TV

The Sandbaggers
2x04 A Question of Loyalty
Still brilliant! Burnside continues to dig a deeper and deeper hole for himself, it seems. Where will he wind up?

Articles

Doctor Who: The Keys of Marinus - DVD by Steve Roberts
(from the Doctor Who Restoration Team Website)
A slew of new articles on the RT's site at the minute (there's lots of Who DVDs out this year, and most have already been announced), but this one is especially interesting -- they've discovered 17 seconds of material missing from the story, which haven't been seen since the original broadcast 45 years ago! The images are still missing unfortunately, but the soundtrack has been reinstated for the DVD release.
While we're at it, the new article about The War Games also has some interesting info about archiving. (It's more interesting than that sounds!)

Two Bafta nods for Kate Winslet
(from BBC News)
But she won't be repeating her Golden Globe double whammy -- she's nominated for the same two films, but this time both in the Best Actress category.
Among the rest of the nods: "Slumdog Millionaire has 11 nominations in total, as does Benjamin Button. Batman blockbuster The Dark Knight follows with nine nominations, while Changeling, directed by Clint Eastwood, is up for eight awards. Frost/Nixon has received six nominations in all, while The Reader has five."
Read the full list here. Most are more or less as expected, though I'm very disappointed to not see a Best Actor -- or at least Best Supporting Actor, even -- nomination for Michael Sheen.

TV

The Secret Life of Elephants
Part 1 (of 3)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Music

Torchwood: Original Television Soundtrack by Ben Foster & Murray Gold
Track 2, The Chase, is bloody excellent. The rest of it's good, but that's outstanding.

Articles

First today, two RIPs (one of which, if I'm honest, I shamefully forgot yesterday) -- both cultish, though one will undoubtedly get more media coverage than the other:

John Scott Martin (1926-2009) by Paul Hayes
(from Outpost Gallifrey)
"veteran of countless roles in over one hundred episodes of the classic series of Doctor Who... best remembered by fans as the main Dalek operator across the twenty-six years of the classic series, but he also played various other monsters opposite the first seven Doctors, and also had occasional more visible roles, such as the dead miner at the start of The Green Death... In 2004, he appeared as the old man who inherits all of Swansea in the Russell T Davies comedy-drama serial Mine All Mine."
I know this isn't necessarily the place to say it, but Mine All Mine is brilliant and much underrated, and it was lovely to see Martin turn up in it.

R.I.P. Patrick McGoohan by Keith Phipps
(from A.V. Club)
"Actor and writer Patrick McGoohan has died at the age of 80... his fame rests squarely on the cultishly adored series The Prisoner, which ran for 17 episodes in 1967 and 1968. McGoohan, who also wrote a few episodes under a pseudonym, starred in the James Bond-meets-Franz Kafka series as a spy who, after resigning, wakes up in a mysterious village assigned a new name: Number 6."

Moving on...

John Barrowman To Write Torchwood Comic by R. Alan Siler
(from Outpost Gallifrey)
Part of Torchwood Magazine's much-needed revamp? (See here for more of my thoughts on that!)

Samuel L. Jackson: The man who may not be Nick Fury by Keith Phipps
(from A.V. Club)
"Jackson, who famously cameod as Marvel superspy Nick Fury in 2008's Iron Man, may not be reprising the role... "There was a huge kind of negotiation that broke down... Maybe I won't be Nick Fury. Maybe somebody else will be Nick Fury or maybe Nick Fury won't be in it." ... Marvel has stated that it will not comment on active negotiations, so maybe all is not lost."

Also see today's reports on an idiotic judge and the uselessness of our legal system.

the British Injustice System

(Do you see my clever pun there?)

A yob accused of robbing a driving instructor walked free from court - after a judge ruled that the victim was too believable as a witness.

Judge Jamie Tabor praised Denise Dawson as 'honest, utterly decent and brave' when she identified a man as her alleged attacker and gave evidence against him.

But moments later he halted the trial and ordered a not guilty verdict on Liam Perks, 20.

The judge said Mrs Dawson's good character and compelling evidence could sway the jury, even though she had had only a fleeting glimpse of her attacker.

[source]

What a moron! Surely the point of evidence is to sway the jury?

