from Stonehenge
to Lacock Abbey to Lulworth's
Stair Hole, where the
final swordfight between
romantic Cavalier king's
man George Baker and Cromwellian
agent Peter Arne takes
place [see below]
as a ship arrives to take
the future Charles II
to safety abroad. The
central section is set
in the clifftop Windwhistle
Inn (where Sylvia Syms
is the sympathetic barmaid),
the script being based
on a play by a former
film censor turned playwright.
The story is vaguely fact-based
- Charles's 1651 escape
to Holland via Sussex
was partly across west
Dorset and Wiltshire,
his various close calls
with Cromwell's soldiery
providing dramatic material
for romantic historical
novels and films ever
since.
Latest entries on film-TV productions chronology page: Bright’s Boffins 1970; Return Of The Psammead 1993; The Buccaneers 1995; Creatives Grow Better In The South West (aka The Harvest) 2008; The Tesco Bomber 2009; Cranford Xmas special 2009; Die Rose von Kerrymore 2001; Far From The Madding Crowd 2009; The Day Of The Trffids 2009.
For 2009 blog entries, see here.
For earlier entriies, see:
South Central MediaScene 2008
South Central MediaScene 2007
South Central MediaScene 2006
South Central MediaScene 2005