Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals...

...and a Happy New Year!

Old habits die hard

Academy Originals, a YouTube documentary-style video series produced by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, has been posting a series of videos called Creative Spark. These focus on people working in the film industry, with a particular emphasis on screenwriters, detailing their work process and the tools they use. As a (wannabe) screenwriter myself, I find this sort of thing fascinating. It's a real treat to see how these people work, and the dramatic extent to which their approaches differ. I'm not sure I have a "process" as such, but I can certainly recognise something of myself in these people, particularly the procrastination angle and rather weird working hours. (Though most of them appear to be early risers, whereas I'm more of a night owl.)

My favourite so far is the video on Eric Roth, writer of MUNICH and FORREST GUMP, among others...



...probably because, while the bulk of the writers interviewed use fancy-pancy Macs, Roth is a committed Luddite, working on a rather grubby-looking Windows XP machine (seriously, that keyboard is FILTHY!) and running an ancient DOS-based screenwriting program that can't export PDFs and runs out of memory once you hit 40 pages. As someone who jumps between Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter and Highland depending on which one I'm in the mood for, I know the program you're using can make a huge difference, even though they're essentially all just different variations of black text on a white background. As such, while the program Roth uses looks and sounds maddeningly archaic, I can completely understand why he sticks with it.

As I've indicated above, I'm somewhat different. I chop and change all the time, depending on how the mood takes me. I wrote about half of my most recent script in Final Draft, then switched midway through to Movie Magic Screenwriter. The latter is way more clunky (though let's face it, both programs leave a lot to be desired) and in serious need of an update (the last one was in 2007, and it still contains bugs that have been claiming to be working on for years), but I don't know... something about the way the text looks on the screen just works for me, at least for now. For my next script, I may well go back to Final Draft or Highland.

But anyway, here's to Roth and his old habits. Any process that delivered MUNICH is all right by me.

Petition Mission: a Glasgow-based film hub

I came across this petition today on Change.org, and it's one that, both as a Glaswegian and as someone who would like to see a bit more in the way of location diversity in UK-based film and television (i.e. not another cop show set in London!), I think is well worth signing:

https://www.change.org/p/scottish-film-studio-delivery-group-recognise-that-a-glasgow-based-production-facility-will-be-at-the-very-heart-of-the-cultural-and-commercial-screen-industry-in-scotland

Recognise that a Glasgow based production facility will be at the very heart of the cultural and commercial screen industry in Scotland.

An Open Letter to the Scottish Film Studio Delivery Group

10th December 2014

After many years of inertia and procrastination, there is now a clear and present opportunity to build not just a film studio, but also a globally significant screen production facility for Scotland.

This facility would deliver double advantages:

1.   The creation of Scotland’s first dedicated studio for the production of international and indigenous film and television projects, alongside a facilities village of companies providing ancillary services to the production industry.

2.     The further development of a creative cluster which would become a nexus for Scotland’s indigenous industry, acting as a catalyst for future collaboration, convergence, and of course skills development and delivery.

The Film Studio Delivery Group was convened in May 2013, and was to be a vehicle by which the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, and Creative Scotland, aimed to deliver ‘a sustainable studio for Scotland’.

Our industry is global, and with that comes fierce international competition, therefore any steps to create a sustainable studio and indeed grow the industry in Scotland would have to be considered, viable, and incremental.

Central to this ambition is location.

We not only have the opportunity to cluster rather than fragment screen and creative industry talent, but also to provide a sustainable commercial income stream to underpin any cyclical use of the studio, workshop and office facilities that would be ring fenced for production use. Pragmatism must come into play, and a stand-alone facility would be vulnerable to the easy-come, easy-go vagaries of the international marketplace.

Star Wars Co-Producer Tommy Gormley reiterated the importance of location in his recent BAFTA Scotland award acceptance speech, highlighting ’I think it should be located in an existing creative hub which we can expand on’.

Undoubtedly, the city of Glasgow has this competitive advantage and baseline of strong screen activity to expand on.

There is an existing critical mass of companies and facilities activity in the city, the major terrestrial broadcasters, over 50,000 sq ft of sound and picture post production houses, new hotel developments, Glasgow School of Art's world leading Digital Design Studio, and existing screen and creative micro-clusters such as Film City Glasgow and The Hub.

Productions using Glasgow will enjoy close links to the city’s existing cultural and hospitality amenities, together with the thicker pools of freelance workers and talent living in the city and surrounding areas. Indeed, Glasgow has the highest density of production crew and facilities companies anywhere in Scotland.

