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| Sunday, April 20th, 2008 | | 6:27 pm |
Shiny Discs Launch
So I've just launched my weekly video podcast review show at http://www.shinydiscs.com . There are some errors on this first show and problems with rendering means I had to publish it at a smaller size than intended, but hopefully the main problems will be sorted out in time for next week's show. If you like it, tell your friends. If you don't tell me why using the "Comment" link on the web page. Thanks, Ian | | Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 | | 12:59 pm |
Elijah Wood on The Friday Night Project
Elijah Wood is on the Friday Night Project soon and they're recording the show on Thursday, April 10th. They're looking for fans for the audience. To quote the researcher who contacted me they're "looking for people who are big fans of The Lord of the Rings, especially the films Elijah starred in". In particular people who've gone to conventions. When I spoke to the researcher he said they WEREN'T looking for people to look stupid in costume (although that's fine if that's your thing) but he was particularly hoping to find someone with a tattoo or someone who could speak Elvish to actually appear on the program, perhaps in a "fan questions for Elijah" section. Anyway if interested you can contact the researcher here: james dot emtage at princesstv dot com (obviously replace the "dot" and "at" with the appropriate punctuation or your email won't get sent). | | Saturday, June 30th, 2007 | | 11:44 pm |
Doctor Poo!
Long time no post, but tonight's "season finale" of Doctor Who couldn't pass without comment. We've had some really bad episodes from Russel T Davies since he "revived" the franchise, but tonight's episode hit new lows. Davies has absolutely no idea about narrative structure, dialogue, resolving cliff hangers without hitting "reset" every few minutes or how to write anything that isn't utterly juvenile crap. I don't think I've seen such a steaming turd of a programme on TV in a long long time. Please God sack the useless lump before he does permanent damage to a series that should be a highlight of Saturday evening viewing, and not the embarrasingly bad amateur fiasco that tonight's episode was. | | Saturday, July 30th, 2005 | | 1:48 pm |
The new SFX magazine...
.. has just come out and features "Lost" on the cover, although the accompanying special feature is a bit "thin". I'm disappointed with the mag - the ComicCon report is desperately thin (despite them having invites to most of the parties) and the photo's are crap: nearly all out of focus with signs of very amateurish "red eye" repair. Then there's the over-hyped King Kong (yet another "feature" that is just a free advertisement for Universal - gotta hand it to Jackson's P.R. - they do a fantastic job) Despite only having to write just a few words before printing the same pictures everyone else has they still manage to get the few words wrong: "New Line has released the first tantalising glimpses of King Kong". Really? I'll bet Universal are well pissed off that their rivals are releasing pictures of THEIR movie! The Doctor Who hype goes ever on. Don't get me wrong I like the show (I got to watch the episode I missed about Rose's father on DVD today and apart from dreadful CGI it was great) but SFX have their tongue so far up Russell T Davies backside it's just embarrassing to read. I wish there was a magazine that covered the same sort of material but had a better idea of what good journalism and writing was about rather than mindless fanboy gushing. | | Monday, July 25th, 2005 | | 11:20 pm |
| | Friday, July 8th, 2005 | | 11:23 pm |
The Life Aquatic
This movie has had some mixed reviews and after "Lost in Translation" (which I thought was pretty dire) I expected this to be another lame, art-house movie with no laughs, no plot and no real interest. I couldn't have been more wrong. I finally get why Bill Murray is so popular as an actor. He dead-pans his way marvellously through this wonderfully surreal but incredibly humane movie. I love "the look" of the movie too - great cinematography. Cate Blanchette is effortlessly brilliant as usual, but all the cast are perfect. It's not a popcorn movie and it's not something that will have you laughing so much you hurt. But if you fancy something truly original, with a good heart, some good chuckles and a consistency lacking in so much of what comes out of Hollywood I'd recommend this one for a viewing. | | Thursday, July 7th, 2005 | | 9:58 pm |
10pm in London, streets are quiet, still no mobile phone service....
What is going on? I can understand that when people were injured and being rushed to hospital that the emergency services needed to use the mobile phone bandwidth but it's several hours since the last people were taken to hospital, there have been no new incidents, the streets are deadly quiet, my phone is showing good signal strength but anybody trying to get hold of me is being transferred immediately (at exhorbitant mobile phone rates) to my voice mail system the second they stop dialling. No attempt at all is being made to even contact my phone. And the phone, despite showing full strength, won't dial any number out. I know this is a minor inconvenience given what others have gone through but when others are urgently trying to get hold of you to find out if you're OK it's a nightmare and I can see no reason for it other than to exhort money out of those paying expensive charges to call me, and them charging me a fortune to call up my voicemail once they do return the service just to clear it down of recorded messages. The internet and email stayed up throughout the bombings. So why, twelve hours later, is the mobile phone system still completely useless? What am I missing here? | | 12:25 pm |
| | Tuesday, July 5th, 2005 | | 1:01 pm |
The Live 8 Effect: Boosting Album Sales
From the BBC - figures for increased album sales and profits following Live 8 appearances. Great to see that Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour has said that all his increased profits will go to charity. Macca has said that money raised through download sales of his Live 8 performance will go to charity. It will be interesting to see how many more of the artists agree to donate their increased profits, showing that they really were doing the concert for 'the right reasons'. 1 Pink Floyd - Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd - 1343% 2 The Who - Then and Now - 863% 3 Annie Lennox - Eurythmics Greatest Hits - 500% 4 Dido - Life For Rent - 412% 5 Razorlight - Up All Night - 335% 6 Robbie Williams - Greatest Hits - 320% 7 Joss Stone - Mind, Body and Soul - 309% 8 Sting - The Very Best of Sting & The Police - 300% 9 Travis - Singles - 268% 10 Madonna - Immaculate Collection - 200% | | Saturday, June 18th, 2005 | | 7:46 pm |
Out with a bang!
