Hello anybody reading this.
My lack of posting may have made it look like I haven't been alive. I am.
It's been a busy old month of festivals, writing and return trips to university for evenings out. Alas, my room key has been handed in and I shall not be returning to Stoke for some time.
Still watching 24. I've just finished the third series and will probably do a 'half way there' review at the end of series 4.
I'm also working on a project called Way Station, an idea that I started to develop a while back. The first episode is written (and I'm going to send it to the BBC as a calling-card type of thing). All feedback on that greatly appreciated as I have to completely perfect this script. It can be found here!
Also been looking for a job. That's impossible at the moment unfortunately. Living in a fucked country is no fun.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Wednesday, 27 April 2011
24
Currently watching 24 and enjoying it immensely. About 3/4 the way through series/day 2. Watching this straight after The Wire has resulted in me needing to suspend my disbelief a fair bit. The Wire was incredibly realistic while 24 is less so.
Still finding it very enjoyable though. Will post about it properly soon.
Still finding it very enjoyable though. Will post about it properly soon.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
What Next???
I've been looking at what to watch through now that I've finished The Wire. A few things have been suggested including 24, Babylon 5, Walking Dead and Southland.
I think I'll give 24 a go but throw ideas at me by all means. I'm looking for something a little lighter than the bleak world of 2000s Baltimore as shown in The Wire.
I think I'll give 24 a go but throw ideas at me by all means. I'm looking for something a little lighter than the bleak world of 2000s Baltimore as shown in The Wire.
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
The Wire - Best TV Series Ever?
This is a piece that I've dreaded writing since the moment that I first watched The Wire. There's nothing that I can say about its sheer brilliantness that hasn't already been said 500 times.
First of all, this will contain spoilers so if you haven't seen it stop reading NOW, go on to amazon and buy the complete box set. You will like it and even if you don't, you have to see it. If you have seen it, read on...
At first I didn't connect with it, I even posted on here that this may not be the series for me. But I stuck with it as many people advised me to. By the fifth episode I was completely hooked and I remained hooked throughout the rest of the series. It keeps you going until the very last moment.
It's incredibly well written, you can tell this straight away. There's an enormous number of characters but all of them feel realistic, all of them are perfectly plotted out. We learn things about them very slowly, some things we don't get told until much much later on. This doesn't matter.
The Wire isn't driven by character or plot, both are perfectly balanced. Sometimes the story hinges on one character yet at other times a main character can be simply bumped off, no epic deaths, it just happens. The best example of this comes towards the end of the final season when Omar, a character that has been pivotal to the story on a number of occasions, is shot by a child while shopping. There are literally hundreds of people after him and have been since the very beginning, yet it's a small and simple thing that is his ultimate downfall.
While watching through The Wire I found that some kind of reset button was pressed at the beginning of each series, I lost interest for periods of time before picking it up again. Yet by the end of every series I was hooked, sometimes watching three episodes in a row. The start of a series does see the pace slowed down a bit. This may have been because I was watching series back-to-back and not one a year over five years.
People ask me what The Wire is about, the obvious answer is obviously cops and robbers. However when you look carefully, it's not about that at all. It's about how Baltimore as a city fails to recognize and deal with its own problems and how the system fails those that it should protect. The Wire is really a novel for TV, about how shit life is and how no one can really do anything about it. Every episode is a different chapter and every series is a different volume of the same story, a story that has no beginning and no end and probably never will do.
A brilliant series that is often hailed as 'the best TV series ever' and I can understand why, it's certainly up there with the greats and I would recommend it to anyone and encourage everyone to watch it in its entirety. The ending isn't particularly rewarding but it puts its message across clearly and in a very entertaining way.
First of all, this will contain spoilers so if you haven't seen it stop reading NOW, go on to amazon and buy the complete box set. You will like it and even if you don't, you have to see it. If you have seen it, read on...
At first I didn't connect with it, I even posted on here that this may not be the series for me. But I stuck with it as many people advised me to. By the fifth episode I was completely hooked and I remained hooked throughout the rest of the series. It keeps you going until the very last moment.
It's incredibly well written, you can tell this straight away. There's an enormous number of characters but all of them feel realistic, all of them are perfectly plotted out. We learn things about them very slowly, some things we don't get told until much much later on. This doesn't matter.
