After the sad passing of David Bowie, we mourn too fast and say farewell Alan Rickman.
He was one of my favourite actors, truly!
He was born 69 years ago in Acton, North London not far from where I live.
I remember in 1982, first seeing him brilliantly playing the slippery unctious almost creepy Reverend Obadiah Slope in the excellent BBC drama series Barchester Chronicles, based on the novels of Anthony Trollope. Even then he was a standout.
Such role type would follow Alan Rickman throughout his long and varied career.
He appeared in many TV programes, theatre plays and movies. He was a theatre director as well as a consummate actor.
You could see in his eyes that he had a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ (not take seriously), some of his roles although he always gave a brilliant performance.
In movies as a co star, he often out-acted the lead actors/movie stars.
Sometimes underated and indeed he should have been the lead in many more movies.
Rickman was deliciously over the top, sardonically as the Sheriff of Nottingham to Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood Prince of Thieves.
This was followed by playing another baddie, Hans Gruber winning the battle of wit and acting with Bruce Willis in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
The movie that for me showed Rickman was a brilliant actor and playing a non baddie role. was in the excellent humourous and moving 1990 movie Truly, Madly Deeply.
Alan plays the ‘ghost’ of a recently deceased husband who returns to his desperately grieving wife to try and lessen her grief by showing what he was really like.
To younger generations, he was famous by reverting to type but playing the ultimately heroic character sneering Severus Snape in the immensely successful and popular Harry Potter movies.
For me, he would have made a superb Dr Who, He had all the attributes, eccentricity of Snape, humour (as he showed in the funny sci fi comedy Galaxy Quest) and commanding voice of reason essential to the good Doctor.
Added to that, Alan Rickman could also have been a flamboyant USS Enterprise starship captain in Star Trek 🙂
Spock Who?
Alan Rickman had a wonderfully mefluous baritone voice and could supebly deliver & convey dry humour, sarcasic and sardonic undertones to his lines with a twinkle in his eyes.
As noted, he had a marvellous range of expressions. Sneers, dry humour & poignancy would play across his face.
English & British acting has lost one of it’s crown jewels.
BBC radio dramas & book readings are among the best listening programs in the world. I have enjoyed many over many years. When relaxing or working on anything at home e.g. DIY etc., I prefer listening to the spoken word rather than the musical lyric!
Jean prefers listening to music while doing something like chores at home. She said fast beat music makes tedious ironing a little better.
BBC Radio 4 & Radio 4 Extra are the channels for drama, documentaries, comedy, news and magazine/lifestyle type shows.
BBC Radio has performed dramas and readings since 1932.
Some recordings from the 1940s onwards can be heard via the BBC radio archives.
Now with podcasts and BBC iPlayer & Sounds, we can hear these anytime; at our convenience.
Their drama & book collection covers diverse genres such as crime, thrillers, historical, classical, sci-fi horror, spooky and more, every taste is catered for.
BBC also excel at readings of famous books for those who are about to sleep; at 10.45pm weekdays they can listen to ‘Book at Bedtime’ readings. .
Popular Book at Bedtime
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The latest I listened to via Book at Bedtime is the latest James Bond novel called Trigor Mortis by Anthony Horowitz (one of the modern authors allowed to write new James Bond novels apart from Bond’s creator Ian Fleming).
As for dramas, I enjoy a good plot, interesting story and characters.
Sometimes, they produce intriguing plays/dramas that when I hear the start, I have to listen to the end!
Last week I listened to ‘The Man in The Lift’
A man has been contracted to repair the lift in a residential tower block. But trapped in a confined space and suspended in time, a lift can become a place of transformation.
A maintenance man at a London council comes to repair and service the lifts (elevators) in one of the council blocks.
While he works and ascends and descends in the lifts, he meets various and diverse tenants and becomes involved in their lives.
Most do not know their fellow neighbours, or even talked to them, such can be the isolation & loneliness of living in a tower block.
While going up or down in the lifts, these tenants take the time to chat with him. They come to find it easy to talk to him and confide problems to him. He offers sage advice.
They come to think of him as a friend they never had and even a father figure to one young teenager.
After completing his work and he departs, the tenants find that they have been brought closer together and talk to each other resolve any problems and become friends.
