Articles

7 Coolest Movie Con Jobs by James White
(from Total Film)

Could Warner Bros. Be Putting The Kibosh On R-Rated Superhero Films? by Casey Seijas
(from MTV Splash Page)
Not all that surprising, considering, but still potentially a shame.

DMCA Take Down Notice: The NYTimes Goes to War & Wants to Shut us Down
(from Apartment Therapy)
Blogs have been around for about 16 years now (though how long they've been widely known about is a different matter), but it seems some old media still can't adapt to how useful they are. The New York Times are of course within their legal rights to both do this and do it this way, but it does come across as underhand and almost cowardly.
Personally, I won't be bothering to read their site any more -- when there are so many valid news sources on the web, why go to one you disapprove of? Losing me won't exactly have a huge impact on their hits, but still.

Also see some of my thoughts on this year's Hugo Award nominations here.

2009 Hugo Award nominations

Specifically looking at "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form" here, as I came across these on a Doctor Who fansite...

2009 Hugo Award Nominations
(from The Hugo Awards)

Once again, Doctor Who gains multiple nominations for this year's Hugo Awards.

Who has received many nominations in the past few years, often receiving multiple nods where other shows can only manage one, undoubtedly due to the sheer variety of styles and content offered by the show. And incoming showrunner Steven Moffat has won every year.

This year, in my opinion, he doesn't deserve to win again -- his two-part Silence in the Library story was a bit sloppy, a weak plot hung on some truly excellent ideas. Russell T Davies' Turn Left, on the other hand, turned the series on its head to excellent effect -- it was both better sci-fi and better drama. Also, Davies' has been produced a relatively huge number of high-quality Who scripts over the past few years -- he deserves this one in recognition of his entire contribution as much as anything.

Both may fall to the competition posed by Battlestar Galactica in its final year (though it will surely be eligible for the 2010 awards too, so perhaps it will take it then) or the power of Joss Whedon's fanbase in the shape of internet sensation Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

Poem of the Week: The Ballad of Dr Manhattan's Change of Fortune

by Richard Nelson

Watchmen's been out for a good few weeks now, and here's the final part of a trilogy of poems about the film. Well, related to the film -- the first two were rather tenuous, whereas this one was composed by my good self in the wake of the film... and the Internet discussions about it, which seemed to focus around one particular member of the cast.

When it was normal-coloured he
had trouble getting laid,
but then there was the accident
which changed its fleshy shade:

No longer was it ugly, pink
and changeable in size,
but now a constant, hanging there;
pleasant blue to the eyes.

His fascinating phallus lets
him have it his own way:
he can have any girl he wants
('cept Silhouette -- she's gay).

This is the first instance in a long time where I've posted a poem of my own composition. Just because I'm writing more doesn't mean this will be occurring more often.

Who Watches the WALL-E?

Too remove all the magic, this is clips from WALL-E edited to the soundtrack from the first Watchmen trailer. It's better than that probably makes it sound.



Also available in HD.

TV

Cracker
1x07 One Day a Lemming Will Fly Part 2 [season finale]
Cracker must be one of the only -- perhaps the only -- police procedural-type shows to have a story that concludes with the wrong man charged, the real killer still on the loose, and no one on the force caring about this. And I seriously doubt it's designed to set up a future story either -- it's just Cracker's very-real-world way.
Next, straight on to the second series.
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Horne & Corden
1x02 Episode 2
Still very mixed, though with potential. Will need to try harder if they want it to last. That said, the piss-take of Christian Youth organisations was fantastic.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Karma Kula: Mystic Warrior Sneak Peak
Trailer for the new live action webseries from the makers of Ninjai: The Little Ninja, exclusive to Ninjai mailing list subscribers (or their invited friends). The acting is atrocious, the writing pretentious, the direction lacklustre, and the unfilmised video stock makes it look dirt cheap... but the fighting is absolutely brilliant. Hopefully there'll be plenty of that in the series then.

Articles

Back To Sleep
(from reddwarf.co.uk)
It's the bunk room set from the new Red Dwarf! Hurrah! Looks brilliant. Can't wait for this at Easter.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (R1/US BD) in May by Dave Foster
(from DVD Times)
I don't know if I missed something, but it's come as quite a surprise that this is being released by Criterion! It's not unheard of for them to do new-release films, but I wouldn't've thought Paramount would want to farm out a high-profile Oscar-winner in that way. Also not sure of the last time Criterion released something so new and high-profile, which probably adds to the surprise.

Lionsgate Premieres Crank 2 Poster on Twitter by Peter Sciretta
(from /film)
Mainly reporting this for the cool tagline (not sure about the Watchmen-esque colour scheme however), though the thoughts about the dramatically increasing popularity of Twitter are interesting.

