Year: 2010

What have you been watching this week (w/e November 12)?

14 November 2010 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching this week?”, your chance to recommend to friends and fellow blog readers the TV that they might be missing or should avoid – and for me to do mini-reviews of everything I’ve watched this week. Except I actually haven’t had time to watch much TV this week and I don’t have time to do any mini-reviews right now – I’m actually writing an article at the moment and procrastination is the enemy.

So it’s all on you guys this week? Anything good?

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 41, 2010)

13 November 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Erin C's Sitting Tennant

Rullsenberg's Sitting Tennant

Sister Chastity's Sitting Tennant

I know, I know – it’s Saturday. David’s sad, too. Just pretend I did this yesterday…

  1. Erin C: 329
  2. Sister Chastity: 290
  3. Rullsenberg: 270
  4. Toby: 185
  5. Rachel: 90
  6. Sabine: 65
  7. Karen: 35
  8. dreamer-easy: 30
  9. Dawn: 10
  10. kellyann06: 5

Don’t forget Tuesday’s caption competition!

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.

UK TV

First Dirk Gently picture released

12 November 2010 Rob Buckley 4 Comments

It started off as a couple of Doctor Who scripts written by Douglas Adams (City of Death, Shada). Then it got heavily altered and became a book (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency) that got adapted into a radio series.

Now it’s a one-off BBC4 special starring Stephen Mangan, Helen Baxendale and Darren Boyd (don’t forget to listen to him in the third series of Safety Catch co-starring Joanna Page on Radio 4 at 11.30am today) – and here’s the first picture from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Agency (see how it’s now promoted to bold?). I’ll say one thing: they’ve got the hair right.

Friday’s “Rubicon uncrossed” news

12 November 2010 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

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)

11 November 2010 Rob Buckley 9 Comments

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)”