They play rival Mods in this striking re-working of the classic Who album.Satellite listings: page 62… on Sky CinemaQuadrophenia (10pm) Phil Daniels and Ray Winstone had already co-starred in Scum, but it was Franc Roddam’s memorable 1979 picture that really brought them to prominence. In this searing piece by Istvan Szabo (with whom Brandauer has collaborated before, on Colonel Redl), Brandauer plays a leading German actor who finds his idealism gradually corrupted by the Nazis.ALTERNATIVELY… “I find that it’s become all too easy not to wear a poppy over recent years. I don’t refuse out of hostility, but somehow Remembrance Day and its symbols have been pulled away from their original object.”FILM OF THE DAYMephisto 12.25am BBC2Klaus Maria Brandauer may be best-known as the smirking, evil baddie in Sean Connery’s (unofficial) comeback as James Bond, Never Say Never Again, but some of his finest work has been in less high-profile, more arthouse fare. Unsurprisingly, celebrity dirt is a highlight, and you can even submit your own..
Saturday Highlights
DOCUMENTARY OF THE DAY
A Day to Remember 8pm C4In the run up to Remembrance Day, historian Patrick Wright presents this provocative film about the ways in which we choose to remember the dead from this century’s World Wars. But, Wright wonders, now that they are on coach-trip itineraries, what meaning do they have? The historian also questions the function of Royal British Legion poppies. The cemeteries under the supervision of the Imperial War Graves Commission in the 1920s represented the first widespread effort to commemorate soldiers who had lost their lives. http:// www.planet. com/dirtweb/dirt.htmlThe Museum of Dirt (above) does exactly what it says on the home page: dirt – rubble, dust, flotsam, jetsam – from around the world, bottled, labelled and displayed for your viewing pleasure. Don’t be put off by some of the pretentious waffle that accompanies the site either as, beyond that, it’s a good introduction to on-line Shakespeareana. After a short while, this rather clinical and painfully up-beat site, for all its good advice, grates – it gives you homework, for example.For a site with a bit of crunch, though, try Nerve ( www.nerve ). Working quite successfully at a non-sleazy but cool approach, it’s basically an intelligent sex site.
There are book reviews, not-at-all-bad essays on the presence of sex in canonical and current literature and not a little wit.SITES OF THE WEEKtech-two.mit.edu/Shak espeare/works.htmlNail that Shakespeare quote at this astonishingly dedicated site which has posted pretty authoritative versions of every play the Bard wrote. Most, I’m afraid, shape up like Romance 101 ( www.rom101 ) – ghastly, fluffy platitudinising.Light Your Fire (above) is a little better, in that it at least takes a rational approach to affairs of the heart, under the auspices of the fearsome-looking Dr Ellen Kreidman. Its main weakness is the lack of cross-referencing, but in every other respect it’s a pleasure: easy to read, fully searchable, divided topically and alphabetically, and – something the others have neglected – easy to read.Light my fire www.lightyourfire Going on-line for sensible advice about romance is as unrewarding as you might imagine it to be And we’re not even talking about the dating services here. And, though it’s drawing on only 16,000 articles, Encarta exploits itself to the limit.Encyclopedia is another rival (encyclopedia ). However, little thought has gone in to the placing of the search dialogue box.Last, but by no means least, is Comptons Encyclopedia ( www ptons /encyclopedia).
This rather tacky site trumpets its association with the on-line cuttings service, the Electric Library, and over 170,000 links. Here, full access is $50 annually, but the limited free service isn’t bad. For that, you get an impressive research and reference resource, with over 70,000 articles available.If it’s to succeed, the EB site will have to poach visitors from the on-line spin-off of Microsoft’s Encarta ( www.encarta.msn ). But it’s in the strange, distracted keyboard writing that Janacek’s true nature is expressed, and Drake was wonderfully alive to every inexplicable nuance, impulsive one second, reflective the very next, antagonistic and giving at one and the same time Blown-away leaves of music. Like the pages of the diary.Final performance tonight at 8pm, 0171-452 3000. By Mike Higgins
netgains independent.co.uk
www.eb When the Encyclopaedia Britannica (above) went on-line just over two weeks ago, you probably read about the result: 15 million hits on its first day and the whole thing seized up.