Month: November 2009

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – 126 – Blue Forgotten Planet

26 November 2009 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

Blue Forgotten PlanetAfter 10 years (or whatever), it’s time for Charley Pollard to leave the Big Finish range. The premier eighth Doctor companion (and possibly best companion of all, depending on who you talk to), with The Condemned she became the premier audio sixth Doctor companion as well.

So, there was obviously some anticipation as to how the final stories of the Charley/Sixth Doctor arc would play out and how she’d be written out of the series again. With the Sixth Doctor not knowing she would travel with him in the future, what would the cunning denouement be, we all wondered? Would she go without the issue being addressed? Would there be some clever bit of temporal mechanics? Would there be soul-baring and a frantic attempt to save the day?

We were all agog, since the Sixth Doctor/Charley pairing was actually very good. Ah, Charley: how we’ll miss you, you were more or less the one thing that kept me listening to these, although given the groundswell of support for these reviews – thanks guys – I won’t be quitting after this one and will be sticking with the main Whο range at Big Finish for the foreseeable future at least.

But after Patient Zero by Nick Briggs proved to be such a dud, hopes weren’t high that there would be a great conclusion to the arc, particularly when Paper Cuts proved essentially to be Charley-free. Twats.

Now we’re here, and Charley’s off. How did they write her out, I hear you ask?

Bollocks. The exact same way they did in The Girl Who Never Was except not as well. Spoilers ahoy.

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 126 – Blue Forgotten Planet”

UK TV

Doctor Hoo?

26 November 2009 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

Ian Hart and Elaine Cassidy in Dr Hoo

So I get this press release on Saturday.

The pioneering online series “Doctor Hoo” is ground breaking once again, as it about to be released in over 82 countries worldwide. Lord Entertainment alongside MO Film will deliver this cult series to viewers around the world through the platforms iPhone/iTouch application, Google Android Market and Java handsets.

Millions of viewers will get the chance to watch the series which the Daily Telegraph claims “could provide a glimpse of how cult TV shows are developed in the future”. With busy lives and careers, mobile applications are fast becoming the way of the future and with such easy accessibility “Dr Hoo” could be on lips of those in countries as diverse as Cambodia, Korea and New Zealand.

Ian Hart, best known for US drama “Life” and “Dirt”, stars in the title role of Dr Hoo as an environmentally conscious, vegetarian Welshman with a multiple personality disorder whose real name is Mr David Raymond Hugh.

Believing the world is coming to an end, he enlists the help of his “sexy bombshell” assistant Zara, played by Elaine Cassidy (ITV1’s “A Room With a View”, “Harpers Island”). She is relying on Dr Hoo to help her “find herself” – but she appears to exist only in his head.

Stephen Lord (“Eastenders”, “Judge Dredd”, “Irish Route”) the producer and director who also appears in the drama as the mysterious Agent Smart, described the offbeat series as a character-driven show that “allows an audience to think and get what they want from the show – or not, which is liberating”.

It’s the first I’d heard of it, and normally, stuff like Sanctuary and Girl Number 9 will have a bit of word of mouth by now. It’s available on Amazon as an on-demand DVD, and I’m waiting to hear back about release dates on iPhone et al, since it wasn’t in the App Store a minute ago.

This feels a tad like those old Bill Baggs Stranger/Professor videos, rather than anything more. Still, it has a much better cast than those (Ian Hart!) and it was also on Virgin 1 in February apparently – did anyone watch it? But I’m not desperately tempted by the promo videos. Are you?

UPDATE (30/11/09): Official release is today. It can be seen by going into the Apple Store and downloading the month film (MOFILM?)application. On downloading search for Dr Hoo. They plan to do more Dr Hoo and “a reformatted and bigger model Dr Usa and are in talks with major us talent.”

Film

Question of the week: the most inaccurate TV show or movie?

26 November 2009 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

A Life In Ruins

So I’m flying home from Israel yesterday. Firstly, can I just say – don’t fly with BMI since:

  1. They’ll lose your luggage, claim to be ‘tracing’ it for three days and seemingly start the whole process again when you ring their Indian call centre when you get home.
  2. If you’re flying back from Tel Aviv (flight time 5h35m), you will only get to see 1.75 movies, because they wait for 45 minutes in between movie cycles
  3. Who still uses VHS tapes? Oh yes, BMI

There was a reasonable range of movies and TV on offer (clearly Virgin have upped the game here), so on the way back I started watching A Life in Ruins which in the UK was called Driving Aphrodite. It stars Nia Vardalos as a Greek-American who becomes a tour guide in Greece, and takes a bunch of national stereotypes around various monuments for four days, during which time she finds herself, her Greekness and everyone learns a little something about themselves.

Ugh. Not awful, but not great, it has to be said. In fact, ‘terminally unfunny’ would be a reasonably accurate description of the movie.

What really annoyed me (more than anything else) was just how stinkingly inaccurate it was. It wasn’t like any tour I’ve ever been on – tourists who go to Greece and go on a guided tour but who aren’t even slightly interested in Greek history or anything else beyond ice cream and souvenirs? O-kay.

But when you have

  1. Incorrectly translated Greek (both written and spoken) – I mean whole phrases translated to mean something completely different (“2 or 3 or 4 children” translated as ‘I love you’, “Are you from…?” translated as “I want gay sex”)
  2. The tour somehow going from Athens to Oia on the island of Santorini to Olympia to Delphi to ‘the beach’ to Athens again in four days in just a coach. Particularly when the tour plans included a trip to Thessaloniki as well.
  3. History that’s completely wrong. I might not have a degree in history but I’m pretty sure that most Byzantine churches wouldn’t have elements dating back to the 12th century BC, and since when did the Delphic Oracle channel Zeus (debates about Aeschylus aside)? Since when did the Greeks say Ulysses rather than Odysseus. Et – and might I just add – al.

That strikes me as dodgy – particularly in a movie that’s essentially an advert by the Greek tourist board.

On the other hand, it was basically just a fluffy rom com, not a documentary,so it’s not like it’s the end of the world, nobody but people like me (ie gits) are going to notice any of that, and I’m pretty sure there are vastly more inaccurate movies out there. So…

Leaving aside things that are pure fantasy/science-fiction, what movies and TV shows are the most inaccurate you’ve ever seen? And does inaccuracy matter if what you’re watching is enjoyable?

The Net was rubbish and hugely inaccurate, but Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and its bizarre view of English geography was still relatively enjoyable, despite Kevin Costner teleporting from Dover to Hadrian’s Wall in a day without taking the M1 at least. Do you have worse movies in your collection?

As always, leave a comment with your answer or a link to your answer on your own blog.