Dave Wrote This

"Too Important To Let A Loose Cannon Rock The Boat"

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

So says Mayor Richard Wilkins III in Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Lovers Walk of 1998. The full quote is "This year is too important to let a loose cannon rock the boat…Loose cannon. Rock the boat. Now is that a mixed metaphor?…Boats did have cannons. And a loose one would cause it to rock…" (and to be perfectly honest he's really talking about the academic year 1998/1999, but I decided the quote was too good not to use it).

1998 was the year in which the Good Friday Agreement was negotiated in Belfast, both India and Pakitan conducted nuclear tests, General Pinochet was placed under house arrest while visiting the UK, the first segment of the International Space Station was launched into orbit and nineteen countries outlawed human cloning.

This was the year in which my school neglected to stage a play, which was probably a good thing since it was also the year that I took my GCSEs and started at sixth form.

These are a few of my favourite things from 1998:

Film

Rushmore
Jason Schwartzman, Olivia Williams and Bill Murray are wonderful in this tale of a student who excels only in extra curricular activities. This is where many of the hallmarks of Wes Anderson's later films begin. Here's the trailer.

Happiness
Not a film about happiness, but its absence. Todd Solondz's cast of characters are all searching individually for an elusive something to make them happy. Those that get what they want are still just as unhappy. Here's the trailer.

Celebrity
Full of characters that contradict themselves in the same breath with the role traditionally played by Woody Allen divided between Kenneth Branagh and Judy Davis as a husband and wife with mostly neuroses in common, caught up in a quest for fame and an assumption that the grass is always greener.

The Big Lebowski
Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Steve Buschemi, David Huddleston, Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman are fantastic in this brilliant slacker comedy with a witty and intelligent script full of twist and turns, a great soundtrack, a hilarious dream sequence and wonderful characters. Here's the trailer.

Antz
Successfully incorporating great visual gags, Marxist theory and all the hallmarks of a Woody Allen film, this is a very funny animated film. Here's the trailer.

π
Darren Aronofsky's directorial debut is a brilliant psychological thriller. The all-consuming search for a mathematical pattern within the Kabbalah and the effect it has on Max are surprisingly compelling as conspiracy theories give way to body horror and desperation. Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis are fantastic. Here's the trailer.

Run Lola Run
Franke Potente is fantastic in this quirky and stylish German film. Here's the trailer.

Velvet Goldmine
Ewan McGregor, Christian Bale and Toni Collette are great in this sprawling ode to glam rock. The film takes the form of a biopic of a Ziggy Stardust-style figure told with the structure of Citizen Kane and a phenomenal (if Bowieless) soundtrack (including peerless track The Whole Shebang by Grant Lee Buffalo). Here's the trailer.

