Ry's Reviews

All Good Things...

2009-06-19T01:25:00.000-07:00

Yes, the time has come.

After a number of months reviewing this, that and the other, it's become increasingly obvious that I'm essentially talking to myself (not, in of itself, a bad thing). As a result, it seems pretty pointless to keep on maintaining this blog, particularly as time often gets sucked away, stopping me from writing what I need to.

As such, I shall bid a fond farewell to one and all and encourage everyone to go to The Enterprise Of Geeks where changes are taking place, but the spirit of both blogs shall live on.

Be seeing you.

Star Trek

2009-05-09T06:04:00.000-07:00

You've got to admire J J Abrams' balls, and possibly not the for the reason the girls think. If someone said to me, "We'd like you to make the eleventh movie in a flailing franchise, of which, tradition dictates the odd numbered films tend to be shit, AND we'd like you to reboot said franchise which has tens of thousands of fans, of which thousands of those are raving obsessives, AND, just in case you haven't shat your pants yet, we'd like you to recast the original characters which are much loved by generations and played so iconically by a very well respected group of actors," the follow up to that request would be "Ryan? Ryan? Are you still there...I think he hung up on me." Because seriously...that is one tall order.

What has impressed me about this film, though, is that Abrams hasn't just given a general two-finger salute to the fans. In point of fact, he's rather held out an olive branch to them, unlike one Zack Snyder to Watchmen films. No, Abrams has given a little way out for the fans - yes, this is a reboot, but *actually* there's this whole time travel aspect to the thing which has changed the future so this is an alternate reality. Oh yes it is...Uhuru actually says it at one point. But, just to make the fans a little happier, says J J, listen out for some choice catchphrases (did I hear "I'm a doctor not a physician" and "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain"? I believe I did), some classic costume design (though those mini skirts look a little longer than they used to) and, of course, Leonard Nimoy.

Because, the geeks have inherited the Earth. That, or Hollywood has finally got the idea of how to make a geek film and make it good - and by good I mean one that appeals both to the fans and the mainstream audience, because these geek things were actually hugely popular in "the day", and there was a good reason for it. It's not that hard to make a film that the fans will love and the mass audience will be entralled with, because they are, at the end of the day, looking for the same thing.

It's been so long since we've had a great sci-fi movie with a kick arse action rogue (since Serenity, in fact), that the audience have secretly been screaming for it. Oh yes, we want massive space battles; we want to hear a captain say "Abandon ship!" (although I actually wanted this to be preceded by "All hands!", but sadly it didn't happen), and yes we want a space captain to shoot first and ask questions later. And that's the most important thing about this movie.
The script for the film is entertaining, but nothing particularly mind blowing (although it's worth noting that one of the things that marks this as a very modern movie is the tongue-in-cheek feel to the film, but more on that later), the special effects are amazing, but in this day and age, if the special effects were crap it would be a very ordinary movie, and the direction is tense; the editing quick. But none of those things make this movie stand out. What makes this movie really entertaining, and really head and shoulders above a lot of other movies, is the astonishingly brilliant cast.
I don't know if these actors sat down and watched the original programme, or if they were fans of Star Trek, but these actors have truly recreated the characters without fault. Yes, Captain Kirk has lost his somewhat unique form of delivery, and the voices are all a little different, but these *are* the characters that were in the original series, without question.

The crew members are all there - John Cho as Sulu, Anton Yelchin as Chekov and Simon Pegg as Scotty are the three smaller parts of the seven, but they are all excellently realised, even though Chekov and Scotty are the comic relief. Sulu is the serious helmsman, Chekov can't pronounce his "v"'s, and Scotty has his scottish accent, but all three are on their first missions and all three are learning their trade, becoming the characters that we will see them become in later stories. From there we get Zoe Saldana as Uhuru, the rather beautiful comms officer who, rather controversially, is having a relationship with her lecturer...but that's not the reason for the controversy.

Rather nicely some other characters from the Star Trek franchise make appearances, giving us a reminder of the original continuity from which they come, and of particular note is Bruce Greenwood as Captain Christopher Pike, captain of the Enterprise, and Ben Cross as Sarek, Spock's father, and the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. I thought that these touches more than anything showed that the production crew cared about the franchise they were now representing, and the fans who also care about the same thing.

But it is the three principals that are truly, truly outstanding. Karl Urban is Leonard "Bones" McCoy, and his portrayal, more than any other in the cast, is spookily like the original. Urban brings his character to life, effortlessly helping out his friend when he's needed and moodily sulking about the Enterprise's first officer when things don't go his way. Urban has caught on to the fact that McCoy is a Southern gentleman who is a moaner at heart, but always does the right thing.

Zachary Quinto plays Spock, and from the moment you see him arch an eyebrow, it is clear that this part is a labour of love from Quinto. He rather nicely shows a Vulcan at odds with his human heritage and his emotions (which is important for this film and the story behind it, though could be rather fey if it carried on), but attempting to balance it as best he can to please everyone except himself. What is also amazing is how much like a young Leonard Nimoy Quinto looks.

And then there is Chris Pine, the man who has the hardest job in the world - bringing to life the original rebel captain who has little respect for authority and a gung-ho attitude that has him fighting every step he takes. And he succeeds in a way that you wouldn't even believe. We see Kirk as a cocky young boy, who becomes an equally cocky twenty-something, and who is more than happy to cheat as long as it means he wins. As he says in the film "I don't believe in a no-win situation" and that is Kirk - arrogant, cocksure, and, rather annoyingly, right. What Pine does is channel William Shatner's complete arrogance in the role of Kirk, and bringing with it the same charisma that makes you refrain from wanting to punch him in the face. You can't help but cheer when Kirk solves the insoluble Kobayashi Maru situation at the academy even though he cheated in order to do it. But every so often we need to see a hero who will break the rules and be happy to blow his enemy away. Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote a script that faithfully recreated the original character, but it is Pine's outstanding performance which sells it.

Have I forgotten anyone? Oh yes...of course...When it was announced that Leonard Nimoy would be appearing in the movie, I did wonder if it wasn't just an excuse to shoehorn an original actor in, and did wonder why they didn't bother doing the same with Shatner. However, after watching the movie, it becomes pretty clear exactly why this couldn't be done. Because, if this is an alternate reality, Leonard Nimoy is definitely the original version - Spock Prime as the credits name him. And it brings a joy to the heart and a slight tear to the eye when Nimoy intones the "Space...the final frontier" before the closing credits.

I really have nothing more to say about this movie, because it really is all about the performances. Never mind Eric Bana, never mind Winona Ryder...the main cast is all you need. And by god do they sell it well.

As Scotty says "I like this ship! It's exciting!" It is indeed.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

2009-05-06T21:46:00.000-07:00

I really had to restrain the fan-geek in me for this movie, let me say from the outset. A movie like this has the potential to be so amazing, but at the same time can upset fan-geeks a lot, primarily because there is already an established movie continuity for the X-Men. What if they were to destroy that? Could I handle it?

As it turned out the fan-geek had absolutely nothing to worry about and while, as I expected, this didn't turn out to be the thought provoking X-Men movies of Bryan Singer, it was still an entertaining and action-packed film that doesn't have a dud moment.

Fox and Marvel must be thanking Tom Cruise every day for the fact that Mission: Impossible II ran over schedule and Dougray Scott was forced to pull out of the role of X-Men, handing over to song-and-dance man Hugh Jackman. Jackman, of course, turned out to be handsome, charming and able to bring Wolverine perfectly to life for three movies, so much so that by the third X-Men movie he was, undeniably, the star. If any X-Man was going to pull off a solo movie, it was going to be Wolverine, and thanks to Hugh Jackman's success and popularity, it became a no-brainer.

What was slightly more controversial, though, was recasting established characters such as Stryker and Sabretooth. However, given the context of the story, this is perhaps, not that surprising. Tyler Mane was brilliant as the tall, muscle bound heavy that Sabretooth was in the first X-Men movie, but I'm not sure he could have gotten through the acting and dialogue that Sabretooth has to carry in this film. Liev Schrieber was an odd choice for me when I first heard about it, but the trailers allowed me to warm up to him and on film, he's an absolutely terrifying beast, even more agile than in the first film.

Danny Huston as Stryker didn't really make me uspet, but at the same time I didn't also get terribly excited about it. He plays the part competently, giving some nice character moments to the part, but unfortunately he fails to make much of an impact.

In truth, most of the film fails to make much of an impact. While the story is servicable and gives a nice backstory to Wolverine, where he comes from and why he is like he is, it's not a particularly new story in any genre, and at times seems more of an excuse to introduce us to a much wider group of characters from the X-Franchise. Characters like The Blob, John Wraith, Deadpool, Agent Zero, The Bolt, Silver Fox, Gambit and Emma Frost all make an appearance while the intricacies of Stryker's plot doesn't entirely add up. We discover that he is rounding up all the mutants to create a supermutant that he can control to hunt down and kill mutants. Except that, if he can round up mutants, why not just kill them there and then? Indeed, at times it seems that Stryker's primary motivation is to create a mutant that can kill Wolverine and Sabretooth - except that if he hadn't tried to create the supermutant, he wouldn't need to kill Wolverine and Sabretooth. It's slightly circular.

What's funny is that, given the Marvel trend to tie their movies into a coherent universe, this one could actually have easily been tied into the Marvel universe, while at the same time giving a little more scope to Stryker's actions. If Nick Fury had had a cameo to check on Stryker's progress in recreating the super-soldier program, suddenly you would have a lot more depth to Stryker; something which would have been more effective than a quick cameo by a kid with two eye colours stuck in a freezer. This would also have been a nice touch for the fans, something which the movie never shies away from; dropping names such as the Hudsons and having a cameo appearance at the end of the film by a certain distinguished British actor.

However, to most people, and to me as well to a certain degree, this movie could have been awful but would still have been saved by watching Hugh Jackman recreate his Wolverine character. Although on a couple of occasions he drops his accent and goes Ocker for a bit, Jackman still manages to inject so much into Wolverine that he simply steals the show whenever he's on screen. Wolverine is much more of a hero in this movie than he was in previous ones, but it doesn't matter because that's what you expect from this movie, and from Jackman as well.

Wolverine is a far more entertaining movie than it's immediate predecessor, but one of my friends remarked that it was the kind of movie that was best seen at the cinema with a group of like-minded friends. I think he's pretty much on the money with that observation.

Heroes: Season Three

2009-05-01T09:05:00.001-07:00

Twenty five episodes later, and Heroes has reached the end of its third season, to a fairly mixed reception and, undeniably, some rather disappointing ratings - an average drop of around three million viewers. Why is this? Well, it's a little hard to say, but certainly the programme this season suffered from two things - the fallout of the writer's strike that cut season two in half, and head writer Jeph Loeb. There were some great ideas this season, but the major problem with the programme was that it lacked focus, which is a great shame, all things told, because there is limitless potential with the format, the ideas and the, frankly quite brilliant cast.

Season Two was supposed to have continued by having a four episode volume called Villains, before going into the Fugitives volume that would have seen the heroes round up and locked away - though not because of Nathan, but rather because of the outbreak of the virus, which never actually happened due to the writer's strike. As a result Loeb decided to take the slightly unusual decision to still have the round up of heroes, but still at the end of the season, which meant that the opening needed to be expanded and this meant the inclusion of a new supervillian, Arthur Petrelli, backed up by Maury Parkman and some other nasty pieces of work. Brother vs brother would become son vs father, dramatic tension would unfold, the astonishing revelation that Sylar was a Petrelli would be revealed, and Peter would absorb Sylar's power and start down the dangerous path that his brother was already treading.

Except it didn't quite work out like that. Throughout the first volume, Jeph Loeb would come up with some great ideas, but then get sick of them and forget all about the fact they had happened. Yes, Peter appropriated Sylar's power, but an episode later and he had forgotten all about it. Sylar was revealed to be a Petrelli...and then it turned out that he wasn't and both Arthur and Angela Petrelli had been independently lying about exactly the same thing.

The big problem was that there was actually so much room for dramatic character development. How interesting would it have been to see Mohinder truly get darker and darker, becoming more and more desperate for power? To see Peter kill Sylar and effectively take his place? To see Angela truly run the company with Bennet as her right hand man. There was an enormous amount of paths that the series could have taken, but instead we got half way there, and then completely forgot about.

There were other problems, of course, including the fact that a number of the heroes were becoming more and more powerful to the point they were virtually unstoppable. As a consequence they had to have their powers very quickly removed, either by the much talked about antidote that Mohinder devised or they were just taken away by Arthur. Which leads me neatly to my next point, and that is the death of characters that were relatively entertainging. Micah and Monica were unceremoniously dumped, while Elle and Adam were killed off and Maya just stood around doing very little. As the cast expanded it became clear that the writers were having difficulty knowing what to do with them, and as a consequence they were just tossed aside.

And so with the ratings progressively deteriorating decisions were made and Loeb was given the chop (although curiously he was credited until the very end) and Tim Kring, apparently, returned to being the showrunner.
Finally the storyline of the heroes being rounded up came into play, but sadly they didn't end up being contained; rather they spent most of the time being on the run from the Hunters. Tracy Strauss, the new character portrayed by Ali Larter - a character with a very dark side, which was a nice move - was effectively sidelined (though she did very little for the opening part of the season). And then there was just a little too much character development, as most of the characters, when they weren't on the run, were moping about how they got into this position.

And then came Episode Twenty, and Bryan Fuller who had returned to be a consulting producer, delivered a script that was simply sublime. Tracy met with a devastating end (or did she?) while Micah returned showing initiative and power. For the next five episodes, the series delivered what it had done in Season One; action mixed with character moments that paid off and explained the motiviations of the characters, most notably Angela who had appeared to be virtually schizophrenic until we finally discovered why she did what she did.

I had been hoping for a huge showdown at the end of Volume Three, with the heroes uniting to battle Arthur Petrelli, but it turned out to be nothing but an anticlimax. Happily, though we didn't get the big fight against Sylar at the end of Volume Four, instead we got the heroes working together towards the eventual aim. The costs were high, as they had been in the finale of Season One, but the final actions of the characters have created some interesting pathways to explore next season.

Season Two had dared to be different to Season One, but Season Three seemed to be lost, struggling to recapture what was lost from the previous two season, whilst attempting to make its own identity. The theory didn't really work, and perhaps the writers would have been better starting afresh, without the leftover storylines of Season Two, and without attempting to be like the previous two seasons; rather just doing what it needed to do.

Season Four has been greenlit for the programme, as the show still is one of NBC's big winners despite the ratings fall, but hopefully the writers will learn from the mistakes of Season Three, utilise the characters better and finally slough off the stigma of the writer's strike. I don't think NBC will be forgiving if Season Four fails.

Doctor Who: Image Of The Fendahl (BBC DVD)

2009-04-30T07:13:00.001-07:00

In England this month, Image Of The Fendahl comes to DVD, with its Australian release just a few months away. I have to admit to be slightly biased in regards to this story as I remember watching it as a child and being just enamoured of it. Rewatching it, this is the story with English sex symbol Wanda Ventham, but frankly it is Leela (Louise Jameson) who blows me away. I've never really found the Doctor's companions of old hot, but I'm finding, more and more, that my feelings on that are changing, and frankly, Leela in those skins...

Back to maturity though!

Image comes at a strange time in Tom Baker's Doctor Who era; producer Philip Hinchcliffe had been stepped down due to the levels of violence and horror his stories had, and script editor Robert Holmes was keen to follow his boss, with whom he was very much in sync with. New producer Graham Williams was ordered to tone it all down, but convinced Holmes to stay on, and Image is Holmes last story (in production order) and it seems he's very much gone back to the style he preferred. Image has all the hallmarks of the Hinchcliffe era - a gothic horror story, homaging a classic (in this case the wonderful 1950's television series Quatermass And The Pit; although truth be told it probably owes more to the 60's Hammer film version than the BBC television version) and featuring some rather horrifying and violent moments. There is, in fact, one scene that is extremely shocking, and even Tom Baker, on the audio commentary seems shocked by it.

The story essentially stems around a skull that is twelve million years old, and the Doctor and Leela have tracked down a time rift which is powering up the skull to release a creature that was imprisoned by the Time Lords and which feeds on death itself. It's simple enough, and the story itself is just rife with wonderfully atmospheric scenes, such as the opening where a hiker is killed by an unknown force, which ultimately affects the Doctor at the end of Part One. Performances are quite fantastic all round, though there are three performances which are, quite frankly, mesmerising.

Dennis Lill plays Dr Fendelman, with a teutonic accent and a mustache that deserves its own spin-off series. That aside though, he positively throws himself into his performance and is just amazing. Daphne Heard, similarly bizarrely accented but without the mo, plays ole Mrs Tyler who baint be approvin' of them scientists, but there's just something about her that makes you shut up and accept everything that comes out of her mouth without a second's hesitation.
However, it is Tom Baker who steals the show. With Williams in the producer's chair, Baker was getting more and more opportunity to do exactly what he wanted to with the part. His ad libs come think and fast in this story, with some moments such as the Doctor telling his feet to move, and then telling them to turn around, showing Baker at his most off the cuff extravagant. The thing about this, though, is that Baker is constantly charismatic. He's like William Shatner...just completely bizarre and yet compelling viewing. Baker is not my favourite Doctor, but there's no denying that his sheer charisma makes him the most watchable of them all, dragging the audience in with his golf ball eyes and making them follow him like a bohemian Pied Piper. In Image he switches from over the top eccentricity to sombre authority. He's truly fabulous.

However, the true star of the story is director George Spenton-Foster. He appears to be absolutely against long shots, and there are copious amounts of close ups, moodily lit, that truly make the story claustrophobic. Doctor Who seems to work at its best when you have a small group of people in a small space, with something outside trying to get in, and something inside going slowly mad (the formula still works; note Midnight). Spenton-Foster knows exactly how the formula nees to work, and brings it home with a bang.

The DVD for this one is one of the "cheap" DVDs, which means that, instead of five documentaries, you only get one; you get the audio commentary, deleted scenes and digital restoration (which is, as always, superb). So, fundamentally, it's still a great DVD with some great extras, and given the tendency recently for DVD documentaries to have a barely peripheral association to the story that it is associated with, it's nice to have just one documentary that is entirely focussed on Image Of The Fendahl. That said, the documentary itself doesn't really reveal an awful lot of new information for the hardened fan, but for others it will be a nice grounding - though I was astonished to discover that everybody hates the Fendahleen...I love them. I think they look great.

But all the extras could be tossed aside for the audio commentary. Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Wanda Ventham (Thea) and Edward Arthur (Colby) are all terribly entertaining, regaling the audience with stories that have nothing to do with the story, but are fascinating, and, of course, Tom Baker is without doubt as mad as a hat full of berries, discussing how old women ask him about his sonic screwdriver, and how he is mistaken for Claire Rayner.

This is another great DVD from the Doctor Who Restoration Team, and is an absolute classic Doctor Who story that everyone should have on their shelves.

The Biggest Loser Australia (Couples) - Season 4

2009-04-27T10:02:00.001-07:00

And so The Biggest Loser (Couples) comes to an end, with twelve weeks of Ten regretting having gotten rid of Big Brother, and so making up for it by putting TBL contestents through more and more ridiculous challenges.
I said at the beginning of this season that it looked like it was going to be the most gimmickiest of the entire lot, but as time went on it became clear that, not only was it the most gimmickiest, it was also going to be the one that was most manipulated by the producers. This is, of course, the one thing that lead to the downfall of BB, and so it was the one thing you'd think the producers would attempt to avoid.
Nonetheless as the game progressed it became clear that the producers had favourites that they were determined were not going to be leaving the show, and it was clear that Nathan was at the top of this list, as despite being voted off the programme twice he was returned both times.
This year seemed to be the year of catchphrases, as "the game was about to change forever" and "we've come to the pointy end of the game" were trotted out with monotonous regularity. Seriously though, unless the game was suddenly changed to "the contestent with the biggest weight gain is the winner" how exactly would the game change forever? I do remember, rather entertainingly, that on one walk, Nathan was told that the power he had was unprecendented in the history of The Biggest Loser. I can't remember what that power was (it was so memorable), but I do remember Sharif commenting, on Nathan's return, that he had no power whatsoever. So much of TBL was a case of build it up, because it's nothing.
It was nice to see that Bob and Jillian weren't remotely associated with the show this year, and it gave Shannon and Michelle the chance to really make their claim on the programme. I'm not entirely certain why, but obviously the producers decided that they needed more to make the programme work, and so aside from Shannon and Michelle, and the always entertaining Commando, we were given Emazon, who, quite frankly, was the most pointless person on the programme. Her workouts were not as terrifying as the Commando's and, aside from constantly shooting her in the dark, she wasn't even as terrifying as Michelle on a bad day.
Then, of course, we had the contestents, given to us in couples, which could have provided a bit of tension if you liked one half of the couple, but not the other, but at the end of the day, if you liked one, you would invariably like the other, and the feelings for hate were similar.
I couldn't stand first couple Tania and Ramses who were kicked out after a week and then bitched and moaned everytime we saw them again, even banging on about how they were going to kick arse when they had the chance to return. As it transpired they not only failed to kick arse, but also failed to lose much weight and it was a very poor final weigh in for them.
However, my feelings of hate for Tania and Ramses were nothing compared to the vitrolic loathing I had for bogan friend mothers Jodi and Jeda. Good god, could there be a more unlikable couple in the house? It seemed that they were going to take up the mantle of moaning and bitching from Tania, and then some. I was so pleased to see the back of them, and even more so, after they complained that they shouldn't be going, Sharif put them in their places. And then, after being told we'd be seeing two hot chicks in the finale, we still just saw two fat bitches.
I had something of a rollercoaster ride with Nathan and Andrew, initially liking them because of their blunt honesty about the way they played the game, but this turned to dislike when it became clear that they - or Nathan at the very least - were pricks in the way they played it. It was extremely entertaining when they attempted to manipulate Holly and Mel and it completely backfired. What shat me even more was how they kept on about the intention to get rid of the pair, and then turned about face. However, once the two were separated, it was interesting to see that Andrew became a whole lot more likable, and Nathan found his home having his arse repeatedly kicked by the Commando every day. And, to their credit, they looked fantastic at the final weigh in.
Holly and Mel were the most annoying couple in the show this year, sniping at each other and making no friends througout the entire show. However, what irked me even more was that they twice said they wanted to leave the game. Look, girls, if you want to go, SOD OFF! Don't wait til you're voted off - pack your bags and walk out the door. At the finale, Mel looked atrocious with hair that looked like she'd taken styling tips from the Jackson 5 (and complained that she still weighed the same as she did on the return weigh in - you chose to leave rather than continue to workout you stupid BITCH!), while Holly looked fantastic. Shame she didn't have the personality to go with it.
Amanda and Stewart had the most to lose, Amanda being an incredible 170 kilos, and yet by the end had managed to get that down to below 115, so big power to her. I felt for the two of them, although they were both a bit mercenary at times, and Amanda did come across as feeling a little bit sorry for herself. Stewart's weight loss was incredible, and Amanda, despite the fact that Ajay seemed to call on her to do it everytime she looked sideways, had a voice that was simply phenomenal. I hope she does get somewhere as an opera singer because she deserves to.
Sammi and Cameron didn't impress me to start with, and this was the one pair that did actually split opinion. I quite liked Sammi, but Cameron was a miserable, negative git, that just moaned for the entire twleve weeks. He finally managed to pull his act together, but still he seemed to chuck a tantrum in the final week. At the end of the day the pair were really non-entities, but I was glad to see Sammi ignore her father and friend and, when given the choice of evicting Sharif or Stewart, she followed her heart and got rid of Stewart, rather than her friend.
Ben and Sean were non-entities for the majority of the time they were in the show as a couple, though I do recall the week they had to have takeaway food for the entire week and Ben chucked the shits because he thought it was counter-productive. Quite frankly I was in complete agreement with him and it makes you wonder why the show does this to these poor bastards. Happily, after Ben left, Sean stepped up and became a quiet little powerhouse. At the final weigh-in I was astonished at how much weight Ben had lost as he looked amazing, but was utterly pleased as punch that Sean won the eliminated contestants prize as he the amount of effort he put into working out was incredible. It was also good to see he got rid of that godawful gap in his teeth.
Tears seemed to be the order of the series with Sean bursting into them every five minutes, but when he wasn't crying it was Julie. Julie and her daughter Meaghan represented the old woman and the hot woman. Meaghan was clearly a bit of a stunner and when she turned up in the finale she looked absolutely hot as. However, it turned out she was a bitch and far more manipulative than anyone claimed - indeed although Julie said Meaghan played honestly, it was clear that that was anything but the case. Julie, on the other hand, sobbed her way to the final five, and most hilariously, when meeting Emazon, walked into an empty room and burst into tears. I felt bad for her as she clearly had issues, but dear oh dear...
My favourite pairing from the outset were Sharif and Teresa, not just because Sharif was 180 kilos (always back the biggest), but because they were fair, honest and determined. From the outset they lead the way, helping others who couldn't quite keep up, and taking the lead in a quiet and effective way. I cheered all of them, and was devastated when Teresa was sent home, but more so when it was Sharif - sent home on Meaghan's whim rather than a proper elimination. When Sharif got the chance to return I was exteremely happy. The weight loss on both of them by the finale was amazing, and they both looked fantastic - Teresa, actually, looked hot. This was the pair everyone should have aspired to, and they really were fantastic role models.
Finally there was the winning combination of Bob and Tiffany. Bob, the oldest contestent ever, was like the energizer bunny, never giving up and just giving it his all from start to finish. His final weight loss (55% of his body weight!) was absolutely incredible, but the fact he was such a decent and nice guy made me glad he won the competition. Tiffany, seemed a bit of a wishy-washy character and never really established a particularly strong personality, but she was clearly determined and I was just as glad to see her get into second spot. Credit to her.
I didn't find TBL to be compulsive viewing this year, and I don't think I watched a single friday night episode as they are becoming more and more reduntant - stupid challenges which aren't resolved until the Sunday anyway. The producer's interference in the show is getting too obvious and unless they want to go down the BB path they really need to pull back from that. Perhaps just going back to the old days of fat people working out and losing weight might be a better idea for next year?

Doctor Who: The Forgotten (IDW Comics)

2009-04-20T05:44:00.000-07:00

It's kind of funny to think that Doctor Who's big break in America is more likely to come through a series of original comics there than through the television series, tucked away on the Sci-Fi Network - although truth to tell, the ratings there may still be higher than the sales of the comics.

Nonetheless along comes - and I've been quite slow in this review - The Forgotten, a trade paperback, collecing the six issues of the series written by Tony Lee and Pia Guerra, with Stefano Martino and Kelly Yates.

Of course the big hook about this series is that it actually features all ten Doctors over the six part series. The tenth Doctor wakes up to find himself in a museum to himself and on touching a variety of objects presented to him by Martha, he recalls adventures from his past. Ultimately, however, he is being pursued by someone who has the ability to manipulate the environment that the Doctor is in.

The nine mini stories are all quite entertaining, though by virtue of the fact that they are really only about 10 pages long, there is not an awful lot of depth to them. The big mystery is actually who is manipulating the Doctor and why Martha seems to know things that she couldn't possibly know.

Lee's story is fun and light, but lacks any real substance to it, appearing to be, more often than not, an excuse to bring the ten Doctors together. One feels though that this could have a little more editing to it to give a bit more definitive characterisation to it.

On the artwork side, Nick Roche provides the covers for the first five issues, and it's pretty clear that it is a good thing he isn't doing the inside art. While it's all very well to describe Tennant as a virtual cartoon, the fact is that there are times when Roche's artwork is so far removed it's not funny. Indeed, given the versions he does of the various Doctors on the front covers, we should perhaps be grateful that Roche at the very worst wasn't given the chance to draw any more McGann or Eccleston.

Guerra, on the other hand, seems to have a slightly better idea of what she is doing, though and her renditions of the various Doctors are quite good (although her second Doctor is waay off in the final issue). Stefan Martino has a bit of fun with the fourth and fifth Doctors, while Kelly Yates gets the chance to do the eighth and ninth Doctor's, though she is probably the weakest of the three artists.

All told, The Forgotten is a better miniseries than Agent Provocateur, but to date both of them lack what makes the new series what it is today - the emotion. A comic allows for an epic grand scale, but there is plenty of room for character as well.

The Pink Panther 2

2009-04-20T02:04:00.001-07:00

People who have the time to care may discover that I didn't entirely hate the new version of the Pink Panther, even in spite of it having the obvious pitfalls that I suspected it would have, and so I toddled off to see The Pink Panther 2 with my expectations a little higher than they were for the first film. Incidentally, I think it's pretty clear that the days of unique titles for sequels have passed - now we just stick a number after the original title, or attempt to do something clever like put a number into the original title. With Fast & Furious it looks like they can't even bothered to change the original title...people will still go see it no matter what.

The big difference between the new series of Pink Panther films and the original series is the target audience. Blake Edward's films may have been slapstick, but the target audience was clearly an adult audience (witness the amount of boobage in A Shot In The Dark if you don't believe me). Steve Martin's films are a family event, and the first film succeeded by catering to that audience. That said, it's strangely where the second film tends to go awry. For some reason, while most people know they are making a family film, some of the screenwriters (possibly Martin himself) has forgotten this, and there are a few jokes in the film which sit uncomfortably with the rest of the film - most notably the jokes about being politically correct. Now, while I laughed out loud at these jokes, and particularly enjoyed the "my little yellow friend" reference to the original films, the joke about oggling the beautiful girl - funny though it was - seemed just crass given the level of the film. I had a similar feeling when, in "The Cat In The Hat", the cat almost swore.

The other thing that is infinitely annoying about this film is the complete lack of continuity with the first film in regards to the Pink Panther. In the first film, it was the largest diamond in the world, but was in a ring on a football coach's hand. Now, it is the symbol of France and is far, far too big to be in a ring. This sort of carelessness is, quite frankly, just annoying and it's here where the screenwriters and producers need to go back to the original films to take some lessons: don't contradict yourself...you don't have to have the Pink Panther in the film to call it a Pink Panther film. All it needs is Clouseau.

Steve Martin makes less of an impact as Clouseau this time round, and sadly, once again saves the day by being a very intelligent detective rather than than just extraordinarily lucky. Fortunately, while Martin is going overboard with his physical comedy and just looking stupid, there are others to take on some of the comedy - in this case Alfred Molina and, surprisingly, Andy Garcia. Molina has some clever lines, but Garcia comes dangerously close to stealing the movie with amazing precision on his lines and, more than that, giving some equally clever slapstick comedy. I would actually love to watch more of Garcia's character rather than Martin's.

I see that the box office returns for this film are particularly bad and so, as a consequence, I doubt we will see a Pink Panther 3. At the end of the day this is probably a good thing. There is a place for this kind of film, but it's quite far removed from the original Pink Panther concept and as a result really isn't a Pink Panther film.

Doctor Who: Beautiful Chaos (BBC Books)

2009-04-20T01:48:00.001-07:00

Gary Russell has had a pretty charmed life given he is a Doctor Who fan and one would assume that, although he hasn't gotten to actually portray the Doctor, he must have reached the second best goal of his life. Over the years he has produced Doctor Who audios, written Doctor Who novels and is now a script editor at Upper Boat. It's a little surprising then that Beautiful Chaos is his first New Series Adventure.

Beautiful Chaos has Donna return to Earth and so characterisation is going to be the most important thing in this novel as the Doctor/Donna relationship has to now factor in Sylvia and Wilf. Writing for Donna is a bit tricky, as one tends to write more for Catherine Tate than for Donna, and writing for Sylvia is just as hard as you have to make a negative character still sympathetic. Regardless of the story of Beautiful Chaos, Russell has managed to nail the four central characters and the complex relationships between them. Wilf is postive, loving of Donna's new life and deeply respectful of the Doctor, while Sylvia is negative, but for all the right reasons - she is terrified of losing her daughter so soon after losing her husband, she has shouldered huge responsibilities while Donna has left them, and she is struggling to accept the situations that have been thrust onto them. The majority of the story takes place before Donna is finally returned to her family, but a coda gives us a chance to see that even Sylvia has a grudging respect for the Doctor and an understanding of what he means to Earth.

