» July 2006 Archives
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Posted by James Hunt at 11:59 PM | Comics
| Responses (0)
You can't take three steps in the Marvel Universe right now without stumbling over a Civil War book, so this week I'm reviewing three of them and shoving in Uncanny X-Men for good measure. To be honest, I could do more, but in this heat it's difficult enough to write these, let alone anything extra. As well as X-Men, there's Civil War #3, Cable and Deadpool #30 and X-Factor #9 on the slate - but which one of these books features their lead getting a kneecap in the face?
Continue reading "Alternate Cover - 26th July 2006" »
Posted by Seb Patrick at 11:56 PM | Music
| Responses (7)
The best music video ever made, there.
I'd completely forgotten about that vid, having only seen it once or twice at the time (it wasn't a massive hit, despite being one of the best songs Jarvis has ever written), until I followed a link on Pitchfork just now. Marvellous.
(well, maybe not the best, as it's no Buddy Holly, for one thing. Still bloody fantastic, though.)
Monday, July 24, 2006
Posted by Phil Reed at 11:47 PM | Books
| Responses (2)
A more definite followup to the very enticing news Phillip Alderman posted last week.
A coworker of mine happened across this news item online. That's actually a bit of a cheat, because she found it on Earthlink and I'm linking to CNN, but an item regarding Pynchon novels sort of deserves to be convoluted at least a little.
Continue reading "Against the Day: 900 pages of new Pynchon" »
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Posted by Phil Reed at 7:28 PM | Music
| Responses (22)
Investing a few hours in "assembling" the soundtrack to I'm Alan Partridge is a few hours well spent.
Where else are you going to hear "Music For Chameleons," "Bright Eyes," "Gaudete" and the theme from Return of the Saint in such close quarters? Oh, and I've now decided "Wuthering Heights" by Kate Bush is lovely stuff.
Of course the cheese factor is intense, but that only increases the fun. The soundtrack to Alan's various life crises is toe-tappingly tragic.
Visit this website for the songs in various episodes if you become inclined yourself to burn one. It's a good resource, but where on earth is "The Lumberjack Song" in episode 1-5? An oblique reference maybe? I can't find it in there at all.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Posted by Jonathan Capps at 7:00 PM | TV
| Responses (33)
With a complete set of series 2 reviews, Noise to Signal begins its weekly look back at the first series of
New Who starting with, of course, Episode 1 - Rose. In a way, it's a much misunderstood episode, with a hell of a lot more going for it than certain quarters of fandom are prepared to give it credit for. But does this episode still stand up today, 26 episodes later?
Continue reading "Doctor Who - Rose" »
Friday, July 21, 2006
Posted by Seb Patrick at 1:09 PM | Music
| Responses (3)
Maybe it's because I know so many girls who dress in polka dots and go to nights like How Does It Feel? to dance the night away to indie pop and Sixties soul, but this all just seems so startlingly obvious that you have to wonder why it hasn't been done before. Get three cute girls with nice voices, give 'em polka dot dresses and choreographed dance moves, back them up with a group of pretty boys called the Cassettes, and get them doing classically-danceable, soulful pop songs with a lyrical edge drawn from girl-punk, in the vein of Phil Spector colliding head on with Shampoo and Helen Love. How can it fail?
Continue reading "The Pipettes - We Are The Pipettes" »
Posted by Seb Patrick at 8:05 AM | Comics
| Film
| Responses (8)
Awesome!
Looks like an interesting mix of the light-heartedness of the cartoon/Archie comics/movies, and the earnest, serious ninja-ness of the Mirage comics/recent TV series (and hopefully with no elements of The New Mutation whatsoever). Animation looks pretty decent, too.
I mean, it's hard not to think that the Turtles have long, long since had their day; but then, their recent animated series appears to have been quite successful, so maybe there is a new generation of fans waiting for this movie. As it is, though, if you're of a certain age (i.e. the age that can remember the words to "TURTLE Power"), it's hard not to raise a smile at this trailer...
UPDATE : There's a bit more info on the film (and where it fits into the TMNT "canon" - apparently, in Superman Returns fashion, it drops in somewhere around the second movie, building on that series' continuity), including character posters, on - *spit* - AICN.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Posted by James Hunt at 2:03 AM | Comics
| Responses (0)
Any weeks where I get comics by Brian Wood are bound to be excellent - DMZ #9 fills that slot this week - but can the rest of the crop give it a run for its money?American Virgin #5, Civil War: Front Line #3 and X-Men #188 (featuring incoming writer Mike Carey) all get a shot at keeping DMZ from reaching the top spot again...
Continue reading "Alternate Cover - 19th July 2006" »
Posted by Seb Patrick at 12:06 AM | TV
| Responses (15)
New series of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipe about to start!
