Slusho and beyond

Slusho

So good you can't drink just six ...

First off, let’s get right to this Slusho 1-18-08 thing … I don’t think it’s Godzilla. In fact the theory I like best is the one most discredited at the moment … that it was all a massive promo for “Lost.” That would be just the best idea ever. But, no, it seems unlikely at this stage.

Anyway, the apple trailer is up and it’s definitely a great trailer. HERE

Just some quick notes here –

1. No, I haven’t read the newest Harry Potter book

2. No, I haven’t seen the newest Harry Potter movie.

3. I haven’t seen Pirates or Spiderman 3

4. The only new music I’ve gotten is by old guys – Robert Fripp’s “Churchscapes” finally arrived. It is exactly what I expected, mainly because he's been releasing this material through his website during the tour.


I also got the most recent Church acoustic album of their older songs “El Momento Siguiente.” This pretty good and features a rather interesting "reading" of "Reptile." Despite Kilbey's amazing ability to shoot himself in the foot, I still like the Church.




So, what’s going on?

I'm currently in total Firesign Theatre mode and reading a rather ok biography about them. This started because of my annual listen to the greatest comedy album "Don't Crush that Dwarf, Pass Me the Pliers" ... still marveling at how much is crammed into that mere 40 minutes.

Well, I’m totally into Stephan Moffatt’s “Jeckyll” series and will definitely be buying the DVD. Part 6 is on this Saturday on the BBC. There are so many bad versions of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (modern retellings or classic adaptations) that it is truly wonderful to see it being taken seriously.




Double-Dipped



Well, despite my best intentions, I’ve been dipped. A couple of times recently. I allowed myself to be double dipped on the Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone classics “A Fistful of Dollars”, “For a Few Dollars More” and “The Good the Bad and the Ugly.” “Fistful” is still a classic introduction to Clint Eastwood (and him to us in many ways) and is rather interesting remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961).



Sadly, though the films themselves are presented in excellent anamorphic glory, the extras aren’t distributed very well. Sadly once again suffering is the best of the three – the glorious “For a Few Dollars More.” It is the only film that has a moral backbone or a firm narrative. All are great, but this is pure genius. Lee Van Cleef has never been better used and Clint really seems have stepped into his own career before it had really happened.




“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” is massive gorge of violence, gigantic set-pieces, and odd characters. It is just too big and long for me (it takes 30 minutes just to introduce the main characters), though it is still a really entertaining film. Eli Wallach is so good as Tuco (the Ugly) that you sort of forget that he isn’t the star of the film.




Also, I got the box for Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Look Back (1965 Tour Deluxe Edition).” While it is a great film, the re-release seems really for the bottom of the barrel crowd. The film has been re-mastered and looks as good as this grainy b/w choppy documentary can (i.e., very impressive both technically and for Pennebaker’s ability to get the shot) but it really isn’t a vast improvement over the previous release. The silly book of the film and the flip book of the infamous “Subterranean Homesick Blues” film are really pointless. So, we are left with the bonus disc of outtakes and these are interesting as they point to even more depth in the “character” we call Bob. There is a wonderful moment when he lets the two girls from Liverpool (the ones he appears to be making fun of during the regular feature) into the show for free. He clearly remembers talking to them earlier, as well. Rather a different side of the enigma we see bouncing from pure iconoclast to jealous paranoid in the feature. All in all, Bob Dylan was an iconoclast and that’s what the film really brings out. If you can find it for a good price, I recommend the upgrade.

Voyage of the Damned pic

Kylie Minogue and David Tennant ... on the Titanic. Well, I'm already excited.

LANDRU

MISTER MEDIA ME>BLOG

If I were being very faithful with this blog and you my dear readers I’d try to keep up to date with my media immersion, but frankly … I just can’t seem to convince myself that it matters.

So what if I’m listening to the 3 CD Sergeant Pepper’s bootleg? Does it matter that I watched Tom Baker’s first season of Doctor who over the weekend? Or that I’ve been watching the brilliant Ian Richardson in the House of Cards series? Is it a crime to have down-time?

The truth is I am constantly immersed in media, as we all are if we’re honest, but I’m also participating in it … which makes writing a blog objectively reviewing things a bit distracting. Currently, I have a lot of songs and Spacefinger music written, a new Spacefinger “set” available on the podcast, and am trying to get some back catalogue on lulu.com in case one or two of you want to buy this stuff.

Not too long ago I self-published a novel (not too disguised to the right of this blog.) Of course, this was really just me being too lazy to go through the double-whore process of selling myself to a publisher. Believe me, unless you are well connected, that’s just harder than writing the novel in the first place. So, I went the self-publishing route. Vanity Press … yes, I know.

