Category: TV and Cinema

Eleven and Half Men

The Television Event of the Century

Now that Charlie Sheen has gone completely mad and declared himself some kind of Vatican-sanctioned assassin-warlock the question arises of what to do with his bizarrely popular sitcom Two and a Half Men. The sensible option of course would be to spare us all and axe it, but while there are ratings to be had CBS will probably try and keep it going, either by writing Sheen’s character out, or by re-casting him Darrin-from-Bewitched style. There’s been talk of Rob Lowe taking over the role, but my workmate Daniel has come up with a much more interesting option…

Commission 10 more episodes to wrap the series up, then hire 10 high profile guest stars, each of which portray Sheen’s character in one episode! Genius!

They could get Rob Lowe for the first ep, then work their way through whatever luminaries they could get by dangling Sheen’s massive paycheque in front of them. Think of the possibilities! Nic Cage! Ice T! Robert Downey Junior! Rich Hall! Russell Brand! Emilio Estevez! Even (for a laugh) Jane Lynch! And then for the big finale that ends the series – William Shatner! It’d be the biggest television event in years – the ratings would soar!

This is something CBS simply must do. Let’s get the letter writing campaign started today!

Watching the Bones

I’ve got the blues Jen!

Man I love Bones. Not an episode goes by where they don’t use technology in a way that it simply doesn’t work.

For instance, in a recent episode they found a negative cast of a skeleton inside a block of concrete. They filled the cast with metal, and CAT scanned it to get a 3D model of the skeleton, which they then printed out on a rapid prototyping machine to get a skeleton they could study. They then solved the murder via a bunch of microscopic scratches on said skeleton. Brilliant!

Except I somehow doubt that,

a) The resolution (for want of a better word) of concrete would be good enough to retain microscopic scratches.
b) A CAT scan would be detailed enough to pick up any microscopic scratches the concrete did manage to preserve.
c) The rapid prototyping machine would have a high enough resolution to print out any microscopic scratches the CAT scan did pick up.

Add to that the scene of the rapid prototyping machine at work – playing a bunch of bright red, clearly visible laser beams all over a tank of goop – well it’s just sheer genius.

(And that’s not to mention the 3D holographic display they regularly use –  a technology that just plain doesn’t exist)

Funnily enough, I don’t enjoy Bones for the reason that so many nerd guys do. Emily Deschanel is unquestionably very pretty, but I find Brennan’s characterisation rather annoying. Also, I guess I find it hard to be attracted to a supposed scientist who makes so many basic scientific errors 🙂

On a personal level I’ve got the blues Jen! I’m feeling tired, run down and ineffective. I spend all week hanging out for the weekend when I can actually get things done – then get nothing done on the weekend because I feel so vague, tired and unfocussed. My apartment is in an appalling state because I haven’t got around to tidying it for weeks, and all I want to do is either prowl mindlessly around the net, or crawl into bed and sleep. Hmmm, I probably need more exercise, more vegetables, or a good slap upside the head or something 🙂

Save the Wombats Lord, Kumbaya

What would we do baby, without us?

In an attempt to fill up the vast, rolling plains of airtime that have recently opened up with the onslaught of newly launched digital channels, the various TV networks have been pulling anything they can grab out of their archives, dusting it off, and throwing it on air willy nilly. As a result shows that haven’t seen the light of day in decades are now turning up randomly all over the TV schedule, often in back-to-back double episodes or in odd timeslots such as 5:00pm Monday to Wednesday, followed by 12:20pm Thursday, then 6:30am Saturday for the early risers. It’s historic TV madness!

One of these shows that has been dragged kicking and screaming off the shelf is that old standby Family Ties, the show that launched Michael J. Fox to stard0m and ensured that we’d never get to see Eric Stoltz drive a Delorean. Ah, the memories! The maddeningly catchy sha-la-la-la theme song! The curiously craggy face of Michael Gross! Ubu the dog with his frisbee! Good times…

But the thing that struck me most forcibly during a recent viewing was a scene that showed just how right L.P.Hartley was with his lunatic ramblings about shadowy umbrellas, hooded eyes and the past as a foreign country where they do things differently (and how!).

So, the titular family are sitting around in the kitchen when Alex (played by Marty McFly) gets a phone call from a girl. From the half of the conversation we hear it’s clear that this girl has managed to obtain tickets for some event. Once off the phone one of the parents (honestly I forget who, they’re pretty interchangeable) asks if said tickets are for Barry Manilow.

A joke of course – clueless parents totally out of touch with the music young people are into, assuming that Barry Manilow is somehow cool enough that their son would be clamouring for tickets. But no. No canned laughter rings out. The Manilow comment is passed over without comment, the actual joke is that the tickets Alex is so excited about are to a lecture by a famous economist.

The only logical conclusion is that in the early 80’s cool kids went to Barry Manilow concerts! Or at the very least TV scriptwriters thought that cool kids went to Barry Manilow concerts. Madness!!