Perhaps unsurprisingly given his tendency towards what people refer to as "fanwank", Beautiful Chaos mines the series history for its villain, bringing us the evil Mandragora Helix that once plagued the fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane in Italy during the 15th century. Central to the Doctor's defeat of this entity, which is attempting to manifest and control Earth, is an elderly lady who Wilf has taken a shine to, and who suffers from Alzheimer's. This is a tricky topic to deal with and Russell handles it rather sweetly, not shying away from the disease and the inevitability of its outcome. Rather nicely as well is Wilf's wonder why the Doctor can't cure it after all his travels.

All in all, Beautiful Chaos is probably the best of the four Doctor/Donna novels to date, helped no doubt by the fact that Donna's journey has finished on screen. But good work Gary for providing such a great character driven story.

Doctor Who: Planet Of The Dead

2009-04-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

When you set the bar high, if you fall short people are going to criticise you for not being as good as you were. For James Bond that meant that Licence To Kill, despite being a box office smash, was regarded as a bit of a failure because it didn't make as much money as the other Bond movies - it was compared to it's predecessors, rather than it's competition. So as a result of that, with Doctor Who's special effects always looking so great these days, I have a gripe about the CGI rendered flying bus at the end of Planet Of The Dead. It just looked more than a little pasted on, particularly when one of the swarm smashed into it and appeared to make no indentation on the bus whatsoever.
It's a pretty good thing, I feel, when the biggest complaint you have with an episode of Doctor Who is the below-par CGI. In light of the fact that this episode was still in post production days before it was broadcast, perhaps the smash of the bus in Dubai caused the tighter than usual post production.

There were a number of things to note about this particular story, and one of them was the much talked about overseas shooting in Dubai. Dubai looks quite impressive as the planet Sans Helios, effectively nothing more than a giant desert, but one can't help feeling that it was marginally unnecessary.

The guest cast was up to its usual standard, but there were four standouts for me, all of whom deserved to be mentioned. From the least important; Noma Dumezweni returning as Captain Magambo (although this is the first time she appeared in the normal universe) gave us a lot more to the character than was seen in her last appearance. Of particular note was her pulling a gun on her scientific advisor to order him to shut down the ever growing wormhole that was the mcguffin of this episode. Harsh though it may seem, her actions seem very much in keeping with a UNIT soldier who sees the protection of the planet more important than the safety of a few civillians.

Next up is Ellen Thomas as Carmen, the older lady who has a psychic gift which gets better and better on the alien planet of the dead. Although she has very little to do, really, in the story, it is her prophecy to the Doctor at the end of the story that is more disturbing than anything else.

Lee Evans plays UNIT scientist Dr Malcolm Taylor who is an affectionate parody of the traditional Doctor Who fan (unlike the parody that was the Victor Kennedy). Taylor has read all the Doctor's files and knows his adventures inside out and loves the Doctor. With his county accent and "I love you, I love you, I love you" line at the end of the episode, this character had great potential to be extremely annoying and, frankly, crap. However, Evans gives the character a lot of warmth and is a very, very likable person.

But it was Michelle Ryan that generated the most concern for the hardcore Doctor Who fans. Her turn in Bionic Woman was hard to pin down, and despite a good performance in Jekyll, there was always the Eastenders shadow hanging over her. As Lady Christina de Souza, Michelle Ryan played a companion very much in the mould of Romana, and this character worked very well opposite Tennant. Christina has Martha's sass, Donna's independence and Rose's admiration of the Doctor. I wanted her to continue with the Doctor on his travels, and was disappointed that she didn't.

Cast aside, as usual, and with the exception of a certain bus, the production was up to its usual standards. The Swarm was quite disturbing, and looked quite scary, while the Tritovores, which in photo looked terrible, came across quite effectively and their deaths were actually a little sad.

I found myself enjoying Planet Of The Dead a lot more than I did The Next Doctor, and as we count down to the Doctor's tenth regeneration, it seems as though we have some great stories to come.

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth

2009-04-14T03:06:00.000-07:00

It's been twenty-two years since Red Dwarf first lazily made its way across our screens, at the time being repainted by its slobby only-living crew member Dave Lister, and nine years since the substantial former-hologram Arnold Rimmer kneed Death in the balls to make an escape from the Reaper. Since that time, Red Dwarf fans (myself included) have hoped for a return from the team, and our hopes were constantly kept up by "The Movie" - a movie with a script, a cast, but with no funding.

Now Back To Earth brings the crew back for three episodes (half a season no less). Sadly, there is something less than satisfying about this particular outing.

It really comes down to the fact that Back To Earth is essentially a "best of" collection of the original series. Three episodes without, sadly, an original idea in sight.
The first episode has the crew bored out of their brains (hello Backwards) while Kryten is on holiday, but on his return they discover there is something on board the ship (hello Polymorph) and it is in the water supply. Kryten, Lister and Cat go to investigate, leaving Rimmer to man the sonar (hello Back To Reality). When they destroy the squid in the water (Back To Reality again) a new hologram arrives giving Rimmer a day to get his affairs in order (err...Me^2) and then sends the entire crew into a new dimension.

I won't bother detailing the final two episodes, which essentially revolve around the crew discovering they are fictional characters of a television show called Red Dwarf, and they need to find their creator, a la Blade Runner. Finally, they discover that they are recycling the actual plot of Back To Reality.

The first episode takes about ten minutes for the actors to get their act together and remember how they played their parts, and at that point the squid fight takes place which is quite entertaining - primarily because Rimmer dances to elevator music as the fight gets out of control on the screens behind him. It's very slapstick, but it's the highlight of the episode. Indeed, it's the highlight of the first two episodes. If the first episode was a slow news day on the Dwarf, the second episode is positively static. The concept of the crew discovering that they are fictional characters was extremely clever and very funny in Back To Reality, primarily because it allowed the cast to play an alternative group of characters who were quite far removed from their regular characters. Sadly, although the plot of Back To Reality is recycled here, the alternative characters don't actually appear and so as a consequence there is little to actually laugh at.

Part Three is probably the funniest of the three episodes, and strangely enough the appearance of Kochanski actually lightens the episode. Craig Charles got the opportunity to have a rather emotional moment in Part One, but in Part Three the ending is Charles best acting in the entire nine series. Part Three also contains the other funny moment in the story as Krtyen, Rimmer and Cat attempt to inveigle themselves into Coronation St.

Sadly Part Three also contains more recycling than the rest of the episode, including obvious jokes from The Simpsons and plot from Blade Runner. Even worse, the Blade Runner and Red Dwarf plot points are actually highlighted when the characters remind the audience of the episode they came from.

Tim McInnerny said that he would never do another series of Blackadder because people didn't want to see the cast fat and bald; they wanted to remember the series as it was. Red Dwarf is proof positive that it is better to travel in hope than it is to arrive as after waiting nine years for Red Dwarf to return, the result is nothing short of a waste of talent.

Bernice Summerfield: The Two Jasons

2009-04-14T03:05:00.001-07:00

I was about two-thirds of the way through The Two Jasons when I suddenly thought to myself, "hold on a sec...this is just Death And Diplomacy all over again". Sure enough by the time I got to the end of the novel (or novella really, because this is not a terribly long book), Dave Stone pointed out that he was indeed just retelling the Death And Diplomacy story because it needed to be told for the new audience of Benny fans who would never have read this book.

Except...I'm willing to bet that the only people who are listening to these Benny audios, and reading these Benny novels are only doing so because they continued on from reading The New Adventures back in the nineties. And after nine years, if people are still listening/reading these things then they don't really have a lot of a problem with the Jason/Benny backstory.

So essentially, one can't help but wonder...what's the point of this book then? It tells a story that most of its audience has already read or really don't care about.

OK, yes the story is quite entertaining (although you really need to be a fan of Stone's work or, quite frankly, you'll hate the entire thing) and yes there are some new elements in the book that we haven't read before, but frankly it's going to take more than a "ooohhh look - Roz and Chris...and a thinly veiled reference to the Doctor" to make the book worthwhile.

Doctor Who: The Story Of Martha (BBC Books)

2009-04-14T02:53:00.000-07:00

Series Three of Doctor Who provided Martha with a nice, year long gap to have a lot of adventures that we would never know about because the entire year was undone when the paradox machine was destroyed. Dan Abnett attempts to bridge the gap a little with this particular novel, though it is interspersed with a number of short stories by other writers who give us adventures that Martha had with the Doctor elsewhere.

David Roden's story tells how a group of people appear to be turning into monsters, though it transpires that this is actually a natural evolution and when the final survivor gets the opportunity to die or change...well...

Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis tell the story of a space station who receive messages from aliens that offer the the opportunity to solve all their problems.

Robert Shearman's story deals with the Doctor and Martha joining an explorer who plans on going to Antarctica, but the Doctor begins to realise that they are going nowhere and have been doing the same thing over and over again.

Finally Simon Jowett's story is a love story of a human and an "artificial" which is forbidden, although it soon turns out that the humans are actually only advanced "artificials".

Most of these stories, truth to tell, are quite underwhelming. Only Robert Shearman's story really stands out above the others, and this is primarily because it is told in such a different style to the other three.

However, that said, the framing story is quite a lot of fun as we join Martha tracking across the world and we discover why Japan was destroyed at the Master's insistence. It's quite a novel idea to think that an alien race were about to invade Earth but were interrupted by the arrival of the Master's own invasion.

The Story Of Martha is an entertaining read, and shows that there is still a place for the short story concept in the new world of Doctor Who. It's a shame that we don't see more of it.

Monsters Vs Aliens

2009-04-14T02:40:00.001-07:00

Dreamworks seemed initially to be just knocking a few animated movies together in an effort to make some money. There was hardly any attempt to actually do it properly, and on occasion it seemed that their ideas were identical to other animated movies that were being released at the time. With Monsters Vs Aliens, Dreamworks has come up with a very clever idea that incorporates a few quite funny concepts.

Told mostly from the perspective of Susan, we meet a young woman who is hit by a meteorite and promptly becomes a giant (with white hair, bizarrely). And so we get the first thread of the storyline which is Susan attempting to deal with becoming a "monster" and being unable to return to her old life.
We meet the other monsters - the Missing Link, Bob, Dr Cockroach and Insectosaurus. It's worth mentioning the rather excellent vocal work down by actors Reese Witherspoon (Susan), Seth Rogan (Bob), Hugh Laurie (Cockroach) and Keifer Sutherland (playing their captor General W R Monger). These actors really bring their characters to life and ingest them with a large amount of humour.

Of course the fact is that the monsters are all based on a group of 50's monsters that were always a bit of a joke (50ft woman, the Blob, the creature from the black Lagoon, and one of Godzilla's opponents). It's this sort of thing that really, really makes the movie a family movie - the kids can enjoy the general silliness, but the adults, particularly the older ones, who can identify who these monsters actually are.

Through in an alien who looks like a 1950s alien, but with tentacles, and agani Rainn Wilson gives Gallaxhar the OTT performance that is perfectly required.

There is still a lack of depth to this movie, unlike the Pixar movies, but Dreamworks is clearly making a lot of effort, and they are starting to produce some quite quality work.

My Word Is My Bond

2009-03-29T06:54:00.001-07:00

Of all the actors to play James Bond, you have to admit that only Roger Moore seems completely happy with having done the part. He's the only Bond to do audio commentaries for his movies (OK, Brosnan did one, but you get the feeling he was contractually obliged to) and the only one who seems to have enjoyed his time on the series with no regrets. Connery hates it, Lazenby regrets what happened, Dalton is reclusive about it, Brosnan regrets it. You may think he can't act, you may think he is too soft, but Roger Moore is an English gentleman. He is self-effacing, occasionally modest, tremendously witty and a real movie star.

His autobiography, consequently, reflects all of these things. Moore spends the entire book recounting mostly happy tales about his life which was predominantly good. He hardly ever has nasty things to say about people and when he does he leaves the identity of the person a secret (with the exception of David Niven's wife about whom he hardly has anything nice to say). His stories start from an interesting childhood (with some bizarre stories about circumcision) and continue to today, including his recent battle with prostate cancer.

Bond fans will have to wait til about half way through the book before he gets to the seminal character, but it's easy to forget that Moore had done so much more before those movies, including appearing in Ivanhoe, Maverick, The Persuaders and, of course, becoming the definitive Saint. Throughout this time we learn about his contracts with Warner and MGM, and with his hobnobbing with such names as Elvis Presley, David Niven, Tony Curtis, Audrey Hepburn, Joan Collins, Moore comes across as a true old-fashioned movie star. He was Hollywood glitz and glamour, and yet has such a down-to-Earth English attitude, he can draw you into that world and make you feel part of it.

It's hard to review an autobiography because at the end of the day all you can gush about is how well written and engaging the actual story is, but you have to be interested in Roger Moore to start with if you want to actually enjoy the book. If you enjoy Roger Moore, or are curious about some background details of his work, then this book will definitely give you what you are looking for. If not, you probably won't even consider buying it in the first place.

Knowing

2009-03-29T06:30:00.001-07:00

Fifty years ago, a young girl wrote a continuous stream of numbers that predict the when, number of fatalities and where of every disaster for the next fifty years. With these in hand, one man tries to stop those forthcoming disasters...

Sound interesting? OK, well try this one.

A man finds a secret code that predicts the end of the world, but there is something missing. Tracking down the descendants of the woman who wrote the code, the man is desperate to find the missing piece of code that could save the world!

That one interesting as well? OK....what about...

The Apocalypse is nigh and the four Horsemen have arrived to collect the new Adam and Eve for a new Garden of Eden.

Knowing is actually all those three storylines thrown together with a great deal of personal angst for our main character. Now, for some, you may be thinking, that's an awful lot of stuff to have in a movie and one might arguably wonder if a story like this could lose focus somewhere along the line. And surprise, surprise, you would be dead right. Knowing has a huge number of brilliant concepts that would make a really fantastic movie, but it is the most poorly executed film I've seen in a very, very long time. The script is indeed the major problem here, requiring at least one more edit before it went before the camera. The best scripts are those where every action and every line leads towards something, be it resolution of tension, story or character. Knowing has too many loose ends. Rose Byrne's character, for instance, is virtually completely redundant to the film, providing no real forward motion for anything before leaving the story in a similarly pointless fashion.

Meanwhile, on the casting front, the movie also runs into problems. Byrne may not be too bad, but Nicholas Cage, unfortunately, is completely miscast. Cage has great difficulty in conveying a lonely father and is even more unbelievable as a research lecturer. Cage manages to engage on not a single level, leaving me completely disinterested in the entire movie, and more particularly his character. I don't care that he is estranged from his father, I don't particularly care about his home problems. And this surprises me because Cage is actually, generally, a pretty reliable actor.

By the end of the movie it becomes clear that someone was desperate to use up the CG budget and so we get some spectacular CG imagery, ranging from the destruction of Earth to a new Garden of Eden. Meanwhile the sound mixer had obviously decided that the dialogue was so inane that he was going to increase the volume of Marco Beltrami's score to drown out pretty much everything. Under normal circumstances this would be great, except Beltrami provides an absolute shit score.

I rarely come out of a movie feeling disappointed, but in this particular instance I really wish I hadn't wasted either my money or my time.

Friday The 13th

2009-03-15T01:47:00.001-07:00

Hollywood has shown an absolute dearth of originality over recent years, taking all their non-sequel movie ideas generally from books, comics or old television series. Indeed, it has reached a point where they are now remaking old movies, and horror movies seem to be a goldmine, be it Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or My Bloody Valentine. Friday the 13th is the most recent in this series of remakes.

The majority of previous horror remakes have attempted to make them grittier and realistic, giving us deep backstories to explain why our favourite psychopaths the way they are. As a result, they are often a little demystified. Michael Myers, for instance, has ceased to be a disturbingly, motiveless, masked killer and is now an abused man who kills in the same mask his sister was shagged in by her boyfriend.

When it was announced that Friday the 13th was to be remade, there was a little concern, not least when it was altered to actually be remaking the first four movies, otherwise there'd be no Jason or hockey mask. But a lot of people were concerned at the thought Jason may become another tortured young child taking his revenge on society.

Happily he's not. Oh, sure, in the first five minutes we see Jason watching his mum get decapitated, but that's the extent of his motivations - exactly as it was twenty-seven years ago. In fact, for all the claims that this is a remake, the truth is there is pretty much nothing to mark this as a remake. Nothing contradicts earlier movies (although the original flashback is slightly different) and it easily flows on from Freddy Vs Jason. In fact, although Jason is a more intelligent hunter in this movie, you could argue that his higher intellect was amped up by Freddy when he left hell. So I'm happy to call this movie by it's Canadian title - Friday the 13th Part XII!

This is a homage movie, of sorts though. The dialogue is just as cringe-worthy at times as the original movies, and of the five girls, three of them get their boobs out as soon as possible, one for the most tenuous of reasons. It's all very Friday the 13th. The characters follow the stereotypes: a good girl, the rude slut, the naughty girl, the loving girlfriend, the geek, the annoying prat, the wild guy...they're all there. Even some of the killings pay a nod to the past with a variation of the sleeping bag kill and Jason himself getting strangled with a chain. And of course the ending...but let's not spoil that.

But what is curious about this movie is the couple of surprises in this movie. When five horny teenagers turn up and get slaughtered within the first twenty-five minutes and *then* the title card is shown, you get thrown slightly and realise that you're getting two little movies for the price of one. Equally, having been a great fan of horror movies for a long time, you get the hang of the characters and are able to pick which is the girl that's going to be the one to send Jason to hell. However, while I had in my mind exactly who it was going to be, when she was killed I was quite, quite surprised.

Most of the cast deliver what is expected of them, and the appearance of Ryan Hansen was a pleasant surprise, though it did confirm that he plays himself all the time. Jared Padalecki is good as the "good guy" in the film, mainly because he *gets* what the movie is about - an ever so slightly tongue-in-cheek horror movie. Meanwhile, the two lead girls - Danielle Panabecker and Amanda Righetti - are both wonderful and are instantly likable.

In my mind I had exactly what I wanted from a Friday movie, and this movie delivered all of it. At one point I was concerned we weren't going to get some mad old person preaching doom and gloom, but as soon as the thought crossed my mind, a mad old biddy told Jared Padalecki that all outsiders got killed. Nice. As a result I couldn't be more satisfied with this movie.

Watchmen

2009-03-11T20:30:00.000-07:00

Watchmen was the most anticipated comic book adaptation ever. Never mind your Dark Knight's...Watchmen was the movie that fans have been hanging out for; that everyone has been hanging out for. Well, I say everyone, but I obviously don't include Alan Moore. Given the choice between Watchmen and Howard the Duck, I suspect Moore would settle on George Lucas' comic book epic over his own.

But Watchmen is first and foremost, in this media, a movie, so before we start looking at comparisons, let's give it the fairness it deserves and look at the actual movie.

It's 1985 and America, with Richard Nixon as third-term president, is on the verge of nuclear war with Russia. The only thing holding them back is the presence of the powerful superhuman Dr Manhatten, the last superhero left after "The Watchmen" were outlawed some years earlier. When one of the former Watchmen, the Comedian is murdered, the other Watchmen find their lives starting to come together to learn the reason behind the murder...and nuclear war grows ever closer.

Visually the movie is spectacular, looking brilliant in almost everyway, from some brilliant character design (most particularly Dr Manhattan, although looking at his nob gets a little boring after a while) to amazing special effects and a, quite frankly, breath taking structure on Mars, the budget is clearly seen on screen. The whole thing is expansive and epic, which is possibly to remind the audience that that is what director Zack Snyder thinks the movie is as well.
But some bizarre aesthetic choices and a script that doesn't entirely convince causes Snyder's vision to fall short. There is something just a little absurd about a giant blue man killing the Viet Cong to the strains of Wagner's Flight Of The Valkyries. I've always maintained that comic book movies need to exist in a heightened reality, but if that reality is pushed too far - such as Batman & Robin - you can't really take the movie seriously. Snyder comes close to pushing the reality in scenes such as the one I mentioned just beyond breaking point.

Equally the motivations of some of the characters seems very odd. The villain's plan (and it's not particularly difficult to guess who the villain is given the actor's and director's choices) seems reliant on the entire population suddenly deciding that they don't particularly want Dr Manhattan to hang around. When it is revealed that Dr Manhattan appears to have given three people cancer, there is no particular indication that the world believes this, and given that, later, the President is still waiting for Dr Manhattan to return and save them, one would assume that he is still in the people's graces, and they are hardly likely to suddenly turn on him.

The true problem with Watchmen, regardless of what anyone tells you, is that it is criminally boring. With so many interesting characters and a quite in depth story to tell, the movie just seems to drag on without actually engaging the interest of the viewer. The cheif reason for this is that, at the end of the day, not a single one of the superheroes is vaguely heroic.

The Comedian, Rorschach and Dr Manhattan are all supposed to be heroes that live, very much, in the world of gray, but one gets the feeling that Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (the second incarnations of both) are supposed to be more representative of what our ideal hero is - and yet both stand by and do nothing as Rorschach murders a criminal in revenge, and then look and each other and shrug as though waiting for a "da-na-na-nuh-na-nuh. NAH!" sound effect. When faced with a group of characters that you can't really sympathise with, let alone like, your movie suddenly runs into some difficulty.

The sad thing is that the acting is actually of a particularly high quality. Malin Akerman is very likeable as Silk Spectre (until her character does something bizarre), while Billy Crudup and Jackie Earle Haley are very convincing as Dr Manhattan and Rorschach. However it is Jeffrey Dean Morgan who steals the show, cast absolutely perfectly as the Comedian, giving us the sick, twisted individual that he is, complete with all the character flaws he possesses. That said there are two performances that are quite unbearable - Carla Gugino as the original Silk Spectre and Robert Wisden as Richard Nixon, both of whom are not even remotely convincing as their characters, and one wonders if it has something to do with the fact both are under prosthetics throughout the movie. The prosthetics are particularly unconvincing.

Unfortunately, actors can only deliver a script to the best of their ability under direction, and when the latter two elements are letting them down, there is not an awful lot the actors can do about it.

But what about the movie as a comic adaptation?

Zack Snyder said: "Worst case scenario - Alan puts the movie on his DVD player on a cold Sunday in London and watches and says, 'Yeah, that doesn't suck too bad."

Alan Moore's response to this was: "That's the worst case scenario? I think he's underestimated what the worst case scenario would be... that's never going to happen in my DVD player in 'London'. I'm never going to watch this fucking thing." It's perhaps worth noting that Moore lives in Northhampton...

And that kinda sums up Snyder's approach to Moore's work - focussing on getting the little details perfect (but not quite making it) while at the same time missing the overall point. It's a little like building a copy of the White House and thinking "I need to get the exact right shade of white" while missing the columns on the front, and not realising that it is where the American President lives.

Moore hates all his movie adaptations, including V For Vendetta, but that movie is actually a movie that is a very good adaption of his work. Despite the change of setting (and indeed because of it), the movie is very faithful to the work, realising what the story is actually about and trying to make that work in today's world - which includes making it relevent. The problem with Watchmen is that what was relevent twenty years ago is not so much now, and it's difficult to get an audience to connect to that. Watchmen is a reflection and a response to the time it was written in. Snyder sees it as a superhero story in the vein of X-Men - real people with real problems, despite having amazing abilities.
The movie isn't about superheroes coming out of retirement, it's about nuclear war and the sacrifices that must be made to stop the end of the world. Gay characters abound in the comic, at a time when homosexuals were hiding in parks thanks to Thatcherism. Funnily enough they've all disappeared in Snyder's movie.

The movie attempts to be faithful to the comic by replicating designs and staging, and some of the more cringe-worthy dialogue (keeping in Rorschach's journals are a painful reminder of how some things work in comics that don't work on screen), but strangely enough chooses to change the ending to one that doesn't work quite as well as the original. It feels as though Snyder has read the comic book and said "those scenes look great, let's recreate them - do what needs to be done to the script to link them all together".

It's hard not to sympathise with Moore about the disappointment he feels over his movies, and never more so in this case. Perhaps, at the end of the day, Watchmen should never have been made into a movie. It just doesn't work that way.

Doctor Who: The Rescue & The Romans (DVD)

2009-03-05T15:54:00.001-08:00

The Rescue and The Romans are an interesting pair of stories to release together on DVD (or, more accurately, in a boxed set), but strangely appropriate, and not just because they follow each other consecutively in original broadcast. Obviously these are the first two stories of Vicki, and show her becoming a member of the TARDIS team, but more interestingly the stories are actually poles apart in ideology and design and yet are written by the outgoing and incoming story editors of the series respectively.

The Rescue is, on the audio commentary, described as a whodunnit with one suspect, but that is grossly underplaying the story and not terribly fair. While there is an element of the whodunnit about it, a better description would be a what-is-it, and this refers to Koquillion, the monster at the heart of the story. Doctor Who often plays with the expectations people have on it (in The Hand Of Fear, Sarah Jane wonders if the gravel pit they have arrived in is another alien planet), and it's interesting that at the start of the second year of filming (which The Rescue is), the series already starts doing it. Koquillion is, of course, a man in a costume, and any fan of the series is automatically programmed to accept that this is a monster, particularly the forgiving audiences of the 1960s. When it turns out to be, literally a man in a suit, the audience would no doubt have been surprised, its expectations turned upside down.

Of course, as previously mentioned, this is the first appearance of Maureen O'Brien as vicki, the replacement for Susan who had left in the previous serial. The production team clearly weren't that keen to stray too far from design, and little orphan Annie, I mean Tanni...I mean Vicki (!) is a girl from the future who, despite being the link for the younger audience, is out of touch with today's world. However, whereas Carole Ann Ford delivered a performance that was just the wrong side of normal, Maureen O'Brien grounds Vicki very much as an everyday young girl. As Vicki is essentially Susan in all but name, it is to O'Brien's credit that her performance makes the character vastly different to her predecessor, and a lot more human - which is entirely appropriate as she is.

The Romans also turns expectations upside down - following on from the serious futuristic story of The Rescue comes an historical that, rather surprisingly, plays it for laughs. This story highlights the difference between David Whitaker's approach to Doctor Who, and his successor as story editor, Dennis Spooner's. Whitaker wrote The Rescue, which was commissioned by Spooner, but for The Romans we have the reverse - Whitaker commissioning Spooner. Whereas Whitaker liked his historical stories to be about the times they arrived in, Spooner preferred history to be a backdrop to the story of people there, including some great historical figure, this time in the form of Nero. Once you have Nero in Rome, there's a certain inevitability about where the story is going to go, and so there's little surprise to see Nero playing his lyre as Rome burns around him.

Where this story works so well is in the cleverness of the script. Often described as a comedy, the actual high comedy doesn't really come into play until Episode 3, where Nero turns into Benny Hill. But throughout the rest of the story there is comedy to be found in some sparkling dialogue and witty scenes. William Hartnell particularly seems to enjoy this, stealing every scene he is in and, according to the production subtitles, improvising his own comedy into the story - notably in a wonderful scene set in the sauna where the Doctor is on the verge of stabbing Nero with a sword everytime he turns around. The banquet scene in Episode 3 is, for me, the greatest moment in the entire story, as the Doctor "Emporer's New Clothes" his way through a lyre performance by not actually playing anything. Derek Francis delivers a line with wonderful timing, but the icing of the cake comes when, though being interrupted and applauded, the Doctor pretends to finish his imaginary piece. Its a golden moment, and, despite the best efforts of the rest of the cast - and they really do put in brilliant performances - shows that this is really Hartnell's show no matter what.

Both stories have retrospective documentaries on them, which are quite enlightening, although The Rescue's is the only contribution by Maureen O'Brien to the extras, which seems a bit of a waste in a boxed set that is essentially about vicki. The Romans, rather uniquely, also sees other actors who have played Nero over the years - such as Anthony Andrews and Christopher Biggins - chat about the character. The audio commentaries, moderated by comedian Toby Hadoke (the man who wrote and performed the play "Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf") all feature essentially the same lineup - William Russell, Christopher Barry, Raymond Cusick and, in the Romans, Barry Jackson and Nick Evans. In The Rescue, Barry and Cusick spend most of the time moaning about how unimpressed they are with the new series, but in The Romans they talk a little more about the story, but the majority of the anecdotes are recounted both here and in the retro-docos.

Both discs have photo galleries and production subtitles, but The Romans also has a little segment where Christopher Barry displays Raymond Cusick's cardboard model of the set, and then proceeds to bore us to tears explaining the camera moves. The other two documentaries are infinitely more interesting - one focussing on Dennis Spooner and his work both on Doctor and on television in general (wonderfully Brian Clemens is interviewed for this), while the other doco sees various actors discuss the Who girls of the 1960s. This latter documentary is fabulous, but has some strange choice of interviews - Maureen O'Brien is not present at all to discuss Vicki, but Jean Marsh is on hand to talk about Sara, whose status as a companion - as Marsh points out - is highly debatable. To cap it all off, a Blue Peter segment about how Romans eat is also included.

The second season of Doctor Who was determined to shake up the format a little and these two stories highlight that. The good thing about them, though, is that they are both very entertaining stories and well worth the buy.

Quatermass

2009-03-05T15:52:00.001-08:00

The true grandfather of science fiction is actually a doddery old scientist from the 1850s called Bernard Quatermass, who apparently managed to give Britain it's very own shuttle technology with his Rocket Group. Three times in the fifties he ran into alien menaces, fighting plant creatures, alien invaders and the remnants of Martians plan to genetically alter us. And then, rather sadly, he disappeared off our screens, handing over to another doddery old scientist - Doctor Who.

Nigel Kneale, the series creator and writer, never had a lot of time for Doctor Who, and so it's a little ironic that the final outing Quatermass was to have, in 1979, would be produced by original Doctor Who producer Verity Lambert. However, the landscape had changed, and while Kneal insured his creation hadn't, the young upstart who had usurped Quatermass was not being played by Tom Baker and redefining what the audience wanted out of television science-fiction, in the wake of the release of Star Wars.

As a result, even for 1979, Quatermass feels a little out of date. Chock full of hippies wandering around looking for aliens to take them away, the story is effectively the young vs the old, with Quatermass in the middle trying to find his granddaughter, before coming down on the side of the old.

The story is, however, quite moody and more than a little disturbing - groups of young people of the "Planet People" cult, are gathering at stone circles whereupon a beam of light disintegrates them all. The Planet People sees this as the rescue they have been searching for, but the government sees this merely as mass slaughter and after a shuttle mission is destroyed, Quatermass is called in to help.

At times the story seems to go nowhere, and all episodes end with the beam striking the planet which lends some predictability to the story, not in a terribly good way. The cast, however, are uniformly excellent, with Mills playing the part very well, initially as a confused old man only interested in his granddaughter, before finding a new cause and a new purpose in life.

The story is also shot magnificiently, and the feel of a London having fallen into a 'Warriors' style society is portrayed magnificiently. And while the story in general may let down the piece as a whole, the ending is really quite sad, but strangely fitting not only for Quatermass but for British science-fiction as a whole.

Always intended to be both a four part broadcast story and a 100 minute movie, the DVD set comes with The Quatermass Conclusion - the movie form of the story which hacks away about sixty minutes of material, mostly, one suspects, from Episode 3, in which the plot really goes absolutely nowhere. There is also a documentary on Stonehenge which, while quite interesting, has a very tenuous connection to the story it is released with.

Quatermass is a nice final hoorah for the Quatermass series, but sadly it lacks the warmth of its predecessors, feeling more Wickerman than The Quatermass Experiment.

