Post by EarlyBird on Jan 8, 2010 6:27:23 GMT 9.5
This is very strange and just found it. Was on in 1995 and found a review which is confusing also. The bit about wondering around wearing furs muttering about bears It would be fake fur because miranda would never wear real. I think her part in the documentry series was to do with people killing animals and they shouldn't kind of thing. This was a part of a review I found. If anyone has any clue where to find this then let me know. I am currently searching. Sounds like part of it was describing magic animals. Then the dolphin sounds to do with something else. Not sure. Have no clue.
This is the part about her and the link to the whole thing is below it.
Spare a thought for Miranda Richardson, currently enduring the unique discipline of narrating a Mark Harrison documentary. The last victim was Tilda Swinton, who intoned her way through Visions of Heaven and Hell, Channel 4's series about technological change. Richardson has been called in for Magic Animals (BBC2), a striking set of films about animals in myth; supernatural history, you could say. Last week she lurked in a sound- stage wood, dressed in furs and murmuring Delphic remarks about bears. This week she was made up to look like a dolphin and had to say things like, "Only now do we need them, only now do they seem to carry for us a message - an answer to all that went before and all that will come after."
But if this sort of thing doesn't make you grind your teeth to clinker, and if your sanity can survive the noodling ambient music that runs unbroken in the background, then there are real pleasures in the films. It feels like a talent misapplied to me, but a talent it undoubtedly is. Harrison through-composes his films with the same dogged persistence as his composer, styling each shot with slightly fantastic details. Sometimes this makes you bark with laughter, as when a dolphinoid sculpture from the studio suddenly appeared in a field, presumably in silent rebuke of the chemical works in the background. At other times they have an allusive force which reminds you how drably literal most documentaries are, how unconcerned with visual insinuation.
Introducing the moment at which humans first started to explore underwater, Harrison showed you a door floating on the sea swell, the colours echoing those of the ceremonial space from which Richardson delivered her text. Underneath the grim New Age blarney there is a proper thoughtfulness about some of the ideas explored. Maybe a few pretensions are a lot better than no ambitions at all.
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/review--no-scoop-for-a-newsman-as-happy-as-harry-1610483.html
This is the part about her and the link to the whole thing is below it.
Spare a thought for Miranda Richardson, currently enduring the unique discipline of narrating a Mark Harrison documentary. The last victim was Tilda Swinton, who intoned her way through Visions of Heaven and Hell, Channel 4's series about technological change. Richardson has been called in for Magic Animals (BBC2), a striking set of films about animals in myth; supernatural history, you could say. Last week she lurked in a sound- stage wood, dressed in furs and murmuring Delphic remarks about bears. This week she was made up to look like a dolphin and had to say things like, "Only now do we need them, only now do they seem to carry for us a message - an answer to all that went before and all that will come after."
But if this sort of thing doesn't make you grind your teeth to clinker, and if your sanity can survive the noodling ambient music that runs unbroken in the background, then there are real pleasures in the films. It feels like a talent misapplied to me, but a talent it undoubtedly is. Harrison through-composes his films with the same dogged persistence as his composer, styling each shot with slightly fantastic details. Sometimes this makes you bark with laughter, as when a dolphinoid sculpture from the studio suddenly appeared in a field, presumably in silent rebuke of the chemical works in the background. At other times they have an allusive force which reminds you how drably literal most documentaries are, how unconcerned with visual insinuation.
Introducing the moment at which humans first started to explore underwater, Harrison showed you a door floating on the sea swell, the colours echoing those of the ceremonial space from which Richardson delivered her text. Underneath the grim New Age blarney there is a proper thoughtfulness about some of the ideas explored. Maybe a few pretensions are a lot better than no ambitions at all.
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/review--no-scoop-for-a-newsman-as-happy-as-harry-1610483.html