The Religion of Dolphins... by Neil Gaiman
(from Neil Gaiman's Journal)
"Picked up my copy of New Scientist over breakfast this morning... and found myself puzzling over an article that began,
"That a complex mind is required for religion may explain why faith is unique to humans."
Which left me amazed and potentially delighted that journalists at New Scientist had succeeded in interspecies communication to the point of being certain that dolphins and whales have no belief in things deeper than themselves, that ants do not imagine a supreme colony at the centre of everything... and that there are no Buddhist Pigs, Monkeys or whatever-the-hell Sandy was."

Who writer begs lotto for TV cash
(from BBC News)
Slightly misleading headline, in my opinion, for a very valid point: "Russell T Davies has called for national lottery money to be given to children's programmes. In a speech to Bafta members, Davies said: "They put money into rubbish films, why can't they put money into children's television?"" Too right!

Best. Advert. Ever.

Seriously, just watch it:

Batman Icon's Mutation

This is rather intriguing and a fun watch. You might be surprised by just how much variety there's been...

TV

Mad Men
2x04 Three Sundays

Nature's Great Events
Part 3 The Great Migration
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

France doesn't want Africans to die of AIDS

After yesterday's news...

France chastises Pope on condoms
(from BBC News)

France, echoing the reaction of some aid agencies, said it "voices extremely sharp concern over the consequences of [the Pope's comments]... we consider that such comments are a threat to public health policies and the duty to protect human life," foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said.

Well done France.

TV

Cracker
1x06 One Day a Lemming Will Fly Part 1
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Lark Rise to Candleford
2x10 Episode 10
Oh my, Lark Rise appears to have turned into a broad sitcom! (I'm sure some would argue it always was.) It also seems to run out of story about three-quarters of the way through, which is a shame.
More of a shame, however, as the "Next Time" trailer, apparently giving away all of the twists in next week's episode. That's just stupidity.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Non-Fiction

The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry
Chapter Three: VI (p.221-228, 242-246)
Chapter Three: VIII (p.261-262)
More re-reading. I was meant to be looking at the section on the Ballad again, but got distracted by these bits on the Villanelle, Ballade and Cento. It's all brilliantly written, of course, and very engaging.
I should really be a good boy and return to reading it in order too.

Watchmen: Portraits by Clay Enos
See here for me thoughts on this book.

Poetry

The Making of a Poem by Mark Strand & Eavan Boland
The Ballad (p.73-98)
Having settled on the Ballad as the form for me, I'm now trying to read some and get an idea of how to do it well. Or an idea of what to write about. And so I've re-read this section of Making of a Poem, which features several good examples. However, most of them are rather old and consequently perhaps not the best guideline for modern work.

Music

Made in Hong Kong (And in Various Other Places) by Nightwish
See here for my thoughts on this album.

Listening to Made in Hong Kong set me off listening to a few other Nightwish things, some of which I'd bought but not yet listened to. Normally I wouldn't mention most of these, but I had the following to say...

Dark Passion Play by Nightwish
The album from which all of Made in Hong Kong's live tracks are taken. This is the first time I've listened to it for a while. It's not quite as good as Once, the band's absolute high point in my opinion, but it's a good effort nonetheless. Most importantly, as the first album after the departure of original lead vocalist Tarja Turunen it shows definitively that Nightwish can go on successfully without her.

The Islander (single) by Nightwish
The Islander is one of my favourite tracks on Dark Passion Play, with a nice folkish vibe to it. Here it's accompanied by an instrumental version of Escapist, a track included as a B-side on the Bye Bye Beautiful single and as a bonus track on Made in Hong Kong. This instrumental is great, I think.
Also included is an orchestral version of album-closer Meadows of Heaven. A grand, 7-minute, orchestra-led epic, Meadows of Heaven works brilliantly like this -- not perfectly, as the guitars and so forth are missing, but better than the orchestral version of Ghost Love Score, another brilliant orchestra-led track (from the previous album) which featured guitars so integrally it fails without them.

Articles

24 movie heading to Europe? by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Not really news -- as long as there's been discussion of a 24 movie it's been mooted that London wold be the setting -- but the concept of Jack being able to traverse Europe within the timespan is quite a neat one. On the other hand, it's still not a concept that really works as a movie. You either do it as two hours of real time, which isn't "24", or do the producers' oft-discussed method, where one hour of the film covers 23 hours and the final hour is real time -- which is just an ordinary thriller with a clock pointing the timings out to you. But hey, we'll see -- they might not even make it yet.

