TV

Taking the Flak
1x04 The Past is a Different Colony
1x05 Unfriendly Fire
[Watch both episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

Wildest Dreams
Part 4 (of 7)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Inception Trailer
The new film from Christopher 'The Dark Knight' Nolan. Little/nothing is known about the plot, but it does look rather cool. On the other hand, it also looks a little bit Matrixy -- but hopefully not too much, because obviously that's a decade old now. Brilliant cast too, incidentally.

Articles

Loophole over DVD age rating law
(from BBC News)
"Retailers who sell violent video games and 18-rated DVDs to children cannot be prosecuted because of a legal blunder 25 years ago."
Oops.

Robin Williams keen to play Susan Boyle in film biopic by Ben Child
(from guardian.co.uk)
"The comedy actor, who donned drag and assumed a Scottish accent in Mrs Doubtfire, has expressed a wish to play the Britain's Got Talent star in a biopic".
I've not bothered to watch any of the Susan Boyle footage (not any of it), but that I'd watch.

Smith's Hancock sequel finds writers by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Well well well, I didn't see that coming. Of course, I'd only heard the poor critical reception -- I didn't realise it had done so well at the box office. As ever, money beats quality.

TV

From the Earth to the Moon
Part Five Spider
Please look here for my thoughts on this episode.

The Last Volunteer
A tribute to Henry Allingham, one of the last survivors of the First World War, who died last month aged 113. Despite his age, he was clearly still young at heart with a twinkle in his eye, attending events and speaking in schools about his experiences in the War, now almost a century ago.

A Poem For Harry
Broadcast at the same time as the Allingham tribute, this documentary (filmed in early 2008) follows then-Poet Laureate Andrew Motion as he tried to write a poem about Harry Patch, the last man living to have fought in the trenches, who also died just one week after Allingham. The film interviews Patch and investigates his life along with Motion, as he gains insight and inspiration for his poem, meaning that when he reads it publicly for the first time (shown at the end of the programme) we know where all the various references and allusions originated. Perhaps it's the fault of the documentary making sure to explain every nuance of the poem, but it seemed a bit too on-the-nose for me.

Taking the Flak
1x02 Black Gold, Code Red
1x03 Cursed is the Country
Hastily catching up on this before it disappears from iPlayer on Wednesday.
[Watch both episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

From the Earth to the Moon - Part 5

The fifth part of HBO's From the Earth to the Moon jumps back in time to the beginnings of the plans to go to the Moon to cover the development of the Lunar Module, the craft that would actually put men on the Moon's surface.

Such a change of pace, structure and -- for most of the episode -- cast continues this series' unusual approach to serial storytelling, where the only constant is Tom Hanks' slightly awkward opening monologues (always a minute or two of apparently-unrelated but actually thematically-relevant anecdotes that convolute themselves to conclude with a sentence ending "...from the Earth to the Moon").

Writer Andy Wolk also manages to inject some levity into the series, the amount of humour bringing a subtly different tone to this episode. It works especially well here, considering the story is essentially about a group of engineers designing a piece of machinery. As for actual space missions, Apollo 9 (the first test of the Module in space, where it went by the call sign "Spider" -- yep, this episode's title) gets a bit of a look-in in the second half, while Apollo 10 is relegated to no more than two minutes at the close.

Of course, the Module's greatest test is still to come. Next stop, the Moon...

TV

As Seen on TV
1x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Jam & Jerusalem
3x03 New Beginnings / Ladies in Lavender [season finale]
A nice ending to a too-short series. Hopefully there'll be more, but if not this serves as a nice little ending.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Rules of Film Noir
A nice overview of the genre for BBC Four's Film Noir Weekend. Not much new to learn if you're decently aware of the genre, but for those who have just heard of it or never delved into it this was a more-than-decent primer and spot of analysis. Nice work BBC.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Channel 4 announces 3D programming week by Dan French
(from Digital Spy)
"Channel 4 has announced a special week of 3D programming to celebrate 3D footage. This autumn, viewers will be invited to don 3D glasses to watch the programmes -- broadcast in ColorCode 3D -- which include previously unseen footage of the Queen during her Coronation year. The two hour-long episodes, titled The Queen In 3D, tell the story of two young men who filmed a 3D colour newsreel they named Royal Review...
The special week will also see the transmission of Derren Brown's 3D Magic Spectacular, The Greatest Ever 3D Moments and several 3D movies."