Torchwood - Pack Animals, SkyPoint, Almost Perfect

2009-02-23T15:23:00.003-08:00

To date the Torchwood novels have been of varying quality, ranging from the pretty ordinary first three novels (which, admittedly, had the distinct disadvantage of having to be written after the very ordinary first season) to the slightly more enjoyable second trio (again, benefitting from coming after considerably better second season). The latest three novels - Pack Animals, SkyPoint and Almost Perfect - are easily the best the novel series has yet to release, completely embracing the new Torchwood philosphy, and presenting us with three slightly offbeat tales centering around a group of likable and friendly characters.

Pack Animals sees Gwen and Rhys preparing for their wedding (one notable aspect of these novels is that they are not consecutive, slotting into various points in Series II), but being attacked by a Weevil and a large flying dog in the shopping centre. More curious is that a "Magick" style game is on sale which features real aliens. Though this is an entertaining novel, it suffers from something that a lot of Peter Angelhides Torchwood work suffers from, and that's giving us mulitple examples of the situation that's occurring. We are subjected to copious alien attacks from the "Magick" cards, the majority of which don't really push the plot forward. Angelhides nails the characters marvellously (and indeed all these books do, but perhaps more impressively they also nail the character of Rhys really well), with some very witty moments including PC Andy stirring Rhys up about illegal parking. Angelhides brings us another group of people retreiving alien equipment, but we are shown quite clearly why it should be left to the experts. Of the three novels, though, Pack Animals is actually the weakest; that it is so good should give a lot of hope.

SkyPoint is more of a Tosh and Owen novel - which is about time, really - as, after Gwen and Rhys go looking for a new home, having recently been married, they discover a place where people are mysteriously vanishing. Enter Tosh and the deceased Owen, who become a married couple in order to discover what is going on - in this particular instance, a mobster who has a pet alien in the building that is randomly chowing down on people that take its fancy. As I said, this is Tosh and Owen's novel more than any of the others, and we get to see a great deal of their relationship and the motivations behind it, as well as some priceless moments, including Owen discovering that one of the occupants is a BDSM prostitute. Perhaps one thing that is not necessarily a criticism of this book as such, but of the book range in general, is the amping up of homosexuality. The criticism stems, not in the inclusion of it, but the apparent ignoring of lesbians. The Torchwood universe seems to be populated by a lot of open-minded people, but none of them are lesbians. In this book there is a gay couple who are simply gay, which is nice, but given the next book, perhaps it would have been just as effective if they were lesbians.

Almost Perfect is easily the best of the three novels, partially because it is written in such a brilliant style - James Goss writes his stories with a large number of very short chapters, but more often than not he likes to play with the style just a little - one chapter, for instance, is nothing more than a few lines of conversations. Equally, he actually uses chapter titles, but all are in the style of Facebook status updates (Jack is..., Gwen is... etc). This novel is set after Series II, and as such has only three Torchwood characters to deal with, which is something of a blessing as it means that all three (as well as Rhys) get some nice development, although again, this is more of a Jack and Ianto novel. The entire premise of the story - that Ianto has suddenly become a very beautiful woman along with a restaurant full of skeletons turning up - is quite mysterious and quite curious. The book centers, to a certain degree in the last third, around a gay nightclub, and it is for this reason that there seems to be a slight dismissal of lesbians, as we are presented with nothing but male homosexual couples in the novels. That aside though, this is easily the best novel of the three, and certainly the best novel of the entire range.

The Torchwood novels are really going from strength to strength as the writers get a better grip on who they are writing about and have more fun playing with the world Russell T Davies has created. Really looking forward to the next three.

Belle De Jour - The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl

2009-02-15T23:46:00.001-08:00

I have to admit that sex is something that fascinates me. The whole sex industry (and I don't think that this is just me) holds some sort of lurid fascination. It's the underbelly of the nice society, and yet at the end of the day, and especially after reading this book, it turns out that it's really a fairly straight forward sort of job place. You wake up, you go to work, you keep different hours than most and get paid better than most, and you probably enjoy your job more than most.

Belle De Jour is essentially the diary of a prostitute named Belle. She has a very wry sense of humour and regards her job very dispassionately, although she does point out the fatal flaws that can occasionally crop up in it. Following about a year of her life, we get to see her going to a variety of different clients who want a variety of different things, and at the same time we are privy to her friends; former boyfriend and trusted confidante "N", former boyfriends A1, A2, A3 and A4, current boyfriend "The Boy" and her agent "The Manager". These are all painted in fairly broad strokes, but come to life more when we discover the origins of their relationships with Belle.

Perhaps the thing that is most obscure about Belle's lifestyle is her rather strange fetishisms. For me personally, her stories about being a prostitute barely raise an eyebrow and the ability to accept her occupation is not a problem for me. However, when she details how she once dated a man who she liked to have smack her around, and "N"'s offer to pee on her when she is depressed is given serious consideration - these are things that I find difficult to relate to, and perhaps indicate a greater distance between reader and author. We can all relate to awful working conditions and dickhead clients, but it's a lot more difficult to empathise with hardcore SDSM.

That said, that aspect of the book is relatively small, and more than made up for by the rest of her diary entries, and her witty A-Z on the sex industry. A very entertaining read.

Star Blazers

2009-02-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

Now in my thirties, I feel fully justified by grumbling that things aren't what they used to be, and that it was much better back in my day. I say that about a lot of things, including television, but in the case of kids' television I feel quite justified. Kids today just don't have the same great cartoons we used to have, and although the memory cheats, when I got Star Blazers for Christmas, I discovered that it is not always the case.

Earth is being devastated by the planet bombs of the Gamilons, lead by their ruthless leader Deslok. Quite why we don't know, but that question is answered towards the end of the series. Regardless, as the radiation from the bombs is causing people to retreat to underground cities, Earth really only has one year to survive. But the arrival on Mars of a beautiful woman named Astra reveals that on the planet Iscandar, Queen Starsha has something called the Cosmo DNA which will heal the Earth and dispel the radiation.

Enter the Star Force, Earth's last hope. A group of dedicated soldiers who will pilot a spaceship called the Argo - actually the rebuilt Yamato sea ship - to Iscandar using a new engine type which also powers the amazing wave motion gun. Star Force has that one year to get there and back.

The series is a funny old beast really, because at times it is quite slow and introspective, whilst other episodes are just nothing but space action. The programme pauses to see the Star Force bury their dead, and relationships are formed and destroyed. The saddest thing, though, is Captain Avatar's gradual deterioration throughout the series, getting sicker and sicker and being unable to perform his duties in the final few episodes.

It's only 26 episodes long, which makes for quite easy television watching. While other Japanese programmes like Planet Of The Planets hacked the original Japanese to bits, Star Blazers really only removes some of the deaths of characters, and some inappropriate sex (in the Japanese version, the robot IQ-9 isn't just in love with Nova, he spends a lot of time molesting her). As a result, Star Blazers is quite close to its original in themes as well as storylines.

I remembered this programme with fondness, and I can see why now, as the series is quite high concept for children, with a long arcing story that makes kids pay attention and learn from what is happening.

The Saint

2009-02-15T19:04:00.001-08:00

Things being what they are, there is very little room for originality on television, and when it happens it is quickly plundered to give a billion variations on the same theme, each one becoming a little like that photocopier that is running out of ink and producing copies that are just a little more faded than the one before. Of course, in truth, very little is ever original and The Saint is no exception, based on the book series that began in 1928 by author Leslie Chateris.

When talking about the Saint, most people think either of the 1960's television series with the impossibly suave Roger Moore playing the part, or the rather dull 1997 movie which saw Val Kilmer play a character so far removed from either the novel Saint or Moore's Saint it wasn't funny. Some people may remember Ian Ogilvy's turn in the 70's revival Return Of The Saint, but sadly very few remember the 1989 series starring Simon Dutton.

The series is six 90 minute episodes, all of varying quality and, due to a decision to see the series get oversees financing, all filmed in a variety of locations. Rather interestingly, a lot of very series themes feature in the episodes. Simon Dutton plays the Saint as more faithful to the Chateris version; though smooth and suave, he is not a joker and has a somewhat harder edge to him than his two predecessors. In fact, he is a little to the Saint as Timothy Dalton is to James Bond, perhaps reflecting a sign of the times.

The Brazilian Connection kicks the series off with a story about smuggling babies from Brazil and illegally adopting them out in England. This story is one of two episodes featuring Inspector Teal, the only other character from the novels, and sets up a very curious relationship between Teal and the Saint. It's entertaining to watch Teal ordered to arrest the Saint when he knows that Templar is the best investigating tool they have.

The Software Murders attempts to get real and gritty by showing us computer crime, and rather entertainingly at the beginning of the episode, the Saint instant messaging his friend in South America. I'm not sure if they were just lucky by showing this, or actually did some proper research, but it's quite good all the same. The majority of the episode is set in the English countryside, and this probably gives Dutton the best chance to shine as the Saint, even though the episode itself is quite straight forward.

The Big Bang is the first of the foreign location episodes, and has the Saint escorting a prisoner who is the only person that can testify against a much larger criminal who is attempting a corporate takeover, and getting his men to throw people out of windows a lot. This is one of the episodes that has the Saint not only helping the police by bringing down the big bad guy, but also shows his less savoury side as he happily steals from the rich to give to, well to the person he feels most inclined to give it to. It's the thief aspect to the character that makes the Saint somewhat different to other heroes of the time, and it's nice to see it used more often than was done in previous versions.

The Blue Dulac is easily the worst of the episodes, and one can't help but feel sorry for Simon Dutton, who looks as though as soon as each scene is finished he's going to be on the phone to his agent demanding to know how he ended up with such a terrible gig. Set in France, the story revolves around jewel thiefs and a pair of twins, and the Saint trying to find the villain responsible for the murder of two of his friends. While it's the lightest story of the group, Dutton looks uncomfortable dealing with corny, and the actual production values of the episode are appalling. The dubbing is particularly bad.

Wrong Number sees Simon Templar accidentally receiving a phone call that his curiousity can't resist and, after finding a dead body, he becomes embroiled in a spy ring in Germany, brokering deals between the West Germans, East Germans, French, English and Americans. It's all a little mundane, but does have some great fight sequences and, of course, the true villain turns out to be an American who is planning on selling weapons to an arms dealer. Perhaps the best part of the episode is trying to work out who is stabbing who in the back.

Fear In Fun Park is the episode set in Australia, and sees a great use of Australian actors, and despite the fact they don't exaggerate their accents, they do seem to exaggerate the slang - by the end the Saint is actually have shrimp on the barbie, of all things. This episode centers around the sale of Luna Park to a Hong Kong triad, although the Australian owners wish to keep it, little realising there is a traitor in their midst. As a side note, the Saint is actually tracking down a girl who he believes has been sold into prostitution. A girl actually is during the episode, and ultimately never meets the Saint, finally hanging herself rather than go on. It's a grim turn of events in the episode, and easily the darkest moment of the series. Richard Roxburgh guest stars in the episode, and there is a cameo appearance by Ernie Dingo of all people.

The DVD set has no extra material, and the transfer to DVD is not particularly good. It seems that someone has used their personal home copy of the stories to make the DVDs and as such, every so often there seems to be video interference on screen. It seems sad that so little care has been taken on the set, almost as though releasing it has been an afterthought; a sort of "well, we've done the other two television series, guess we should do this one to". Simon Dutton is not well served by the scripts for this series...it would have been nice if the DVD could have made up for that.

Doctor Who - The E-Space Trilogy (DVD)

2009-02-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

Season 18 is an odd beast in the classic Doctor Who series, as there is a huge sense of change throughout the entire season. But it is a progressive thing, and so it doesn't fit comfortably with the previous Graham Williams style scripts, despite opening with one that was obviously a leftover from that era. Nor does it fit the rest of the eighties - despite having the Peter Howell version of the theme, the starfield title sequence, the instantly recognisable 80's incidental music. Here it fails to fit in because script editor Christopher H Bidmead has a very different take on the programme, worlds apart from his predecessor Douglas Adams, and his successor Eric Saward. Oh, and of course, because it stars Tom Baker.

Poor old Tom clearly wasn't having a good time during this season. Having been accustomed to having everyone hang off his every word, and virtually dictating the direction of the show, regardless of what former producer Graham Williams thought, it must have been quite a shock when he walked into new producer John Nathan-Turner's office, and told him and Bidmead he felt it was time for him to go, and not get the response, oh, but Tom you must stay. And Nathan-Turner and Bidmead had a youthful arrogance that said this is OUR show, not yours, and we'll do what we want. For Tom, it was clear that he was now surplus to requirements. Lalla Ward had the same impression, and neither of them liked the scripts that were presented to them. As for their new co-star...well...

The E-Space Trilogy sees the Time Lords and their metal dog (once again voiced by John Leeson) crossing into another universe, smaller than ours, and apparently greener. Their mission - to return home. It's Star Trek Voyager, done over three stories, rather than seven years.

Full Circle sess the TARDIS materialise on the planet Alzarius, where the small group of people who live there are about to lock themselves away in the spaceship their ancestors arrived in because Mistfall is arriving and, aside from the mist killing everyone, spiders spring from the river fruit and monsters stalk out of the water. The Doctor gets involved with the settlers, discovering a bizarre secret about them, while Romana meets a group of rebels (against society of all things) including a young man called Adric, who will stow away at the end. The show is quite entertaining, and rather interestingly sees the Doctor and Romana swept up in events rather than being the catalyst for them. George Baker has an appearance in this programme, alongside James Bree (one gets the rather entertaining image of the two of them chatting about On Her Majesty's Secret Service in tea breaks), and the two are very, very good as the planet's leaders. The Marshmen are quite convincing, though better on location than in studio, and clearly inspired from the Creature From The Black Lagoon, but the marsh spiders are atrocious. Romana has little to do, while Adric is not as terrible as he could be. Meanwhile, Tom phones in his performance, except for one amazing scene where a young Marshman frees himself from experimentation, and then is killed as it tries to reach out to the Doctor through a video screen. Tom gives one of his brilliant righteous anger scenes which he is so amazing at.

State Of Decay, though second in order was actually filmed first, and this time the TARDIS lands on a planet where a small group of villagers are oppressed by the local lords who turn out to be vampires. The vampires' plan is to resurrect the great vampire who lays beneath the castle, and who is an ancient enemy of the Time Lords! This is my favourite story of the trilogy, because it's steeped in Gothic imagery which is wonderful, and, as Terrance Dicks points out on the commentary, has a number of "traditional" vampire movie scenes in it (Adric being warned against going up to the castle for instance). However, the cleverness of this is the science-fiction additions to it which, though Dicks moans bitterly about his problems with, are the result of Bidmead's work. Bidmead claims, on the documentary, that he thinks some great things can come from creative tension, and this would seem to prove his point. Meanwhile, on the acting front, the three lords are absolutely brilliant, with costumes out of a period drama, and makeup out of an 80s music video. Tom again phones in his performance, though to be fair he was very ill on this filming, while there the lack of love between Lalla Ward and Matthew Waterhouse makes the tension between Romana and Adric very real.
Warriors' Gate is the third of the trilogy, finally giving the TARDIS travellers their way back to the normal universe. They arrive in a strange no-place where a spaceship is also trying to get out, but their captain is at his wit's end, and his plans involved destroying the very place they are in. They are also trafficking time sensitives, but time being what it is, the slavery may soon come to end as all things do. Complex? Well, it is quite frankly. However, if ever a story was a triumph of style over content, this is it. The whole piece is beautifully acted and shot in a very atmospheric and moody way that you are content to just watch it. And then watch it again to see what you missed. And then watch it again to try to understand the story. Points go to the actors playing the Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern characters of Aldo and Royce, but in truth the entire cast is well and truly up to scratch. Sadly this is the final story for Romana, and though her exit is a little bit of a surprise, it is nicely played by Baker who finally manages to show some emotion in the story.

As for the extras...all three have commentaries; Waterhouse, Bidmead and writer Andrew Smith are very entertaining for Full Circle, while Waterhouse is pushed to the background as Dicks and Peter Moffatt bitch for State Of Decay, mostly about Bidmead. On Warriors' Gate, director Paul Joyce, SFX Mat Irvine, Bidmead, Leeson and Ward all provide a very interesting commentary, with level headed, but honest comments about their time on the show, their feelings about it, their feelings about the management and their experiences with Tom Baker. All three also have "making of" documentaries, the Warriors' Gate one being the best simply because of the difficulties in getting the production made. Sadly Tom Baker has no part in any of these documentaries which is something of a shame. Matthew Waterhouse talks about his time as Adric in another doco, while a variety of people, including Lalla Ward, discuss her costumes in the series.

Rather bizarrely there are a number of what can only be described as contextual documentaries as well; Full Circle has one about parallel universes, while State of Decay has a number, including ones on blood, vampires, and Sir Christopher Frayling discussing the story in relation to other vampire literature. These documentaries are a continuing trend of seeing material only peripherally related to the show, but trying to put it into a context. They are quite interesting, but sometimes they verge on the obscure...it's hard to see what a butcher could bring to a Doctor Who documentary, but it's there.

Overall this box set is a great release, with three stories that are really quite good, and the usual plethora of extra materials that show Doctor Who is really the only television programme that is getting value on the DVDs. Outstanding.

Soundtracks: Doctor Who Series 4, Torchwood

2009-01-31T07:17:00.000-08:00

For the past few years, an important element of Doctor Who has been the incidental music. There have been some pretty strong themes recurring in the series, such as the haunting solo vocalist performed Doctor's Theme, the heart rending Rose's Theme, and the variations of Martha's Theme which has created sadness and inspiration. In the first series, these were performed in studio, but as of Series 2, the National Orchestra of Wales has performed the music, lending a cinematic quality to it. Coincidentally this coincided with David Tennant's arrival.

Composer Murray Gold is actually quite similar in his music to David Tennant's performance. Quirky is a bit off, action is pretty bombastic, and emotional is heart tugging. Each series his work gets better and better, and Series 4 is the best soundtrack of all to date.

Kicking off with new version of the Doctor Who theme (I don't like that we've lost the single brass note in the titles anymore), we quickly go, choronologically through the episodes, taking a small break in the middle for a suite of music from Voyage Of The Damned.

The tracks are all very grandiose and quite, quite beautiful, although I think that the best is easily The Greatest Story Never Told from Silence In The Library which is one of the most inspirational pieces in the entire series. The Song Of Freedom occurs twice, once as a piece from the incidental music of Planet of the Ood, and once at the end in a single version, and it's a stunning piece of music. If Murray Gold's music could be likened to any one composer, it would James Horner.

What's really worth mentioning, though, is The Unicorn And The Wasp piece, which is probably going to appeal very much to fans of the classic series of Doctor Who. It's very much in the style of Geoffrey Burgon who did the music for Terror Of The Zygons and The Seeds Of Doom. Moody woodwind brings back the feel of the 1970s as opposed to the full orchestral sound that most science fiction programmes (including Doctor Who these days) use.

This is one of the best soundtracks I own, and that has nothing really to do with it being Doctor Who. It has everything to do with it being bloody good.

Also on sale now is the official Torchwood soundtrack. Although Murray Gold composed the theme for Torchwood based on a short piece of music he wrote for Doctor Who, it is his conductor and orchestrator Ben Foster who writes the music for Torchwood. It's worth mentioning that the Torchwood theme is a lot longer on the soundtrack and is quite a fascinating piece of music that isn't really done justice in the title or closing sequences of the television show.

However if Murray Gold is James Horner like, then Foster is David Arnold like. His music tends to be a lot more action packed, rarely taking time to be introspective. That said, don't get me wrong - like Arnold his love music is quite beautiful. Jack's Love Theme and Toshiko & Tommy are sweet, and there is a lot of emotion in The Death Of Dr Owen Harper and The End Is Where We Start From.
However it is the action music which really sets Torchwood aside from Doctor Who in terms of soundtrack. The Chase, Everything Changes...the list is quite endless in terms of the absolutely amazing action.

In many ways this is a very complementary soundtrack to the Doctor Who one and having them both actually makes them even more fantastic than listening to each one separately. But, rather happily, both stand very well on their own.

Michael Atkinson

2009-01-31T07:14:00.000-08:00

Michael Atkinson is the Attorney General of South Australia, which would suggest he's a little bit intelligent and possibly has a somewhat strong grip on reality and the law. He's also a big fan of protecting children, which would suggest that he's got quite a conscious.

Suprisingly, however, the man is an idiot.

If you've ever played a video game, actually, check that, if you've just got some common sense, you probably think that there are some video games out there that are just a little outside the 3 - 15 year age gap. Some of them have quite a bit of violence in them, some have some nudity, some have some sex, and some allow you to shag hookers and then kill said hookers to get your money back. Now, even though I don't have a fifteen year old child, I wouldn't be keen on that child playing some of those games. But frankly, I'm not going to sit down and play every game that comes out, and I may even not look up information about a game on the internet sometimes. No, it would be nicer if there was a big black sticker on the front of the game with a nice fat "R" telling me the game is for adults only.

As events transpire, Mr Atkinson disagrees. He feels that there should be no "R" rating for games. He feels that games should just be banned if they are not suitable for children. Because, at the end of the day, he feels that adults don't play video games. In interviews he's banged on about how he can barely control what games his kids play, and how the effects of interactive games may be more severe than watching "R" rated movies, and some people just can't distinguish fact from fiction. And he may be right about all those things he's said in interviews. But he's very wrong about his feelings that adults don't play video games. He can defame Bond University all he likes, but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of gamers are 30+. And adults should be allowed to choose what they want to do, not be told by Big Brother. Because, if not, then why not ban alcohol?

And the really funny thing is, that most gamers want the "R" rating to protect children, because at the moment too many games are getting through and being classified "MA 15+" because there simply isn't a higher rating.
An "R" rating isn't going to magically solve all the problems of kids getting their hands on inappropriate games, but the fact is it will go some way to solving the problem. And any little bit helps.

It's a little sad that the only person who doesn't see this is Michael Atkinson. And it's also a little sad that one state AG has the ability to veto all the other six.

Well done Michael. You're doing a great job.

Comics Etc

2009-01-18T23:40:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I reviewed something out of the ordinary, but I'd like to take the opportunity to review the comic shop, Comics Etc. Truth to tell there was a time when I didn't actually want to go in there as the staff seemed to be rude beyond belief, often shouting at each other from across the shop and telling people how shit their purchases was. In fact, on one occasion they had reviews of their stuff up and they were virtually all negative. The one that wasn't read something like (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Simon really loves this comic. However, Simon's taste is in his ass." I'd pretty much given up on Comics Etc.

Then one day I discovered I could order online from them, and given they have the best range in the city, I figured, why not? I don't have to talk to them, so I can order without having any problems.

And the first order went through without any hassle. Then the next time I wanted to order something, they had it listed but I couldn't add it to my basket. I emailed and asked what I could do. And the response came back to tell me just to put it in the notes and they would be happy to add it.

Wow. I thought. That's really good service.

The next time I ordered something, I tried it again, and got a response back just as quickly telling me that it would be no problem at all. And every single time I ordered online from Comics Etc they had the best online service I have ever encountered.

Amazed by this sudden change, I wondered what it would be like if I went into the store. I placed an online order for pickup, and stolled into the store that weekend. To my surprise, all the old staff that used to diss my purchases and shout across the store at each other about how they had the latest issue of Batman (although it was a shit issue, so they had wasted their money), were gone. Instead there was this friendly chap who, when someone else bought a comic, he enthused about the purchase and recommended something that he loved that was of a similar nature.

My order was waiting behind the counter, and I happily paid without any hassle.

I don't know what's happened at this store, but I will tell you one thing - I will not get my comics from anywhere else. Comics Etc not only has a great range, but they have the best service, and have shown amazing thoughtfulness when dealing with me. Go to this comics store. Go nowhere else.

http://www.comicsetc.com.au/

Law & Order

2009-01-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

Ten seem to have a bit of an active hatred for Law & Order Prime. Criminal Intent and Special Victims Unit are bringing in the ratings, but Law & Order is like the poor old sire that is still trotting around out the back. But unfortuately for Ten, there's still enough interest in the old fellow to keep showing her. Stuck on a Friday night in the non-ratings period, now showing two episodes back-to-back to get through the season as quickly as possible...oh, Ten hate it, but the people are still watching.

And well they should. I've been a bit neglectful of my reviews of Law & Order since it's return, but I've been watching every Friday night, and if a programme is going to last a long time (and it's worth reminding people that Law & Order is now in it's eighteenth season on Australian TV - ninteenth in America) change has got to be at the core. Law & Order thrives on change. It's cast is cycled through like it's going out of fashion.

I enjoyed last season, with the introduction of Detective Cassady, a young female who was a little out of her depth in homicide, although I felt ADA Rubirosa was just going through the motions as the latest in Jack McCoy's dark-haired assistants. But this season...this season has been a real shot in the arm that has changed the entire way of things. Jeremy Sisto's introduction as Det Cyrus Lupo has brought a feeling of cameraderie between him and Jesse L Martin's Det Green, which is something the detectives have never really had before because of the old detective/young detective partnerships that have been in the show up until now. A pair of detectives, both in their 30's has shown a different partnership that works really well, and gives some bizarrely entertaining dialogue. Lupo's obscure questions - most recently his questioning Green about being a socks off/socks on man - have given a different level of humour to the detectives.

And on the other side, Sam Waterston's Jack McCoy going to DA, and being replaced by Linus Roache as EADA Michael Cutter has brought out a completely different dynamic to the "Order" side of the program. As Waterston changed roles not because he was leaving but because it was about bloody time, DA McCoy has a lot more to do each episode than his three predecessors ever had to. And the relationship between McCoy and Cutter is very different as well. Cutter often at times seems to be doing things just because McCoy wouldn't, while McCoy seems unable to let Cutter handle a case by himself, something which Cutter frequently throws back in his face. This means that Rubirosa becomes the middle man, trying to balance her two superiors while remaining loyal to both. Rubirosa and Cutter, however, have a better relationship than the one she had with McCoy, although last week's episode showed us Cutter pushing it just that bit too far.

And we've had some very interesting cases over the past few weeks. A bizarre murder revolving around a pair of pants, a murder caused by a black man and a white woman independent of each other, an apparent gay murder which turns out to be about political buy-outs, a con artist that tricks everyone out of a fortune and then tricks her way out of jail, murder during immigration riots, murder because of capital punishment, and murder as a result of sex - the case where Cutter keeps on a juror because of their interest in Rubirosa.

Law & Order is playing hardball this season, showing us a new side to the principal characters and new cases ripped from the headlines. However, what's interesting is how Cyrus Lupo seems to be taking the lead in the criminal investigations...I wonder if that's going to have long term effects...?

Character Options Doctor Who Figures 2009

2009-01-18T23:34:00.001-08:00

Truth to tell Doctor Who fans are pretty bloody lucky. We have a specific group of people who work to make our DVD releases so kick-arse they are the best television DVDs out there. We have a company that strives to bring us audio adventures of previous Doctors, so those that don't like the new series can still have a grin on their face. We have an action figure range which is one of the best that is out there, with care given to the figures and a range of classic figures for us old fans.

And yet a few years back, the DVD company, 2Entertain, along with the audio company Big Finish, anally raped us like a $2 hooker. Yup, after releasing all five Davros stories, they then went ahead and released a Davros boxed set which had all five stories, plus all the audio Davros stories. Fine, we all thought. We've been loyal, we bought all those things when they were released, we can probably skip the boxed set. Except a special audio story was released on the boxed set, and Remembrance Of The Daleks was fixed up to include the missing special effect, PLUS had two extra documentaries and the whole box had a new Davros documentary. And the price was in excess of 80 pounds. We called 2Entertain.

Any chance we could get a new release of Remembrance with the new documentaries and the Davros documentary? we asked.

Why don't you go fuck yourself? 2Entertain asked us.

Any chance we could get the new audio story released at some point? we asked Big Finish.

Sure, they replied, when you go fuck yourself.

It was a harsh lesson to learn. Not us, I might point out, but 2Entertain. Sales of the Davros box set were absolutely woeful. They sit on the shelves of every JB Hi-Fi and ABC bookshop across the country. And that's just Australia. Fuck ourselves, the fans said...no...fuck YOU! When 2Entertain released their Sontaran boxed set, they didn't bother to play the same stupid game they had last time. Just the DVDs...no new extras.

Character Options, however, have decided to play the same stupid game. Hopefully you've been here (

http://enterpriseofgeeks.blogspot.com/2009/01/doctor-who-action-figures-2009.html) to read about the new figures. How awesome is the Cyberman wave? Four new figures and a fucking cool build-a-figure. In fact, all the build-a-figures rock. That Vespiform is something special. I ordered those Cyber-dudes within about two minutes of finding out about them.

The old series wave...hmm...that one had me bothered. OK, so Captain Jack has the Doctor's hand, but I already have TWO Captain Jack figures. Another Astrid Peth figure...not really essential. I finally managed to track down the Master in Yana's clothing a mere month ago...would've been nice to know it was going to be released this year. A repainted Clockwork Man...So, in order to get the Gelth figure, I get three new figures, a repainted figure I already have, and three other figures I already have. I decided that I would have to think about this one a bit longer.

And then I read about the Series 4 wave. 13 figures. 13 figures to get a build-a-figure. I mean, COME ON CHARACTER OPTIONS!!!! THIRTEEN FIGURES???? Oh, but it gets better. Of those thirteen figures, I ALREADY HAVE TWELVE OF THEM!!! Yes, that's right. Twelve of the thirteen releases have already been released! 25 Adipose pack is the only new figure - and if you bought the Doctor with 5 Adipose last year, you already have 5 Adipose!!!! In effect, CO is saying - you want a Vespiform? You pay 84 pounds and like it. All the other deluxe figures are about 19 pound.

We called Character Options.Any chance we can get the Vespiform as a deluxe figure? we asked.

Why don't you go fuck yourselves? Character Options asked us.

So, we will. I may be a Doctor Who fan, but I will draw the line. I drew the line with the Davros Boxed set...it does not sit on my shelves. And surprisingly, I ain't beating myself up over not having those extras. Yup, fuck you 2Entertain.
And fuck you Character Options. I'm not getting your fucking thirteen figures to get a Vespiform. It will not enter my collection. And if it does, it's because someone's got it for me, or because I could get it for a cheap-o price on EBay. But further, screw the Series 1-2-3 wave as well. I can live without a gas Gelth. I can live without a stupid purple Clockwork Man, the Doctor's hand, Jabe, Bannakaffalatta, the old Doctor, and I can sure as hell do without the Ancient Doctor which was a character that sucked in the episode it was featured in, and sucks just as hard in the toy figure.

Doctor Who fans are the reason that the programme still exists. Oh, seriously that is true. We wouldn't let it die in the 90's and some of us eventually had the power to bring it back. But what the fans giveth, the fans can taketh away. 2Entertain learnt their lesson. Now it's time for Character Options to learn theirs. (Oh, and it's not just the fans, I might add. You really think the mothers of those 10 year olds are gonna fork out 85 quid on a stack of toys their son/daughter already has?? Welcome to the real world...)

Doctor Who: Battlefield (DVD)

2009-01-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

The irony is, of course, that fans and critics alike agreed that, just as the BBC decided to cancel Doctor Who (albeit without telling anyone), the production team had finally got it right.

Season 26 opened with a whimper and the production team learnt a very valuable lesson - it was better to get a group of people who loved Doctor Who to make the programme rather than a group who couldn't care less. Consequently, fans such as Mike Tucker made great special effects, and Sue Moore and Stephen Mansfield creatd brilliant monsters like the Haemovores. And moreso, fans were writing the stories. And they were all loved.

Except Battlefield. The opening serial was spat upon, and even writer Ben Aaronovitch believes that it is his biggest failure. And he's actually wrong. He gets it right on the audio commentary, though, when he says that the acting and direction were on top form, and his script editor Andrew Cartmel says the script is very good, but Aaronovitch also points out that there are other departments that just didn't seem to care. And he is right here because there are two versions of the story on this DVD - the transmitted TV version and a movie version with new effects, missing material restored and, most crucially, new sound effects. The sound effects make all the difference, clarifying inane dialogue that seems to make no sense in the transmitted version.

