Category: TV and Cinema

Moit!

One of my guilty pleasures at the moment is the new season of Iron Man: Armored Adventures on ABC 3. Sure, it’s a kid’s show, but it’s fun – and hey, I already classified it as a guilty pleasure, which means I don’t have to justify it to anyone, let alone you.

😉

There was one annoying thing about the episodes they played last night though. The presence of an “Ossy” (which is how Americans strangely insist on pronouncing “Aussie”).

Now I have no strange objection to Australians appearing in American TV shows. It’s nice to see us represented. But what would also be nice would be getting actors who can actually do an Australian accent – as opposed to doing a Cockney accent with “moit” added to the end of every second sentence.

Sure, Americans can’t tell the difference, but believe me it makes us cringe. It’s like representing an American accent by getting a Puerto Riccan to randomly say “pard’ner”. Or a Canadian accent by having a South African end every sentence with “eh?”. It’s bizarre.

Of course, it’s not going to change. But it would be nice.

Or perhaps noice moit!

Hold Fast to the Law

Gormenghast Castle
So, I’ve just finished reading Gormenghast, the second book of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. It’s every bit as good as Titus Groan, and every bit as good as I expected. Highly recommended!

I’ve also just rewatched the BBC adaption of the books from 2000. I saw it when it first came out and never since, but some wonderful soul has uploaded it in it’s entirety to YouTube. Here’s the first bit and you can follow it on from there.

The mini-series is of course different from the books – in a few places wildly so – but it’s very true to the spirit and feel of the story. So, go ahead and watch it, and if you like what you see then read the source material for the real story.

Onwards to Titus Alone!

 

An Earful of Shins

Channel 73 (I refused to call it “7 Mate”) has started running repeats of Scrubs in the afternoons, which makes a pleasant change from repeats of That 70’s Show. Not that I have anything against That 70’s Show mind you (apart from perhaps when Laura Prepon dyed her hair blonde)  but variety is the spice of life and so on.

One of the great things about Scrubs has always been the music, a fact of which I was reminded when last night’s episode featured New Slang by the Shins. I haven’t heard that in ages, and enjoyed it so much that I immediately headed off to YouTube to listen to it in full. Then some other Shins tracks.

So, today you’re getting an earful of Shins. Not as painful as it sounds, I assure you…



My Chiffon is Wet!

Disco Stu likes Disco Music!

Have you ever wandered what that disco song they keep using in the Simpsons is? Well, wonder no more, for here you may behold the campy horrors of Disco Tex and his Sex-o-Lettes with 1975’s Get Dancin’

Disco Stu likes Disco Music!

Warehouse 23 13

Yeah, like I’d actually call her…

Caught a couple of episodes of Warehouse 13 last night for the first time.

I’ve been meaning to check the series out for a while, it’s been getting a fair amount of good press online and hence has been sitting in the back of my head as something to watch out for. So when Channel Seven announced (with a slight amount of fanfare) last week that they were putting it on at 8:30 Sunday nights I jumped at the opportunity (sorry Spielberg, Terra Nova is quite good, but not quite enough for me to obsessively reserve its timeslot).

So, having watched two episodes last night, I have a number of questions…

What’s with starting with episodes 8 and 9 rather than 1 and 2?
The most likely explanation of course is that they’ve quietly played the previous 7 episodes in some graveyard slot and all they’ve done now is promote the show up to the top rank by moving it to Sundays, but it’s a bit disconcerting to have all these ads promoting this great new series only to drop new viewers right in the middle of the first season without warning.

Why was the pre-credits teaser cut from Episode 9?
It would have been a lot easier to understand the episode if we’d seen the intro. Was it a typically pathetic attempt to run the two episodes together into a continuous “Movie Length Episode”, or just general incompetence?

Why did the Studio 54 Mirror Ball play generic disco music rather than I Will Survive?
Yeah, I know, probably a syndication licensing thing…

What – if any – is the connection with Steve Jackson Games and their GURPs Warehouse 23 from back in the 90s?
It’s exactly the same idea with a different number.

Why are the Communicators called ‘Farnsworths’ rather than ‘Logie-Bairds’?
Zing! 🙂

Where can I get Allison Scagliotti’s phone number?
😉

All that aside, I found the show quite entertaining – even if the science was abominable – and will keep tuning in for as long as Seven deign to air it at a reasonable hour – which will probably be for about two weeks at which point it won’t have beaten Terra Nova in the ratings so they’ll swap it out for So You Think You Can Juggle Chainsaws America or whatever their next guaranteed ratings winner is.