Year: 2012

It's Hammer Time!

It’s Hammer Time!: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

21 September 2012 Natalia Romanova 5 Comments

Time to start a new mini-series: It’s Hammer Time!.

For decades, one of the biggest names in British movie production was Hammer. Famous for horror movies, particularly ones starring Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, the studios were an integral part of British movie production and starting today, for a limited run, I’m going to be giving you a chance to watch a glorious smattering of them in HD.

We’re going to start with The Quatermass Xperiment, based on the famous BBC serial by Nigel Kneale of the (almost) same name and starring Brian Donlevy as the eponymous Quatermass. In it, the British Rocket Group sends an experimental rocket into space, but when it comes down again, all but one of the astronauts is missing and the surviving astronaut is different somehow. What happened? BRG’s Professor Quatermass is determined to find out.

When first broadcast on the BBC in the early 1950s, the six-part The Quatermass Experiment emptied the streets and changed the face of British television forever. It spawned two BBC follow-up series the same decade – Quatermass II and the jewel in the series’ crown, Quatermass and The Pit – and an ITV series at the end of the 70s called simply Quatermass. BBC4 even remade The Quatermass Experiment as a live broadcast, just as the original had been, starring David Tennant, Adrian Dunbar, Jason Flemyng and Mark Gatiss among others, back in 2005.

Taking advantage of the original series’ notoriety and shocks, in 1955, Hammer took it, condensed it down to a single X-rated movie (hence the slight change of name), gave it an American lead and changed the ending slightly. It was popular enough that Hammer was able to film Quatermass II, again starring Donlevy, a couple of years later, and in 1967, Quatermass and the Pit, starring Andrew Keir. 

But for your delight, here’s the first of those movies, direct from Hammer (yes, it’s still going). I’ve preceding it with Hammer’s own documentary, written by film historian Marcus Hearn. Enjoy!

Continue reading “It’s Hammer Time!: The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)”

Friday’s “Dallas down 50%, The Secret Dude Society and Guillermo del Toro’s TV The Strain” news

21 September 2012 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • Ashley Walters to guest

Films

Trailers

  • Trailer for 42 with Harrison Ford
  • Trailer for remake of Gambit with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz
  • Trailer for Beautiful Creatures with Emmy Rossum, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons et al

Canadian TV

UK TV

US TV casting

New US TV shows

  • Fox developing modern Hamlet set in DC
  • Guillermo del Toro adapting The Strain for FX with Carlton Cuse
  • FX buys thriller from Stephen Belber
  • CBS buys Melissa McCarthy-produced comedy
  • ABC buys Party Girls

New US TV show casting

The West Wing cast reunited! Again! To help one of their sisters! Not again!

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

It’s at times like this, particularly now that The Newsroom‘s on the air and offering a pale political shadow of its predecessor, that we wish Aaron Sorkin was still dedicating his life to giving us more episodes of The West Wing. The show that effectively predicted that a young non-white politician would soon be the president of the United States, it’s sorely missed and with a fall season of soon-to-be-forgotten dramas lined up for most networks and a stream of “WTF were they thinking commissioning that?” already polluting NBC’s schedules, one might be wondering why no one has thought of reuniting the old gang.

I say no one, but actually they have been reuniting quite a lot of late. Bradley Whitford was doing a walk and talk somewhere near Rob Lowe over on Parks and Recreation in April. Martin Sheen, Allison Janney, Dulé Hill, Joshua Malina, Melissa Fitzgerald and William Duffy got together for a public service announcement over on Funny or Die back in May.

Is that enough though? Hell, no. We want a full deck!

Thankfully, we’ve got something pretty damn close. In an ad to get Bridget Mary McCormack* elected to the Michigan Supreme Court and to explain how US voting forms work, we have Richard Schiff, Bradley Whitford, Allison Janney, Joshua Malina, Janel Moloney, Mary McCormack, Melissa Fitzgerald, Lily Tomlin and, yes, Martin Sheen, all recreating their The West Wing characters.

