The National Television Awards 2010

Did anyone see this piece of crap?

I mean, yeah, I know it’s only an awards show and yeah, sure, Doctor Who got some awards so I heard but somehow a show that gives awards to a few shows I like but simultaneously gives awards to shows I detest (soaps, reality shows and all that kind of TV shyte) doesn’t quite seem to cut it with me. I suppose that in order to see an award for a show I like as valuable I have to believe that the awards themselves have value and if the awards are being given out to shows I despise then I don’t see them as valuable.

I mean, let’s be straight here, when I say “despise” I don’t mean simply “don’t like” … I don’t like “Life On Mars”,  I don’t like “Taggart”, I don’t like “Inspector Morse” or “Boys From The Black Stuff” or “Spooks” or “Bleak House” or many, many other shows but I don’t sneer at them either, I can see that they’re exceptionally well made dramas that I don’t happen to like. But I do (most emphatically) despise each and every single soap and reality show to some degree or other, I despise quiz shows as a rule (and I’m not talking “QI”, “Have I Got News For You” or “Mock The Week” here) and I despise fly on the wall documentaries and shit like that. I think they’re cheap arsed crap that are being fed to a gullible, all too accepting public and that being an entertainer is both a privilege and a responsibility, that they have the responsibility to produce good stuff, to make it intelligent, to make it clever to make it in some way special.

And when the hell did programs like “The Apprentice”, “Come Dine With Me” and “Loose Women” become “Factual” programmes?

So no Sir, frankly the awards that Doctor Who got from the National Television Awards should be displayed in the place it most deserves, the rubbish bin!

Kyuuketsuki: Angry Atheism & “Science, Just Science” Campaign (co-founder)

On The US WGA Writer’s Strike “Deal”

I was glad when the WGA strike was over, even more glad that I thought they had got some measure of what they wanted but if Harlan Ellison (I assume the same as the respected SF author and a significant force behind Babylon 5) is typical of the view the WGA memebers hold they were shafted:

HARLAN ELLISON ON THE WRITERS STRIKE SETTLEMENT

YOU HAVE MY PERMISSION TO RE-POST THIS ANYWHERE:

Creds: got here in 1962, written for just about everybody, won the Writers Guild Award four times for solo work, sat on the WGAw Board twice, worked on negotiating committees, and was out on the picket lines with my NICK COUNTER SLEEPS WITH THE FISHE$$$ sign. You may have heard my name. I am a Union guy, I am a Guild guy, I am loyal. I fuckin’ LOVE the Guild.

And I voted NO on accepting this deal.

My reasons are good, and they are plentiful; Patric Verrone will be saddened by what I am about to say; long-time friends will shake their heads; but this I say without equivocation…

THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse’s asses who kept mumbling “lessgo bac’ta work” over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.

My Guild did what it did in 1988. It trembled and sold us out. It gave away the EXACT co-terminus expiration date with SAG for some bullshit short-line substitute; it got us no more control of our words; it sneak-abandoned the animator and reality beanfield hands before anyone even forced it on them; it made nice so no one would think we were meanies; it let the Alliance play us like the village idiot. The WGAw folded like a Texaco Road Map from back in the day.

And I am ashamed of this Guild, as I was when Shavelson was the prexy, and we wasted our efforts and lost out on technology that we had to strike for THIS time. 17 days of streaming tv!!!????? Geezus, you bleating wimps, why not just turn over your old granny for gang-rape?

You deserve all the opprobrium you get. While this nutty festschrift of demented pleasure at being allowed to go back to work in the rice paddy is filling your cowardly hearts with joy and relief that the grips and the staff at the Ivy and street sweepers won’t be saying nasty shit behind your back, remember this:

You are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another.

Please excuse my temerity. I’m just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards.

I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant.

Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison

I suspect my good friend Ben will have more to say about this!

Kyuuketsuki (Co-Founder: “Science, Just Science” Campaign)

FILM: Mr. And Mrs. Smith

My wife thought it was appalling but maybe that’s because she isn’t a man!From the first moment the two main stars appeared on the screen I couldn’t help but grin at the whole idea of it (which of course I already knew about) … two very good looking, obviously sophisticated, people hooked up with each other for 5 (or 6) years of marriage and they still had no idea what each other did or that what each did was essentially the same as the other. Dumb! Worse than dumb! Fundamentalistically dumb!

But with Pitt looking every bit the suave secret agent playing at happy families and Jolie, the same (and looking damned hot to boot) I simply couldn’t help but enjoy most of it. I don’t know what it is about these two but there was definitely a certain chemistry going on … they sizzled

To cut a long story short they each find out the other is an agent and then (I’ll keep the why’s to myself) set about trying to wipe each other out, kicking, punching, attempting knife and shoot each other etc. etc. Up to about halfway the film is (assuming you aren’t my wife) quite acceptable entertainment but at that point whatever grasp on reality the director/writer had seems to vanish and the film disintegrates into a series of (admittedly good in their own right) set pieces that have no appreciable link with the one before or after. I’m not sure if that’s because the writing was truly awful or whether the relevant bits ended up on the cutting room floor.

