Hopefully this is allowed. Have been watching Taskmaster on Youtube so naturally a video of David Mitchell's book where he talked about Victoria appeared on my feed. In the comments someone mentioned that they were introduced by fellow Taskmaster contestant David Baddiel, so I googled it and found this:
>The couple were first introduced to each other by fellow comedian David Baddiel, who played matchmaker when they both attended the same film premiere in 2007.
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>Victoria admitted: "He specifically said to me, 'There’s David Mitchell over there, I think you should probably marry him, I’ll get the ball rolling by introducing you.'"
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>She added: "I thought that was ridiculous but, a couple of hours later, I thought I would probably marry him."
How neat is that? On a side note I wonder what kind of team David Baddiel and VCM would have made on TM lol. Would the two 'negatives' (since they both finished last on their respective series) have joined up to be a positive?
It’s just not bloody fair.
I often see Cloud Atlas and the Bone Clocks recommended around Reddit (although I haven't got round to reading these yet, so no spoilers please) and the name David Mitchell always stands out due to the UK comedian - so of course, when I saw this book lying in a hotel bookshelf, I had to pick it up.
I wasn't quite ready for the work of genius I was about to delve into. Mitchell is a superb writer, with beautiful descriptions, turn paging tension, realistic characters and wonderfully imagined concepts.
The idea behind this novel, with 9 interconnected stories, is genius. The first protagonist being a member of the Tokyo subway attacks cult was a bold starting point. Then we get a couple of real life love/loss/work dillemmas in Tokyo and Hong Kong, before incredibly all the themes/history of Jung Chang's Wild Swans are swept through in a short chapter covering decades of a Chinese woman's life. When things turned to a chapter written from the perspective of a disembodied spirit who travels from mind to mind, I just couldn't put the book down.
Great great book. I would have loved to known more about the fate of the Chinese maid who seduced her boss, seen more interaction between the woman on the Holy Mountain and her family, and the fate of the non corporeal entity after it makes it's life altering decision. I have heard that other characters crop up in other Mitchell works, so I'll keep an eye out as I work my way through them.
Cloud Atlas next...
I remember watching it. I remember it was one of the only episodes I watched without my wife and wanted to show it to her, but I can't remember which episode. Even weirder, when I search "David Mitchell" and What we do in the shadows, absolutely nothing comes up. I remember the scene was less than 10 seconds and he had no lines. There might have been voice over going on at the time. Point is, I can't find it, nor any indication that it even exists. I'm not nuts, am I? David Mitchell WAS in one episode for a scene, yes?
- Found what I was talking about. It was S03E01 when Nadia was talking about scrambling the brains. I realize it’s not really David, but it looked pretty similar to me.
I just want to see David when he loses.
I'm pretty sure it was WILTY. David says "(talking about comedians) It's no accident we're here. We all have a deep insecurity within us, that we fill with the affection of strangers."
https://gizmodo.com/when-lana-wachowski-asks-you-to-write-matrix-4-you-say-1848230746
>“It was Fall 2018 and Lana asked for a Zoom... and she outlined one or two ideas for Resurrections,” Mitchell told io9 over the phone. “And while she was speaking, I was already thinking, ‘This sounds great and if she is telling me this just by chance to ask if I’d like to be involved, then it would be yes.’ And she was and it was.”
>Eventually the trio got together in a hotel to figure out the beats of what would become the fourth Matrix film. Each would write scenes and, eventually, Wachowski would kind of smooth them all out and make it cohesive. During that time, Mitchell and Hemon found themselves in sort of a Matrix school as Wachowski would explain all of the minutia and backstory she and her sister had been thinking about for decades.
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>“I remember this one day when we were writing it [and] a couple of hours went by when she was talking about all these other possibilities,” Hemon recalled. “It’s not that they wanted to shoot and they couldn’t. It was just that they imagined more than was necessary for the story itself. The backstory was so elaborate and huge and expansive.”
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>Mitchell adds that he feels that attention to detail is why the franchise has continued to be so popular. “I think it makes the world building absolutely copper bottomed and solid and robust,” he said. “There’s nothing kind of makeshift or floating about the world building of The Matrix. It’s really solid. It feels really solid on the screen because it is really solid in Lana’s head.”
>“Some of the [movie clips] were in the script... but also some of the things that we wrote were replaced, and the movie’s better for that,” Hemon said. “The scene in a coffee shop in particular was intercut with Neo’s memories of Trinity. It was something that we worked out in that scene that showed how strong their love is, although they cannot quite formulate or understand it in that moment. But then to intercut with the old movies gave. and not only in that scene in a particular way, value [to] those movies. The movies as memories. That’s a fascinating concept.
Hello,
I'm a big fan of David's from his various incarnations and just discovered Would I Lie to You.
In a couple of montages on YouTube I noticed he is called repressed and middle class but at the same time they make fun of his posh ways. In the States he'd be called rich and upper crust, not middle class. Or is that the same as rich?
Also, why repressed?