Transportation and access to a Glasgow site is enhanced by close proximity to the major airports and transport hubs, and strategically connects with the new £40m Fastlink system, which opens in 2015. Clearly, Glasgow has the potential to be home to one of Europe’s most connected screen production facilities. Institutionally, in addition to the national cultural and enterprise agencies, a Glasgow based facility would have the added support of a film office, marketing bureau, business support agencies, chamber of commerce, and a tacit connection with one of the world’s strongest city brands.

As evidenced by Game of Thrones in Belfast, a globally celebrated high-end drama production can be delivered from a relatively small footprint in the very heart of a metropolitan environment. Titanic Studios covers approximately 10 acres of land less than 2 miles from Belfast City Centre. Glasgow has at least double this amount of developable land for a screen facility – a tantalising prospect.

We agree with the Film Studio Delivery Group that any development of a film, high-end television, or indeed animation, facility in Scotland has to be sustainable, but such sustainability will only be achieved with the right location, and with a regular and demonstrable commercial income stream.

Glasgow is the right location.

Other sites currently under consideration, such as Cumbernauld and the M8 corridor, are compromises that will not deliver the double advantages of a connected, accessible , facility, married with commercial sustainability. There is little appetite amongst the many skilled workers, screen companies, post houses, or facilities companies to permanently relocate outside an urban centre, and certainly wholly impractical for the many academic institutions delivering screen industry training to align themselves with an inaccessible, out of town screen facility.

Contrast this with a Glasgow based facility, at the very heart of both the cultural and commercial screen industry in Scotland.

Longer term, and once a more tangible critical mass of screen production companies and facilities exists, an Edinburgh based facility could further complement Scotland’s production offer.

We, the undersigned, ask the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise and Creative Scotland to urgently reconsider any moves to develop a screen facility or studio outside of an urban centre, and to recognize that currently, the metrics of place, connectivity, accessibility and sustainability can be only fully realised within the city of Glasgow.

Alan J. Wands, Producer (STONEMOUTH, FIELD OF BLOOD)
Allan Hunter, Co-Director, GLASGOW FILM FESTIVAL
Allan MacDonald, Managing Director, MNE
Allison Gardner, Head of Cinemas, GLASGOW FILM THEATRE
Andrea Calderwood, Producer, SLATE FILMS (LAST KING OF SCOTLAND)
Andrew Orr, Managing Director, INDEPENDENT FILM SALES
Anne Mensah, Head of Drama, SKY TV
Anne Murray, Business Relationship Manager, INVEST GLASGOW
Arabella Page-Croft, Producer, BLACK CAMEL (OUTPOST, SUNSHINE ON LEITH)
Brian Coffey, Producer (CITADEL, STARRED UP)
Carole Sheridan, Producer, SINGER FILMS
Catriona MacInnes, Creative Producer, JUMP CUT
Colin Kennedy, Director, (SWUNG)
Compton Ross, Financier/Producer, (YOU INSTEAD, BELLE)
Dan MacRae, Head of UK Development, STUDIO CANAL
Daniela Nardini, Actor (SUNSHINE ON LEITH, FESTIVAL)
Danny McGrath, Assistant Director (PROMETHEUS, SHERLOCK HOLMES)
David Mackenzie, Director (STARRED UP, HALLAM FOE)
Dr. Belle Doyle, Screen Industries Freelance Consultant
Dr. David Archibald, Lecturer, Film & Television Studies, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
Dr. Katherine Champion, Research Associate, UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW
Dr. Steve Inch, OBE Chair, GLASGOW FILM THEATRE
Ewen Bremner, Actor (TRAINSPOTTING, HALLAM FOE)
Gary Lewis, Actor (BILLY ELLIOT, GANGS OF NEW YORK)
Gavin Smith, Creative Director Development, COMEDY UNIT
Giles Lamb, Managing Director, SAVALAS
Gillian Berrie, Producer, SIGMA FILMS
Greg Hemphil,l Actor/Writer (STILL GAME)
Gregory Burke, Screenwriter & Playwright ('71, BLACK WATCH)
Hamish Walker, Production Executive, GLASGOW FILM OFFICE
Jack O'Connell, Actor ('71, UNBROKEN, STARRED UP)
Jaki McDougall, Chief Executive, GLASGOW FILM THEATRE
Jennifer Reynolds, Film Commissioner, GLASGOW FILM OFFICE
John Archer, Producer, HOPSCOTCH FILMS
John O'Neill, Film Finance, THE O'NEILL PARTNERSHIP
Jonathan Olsberg, Screen Consultant, OLSBERG SPI
Kahleen Crawford, Casting Director (FILTH, ANGELS' SHARE)
Kate Dickie, Actor (RED ROAD, FILTH)
Katharine Otway, Film Business Affairs, KENREN MEDIA
Katie Lander, Managing Director, FINESTRIPE PRODUCTIONS
Lenny Crooks, Film Consultant, Visiting Faculty (STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY NY)
Martin Compston, Actor (SWEET SIXTEEN, LINE OF DUTY)
Michael McDonough, Director of Photography (STARRED UP, WINTER'S BONE)
Mike Bolland, Freelancer, Ex-CHANNEL 4, BBC, NFTS
Mike Kelly, Film Analyst & Consultant, NORTHERN ALLIANCE
Morven Christie, Actor (GRANTCHESTER, CASE HISTORIES)
Paul Laverty, Writer (MY NAME IS JOE, ANGELS' SHARE)
Peter La Terriere, Managing Director, EUROPEAN FILM BONDS
Peter Mullan, Actor/Director (SUNSHINE ON LEITH, NEDS)
Professor Nick Higgins, Director, Creative Media Academy, UWS
Rebecca O'Brien, Producer, SIXTEEN FILMS (ANGELS' SHARE, LOOKING FOR ERIC)
Reno Antoniades, Film Lawyer (RUSH, UNDER THE SKIN)
Richard Brown, Producer (TRUE DETECTIVE)
Rob Kettlewell, Financier, RED SKIN MEDIA
Roddy Hart, Musician, Actor (SUNSHINE ON LEITH)
Roland Kennedy, Director, FILM CITY CAPITAL
Sean Gascoine, Agent, UNITED AGENTS
Stuart Cosgrove, Director of Creative Diversity, CHANNEL 4
Sue Bruce Smith, Filmmaker
Suzanne Reid, Production Manager (DA VINCI'S DEMONS)
Tiernan Kelly, Director, FILM CITY GLASGOW
Tommy Gormley, Co-Producer (STAR WARS VII)
Tony Safford, Co-Head of Acquisitions, FOX SEARCHLIGHT