So, yes, Battlefield is actually a good and underrated story. The idea of making the Doctor Merlin seems, on reflection, glaringly obvious, and you can't understand why this wasn't done earlier. The rest of the Arthurian legend fits in very nicely, with Jean Marsh playing a brilliant version of Morgaine, and Christopher Bowen giving a delightful performance of Mordred (as long as you ignore the fact he can't do insane laughter for nuts). Marcus Gilbert is brilliant as Ancelyn and Lin Tai is tolerable as Shou Yuing.

However the top performances are regulars Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred as the Doctor and Ace, developing the relationship between the two very nicely (and how hot does Sophie look in this story), while Angela Bruce is outstanding as the new head of UNIT, Brigadier Bambera. The shock of seeing a black woman leading UNIT doesn't have quite the same effect today as it would have back in 1989, but it makes little difference because Bruce is just brilliant.

However all this fades into insignificance because this story sees the return of the Brigadier. Nicholas Courtney is such an integral part of Doctor Who nowadays it's hard to imagine there was a time when the character wasn't there. When he turned up in Sarah Jane Adventures last year it seemed entirely appropriate and when the old war horse opens Battlefield one can't help but cheer. He almost overshadows the return of the Doctor's vintage roadster, Bessie.
Battlefield may not be the best of Season 26, but it's still a thrilling story and works very well even today.

"B"

Doctor Who - The Next Doctor

2009-01-01T07:29:00.000-08:00

It's a little delayed, but I have to say I did get the chance to watch this on Boxing Day and so was able to enjoy it in the spirit in which it was intended.

There's a feeling about the Christmas Specials (and I'm as guilty of this as the next man) that they are the big spectacles of Doctor Who; a longer episode with big name guest stars and lots of action. But then I sit down and think realistically that only The Runaway Bride and Voyage Of The Damned fit that bill. Arguably, though, you think that it applies to The Christmas Invasion as well because Tennant is the big name (except he wasn't) and there was plenty of action too (except, really, there wasn't).

So, when The Next Doctor finishes, part of you is inclined to think...is that it? I mean, yes, at the end, a giant Cyberman walked through Victorian London stomping on people left, right and center, but still...it wasn't a TARDIS chase down the freeway...or a tension-filled walk across a pylon, pursued by robots. Except that's not really what the Christmas Special should be about. It's really just a bit of fluff - something to sit down and enjoy on Christmas Day that gives a bit of action and a bit of fun, and when it boils down to it, The Next Doctor fits the bill perfectly.

There are a lot of little parts in the episode, all handled rather well by the various actors involved, but really, the majority of the screen time is held by four actors - David Tennant, David Morrissey, Dervla Kirwan and Velile Tshabalala. Kirwan is the luckiest as she is playing the villain, and she gets to be beautiful and nasty for the entire episode, even lording it over the Cybermen at the end when she proves she is actually better than they are. There is a lot of the feminist in Miss Hartigan and she gets many opportunities to put the boys in their places. Sadly, poor old Rosita (Velile Tshabalala) doesn't quite get the same opportunity to shine. An assistant to Morrissey's Doctor before taking on the role for Tennant, she plays second fiddle throughout the entire episode and aside from a nice little moment at the end, one can't help but wonder if there was any point to her character. Certainly the episode wouldn't have lost anything by her not being there.

And then, of course, there is David Morrissey. A lot of fans on the 'net at the moment are bleating on about the need for a male companion. We've had enough of young women, they've declared, bring us a young man. They are, of course, mostly the gay fans, and they are, also of course, missing something pretty fundamental - at the end of the day, male companions don't really work. Oh they work well when the Doctor is an absent minded professor who doesn't have the time to be a hero - Ian, Steven, Ben and Jamie all worked because the Doctor was too busy being mysterious. Jack works for the same reason; the ninth Doctor is too damaged to be an action hero. And when the third Doctor is getting all high and mighty, and scientific-advisory, the Brigadier was there to do the heroic work. But once the Doctor takes on that role, the male companion becomes redundant. Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Tenth Doctors are all heroic Doctors...they don't need a male to do that stuff. And the female companion works in most capacities because they are so flexible. The best combination is a male-female relationship. And so the Tenth Doctor besides another Doctor, who is essentially the male companion, is a difficult mark.

Davies goes some way to address this situation by reversing the roles and making the tenth Doctor the companion to the next Doctor, whilst at the same time getting him to do Doctory stuff. This works surprisingly well, and it's interesting to see the tenth Doctor face a character he believes to be his older self, but trying to understand why he doesn't remember what he should. Finding more out about the next Doctor changes our perceptions of him, and he stops being the action companion, and becomes a tragic character which makes him work all the better.

Of course, what makes him work the best is David Morrissey who brings the next Doctor to life in a brilliant fashion, playing him as a bizarre amalgam of the tenth Doctor and the fourth Doctor. Tennant is obviously pleased to be on set with Morrissey as the two actors spark off each other fabulously, trying to outsteal each scene from the other. If it weren't for this brilliant combination, the episode might fall slighly foul of being just average.

The Cybermen are also used in a very effective manner, looking particularly creepy as they move through the graveyard, giving Andy Goddard a chance to show his directorial flair. They also are vividly single minded, with their Leader looking decidely disturbing and stealing a scene where it informs Miss Hartigan that information it gave her was designated a lie.

There are other delights in this episode - Davies dialogue absolutely sparkles, with some genuinely funny moments in the episode, and for the fans there is a rather special treat when an info-stamp shows us images of the previous nine Doctors. This is not the mind-blowing spectacle of the previous two Christmas Specials, and there is a strange lack of spectacle that is surprising from a Davies script, but it is still very enjoyable.

"B"

Quarantine

2008-12-08T03:24:00.001-08:00

This review has been a little while coming, and I humbly apologise for that.

The Blair Witch Project was overhyped but still a brilliant film, and one of the things that scared me every so slightly about the film was the huge success of the hand-held camera, something which I thought every film would then try to copy in an effort to reproduce the fear of TBWP. Rather surprisingly, most of Hollywood realised that the originality of TBWP was what made it successful and so they didn't jump on that particular band-wagon (ironically, the exception to that was the producers of TBWP who stayed on their own bandwagon and made a shit house sequel).

Cloverfield decided to adopt the same principle, and given that it has been a considerable time since the horror film genre had made use of the hand-held technique Cloverfield was considerably successful.

A year later and rather scarily it seems that Hollywood now has jumped on the bandwagon with Quarantine. What is rather more disturbing is that, not only does Hollywood start to flog the hand-held horse, but, ably demonstrating what Sean has described as a culturally bankrupt Hollywood, Quarantine is a remake of a Spanish film.

However, if the Ring proves nothing else, it's that America can actually take a foreign scary movie and actually make it even more scary. Sure, the American Ring doesn't have the same coherenet plot that the Japanese one does, but the American Ring is seriously scarier. And Quarantine is absolutely terrifying.

Effectively carrying the entire movie as a sophomore reporter following a fire department is Jennifer Carpenter, star of Dexter. I say carrying not in a nasty way, because it's not like the script, direction and acting all suck, but basically because Carpenter is on screen pretty much throughout the entire movie. The hand-held aspect comes from her cameraman following her and filming where she tells him to. It's a fairly big ask of Carpenter, but she not only does it effectively, but creates a character who is pretty damn sympathetic.

The rest of the cast include the likes of Jay Hernandez as one of the fire fighters and Dania Ramirez as, bizarrely, an opera singer. The cast is pretty likable, but full of very believable characters. I can actually feel a lot for the lawyer who gets pretty jack of the fire brigade and police telling him what to do when it becomes clear that even they don't know what is going on.

Rather surprisingly there is a pretty good explanation for why we have zombies running around the movie. Nowadays there is more and more desperation for zombies turning up in movies who aren't the undead. 28 Days Later provided us with a group of people infected by "Rage", but Quarantine opts for a slightly more obvious answer - a particularly virulent strain of rabies. When the vet recognises this, you can feel the dread in everybody - especially the woman who knows it was her dog that had it to start with.

Other little touches to amp up the fear include the building losing electricity and having their internet cut off so they can't contact the outside world, and then discovering that it is being reported that the building has been evacuated. Add to that some really nasty moments like crushing a rat to death and drilling into someone's head, and this movie is not for the squeamish.

I suspect this movie would have worked really well without the hand-held, which suggests that the movie is a good stand-alone film. However, add to that the hand-held aspect and it gives it that little more edge.

A truly terrifying film.

"A"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Frame (Season Seven)

2008-11-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

The day after breaking a case, and the anniversary of the death of Goren's mother, Frank Goren is found dead, and Goren just happens to be at the scene of the crime. Goren is keen to be involved, particularly when it looks like Frank's killer might have been Nicole Wallace. However, after tracking down Nicole, they discover a heart which Rodgers confirms belongs to Wallace. Goren begins to lose sight of the case, not helped by Ross's belief that Goren might be the killer. Forced into investigating Goren, Eames finds herself in an unenviable position, and Rodgers also is forced into betraying Goren's trust. With no one to turn to, Goren finds himself again keeping company with Declan Gage, who is convinced that the killer is someone close to Goren - possibly even Eames herself.

I laughed my arse off during this episode when I got a phone call from a friend to tell me that he thought Goren looked like a fat, hobo - all he was missing was a bottle of whiskey, and there is a certain truth in that statement. It's a little ironic that the plot of the episode is about Dr Declan Gage believing that Goren has fallen off the rails and he is determined to put him back on track. Of course, as only a complete nutcase could think, his solution is to murder a large number of people.

This is Warren Leight's last episode as showrunner and one gets the feeling that he's decided to wrap up Goren's life completely with a completely fresh start. As a result, aside from the return of Dr Declan Gage, we also see the return of Nicole Wallace (although rather surprisingly her appearances are actaully very small), Gwen Chappell, Frank Goren and copious amounts of flashbacks to previous episodes. And, with the exception of Gwen, they are all bumped off (although, to be fair, Gage's death is still impending).

I don't have any conscientious objections to episodes featuring returning characters, although in Criminal Intent I'd probably prefer it happened a lot less, although that said I didn't mind Goren's tussels with Nicole Wallace - she was, after all, the Moriarty to his Holmes. I was never terribly happy with the whole Goren family storyline, and the death of Frank, and the discovery that serial killer Mike Brady was indeed Goren's father will hopefully end the entire situation.

The problem with this episode was that there wasn't any real invesitagation. It was Goren and Eames following a series of stupid clues and never actually solving a crime. There was no real showdown between Goren and Gage because Gage pretty much confessed and spent the rest of the time talking about why he did it. And, most annoying of all, it seems Nicole's final end is almost an offscreen thing. The last Nicole Wallace episode, for anyone who may remember, was the episode which had two endings that the public had to vote for. The ending they voted for, of course, was the one where Nicole escaped before the police arrived, but it seems such a shame as the alternate ending where Goren shot her seemed a far more appropriate end to her. And in light of this episode, it was a much better finale for her.

This episode also cemented the relationship between Goren and Eames, as Eames is forced into investigating her partner, but it's nice to see later she is pretty firm in her defense of her partner, not just to Gage, but also to Ross. I've spent the last few years hoping Goren would punch Ross in the face, but sadly as close as Goren gets to doing in this episode it never happens. In fact Ross is a complete prick in this episode, and while it's understandable that he should consider Goren a suspect, his complete lack of faith in his best detective is constantly surprising. Last week he lost Logan, this week he's coming close to losing Goren - given the amount of cases these two detectives close, you'd think that the COD's would have something to say about it - except as we all know he hates Goren as well. Whatever happened to the days when Deakins ran the department and Goren merely had to think someone was guilty for Carver to issue a warrent.

With Leight moving on, hopefully this is the end of the two year period of deep, dark personal issues and we can go back to solving cases with that quirky Goren manner.

"B"

NCIS: Cloak (Season Six)

2008-11-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

Three days before Ducky and Palmer get a shock by discovering one of their corpses delivered to a top secret Naval Base, Gibbs briefs his team about an attempt by them to infiltrate a top secret Naval Base and steal Domino - the very thing that Langer appeared to be attempting to steal when Vance disbanded Gibbs' team. Tony and Ziva do the main work and, with hints from Lee, they infiltrate the base, only to be immediately caught. Vance and the Secretary of the Navy are both called in, with Vance telling Davenport that it was all a setup to find the leak in NCIS that still exists. Both Vance and Gibbs know it is Lee and thanks to Abby they have sprung a trap. When Vance later apparently has Abby arrested, this gives Lee an excuse to leave the locked down NCIS HQ, but she is quickly arrested when she makes contact with the outside world. Lee tells Gibbs she has a daughter being held hostage, but Vance believes this to be a lie. Nonetheless DiNozzo, Ziva, McGee, Abby and Palmer are shocked to see Lee leave the building without anyone stopping her.

So it turns out that Gibbs was right, and Vance was completely wrong, and poor old Langer was a victim of a conspiracy of which Michelle Lee was part of. Not that that comes out in the first five minutes, but it was pretty obvious from the last few episodes. It's nice, though, that rather than wait til the end of the season to resolve this plot line, it's come as a mid-season two parter (which Australia's Channel TEN has decided the first part of which is the season finale...do they think we're stupid? Do they seriously think we can't count? A season finale after seven episodes? What, has the writer's strike started again???). What's perhaps rather nice about this story is that, rather than have it turn out that Lee has been a villain for the past few years, she was, in fact, being forced into this with the existance of a daughter no one has ever heard of. Strangely enough I actually don't have too much of a problem with that plotline, particularly when it transpires that she had the child when she was very young and her mother has been raising it. Fair enough, she wouldn't be the first.

The attempt to break into the top secret naval base is pretty entertaining as McGee is obsessed with using a fire drill which the other's all say is a bad idea, and sure enough when they are caught it is because someone sets off a fire drill (well, I say someone, obviously I mean Lee). Everyone's reactions to the situation are interesting - DiNozzo's anger at being manipulated not only by Lee, but also by Gibbs who he abuses through Ducky - and indeed Ducky himself is less than impressed with the way Gibbs had handled the situation. The scene between Gibbs, Ducky and DiNozzo is actually really well acted and it's interesting to see how each of them responds to the other - David MacCallum injects a considerable authority into Ducky that seems to put DiNozzo in his place as well sending a signal to Gibbs.

Meanwhile we get a little more confirmation about Ziva's feelings for Tony when she suggests they should follow orders and, after Tony points out that Ziva most certainly didn't follow orders when they were caught, she only attacked their captors because she was worried about Tony. And on top of that there is the slightly scary moment when, for just a bit, you think that Abby has betrayed the team as well (why did I even fall for that one??).

Cloak, of course, ends on a cliffhanger, as Lee discovers she is now being shadowed by Gibbs. Channel Ten has decided to just randomly stop showing the series now, so consequently I will happily stand up and say I'm pirating the next episode. Do I feel guilty? Nope. I wouldn't have paid for the episode anyway, and I'll be buying the DVD boxed set when it's released so I'll contributing properly. Screw you Channel Ten. Rock on, NCIS.

"A"

Quantum Of Solace

2008-11-23T01:09:00.000-08:00

I happen to be one of those people who go to the movies to get some entertainment, and I don't necessarily go looking for deep insights into life. As a result, on leaving a cinema, I'm rarely disappointed by what I saw, and so perhaps am not the best reviewer of a movie after I've left it. Consequently I've left it a couple of days before giving my review of Quantum of Solace.

Having criticised The Dark Knight for being too much of a Chris Nolan film rather than a Batman film, I have to say that Quantum of Solace comes very close to being too much of a Marc Foster movie than a James Bond movie. Stylistically, QoS is further away from even Casino Royale and part of this comes from Foster's decision to use his own creative team, rather than the standard Bond one. Daniel Kleinman, for example, has been dumped from doing the title sequence, and instead Mk12 step in to provide both this and the gunbarrel logo. This gives the movie quite a different feel (although Mk12's decision to restore the silhouettes of women to the title sequence is an interesting step back to tradition). In terms of style, my one big complaint would be that it is perhaps time to return the gunbarrel to the beginning of the movie, rather than, in this case, leading into the closing credits. CR was able to have a pre-title sequence in black and white which gave a firm feeling of the movie beginning, whereas QoS kicks in with an action sequence and, for a moment, I was unsure if the movie had begun, or if I was watching another trailer.

Oddly enough, as the movie stylistically moves away from its predecessors (another example of this is the appearance of very exaggerated location subtitles) James Bond himself becomes more and more like the Bond of old. He spends the majority of the film in a tailored suit, and at one point is back in tuxedo. After the joke in CR, he most certainly does give a damn about how he likes his vodka martinis, and more than that, the idea of staying at accomodation that is anything less than five star has become something of an anathema to him. Perhaps the most obvious example of his actions, however, is that, within an hour of meeting MI6 agent Strawberry Fields (easily one of the silliest names for a Bond girl ever, but thankfully we only discover her first name in the credits) he shags her silly. Rather oddly, though, this is the only sex Bond has in the movie, implied or otherwise. Bond only actually gets a single kiss from primary Bond girl Camille, before she walks off into the distance. But Bond is still as brutal and as callous as he was in CR. At one point "M" is forced to ask Bond not to kill their lead as he has already murdered three of them. Though this is symptomatic of Bond being a broken man. Vesper's betrayal from CR weighs heavily on him, and it is this more than the hunt for Quantum that makes QoS a direct sequel to CR. Bond himself continues to develop, seeking for a way to end the pain of Vesper, while hardening himself against the possibility of having his heart betrayed again. Barbara Broccoli has said that there will be one more film in the development of Bond to 007, and it certainly seems that she and Michael G Wilson have indeed been planning this with some thoroughness.

Whereas CR was the longest Bond film to date, QoS goes the other way, and is the shortest film in the entire series. To a certain degree I believe this has meant that the movie has suffered ever so slightly. While CR took the opportunity to occasionally reflect on what has happened, QoS from the very outset hits the ground running and seems to rarely let up. We have a pre-title sequence that is nothing but action leading into a short moment where White laughs at MI6 before there is more action. Bond is sent to Haiti for more action before going to Austria for a bit more action, and so on. This leads to what trailer makers call a "high octane" film, but unfortunately gives some slightly muddled plotting as a result. Reflection is needed in order to work out quite what is happening. Bond's mission occasionally seems disjointed as he travels from lead to lead, but the most confusing moment comes with regard to Mathis who, on his deathbed, tells Bond that they forgive each other and tells Bond that Mathis was indeed his cover name, which Bond says was a stupid name. It's never quite clear if Mathis is saying he was always a double agent, with Mathis not his real name and that's why Bond should forgive him - or if Mathis is his real name, and he used it as a cover name in Bolivia (hence a stupid cover name)...although quite why they forgive each other still remains unclear. Equally Mr White, who Bond tried so hard to hand over to "M" in the pretitle sequence, disappears and is never heard from again. I understand a scene was filmed where Bond tracked him and the British envoy down and dealt with both of them, but this scene was cut. One can only hope the reason for the cut was that this will be developed in the next film, rather than they just wanted to remove it to pick up the pace of the movie.

Marc Foster's hand can be felt throughout the entire movie - Bond's opponent, Dominic Greene as played by Mathieu Amalric (The two Quantum members we've seen now are Greene and White...will we see Red and Black?) is an everyman with no noticeable foibles; in fact, if anything Greene seems to be a little weed of a character. It's almost hard to believe that Bond doesn't simply kick his arse when he and Greene come face to face. Equally, Greene has no stand out henchmen of note. Indeed the nebulous Quantum organisation seems to be the villain of the movie more than Greene himself. This in of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that Bond doesn't seem to have an opponent worthy of him in the film. This isn't really Amalric's fault, but it does make him a less than memorable character.

Olga Kurylenku is Bond girl Camille Montes, and she is one of the more complex Bond girls we've seen for a long time. Initially she seems to be playing against Dominic Greene, despite being his lover at the same time, but ultimately she is revealed to have been at the very least trained by the Bolivian secret service in search of the same revenge that Bond is - albeit hers is against would-be Bolivian dictator General Medrano. Medrano raped her mother and killed her father, while leaving her to almost burn to death, and nastily scarring her back. In a nice bit of character development, this means she suffers from pyrophobia in the film's finale, giving Bond the opportunity to play Knight in White Shining Armour as he has to rescue her.

Gemma Arterton, though credited quite high in the film, has little screen time as MI6 Agent Fields, and ends up covered in oil, having been drowned in it, in a rather nice homage to Goldfinger. Jeffrey Wright also has his screen time cut down as CIA agent Felix Leiter which is a shame as he is developing the character quite nicely. Leiter appears to have the same strong sense of fair play that Bond has, making them good partners. Giancarlo Giannini returns as Rene Mathis and it is great to see this character return, complete with the baggage that he brings from CR. It's almost disappointing to see him pass at the end of the film, but at the same time it seems quite fitting.
One person who does not suffer is Judi Dench, returning for her sixth outing as "M". Dench is again absolutely superb in the film, having complete trust in her best agent, while at the same time not entirely happy about his cavalier attitude towards life and death (see what I did there?). "M" is joined by Tanner in this film, now portrayed by Rory Kinnear, but here Tanner is nothing more than replacing Villiers from the last film.

A new production designer brings a different feel to the movie, as does the new director of photography, but both of them are trying very hard to keep in the Bond style, with the Austrian opera performance being of particular note as a set that is both awe-inspiring while also being just that little OTT Bond style. David Arnold returns to score the film, and uses both the James Bond theme and Jack White & Alicia Keys theme (which slowly grows on you, and works wonderfully opposite the interesting title sequence) liberally throughout the score.

No doubt in a few years from now I'll rewatch this movie and have a slightly different opinion, but this is the initial feel. A good film and a good chance for Daniel Craig to cement his position as James Bond.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Daniel Craig; 3. Roger Moore; 4. Sean Connery; 5. George Lazenby; 6. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Casino Royale; 4. Dr No; 5. Licence To Kill; 6. A View To A Kill; 7. Live And Let Die; 8. Quantum Of Solace; 9. Thunderball; 10. For Your Eyes Only; 11. Octopussy 12. The Spy Who Loved Me; 13. Tomorrow Never Dies; 14. GoldenEye; 15. From Russia, With Love; 16. Goldfinger; 17. You Only Live Twice; 18. Moonraker; 19. The World Is Not Enough; 20. The Man With The Golden Gun; 21. Die Another Day; 22. Diamonds Are Forever

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Eva Green/Vesper; 5. Olga Kurylenku/Camille; 6. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 7. Izabella Scorupco/Natalya; 8. Barbara Bach/Anya; 9. Maud Adams/Octopussy; 10. Michelle Yeoh/Wai Lin; 11. Mie Hama/Kissy; 12. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 13. Ursula Andress/Honey; 14. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 15. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 16. Lois Chiles/Holly; 17. Honor lackman/Pussy; 18. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 19. Denise Richards/Christmas; 20. Halle Berry/Jinx; 21. Britt Ekland/Mary; 22. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Jonathan Pryce/Carver; 9. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 10. Mads Mikkelsen/Le Chiffre; 11. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 12. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 13. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 14. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 15. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 16. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 17. Mathieu Almaric; 18. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 19. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 20. Toby Stephens/Graves; 21. Sophie Marceau/Elektra; 22. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

Doctor Who - The Doctor Trap (BBC Books)

2008-11-23T01:08:00.000-08:00

With the Doctor now being the confirmed last of the Time Lords, the idea of him being hunted down because of this is not a particularly new one within in the Doctor Who novels. When I read that The Doctor Trap would be about a hunter trying to get the ultimate prize of the last of the Time Lords, I couldn't help but think that we were just retreading the same old ground. However, to my surprise The Doctor Trap is a very, very different beast.

Sebastianne is the hunter, but he appears to be a virtual god on his home planet. Having summoned a group of hunters to capture the Doctor (a group which are a little cautious about the whole idea of hunting down the legendary Doctor), and with the help of the Doctor's greatest fan who now looks like the Doctor, Sebastianne is ready to get his prize. However, the Doctor is one step ahead of his hunters and is preparing to spring the Doctor Trap...

It's a little different to have a story where the Doctor is ahead of the villains these days. There was a time when it was virtually par for the course, but over the last few years we once again have a Doctor who plays things by the seat of his pants. What's so good about this story is that, although appearing to be a step ahead of this enemies, the Doctor is in fact still playing things by the seat of his pants, but manages to convey the idea that he is ahead of his opponents. The story manages to give us a twist on two old ideas, while still being fresh and original.

Meanwhile, Donna is being Donna, brashly believing that the Doctor's biggest fan is actually the Doctor, but still with the same moral outrage that makes her so endearing as a character.

Arguably one of the better new series adventures, The Doctor Trap gives a great story with great characterisation.

"A"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Last Rites (Season Seven)

2008-11-23T00:54:00.001-08:00

A friend of Lennie Briscoe's approaches Logan about a deathbed confession to a triple homicide, but unfortunately he can offer very little details, forcing Wheeler and Logan to dig deep to find the actual case. Having found the case, they find that someone was already convicted - though he vehemently denies it, stating that his alibi was he was breaking into another car, though no one reported this. The case had two eye-witnesses, but as they are uncovered, the detectives find that one was blind in one eye, and the other was bargained into being a witness - and the ADA who tried the case was Terri Driver. Given Driver's history, Logan is convinced that she didn't investigate properly, and another suspect soon comes to light. Meanwhile, Driver is concerned about her reputation, and discovers that Wheeler's fiance has mob connections. As Logan and Driver clash in the press, Wheeler soon becomes the victim, and Logan begins to question his career.

There is something of the landmark about this episode, being as it is Detective Logan's final appearance on Criminal Intent, and arguably the entire Law & Order franchise. Chris Noth was almost synonymous with Law & Order, trumped in recent years by Jerry Orbach, Sam Waterston and S Epatha Merkerson. But Noth's firey detective has brought spice to the series, fighting with the DA's office and coming into conflict with his partners over the years. This last episode is almost a homage to all of those things as Logan's actions are disapproved of, not just by Ross, but also by Wheeler as he is determined to go into battle with ADA Terri Driver. When Driver asks him at one point if he is prepared to fight her office, given Logan's past relationship with now DA McCoy, it's perhaps not so surprising that he probably is.

But even as Logan decides to leave, having probably destroyed his career in obtaining justice (not for the first time), his partner Wheeler also suffers considerably as a result. Opening the episode by looking absolutely hot in a blue number to attend a benefit function, Wheeler starts to get out and about with her fiance only for her to soon discover that he may actually have a shady side; one which someone is prepared to blow open in order to protect their own secrets. Quite who that is, is never revealed (although there are enough hints for us to assume that it is actually ADA Driver), but Logan's actions finally do indeed have the consequences that seem inevitable and Wheeler's private life is destroyed.

Plotwise the episode is an interesting one, a murder case having been rush investigated and prosecuted, resulting in some poor guy being locked away in prison for sixteen years for a crime he didn't commit. Logan, with Wheeler's unquestioning support, uncovers the truth of the situation, but this in itself seems hardly the point of the exercise. Nothing is going to be done until Logan goes to the press with information that is embarrassing to the criminal justice system. The episode is about Logan's determination to see justice, and the lengths he will go to get it.

Am I disappointed that Logan is going? Well, part of me is, and part of me isn't. Logan's never quite seemed entirely comfortable at Major Case, but seeing Logan back in action has been an absolute joy. Thanks for returning Chris. We've enjoyed it.

"A-"

NCIS: Collateral Damage (Season Six)

2008-11-19T05:39:00.000-08:00

A bank robbery at Quantico which results in the death of a security guard brings in NCIS, with Vance insisting that they keep control of the investigation over the FBI. He also appoints a new propationary agent to the team who points out that if the robbery three days later the robbers would have made an extra hundred thousand, and Gibbs realises that the security guard was the true target. As Agent Wilson and DiNozzo uncover a former robbery that has a strange similarity to their current case, and Abby notices a distinctive tattoo that sparks a memory. Meanwhile, Gibbs self confidence begins to restore and he begins to think further about Langer's betrayal.

This episode's plot doesn't center around it, but it's nice to be reminded that Special Agent Michelle Lee is not playing straightball with the agency, something which Director Leon Vance seems completely oblivious to. The fact that Gibbs believes he chose a traitor to join the agency (Agent Langer) has obviously been playing on his mind, and when he gets Ducky to do a psychological evaluation on the probationary teammember that has been assigned to him, Ducky in fact does one on Gibbs himself, pointing out that he is human and prone to making mistakes as well. But what is nice is that Gibbs actually sees this as a reaffirming of his own confidence and as such a belief that he didn't make a mistake about Langer. What adds to this is an interesting exchange between Vance and Gibbs:

Vance: Our agents should be more like McGee than DiNozzo.

Gibbs: You mean more like me than you, Leon.

Firstly it's interesting that he sees DiNozzo as being a younger Gibbs (and thank God - Todd may have given DiNozzo a hard time, but she still essentially liked him, as did McGee when she was around. Since Ziva's shown up it seems that no one outside of Abby actually likes DiNozzo, let alone respects his abilities. It's nice that Gibbs affirms to Vance that he has time for DiNozzo and his methods), but more interesting is that Gibbs sudden desire to validate Langer seems to stem from an urge to invalidate Vance.

Back onto the episode itself - once again Ducky has virtually nothing to do, while Abby gets a little less herself this time round, although it's great to see that her recognising a tattoo is essential to the solving of the case. What's also great is that DiNozzo is not sidelined and gets the opportunity to prove why he is the senior agent (not least noting that when the two men are shot at the end, they are taken down by Gibbs and DiNozzo). The probationary agent lends a nice touch to the episode, and everyone else plays their part competently.

A good episode.

"B"

The Bond Films In Retrospect

2008-11-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

Having watched the Bond films, let me tell you the things that made them great, and the things that made them...not so much so...

In order of my preference:

The Living Daylights - Highlight: Timothy Dalton

On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Highlight: George Lazenby

Casino Royale - Highlight: Daniel Craig

Dr No - Highlight: Terrence Young's direction

Licence To Kill - Highlight: John Glen's direction

A View To A Kill - Highlight: Roger Moore; Lowlight: Roger Moore's age

Live And Let Die - Highlight: Roger Moore; Lowlight: Sherriff J W Pepper

Thunderball - Highlight: Sean Connery & Claudine Auger; Lowlight: The underwater fights

For Your Eyes Only - Highlight: John Glen's direction; Lowlight: the man with the bottle of wine

Octopussy - Highlight: The villains; Lowlight: James Bond doing an impression of Tarzan

The Spy Who Loved Me - Highlight: Lewis Gilbert's direction; Lowlight: The navy band version of the theme

Tomorrow Never Dies - Highlight: Jonathan Pryce; Lowlight: The script

GoldenEye - Highlight: Judi Dench; Lowlight: Jack Wade

From Russia, With Love - Highlight: Terrence Young's direction; Lowlight: The title sequence

Goldfinger - Highlight: Sean Connery; Lowlight: Bond and M's relationship

You Only Live Twice - Highlight: Donald Pleasance; Lowlight: Lack of Fleming based material

Moonraker - Highlight: Micheal Lonsdale; Lowlight: Jaws

The World Is Not Enough - Lowlight: The script

The Man With The Golden Gun - Lowlight: Herve Vellechaize

Die Another Day - Lowlight: The script

Diamonds Are Forever - Lowlight: Sean Connery

Casino Royale

2008-11-12T08:14:00.000-08:00

James Bond is definitely not the man he used to be.