Well Russel T Davies redeemed himself in my view with the season finale of Dr Who. This had it all - daleks everywhere, far more impressive than they've ever been before, a new Emporer dalek (I'm so glad it WASN'T Davros or The Master), lots of death, destruction and fear (I'll bet kids were absolutely terrified), weepy, sentimental bits and ... the transformation of Eccleston into the new doctor with that wonderful line "Hmmm. New teeth!". Personally I think it's a shame that Eccleston's gone - he made a great doctor. And it looks like Jack's gone too although they left things open for his return so fingers crossed - I liked his character. I loved that he kissed Rose on the lips when saying goodbye and then did the same to the doctor. I bet they get complaints about that flooding in :-) It's had a few weak patches but all-in-all I think the return has been a huge success, and the audience figures have held steady, as evidenced by the Beeb announcing this week that Billie Piper WAS booked up for the whole of the second series (earlier reports had said she'd only signed up for half the season) and that they'd already signed up for a third season. Now we have to wait until Christmas for the next story. Russel T Davies has already said he's doing the Cybermen in the next season and my guess is that "The Christmas Invasion" is going to be the story that features them. Huzzah! | | Wednesday, June 15th, 2005 | | 10:50 pm |
| | Monday, June 13th, 2005 | | 7:39 am |
| | Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 | | 8:05 pm |
Not happy!
I had an email today from someone asking me about the poster of the cast of LOTR at the airport that she'd bought on Ebay after reading about how it was raising money for my favourite charity. This is the result of my being hassled at the bar one evening at last year's RingCon, after donating the photo album to the charity auction there and giving the charity stand a mis-printed A3 poster of the airport photo to advertise the auction. An American lady in the bar badgered me to have the airport photo made into a poster to raise money for another charity. This charity was some sort of artist's collective, and the deal was they would take care of everything, make a high quality poster, limit the poster to 100 copies, and half the money raised would go to their charity and the other half to a charity of my choice. I chose Mark Ferguson's "Starship Foundation" hospital charity in Auckland as that was what had kicked the whole auction thing off at the very first RingCon and the photo had been taken on New Zealand soil so I figured a charity there should benefit. I didn't provide this new charity with any contact details for Starship Foundation as I don't have them (but I do have Mark's email address so figured he would supply the necessary details when needed). A few emails went backwards and forwards between myself and two ladies representing the charity, reminding me of my "promise" at RingCon and negotiating the best format for supplying a hi-res image for printing. I mentioned again and again their promise that I would be sent a copy of the poster so that I could see the quality of what was going to go out with my name on it. Of course since they received the CD containing the "digital negative" on my emails have all gone unanswered. I've never received a copy of the poster and I suspect my charity has not received a penny. Yet again I've become a charity myself spending money to get nothing back other than what looks like a bunch of lies from some opportunists. Is it me or are there a LOT of liggers and blaggers around the LOTR community? Fortunately a few folks (like Brian S, and Mooch and those of you on my friends list who know who you are) make up for it giving far more than they ask for in return, but yet again I'm left with a sour taste in the mouth and a determination the next time I'm approached for "a copy of this/that photo" to live up to my curmudgeonly reputation and just say "No way. Sorry". | | Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 | | 11:28 pm |
Los Angeles Flights Booked - Huzzah!
I've booked my flights for Microsoft PDC 05. I get in on the Friday before the convention starts (officially Tuesday but I may end up paying for some training on some optional workshops on the Sunday and Monday) and leave on the Sunday, so I'll have Friday night and Saturday free to hopefully hook up with some old LOTR pals. No idea where I'm staying yet. The bookings for the event don't start until June 7th and I guess they reveal the hotels then, but I would imagine somewhere near the Los Angeles Convention Centre, assuming I'm quick enough to get a hotel booking when they announce the registration details next week. Thank God for Air Miles. Had to pay about £300 including taxes but at least I saved a couple of hundred on the airfares I'd been looking at without Air Miles, nearly all of which seemed to be via some Godforsaken place instead of direct. So I arrive on Friday, 9th September at 15:10 and leave on 18th September at 17:30. I haven't had a holiday since the oscar party last year so although this is sort of work related I'm getting quite excited about it already. Woo hoo! | | Monday, May 30th, 2005 | | 5:25 pm |
Six Feet Under...
