Cold Lazarus

Last night I watched the first two episodes of Cold Lazarus, which was the last work by the writer Dennis Potter before his death of cancer in 1994. The show was broadcast in 1996 immediately after Karaoke, and the two shows kind of follow on from each other. In the 1990s writer Daniel Feeld (played by Arthur Finney, reprising his role from Karaoke) dies of cancer but, over 370 years later his cryogenically frozen head is reactivated by a team of scientists who want to study his memories. The future is depicted as a grim and violent world where Britain no longer exists as a country in it's own right and where the world is controlled by vast Virtual Reality entertainment companies who want to buy Feeld's memories to sell on their networks. However the scientists notice that Feeld seems to be attempting to edit and control the memories they can access, which makes them suspect that more of his brain than his memories have been accessed. It's a very dark and genuinely disturbing science-fiction piece but it does have plenty of wildly funny elements.

Today I took the day off work to celebrate finishing NaNoWriMo. In the morning I went off to the cinema and saw the movie Paranormal Activity, directed by Oren Peli. The film revolves around a young San Diego couple who seem to be plagued by unexplained phenomena, and so the guy, Micah (Micah Sloat), buys a video camera to record the events and, as with The Blair Witch Project, it's their home video footage that, allegedly, makes up the film. It's actually really quite scary, with most of the scares coming from strange noises and shadows in the dead of night.

After the movie I went out and did some shopping. I got the DVD of the TV serial Pennies From Heaven, which is another one of the Dennis Potter shows, and a book called The Wire: Truth Be Told by Rafael Alvarez, which is like a guidebook to The Wire TV series containing episode guides, interviews, behind the scenes pieces and essays.