After the four Brosnan films, which progressively got more and more dire, I was happy at the end of Die Another Day for Bond to hang up his Walther and move on. Forty years is a pretty good run for any film series, and twenty films has to be some sort of record, so RIP Commander Bond. However, with the huge takings from Die Another Day, you could pretty much guarantee that a new film was about to arrive, and you could also bet that it would be more of the same - after all, only a fool of a producer would take the series in a completely different direction. A fool, or very brave...

When Bond 21 (as it was so charmingly called for so long) went into negotiations, Brosnan demanded exorbitant sums of money and so his services were dispensed with. My stomach sank when Daniel Craig was announced as the new Bond. Everyone was up in arms about him being blonde, and non-fans couldn't understand why. "We're just used to seeing a tall, dark Bond" they said..."It's not like the description is written down somewhere." Except it is. Try reading the books - they may not have the scar, or the comma above the right eyebrow, but Connery, Lazenby, Dalton and Brosnan come pretty close to the description that Ian Fleming gave. Even Moore isn't way off. Craig is nothing like the description.

And then the word "reboot" was bandied around.

The first teaser came out, and Craig looked distinctly uncomfortable at the end when the camera zoomed in on him. "God, I hope I don't screw this one up," his eyes seemed to be saying.

Then the first trailer came out. And suddenly it looked as though Craig was going to do something that Brosnan decided not to. He may not look like Bond, but he was going to act Bond.

And by God is he good. Daniel Craig seems to get the part in a way that Pierce Brosnan never quite seemed able to. Yes, Bond is a bit juvenile at times - in Casino Royale he can't help but give a smug smile of satisfaction when the loudmouth who treated him as a chauffeur discovered his car smashed. But Bond is not an adolescent. And he is a cold-blooded killer. When "M" says she would tell him to keep his emotions out of it but that's not his problem, Bond agrees. He has no feelings for anyone. He has a job and is ruthlessly efficient in it's execution - if not very stylish.

As this is a reboot, the movie kicks off without the traditional gunbarrel; just straight into a black and white pre-title sequence where Bond dispatches a treasonous MI6 section chief. He has no 00-status. But the titles start with a new gunbarrel (very different to the old one, and one can't quite understand why that is - only the fans would know the difference, and would be upset by the unnecessary change, which suggests they were trying to annoy the fans) which leads into the title sequence that is also very different to its predecessors. Gone are the nakes silhouettes, rather we get a playing card/gambling motif with a variety of fights that result in attackers disintegrating into hearts, spades, clubs or diamonds. During the titles we learn Bond is granted his 00 status. In effect, this brilliant sequence is what Die Another Day could have been.

In fact, Casino Royale is the reboot that GoldenEye half-heartedly attempts to be. It's long been debated as to whether Brosnan is the same Bond as Connery, Lazenby, Moore or Dalton, and while there are little hints to suggest he is not, there is nothing definite, and some specific comments to indicate that it is the same Bond (mainly Bond's point about Judi Dench's "M" being the new "M", giving a film continuity. That, and Desmond Llewellyn of course). Craig's Bond is clearly not the same man as his predecessors, not even if you pretend that this is a prequel in the series. There is no Moneypenny, there is no "Q". The only link to the previous films is Judi Dench as "M", and she plays the part in a different manner to her time opposite Brosnan. This new "M" has been around since the cold war, and has very little time for Bond and his methods. But he is her blunt instrument to be wielded and manipulated as she sees fit.

But Bond is occasionally more resourceful than his boss realises. He knows when she manipulates him, but goes along with it anyway. He is an investigator, able to access "M"'s home and computer where other people can't. But there is no denying he is a blunt instrument. It's not just his dismissal of the question as to how he wants his martini; rather it is in the way he carries himself. In the opening sequence, post-titles, he chases after bombmaker Mollaka (played by athelete Sébastien Foucan, inventor of free running, which is used extensively in the fight); but where Mollaka jumps through small gaps with grace, Bond lumbers through fibro walls, causing destruction without forethought. But what is great about this movie is that Bond develops throughout the film, becoming more and more like the James Bond we know. By the end fight against White and his men, Bond is more cunning, thinking more about the fight. The clever quips become more frequent as the movie progresses. By the end of the movie, when he utters the words "My name's Bond, James Bond" for the first and only time in the movie (to the James Bond theme which is played complete for the first time as well), he has almost become the character we knew. It's a brilliant bit of acting and, to be fair Neil Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, a cleverly written screenplay. If I were to compare, Craig plays the part similarly to Dalton, very cool, very hard, with some spectacular dialogue and a sweet charm.

There are numerous moments in the film which, despite a developing Bond, are typically Bondian: when Mollaka throws a gun at Bond, he catches it and throws it back, smacking him in the face; and a brilliant line where Bond tells Vesper she is not his type, not because she is smart, but because she is single. Two personal little things I also like were that the strongest word Bond uses in the film is "bloody", but he makes it sound like an f-word; and Bond finally refers to Dench's "M" as ma'am. At last!

Though they are, for the first time in a long while, using Fleming's original novel as a basis. In fact the film feels a bit like Michael G Wilson had quite a hand in it. Surrounded on either side by mini adventures which show why Le Chiffre needs to gamble the poker game at Casino Royale, and Bond's hunt for Mr White, Fleming's novel is translated in the middle quite well.

Martin Campbell returns to direct the film, and he deserves considerable credit for what he has achieved. The pre-title sequence is directed brilliantly (and although this is true for most of the movie, the lighting and photography of the pre-titles deserve particular praise), and the movie itself is full of action, tempered with character moments and, rather bravely, a poker game. It's a little amazing that in a James Bond action film, Campbell decides to show people sitting down playing poker, but it is such a relief from the absurdity of the previous films, and acted and directed so well, that time doesn't seem to drag. Indeed the whole movie, despite being the longest Bond film to date, rattles along at quite a pace.

The film gives us no less than three villains - the main one being Mads Mikkelsen's Le Chiffre, a money man for a mysterious organisation that is represented by Jesper Christensen's Mr White. Le Chiffre appears to be an asthmatic who, thanks to blocked tear duct, weeps blood (this is no in Fleming's novel, but it is a very Fleming idea), while, thanks to some great acting, we see that White doesn't entirely trust Le Chiffre from the outset. The third villain is terrorist Colonel Obanno (Isaach De Bankole), who gives his money to Le Chiffre, only to be stabbed in the back - something which he intends to do to Le Chiffre. Ironically, it is Bond who saves Le Chiffre's life in a very vicious fight with Obanno in a stairwell. Mads Mikkelsen brings Le Chiffre to life in a fantastic way, playing him very much as a human being. There is a panic in Le Chiffre's eyes from the moment he tells his banker precisely how much money he has lost, to the final torture scene where he realises that Bond isn't going to give him the money he needs to save his life. It's a fantastic performance.

It's worth taking a moment to talk about the fights and stunts in general. Gone is the rubbish CGI from Die Another Day, rather we get a return to stuntmen performing real stunts. Sure, their harnesses may be digitally removed, but there's something satisfying about a stuntman smashing into a crane that a CGI figure surfing a melting glacier doesn't quite deliver. The fights have returned to the nasty fights of the 60s and 80s, with not only the fight between Obanno and Bond standing out, but also the battle between Bond and White's men at the end, which is particularly nasty, if not just for the use of a nail gun. A brilliantly staged fight between Bond and henchman Alex Dimitrios over a
knife is also interesting; not a word is uttered in the entire scene by either man, but it is one of the tensest moments in the film. The whole thing is topped off by the seven turn barrel roll of the new Aston Martin (great to see Bond driving an Aston Martin, and not just the '06 model, but also a '64 model). That said, there is one scene that is
perhaps the true icing of this gruesomely violent cake. I never thought that they would include Fleming's testicle-smashing torture scene in any of the Bond movies. It is painfully brutal on the written page, but seeing it on screen, with a naked and vulnerable Bond makes it just that little more real. It is one of the most disturbing moments
ever seen in a Bond film.

There are two Bond girls in the movie - Caterina Munroe as Solange, and Eva Green as Vesper. Munroe is very beautiful, and her part is quite brief, being virtually window dressing. Vesper, of course, is the main Bond girl, and the woman who Bond finally cares about, letting his guard down and letting her in his heart. Eva plays the part marvellously, being very caustic with Bond on their first meeting (indeed, the initial meeting between Bond and Vesper is so well played, it is one of the highlights of the film) before softening towards him, and, after their capture by Le Chiffre, falling in love with Bond, while clearly regretting something that is playing on her mind. Her final betrayal of Bond is unpredicted, and gives Craig another chance to highlight his skill at playing Bond - putting up his guard before giving into his emotions after she passes. Aside from being absolutely stunning, Vesper has one of the best moments a Bond girl can have - a true reaction at witnessing a man she is falling for brutally murder two men. Aware that her life was threatened, she is still very shaken by what has happened, and it is one of the best character moments in the film. In line with the disturbing nature of the film, Vesper's death is particularly unsettling.

Other cast members of note are Giancarlo Giannini as Bond's contact Rene Mathis - who may or may not be working against MI6 - and Jeffrey Wright as Felix Leiter. Mathis is a character of the Kerim Bey mould, easily charming, with an edge of steel, and Giannini plays him marvellously. It is great to see Leiter back again (although as this is their first meeting, again we see that this is not the same Bond from the previous twenty films), and curiously played by a black actor - not the sandy haired Texan that Fleming described. However, given that the film is a reboot, and Wright is fantastic in the part, despite not having a terribly large amount of lines, his skin colour is of little interest - this Leiter is far more engaging than at least three of his predecessors. Wright plays the part very cool; when Bond asks who will get the $150,000,000 from the gambling game, Leiter smoothly replies "Does it look like we need the money?" Bitter irony for the Americans these days, no doubt.

One of the standout elements of this film is the music. David Arnold returns to score the film, but is obviously a little more inspired to make something of it. He and Chris Cornell co-wrote the quite simply amazing theme song "You Know My Name" which returns frequently in the film as a theme. But, what Arnold does with the James Bond theme is far more clever. It doesn't feature until Bond puts on his tailored tux for the first time, when we get hints of it. From then on, everytime there is a Bondian moment, an echo of the theme is heard before absolutely brilliant end where the theme kicks in over the closing titles as Daniel Craig utters the immortal line. A lot less synthesizer and a far
grander score shows that even the crew have been invigorated by this change of pace.

A few points that need to be made:

It's interesting to see the company logos at the beginning of the film also in black and white.

The character of Villiers could have just as well been Moneypenny - this seemed an unnecessary break from tradition.

The scenary is gorgeous, as always, by Montenegro is absolutely mind blowing.

Mr White's "Organisation" is very curious.

As Bond recovers he looks a little like he has ended up in The Prisoner's Village.

It's fantastic that Bond delivers the line "the bitch is dead" - the last line of Fleming's novel.

Despite brilliant acting, Vesper seems to suddenly fall for Bond; something which even Bond comments on. I'm not sure why, but this seems just a little out of place.

What's so amazing about this film is that it shows that, after a movie that was hackneyed and cliched, Bond still has life in him. Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli deserve praise for making what must have seemed like an absolutely insane move in the Bond series. How wonderful for them that it paid off, and Casino Royale beat Die Another Day's returns. And for the first time in a few years, I am worry free when I see the words: James Bond will return.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Daniel Craig; 3. Roger Moore; 4. Sean Connery; 5. George Lazenby; 6. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Casino Royale; 4. Dr No; 5. Licence To Kill; 6. A View To A Kill; 7. Live And Let Die; 8. Thunderball; 9. For Your Eyes Only; 10. Octopussy 11. The Spy Who Loved Me; 12. Tomorrow Never Dies; 13. GoldenEye; 14. From Russia, With Love; 15. Goldfinger; 16. You Only Live Twice; 17. Moonraker; 18. The World Is Not Enough; 19. The Man With The Golden Gun; 20. Die Another Day; 21. Diamonds Are Forever

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Eva Green/Vesper; 5. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 6. Izabella Scorupco/Natalya; 7. Barbara Bach/Anya; 8. Maud Adams/Octopussy; 9. Michelle Yeoh/Wai Lin; 10. Mie Hama/Kissy; 11. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 12. Ursula Andress/Honey; 13. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 14. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 15. Lois Chiles/Holly; 16. Honor lackman/Pussy; 17. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 18. Denise Richards/Christmas; 19. Halle Berry/Jinx; 20. Britt Ekland/Mary; 21. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Jonathan Pryce/Carver; 9. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 10. Mads Mikkelsen/Le Chiffre; 11. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 12. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 13. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 14. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 15. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 16. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 17. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 18. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 19. Toby Stephens/Graves; 20. Sophie Marceau/Elektra; 21. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

Ultimate X-Men 19: Absolute Power by Aron Eli Coleite

2008-11-07T12:23:00.001-08:00

Thank God Robert Kirkman has fucked off out of this series. Clearly I'm not the only one thinking this, as Aron Eli Coleite has come on board and is quickly trying to undo as much of the damage Kirkman did to the series as he can. Jean Grey has returned, both to the school and to her normal self. She and Scott are back together and all the Phoenix stuff seems to have been forgotten about. There is a cursory mention of Nightcrawler still leading the Morlocks, but apparently he doesn't have to be there as he has returned to the X-Men as well, and seems to have completely dealt with his homophobia (that said I didn't actually mind the fact that Kurt had so much difficulty dealing with Peter's sexuality).

And once again the X-Men are playing baseball against the Academy of Tomorrow (although no Lorna! What's with that?), this time joined by newest recruit Liz Allen, who has crossed over from Spider-Man to X-Men now that she has developed powers and become the Ultimate version of Firestar. I love the fact that the Ultimate comics are all linked so closely and that this sort of thing can happen without too much hassle. Equally in this run we get to see Spider-Man, still working with Shadowcat (in her new costume) as Wolverine pops in to pay them a visit (the fact that these two are working together makes me wonder if Coleite is also attempting to fix the continuity problems Ultimate Power presented to the X-Men).

But the baseball is interrupted by the appearance of Alpha Flight, and there are a few curious things going on with these guys. Their Ultimisation (if I may coin the term) brings out some interesting twists to Marvel characters - Sasquatch is now Rahne Sinclair, while Jubilee is a member of the Flight. Gone are Box and Puck, but Shaman, Aurora and Snowbird are all in, while Guardian is going by the name Vindicator. Wolverine's assocition with Alpha Flight remains, though curiously Vindicator fails to recognise Wolverine when he calls him "Mac" suggesting that something is going on with Vindicator that may play out later (indeed this seems to be confirmed when Rogue attacks Vindicator and he is horrified that someone knows his secret).

With Alpha Flight having kidnapped Northstar, Colossus is keen to go after them, but Cyclops says no and so Colossus leaves and forms his own team of X-Men. However, here's the cool bit - Colossus, though able to turn himself into metal, does not have super strength and therefore needs a drug called Banshee to enhance his powers - Banshee giving non-mutants powers, and mutants enhanced or additional powers. It's a great concept and one that works well in the X-Men universe. When Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Angel and Rogue all join Colossus team, they take the drug and become something quite different - Angel actually changes into a bird. Cyclops goes undercover with their team, but is forced to take the drug and when he does he goes absolutely loopy, even as the rest become addicted.

And, of course, Wolverine also shows traces of the drug - except it turns out that he IS Banshee.

It's a complex plot, and ties into something that Magneto and Xavier did many years ago when they first arrived in the Savage Lands, and for that Wolverine goes straight after Xavier in retaliation for what has happened. However, it turns out that Moira MacTaggert is behind it all (and behind her is Quicksilver) and she has developed a sonic scream from taking the drug (which is a nice reference to the normal universe as the X-Man Banshee has the power of a sonic scream).

All in all, Coleite has taken the X-Men series is a very good direction, starting off with some sweeping changes, making some bold revelations (not only about Alpha Flight, but also things like Iceman's arm breaking off but him being able to regenerate it) and sowing the seeds for some interesting stories to come.

"A"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Legacy (Season Seven)

2008-11-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

A young man is found murdered after sending an insulting video insinuating that two girls in his class were lesbians. This, however, came after he was beaten in response to causing one of the girls to lose her prom date. An exclusive school, Major Case are called in and Goren is immediately curious about the teacher who found the victim - the mother of the girl who missed out on the prom. After questioning the second girl in the supposed lesbian tryst, they discover it was she who led the attack on the victim, but she was clearly not responsible for the murder - although the teacher Goren was interested in lied to them. With the suspects building up, the TARU techs being to question whether the cyber date the girl had for the prom actually ever existed and this leads Goren and Eames to the question of who precisely was the target in the plot.

Whereas NCIS can get away with glossy over flaws, Law & Order is not so easily blessed, and the immediate question that leaps to mind is, given that this episode deals with the death of a minor, why is it not being investigated by the Special Victims Unit? The only solution I can come up with is that Detective Biaggi, who hands the case over to Major Case, must be an SVU detective and because of the nature of the school, Major Case has specifically been asked to take the case over. Whew! Sorted that out then.

CI finally seems to be getting back up onto its feet, with another very entertaining CI case in which Goren is Goren, Eames is Eames, no mention is made of the problems they had and Goren actually gets to do some Sherlock Holmes style observations. Notice as soon as he meets the teacher who found the body he is asking them to turn around so he can see the paint chips on her sleeve. It's so good to have the old Goren back. Now if only he'd just lose that stupid beard. Sadly Eames doesn't get any sarcastic quips to throw at anybody. Ross, on the other hand, is becoming more and more redundant, playing the more traditional role that Deakins used to play. I have to admit I prefer it that way, as his constant questioning of his lead detectives was a bit ridiculous.

Most of the guest cast turn in quite credible performances and there is some nice ideas bouncing around in this story - note the rich black girl who pretends she's totally ghetto to impress her classmates and hide the fact she is a lesbian. John Shea makes a return to the world of Law & Order, again playing the usual rich father who has no idea of what is going on, though this time he is not the killer, which makes a change. Just doing a quick scan, and I see that this is John's fourth appearance in a Law & Order episode of some description, and his second in Criminal Intent.

This was a great episode, but perhaps the thing that made it most interesting was that the plot was quite complex and well thought out. Initially it seems to be all about a boy getting murdered as payback for sending a derogatory video to all phones, but it soon gets deeper and deeper, turning into an elitist plan to bring down the common teacher who is lowering the standards of the school that she is teaching at.

Ahh...when will those rich kids learn?

"A"

NCIS: Murder 2.0 (Season Six)

2008-11-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

On naval housing, a couple are surprised when their shower spews blood, and NCIS soon discover a corpse in the water tank, and a curious message that leads them to an online video that not only shows them the murder being committed, but also gives three important clues that, after meeting with the roommates of the deceased, leads them to a second corpse - though this time the message rather specifically targets Gibbs. A second online messages contains clues that the team believe indicate Gibbs is the next victim, but it is Ducky which provides them a solid piece of evidence. The young lady who was the roommate of the first victim, Rose - and who has also developed a crush on Gibbs - provides them with a lead in the form of the man who made their music videos; very similar in style to the videos showing the murders. He is brought in for questioning, but dies at the time Ducky predicted. Angered that someone was murdered in his custody, Gibbs has his team working overtime to find any clue as to the killer and his fourth potential killing - until he begins to wonder if that is exactly what the killer wants them to do.

It's quite nice that NCIS does a Hallowe'en episode every year. There's something just a little kooky about them, and Abby always gets the chance to be mildly more bizarre than usual, as though there is something with the moon that night. However, and in a surprise move, it is Gibbs and DiNozzo who get to take the lead - DiNozzo having been sidelined for a fair while now, including virtually all of season five. That said, though, it surprises me that when we get a character called Sam Loomis, DiNozzo makes no mention of his name - particularly when he goes out of his way to mention Psycho when they find the bloody shower.

Ducky and Palmer make a small appearance, but sadly Ducky is becoming even less important to the plots than DiNozzo is these days. However, Ducky still gets marginally more screentime than new Director Vance, who returns after having not been seen for the past two episodes. There is something clearly wrong with making the NCIS Director a regular character when they can't find enough for that person to do. Both Rocky Carroll and Lauren Holly have skipped episodes in their run, making you wonder why they bothered to add them to the titles. Why not just return to giving them Guest Starring And credits as they did with Holly early on in Season Three and Alan Dale in the first two seasons (although Dale got "With" rather than "And")?

Anyway, enough trivia. Naama Kates is the guest star who stands out this week because, obviously she is pretty hot, but also her character develops an instant crush on Gibbs, which he just ignores, pointedly giving her character his card and telling her to call him in an emergency and only if it's an emergency. It's a nice touch, and as usual there is a nice bit of redirection suggesting she might actually be the killer in this episode.

Because this is a Halloween episode, there is a slightly more horror movie aspect to it, and getting marks for originality, the killer films the murders, and then intersperses the film with frames that hint at who, where and when the next murder will take place. I do have one small gripe though - at the second murder, Gibbs gets a message that specifically is addressed to him. However, Gibbs and DiNozzo go to the murder scene immediately after meeting the murderer for the first time. So, precisely how did the murderer know to address the message to Gibbs?

It's only a minor gripe, and let's face it, NCIS is the programme you don't dig too deeply into otherwise the flaws start to show. It's glossy and it's fun, and this episode is fabulous entertainment.

"A"

Die Another Day

2008-11-06T21:00:00.000-08:00

It's been forty years since the Bond series began, fifty since the book series started, and Die Another Day is the twentieth Bond film. There's an awful lot to celebrate here; a chance to reflect on former glories, embrace what made the series so brilliant and look to the future with original and fresh ideas.

So obviously it's time to deface the iconic gunbarrel logo by having a bullet fly out of Bond's gun and into the camera.

Here's the thing about Bond films: There's a certain heightened reality in them. It's a little like a piece of cardboard. If you look at it side on, you can see all the little bumps, and you notice that it's not flat, and you may even begin to ponder just how those bumps got there. But if you look at if from above, you don't notice the bumps, and so it's just a piece of cardboard, no problem. If that cardboard is a movie, and you look at it from the side, you'd better hope there are no bumps. The Dark Knight, for instance, encourages you to look at the side - gritty realism - and then puts in a massive bump when it expects you to believe that a bullet impact can be used to get a fingerprint off said bullet. Certain movies need to be viewed from above, and the Bond series is one of them. The gunbarrel sequence, if you think too much about it, doesn't make sense. If you just watch it, it's bloody cool. Bond shoots some guy who is targeting him, and the blood rolls down the gunbarrel. Nasty. However, that bullet says, "look at this from the side". And you start to wonder. Did Bond actually shoot a bullet straight down the barrel of someone else's gun? That's a pretty hard shot to pull off...So why does the blood fall from above? Surely you wouldn't see the blood because it entered the dude from the barrel of his gun...actually wouldn't there already be a bullet in the barrel? Maybe it should've exploded in blood...and what's with those little white dots before we see Bond anyway??

The really sad thing is, that David Arnold has got the idea. His gunbarrel music embraces the icon and gives us back the traditional sequence of the Bond theme, but updates it with a bit of synth over the top of his orchestra. It's his best gunbarrel yet. Sadly the rest of Arnold's score has flashes of brilliance, particularly the Havana scene, but most of the time is just the same old, same old.

The funny thing is, GoldenEye actually took exactly the right approach. Witness the gunbarrel - the same as it used to be, except now rendered in 3D CGI, and with a moving reflection on the barrel. Kleinman got it bang on in GoldenEye - embrace the icon, update with reverence.

And then we get the pre-title sequence. I'm still not sure about the idea of Bond surfing, but it's nice to see that there are still some fresh and original ideas out there that the series can embrace. In fact, the entire pre-title sequence is just absolutely brilliant; easily the best of any of the Brosnan films, and possibly the best since...well, since The Living Dayligts. Will Yun Lee is fantastic as Colonel Tan-Sun Moon (and isn't that a clever homage to Robert Markham's novel Colonel Sun?), Rick Yune is nice and moody as Zao - but what a clever idea to have his face shredded and embedded with diamonds? - while Kenneth Tsang brings a wonderful dignity to General Moon. Bond is smooth and efficient in performing his mission, and the hovercraft chase is tense and exciting, ending with one of the best scenes of Bond getting out of a difficult position; even getting to deliver a clever, witty line. After watching this sequence, I was completely forgiving of the gunbarrel.

Then I saw the title sequence. For years the titles have been iconographic, with lurid images of beautiful women in silhouette, dancing and moving around absract elements of the film we are about to see. This time, the sequence shows Bond being tortured for fourteen months, all somewhat curiously edited, with scorpions and...err...women made of smoke, fire ane electricity. So...gritty realism...interspersed with the ice becoming a naked woman. Once again the audience is led to look at the cardboard one way, while delivering something that should be seen from the other.

And then there's Madonna's song. I know that it's great to hear on the dance floor at a nightclub, and it's cool to dance to, but it is simply not a Bond theme, and is absolutely apalling against the titles. And the really, really terrible thing about this song is it is used no less than three times in the movie, each a different mix; the titles, at the ice hotel and finally over the end credits. And if you thought it was bad to start with, each mix is progressively worse than its predecessor. But hold on, that's not all. No, as part of the deal, Madonna also has to appear in the film as a lesbian fencing instructor. Mix this in with Neil Purvis and Robert Wade's usual coarse rather than clever dialogue and you can imagine how the scene comes off.

The movie uses elements of all previous Bond films, apparently as a homage to them. In some cases it works very well, appearing as the homage it is intended - notably, Jinx wearing the orange version of Honey's bikini as she comes out of the water; Gustav Graves parachuting to Earth with a Union Jack parachute; and Bond and Jinx escaping the cargo plane they are on by getting in a vehicle which falls out of the plane (Dr No, The Spy Who Loved Me and The Living Daylights respectively). However, when it doesn't work well, it seems as though the series has exhausted its ideas and is just recycling the old ones (so much for fresh and original ideas). The worst of these is the diamond satellite laser, which is less a homage to Diamonds Are Forever and more just a villain using a former villain's idea. Blofeld should sue for breach of copyright.

However, this could have been the best movie ever made and it would still have been ordinary because, at the end of the day, Pierce Brosnan is giving a performance in this movie the same way that Sean Connery gave one in Diamonds Are Forever. Brosnan is bored out of his mind, and clearly left the set to go and count his money. Letting Bond have long hair and a beard just makes Brosnan look laughable rather than beaten down, and Bond is at his sexist worse in this film, virtually raping Miranda Frost, telling her she likes it. In Havana, Bond becomes a complete hypocrite by smoking a cigar (what happened to it being a filthy habit?) and then, quite literally, sees Jinx and thinks to himself "I'm bored - I'll shag that chick". There is no other reason for him to talk to her - or are we supposed to believe that Bond is desperate for some after so long in prison? And once again we are back to the cardboard, as Bond finds himself stuck in an MI6 hospital and there he is able to slow his heart til it stops...as you do. Once achieved he electrocutes his doctor and escapes, while the nurse, despite the fact that her collegue has been badly injured, sighs longingly at the bearded Bond. One can only wonder what was going through director Lee Tamahori's mind.

That said there is a wonderful moment when Bond picks up the book that inspired Fleming to name his leading man, and then later adopts ornithologist as a cover story. It's a very nice nod to Fleming, and it's a same there isn't more of it.

Halle Berry looks hot in the entire film, but is pretty ordinary as the character Jinx Jordan (or Jacinta Johnson, or something...it's never really made clear). Sadly, Rosamund Pike turns in a better performance as Miranda Frost, but she seems just a little overwhelmed by the entire experience.

Toby Stephens is really good as Gustav Graves, the villain that Will Yun Lee becomes (although I still can't help wishing Lee had remained the villain throughout), getting the chance to show a man who has a real chip on his shoulder. Sadly, though, the character is ill thought out. In the pre-titles, Moon is really nothing more than an arms dealer, using his military status as cover. However, by the end of the film, Graves is a patriot, using the Icarus satellite to destroy the minefield between the two Koreas. However, villain motivation has never been Purvis and Wade's strong suit. As soon as Graves puts on the Iron Man costume to control the Icarus satellite, Stephens clearly lacks confidence in what he's supposed to be doing, and as such he starts to go as over the top as possible. At one point in grabs two parachutes and throws one away so only he can escape, leaving Bond stranded - except as far as he knows, Miranda Frost is still alive at this point, so wouldn't he have needed one for her?

Rick Yune turns up again as Zao, of course, but this time he has had some sort of genetic alteration (hello magical world of fantasy) which has turned him into a bald albino with diamonds in his face. Looks very cool, and is played very well, but, of course, makes no sense if you think gaobu it too deeply.

The regular cast is back - Dench as wonderful as "M" as always, although quite why she has no confidence in Bond at the beginning of the movie is a little bizarre. Colin Salmon returns as Robinson, and gets a nice little moment in a VR simulation when he and Bond try to take down the terrorists who have invaded MI6. John Cleese is infinitely better in this film as the new "Q", and gets to deliver the best line of the movie (Bond tells "Q" he's smarter than he looks, to which "Q" replies "Better than looking smarter than you are"). Sadly no Tanner again, and Michael Madsen turns up as some sort of NSA director, but he does little except bitch throughout the entire movie and complain about the English. Meanwhile, Samantha Bond returns as Moneypenny, and interestingly doesn't techincally meet Bond in the film - something that hasn't happened since Licence To Kill.

One of the biggest problems with Die Another Day is that the theme of the movie is "looks cool, but is pretty stupid if you think about it". The gunbarrel, the VR fight sequence (what's the point?), the fencing scene at Blades (both of which is a great reference to the novel Moonraker - and incidentally, Miranda Frost was going to be named Gala Brand after the girl in the same book, but it was changed just prior to filming - but one finds it difficult to believe that two people could attack each other with swords, causing physical violence, without any sort of police involvement) all look great but are not really well thought out. The worst offender, though, is the invisible car. So the technology is possible (although apparently it wouldn't be anywhere near as effective as the movie suggests), but surely this means from this point on, Bond just has to drive his invisible car around rather than get somewhere stealthily? Why bother with the HALO style jump into Korea? Why not just drive the invisible car?

The other big problem with this movie is that it's not just ordinary throughout; there are some absolute gems coupled with so much rubbish. For all the bad points I've listed, you've got things like the pre-titles, the filming of Iceland (which is gorgeous), the ice hotel (fantastic setting) and a car chase which is just phenomenal - not only because its on ice, but because it actually goes into the ice hotel.

Finally a few more gripes about the movie. The CGI surfing scene is absolutely unforgivable. One of the best things about Bond is that all the stunts are done for real, even if just by the stuntment. They still do it. If you can't do it for real, don't do it all. The CGI looks absolutely crap.Where do all the guests go after the Icarus presentation? They just disappear.Mr Kil is really Gabor in everything but name.The Matrix style editing doesn't suit a James Bond movie - the fact that the editor actually says in a doco "I wanted to make it look more like the Matrix" should have him shot. It's James Bond, not the Matrix.

And speaking of editing...
There are three scenes at the end of the movie.

Scene 1 - Bond and Jinx desperately trying to escape in a helicopter, ending with Bond turning to her and saying "What was that about us both going down together?" Terrible line, but...

Scene 2 - Moneypenny using the VR to live out a fantasty of getting it on with Bond.

Scene 3 - A final scene with Bond and Jinx fooling around in the stolen diamonds with what is easily just the most ordinary dialogue in the entire film.