The Wire isn't driven by character or plot, both are perfectly balanced. Sometimes the story hinges on one character yet at other times a main character can be simply bumped off, no epic deaths, it just happens. The best example of this comes towards the end of the final season when Omar, a character that has been pivotal to the story on a number of occasions, is shot by a child while shopping. There are literally hundreds of people after him and have been since the very beginning, yet it's a small and simple thing that is his ultimate downfall.
While watching through The Wire I found that some kind of reset button was pressed at the beginning of each series, I lost interest for periods of time before picking it up again. Yet by the end of every series I was hooked, sometimes watching three episodes in a row. The start of a series does see the pace slowed down a bit. This may have been because I was watching series back-to-back and not one a year over five years.
People ask me what The Wire is about, the obvious answer is obviously cops and robbers. However when you look carefully, it's not about that at all. It's about how Baltimore as a city fails to recognize and deal with its own problems and how the system fails those that it should protect. The Wire is really a novel for TV, about how shit life is and how no one can really do anything about it. Every episode is a different chapter and every series is a different volume of the same story, a story that has no beginning and no end and probably never will do.
A brilliant series that is often hailed as 'the best TV series ever' and I can understand why, it's certainly up there with the greats and I would recommend it to anyone and encourage everyone to watch it in its entirety. The ending isn't particularly rewarding but it puts its message across clearly and in a very entertaining way.
Sunday, 20 February 2011
Making a film!
I've been here before. A couple of years back a few friends and I decided to make a film. All was going well until we gave up due to it being far too much effort when A Levels had to be focused on.
I went away and wrote 3/4 of a script that could easily be made. I literally wrote it so that it could be filmed in any location at anytime very easily.
And the project is off! People are up for it and now I'm at uni equipment access is so much better.
Here's some of the results of the last attempt, hopefully we'll be more successful this time...
I went away and wrote 3/4 of a script that could easily be made. I literally wrote it so that it could be filmed in any location at anytime very easily.
And the project is off! People are up for it and now I'm at uni equipment access is so much better.
Here's some of the results of the last attempt, hopefully we'll be more successful this time...
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Stop Messing With the Classics!
It's been announced lately that the next failed remake/reboot attempt will be The Black Hole. Not seen it since I was about 10 but I loved it! I still remember the pure bizarreness and creepiness of it all. It wont work, remakes are always crap. The American Italian Job: Crap, Assault on Precinct 13: Crap. It even spreads to TV, no one in the world liked The Prisoner remake. Creatively bankrupt bastards!
Monday, 10 January 2011
Doctor Who - Meglos
Good old Amazon pre-orders, getting the DVD to me on Saturday, two days before release.
Meglos is a 1980 tale featuring Tom Baker's Doctor. This was in his final season and the adventures were a lot darker and sciency. If any of Doctor Who has ever been science-fiction (which I don't believe that it is), this is it. However Meglos presents us with an anomaly, in the sense that it's a fairly light-hearted tale.
First of all, Meglos himself is an evil cactus, a concept that is bizarre even for Doctor Who. In the first episode it's very difficult to take this talking cactus seriously, as you can understand. However when the cactus steals the body of a human, we begin to see the sinister side, even more so when he alters his form to look like the Doctor!
For the first half of the story the Doctor does very little, there's certainly more of a focus on Meglos, the space pirates that he has enlisted the help of and the religion vs science argument that the planet Tigella's society seems to have as the prominent aspect of its planets culture. It's quite worrying to see that all the scientists are blond-haired and blue-eyed whilst the religious Deons are not.
The story is simple enough. Meglos steals something to power his weapon, crippling a planet in the process as the power source is required to power everything on their planet. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and a couple of the Aryan-looking scientists have to follow Meglos back to his home planet to stop the weapon from being fired. All the time the Doctor and Meglos are identical, each impersonating each other to confuse the Tigellans and the Space Pirates. This leads to a number of comic moments. When the two 'Doctors' eventually meet each other the comedy however turns to silliness. By this stage teh Doctor and Meglos are deadly enemies and should be locked in mortal combat, however they spend most of their time complimenting good looks.