And this is the same judge who...

set free a woman who killed her husband just to stop him seeing his mistress [source]

let off a famous photographer who took indecent photos of a 15-year-old girl [source]

suggested rape victims shouldn't bother pressing charges [source]

let a paedophilic choirmaster go with a lighter sentence because one boy he abused seemed to be enjoying it [source]

let a defendant break his curfew to go to a holiday camp!

I appreciate that most of these articles being from the Daily Mail rather weakens the case against anyone, but it was the top Google result. See the main story covered by The Independent, The Times, The Telegraph, or even The Sun. (I also looked on The Guardian's site for a leftest-of-the-left view, but couldn't find an article on it.)

Judge Jamie Tabor -- the sort of person that makes you wonder why being in contempt of court is a crime.

TV

Broken Saints
Chapter 11 Surfacing
Chapter 12 Passage
The plot rattles on ("rattles on" in the context of Broken Saints, anyway) as we reach the halfway point -- in terms of episode numbers at any rate (the parts get much longer toward the end, meaning the halfway point in running time is somewhere around the end of Chapter 15).

Derren Brown: An Evening of Wonders
Derren Brown's brilliant, you know -- incredibly clever, hilariously funny, amazing to observe. It's all good.

Gilmore Girls
5x15 Jews and Chinese Food

Films

Watchmen Japanese Trailer
Sure, you can't understand a word the voiceover guy says, or read any of the on screen text, and it's pretty low quality... but look at the beautiful pictures! Revel in the coolness! Amaze at the apparent faithfulness! I can't wait.

Articles

Add "Get Off My Lawn" To "Make My Day"
(from Studio Briefing)
"Gran Torino took in $29.5 million in 2,808 theaters -- or a whopping $10,500 per theater -- [over the weekend] after playing for a month in limited release. It was the 78-year-old Eastwood's best opening ever." Well blimey.

Report: Watchmen Settlement Close
(from Studio Briefing)
Fingers crossed!

TV

Argumental
1x10 (12/1/09 edition)
Annoyingly, I missed last week's episode 9, and it's not repeated. It's on Dave for Chrissake, the channel that exists for repeats -- why wasn't there one of their only (pretty much only, anyway) original programme?!

Broken Saints
Chapter 8 Lomalagi
Chapter 9 Personas
Chapter 10 Trinity
Things actually happen! The story moves forward! My God, what is the world coming to?! "And so it begins," Shandala says in Chapter 8, and I'm inclined to agree with her -- but why did it take two hours to get there?!

Films

Anne Frank Remembered (1995)
[#4 in 100 Films in a Year 2009]

Articles

1 million smite ITV's Demons by Neil Wilkes
(from Digital Spy)
"New fantasy drama Demons lost almost a million viewers Saturday. The supernatural series made an encouraging start last week with 5.75m (24.1%). The second episode averaged 4.83m (20.4%)... The most-watched programme of the day was Lottery gameshow In It To Win It, which pulled in 6.86m (28.9%) for BBC One."
Oh dear for Demons -- but how the hell did that wind up as number one for the day, especially on a Saturday?!

Golden Globes bring tears, tributes and upset wins by Maureen Ryan
(from chicagotribune.com)
"“Well done, Winslet,” Ricky Gervais said to the actress, who got one Globe for her work in The Reader, a Holocaust drama. “I told you -- do a Holocaust movie, the awards come, didn’t I?”" Nice Extras reference.

Someone rescue 24 from bland stories — now! by Maureen Ryan
(from chicagotribune.com)
"If familiarity with 24 doesn’t quite breed contempt, it has, by this point, bred a certain amount of indifference...
There are droning scenes in Sunday’s season premiere that literally stop the show cold... the biggest problem is that by now some elements of 24 are distressingly predictable. There’s no computer system or firewall that snarky hackers can’t subvert or disrupt. There’s always a mole among the good guys. Characters who flinch at the idea of torturing suspects are portrayed as hopelessly naive...
Despite an extremely uneven start to the season, there’s always hope that, as Jack Bauer so often does, the show may pull off an unlikely rescue -- of itself. Or we could all be in for another very long day."
(The rest of the article includes some spoilers for the new season; but they're all from the first ep and quite widely known.)

Plus, see here for more thoughts on the Golden Globes.

