Friday’s “Rubicon uncrossed” news

Film

  • Zoolander 2, Star Trek 2 a go
  • Trailer for Nicolas Cage in Season of the Witch
  • Phillip Noyce to direct time-travel movie Timeless?

British TV

US TV

Classic TV

Weird old title sequences: The Invisible Man (1975)/Gemini Man (1976)

One of those glorious trends of US TV in the 70s and 80s was “Me, too!” One network had a hit show on a certain subject – cat juggling, spoon sculpting, fish dating, whatever – and all the other networks had to have one, too (cf Blue Thunder, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Street Hawk, et al). A related trend was “More please!”, in which a network would try to capitalise on its own ideas. The Six Million Dollar Man on ABC begat The Bionic Woman on ABC (and then NBC), for example.

But that was a spin-off. Sometimes it was just the idea that got revived. To demonstrate, let’s look at two examples of “More please!”: NBC’s 1975 show The Invisible Man, with David McCallum, and its 1976 show Gemini Man, with Ben Murphy, in which two men perform secret agent-style missions thanks to the gift of invisibility.

Here are their weird old title sequences with very 70s theme tunes. Or just the theme tune in The Invisible Man‘s case. Sorry.

Continue reading “Weird old title sequences: The Invisible Man (1975)/Gemini Man (1976)”
Random Acts

Random Acts of Ali Larter: Maternity cover from Scarlett Johansson

Ali Larter JCP Cooks Peanut Butter event

So our Ali is, of course, still working hard, despite being pregnant. She’s just run an event with Stella McCartney in support of Project Peanut Butter to which – be still my beating heart – both Julie Bowen and Julie Benz turned up.

But the time is fast approaching when Ali simply won’t be able to be random every five minutes like she normally is. Fortunately, she’s planned ahead and charged various people of extreme randomness with the job of covering for her in her absence.

This week – and probably in some future weeks, too, given her showing this week – Scarlett Johansson is providing Ali’s maternity cover. She’s already helped out once before, so pretty much knows the ropes. But to prove a point, she’s gone all out for random this week.

Here she on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, playing ‘Who Let the Dogs Out?’ on the violin, as well as ‘She’ll Be Coming Around The Mountain’ on the trombone, despite having no actual training in either instrument.

Scarlett Johansson plays Who Let the Dogs Out on the violin

And here she is advertising her appearance on this Saturday’s Saturday Night Live in a variety of random ways, including as an angry Brit, as a pirate and by doing magic tricks.

I think she’s going to fit right in here.

Have you seen Ali Larter, Scarlett Johansson or any one of Ali’s sub-contractors acting randomly? If so, let us know and we’ll tell everyone about it in “Random Acts of Ali Larter

Thursday’s “sexy bad girl” news

Doctor Who

Film

British TV

US TV

  • Tuesday night ratings: Glee matches season low
  • TV Land orders pilot of Ex Men
  • Fox to pick up Christian Slater’s Breaking In to replace Running Wilde?
  • Ronald D Moore and Naren Shankar to remake The Wild Wild West
  • HBO passes on Miraculous Year
US TV

Question of the week: is US TV over-rated?

The Wire

So a few (quite important) Brits have been poking at the US TV industry recently. Ben Stephenson at the BBC recently said that it was a "myth" that US television is better at making drama than its UK counterparts. So far, so almost uncontroversial. The best of British can hold its own at most levels compared with the US, exceed it in some areas, but be inferior in others, IMHO.

But now famed TV writer Jimmy McGovern (Cracker et al) has weighed in, saying that all US TV drama is over-rated.

"I couldn’t get into The Wire and everybody told me it was great. I was watching it and I thought Bugsy Malone – these guys are talking about things, but they never convinced me they had experienced the emotions they were describing. It was never authentic for me at all.

Huh. The Wire – not very good? Not sure I can agree with that. Cracker was good but The Wire good? Nope. And can anyone point to the current British TV shows that match The Wire, Mad Men, In Treatment et al in terms of drama?

But what do you think? Is US TV drama over-rated?

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