The Lion’s Share

Hello Everyone :-)

Anyone who knows me is aware that I love a bit of Disney. I was taken to see this film by my Nan when I was about 6, I think I enjoyed it but in the subsequent years I convinced myself that I didn’t like it. A friend of mine and fellow Disney enthusiast asked if I wanted to go with her to see the newly re-released ‘The Lion King’ in 3D. Here’s what I thought seeing it on the big screen second time round.

In case you’ve been living on a desert island since 1994 ‘The Lion King’ is the story of Simba, son of Mufasa, King of Pride Rock. Simba is born much to the displeasure of his Uncle Scar who wants to rule Pride Rock himself. Over the coming years Mufasa teaches Simba about being a King until one day Scar tells Simba to wait for his father in the gorge where, with the help of the Hyenas, he creates a stampede of Wildebeest that head straight for Simba.  Feigning concern, Scar goes to get Mufasa and tells him of Simba’s peril, Mufasa successfully rescues Simba from the gorge but when he’s trying to get out Scar throws Mufasa back down where he gets trampled to death by the stampeding Wildebeest. Simba, after being told by Scar that he is responsible for the death of his father, flees Pride Rock.

I have no idea why I told myself I didn’t like this film. It’s awesome! Within the first few chords of ‘The Circle of Life’ I had that lovely fuzzy warm feeling in my belly that only Disney can provide.

Under an hour and a half it zips along quite nicely, not drawn out enough to out stay its welcome but enough for it to stick with you after the closing credits. The score is superb, Hans Zimmer, Elton John and Tim Rice all did a fantastic job and most importantly the songs stand up after 17 years (god that makes me feel old). The Animation is to die for. The ‘Disney Renaissance’ (1989-1999) really did turn out some cracking films and I think this is one of the best. The voice cast is great. My personal favourite is Rowan Atkinson as Zazu but there’s Whoopie Goldberg, Jeremy Irons, Matthew Broderick and of course James Earl Jones as Mufasa (I may have spoilt ‘The Lion King’ for one of my friends for life when I told her Mufasa was voiced by the same bloke that does Darth Vader, she says all she hears now is Vader).

The 3D is fine, not awful but definitely not good enough to outweigh the loss of light and colour saturation. I’m taking a positive view though; if Disney starts releasing their back catalogue in 3D they’ll be back in cinemas which will hopefully introduce them to a whole new audience of children. If the screening of ‘Tangled’ I went to in February is anything to go by there’s still a huge audience for Disney.

‘The Lion King’ is the highest grossing traditionally animated film of all time and having seen this as both a child and an adult it’s easy to see why. The story is timeless; it harks back to stories like Moses and Hamlet but obviously in an anthropomorphic, Disney friendly kind of way. That said you forget how scary that gorge sequence is and I have always liked the way Disney films deal with mortality, most lead characters in Disney films are orphans, have to deal with death in some way or are taken away from their parents at a young age and it’s admirable that Disney continue to tackle that kind of subject matter in their more recent outings.

In the years since it was released ‘The Lion King’ has become something much more than just a Disney film (although in my opinion nothing is ‘just a Disney film’), it’s an award winning soundtrack and a massive stage show but everything stems from this; a wonderful animated film that will be loved for years to come.

It’s Friday so lets have some…

Reasons to be Cheerful
1. This week is Halloween week on Strictly! I’m loving the series so far! In spite of initial reservations Chelsey Healey is one of my favourites; her quickstep last week was GORGEOUS! Jason Donovan is also proving to be quite the contender. Unsurprisingly my previous predictions were crap… Oh well! Strictly is on Saturday, BBC1 at half 6.

2. OMGHOWGOODWASTHELASTEPOF’THEFADES’!!!!!! I have LOVED ‘The Fades’! Some have dismissed it a bit of a slow burner but I thought it was great! A great cast, modern take on the traditional ghost story and lashings of lovely Sci-Fi! What’s not to like?!?! I mourn the loss of ‘Doctor Who Confidential’ but if they can put the money they save from that into more new, fantastic stuff like this I might be consoled. I’ve already pre-ordered my copy of Series 1 :-)

3. Character Posters for ‘The Hunger Games’! I do enjoy a ‘Dystopian Future’ movie and this looks good, alas the same cannot be said for Woody Harrelson’s wig…. I want to read the book but obviously when the film comes out I’ll judge it on its own merit. Thankfully, even if it’s total crap at least I’ll have the lovely Liam Hemsworth to look at!

4. Brad Bird wants there to be a sequel to ‘The Incredibles’ and so do I! I really enjoy ‘The Incredibles’, it’s marginally more grown up than other Pixar fare (it was their first PG rated film) but still has the top class story telling of which our favourite digimation gurus are capable.

