Happy Newman

Happy new year to the readers of this blog.

Let's hope you are kept as busy as the writer Kim Newman was last year, who made so many appearances on BBC4 in recent weeks that it sometimes appeared as if the channel was devoted to him. (I note this with pleasure, as his obversations were generally interesting and coherent.)

Here's a younger Kim offering a plot synopsis of the David Cronenberg movie Videodrome:
"... the film follows Max Renn (James Woods), a cable TV hustler in a near-future Toronto whose justification for his channel's output of 'softcore pornography and hardcore violence' is 'better on television than in the streets'. Renn is trying to track down a pirate station that's transmitting Videodrome, 'a show that's just torture and murder. No plot. No characters. Very realistic', because he thinks 'it's the coming thing'" (Nightmare Movies: The New Edition, London: Bloomsbury, 1988 ed., p.119).

How come so many recent media developments, not least the alleged democratising consequences of mobile video cameras, make one think s/he is living in Videodrome? Like I said, happy new year.