Ancient TV aside, the old black dog has been stalking me quite efficiently recently, to the point that I’d very much like to spend my days curled up in a fetal position, weeping quietly under my bedsheets. Unfortunately it’s been too hot for that, so I’ve had to pull myself together and come into work instead. I’ve been doing my best to deal with it by subverting my angst into fantasies of extreme violence against everyone who has ever crossed me. This is startlingly effective but hardly qualifies as a long term treatment plan. I did manage to get my bike fixed however so I’ll try some needlessly aggressive bike riding instead and see how it goes.

That’s all for now folks!

Odd

Life After the Apocalypse with Power Armour and Demons and Tube Stations and Things

7 Mate (as Network 7 is insisting on calling it’s third channel) is promoting the series Life After People with that picture from Hellgate London.

You know, the one that curiously distorts the layout of the city to get the maximum number of devestated landmarks in?

With the game shut down and all I don’t know what the copyright status of the image is, but it seems like a strange choice. I mean the series is Life After People, not Life After the Apocalypse with Power Armour and Demons and Tube Stations and Things.

Odd.

Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco

In Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco (2010), the two main characters, Lindsey and Leon, go to a roller disco.

Observe the Wikipedia page for “roller disco“. Observe this…

In Lindsey And Leon Go To A Roller Disco (2010), the two main characters, Lindsey and Leon, go to a roller disco.

I so wish I could have found a reference to this on Google, but I couldn’t, so I had to remove it, damnit!

It may have been called “Adam 1985” or something…

Televisual Memories

Yes, yes, happy new arbitrary point in the earth’s orbit and all that. I have more important things to talk about. Like TV.

(If I were running things then the year would start/end at a solstice or equinox or something. You know, a date that means something. Hrumph.)

Anyway, I remembered a TV show the other day that I haven’t thought of for years. The trouble is I don’t know the name of it, and can only remember a few fragments of plot. This is driving me nuts so I thought I’d start off the new year by putting all the details I can remember about it up online, thus making it someone else’s problem.

It was a live action show. I have a vague suspicion that it was made somewhere in Europe, and dubbed into English – or at least it was filmed in English but in association with a French or Belgian or Dutch (or maybe German) TV network. The plot (insofar as I remember it) was that at some point in the future the world is threatened. You see, in the future everyone wanders around in white robes in a big white building, listening to a super intelligent computer – which appears to be nothing more than a large perspex cube. This computer predicts that some kind of cataclysm is going to occur – a comet, or a planet or an asteroid is going to collide with the earth. Oy gevalt!

Now, the super civilisation of the future is based around the discoveries of a brilliant scientist who was born in the 20th century. In his memoirs he mentioned that he once developed a formula that could be used to move a planet – exactly what the future people need to do to save the earth. But, the formula doesn’t appear anywhere in his papers. So the future people decide they need to travel back in time to the 1980s (when the scientist – about 12 years old at the time – says that he developed the formula) and get it off him – without disturbing the time line by walking up to him and saying “Hey! We’re from the future!”.

So a small team travels back to the 1980s and spends most of their time stumbling around, not actually achieving anything.

They do however (somehow) become involved with a local tramp, who wanders around whitling things. Right at the end of the series they rescue the tramp from being hit by a car (and for some reason) immediately need to return to the future without the formula. Because the tramp is supposed to be dead, they take him with them. Once back in the future they get all mournful about how the mission failed and they’re all going to die.

Meanwhile the tramp notices that the perspex cube supercomputer isn’t level, and quickly whittles a wedge to correct the situation. The computer then announces “Hey, guess what! I wasn’t on a level surface so my calculations were off, the comet/asteroid/planet is going to miss us, hooray!” and everyone lives happily ever after.

The series ends with the boy genius and his girlfriend sitting on a pier back in the 1980s. She asks him what he’s carving into the wood, and he tells her it’s a formula to move planets. THE END.

It was a very weird show – everything was very grey and grim. Lots of melancholy shots of salt marsh and things. I remember a couple of other scenes, one of the future people ransacking the kid’s house (which in the future is a scheduled monument of some kind), and a couple of the time travellers sitting around at a party noting that all of the songs the locals are singing are about love. But that’s it.

So, what the hell was I watching? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Happy new year y’all! 😀

Pun Unintentional

Talk about ideas that suck

So, they’re apparently making a Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie.

Hmmm, didn’t they already do that? And it sucked?

(While we’re on the subject of awful Vampire movies, I meant to say a while back that I didn’t think there was any way to make the Twilight movies worse, but that the makers of Vampires Suck seemed to have somehow managed it.)

Micturition

You know it’s bad when the most authentic version featured Ted Danson…

Saw a preview for Jack Black’s version of Gulliver’s Travels this week. It’s kind of ironic that the only bit that looks authentic to the book is the one bit everyone would assume isn’t in the book.

(If you don’t get what I mean then go out and read it you phillistine!)

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