As you can see, it's already attracted the signatures of a number of heavy hitters in the industry, both local and from further afield. Please consider adding yours!

There's something about Léa...

...Seydoux, that is. She first caught my attention, and that of much of the rest of the world, with her sterling performance in Abdellatif Kechiche's BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR (alongside Adèle Exarchopoulos), and she continues to impress in GRAND CENTRAL, an intriguing and alluring little film by Rebecca Zlotowski in which she plays the love interest to a nuclear power plant worker. Oh, and she has a leading role in the next James Bond film, SPECTRE, which should ensure that her star continues in its ascendancy.

Top 10 Giallo Films for the Beginner

It's been four years since I last wrote for DVD Times, the site now known as The Digital Fix. I had a few reasons for stepping down, including a degree of uncertainty surrounding the site's future. Thankfully, it survived and has continued to prosper, although I felt it was time for me to make a clean break. After writing more than 300 reviews, I'd burned myself out and was getting to the stage of no longer being able to remember what I'd written. (Or seen. I remember vehemently insisting that I'd never seen David Koepp's SECRET WINDOW, only for it to be pointed out to me that I'd written a review of it.)

Today marks the first time I've had an article on film published on a web site other than my own since 2010. Dan Stephens, one of my former DVD Times colleagues, contacted me asking if I'd be willing to put together an article for his web site, Top Ten Films, with the brief "an introduction to the giallo in 10 films." I said yes, and you can find the finished piece here:

Top 10 Giallo Films for the Beginner

Have a look and tell me what you think of my choice of films. As I mention in the article, I deliberately went for ten films that I felt would be most appropriate for someone new to the genre rather than my ten absolute favourite gialli (though if I did produce such a list, a number of the same films would also appear on it). I doubt I'll go back to writing regular reviews any time soon, but I enjoyed the process of putting this piece together and was surprised by how quickly I was able to "get back on the wagon", so to speak.

Chasing Jessica Chastain

One of the most disappointing aspects for me of Christopher Nolan's ambitious but heavily flawed INTERSTELLAR was its underuse of Jessica Chastain, an actor who I only became aware of in the last couple of years but who's been impressing me in everything in which I've seen her, particularly Kathryn Bigelow's ZERO DARK THIRTY, a film she carried more or less single-handedly by virtue of being the sole figure of audience identification in what could otherwise have been a meandering and only loosely connected series of events. Of course, it helps too that she's extremely striking-looking. With her red hair and incredibly pale skin, she can't help but be the most eye-catching part of any frame in that film, whether she's standing in the desert or in a room full of grey men in grey suits.

Beam me up, Scottie!