TV
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Bad Eggs; Surprise & Innocence; Phases; Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered; Passion; Killed By Death; I Only Have Eyes For You; Go Fish; Becoming; Anne; Dead Man's Party; Faith, Hope & Trick; Beauty And The Beasts; Homecoming; Band Candy; Revelations; Lovers Walk; The Wish; Amends
The second season continues with Bad Eggs which is easily dismissed as Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers with added egg jokes, but they're very good egg jokes and the conviction of everyone involved raises it above dismissal. As the series mythology develops, the use of horror as a metaphor becomes more intricate and as Buffy and Angel consummate their relationship in Surprise, the consequences become apparent in Innocence as Angel is released from his curse and becomes the Big Bad. These episodes shake just about every relationship on the show, from the tenderness of Willow and Oz, Willow feeling betrayed by Xander, Cordy's embarrassment of Xander, Giles' mistrust of Jenny and Spike's jealousy of Angel. The show just keeps getting better and better and in retrospect these two episodes are the foundation on which the rest of Buffy and Angel were built. Phases is fantastic and Seth Green is awesome in what looks like an audition for Oz to become a regular. Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered is another great Xander comedy episode, but also another example of Buffy taking an idea and doing it better than anybody else. Passion is a stunning piece of television from David Boreanaz's opening monologue that makes Angel's sadism real to Anthony Stewart Head, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Alyson Hannigan's excellent portrayals of grief. Killed By Death is a change of pace, but it's interesting to see Buffy weakened by something as universal as the flu and the episode uses Cordelia really well. Gellar and Boreanaz are fantastic in I Only Have Eyes For You which is possibly the best ghost story ever made. Go Fish is Buffy at its most monster-of-the-week, but the scenes of Willow interrogating Jonathan, Cordelia's promises to the fishman she believes is Xander and absolutely everything Snyder does are all hilarious. The two-part season finale Becoming is a game of two halves, the flashbacks of the first part make the story feel bigger in scope and the second part draws together the threads of the season and brings out the best in everyone and the ending is heartbreaking.
The third season begins by showing us where Buffy ran away to and her life as Anne in Los Angeles meanwhile the scenes of the now-Buffyless Scooby Gang slaying in her absence are great, the really long first-day-of-school tracking shot is very impressive, Joyce's speech about blaming Giles is terrific and Buffy's Gandhi impression is a nice little non sequitur. Dead Man's Party is a nice little zombie story and Oz drawing the distinctions between gatherings, shindigs or hootenannies, Nancy Lenahan, Giles threatening Snyder and Buffy and Willow insulting each other in the last scene are all great. Two out of three ain't bad as Eliza Dushku and K. Todd Freeman are great as Faith, Hope & Trick introduces Faith, Hope and Trick and it sets the scene for the rest of the season. Beauty And The Beasts looks like it'll be another Oz-centric episode but instead it is Buffy's Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde homage with the twist that Pete is an abusive boyfriend in both his forms, Green makes Oz's dilemma real, Phill Lewis is great as Mr Platt and Buffy's secret discovery that Angel is back is well handled. Contrasting Buffy and Cordelia's fight to be Homecoming queen with Mr Trick's SlayerFest '98 in a great episode, Harry Groener is fantastic and instantly likable as the Mayor, the Xander and Willow formal wear scene, the funniest use of a spatula ever on television and a great ending and so begins an unparalleled run of episodes. Head, Sutherland and Shimerman are all great as Band Candy-regressed teenage versions of their characters and this episode manages to be both a very funny standalone comedy episode and keeps the various storylines with the Mayor, Buffy keeping Angel secret and Xander and Willow's rekindling romance ticking along expertly. In Revelations, Buffy's secret is out and the gang's intervention scene is great, Xander and Willow's secret is and the driving of the wedge between Faith and the gang starts here. Spike is back with a bang in Lovers Walk and his scenes with Willow are shocking and with Joyce are hilarious, the funeral ending is fantastic, the closing montage is heartbreaking and brilliantly undercut Spike's way. 'What if' scenarios and parallel universes are commonplace in SF TV, but when Cordelia makes The Wish that the slayer never arrived in Sunnydale, Buffy proves that it even has a fresh perspective here: Mark Metcalf is fantastic as a Master whose Harvest was successful, vamped Xander and Willow are a shocking sight and an amazing final fight in an episode that moves from a Cordy comedy to operatic tragedy. Amends is Buffy's Christmas episode, the reconciliation of Willow and Oz is beautiful, The First Evil is a great concept and the Christmas miracle ending is as unashamedly sentimental as every other Christmas episode, but possibly unique because the right to be sentimental is so well earned.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Waltz; Who Mourns For Morn?; Far Beyond The Stars; One Little Ship; Honor Among Thieves; Change Of Heart; Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night; Inquisition; In The Pale Moonlight; His Way; The Reckoning; The Sound Of Her Voice; Tears Of The Prophets; Image In The Sand & Shadows And Symbols; Afterimage; Take Me Out To The Holosuite; Chrysalis; Treachery, Faith, And The Great River; Once More Unto The Breach; The Siege Of AR-558; Covenant; It's Only A Paper Moon
The sixth season continues with a Waltz between Sisko and Dukat, Marc Alaimo is great as a man who has lost his sanity, but not his ego. It's a credit to DS9 that an episode focussed on a supporting artist with no dialogue can be as good as Who Mourns For Morn? The episode is a very enjoyable treasure hunt, Morn's memorial is very touching and his co-conspirators are all great. Far Beyond The Stars is one of the best episodes of any television series…ever, Avery Brooks is phenomenal, the fifties period detail is fantastic and the rest of the cast clearly relish playing their other roles. One Little Ship is ludicrous, but unashamedly so. O'Brien goes undercover and discovers Honor Among Thieves in the sort of murky episode that none of the other Star Treks could do justice to. Husband and wife team Worf and Jadzia go on a mission in Change Of Heart and Terry Farrell is fantastic. Wrongs Darker Than Death Or Night has both a great moral ambiguity to it and an emotional intensity, Nana Visitor is as wonderful as ever and Wayne Grace steals is scenes as the Cardassian Legate undermining Dukat. Bashir undergoes an Inquisition, William Sadler is fantastic as Sloan and the concept of Section 31, an organisation that betrays the principles of the Federation in order to protect it, is a brilliant one that would clearly have appalled Gene Roddenberry, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It's a theme that pervades the next episode as well, In The Pale Moonlight, as Sisko proves that every man has his price as he constructs a complex lie in order to bring a new ally into the war for the greater good, Brooks is phenomenal as the Captain struggles with his morality and the resulting episode is probably Star Trek at its darkest, but also at its best. Odo woos Kira His Way in a very touching fashion, James Darren's Vic Fontaine is great addition to the show and Visitor's performance of 'Fever' is astonishing. The battle between the Prophets and the Pah-Wraiths is fought in The Reckoning and mixes the epic and the personal to great effect. Lisa Cusak is great as a stranded Captain whom the Defiant's crew try to rescue, but know only by The Sound Of Her Voice in what is essentially a Star Trek radio drama and O'Brien's eulogy is wonderful. The season finale, Tears Of The Prophets, is epic: the space battle is fantastic, Dukat's Pah-Wraith possession, the darkened Orbs and wormhole's disappearance are suitably sinister and mysterious, the episode also proves that death is what happens when you are making other plans and once again the symbolism of Sisko's baseball is brilliant.
The seventh season begins in a quieter fashion than its predecessors with Image In The Sand, which sees the various factions involved in the war posturing while Sisko searches for a purpose. Ezri Dax is a perfect contrast to Jadzia and Nicole de Boer is fantastic. Shadows And Symbols sees Sisko's quest digging for buried treasure provoke the Pah Wraiths, but it's great to see Benny Russell back and the revelation about Sisko's parentage is intriguing and just the right side of Christlike. Afterimage concerns Ezri's struggle to settle back into life on DS9 and shows how her relationships with Jadzia's friends have altered and Andrew J. Robinson is as great as ever as Garak. I know absolutely nothing about baseball and still quite enjoyed Take Me Out To The Holosuite which has to be a good sign. Bashir helps Sarina emerge from her Chrysalis and oversteps the mark, but it's good to see the return of the genetically engineered savants. Jeffrey Combs is always fantastic as Weyoun, but outdoes himself as two distinct clones of the Vorta in Treachery, Faith, And The Great River and Aron Eisenberg is great as Nog navigates the twists and turns of the Great Material Continuum. It's Once More Unto The Breach for Kor and John Colicos' portrayal of his delusions is wonderful, and J.G. Hertzler puts in another great performance. The troops on AR-558 are under siege and under attack, each of the characters has a fascinating personal reaction to the warfare and Armin Shimerman's of Quark's "creature comforts" speech is perfect. The Siege Of AR-558 is Star Trek at its bleakest and this episode was vital in making the Dominion War matter. Covenant reasserts Dukat as both a villain and a believer, his spin on the parentage of Mika's baby and his speech blaming his followers as he is unmasked as a traitor are brilliant. Deep Space Nine's supporting cast has always been great, but the fact that It's Only A Paper Moon concentrates on Nog and Vic almost to the exclusion of everyone else is testament to the faith that the show put in Aron Eisenberg and James Darren. They do not disappoint.