5. The Muppets have done their final parody trailer. And it’s awesome! 105 days to go!!!!

That’s it for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x x x

"River Song didn't get it all from you, sweetie"

Hello Everyone :-)

Have we all brought new hats? Is the confetti on standby? The best man is stressing over his speech, it’s time for ‘The Wedding of River Song’.

This blog is spoilers galore so if you’ve not seen ‘The Wedding of River Song’ and don’t want to know anything about it, don’t read it.

We open in very confusing times. Winston Churchill is Emperor of the Roman Empire parading around London on a woolly mammoth and Charles Dickens is yet to write ‘A Christmas Carol’. All of time is happening at once and Churchill (in this reality he doesn’t know the Doctor) has our favourite Timelord held captive as his soothsayer. The Doctor explains to Churchill how he was searching for The Silence to ask them why he had to die and met the Teselecta when they were posing as one of The Silence. In flashback the Doctor is taken to the head of Dorium Maldovar who tells him "On the fields of Trenzelor, at the fall of the Eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a question will be asked - one that must never be answered. And Silence must fall when the question is asked". The Doctor refuses to go to Lake Silencio until he’s told of the death of his old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart which makes him reconsider his fate so he takes Dorium’s head and leaves.

The Doctor arrives in America and meets Amy, Rory and River and events unfold as they did in ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ until we see things from the perspective of the Doctor as he approaches River in the Astronaut suit. River is shown her future of imprisonment in Stormcage and then, to the Doctor’s surprise she drains her Astronaut suit of its power, time becomes stuck and all of everything happens at once, bringing us up to date and back with Winston Churchill and the Doctor. During the time the Doctor has been explaining what has happened to Churchill tally marks have begun to appear on The Doctor’s arm. He has no recollection of how they got there the pair look up to find a fuck load of Silence (that’s the collective noun of choice when talking about the Silence) are nesting on the ceiling.

Churchill and The Doctor are rescued by Amy and some soldiers then the Doctor is taken to a train where Amy explains that she is aware of the alternate reality because of her proximity to the crack in her bedroom wall growing up (however she’s not twigged that ‘Commander Williams’ is Rory), she then gives the Doctor an eye patch like the one worn by Madame Kovarian and informs him that it is an ‘Eyedrive’, an external memory that enables the user to remember what the Silence look like. They travel to ‘Area 52’ which is a hollowed out pyramid at Giza where Amy, River and her team of soldiers have got some of the Silence captive along with Madame Kovarian. It soon transpires that this has all been a trap set by Madame Kovarian and the Silence begin to escape and overload everyone’s eye drives, killing some of the soldiers. As the Doctor and River escape up to the top of the pyramid Amy and Rory hold the Silence back and Amy realizes who he is. Madame Kovarian discovers that her eye drive is also being overloaded so dislodges it, but Amy forces it back into place in an act of revenge.

The four convene at the top of the pyramid and River tries to convince the Doctor that he doesn’t have to die and that having history happen all at once is acceptable. The Doctor explains that the whole of time will tear apart if it carries on as it is then he marries River, whispers something into her ear and kisses her unsticking time, taking them back to reality and Lake Silencio where River seemingly shoots and kills the Doctor.

Sometime in the future River arrives at the home of Amy and Rory, in her timestream it’s just after the events on ‘Flesh and Stone’ but in Rory and Amy’s timestream it’s not long since they’ve been dropped off after the events of Lake Silencio. River tells them to remember rule number 1; the Doctor lies. It transpires that when the Doctor whispered to River he was actually telling her to look into his eyes and she saw that the Doctor had been shrunk and is inside the Teselecta so the effigy of the Doctor was safely dispatched without harming him.

Elsewhere the Doctor returns Dorium’s head and as he is leaving Dorium shouts after him the ‘question hidden in plain sight’, Doctor Who?

Let’s start with the positives. I loved Karen Gillian’s performance as suited and booted Amy. She proves that the old adage ‘Hell has no fury like a Woman scorned’ is wrong, it should be ‘Hell has no fury like a mother who has her timelord daughter stolen only to discover she was her childhood friend who regenerates into the woman who marries The Doctor’ although I don’t think that has the same ring to it…

It was lovely to see Rory in a different light and in uniform! I had to chuckle when the Silence called him “the man who dies and dies again”!

Unsurprisingly Matt Smith steals the show. I said the other day about how Smith is making his Doctor much more about the self-hatred and that’s very much the case in this episode. Not just that but he’s a man trying to out run the inevitable, he goes through denial, sadness and finally acceptance of his fate and Smith deals with it all with aplomb.

