So, Deal or No Deal's back. Hurrah! Monday's game was a bit of a damp squib, but Tuesday's and Wednesday's were absolutely superb. Go and download them if you didn't catch them, like if you're one of those people with so-called 'jobs'.
But anyway, more observant/anal/autistic viewers will have noticed that during the last few months of the first run, Noel would draw different little symbols on his hand every day. These were visible whenever he was on the phone to the Banker, and speculation was rife about what they could mean. When he was on Parky, Noel gave some bollocks about "cosmic ordering", but you could tell from the glint in his eye that he was hiding something.
And in the first three editions of the new run, the symbols have been "www", "red" and "box". Well, expect today's to be "club", as in www.redboxclub.com! OK, the prize isn't spectacular by the looks of things (you could probably get all that anyway just by asking), but it's a great idea. Typical Edmonds really - say what you like about him, he's always been innovative. Unfortunately, there's not a chance in hell that I'd be able to crack the code...
Continuing the BBC's excellent tendancy to publish out of print Doctor Who New Adventure books online and for free, we now have this.
Nightshade is one of the earlier New Adventures books and written by that fine fellow Mark Gatiss, who's gone and wroted 'The Unquiet Dead' and 'The Idiot's Lantern' for the new series.
So, why not fill in the long and miserable wait for Torchwood with a bit of a good ol' fashioned New Adventures goodness.
DO IT.
It's looking that way. See Steven Bagley and Rob Ford's posts. Most of the buzz surrounding Torchwood seems to confirm that that series is still being shot in HD, though.
A shame about Who, if it's true. Still, Series 4 will almost certainly be HD.
So Bob Dylan's newest album, Modern Times, came out today. Expect a review before long...though I want the music to sit, sit, sit and make a proper imprint before I go spouting...
Anyway: my gripe. I had the choice at Best Buy today. Did I buy the standard edition CD for $13.99? Or did I splurge on the "deluxe limited edition" for $19.99? Well, I'm a gigantic Dylan fan (ironically only 5'4") so I went for the deluxe...which was limited, so that's a selling point..and it also came with a four-song DVD. Okay? The "standard" edition was bundled with a 100 page booklet, which it didn't look like the deluxe had. Oh well. I made my choice. Deluxe it was.
Or was it? In the car I opened the CD...it had a nice cardboard "photo album" motif to the packaging...and that was it. This is deluxe? The DVD has four songs on it...three of which have been released on other DVDs and one of which is the live Grammy performance of "Love Sick" that's been included on at least three CDs that I already have. And a booklet? Nothing. A pic of Bob. Whoo-ee.
Who labels this stuff? Why would the "deluxe edition" actually have less to recommend it than the opening-day "standard edition?" A new 100 page booklet or four songs you have already? Plus the fact that "special packaging" more often than not gets demolished over time...
So I'll be back to buy the standard, I guess. You win this round, Columbia.
"Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type."
I took advantage of UK Drama's presentation of the whole of the excellent 1995 BBC adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice' tonight, and I noticed two interesting appearances: Lucy Davis as Maria Lucas and David Bamber as Mr Collins.
Doesn't Lucy look cute?
Those of you who know what the Hugos are know that they're a pretty big deal with those in the know about the SF community. As such, at the 2006 WorldCon (LACON IV) in Los Angeles, the following fictional works were voted to be honored with a Hugo Award:
Best Novel: Spin, Robert Charles Wilson (Tor)
Best Novella: "Inside Job", Connie Willis (Asimov's Jan 2005)
Best Novelette: "Two Hearts", Peter S. Beagle (F&SF Oct/Nov 2005)
Best Short Story: "Tk'tk'tk", David D. Levine (Asimov's Mar 2005)
Best Dramatic Presentation - Long Form: Serenity (Universal Pictures/Mutant Enemy, Inc.; Written & Directed by Joss Whedon)
Best Dramatic Presentation - Short Form: Doctor Who: "The Empty Child" & "The Doctor Dances" (BBC Wales/BBC1; Directed by James Hawes; Written by Steven Moffat)
There are several other winners, but these are the fiction categories. The rest can be seen here.
