Hello, I don’t know if I have done any shameless self-promotion on here before, but knowing me it is quite likely.
Nonetheless, as I mentioned briefly in my last post, I am currently working at CNET UK as an intern.
Here’s a link to my first article to be put on the sight. Enjoy!
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson is perhaps one of the best gothic horror novels in history, standing tall amongst the likes of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein but, for all it’s infamy and for all the adaptations, the novel itself isn’t as widely read as you might think; I take it from personal experience, as someone who is new to classic literature but has, of course, grown up with it’s legends. Until the reading, I had never heard of the character Mr. Utterson and believed that the entirety of the suprisingly short novel was narrated from the perspective of Jekyll/Hyde if anyone; as it happens, the novel’s protagonist is a lawyer who has Jekyll as a client and only part of the text is from the vantage point of the titular character(s), and even that’s in the form of a letter.
I was suprised, when I found this novel, that it was only some 65 pages in length, to the point that many publishers print it alongside some of Stevenson’s other short stories and a wealth of annotations and background information, to pad out the book to sell more easily as a product.
This novel is as gripping as the other great gothic horrors, but perhaps isn’t as terrifying by modern standards; but this is, I increasingly feel, a symptom of Victorian literature: there’s very few horrors that took the imagination of those authors that hasn’t already been dreamt up, and doubled in horror, in 2010. Stevenson’s descriptions are vivid and tantalysing, and would’ve astounded the reader when it was published in 1886, but given we can basically replace our imaginations with TV, it’s hard to conjure up (based on Stevenson’s descriptions) an image as disturbing as one that can be simulated with a combination of CG and the fucked up mind of Tim Burton.
There’s an odd irony in the fact that, just as Dr. Jekyll (through his discovery) adopts a face and personality quite different yet still somehow, at it’s core, the same as his own, many stage and screen adaptations of Stevenson’s classic novel drop a great deal of the storyline, characters and subtleties of the original but maintain the core concept. To paraphrase (because it’s hard to hold open a book and type simultaneously) Dr. Jekyll “it seemed more express than the divided countenance I had become accustomed to call mine.” Rather than putting together a somewhat fragmented narrative as the novel does, jumping between Utterson being told a story by Enfield, Utterson’s own investigative narration, Lanyon’s letter and Jekyll’s closing statement of the case, directors often opt to follow (without narration) the chronological events of Jekyll and Hyde.
By all means read this novel, lit’s a rather unsettling examination of dual-personalities, half of which emerges from the legacy that the novel left, from the allegorical meaning behind the Jekyll/Hyde creature that emerges (Jekyll’s apparent struggle to know what to refer to himself as I found engaging), but also for the sheer enjoyment of the tale. I’ve often said that the lasting feature of gothic horror novels isn’t the imagery or the propensity of disturb, but more the psychological element, the reflection into one’s very soul and showing the harsh ugliness (and sometimes beauty) within.
P.S. Sorry for the short review, that new Sherlock Holmes series with the writers from Doctor Who starts soon. Oh, by the way, so that I can bend instead of break, my cardinal rule not to discuss personal matters, or anything not pertaining to the point, on this blog, I will only briefly mention that I got an internship at CNET UK and start on Wednesday.
One of the biggest criticisms of 3D, and one of the main reasons why it is yet to hit the big-time in home entertainment, is the clunky polarised spectacles that frequently make a screening of Toy Story 3 look like a librarian convention.
The Nintendo 3DS is the first commerically available product that attempts to use 3D technology, without condemning gamers to the same dowdy fate, and it’s success is yet to be decided. The technology behind (or should that be in front of) the 3DS’ three-dimensional screen is called a Parallax Barrier and, though it can allow the user to perceive a 3D image, it has massive limitations and would be hard-pressed to stand up to proper scrutiny (for a more in-depth look at Parallax Barriers, see Nintendo 3DS: How It Works). However, recent reports indicate that manufacturers, such as Sharp, Hitachi and Toshiba, are investigating ways of putting Parallax Barriers onto their latest range of 3D televisions.