TV

Mock the Week
7x07 (20/8/09 edition)
A clips & outtakes edition, unusually placed halfway through the series. Although it started out weakly with a huge chunk of repeated material, it steadily improved, in the end almost inadvertently giving a real sense of what it must be like to watch a recording of the show rather than the tightly edited highlights package that each week's edition amounts to.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Would I Lie To You?
3x02 (17/8/08 edition)
Brilliant turns from Reginald D Hunter and Stephen Mangan this week.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Do You Wanna Date James Cameron's Avatar?

It's always fun to mush news stories together for potentially comedic effect*.

So when I heard, on the same day, of the expected success of the trailer for James Cameron's Avatar -- or, as I've taken to calling it, Phantom Menace 2: This Time Everyone's Jar Jar -- and the surprising success of The Guild's music video for (Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar... well, I couldn't help seeing what would happen were the two to collide...

* I'll leave it to you to decide if this example is successful.

TV

From the Earth to the Moon
Part Four 1968
Please look here for my thoughts on this episode.

The Tudors
3x01 Civil Unrest
3x02 The Northern Uprising
Mm, HD! Thought it seems the BBC are intending to show this season in double bills, burning through it in just four weeks (though the series' BBC website says it has six episodes, so maybe they're abandoning it from episodes five). It works quite well in such big chunks, actually -- I certainly didn't spot the join, and a whole lot actually happened.
A bit like Desperate Romantics, The Tudors is historically dubious but an awful lot of fun. It's nice to have it back.
[Watch both episodes (again) on iPlayer.]

You Have Been Watching
1x07 (18/8/09 edition)
"They gone done fell in the water!"
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Music

(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar by The Guild & Felicia Day



Brilliant!

Articles

Cult web series tops iTunes chart by Mark Savage
(from BBC News)
"A music video by the creators of cult web sitcom The Guild has gone straight to number one in the UK iTunes chart, beating Black Eyed Peas and Beyonce.
(Do You Wanna Date My) Avatar was written to promote the third series of the show, about a group of people who play an online role-playing game... More than 1.5 million people have watched the video on YouTube since it was uploaded on Monday, while the song itself is currently number two in the Amazon US download chart."
Hurrah for Internet geekdom! Well done one and all.

From the Earth to the Moon - Part 4

Part Four of HBO's From the Earth to the Moon is simply titled 1968 -- and for good reason.

For the first 20 minutes, writer Al Reinert (director of the 1989 documentary For All Mankind, as well as writer of Apollo 13) broadens the scope of the series to put the Moon missions in the context of news events at the time. It seems the titular year was a particularly poor one for America: mass casualties in Vietnam, violent protests against the war taking place worldwide -- not least in America itself -- and the crushing of dreams and hopes with the assassinations of, first, Martin Luther King, Jr., and then Bobby Kennedy.

And amongst all this, the Russians became the first to send an unmanned flight around the Moon and back to Earth.

In response, NASA wanted to best them -- of course -- and so in the days leading up to Christmas 1968, Apollo 8 headed for the Moon, and on Christmas Eve entered orbit -- ten times! -- before eventually returning safely to Earth. Naturally it's this that the majority of the episode focuses on, although the opening section feels longer, so densely packed is it with news footage (both real and faked) covering the events of that year. It perhaps shows Reinert's documentary roots that it so precisely evokes and retells history.

While it's good to cover the details of the missions themselves, the context is also very important -- not just because it's interesting to see these events in the light of what else was going on at the time, but also because they directly impacted on it. Were it not for Kennedy's promise that America would put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, for example, they might not have strived so hard to do it so quickly. Numerous other examples abound throughout the series.

And, as one telegram to the astronauts on Apollo 8 put it, they "saved 1968".

TV

From the Earth to the Moon
Part Three We Have Cleared the Tower
Please look here for my thoughts on this episode.

The Mentalist Finale Night
The Mentalist Revealed
Inside The Mentalist
And so Five chooses to close out the first season of its enjoyable House replacement with three hours of programming devoted to it. First up, two behind-the-scenes half-hours that feature the same narrator and cuts from the same set of interviews. Why isn't it just a single one-hour programme? God only knows.
They hardly dig deep into the production, characters, or anything else, but with a fun lightness about them ("Crowie and Kidders"!) they were perfectly in keeping with their subject matter. Lightweight, then, but enjoyably so. Nice work Five.

And they were of course followed by...

The Mentalist
1x22 Blood Brothers
1x23 Red John's Footsteps [season finale]
A slightly disappointing finale in my book, being rather too much like any other episode. (And, of course, ep22 was just any other episode, though Five did their best to convince people otherwise in promoting Finale Night.)
I do hope Red John doesn't get dragged out interminably, although once he's dealt with it'll leave Jane entirely nemesis-less (and any potential replacement couldn't possibly carry the same weight). Of course, seeing what happens to a Man With A Cause once he's fulfilled it -- is there fulfillment? -- could be very interesting if treated right.
[Watch episode 22 and episode 23 (again) on Demand Five.]

