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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 3, 2012 10:34:13 GMT
I see the episode of Horizon on Infinity is on this week: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qszchIf I'm right when we saw this the first time we had to stop the recording after the analogy on "different types of Infinity" to try to explain it to Liz. Then we promptly had an arguement which concluded with the words "that's just silly" Some years later she saw the program on Quantum Mechanics and learnt the true meaning of silly! |
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 3, 2012 10:37:31 GMT
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 3, 2012 10:38:28 GMT
And if you're not watching the Tube on BBC 2 on Monday nights. why not? A fascinating look into running a public transport system.
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Post by legios on Mar 5, 2012 21:15:40 GMT
The nice thing about an "all you can eat" rental queue is that you can just stuff things into it that you are curious to try out but not curious enough to actually stop doing other things when they are on television. (I am getting badly out of the habit of broadcast TV again at the moment). Anyway, I stuck the first discs of "Bones" and "Chuck" in the rental queue last year and they have finally worked their way out through the system.
"Chuck" on the surface of it should be right up my street - spy spoof about a wage-slave who gets all of the US Governments secrets crammed into his head by accident and becomes an indispensable asset. It has promise as an idea, and it also has Adam Baldwin threatening people - often in a suit. I think, however, that I am developing a slight allergy to the executive producer, McG. As seems to be the case with a lot of the things he is involved in the humor feels painfully laboured - we get it, nerds are sad friendless people and you feel that this is a source of great humor. Fine, I hear you. Now stop hitting me over the head with it, I am all out of aspirin. Also, a little less objectifying and fetishising of the female lead might not go amiss. (On the other hand, what did I expect exactly from the director of the "Charlies' Angels" movie?). The cast are actually quite funny - although it is odd hearing Yvonne Strahovski with an American accent, I'm too used to her natural one - and Adam Baldwin threatening folks is always entertaining. But there is just something about the way the show comes together that really doesn't gel for me. Ah well, an end of month rental and it only cost me a couple of hours of my life.
Besides, "Bones" seems to have more than compensated in terms of value. Having become very jaded with forensic shows thanks to the CSI Franchise and its descent into pretty near outright magic I went into "Bones" a little bit warily - "Forensic Anthropologist, uh-huh. It'll be more handwaving nonsense and bland characters". Fortunately I was pleasantly surprised. Yes, it is clearly tosh in many respects, but unlike the CSI shows it doesn't pretend to be anything other than tosh. Is their main lab set ludicrous? Of course it is, but I can excuse it because the show clearly knows it is a little bit daft. It also has the advantage of a great chemistry between its leads. David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel work very well together on-screen - Deschanel especially manages to walk the line of making a character with very little empathy or social skills likeable. I think that "Bones" is probably going to fall into the same category as things like NCIS and The Mentalist - shows I watch less for the stories and more for the pleasure of watching the actors bounce off each other.
Not bad for one weekend though - one show that I think I can stand to watch more off and one show where my curiosity has been satisfied as to whether I need to see anymore of. Right, I'm off to delete the next disc of "Chuck" from the queue and add more "Bones".
Karl
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Post by blueshift on Mar 14, 2012 21:11:31 GMT
I've just found something I never knew existed, the unaired pilot of Blackadder.
Sure it lacks Tony Robinson and Brian Blessed, but my god it is actually brilliant. Rowan Atkinson completely nails the character of Blackadder... and then plays him the opposite come the actual series 1!
A case of getting it right first time, then getting it wrong!
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Mar 26, 2012 19:38:54 GMT
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 26, 2012 21:40:04 GMT
was fab. Sue's little verbal slip as well.....
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Mar 26, 2012 22:21:13 GMT
That verbal slip was fantastic!
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 27, 2012 20:52:05 GMT
Good again tonight! Russel T was a little weak though but putting him opposite the other 3 on debut was always going to be difficult.
I'm not yet seeing Ross Noble on the guest list yet!
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Post by blueshift on Mar 30, 2012 17:03:55 GMT
Why the hell did I ignore literally everyone and not watch Dr Horrible's Singalong Blog before. This is amazing.
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Post by legios on Apr 5, 2012 19:55:43 GMT
Been watching the first six episodes of "A Game of Thrones" over the last couple of weeks. I'm not normally one for the great fantasy epics, but this has surprised me. I think the reason I am enjoying it so much is that it is very much "grubby fantasy". It feels like the historical middle ages - ageing kings gone to seed, civil strife over personal slights and injuries to ones families, characters driven by petty ambitions, lusts and jealousys - I like the production design as well, it does feel like a pre-industrial setting complete with proper muddy roads and draughty halls. It also manages to surprise me rather smartly, characters and events go in logical directions but not always in the ones that the traditional grooves of this sort of thing have laid down. Always nice to be a little bit surprised by things that make sense in retrospect.
Got the remaining two discs in the rental queue and I think I must remember to stick in a reservation for Season Two nearer the time of its shiny disc release.
Karl
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Post by legios on Apr 16, 2012 19:21:33 GMT
A little thing that pleased me in watching "Game of Thrones" is that it is clear that they have sword-play choreagrapher(s) who know there stuff. Their is a clear distinction on-screen between the styles of different combatants and in the useage of different weapons - the fencing style being taught to Ned Stark's youngest daughter for use with her rapier-like small-sword is very different to the typical broadsword techniques used in any of the actual fights we've seen (and it is nice to see in Episode 9 someone knows how to use the length of the blade as well as the edge). Sensible-looking sword-technique is often something that is neglected in Western Fantasy productions and it does help the atmosphere when folks look like they know what they are doing.