Golden Globes result

Winslet and Slumdog sweep Globes
(from BBC News)

"Kate Winslet has won two awards at the Golden Globes in Los Angeles, winning best actress for Revolutionary Road and best supporting actress for The Reader."

Now that was unexpected.

Elsewhere, British efforts also cleaned up: "Slumdog Millionaire was named best film drama, one of four awards Danny Boyle's Mumbai-set movie received [also director, screenplay, and score]. Other British recipients included Sally Hawkins, named best comedy actress for her role in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky... John Adams British co-star Tom Wilkinson was also recognised, winning a best supporting actor prize for his role as Benjamin Franklin."

Plus, "Irish star Colin Farrell was named best actor in a musical or comedy for his role as a hit man in black comedy In Bruges" and "Irish actor Gabriel Byrne was named best actor in a TV drama for In Treatment." (Though Cranford was shockingly overlooked in all the TV categories.)

Despite the amazing turnout for our fair isles, the Americans managed some notable wins too, including... "Heath Ledger was given a posthumous supporting actor prize for The Dark Knight, accepted by director Christopher Nolan, who said the late actor would be "eternally missed but never forgotten... All of us who worked with Heath accept with an awful mixture of sadness but incredible pride."

"Mickey Rourke was named best actor in a drama for The Wrestler. Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona was named best comedy, ahead of Happy-Go-Lucky and Mamma Mia. WALL-E was named best animated feature, while animated documentary Waltz with Bashir received the best foreign language film prize. Steven Spielberg was presented the Cecil B DeMille Award for his "outstanding contribution to the entertainment field"."

And a small splash of disappointment too:

"But there were no awards for Doubt, Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, despite them having led the field with five nominations apiece." Don't be surprised if Frost/Nixon is a tad more successful at the BAFTAs, considering its British roots -- hopefully a nomination, if not an award, for the always-excellent Michael Sheen.

Still, well done Britain! Chances of a similarly good result in six weeks at the Oscars? Slim, I would imagine.

TV

Broken Saints
Chapter 6 Synchronicity
Chapter 7 Lucid
After a Christmas hiatus (that lasted exactly a month), it's back down to business with this animated-comic-y epic. It's still rather pretentious and incredibly slow-paced though.

Gilmore Girls
5x14 Say Something

QI
6x03 Flotsam and Jetsam (extended repeat) [2nd watch]
A much lower percentage of filthy stuff in this fourteen-minutes-longer extended repeat. It's all interesting and amusing too, making the filthiness of the edited one look even more deliberate.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Sandbaggers
2x03 Decision by Committee
Another brilliant episode, as Burnside fights Whitehall bureaucracy to save two British officials -- plus Willie and a CIA agent -- trapped on a hijacked plane that's set to explode at midnight. It might sound like something Spooks would do, but in practice it really isn't. For one thing, in Spooks you'd know from the outset Harry would succeed in his persuasions, but in Sandbaggers the outcome is always in doubt -- and I'm not going to reveal it here, because you should go watch it!

Articles

Five Favourite Films with Danny Boyle by Joe Utichi & Jen Yamato
(from Rotten Tomatoes)
A very interesting list, with much of interest to say about the choices. Danny Boyle is an excellent filmmaker too, so, all in, this list earns much respect from me.

Harry circus shames journalism by Iain Martin
(from Telegraph.co.uk)
"It is all so very typical of... a section of the modern British media and its absence of any sense of perspective. There's a dislike of anything which smacks of complexity and a refusal to understand that people make mistakes. Should Harry have used those precise words? Of course not, but is anyone really surprised that young soldiers say silly things? And heavens, one can never imagine a News of the World reader using such a term as that employed by the Prince."
(If any News of the World readers happen to be reading, I'd like to point out that the last sentence is using irony. This means he actually means the opposite. Complex, I know, but people with brains can handle that kind of thing.)