Films

Avatar Trailer
Just as overhyped as we all should have expected.
The CGI is very good, true, but it's no better than that: very good CGI. It does not look real. That journalist who said s/he knew the Big Blue Aliens couldn't be real but they certainly looked it was either a fool or just very gullible. And better CGI has been seen too, such as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and 3.
Of course, if the story's good then this won't necessarily matter, but it's already harming it's chances in my book.

Music

No Line on the Horizon by U2
I'm not the biggest U2 fan, though I quite like them, but I couldn't resist this rather lovely edition at Amazon's reduced price (for this week only, I should add).
As for the album itself... it's not bad.

Articles

50 Greatest Movie Sequels
(from Empire)
I like lists, and this is an interesting (if long) one.

Guy Ritchie Talks Moriarty Rumours by Owen Williams
(from Empire)
""Some kind of appearance is probably the best way to describe it," says the director, replying "I believe not" when asked if anyone is officially named as the Prof in the credits. "All will be revealed. I'm afraid I have to be slightly ambiguous, but you'll understand when you se the movie.""
Ah, crystal clear.

Will The Hobbit Be A Trilogy? by Owen Williams
(from Empire)
Answer: we don't know. Obviously -- if we did, there'd be no question in the headline.

From the Earth to the Moon - Part 3

21 months on from the Apollo 1 disaster (depicted in Part Two of From the Earth to the Moon), NASA is preparing for the launch of Apollo 7 -- the first manned mission attempt since the fire. This episode's title -- We Have Cleared the Tower -- should give away its success.

Once again, FtEttM (a catchy acronym if ever I saw one) uses an unusual structure to tell it's story. Here, a young documentary crew follow the preparations for Apollo 7 -- while the mission is obviously real, the documentary crew are a fictional creation. On the one hand it works quite neatly, allowing characters to explain technical details and expand on their feelings in a way that would be unrealistic in a standard dramatisation. The major downside of this is that it occasionally feels like a documentary being performed by actors, rather than a genuine piece of drama.

The primary benefit of this, on the other hand, is to emphasise the effect of Apollo 1: it features ominously in the thoughts and words of the astronauts, ground crew and the media, the potential for a similar incident constantly hanging over them. So tangible is the memory of the accident that this episode almost feels more like a continuation of the Apollo 1 story, rather than the tale of Apollo 7. Certainly, by choosing to end the episode with the successful launch -- thus ignoring what occurred during the 11 days the men spent in space -- the story makes its focuses whether NASA can overcome the legacy of Apollo 1 rather than what Apollo 7 contributed to the space program.

It's the creation of this feeling that makes Part Three another successful episode of From the Earth.... As a series, it's finding new angles from which to tell the story of the Apollo missions, rather than just rehashing other films and documentaries. If it wasn't for this it would inevitably repeat itself with episode after episode of similar experiences in space, and while those tales are likely fascinating, a lot of other things went on around the program that are worthy of retelling too.

TV

Dragons' Den
7x06 Episode 6
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

From the Earth to the Moon
Part One Can We Do This?
Part Two Apollo One
Please look here for my thoughts on these episodes.

Articles

Davies has future Torchwood plans by Mayer Nissim
(from Digital Spy)
I actually noticed this story yesterday on a Who fansite, but as they don't have links to individual news stories this makes for a better link. Anyway:
"Davies said: "I could write you scene one of series four right now. I know exactly how to pick it up. I've got a shape in mind, and I've got stories. I know where you'd find Gwen and Rhys, and their baby, and Jack, and I know how you'd go forward with a new form of Torchwood... If the BBC asked for another 13 one-part stories, that's what we'd do... but I think it works well as one continuous story.""

Deayton 'to return for HIGNFY milestone by Daniel Kilkelly
(from Digital Spy)
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

Scoop on those final Who specials by Dan French
(from Digital Spy)
It's not really all that much of a "scoop" -- it's just a brief, largely unrevealing interview with guest star David Harewood (most recently seen as Friar Tuck in Robin Hood (which I've still not seen the final two episodes of, incidentally)) -- but will still be of interest to fans (obviously).

U2 explain Spider-Man 'opera' by Greg Cochrane
(from BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat)
U2 do have some good songs/albums, but they really are a bunch of... well, I try to keep this blog family friendly, so let's say "twits".