Category: Entertainment

It just gets better and better…

The BBC has been setting up tie-in websites as viral marketing for Doctor Who. I haven’t had time to explore them yet, but will try to do so sometime soon.

 

And may I just say that the reinvented Doctor Who series has been simply wonderful. Christopher Eccleston was excellent, and David Tennant is already shaping up to match him in the eponymous role. It’s not simply that the production values of the new series are an order of magnitude better than the cardboard sets and characters of the original (fun, in a cheesy sort of way, though they were). It’s that the quality of the writing, and the strength of the acting of all the lead characters, knocks the series into a different class altogether. For example the scene in the swimming pool between David Tennant and Anthony Head in last week’s School Reunion was electrifying, and the dissection of the doctor’s character by his present and past assistants (Billie Piper and Elisabeth Sladen) was brilliant. In fact, the tying together of past and present in School Reunion made that episode for me one of the most satisfying I have ever seen, while The Doctor Dances remains as my number one favourite, with Boom Town as a close second, because of the scenes between Annette Badland and Christopher Eccleston.. 

 

My only regret is that Martin does not share my enthusiasm for Doctor Who in any shape or form, so I’ve got no-one to discuss it face to face with. Perhaps I’ll just talk to the dog about it. At least he won’t get bored and go off to do something else.

 

(hat-tip to Diamond Geezer of the tie-in websites link)

What with all the work involved in the move to the country, we’ve missed several weeks of The Apprentice. However, we were able to catch up with last night’s episode – a real humdinger involving Syed and Ruth fighting tooth and nail with each other. And they were on the same team.  Nancy Bank-Smith’s review of the episode in today’s Guardian is worth reading. Watching Sir Alan deal with them was, as Bank-Smith says, a brisk lesson in elementary butchery. Lovely stuff.

Forget the actual article, just savour the brilliant headline that has been provided by an anonymous sub-editor to this review in today’s Observer.

I see that today’s featured article in Wikipedia is on the TARDIS – the vehicle-cum-home of Doctor Who. Great stuff.

A full-page article in the Volkskrant today about Deeyah, who has been called the Moslem Madonna. She has been threatened with death by fundamentalists because of her appearance and performances. Accompanying the article is a link to her latest video What Will Be. It it, she has taken a leaf out of Theo van Gogh’s book – images of women and others gagged with tape are projected onto her bare flesh. The face of van Gogh also makes a brief appearance.

Sad to read that Scottish eccentric Ivor Cutler is no longer with us.

It’s that time of the year again – the Eurovision Song Contest. I’ve just watched the British entries for this year’s contest. Two things struck me.

 

First – I hope that Teenage Life wins. This song is so wrong on so many levels that it deserves to win. From the gyrating overage schoolgirls to the substandard rap – I have to say that this is a marriage ripe for Eurovision heaven. My jaw dropped open and stayed there. It is a brilliant piece of Japanese-influenced Eurotrash. It deserves to win the British entries.

 

Second – as a finale to the BBC programme, they had Helena Paparizou (last year’s Eurovision winner from Greece) reprising her song. And, frankly, she and her song knocked all this year’s British entries for six. A brilliant barn-storming song – reminiscent of Dana International’s Diva. Will the faux schoolgirls retrieve Britain’s pride? watch this space…

 

Update: Yup, it’s Teenage Life. Gawd help the rest of Europe…

They are the fourteen hopefuls after a job with Sir Alan Sugar. Yep, last night a new series of the Beeb’s version of The Apprentice came to the haunted fishtank. Well, OK, strictly speaking it’s Sir Alan and his two sidekicks who are back – the fourteen hopefuls are a new bunch, although clearly from the same stable as the last lot – a set of driven backstabbers who spew managementspeak at the slightest opportunity.

 

Actually, I think the producers have tweaked up the evil knob a couple of notches for this series, I warmed to none of the candidates last night. The one who I had a slight twinge of sympathy for – he actually wanted to trust his colleagues – was the one who got fired. Admittedly, he deserved it, he did a bad job as project manager, but the fact remains that the most sympathetic one got the old heave-ho straight off. A nice touch was that he had just beaten off a life-threatening cancer. He clearly failed to beat off Sayed and Samuel who turned on him like hungry hyenas in the climatic firing scene in the boardroom. Sayed is clearly the producers’ choice for the villain of the piece, every time he opened his mouth I could sense thousands of viewers reaching for their voodoo dolls of him and sticking in another pin. Even Sir Alan seemed to get the message, and gave him a warning. Mind you, a number of the girls are also being groomed to take on the title of the candidate you most love to hate. My money’s on Jo.

