“There was a monster party and all the monsters dancing. The green monsters were nasty, them called Doctor Who ‘idiot’. At the end him not Doctor Who anymore, him a different person. I love Doctor Who, can we have it on DVD?”
Tom in FT • 6 Comments
Well, that’s that: the machine has been given a good beating and we can look forward to “Bulls On Parade” on the festive Argos ad next year. I will admit I didn’t think the RATM crew could do it: I was wrong. But as the dust settles on this most fractious and increasingly entertaining Christmas No.1 race, who has actually benefited? Here’s my round-up of winners and losers.
Joe McElderry: He’ll be Number 1 next week most likely, but while the ‘battle’ was never about him this puts him firmly in the “Leon Jackson” box, not the “Will Young” one. On the other hand, the constant refrain from the judges during the series was that he had a musical theatre kind of a voice, and this might nudge him in that direction and away from the fickle world of pop. Before dabbing your eyes over Joe’s lost dreams, it’s worth noting that if he’d sold as many as Alexandra did with “Hallelujah” last year, he’d have been #1, Rage or no Rage.
Rage Against The Machine: It’s good profile-raising stuff for them and their other material will do well from it, though unless MP3s come with reading lists in their IP3 tags the ‘educational’ element of RATM may be a little missing. The downsizing of their song’s target from “institutional racism” to “Simon Cowell” is probably a fairer reflection of their listeners’ concerns anyway but it’s left them looking a little… cuddlier… than once they did (and their participation in a classic British radio brouhaha has only helped). They themselves have joined in with gusto, of course: “RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE THANKS ‘EVERY FAN AND FREEDOM FIGHTER’ FOR THE ‘ANARCHY CHRISTMAS MIRACLE OF 2009′” blared their press release. more »
Tom in FT • 57 Comments
The point and click puzzle game these days seems almost as dead as the text adventure. And in the case of the text adventure (interactive fiction darhling) perhaps they have just reverted to their core audiences oblivious of the technological progress that seemingly made them obsolete. Well today’s is a beautiful thing to look at, and to play. Short, sweet and very very pretty. Starring this geezer – but what is he looking at?
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Pete Baran in Do You See / FT • No Comments
HARDCASTLE AND McCORMICK Remember them? Early eighties Stephen J.Cannell buddy show. The sit being Hardcastle was a retired judge, McCormick his last case, and together they chased down criminals who had slipped through the legal system to catch them in the act. Law & Order second chance division. The show had gimmicks galore, a nice sportscar, and a gruff relationship between the leads .but it got me thinking, what is there about its name that would make you watch it. HARDCASTLE AND McCORMICK!!!! How long were they spitballing that title around to make people watch it? Was there a suggestion in the name that this would be a HARD show, spiky long names in lieu of characterisation.
Instead look at The Scarecrow And Mrs King. That is an intriguing title from the get go. Why would Mrs King (ordinary name) be hanging out with someone/thing called The Scarecrow? And are you willing to give the show ten minutes of your time to find out? Maybe Little And Large, Cannon and Ball or even Smith and Jones were not your cup of tea, but the names describe aspects of their acts. (Smith and Jones really were that dull.)
In the understanding that nothing is done randomly in TV, or indeed any artform, here are another 18 double acts with unremarkable names. And a few theories behind the naming. more »
Pete Baran in Do You See / FT • 10 Comments
Bond pulls the handbrake and dips his DB7 into a shimmying 180, suddenly accelerating again in a squeal of smoking rubber around the corner, where he’s just caught a glimpse of the villain’s tail-lights. But wouldn’t you know it – there’s a fruit stand in the way. Stolidly gripping the gear shift, Bond slams through it, no time to spare, grapefruits and plums ripped flying from their lovingly-packed cases into the cloudless Adriatic sky, two green and white striped umbrellas flail over sideways, screams are heard. The grocer’s jumped, but whether he’s clear of the damage is not known.