I knew, as soon as we saw the Teselecta again, how it was going to play out. Trouble is when that’s happened in renders the rest of the episode fairly irrelevant. Not just that but I’m not that bothered about what happens to River anymore, we’ve seen her birth, we’ve seen her death, we’ve seen her get married, the question of who she is has been answered and I don’t like her character enough to want to see her again, but I think I’m alone in this opinion.

In this episode the Silence prove themselves to be one of the scariest ‘Who’ creations of recent years. I defy you not to jump/squeal/hide behind a cushion (or like me, all of the above) when you see that shot of a nest of Silence on the ceiling on Churchill’s palace. They’re awesome.

Unfortunately, other than when the Silence were on screen and the last scene with Dorium, there was a total lack on tension throughout the episode. There was just too much exposition and not enough action. I applaud Captain Moff’s use of the wibbley wobbley timey wimey nature of ‘Doctor Who’. I think he uses it a lot better than Lord T Davies ever did (I found that Davies used time travel to set the scene of his episodes whereas Moff uses it as an integral part of the overriding story arc) but it shouldn’t come at the expense of drama. I spent so much time trying to straighten out who was when and which reality we were in that I couldn’t enjoy it properly.

When it all boils down I thought it was lots of information and not enough excitement. I was pleased with the ending, next series sounds very intriguing, but it wasn’t enough to redeem the whole episode.

So there we have it. Looking back, this series has been a bit up and down but I don’t think any episode has been less than ‘good’. A couple of episodes this series have been outstanding, the shades of dreamy fantasy clash with some very visceral horror in ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and the Sci-fi heavy but emotionally charged ‘The Girl Who Waited’ were stand outs for me. All we have now are hints, hints at the eventual departure of Matt Smith at “the fall of the Eleventh” and a shadier, less ostentatious Doctor. I’ve got the proverbial hook in my lip!

The Doctor returns on 25th December in the ‘Doctor Who Christmas special’ :-)

Phew! Now all that’s out the way let’s do some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)

1. MISFITS IS BACK!!!! Yay! The well-publicised departure of Robert Sheehan was realised in the online mini-episode ‘Vegas Baby!’. I am sad to see him go but all good things must come to an end and ‘Vegas Baby!’ also served as an introduction to the new recruit to the ‘Community Blowback’ family, Rudy. Joe Gilgun will be playing Rudy and he’s previously been in ‘This is England’ and apparently Emmerdale (needless to say I’ve seen the former but proudly never the latter). The creators of Misfits clearly aren’t afraid of shaking things up a bit and hopefully Nathan’s departure and Rudy’s arrival will keep the show as fresh and exciting as it’s always been. Series 3 of Misfits starts on Sunday 30th October at 10 o’clock on E4.

2. Tintin is out today! I’m excited about this. It’s got a great cast, Jamie Belll, Andy ‘Lord of Mo-Cap’ Serkis, Daniel Craig, Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Toby ‘Dreamlord’ Jones. Not just that but it was written by Captain Moff, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, music by John Williams,  produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Steven Spielberg. The caliber of talent on offer in this film is mind boggling. I’m planning (although I’m sure you’ve grasped by now that my plans do not always come to fruition) to go an see it on Saturday morning so I’ll let you know what my verdict is at some point next week, but if you want to know now read my lovely friend Mark’s review.

3. New trailer for 'The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists'! This looks like SO MUCH FUN! I can’t wait. With this and the Muppets (107 days!), 2012 looks set to be a cinematic hoot :-)

That’s all I’ve got for you!

Goodbye till next time :-)

x x x x x x x x x x x x

Closed for the Season

Hello Everyone :-)

The penultimate episode of Doctor Who, series 6 sees the return of James Corden (who incidentally, I’m going to see in a play on Saturday) from last series’ ‘Companion Lite’ episode ‘The Lodger’. We return to Mr Craig Owens in ‘Closing Time’.

The Doctor is on a farewell tour before his pre-ordained demise at Lake Silencio and rocks up in Colchester to visit Craig Owens (James Corden). Our favourite Timelord finds Craig living with girlfriend Sophie and new baby Alfie. The Doctor notices strange electrical disturbances and investigates. He traces the disturbances back to a new department store and soon finds that it’s been built over a crashed Cyberman spacecraft upon which Craig and The Doctor discover that they have been siphoning off the store’s electricity to reactivate the crew of the ship.

This episode is in a bit of a unique position in this rebooted age of Doctor Who; we’ve not had a standalone penultimate episode before. On the surface it’s a story about fighting the Cybermen (more of them later) but really it’s about Craig overcoming his trepidations about being a Father.  This idea of parents and children has been the glue that binds the series together; we’ve had gangers made human to fulfil their fatherly responsibilities, we’ve had Captain Avery accepting his son Toby, Alex and George worked through their issues in 'Night Terrors' and not to mention the Amy, Rory and River saga.