So, someone a few weeks back asks if I had copies to sell (not online.) Well, this is Print on Demand … I don’t have a few hundred sitting around. I have to buy them, too. So, I got a couple of copies … and no one is interested. They are just sitting here …. Even with signs up and everything … bastards.

And, then there is the short-story I just sent off to a science fiction magazine.

So, I’m a busy guy. I have a job, too, which is rather too dull to write a blog about. So, I’m a bit depressed. Just turned off the Beatles from the ipod monster. Not even the fabs can save me today.

“It’s only a Northern Song.”



ps ... this thing really isn't into using the Title box lately ...

Doctor Who “The Sound of Drums” and “Last of the Time Lords”

“Drums” – 10/10
“Last of the Time Lords” – 7/10

Rant and Review - Well, it feels wrong to review both here in one go, but I got lazy again. There was this thing that gets in the way (work, life, whatever) and there I go … forgetting to review stuff on a blog that no one is reading, anyway.

So, “The Sound of Drums” kicked the gears up a few notches from the spectacular “Utopia” but then lost its rhythm (and reason and rhyme) in “Last of the Time Lords.” This is the first season finale that doesn’t feel embarrassing in terms of the overly soapy emotional stuff … but still utterly failed to deliver the goods in terms of plot and story telling. And, shame on that for ending an otherwise nearly perfect season. But, it calls into question something else: do the emotional fireworks cover up really bad endings in the previous two seasons? It is obvious that Russell T. Davies does depend a lot on emotion and a lot less on logic. To be fair, this is the first 3-part story the new series has done (roughly equivalent to the old fashioned 6-parters in the “classic series” days) and it should be judged on overall story merit … but, somehow I cannot quite do it.

1. Because “Utopia” was directed by Graeme Harper (who directed for the classic series as well) and
2. Because Derek Jacobi was in it and not John Simm
3. Because it is so stylistically different than the last two parts



We left “Utopia” with Doctor, Martha, and Capt. Jack stranded while the newly regenerated Master (Simm) has stolen the Doctor’s TARDIS. We resume the story with the 3 getting away pretty quickly (and really, who wanted to see that bit go on more) to find that the newly elected prime minister Harold Saxon is in fact the Master … who taunts the Doctor with a speech parodying the now disgraced Harriet Jones “What this country really needs … right now … is a Doctor.” Ping. A nice big smile and the credits roll in pretty heavy.



What follows is a tour de force for Simm’s Master as he rounds up Martha’s family and plays cat and mouse with the Doctor. First, he blows up Martha's flat and then reports the three as terrorists.




It is really the best set-up episode in history, giving us not only two really great actors going for guts and glory, but also a lot of CGI Time Lord flashbacks (for the fans)




... some weird new aliens he calls “the Toclafane” (a Time Lord myth), and the ultimate spaceship in the sky. The Master has been setting this up all along for 18 months. After he announces the first alien contact with the Toclafane, he is met by an enraged, though thoroughly stuck up President Arthur Winters (played by Colin Stinton of A Very Peculiar Practice fame.) Of course, this is a British drama, so there are lots of pokes at Americans. “Shall I make the tea? Or isn’t that American enough? I could make grits? What are grits, anyway?” and then … has the aliens kill the President on world-wide television. It is, to say the least, outrageously funny.












By the end of the story, (the Master's quite insane "Here come the drums!" Voodoo Child moment is perhaps unforgetable as a climax) the Doctor is made very old and forced to watch the Earth being invaded by 6 billion spheres …

By the time “Last of the Time Lords” begins … Doctor Who has taken a big leap of faith by projecting the story one year into the future. Martha is wandering the world and … well … the Master has made the Doctor even older … Martha’s family are his servants … he appears to be in some drug stupor … and then the plot gets silly.







1. The Tinkerbelle moment … Yes, the Doctor saves the world by having everyone say his name at the same time (with the added benefit of the Master’s Archangel Satellite network.) This is of course not only absurd, but simply impossible to manage, let alone plan (which is what he claims to have done.)




2. The reset … the Earth goes back in time to just before the spheres appear. This is sadly the worst thing in the original Superman movie … it certainly doesn’t get better when redone in Doctor Who …

3. And, after all that, the Master inexplicably decides to die and the Doctor cries. It seems utterly absurd. (Although, there is a shot of a woman picking up his ring after his Jedi style pyre.)







4. And Martha leaves … Why? We like Martha.



5. Donna from the Runaway Bride is coming back? Why? We didn’t like Donna.

6. Jack is ... the Face of Boe ... What????



7. Kylie is on the Titanic ... which crashes into the TARDIS at the end of the episode.





In the end, my response is that someone slipped the entire production team some heavy hallucinogens at the same time … and they’ve all gone simultaneously insane. It can be the only explanation.

And so now we wait for next Christmas and ... watch thousands of people die in a story called "the Voyage of the Damned" ... I think I'm on pretty sturdy ground with my hallucination theory.