BBC Radio 4 are running a series of adaptations from the early novels of John le Carré. The first dramatisation (of Call for The Dead) was on yesterday morning and enjoyed it immensely.
One of the most enjoyable performances I’ve ever heard on the radio was the author reading his own work (Absolute Friends). He sounded like a madman jumping around the recording booth no doubt, doing the accent for little Mustafa and his mother Zara in broken Hungarian then jumping into eurobanker English and back to that lost boy Mundy and his head prefect voice, which lé Carre mimics well, considering he’s the son of a disgraced con-man / social climber. He knows his characters well and obviously cares about their voices beyond the page. Listen to this short interview on Front Row if you’re interested. There’s more lé Carre archived on the BBC’s website- he’s an writer well worth investing some serious time to. Remember this is the author of The Constant Gardener, that bitter melancholic story which was turned into an unlikely Oscar winning film. Much more than simple espionage plots. His new novel A Most Wanted Man does sound interesting.
this fella runs a country, but still has time to follow me on twitter and move his own furniture. mr. Obama has made it 100 days- some notable moments: the whistle stop train tour, the Obama’s decline $100,000 redecoration budget. Bo. Pres’ meets the press corps (they scrum and grovel), O! shirtless, visit Carla Bruni… and her husband, our monarch is totally gay for Michelle (apparently), the YouTube addresses oh and the inauguration. but what about New Orleans.. yer, whatta’bout it?
I love Armando, and ‘The Thick of It’ is absolutley brilliant. Here’s the mininova torrent. Notice if you go to the Amazon Page for this DVD you get a wee picture of the sarcastic wee Scot (Iannucci) himself… no DVD in sight.
YouTube Episode 1 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
“Hello Boys and Girls”, and all that Backseat Das Kapital is superbly acted out… then Alastair Campbell Capaldi quotes Billy Joel. Sheesh; funny funny funny stuff.
Not enough Iannucci? Really do sample some old-school ‘ Armando Iannucci Shows‘, from FistOfFun.net. Now to round-off a night of comedy with some Dad’s Army. Mmmh, BBC 7.
…at fifteen seconds after 9:41 a.m., on September 11, 2001, a photographer named Richard Drew took a picture of a man falling through the sky—falling through time as well as through space. The picture went all around the world, and then disappeared, as if we willed it away. One of the most famous photographs in human history became an unmarked grave, and the man buried inside its frame—the Falling Man—became the Unknown Soldier in a war whose end we have not yet seen. Richard Drew’s photograph is all we know of him, and yet all we know of him becomes a measure of what we know of ourselves. The picture is his cenotaph, and like the monuments dedicated to the memory of unknown soldiers everywhere, it asks that we look at it, and make one simple acknowledgment… #
