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Doctor Who 2009 Specials
Fri Sep 12, 2008 3:01 am
[  Mood: Cool ]
Okay, here's what we know so far (all information from The Sun):
1) There are going to be four specials next year while Tennant is off doing Hamlet as a break from playing a Time Lord. That's a British actor for you, doing Shakespear to relax.
2) Two of the specials will be set in Amercia, and the Doctor will have an American as a companion, like in the Fox Doctor Who tv movie.
3) Speaking of that flick, Paul McGann return as the Eighth Doctor, which I have mixed feelings about. I really didn't care for the Doctor Who movie he was in, but I can't really blame him for that. The radio dramas supposedly redeem him, but I've not listened to them. What really interests me, though, is that he will be appearing in flashbacks about The Time War. Anything that shows me exactly what happened there has my attention. My main hope, though, is that RTD explains away that stupid "Half-Human" thing from the American Doctor Who movie as a joke or something.
4) One of the specials will have the return of Donna Noble. I hated Donna when she first appeared in The Runaway Bride, but I came to really like her over the course of the last season, so I'm happy about this. Bernard Cribbins will also be back as her grandfather, which also pleases me.
5) Another special will feature the return of John Simm as The Master. Did anyone really think he was dead? The Master is, well, a master of mind control, and that slack look on his companion's face as she shot him just screamed to me that his being "killed" was The Master's escape plan.
5a) It would be very cool to see the Master special as a sort of "Reverse Doctor" story, since what's they kind of made him in the Saxon arc. He shows up somewhere in a TARDIS, finds peaceful people, and brings about some kind of horrible crisis that ruins everything until The Doctor shows up in a cameo and saves everyone.
6) There are plans for a Doctor Who movie, and Tennant wants the role. I personally think it would be stupid for them to cast someone else, unless they were able to woo Christopher Eccleston back in some kind of "Two Doctors" storyline. And RTD wants Catherine Zeta Jones as the companion for the flick. I'm not sure if she'd do that, but I think she'd rock as a companion.
While I'll miss having a full season of The Doctor next year, I'm really looking foward to these specials. And since each one is two hours long, we'll only be about four or six hours shy of a regular season anyway. I can live with that.
Posted By: sneezythesquid 3 Soundings Signal
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Disney Gives Me A Birthday Present
Wed Sep 10, 2008 2:14 am
I am a very happy geek right now. There's this movie that was supposed to have come out on DVD two years ago, but it got pulled from release for some unknown reason. Probably just to frustrate me. Now it's being released on November 11th, just in time for my birthday. The flick is Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh , starring Patrick McGoohan.
This was a three-part story on Disney's TV series back in the 60's, and the episodes got mashed together to make a theatrical release. This DVD set will have the episodes along with the movie (which is the only way I've seen it, so it will be great to finally see the unedited whole story.)
The show is excellent, and here's the skinny: Dr. Syn is a former pirate turned parson, but when the greedy King of England levies overbearing taxes against the people, Dr. Syn helps them by becoming The Scarecrow, a blend of Batman and Robin Hood to smuggle in food and other needed goods. Over the three episodes he outwits General Pugh of the British army, smuggler double-crossers, and more.
Here's why the show rocks. First up, it's a great swashbuckling/action yarn in the style of the old Zorro/Robin Hood mold, where good men of courage become outlaws to combat a corrupt government. Sure, it's a Disney work, but it's old-school original Pirates of the Carribean Disney, where there's actually a sense of danger along with the fun.
The main reason it rocks, though, is Patrick Filkin' McGoohan. He's simply one of the best actors to grace the screen. Doubt me? Watch Ice Station Zebra, where he's a bad-ass British spy. Watch Danger Man/Secret Agent Man, a series where he out-Bonds James Bond. He's so bad-ass as a spy that he was asked before Connery to be Bond, and he turned them down. He then pointed them at Connery for the role. When Connery quit, they asked him again, and once more he said no, directing them to Lazenby.
Or you can look at his performance in Bravehart as the utter bastard Longshanks, where he plays a cruel British King as only a Scotsman can.
