What have you been watching this week (w/e April 23)

Well, I gave up on Ashes to Ashes this week – I just couldn’t bring myself to watch the third episode after the first two. I’ll probably tune in for the finale, just to find out how it ends, though. Still haven’t managed to watch Treme yet, which is a bit disgraceful, but where am I going to find the time?

  • Alexandria: Bettany Hughes’ latest documentary and the first in the Ancient Worlds series – finally caught up with using 4oD. Only an hour, and it felt more like an advert for the movie Agora at times – which worked, since I’ll probably go and see it now. Could have done with a whole lot more on the library of Alexandria, to be honest.
  • Cougar Town: Not desperately funny, but had its moments. Not many though.
  • The Daily Show: As funny as always, but feeling more superficial of late than it used to.
  • Heston’s Feasts…: Caught up with a couple of old eps of this. Always interesting to see Heston in action, but while his food knowledge is second to none, Lovely Wife tells me his knowledge of medieval and Tudor history leaves a lot to be desired. And did he really need to go to New York to learn about frog-cooking?
  • House: Ah, the good old “we wish we had history” American Renaissance Fair rears its head. The medical story wasn’t that great, but the return of Wilson’s first wife (Lost‘s Cynthia Watros) was the raison d’etre of the episode anyway, and that part worked nicely.
  • Lost: For once, the flash-sideways proved more intriguing than island activities and Sun and Jin‘s reunion was rushed to say the least. But what’s Desmond doing in the alternative univese – he’s definitely the most intriguing character right now.
  • Parenthood: Caught up with the last two episodes of this, which is shaping up nicely as a drama. Good to see Monica Potter now has someone to talk to, and all the women are starting to talk to each other independently of the men at last. Also good to see Bonnie Bedelia getting something to do. But after a brief flirtation with comedy at the start of the season, it’s started to return to drama and has also imported Friday Night Lights-style handheld camera work, which I don’t think suits the show.
  • Rome: Two episodes away from the end now. Definitely not as good as the first season, and the historical fudging is becoming decidedly off-putting (Augustus has just skipped his first two wives and headed straight over to the third).
  • Spartacus: Blood and Sand: A good ending to a series that got better and more sophisticated after a very clumsy start. I’m surprised they killed so many of the regulars, but I enjoyed that – it’s the sign that story is leading over network politics, which has to be a good thing. On the not so plus side, Crixus‘s sudden change of heart seemed unlikely.
  • Stargate Universe: I slightly spoiled this one for myself by inadvertently reading the writer’s blog before watching it, but it was an interesting look at faith and how people will believe what they want in the absence of evidence and logic – yes, if aliens were powerful enough to build a solar system and lead you there, I’m sure they wouldn’t bother to leave a note telling you they’d done it. I’m not sure it fully mined the story’s potential, and the attempts by both factions to mend fences after last week’s civil war, even if it was over the month-long period of the story, seems a little forced. The relationship between TJ and Colonel Young feels like a bit of ret-con, mind
  • Supernatural: I really didn’t like this week’s –if you’re going to introduce other gods into the series, at least try to be a little respectful and treat them, you know, like gods. Still nice to see Lucifer, even if it did mean the death of Gabriel, but the ring MacGuffin at the end was decidedly clumsy, if it’s to be taken at face value.
  • 24: Slightly dull compared with last week’s.

But what did you watch?

As always, no spoilers unless you’re going to use the <spoiler> </spoiler> tags, please. If you’ve reviewed something on your blog, you can put a link to it here rather than repeat yourself (although too many links and you might get killed by the spam filter).

Sitting Tennant

Friday’s Sitting Tennant (week 16, 2010)

Erin C and Sister Chastity's Sitting Tennant

Rachel's Sitting Tennant

Rullsenberg's Sitting Tennant

UPDATE: Here’s Toby’s proper pic for this week, rather than the repeat from last week!

Toby's Sitting Tennant

A lovely array of Sitting Tennants for you, with Erin C and Sister Chastity once again displaying their like-mindedness and love of a Tennant in a DJ (no, not Christian O’Connell this week).