Karl
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Post by Philip Ayres on Apr 17, 2012 9:22:46 GMT
Anyone catch Journey to Titan last week?
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Post by The Doctor on Apr 17, 2012 17:15:40 GMT
I'm struggling to think if I have actually bothered to watch any new TV shows this year!
-Ralph
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Post by legios on Apr 22, 2012 18:48:32 GMT
As it was an espionage genre show, and it is available rental it was inevitable I was going to give Alias a second try. Umm. Well. I managed two episodes before admitting defeat with it once again. I think my main problem with it is tonal inconsistency. On the one hand we have Sydney Bristow, superspy for a superspy agency doing daft missions in a succession of outfits in foreign countries that look suspiciously like America. There is nothing wrong with that, and it is a perfectly viable formula. On the other hand we have Sydney Bristows civilian life and the whole "I have never really been emotionally close to my father" subplots, which the show desparately wants us to believe are proper "grown-up drama". The problem is that if you put those two tones right alongside each other it just makes both of them look ludicrous. The attempt at "grown-up drama" just makes the superspy nonsense look like the absurd wish-fulfillment it is, and vice versa the superspy nonsense makes the "proper drama" look odd and out of place.
To make this work the "out of spy life" drama needed to be played much larger, and melodramatically, or the "spy life" needed to be more down to earth. Otherwise it just seems to lurch between two completely different shows at random.
Ah well. At least I now know what the new "Nikita" show wants to be when it grows up. Why it would want to do so kind of escapes me, but never mind.
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on Apr 24, 2012 21:09:12 GMT
I could never get it into it, mainly due to not warming to the lead performance.
-Ralph
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Post by legios on Apr 25, 2012 19:22:55 GMT
I could never get it into it, mainly due to not warming to the lead performance. I thought I should give it a fair shake, but it just didn't work for me at all. I know what you mean about the lead - I actually thought that her agency sidekick/partner was the more interesting performance to be honest. Which I should probably have taken as a bad sign partway through the first episode really. Karl |
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on May 13, 2012 18:50:13 GMT
Enjoyed the 3-hour TV adaptation of Ben Hur on Channel 5 last night.
Martin
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Post by Philip Ayres on May 17, 2012 18:10:56 GMT
I suspect that Tales of TV Centre, 9pm, BBC4, might be a good watch. If you get Carrot Confidential intros, that was my suggestion :-)
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Post by Andy Turnbull on May 17, 2012 18:14:19 GMT
Was mentioned by Tom Spilsbury on twitter. I shall watch that tonight.
Andy
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Post by The Doctor on May 17, 2012 18:44:26 GMT
It shall be my first TV watching of the year.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on May 17, 2012 20:23:58 GMT
And then the Iplayer app crapped out 15 mins in and that was it. Oh well. What I saw were 5 second long sound bites which all said the same thing over and over so I don't feel I have missed out. If that's how modern factual programmes are made I can happily continue not to watch TV. It was like it thought I had the attention span of a goldfish.
-Ralph
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Post by Andy Turnbull on May 17, 2012 20:39:38 GMT
You missed some quality Brian Blessed action.
Andy
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Post by Philip Ayres on May 17, 2012 20:41:32 GMT
Oh yes:
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Post by legios on May 18, 2012 19:48:19 GMT
Finished rewatching the third season of Farscape. Every time the Hallmark Channel logo comes up on the end of each episode it makes me chuckle. The mismatch between that and the content of the show - even just the costume design and the implied swearing (seriously, if we were actually getting the alien swearing properly translated a lot of episodes would give some HBO shows a run for their money) - just amuses me.
I had forgotten until I rewatched this season how much I liked Lani Tupu's performance as Captain Crais - he is untrustworthy, self-interested, conniving but very watchable. Considering that he started out as my least favourite recurring character in the show (in the first season he just felt like a bonkers crazy riff on Lieutenant Giraud most of the time). The character was taken a long way and he manages to make it seem credible whilst standing around in a space Gunslinger coat a lot of the time.
Even now though, I have to keep reminding myself that Rigel is the performance of three puppeteers and a voice-actor. He isn't some muppety-alien. He's Rigel, my old acquaintance (who I do not trust anywhere near my stuff when my back is turned).
Karl
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Post by Philip Ayres on May 18, 2012 21:53:54 GMT
I suspect that Tales of TV Centre, 9pm, BBC4, might be a good watch. If you get Carrot Confidential intros, that was my suggestion :-) What a superb program, fabulous! |
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Post by The Doctor on May 19, 2012 7:20:15 GMT
RE: Farscape. I'd rather wait until the concluding mini-series is re-issued before watching again. I'm not keen on picking up the boxsets of the seasons without being able to watch the end of the story.
-Ralph
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Post by Jaymz on May 19, 2012 8:02:36 GMT
RE: Farscape. I'd rather wait until the concluding mini-series is re-issued before watching again. I'm not keen on picking up the boxsets of the seasons without being able to watch the end of the story. I thought the complete boxsets in the UK included Peacekeeper Wars, just the US ones that don't due to rights issues. |
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Post by The Doctor on May 19, 2012 9:48:30 GMT
The previous big mega expensive box set did. The series has since been reiussed in nicely cheap small sets, minus the concluding mini.
-Ralph
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Post by Jaymz on May 19, 2012 22:02:07 GMT
I see. Well play.com have Peacekeeper Wars for £4 if that helps.
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