I like James Corden, although I’m aware he divides opinion. I think he’s a great comic actor and he shows that in this episode. Corden and Smith have an excellent on-screen chemistry; they bounce off each other really well. I had to giggle at the misunderstanding with the shop assistant as to how they’re involved with each other.

There are some lovely references to previous episodes in ‘Closing Time’. The Doctor speaks baby again (I’m totally calling one of my future children ‘Stormageddon: Dark Lord of All’), we see Amy’s post-Doctor career as a model (a reference to Gillian’s career prior to ‘Who’?) for Petrichor perfume harking back to ‘The Doctor’s Wife’ and we finally find out where the Doctor got those blue envelopes and that Stetson. Not only that but our suspicions are confirmed and in the last few minutes of this episode we discover it’s River in the Astronaut suit from Episode 1.

Let’s deal with the big Cyber-Elephant in the room. My main gripe with this episode (and I’m not alone in this) is that it makes a mockery of the Cybermen.  The Cybermen are supposed to be one of the most formidable races in the universe but they are defeated when a bloke hears his baby crying. WHAT?!?! In one fell swoop Gareth Roberts has removed the Cybermen’s Cyber-balls which is a crying shame because when they’re given a good enough story they can be proper scary. Think back to ‘The Next Doctor’ (my favourite Christmas special), in that the Cybermen are bloody terrifying. You’re telling me that in the space of a Series they’ve gone from trying to take over the world to hiding under a shop and nicking their electric? Pull the other one.  Captain Moff needs to have a serious think about the Cybermen, I know they’ve been defeated time and again but they deserve better than this.

I’ll put my hands up and say, I don’t think this is as good as ‘The Lodger’. There’s a lack of threat due to the metallic castration of the Cybermen and it’s just a bit too soft for my liking. That said there are some nice comic moments (I want the Doctor to work in a toy shop near me!) but ultimately I felt that this episode was using the central relationship between Craig and the Doctor as a crutch for its lack lustre storyline.  

And just so you know, the entire time I’ve been writing this I’ve had the song ‘Closing Time’ by Semisonic in my head.

Join me next time for  the Series finale, 'The Wedding of River Song'.

Now I want some

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Bumper ‘Being Human’ news! Damien Molony has been cast in series four of ‘Being Human'. He’s set to play a thoroughly upper class Vampire called Hal. I’ve never seen any of his work so he’s a bit of an unknown quantity but I like the idea of having the dynamic of the group shaken up. Also Craig Roberts is reprising his role as Adam for at least one episode of series 4! No word on ‘Becoming Human’ yet (which is a shame because I really liked it). I love Craig Roberts and having Adam’s character back in the show for however short a time can only be a good thing

2. Anne Hathaway joins the cast of ‘Les Misérables’! She’s playing Fantine, a woman who is forced into prostitution when she loses her job. She joins Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, who will portray Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert respectively. This is so exciting! I LOVE Les Mis, it’s wonderful. I’ve got the 25^th anniversary DVD with Alfie Boe, it makes me cry every time! I’m glad it’s getting its own film adaptation because the story is a great one and it’s sad that people that aren’t fond of musical theatre are missing out on it. The film is due for release on 7^th December 2012.

3. Zachary Quinto has come out as gay! It’s great, out and proud is the way to go if we’re going to change attitudes and stop tragedies like Jamey Rodemeyer happening in the future. Hopefully the courage Quinto has shown in publicly coming out will make it easier for others to do the same. Respect, acceptance and equality for all!

That’s it for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x

The Holy Hotel

Hello Everyone :-)

Things take a turn for the mythological in Episode 11. There are hotels with ever changing room, Minotaurs and a journey home in ‘The God Complex’.

As before, this aired ages ago so expect spoilers.

The Tardis lands in what appears to be an 80’s Hotel where The Doctor, Amy and Rory meet a Rita, Howie, Joe (Humans), and Gibbis (an Alien) who find themselves in the hotel with no explanation as to how they came to be there. The four explain that there is a Minotaur-like beast in the hotel that has killed others. It does this by enticing them to enter one of the rooms in the hotel which contains their greatest fears, upon which they become brainwashed to "praise him" and allow themselves to be taken, their bodies left without any signs of life. The hotel is inescapable (its doors and windows walled up) and its halls and rooms can change without notice. The Doctor, Amy, and Rory soon find the TARDIS has disappeared, and the Doctor warns them from opening any door they are drawn to, for fear of being possessed.

