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Post by fenris on Dec 22, 2008 19:22:32 GMT
As a general rule, I can't stand reality shows and avoid them like the plague. I've never watched the likes of Britain's Got Talent, The X Factor and I'm a Celebrity Wanker - Watch Me Eat Bugs, and I never will.
However, my Mum's a big fan of Strictly Come Dancing, and although I can't honestly say I've been avidly following the current series, I'm often there when Mum's watching it and so I've caught quite a few episodes - at least enough to form some opinions.
So here's my view regarding the recently-screened grand final between Tom Chambers and Rachel Stevens (after the viewers' votes put Lisa Snowdon in third place);
Something that struck me early in the series was that Rachel's performing background gave her an unfair advantage. True, the dance routines she had to perform in S Club 7 were nowhere near as complex as an actual waltz or foxtrot, etc, but it meant she was already used to (1.) the daily ritual of rehearsing, (2.) memorising a large number of steps, and (3.) how to keep in time. In other words, Rachel already possessed a strong grounding in the basics of dance, which the other competitors lacked. I think it's accurate to call her a ringer.
While Rachel's dancing was technically impressive, it was also a little soul-less, while Tom was clearly enjoying himself immensely and that sense of fun and enjoyment came across. Tom was living the dream, but in contrast there was always a look in Rachel's eye that said 'this will be good for my career'. Now there's nothing wrong with taking part in a reality show in an attempt to boost or revive your public image (it's why 99% percent of celebs in such shows are there), but it just made Tom's genuine enthusiasm even more appealing.
And Tom's final showdance was stunning. It was surprising, it was silent cinema physical comedy, it was vaudeville, it was slapstick, it was daringly different (especially compared to Lisa and Rachel's showdances), it was sweet, and it was fun. It even seemed to finally win the judges over. Tom and Carmilla were worthy winners in my opinion.
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Post by orokiah on Dec 23, 2008 20:26:36 GMT
And Tom's final showdance was stunning. It was surprising, it was silent cinema physical comedy, it was vaudeville, it was slapstick, it was daringly different (especially compared to Lisa and Rachel's showdances), it was sweet, and it was fun. It even seemed to finally win the judges over. Tom and Carmilla were worthy winners in my opinion. Fully agree. I've watched most of this series but I could never warm to Rachel Stevens - she's a great dancer but as the John Sergeant saga showed, it's not enough. There was an interview with her recently in which the interviewer mentioned that she'd been in showbusiness so long she'd been media-trained to within an inch of her life. I think that came across when she danced and the whiff of 'please-resurrect-my-career!' about her didn't help. Rightly or wrongly, the public vote for a good personality as much as a good set of dancing feet. Tom's showdance was fantastic and I've watched it a few times since on YouTube. It was the best dance of the night, along with the previous winners' one. He definitely deserved to join them.
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Post by fenris on Dec 26, 2008 15:50:33 GMT
Watched Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death yesterday, and I have to say I though it was quite underwhelming. Not - I hasten to add - in regards to the production values, which were of the same high standard as the previous short films in this series. Instead I'm thinking of the script, which seemed underwritten and by-the-numbers. It even fell back upon parodying scenes from other films, such as Ghost, Aliens, and the 1966 Batman movie, which the previous entries in the series never resorted to.
Writer/director Nick Park has been quoted as saying that while the earlier Wallace & Gromit films took two-three years to make, A Matter of Loaf and Death was rattled off in just seven months. I can't help but think that the reason it was rushed through production is that actor Peter Sallis (the voice of Wallace) is in his late Eighties, and - as anyone who's seen recent episodes of Last of the Summer Wine can attest - growing increasingly frail. To be blunt, I suspect Park wanted to get this latest film completed quickly because Sallis sadly might not be with us for much longer.
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Post by fenris on Jan 21, 2009 20:05:12 GMT
Britannia High, the Fame meets High School Musical brainchild of Arlene Phillips, starts this Sunday at 6.15pm on ITV1. The series producer and lead director is Hex's Brian Grant. ITV seem to be throwing every resource into backing Britannia High, and it's being hyped and cross-promoted to death. But the songs are annoyingly catchy, the cast can actually act, and riding on the fame-obsessed crest of The X Factor, I think it might well be a hit for them. Britannia High has been cancelled after a single series, due to low audience figures; www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/a143500/britannia-high-axed-after-one-series.html
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Post by fenris on Apr 21, 2009 18:38:57 GMT
Further proof (if it were needed) that fantasy TV is now considered mainstream: on 01/05/09 at 21:00 the four-part series Boy Meets Girl begins on ITV1. It stars Martin Freeman and Tapping the Velvet's Rachel Stirling as two complete strangers whose minds swap into each other's bodies.
