Category Archives: Television

Comics, Culture, Film, Television

Comic-con, someday

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Comic-Con LogoI don’t have a long list of places I’m itching to visit. I’m not one of those people that has 40 things to do by the time I’m 40. But there are a few things I’d like to experience at some stage, and, foremost amongst the ‘selfish’ desires would be to hit the San Diego Comic-con one year.

I’ve been following the news more closely than normal, thanks to Topless Robot and Geekologie, and hearing the inside track on things ranging from the new ‘Avatar’ series to rumours of Dr Horrible 2, seeing Andrew Garfield deliver his heartfelt geek speech on the wonders of Spidey, seeing the posters of the Avengers movie appear, knowing that the people making these things happen are wandering a giant exhibition stall with thousands of like minded people… well, it sounds intriguing, if faintly sweaty.

My brother and I have a non-specific plan to make it out one year. I’ve never had a lot of friends into the whole comic/fantasy/sci-fi/animation thing with me, but it is something my brother and I have always shared, and a select few other fellow geeks. Thanks to my brother’s career (he makes movies) I’ve met one of my favourite contemporary comic book writers virtually, Mike Carey, and that is a pretty heady feeling. Geek star struck, natch.

Anyway, if you’ve ever gone I’d love to know what you think and if you think I’d enjoy it. I’m not sure how I’d find the crowds – have always found that aspect of exhibitions unspeakably tedious…

Television

Torchwood: Miracle Day premier – first thoughts

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Torchwood Miracle Day 101_27

We finally watched the season premier of the new Torchwood.

I wasn’t as blown away as I’d hoped. The premise of the show is great and well-advertised (death stops working), and the reveal of the specifics of this within the show is pretty entertaining (and surprisingly gory for a Doctor Who spin-off).

They’ve successfully introduced the new cast – a mobile phone addicted Mekhi Phifer and a generic young, female, attractive CIA agent amongst them, and a creepy paedophile. But the majority of the episode was spent revealing what you probably knew if you’d watched any of the trailers: death has stopped happening and its going to cause problems for planet Earth. And it has something to do with Torchwood.

That said; the production values are ridiculous compared to previous seasons and some of the sequences are fantastic. Jeep vs helicopter on a seaside car chase? Bet on the jeep, every time.

I’m hoping that the show picks up its pace now that the initial unveiling is done. I guess that it had to be from first principles, given that the cable tie-up (the show is co-produced by American cable TV network, Starz, which also co-produced Camelot) will bring it to new audiences in the US. Although I’m not looking forward to seeing Captain Jack’s willy as some are (or not, as the case may be).

Still, looking forward to the next one.

Television

Torchwood returns with Miracle Day

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Torchwood Miracle Day 403 BBC Promo_06Excited to see that Torchwood has returned. Despite a shaky start in the early seasons, the Dr Who spin off has grown up and I’m led to understand that many of the new production team – a collaboration between BBC Wales and a US cable network – are very excellent people indeed. The trailers I’ve seen set the pace nicely and I’m looking forward to catching up on the return of Captain Jack (I missed the premier last week – thank the BBC for iPlayer!).

Anyway, no spoilers please (I already know that nobody dies). Trailer:

Books, Television

Post modern post-modernism

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tyrion-lannister
I’m experiencing two different timelines for Game of Thrones at the moment – the TV’s first season / first book, in the early days of the War of Kings – and the latest book, A Dance with Dragons, as I read through it on Kindle. It’s a bit surreal; as ever, I am enjoying both, although a point Amanda made to me rings through – the number of characters Martin creates in depth in the books is very hard to keep track of, and I’m struggling to remember who all the random Mereen are around Danaerys at the moment. Will need to find a quick-ref summary.

Scalzi has a fun analysis on why this book has taken so long for George R R Martin to write – at over 400,000 words, in essence, it is the length of four or five lesser books, which a man might have churned out at a rate of one a year. So he’s basically written 4 regular sized books, or two jumbo sized fantasy epics, in one. Sterling effort, my good man, sterling effort.

Business, Television

Nice guys finish last. And also first – the Apprentice 2011 finale

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apprentice2011
I wasn’t expecting that (ref finale of BBC Apprentice 2011). But then, I wasn’t expecting Helen to go off the rails with a totally nonsensical business model on the basis of absolutely no previous experience. For Susan to be stupidly naive, borderline illegal – well, that was predictable. For Jim to be 100% bullshit – again, predictable.

That the single least successful person in the process to make it to the final eventually became the winner kind of nullifies the entire purpose of the process, no? Tom’s 11th hour revelation on how he got his previous product into Walmart must have had a big impact on Alan hiring him for his guts as he’d been as meek as Susan most of the way through the process. Lord Sugar clearly had, however, a soft spot for Tom the whole way through the project. And we liked him too, and were chuffed for him when he won through.

But perhaps the process was never about being the best business person – after all, Helen was unquestionably the best at doing "business" in the process – but perhaps it was about not contributing to stupidity and making your presence felt on collaborative group projects to demonstrate your role within the teams. As the roles filtered down at the end – Alan had a choice between the inventor, the operations person, the sales and marketing douche and the sparky, driven nit-wit with no clear discernible skills. Left with that choice, as a successful, excellent operations person yourself – there really is only one choice, irrespective of their performance in the final task.

