From the Dabbler archives, Rosie Bell's excellent tribute to John Gross. The post is also notable for concluding with some remarkable lit-crit twaddle from one Dr Dylan Trigg, subsequent star of a Noseybonk episode... I was sorry to hear of the death of John Gross. His Rise and Fall of the ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Rosie Bell
After reality shows like Big Brother and its spawn, the new programmes that are denounced as representing all that is low in British television are The Only Way is Essex (now on the ITV Player), and Made in Chelsea (E4, Mondays 10pm). These programmes are "structured reality" and are meant to show real ... Read More...
Definition of Pendants Coroner: when someone corrects someone else’s grammar, punctuation, spelling or factual knowledge, and in the process makes some risible error or errors. It derives from a thread on Harry’s Place when a commenter came to correct some points of grammar, punctuation, etc. under the moniker (unintentional) of ... Read More...
The BBC’s adaptation of D H Lawrence’s Women in Love looked lovely (viewable on the iPlayer). There was a lot of white, from the white horses at the beginning to the sheets hanging in the garden, the tiles in the kitchen and the women‘s blouses and petticoats. There were muted soft ... Read More...
Sunday evening, you’ve gloomily ironed your shirts for the week and now it’s time to settle on the sofa with a dram and see what the BBC has to offer you. A train appearing through steam, a man on a horse galloping along the beach, cars with running boards and ... Read More...
In the wake of its star, Natalie Portman, winning the BAFTA for best actress, Rosie Bell sorts the melodrama from the magic in Black Swan. This clip is my favourite piece of Black Swan, the melodrama that‘s doing the rounds at the moment. When I saw it one part of my mind ... Read More...
I was sorry to hear of the death of John Gross. His Rise and Fall of the Man of Letters is one of my favourite books and has been since I was a teenager. We were living in humid Hamilton, New Zealand, a city that was growing fast with wide sticky roads ... Read More...
So Peep Show is back with us, the nastiest and funniest of comedies. For those who don’t watch it, the show follows the grubby lives of two loser friends and flatmates. One is a wimp, a corporate drone and a geek (David Mitchell as Mark) and the other a chancer, a fantasist ... Read More...
I wasted about 100 minutes of my sleeping time the other night to watch an execrable film called Irina Palm. It starred Marianne Faithfull and I enjoy her singing, but her idea of acting is to be catatonic with slow, vague reactions. The screen play was dire - the story ... Read More...
The Song of Lunch, BBC2’s filmed version of Christopher Reid’s long poem, was excellent. I had some misgivings because a poem’s own words should be able to take care of themselves without the help of images and it’s an abomination to put music behind a poem, but I found it effective ... Read More...
