Right. Posting here as AndiD's not on facebook.
Two things:
First, I've just realised that having a new PC means I can play modern games on them (ie, things newer than Baldur's Gate 2, which is embarrassingly old now), so I'm installing Mass Effect 2 as we speak. I'm very excited by this.
Second, with redundancy payment looming, I'm treating myself to a console. I need something that A) will play games, B) at least some of you guys have got, C) will allow me to play DVDs, and D) will allow me to stream from my laptop (or play AVIs from it's hard-drive).
I'm assuming a 360 is the thing to get in this case, but obviously the PS3 is around as well.
Any thoughts?
Just watched the new trailer for Torchwood, coming over the summer. Now, the first two series were a bit hit and miss, sometimes routine monster-of-the-week episodes, but the 5-episodes-in-one-week series was fantastic.
In this new series, which will consist of 10 eps telling one story, there are some surprise guests: Bill Pullman, and Dichen Lachman, who I was never sure I liked in Dollhouse.
There's one cracking scene with Eve Myles (the welsh bint who's always been in Torchwood) facing off to Dichen in a plane. Dichen says something like "if you're the best we've got, we're done for." Eve says "I'm Welsh"... and promptly decks Dichen with a good right-hander.
Nice.
Was emailing The Fly the other day, and happened to mention I'm about to start watching V series 2.
"Don't bother", he glibly responded. Yep, cancelled. I'm obviously not reading enough sci-fi blogs recently, as I'd missed that one.
Just like I'd missed the cancellation of The Event, which was there on my back-up list of things to watch.
Any other cancellations I need to know about?
Thank fuck for Fringe, that's all I can say.
And Game Of Thrones is shaping up pretty good as well.
And there's always the 5th series of god-awful-but-just-about-bearable-to-watch-because-of-dinosaurs-and-Ben-Miller's-fantastically-drily-sarcastic-charcter Primevel showing on Watch at the moment.
I'm posting from my phone, so I'll let you find a url, but look for the ad with the star wars theme. Very funny.
No, I'm not talking about the wee man's childhood. I'm talking about mine.
He and I had a boys weekend away this weekend, during which we went to:
1. Dynamic Earth
2. The Scottish Museum of Flight or whatever it's called.
In Dynamic Earth, there was a female astronaut presenting. We didn't actually see her, but, caught up in the space theme, the wee man bought a toy space shuttle. Then later that night, we watched a few YouTube vids of the shuttle landing and taking off. And by co-incidence, when we got back, the good lady had a Panorama special lined up for us to watch.
At the Flight Museum, we got to explore a Concord, and looked in a cockpit of a Jump Jet Harrier.
...
Never mind the continual litany of the end of decent sci-fi programs. WHAT ABOUT THE ENDING OF ALL MY CHILDHOOD DREAMS!
I'll never fly in a Jump Jet now they've been mothballed.
I'll never get to see the shuttle take-off or land.
And I'll never fly in Concord.
And I still haven't got the flying jetcar they promised me in Tomorrow's World.
Bastards.
The good lady is well into Bondi Beach rescue at the minute. And there are two things that amaze me. No, three things.
1. How can all male Aussies sound just like the two guys in the beer advert that have the phone-in helpline?
2. How can people who blatantly can't swim be so fecking stupid as to go to one of the best surfing spots in the world, and then ignore the lifeguards who say it might be bit rough out there, mate?
3. How can the lifeguards remain so cheerful in the face of so much stupidity, day after day?
OK, four things.
4. Tonight's episode was the day after New Years day. You can picture the scene - the beach full of hoboes sleeping off the night's excesses. So the lifeguards start work in the morning, sun barely lighting up the horizon, by driving round in their jeep thing, revving the engine and tooting their horn to get people to move and prove they are just asleep and not comatose or dead. At one point, they let off their siren to wake everyone up...
... So my question is: Bondai Beach. The other side of the world. How come the only guy to shout out "Hey, ya bastads" was from fecking Glasgow????
And yes, I mean pages like
this.
There we were, unwrapping Granny's new TV, when it all came flooding back...
You know in packaging for big electronic items, you get polstyrene corner pieces that look a bit like this, only normally with more nooks and crannies:
Well, when I grew up, they made for great bases for Star Wars figures! So obviously, the Wee Man and I are making a trip to Toys R Us next weekend for some figures to play with in our polystyrene!
Father and son bonding.... There's nothing like it! :-)
Sarah Connor Chronicles. Canned.
Caprica. Canned
Dollhouse. Canned.
Firefly. Canned.
etc
etc
etc
Until you get to this one:
Primeval. Should have been canned when 4/6 of the main cast were written out.
Should have been written out 1 series later when it went down hill.
But no! It's back!
Fecking unbelievable.
Labels: primeval, tv
Only 2 episodes [no pun intended] but Episodes is looking pretty sharp. It stars Tamsin Greig (the neighbour from Black Books - albeit not the best characters) and Stephen Mangan (who's face I know from somewhere I can't remember), and Matt LeBlanc playing ... Matt LeBlank.
Great set up where Tamsin/Stephen play British scriptwriters trying to launch a remake of their hit UK TV series into the US, and the interplay between US/US TV people is what drives the series (Episodes, that is, not the one that the characters have written).
The best characters are definitely the US people, which doesn't say much about the UK view that the Yanks don't have any sense of humour.
But it's a BBC production, so that makes everything alright again.
Well worth a look.
Labels: tv
