TV

By Any Means
Part 2 (of 6)

Dexter
2x06 Dex, Lies and Videotape

Poirot
11x01 Mrs. McGinty's Dead
ITV may screw over both Miss Marple and Christie's sundry other characters by adapting them all willy-nilly in Marple, but Poirot sticks firmly to canon in its aim of filming all her stories about the Belgian detective. 61 down, 11 to go...

Films

Bond from the Beginning #11:
Moonraker (1979)
[2nd half; 3rd or so watch]
See here for my thoughts on this film.

Articles

Apocalypse then by Ed Potton
(from The Knowledge Sept 13-19, 2008, p.12-13)
The fact that articles like this can be found online these days almost makes you wonder why they publish the magazine. Though, on the page it does have a review of the new DVD release (identical to the US one from a couple of years ago, by the sound of things). It comes in a Steelbook, which the people at The Times have obviously never heard of, bless them, as they insist on calling it a "steelbox". In a rare instance of Steelbook-beating, I prefer the US packaging.

David Blaine: death-dealer by Michael Joseph Gross
(from Telegraph.co.uk)
"'A lot of people in England don't like me for some reason,' Blaine continues." Because he's a pretentious show-off dick, a bit like Derren Brown only less entertaining and based on tricks of endurance rather than skill. This article does nothing to dispel such an opinion. In fact, if anything, it makes it worse.

Bond from the Beginning #11: Moonraker

Moonraker has some good bits. A shocking thing to say, I know, especially for me -- but it's true!

Sandwiched between arguably the two most popular Moore films, it's probably the most reviled film in the entire franchise -- though A View to a Kill runs a close second these days -- but there are a number of redeeming qualities that prevent it being a total loss as a film -- though it helps to think of it as a generic sci-fi-tinged spy thriller, rather than a film starring Ian Fleming's James Bond.

The pre-titles sequence is a stunning piece of stunt work, the like of which you would surely never see today; Drax is an excellent villain, with some of the best one-liners in the entire series; and many other bits work marvelously too. But there are also huge lapses of judgement -- as if a motor-powered gondola wasn't bad enough, it has to turn into a hovercraft... with a double-taking pigeon, just to hammer home that final nail. There are others, far too numerous to mention -- though the constant repetition from earlier films is blatant when watching in sequence, and the huge sin that is the laser-gun space battle cannot go unacknowledged (and after most of the space bits were relatively realistic too!)

The real shame about Moonraker is it doesn't have to sink to such lows. Despite how "James Bond in space" sounds, the concept isn't inherently flawed -- it's only You Only Live Twice with Bond getting in the spacecraft -- but there are so many misguided bits that they sometimes become hard to ignore. On the bright side, if one can ignore the silly bits there's actually a hugely entertaining film here.

I never thought I'd say this, ever, but Moonraker is not my least favourite Bond film, and by some margin. (In the not-unlikely event that you can suddenly feel shooting pains in your left arm now, please call a doctor.) Perhaps there's hope yet for View to a Kill...

TV

Spaceballs: The Animated Series Trailer (direct link)
Apparently this series is going to air at 5PM in the US. Based on this trailer, I find it hard to believe they're going to get away with that. Also, I'm not convinced it will be very funny -- partly because I watched Spaceballs again a year or two ago and struggled to be amused, and partly because this trailer has no laughs. Not even one. And it's clearly been done with Flash animation, so looks cheap as chips. And, to be honest, just looks like it wants to be cartoon porn.

Films

Bond from the Beginning #11:
Moonraker (1979)
[1st half; 3rd or so watch]

Articles

Temporary Production Shutdown on Dollhouse by Dave Golder
(from SFX)
"Production on Joss Whedon's Dollhouse has temporarily shut down... Apparently, "Whedon had been busy directing two of the first three [episodes], which kept him out of the writers' room. As a result, the studio, network and Whedon agreed that the show's fourth script needed work. Whedon also requested the production reprieve to get ahead on the next few scripts.” The show will still air as scheduled in the New Year."
Oh dear. This is after the news that the network half-insisted there by a new pilot episode (Whedon claims he agrees, stating the show needed setting up better, and Pilot #1 will now air as episode two). Depending on your perspective, these pieces of news are either:

Good! They want to produce the highest quality show possible. I'm an optimist, yay!

