Messages

[Boston Legal]

I do so love Boston Legal, despite its flaws. The last time I watched it was maybe five or six years ago and I remember thinking then that it was like the secret love child of Crown Court and The Benny Hill Show. The shenanigans surrounding the Victorian steam-powered orgasm machine spring to mind (more often than is probably healthy, to be frank). 

It's one of those shows I can forgive a lot because of all the reasons Jim mentions, it's an old friend to me, warts and all. The Shatner/Bergen/Spader dynamic is delightful, Mark Valley getting teased as a Ken doll is kinda cool and I will always be indebted to the much-missed Rene Auberjonois, whose character in this show taught me the word "fungible." Then there is Rhona Mitra, with whom I am eternally and hopelessly in love.

I like this idea.

I'm back in, but when I try to change my profile I can't because "403 Forbidden."

Credo!

Happy anniversary to you both, and I wish you many more. xx

I heard Johnny Depp would be playing Purity Brown...

Who would lend Nemesis a good voice, though? Hugo Weaving? Anthony Hopkins? Alan Carr?

...the small ones like yours are harmless of course...

Well, I didn't expect this thread to win any comedy awards but neither did I expect it to trigger existential crises.

Sorry about that.

Speaking at AnimoCon in California last week, Tim Burton reportedly teased audiences with the subject of his next-but-one film project; "There's a writer called Pat Mills, from the UK, who wrote about an alien freedom fighter back in the 70s. All I can say is that we're in negotiations." Burton further hinted that stop-motion genius Phil Tippett may also be involved because he "lost a bet." The script is currently on its fourth draft (due to 'creative concerns') and pre-production is due to begin sometime in late 2025 or early 2026. Full details can be found here: animasaurus.Rex.com/news/2077612

[Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World]

Speaking of nostalgia, I've just gone through Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World for the first time since it originally aired in 1980. It's crammed full of lovable crackpots and has a wide-eyed awe of Computers, with not a single mobile 'phone or web page in sight. Some of the interviews are ripe for satire, for example three Irish priests in a rowing boat recounting their brush with a lake monster has Father Ted written all over it. (And some of the retrospectively ill-advised scenes of Uncle Arthur and young Sri Lankan boys seem to have something else entirely written all over them.) 

It's sometimes hard to believe that the world I grew up in looked like that.

[Out of Darkness]

Heh.

Next up was Out of Darkness. This is a really bleak romp about a disparate group of cavepeople looking for the promised land but ending up in a land of monsters. Fairly early on the thought occurred that these primitive humans must have passed through the Golgafrincham camp pretty recently because they all had really cool haircuts. This was more or less the time I started thinking about Predator v Humanity: First Contact, in which an arrogant Alpha Predator discovers Earth and humans - and finds himself totally outmatched from the start; pursued by a tribe of Stone Age human hunters at the peak of their own apex predatoriness, so in tune with their prey and environment that all those fancy invisibility shields are practically useless. Give it the whole King Kong vibe of the tragic, doomed monster. I mean, there has to be some reason Predators come here, right? Maybe it took them ages to even get a "win," and this first encounter sees the Predator using Arnie's mud trick to evade detection, and the chief hunter lets the Predator go with a precious shiny pebble as a souvenir. Anyway, Out of Darkness, okay if you like bleak stories about cavepeople playing out while you think of other things.

[Winnie the Pooh - Blood and Honey]

Winnie the Pooh - Blood and Honey. Ooh, I thought, that sounds interesting. But it isn't. It's rubbish. At least, the first 26 minutes are rubbish (up to and including the awful rubber masks, the completely unnecessary and gratuitous nudity, and the wood-chipper), the rest I can't vouch for as I switched it off.

I think there is a good idea lurking in here somewhere, turning beloved characters into genre heroes (Windy Miller - Zero Flour, Mr. Ben - Shop Gun, Sooty - Clean Sweep, and so on), but the filmmakers seem to have overlooked it in favour of artless slash. Hmph.

Yes, Minister Dexter and the sequel, Yes, Prime Minister Dexter.

Later, tired of wetwork and politics, the gun shark may become a trawlerman in Finisterre Dexter.

I'm chokin', I just ain't gaspin'.

Been trying to mount a TV in the living room ...

Maybe buy it dinner first...?