Month: January 2005
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A Very Long Engagement
A couple of years ago I fell in love with Audrey Tatou. It wouldn’t be untrue to say that in actual fact I fell in love with her character in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s film Amelie. Jeunet had previously made Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and, er, Alien Resurrection. But Amelie was when he really hit…
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UK Radio Aid
UK Radio Aid is the British radio industry’s bit to help with raising cash for the tsunami fund. My employers will, like many of the rest of the UK’s commercial radio stations, join forces next Monday for 12 hours to simulcast a telethon featuring the great, the good, and the possibly not-so-good of the UK…
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British Police Cars
I saw the first double-length episode of the new series of Alias at the weekend, and as usual it was a globe-trotting affair with the theft of Japanese sword from a museum which some might mistake as being The British Museum. Afterwards, Sydney gets picked up by her father who’s driving a British police car.…
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Sideways
I went into Sideways knowing very little aside from the fact that it was about a wine taster. Indeed, for all I knew it might have been a documentary. All of which goes to show that I’m not reading enough about upcoming films – it’s fantastic. Paul Giamatti (who’ll you’ll recognise from bit parts in…
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Alexander
Alexander has been roundly criticised by many as being almost laughable. In particular, in America, it has performed poorly at the box office, taking something like $35m dollars when it cost something nearer $150m. It’s certainly not a great film, but it’s not nearly as bad as some would have you think. I think the…
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Jerry Springer the Opera Part 2
So what did I make of Jerry Springer the Opera when it was finally shown? Umm. Well I fell asleep after about 45 minutes, and by the time I woke up, the darts were on! What I did see was reasonably entertaining and clever, but I can’t really say a great deal more than that.…
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Jerry Springer the Opera
It now seems that the BBC has received 30,000 complaints about a programme that has yet to air – Jerry Springer the Opera. If we’re not careful we’ll start suffering the same ridiculousness that’s currently afflicting American television. The people complaining are organised – most notably by Mediawatch, but undoubtedly backed by various church groups.…
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TV in 2005
Private Eye’s “Remote Controller” writes a summary about the health of the various main TV channels as we leave 2004 and enter 2005. I thought I’d contribute my own summary of where they stand. BBC1 Not doing badly – not doing wonderfully. Yes, we all know that the charter’s up for renewal and we’re seeing…
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Tsunami TV News Coverage
There are a couple of articles (which I only noticed via Stuart Hughes website) on Media Guardian attacking and defending the BBC’s coverage of the Asian Tsunami. Here’s the attacking piece by The Guardian’s Matt Wells, and here’s the rebuttal by the BBC’s Head of News Roger Mosey (both articles require free registration to read).…
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Commenting Re-enabled
Well I’ve tentatively re-enabled commenting on the site. It requires you to have a Typekey username so you’ll have to go away and sign up for one if you’ve got something you want to say to me. And as a result, I will also want a copy of your email address. Be sure that I’ll…
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3 Minutes of Chatter
I’ll sit back and not take a view over whether or not having three minutes of silence for those who died in the Asian Tsunami was a good thing or not. I’ve no problem with remembering the dead, but putting it into the context of the many other disasters and tragedies that have struck –…
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Desperate Housewives
Channel Four’s big new acquisition starts tomorrow night – Desperate Housewives. Much has already been written in the “quality” press about this, but somehow I don’t think that many of the commentators have quite got the tone of this show quite right. You might think that shagging in the suburbs is the full nature of…