Bad! It's struggling under network pressure already and will surely go the way of Firefly. I'm a pessimist, boo!

Well, we'll have to wait and see won't we. Networks always interfere and quality shows still happen. I'm a realist. So there.

Movie Reviews: Righteous Kill
(from Studio Briefing)
"Taken purely on its merits as a psychological thriller, Righteous Kill is probably a two-star film. The third star is there strictly for De Niro and Pacino. Playing off each other, they stir up the ghosts of past greatness." A shame, because from the trailer I thought this looked like it could be a great thriller with two great stars. I'll judge for myself at some point, of course.

Movie Reviews: The Women
(from Studio Briefing)
Even the women hate The Women, which sounds to be as bad as the trailer looks. Except Roger Ebert, who praises it, yet again seeming to disagree with everyone else (see: The Mummy 3).

Unrelated by clydefro [online for a limited time]
(from clydefro)
"In 2004, the cities that had been attacked [on 9/11] picked one person as the best man to further protect us while nearly everyone else picked someone else, the eventual winner. With a new election just weeks away, these uncertainties and fears once again feel necessary."

Be sure to check out today's other Articles post for some Bondage.

Articles: Bond, James Bond

Another Way To Drink? by Matt Weston
(from CommanderBond.net)
Seems the Coke Zero Zero 7 ad has caused quite a stir -- so much so that I'm not going to quote the article, just recommend you go read it.

By Royal Command: Judging A Book By Its Cover by Tanner
(from double o section)
"I know most of you probably think me certifiable after reading this post, but I also know that there are some readers and collectors who know exactly what I’m talking about."

Charlie in Command by John Cox
(from The Young Bond Dossier)
Fairly extensive interview with Young Bond author Charlie Higson. Contains spoilers for By Royal Command, so do be careful.

David Arnold Audio Interview: Scoring Quantum of Solace by Devin Zydel
(from CommanderBond.net)
Interesting comments on both the film and its score.

Looks like I just need some articles beginning with E to Z...

Websites

Evil Dead: The Musical
I kid you not. Recent rumours have that it may be getting a film adaptation...

Adverts

Coke Zero Zero 7
The new Coke ad allegedly uses music from Another Way to Die, the theme to Quantum of Solace. If that's true, I can't decide whether it sounds reassuringly Bond-like or depressingly generic-Bond-like -- if the article didn't claim it was the new song being used, I'd just assume it was some Bond-alike track Coke had found/had done. Either way, it's a fairly nifty advert, though most amusing is the Guardian's claim that it "is an homage to the Bond movie franchise's highly stylised pre-credit sequences" -- for a paper so into the arts and claiming such intelligence, you'd think they could tell the difference between the credits and pre-credits.

See today's Bond Articles post for more on this.

TV

Dexter
2x05 The Dark Defender

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
21x07 (3/1/08 edition) [2nd watch]

The Tudors
2x07 Matters of State

Fiction

Double or Die by Charlie Higson
Chapter 17
Trivia time: the events of this chapter are (briefly) referenced in canonical continuation novel Devil May Care.

Articles

Favreau Talks the Future of Iron Man by Devin Faraci
(from CHUD.com)
Faraci boasts (several times) about his very long interview with Iron Man director Jon Favreau. Handily for those of us only interested in the highlights, he hasn't got round to typing it all up yet, so summarises the best bits. They include:

"Favreau said that he very much wants War Machine in the second film. He said that Rhodey had a smaller than anticipated role in the first movie and that he would like to rectify that."

"The Mandarin is the overarching, behind the scenes villain of Favreau's planned trilogy, but he's very aware of how hard it is to keep a character like that cool. [He] is also 'surrounded by minefields,' specifically the racial aspects and the fact that his powers are arcane in nature."

"Favreau wants to complicate the personal stories in the sequels, not the plot lines. He sort of pointed at The Dark Knight as a movie that had a very complicated plot... To him it's about the characters first and the stories should be simple and fun." (No bad thing -- complex plot-driven stories suit Batman, not so much Downey Jr.'s very light take on Iron Man.)

