More on that competition to be William Shatner’s spokesgeek: there’s a web site for you to upload a video where you can explain just why you should be given the job. Go! Go! Go! You know you want to.
New James Bond book coming
To mark the centenary of Ian Fleming’s birth in 2008, a new James Bond book has been authorised. Just to prove this isn’t some tawdry cash-in but is in fact a genuine artistic decision, they… oh. They haven’t actually got an author yet. Oh well.
Who am I kidding though? It’s James Bond
Doctor Who? Speak up
David Tennant and Charlotte Church: what do they have in common? Apparently, they have the sexiest ears of any celebrities.
UK TV
Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe still holding up
After praising last week’s Screen Wipe, I was wary that it was going to be pants this week, just to spite me. Fortunately, it was just as good, if not better.
Brooker’s pretty much nailed down the right combination of puerility, extended rants and incisive commentary. And where he is using other contributors, he’s now picking the right kind, such as David Quantick and Adam Buxton. Absolutely hilarious from start to finish it was. I particularly enjoyed the slating of the extremely rubbish Are We Being Served?, which was basically a bunch of complaints by stupid people who couldn’t read and who had an extreme sense of entitlement.
But Adam Buxton’s use of his old character, Ken Korda, from The Adam and Joe Show was interesting. On Adam and Joe, Korda was rather a pathetic figure (here are some YouTube examples of Korda in action). On Screen Wipe, he was doing a faux director’s commentary on The Mint, ITV Play’s rather awful late night phone-in show. It was all suspiciously similar to Rob Brydon’s 2004 series Directors Commentary:
Continue reading “Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe still holding up”
News
Sky beaten to the punch for The Prisoner?
There have been rumours for quite a long time (for which, read ‘decades’) of a movie version of classic 60s show The Prisoner. For some time, Mel Gibson was going to do a version. Guess what. He’s not any more.
Then there was all the excitement back in May about the possibility of Christopher Eccleston appearing in a TV remake for Sky. Nothing more’s been heard about that. With ITV, who were going to make the show for Sky, busy imploding, that’s no surprise.
Today, news comes from Variety that Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, as well as the forthcoming The Prestige and The Dark Knight, is being lined up by Universal to direct a film version. Janet and David Peoples are set to write the script, a “contemporized transformation”. Scott Stuber, Mary Parent, Barry Mendel and Emma Thomas will produce. Nolan will direct after he completes The Dark Knight, which begins production early next year.
Not sure how this all works out rights-wise: did ITV/Sky skimp on the rights and only buy the TV rights? Did Universal still own the film rights but not the TV rights from the movie’s various years in development? And will Sky be more or less inclined to do a remake, if there’s a film version coming our way soon?
So many questions, so few answers. How appropriate.
If you want to know more about The Prisoner, here’s the title sequence (one of the candidates for ‘Best sci-fi title sequence ever’ from yesterday), which pretty much explains the plot.