At the end the film seems to recover itself a little and give the audience the ending they wanted (though weren’t expecting) and I managed to go away felling fairly satisfied.

The film relies on special effects (it sure as hell didn’t make it on the acting) and these do grow repetitive by the end but at the end of the day I wanted to be entertained and it did so even if it was a little bit over the top in many respects.

My wife, as I say above, thought it was appalling and perhaps she’s right because the film is essentially pointless but I’m afraid I couldn’t help but like it. I only give it a 6 out of 10 but yes I will buy it on TV if only to watch Jolie amateurishly smoulder her way around the screen but also because I KNOW my oldest daughter will love it and because the extras (if any) should reveal why it ended up the way it did.

FILM: Sahara

FILM: Sahara Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
With Matthew McConaughey, Stephen Zahn & Penélope Cruz great visuals, no obvious digital FX this is a straight forward good guys (American obviously) vs. bad guys Indiana Jones style (though perhaps a modern, no magic version of “The Mummy” might be more accurate) action/adventure/comedy film with not much story and lots of action. As one might expect the main strength of the film is in the relationship between the two lead characters Dirk Pitt (McConaughey) and Al Giordino (Zahn) with the “love interest” (a fairly well handled, positive role for a change) in Dr. Eva Rojas (Cruz). What little lot exists (concerning a mythical US Civil War Ironclad that no one except the hero, Pitt, believes in and the uncovering of a soon-to-happen eco-disaster that seriously could screw the world) doesn’t really faze the film (though apparently the writer, Clive Cussler, was none too impressed).Obviously everything that can go wrong does go wrong and the heroes, naturally enough, conspire to turn several situations from near death experiences (spooky) into victory (and usually involving lots of gunfire and explosions), do so in such dumbass, unexplainable ways it defies any kind of logic & manage to save the girl, solve the mystery, screw the bad guys and save the world that you simply have to laugh. There is no doubt in my mind that it isn’t that good a film but, if you can leave your brain switch mostly off for a couple of hours, it is simply great fun and you’ll leave the cinema feeling entertained!

If you’re not the kind of person who can take your head out of your arse for a couple of hours you’ll hate it! Me? I enjoy being entertained and I was, indeed, entertained!

Oh yeah, apparently Clive Cussler had agreed some kind of editorial screenplay rights to the film, was denied them and is now suing for the profits and damage to his reputation as an author.

6/10 and yes, I will buy it on DVD!

FILM: Hitch Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy 2005 …

… and how it compares to the BBC series!As I understand it the radio version was the original guide … that was good. From that came the books the first two of which were simply excellent but the sequels, whilst still entertaining, progressively less so. From the first two books, in 1981, came the BBC version of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and it is to that version that I am comparing the 2005 film that I saw today.

The BBC series, even though it missed a lot of the books material (it would have to to cram it in to the 6 x 30 minute episodes it comprised), was reasonably faithful to the books in a way that the film, quite simply, isn’t. Just changing a film from it’s original script, however, does not make a film a bad thing as long as the changes can be justified.

So what’s sorely missing from the new version ? There’s no mention of Eccentrica Galumbits (the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Six), Marvin the Paranoid Android (still depressed) makes no mention the pain in all the diodes down his left side, some marvelous script (such as where the plans for the demolition of Arthur’s house were), Peter Jones as the book, much of the material involving Deep thought, the Restaurant at the end of the universe, Zaphod’s two (simultaneous) heads, fear sensitive sunglasses, much about the starship Heart of Gold, the uber depressive Marvin the Paranoid Android and a magnificent buddy ending to the accompaniment of Louis Armstrong’s “It’s A Wonderful World.

What’s new in the new version … singing dolphins, Zaphod’s (alternative) heads, a completely revamped storyline featuring much more about the Vogons, a new villain, some excellent new effects, a shed-load of slapstick humour and a new happy, happy ending with Earth recreated, everybody happy and Arthur & Trillian falling for each other.

Some of the characters were quite well done … I did like Bill Nighy’s Slartibartfast, I quite liked the new Ford Prefect and I definitely approved of the new Trillian over the originals Sandra Dickinson but I found the new Arthur Dent, whilst competent, somehow diminished, the new Zaphod Beeblebrox irritating and Marvin simply not depressed enough.

My gut feeling is that the film, though British, has been reoriented at a less-than-sharp US mass market and has followed recent trends which seem to act under the assumption that if enough effects are thrown into a film it will make up for it’s shortcomings. I think, but am not sure, that I would have liked the film more if it was my first exposure to HHGTTG but ultimately consider the film to be somewhat uninspiring and nowhere near the kind of quality of the original.

In many ways it was a wasted opportunity (5/10) … indeed after seeing this film, with a birthday coming up, I asked for the BBC series on DVD (and got it … thx Mum)