  1. Rullsenberg, Erin C: 100
  2. Sister Chastity, Toby: 90
  3. Rachel: 65
  4. Sabine: 60
  5. Karen: 35
  6. Dawn: 5

The power of Christ compels you not to forget Tuesday’s caption competition either.

Got a picture of David Tennant sitting, lying down or in some indeterminate state in between? Then leave a link to it below or email me and if it’s judged suitable, it will appear in the “Sitting Tennant” gallery. Don’t forget to include your name in the filename so I don’t get mixed up about who sent it to me.

The best pic in the stash each week will appear on Monday and get ten points; the runners up will appear on Friday (one per person who sends one in) and get five points.

You can also enter the witty and amusing captions league table by commenting on Monday’s Sitting Tennant photo, the best caption getting 10 points, everyone who contributes getting five points.

Friday’s unwanted news

Doctor Who

  • Fiver acquires K-9
  • Steven Moffat talks about filming the first scene of the new series and more [spoilers]

Film

Theatre

French TV

US TV

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest

Survival of the Fittest coverWhen last we left the seventh Doctor in Big Finish land, he’d decided it was a cracking good idea to take a time-travelling Nazi scientist on a grand tour of the universe with him.

As you do. Can’t see anything going wrong there, can you?

Nevertheless, said scientist, Dr Elizabeth Klein – who is from an alternative universe in which the Nazis won World War 2 – is now the Seventh Doctor’s companion in his travels through time and space.

Of course, with the great big ‘Nazi’ thing hovering over her, do you think the Big Finish writers could resist writing a story about the struggles of a ‘master race’ trying to obtain lebensraum? Of course not, which is what we have with Survival of the Fittest.

Nevertheless, despite its occasional ladelling on of the sub-text, Survival of the Fittest is actually a very decent, intelligent hard SF story. It’s also preceded by an equally interesting episode-long flashforward to Klein’s future which sees a guest visit by the eighth Doctor.

Unfortunately, there’s also the concluding part of The Three Companions tacked on the end. Couldn’t go five for five, could we?

Continue reading “Review: Doctor Who – 131 – Survival of the Fittest”

Random Acts

Random Acts of Ali Larter: Envying Mad Men

Ali Larter in Resident Evil Afterlife

Those set interviews from Resident Evil: Afterlife just keep rolling in. Now our Ali’s talking about what movies she’ll be doing next, as well as what TV.

I was just hearing that some scripts were being sent up. For me, it’s like I’ve gotten my dose of this, I’ve gotten to do some great dramatic stuff, especially working on Obsessed, which was an incredible experience for me. Now, maybe a little comedy or, I don’t know. Maybe a love story. Who knows? We’ll see what’s next.

It turns out that as well as having a few doubts about whether/how long she’ll be in Heroes for, she envies Mad Men.

You also see when you go onto cable and they allow the creators to have their vision. You look at Mad Men and he’s like, in every, they don’t come shouting down. There’s not ten studio heads screaming at them, they have to rewrite this or rewrite that or overwrite it to over explain it. For me, we’ll see how long I’m on the show and if I do go into television again, it will be in a situation where, whoever the creator is, has the power to keep their vision clean. And that’s to me what I think the greatest problem is right now on network.

Q: You’re a fan of Mad Men?

Oh, who isn’t? It’s so spectacular and, you know, I’ll laugh with my husband when we watch it after because you just thinking, “Three minutes have gone by and no one’s said anything.” Isn’t that amazing. You get to live and breathe with these characters and as an actor, that’s one of, at least for me, one of the most thrilling things is being able to discover things in the moment and there’s not a lot of room for that in a lot of movies. So, that’s one side of it. Maybe I’ll get to do a little breathing after this.

Look, here’s a trailer for the movie, you lucky people, and you can listen to the interview here.

Have you seen Ali Larter acting randomly? If so, let us know and we’ll tell everyone about it in “Random Acts of Ali Larter