Saturday 21 March 2009

TV

Damages
2x05 I Agree, It Wasn't Funny
I think Damages has a few too many balls in play this season. Complex, multi-stranded, multi-layered TV is great, but with so many disparate plots going on Damages has to keep flitting between them, leaving some out entirely. It's not bad, but pulling things back a little -- to the level of complexity offered by season one, to be precise -- would improve things. If it's not careful, it'll go the way of 24...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Graham Norton Show
5x02 (12/3/09 edition, uncut repeat)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Lark Rise to Candleford
2x11 Episode 11
Many series have "Next Time" trails these days. I like them -- it's a nice little tease for what's coming up. Except on Lark Rise, where last week's trailer gave away nearly all of this week's twists. Oh dear.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Nature's Great Events
Part 6 The Great Feast [final part]
Jumping ahead for iPlayer-related reasons (which is fine, because the episodes aren't connected).
Lots of stunning footage in this one, but none more so than the bait-ball -- like an action sequence from a movie thanks to some great camerawork, fine editing and well-chosen music. Engrossing.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

He looks a bit fed up for some reason, doesn't he? by Anton Vowl
(from The enemies of reason)
This is one of the stories that's most upset me this week -- not only for the tragic loss, of course, but for the callous and intrusive way the press have chosen to report it. This is why there should be laws against the paparazzi.

The Mail and Gemma Arterton. And pants. by Anton Vowl
(from The enemies of reason)
More anti-newspaper common sense (this is the kind of thing I love, by-the-by). A case study on the hypocrisy of the British tabloid press, in this instance focussed on one of said hypocrisy's main perpetrators, the Daily Mail. Go on, read it; and read to the end.

The Next Dimension by Josh Quittner
(from TIME)
"Jeffrey Katzenberg, the head of DreamWorks Animation SKG, is betting the future of his studio on digital 3-D. While he's not the first to embrace the technology, he has become its most vocal evangelist, asserting that digital 3-D is now good enough to make it -- after sound and color -- the third sea change to affect movies. "This really is a revolution," he says."
Is it, really? I think that remains to be seen. It's almost all riding on the back of James Cameron's Avatar -- while there are other big-name 3D films in production, if Avatar flops that could put off cinemas off bothering to upgrade for 3D and therefore not show the later films either. But, we'll see...