It’s a Brazilian advert for Peugeot from last year, but that doesn’t stop it being awesome this year.
[via Paul Ebbs]
News: Universal acquires Librarians and Necessary Roughness, ITV’s Great Fire trailer, SJP returns to TV + more
Film
- Ridley Scott to direct Matt Damon in The Martian
Trailers
UK TV
- Universal Channel acquires: TNT’s Librarians and USA’s Necessary Roughness
New UK TV shows
- Teaser trailer for ITV’s The Great Fire
US TV
US TV show casting
- Natasha Lyonne to guest on Girls
New US TV show casting
- Sarah Jessica Parker to star in Busted
The Dukes of Hazzard reunite to flog you something from AutoTrader
Yes, that really is Tom Wopat and John Schneider in the General Lee, trying to get you to use the AutoTrader app. Do they get 4G in Hazzard County?
[via Toby. Thanks Toby!]
The Wednesday Play: Ghosts (1987)
The heyday of theatre on television has long gone. Indeed, by the early 80s, with television’s constant drive to become more filmic and more ‘mimetic’, pretty much all the play strands on all the UK’s channels had disappeared, leaving film strands or even nothing at all behind them. However, occasionally, one channel or another would try to revive theatre on TV.
In 1987, BBC2 launched its Theatre Night strand, which televised staged adaptations of classic plays. One of those chosen was Ibsen’s Ghosts, directed by Elijah Moshinsky and starring Kenneth Branagh, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, Freddie Jones and Natasha Richardson.
Given the year, it should be no surprise that Ibsen’s story of a venereal disease passed down from father to son should have been selkected. Working entirely in a studio set of interconnecting rooms created by designer Gerry Scott, the adaptation shows the power theatre has, even without the trappings and verisimilitude of film, but it wasn’t enough to convince the powers that be that plays should still be part and parcel of television output. All the same, you can enjoy it on YouTube or buy it on DVD.
US TV
Review: The Last Ship 1×1 (TNT)
In the US: Sundays, 9/8c, TNT
In the Venn diagram of TV genres, TNT’s The Last Ship would appear to be in an almost unique intersection that’s targeted at me.
I love things to do with ships, period or modern day, surface or sub-surface. I loves me a Master and Commander, A Hunt for Red October, a Warship, Making Waves or a Hornblower. Although Last Resort wasn’t great on land, as soon as it put to CGI sea, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The Final Countdown might not have been the best time travel movie ever made but I am so geared up to write an article about how you definitely must watch it because of its naval accuracy. I so am.
Provided you give me enough proper naval content per episode – I’m staring at you here, Black Sails – I’ll watch you, no matter how bad the rest of the show is.
As I remarked when I reviewed Helix, another thing I love is the killer virus genre: The Andromeda Strain – (both versions) – Outbreak, The Burning Zone, The Satan Bug. All aces, provided there’s a real threat of a wide-scale outbreak of a potential lethal virus.
So imagine my nerdy joy, given those facts, when I heard about The Last Ship. An adaptation of the 1988 post-nuclear apocalypse novel set on a US naval vessel that was at sea when the nukes went off, this TNT update instead gives us a guided missile destroyer that happens to be at the Arctic when a global pandemic breaks out, wiping out half the world’s population and leaving the remaining half on the verge of death, too. With the world falling apart, its crew has to survive and fight off enemies while scientists on board have humanity’s best – and perhaps only chance – to create a cure for the disease.
Brilliant, hey? Hell, it’s even got Adam Baldwin as the XO. Nothing could tarnish this, surely?
Not even the fact that Michael Bay is the executive producer?
Well…
Here’s a trailer.