Maria C. Dolores

The Venetian Ghost

What’s it like being a Renaissance man when your host is a jerk-of-all-trades? What’s it like being obsessed with memory when you host lives in the perpetual present? George Barber’s The Venetian Ghost has as its hero a former ruler of Venice who, as a result of a semantic boo-boo, finds himself catapulted from the High Culture of Venice, Italia, to the High camp of Venice, LA. Barber plays up these oppositions in his usual offbeat style; having the figure of the ghost keyed in cartoon – like with Charlie and family – good-time Californians to a fault.

Taxi Driver Two

This revolves around Tim West, an advertising executive who is developing a Channel 4 programme on cooking for terrorists. Disillusioned by the hyper-reality of the media world, he joins Robert de Niro evening classes, but also falls under the pastoral influence of Johnny Morris. From the opening images of night-time, car-ridden streets accompanied by languorous sax on the soundtrack, through to the sub-Chandleresque voice-over narration, Taxi Driver II strikes you with its clever knowingness. But it's more than just a clever nod in the direction of contemporary film noir, just as it's more than an incestuous joke at the expense of the London based media world: it's a telling comment on the contemporary media culture of postmodernism.