Now, if anyone had any sense at all, they would have ended the movie with scene 1, put scene 2 as a post-credits scene, just to give people a bit of a chuckle, and ignored scene 3 completely. It would have been a much better decision all round, but, like the rest of the movie, no one seems to have given anything much thought.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby; 5. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Dr No; 4. Licence To Kill; 5. A View To A Kill; 6. Live And Let Die; 7. Thunderball; 8. For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy 10. The Spy Who Loved Me; 11. Tomorrow Never Dies; 12. GoldenEye; 13. From Russia, With Love; 14. Goldfinger; 15. You Only Live Twice; 16. Moonraker; 17. The World Is Not Enough; 18. The Man With The Golden Gun; 19. Die Another Day; 20. Diamonds Are Forever

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 5. Izabella Scorupco/Natalya; 6. Barbara Bach/Anya; 7. Maud Adams/Octopussy 8. Michelle Yeoh/Wai Lin; 9. Mie Hama/Kissy; 10. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 11. Ursula Andress/Honey; 12. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 13. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 14. Lois Chiles/Holly; 15. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 16. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 17. Denise Richards/Christmas; 18. Halle Berry/Jinx; 19. Britt Ekland/Mary; 20. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Jonathan Pryce/Carver; 9. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 10. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 11. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 12. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 13. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 14. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 15. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 16. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 17. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 18. Toby Stephens/Graves; 19. Sophie Marceau/Elektra; 20. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

By Royal Command

2008-11-02T07:12:00.000-08:00

When I first heard about the Young Bond novels, I thought to myself "This is a bad idea. Are we now expected to believe that the man who saves the world at least once a year, was actually doing the same thing when he was a child?" My low expectations were met by SilverFin which was a pretty bloody awful book. Blood Fever was a bit of an improvement. Double Or Die was actually quite entertaining, and Hurricane Gold was really good. So with the books getting better and better, would By Royal Command continue the trend, or buck it?

Happily it continued it with aplomb! By Royal Command is the best of the Young Bond novels, and gives a very satisfying explanation for why Bond was involved with so many of those other adventures. For anyone who knows their Bond (ooo!! pick me!!) they know that Bond's time at Eton was cut short after an incident with a maid. Charlie Higson has remained faithful to what Fleming wanted and Bond does leave Eton after an incident with a maid, but obviously things are quite what they appear to be.

I love the characterisation of Bond in this novel. He is a young man, but he is starting to develop the streak that we saw in Fleming's novels, and which was hinted at in Hurricane Gold. Bond is a tough nut, more inclined to be active than actually think about his situation, but not a stupid lad. He is cunning and quick and it's obvious why MI6 take an interest in him at a young age (although there are more obvious reasons as well).

Roan Power is the maid with whom Bond falls in love, although the relationship is a bit odd, with Bond being fascinated with her for a lot of the book before ultimately declaring his love for her at the end. It's a bit of a leap, but I suppose he is still a lad and has a boy's way of looking at things. All the rest of Bond's crew turn up briefly in the Eton segment of the book, but they don't spend a lot of the time on page. In fact, with Bond leaving Eton at the end, one feels that there were a lot of loose ends he left behind at his old school.

The story is effectively three mini-adventures, and everything comes together nicely, with characters from all four of the previous novels returning to tie the five novels together in a very neat package. What started out as Harry Potter meets James Bond, has become something entirely of its own and deserving of much praise.

"A"

The World Is Not Enough

2008-11-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

I get the feeling that the script meeting for The World Is Not Enough went something along these lines:

Neil Purvis (story): Errr...is Michael awake?

Michael G Wilson (producer): Yes I'm bloody awake.

NP: Have we actually filmed anything for this movie yet?

MGW: Nope.

Robert Wade (story): Any locations?

MGW: Errr...I like Spain.

RW: Spain sucks!

MGW: I *like* Spain.

NP: Pretitle sequence in Spain. Do we have a director yet?

MGW: Wha? No. Mmm...zzzzz

RW: I think he's asleep now.

NP: Well...You know what would be funny?

RW: What?

NP: If someone was called Christmas. Cause then, if you had sex with them twice, you could say...

RW: Christmas only comes once a year! That's brilliant!!!!

NP: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

RW: Well, he's asleep so let's ask him quietly.

NP: Errr...Michael, would you disagree with us having the Bond girl called Christmas and ending on that cracking joke?

MGW: ZZzzzz.

RW: He didn't disagree.

NP: Man, I hope they get that cheerleader chick from Wild Things. She has great tits.

RW: Wet t-shirt..mmm...

Somewhere along the lines, The World Is Not Enough lost its way. Like Elliot Carver, chief villainess Elektra King has very bizarre motivations in this movie. Initially she wants to get revenge on "M" and her father by killing them because they didn't pay the ransome to free her from Claude Renard, who promptly shagged her. Or rather, she seduced and shagged him. Now she has inherited her father's millions and is building a pipeline that "M" informs us the Western World is dependent on. So when Elektra talks about how soon everything will be hers instead of her late father's one wonders exactly what she is talking about...after all, she already has it all. Then somewhere around the middle of the movie, King wants to nuke Istanbul because if she does, all the pipelines will be soured and everyone will have to use hers...except, "M"'s already said the Western world is dependent on hers anyway. So...why is she blowing up Istanbul again?

The pretitle sequence of this movie is the longest in the series history, primarily because all the stuff in Bilbao, Spain, was deemed to be not eventful enough and it's relatively short. Consequently, we get the boat race on the Thames to lead us into the title sequence (and let's make no bones about this, that boat chase is absolutely brilliant; featuring Bond launching himself out of MI6 - yes, the actual building - HQ, onto the Thames and then through the streets of London before Bond making a spectacular boat leap, as he jumps onto a hot air balloon launching). From this intriguing pre-title sequence we go into the title sequence, and this pretty much sets up the tone of the movie - meaningful, but ugly. The theme song is great (though in some ways it's just a retread of Surrender; Arnold finally being given the all clear to write the main song - and I'm still not convinced about David's gunbarrels), but the title sequence is just a mess of naked girls made out of oil spills, which fits the movie, but is not pretty to look at. From here on, most of the movie gets part of the element right, but the rest dead wrong.

Look at the principal characters. Finally, the right decision was made and Valentin Zukovsky was brought back. Robbie Coltrane is again in fine form, stealing every scene he graces. Sadly at the end of the movie he is shot dead. One out of two.

Elektra King is a beautiful woman who has a personal vendetta against MI6, and seduces Bond before betraying him. However, after a while it's pretty clear her motivations are completely all over the shop and no one actually knows what she is trying to achieve. She's also lacks any kind of fun at all. One out of two.

Claude Renard is basically a recycled Stamper, though this time his inability to feel pain is made explicit. He doesn't really do much except act as King's primary henchman, but cast in the part is the highly talented and now completely wasted Robert Carlslye. One out of two.

Denise Richards is one of the hottest actresses to walk the planet, and looks absolutely hot as in short shorts and a singlet. Dr Christmas Jones (dear God, the above conversation can be the only reason they chose that name) is completely unbelievable as a nuclear physicist because she dresses like Lara Croft and looks like she is barely past her teens. One out of two.

You can't help but begin to wonder what the point was.

Pierce Brosnan, meanwhile, continues to deliver us a sulky, adolsecent James Bond who delivers double entendres like they are the only thing he has the ability to say (his quip towards Maria Grazia Cuccinotti is greeted with the same look the audience is giving) and has now added irritation to his vocabulary - though this is portrayed by hissing. Brosnan's performance is pretty awful in this film all round; when he is sarcastic to Elektra it's difficult to imagine what was going through his mind. To be fair, the dialogue generally wavers between witty and juvenile. And Bond still calls "M" "M"!!!! In fact, even bloody Robinson is doing it! Show some respect peoples!

Judi Dench is actually the shining light of this movie, given considerably more to do than usual as her past is tied into Elektra's, she gets the chance to be involved in the plot like never before, and even needs rescuing by Bond towards the end (although after the chilling moment of Bond brutally killing Elektra, as he leans over to kiss her forehead, clearly "M" is thinking what we all are - he's not seriously going to shag her corpse is he?). She even gets the chance to deliver an almight smack to Elektra's face - and didn't we all cheer?

Desmond Llewellyn makes what was to be his swansong performance, killed in a car crash a few weeks after the release of the movie. His final scene is actually very sad when viewed in this context, and given he is introducing Bond to his successor, and his final line is "always have an escape route handy"; I'll bet every audience member was thinking the same thing when Bond asked him "you aren't retiring soon, are you Q?". It's actually quite a moving moment, and dear Desmond deserves a salute for the amazing character he created that will go down, not only in the Bond history books, but in the annals of cinema itself.

To complement this moving and tragic farewell, predictably we get a performance from John Cleese as "Q"'s assistant which is cringingly awful. You can't help but sit there just praying that he stops talking.

So the good bits:

The action sequences are great - particularly the boat chase, the paraski chase and the BMW vs helicopters scene. Absolutely marvellous.

MI6 HQ is quite exciting to see and it's brilliant to see not only Robinson, but the return of Tanner. The MI6 staff is finally becoming a nicely regular and effective crew.

In the Scottish HQ it's nice to see a portrait of Bernard Lee on the walls.And equally interesting to see that one of the 00 agents is a woman.

Moneypenny has some entertaining dialogue, particularly in reference to Dr Molly Warmflash's sudden approval of Bond's health status.

There is an interestingly oblique reference to Tracy's death when Bond avoids answering the question of whether he has lost someone close to him.

The James Bond Will Return tag is featured directly before the credits this time, and kicks off a fantastic version of the James Bond theme to close the movie. You almost can't help but leave excited...almost.

But...

Bond wearing glasses seems wrong, regardless of the fact that they are a gadget.

What was the point of the para-ski attack? If Elektra is the mastermind, and Bond only joined her at the last minute to go skiing, why was an attack even considered? Or are we expected to believe that Davidov overheard Bond say he would go skiing with Elektra, and in the space of an hour, called Arkhov, organised troops and equipment and then sent them to the slopes with strict instructions to kill Bond, but avoid Elektra if you could with those machine guns you're using...

David Arnold's music is usually very good, but at times it actually sounds like he's spoofing Austin Powers...which given the music there was specifically composed to spoof John Barry's James Bond scores...

The dialogue in the final few scenes - both in MI6 and with Bond and Christmas is embarrassingly terrible.

Brosnan's Bond movies are struggling to make an impact, mostly due to dodgy scripts it must be said, but TWINE actually sets the Bond movies back considerably. This is one of the worst films the series has seen.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby; 5. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Jonathan Pryce/Carver; 9. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 10. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 11. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 12. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 13. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 14. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 15. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 16. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 17. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 18. Sophie Marceau/Elektra; 19. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Ten Count (Season 7)

2008-11-02T07:01:00.001-08:00

Logan is called in to the shooting of an old friend from Staten Island, the younger brother of whom he helped control his violent impulses. When Wheeler joins him, the two start to look into the victim's life, only to discover that there were some very odd things happening, including being approached to throw the game, although this turns out to be little more than incentive for his opponent. However, when ten thousand dollars is found in the victim's room, and the knowledge that he was about to join a promoter which was known only to his younger brother's girlfriend, Wheeler suspects that an illicit affair was going on, and the detectives realise that a lot of secrets were being kept from everybody in the house. At the center of the investigation, though, is the victim's manager who is keen to use the death as an opportunity for his younger brother to go far.

There are times when stories involving detectives pasts can work quite well, and in this week's episode of Criminal Intent, we actually get a good example of this. Logan's younger self is let loose a few times in this episode as he finds his motivations questioned not only by Ross, but also by those on the street. In fact, if Goren's method of getting a person to confess is to psycholigically force it out of them, Logan seems to rile them the wrong way and get them to blunder that way. In this instance, riling up his apprentice so much he goes and beats the real villain to death. Not a masterstroke of Logan's planning, but it's in the way that you do it.

The cast is quite good, although Tony Roberts turns up as a red herring for a whole three pointless scenes. Miguel Ferrer, on the other hand, gives a very good performance, and there are a few questions left unanswered at the end that, thanks to Ferrer's performance, make you wonder; the girlfriend said that the trainer had tried to rape her, but the trainer (Ferrer) seemed pretty convincing that he didn't, and he certainly was fairly honest (stopping short of confessing) about most other things...so did the girlfriend lie? Even Logan's apprentice seems to think so.

So with good performances, an interesting murder mystery and some nice elements of Logan's past surfacing naturally and acceptably, this week Criminal Intent was a winner.

"A"

NCIS: Nine Lives (Season Six)

2008-11-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

The torture and murder of a marine leads the team to trying to track down the man's sergeant while he was on duty - a man with a particularly violent history and who is on medication. Thanks to the medication he was taking, McGee is able to locate a specific address for the man, but to the surprise of Gibbs and DiNozzo when they burst in, they find their target in the protective custody of Fornell. Fornell tells them that his man is the key witness in a murder trial, and McGee does some more digging and uncovers the name of the person on trial - a big drug lord who has been a target of Fornell's ever since Fornell was a junior FBI agent. Fornell believes that he can alibi his witness regardless, but is embarrassed when McGee is able to pinpoint the witness at the home of another marine. When they get there, the marine is dead, and the witness is fleeing, though he vehemently denies the murder. Meanwhile, Abby is extremely puzzled by a similar mould on the ropes at both crime scenes.

You can't help but love an episode of NCIS where Fornell turns up. The anti-Gibbs in so many ways, it's great to see them working together, but it's just as interesting to see them working against each other. It's just a shame that Tony's FBI nemesis, Sacks, didn't turn up in this episode. Joe Spano seems to enjoy playing Fornell, and this episode gives us a little bit more to learn about the character; desperate as he is to catch a criminal that he once felt was not a true threat. Fornell is not perfect and just as he makes mistakes in the past, he makes another this time round.

Gibbs, on the other hand, does appear to be perfect and does what Fornell failed to achieve, although to be fair he does approach this case with a head that is a lot clearer than Fornell's. The idea of torturing victims is a particularly repellent one, and it is this more than anything else that seems to drive Gibbs in his investigation. If they'd just shot their targets in the head, Gibbs would probably never have bothered to push Fornell and his witness as far as he does, but such is what you learn when you cross NCIS.

This is the second week in a row where new Director Vance hasn't put in an appearance, and that's a little disappointing as Vance was turning into an interesting character. But this week was the gratuitious Forenll episode, so next week let's get back to the episodes that are forging this series into a new and interesting direction.

"B+"

Doctor Who: Ghosts Of India (BBC Books)

2008-11-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

I once had this idea to submit a historical story to the BBC in which the Doctor would meet Jesus Christ. I was going to be absolutely fair about it, and portray him as a wonderfully nice and gentle person, but not make a statement one way or the other as to whether he was the son of God or not. Ultimately I realised two things - a) it was a pretty dodgy topic and I should leave well enough alone, and b) I couldn't really write very well. Hopefully I have overcome b), but a) still prevents me to this day of realising my story.

Mark Morris, rather better known in Doctor Who circles for his more horror based stories, has thrown my hesitance to the wind, and written Ghosts Of India which features Mahatma Gandhi. I think that the best thing about this book is that I am learning things about Gandhi that I never knew before - not least the fact that Mahatma isn't actually his first name. Morris writes Gandhi in the way that most people imagine he would be, a gentle soul with a passionate belief and a firm will. That said, though, even though I don't have a problem with this book and Gandhi's depiction, I imagine that there are some people out there who would feel that Morris has crossed a line he shouldn't have.

The other thing of note, of course, is that this is the first novel adventure of Donna Noble. Donna's actually a character that's pretty easy to nail as she has a very distinctive vocal mannerism that's easy to write for. However, it's easy to write Donna as a brash, mouthy woman - in fact the character that we see in The Runaway Bride - rather than the character that develops in the fourth series. I suppose that Morris has the advantage of saying that the book actually takes place wherever we feel that the version of Donna should fit, but this is a bit of a copout. Morris' Donna is mouthy and loud, but hasn't really developed terribly much, so one can only hope he was planning this for an early series placement.

The rest of the characters play out nicely, but most are just cyphers - the bluff old English army chap, his daughter who is more in tune with the natives, etc etc. It's a good story, not too taxing and worth a read.

"B"

Tomorrow Never Dies

2008-10-27T03:33:00.001-07:00

OK, all the negative stuff out of the way in the first two paragraphs. Firstly, the theme song. The most bland, boring piece of music ever to grace the lucious titles of a Bond movie (and don't get me wrong - aside from some bizarre imagery, thanks to the script - the title sequence is fantastic). Just a shame that the theme song is so absolutely boring. And you know what the saddest part about all of this is? David Arnold was under the mistaken belief that the song he composed would be the theme, and used it throughout the score. It finally turns up in the closing credits and, guess what! It's about three hundred times better than Alanis Morisette's dirge at he beginning. Oh, why couldn't the producers have just stuck with the original plan?

Neil Purvis and Robert Wade have a lot to answer for in this movie, actually. Any faults can pretty much be blamed completely on them. There are a lot of problems with the script with things occurring that have to be explained in a throwaway line. General Chang is the best example. Is on screen for thirty seconds, but in the next two minutes we discover he is actually villain Elliot Carver's accomplice. Quite whatever happens to him, we'll never know. Lines have been cut left, right and center (don't believe me? Read the novelisation - it's based on an earlier draft and most of the stuff is still in that) and so the diamonds around the world that appear in the title sequence don't seem to have any point - but there was a line where Carver described his satellites as diamonds orbiting the planet. At one point Carver has a press conference to announce the completion of his global satellite network. A few scenes later, Gupta orders a satellite to be sent to the launch pad...why precisely? Aren't they all already in position? And can Stamper actually feel pain at all? He's stabbed several times in the movie and doesn't even seem put out. But the killer is Carver's plan - to start World War 3 in return for exclusive broadcasting rights in China for the next century. Now, there have been a lot of mad villain schemes in the past - blowing up Silicon Valley to increase the value of your hoarded micro chips; starting World War 3 to get money, or start a new world in space, or underwater; holding the world ransome with nuclear weapons. But in all these situations, if the plan fails, they lose everything. If the plan succeeds said villain is made for life. With Carver's plan, if it succeeds...well, it might still go all pear shaped because China might lose World War 3. Which begs the question...what's the bloody point?

But all that aside, this is a very entertaining film. Roger Spottiswoode may have had big problems with the cast, but it certainly doesn't show. Virtually the entire cast shine in this movie and very competently directed by Spottiswoode. And it is exquisitely shot and lit. Very, very beautiful. Curiously there are some slow-motion scenes in the movie which rather add nicely to the whole feel of the film. David Arnold scores the movie this time round, and it is the single best score since The Living Daylights. Arnold knows exactly what the Bond sound is, and adding some techno over the top brings it right up to date. I'm not entirely certain about his decision to use a different part of the James Bond theme for the gunbarrel, but thank god it sounds so much better that that rubbish Eric Serra had in GoldenEye. And, as I mentioned earlier, the closing theme, sung by kd Lang is absolutely brilliant. I notice, sadly, that Cubby Broccoli has passed away, getting an "In memory of" credit at the end, and the opening credits now read "Albert R Broccoli's Eon Productions presents" which is nice.

One thing in everyone's favour is that, despite a poor story, the actual screenplay, handled by writer Bruce Fierstein (apparently the man who "Bond"s up the screenplays), has some sparkling dialogue. There are som brilliant lines in the film, and everyone benefits from them.

Pierce Brosnan is still not entirely comfortable as Bond, although he is much better this time round despite actually looking older, bizarrely. He is still labouring under the delusion that "stoic" means "show no emotion" and as a result there are some rather boring moments from Bond himself. His flirting with Moneypenny is awkward and Brosnan plays Bond as the cool kid in the playground which is great for the BMW 750 car chase (which is an amazing moment in the film) where Bond is clearly having a ball, but no so great when Bond appears like a sulky kid if he doesn't get his own way. That said there are some brilliant Bond moments in the film - a great spy moment when he kills someone and then tricks Stamper into believing that it is Bond himself who has been murdered, and most impressively of all is the moment where Bond is, arguably, at his most ruthless, coldly killing Dr Kaufman. He is also a hypocrite, though, as he is suddenly against people smoking. Nice change of heart, Mr Bond. Also rather nice, is seeing Bond back in his naval uniform.

Michelle Yeoh is the chief Bond girl Wai Lin, and she is fantastic, although it appears there is a clause in her contract where she gets to have a martial arts fight at some point - though that point is great, and its worth sitting there for it. She plays her part very straight, clearly disinterested in Bond, although as the film progresses there is obviously not only some attraction but some admiration, and Yeoh hits her part just right, giving a few well placed smiles that indicate the feelings Wai Lin is developing for Bond. Brosnan also handles these scenes very nicely, and the relationship between the two is very believable. Contrary to the various reports and expectations, Teri Hatcher, fresh from her success in Lois & Clark, plays a very nice role as Paris Carver, the villain's wife and Bond's former lover, as it transpires. It's not a standout role, but it is played very well, and is very nice.

Back at home base, Judi Dench and Samantha Bond have settled very well into their roles, with a much better chemistry between the two than either share with Brosnan - although both vocally and physically, Bond looks a lot like a younger Dench, which is a little odd. Sadly there is no Tanner this time round, so Colin Salmon plays Charles Robinson who is (contrary to what everybody seems to claim) "M"'s senior analyst. It's a small role, but played very well, and a nice addition to the Bond films. Desmond Llewellyn returns, of course, and is a lot more competent in this movie, with some wonderful moments, and a classic "oh, grow up 007" which is perfectly timed and delivered. Julian Fellowes now plays the Minister of Defence, who is presumably not Freddie Gray, but it is Geoffrey Palmer who gets to tower as Admiral Roebuck, head of the Navy. He and Dench go head to head, and the chemistry between the two is pretty obvious, and their sparky relationship is fantastic. The best line in the film, though, has to be Roebuck telling "M": "With respect, "M", sometimes I don't think you have the balls for this job," to which she replies "Perhaps, but the advantage is I don't have to think with them all the time."

Oh, yeah, there is another negative. Joe Don Baker returns as Jack Wade. Dear God, thank heavens he is only in it for two brief, consecutive, scenes.

Back to the good stuff, and we can look at the villains, led by Jonathan Pryce as Elliot Carver. Clearly, given Carver's plot, there is a bit of difficulty in trying to find a good motivation for Carver, and so Pryce just plays him as a very over-the-top villain, and it actually works. Pryce lights up the screen when he appears and again has some fantastic lines and moments. He actually comes across as quite scary when he openly mocks Wai Lin's martial arts, and callously kills one of his offsiders when Bond uses said offsider as a hostage. There is also a great moment on Carver and Bond's first meeting when Bond subtlely hints that he knows he was behind the sinking of the Devonshire - it's a little dialogue exchange that is very reminiscient of the exchange between Bond and Zorin, when Bond hints that he knows his involvement with the murder of Aubergine.

He is backed up by a group of henchman, ranging from Ricky Jay as cyber terrorist Henry Gupta (a competently played part, though nothing outstanding); Gotz Otto as Stamper, Carver's chief enforcer and apparently completely insane; and most impressively, Vincent Schiavelli as Dr Kaufman, Carver's personal assassin. Schiavelli absolutely relishes the part, making it one of the most memorable characters to ever appear in a Bond film. It's a superb part, and it's so appropriate when Bond viciously executes him.

There are fantastic performances, there is brilliant direction, lighting and photography (how beautiful does Vietnam look?), and some absolutely amazing stunts (from the pretitle sequence which is thunderingly good, to the amazing bike chase where Wai Lin and Bond are handcuffed together) Tomorrow Never Dies may not have a story that is better than GoldenEye, but it is a far more competent film.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby; 5. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 5. Izabella Scorupco/Natalya; 6. Barbara Bach/Anya; 7. Maud Adams/Octopussy 8. Michelle Yeoh/Wai Lin; 9. Mie Hama/Kissy; 10. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 11. Ursula Andress/Honey; 12. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 13. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 14. Lois Chiles/Holly; 15. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 16. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 17. Britt Ekland/Mary; 18. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Jonathan Pryce/Carver; 9. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 10. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 11. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 12. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 13. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 14. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 15. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 16. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 17. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 18. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

The X-Files

2008-10-24T07:33:00.001-07:00

I don't think there are many people out there who would disagree with me when I say that Chris Carter's finest writing was the pilot episode of "The X-Files". There are very few television programmes that nail it in the pilot episode, but "The X-Files" was one of them. And Carter did a good job of the season five finale The End, ending the programme with the agents being beaten again by the cigarette-smoking man's organisation. It seemed appropriate and it was a good way to end the series, but rather sadly, of course, the plan to end the series with a movie was written off as four more seasons were made, slowly flogging that dead horse.

But this is the story of the movie. The first one, that is, that is often mistitled "Fight The Future" because that was the tagline - although that would have been a pretty damn cool title. This was the actual end of the series, and in many ways it was probably a better ending than the somewhat downbeat season five ending - though that was great. Because, at the end of the day, the whole point of the series was that these two FBI agents were determined to stand up against the government, the Syndacite, against anyone who was going to supress the truth. And so at the very end - and you'll forgive me if I skip forward to this - when the cigarette-smoking man gives Strughold the note that reveals the X-Files had been reopened, you think: that is a good ending. That's an ending of hope. And that's appropriate for this series.

And so the movie itself. After I watched and reviewed the new movie, somewhat favourably, a good friend of mine pointed out that it was just a standard episode, and he'd been hoping for something "bigger" and on reflection I'm kind of inclined to agree with him. An X-Files movie should be BIG. It should have big concepts and big ideas and big moments. That was missing from the new movie, and despite the fact that this movie is quagmired in the boring arc that had been set up over the last couple of years, the fact is this movie has BIG moments.

There are some very stupid moments as well. The introduction of the Syndacite's leader is completely pointless, and the appearance by the Lone Gunmen is equally pointless. However, both the cigarette-smoking man and the well-manicured man are well used in this movie, and the death of the latter is actually both surprising and a little disappointing. He was turning into a really interesting character. It's also nice to see the cigarette-smoking man just lingering on the outskirts as opposed to being used as a weapon or all the boring crap that he was doing in the last few seasons. And, of course, Skinner puts in an appearance to just have his presence registered, but it does seem appropriate. So thumbs up for great performances by William B Davis, John Neville and Mitch Pileggi.

There are some fantastic moments between David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, and, of course, the two almost kiss which is a moment everyone has been waiting for - but as usual it didn't happen, though it was clear that that was what they intended to do, and so five years of sexual tension was finally climaxed without actually climax. Oh, I kill me.

Happily the torturous dialogue usually associated with a Carter script is kept to a minimum, and the direction is handled, not by a big screen pro, but by one of the X-Files usual directors - Rob Bowman. Bowman, of course, would go on to direct other stuff, but he does a more than competent job in filming this, and the climax of the movie is especially exciting.

In fact, the climax is the BIG moment that we should get. A giant spaceship crashing out of the ice under Antarctica and flying away from Mulder and Scully, who have been trying to outrun the ice collapse, and end up on top of the ship before sliding off onto the ground. It's absolutely spectacular and is preceded by some amazing underground shots of people incubating the aliens.

For an arc story this is pretty bloody good, and for an X-Files movie, this is pretty damn entertaining. It actually works much better than the most recent one, and how great it should have been for the film to end a brilliant television series.

"A-"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Vanishing Act (Season Six)

2008-10-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about The X-Files is that you could tell when David Duchovny wasn't particularly interested in the episode, mainly because he gave a very bored performance. Vincent D'Onofrio is not quite so bad as Duchovny, but quite frankly it showed this week that he was excited by the script. And, indeed, everything seemed to be amped up just a little by what was a unique and different investigation. A magician doing a stunt where he stays buried for almost a month almost dies on screen, is dug up but to the surprise of everyone he is not in the box. Instead he turns up dead in the cabinet-of-knives belonging to his mentor. Who is taken in for questioning. And then disappears. Weirded out?

The "And Special Guest Star" this week was Christopher Lloyd and despite the fact he is looking extremely old (although he was playing an old drunk) it's so great to see Lloyd back in something. He gives a brilliant performance as the mentor who appears to be framed for murder, and he has some wonderful moments, particularly when, desperate to prove the existance of an assistant, he reveals he was watching her with a teddy bear-cam because "old men have needs too".

But in this episode, Goren got the chance to show that he knew some basic magic. And D'Onfrio is clearly having the time of his life. Thanks to some dodgy swapping of episodes, we see Goren with a beard again this week, and again mention of his "betrayal" of Eames comes up, but this is clearly forgiven and forgotten as Kathryn Erbe allows Eames to be postively delighted by Goren's magical expertise. Indeed Erbe and D'Onofrio are having so much fun there are moments when you temporarily forget that they are investigating a murder.

Except that Goren gets some great Goren moments. He gets his psychological advantage over the killer, getting a confession out of him without actually having any evidence, but having solved the case beforehand. He works out the trick and finds the tunnel. The two detectives get to go following tunnels and tracks. It's just such a great opportunity to see them actually doing something that they are enjoying doing.

A brilliant episode of Criminal Intent.

"A+"

Playboy - September

2008-10-21T08:47:00.001-07:00

Variety being, as it is, the spice of life, one can only imagine that September, for Playboy, is a rather neat little pinch of oregano, bringing a great deal of flavour and just a little bit of exotic-ness (where there to be such a word) to the worlds of Playboy. Take, for example, the Cybergirls. Only one blonde among them, and as she doesn't have big boobs she doesn't really fit the Playboy mould. Stephanie Emma kicked the month off, from New York and bringing a slight Latina feel, she's in her mid-twenties and is quite pretty in a "pocket rocket" kind of way. The curiously named Elizabeth Taylor from Illinois is very, very striking, though probably enhanced. Curiously she's another in the mid-to-late twenties. Rebecca Lynn is our small breasted blonde, and the babe of the group at the tender age of ninteen. A Florida girl, you can tell she has a bit of a beach bunny feel to her. Back to the brunettes for a twenty-one year old shortie named Stephanie Strong. I like Steph as she has a very nice smile that suggests she's really having fun. Finally another twenty-one year old short brunette (although not as short as Stephanie) with Samantha Dunn. Again, quite pretty, but there's something that's a little fake about her. It's a difficult one to pick, but I'm going to put my money on Elizabeth Taylor to be CGOM. Tough choice though.

The Coeds are a little more in line with the stereotype, despite kicking off with a brunette. Corin Riggs is very pretty (love dark hair against a pale body), while Renee Reece sees our first blonde, again very pale. The tanned blonde is Christen Autumn, and finally Hayley Foxx rounds the group out. I suspect that the first three all have enhancements, while what's most tantalising about Hayley is that she never gets completely naked. That ususally means she'll become CEOM, but I am going to put my money on Christen Autumn.

As seems to be increasingly the case I didn't pick either CGOM or COEM, but the choices turned out to be not so bad. Curiously Tiffani Amber, COEM, looks a lot like the girl that Ross dated when he had very white teeth in that episode of Friends you may or may not remember. She photographs nicely and there were some nice sets for her. Jai Lynn, on the other hand, was not my choice at all, but she comes across as a little severe in her photo sets, and it was hard to find a shot of her that made it look like she was having an absolute ball.

Finally, Miss October is Kelly Carrington, and here Playboy have gone back to the standard (although again, the breasts aren't huge). Strangely, though, I found myself not being particularly disgruntled with this return to form. I guess it just goes to show that every so often it's nice to have the familiar back with us. Kelly is very attractive and also from New York. At 22 she's about average for the Playmate age, but she is a very good choice and I have to approve of Holly Madison's selection.

Although, there's an interesting question. Miss Madison and Heff have broken up, so the question is, will Holly still be in charge of the centerfolds in the magazine from this point on, or will someone else get the job? I suppose only time will tell.

The X-Files: Season Five

2008-10-21T06:38:00.000-07:00

After a very crap Season Four, I had pretty much given up on my rewatching of The X-Files, happy to alter my plan to finish at the movie by ending with Mulder appearing to have shot himself in the head. However, the release of the new movie got my little X-Phile pulsing and so I decided to go back to my original plan and get Season Five. And, surprise, surprise, I was actually not disappointed.