The lift repair man had become an almost mystical catalyst to those lonely tenants.
Yes, I am afraid, I surrendered. I watched Eastenders after a hiatus of 3 years. I made a decision three years ago not to watch EastEnders anymore as it was making me uncomfortable with all the nasty shenanigans and wheeling and dealing of horrible characters. I know it was not for real, it was only a tv soap but it did get me down!
Anyway, lately there was such a buzz regarding one of the show’s major character’s demise. I sort of saw the character ‘grow up’ (though several actresses had played the role over the years). I was, therefore, suitably intrigued with all the hoopla about the murder of Lucy Beal.
It seemed I was not the only one. William Hill, the betting shop, had to close the wagers that was started to guess the killer of Lucy Beale as they were inundated with so much bets, so many risk takers, more than what William Hill can handle! LOL I wonder who was the final winner and how much was won?!!!
Lucy Beale was killed last year and it took a long time to give her the closure she deserved. Everyone, every character in the soap was shown as the potential murderer and my goodness, they milked every scenario, every story line for all its worth.
EastEnders is a long running UK television soap which is celebrating its 30th anniversary. The Lucy Beale murder closure was the pinnacle, the highlight for the anniversary. And as a special treat to fans, followers and licence payers, Eastenders was shown as a ‘live’ action. For me this was not really a treat as most of the scenes were so stilted and the acting so wooden, you can use the actors to fence off the studio. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Many of the scenes were so dull and could have been easily written out completely.
The ending was tense and really unexpected and sorry to say a bit of a cop-out. Probably, they didn’t want any of their leading actors to go so they used the story line that Lucy’s youngest brother, Bobby, killed her.
The final outcome will be shown tomorrow. Probably Lucy will not going to be laid to rest just yet. Perhaps Ian will be blaming Jane for the murder and Jane would willingly go to prison as she adores Bobby and will do anything for him including cover for him……
On April 1, 1957 the British television programme Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper spaghetti harvest in southern Switzerland. The success of the crop was attributed both to an unusually mild winter and to the virtual disappearance of the spaghetti weevil. The audience heard Richard Dimbleby, the shows highly respected anchor, discussing the details of the spaghetti crop as they watched video footage of a Swiss family pulling pasta off spaghetti trees and placing it into baskets. The segment concluded with the assurance that, For those who love this dish, theres nothing like real, home-grown spaghetti.
The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest hoax generated an enormous response. Hundreds of people phoned the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this query the BBC diplomatically replied, Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best.
To this day the Panorama broadcast remains one of the most famous and popular April Fools Day hoaxes of all time. It is also believed to be the first time the medium of television was used to stage an April Fools Day hoax.
Since 1955 Panorama had been anchored by Richard Dimbleby, whose authoritative, commanding presence had made him one of the most revered public figures in Britain. If Dimbleby said it, people trusted that it was true. Which is one of the reasons why the spaghetti harvest hoax fooled so many viewers. His participation lent the hoax an air of unimpeachable authority.
Almost no one else at the BBC knew about it. The segment was not mentioned at all in the pre-transmission publicity handouts.
The line-up for that days show included a long segment about Archbishop Makarios, leader of the Greek Cypriots, and a clip of the Duke of Edinburgh attending the premiere of the war film The Yangtse Incident.
The second-to-last segment was about a wine-tasting contest, and then it came time for the spaghetti harvest.
Dimbleby, sitting on the set of Panorama, looked into the camera and without a trace of a smile said: And now from wine to food. We end Panorama tonight with a special report from the Swiss Alps.
The screen cut away to the prepared footage. When it was all over, Dimbleby reappeared and said, Now we say goodnight, on this first day of April. He emphasized the final phrase.
Panorama never attempted another April Fools Day spoof, despite numerous calls for a sequel. However, the hoax did inspire a number of similar stunts in its honour.
This film footage is from the Archive Collection held and administered by the Alexandra Palace Television Society.
GlobalGranary.org would like to join the campaign of worldwide “Stop Child Abuse!” We will highlight this most heinous criminality.
