Missing Out: The Great Londoner

Tomorrow, Charlie Chaplin, The Great Londoner, opens at the London Film Museum.

The blurb calls it "An exhibition devoted to the greatest artist in the history of cinema".

Sadly, as today's press invite landed in my inbox this morning (and it closes at 5pm), I've missed the press showing, which is a shame. I think the exhibition sounds kinda fun. More blurb:

Visitors will discover exciting new insights into the life and career of Charles Chaplin, the boy from the London slums who won universal fame with his screen character of the Tramp, and went on to become a Knight of the British Empire.

Then I realised this is simply another section of the disappointing Movieum, which I've written about before. It's due to be a permanent exhibition. So just another section of the already hopelessly unwieldy beast. Let's hope it's been put together with a little more panache than the other sections I've seen.

But even on the website (which is a nice example of a badly put together website) there's confusion. At the bottom of the page about the "new exhibition" (if it's a new permanent collection, call it a bloody new permanent collection), the same thing seems to have another name:

The Charles Chaplin – Citizen of the World exhibition will be a permanent feature and entry is included in the admission price of the London Film Museum.

Quelle mix-up.

And what about the name change? Are they rebranding themselves? I have to say The London Film Museum certainly has more googlability, and makes far more sense to your passing tourist than the dreadful Movieum name.

But all these little errors and inconsistencies just make me itch. If you can't get your website right, I'm really not convinced you've got ANY of your facts straight. Maybe I'm being pernickety. But if museum curators and their website copyists aren't pernickety, then surely they're in the wrong job?

London's Movieum: Disappointing

My Mum and I visited the horribly-named The Movieum last week. I had been forewarned by people at work that it wasn't a great example of London's wealth of world-class museum spaces.

But it was starting to rain, we'd just done the London Bridge to Waterloo Walk, and I remembered that there was a display of Beatles photos by the Getty people on show (just the kind of thing that Mum would like), so we decided to give it a go.

After chatting up the man at the front desk (explaining that we only really wanted to see The Beatles stuff, not the rest of the grinds-teeth-at-the-terrible-name "Movieum"), he gave us concessions. So, instead of it being £17, it was a tenner each. (But Mum would've had a concession anyway... but... blah, it's what he offered us.)

The Beatles photos were fun. The usual Getty stuff; things you haven't seen before, huge, blown-up, classy, black-and-white shots in plain frames, with tiny nuggets of interesting info by the sides. Getty, increasingly, do this kind of thing rather well. Although I always feel, if you're having to pay for it, it's a bit like money for old rope: they already own the pictures, they're very cheap to reproduce, your money's just making someone rich richer.

But of course, the subject of The Beatles, those ordinary boys being extraordinarily famous, going from ordinary to nuts while in extraordinary circumstances on tour is a compelling one. Although it was almost ruined by the continual, play-it-until-you-go-crazy, sound of Hard Day's Night being played on a loop every four minutes. It must drive the people who work there to distraction.

From there, we went around the rest of The Movieum (gah, it isn't getting any easier). It's a labyrinth of corridors, doors, small spaces and odd exhibits. The sheer scale of the space is surprising. Especially condsidering they don't seem to have that much to show.

We wandered the corridors, stopping to read typo-ridden factoids about various stars, from Keira Knightley to Orson Wells (the sort of thing you can read every day on IMDB) and looking for something else to look at.

The Period Dramas room caught our eye (of course.) But all I can remember from it is a spear from Zulu (never seen it), a tiger skin(?) and a costume worn by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator. Not terribly impressive. It was the same in each of these little rooms. A few unimpressive pieces of tat that was once used on a film set, a speaker in the corner playing something vagely associated with the genre, but the words were mainly incomprehensible, and that was it.

We did like watching / listening to a piece on Pinewood (where my bro got married a couple of years ago) in a corridor dedicated to British movie making, but the vid was the sort of thing you should be able to see on YouTube whenever you want. It shouldn't cost you £17.

I wonder if movie buffs totally love the place? I wonder if people who are into the sci fi, the monsters, the daleks you can see there think that this is London's greatest attraction.

To me, it just felt like another of those Madame Tussauds places. You wander around going, "Oh, look, it's... blah" and don't make any connection, learn anything, or feel any sense of satisfaction beyond the simple warmth of momentary recognition.

The Movieum: it's the Alistair McGowan's Big Impression / Dead Ringers / I Love 1994 of museums.