The Herald has released pictures of the interior of the soon-to-be-completed South Glasgow University Hospital, set to be one of the largest hospital complexes in Europe. I'm sure I can't be the only one who immediately thought of JJ Abrams' STAR TREK reboot when I saw them:

All kidding aside, it looks very impressive, and a massive improvement over the dingy old Western Infirmary, in whose A&E department I've spent the occasional evening over the years.

State of the nation

On the 18th September 2014, approximately 45% of Scotland's population voted for independence. A minority, yes, but a significant one. You'd think, then, that with such a vast number of people all supporting a similar cause, there would be a number of pro-independence newspapers to support their viewpoint -- just as there are newspapers that support the Tories or Labour -- right?

You'd be wrong. Throughout the independence campaign, just one single newspaper supported a Yes vote, and it wasn't even a daily. It was the weekly Sunday Herald, whose sister publication, the Herald, published Monday-Saturday, ultimately backed a No vote, as did the vast majority of the newspapers published in Scotland, either explicitly or implicitly. (The Scottish Sun was one of the only newspapers to make a resolute declaration of neutrality at the eleventh hour.) Almost half the country's population had their opinion reflected by a single weekly paper. A scandalous state of affairs, as I imagine most sane people would agree.

Last week, that gulf narrowed in a small but significant way with the introduction of the first weekly newspaper to explicitly support independence, The National. When it came out for Yes, the Sunday Herald defied all expectations and achieved something that no other newspaper has managed for a very long time indeed: it increased its sales figures. Not merely increased them, but DOUBLED them. Sensing that they were on to a good thing, the publishers behind the Herald and Sunday Herald, NewsQuest, decided to commission a pro-independence weekly using the same editorial team and most of the same contributors. What started off as a week-long trial run was confirmed on Friday to continue indefinitely as the paper broke all expectation in terms of sales figures. In fact, it proved so popular that, by as early as Tuesday, the publisher doubled its print run. There is a healthy appetite, it seems, for a paper that explicitly supports the concept of independence and challenges the establishment narrative.

Myself, I took advantage of the rather generous digital subscription offer of a week's worth of issues (i.e. five -- the paper doesn't publish on Saturdays and Sundays) for £1.50. I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, an avid newspaper reader. For as long as I've had any interest in current affairs, I've been able to get all the information I need online, which I find vastly preferable to picking up a physical paper -- not just because it's less cumbersome to read and I don't get ink on my fingers, but also because it means I can get my information from a variety of sources instead of being restricted to the editorial line of a single publication. In fact, before the Sunday Herald started supporting independence, the only times I'd ever bought a paper were when I was looking for job advertisements. I bought the Sunday Herald most weeks more as a means of supporting the endeavour than because I had any intention of reading it cover to cover (most of their articles are available online anyway), and have decided to do the same with the National. In fact, I just took out a three-month subscription to the digital edition for a very reasonable £16.99.

As far as its content goes, someone -- accurately, I feel -- described it as essentially a Scottish, pro-independence version of the i Newspaper. It's more or less a tabloid, albeit not of the cheap, tawdry variety -- there are no Page 3 girls, for instance, and celebrity gossip is more or less non-existent. (The covers are really its most sensationalist aspect.) The style is accessible, with clear, direct language and lots of large pictures. A few advertisements too, at the moment mostly for pro-Yes outfits like Glasgow's Yesbar and Deacon Blue's upcoming tour, though that appears to be changing, with Friday's edition having been expanded from 32 to 40 pages because of an increase in advertisers wanting to hawk their wares within its covers. Starting tomorrow there's even a crossword puzzle, along with cartoons from the brilliant Greg Moodie. The content is overwhelmingly focused on Scotland and Scottish politics in particular, but there is a decent amount of international content as well. I particularly like the inclusion of a profile of a different world leader each day.

It seems bizarre to be celebrating the fact that independence now has the backing of 3% of the print media, but that's the situation we're living with. Whereas Catalonia has its own television networks and press, which are able to take a pro-independence line, Scotland has for a long time been extremely poorly served by its media, with the establishment (i.e. Westminster, unionist) line being piped in on a daily basis... and nowhere was this more apparent than during the final two-week anti-independence blitzkreig, where the BBC News channel essentially turned into a 24-hour rolling propaganda broadcast, prompting at least one former contributor to condemn it for its Pravda-esque antics. 3% vs. 97% is still a sad indictment of our media, but the tectonic plates are shifting. Where the National has led the way, other publications like the Scottish Independent and Scottish Statesman look set to follow. The times they are a-changing...