Then there's The Prisoner, simply one of the best shows to be on TV, ever. He was the star, head writer and director of this mind-bending masterpiece, and very little has ever topped it.
So McGoohan's perfect as this former pirate turned priest who dons a scary costume to outwit evil oppressors. When he's in the Scarecrow persona, he's got this great gruff voice, and his laugh is truely demonic. McGoohan is the man, and he owns this show.
In short, it's a fun ride, and I'll be glad to finally have a copy on DVD to replace my VHS copy from when the Disney Channel ran it a while back. And you should own it too.
Posted By: sneezythesquid 4 Soundings Signal
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Dr. Doom Is Not a Potty Mouth
Thu Apr 17, 2008 10:54 am
Over in the forums, there's a thread about why some of us Revolutionaries are no longer reading Marvel Comics. Allow me to present the most recent exhibit for doing so: They don't know how to write for the characters anymore. For example, Doom would never talk like this.
Setting aside the whole misogynistic angle of what's said there, that whole sequence is just not Doom's style. Doom is proud, arrogant, manipulating, cunning, and evil, but he's never crude. Just look at these past shots of Doom in action to see what I mean. Here's a good example of how Doom would make that same threat, in a way that fits his character.
This all really ties into the main problem that exists at Marvel right now: they don't care about continuity anymore, either historical or when it comes to character consistency.
Just about all of their characters have been acting out of character for years, and they will continue to do so as long as Bendis and Millar are Quesada's go-to guys.
The only characters that Bendis have really gotten right are Spidey, Daredevil and Luke Cage. Millar hasn't gotten anyone right at all. These two have written everyone so out of character (turning Tony Stark into a fascist prick, and Mr. Fantastic praticly into Dr. Mengele in Civil War, for example), that Marvel has had to resort to the current Secret Invasion event to try and fix things.
Marvel wouldn't have had to resort to this event to explain why everyone's been acting so out of character if Joe Q and the other editors had reigned in their writers and made them write people in character. I thought that was the job of Marvel's editing staff, or at least part of it.
Somehow, I just get the feeling that SI is going to cause more problems than it fixes, and it's not going to bring me back into the Marvel fold. Mainly because afterwards, Millar and Bendis are still going to be the "head writers" at Marvel, which was the source of this problem to begin with.
What's frustrating is that there are some great writers at Marvel, who respect the characters and portray them in ways that stay true to their past. When JMS took over Spider-Man, it was great. Sure, there were some rough patches, but over all, it was Peter, as we've always known him. He's also doing a bang-up job with Thor.
Same thing when Joss took on Astonishing X-Men. He captured the feel of the characters, and it was like coming home.
Peter David is doing fantastic work with X-Factor and She-Hulk. That brings me to Dan Slott, who is a master of not only respecting continuity, but in using past events in unique ways to drive his plots foward.
I really love the characters in the Marvel Universe, and its past. There are some good people there now, but they're not the ones guiding the main editorial decisions. As long as Joe Q, Bendis and Millar are the top dogs, writing without any regard to the characters and their history, I'll not be making mine Marvel.
Posted By: sneezythesquid 2 Soundings Signal
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Charlton Heston: 1924 - 2008
Sun Apr 06, 2008 4:26 am
There are a lot of great actors out there. Some become legendary. Even fewer become legitimate icons. Charlton Heston was one of them. He died today at 84, and the world is a lot smaller because of it.
Icon doesn't even really seem to cover it. Charlton Heston was practically a force of nature that decided to be a man for a little while.
Most actors would be happy to have done a single movie that had the impact of any one of Heston’s films has had on the world. Films like Soylent Green. The Omega Man. Earthquake. Touch of Evil. Ben Hur. El Cid. The Greatest Show on Earth.
Not to mention The Ten Commandments, which pretty much solidified Heston as the voice for God on Earth. When he intones to Yul Brenner, “Let my people GO” you can’t help but get a shiver from the power in his voice.