David Chase cuts Ribbon at HBO by Michael Schneider
(from Variety)
This series sounds great. And if they can pull it off, it will be.

Five Favorite Films with Alex Proyas by Jen Yamato
(from Rotten Tomatoes)
Not quite as good as Danny Boyle's from a few weeks back, but Proyas is a good filmmaker (Dark City is underrated and I, Robot isn't anything like as bad as some would have us believe) and his choices and interview are interesting.

Radio 4 ditches last remaining children's series by Ben Dowell
(from guardian.co.uk)
"Go4it [the cancelled series] sometimes registered zero listeners from its target four-to-14 age range, with an average of about 20,000 listeners in that age bracket tuning in. The average age of its 450,000 listeners was between 52 and 55." It's a shame really, but also, it must be said, quite funny.

Way Cooler Than Anything In Either Alien Vs. Predator Film... by Merrick
(from Ain't It Cool News)
Amusing indeed.

Watchmen: Portraits

by Clay Enos

I only had a relatively fast look through this beautifully huge volume, but it was enough to garner the following thoughts:

The format, blurb and price give away the truth: this isn't really a Watchmen tie-in book, it's a book of photography -- portraiture, to be precise -- that happens to be about Watchmen. It's the visual-arts equivalent of poetry, where each unexplained image is designed to be perused slowly for its own beauty and its placement in relation to the other images, not rushed over in pursuit of an overall narrative. It is, if you will, an Art of the Film book taken to its furthest extreme.

However many times you've seen the film -- and, for some people, that's already a bizarrely large number -- there will still be far more faces here you don't recognise than those you do. For example, in amongst the previously faceless punks, prostitutes, protestors, prisoners, politicians and pedestrians there is only one shot of Nite Owl II and not even that many of Dan Dreiberg or a CGI Dr Manhattan.

This isn't about the film, it's about the people, and the art.

Made in Hong Kong (And in Various Other Places) by Nightwish

Nightwish's latest is a live CD (plus documentary DVD), including a variety of tracks from their most recent album as performed on their most recent tour. The selections are, shall we say, interesting -- as well as the singles (Bye Bye Beautiful, Amaranth) and centrepiece track (The Poet and the Pendulum) they offer up a couple of songs I can't even remember. In fact, a glance at my iTunes playcounts reveals I've only listened to them twice, as opposed to the decent double-figures of some tracks not included here. It's a shame, to say the least.

Arguably the most notable omission is Eva, which was the first single released featuring the group's new frontwoman, Anette Olzon. Talking of Olzon, while she was fine on the album she seems a bit weak live, leaving a few songs sounding decent but not as good as their studio counterparts. Those with male lead vocalists, or instrumental track Last of the Wilds, seem to transfer best.

The album is pushed up to 66-minute running time by the inclusion of some B-sides (and one new demo version). A nice inclusion for some, I'm sure, but in the days when individual tracks are easily acquired by digital download, any band/company which does this begins to seem a tad greedy, as fans will surely have got hold of these tracks already (I know I had). To be fair, it does no harm them being there if the alternative was blank space, but equally it could've been used for some more live cuts.

The Pope wants Africans to die of AIDS

Pope says condoms are not the solution to Aids - they make it worse by Richard Owen
(from Times Online)

The Pope courted further controversy on his first trip to Africa today by declaring that condoms were not a solution to the Aids epidemic – but were instead part of the problem.

Yeah, helpful.

TV

Horne & Corden
1x01 Episode 1
Varying degrees of funniness, just like most sketch shows. Not a failure then, but not yet a success. We shall see...
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Law & Order: UK
1x04 Unsafe
Nothing like as bad as the Radio Times try to make out. In fact, after expressing his support for this week's villain, I'm slightly concerned for the mental state of RT's review...
[Watch it (again) on ITV Player.]

Articles

100 Things More Popular Than Twitter by Nicholas Carlson
(from Silicon Alley Insider at The Business Insider)
Twitter's received a huge spike in popularity of late. Here's a dose of reality, reminding us that it doesn't rule the world. Yet.

The Big Writing FAQ by James Moran
(from the pen is mightier than the spork)
James Moran -- writer of the movie Severance and episodes of Doctor Who, Torchwood, and other things -- gives advice on how to break into the industry and a bit about what being a writer is like. There are no magic solutions here, but there is truth.

Google Earth used by thief to pinpoint buildings with valuable lead roofs
(from Telegraph.co.uk)
Yes, it's crime; but it's funny crime.

K9 and Co by Dave Golder
(from SFX)
Oh no, poor K9 -- what have they done to you?