Coincidently (or not), two days earlier (29/04/09) an American movie called It's a Boy/Girl Thing that uses the exact same premise is being screened on BBC3 at 21:00.
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Post by fenris on Jul 7, 2009 8:15:32 GMT
A quick summary of satellite/cable channels dedicated to science-fiction, fantasy and horror that are currently broadcasting in the UK;
The Paranormal Channel. Owned and run by Yvette Fielding and her husband, it screens little-seen horror films, documentaries about the supernatural, TV series such as Strange But True, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and the classic One Step Beyond, plus vintage cliffhanger serials (Flash Gordon, Undersea Kingdom, etc). Unfortunately there are recent signs that this channel is struggling: last week they suddenly stopped showing movies between 21:00 - midnight, and have replaced them with one of those awful (but cash-generating) psychic phone-in programmes.
Sci-Fi. The UK's longest-running genre channel, Sci-Fi is often criticised on other forums for not showing enough first-run TV series. Presumably, such complaints come from individuals who mistakenly think that TV channels run on air. The fact is that Sci-Fi is a minority interest channel that operates on a budget that's a fraction of that enjoyed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, Sky, and probably even Living, Virgin 1 and Bravo. Sci-Fi would undoubtedly love to be the first to screen such shows as Lost, Fringe, Supernatural, Pushing Daisies, Reaper, Sanctuary, etc, but they are often out-bid by one of the larger channels. Even when they do secure the rights to a major series, they receive little thanks from genre fans - for example, they were the first in the UK to screen Heroes and nearly blew their entire yearly budget in the process, resulting in them being forced to show endless repeats of the 1st season for several months, because they barely had any money left to purchase anything else. Then the Beeb swooped in and bought the rights to the second season onwards, and the only comment from viewers seemed to be "Great - now we'll be able to see the show for free." Nice.
Sky Sci-Fi/Horror. Mostly a selection of well known, big-budgeted studio movies from the last few years. Pretty much what you'd expect, in other words.
SUMO TV. Not even Bravo can match the startling number of format changes that this channel has undergone in a remarkably short period of time. It started out showing obscure genre movies during the day and YouTube-style clip marathons in the evening & night. During this period, it gave us two memorable but short-lived series: the wonderfully entertaining Cult 45, which provided an overview of various movie subgenres, and the strangely compelling car-crash TV that was In Bed With Sim-Wise with glamour model Alex Sim-Wise and her masked sidekick Prolapse presenting bizarre short films while lounging about in their underwear. SUMO subsequently underwent a total identity change, ditched all it's pre-existing programming, briefly became a 24 hour dating channel, and then even-more-briefly a late night adult phone sex channel (!!). It currently operates only during the daytime, and has reverted back to showing obscure movies (often sci-fi), intermixed with Public Information films from the Fifties and Sixties.
Zone Horror. A solid selection of B movies and independent films, most of them very recent, plus TV shows such as Vampire High, The Collector, Urban Gothic, Dark Knight, Witchblade, Friday the 13th: The Series, Beastmaster, Millennium, etc. The best of the genre channels, in my opinion.
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Post by orokiah on Jul 22, 2009 19:54:43 GMT
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Post by fenris on Aug 1, 2009 13:48:50 GMT
Enjoyed the first episode of the second series of The Kevin Bishop Show last night (31/07/09). Like all sketch shows, it's hit and miss, but there's definitely more of the former as opposed to the latter. One slight problem that I foresaw when I watched the first series last year is that the humour is so topical that re-watching it even as little as a few months later, some of the sketches will have lost some of their bite. And while that's perhaps still true, there's no denying that many of the jokes work wonderfully seen here and now. I especially liked the show's take on the media's reaction to the death of Michael Jackson; "Coming next on Channel 4, Michael Jackson: What Really Happened. We Haven't Got a Clue, But We're Still Going To Milk It For An Hour." The various Frost/Nixon-inspired 'sequels', recreating some the most memorable and disastrous celebrity interviews on British TV from the Seventies and Eighties, was also chucklesome. I also enjoyed the Mind Cop sketch, about a homicide detective whose supposed ability to 'get into the criminal's mind' actually only reveals too much information about himself, as he insists on seeing a homosexual motive in every straight-forward, textbook death that he comes across (is my memory playing tricks on me, or did this character also appear in the first season?). And the spoof Jason Statham trailer was note-perfect. A promising start to the second series.
And I couldn't help noticing that either Kevin Bishop is quite short, or Karen Gillan is really tall.