TV

Demons
1x01 They Bite
My God, that's one of the worst title sequences ever! A dreadful -- and dreadfully inappropriate -- song stuck on animation that would barely pass as a DVD menu. Oh dear oh dear. And Christian Cooke needs a better agent -- he's ostensibly the star, yet his name comes third? Ha! And Philip Glenister's accent is variable and a bit am-dram; which is a shame because, obviously, he's great otherwise.
Still, the first episode did alright in the ratings (and by "alright" I mean it didn't do as well as Merlin (created by some of the same people, incidentally) or Primeval -- or Doctor Who, obviously... or even the Doctor Who Confidential announcing the 11th Doctor, which was on earlier that evening -- but still beat what was on BBC One at the time); and the concept, albeit all nicked from other places (mainly Buffy), has legs.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Eurovision: Your Country Needs You
Episode 2 (of 5)
And so it becomes your bog-standard talent show. Except, it must be said, with less talent than usual.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Gilmore Girls
5x13 Wedding Bell Blues

Live at the Apollo
4x05 (9/1/09 edition)
So what if nearly all the guests are regulars on Mock the Week? It's still funny. Also, an appearance by Lenny Henry, which seems to be something of a rarity these days.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Sandbaggers
2x02 Enough of Ghosts
Bloody Germans, eh?

Non-Fiction

Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale by Russell T Davies & Benjamin Cook
Chapters Twelve - Fifteen
Nineteen Days Later...
Appendix 1 & 2 [the end]
Including the first drafts of Journey's End and The Stolen Earth, featuring the original conception of the Shadow Proclamation -- so, so, so much more glorious than the couple of Judoon and pasty-faced woman we ended up with on screen. Plus, the alternate ending to Journey's End and an alternate open to The Next Doctor.
As I said before, this is a great book and a definite must-read for all Who fans and all aspiring writers. "If you still want to be a writer after reading this," says Steven Moffat, "then you probably will be." I guess I must be halfway there then...

Magazines

Doctor Who Magazine #404
DWM's 30 this year -- happy birthday, DWM! Though that's proudly emblazoned across the top of the cover, there's no mention of it inside (that I noticed anyway), so perhaps they have a big feature coming up. Then again, they only just did something for issue 400, so maybe not just yet, eh?

Torchwood: The Official Magazine #13
An even more uninspiring issue than usual, with absolutely no news on the forthcoming third series (to be fair, there's an interview with the new producer that features a couple of new piccies). In fact, the best bit is a teeny tiny news box-out, announcing three new radio plays to come later in the year (more news next issue folks!) Thankfully, the last page promises a great big revamp next issue, as the mag switches format to be 100 pages bimonthly. Let's hope that gives it a much needed kick up the arse, eh?

TV

The Diary of Anne Frank
Part 5 (of 5)
An appropriate end to what's been an excellent series.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

No Heroics
1x05 Origin, Toxic
Sex. Ob. Sessed. Also, they've just started repeating it on ITV1, if you're interested.

QI
6x03 Flotsam and Jetsam
QI's back! Hurrah! But oh my, isn't it filthy? I wonder if that's a deliberate reaction to the move to BBC One...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Vicar of Dibley
2x05 Dibley Live [3rd or so watch]
Ah, random Dibley. Isn't it brilliant?

Articles

Producer: Dark Knight sequel a mystery by Lara Martin
(from Digital Spy)
It's amazing how thoroughly "there's no news" can be reported, isn't it? (Note another silly article from the same authoress later in this post.)

Ross 'lining up Cruise for chatshow' by Alex Fletcher
(from Digital Spy)
"Stephen Fry [yay!], comic Lee Evans [never mind] and Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand [meh] have already been confirmed for the first show back on January 23 [but] Jonathan Ross is reportedly lining up an appearance from Tom Cruise to boost his chatshow's ratings."
It'll be interesting to see how the show's ratings fare at the start -- will they be huge, as people tune in to see what he says; massively down, as people avoid him following the fuss; or just normal, because his fans weren't the sort who complained in the first place? Personally, I think the first or last of those are most likely, as the majority of complaints were by people who don't even watch or listen to his programmes.
Additionally, "Film 2009, also fronted by the star, will return to BBC One two days later" (source). Yay!

Suchet wants to complete Poirot series by Lara Martin
(from Digital Spy)
"David Suchet has revealed that he wants to continue playing Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot until he has filmed the novelist's "complete works"."
Revealed? Revealed? "Yet again reiterated" more like! Still, with only 10 to go -- and four of those being shot this year -- let's hope he can do it.