I never really noticed before but ‘Doctor Who’ is a secular show. Perhaps, on a subconscious level, this is why I’m so very fond of it. This episode, more than any since ‘The Impossible Planet’ and ‘The Satan Pit’ two-parter, deals explicitly with the idea of faith, not necessarily religions (although one of the trapped individuals is a Muslim) but faith in others and in beliefs.

I liked the Rita, Joe, Howie and Gibbis. Gibbis was played brilliantly by David Walliams. Coming from a planet that has been invaded more times than any other his subservient nature soon reveals itself to be sly and underhand.

Rita is another to add to the hall of ‘Companions that never were’. Amara Karan is suitably witty and clever as Rita, she gets some fun lines (Doctor “You’re a Muslim?” Rita “Don’t be Frightened”) and generally she’s perfect companion material. What I didn’t understand was why she had to die. I was a bit annoyed at that.

Another super performance from Matt Smith. After the ‘Doctor Lite’-ness of last week this episode saw a much more self loathing Doctor, rife with guilt at all he’s put the Pond’s through.  The difference between the 10^th and 11^th Doctors is brought more sharply into focus in these scenes. I always found Tennant’s Doctor to be more self pitying in situations such as this whereas Smith takes a much more searing approach; it’s very much self hatred.

I don’t know if this was widely talked about, it wasn’t anything I read prior to viewing, but this episode signals the departure of Mr and Mrs Rory Williams from the TARDIS. In retrospect episode 10 was all leading up to this and the first 40 minutes of this episode does feel a little like it’s been bolted on just to facilitate the Pond’s departure.  Not that that makes the first 40 minutes bad, in fact I quite liked it.  It was creepy, weird and a little unnerving but fun at the same time, all the things ‘Doctor Who’ should be.

I particularly liked the scene with Amy’s room. It’s always nice to see Caitlin Blackwood back as young Amy. In fact I like the whole end of the episode. It felt strange because usually companions leave after a major event but this just seemed like another standard ‘Monster of the week’ adventure. That said it was a lovely ending, nice new house and car and the Pond’s free to live their life as a married couple.

I did enjoy this episode, it just felt like the two parts were separate entities, both were more than the sum of their parts.

Join me next time as the Doctor drops in on his old Landlord Craig Owens in ‘Closing Time’.

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. New posters for ‘Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows’! I’m excited about this, it’s always nice to have something good to go and see over Christmas/New Year and if the first film is anything to go by this is going to be great! I’m a little bit in love with Jared Harris and can’t wait to see his take on criminal mastermind, Moriarty. Yay!

2. Photos of Henry Cavil on the set of ‘Man of Steel’. Oh my giddy god. That man is tasty!

3. ‘Thor 2’ release date has been pushed back. I’m not massively fussed, it’s only being moved from June 2013 to November 2013 and between now and then we have ‘The Avengers’ in May next year (link to the AWESOME trailer was posted in my last blog) and ‘Iron Man 3’ due in May 2013 so here are plenty of heroes to keep me happy till then :-)

 4. Another Muppet Trailer! It’s obviously awesome! 119 days to go!

That's all I've got for today.

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x

“You're asking me to deny destiny, causality, the nexus of time itself, for a boy?"

Hello Everyone :-)

There’s been a tradition of ‘Doctor Lite’ episodes since ‘Love and Monsters’ in series 2. Born of necessity (Billie Piper and David Tennant were tied up filming other episodes in the series), the tradition of ‘Doctor Lite’ has actually brought about some really good episodes, most notably ‘Blink’. ‘The Girl Who Waited’ followed in this tradition and combines sci-fi, romance and tragedy.

The Doctor takes Rory and Amy to the planet Apalapucia. When they arrive they discover that the planet is suffering from a fatal plague that affects beings with two hearts and can kill them within a day. "Kindness Centres", have been created where those infected by the plague are placed in accelerated time streams, allowing them to live out their lives whilst in communication with their loved ones through a glass lens in the waiting room. On their arrival, Amy is separated from the Doctor and Rory, and becomes stuck in an accelerated time stream. As the Doctor and Rory discover Amy's location, they are approached by one of the facility's ‘Handbots’. The Handbot explains about the plague, and mistakenly attempts to administer medicine that would kill them both. The Doctor uses the glass lens to warn Amy of this, and tells her to wait for him, promising to rescue her.

This is a weepy. I unashamedly cried like a child.

