Saturday 8 November 2008

TV

Have I Got News For You
36x04 (7/11/08 edition; extended repeat)
The added material is often very funny, and really speaking there's quite a lot of it, but it's usually little bits scattered about and so at times feels a bit of a trawl.

Merlin
1x08 The Beginning of the End

Merlin: The Legend
Nothing to do with the current TV series, but a documentary on the history of the character in literature and whatnot. Of some interest, but occasionally padded and slow.

Fiction

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
There are, I think, three things that might surprise people who've only really heard the title & fame of the book/film Breakfast at Tiffany's -- certainly, they surprised me the first time I discovered them. One, it's by Truman Capote, the author of In Cold Blood and the subject of the surprisingly mediocre 2005 film Capote. Two, it's only 92 pages long, and that with relatively large text for a literary book. It doesn't even have any chapters. Shocking! And three, the character portrayed by Audrey Hepburn in the film, Holly Golightly, isn't... well, I'm not sure what she isn't, really, but she wasn't what I expected.

Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman & Andy Kubert
Time After Time: From 1602 to 2004 by Peter Sanderson
A distinctly above-average introduction to a graphic novel, by academic Sanderson, that acts as both an introduction to some of the characters involved and to the themes and concepts explored. Super.

Articles

"And Don't Crash It!" by Christopher Middleton
(from Radio Times 8-14 November 2008, p.14-16)
Richard Hammond and 'Gene Hunt' chat about the Ashes to Ashes special, part of Children in Need this Friday. Highly amusing stories about their driving tests too.

Daniel Craig On Continuing Bond's Journey In Quantum of Solace by Devin Zydel
(from CommanderBond.net)
But, more important than Craig going on about the Bond/Vesper love story again, there's this: "Someone asked me before, who would win a fight, Bond or Batman or Bourne? And I said, 'Bond would get the other two to punch the shit out of each other while betting on both of them and having a martini.'"

"I'd love to reinvent Q and Moneypenny" by Tim Roth
(from CommanderBond.net)
So say Daniel Craig. Plus, a gay Bond?