Posted on November 16, 2009 by Darren
Of all the people to survive, he’s not the one you would have chosen, is it? But if you could choose, Doctor, if you could decide who lives and who dies… that would make you a monster.
– Mr. Cooper, Voyage of the Damned
The Waters of Mars is a lot more intense than I was expecting. It started out as a standard base under seige story with more than an echo of the era of the fourth Doctor about it, but then something happened. The Doctor made the decision that he’s made before – and which he explicitly compares in the episode to the decision to watch Pompeii burn in The Fires of Pompeii – the decision to walk away. And then the episode kicks it up a notch and becomes a fantastically appropriate penultimate story for this incarnation of The Doctor.
A Mars attack...
Note: There are naturally spoilers for the episode under discussion below. If you want a recommendation, then here it is: this is the best episode of the new series since Midnight over a year ago. It has some pacing issues and a very standard opening half. But the finalé is a perfect dovetail of the core themes of Davies’ run on the show.
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: bbc, bowie base one, david tennant, doctor who, doctor who specials, fires of pompeii, lonely god, mars, review, russell t. davies, specials, Television, the fires of pompeii, the master, the waters of mars, time lords, waters of mars | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 13, 2009 by Darren
In my defense, I haven’t seen the original 2002 movie The Gathering Storm, to which this movie serves as a sequel – but I think the movie (as a historical piece) stands very well on its own two feet. Besides, aside from the producers (the brothers Scott, obviously attempting to follow Spielberg into the World War II market) and writer (Hugh Whitemore), the series has little in common with its illustrious predecessor. The director is new. The roles have been recast. If it weren’t for the linking theme of the word ‘Storm’ in the title and the fact that this movie picks up where the other left off (at least chronologically), there would be nothing to really tie it down. So, with the confession that I have not seen the original made-for-TV movie, what did I think of Into The Storm?
Cry Havok! And let slip the insurance-selling dogs of war!
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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews, Television | Tagged: brendan gleeson, churchill, drama, hbo, into the storm, made-for-television, Movie, non-review review, review, Television, winston churchill | 2 Comments »
Posted on November 11, 2009 by Darren
One of the wonderful things about the advent of portable media like DVDs and BluRay is that it allows filmmakers to cram a whole lot more of their film on to the disk. Most offer a variety of insights into the filmmaking process – such as featurettes or commentaries – whereas some add more texture to the environment created – deleted or extended scenes, or included multimedia extras and so on. It’s become quite common to release extended editions (or directors’ cuts) of major motion picture releases – Watchmen, for example, has no less than three versions so far, for example. Here’s the question though: should those deleted or extended scenes be treated as the word of god (for lack of a better description) and as having occurred in the continuity with which we are presented? Admittedly it’s less of a problem for movies, where there are only occasionally sequels and even then continuity is generally loose, but what about television series? I’m watching the second season of Battlestar Galactica and it includes two distinct versions of the episode Pegasus – the extended one featuring at least one important plotpoint – so which do I presume happened when I view the following episodes?
Is it only the final cut that matters?
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Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: continuity, cut, deleted scenes, films, interpretations, Movies, scissor, word of god | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 10, 2009 by Darren
Well, the whole point of Frontline was to offer a more realistic and “grounded” discussion of current affairs, where anything could happen. So – in a way – the three-minute rant that Kenny was subjected to last night seems to be almost a proof of concept: this is no-holds-barred television, not choreographed or airbrushed. The rant seems to have split public opinion (at least from listening to Newstalk this morning), but I think we’ll all avoiding the real elephant in the room: if you’re going to hijack the spotlight on a current affairs show, at least make your point in a way that isn’t simply mashing up a handful of words (“hypocritical”, “600,000”, “eleven hours”, “credibility”, “pontificating”) in a variety of permutations for three minutes.
Quite literally on the front line...
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Filed under: Opinion, Television | Tagged: frontline, oratory, Pat Kenny, public speaking, rants, raves, recession, rhetoric, rte, speeches | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 3, 2009 by Darren
All of this has happened before… and will happen again.
With that line articulated by the Cylon Leoben Conroy in the episode Flesh and Bone, the producers and writers lay their cards on the table. Time is cyclical. Maybe for the grand design of human history, but most definitely for storytelling. Battlestar Galactica is possibly the most wonderfully dense and layoured piece of popular culture which I have had the joy of savouring since first cracking open Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. It’s magical, it’s mystical, and it’s wonderful. How Ronald D. Moore turned a kitsch footnote in television science fiction history into this, I will never know. I am just thankful.
