Month: March 2007

Monday’s March news

5 March 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Doctor Who

  • Video footage of the possible last scene for John Barrowman in the next series of Doctor Who. No sound to spoil things
  • David Tennant’s video diary is on YouTube, now the Beeb has done a deal with Google

Film

Art



British TV

  • Neil Gaiman gets bewildered by the UK release of Neverwhere

US TV

  • Sort of spoilers for Tuesday’s House. And for The Pussycat Dolls Present: The Search for the Next Doll. Yey?
  • Chris Showerman (what did his ancestors do?) has been cast as Flash Gordon
  • Spoilers for Heroes. And more spoilers. And more!
  • Sarah Connor Chronicles talk. Yes, Summer Glau is an evil female terminator
  • Joss Whedon talks about Buffy, Firefly, Wonder Woman and the Buffiverse movies that never happened
  • How Lost got a VW camper van onto the island
  • Spoilers for BSG
  • Pamela Anderson has a new TV show in the works
  • Amber Tamblyn is to star in the disturbing Babylon Fields pilot
  • 24 spoilers
Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – Fear of the Daleks

2 March 2007 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Cover of Fear of the DaleksSkipping neatly over various generations of companions, we move from Vicki to Zoe for the second of the Companion Chronicles, slightly dramatised audio books in which former Doctor Who companions recount missing tales of their youthful exploits with the Doctor.

There’s a slight problem with creating tales for older companions. Do you write the stories in in the same style as the stories of the time, or adapt to changes in taste, audience, etc? With the former, you risk losing the audience through lack of pace, simplistic plot devices, et al; with the latter, you can end up losing the charm of the original stories, while making them look stupid.

Fear of the Daleks tries to have the best of both worlds by marrying modern-day writing with 1960’s style stories. Unfortunately, it fails just horribly.

Continue reading “Review: The Companion Chronicles – Fear of the Daleks”

Embarrassing impulse purchases meme

2 March 2007 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

There are certain risks involved in going into shops like HMV or Virgin Megastore: the DVD sections. Ooh, so many tempting things.

I have to keep these impulses under control. Last time I went in, those Man From UNCLE movies looked pretty tempting: nothing quite says mid-80s BBC2 at teatime like the Man From UNCLE films. Well, except for box sets of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes films, The Invaders or The Martian Chronicles.

If I gave in, I’d be bankrupt.

But I do have, languishing on my shelves:

  1. Clint Eastwood’s Firefox
  2. He-Man and She-Ra’s A Christmas Special
  3. Four different versions of Dune: the original David Lynch movie, the extended David Lynch movie, the special edition David Lynch movie with documentary and the SciFi Channel mini-series version.

Oh dear.

But now I’ve shared, it’s time for a meme: fess up, everyone – what are the three most embarrassing impulse-purchase DVDs sitting on your shelves. They can either be embarrassing for you or something that others consider embarrassing. I don’t care whether it’s TV, film or even Jade’s workout programme. Just name those DVDs!

News

Friday’s slightly more lucid news

2 March 2007 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

Party Doctor

They must have been out partying.

Doctor Who

Film

  • Talk with Zack Snyder about Watchmen. Narrowly avoided: Tom Cruise as Ozymandias.
  • A sequel is being planned for LA Confidential
  • Arnold Schwarzenegger is contractually obliged to appear in Terminator 4
  • Latino Review casts its eye over the script for Matt Helm. There’s a blast from the past, hey?

Art

  • Sotheby’s has a Munch sale towards the end of the month

British TV

US TV

  • Big changes afoot for season two of Heroes
  • Bereft of inspiration, ABC turns some commercials featuring cavemen into a pilot
  • Richard Dreyfuss joins the cast of Tin Man
  • Season five of The Wire will be the funniest but only run to 10 episodes
  • Lots of casting news, with Donald Sutherland joining Peter Krause’s Dirty Sexy Money
  • Yet another Spiderman cartoon is on the way.
  • Heroes‘ Jessalyn Gilsig gets a pilot
  • Trailer for the last Heroes before the season break
  • Paul Reubens joins the cast of the Area 52 pilot
US TV

Muck and BSG: let’s speak outer space

1 March 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Gaius Baltar

Before I lay my weary head to sleep, I thought I’d leave you with this passing thought about Sunday’s episode of Battlestar Galactica. Don’t worry, UK viewers, it won’t be spoilery, really.

There’s a point where Gaius Baltar (as played by James Callis) reveals that the posh English accent he’s been using since the start of the mini-series is a complete fake. He’s actually from the farming colony of Airlon (or is that Arelon? It’s derived from ‘Aries’ and rhymes with bear-lon, which is a word I’ve just made up, so you work it out).

Then he lapses into his true accent, which is remarkably similar to a Yorkshire accent, James Callis having gone to university in York.

Now, okay, everyone else from Caprica, the posh Southern pansy BSG colony, sounds American, including the secret Brits and Canadians, so it’s not like there’s one accent per colony. But the dialogue leading up to that moment seems to suggest that everyone from Airlon speaks with a similar accent.

So my thought for the day is this: is Baltar now going to be the only character on BSG to have come from Airlon, or can we expect one of the following:

  1. Lots of Yorkshire actors getting cast in BSG
  2. Lots of American and Canadian actors trying to fake a Yorkshire accent under James Callis’ tutelage
  3. Lots of British actors who aren’t from Yorkshire trying to fake a Yorkshire accent?

I do hope it’s number 3. You just can’t get away with crap regional accents on British TV any more, so it would be just fabby if former culprits Nigel Havers et al could be jetted off to Canada to give out soaring renditions of “Ee bah gum! Ya daft ‘apeth, Adama! Dooant trust t’ cylons. Those robots are evil. Naw launch t’ vipers.”

On the other hand, which of your favourite Yorkshire actors would you like to see in BSG? Patrick Stewart? Keith Barron? Sean Bean? Or even – and you know you want it bad – Brian Blessed?