Music

An archive of blog entries about music and music production.

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Sapphire and Steel – Cruel Immortality

9 April 2007 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Cruel Immortality Try and imagine you or your lifetime as approximately one inch in length. Then compare it to the first CD of Cruel Immortality, which is a thousand million miles long. One inch, you. CD one of Cruel Immortality a thousand million miles. Just compare them. It’s very, very long. And it’s very, very boring.

Those were more or less the thoughts that passed through my mind as I tried to get through the first half of Cruel Immortality. Each track was like having teeth drilled. Every single thing that was wrong with the Big Finish series of Sapphire and Steel audio plays was here and taken to the Max. Trite characterisation, poor acting, a Sapphire and a Steel completely unrecognisable and way too human in comparison to their on-screen selves. Listening to David Caruso sing the works of Marilyn Manson would have been preferable.

But, suddenly, come the end of CD one, it all changes. It becomes interesting. All the pain, all the hurt dissolves away and suddenly, you don’t want to use the second CD as a hat, garden ornament or eccentric clothing decoration. Instead, you want to listen to it.

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Monday morning news

2 April 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Doctor Who

  • Ratings for Smith and Jones were 8.2 million, peaking at 9.11 million
  • John Barrowman questioned about ‘fattie’ comments
  • David Tennant’s Doctor models himself on Jamie Oliver

Commercials

  • The official solution to that Virgin 74 bands puzzle

Film

  • First pics from Iron Man
  • Tarantino frightens cast with knowledge of their rubbish movies
  • A Dylan Thomas movie is on the way
  • The official site for Nicholas Cage’s Philip K Dick movie, Next, is up
  • Test-screening details of The Simpsons
  • Sigourney Weaver talks about Avatar
  • Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp may be in the sequel to Sin City
  • Luke Goss joins the cast of Hellboy 2
  • Two Transformers TV trailers

British TV

  • Living TV has the rights to Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer‘s second seasons

US TV

  • A promo for the next episode of Heroes
  • James Doohan has been fired into space
  • Sydney Pollack is directing a movie for HBO about the 2000 Florida recount
  • An interview with Dennis Haysbert about The Unit
  • The Sopranos in seven minutes

24 for people in hermetically sealed bubbles

23 March 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

I thought I’d post a quick plug for the Slate spoiler specials podcasts (RSS ∙ iTunes). The idea of the spoiler specials is to discuss something, be it a film, book or TV show, for the benefit of people who have already seen or read it.

Right now, among their other duties, they’ve been discussing episode by episode, the latest season of 24. It’s kind of fascinating if you’re a fan of the show, particularly if you’ve been watching it from the beginning.

It’s possible to get inured to the silliness of 24. You take for granted its tissue-thin characterisation, its plot conventions, ridiculous over-acting, et al. They’re all givens now. Even if they occasionally penetrate your consciousness, the bracing speed of 24 means you’re swept along by the tide of its other delights.

Not, however, if you have 15 minutes each week in which a bunch of people who’ve either never watched it before or who use words like Chekovian when trying to discuss the merits of each episode. Was Jack more or less believable as a character than he was last week? Why didn’t those Russians speak Russian to each other this week like they did seven episodes ago? Or more entertainingly cluelessly, do grenades go off only a few seconds after their pin is pulled or might they go off next episode instead?

It’s a nitpickers’ paradise, populated by people who have lived in hermetically sealed bubbles bereft of televisions. Amusing, a wake-up call and a warning not to take things too seriously. Go listen when you have a mo. They do other things too.

PS One of the women – for they are all women – has a very odd accent. Is she a Scot who’s lived in the US for a long time? Is she Canadian? What?

Audio and radio play reviews

Review: Doctor Who – Nocturne

13 March 2007 Rob Buckley 10 Comments

Drwho Main Graphics Bf092 Nocturne Big“Dear Valued Big Finish customer,

Congratulations on your purchase of our latest audio play, Nocturne, starring Sylvester McCoy, Sophie Aldred and Philip Olivier. To help us improve our customer service and future output, could you complete this brief survey and return it to us as soon as possible?

1 From the following list, please pick the thing you’d rather do most than have to listen to Nocturne again

a) Receive a pick axe to the base of your skull

b) Be tethered to an anthill while slathered in honey

c) Be fed one of your own limbs after having it removed by a chainsaw-wielding serial killer

2 Please suggest further uses for your Nocturne CDs

a) Turning them into throwing disks for Raston Warrior Robots

b) Coasters

c) Pimping our rides”

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Audio and radio play reviews

Review: The Companion Chronicles – The Beautiful People

7 March 2007 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

The Companion Chronicles - The Beautiful PeopleWe’re now at the last and least explicable of The Companion Chronicles range, with Lalla Ward (aka Romana II) the final companion to fill the dimensionally transcendental Jackanory armchair. With the previous entries, there’s been a semi-reasonable excuse for the story’s existence – the actor who played the companion’s Doctor being dead and therefore no tasteful or faithful way to have a play featuring the companion alongside her Doctor. Here, we have a simple disagreement between the actor (Tom Baker) and Big Finish that’s resulted in Tombo not appearing in any Big Finish plays, leaving the companions to fend for themselves.

This would still be a good enough reason for the play if Tombo’s companions had had no other opportunities to appear in stories. But of the surviving fourth Doctor companions, Sarah Jane has had two series of Sarah Jane Smith adventures and now has her own TV show; Leela, Romanas I & II and K9 have had three series of Gallifrey to mess about with; Tegan and Nyssa have both had fifth Doctor stories; and the less said about Adric the better. They’ve all been well-mined for dramatic nuggets.

So I think it’s pretty clear that the Big Finish luvvies really just wanted another excuse to work with lovely, lovely Lalla again.

Putting that to one side though, in the form of The Beautiful People, we do have a perfectly acceptable piece of season 17 hokum to while the hour away, and a reasonable enough conclusion to the series.

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