Cinema’s have, by now, become used to dealing with 3D films; the sudden explosion of 3D films, with the use of more sophisticated technologies than the primitive red-cyan affair, last summer forced cinemas to adapt and, almost a year later, it has become commonplace. However, it was (arguably) easier for cinemas to sell 3D as, by and large, people come to the cinema with the explicit purpose of seeing a film, thus the environment was well-suited and the audience willing to accept the glasses. At home there is no such guarantee, and surveys indicate that people are far more likely to multi-task while watching a film or TV, making the latter almost like background noise. The inception of High-Definition TV has been an unsteady one, as people are, again, less likely to invest in something that they will only half-appreciate; at least here, the only issue is cost which has gradually come down and, combined with major sporting events, allowed a greater uptake. 3D, on the other hands, makes more physical demands. The only way to ensure a great enough uptake to warrant the investment from film studios is to eliminate the glasses, but is using parallax barriers really the right way to go about it?
As we saw in a previous article on MediaKick, there are massive limitations to using this technology, which make the glasses almost seem bearable, the most prominent of which being the fact that a full 3D image is only acheivable if the viewer sits at a very precise angle and manages to remain perfectly still for the duration; making 3D at home a choice between neckstrain or eyestrain. Obviously, this fact has not gone unnoticed by the biggest consumer electronics companies in the world, and are attempting to reduce (if not remove altogether) the problem using what’s being dubbed ‘multi-parallax’. Essentially, multi-parallax (as the name suggests) uses several barriers (in Toshiba’s case, nine) to create nine “golden angles” at which the full 3D image can be perceived, over the Nintendo 3DS’ solitary angle.
No doubt Sharp, Hitachi and Toshiba’s R&D departments will spend the next few months painstakingly experiementing to find out which “golden angles” are needed to ensure the viewer gets all the 3D goodness they can, but either way there is still this damning drawback on parallax barriers. Film buffs, who are always the first to take up a new home cinema technology but always to first to trash it, will marvel at the crisp graphics, but fume when their head slips slightly and the screen looks like the cameraman suddenly developed cataracts.
Good evening, Blucher!
Apologies for my absence of late, I have had a number of things to deal with; fortunately I’ve got a lot of draft posts to complete and post so anticipate a lot of activity in the coming days, starting with this Dracula review……you know what, this font is really hard to read so I’m going to find something a bit more legible.
By the way, as ever I speak quite candidly of the events in the story. If you don’t want to know the ending, then enjoy my Twilight rant instead.
Vampires are a concept almost as old as the tired clichés in romantic literature that authors like Stephenie Meyer trot out regularly, so it’s hard to really know how one learns about them, though I suspect my generation’s first exposure to vampires may be here. Though the folklore has been around for centuries and there have been several vampire novels that predate, Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ stands as the best known and, by many, thought to be the original vampire story. As the modern exposure to vampires comes in the form of pre-teen novels like the ‘Twilight’ series and “gritty” American TV Dramas like ‘True Blood’, it’ll be hard to write this review without making some comparisons; but this is not a rant about how much I despise Twilight, I’ve already done that.
I feel, increasingly, like scary movies have spoilt me in what I expect from the horror genre, as I went into reading Dracula, I anticipated a continuous narrative of one horrific event trapped in Castle Dracula, a la ‘House of Wax’, which would serve a few jumps and a bit of gore but nothing genuinely chilling. I was quite wrong. The narrative of ‘Dracula’ is a collection of journal entries from the main protagonists and occasional newspaper clippings over several months. The titular Count Dracula is, in actuality, seldom seen past the first act, and so he becomes much more of a feared presence which lends the story a far more eerie and paranoid element; it’s a mark of good horror to invoke true fear rather than just the shock-factor of a bit of blood and human dismemberment.
A theme throughout the novel is skepticism, which I found quite engaging, personified through Dr. Seward’s reluctance to accept what has happened to Lucy (a female character whose infection by Count Dracula and eventual un-dead death serve to exemplify the vampire effect and provoke three of the main characters, all of whom were in love with Lucy, to action against this threat) as something unknown to modern science. Through the open-minded Van Helsing, Stoker delivers a kind of “treatise to the skeptic” on following evidence where it leads, even if the conclusion that is drawn goes against what one knows to be true. It’s not a criticism of science, it’s simply an imploration to scientists of the day to accept what evidence shows even if the conclusion that can be logically drawn from it contradicts known understanding; though this message’s significance today is debatable.