Tom and Helen both did badly on the final task. Tom’s business plan was riddled with errors, didn’t mention his major margin product in it, he didn’t fight the case for workplace need before Lord Sugar (every large business’ health & safety requirements is having people fill out workplace health assessments these days), and was generally an affable twit. Helen’s idea was chronically bad; a re-hashed version of a concierge service wrapped in some nonsense about lifting Britain through recovery whilst really being contingent on a ‘recovered’ Britain in which idiots with too much money and too little time would outsource administrative trivia to an army of virtual assistants. My single biggest question about the Apprentice – were they allowed to use the Internet / computers? Surely a spreadsheet and a web-browse could have wheedled out 90% of the idiocy encountered across the course of the series.

The Apprentice process is exactly what it claims to be; it’s about finding the best business partner for Lord Sugar. It’s not about finding the best business person or entrepreneur in Britain – Lord Sugar already has one of those – himself.

For us? Adieu to Apprentice 2011 – it was fantastically entertaining television – and here’s to the next thing.

Television

@bbcapprentice ep 11–on business plans and production lines

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caracas

Episode 11 of the Apprentice went pretty much as expected. The team with the stupid people lost, and the stupid person with the bad attitude was fired.

It’s astonishing that – on week 11 of a 12 week exercise to showcase your business acumen – that Jim and co didn’t think a business plan was worthwhile. It’s a simple set of calculations to work out margins, estimate how many of which you can sell per hour, etc. but they simply didn’t consider the need for it – it seemed to be treated as a game to design the prettiest store.

Helen was very impressive on that front, carrying all the margins in her head, and I think moves even more decisively into the lead for the win.

Messing up the production line, as Jim did, I think was a more understandable error. Time was short, he’d clearly never given any thought to how restaurants were actually run, and whilst under that pressure he simply didn’t think through the implications.  Not to say they shouldn’t have tried to fix it, but I think they underestimated quite how labour intensive the creation of  fajita would be. Which is odd, as anyone who’s ever made them at home from one of those kits knows that it takes a bit of faff.

Television

The Walking Dead

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THE WALKIN DEAD serie 2 dvdsMy brother introduced me, via iTunes, to AMC’s The Walking Dead – a 28-days-later style post-apocalyptic Zombie tv-series set in the American South – near the city of Atlanta. I’ve never really been one for horror – my cousins Rey and Anand used to lap this stuff up as kids, but I somehow never took great joy in being scared – amazed and amused were more my preference.

But the Walking Dead is very, very good television indeed. Whilst the characteristics of the zombies and the conventions of the genre are left undisturbed and ordinary, where it excels – as ArvD pointed out to me – is in the depth of the characters it manages to get across so rapidly. I’m only three episodes in but already have an excellent sense of half a dozen major protagonists.

For those curious, small-town sheriff Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) wakes up in hospital following a car chase and a shootout that sees him badly injured. He’s been out of it for several weeks and in the meantime pretty much everyone in town has either been killed, zombiefied or both. Unable to find his kids, with the help of a couple of other survivors, he raids the police station for supplies and heads to nearby Atlanta, where reports say there is a camp of survivors, in the hope of finding his missing wife and son.

It kinds of goes from there.

Really high production values, incredible performances, and very tight writing – incorporating some brave silences for mainstream TV-writing – has seen this renewed for a second season. Andrew Lincoln’s accent (he’s British playing Southern) is flawless.

I’m going to have to find gaps when Amanda isn’t around to watch it, as I don’t see her being sold on the genre regardless of the quality of the writing… there is a high level of gore involved.

Trailer:

Television

Which Captain Planet ring would you choose?

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Mine’s wind or water, as fire and earth are too destructive and heart is too lame. Think of the practical applications!

This conversation was preferable to me than ‘would you rather’ as a way of passing the time on a delayed coach journey the other day.

Captain Planet, he drives a Prius, he’s going to reduce emissions down marginally through considered consumerism….

Television

@bbcapprentice–Melody slips on the fine line between arrogance, ignorance and insecurity

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melodyThe latest Apprentice was its usual action-packed self. I found it particularly enjoyable as the barrow-boy buy/sell exercise seems more in the spirit of British enterprise than some of the slightly more artificial exercises of introducing un-researched, poorly differentiated products into a crowded market. Truly, it was the Only Fools and Horses edition episode.

I was hoping for Melody’s departure. Of the remaining brands of ignorance and idiocy, hers is the most aggravating. Loud-mouthed, tedious, and almost exclusively from a place of polished, artificial superiority, her overall tone and bearing invited contempt. I’m surprised it took this long; but I guess her unfailing sales patter did protect her from the wrath of Sugar.

To me, arrogance and insecurity are flip sides of the same coin. The less confident you are, the more you crow, and the harder you push for the centre stage. And this, I think, was at the core of Melody’s failure.

Having seen the personalities in action for a few weeks, my estimation of Helen went down too – the only way to work with people like Melody is to play to their ego. She could have asked for the stock replenishment role without usurping Melody’s authority and she might have therefore had a chance of adding another task to her winning streak.

Alan (or Al, as I like to think of him) commented on the fact that it is a "cruel process." As someone fresh to the Apprentice this is becoming increasingly evident. Unlike other reality TV programmes where there seems to be something of a bond between the participants, the adversarial nature of the Apprentice seems to have resulted in higher barriers. And, indeed, when on a weekly basis they are forced from camaraderie and teamwork into blame-calling and execution, it’s unsurprising. It’s not an exercise I’d have any desire to get involved with at all.

The remaining weeks will be interesting. Natasha and Susan are probably next for the chop, owing to the former’s unpleasant ignorance and the latter’s naivety (although I really felt for Susan this week when dealing with the frankly pathetic Natasha), leaving Tom to flounder against the polished Helen and the manipulative Jim.