Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Go tell the Spartans

Posted on in Films.

I saw 300 yesterday. Is it historically inaccurate? Yes. Does it illogically put modern notions of freedom and democracy into the mouths of the Spartans? Yes. Does it look like a montage from Braveheart, Gladiator and Lord of the Rings? Yes. Does any of that really matter? No, ‘cos it’s just a damn good heroic action movie in its own right.

Everyone seems to want to read some sort of modern political message into this film. As the heroic Spartans are shown both supporting “modern western” values against an eastern religious tyranny and as supporting native defenders against overwhelming foreign invaders, it is hence seen as both supporting the US against Islamic fundamentalism, and as supporting the Iraqi insurgents against the US occupation. Considering these contradictory interpretations it seems that if the makes intended it as a comment on the war against terror/war in Iraq then they didn’t do a very good job of getting their message across.

Screw all that, this is a movie about violence, heroism and warriors. It’s visually stunning and full of blood and guts and thrills. The first battle scene, with the two forces pushing and shoving, shield-to-shield, stabbing and slashing, is one of the best depictions of pre-gunpowder warfare that I’ve ever seen. After that things stray into heroic fantasy territory, rather like a big budget Xena with lots (really, lots) of blood splatter.

Not going to be everyone’s taste, but if you like this sort of thing, you’ll probably love this one.

Bug Hunt

Posted on in Dinosaurs, Science, TV.

When I saw the trailers for yesterday’s episode of Primeval I wondered whether they were going to give any explanation of how the giant arthropods could survive in our atmosphere, and pleasantly they did – oxygen rich air leaking through the rift anomaly from the Carboniferous.

Then they go and spoil it by having the good looking bloke use a blowtorch right in front of the rift anomaly with no side effects what so ever. If the oxygen levels were high enough to affect the soldiers then wouldn’t any flames also be affected?

Oh, and they doubled the size of Arthropleura. There could be a larger species that simply hasn’t been found in the fossil record yet…

Science aside, it’s fun tea time nonsense, but the geek is very annoying and only Douglas Henshaw shows any signs of actually being able to act.

One last thing. We’ve all been conned. On the ITV web site for the series there’s a list of creatures. Have a look and see if you spot whats missing:

  • Coelurosauravus
  • Scutosaurus
  • Gorgonopsid
  • Giant Spiders
  • Arthropleura
  • Mosasaur
  • Hesperonis
  • Dodo
  • Parasite
  • Pteranodon
  • Agnurognathus
  • Predator

Not one of those is a dinosaur. No dinosaurs. Weren’t we promised dinosaurs? But all we get is arthropods, synapsids, and birds (I know birds are dinosaurs). Give us some proper dinos!

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Ragnarok 51

Posted on in Games, Magazines, Miniatures.

Ragnarok 51Ragnarok is the journal of the Society of Fantasy and Science Fiction Wargamers. The latest issue, the first with John Wilson as editor, of Rag has been published and is in the post to members.

  • Saint Snatch – Relic steaing in Dresda
  • In the Dog House – Strontium Dog in Inquisitor
  • Crimson Twenty One – Crimson Skies in Air War C:21
  • Ottomania II – More Turks in Aeronef
  • The Rules of War – Reviews of Space Vixens from Mars and Battlestations
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Making history

Posted on in Computer Games, Magazines, Memes, My Life, TV, Work, WWW.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting – a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice – she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

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Real Life / Online Life

Posted on in Books, Music, My Life, WWW.

On Saturday I bought a song from iTunes by Drill Queen, one of whose members I know in real life.

On Monday a package from Amazon arrived for me, I didn’t remember ordering anything but thought that I might have done when I set up work as a delivery address (Amazon’s courier company is totally incapable of delivering to home). Today I checked the delivery note and discovered that someone else had bought it for me off my wishlist.

I didn’t recognise the name and so checked my Gmail archive to see if it was anyone who had ever spoken to me. It was, a little while ago he had sent me this e-mail:

Hi there, you responded to one of my messages on Usenet, full details here.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets/msg/…

I was wondering if you could please remove it from Google’s archives (you can do this by creating a Google Groups Account, looging in, finding the message and pressing remove).

I’m just not keen on having that URL on the Internet now that it’s used for something different.

Thank in advance,

Used for something different means not used for an escort site anymore. (I’d answered a technical question about the site coding not anything related to the content.) Anyway, today I sent back the message

Bribery worked.

Nice to know that after all these years of giving free advice on Usenet I’m finally getting some reward.

Trekkie stuff

Posted on in Media.

It’s one of those funny but not especially surprising things that fan activity for some well established shows is more creative when the show is off the air and loses momentum somewhat when new material is actually being produced.

Just as a new TV season starts in the US, the first second (bugger, things never sounds as good when the facts are right) without a new Star Trek series for nearly two decades, so two lang standing stalwarts (what I suppose we’d call BNFs in other circles) of treknical fandom produce new material. David Schmidt’s Strategic Design produces a new range of blueprints and Eric Kristiansen releases a new edition of Jackill’s Volume One.

Well, I’m excited even if you’re not.

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Great sporting events

Posted on in Doctor Who, Sport.