A snapshot in time

Clearing through the contents of my photos folder today, I came across this little work of horror. It's my desk while I was in the process of revising for my finals circa April/May 2005. I'd like to say I'm more organised now, but the reality is all that's changed is that most of my paperwork is now of the digital variety.

Quote of the day...

...comes from, of all people, Scottish Conservative deputy leader Jackson Carlaw, commenting on the fact that three of the four "main" parties in Holyrood are now led by women:

In a back-handed compliment to that huge Hollywood blockbuster Three Men And A Little Lady, this parliament is now fronted by three ladies and a little Willie.

The "little Willie" he mentions is, of course, the Liberal Democrats' non-entity of a leader, Willie Rennie.

(Source: STV News)

The 50/50 cabinet

Yesterday, Scotland's new First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, unveiled her reshuffled cabinet -- the first cabinet in the world to achieve complete parity between men and women. Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill and Education Secretary Mike Russell are out -- replaced by Michael Matheson and Angela Constance respectively -- while Health Secretary Alex Neil has become Social Justice Secretary, his old role now filled by Shona Robison. As was trailed by last weekend's Sunday Herald, John Swinney will step into the shoes of Deputy First Minister, in addition to continuing in his role as Finance Secretary.

I'm not surprised to see MacAskill and Russell go. Both were pilloried heavily in the media and on the opposition benches for a number of reasons -- MacAskill primarily for his rather ill thought out (and currently iced) plans to remove the requirement of corroboration that is unique to Scotland's legal system, and Russell for his less than universally popular education reforms (though it goes without saying that the ire directed towards him pales into insignificance compared to that received by Gove south of the border). Neil too was on the receiving end of an infantile smear campaign cooked up by the Labour party (over his intervention to stop the closure of a mental health ward in his constituency), so in a sense his sideways move could be seen as an attempt to clean the slate. (Incidentally, it was observed by Alex Salmond in his final First Minister's Questions last Thursday that Labour had, at one point or other, called for the resignation of every single member of his cabinet... with the exception of himself.)

As regards the new cabinet's gender equality, while I think it's a laudable achievement, I must admit that I have very mixed feelings about the idea of gender quotas, or indeed quotas of any kind. Given the low number of women in politics in the UK, they may to an extent be a necessary evil, but I'm always left feeling rather uncomfortable with the idea that a person's gender could potentially have played a greater role in their appointment than their suitability for the job. I don't for a minute wish to suggest that any of the women promoted to the cabinet got the job at the expense of a better qualified male counterpart, but such accusations are inevitably going to surface in these situations.

Today Nicola Sturgeon, Alex Salmond and Stewart Hosie addressed a crowd of 12,000 independence supporters at the packed out Glasgow Hydro. I was working and so wasn't able to go, but my dad did and was good enough to bring me back a giant foam hand, which unfortunately I'm finding rather difficult to type with.

Musical musings: The Hypnotist

This evening, I watched THE HYPNOTIST, a not particularly remarkable slice of Nordic noir from director Lasse Hallström, based on the novel of the same name by Lars Kepler. The film itself may have been underwhelming, but I did appreciate the score by Oscar Fogelström, in particular the piece that played over the closing credits, available here:

Changing of the guard

Yesterday, the first day of the SNP's annual party conference in Perth, saw the reins of party leader formally handed over from Alex Salmond to Nicola Sturgeon, in what was easily the most seamless transition of power I've ever witnessed. I'm certainly struggling to think of any other political leader in recent history elected on 100% of her party's vote... though it certainly helped that no-one was foolhardy enough to stand against her.

Sturgeon and Salmond share similar backgrounds. Born in a council house (in Prestwick rather than Linlothgow), she attended a state school and benefited from a free university education (she studied Law at Glasgow University, while Salmond studied Economics at St. Andrews') and joined the SNP at the age of 16 (she was already a member of the CND). She has always been an incredibly shrewd and capable political operator, and opponents underestimate her at their own peril. For instance, in a now-notorious STV debate, she famously reduced Scottish secretary and supposed "bruiser" Alistair Carmichael (seriously, Google his name and "bruiser" and see how many hits turn up) to a blithering wreck who asked moderator Rona Dougall to intervene on his behalf. (Her weary response -- "Answer the question, Alistair" -- was the icing on the cake.) The unionist parties may like to smugly characterise her election as a "coronation" and point out that she has spent the last seven years being groomed to step into Salmond's shoes, but there's little sense of political nepotism in her appointment -- she really is, by a country mile, the best person for the job.