"Favreau sees his trilogy as almost one long story, comparing it less to the Spider-Man films, which are modular, and more to The Lord of the Rings or even a season of a TV show."

Aiming high indeed!

Ray Winstone Joins Edge Of Darkness by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire Online)
Ray Winstone replacing Robert De Niro? Well that's just odd.

Viva Che (Just When It Seemed Dead)
(from Studio Briefing)
"Nearly four months after it was screened at the Cannes Festival to widespread critical acclaim and a best-actor award for its star, Steven Soderbergh's Che has finally landed a distributor... Soderbergh indicated that it was still uncertain whether the film will be released in two parts or as one four-and-a-half hour feature. (At Cannes, it was shown both ways, and Soderbergh had indicated he would like it to be shown that way upon its release, allowing ticket buyers to decide for themselves whether they wish to see it in two installments or in one.)" That'll be fun for IMDb to list, then -- though they must've made a similar decision for Grindhouse at some point, so I guess there's a precedent. That said, in Grindhouse's case the double-feature versions are notably different to the individual releases; if Che is just The Argentine and Guerrilla stuck together, it might be a different matter. Currently they just list them both separately, so what would they do if it was only released as a single feature, eh? Ah the things I think about...

TV

8 Out of 10 Cats
7x02 (11/9/08 edition)

Dexter
2x04 See-Through

Mock the Week
6x10 (11/9/08 edition)
If only some Americans could see our satire, as opposed to their own pathetically weak attempts at it, they might sensibly rethink who they were voting for. Though if they knew it was satire by Foreigners it would probably just encourage them.

Fiction

Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth by Grant Morrison & Dave McKean
Arkham Asylum is one of the most acclaimed Batman books ever written -- for one example, it came 4th on IGN's 25 Greatest Batman Graphic Novels -- and, as the blurb on the 15th anniversary edition proudly proclaims, is still "the most successful graphic novel of all time" (I took that to mean best-selling, but upon re-reading it's obviously completely vague). It's certainly unlike any other Batman book you will ever see; in fact, it's hard to believe something so unusual was ever released by a mainstream publisher; even more so that they allowed it to be about one of their most popular creations. It's very dark, very bleak, very dense, and, despite its wide-spread high acclaim, is surely an acquired taste.
The 15th anniversary edition (it seems like this was only recently released still, but Arkham will be 20 next year!) includes Morrison's complete original script, plus new annotations. It's hard to believe people got by a decade and a half without this, as his comments in the original script explain so much, and his new notes flesh out many bits further. I haven't read it through in full yet, but did refer to it on multiple occasions while reading the graphic novel, and will unquestionably be reading it properly at some point.

Double or Die by Charlie Higson
Chapter 16

Articles

The Dark Knight Set For Re-Release by Glen Ferris
(from Empire Online)
"Warner Bros. is... planning to re-release the comic-book epic in IMAX cinemas in January, the height of Academy Awards voting season. The move will fuel speculation that the studio hopes to win a posthumous gong for Heath Ledger, as well as attempting to grab all the other big prizes." Hey, if Titanic of all things can take ludicrous amounts of money and win all the Oscars, why can't The Dark Knight?

Paul McGann back as Dr Who by Jen Blackburn
(from The Sun)
I hope to God it's true, but I won't believe it til I see it confirmed somewhere official-like, considering the reliability of The Sun. That said, in the past they've got a surprising number of things right about Who... but they've also been known to print fan speculation from forums as facts and/or 'insider info', and this sounds exactly like that. But in case it isn't, the rumours go as follows: McGann "is expected to begin filming in October or November for one of four feature-length specials to be shown instead of a series in 2009. Flashback scenes will see him battered from the Time War and shorn of the long hair he had in the film. An insider said: “Fans loved Paul's Doctor and feel he was never given the proper chance to shine. Reference is often made to the Time War which wiped out the Time Lords and this will give them a taste of that.”... David Tennant will also appear." Fingers firmly crossed!