It’s Karen Gillian and Arthur Darvill’s finest episode. Actually its Gillian’s episode twice over because she plays young Amy and old, bitter Amy. They are two great performances, especially old Amy. Everyone’s going on about the prosthetics used to make her look old but I don’t think it was too bad and quite frankly if that’s all you’re paying attention to then you’ve totally missed the point.
Old Amy is so angry (and rightly so, I’d be pretty cross if my childhood hero left me to fend for myself in an alien world for 36 years) it’s a bit of a shock because the only emotion she’s conveyed thus far for the Doctor is wide eyed wonderment (except in ‘A Good Man goes to War’ when she asks the Doctor ‘What’s the point of you?’ which gave us the hintiest of hints that he may be falling out of favour with her). I had started to question Gillian’s acting ability because Matt Smith and Arthur Darvill have been so fantastic but in this she shows exactly what she can do.
Rory is a man torn with two different versions of his Wife. One is older but totally kicks ass (Amy turns futuristic samurai and it’s AWESOME!) and the other is the girl he married. The sad twist of fate is made so much worse knowing the hardship that future Amy has faced and regardless of age, she’s still the woman Rory loves (it was at this point that I cracked and wept rather noisily into my cup of tea). Darvill has been so wonderful, and continues to be one of my favourite companions ever.

It’s a wonderful episode, especially when you take into account that it’s kind of been done on the cheap. There’s a cheap and cheerful episode every series (to offset the cost of massive productions like ‘Curse of the Black Spot’ etc) but thankfully the ‘Who’ team are quite good at making the low budget look blockbuster. All filming locations for this episode were in Cardiff (I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s a big, lovely, public garden, someone from ‘Don’t Tell the Bride’ got married there) there were no guest stars (unless you count Imelda Staunton as the voice of the interface) and all the ‘Tim Burton-esque’ trees and stuff were CGI trickery.
Tom MacRae has previously written ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ and ‘The Age of Steel’ which heralded the return of the Cybermen and the introduction of the parallel universe. I liked these episodes; they haven’t stuck with me like others have, but they’re fine. This on the other hand has lasting appeal. It’s a mish mash of wonderful genres; the obvious sci-fi influence (it is Doctor Who after all), just the right amount of comedy and so much romance. The romantic element could have been suffocating but I didn’t find it saccharine at all. I loved MacRae’s script and I hope he continues to write for the show.

Its things like this that make me blissfully, blissfully happy, it worked so perfectly, a ‘Who’ fan really couldn’t have asked for more. It’s a superb 45 minutes of television that’s funny, action packed and so moving. Perfect storytelling with a killer emotional sucker punch. The only trouble is now I want to know why everything else isn’t as good as this. It’s up there with ‘Blink’ and ‘Midnight’ for me.

Just a little extra nugget of ‘Who-nievrse’ wonderfulness. I was looking back at some of the ‘Doctor Lite’ episodes and I don’t know if this was intentional but in ‘Turn Left’ the Italian family that Donna, Her Mum and Wilf share a house with are called the Colasanto’s which is the surname of Angelo from ‘Torchwood: Miracle Day’…

Now it’s time for some…

Reasons to be cheerful :-)

1. OMFG IT'S ACTUALLY HERE!!!! The Avengers Trailer is HERE!!!!! This is immense! I'm so excited about this :-)

2. Disney is re-releasing some of its stellar back catalogue in 3D! Now I’m not a big fan of 3D, I think at its best it’s pointless and at its worst it’s distracting, but if releasing them like this means a younger generation can see these wonderful films on the big screen then its ok by me. ‘The Lion King’ was released in the UK last week (it’s already made $80 million in the US) and next year Disney is planning to re-release the Oscar winning ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Finding Nemo’. In 2013 there are plans afoot to re-release Pixar’s ‘Monster’s Inc’ before the release of ‘Monster University’ in June and 1989’s (an excellent year if I do say so myself…) ‘The Little Mermaid’. Needless to say, I’ll be first in line :-)

3. The Muppets say don’t talk during the film! I bloody love this! Btw… 121 days to go!

4. New pictures of the untitled Tarsem Singh film based on the story of ‘Snow White’ have been released. This is the pretty one with Lily ‘daughter of Phil’ Collins not the emo looking one with Kristen ‘face like a smacked arse’ Stewart. This one looks more like my kind of thing, bright colours, massive dresses and fairytale Princes (Armie Hammer, yum!). It looks spectacular; let’s just hope the story lives up to the aesthetic.

5. New trailer for ‘The Walking Dead’! I think Andrew Lincoln is helping me deal with my phobia of Zombies. Seriously! I used to be totally rubbish with any horror, but now, since watching ‘The Walking Dead’ I’m so much better, I can watch ‘Dead Set’ now without freaking out and not sleeping for days!

With all those reasons to be cheerful it’s no wonder I’m in such a good mood today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x

Dawn of the Dolls

Hello Everyone :-)

Do you find oldy worldy Dolls a bit scary? Like old Peg Dolls? Well I do, in a big way; they’re up there with Clowns , mask wearing psycho murderers and other super scary stuff of nightmares.  So with much trepidation and clutching a cushion to hide behind, I sat down to watch episode 9 of series 6 of Doctor Who; ‘Night Terrors’.

