Posts tagged ‘tv’

It’s been a quiet time around the Grapefruit office while everyone’s away on summer break. Or at least, that sounds like a good excuse for the lack of things around here. I have been watching films and television, and playing games — I’ve just been a bit lax writing about them. I’ve only got three episodes of Battlestar: Galactica season one to watch and it’s still awesome. I won’t start reviewing it until I get to season two, though. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was great, too — I’ll probably review it too, at some point. Yes, I’m a little behind.

We got the yellow pages the other day. L-Z is now sleek and black with yellow highlights, an inverted A-K. I reckon A-K must be getting jealous. L-Z looks awesome. Speaking of awesome redesigns, the DS got a whole lot more sexy yesterday (or rather, it will) after the announcement of the DS Lite. A hot Australia Day was made even more annoying when I had to wipe the drool off Andy’s keyboard as he gibbered in the corner.

Finally, X3 seems to be getting a subtitle: ‘The Last Stand’. I don’t like subtitles. I don’t know where to put them on reviews. When X2 came out I saw ‘X-Men United’ bandied around the place but it’s not on the actual film. IMDb calls it a “promotional title”. After the film’s release they’re lost in the mists of time. Besides, what’s the point of doing subtitles when “The Secret of the Ooze” has already been taken? Nothing’s going to top that. X3 is apparently “the conclusion of this trilogy” according to some 20th Century Fox executive. I like how studio bosses are getting artistically involved in movies these days.

Channel Ten is promoting their new US import, Supernatural as coming from “The Director of X-Files“. So, just who is the director of The X-Files, given that the show ran for nine seasons with the usual cycling of directors? Is it writer/creator Chris Carter, who directed a about an episode a season? No. Is it Rob Bowman, the director of numerous episodes as well as the 1998 movie? No — he’s too busy making quality films like Elektra.

So who is it? Well, it could be David Nutter, but it seems that Channel Ten mean be Kim Manners — who has directed boodles of times for The X-Files and twice for Supernatural, and is also co-executive producer on both shows. So it’s “from” him. And not, say, “from” Eric Kripke, the creator and writer of the show. Why not? Why, because then they’d have to say “From the co-creator of Tarzan” and I think we can all see that that’s not so impressive.

A few random points of TV interest:

• I’ve watched the first two episodes of Battlestar Galactica season one, and they’re awesome. I doubt all the episodes will be this tense — I don’t think I’ve been closer to the edge of my seat since the first season of 24. I’m particularly looking forward to getting to the final five episodes of the season, because there are downloadable commentaries from SciFi.com.
• Speaking of which, there was a downloadable commentary for ‘The Christmas Invasion’ as well, where Russell T. Davies revealed that Doctor Who‘s second season will show us the establishment of ‘Torchwood’. Hopefully, it’ll be an historical episode, just because that would be much cooler. How much cooler would it have been if The X-Files had been set in 1897?
• And while I’m on The X-Files — I’m on a segue-roll here — I’m halfway through season two, and I’ve just seen the two-parter that introduced the shapeshifting alien bounty hunter. Which reminded me just how awesome we all thought face-morphing was in the nineties. We’ve come a long way.

Meanwhile, I’ve spent today wrestling with Word. In a 53 page document, I changed one group of bullets to roman numerals, and went on to find that every other set of bullets in the document had suffered a similar fate, and had to change them all back. Even the ones that were supposed to be roman numerals refused to reset their numbering for different lists, greying out the option to do so. This is tremendously uninteresting, I know, but I’m writing it down as therapy. Just ignore me.

This post was initially to only include my mini-review of Doctor Who‘s mini-episode. But then I thought, let’s give this some mass appeal. This teeny episode has made me even more anxious to get new Who, but let us also mention the need for more Stargate SG-1.

When we reached the mid-season hiatus that we’re currently inhabiting, Stargate was ticking along nicely. Which was a shame, because there were a few hints that it could have reached ‘awesome’ level earlier. These were dashed mostly by the departure of Vala Mal Doran, as played by Claudia Black. Well, there’s good news. In Stargate‘s (American) record-breaking tenth season, Vala’s back!

Oh alright, so we all assumed she would be anyhow. But it’s nice to get confirmation.

Now, onto Who — which you can watch for free online in crummy quality. Three and a half minutes doesn’t make for a very satisfying story. It’s basically just a TARDIS scene immediately after ‘The Parting of the Ways’. But as it’s our first sustained look at David Tennant as Doctor Who, it’s pretty interesting nonetheless. I should point out straight away that Billie Piper is still fantastic, and still manages to ground the craziness of any scene she’s in, and is still cute.

The Doctor’s regeneration goes wonky, naturally, but there’s a minute or two of lucidity where he can reassure Rose that it’s actually him. In my favourite moment, Rose accuses him of being a Slitheen, or some other impersonating monster, and he replies “I am not a Slitheen” with a curious sincere blend of sarcasm. I don’t know how he did it.

The manic bits are amusing, but I much preferred his quiet moments. I especially liked it when he reminded Rose and the audience of the first time he met her, complete with the eerie ‘Bad Wolf’ theme playing in the background. Some have disliked the bit where he tries to get Rose to laugh by reminding her of the time they had to “hop for their lives”. These people have obviously never tried to make a joke and watched it die horribly in front of them. Tennant does it perfectly.

So I’m pretty confident about this new Doctor. I’m sure he’ll be just as good as Eccleston, but I’m hoping they find a way to make him markedly different (in personality or methodology, not in fashion sense). I’d say more but it’s ridiculous to write more than a paragraph per minute. I wouldn’t want to follow this rule in a full episode review. Although it would be a good way to review 24.