Tennant: I'll be movie Doctor by Sara Nathan
(from The Sun)
More from The Sun: "we can now reveal that the star has agreed to make a full fifth series [of Doctor Who] in 2010 if the big screen role can be tagged on to the deal." Considering the source, it's worth taking this with a pinch of salt. Actually, make that a handful. Actually, make that a bucket.

(An amusing postscript: The Sun's confusion over previous Who movies. "Two previous big-screen versions of Dr Who have been made, starring Peter Cushing in 1965 and Paul McGann in 1996." The facts, of course, are that there were two Cushing cinema releases (1965 & 1966) and the McGann effort was just a TV movie.)

Young Bond Loses His Innocence (non-spoiler version) by John Cox
(from The Young Bond Dossier)
Review of the fifth Young Bond novel, By Royal Command. Cox concludes the novel is "a picture perfect landing, touching down cleanly and evenly on every aspect of James Bond’s past and future life... a surprisingly profound and introspective chapter that takes a leap in quality and maturity from all that has come before." The rest of the review merits reading too, and if you want a spoiler-filled version can be read here.

Music

C-lebrity (song) by Queen + Paul Rodgers
Not their best work, if I'm honest, but it's a good concept and I wager it'll grow on me. Nonetheless, I still can't wait for the album. Though it's not been dispatched by HMV yet...

Torchwood on the radio

As some/all readers will surely be aware, yesterday BBC Radio 4 broadcast an exclusive 45-minute full-cast Torchwood audio drama, tied in to all that fuss about "Big Bang Day" (y'know, the CERN thing).

Anyway, the drama -- which I've yet to listen to, typically -- will be released on CD next week (with a bonus feature thingy; Play.com are cheapest), but if you're snappy you can download an MP3 of it free and, importantly, legally, from Radio 4's website. Here's the Torchwood Big Bang Day page, here's a relatively similar page on the Torchwood official site, and here's the file itself.

TV

Lost in Austen
Part 2 (of 4)

Mutual Friends
1x03 Episode Three

Films

Casino Royale Collector's Edition DVD & Blu-ray Trailer
Finally getting the release it deserved first time round, here's a trail for the great-looking three-disc re-release of Casino Royale (Collector's Edition in the States, Deluxe Edition over here, I believe). Time to flog my 2-disc on eBay, methinks.

Ghost Town Trailer
After a surprisingly long wait, it's The Ricky Gervais Movie. Except it isn't -- that'd be This Side of the Truth, which is completed but not due til sometime in '09 -- but he does star in this one. And he plays the same character he played in The Office, Extras, cameo-size parts in films, his stand-up gigs, and on every chat show interview he's ever done. He can be a very funny guy, but this repetition is as bad as the overuse of catchphrases that he derides so much. Still, the film looks quite funny.

Fast & Furious Teaser Trailer
The third (can you believe it?) sequel to The Fast & the Furious, with a title so different I'm sure it won't cause confusion for anyone. With Vin Diesel (and a couple of others) finally returning to the franchise, and Paul Walker back having skipped a film, I won't be surprised if your average brain dead boy racer -- the film's primary market, surely -- thinks this is a pointless re-release and returns to their DVD of the original. That said, this first trailer -- mostly consisting of one action sequence and little plot detail -- makes it look like it could be as surprisingly entertaining as the first, though hopefully with less reliance on CGI.

Knowing Trailer
An interesting premise, but similar films recently have turned out to be pretty crappy so it's best not to be too hopeful.

Quantum of Solace Trailer [2nd watch]
Following the excellent teaser -- and, of course, the huge level of hype -- this had a lot to live up to. It's a slightly unusual trailer, with minimal use of the iconic Bond theme (it's really in need of it properly at the end) and an odd pace (a slightly lacklustre 'big final montage', for one thing), but it still delivers because everything looks great. Not exactly an exciting trailer in its own right, then, but the movie it promises looks bloody fantastic. Only seven weeks til the UK release!

Sukiyaki Western Django Trailer
Spaghetti Western (or should that be something like 'Sushi Western'?) from "famed Japanese auteur" Takashi Miike. It's hard to tell if it's going to be trashy & cool or just trashy. Whether they were or not, the bits featuring Tarantino look cheaply tacked on for a Western audience.