WATCH IT. Brooker talks about TV better than... well... anyone, really. The first series of Screen Wipe wasn't quite as compelling as his weekly Screen Burn columns, but it still pissed all over just about any other attempt in recent years to make a TV-show-about-TV (with the obvious exception of the incomparable TV Burp). The more people watch it, the more likely he is to make more, and more Charlie Brooker on our screens is a GOOD THING. Especially if it prevents him from writing any more Nathan Barley.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 10:36 AM | Net
| TV
| Responses (5)
Quick, before they correct it!
"Mr Fincham has promised to reinvigorate comedy on BBC1. He has reunited Ben Armstrong and Lee Miller, the comic double act last seen on Channel 4 five years ago..."
Ben Armstrong and Lee Miller? Would it hurt, in the interests of decent journalism, to at least get their fucking names right?
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 12:57 AM | Books
| Responses (58)
Here's a question. If you could recommend one book for someone to read - what would it be?
(Yes, I'm attempting to make myself more widely-read.)
Monday, July 17, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 10:37 PM | Music
| TV
| Responses (12)
No, it's not a L&H DVD release. But it's still excellent.
Posted by Seb Patrick at 1:56 PM | Comics
| Film
| Responses (18)
In the nineteen years since
The Quest For Peace, stories of the ongoing attempts to make another
Superman film could fill a book called "How Not To Make A Movie". But after ten years of the most painful of development hells, the world's premier superhero is finally allowed to join his lesser peers in the current comic book movie
renaissance, courtesy of Bryan Singer. And there's not a single giant spider or gay robot in sight.
Note that the review does not contain major spoilers, but the comments do.
Continue reading "Superman Returns" »
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Posted by Philip Alderman at 8:42 PM | Books
| Responses (5)
Posted by John Hoare at 2:33 AM | Games
| Responses (7)
This and this are currently my favourite adverts of all time.
Disclaimer: I spend far more of my time emulating the SNES than I do the Genesis/Megadrive.
Posted by John Hoare at 1:41 AM | TV
| Responses (22)
There's an interesting thread on the Doctor Who Restoration Team Forum at the moment - which has turned into a discussion about appalling cover art. Can anyone beat this supreme example, from the American Fawlty Towers laserdisc release?
Continue reading "Faulty? What's wrong with him?" »
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Posted by Seb Patrick at 10:47 AM | Music
| Responses (11)
I can't decide if the new, banjo-fied version of "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" (originally the best song on Franz Ferdinand's You Could Have It So Much Better by a country mile) is completely brilliant or completely awful.
Probably somewhere inbetween, but it really does vex my head, especially when I start to think about whether I'd listen to it, or to the original. Bah.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 3:04 PM | TV
| Responses (42)
The Search for the Apollo 11 SSTV Tapes (PDF, 2MB)
Fucking hell. Long, but well worth reading. Especially for the comparisons between the quality of picture these tapes hold, and the pictures that were actually transmitted at the time by the TV stations.
How the fuck can something like this happen?
Posted by Ian Symes at 12:57 PM | Music
| Responses (9)
I actually quite like this song, despite it being not-my-cup-of-tea-at-all on paper. And I find Lily strangely sexy, despite her dressing like a chav. And I don't even mind that she's Keith Allen's daughter. What's going on?
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Posted by James Hunt at 11:54 PM | Comics
| Responses (0)
Starting with Daredevil spillover from last week, there's still not much that I picked up. Brubaker's arrival on Uncanny was the real big event for the week, but after the pretty uninspiring Deadly Genesis (how many times can the second X-Men team's Krakoa origin story be retread anyway?) I'm not actually all that excited at the prospect. Beyond that, there's the first issue of, er, Beyond, and the latest stop on Planet Hulk. Next week is another huge one, so let's enjoy the down time while we can...
Continue reading "Alternate Cover - 13th July 2006" »
Posted by Jonathan Capps at 4:50 PM | TV
| Responses (39)
For the first 21 years of my life nothing happened, nothing at all, not ever. And then I met a man called The Doctor. A man who could pull huge TV ratings out of his arse. And he took me away from home in his magical machine. He showed me the whole of time and space on primetime BBC One.
I was a little disappointed with series 2. Disappointed with sub standard stories, dodgy acting and poor scripting. I thought the disappointment would never end. That's what I thought. But then came the Army of Ghosts. Then came Torchwood and the war. Then came a fuck load of Cybermen and Daleks and a pant wetting cliffhanger.
And that's when the disappointment ended.
This is the story of how I cried.
