Theatre 🎭 Film 🎬@jmcfireplays; essayist; recovering academic 📚. Author of Fat Souls, Divine Vision. These views and musings I acknowledge mine...
Wing, England
Joined March 2009
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My two most recent play publications - Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham and The Pilgrim's Progress are available from @TSLpub
The Pilgrim's Progress
Step into an unforgettable journey with this epic adaptation of John Bunyan’s timeless allegory, The Pilgrim’s Progress. Originally commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, this dramatization brings to the stage the tale of Christian, who flees the City of Destruction on a perilous quest to reach the Celestial City. Guided by Evangelist, Christian encounters a host of vivid characters—both friends and foes—including the treacherous Mr Worldly Wiseman, the loquacious Talkative, and the fearsome Apollyon. We follow Christian’s trials as he battles through the murky Slough of Despond, faces persecution at the chaotic Vanity Fair, and confronts the enormous Giant Despair in the menacing Doubting Castle. Meanwhile, his family endures their own hardships in his absence, adding a poignant counterpoint to his epic journey.
tslbooks.uk/product/the-pilg…
Divine Vision: William Blake in Felpham
London, 1800. Things aren’t going too well for William Blake. He lacks work, his wife worries over the bills, he’s seeing visions of the Apocalypse, and his planned epic poem on the divine remains unwritten. When Blake gets an offer from famous poet William Hayley to leave London and settle in a cottage at the seaside village of Felpham, he jumps at the chance. In Felpham, things don’t quite work out the way Blake had them planned…
tslbooks.uk/product/divine-v…
The cover designs are by brilliant @MiddlesexUni BA Graphic Design graduate Phillip Block.
Alice, Sweet Alice, aka Communion (1976) is a Catholicism-soaked slasher that keeps wandering down blind alleys, but often finds something memorably unnerving there. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
BBC and David Irving making quite the dream team here...
How can the BBC teach about Adolf Hitler with no meaningful reference to the Holocaust?
In its biography of Adolf Hitler, BBC Bitesize – an educational resource for GCSE students – apparently fails to mention key events which led to the Holocaust, including any reference to the “Final Solution”, a plan devised by the Nazis to orchestrate the mass murder of European Jews. It also makes no reference to Kristallnacht, a coordinated, state-led pogrom where Jewish homes, businesses, schools, and synagogues were looted and burned resulting in over 30,000 Jewish men being arrested and sent to concentration camps.
This pathetic attempt at educating students is so alarmingly vacant of key historical references that it almost reads as a whitewash of the Nazi dictator’s brutality.
At a time when antisemitism in schools is at a record high, how can we expect the situation to improve if our resources even on Holocaust education – let alone contemporary antisemitism – are so woefully inadequate.
Combatting antisemitism starts with education, and the BBC must urgently revise this resource.
gbnews.com/news/bbc-bitesize…
Gordon Brown didn't write a word of this commentary piece attributed to him. But the thought of him even knowing the word Youthquake is pretty hilarious.
theguardian.com/commentisfre…
Why do actors do this to themselves? Whishaw appears to complain that "..although there is a brief reference to him going on a date with a man in No Time to Die, his sexuality isn't picked up on again."
The film's show Q, for the most part, at work. Why should your sexuality be discussed or exhibited in the workplace?
Bond star Ben Whishaw confirms he won't return for franchise reboot as he reveals his regrets over 'unsatisfying' portrayal of his character Q's sexuality trib.al/E1wG00I
Twilight (1990) is a beautifully ominous murder film that seems more interested in atmosphere than in actually telling its story. letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
“Opinion is one Thing. Princip[le] another. No Man can change his Principles Every Man changes his opinions.”
- Blake.
You may as well ask the village idiot.
Reeves says UK's future should be inside the EU bbc.in/4jS3XXi
Cop au Vin (1985) is a more critically acclaimed Chabrol than I have tried before. Can't acclaim it myself. Does the bloke know how to make a scene interesting? letterboxd.com/jmcfire/film/…
Ronald Reagan. Mum and I were on holiday in LA and were staying at the Ambassador Hotel, at which he gave a speech. We popped into the Peppermint Lounge and Ronnie and Nancy were in there. He chatted to us about how it hadn't changed since The Graduate.
Fascinating. I've had these emails, as have a number of writers I know. They'd have trouble getting any money out of me, I hope they know.
| Fake film deals and emails from top agents: who is behind the explosion in literary scams?
theguardian.com/news/ng-inte…
Inevitably, the news that Donald Tusk is accused of leading a coup d'état in Poland is escaping the main tranche of today's news. One would have thought it might deserve some attention...
reuters.com/world/polands-pr…
James Martin Charlton retweeted
You can cancel an election and ban the winner from running (Romania), you can ban your opponents from ever running again (Hungary), you can threaten to ban the main opposition party and subject it to relentless investigations by the secret police (Germany), you can threaten a ban on the leading presidential candidate and make them wear an ankle monitor (France), every member of your circle can be investigated for corruption (Spain), you can try and cancel local elections because you will lose them (Britain), and you can storm the constitutional court with riot police because you want to control it (Poland).
You can just do all these things. The secret is you just have to be on the right side of the European Commission.
Brilliant work by @Jebadoo2 eviscerating this appalling legislation. The bloke behind him is having the parent of hissy fits.
“I think this bill is ripe for a declaration of incompatibility. And what an embarrassment that would be for the signature centre piece of human rights legislation to run a risk of incompatibility. Particularly on Article 8 when the first poor, unfortunate parents, I suspect mothers, are arrested under this bill”.
Yesterday, at the first oral evidence session at the Joint Committee on the draft Conversion Practices Bill in Westminster, the panel was asked how the bill will interact with the European Convention on Human Rights.
Watch criminal barrister Dennis Kavanagh @Jebadoo2 set out how the bill will be incompatible with Article 7, 8, 9, 10 and 14 of the ECHR.
Yes, and theres a Ronnie Barker statue in Aylesbury which is absolutely criminal.
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I was privileged to see Sir Patrick Stewart as Titus Andronicus, Sir Eglamore, Henry IV and Leontes at the RSC in the early 1980s, and much later as Marc Anthony. He shaped my idea of a Shakespearean actor - the voice, the presence, the intelligence, the humour, the charisma. His brilliant return to the role of Shakespeare in Bingo at Chichester in 2012 was stunning, the best performance I have seen in a Bond play. And his Hirst in No Man's Land was one of the few to challenge Richardson. A great actor. RIP.