I have a fantasy – surely shared by others – of seeing an entire movie based on the aftermath of this scene. First the stillness of the street and the exclamations of bystanders. Someone’s writing down the license plate number. A peach rolls a few feet and stops. In a room where light cuts through wooden shutters, we see photographs arranged on a mantle, and an old black telephone. It rings. A woman answers. The news isn’t good.
OK, maybe it shouldn’t be feature-length. But I luxuriate in these sorts of details when they appear in movies and on TV, and they’re a big reason why I like Breaking Bad.
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Tracer Hand in Do You See / FT • 4 Comments
i wasn’t really watching closely enough to make this an actual real REW, but tonight’s ep of robin h. featured LOLLARDRY! (or at least wycliffism)
UPDATE: didn’t think properly about this last night — robin is set in the reign of king richard (and john?), c.200 years before wycliffe’s translation of the bible into english: the plot point was that such translation was HERESY, which it was in john’s reign: in 1199 pope innocent iiI forbade unauthorised versions in the wake of the cathar and waldensian movements (which lollardry is loosely linked with); prior to this translation hadn’t been considered problematic — the venerable bede made a partial translation, and there’s also the wessex gospels, from c.990
Music videos: what a pile of shit, eh? Well, not always, obviously but more often than not they’re a cheap set of cliches thrown together for a song that’s not that far off that description and generally rubbish and boring, the only distractions being that someone might be writhing around sexily somewhere in the background.
There’s not a lot I could say about them that hasn’t been said before, particularly in terms of gender politics and yet sometimes, whilst I’m lying prone on my parents’ settee wondering why this time of the morning has to exist and watching 4Music, I’m gripped by an urge to rage and by about 11pm this rage occasionally takes on textual shape and form. more »
piratemoggy in FT • 16 Comments
I’ve noticed many people saying the only thing wrong about the crazy world of the Heston’s Feasts series has been the celeb diners making their inane comments. So yes, the format is great — a talented man’s fabulous cooking inspired by myth, fable and history — but the guests he’s cooking for are (mostly) rubbish.
I’ve not, so far, seen people making the complementary complaint about cBeebies ‘Big Cook, Little Cook’. A long description of the show can be found on an old post on Richard Herring’s blog, but in short the eponymous cooks have to cook for a character from nursery rhymes or fairy tales (Snow White, Old Macdonald). The problem is that as a show meant to inspire children to cook, the options are limited to recipes involving mashing together cottage cheese, crushed up crackers, toast and food colouring, with specially shaped-cutters (stars, fish, etc) to theme it up a bit. more »
Alan in Uncategorized • No Comments
FM (Wednesdays, ITV2, yes ITV2) is a very odd little concept, but kind of works, I think?
So you get 20 minutes of him off the IT crowd and her off of teachers doing pretty standard “embarrassment and swearing” comedy set in a thinly-veiled Xfm clone and it kind of works cos chris o’dowd is good at that sort of thing, and the script is a bit obvious but has some decent set-ups and one-liners and visually it’s pretty decent, not unlike Nathan Barley but without the vicious, crippling evil that made NB so wonderful.
But then, because he’s an indie DJ at an indie radio station you get five minutes of the guillemots or the wombats playing a song “in session” in the studio whilst the characters occasionally talk over the top of it. It’s really weird. Really really weird. It’s not like in, eg The Young Ones where a band would suddenly appear for no reason, clearly the production company has thought about this and sold these slots (and it appears future bands include Ladyhawke and The Subways) as a way of increasing their income stream. And, they’ve even monetarised the playlists of the music in the show, with handy click-throughs to 7digital so you can buy what you’ve heard…
CarsmileSteve in Do You See / FT • 5 Comments
Last night saw the first episode of Law & Order:UK, a British version of a US television programme! I couldn’t remember this sort of cross-ocean event ever having happened before in the history of entertainment so your intrepid telly reporter here thought she’d give it a whirl. Plus it had Martha from Doctor Who in it. more »
katstevens in Uncategorized • 5 Comments