As the title suggests, so forth.
What a difference a theme tune makes
In a mind-bending piece of coincidence I now have to remind myself that I cannot change reality merely by complaining about it. Obviously. But after ITV 4 started showing Magnum PI from the beginning, only to ditch the theme tune after the two-part pilot, I got annoyed. It was replaced by some smooth jazz muzak that might have served, had I not known what should have been there. Indeed as the action set pieces sometimes included that rousing theme that we were apparently not allowed for legal reasons to hear over the opening credits it was a strange case of the theme tune comes and goes at random. And then suddenly it was back, and has been ever since, as ITV 4 chugged on into season 2. And it really sets the show up as the fun blast that it is in a way that the smooth jazz muzak surely did not. Watching Magnum PI for the first time, after it somehow didn’t seem to get aired here first time round despite everything from Jake and the Fatman to Riptide making it across the Atlantic, has certainly changed my perspective on a couple of 1980s comedies. The moment when Eddie Murphy breaks the fourth wall in Trading Places on having the meaning of a BLT explained to him suddenly seems to come less out of the blue when Magnum has been breaking the fourth wall for three seasons to shoot a glance at the audience. And the magnum opus of fourth wall breaches, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, seems like an inevitable combination of Magnum’s sardonic PI narration mixed with fourth wall glances. Did American audiences of the time understand these movies in the light of Magnum PI? Who knows. Nice to think so.
A curious choice for a concert
It’s nice to see the return of Culture Night now that COVID-19 has been put behind us (cough) (touch wood) (it hasn’t gone away, you know). I was, however, quite surprised to see the programme put together by the National Concert Hall for its free concert on September 23rd. Earlier this year the London Times reported that the NCH would not be boycotting Russian composers after TCD and UCD announced that their orchestras would be. I am queasy about the idea of boycotting long-dead composers to protest a very live tyrant, and to simply lose the Russians blows quite the hole in the classical canon, so I was happy with the NCH’s decision. There is a difference though between not jettisoning the Russians and not playing anyone else. Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, Prokofiev’s 2nd Violin Concerto, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, arranged for orchestra by Ravel. When I first saw that programme I did a double-take, and thought Oh, it’s … All-Russian. I mean, it’s not that hard to not have an All-Russian programme, you could simply switch out Shostakovich’s Festive Overture for Brahms’ Academic Festival Overture. The fact therefore that it is All-Russian seems like it is meant to say something – music is above politics, or, these men born before 1917 have nothing to do with Putin. It’s just odd for that wider politico-cultural meaning to be left unspoken, and simply rhapsodise about Russian folk rhythms and Russian drama and romance. As someone suggested to me perhaps when I attend I should also say something politico-cultural but unspoken, and wear blue and yellow.
Talking Movies 