Again, this was broadcast weeks ago so all bets are off and its spoilers ahoy from here on in.

The Doctor receives a message on his psychic paper from 8 year old George who wants saving “from the Monsters”. The Doctor and Alex, (Georges Dad) try, through the night, to find out why George is so afraid of everything whilst Amy, Rory and some of the other residents of his council estate go missing and turn up in a super creepy Doll’s House.

This episode harks back to episodes like ‘The Empty Child’ (“are you my mummy?”) from series 1 and ‘Fear Her’ from series 2, there’s a peadophobia theme running straight through it. In fairness George in himself isn’t as creepy as Chloe or the kid in the Gas mask but the fact he can shrink you down and put you in a Doll House in his wardrobe is pretty god damn scary.

It’s an excellent idea. That an alien child comes to earth, takes on a Human appearance to be raised by a couple that can’t have kids. It’s like a cuckoo but nicer. Penned by NerdyRachelMay favourite Mark Gatiss (while we’re here let’s clear something up, you say it ‘Gate-iss’ like gate and hiss without the ‘h’, ‘Gate-iss’) it features some great ideas throughout. This is the fourth episode of ‘Who’ that Gatiss has written (the other three being 'The Unquiet Dead', ‘The Idiot’s Lantern’ and ‘Victory of the Daleks’) and this is by far my favourite. It’s lovely and dark, very old school in its sinister-ness. Some have said that such a contained story following on from such a story arc heavy episode like ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ jarred but I don’t think it did. I think the answers we got from ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ were enough to satisfy viewers so we could enjoy an excellent piece of television like this.

It’s a pretty companion-lite episode. Although Amy and Rory are in danger for most of the episode their scenes never really have the same impact as the ones with George, Alex and the Doctor.  Rory is, for my money, the funniest companion to have flown with the Doctor and Arthur Darvill is excelling himself. I like that they’re referenced how many times the character has died (three and counting) to great comic effect. I thought Amy’s transformation from Human to Doll was glossed over a bit and there was never any peril because the audience knew she’d be changed back eventually.

I thought as a ‘baddie’ the Dolls were pretty terrifying. The genius use of the sound of children playing and the way they spoke gave me shivers. They reminded me a bit of the clockwork people from ‘The Girl in the fireplace’, (an episode that divides fans but I really liked) in the way that they’re not being evil for personal reasons, they’re doing it because they’ve been told to.

Matt Smith is on form again. He’s acting his little socks off and it’s lovely. He acts along side Jamie Oram (George) a lot in this episode and their scenes together are really nice. Praise must go to Daniel Mays as Alex. I love Daniel Mays; I think he’s one of the best Actors in the UK at the moment. ‘Ashes to Ashes’, ‘Made in Dagenham’, ‘Vera Drake’ he’s awesome in all of them and now he’s awesome in this.

I really liked this episode. It was a really good idea executed really well and for me that’s what great telly is.

Tune in tomorrow to find out what I thought of ‘The Girl Who Waited’.

No ‘Reasons to be cheerful’ today because this morning we all woke to the sad news that Steve Jobs has died. Steve Jobs was a co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple Inc and a member of the Disney board of Directors who was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. It’s hard to imagine a world without Apple, I mean that sounds ridiculous but think about it. No Macs, No Ipods, No Ipads, No Iphones, No Itunes and lets not forget that Steve Jobs was the man that funded Pixar in it’s infancy so without him there may have been no ‘Toy Story’. What ever your opinion of Jobs or of Apple you can’t deny that he was a visionary and that Apple has forever changed how we look at technology.  He strove for perfection and the impact of his work will be felt for years to come.

“There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.” —Steve Jobs

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x

"Get in the cupboard Hitler!"

Hello Everyone :-)

Some regular readers of my blog (all three of you…) may have noticed an absence in these pages over the past month or so. I’ve not been writing about ‘Doctor Who’.

I’ve been mulling it over and I decided not to write about the episodes in the days after their broadcast for several reasons, for one I was already musing about Torchwood and secondly I wanted some time to digest the episodes in this series because last time I don’t think I properly appreciated them.

So over the course of a week, after due consideration, I’ll be talking about one episode a day. I’m not even going to pretend to try and be spoiler free so if you don’t want to know anything about this second half of the series look away now.

So let’s get cracking… or more to the point ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’.

 ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ starts, as all Doctor Who series openers should, in rather dramatic style. Amy and Rory are at home in Ledworth making crop circles to try and get the Doctor’s attention and when he arrives so does Mels, Rory and Amy’s friend from school. Mels is toting a gun, on the run from the police and hijacks the Tardis, Doctor and all so they can all go and “kill Hitler”.