Time's Arrow is cyclical...
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: 33, adama, all this has happened before, baltar, battlestar galactic season 1, battlestar galactica, bluray, cyclic, cylons, faith, god, kobol's last gleaming, litmus, religion, review, six, the hand of god, war on terror, you can't go home again | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 15, 2009 by Darren
Product placement. Sponsorship. Payola. Image branding. Advertising. Astroturfing. The use of media – old and new – to sell products to people – whether they know you’re selling it to them or not. It has always been a bit of a thorny issue – with laws popping up against the legendary, but ultimately unproven, “subliminal advertising” – the flashing of words and images between the stills of a movie so fast that the audience couldn’t actually see them (though some would claim that these images made a subconscious impression, it has been difficult to consistently reproduce – but it was still banned). The last few decades in particular have seen a flurry of rules and regulations attempting to regulate what you can sell to who and how. But is advertising that easy to regulate?
"The Mac - for the insufferable genius in all of us..."
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Filed under: Movies, Television | Tagged: advertising ftc, advertising subliminal, astroturf, astroturfing, bloggers, blogging, federal trade commission, journalism, new media, old media, payola, placement, print media, product placement, regulations, subliminal advertising, subliminal messaging | Leave a comment »
Posted on October 9, 2009 by Darren
For reasons beyond my control (and the same reasons that might lead me to slow my contributions over the next weeks) I found myself watching late night reality television on TV3. Until now, reality TV and I have observed something resembling a mutually peaceful existence – I don’t bother it and it doesn’t bother me. However, watching an hour of Gordon Ramsey swear like he’d just bought a sailor’s thesaurus really just hammered home how uncomfortable I am watching reality television. What’s my problem?
Reality TV in a nutshell...
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: broadcasting, competitive reality shows, networks, programming, reality shows, reality television, reality tv, scripted drama, Television, voyeurism | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 5, 2009 by Darren
It’s a strange world. It’s startling that last year’s writers’ strike produced one the most stunning years of television that I can recall. In particular the fourth seasons of both House and Lost managed to inject a new sense of life into premises that had been wearing more than a little thin. Both series finales were fantastic, and promised wonderful things for the coming year. And both series subsequently failed to live up to the promise offered by those finales. In fairness, Lost was pretty awesome this year, just not with the same concentration of awesome which defined its earlier season. House, on the other hand, faltered coming out of the date by giving us a whole myriad of poorly-handled interesting storylines and just blain terrible subplots. Just when it looked like it was going to limp past the finish line, the last handful of episodes managed to turn it around, but I’m still not sure what to make of the season as a whole.
The show had its problems this year, let's see if we can make a diagnosis...
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: cuddy, drama, gregory house, house, house m.d., house md, house: season 5, hugh laurie, kal penn, laurence kutner, lisa edelstein, robert sean leonard, Television, wilson | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 4, 2009 by Darren
I recently picked up Battlestar Galactica on bluray, the complete series boxset, including every episode and special. I’d wandered in and out of the series over the years (mainly due to the fact that I was at college during its run) and when this package was released I decided that it might well be worth my time to pick up the whole kit and kaboodle on watch it through from beginning to end. So, for the first time, I watched the 2003 miniseries which had served as launching pad for the series. While I’m not entirely happy with the bluray itself, I am very satisfied with the programme.
Guess who’s coming to dinner?
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Filed under: Television | Tagged: adama, battlestar, battlestar galactica, Battlestar Galactica miniseries, Battlestar Galactica: The Miniseries, bluray, BSG, cylons, review | 15 Comments »
Posted on October 1, 2009 by Darren
It’s interesting to look at television, and look how the format of what is being broadcast has changed in the past few years and how it varies from place to place – I’m not talking about the revolution in content that has been slowly happening since the eighties, merely the way in which that format is presented. Television in the UK and Ireland isn’t normally broadcast in the same fashion as it is in the USA. Here shows generally run week-in, week-out for thirteen weeks rather than running twenty-four weeks spread from September to June. We don’t have shows that take breaks between episodes – the next episode is generally always next week. So when Sky recently announced that it had a spate of new shows returning this and next week, I was a little intrigued.
House will be making house calls even sooner...
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Filed under: Television | Leave a comment »
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