Month: June 2012

Thursday’s “Wonder Woman gets a writer, Samuel L Jackson joins Robocop and France gets six new HD channels” news

7 June 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film

Trailers

  • Trailer for That’s My Boy, with Adam Sandler, Leighton Meester, Susan Sarandon et al
  • Trailer for Robert Zemeckis’s Flight, with Denzel Washington, Kelly Reilly, Don Cheadle et al
  • Teaser trailer for Django Unchained

Theater

French TV

UK TV

US TV

New US TV shows

On the psychological importance of sound to TV

6 June 2012 Rob Buckley 8 Comments

Interesting observation, today. I was on one of my regular commutes. I had my iPad with me, ready for me to watch the second episode of Sebastian Bergman, when I realised I’d left my headphones at home. How could I possibly watch it now? The noise would annoy everyone else.

So I didn’t watch anything at all and read a book instead.

It was only on the way home this evening that I realised that Sebastian Bergman, being a subtitled drama, possibly didn’t need sound. I could mute the iPad and still watch the show.

Duh.

And yet I didn’t. Now this could be for several reasons:

  1. I’m stupid
  2. There’s a sort of ritual there that I didn’t want to break
  3. Sound, even if it’s not dialogue, is still important to full the appreciation of TV drama.

Which do you think it is (I’m expecting a lot of ‘1’s here) and if you were in my position, would you have watched Bergman with the sound muted or waited until you were at home?

The Weekly Play

The Wednesday Play: Gangsters (1975-1978)

6 June 2012 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Gangsters

We’re going to step away from the surreal and fantastic almost completely for this week’s Wednesday Play: Gangsters, an episode of Play for Today written by Philip Martin. Set in the multi-cultural criminal community of Birmingham, Gangsters was originally conceived by producer David Rose as a drama with sensibilities similar to those of The French Connection that would showcase England’s second city. It deals with various ethnic groups competing to run scams, exploit illegal immigrants and outwit the almost equally morally suspect law-enforcement officers.

The play caused outrage not just from Birmingham City Council, which resented the perceived slur against the city’s character, but also from the press, which argued it had featured racial stereotypes, such as servile Indians and clueless whites. However, the play achieved higher ratings than any previous episode so Martin was commissioned to write a full series – one of the few spin-offs the Play for Today had.

The play itself formed the template for most of the first series of the spin-off, with former SAS soldier and convict John Kline (Maurice Colbourne) acting as an undercover underworld agent to investigate crimes and pass intelligence back to ‘DI6’. But I said “almost completely” at the beginning because despite its subject matter and occasional ultraviolence, Gangsters became a very different beast in its second series, with the surreal intruding throughout – writer Martin is seen dictating the script to a typist during the season and there are references to film noir, gangster films, westerns, Bollywood and kung fu movies throughout. On top of the increasingly bizarre end-of-episode cliffhangers, the series ended with the characters breaking the fourth wall and walking off set.

But here, for your delectation is that first Play For Today – a sort of ‘Roy Rogers meets Get Carter in Birmingham”. If you like it, buy the whole thing on DVD.

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