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that this statement in many adverts now is tantamount to casual racism? Maybe I'm sensitive to this because I spent three months successfully training Indians to do my job, which is more complex than a call centre one, but in my experience, the service you get from a company is to do with how well the company is run, not which nationality the call centre employees are. In my office, we often have employees from the Bangalore office working for several months, so god alone knows what they make of it. For me, it's a rather depressing indictment of how threatened a lot of Brits are when they hear a foreign accent on the end of the phone, which really shouldn't be the case in this day and age.
If you're of a certain age, you might remember a certain character named Megatron looking a lot like like this:
However, in next year's Transformers movie, he'll be looking not unlike...
As you may be aware, the third episode of Armando Ianucci's political satire Time Trumpet was last week pulled from the schedule and replaced with Episode 4. Episode 3 was eventually shown this week, but was reportedly missing the following footage for reasons best left to your own imagination:
(Hint, it's either the plane crash or the murdered Prime Minister)
Ah, The Venture Bros....the anti-adventures of a failed scientist, a frustrated bodyguard, two boys with an outlook on life that's at least forty years out of date and a self-proclaimed supervillain in a butterfly costume. And did I mention that this strange program actually contains some of the best characterization I've ever seen in a popular weekly program? Don't worry, I will.
Of course, I doubt many of you are familiar with The Venture Bros., and so I'll open my review with a short explanation...
Just to let you know that if you've been experiencing problems with the front page loading on NTS, that this has now been fixed. Hooray for me.
Also, due to what's happening with G&T, NTS might be a bit quiet for a few days until the new site up. It's unlikely to slow down completely though, as not everyone here is pathetically Dwarf-obsessed.
That is all.
Here and here. Don't forget to click on the next page links.
And yeah, I know these are linked to everywhere on the net now, but I didn't want you to miss them.
I also feel I should make some serious remark about the privacy concerns here, but I'm too busy laughing. And crying.
This is really, really good. I hope it gets picked up for a series.
Nice to see UKTV G2 giving this an airing.
But on the first episode tonight, they cut out the entire first scene. This is a great sequence introducing Richie and Eddie, and lasts about two minutes. It's our first introduction to the characters - and it's just gone. FFS. I gave up watching after that - I couldn't trust that the rest of the programme hadn't been fucked about with.
When you're reporting on the non-story (at least, in the sense that it's not national news-worthy, nor is it particularly new today) of Russell T Davies' Doctor Who Magazine-published admission that a Rose spin-off was commissioned and well into the planning stages before being canned, and when there's another, quite well-known and well-hyped spinoff in the works, is it really that wise an idea to put the story under the front-page headline of Doctor Who spin-off "cancelled"?
Thanks. For. That. Not least because of the fact that, through my job, I found out a potentially interesting news about someone's appearance in Torchwood today, then logged on and thought it was all for nowt...
Ah, Edinburgh. The one place I go to each year where I pretend to be cool, as I hang around the Pleasance, sipping a Diet Coke, reading Mac User in lieu of actually owning a Macbook, and spying on Steve Punt. But enough of my personal problems - onto the shows.
The first Doctor Who serial. The first episode is one of the finest television programmes ever made, but after that... well, it's just a huge pile of tedious boring old cack, isn't it? It takes a special kind of incompetence to come up with such a great idea for a series, fill it with great regular characters, and then manage to bore the audience half to death.
Not an original opinion perhaps, but nonetheless the CORRECT one.
A quick round up of the shows I saw at this year's Edinburgh Fringe...
Searching for reviews of Follow That Bird I was sidetracked into the Amazon listing for Kermit's Swamp Years. I've never heard of this film but, for the most part, the reviews were good.
Then there was this:
Absolutely Disturbing, March 14, 2006
Reviewer: Janice Smith - See all my reviews
I bought this for my son who still lives with me. This is completely disturbing even to my son who is thirty. We watched it together and he cried his eyes out during the whole disection scene. He was absolutely tramatized by it. He could not sleep for the next 2 weeks. There is also some disgusting nudity in which the frog moons the camera and now my son knows how to do that, and frequently does it to me. Overall, do not buy this movie as it is depressing and disgusting.
