Just enough to get me excited for the return of Heroes and yet also revealing nothing at all about what we can expect to see in the second season of the show. In fact the interview that the BBC Breakfast show had with Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia about season 1 which is currently showing on BBC Two revealed more.
BBC Four will be running from Monday 10 September 2007 a three part series Comics Britannia, which will cover the history of the British comic book taking in everything from the Beano to the work of Alan Moore. [via]
New York Times profile of Donnie Andrews the real life inspiration for the character of Omar Little in The Wire, probably inspired the creation of Dennis ‘Cutty’ Wise too. [via]
Perhaps it’s just me but The Wire seems to be rising to the surface amongst people’s collective unconscious recently. I’ve just finished rewatching all four seasons of the show and many of my friends who also watch it have been rewatching episodes recently too.
Two of the best scenes of ‘the best show on television’.
The Wire – Omar gives evidence against Bird Hilton
The All-“Fuck” Murder Investigation Scene from The Wire
Metafilter loves The Wire, and so does The Guardian newspaper.
Television Without Pity has started to do recaps
Snoop Pearson talks to The Washington Post about the ‘Role of Her Life’
Slate breaks down The Wire and analyzes it.
Have just finished Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons and I have to say that once you get past the science bit (and Brown has clearly researched the science but has utterly failed to understand it) there is a half-decent plot albeit with a rather obvious twist in the end.
It’s better plotted than The Da Vinci Code as it does actually build to a climax rather than a series of anti-climatic cliffhangers.
The characters are as poorly sketched as they were in The Da Vinci Code though and are little more than stereotypes.
Just watched this episode and I was really pleasantly surprised.
Didn’t know this was the first part of a three-part finale and so had just been expecting a filler episode which reintroduced the character of Captain Jack, but damn me was that good stuff even with the paper thin plot.
The plot was really just a shallow backdrop for what was an excellent character piece.
I love the character of Captain Jack Harkness and that the Doctor is both terrified of and attracted to him. Every piece of interaction between the two of them in this episode was brilliant from the bit where Jack talks about the Battle of Canary Wharf and the Doctor reveals that Rose actually survived to their talk when Jack was in the radiation room.
Derek Jacobi was rather bloody good as the tragic Professor Yana and wonderfully sinister Master. It seems so cruel that the almost saintly Professor who was willing to sacrifice himself to save what little remains of the human race would contain that monster.
Wasn’t too sure about John Simm’s version of the Master but then I think that they are trying to strongly establish him as the evil version of the Doctor as he has the same kind of insane exuberance that Tennant’s incarnation of the Doctor has.
This movie was probably designed to be a wonderful mix of Psycho, Peeping Tom, Wolf Creek and Breakdown but it fails to come anywhere close to any of its’ antecedents. It’s not even the bastard child of those movies it’s the runt of the litter of bastard children.
Don’t bother with this one I found it to be only mildly disturbing and though it’s just 80 minutes long it barely held my interest. It was a very pedestrian example of the genre and they seemed to waste a number of opportunities for shocks along the way.
The throwaway line “Oh, boy, sleep! That’s where I’m a viking!” uttered by the character Ralph Wiggum in The Simpsons has caused unholy debate on the internet lately.
Does he mean, or perhaps more specifically what did The Simpsons’ writers intend the meaning to be?
A) That he has an enjoyable recurring dream in which he is a Scandinavian warrior.
or
B) That he excels at sleeping.
The debate on this topic at Metafilter outshines all others out there. Especially the following comment posted by fleetmouse.
English is a flexible, nimble, shifting-pathogen language and is more than able to absorb that slight stretch of a figure of speech
Yes, exactly – which is why people are arguing about this in the first place – we’re used to this goddamn inexterminable cockroach of a language having umpteen layers of literal and figurative meaning.
God, I love the Frankenstein’s monster that is English. Sewn together out of dead languages and living ones that it kills and uses for spare parts. If the human race were exterminated, English would find a new host or wait for one to evolve. English does not sleep. It waits.
I love this metaphor for the English language.
Blink.
Wow yet another brilliant episode of Doctor Who and it is probably going to be the source of nightmares to come for a whole generation of British kids.
Very spooky and chilling stuff especially the montage at the end which really drove the point home that we could be surrounded by killer statues.
Most important UK documentary of the decade? Perhaps. Whilst it is not as well made as the Adam Curtis documentary The Power of Nightmares it is very powerful and has a hell of an impact. I only wish more people would see it, but I have a feeling that it will only end up preaching to the converted as those in the know are the only ones that will go to see it.
However if it inspires anyone and moves them to action then perhaps it be said to have succeeded. It made me rethink my decision no to join the march against the War in Iraq, I knew at the time that the government was committed to war and would not be swayed in that by any number of marchers but perhaps I should have stood up to be counted amongst those opposed.