And, of course, there’s The Planet of the Apes. His performance as Taylor, which he did with the perfect mix of serious and scene-chewing ham is one of the key elements of the film. From his snarled “Take your paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” to the final (and oft parodied) twist of “You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!” Heston nails the role and made it the movie iconic. It would have crumbled and been a silly mess with a lessor actor, and couldn’t really have been carried off by anyone else.
Not only did his performance make that film, he was a heavy influence on the follow up Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and that’s with him only being in the opening and closing of the film! It's the search for Taylor that drives the movie, and his presence is felt even with him not being there.
It was also Heston's idea to blow up the planet at the end of the film, so that a third movie couldn’t be made. This resulted in the third flick sending Roddy back in time to the “present.” This set up the cycle of how the Apes became ascendant over man, so it was still a great idea.
The addition of Heston to a movie as a cameo in his later years added an extra layer of cool. Just look at Tombstone, Branagh's Hamlet, The Planet of the Apes remake (his was the best scene in that movie), and his Nick Fury-style general in True Lies.
Charlton Heston was a giant. He was an icon. He was a honest-to-god legend. There won’t be anyone like him again, and he will be missed.
Posted By: sneezythesquid 0 Soundings Signal
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M-M-Max is Back-ck-ck-ck, Baby!
Wed Dec 12, 2007 3:46 pm
[  Mood: Amused ]
One of the best things about growing up in the 80's, aside from the cool toys, New Wave music, MTV actually playing said music instead of endless "reality" shows, and the threat of nuclear annihilation (WOLVERINES!) constantly over our heads, was that occasionally something really bizarre would slip out through the cracks and catch on.
Like the Smurfs, for example.
But one of my favorite characters from the time is back. Perhaps not in the way I would have hoped, but never the less, Max Headroom has returned.
Originally created as a host for a video music show in England, Max was played by Matt Frewer in a fiberglass suit and rubber get up. He was then filmed, electronically manipulated to have an odd stutter, and put in front of a fake computer background.
Max had a very fun, odd sense of humor, was snarky, cool and had that distinctive st-st-stutter. He went from being a video host to Coke pitchman, hosting a talk show, having a TV movie and then TV series that went 14 episodes.
I loved the TV show. And, in fact, I still have the original British pilot movie on VHS. The show was one of the first to have a cyberpunk aesthetic, with a corporate dominated dystopian future.
(We were sure of one thing in the 80's: The future was gonna suck, either from the Bomb, or from the Corporations taking over and running everything into the ground. Then both the USSR and Japanese Stock Markets both imploded, ruining my chances of ever entering the Thunderdome.)
The show was groundbreaking and ahead of its time (it's tagline was "20 Minutes Into the Future"), and was on a major network. Like the best Sci-Fi, it dealt with social issues through the lens of the genre, and Max would usually give a few off-kilter monologues about the subject. Here's an example. The show was dark, subversive, and seeped in black humor. That the show lasted 11 episodes before getting the axe is a miracle.
One of the great crimes of the TV on DVD situation right now is that Max Headroom is not available on DVD, though it was rerun for a while on Sci-Fi and TechTV (before it became the great hole of suck called G4)
Anyway, Channel 4, which made the original music video show that Max was created for, has resurrected Max from the sea of nostalgia for their campaign to get people ready for the switchover from analog broadcast to digital TV.
This time, Max actually is a completely digital creation, while still voiced by Matt Frewer. And while Max may be a digital being, apparently he's not immune to the ravages of time:
Still, his irreverence is still there, and the short is fun to watch. It's a nice trip down memory lane, which you can watch here.
For more Max fun, watch this interview, and his music video with Art of Noise, Paranoimia, which is a favorite of mine.
I've really missed Max, and due his performance of the character Matt Frewer is a staple of genre flicks and TV. It's nice to see him reunited with Max, who really was a pioneer character. Sure, he wasn't the first AI, but he was one of the first to "look" like a CGI creation (even though he wasn't), was how most people were first exposed to the concepts of the cyberpunk genre, and he was just digital cool.
Posted By: sneezythesquid 0 Soundings Signal
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About sneezythesquid
Joined : Thu Jul 28, 2005 1:15 am
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Blog Started : Tue Feb 27, 2007 7:59 pm
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