Continue reading "Ursula K. Le Guin - The Left Hand of Darkness" »
I think we all had a sort of select group of films we watched as children over and over and over and over and over and over again. Mine were The Great Muppet Caper, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and...as if you haven't guessed...Follow That Bird.
Maybe it's because, as a child, you are without finances of your own and so can't purchase a wide assortment of films for yourself. Maybe it's because you have limited mobility and can't make it to the theater very often to see new films. Or maybe it's the instinct young children seem to have to hold a few of their possessions much closer than their others. But, whatever the reason, we all had that core group of films. And I don't know if the fondness we had for them ever really fades.
So finding it in a bin of used DVDs for five dollars or so, how could I resist? One way or the other it was a film I wanted to own...but I did have to wonder: was this film actually any good?
...and a strange man with large teeth.
Following this post asking you all to recommend me one book, my final list is below. Hang on to your wage packets I MUST REMEMBER THIS IS NOT GANYMEDE & TITAN.
It was with some excitement that I first sat down to watch long-time fan and comedy writer Mark Gatiss' contribution to the first new series of Doctor Who. I wasn't disappointed, but does the episode still inspire the same excitement in me more than a year after broadcast?
A pun roughly on the same level as that used in the title of BBC3s sketch show "TittyBangBang", there. Titty because, they're women, you see? And no spaces because, it's modern! Spaces are for old fashioned wankers like you, Gramps. Like humour, or jokes, etc.
David Tennant returns to his role as the tenth Time Lord and meets his brand new companion, as filming commences on the highly anticipated third series of Doctor Who for BBC ONE.
Remember this? Well, I think I've found one show that I can't defend.
The best I can come up with is "Kelly Packard".
On Fear Her:
"...the moment when the Doctor takes the Olympic torch was just arch, unconvincing and unnecessary."
I loved that!
Is the new name for the letters page in TV Zone. Nothing wrong with that, you might think. Until you start reading the introduction...
"What is this Mystery Science Theater 3000 nonsense and why should I care?" is what you're probably shouting at the screen right now. Why, it only happens to be one of the most underrated comedy shows that has ever aired on American television. And unfortunately, almost entirely unknown outside the US. So for the benefit of those not in the know, I've cobbled together this little guide to the wonderful world of MST3K. With Youtube links!
From the Beeb :
Only Fools and Horses star Nicholas Lyndhurst will return to the BBC in a sitcom scripted by My Family creator Fred Barron. In After You've Gone, Lyndhurst, 45, plays a divorced father who has to look after his children when his wife leaves the country to work in the third world.His attempts to be a father are hindered by his mother-in-law, played by Acorn Antiques star Celia Imrie.
Now, I like Nicholas Lyndhurst. From Butterflies, though OFAH, through to the early series of Goodnight Sweetheart (hey, I liked it at the time, and as high-concept sitcom goes, you can't beat it). I also like Celia Imrie, who has a fantastic track record when working with people like Victoria Wood. But, come on. Does that not sound like the most ridiculously cliched and formulaic sitcom idea you've ever heard? Divorced father (presumably not used to looking after children), interfering mother-in-law, "hilarious consequences!" and so on. Even ignoring my natural bias against anything that includes the words "scripted by My Family creator Fred Barron"... is this really what we've come to?
Slightly better news further down, though :
A sketch show by British-Iranian comedian Omid Djalili has also been commissioned after the testing process.
Djalili is one of the great underrated, underexposed comedians of our time (all the way back to his appearance as "the bloke who does the drumming bit at the end of Eastenders" on The Friday Night Armistice), so it'd be nice to see him have a crack at the big time.
From the latest issue of Ariel, the BBC In-house mag (as mentioned on the Restoration Team forum):
"CBBC is developing a spin-off series from Doctor Who based on the adventures of investigative journalist Sarah Jane, played by Elisabeth Sladen, and to be written by Russell T Davies. Sladen, who originally played the Doctor's assistant in 1973, returned for the last series where she was seen vying with young Rose Tyler for the Doctor's affections."
Apparently, the source for this isn't known yet - it's not a press release from BBC Wales - so the official Who site is holding off for now.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's true, though - Russell has been hinting for ages than there were plans for further spin-offs in his Doctor Who Magazine column...
