tim wright: digital writer

Orange Fright Night

I was sent the link to a great gallery of photos from Orange's showing of 'The Exorcist' in Tower Hamlets cemetery.

Looks like a fun night. Why am I telling you this? Well, I worked with Poke London to script a little pre-screening fun - a series of simple daily puzzles based on a ghost story that clued you in on where to get tickets for this event, led you on a route through London to the graveyard and added a bit of a spooky vibe for when you got there.

And on the night my invented character - ghostly Beth who likes to push people under trains - actually made an appearance in the graveyard. Nice...

UBU.COM

"You could lose a lifetime here: www.ubu.com" says my friend Mark Whitehouse of www.seekasecondopinion.com. He's not wrong.

I'm particularly pleased to see so many important film works available online and free-to-air. My fave? Guy Debord, of course. 'Never work!'. Thanks Mark.

Moss, Figgis and Agent Provocateur

Is this the future of online movie making? http://www.agentprovocateur.com/miss_x/shadows.php

Four Eyed Monsters Video Podcast

I'm quite enjoying this - if only as an indication of what the future holds for companies like XPT - once (if ever) we get our arse in gear. The obvious point is that video is going to take over as the primary media. It's already quite watchable on an iPod, for example.

But let's not get carried away and claim it will be the ONLY media. The video podcasts are only ever one part of the overall story here (as Four Eyed Monsters demonstrates through its use of text and image, email external web services, social software and so on).

And the other point is that, frankly, the movie feature that is supposedly the final output of this process will probably be the least entertaining (and least valuable?) part of the whole proposition. To my mind, we need to find models that make the collaborative and quirky 'making of' part the bit that people actually pay to be part of, rather than forcing them to fork out for a self-indulgent end product that possibly sucks .

Watson spotting

Watching 'Battle of the Rive Plate' on DVD last night (yes, that's how busy I am...) lodger Surrey & I noticed Patrick Macnee and Nigel Stock in the same scene - a rare example of a Watson meeting a Watson; that is, both Stock and Macnee have at some stage played Dr Watson in a Sherlock Holmes movie.

We spent the rest of the evening wondering how far could we go with 'Watson spotting'. Could there be three in a single movie? Do actors count as Watsons *before* they have even played the part? For example, both Stock and Macnee were yet to play Watson when they met on the set on 'Battle of The River Plate'...

As usual, the Web has subsequently proved very useful. Here is a list (not comprehensive) of Watsons from German Wikipedia:

Hubert Willis in einer Kinoserie der 1920er-Jahre

Ian Fleming (das ist nicht der James Bond-Autor!!), u. a. in The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935)

Fritz Odemar im Film Der Hund von Baskerville (1936)

Heinz Rühmann im Film Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (1937)

Nigel Bruce, u. a. in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)

Paul Edwin Roth in einer Fernsehserie der 1960er-Jahre

Nigel Stock in einer Fernsehserie der 1960er-Jahre

Donald Houston in A Study in Terror (1965)

Colin Blakely in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

Robert Duvall in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976)

Thorley Walters u. a. in Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes (1962)

James Mason in Murder by Decree (1979)

Ben Kingsley im Film Without a Clue (1988)

John Hillerman in dem Fernsehfilm Hands of a Murderer (1990)

Patrick Macnee u. a. im Fernsehfilm Incident at Victoria Falls (1991)

Edward Hardwicke in einer Fernsehserie der 1990er-Jahre

Ian Hart in einer Fernsehserie der 2000er-Jahre

See also: http://p098.ezboard.com/fscarletstreetsherlockholmes.showMessage?topicID=379.topic http://www.geocities.com/~smidden/GoodOldIndex/SHActorFilmTVList.txt