JPJhermes, On Patrol
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THE INTERNET AND ORPHANAGE – SCENES OF CHILD ABUSE
by Fr. Shay Cullen
Two major child abuse stories broke last week. The exposé of the deviant criminal behavior of paedophiles in the UK, America, and Australia and the Philippines who are sexually exploiting Filipino children through the internet, has been revealed in a BBC report which staff of the Preda Foundation in Olongapo city help them make.
In Lucena City, an orphanage, Sankey Samaritan Mission for poor children and youth was raided by the NBI and an American, Tom Randall and orphanage manager Toto Luchavez and his son, Jake Luchavez, were arrested and are charged with trafficking and child abuse based on strong testimony of some of the 31 victims.
The web-cam internet investigation, carried out by Tony Smith and Angus Crawford of the BBC shows that these paedophiles not only have thousands (one had 4 million) indecent images of children on their computer hard drives but pay gangs in the Philippines to get children to perform sexual acts online for them to watch. They traveled around the Philippines interviewing police, victims and social workers helping the children. Their next report will be to investigate the companies that allow this to happen and enable and abet the crimes against children through the internet.
The report that caused international reaction showed that even some relatives and parents of the children allowed them to be trained to perform so as to earn money. The report showed cyber-dens in Cebu city slums where poor children are the most exploited. Some people think that such acts before a computer-connected camera will do no harm as the customer is far away but one child victim said that it makes them lose their dignity, innocence and purity. In other child web cam crimes, the children are not alone and sex acts between young boys and girls are ordered up.
The children are persuaded that it is just play and fun, but this is severely damaging to children. Besides, the criminals doing this use the web-cam sessions to make child pornography which they transmit across the internet for money to paedophile who will pay for it.
It is clear also that web-cam crime against children is a warm up for sexual assault. The paedophiles soon get so aroused, they will abuse children in their own locality. This is not an evil done far away against Filipino children only but it is putting the children, where the paedophile is residing at greater risk. It is estimated that thousands of children are abused in this way.
Philippine police blame the Internet Server Corporations and cell phone companies for flouting the anti-child pornography law which mandates filtering of child pornography and any sexual images of children or illegal content passing through their servers. Republic Act 9775,under Section 9, says “The duties of Internet Server Providers (ISP) to monitor the content passing through their servers, notify the police of illegal content and provide the authorities the particulars of users who gained or attempted to gain access to an internet address which contains any form of child pornography. All ISPs shall install available technology, program or software to ensure access to or transmittal of any form of child pornography will be blocked or filtered”
The National Telecommunications Commission ((NTC) is supposed to oversee this also. The law says the ISPs at fault should pay a fine and have its license to operate revoked for non compliance. But the law is allegedly ignored, flouted and disobeyed. If so, it is a grave injustice to the Filipino people and the children worldwide.
The other child abuse scandal broke last week was that of a wealthy American Evangelist preacher, Tom Randall, and his Sankey Samaritan Mission orphanage house manager Toto Luchavez and son Jake Luchavez. The three were arrested by the NBI agents and charged in the multiple sexual abuse and exploitation of 31 children and youth. The orphanage is in Lucena city, south of Manila. Seven of the 31 victims are minors; three boys and four girls. Those minors and youth over 18 years have made strong statements to rescuers and to the NBI that they were systematically, sexually abused since childhood in the orphanage.
Charges based on the strong sworn statements of the many victims have been filed with the prosecutors. The accused deny all wrongdoing. From the holding cell at the NBI headquarters, they amazingly have access to the internet and cell phones and are organizing a defense campaign on social media Facebook, proclaiming they are being set-up and persecuted by the Philippine authorities. Five previous investigations were allegedly squashed by higher authorities in Lucena city.
The victims say they were abused by the manager and his son and begged Randall to save them but allegedly he did nothing. Police suspect that Luchavez may have secret video evidence against Randall. This has yet to be ascertained. He might try to turn state witness to cut a deal with the prosecutors. Assistant Secretary of Justice Geronimo Sy is monitoring the case. The victims are under the care of the DSWD although they are asking to go to a private care center where they can get help to finish their studies and get professional therapy. This case is a challenge to the Philippine government, the people and defenders of human rights to see justice done for the victims without compromise, bribery, or skulduggery.