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Post by orokiah on Aug 2, 2009 14:41:43 GMT
Enjoyed the first episode of the second series of The Kevin Bishop Show last night (31/07/09). Like all sketch shows, it's hit and miss, but there's definitely more of the former as opposed to the latter. I thought it was a good start to the series. Nice to see some of the best bits from last year making a reappearance - the Mind Cop was definitely one of them, and the DVD and perfume adverts are also still highlights. I'd like to see the Nursery Crime Squad again too in future episodes, but I suspect they might have used up all the best nursery rhymes in series one. My favourites this episode: Gritty Bafta, the dig at all the Top Gear repeats on Dave, the 'Pete Townshend book: still not out' news banner during the Sooty sketch and Horne and Cordon trying and failing to remake On The Buses.
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Post by fenris on Aug 6, 2009 5:57:35 GMT
I won't be surprised if viewing figures for the second series of The Kevin Bishop Show are considerably higher than those for the first series (at least for the first few episodes), simply due to curious New Who fans tuning in to see Karen Gillan.
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Post by orokiah on Aug 6, 2009 15:37:19 GMT
The Karen Gillan Factor is going to have to be something special to take on the declining popularity of Big Brother - The Kevin Bishop Show has been sandwiched between it on both runs and that's probably not going to do it any favours in the ratings stakes.
This year's opening episode got 1.8m in the overnights.
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Post by fenris on Aug 8, 2009 15:21:10 GMT
Two episodes into the second season of The Kevin Bishop Show, and it's interesting to see what's working and what isn't. The Hugh Laurie and Celebrity Siblings sketches have already grown tiresome, while Jonathan Rockerfeller just isn't funny. There's plentiful comedy mileage to be had with the concept of an American Anglophile who's actually hugely ignorant about the UK, but Bishop has made Rockerfeller much too outlandish. However, Mind Cop remains highly amusing, despite the fact that it's merely the same joke (often word for word) repeated each week in a different setting.
Highlights this week included The Cry Factor (a welcome skewering of how mawkish hard-luck stories have become an expected part of the fabric in TV talent shows - and Karen Gillan's Cheryl Cole was tremendous), the Nookie Bear version of Peep Show, the adverts for the multi-part Coffin Magazine and Incest Island (I bet the latter idea has actually occurred to a TV producer somewhere), the trailers for film adaptations of Andy Capp and George & Lynne, and the pointless movie prequels.
This week's observation: the writers keep thinking up a surprisingly large number of sketches that require Karen Gillan to run about in just a tiny bikini or skimpy underwear.
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Post by orokiah on Aug 14, 2009 15:54:54 GMT
The Cry Factor was superb, and I loved Wrinkly Skins, the recession-hit rapper and the Coffin Magazine advert too. Bishop's impression of Gok Wan is spot on.
Agree that the Rockefeller sketch isn't his best work, though - not particularly funny and boring to boot. The best thing about it is the spoof TV logo in the corner of the screen.
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Post by fenris on Aug 15, 2009 12:00:43 GMT
There was a noticeable increase in potentially controversial and near-the-knuckle material in the third episode of The Kevin Bishop Show, but nothing that I personally considered unacceptable. And while I still enjoyed the show, most of the sketches weren't particularly memorable this time. 'Mind Cop' remains a standout - a prime example of the Fast Show principle that some jokes actually get funnier through repetition. This week's Opportunity To See Karen Gillan In Her Underwear was the Michael McIntyre Undercover skit. I personally think that McIntyre can be very funny, but his Tigger-like stage persona soon grates, so I found that sketch particularly well-targeted and amusing. The Paranormal Channel. Owned and run by Yvette Fielding and her husband, it screens little-seen horror films, documentaries about the supernatural, TV series such as Strange But True, Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and the classic One Step Beyond, plus vintage cliffhanger serials ( Flash Gordon, Undersea Kingdom, etc). Unfortunately there are recent signs that this channel is struggling: last week they suddenly stopped showing movies between 21:00 - midnight, and have replaced them with one of those awful (but cash-generating) psychic phone-in programmes. The Paranormal Channel has been renamed The Unexplained Channel. The fact that it's had to undergo a rebranding exercise after only being on air for about a year is not a good sign, especially as the name appears to be the only thing that's changed - the channel's content & scheduling remains the same, making the retitling both pointless and somewhat desperate. I've read reports on-line that the channel's most-watched shows are only getting audience figures of a few thousand. If that's true, it's a great shame, as it's my second favourite channel after Zone Horror.
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Post by orokiah on Aug 16, 2009 16:17:59 GMT
And while I still enjoyed the show, most of the sketches weren't particularly memorable this time. Agreed, I thought it was the weakest episode so far. The TSnore sketch with Karen Gillan's top-notch impression of Alexa Chung was a gem, though.
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