Sturgeon's ascendancy also leads us to the unprecedented situation of all three major parties being led by women. (I'm including Labour even though, strictly speaking, Westminster MP Anas Sarwar is currently standing in as branch officer following Johann Lamont's applecart-spilling resignation. In any event, Labour's interim Holyrood spokesperson is also a female of the species, Jackie Baillie. And as for the dear old Lib Dems... well, does anyone outside of their own rapidly contracting party even remember who their leader in Scotland is?) I'm not so naive as to suggest that a party being led by a woman is automatically preferable to its being led by a man (just look at Margaret Thatcher, or her spiritual successors, the current leader of the Scottish Tories and the outgoing leader of Scottish Labour), but anything that breaks the political stranglehold of the old boys' club has got to be a step in the right direction. More pertinent, I feel, is that Sturgeon, like Salmond before her, wasn't born into a life of privilege and has got to where she is today through a lot of hard work rather than because she went to the right university and rubbed shoulders with the right people.

Yesterday also saw the party's depute leader elected, with Stewart Hosie coming first with 59% of the vote, from a pool of three candidates. The only Westminster MP to stand for the position, Hosie was my first choice (the election used the single transferrable vote system, allowing you to rank candidates in order of preference), primarily because he's a very smooth, capable operator who comes across extremely well whenever he's interviewed. He strikes me as a hard man to rattle, which is good because he'll no doubt be spending a lot more time in the glare of the media spotlight from now on. There is another advantage, though: it gives the SNP a more prominent profile in Westminster -- something that will no doubt be required if the party is to be successful in its stated goal of winning a majority of Scottish seats in the 2015 election. It also allows Sturgeon the opportunity to choose her own Deputy First Minister for the Holyrood parliament -- effectively two for the price of one.

I'm incredibly sad to see Alex Salmond go, and a part of me still wishes he could have been talked out of falling on his sword. He's been such a staple of Scottish political life for so long that the thought of someone else standing at the dispatch box is genuinely difficult to get my head around. There's also the principle of the matter: Salmond has behaved with integrity throughout his political life, and it seems mighty unfair that someone of his character is stepping down while the assorted pirates and cutthroats of the LibLabCon "Better Together" alliance are (for now, anyway) congratulating themselves and each other on a smear campaign well done and/or being measured for their ermine robes. (Little known fact: he donates a third of his salary to charity every year. The fact that he has never publicised this says a lot about the sort of person he is.) That said, it's becoming increasingly clear that, despite standing down as party leader and First Minister, he has no intention of disappearing into the shadows. And it strikes me that a renegade Salmond, unshackled from the responsibilities of First Minister, could well prove to be far more of a thorn in the side of the British state than he ever was in office.

Bona sort, Catalunya!

Today, the people of Catalonia go to the polls in a historic independence referendum. They extended a great deal of support and goodwill to the Scottish independence campaign in the run-up to the referendum on the 18th September, so it's only fair to return the favour and wish them the very best of luck.

Bona sort, Catalunya! Hopefully you'll manage to achieve what we couldn't.

Flaming effigies and flaming morons

Live from the heart of Middle England...

Last night, Guy Fawkes Night, the people of Lewes in East Sussex participated in an annual local tradition of burning effigies of public figures they don't like. This year, one of the star attractions, and the subject of considerable media attention, was a giant Alex Salmond figure, wearing  accompanied by a smaller effigy of the Loch Ness Monster. This event was gleefully trailed on Twitter by the Tory-controlled local council, and provoked a veritable shitstorm of online attention. The official line is that the police intervened and confiscated the effigies following multiple complaints, though eyewitness reports state that the Salmond effigy, or another just like it, was in fact stuffed with fireworks and blown to smithereens.

Ordinarily I wouldn't get particularly concerned about this sort of behaviour. Politicians, for better or for worse, are public figures and invariably end up on the receiving end of a lot of ire, some deserved, some not. As far as I'm concerned, Alex Salmond is that rare breed -- an honourable politician -- and has done nothing to deserve such opprobrium. That said, if you live deep in the heart of Daily Mail-reading, UKIP-loving Middle England, you may well disagree. From their point of view, Salmond is the monster who came close to breaking up Our Glorious Union (TM) -- in their fevered imaginations some sort of modern day Hitler (you know, as opposed to an actual modern day Hitler like that beer-swilling goon they themselves worship in worryingly high numbers). And of course, stunts like this are nothing new. Plenty of effigies of Margaret Thatcher, for instance, have been burned throughout the UK (though, in my not entirely unbiased opinion, she did far more to deserve such treatment). No, the really sick part is the inclusion in the burning of "Yes" and "45%" symbols. By doing that, the people involved were responsibly for symbolically burning not just a politician but also 45% -- 1.6 million -- of a country's population.

