Screen stuff

Finished True Blood season one last night and I really enjoyed it: it's got a nice spin on the old vamp thing, a good script and some decent acting. I'm not fussed for the actress playing Sookie but that's ok as I believe the second series moves away from her onto other characters.

Dracula 2000 in contrast was mediocre at best. Plummer was good as an aging Helsing propped up by injections of vamp blood who's absent minded enough to allow Dracula's coffin to be stolen, doh, he has Lee Miller to help out though he's useless. There's little to recommend this to anyone though it does have Gerard Butler playing the title character with a barely hidden Scottish accent.

No Blade of Grass, an old British post-apocalyptic drama was great, it kinda shares a similar grimy, uber depressing view of societal collapse much like Threads but attributes the crisis to our enviromental mismanagement. Ohh how very prescient! guess it's just a matter of days before this gets remade. The acting is functional with a few familiar faces but it doesn't detract from a great story though eye patch dude did distract me a bit. Written by the guy who did Tripods.

Just rewatched the last quarter (sober) and it was worth it for the biker gang shoot out and the ultra gloomy fraticidal ending which was nice. Needs a remake and we should do it and soon.

forgotten trash

Can't imagine why but I forgot about Mindhunters - another pick from the customers and another piece of crap, I'm sure someone said it was a bit scifi-y but it isn't and instead its a tedious And Then There Were None riff with a few b-listers plodding their way through a dodgy script about wannabe FBI profilers under the tutelage of Kilmer & Wig. Avoid this one unless you need emergency brain shutdown.

Space Junk

There's so much interesting stuff about at the moment and courtesy of io9, here's another cool link this time about one of Saturn's moons, Iapetus.

Shinema

Bruno, was pretty awful, not as funny as Borat and a total waste of time. Cohen's characters were better focused on celebs and media pundits like back on the 11 0'clock show.

Dead End, was better if a little formulaic, starring Ray Wise who makes an unfortunate short cut on a journey to spend Xmas with the mother in law. It all goes wrong mostly just as you'd expect but it's redeemed slightly by Wise's amazing face and some other good performances.

Alone In The Dark was actually a pretty decent psycho-thriller from the 80's. Murdoch from the A-Team is a new psychiatrist for a bunch of violent loons who escape from the low security nut farm during a black out, kinda looks like a tv movie but it's got a bevy of stars in a true ham fest, Palance should get an award for his uber-triple-hamtastic performance.

Hopkin's amazing ventriloquism

Cool I thought I was losing my mind, switched onto Tomb Raider tonight and caught Anthony Hopkins voice coming out of Voights puffy face during a comedic remembrance by a super pouty Jolie. Anyways I thought it must have been my imagination, erm, but I googled it and some guy on some website thinks the same thing, phew, that was a relief.

Obviously Voight wasn't capable of an English accent, no real surprise, he always struck me as a div, so they got ole Tony in to do his bits - should have watched the rest to see if there was more but I'd rather not. Hopkins isnt listed in the IMDB cast list tho. Maybe madness beckons after all.

Been watching...

Shows and more shows, thought I'd have a little time off the films so been watching some small screen guff.

30 Rock - nice couple in the shop have been telling me to watch this for a while, and they were right it is good, we're only half way through season one and I'm quite happy to watch 3 or 4 in a row. Baldwin is surprisingly funny and Fey has more nuance than I'd expected. Hope it won't drift into Sex and the City territory though.

Warehouse 13 - well I love the concept and was teased by IO9 for a few months but sadly I was gutted to find the actual show much lighter in tone than I'd expected, I get the idea that you need an audience but the gags would work better with an actual dramatic serious background not some sort of kids show, oh just twigged maybe they were thinking of a US show like Dr Who, kinda like a family thing - don't really know what slot it's on in the States, should really Google it.

As it currently stands I can't see myself watching much more of this show, which is a shame cause I've loved the idea of a warehouse of cool subversive archaeological objects since Indy and I'd kinda hoped this would flesh out my childhood dreams from that briefest of glimpses. The whole thing isn't helped by some of the worst music ever and I normally never notice the music.


Dr Who Robots of Death - some vintage scifi - I'm running out of scifi these days, suggestions welcome, so I thought I'd dip into some classic Who. It's a nice little story of a peculiar society with some tempramental droids and it's Tom Baker so has drama even in the quiet bits. Caves of Androznia or something next.

Mock The Week, always watch this as it's a guaranteed laugh per minute show and it's got Frankie Boyle on it. Only mention it cause this week I felt that I've been watching too many of these fake quiz show type things and they'll only stop making them till peeps like me stop watching. Ho-hum the state of our TV is depressing, time for that nutjob email to the BBC.

The Sky At Night - I fricking love this show, been watching it most of my life, apart from those lost Uni years, but it's pretty much the only science show on TV that doesn't treat you like an idiot and it's actually pretty topical. Plus it's got Patrick Moore, who is truly a natural treasure, like a British Buddha or something, lord knows who old he is but he's got plenty of passion for his subject & I hope they've got time for the recent Venusian event in the next ep. Anyways I hope Moore lasts another 50 years.

Defying Gravity - a new scifi show and imo it didn't totally suck like say Virtuality, anyways it's middle budget effort about a grand tour of our solar system that's got a crew with a bit of a past and has some sort of mysterious object/alien onboard that only a few know about. Anyways I saw a few pretty harsh reviews of it online but I quite liked it; I thought the near-future setting reasonable and reminded me of Planetes which was great. I also didn't mind the acting, Ron Livingstone is watchable enough and banked loads of creds with Office Space. Some of cast were pretty soap-ish but that's fine, I watch US TV so I'm used to sheit acting. Hopefully this won't get axed.

True Blood - I wasn't too keen on 6 Feet Under so I hadn't bothered with this neo-vamp drama but it's really good. Chock full of kinda-familiar actors this is a sweaty, dirty tale of a southern town with some newly out in the open Vamps dropping in. Only watched a handful so far so fingers crossed for the rest of the series.

Blues Britannia - tis on TV as I write, great show about the British Blues Boom.

Today was a good day

Well any day when you get a book like this delivered is a very good day. If like me you quite like bad scifi covers there's a heap of them at io9.

Cinema catch up

Couple of days off the celluloid but back with Watchmen, second time round, maybe should've waited for the Ultimate cut or something as it really didn't have the punch it had in the cinema. Rorshach was great though and guess I've come to terms about the lack of squid.

Bunny Lake Is Missing, a odd little picture by Preminger was more enjoyable though, a twisted little psychological thriller about a missing kid. Olivier plays the detective in charge of the case and as usual is excellent, there's a weird super-creepy cameo by Noel Coward and the two leads do pretty well, even during the bizarre end scenes. Noticed it's getting remade, typical.

The International, was as I expected, a fairly average action thriller, Owen and Watts were competent at least and the I guess the shootouts were ok. It did look nice though despite the director indulging in some sort of architectural fetishism.

Up next is Dead Birds - I was looking for some more period set horror after enjoying the schlocky yet good The Burrowers and found this nice little haunted house-ish tale about some Confederate soldiers turned bank robbers who come a cropper before they can share out the loot. Dunno why it's scoring so low on IMDB I liked it.

The List of Adrian Messenger was a revelation, a witty little mystery thriller from John Huston crammed with stars, though it's easy to miss a few of them. George C Scott is great and has one of the best British accents I've heard from a Yank.

And finally The Seven Ups, recommended by a friend this was a taut cop thriller starring Roy Scheider, not particulary original but well made and pretty entertaining. Something about it made me think it was based on a true story.