Star Trek: Voyager: Message In A Bottle; Hunters; Prey; The Killing Game; Vis à Vis; The Omega Directive; Living Witness; One; Hope And Fear; Drone; Timeless; Infinite Regress; Thirty Days; Counterpoint
The highlights of the latter half of Star Trek: Voyager's fourth season include Message In A Bottle in which Robert Picardo and Andy Dick are a hilarious double act. The Hirogen Hunters make for a fascinating alien culture that arrives fully formed and are successfully very intimidating. The threat of the Hirogen is cemented as they track a member of Species 8472 as Prey to Voyager, the CGI of it walking on the ship's hull is incredible and Seven's conflict of interests is a great source of friction here. The two-parter The Killing Game uses the Holodeck and all the hallmarks of a World War II movie to give the Hirogen added depth and features great moments for each of the regular characters. Robert Duncan McNeill and Dan Butler are great in bodyswapping episode Vis à Vis. Janeway attempts to uphold The Omega Directive in a great conspiracy episode and finds herself in confrontation with Seven in some great scenes that take in lines that science shouldn't cross and concepts of religion. The Doctor finds himself in an inaccurate recreation of events that paints Voyager in a very bad light and asks the question of whether history is written by the victors or the victims, his reinterpretation asks questions of truth itself and has far reaching consequences for an entire society: Living Witness is phenomenal. Ryan portrays Seven's sense of isolation brilliantly in the eerie and claustrophobic One. Mulgrew, Ryan and Ray Wise give wonderful performances as the ramifications the events of the last season come back to haunt Janeway in the excellent season finale Hope And Fear which seems both more and less plausible than most of the 'short cut home' episodes and with good reason.
The fifth season's highlights include Drone, an interesting twist on a euthanasia allegory which features great performances from Ryan and J. Paul Boehmer. Timeless is flawless: the visual effects are wonderful and Garrett Wang's performance as the future Kim is wonderful. Once again Ryan is fantastic in Infinite Regress as Seven suffers from a version of multiple personality disorder. McNeill's great central performance, the flashback story structure and the environmental issue under discussion gives Thirty Days a real edge. Mulgrew is wonderful in Counterpoint's great tale of sleeping with the enemy.