Mostly, anyway. There are five episodes which, quite frankly, drag the season down a little, and perhaps to no one's surprise they are all "arc" episodes. Most of the time you have to sit through the torturous dialogue of Chris Carter, and these episodes tend to begin with a voice over by either Mulder or Scully, both sounding as bored as the audience are. Redux, Redux Part II, Patient X and The Red And The Black all deal with the standard alien abduction, is it all real, government conspiracy, blah, blah, blah. The latter two see the return of the ugliest man on television, Brian Thompson, who clearly has some sort of hold over Carter. I can see Carter now - "Hmmm...Brian's told me I have to keep him in television or he'll tell everyone I'm gay. He's so ugly no one will ever employ him...so I guess I'd better make sure we have an episode in the season that features the return of the Alien Bounty Hunter...it's just...he's sooo ugly..."

Of course, the more perceptive of you will note that I said five episodes, but I've only actually mentioned four. The fifth episode is Emily and it is a serious disappointment because it is the second half of a story, the first half actually having nothing to do with the arc, but is a really, really good episode. Christmas Carol is a Scully episode where she goes home for Christmas and runs into a girl she is convinced is the daughter of her dead sister. The cliffhanger reveals that she was way off base, as her family predicted, as the mother of the child is actually...herself. Absolutely brilliant cliffhanger, completely destroyed in the next episode by the return of Mulder and the "arc". It's completely depressing to see such an interesting episode die so completely.

And this segues quite nicely into the revelation that there are some episodes in this season that don't necessarily feature either Scully or Mulder, althogh generally when it is a Scully only episode, Mulder has a small scene somewhere in the episode. But enough detail, onto the episodes.

After the Redux two parter, Unusual Suspects is a flashback episode introducing the Lone Gunmen and revealing the spark of interest Mulder has in the paranormal. It gives Steven Williams/Mr X a chance to make a reappearance and also features a cameo appearance by Richard Belzer as Detective John Munch in one of the many television programmes he played the part (presumably this episode also sparked his interest in government conspiracies). It's a great little story that gives Bruce Harwood/Byers the chance to shine.

Detour is a classic episode that sees the kooky relationship between Scully and Mulder highlighted, as the agents investigate what appears to be the Mothman. Very much in the tradition of Ice, it's a great traditional episode.

The Post-Modern Prometheus is an experimental episode that is shot entirely in black and white and is (naturally) a homage to Frankenstein. Although written and directed by Chris Carter, the episode doesn't have quite the same terrible dialogue, and certainly the fact that David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson seem interested in the script, brings it to life somewhat.

Kitsunegari, following the Emily two parter, is a sequel to the episode "Pusher" and sees the return of Robert Patrick Modell as he tries to save someone who has the same abilities he has; but of course Mulder can see straight through him. A bit ordinary, it's still quite entertaining to watch.

Schizogeny is a curious beast of an episode. From the outset it appears to be about a group of kids who are being molested by their parents, but this turns into them having the memories implanted by their therapist. She, of course, can control the Earth. It's a good episode that is worth the watch.

Chinga is another Mulder-lite episode (although Duchovny's appearances are hilarious) about Scully stumbling upon a murderous doll. The story is written by Stephen King and so it's not so surprising that there is a lot of gore in the episode. You can't help but enjoy the episode, and the ending is priceless.

Kill Switch sees an AI taking control of computers in an attempt to defend itself from its creators turning it off. Mulder ends up getting sucked into the bizzare world it creates and finds his arms removed while Scully gets a mild hint of jealousy towards the cybergeek they meet. Another really enjoyable episode.

Bad Blood, is quite frankly, the jewel in the crown for the series. An truly off beat episode that starts off with a boy getting staked...by Mulder...but the boy's a vampire...except Scully reveals his teeth are fake. From then on we get to see a story firstly from Scully's point of view and then from Mulder's. This is a great chance for the two leads to play their characters in slightly different ways, and for guest actor Luke Wilson to play the same character from two points of view. Finally the episode is wrapped up by the two detectives as they uncover a group of vampire gypsies. There is nothing bad about this episode at all, and is one of the best episodes of The X-Files ever.

Another two parter before a second flashback, Travelers, episode (giving Anderson the day off) shows how Mulder became involved with the "X" files. He gets to meet the man (played by Darren McGavin in a nod to Nightstalker) who started the X-Files, before the majority of the episode becomes a further flashback to the fifties as Mulder's mentor investigates his first "X" file.

Mind's Eye sees the agents investigate a series of murders apparently perpetrated by a blind man, until Mulder believes that the blind lady can actually see the murderer's actions in her mind. Another great episode.

All Souls is an episode that deals with the possibility of nephalytes on Earth. It's a great episode in that Scully's faith in the religiously paranormal is questioned by Mulder's belief in the scientific paranormal. What's great is that Scully's point of view isn't ignored and it certainly seems to be the actual truth of the situation, rather than Mulder's plans.

The Pine Bluff Variant is another slightly curious episode where Scully believes that Mulder has actually joined a terrorist cell. This episode is actually all about a government conspiracy, but as it's completely detached from the standard alien/Syndacite storyline, it's far more watchable. It also gives Mitch Pileggi the chance to shine this season as AD Skinner.

Folie A Deux is another slightly disturbing episode about a man who is actually a giant bug, but is able to hide in plain sight. Mulder gets the ability to see the bug as the episode continues despite the fact that both Scully and Skinner believe he is going mad. What's great about this episode, and the previous one, is that both see the agents involved in standard FBI investigations that turn into X-Files, rather than them seeking the paranormal. It's a difference that is welcomed.

Finally, we get to The End, an episode which is tied into the story arc, although there appears to be no obvious reason why. The cigarette smoking man, who was apparently killed in Redux, returns to kill a little boy, and apparently gets away with him, though the boy is actually a mind reader. The character introduced in Patient X, Agent Spender, returns, alongside a new agent, Fowler, and the episode leads directly into the movie. However, the ending sees Mulder and Scully in the burnt our remains of their office, which seems a symbolic way of ending the series for good. As we know, sadly, the horse was dead, but Fox were still going to flog it.

I have to admit I'm really glad I took the risk and decided to face Season Five. I don't know whether it was the fact that the series was supposed to end and everyone was eager to give it their all, of if not having to film as many episodes relaxed the leads just a little, but this season is a breath of fresh air.

"A"

GoldenEye

2008-10-21T05:36:00.001-07:00

The tagline for GoldenEye begins: "It's a new world..." Six years after Licence To Kill, it is indeed very new, and a lot has changed on the Bond films and the biggest and most noticeable change for the films is a new producer. After sixteen films and over thirty years in the driver's seat, Albert R "Cubby" Broccoli has nothing but a "presents" credit on GoldenEye, his job being taken over by his daughter Barbara. Babs Broccoli and her step-brother Michael G Wilson (who's been doing the job for quite some time) clearly have a slightly different idea about what a Bond film is. What's ever so slightly strange, though, is that Wilson is no longer contributing to the scripting duties. And worse, without Richard Maibaum, there are no old hands on the GoldenEye script. And what's a little disturbing is that there were no less than four different writers on GoldenEye. Good...or bad?

The first most noticeable major change to the film series is a revamp of the gunbarrel logo by new main title designer Daniel Kleinman. It looks amazing, with a true three-dimensional effect. And, of course, a new James Bond - Pierce Brosnan, finally getting the chance to play the part he's desired for so long - walks in the sights, but sadly doesn't deliver quite the same punch with his casual swing to camera. OK, it's only the gunbarrel, but it's important. What's also important to mention is that Eric Serra is handling the music chores, and quite frankly, this is a very, very bad idea. From the outset Serra just doesn't get the "Bond sound". Bond has a "sound" which other composers have gotten, tweaked slightly so they can work with it, but kept it essentially the same. Serra just tosses it aside and delivers a Serra score that occasionally uses the James Bond theme in the same way that Diamonds Are Forever was a Bond film - maybe in name. You know that you're onto a bad thing when even the producers have lost faith in your composer - during the amazing tank sequence (more on this later) orchestrator Nic Foster composes the scene, replacing what Serra originally wrote. You can immediately tell the difference and immediately realise that Foster got it in exactly the same way Serra didn't. To cap it all off, Serra himself performs the closing song "The Experience Of Love" which, despite being quite a nice song, is frankly boring. That said, Serra's love theme for the movie is very beautiful and it's lovely when it comes up.

There are a lot of great things about GoldenEye, but to be frank there are some big problems, and I want to address those first, before praising the good. Aside from the music, the script is extremely clunky. There is narrative exposition aplenty which seems stuck in because essentially what happens isn't terribly clear. Unfortunately, there are some moments which need that exposition that just aren't there. Bond meets up with Zukovsky and out of the blue offers him the chance to deal explosives in return for a meeting with Janus. However, Bond has only just arrived in Russia and met up with Jack Wade; so how does he come up with this explosive deal exactly? Wade never mentions it and clearly neither does Bond. It's a bizarre piece of storytelling that is just thrown in. Meanwhile, every single Russian we meet introduces themselves using all three of their names: Arkardy Grigorovitch Ourumov; Natalya Fyordorovna Simonova; Valentin Dimtrovich Zukovsky...it just goes on. When Minister Mishkin actually calls Ourumov "Arkady Grigorovich" you begin to whither. On the other hand, it's clear that none of the writers involved where particularly keen to use the Bond traditions and, as such, decided to get them all over in the Casino scene which, aside from having Bond introduce himself and ask for a martini, sees more double entendre than has ever been seen in one film. It is quite simply cringe inducing.

And of course there is new James Bond, Pierce Brosnan. For so long, we were assured that Timothy Dalton would be returning to Bond, but after the announcement of the film, Dalton announced he felt it was time to move on, and his replacement in The Living Daylights (who ultimately had to step down) is the man to get the job. Truth to tell, Brosnan doesn't quite nail the part in this movie. Unlike his predecessors who all seem to have an understanding of what they want to do with the part, Brosnan seems curiously uncertain of where he is going. When he's smooching up to the women, he's playing Remington Steele; when he's being serious he comes across as a petulant fifteen year old, and the rest of the time he is trying to channel Roger Moore. There is a fine line between being confident and being smug, and sadly Brosnan sits on just the wrong side of this line. It's annoying, because you get the feeling Brosnan does have the potential to do a good job of the part. It just doesn't materialise in this film. However, that said, the one thing that Brosnan does bring to the role is a smoothness that sets him apart from his four predecessors. It's your schtick, Pierce!!! Work it!

And that's pretty much the negatives of the film. Because, outside of that there is an awful lot of great stuff in the film. The pre-title sequence is wonderful, with no less than two absolutely amazing stunts taking place - the brilliant leap off the Russian dam and Bond driving a motorcycle of a cliff to catch a plane that is falling. The plane stunt occurs just before the title sequence which is a wonderful sequence incorporating CGI. On top of that Tina Turner delivers an amazing rendition of Bono & The Edge's theme song, which just highlights how horrible Serra's score is.
There is essentially no former cast members in this film, though Desmond Llewellyn does reprise "Q", but sadly this is not a wonderful performance, with Llewellyn and Brosnan doing what appears to be Carry On "Q". However, Samantha Bond becomes the new Miss Moneypenny, and there is an attempt to make her just a little more independent, but it does seem to make her just that little too independent. Michael Kitchen plays Bill Tanner, and its a brilliant performance that is exactly the way the character should be played. He has a relaxed relationship with Bond, and is clearly, like the rest of the MI6 staff (now located in the correct MI6 building in Vauxhall) is trying to impress his new boss.

Judi Dench steps into the shoes of "M", clearly a new character, and one who sees Bond as outdated and not entirely essential to her new regeime. This is a good move, as it's nice to see Bond as an old-fashioned character struggling to fit into the new world of spying. Dench brings a whole new quality of class to the Bond movies, and her scathing relationship with Bond, is exactly the way the Bond/"M" relationship should be played. You can't help but be excited by Dench's casting - and once again, like Bernard Lee, she gets an "and" credit in the title sequence! However, I don't like the idea of Bond referring to "M" as "M" rather than ma'am - it seems a little insubordinate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the casting is simply superb (with one possible exception, so we won't dwell on Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade). Tcheky Karyo plays Russian Defence Minister Mishkin and brings a small part to life, stealing the two scenes he is in, which is particularly impressive as both of those scenes also feature Gottfried John as General Ourumov, who injects a sense of brilliant desperation into his character. Perhaps the thing that makes Ourumov brilliant is his facial expressions which are always just a little off-kilter, and always give the feeling that Ourumov can't quite believe what he is seeing. However, Ourumov has very little patience for fools under his command as he ruthlessly shoots one of his men dead after ordering them not to shoot at gas barrels. It's a wonderful moment. Alan Cummings plays the other henchman, Boris Grishenko, a computer geek who has his own catchphrase. Cummings is great in the role and you can't help but hope he makes it through to the end; though he has a rather nasty moment with the leading lady. The other cameo part - of sorts - is former KGB agent-turned-Russian mobster Valentin Zukovsky, played by Robbie Coltrane. Frankly, he steals the entire movie. He delivers everything with a twinkle in his eyes and one gets the feeling that Coltrane is having the absolute time of his life playing this larger than life ally of Bond. I can only hope and pray he will return to the series.

Roll on the Bond girls, with Bond apparently becoming somewhat monogamous in this movie. There are two girls - Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen as Natalya and Xenia Onnatopp, respectively. Xenia is an absolute fruitcake, a villainous henchman who gets off on violence. She is one of the best henchmen the series has ever seen, killing her victims by crushing them with her thighs, but is so hot you can't help but root for her (pardon the pun). Scorupco, on the other hand, is stunning, her figure highlighted by what could be regarded as a somewhat gratuituous moment when she walks on a beach in nothing but a white bikini (cue a curious crotch shot). Natalya is an interesting Bond girl, resourceful like many of the others, but there is some good acting from Scorupco when she witnesses Bond massacre a group of soldiers. Both girls are standouts.

Finally, on the casting front, comes Bond villain Alec Trevelyan, former agent 006 as portrayed by Sean Bean, who just missed out on getting the role of Bond in this movie. It's great in the opening sequence to see another 00 agent in the same light as we often see Bond - usually 00 agents are shadowy figures who get killed, inspiring Bond to seek revenge of some sort. Somehow 006 makes a deal with Ourumov (either in the few moments he got caught, or beforehand, which indicates that both he and Ourumov have an absolute callous disregard for the grunts) and becomes the surprise villian later in the film - which would be a huge surprise if the trailer hadn't let everyone know that the movie would be about 007 fighting 006. This, of course, is not he fault of the movie makers, rather the trailer makers who made a huge blunder with this one. Sadly Bean tends to eclipse Brosnan most of the time, and brings a lot more passion to his part than Brosnan brings to Bond; though his claim that Bond has no loyalty towards his friends is a little off base after LTK. That said, though, the final fight between Bond and Trevelyan is one of the most vicious we've seen in the series to date.

And so we get to the details of the movie. The stunts are universally spectacular in the film. We've already established those in the title sequence are amazing, but later in the film there is a tank chase which involves trashing St Petersburg, as well as driving an armoured train into said tank. It's truly incredible and you feel the pain everyone goes through when they get hit. Also of note, and perhaps appropriately given that sadly the man responsible, Derek Meddings, died after the film was made and gets the dedication, is the modelwork of the film which is simply spectacular. There are moments of modelwork in the film you would honestly believe where filmed live. It's simply breathtaking, and is so wonderful that Meddings final film is the absolute best example of his work.

The Aston Martin DB5 turns up again for an entertaining little chase in through the mountainside, but Bond's car for the movie - apparently gadged enhanced - is a BMW Z3, which sadly appears...once. And is used for Bond to drive to meet Jack Wade. Utterly, utterly pointless. On the other hand, there is a curious reference in the film to Bond's parents, which is a nice nod to Fleming's novels.

Then there are the gadgets, principally the explosive pen that goes off after four seconds of being armed by three clicks. Clearly Bond has absolutely no faith in "Q"'s gadgets at all as, when given the pen by "Q", he arms it and puts it in "Q"'s pocket. That said, though, he seems completely justified as it doesn't go off. Then..."Q" puts it on a dummy and does the same thing...which results in an explosion. This pen is, quite frankly, bizarre. Try to keep track of the clicks in the final scene and you'll notice it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why on Earth does Bond think it will go off when it does??

At the end of the day, GoldenEye feels like a Sean Connery movie, directed by John Glen and starring Roger Moore. It's a mix and mash that doesn't work for Brosnan, and ultimately just doesn't really work.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby; 5. Pierce Brosnan

Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Dr No; 4. Licence To Kill; 5. A View To A Kill; 6. Live And Let Die; 7. Thunderball; 8. For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy 10. The Spy Who Loved Me; 11. GoldenEye; 12. From Russia, With Love; 13. Goldfinger; 14. You Only Live Twice; 15. Moonraker; 16. The Man With The Golden Gun; 17. Diamonds Are Forever

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 5. Izabella Scorupco/Natalya; 6. Barbara Bach/Anya; 7. Maud Adams/Octopussy 8. Mie Hama/Kissy; 9. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 10. Ursula Andress/Honey; 11. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 12. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 13. Lois Chiles/Holly; 14. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 15. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 16. Britt Ekland/Mary; 17. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 9. Sean Bean/Trevelyan; 10. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 11. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 12. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 13. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 14. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 15. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 16. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 17. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

NCIS: Heartland (Season Six)

2008-10-21T05:34:00.000-07:00

I can only think of one reason for the sudden change in quality of NCIS and that must be Mark Harmon's influence as new producer. After that disappointing fifth season, this season is dealing out new ideas and a little bit more backstory for the various characters and, perhaps unsurprisingly most of all, Gibbs. This episode sees Gibbs forced to return back to his hometown where we find that the murder of a marine and the attack of another is rooted in the relatively sordid personal problems of a group of high school thugs who grew up to run the town.

In terms of the mystery, there are a few surprising twists and turns and I certainly didn't predict the revelation at the end of the episode - and my wife believed she had predicted it, only to find out that she predicted the wrong thing. It's good that the series can still be surprising after all this time.

On the personal front, it's great to see DiNozzo being the guy who is most fascinated at the idea of travelling to Gibbs' hometown. His hero worship of Gibbs has developed into an intriguing fascination of the man's past which, as we've discovered over the last few seasons, is a little more surprising than we first thought. When he finally turns up, again we get to see Gibbs' fondness of his senior agent as he permits DiNozzo to ask two questions of his father. Ziva and McGee, meanwhile are mostly puppy dogs for much of the episode.

Gibbs, however, gets to reveal a lot more about his past, not least of which is the discovery that his first wife was a girl he met while in Stillwater. We also discover that his mother passed away and he never really forgave his father for getting on with his life. So, like most television heroes these days, he has issues with his father, but happily by the end of the episode these are mostly resolved, and the final scene between the two Gibbs is wonderfully played by both actors involved.

It's a great episode, not only because of the entertaining plot, but also because of the nice character development of Gibbs.

"A"

Licence To Kill

2008-10-16T08:19:00.001-07:00

Timothy Dalton's second outing as Bond is heralded by a curious rearrangement of the James Bond theme by this movie's composer Michael Kamen, presumably given the fact he had a fair bit of street cred at this point in his career. Interestingly, the pretitle sequence is nothing more than an extension of the main movie, introducing us to the main villain in the form of Robert Savi's Franz Sanchez and his girlfriend Lupe Lamora (Talisa Soto), along with Bond's two allies; Sharkey, played by Frank McRae, who plays the part in the same way he was playing all parts in the eighties; by shouting a lot (I suspect that it was part of his contract that if he were to appear in a movie he had to shout a lot, which was great for the enormous amount of times he was playing police captains); and Felix Leiter, thankfully not portrayed by the wet fish that was John Terry. This time around - and for the first time ever - David Hedison reprises the role he played in Live And Let Die, and how great is it to see? He and Dalton have a good chemistry (clearly everyone loves David, as Moore had a similar connection) and this makes it a lot easier to believe Bond's motives later in the film.

Kamen's music (and let's talk about it for a moment) is really good and he makes an appropriate successor to John Barry. His Bond action theme arrangement is very engaging, but Kamen's piece-de-resistance is easily his love theme for Pam (Carey Lowell), which is the most beautiful piece of music the series has ever seen. On the downside, however, is that he didn't write "Licence To Kill" as performed in true Shirley Bassey style by Gladys Knight. It's a very stirring piece of music that is a little let down by a fairly generic title sequence from Maurice Binder that, aside from showing us Dalton, is essentially girls dancing around and a casino motif...for some bizarre reason. But as Kamen didn't write it, it appears soley in the title sequence. The close song - "If You Asked Me Too", performed by Patti LaBelle, is possibly even better than the title song, and is one of the best songs ever to appear in a Bond movie - at least that's what Celine Dion thought when she covered it.

There's something very different about this Bond movie, and it feel as though both John Glen and Timothy Dalton are making more of the kind of movie that they want to make. The very ruthless, vengeful Bond we caught a glimpse of in For Your Eyes Only is made manifest by Dalton throughout the whole movie, using the anger that we saw when Saunders was killed in The Living Daylights. This is Bond througout the entire movie, throwing away a lot of the humour that he had in the previous film. Don't get me wrong though, Bond is not humourless and there are some very witty moments in the film, just few from Bond himself. In fact the best lines in the film go to Sanchez.

There's also a great deal of "reality" in the film - Bond's enemy is a common, though very powerful, drug baron. There is a barroom brawl at one point. These are all things that ever so slightly change the feel of the movies. In addition to this, two regulars who have been around since The Spy Who Loved Me - Gogol and Gray - are both gone. Finally, of course, the level of violence in this film is the highest we've ever seen. The death of Milton Krest is particularly gruesome, and Leiter's torture is equally disturbing. We also get another oblique reference to Tracy Bond and her death. That said, the amount of reality is perhaps more indicative that this movie is a product of it's times, as most Bonds are.

However, the production of the film is of its usual high quality. The underwater sequences are beautifully shot and the pace of these is far better than those in Thunderball and the stuntwork in general is again exceptional. Glen and writers Richard Maibaum and Michael G Wilson continue to try to push the boundaries of the Bond films. Some of the film is grounded in another of Fleming's short story - The Hildebrand Rarity, which gives us Krest and the WaveKrest yacht, along with Sanchez's disturbing beating of Lupe with a stingray tail. A lot of original action sequences feature in the movie, from the opening where Bond in a helicopter literally catches Sanchez in his light plane, to the end where a truck chase gives us the most impressive explosions the series has seen. Indeed, the truck doing wheelies on both the side wheels and back wheels is an amazing stunt. The movie as a whole moves along at a cracking pace and is extremely watchable.

And so to the cast. Dalton, as noted, gives us a grimmer Bond in this film, his licence revoked after he can't let Leiter's death go (interestingly the original title of the movie was Licence Revoked, but American audiences were unable to wrap their heads around the meaning of revoked), but he has gone back to some of the more traditional Bond foibles. Once again he is a womaniser, happy to sleep with Lupe Lamora when she offers herself, and even appears to have a rather more than "best man" relationship with Della Leiter (not that Felix appears to care). But this is the Bond of TLD - a man who is happy to deliver a headbutt, and one who develops more than just a shallow relationship with his primary girl.

Carey Lowell is perfect as Pam, not only absolutely stunning (there is a priceless moment when Bond double takes on seeing Pam stripping down to a swimsuit), but also extremely resourceful. Her feelings for Bond develop throughout the film, their partnership forged in fire as she feels Bond's desire for revenge, but also aware - far more than him - that there is more at stake than just Bond's desire for justice. The ending of the film is a beautiful moment with not even the winking stone fish able to destroy it. The other Bond girl, Talisa Soto, is extremely beautiful as well, but is sadly rather passionless.

Franz Sanchez, on the other hand, is one of the most interesting Bond villains to date. In very many ways, he is the anti-Bond; smooth, suave and debonair, remaining constantly calm and dedicated to something more than just money. He has his traditional Bond villain moments - notably he delivers a lecture to a group of drug dealers in the same fashion that Goldfinger and Zorin addressed their allies - however, when he lets his anger out, it is pure viciousness. In the final showdown with Bond, both men are torn apart; Bond is the most shattered we've ever seen him in the entire movie history, and Sanchez is in a similar state.

But whereas other Bond villains have been supported by a faceless army, Sanchez's generals are all personalities of their own. From the sadistic Dario (Benicio Del Toro), to the loyal Braun (Guy De Saint Cyr); from the opportunistic Heller (Don Stroud) to the money obsessed Truman-Lodge (Anthony Starke); from the traitorous Killifer (Everett McGill) to the treacherous Krest (Anthony Zerbe); all the henchmen are brought alive by uniformly fantastic performances. That said, though, the scene-stealer of the movie is Professor Joe Butcher, played by Wayne Newton; ostensibly a televangilist he is actually the connection for all of Sanchez's major drug deals. It's such a brilliant performance that you can't help but laugh with him.

Finally, Robert Brown again gets a chance to shine as "M", while sadly Caroline Bliss' Miss Moneypenny is relatively wasted. It's interesting to see Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa make an appearance as a Hong Kong narcotics agent, and the underrated British actor Christopher Neame is MI6 agent Fallon. But, at long last, Desmond Llewellyn gets "Q"'s finest hour in this movie, as "Q" joins Bond and Pam in their mission and becomes an effective field agent. It's great to see Llewellyn get so much screen time, and it's so well deserved. Again, noting the humour, the scene between Pam, Lupe and "Q" is one of the funniest in the film.

Their are a few minor plot niggles about this movie. It's a shame that an imaginary country was created to house Isthmus City, but I suppose it would have been difficult to do it with a real country. The police are stupid, but to be fair all police are stupid in the world of James Bond. Given that Sanchez (or more accurately Heller) is made instantaneously aware of Bond's five million dollar deposit, surely its withdrawl would have been reported immediately as well?

Overall, this is an interesting experiment for the Bond films, which works well and gives a nice variety. However, it would be nice to see Dalton return a little more to TLD for his next movie than continue down this gruesome, darker path.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby

Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Dr No; 4. Licence To Kill; 5. A View To A Kill; 6. Live And Let Die; 7. Thunderball; 8. For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy 10. The Spy Who Loved Me; 11. From Russia, With Love; 12. Goldfinger; 13. You Only Live Twice; 14. Moonraker; 15. The Man With The Golden Gun; 16. Diamonds Are Forever

Favourite Bond girl: 1. Carey Lowell/Pam; 2. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 3. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 4. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 5. Barbara Bach/Anya; 6. Maud Adams/Octopussy 7. Mie Hama/Kissy; 8. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 9. Ursula Andress/Honey; 10. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 11. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 12. Lois Chiles/Holly; 13. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 14. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 15. Britt Ekland/Mary; 16. Jill St John/Tiffany

Favourite Bond villain: 1. Robert Davi/Sanchez; 2. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 3. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 4. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 5. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 6. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 7. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 8. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 9. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 10. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 11. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 12. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 13. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 14. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 15. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 16. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

The Big Over Easy

2008-10-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

I do like novels that are a little bit quirky and pose the question "what if the extraordinary was actually ordinary?". I liked the Anita Blake novels for exactly this reason, primarly because the idea of vampires sitting side by side with us in our world is a curious one. Equally in The Big Over Easy, the idea that literary characters are real and their universe exists besides ours is also intriguing. Humpty Dumpty has been murdered - apparently, although it does appear to be a suicide. DI Jack Spratt and his new DS Mary Mary are determined to find the real killer, but the famous DCI Friedland Chymes wants the case so he can have another brilliant write up in the papers that tell the stories of famous detectives. However, the Nursery Crimes Division of the Reading Police Department is not in favour - mainly due to their inablity to prosecute the three little pigs for the murder of the big, bad wolf - and so Spratt and Mary have little time to prove their case. All of this is complicated further by Mary wanting to be out of the NCD and in Chymes' little army, meaning she is more than a little open to temptation.

Come on, you can't not like the concept. Because, don't get me wrong, this is no kid's book. This is a proper adult novel, written about kids' things and that just makes it all the more fascinating. The ultimate revelation of what happened to Humpty is both very, very clever, and yet so obvious you can't help but wonder why it's never been written about before. Equally clever is the fact that Spratt and Mary, despite amazed at the idea that nursery rhyme characters aren't aware of their fictious existance, are just as unaware of their own less than factual lives.

I genuinely enjoyed this novel. It's full of great twists and turns, and great characters, with references to such a variety of literature that it's almost a certainty that I missed a great deal of it.

"A"

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Reunion (Season 7)

2008-10-16T08:17:00.001-07:00

Logan and Wheeler are back to investigate the murder of a late night television host and, rather entertainingly, this case actually has them doing a little more work than usual. The episode actually feels like a proper 42 minute script, rather than the law half of a Law & Order episode that has been extended to fit the bill. Bring on, then, a whole host of suspects, and a whole host of motives including paedophilia. And, to add to all of that, Wheeler gets to meet her hero who is, apparently, Jordie Black, lead singer of The Twisted Strands, a rock group in the 70's - although as Black himself points out, she wouldn't have been old enough to have ever actually seen them perform. It's a nice little touch to Wheeler's character that makes me all the more grateful she has returned.

Outside of the characterisation (and no one really makes an impression, although Joan Jett gives quite a memorable performance for a character who dies in the pretitle sequence) the rest of the episode is fairly workmanlike, and just generally entertaining.

"B"

NCIS: Capitol Offense (Season Six)

2008-10-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

NCIS takes a leaf out of Law & Order's textbooks and we see a random couple discovering the body of the deceased in the pretitle sequence. Following that it takes about four minutes after the appearance of the murderer to realise who it is. Which, I suppose, makes for a pretty pointless episode of NCIS, but at the end of the day, all television shows get a little formulaic and as such it doesn't take too long to work out exactly what the formula is. If that means discovering the identity of a killer, I suppose that becomes the easy part. But then, apparently it takes some people very short time to work out a murderer in Agatha Christie.

Lo and behold, Gibbs' past comes back to haunt him as an old friend is forced to contact him and confess that he was having an affair with the victim and as he is a senator attempting to get an energy bill through, he is rather desperate to keep his name out of the public records until that bill goes through. Gibbs agrees and withholds everything from his team and from Vance, which seems somewhat uncharacteristic of him, though he later brings it straight to Vance when it becomes clear that they have little choice but to give up his evidence.

Meanwhile the rest of the team is at their entertaining best - DiNozzo confesses that he became a cop because he was nosy; Ziva gets the chance to play sex kitten; McGee falls afoul of Tony again and gets drenched in sewage; Vance is proving to be less and less of a thorn in Gibbs' side, and certainly seems to have a desire to build bridges; Ducky puts in a token appearance and actually says that he feels unneeded - the audience is feeling a similar thing, to be honest; and finally Abby undergoes a complete forensic investigation to discover who stole her chocolate muffin. This last plot thread is the highlight of the episode and produces some great moments as she attempts to gather the evidence.

It's a well made episode, but there is nothing to make it stand up and make you want to cheer.

"B-"

The Living Daylights

2008-10-14T07:20:00.000-07:00

It's the dawning of a new age for James Bond, heralded by a brand new gunbarrel sequence which is easily the best the series has ever seen - new Bond, Timothy Dalton has the "swing to camera" down perfect, and John Barry's theme means the gunshot occurs at precisely the moment it feels it should. A good sign or just lucky?

The pretitle sequence kicks off with a mini adventure that hides new Bond until 002 is murdered by a steely faced imposter 00, and as Bond is scared by monkeys (has John Glen gone mad? It's supposed to be pigeons that get disturbed by Bond!) he chases down the imposter - to easily the best incidental version of the James Bond theme ever - has a car chase where he is on the car, and drives off a cliff, parasailing down to a boat where our new Bond utters his first lines: "I need to use your phone". Weird? Maybe, but Timothy Dalton proves that he is perfect casting for Bond before the title song even kicks in. He's fought a villain, had a mini adventure, and gotten a girl.