Of course, this is far from the most offensive thing the people of Lewes have done. A couple of years ago, they burned an effigy of Angela Merkel, performing a Nazi salute and wearing the Iron Cross. Stay classy, Lewes.

Harper's bizarre

Striking vintage photograph of Jessica Harper from one of my all-time favourite films, Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA.

Musical musings: Under the Skin

Jonathan Glazer's UNDER THE SKIN is a bizarre and hypnotic film that I'm not altogether sure I actually like. It's certainly unforgettable, though, with a terrific performance by Scarlett Johansson and a view of Glasgow that's totally different from anything I've ever seen before. (It helps, I suppose, that we're seeing it through the eyes of an extra-terrestrial, to whom all human behaviour seems alien.) It's a film I definitely intend to revisit before the end of the year, so I can form a more definite opinion of it before drawing up my annual Top 10.

One thing's for sure, a huge part of what makes the film so eerie and unnerving is the fabulous score my Mica Levi. I normally dislike atonal stuff (I once got into virtual fisticuffs on a message board for rather glibly suggesting that the score to the American remake of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, didn't actually constitute music), but for some reason I adore this. The track above, "Death", is my favourite of the bunch.

I guess that's the "English Votes for English Laws" issue settled, then

Seat projections for the Westminster 2015 election based on the results of today's IPSOS MORI poll.

Memo to Labour: if you lie (in both senses of the word) with the Tories, be prepared to be treated like Tories.

My Windows 8.1 comedy misadventure

On Monday evening, just after 9 o'clock, I decided to finally replace my Windows 7 installation on my main desktop PC with Windows 8.1. I assumed the upgrade process would be relatively straightforward, taking a couple of hours at most and requiring minimal effort on my part other than putting the DVD in the drive and clicking "Next" where necessary. I should add that I had no burning NEED to install Windows 8.1 -- I just fancied a change after all these years, and am one of those people who likes to be running the latest version of any software. I've been running Windows 8.1 on the secondary partition on my MacBook Pro and have had no complaints about it, once Charms and other annoyances have been disabled and Start8 is installed. And besides, Windows 8.x has a nifty file transfer dialogue.

More fool me.


9:30 PM

My problems started when I discovered that, despite Windows 8.1 being a free upgrade available to all Windows 8 owners, I couldn't actually install Windows 8.1 using my Windows 8 license key. That's right, it demands a specific Windows 8.1 key. No problem, I thought -- I'll install Windows 8, then install the Windows 8.1 update afterwards. After all, it's basically just a service pack, right?

More on that later. First, however, a more immediate problem.


10:00 PM

I updated to Windows 8 successfully and found myself with over 100 Windows updates to install... one of which, I assumed, would be the Windows 8.1 update. I promptly elected to install all 100+ updates in one go and sat back to wait for it to do its thing.


10:30 PM

"Failure configuring Windows updates. Reverting changes. Do not turn off your computer".

Oh.

Obviously, the system had decided to crap itself when faced with so many updates at once. No biggie, I thought. I'll wait for it to roll back, then install them in blocks of, oh, say, 20 at a time. Problem solved.

Except not.


00:30 AM

Two hours(ish) later, after several reboots and the same error message continuing to appear, it began to dawn on me that this wasn't going to be plain sailing. Realising that there was nothing for it, I pulled the plug and booted into the recovery menu, intending to make use of the system refresh utility that made its debut with Windows 8.

To explain, you have three options when you do this. The first and least invasive of these is a system restore, which takes you system back to an earlier point in time with a minimum of hassle. This has been a standard feature in Windows for many years now, and I've used it on a few occasions in the past without any problems.

Error message telling me there are no usable system restore points. Strike 1.

The second, more invasive option, is a system refresh, which scrubs all your settings and installed programs but keeps your files intact. Not ideal, but oh well. I decided to try that.

"There was a problem refreshing your PC. No changes were made." Strike 2.

Option three is the nuclear option: what Microsoft calls a reset, which is essentially the equivalent of wiping your entire hard drive and reinstalling from scratch. Microsoft claims this means you'll lose your files, though obviously if, like me, you keep all your files on a secondary hard drive anyway, that's not the case.

"There was a problem resetting your PC. No changes were made." Strike 3.

At this point I realised the whole system was goosed to the point that Windows couldn't even nuke itself, meaning I'd have to do the job for it. By this time, it was approaching...


01:00 AM

Not a problem. I've reinstalled Windows more times and on more computers than I care to remember. It doesn't faze me, and it's not as if there's anything irreplaceable on my C: drive.


01:30 AM

And the process of installing a fresh copy of Windows 8 was straightforward enough. Once I'd got myself into a fresh desktop, I set about downloading the 100+ Windows updates all over again and installing them in chunks.


