The talented Hughes brothers have won the coveted chance to direct the movie version of Kung Fu. I’m actually starting to look forward to it now, since Warner Brothers have put some actual talent to work and they’re intent on preserving the “zen spirit” of the show. The Hughes brothers have also approached the Shaolin Temple outside Beijing – to do what, I don’t know, but that shows a certain sensitivity to the subject matter that I wasn’t expecting.
Year: 2006
UK TV
Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity
In the UK: BBC4, October 31st, 10pm
As everyone knows, October 31st is the pagan festival “Dennis Wheatley Night”. It’s a time of the year when occultists of all varieties traditionally get together to wonder why Wheatley, whose books were once as popular as Agatha Christie’s, was such a right-wing Nazi loon*.
This year, BBC4 chose to celebrate Dennis Wheatley Night with a dramatisation of one of his stories, The Haunting of Toby Jugg, and a documentary about his life that had a group of experts wondering why he was such a right-wing Nazi loon.
Continue reading “Review: The Haunted Airman/Dennis Wheatley: A Letter to Posterity”
How iTunes saved the US Office
Interesting piece over on Newsday about how the ability to download whole episodes of The Office from Apple’s iTunes Music Store saved it from cancellation. 30 Rock might also be a beneficiary of this phenomenon as well, as might Studio 60.
Kidnapped doing worse and worse
You’d have thought that there was nowhere for Kidnapped to go but up. You’d wrong. Despite being exiled to a Saturday night slot to eke out the rest of its remaining 13 episodes, it’s now been pulled from the schedules completely because its ratings were so poor. Ouch.
Studio 60 will go on. Probably.
The Media Guardian appears to have been watching Fox News or something. Following that particular ‘news’ outlet’s call that Studio 60‘s death was imminent, with cast members telling their family that it was all but cancelled, the Media Guardian has followed suit. Strangely though, it cites the one-week change of time slot for Friday Night Lights as the main reason for the call, despite the fact FNL only replaced a Studio 60 re-run.
It might have a point if NBC hadn’t just come out and ordered three more scripts and declared that the show was already profitable. I think Studio 60 probably has a little more life left in it and a probable time-slot change in its future. But its death is by no means imminent, I suspect.