Continue reading "Doctor Who - Doomsday" »
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 4:02 PM | Net
| TV
| Responses (3)
Sunday, July 9, 2006
Posted by Phil Reed at 12:01 AM | Film
| Responses (11)
It's the kind of movie that practically begged me to watch it. There were advertisements everywhere, assuring me that this was exactly what it should have been: a straight-forward, easy-to-follow, fact-driven documentary about what we've done to the planet. I don't go to the movies often. The reason? Not enough films are like this.
Continue reading "An Inconvenient Truth" »
Friday, July 7, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 3:41 AM | TV
| Responses (10)
Most people (or at least, the kind of people who read this site) have at least one favourite forgotten comedy series. One of mine is Hippies, the 1999 BBC TWO sitcom written by Arthur Mathews "about" the counterculture - although in reality, the setting was merely an excuse to do a large number of silly jokes, something which sadly most ignorant journalists failed to understand. Lewisohn may complain that "the show failed to capture the zeitgeist of the time", but that is hardly the point; the show uses the situation for its own ends, rather than becoming a string of jokes about TEH DRUGS.
Continue reading "My Fantasy DVD: Hippies" »
Posted by John Hoare at 12:26 AM | Net
| TV
| Responses (8)
Remember this article? Well, take a look at this, written by... actually, someone should invent a word meaning "forum acquaintance".
http://objectdoesbuffy.wordpress.com/
Not, I hasten to add, that I'm responsible for Peter writing the site - just that it demonstrates that you can take a subject that you'd think has been written about to death on the net - until you investigate, and realise that most sites are just rubbish recycled episode guides and nicked images, rather than someone writing something actually interesting about the subject.
Only one post, and it's blown away 99% of Buffy sites out there - by writing with a shred of wit and intelligence...
Thursday, July 6, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 12:05 AM | TV
| Responses (4)
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Posted by James Hunt at 11:55 PM | Comics
| Responses (4)
It's a heavy as hell week, and I'm that's talking about the weather. I bought 9 comics in total, so rather than try and cram it all in, I'm going to concentrate on the Civil War issues and then throw in a couple of the others with next week's reviews, but fear not - the big Spider-Man reactions are all covered.
Continue reading "Alternate Cover - 5th July 2006" »
Posted by John Hoare at 10:34 AM | Net
| TV
| Responses (18)
Yes. Also being shown daily on BBC ONE - exactly like Series 1.
Just thought I'd start another story to discuss them, so people who don't want spoilers can keep away...
Posted by John Hoare at 9:44 AM | Net
| TV
| Responses (2)
Spoof panel show with Rob Brydon, premiering on the BBC THREE site. You need to be living in the UK and have Realplayer, though.
Not seen it myself yet, so off for a watch now...
Tuesday, July 4, 2006
Posted by Seb Patrick at 10:00 PM | TV
| Responses (20)
I've thought long and hard about this one. For obvious reasons - which will be gone into in immensely SPOILERY fashion - I was a gibbering wreck at the end of
Army of Ghosts. My immediate instinct was that this was an utterly incredible episode, and that it was easily deserving of the first five-star review that NTS has given out for the second series. And then I stopped for a moment. Was I just being blinded by those staggeringly good - and almost unbearably tense - last ten minutes? Were they a cunning act of smoke and mirrors, to mask a disappointing episode - nay, a disappointing
series? Certainly, this episode's counterpart last year,
Bad Wolf, benefited from a similarly wonderful closing act, leading to fonder reactions than such an admittedly good, but not brilliant, episode would have otherwise garnered. So I thought for a bit about everything that had happened in the preceding thirty-five minutes or so. And then I watched the episode again.
Continue reading "Doctor Who - Army of Ghosts" »
Posted by Ian Symes at 2:25 PM | TV
| Responses (22)
It's Freema Agyeman!
She, of course, played Adeola in Army of Ghosts (our review of which should be coming this evening), but will be playing a *different* character in Series 3, named Martha Jones. How are they going to account for that then? Whatever happens, she won't be in the Christmas episode, but will presumably be introduced fairly early on in the new series.
Monday, July 3, 2006
Posted by John Hoare at 12:40 PM | Radio
| TV
| Responses (22)
1) How pathetic do you have to be in order to fail to supply compliance recordings of your output? Especially when student radio across the UK manages it perfectly well? Clue: buy a few cheap video recorders from Argos.
2) I know this is old news now (although it is shocking - less the standards stuff (Kiss isn't really aimed at kids on the school run), and more the wind-up call on "Mr R", which goes far beyond what even I think is acceptable) - but I have to quote my favourite ever sentence from an Ofcom report:
There was a clear faliure by the Licensee to put in place the necessary management structure to oversee its "talent".
More sarcastic scare quotes in official reports of all kinds, please.
