Do You See
7 December 2011
When I was little, what I really liked about Christmas was being able to stay up late, and sometimes, if I was lucky catch an episode of Tales Of The Unexpected or one of those weird portmanteau horror movies. I caught Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors as a ten year old and loved its creaky short story nastiness. So much like MR James’s Christmas tales have a strange link with Christmas, so do portmanteau horrors, and it happens to be the form today’s Christmas Special takes.
Which village has a graveyard like this?
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Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
6 December 2011
The best bit about Christmas specials is the sugar-coated MORAL at the end of the story where the authority figures remind the children that the holidays are about Giving and Sharing and Not Hitting Your Brother.
But what if your brother was a superhero from another dimension? And he had to fight this?
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katstevens in Do You See • 2 Comments
Christmas specials aren’t just the province of television. Every year all sorts of media throw Santa coated tat at us left, right and centre. All it takes is to go back to the Victorian age and there is Dickens knocking out a Christmas Carol, and other Christmas stories that no-one ever uses to theme their popular sketch show into some sort of loose limbed narrative arc.
Sketch shows are tough for Christmas specials because, well, there is nothing special about a set of sketches. You could do it so that all of the characters are doing something Christmassy, but that is still a bit scattershot. Luckily all sketch shows have at least one Scroogelike character for us to laugh at, and have other characters take them through their life in a Ghost of past, present and future way.
So who had a Ghost Of Christmas Past like this?
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Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
4 December 2011
Here on FT we love puns. We don’t mean to but we do. And behind today’s hastily arranged advent calendar window is probably the greatest pun to grace a TV Christmas Special ever. Even better than One Foot In The Algarve. Not necessarily that Christmassy, it blew away almost everything at Christmas on TV in 1985. I certainly remember the whole family huddled around the TV for this one, and it being really rather good, Indeed better than the standard episodes of the show.
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Pete Baran in Do You See • 3 Comments
1 December 2011
We love the 1st of December, when we get to go to FT to open the little Windows* that mark down the passage of time towards Christmas with a little nugget of something special. Something very special this year, namely an advent calendar of TV Christmas specials. TV Specials are, as if you didn’t know, often extended one off episodes of popular television shows which either take place at Christmas, have a Christmassy theme or – well don’t. Our rules are simple:
- Must be Christmassy
- Must not be part of regular series/season
This latter one is important as the BBC in particular have a habit of rolling the Christmas Special as the sixth episode of six if they are scheduling before Christmas. Many US sitcoms will have Christmas (and Thanksgiving, and Halloween) episodes, but just as part of the regular run.
Will we stick to these rules religiously. Maybe. While you ponder that, this is screenshot from today’s special, which despite what it looks like, really is a Christmas special. What’s that you say?
“I DON’T BELIEVE YOU?” more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • 1 Comment
28 November 2011
It was always going to be hard pleasing me with a Thing remake. The John W. Campbell short story it’s based on was the subject of the inaugural episode of A Bite of Stars, a Slug of Time and Thou. Not having read it before then, I immediately took to its tight-knit team of scientists whose ability to rationally work through the horrific problems that increasingly beseige them is undermined by the M.O. of The Thing: it can become someone so completely that the victim may not even be consciously aware that he is no longer himself.
Every Thing fan who hasn’t read Ann Billson’s wonderful BFI book on John Carpenter’s The Thing should do so immediately; I quibble with Billson here and there but it’s a pleasure to read a good writer given free rein to create a searching, detailed love-letter to the object of her obsession.
The review you’re reading right now is not, unfortunately, that. more »
Elisha Sessions in Do You See /FT • 16 Comments
24 August 2011
53: The Box (DVD)
I missed The Box in the cinema, it being my year without film. It is the kind of film I would normally jump at, liking claustrophobic paranoid fantasies, films based on Twilight Zone episodes, Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and even not minding Richard Kelly*. And it starts promisingly enough, with a decent period scene setting and some nicely sympathetic leads. And then Frank Langella turns up at the door with the Box. The Box is a nice, cheap, period looking piece of technology – with its big red button under a dome. But the box isn’t the problem. The box and what it leads to may be as preposterous as anything thrown at us in Kelly’s other films but at least has a semblance of fun fantasy storytelling around it. The problem is Langella. Or at least his digital face.
Langella has played some of the greatest villains known to man. Insert Richard Nixon and Skeletor jokes here. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
23 August 2011
51: Super 8 (Cinema)
Super 8 is an homage to Spielbergian kids fantasy films of the early eighties. Its more than that actually, its DNA is plainly on display. Its Mom (correct word in this context) is ET, its Dad is The Goonies. We have a gang of kids (Goonies) who discover something remarkable and alien (ET). And its interesting that the setting, and the characters hark back to a bucolic seeming small town America which I get the sense that JJ Abrams believes doesn’t quite exist any more. You get the sense the turning point was rap music (the music in Super 8 is all over the place, though follows the “if in doubt, use ELO” model). more »
Pete Baran in Do You See /FT • 6 Comments
15 August 2011
Clearly I am massively behind on this project, as is often the way with FT projects. But whilst there is usually something interesting to say about any film, sometimes there is not MUCH interesting to be said. So here is a stab at quickly trying to simultaneously cut my list shorter, and get to the heart of the matter with a lot of these films…
41. The Navigator (Cinema)
Minor Buster Keaton, which has some typically well staged physical humour and innovation. It does seem to be missing Good but it does seem to be missing a whole third act, though I didn’t see its deus ex submariner coming. To be more precise it is missing Act 2 Scenes 1 & 2, all of act three and would probably be considerably better without its somewhat racist (though not at the time of course) canibles. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See • 2 Comments
5 August 2011
Whilst the threat of a Double Dip Recession is nothing to make light of, there is at least one aspect fondly remembered from 2008. Like the gurningly beautiful twins on A-Level result day, there is only one way our online news sources know how to celebrate this. Pictures of bankers with heads in their hands. So all day (and feel free to send me links), I’ll be updating this post with just that.
3:08PM The markets are rallying. Like they did three summers ago. Still a long way to go, but I’ll probably leave you with this one from the Evening Standard for now. Early prices Special (there was nothing special about the early prices). If only we could zoom in to see what he is saying in that outlook window. I’d give you good money (which is worth NOTHING now) that it is SELL SELL SELL.
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Pete Baran in Do You See • 20 Comments
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