02:30 AM

Success! Windows was fully updated and ready for action. Only... where was the Windows 8.1 upgrade? There was no download showing up in Windows Update, where you'd logically expect to find it.

A quick visit to Google told me that, contrary to all logic, you do not in fact download the Windows 8.1 update through Windows Update, but rather through the dreaded App Store. OK, then. It was easy enough to find: a big button reading "Update to Windows 8.1 for free." Which I dutifully clicked.

And then got this message:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

So that's it? No explanation? Just "Something happened." Great going, Microsoft. Really fantastic job with the error message there.

Back to Google once again, and it turned out I was far from the only person having this problem. It appears to be a widespread issue with multiple possible causes, and nothing I tried, from multiple reboots to deleting the Windows Update cache, could fix it.


03:30 AM

By this time I was, to put it mildly, a little ticked off and having trouble keeping my eyes open. However, faced with the choice of admitting defeat and calling it a night, or staying up and persevering, I chose the latter. During my Google search for solutions to the aforementioned cryptic error message, I'd inadvertently discovered that it's actually possible to install Windows 8.1 without owning a Windows 8.1 key. Microsoft provides generic keys for use by businesses which are installing Windows on multiple machines at once, with a 30-day grace period after that to acquire and input a legitimate key in order to fully activate the installation. And, it turns out, you can activate using your Windows 8 key.

That's right. You can activate Windows 8.1 using a Windows 8 key, but you can't INSTALL Windows 8.1 using a Windows 8 key. Oh, Microsoft.

So I performed a complete reinstall of Windows. AGAIN.


05:00 AM

Seven and a half hours after I started what I thought would be a seamless and fast operating system update, I finally had a working, fully updated copy of Windows 8.1... with none of my programs and settings, of course, but by this time I was grateful just to have a functioning computer. I'll no doubt end up spending much of today reinstalling things, tweaking the OS to my tastes and so on.

So, at the end of the day, I guess the question has to be "Was it worth it for that fancy file transfer dialogue?" I'll leave you to figure that one out. For now, all I'll say is that this was a somewhat different experience to upgrading my MacBook Pro from OS X Mavericks to Yosemite, a process which took all of 25 minutes and required no user input whatsoever beyond restoring the privileges for a couple of tools I've installed to help OS X make more sense to my poor Windows-infused brain (Karabiner and ShiftIt).

Ding dong...

I woke up this morning to the news that Johann Lamont, "leader" of "Scottish" Labour, had resigned with immediate effect, giving an exclusive interview in the party's house journal, the Daily Record. In doing so, she has become the fourth SLab leader in a row to be seen off by Alex Salmond since he became First Minister in 2007. This just shy of a month after giving an interview to the same newspaper in which, following mounting speculation that the knives were being sharpened for her, she insisted that she was going nowhere and proclaimed her ambition to be the next First Minister. (OK, stop laughing...)

Artist's impression of Lamont's political fortunes

in the Yes-supporting Sunday Herald last week.

With her excruciating performances on Thursday mornings at First Minister's Questions and a knack for soundbite gaffes that would make George W. Bush blush, Lamont never appeared comfortable in the role of party leader, and has looked like a (political) dead woman walking for at least the last year. She also came across, either as a result of her actual personality or the scripts prepared for her by her spin doctors, as a bitter, spiteful individual -- a perception given credence by the hand grenade she lobbed at the party's Westminster leadership on her way out the door. She claims to be sick of being overruled by London, whom she accuses of running the Scottish division as little more than a regional branch office, and of failing to understand that Scotland's political centre is now Holyrood, not Westminster. (We could have told you that, Johann.)

That's right, the woman who campaigned so strenuously for Scotland to remain governed by Westminster has resigned because she doesn't like being governed by Westminster. I presume she doesn't "do" irony.

In my view, Lamont's departure is both a blessing and a curse to the Yes side. A blessing, because she leaves SLab in such a state of utter turmoil that it's difficult to see how it can recover. There is no heir apparent to her "crown" -- calling the talent on the Labour benches at Holyrood third rate would be overly charitable, and her accusations of London interference means that any "big hitter" parachuted in from the Westminster benches is going to have about as much credibility as... well, Johann Lamont. On the other hand, Lamont's ineptitude has long been viewed as a gift to the SNP. Truly, she was so poor that whoever replaces her can't help but look better by comparison. Then again, much the same was said of her predecessor Iain Gray...

One thing's for sure, I doubt the BBC's James Cook had any idea he was writing the epitaph for Lamont's career when he made this observation to her on a panel show back in August: