Alec Baldwin is very funny

Normally I don't bother watching videos people post on blogs unless they're under a minute. This one's nearly three, but I bothered, and so should you -- it's hilarious.

TV

Babylon 5
1x21 The Quality of Mercy
1x22 Chrysalis [season finale]
Long-time readers may remember that I tried to finish the first season of Babylon 5 before I went to New York last summer -- five months ago. Ha! Well, anyway, I've finally done it.
The Quality of Mercy is one of the series' best stand-alone episodes so far; Chrysalis is overrated, one of those season finales that confuses complications and "not resolving anything" with events of importance and cliffhangers -- thankfully, a style that's now mostly out of fashion. And where Mercy is all very well written and performed, Chrysalis has some dreadful daytime-soap-level relationship scenes. Ouch.

The Devil's Whore
Part 3 (of 4)

Heroes
3x09 It's Coming

Little Dorrit
Part 11 (of 14)

The Sarah Jane Adventures
2x09 The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith Part One

Poetry

Fall of the Rebel Angels: Poems 1996-2006 by Andy Brown
Part II (pages 37-48)

Poem of the Day: December Night

by W. S. Merwin

This week Poem of the Day is celebrating the start of December, with a poem each day somehow related to the month.

After a pair of English poets, it's time for a pair of Americans. Born in 1927 and coming to fame as an anti-war poet during the 1960s, Merwin is decidedly more modern than Southey or Keats, though his poem might not be so different...

The cold slope is standing in darkness
But the south of the trees is dry to the touch

The heavy limbs climb into the moonlight bearing feathers
I came to watch these
White plants older at night
The oldest
Come first to the ruins

And I hear magpies kept awake by the moon
The water flows through its
Own fingers without end

Tonight once more
I find a single prayer and it is not for men

Tomorrow, a woman. Shocking I know.

TV

Heroes
3x08 Villains
Backstory episodes like this are often among Heroes' best, if you ask me. But that ending... my God that was gruesome! It says a lot about American TV that they'll merrily show a decapitated body -- and the head lying separately by itself -- but not so much swearing as "God" and not so much nudity as a bottom. What's wrong with that nation?!

Spooks
7x07 The Mole
Oh dear! Oh my! Not just for Harry being interrogated and the revelation of the mole, including a particularly vicious murder (though, next to that decapitation...), but because there were times when I actually liked Ros! Argh! "You are a fool" were probably the most satisfying four words in a drama for a while, especially as no good guys seem to be allowed to take appropriate revenge or deliver appropriate put-downs these days.

Music

Day & Age by the Killers
[2nd listen]

Every time I get a new Killers album I'm not sure about it, then it slowly grows on me. So it was with their first, Hot Fuss, and their second, Sam's Town, and now with their third, Day & Age -- so, see, every time. (Sawdust doesn't count -- it's a collection of B-sides & rarities, not an album, and I'd heard most of its tracks over the years.)

Trying to predict ahead to my long-term thoughts (always tricky), I'm not sure there's anything on D&A that will I grow to love as much as Somebody Told Me, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine, When You Were Young, Bling (Confessions of a King), Tranquilize, or my unusual favourite-of-all, exitlude; or, indeed, several other tracks from those first two albums. The tracks with the best chance, I would say, are Losing Touch, Joy Ride (great chorus... until the last two words) and A Crippling Blow. But we'll see.

(All track names link to iTunes, so you can hear previews.)

Magazines

Radio Times 6-12 November 2008
I posted the fold-out cover for this issue the other day -- "Who's the Doctor?" it demands, playing in on the fact that Proper Dave's leaving (in 2010) and Other Dave's also playing "the Doctor" in a special called The Next Doctor. Oo-ooh! (I also can't believe I've not seen anyone else applying Proper Dave and Other Dave to this situation yet.)

Anyway, this issue has a nice little preview of that ep, spoiler-free; plus a preview of the Sarah Jane finale, spoiler-filled; and a Review of 2008 that starts with a (dull and informationless) Catherine Tate interview. Also, a rather scathing piece on Survivors and some letters about the Strictly thing.

Websites

from Firebox
And the prize for Oddest Christmas-Related Service Ever goes to... CrapWrap (which, I should probably add, is a trademark) is Firebox's new optional giftwrapping service. But rather than providing the normal Christmas-movie-perfect wrapping these services normally produce, CrapWrap wraps your gift badly. Really badly. Really, really, really badly, in fact. Not only that, it'll cost you £3.95. How gullible do you have to be to fork out £3.95 to have your present wrapped so badly you could unquestionably imitate it yourself? The only difference would be, you wouldn't have an official sticker on it. Ludicrous.

Doctor Who Adventure Calendar
I forgot to mention this yesterday, but the annual Doctor Who Adventure Calendar has begun again on the official BBC Who site. Day one was a rather pathetic Christmas greeting from David Tennant, while today's is a more interesting text interview with director Graeme Harper, answering fans' questions. (Incidentally, the link at the top is a rather undramatic text version of the calendar. Go to the site's front page for the full door-opening experience.)

Zavvi struggles this Christmas

Click to enlarge.

Pulped Genitals -or- Riviera Dogs

So, yesterday, I mentioned a certain parody screenplay/scene I was writing for my degree. Well, today, here it is to download.

Can you guess whose style it's in? (I expect so.)

Warning: normally I try to keep this blog family-friendly, but this piece contains lots of nasty swearing and some pretty nasty violence too. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Pulped Genitals
or
Riviera Dogs

Poem of the Day: In Drear-Nighted December

by John Keats

This week, Poem of the Day is presenting a series of poems relating to December. Today's second is by John Keats, an English Romantic poet -- just like yesterday's. Maybe they really liked Winter? Or, possibly, liked to espouse their dislike of it -- certainly, the title suggests that.

Either way, they wrote about it, and here it is:

In drear-nighted December,
   Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
   Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
   From budding at the prime.

In drear-nighted December,
   Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
   Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
   About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
   A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
   Writh'd not at passing joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
   Was never said in rhyme.

Originally written in December 1817 and first published in 1829. The version reproduced here combines the varied formatting (and two differences in spelling) from a couple of different sources into a version I prefer. If they differ -- and therefore, clearly, neither is definitive -- why shouldn't I?

BBC One Christmas 2008 Drama Preview

There's a helluva lot of good TV on this Christmas, and most of it's on the BBC. This one-minute trail features clips from all their big drama highlights, most notably Doctor Who, a new version of The 39 Steps, and a return for Jonathan Creek. Hurrah!

Watch it here.

Some of BBC One's other Christmas highlights, not in the trailer, include a Gavin & Stacey special, a documentary for Blackadder's 25th anniversary, Blackadder Rides Again (one can only hope a decent & complete DVD set is to follow), and a new Hitchcock-inspired Wallace & Gromit, A Matter of Loaf & Death.

Plus, on BBC Four, there's Crooked House, which sounds brilliant. Read a whole feature on it here.

TV

Argumental
1x06 (1/12/08 edition)

Clone
1x03 The Line
The problem with Clone is, it's a sitcom, but it's not terribly funny. It is terribly dated though. If it'd been made in the '70s it would probably be a classic. Or totally forgotten.

The Graham Norton Show
4x09 (27/11/08 edition, uncut repeat)

The Sarah Jane Adventures
2x08 The Mark of the Beserker Part Two
Only running two weeks behind...

Survivors [2008]
1x02 Episode 2
The problem with Survivors is, it's full of stock characters stuck in cliched stories. It does pretty much exactly what you'd expect it to do, usually exactly when you'd expect it to do it, and with the exact lines you'd imagine too. Oh dear oh dear. Hopefully things will improve or it'll be a waste of such a good first part.

DVD Extras

a variety of extras from Doctor Who: The Complete Fourth Series, including:

BBC Trailers (Disc 1)
Ooh, I love the Voyage of the Damned trailers, especially the long cinema one. I hope there's one to come this year...

David Tennant's Video Diaries (Part 1)
David Tennant and Julie Gardner -- with Phil Collinson and Russell T Davies on the phone! -- get a police escort into Blackpool to turn on the illuminations. Brilliant!

Deleted Scenes: Voyage of the Damned
It's funny watching the deleted scenes -- they're all pre-filmising, so the picture's all video-y, and with studio sound only... which means they really, really look and sound like classic Who. A very odd experience.

Deleted Scenes: Howard Attfield
Howard Attfield originally reprised his role fromThe Runaway Bride as Donna's dad, filling Wilf's part. However, the actor was too ill to continue filming and sadly passed away shortly after completing these scenes for episode one.

Deleted Scenes: Journey's End
Including an alternate ending that, frankly, belongs deleted. Though obviously it also belongs on DVD for everyone to see.

the start of The Journey (So Far)
Woah, it's surprisingly weird seeing Eccleston as the Doctor again. Not watched any of his eps for years. It's funny to remember how uncertain everyone was if Tennant could follow in his shoes, whereas now, for me, he's virtually wiped Eccleston from memory.

+ commentary snippets
The Doctor Who team are an engaging lot y'know -- I listened to the start of every commentary to hear who the participants were and, out of curiosity, to see how chatty they were, then wound up listening to several minutes of them! On Journey's End it was over 20 minutes before I finally turned it off again.

I really ought to go listen to all the commentaries, though I'm now obviously 55 episodes behind! And there's another 40 commentaries if you count the podcast ones.

Actually, there's a point to be made here: the VotD commentary on this set is a new one, the first time they've done that for the DVD (the other two Christmas specials duplicated the online commentaries, while the remaining episodes had different podcast and DVD commentaries). But the DVD has Russell Tovey (who played the relatively minor role of Midshipman Frame), Murray Gold (who does the music), and Peter Bennett (the first assistant director. Yes, really.) I'm sure they're all lovely people with interesting things to say, but that line-up just doesn't compare to the podcast's Dream Team of Russell T Davies, Phil Collinson and Julie Gardner. When the DVD is the one you pay for and the online ones a nice bonus, surely the better commentary should be on the disc?

At least the online ones are all still online, but, as I've thought since series two, surely there would be room on the discs to squeeze in an extra commentary track for each ep? I know we shouldn't complain -- as I said, they're all still available online for free, and most TV shows don't manage a single commentary for every episode never mind two! -- but... well, why not, hm?

Fiction

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
Chapters 17 - 18 [2nd read]
The first of these chapters, titled 'My Dear Boy', is probably the novel's most famous. Yep, it's the torture scene! For one of my MA modules we have to write a piece in the style of another writer.

No, I'm not doing Fleming; rather, a few years ago, a certain Hollywood writer-director expressed an interest in doing a version of Casino Royale. Personally, I'd've loved to have seen it -- though it would've been very different to the version we got and, perhaps, in the long-run, that was better -- so I've run with the idea and decided to do the novel's most infamous scene in his style. He wanted to set it in the '50s, and I believe he would've done a reasonably faithful job, but for the purposes of this exercise I'm taking his usual style and applying that.

I'll probably post the result at some point, hence why I've not mentioned the guy's name (though some will work it out) -- it's just more fun if you don't know.

Poem of the Day: Ode Written on the First of December

by Robert Southey

Welcome to a week of poems about December, seeing as it's December.

Today's first poem is by English Romantic poet Robert Southey, hence a preoccupation with nature. I must admit to not being entirely convinced by the content of this one, but the title was far too appropriate to resist (for obvious reasons) and there are definitely some good lines.

Tho' now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze
That lingers o'er the green wood shade,
I love thee Winter! well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,
Sweet is the summer's evening gale,
Pleasant the autumnal winds that shake
The many-colour'd grove.

And pleasant to the sober'd soul
The silence of the wintry scene,
When Nature shrouds her in her trance

Not undelightful now to roam
The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace
The forest's ample rounds;

And see the spangled branches shine,
And mark the moss of many a hue
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
Or o'er the grey stone spreads.

The cluster'd berries claim the eye
O'er the bright hollies gay green leaves,
The ivy round the leafless oak
Clasps its full foliage close.

So VIRTUE diffident of strength
Clings to RELIGION'S firmer aid,
And by RELIGION'S aid upheld
Endures calamity.

Nor void of beauties now the spring,
Whose waters hid from summer sun
Have sooth'd the thirsty pilgrim's ear
With more than melody.

The green moss shines with icey glare,
The long grass bends its spear-like form,
And lovely is the silvery scene
When faint the sunbeams smile.

Reflection too may love the hour
When Nature, hid in Winter's grave,
No more expands the bursting bud
Or bids the flowret bloom.

For Nature soon in Spring's best charms
Shall rise reviv'd from Winter's grave.
Again expand the bursting bud,
And bid the flowret bloom.

Personally, I don't like Spring.

Tomorrow, some Keats.

TV

Live at the Apollo
4x01 (28/11/08 edition)
Michael McIntyre (one of the absolute best observational comedians), American Rich Hall (lots of nice things to say about the British), and Rhod Gilbert (he's Welsh donchaknow) open the new series with a doozy of an episode.

Outnumbered
2x03 Episode 3
Outnumbered's at its best when there's virtually no plot and the kids are allowed to shine -- unfortunately, this episode was a little too much of the former and not quite enough of the latter. Still, the next one looks like a doozy.

Spooks
7x06 Accidental Discovery
Spooks has done pretty well for itself this series, I think. It's still not back in the real world as much as the early series were, but it's good spy-thriller entertainment nonetheless. Looks like next week's (or rather, tomorrow's) will be a doozy too.

Top Gear
12x05 (30/11/08 edition)
Tonight's episode was so low in doozying that I spent the first 10 minutes or more unsure if they'd shown an old one by accident.

Poetry

Fall of the Rebel Angels: Poems 1996-2006 by Andy Brown
Part II (pages 29-36)

Articles

Blah Indeed by clydefro
(from clydefro at FilmJournal)
See here for my thoughts.

First Look At Gambit's Wolverine Appearance by Rafe Telsch
(from Cinema Blend)
Gambit, Gambit, yay! Not necessarily convinced by this photo, but there's time.
In other X-Men news, that exciting box set of the first two seasons of the amazing '90s animated series seems to have disappeared from the radar. Where is it? I want it!
Edit: here's an answer, in an article about the latest X-Men animated series.

Winstone Threatens To Leave U.K.
(from WENN)
I couldn't care less which country Ray Winstone lives in, but he's making a good point. "Winstone wants to leave his native Britain and start a new life abroad -- because the U.K. justice system is too lenient on criminals. [He] blames the government under Labour Party leader Gordon Brown for not doing enough to tackle crime and punish offenders... "I wouldn't mind if we actually see something being done with all the money they take off in taxes. [But we have] a legal system that doesn't support the coppers when things finally get to court... [Britain]'s just not that great any more, is it? Let's be honest. This country isn't going to the dogs. It's gone to the dogs. We're a mess.""

don't trust blah!

I've always thought blah! (also known as BlahDVD, or Blah DVD, or whatever) looked a bit dodgy and never trusted them enough to order from them. Not sure why, that's just the impression I've had.

Now, this piece by clydefro over at FilmJournal suggests I was right to be suspicious. I don't think customers routinely get that sort of treatment from more respectable sites like Amazon or Play.

I don't imagine many have heard of blah! anyway, and it's not like they're a great deal cheaper than several other places, so I'll be continuing to follow my instincts.

TV

Einstein and Eddington
David Tennant and Andy Serkis both give great performances -- as do the rest of the cast, it must be said -- in this excellent TV movie. What might have been a dry near-documentary is brought to life by a broadening of topics and themes -- it's as much (perhaps even more) about the First World War and its wide-ranging effects, as well as the boundaries and the applications of science, as it is about the specific theory the titular characters uncovered and proved (respectively).

Have I Got News For You
36x06 (28/11/08 edition; extended repeat)

Lead Balloon
3x03 Fax

Merlin
1x11 The Labyrinth of Gedref

Survivors [2008]
1x01 Episode 1
Feature-length opening ep for BBC One's "it's not a remake of the TV series, honest" adaptation of Terry Nation's novel based on his famous '70s TV series. It's a strong start, dealing first with the horror of the virus' outbreak and the way it brings down the country before moving on to set up of the group of survivors we'll be following. There's also a hint of some Hidden Conspiracy in the closing moments. Very much a First Episode then; it remains to be seen if the remaining five will play as a serial or a series of stories. Also, considering the number of British shows that get remade for the US these days, this seems a prime candidate for such treatment in the future.