And you know what? It actually feels like the real thing. Woo hoo! Now get voting and/or writing to NBC and Aaron Sorkin.

* Yes, Bridget Mary McCormack is Mary McCormack’s sister, now you ask

US TV

Preview: Elementary 1×1 (CBS/Sky Living)

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 6 Comments

Elementary

In the US: Thursdays, 10/9c, CBS. Starts September 27
In the UK: Acquired by Sky Living for October broadcast

You will recall that not so long ago, Steven Moffat was extremely dischuffed. “Pourquoi?” you might ask if you were French. Well, my francophone friend, because as well as being the showrunner for Doctor Who, Stevie is also the showrunner and indeed co-creator of a little known show called Sherlock, an updating of Conan Doyle’s famous consulting detective. After pitching an updated version to the American TV network CBS, he became seriously dischuffed when he heard that CBS was going to do their own version without the benefit of his wisdom.

And here it comes: Elementary, starring Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes, a former consultant to Scotland Yard, who moves to New York to get away from his father and to help US cop Captain Gregson (Aidan Quinn) with his enquiries. Of course, since he doesn’t get paid for his work, he needs his father’s money to keep him in little things like food and lodgings, and since our Sherlock also had a bit of a drug habit, as a condition of continued support, daddy dearest gives him a live-in ‘sober companion’, a therapist who stays with Sherlock night and day to make sure he doesn’t revert to old habits. That would be one Dr Joan Watson (Lucy Liu).

Sound much like Sherlock? No.

Stevie need not have worried.

In fact, Elementary, even putting aside the change in location of the stories, gender of Dr Watson and promotion of Inspector Gregson, is possibly the loosest adaptation of Conan Doyle’s classics there’s ever been. Well, apart from that manga one and that one set in space. And while it’s a perfectly functional procedural, efficiently told and competently made, with an intriguingly quirky performance from Miller, it’s also the blandest adaptation of Conan Doyle’s classics there’s even been. Yes, even including Young Sherlock – The Mystery of the Manor House.

Here’s a trailer. It’s basically a four-minute precis of the pilot.

Continue reading “Preview: Elementary 1×1 (CBS/Sky Living)”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Go On (NBC)

20 September 2012 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

In the US: Tuesdays, 9pm Eastern/8pm Central, NBC. Starts September 11
In the UK: Not yet acquired

So far, if there’s one new comedy acquitting itself on NBC, it’s Go On. Although the idea of a support group for the traumatised – in particular, Matthew Perry channelling Joel McHale in Community as a talk radio sports commentator who lose his wife in a car accident – sounds like a sad idea for a sitcom (and you’d be right), the show is just about managing to find some laughs.

Just about.

Trouble is, we’re still talking about a guy who has lost his wife. And as the first episode demonstrated, that’s not that funny. Even if you can somehow turn adjustment to bereavement into something wacky – Perry not wanting to return home at night so he keeps making his assistant work late and gatecrashing her social occasions, as per episode two, or his gardener erecting a tribute fountain to his dead wife in episode three – we’re still talking about a show that makes you want to cry more than laugh.

And partly, that’s because the writers aren’t writing many jokes, partly because the supporting characters are woefully underdeveloped and partly because 90% of the cast are rubbish. Of the good portion of the cast, John Cho now has something to do but isn’t being given great material, Laura Benanti now has less to do and is getting less material, leaving Perry to get most of the good material and resultingly having to shoulder virtually the entire burden of the show, something that’s seeping into his performance.

Nevertheless, the show is just about treading the right side of the funny-unfunny/watchable-unwatchable line. I’m not recommending it, but I’m going to stick with it for a while, since there is some promise in it, and Perry, Cho and Benanti all deserve a successful TV show after all their previous flops. And given NBC’s ratings, I think it’s likely to get picked up for a full season very soon so it might actually have a chance to find its feet.

And lo and behold, look! Here’s The Carusometer’s replacement The Barrometer to pass verdict on it!

Barrometer rating: 3
Rob predicts: Will get a full season, maybe even 2