I take it that all the shouting and honking of horns outside means that England did okay in the footie?

Doctor Who – Fear Her last night was an interesting companion piece to The Idiot’s Lantern earlier this season. Both set in London, both take place around a major televised event, both feature a single alien, both feature an abusive father, both have one of the TARDIS crew taken out of the action by the alien.

The differences – East London not North London, set in the near future not the recent past, a lonely alien child not a hungry alien monster, the haunting memory of a dead father not a n everyday living father, the Doctor captured not Rose.

Both stories also have low body counts (especially by DW standards), only the unfortunate Mr Peacock and the Wire itself died in The Idiot’s Lantern and no one dies in Fear Her.

The news reader, Huw Edwards, really hammed up those lines about the torch being a beacon of hope and love and so on. I would have preferred a couple of lines of technobabble over that.

Loved the Doctor lighting the Olympic flame. But I suspect that in reality there would be a back up runner around to take over. Anyone fancy tripping the runner up in seven years time to see?

The plot was predictable and the production seemed a little lifeless apart from the two leads – possibly David Tennant’s best performance yet and a good showing from Billie Piper. Nice to see positive Rose in full swing (literally with the pick-axe), but clingy Rose is really annoying. Oh well, nect two weeks should sort that out. 😉

Overall, another good solid 8/10.

I know I haven’t written much about Love and Monsters. I can’t think of much to write that doesn’t turn into a rant. I can’t believe that some people saw it as a negative portrayal of fans – it was incredibly positive for about fans in general, just negative about the sort of bossy, uber-fan represented by Victor Kennedy. I did enjoy it for the most part but Peter Kay’s performance kind of spoilt it for me. 8/10 for sheer novelty value and Marc Warren’s performance, maybe not something we want every week but let’s have another experiment of some sort next year.

Well, that was different.

Posted on in Doctor Who.

Love and Monsters – instant reaction, no spoilers

That was a very odd episode. I’m not quite sure it worked but I couldn’t help but love it none the less.

Oh, and I was right. Basically, it was the novel Who Killed Kennedy (notice the name? Hmmm.) being played for laughs.

More later.

Not the pits…

Posted on in Doctor Who.

…and certainly not The Pit 😉

I said at the end of my review of the last Doctor Who episode: “I do have a bad feeling about part two though.”

I was right and wrong. Or to put it another it, The Satan Pit was better than I feared but not as good as I hoped.


The one thing that new Doctor Who is bad at is resolving cliffhangers and this season is even worse than last year. After all the tension at the end of last week, what happens? Jefferson shoots the Ood, the power comes back on, and nothing comes out of the pit. Oh dear.

Maybe at some point the contrast between the action in the base and the more philosophical conflict in the caves looked good (and is a reversal of the normal pattern) but it really didn’t work. The two halves needed to be tied together a bit better.

It was good to see proactive, thinking on her feet, Rose, she’s been missing for a while. Shooting the windscreen (or whatever you call that part of a rocket) wasn’t the smartest thing in the world but if you know that you’re going to die would you rather (a) die in a little while with the devil in the chair next to you all the time, or (b) die sooner but after having the statisfaction of killing the devil? I’d go for (b) too.

The Doctor’s leap of faith when he dropped off the end of the cable into the darkeness was logical within the confines of the story (what else could he do?) and in character for the tenth Doctor (who does tend to look before he leaps, and is a hypocrite for pointing out the same flaw in the humans) but still seemed like poor writing. “We have cool descending through the darkness whilst talking philosophy with Ida scene, and we have cool confront the devil scene, but how do we get from one to the other?”

So what do we make of the Doctor’s belief in Rose that allowed him to smash the vase? What exactly does he believe? Looked at coldly, it could only be the belief that Rose would want him to sacrifice her to save the universe. But that doesn’t really fit with the emotional tone of the scene. It was a good line but sadly doesn’t make much sense.

Bad science – I can forgive almost everything except the way the rocket swung round towards the black hole when the gravity funnel collapsed. Why? Yes it would be pulled into the black hole but what caused it to rotate so that it goes nose first rather than tail first?

Design work, performances and directing were all excellent, and the number of old series references raised a smile. If only the script had been just a bit tighter and the resolution made a bit more sense then this would have been an all time classic.

I think this was a very good 9/10

Next week looks like another rummage through the Virgin scrapbook. This time taking Who Killed Kennedy and playing it for laughs.

Zesty orange death for the beeb

Posted on in Doctor Who, My Life, TV.

So last night and I went out for dinner with the weasel clan to hip and happening Sanderstead. we went to Modern Time which advertises itself as non-specific ‘Oriental Cuisine’. When I orderd the the ‘zesty orange beef’ from the menu the waitress felt obliged to warn me that it contained orange. Um, yes, I can read, I wasn’t just staring at the menu for fun for theleast five minutes and the word orange was quite clear and that’s why I ordered it. Whatever, as they say.

So once we got home we wanted to play Doctor Who back. Now this being the most important television program ever I had given it a nice generous fifteen minutes after the end, just in case. But, it goes and starts over twenty minutes late. Bastards. If you’re going to insist on showing all of the stupid football then cut some time off Graham Norton’s bloody dancing crap instead. Wankers, as I say.