There are some odd bits of writing and direction throughout. The fact that the Doctor, Romana and K9 don't even leave the TARDIS until part two should be disturbing, however the space pirates and Meglos provide enough action to keep the pace going. This is unfortunately canceled out by the tediousness of the science vs religion debates on Tigella, the same scene is repeated about five times in different parts of the Tigellan city.
The final episode, despite being entertaining, is a total mess. Lexa, leader of the Deons, played by original companion actress Jacqueline Hill, is killed off in the stupidest of ways. A space pirate that we thought was dead shoots her before actually dying. the scene is rushed and there is no tension at all, when something could easily be made from it, especially when you consider the episode's strangely low running time.
There is also the ending. A rushed scene back on Tigella after the destruction of the dodecahedron (the infinite power source) where the locals have changed their minds about attempting to inhabit the surface, that is covered by the unconvincing killer Bell Planes, and have started to do a bit of gardening.
Meglos is a rushed mess, yet it is still strangely watchable and enjoyable. The acting is on a surprisingly high level, mainly due to Tom Baker playing both the Doctor and Meglos for the majority of the story. There are some questionable moments by the space pirates but nothing that removes the viewer from the story. It's a dark story told in a surprisingly comic way. The only real letdown is the shortness of three of the episodes, all of which are considerably below running time, episode four taking up only 18 of the 25 minutes. If you're willing to overlook things like this then you will find Meglos to be highly enjoyable. 7/10
Meglos is a 1980 tale featuring Tom Baker's Doctor. This was in his final season and the adventures were a lot darker and sciency. If any of Doctor Who has ever been science-fiction (which I don't believe that it is), this is it. However Meglos presents us with an anomaly, in the sense that it's a fairly light-hearted tale.
First of all, Meglos himself is an evil cactus, a concept that is bizarre even for Doctor Who. In the first episode it's very difficult to take this talking cactus seriously, as you can understand. However when the cactus steals the body of a human, we begin to see the sinister side, even more so when he alters his form to look like the Doctor!
For the first half of the story the Doctor does very little, there's certainly more of a focus on Meglos, the space pirates that he has enlisted the help of and the religion vs science argument that the planet Tigella's society seems to have as the prominent aspect of its planets culture. It's quite worrying to see that all the scientists are blond-haired and blue-eyed whilst the religious Deons are not.
The story is simple enough. Meglos steals something to power his weapon, crippling a planet in the process as the power source is required to power everything on their planet. The Doctor, Romana, K9 and a couple of the Aryan-looking scientists have to follow Meglos back to his home planet to stop the weapon from being fired. All the time the Doctor and Meglos are identical, each impersonating each other to confuse the Tigellans and the Space Pirates. This leads to a number of comic moments. When the two 'Doctors' eventually meet each other the comedy however turns to silliness. By this stage teh Doctor and Meglos are deadly enemies and should be locked in mortal combat, however they spend most of their time complimenting good looks.
There are some odd bits of writing and direction throughout. The fact that the Doctor, Romana and K9 don't even leave the TARDIS until part two should be disturbing, however the space pirates and Meglos provide enough action to keep the pace going. This is unfortunately canceled out by the tediousness of the science vs religion debates on Tigella, the same scene is repeated about five times in different parts of the Tigellan city.
The final episode, despite being entertaining, is a total mess. Lexa, leader of the Deons, played by original companion actress Jacqueline Hill, is killed off in the stupidest of ways. A space pirate that we thought was dead shoots her before actually dying. the scene is rushed and there is no tension at all, when something could easily be made from it, especially when you consider the episode's strangely low running time.
There is also the ending. A rushed scene back on Tigella after the destruction of the dodecahedron (the infinite power source) where the locals have changed their minds about attempting to inhabit the surface, that is covered by the unconvincing killer Bell Planes, and have started to do a bit of gardening.
Meglos is a rushed mess, yet it is still strangely watchable and enjoyable. The acting is on a surprisingly high level, mainly due to Tom Baker playing both the Doctor and Meglos for the majority of the story. There are some questionable moments by the space pirates but nothing that removes the viewer from the story. It's a dark story told in a surprisingly comic way. The only real letdown is the shortness of three of the episodes, all of which are considerably below running time, episode four taking up only 18 of the 25 minutes. If you're willing to overlook things like this then you will find Meglos to be highly enjoyable. 7/10
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