Month: September 2007

News

Monday’s sexy city news

24 September 2007 Rob Buckley 5 Comments

Young Sex and the City

Film

British TV

  • Catherine Tate should have a won a comedy award in 2005 instead of Ant and Dec
  • Danny Wallace to do a weekly Prison Break podcast for Sky One
  • Spooks will be a 10-part serial, not series, when it comes back this autumn

US TV

Weekend upgrade

23 September 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The observant will have noticed that I’ve been tinkering again. Just can’t help it with the tinkering, these days.

This, however, was the big tinker – I’ve finally upgraded my blog’s software to Movable Type 4. At the moment, that doesn’t affect things at your end, gentle reader, an awful lot, although you can now sign in with your Vox account, if you have one, or you can even create your own account on this blog if you really want. However, shiny things will percolate through the system over the next few weeks as a result, which should hopefully make it all worth it. Hoozah!

Anyway, I’ve had to fiddle around with the templates so not all things might be working as they should. If they aren’t, email me using the link down the side to let me know and I’ll try to sort out your problems – and thank you for your patience. Ironically, about the only thing that might not be working properly is the email subscriptions to comments (which no one appears to use anyway).

Thanks in particular to Toby OB for letting me know about what I hope is the only bug in the system!

UPDATE: You might have to log out and back in again, if you signed it with TypeKey or LiveJournal previously, or you might come up as ‘anonymous’. Sorry, Stu_n!

Theatre

Kelly Osbourne: attraction or detraction?

23 September 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Chicago with Kelly Osbourne It’s a well known trick to get people to watch television programmes, head off to the movies or go to the theatre. It’s stunt casting.

You take a regular role, hire a celebrity for that role, and more people are likely to fork out the necessary cash to watch your production. It would certainly explain why my last two trips to the theatre were to see A Few Good Men with Rob Lowe and Patrick Stewart’s one-man version of A Christmas Carol.

But heading back from a trip out this weekend, I noticed that Kelly Osbourne has signed up to play the new Mama Morton in Chicago. Chicago has never been averse to a bit of stunt casting: we’ve had David Hasselhoff, Denise van Outen and a load of other celebs take a turn in various roles. However, the celebs have almost always been actors of some variety or other.

But Kelly Osbourne – an actor she is not. Although I’ve never been particularly interested in seeing Chicago, the thought of Kelly Osbourne in it has put me off it even more.

So the question is, is it just me or would most people actually like to see Kelly Osbourne in Chicago (assuming they had the time, money, proximity, etc)? And is there a piece of stunt casting that you can think of that has actually put you and everyone you know off from going to see or watching something?

Questions and realisations from television last week: Burn Notice

22 September 2007 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s back, but it’s mutated. “Things I learned from watching television last week”/“Things I learned from television last week”/“Things I learnt from last week’s television” (style guide? What style guide?) has returned – but in a different guise (as promised). After a brief experiment last week, it has now emerged from the pupa of my brain into something hopefully more butterfly-like than the original caterpillars.

Here goes: this week’s question(s) – which I throw open to the floor to answer, whether you’ve seen the show or not – and realisation(s) – for which I also invite comment – come from having watched the rather good finale of Burn Notice on Friday.

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UK TV

Review: Commando – On The Front Line

21 September 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Commandos in the mud

In the UK: Thursdays, 9pm, ITV1

Bit of a yin-yang choice for me here: it was either this or Gossip Girl. I went for this.

Now, time was, ITV used to be able to do a documentary. Think World in Action. Think Survival. They were cracking.

Then they pretty much stopped doing them. Good ones, that is.

Commando: On the Front Line represents a true return to form and production values. Watching it, you’d think it was still the 80s, bar a switch to video from film. And that’s a good thing.

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