In truth, Dalton shows a perfect style throughout the entire movie. Moore finally agreed to end his stint (did he just hang around to be the longest running Bond?) and Dalton was offered the role, but was unable to take it, so it went to Pierce Brosnan, who filmed the gunbarrel and was then mucked around with the producers of Remmington Steele, forcing Brosnan to leave, by which stage original choice Dalton was available again, and so Tim gets the job, and proves that he was the perfect choice. The script for "The Living Daylights" was written with Roger Moore in mind, and there is a good level of humour that Dalton manages to deliver in a way that is not quite so knowing as Moore's style. However, Dalton brings two extra things to the role - firstly a true relationship with the Bond girl that Moore really only managed to create once with Octopussy. Bond clearly cares about Kara Milovy and has her best interests at heart. Secondly, Dalton's Bond is clearly a dangerous man. When Saunders is killed, Dalton brings a true tension to Bond, a viciousness that shows he will not be pushed around. It's these tense moments that give Dalton's Bond a different edge to his predecessors, making him more like Connery than Moore, but turning the dial up just a little more. In fact, in many ways, Dalton is Bond the way Ian Fleming imagined him to be - a hired assassin who takes no real joy in his job, but is prepared to execute it ruthlessly. With Dalton taking over from Moore, some of the former Bondisms have returned; Bond once again asks for his martinis shaken not stirred and he is smoking cigarettes again (in fact I don't think Moore has smoked since Moonraker).

All the regular characters are back - Robert Brown's "M" works a whole lot better against the younger Dalton, and the relationship between Bond and "M" is more in the style of Lee and Connery the way that Terence Young created it. "M" tolerates his best agent but wont accept him disobeying orders. Desmond Llewellyn gets a little more to do in the movie, with "Q" showing up in the opening sequence to help Bond in General Giyogi Koskov's defection. Geoffrey Keen and Walter Gotell return as the Defence Minister and General Gogol, but both appear for a very, very short time this movie - in Gotell's case it was because of his poor health. But, with Moore's departure, the wise decision was taken to recast Miss Moneypenny - now the beautiful blonde Caroline Bliss, who is more like Penelope Smallbone in Octopussy than the Moneypenny we remember. Also, after a considerable absence, we get the return of Felix Leiter, but sadly he is portrayed by John Terry and there is absolutely no conviction in the performance and no chemistry with Dalton. It's easily the worst casting of the movie.

There are a lot of similarities to Octopussy in this movie, actually. Aside from those mentioned, the short story "The Living Daylights" appears in the movie, although in this instance the opening sequence is essentially the short story; it's not just recounted. Equally we get two villains in the movie - the super suave Yogi Koskov played by Jeroen Krabbe and American arms dealer Brad Whitter, played by Joe Don Baker. Both play their parts excellently, although Krabbe's accent is truly bizarre, starting off as a bizarre Russian before ultimately becoming standard European. This may, though, be deliberate to show Koskov deceiving the English at the beginning of the movie. Baker gets a few short scenes before the final showdown at the end of the movie, and we get to see a great gunbattle.

Maryam D'Abo plays the only Bond girl for the movie (if you discount Linda in the pretitle sequence) and she plays a very naive and, well, pretty useless character. That said, and to be fair, she is a musician, not a secret agent, and it's perhaps no great surprise that she can't really hold her own in a fight against a Russian soldier. However, the fact is that she is very beautiful and easily likable, and that makes it very easy to like her. That said, Dalton gives a great performance when Bond is trying to communicate to Kara to drive her jeep onto the Hercules jet - the look on his face is priceless.

Their are a whole range of brilliant characters in this movie, all brought to life by some exceptional actors and actresses. Villainous henchman Necros is portrayed by former ballet dancer Andreas Wisniewski, and aside from a disturbingly blank performance by the actor in question (so blank he appears not to feel pain, although it's never really confirmed if that is the case), the direction and editing makes him even more scarier; a brilliant move is to have the Pretenders' song "Where Has Everybody Gone" constantly playing on Necros' walkman, meaning we hear Necros before we see him. Thomas Wheatley plays Saunders, Bond's contact in Czechoslovaki; initially a hindrance to Bond's activities, he ultimately comes through for Bond when he realises that Koskov has duped them in faking his defection. There's a very good chemistry between Dalton and Wheatley (in fact if only this had been the relationship between Bond and Leiter...) and Bond's anger at Saunders death seems completely believable and one can't join in the desire for revenge Bond gets. Finally, John Rhys Davies plays the new KGB boss General Leonard Pushkin (initially this character was supposed to be General Gogol, but Gotell's health meant that was impossible - as a consequence Bond and "M" both appear to know this new General very well, despite us never seeing him before) and again there is a great relationship between Bond and Pushkin that makes the relationship very believable. The scene where Bond threatens to kill Pushkin in order to discover what Koskov is doing is very, very tense. One of the things that the Bond films has done really well is to show the KGB chiefs - be it Gogol or Pushkin - as sensible humans, rather than ruthless psychotics.

Outside of casting there are a whole lot of other great things that make this movie. John Glen who has revitalised the Bond series seems to have gotten a bit more inspiration with a new Bond (and he does disturb those pigeons!), and so there is a whole lot of new things going on, including the return of the Aston Martin - now a Volante - chock full of gadgets. Indeed there seem to be far more gadgets in this movie than in the last three movies, but all are used rather well, and Bond doesn't seem to rely on them particularly. The fight scenes are particularly effective in this movie, from a brilliant opening fight between Necros and a MI6 butler (and it's great to see that he isn't a pushover; clearly MI6 train all their agents well, no matter what position they hold) to a rather disturbing fight at a jail in Afghanistan, and two great fights at the end - one between Bond and Necros in midair, and the shootout between Bond and Whittaker. All the locales are exotic and shot very beautifully - be they Vienna, Czechoslovakia, Tangiers (although with the morning wailing I was put in the mind of the Pink Panther films for a moment). The script is particularly well written with some wonderful lines for everybody in the film, and a very complex plot; possibly the most complex of all the Bond films (think about it...it's not as staightforward as it appears). And, of course, Kara says "Oh, James" at the end of the movie, wrapping everything up nicely.

I have no complaints with this movie, so I don't have bits and bobs to mention, but I would like to make note of the music in this film. The Living Daylights is performed by a-Ha, and we've already mentioned that the Pretenders perform Where Has Everybody Gone; but it's also worth noting that for the first time we get a special closing song - If There Was A Man, again performed by the Pretenders. These three themes all appear in John Barry's incidental music which is the best score he has ever written for a Bond film. I've already mentioned his amazing Bond theme, but music like that which accompanies Bond and Kara's journey to the Muhajadin's headquarters is simply sumptious. It's perhaps appropriate, then, that Barry actually gets to make a cameo appearance in the film as the conductor of Kara's orchestra at the end.

After twenty-five years, and fifteen Bond films, the producers have shown that, not only have they not lost originality, but they are at the top of their game. This is the best Bond movie ever.

Favourite Bond: 1. Timothy Dalton; 2. Roger Moore; 3. Sean Connery; 4. George Lazenby
Favourite movie order: 1. The Living Daylights; 2. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 3. Dr No; 4. A View To A Kill; 5. Live And Let Die; 6. Thunderball; 7. For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy 8. The Spy Who Loved Me; 9. From Russia, With Love; 10. Goldfinger; 11. You Only Live Twice; 12. Moonraker; 13. The Man With The Golden Gun; 14. Diamonds Are Forever
Favourite Bond girl: 1. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 2. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 3. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 4. Barbara Bach/Anya; 5. Maud Adams/Octopussy 6. Mie Hama/Kissy; 7. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 8. Ursula Andress/Honey; 9. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 10. Maryam D'Abo/Kara; 11. Lois Chiles/Holly; 12. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 13. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 14. Britt Ekland/Mary; 15. Jill St John/Tiffany
Favourite Bond villain: 1. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 2. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 3. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 4. Jeroen Krabbe & Joe Don Baker/Koskov & Whittaker; 5. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 6. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 7. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 8. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 9. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 10. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 11. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 12. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 13. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 14. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 15. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Please Note We are No Longer Accepting Letters of Recommendation from Henry Kissinger (Season Seven)

2008-10-10T08:18:00.001-07:00

Goren's back to being clean shaven, and Eames has apparently forgotten why she was bitching and moaning about Goren not telling her about being undercover, so it looks as though the reset switch has been hit and the two detectives are back to being the way they were. Thank god, let's hope it's never brought up again.
Sadly, even though the pretitle sequence has gone back to being edited in the usual fashion, without any of the ridiculous decorations that usually precede a Goren episode, the rest of the episode is a bit ordinary. A person is killed, Goren and Eames go down the wrong path. A second is killed, and the detectives head down another route, but this one is wrong as well. A third one is murdered and this time they get the right motive. Lucky it wasn't too complicated, otherewise another few people would have to die before the Goren would work it out.

What's the most frustrating thing about this episode is that again Goren is being used as just a standard detective. The whole point of Goren was he was a Sherlock Holmes type character, able to pick up on small clues that no one else would see. Nowadays all he does is just go...oh, that guy had a gay lover...maybe it was him. Nope. Well maybe the two had a connection...yup, but it's not that...

I don't mind this kind of investigation, but not on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. When I want standard police procedure, I watch Law & Order. Criminal Intent seems to have almost jumped the shark, and I hope that the promise of next year's changes will bring the series back to where it is supposed to be.

"C+"

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Day Of The Clown (Series 2)

2008-10-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

So Maria has moved on. What a shame. She was very engaging and added a certain something to the show.
There is something inherently disturbing about clowns and the appearance of the clown in the pre-title sequence, freaking out the kids, is quite disturbing, and I have to agree with Sarah Jane when she claims to find them skin-crawling. Very, very true. As choice of villain in "The Day Of The Clown" the clown is a great villain, but what's even more interesting is when we discover that it is, in fact, the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Doctor Who has always benefitted from shamelessly pillaging from other sources, and it's great to see that Sarah Jane Adventures has no qualms in doing exactly the same thing.

But, of course, the main thrust of this episode is not so much to battle clowns, but to meet the person who is essentially Maria's replacement, not only in Sarah's life, but also quite literally in the house across the street. The Chandra family have moved in and to the dismay of Clyde, the father is their new head teacher. Rani Chandra, however, has a profound effect on Clyde, who falls for her quite instantly, but it is her fascination with the unknown and unexplained that intrigues Luke, who is still mourning the departure of Maria. Rani is, if anything, even more likeable than Maria, and has a keen mind, able to work out on her own, exactly what Sarah Jane has already worked out.

OK, so how coincidental is it that Sarah Jane should meet another young lady who happens to be in exactly the same headspace as her? Well, very, but let's face it, this is a kid's show.

"A"

Ultimate Power

2008-10-10T08:15:00.001-07:00

The Ultimate Marvel universe is a pretty small place when all things are considered. There's the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Spider-Man and the Ultimates and they are all based in New York. There are a few other vigilantes floating around - Daredevil, Dr Strange, Moon Knight...but surprise, surprise, they all hang around New York as well. So it's something of a surprise to think that until know all those heroes haven't met up together at the same time. Oh, sure, most of them were there for Gah Lak Tus, but Spider-Man was noticeably absent. Ultimate Power sees that small place show it's constraints as the groups finally do come together, and yet strangely enough the universe itself is opened up as another dimension bursts into Earth-1610.

I decided to do a bit of background reading on the Squadron Supreme before they showed up in Ultimate Power, and was a little surprised to find that they had faced the Avengers earlier, although the Squadron that turns up in Ultimate Power are a parallel version of that. In fact, it seems that this Squadron is a bit of a spoof of the DC Justice League. Hyperion being Superman, Blur being Flash, Princess Power being Wonder Woman, etc. That said, though, Supreme Power is a comic aimed at adults and the Ultimate Universe is a more grown up version of the standard Marvel Universe, so if Supreme Power was ever going to cross over with anything, the ultimate universe would be it.

Brian Michael Bendis, who is essentially the architect of the Ultimate universe, writes the first three issues of this series and, aside from completely shagging Ultimate continuity (seriously, does Bendis even remotely keep track of what is happening in the X-Men?) he provides us with the set up for the story and essentially tells us what is happening from the Ultimate point of view. Which means that, when things go over to the Power universe, it's appropriate that J Michael Straczynski takes over as the architect of that dimension.

It must have been hard for both of these writers not to show their particular heroes as being just a little better than the other team, and certainly Straczynski is a little guilty of this - the Squadron Supreme seemingly able to easily hold their own against all the heroes of the Ultimate universe, which is just a little unbelievable. Bendis, on the other hand, shows the Squadron losing, but blames it on the dimensional jump, which is a little fairer.

As the story progresses - Reed Richards being accused of essentially destroying the Power universe, but in fact being manipulated unwittingly by both, and independent of each other, Emil Burbank and Nick Fury; Fury being in league with Dr Doom. It's something of a surprise to find that Doom is back, and is never really explained but perhaps that's just one of the conceits of comic books.

For the last three issues, Jeph Loeb takes over the writing task, and Loeb is perhaps best remembered for such wonderful things as DC's Hush in which he manages to bring virtually every villain who ever looked sideways at Batman into a battle with the Dark Knight. Given the amount of people in this comic (and bearing in mind that towards the end of the series there is not one, but two Squadron Supremes!) Loeb seems like a good choice to wrap this up, and Loeb does seem to treat them fairly. What is perhaps the best part about the whole comic is that Fury has a back up plan in his attack on the Power Universe, and that backup plan is to release the Hulk. I love the fact that in the Ultimate universe, the Hulk is the worst thing there. Never mind criminal masterminds like Doom and Magneto - once the unstoppable and cannabilistic Hulk is unleashed, everyone stops to take notice.

All in all the series is a great read. With so many characters, though, it's fairly obvious that some characters are going to suffer a little, but what actually happens is that most of the characters just fill up the background. From the Squadron, happily Hyperion, Power Princess and Doctor Spectrum all get stuff to do, while everyone else just fights. From the Ultimate universe, however, Spider-Man, Mr Fantastic, Shadowcat, Invisible Woman, the Thing, Captain America, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch all get parts to play, while everyone else just plays in teh background. It's almost inevitable that this will happen, however, so I suppose that you have to be aware going into the comic.
Greg Land's art, however, is really good, and I love his takes on the FF and Carol Danvers in particular. Land has a great way of drawing the women in the comic and they all end up looking stunning.

All in all, continuity aside, the comic ends up working really well and is an enjoyable read.

"B+"

NCIS: Agent Afloat (Season Six)

2008-10-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

At the end of the last episode there was the vague feeling that Gibbs' team had been reassembled, but as we discover this week that is not the case, and poor old DiNozzo is still stuck out at sea on a ship where he is less than popular being the only person policing the navy. Someone's suicide, however, brings him back into contact with his old team and despite Vance determined to stick him out at sea (Gibbs' belief being that Vance is punishing DiNozzo is ultimately challenged by Vance, which does beg the question why did he bother to send DiNozzo away?) DiNozzo finds he is able to get some land time investigating the drug angle of the case.

Last season I felt that DiNozzo had begun to suffer as a character, not just in him becoming little more than the 'party guy' of the team, but also in the fact that he was more often than not given absolutely nothing to do. The great thing about DiNozzo in the earlier seasons was that he was the 'party guy' but he continually surprised Kate and McGee by getting his job done quickly and efficiently without either of them seeing it happen. This episode reminds us that DiNozzo is the senior agent of the team for a reason, and even if McGee and Ziva can't be bothered to show him the respect he deserves, Gibbs most certainly does. DiNozzo's addressing of Gibbs as Dad is a nice touch that, for the character, is probably more true than he would care to admit.

The rest of the case is relatively straightforward and uses the "incidental character who we see for a scene" killer as opposed to having some sort of logical raionale and deductable case. Poor old Ducky is given even less to do than he has been in the last few episodes, this week barely doing anything more than putting in a cameo appearance, while Abby is in a similar position, though at least she gets more character interaction with DiNozzo to make up for it. Vance is becoming increasingly more amiable and less shadowy, which is nice, but does rather mock his shredding of the document in his record. Hopefully this will be brought up again rather than ignored.

Two episodes into the new season and it has yet to set a foot wrong, and certainly pushing in a better direction that the last season.

"B+"

A View To A Kill

2008-10-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

OK, so let's get this over with straight away. Roger Moore is now clearly waaaaayyy too old to be playing Bond. When Bond meets with "M", it's more than a little embarrassing that Bond looks older than his boss, even if he actually isn't. Equally, we see old man Bond, old man "M", old man "Q", old man Defence Minister, old biddy Moneypenny and joined by old man Tibbet - it's like the pensioners are out to fight the good fight. However, as I cringed during Never Say Never Again while Bond got it on with a woman twenty years his junior, it's impossible not to feel the same about Moore and Tanya Roberts.

And, let's accept that fact that this movie is pretty much the plot of Goldfinger, with Goldfinger replaced by Zorin; Oddjob replaced by Mayday; gold replaced by microchips and irradiating Fort Knox becomes destroying Silicon Valley. That said, though, it's not like a story hasn't been recycled in the Bond movies.

So with that out of the way, I have to say I love A View To A Kill. I think, perhaps, the thing that impressed me the most about this movie is that, after twenty-three years of Bond movies, after thirteen films, you might think that the fourteenth just wouldn't have anywhere to go. And yet there is a great deal of originality in this movie, perhaps stemming from the fact that Michael G Wilson now moves into the producer's chair alongside his stepfather. The stuntwork on the movies continues to get better and better, with the Eifel Tower high dive of particular note. Equally the horse chase sequence is notable for so many reasons - the first being the aforementioned originality (I wonder why this has never been thought of before), the second being the fact that at the end of it Zorin calmly points out that he knows exactly who he is - no more stupid Bond/villain games in this film - and Bond about to leap into the car, only to discover that Tibbet is dead is very, very well played.

It's worth pointing out that, aside from his age, Moore is still on great form as Bond. He plays the part perfectly in this movie, giving Bond the humour and the deadly seriousness that is required. His relationship with Tibbet is laid back and well played, clearly stemming from the good relationship Moore and Macnee shared off set. Equally, after Tibbet's death, Bond is very, very serious and the cold delivery of his lines to Walken is brilliantly played. If it wasn't for his age, I actually feel at this point that I don't want Moore to stop playing the role.

Desmond Llewellyn and Lois Maxwell are back for their traditional cameos, which are wonderful as always (although Moneypenny, like Bond, is also getting on a bit. It's difficult to see how she will be able to carry the role on if Moore leaves), but this movie actually allows Robert Brown to stamp his mark on "M". With the Minister having very little screen time, "M" goes back to the position he used to play and his chance to go to Ascot gives him a great chance to establish his "M". The other regular - Gogol - also turns in an appearance, and as usual his character has something slightly different to do, visiting Zorin who is a KGB agent and there's a great moment where a fight breaks out and Walter Gotell establishes the strength and authority of his character.

So with all this talk of him, it's time to note Christopher Walken's performance as the villain Max Zorin. Walken has an unusual performance style, one I once saw described as Walken taking the punctuation out of all his lines. Here it seems completely true, with Walken's delivery boardering on the positively bizarre, but he still gets all the best lines in the film. What's great about Zorin is that he is completely psychotic. Walken shows the character is completely over the edge from little touches like his facial acting when he is described as psychotic, to the smile he gives just before he slips off the Golden Gate bridge. Walken ends up being completely enthralling and one of the best Bond villains to date.

The funny thing is that if someone suggested a movie starring Christopher Walken and Grace Jones, you'd have to sit there and go...yesss.... Conversely, though, if anyone's offbeat acting can counterbalance anyone else's, it's most definitely Walken and Jones. Tall, black and muscular, Grace Jones is not the typical Bond girl, or villain's henchman, yet, she works so well, particularly against Zorin. Backed up by Patrick Bachau as the creepy Scarpine and the extremely beautiful Alison Doody as Jenny Flex (I can't gush enough about this woman - as a young lad I was madly in love with her), Zorin's got a nice little army in the style of Mr Big in Live And Let Die.

Another great performance is Patrick Macnee as Sir Godfrey Tibbet (and thankfully we get no "Sir Tibbet"'s in this movie like the abominable "Sir Havelock" in For Your Eyes Only). As I said earlier, Macnee and Moore were clearly good friends offset and this helps the relationship between Bond and Tibbet no end. At the end of the day Macnee seems to be playing, essentially, Avenger John Steed (and let's face it, to the fans of Bond and The Avengers this makes it almost a dream come true), but the character he is given is pretty much Steed so there is no real issue here.

Not working quite so well, though, is Tanya Roberts who delivers a fairly lacklustre and passionless performance as Stacy Stutton. As usual John Glen makes Bond less of a guy who uses women as his pawns, and so Moore attempts to give Bond's relationship with Stacy a little bit of depth, but it's very hard when he's playing against someone who is not quite so interested in giving the same kind of depth. Although she is very beautiful, she is in a movie with a group of girls who are all extremely attractive, and when Fiona Fullerton can not only look beautiful but give her cameo appearance as KGB agent Pola Ivanova a great deal of depth, especially given it is an ultimately unnecessary part; Roberts needs far more than beauty to get by.

Looking at other aspects of the production; John Barry gives a wonderful score for AVTAK which, while not having the originality of Octopussy, still has a great deal of style, and is helped out no end by a fantastically brilliant title song from Duran Duran. Duran Duran and Barry working together on the theme clearly inspired both sides of the deal, and Barry, of course, was able to use the theme throughout the movie. My favourite example of this is the fanfare version when Bond rescues Stacy from the burning Town Hall - although enough of people drinking wine when Bond does incredible things!

DP Alan Hume has his work cut out for him given that there are virtually no real exotic locales to play with - it's set in San Francisco and...er...well, there's that bit in the Arctic at the beginning... In spite of that, you never get the feeling that the movie lacks that certain Bondian setting that you got in Diamonds Are Forever. And with Peter Lamont apparently having studied very well under Ken Adam, the production design is quite astounding. What is the most amazing is the mine set at the end which is simply massive and allows Glen and Hume to shoot from so many angles that the set looks even more amazing.

Glen's direction is absolutely outstanding in this film and so with things like the Golden Gate fight (note the performances not just of Moore and Walken but also Bachau and Willoughby Gray) and the mine massacre (which is actually quite disturibing) the film stands out from the other Bond movies by showing us that Glen is still full of ideas for the series.

And so it's to the bits and bobs part of the review. If Moore is going to continue to play Bond it's about time they reshot the gunbarrel logo - Bond is still in flares! Why do the guards immediately start shooting at Bond in the pretitle sequence? Is that just standard Russian policy? And the "California Girls" is perhaps a little misjudged. The decision to insult the French so soon after the Indians is perhaps also misjudged. Given that Zorin doesn't know who Bond is until he meets him the day after Bond arrives, why is everyone so mistrustful of "St John Smythe" when he immediately arrives? Equally, surely Zorin's residence would have video surveillance as well as audio (in fact there is a bank of monitors in the surveillance room) - why did Bond and Tibbet think that just a recorded conversation would be good cover? And clearly "Oh, James" is now going to be the standard ending to the Bond films...not sure if that's a good thing though...and the next movie is? Well, we don't know. But...James Bond Will Return.

Favourite Bond: 1. Roger Moore; 2. Sean Connery; 3. George Lazenby
Favourite movie order: 1. On Her Majesty's Secret Service; 2. Dr No; 3. A View To A Kill; 4. Live And Let Die; 5. Thunderball; 6. For Your Eyes Only/Octopussy 7. The Spy Who Loved Me; 8. From Russia, With Love; 9. Goldfinger; 10. You Only Live Twice; 11. Moonraker; 12. The Man With The Golden Gun; 13. Diamonds Are Forever
Favourite Bond girl: 1. Claudine Auger/Dominio; 2. Diana Rigg/Tracy; 3. Carole Bouquet/Melina; 4. Barbara Bach/Anya; 5. Maud Adams/Octopussy 6. Mie Hama/Kissy; 7. Daniela Bianchi/Tanya; 8. Ursula Andress/Honey; 9. Jane Seymour/Solitaire; 10. Lois Chiles/Holly; 11. Honor Blackman/Pussy; 12. Tanya Roberts/Stacy; 13. Britt Ekland/Mary; 14. Jill St John/Tiffany
Favourite Bond villain: 1. Donald Pleasance/Blofeld; 2. Gert Frobe/Goldfinger; 3. Christopher Lee/Scaramanga; 4. Christopher Walken/Zorin; 5. Louis Jordan & Steven Berkov/Kahn & Orlov 6. Adolfo Celi/Largo; 7. Michael Lonsdale/Drax; 8. Yaphet Kotto/Mr Big-Dr Kananga; 9. Julian Glover/Kristatos; 10. Joseph Wiseman/Dr No; 11. Lotte Lenya/Klebb; 12. Telly Savalas/Blofeld; 13. Charles Gray/Blofeld; 14. Curt Jurgens/Stromberg

Never Say Never Again

2008-10-02T06:35:00.001-07:00

Remakes are notorioiusly dodgy territory as you can almost be dead certain that at least half your audience will hate it because it's not like the original. If it's not at least as good as the original then you've lost the rest of them. Kevin McClory, at the end of the day actually only having the rights to Thunderball, was a little limited in his choice of Bond movie to remake and choosing one of the best remembered is always going to be a bad thing, regardless of whom you have playing Bond.

It's interesting to see just how much of a difference Roger Moore had made to the Bond movies. The general audience will sit down in front of Never Say Never Again and, aside from briefly pondering why it doesn't have the Bond theme, the gunbarrel logo and Roger Moore, will move on and see a standard Bond movie. However, the fact is that Roger Moore has changed audience expectations of what a Bond movie is. Sean Connery may be returning to the world of Bond, but he is not playing the character he played in the sixties. This Bond is a bizarre amalgam of Moore's Bond and a caricature of his own Bond. He is even smoking cigars instead of cigarettes! Additionally Connery has aged considerably since "the day" but strangly enough he looks better in this than he did in Diamonds Are Forever.

Obviously the plot of this movie is essentially the same as the plot of Thunderball (although there is a vague insinuation that this is a continuation of the previous Bond movies - the new "M" is acknowledged as not being the same as the one Bond knew in the sixties, and he already knows of Shrublands - but as a consequence of this, Dr Evil's line "let's just steal a couple of nuclear bombs and hold the world to ransome like we usually do" is more on the money than would initially appear) but a lot of things are rearranged and a few of the characters have been a little altered - most notably the inclusion of Fatima Blush who replaces Fiona Volpe and Count Lippe in a slight tightening of the script that works quite well - in terms of tightening, more on Fatima later.

So while Sean Connery attempts to channel Roger Moore, the rest of the regular characters are, obviously, also recast. Edward Fox becomes the new "M", setting this movie at the end of the Eon series. Fox mumbles his way though the movie in a performance that is truly misjudged. By the end of the movie he offers Bond the reward of going to his club. The excitement must never stop at "M"'s home. "Q", or Algy as he is now known, is Alec McCowan, a cold ridden, Michael Caine-sounding armourer who has all the gadgets at his disposal (another change from Thunderball thanks to the Moore movies), while Pamela Salem delivers a vapid Moneypenny. In defiance of the idea of people having static skin colour, Felix Leiter is played by Bernie Casey, a black actor. Regardless of not looking like the character, Casey delivers the best performance of the movie and is perfectly cast - craps all over Norman Burton.
Annoyingly, but to be expected of course, is the fact that all characters have been seen before and therefore you can't help but compare them. Max Von Sydow actually is seen as Blofeld, still with his white cat, but sadly he lacks any of the threat of his predecessors; indeed he even manages to make Charles Gray's performance look good - at least Gray had charisma. Klaus Maria Brandeaur plays Max Largo - a name change from Emilio - and while he also lacks the suave menace of Adolfo Celi, at least he delivers a completely difference performance; more of a "man of the people" style of villain with an uncontrollable anger. Kim Basinger takes over the role of Domino (Petachi rather than Vitalli) and while she looks good (though nowhere near as stunning as Claudine Auger) she is a bit of a whiner. Rather curiously the character is now a dancer - apparently for Hot Gossip - who wears see-thru leotard, which is a little embarrassing for all. In fact the movie is overly sexist, highlighted by not only the see-thru leotard, but also Basinger wearing sexy silk pyjamas at the climax and a bikini at the end.

Barbara Carrera is Fatima Blush who, as noted earlier, takes over from both Fiona and Lippe (although a character called Lippe does appear but does nothing that the original did). Fatima appears to be an egotistical dominatrix who is certifiable and completely ineffective, managing to not kill Bond so many times it's not funny. It's not as even though she actually comes close on many occasions.

Rounding out the cast is Rowan Atkinson as the comic relief character of Nigel Small-Fawcett (yes...you read that right). Rowan does a good job, and is quite funny, but the character just doesn't seem right in the movie. There are, really, overly too many in-jokes in the movie, ranging from Algy's hope that now Connery is back there will be more gratuitous sex and violence to Connery's wink at the camera at the end after being told to never say never.

Curiously, in light of the fact that McClory has the rights to the movie version only of Thunderball, there seems to be a few more swings back to the novel - Bond drives a Bentley and Largo is number one rather than Blofeld. However greater changes include the introduction of remote-controlled sharks (welcome back, Dr Evil) and Bond and Largo playing a computer game called Domination instead of Baccarat. The computer game is a pretty stupid idea (though curiously at one point, Bond activates his "shield" which spirals in on his face recalling the Eon gunbarrel logo) and it's hard to imagine why anyone could stand up and say, without anyone raising an eyebrow, that he has devised a computer game which could kill the players. Bond wins - as he is supposed to - and then dances with Domino (as opposed to buying her a drink in the original). This is a tango which is so completely out of place in a Bond film it's not funny.

And this brings me to the music of the film which is incredibly corny, and used in a very strange manner. The Shrublands fight suffers on many levels, but the chief one is that there is no music to it (while we're on the topic the other reasons include people cheering a fight on TV which mirrors the real life fight - it was dumb in Octopussy it's dumb here - and Bond winning by throwing his urine sample into the face of his opponent). Frankly, the music gets off to a terrible start with a very eighties, but unmemorable, theme song and then proceeds through the cheesy music of Michael LeGrand.

Overall there is not much else to recommend the film. The photography is nice, but not exciting, and even Ricou Browning seems to have lost some of his flair for the underwater filming. The sets are particularly uninspiring, and while the Flying Saucer may be physically more impressive than the Disco Volante, it's certainly not visually. It's really hard to believe that the director of this film is the same guy who directed The Empire Strikes Back.
And we get to the final scene, which essentially sums up the movie - Sean Connery lounging around and doing bugger all except moaning what a Bond movie is supposed to be like (I usually have a martini, he moans, to wit the audience are thinking much the same). It's hard to be understand why McClory bothered to do a Bond movie, but given that Roger Moore can make a scene where he defuses a nuclear bomb dressed as a clown one of the tensest things you'll see; and Sean Connery can't make a brilliant script into a hugely entertaining film; it's easy to see why Octopussy beat Never Say Never Again at the box office.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent - Assassin (Season Seven)

2008-10-02T06:34:00.001-07:00

When I found out that the Torchwood episode "They Keep Killing Suzie" had to be shot to a complicated timetable because Indira Varma was shooting in America, I thought, why did she bother? What on Earth is she doing in America? Who knows what she was doing at the time, but how delighted was I when she turned up in tonight's episode? Extremely.

Clearly she is supposed to be playing Benazir Bhutto, although I don't think many people would be happy at the possible allusion that Bhutto was a cold killer who planned the murder of her brother in order to get the family fortune. But as they are obviously not the same person, I suppose CI has got itself out of a nasty lawsuit.

Once again I have to say how obvious it is that Chris Noth gets on well with Julianne Nicholson, as the Logan/Wheeler pair is easily the best of Logan's various partnerships, and the relaxed byplay between the two is getting as good as the happier days of the Goren/Eames relationship (you know - back when it seemed Goren was the senior detective and they actually liked each other). This was an extremely entertaining episode, and while it didn't really get you thinking very much (but let's face it, CI rarely does that these days) it did keep me entertained for a good 42 minutes.

"A-"