I wish I could dig up the clips but they were long montages and I didn't bookmark.
Thanks!
Among other things.
https://www.avclub.com/matrix-resurrections-co-writers-aleksandar-hemon-and-da-1848234303
>AVC: The scenes in the “real world,” where humans and machines are working together and growing strawberries, is a nice new wrinkle. Were there any personal favorite ideas like the strawberries that were close to making it into the movie but ended up cut?
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>AH: I think the most exciting thing that we had to give up because it was too expensive was the machines were supposed to be speaking and they were supposed to be communicating. But the CGI would’ve been very expensive for that.
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>There was also a very elaborate and aggressive machine in the Machine City, and we had a name for that machine: “Animalium.” Morpheus was supposed to fight this big mechanical monster, so the good machines and the bad machines were supposed to have more prominence, but it was too cost-prohibitive. I know this because I was writing dialogue for those machines, and there was a point where I couldn’t convince myself that machines would be saying the same things that humans would. So the dialogue was lousy. So I had to realize that I couldn’t write machine dialogue. Well, I couldn’t then. Maybe I could now. Next time.
David seems to be one of the most-wanted potential contestants, but sadly on today's episode of Richard Herring's podcast he has reaffirmed that, despite being a fan of the show and having been invited, he has no interest in taking part. The short version is that he seems quite anxious of the idea that expectations would be high, and that it would only ever be worse than people are imagining, because he doesn't enjoy games and puzzles enough to be a good sport about being bad at them.
Here's a few noteworthy comments:
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"I've been asked, and said no thanks. I think it's a very good show, really it's very funny, but I don't want to be on it. My feeling is ... I think I'd be shit, but not in a funny way."
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"The thing about the fact that people say 'oh you should be on it' is that people think maybe I'd be quite a good sport about it. And I don't think that people thinking that would increase if I am on it. It's like, I've been asked on Celebrity Mastermind because people think I might be quite good at that - so, why would I go on it then? All you can do if you go on it is achieve a situation where people think you're good on it, because you've been good on it. I'm in that situation already, all I can do is ruin it by going on it and turning out to be considerably more ignorant than people expect."
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[Victoria] "did have a nice time, but she really likes games and challenges and puzzles, and I find puzzles... puzzling. If it's not immediately opening up to me, a puzzle, I start getting cross and thinking 'are you saying I'm stupid, puzzle?'"
I just watched the livestream of Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast (RHLSTP) with David Mitchell as the guest, and he stated very clearly that he had been asked to appear on Taskmaster, but basically he has no interest in exposing himself as a monster. He's very happy that people think he would be an entertaining contestant, and feels no desire to prove or disprove that theory.
I haven't read a lot of fantasy, so I'm curious what fans of the genre think.
I personally love him. The man could deliver a letter bomb and it would be hilarious. But I can totally imagine his general persona (condescending, sarcastic, hyper-intelligent) rubbing people up the wrong way. He's Oxbridge-educated, incredibly posh and not afraid to voice his very strong opinions. In his favour, his opinions have always seemed to me extremely grounded in logic, and he does come across as a genuinely compassionate guy.
Surprisingly, I've never personally met anyone who doesn't like him. I know folk who are neutral, but no active dislike. I wonder if it's because most people know him from Peep Show, where he clearly pokes fun at his more grating personality traits? I can imagine many find that quite endearing.
So I'm curious; what do you think?
From the paywalled version of: https://www.tovima.gr/2021/11/14/vimagazino/i-leoforos-tis-outopias/ sent to me by /u/yrg_lh
Translation:
>"I cannot say much about the film, but I can share the unexpected story of how an obscure British novelist found himself involved with this project. Lana and Lilly Wachowski adapted theatrically, in collaboration with Tom Tykwer, my novel "Cloud Atlas" in 2012. Then we collaborated in the series "Sense8". Their parents died a few years ago in a short period of time of a few months from each other and Lana in her grief had an idea for a new "Matrix". When she revealed it to me, I immediately accepted with joy to contribute to the script. I saw the film in Berlin in September. It's really good. I cannot tell you what this film is about, but I could explain what it is not. It's certainly not yet one more sequel, but something autonomous that contains however the three "Matrix" that preceded in a really ingenious way. It's a very beautiful and weird creation. It also achieves a couple of things that we do not see in action films, meaning it subverts the rules of blockbusters.
There are various instances of David going along the line of "The problem with this game is that... it plays tricks on your mind" and explaining the genius of show by saying something like it makes you think the implausible is true, and the plausible is false. I don't know which particular instance I'm looking for—right now all I have is the David O'Doherty one about birds with leg warmers, but that's not the one I'm looking for.
edit: I'm now also looking for another instance, whereby a panellist said that their claim is true during the process of telling their story, and David said something like "don't insult me by saying that...this could be false and that's the nature of the game" (I'm paraphrasing).
second edit: I've found what I'm looking for thanks to u/Devilled_Advocate; thank you to everyone else as well!
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