... Well instead of getting on with some work I've spent most of the day getting to the end of Season 3 of "Six Feet Under". It's as addicitive as Season 3 of "24" was ("I'll just watch one more episode" and then before you know it the whole day's gone!). I love this show. The second season went a bit off-kilter for me, but the third season is back on top form. Sure the plotlines are sometimes too bizarre for words, but the sheer humanity of the series and the quality of the writing and the acting talent never fails to impress. I think my new favourite line is one from a gay video store owner to the rather closeted vicar "Heh! You haven't returned your copy of 'Back to the crack - Butt Lunch II'". Very jealous of those about to catch Season 5 on TV (the last series - waugh!) - I just hope they don't wait too long to give us Season 4 on DVD. | | Sunday, May 29th, 2005 | | 11:42 pm |
There goes my email....
I am currently averaging about 600 spam rejected emails per half-hour which is making my email totally unusable. Some f******* is spoofing my irascian.com domain name and inventing people at that URL to send endless spam and of course all the damn spam engines are rejecting it and emailing back to me to say they've done so. My email is completely unusable. If I could get onto the admin server I'd block all the non-existent emails and only allow ian.smith through but at the moment I just can't get in to do that - probably because I've got the wrong port number written down. My bank holiday weekend has been a nightmare of trying to get Adobe Acrobat 7 installed from the Adobe CS Premium pack I bought. Adobe Support have been hopeless. This is a problem people have been reporting ever since Adobe Acrobat 6 came out - what happens is Adobe Acrobat whenever it's started tells you your machine configuration has changed and it needs to be re-activated and then disables all the software telling you you've installed it on too many machines. It's a nightmare. So far Adobe have told me I have a RAID disk array causing the problem (no, it's a laptop with a single hard drive), had me spend forever uninstalling and reinstalling the software (it takes just over an hour just to uninstall it) and NONE of it has made any difference. The irony is that if you do a search on Google for Adobe Acrobat Activation most of the hits tell you how to hack the demo version of the software so that you get it for free and never have to activate it, with the rest being from dumb schmucks like me who've paid for the software, spent forever on so-called support lines and uninstalling and reinstalling software only to find they can't get what they paid for working because of the company's stupid "stop pirating" measures that just penalise the innocent. Nightmare! Watched two good movies today instead of getting on with some work (which I must do tomorrow): "Dear Frankie" is what they call "a women's film" although the presence of Gerard Butler ups the eye candy factor. In all seriousness this is a wonderful movie. The plot is simple: mother runs away with child to escape bullying husband but tells son that his father is away on a ship, and intercepts son's letters and responds to them herself to make son believe father is at sea. Then one day a schoolfriend notices boat is due to dock, kid gets excited and mother has to hire a stranger to masquerade as the father who's been at sea writing all this time. It has all the recipe for a schmaltz-fest and indeed you'll need a box of tissues by your side, but despite the hackneyed story it's brilliantly acted and written such that it's totally believable. And although it ultimately ends up as a 'feel good' movie, it's not all tidied up at the end. Recommended. "Run Lola Run" was a present from Brian S for my birthday and he'd recommended it to me in the past. It's a German movie that shows the effect chance meetings or just a few seconds difference can make to our lives. The premise is a diamond smuggling boyfriend leaves a valuable consignment on a train and unless he can get $100,000 within 20 minutes he's a dead man. The film repeats the 20 minutes three times as his girlfriend, the Lola of the title, tries to raise the money, showing wildly different results dependent on just slight changes. The movie works really well because of its MTV-styled pacing. There's animation, lots of weird and great camera shots and techno music throughout. Very original (yeah, I know it probably doesn't sound original, but trust me on this). I thought the third scenario was a bit far-fetched but it was a fascinating movie regardless. It was originally filmed in German and after 5 minutes of the dreadful English dubbing (awful 'porn movie acting' dialogue) I switched to German with English sub-titles which made it a MUCH better experience. | | Friday, May 27th, 2005 | | 8:39 pm |
Lemony Snicket!
I haven't read the Lemony Snicket books and the Harry Potter franchise is so dreadful that I steered well clear of this movie when released theatrically because the reviews weren't exactly rave. WHY NOT??!! Brian S has been enthusiastically telling me about this movie, particularly the first section, since its release and he's right... it's wonderful. The music is basically the music from "Six Feet Under" (the composer should have written something new really) but matches the quirky visuals here so well that I'll forgive the composer for being a bit lazy. Cinematically the movie is breathtaking. Even Jim Carrey, who I usually can't stand, is perfectly cast. The kids are excellent. Treat yourself this bank holiday and get a copy on DVD. | | Thursday, May 26th, 2005 | | 8:21 pm |
| | Tuesday, May 24th, 2005 | | 9:11 pm |
| | Monday, May 23rd, 2005 | | 7:44 am |
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