Ooh. Martial Arts TV. Bit limited at the moment, and if you’re on a Mac, you may need to use the full-screen player since the embedded one didn’t seem to work, but it shows promise, at least.
Live-action Pratchett on the way
While we were all looking in the opposite direction, Sky has been quietly filming Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather. Starring David Jason, Nigel Planer, Ian Richardson and Marc Warren, the two-part adaptation is likely to air just before Christmas week. The producers have the option to adapt other Pratchett novels, including The Colour of Magic.
A warning to Struggling Authors and others
Will Ferrell has a new film out soon (doesn’t he always?). It’s called Stranger than Fiction and seems a bit smarter than his usual fare. Co-starring Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Dustin Hoffman, it should also prove a warning to authors, struggling or otherwise.
Here’s the YouTube trailer, and there’s a very weird official site, too.
The burgeoning trade in directors’ commentaries, real or otherwise
Time was, directors’ commentaries on DVDs were an optional extra. You knew you had a classy DVD if there was a commentary.
Nowadays, if you put out a DVD, an investigative hearing will be convened if you don’t have a commentary track, no matter how bad.
Commentaries are even springing up before the DVDs come out; you can download the Doctor Who commentaries and Battlestar Galactica commentaries the night the episode airs then list to them while you watch a recording of the show.
But there’s also an odd trade growing in fake commentaries.
Continue reading “The burgeoning trade in directors’ commentaries, real or otherwise”
Today’s RTD enlightenment
Probably the last RTD quote of the week, again from Doctor Who Monthly:
“I’ve always got a much more complicated, science-fictiony version of each episode in my mind,” he persists, “and I always filter that out, and go for the more straightforward version – the more emotional, honest version.
”For example, there was a great, complicated version of ‘Tooth and Claw’ in my mind, where, at the end of the episode, Queen Victoria is killed, and that creates the parallel universe, which becomes the world of ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Age of Steel’. It would have been the most brilliant ending because the Doctor and Rose would have just stood there and gone, ‘That’s not meant to happen!’
“But it’s very subscription channel, cult audience male sci-fi. And I loved that version. In any historical adventure, with Queen Victoria, you know that she’s not going to die, so it would have been the most exciting thrill in the world. But the price we’d have paid for that would have echoed on. Three episodes later, they’d still be saying, ‘Ah, yes, when Queen Victoria was killed by a werewolf…’ That’s when you start to lose viewers. It’s a brilliant moment, but its legacy is too complicated, and too dark, in a boring way.”
Interesting, no?