I had some gripes with ‘Dracula’, in particular that the latter 100 pages detail the preparations of the group to hunt Count Dracula down and then the actual travels of them as they head towards the Castle, hot on the heels of the now fleeing (yes, fleeing) Count. After a while the whole thing began to feel a bit ‘Scooby Doo’, all it needed was a detailed journal entry from Lord Godalming describing how they chased The Count through a hallway of doors that kept leading back on the same hallway and a talking dog. The ending is pretty disappointing and, though Stoker builds tension sensationally by describing the closing in on the Count on all sides whilst the sun is seconds from setting (at which point Dracula revives), there is little payout from this tension. There is a fight (of sorts) with a group of gypsies who are protecting the box in which Dracula lies “dead” during daylight, but they don’t really feel like much of a threat. They do, during the fight, manage to kill Quincey Morris, one of the protagonists, but largely Morris was an uninfluential character, who has such a swift death with so little emotive impact that I can’t help feeling that the character was written in as an afterthought whose only narrative purpose was to die. The death of Count Dracula is underwhelming, the demise of the titular character around whom the entire novel has centred feels like it should be somewhat more ceremonious, but details on the vampire affliction make this inconvenient. I suppose one of the biggest drawbacks of having a character who is completely incapacitated and vulnerable for half the time (during the day), and then near-invincible the next (the night), is that he can only be defeated in the vulnerable state which, if he’s unable to put up any resistance like Count Dracula, makes for a weak ending.
The passiveness of Dracula at his death is an interesting characterisation choice and one that is probably significant, were I more learned in the art of analysing literature I may notice it. But to me it seems to be at odds with his portrayal and indeed description throughout as a powerful, cunning creature who has survived centures, yet is no match for an old man and a knife. Perhaps Stoker intended the great fear and impression of power to feed the theme of paranoia throughout, as it turns out that for all the fear that the protagonists regard him with, he fails to live up to it when someone dares to challenge him regardless of reputation, as they do. Ooo, I’m analysing … fun.
There are, as you’d expect from a book more than a century old and still well-known, plenty of film versions, though the first was a massive departure from the original story as Stoker’s widow refused the copyrights. The best-known adaptation has Christopher Lee as Count Dracula and Peter Cushing as Professor Van Helsing and was made in 1958; I haven’t yet seen it but I expect it’ll be hard to watch it without wondering how Van Helsing survived the destruction of the Death Star.
It was the great thinkers of our time 3OH!3 who once said “Tell your boyfriend if he says he’s got beef,
that I’m a vegetarian and I ain’t f****** scared of him” and never were truer words spoken. However, it may now be even easier for the aforementioned boyfriend to obtain his beef with which to threaten human-herbivores as Amazon have lifted the moratorium on their new grocery delivery service, still in beta, in the UK to compete with supermarkets.
Amazon has not, though, opened a warehouse of their own produce, and instead the service will simply be a middleman between retailers, suppliers (and people who have a festering old can of tuna stashed away) and the consumer. Much as you can buy practically any item on Amazon from other sellers, often at a lower price like the infamous 1 penny books, the grocery department will be the first to list items exclusively available from third party sellers. Though no official confirmation has been given, the online retailer’s normal procedure of delivering goods through the post will likely be used in this service also.
Obviously, home grocery delivery is relatively old hat as practically every big UK supermarket has it in some form, but this is the first attempt by an already established exclusively-online store to do so. Ocado is currently the only other web-only service of this type, albeit with only moderate success, while Tesco, Asda and Sainsburys (to name but a few) have been running these services parallel to their brick-and-mortar stores for years. The first attempt to make a service like this work was Webvan in 1999, which went bankrupt in 2001 (though resurrected by Amazon themselves last year, presumebly as a precursor for this) and was described by CNET as one of the greatest dotcom disasters in history, probably just after the dotcom bubble burst and the continuing existence of Fred.
Though this sounds disgustingly like a fat-man’s eBay, it’s actually an interesting (if a little bit odd) exploration of the concept of The Long Tail. A Web 2.0 model that describes the capacity for exclusively-online stores to stock less popular products (“niches”) as well as the bracket of the most popular products (“hits”) as webspace and bandwidth costs are, more or less, negligible, whereas brick-and-mortar stores have limited shelf-space so much inhibit themselves to the “hits”. It’ll be interesting to see what manner of rare, unusual or plain weird foods will become available on such a well known company’s website once it begins democratising the trade of groceries, have you ever tried sauerkraut?
Presumebly this is only the first step in a new laziness-paradigm, all we need now is a legion of domestic robots, mass-marketing of Steven Hawking’s infra-red ‘blink switch’ computer controls and some sort of food to mouth interface for the Disney classic Wall-E to become eerily prophetic.
That’s it, now go wash your hands – the postman’s here.