Film

The real Dodgeball director’s commentary

Dodgeball



You know how I mentioned a while back that the DVD of Dodgeball has a fake director’s commentary? Turns out there’s a real one, too. If you go to “Special Features” then select the purple cobra logo, you can get the real commentary, which also features Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn.

Of course, over at the IMDB forums (motto: “no minimum IQ required”), some of them are convinced the fake one was real…

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – Frostfire

FrostfireNot wishing to be tasteless or anything, but it can’t have escaped your notice that a lot of the Doctors Who are dead now. Numbers one to three have passed on; number four is a tad on the eccentric side. Many of their companions live on, however.

Something of a dilemma for Big Finish, no? Being Doctor Who fans of the first order, they’ve got the collecting instinct, and getting those companions into the Big Finish range would be just great. Even better than Top Trumps, in fact.

Now, they’ve already had a fair stab at this. Carole Ann Ford’s played an alternative version of the Doctor’s granddaughter, Susan, alongside an alternative Doctor in a couple of the Doctor Who Unbound range; Anneke Wills, William Russell, Caroline John, Katy Manning and others have all played new characters in other Big Finish plays; and most of Tombo’s assistants have turned up in ranges of their own (Gallifrey and the Sarah Jane Smith series to be precise).

But with the slight exception of those Unbound plays and The Kingmaker, Big Finish’s producers have stopped short of getting other actors to play the Doctor. So what to do?

Cunning plan. How about creating audio books instead of plays, with the original companions pretending to be telling stories to other people? You don’t need the Doctor anymore and you get to make the companion the centre of the story.

Plus it’s cheap.

Continue reading “Review: The Companion Chronicles – Frostfire”

What I learned by watching television last week

24: Never give jessie-wuss girls a gun because they’ll never use it, even when it could shorten a whole season and save the US

30 Rock: Is getting seriously cerebral. I thought Numb3rs was the only show on tele that could talk about “transitive properties”

Battlestar Galactica: James Callis can do a pretty good Yorkshire accent (he did go to the University of York, apparently); the class war will continue in space

The Class: Adultery is perfectly acceptable if your husband mixes you up with one of his ex-wives.

CSI: William Petersen’s beards can be used as plot development

Heroes: Is just so cool

Lost: Some flashbacks can be amazingly tedious and pointless and should be best left forgotten

Numb3rs: Just occasionally, Ken Sanzel can write a good episode. It’s still not great, though, not even though it’s ripping off 24

Studio 60: If you’re going to go, go out on a bang or your chances of ever coming back are scuppered.

The Unit: It’s possible to make the LA metro look like the Berlin underground system. A bit.

News

Monday morning o’news

Tennant, Barrowman and Agyeman outside the Millennium Centre in Cardiff

Top O’The Morning to you, future Black Donnelly viewers. Begorra.

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

  • Virgin Media has acquired the on-demand rights to Lost‘s first three seasons. Episodes from season three start in August.
  • Two Primeval stars have shacked up together.

US TV

  • Kiefer Sutherland is bemused that the US army would be influenced by 24
  • Missi Pyle’s a regular on new series Wedding Bells
  • Christopher Guest is to direct the pilot for the US version of The Thick of It
  • The SciFi Channel and Richard Branson unite to fight crime together. Or to make money.
  • Back from the dead, Six Degrees returns on March 23rd
  • Alyssa Milano has a new pilot with Mary Steenburgen.
  • An interview with an ex-Hero
  • Jericho‘s back but its ratings aren’t so hot now it’s up against American Idol
  • Sylar from Heroes (aka Zachary Quinto) talks to Kristin