 

Of course, it’s all a pile of dingo’s kidneys. But it is brilliant entertainment, and I’ll be parked on the sofa for the rest of the series.

Singalong with Willie – bouncing ball and all…

Is Charlie Brooker training to become the new Jonathan Swift? On the strength of today’s modest proposal in the Guardian, it would seem so. Methinks there is much to commend it…

Martin was away tonight, so I decided to watch a couple of DVDs.

 

First up was Hellboy. It’s the sort of movie that Martin hates, but that I love – a comic-book perfectly translated to film. Lot’s of brilliant little touches that made it work for me. OK, the hero is large, red, and short-tempered, but he’s still a dutiful son who tries to get on with his adopted father, and is tongue-tied when in the presence of his girl. Ron Perlman is perfect as Hellboy, and the rest of the cast make their characters come alive.

 

Next up was Contact – a film I think I’ve seen about eight times now. The magisterial opening: a long reverse zoom shot from the earth out to the farthest reaches of the universe (with the radio static of mankind’s broadcasts dying away into nothingness), resolving into the glint in the eye of an eight-year girl. The wonder of astronomy – the seed planted in that little girl, coming into flower in the adult. The debate between science and religion (and perhaps it’s me, but I think that science trounces religion in this film, as for me in life). The passion of Ellie – and it’s not "faith" – it’s her clear-eyed wonder of nature and of the world around her that makes her what she is, and which is so much more admirable to me than the bathetic, pathetic Palmer Joss, the shallow David Drumlin or the amoral Michael Kitz. 

 

And in both films – the marvellous presence of John Hurt. In Contact, he has a line that summarises for me the very attraction of film; his wonderful, sly voicing, not so very far removed from satan himself, of the essence of movies: "Wanna take a ride?"…

As the late Kenny Everett used to say: "It’s all in the best pahsible taste". Not, in other words. Still, I found this short video by Javier Prato amusing. It will be a sad day when we can’t laugh at ourselves anymore.

 

 

Much as I like Roller-Coasters, I don’t think I would care/dare to ride the one at Cedar Point.

 

(hat tip to Neatorama)

25 years ago, an artist by the name of Kit Williams created a puzzle in book form named Masquerade. Now, to mark the 25th anniversary, Dillon Waugh has created an homage in the form of a web site puzzle named Menagerie. Happy hunting!

I see that the answers to the King William’s College quiz have now been published. As expected, I did miserably, and am kicking myself that I did not get more, particularly in the Grimm’s section. I should have just slowed down and thought about the questions, instead of dashing through them… 

I see the dirty little secret of Digital Radio has been let out of the box – its quality is usually worse than that of FM Radio. The digital radio industry is hastily backpedalling – "Mandy Green, of the Digital Radio Development Bureau, said the industry no longer promoted digital on sound quality". Hah. The BBC seeks to reassure us: "We believe we are providing good sound quality on all our digital radio networks and recent research bears this out. The majority of people are very satisfied with the sound quality with around 95 per cent of digital radio listeners rating it ‘excellent’, ‘good’ or ‘satisfied’". Well, yes, if you’re listening to a portable radio in the kitchen, then I don’t suppose you’ll notice a thing. But if you’d like to listen to a classical music concert from BBC3 on your hi-fi system, then tough – you’ll often hear the difference, because the BBC will drop the bit rates to below CD quality.

 

As usual, I find myself in the minority, and, as usual, we’re the ones that get screwed via the "9 billion flies can’t be wrong" mode of thinking that is so typical today. Why is it always the lowest common denominator, and never the highest common factor that is pursued?

 

Still, I can indulge in a little bit of schadenfreude here – I’ve never invested in a digital radio set, but kept tight hold of my trusty old FM tuner. So I, at least, can continue to hear music as god intended – via FM.

There’s a chap called Noel Hurley who is writing pithy reviews of items on Amazon. His tongue must be pushed so firmly into his cheek that it is in mortal danger of bursting through. Laugh-out loud stuff.

 

(hat tip to Goosing the Antithesis)

Another pointless but mildly amusing test…

 

 

Courtesy of the BBC – here’s a roundup of 100 things that we didn’t know this time last year.