Teased Bond stylee at the end of ‘A Good Man goes to War’ the title ‘Let’s Kill Hitler’ was so exciting. Doctor Who has met Hitler before (the 6^th and 7^th Doctor) but in the hands of the new team I thought it could be something really interesting. However it turns out that he’s not in the episode for very long, in fact the whole World War 2 setting is pretty incidental. I wasn’t that bothered about it because this episode was great, I just thought it was worth pointing out that despite his name being in the title, he gets very little screen time.

The story is that there are miniaturised people who pilot robots called the Teselecta that take the form of a full sized, actual person, hunt down War criminals from the past to prevent genocides and world wars happening. As this weeks ‘baddie’ they were fine, forgettable but fine. In fairness they didn’t really have a lot to do because this episode belonged to Melody Pond.

Mels, played by Nina Toussaint-White, is the most annoying Doctor Who character I’ve come across. In fact, she annoyed me so much I was relieved when she got shot. Low and behold when she gets shot she starts to regenerate. It’s at this point we put two and two together and come to the conclusion that Mels is Melody Pond, the regenerating child from the end of episode 2 (Day of the Moon). Toussaint-White promptly morphs into Alex Kingston and everyone’s happy. Everyone except the Teselecta.

It transpires that the Teselecta, on discovering that Melody/River is in the vicinity, decide to leave Hitler and chase her down for the crime of killing the Doctor. Now, I’m not on my own here in thinking that the suggestion that the Teselecta would view Melody/River as being worse than Hitler is a bit… wrong. I’m all for artistic license and what not but when it’s something so huge and (in the grand scheme of things) so recent I do think a certain degree of care should be taken over the subject matter.

Alex Kingston as newly regenerated Melody is like a whirlwind! She shows River at the very start, which is fun because we’re seeing her story play out in true wibbley wobbley timey wimey style. We’ve seen her demise (‘Forest of the Dead’) and in this we see her genesis so now all we need to do is fill in the gaps in between…
As you’d expect she has some cracking lines ("So I was on my way to this gay, Gypsy, bar-mitzvah for the disabled, then I thought, the Third Reich's a bit rubbish…") but she manages to rein herself in for a lovely, quite moving final act. There were fair few mysteries solved which was nice, we know where she got the Tardis diary, we found out that yes she can regenerate but she gave it all up for the Doctor thus sealing her fate in the Library but we’re still not 100% as to who she is to our favourite Timelord.

Matt Smith is cementing himself as my favourite Doctor ever with an excellent performance that shows us everything the Doctor is.  He’s manic and vulnerable and funny and angry; the Doctor is everything all the time and Matt Smith nails it perfectly.

Another good thing about this episode is that it’s nicely speedy and full of energy (mostly provided by Alex Kingston). There are some good slapstick moments and the cast are at their humorous best. The dialogue is nicely zippy too with some good laugh out loud moments (when Rory said “get in the cupboard Hitler” I let out a laugh like a foghorn). There’s a bit of a change in pace as we go careering into the final few scenes which could have been jarring but is handled really well.

Over all, a nice solid opener after the summer break. It answered some of the questions that I wanted answering at the end of ‘A Good Man goes to War’ but in a fun, frolicky kind of way.

Tune in tomorrow for my look over ‘Night Terrors’.

It’s about time for some…

Reasons to be Cheerful :-)
1. Autumnwatch returns! Yay! I’ve been an avid watcher of Springwatch and Autumnwatch since June 09 when Chris Packham joined the programme, I used to watch him when I was younger and I was interested to see how he’d do because I had seen the show on and off when Bill Oddie was presenting. Needless to say it’s been a resounding success and has built on the fanbase that already existed. I found that whilst Oddie was great in small doses having him co-anchor the show wasn’t great because he had a tendency to go off on one and waffle whilst poor Kate Humble looked on helplessly.  The balance of factual TV and entertainment has been addressed and I think they’ve got it spot on, accessible to ejits like me that know next to nothing about the natural world and insightful enough to keep the most devoted twitcher amused. Michaela Strachan is co-host this series in the absence of Kate Humble. I like Michaela, she used to present Disneytime!  Plus Chris loves the Smiths and Martin Hughes-Games is a silver fox! Episode one of an 8 show run airs on Friday night at half 8 on BBC 2 with ‘Autumnwatch Unsprung’ at half 9 after the main show.

2. More Avengers pictures. Only 2 this time after the bumper crop of last week but one of those pictures is a totally lush and exciting photo of Thor and Captain America :-)

3. New Muppets character posters! Btw… 130 days to go!!!

That’s all I’ve got for today!

Goodbye till next time :-)
x x x x x x x x x x x x