Month: July 2009

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Sid and Nancy

8 July 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The wonderful Zooey Deschanel and the perfectly acceptable Joseph Gordon-Levitt have a new movie out called 500 Days of Summer. I haven’t seen it, but I hear that despite them, it’s not very good. Oh dear.

But in the movie, there’s a scene where the two young lovers compare their relationship to Sid and Nancy’s. Here it is:

Cinemash is doing a new project in which various actors re-enact scenes from famous movies. So it’s appropriate that they start off with our Zooey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt re-enacting a scene from Sid and Nancy. Unfortunately, you can’t embed the vids (easily), so you’ll just have to go to Cinemash to watch it.

Also coming up: Cheech and Chong do Tron (seriously), Milo Ventimiglia from Heroes doing Oldboy and Will Arnett and Xavier from Adult Swim do Carrie. Should be interesting.

Wednesday’s rejuvenated Caruso news

8 July 2009 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

Wednesday’s rejuvenated Caruso news

8 July 2009 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

UK TV

Review: Torchwood – Children of Earth – Part 1

7 July 2009 Rob Buckley 28 Comments

Torchwood - Children of Earth

In the UK: Monday 6th July, 9pm, BBC1. Parts 2-5 airing Tuesday-Friday
In the US: Monday 20th July, 9/8c, BBC America. Parts 2-5 airing 21st-24th

You know Apple, right? Makes iPods.

Well, it was set up by a guy called Steve Jobs. You know him, right? He has a reality distortion field.

Anyway, he got thrown out – and the whole company fell apart. When he came back, it suddenly became great again. Insanely great.

All of Apple’s intervening bosses said more or less the same thing: Apple has Steve Jobs’ DNA. Only Steve Jobs can run it.

I’m beginning to wonder if Russell T Davies is the Steve Jobs of Torchwood. He created it. It’s his baby. He wrote the first ever episode, which was really very promising. Since then, he’s had minimal input and it’s range from absolutely horrifically bad to not bad but still not great.

However, has it ever quite achieved the heights we thought it could achieve?

No.

Essentially, it’s an embodiment of all his obsessions and interests: sci-fi, soapy relationships, sexuality, Welshness, action and Doctor Who. Who else could ever work with those themes as well as he can?

Well, guess what? After moving from BBC3 to BBC2 and now to BBC1, Torchwood once again has Russell T Davies in charge for a five-part, nightly mini-series called Children of Earth. I won’t pretend episode one was an absolute classic of television, but it really was pretty good.

See what I mean? He’ll be creating the TorchPod before you know it.

Continue reading “Review: Torchwood – Children of Earth – Part 1”

Today's Joanna Page

Today’s Joanna Page: Bleak Expectations

7 July 2009 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Bleak Expectations

Today’s Joanna Page was going to be Radio 4’s Dickens piss-take, Bleak Expectations:

The plot revolves around Philip “Pip” Bin and his two sisters, Poppy and Pippa, whose seemingly ideal life is disrupted by the death of their father and the madness of their mother. They are then locked away by their guardian, Mr. Gently Benevolent, in St. Bastard’s, the most vicious boarding school in England, and St. Bitch’s, a nearby convent. Pip and his sisters attempt to free themselves of their guardian with the help of Harry Biscuit, whose father invented the biscuit.

I knew she was in it: her IMDB page says she is* and IMDB would never lie, would it?

I listened to the whole first series, trying to work out which character she might be. It’s actually pretty good if you know Dickens even vaguely, although it does remind me of all those skits you used to write in sixth form where you’d play on words, looking for a silly alternative meaning to every line and then running with the sillier meaning. But it’s very funny all the same, and Anthony Head’s great as the evil Mr Benevolent. I’ll probably scout out the second series when I can, and a third series has just been recorded.

Anyway, for a second, I thought she might be Flora Dies-Early, a pastiche of David Copperfield‘s Dora Spenlow, whom she played in the most recent BBC1 adaptation. But she wasn’t.

Was IMDB mistaken? Surely not. So I investigated further…

Continue reading “Today’s Joanna Page: Bleak Expectations”