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends: UFOs, Porn, Survivalists, Weird Christmas
Louis looks into American subcultures one at a time. He meets members of a community following UFOs, but discovers far more variety in humanity, there are enthusiasts, academics, witnesses, self-appointed ambassadors, exploiters, tour guides and the inhabitants of Rachel, Nevada and their infighting. He attempts to make it in the Porn industry and the results are darker than usual as they range from heartbreaking to terrifying following new boy JJ Michaels' first steps, failed HIV tests and waiting for wood. The variety returns in his investigation of the movement of Survivalists in the American North West living in covenant communities, white separatists, a man living in straw bale house in freezing conditions, a very surprising fan of Are You Being Served? and the absolute star of the show is Mike who lives underground like a hobbit. Weird Christmas sees Louis spend the holidays with four of his former subjects and it's a joy to see Louis, JJ Michaels and Mike getting on so well.

Father Ted: Are You Right There Father Ted?; Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep; Speed 3; The Mainland; Escape From Victory; Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse; Night Of The Nearly Dead; Going To America
The Craggy Islanders return for a third series with Are You Right There Father Ted? and it's firing on all cylinders, highlights include: Habit-Hat, the perfectly square bit of dirt on the window, Nazis, "I hear you're a racist now", Dougal's hamster, Mrs Doyle's cure, Ted's sideshow and Jack's agoraphobia. Ted's Columbo moment and the various descriptions of 'the beast' in Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep are brilliant. Speed 3 is quite simply the finest action movie set on a milk float and is better that both of its big screen predecessors put together. They brave a visit to The Mainland, Richard Wilson and Graham Norton are wonderful. Escape From Victory is nice football episode and Dougal's puppetry of Ted's fake hands is hilarious. Jim Norton is fantastic as the football forfeit leads to Ted Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse. Zombie film and Daniel O'Donnell parody all rolled into one Night Of The Nearly Dead and Patrick McDonnell is very funny as Eoin McLove. In the final episode Ted believes he's Going To America and the point-of-view shots that prevent him from telling Dougal, Mrs Doyle and Jack the truth, while Tommy Tiernan is fantastic as depressed Father Kevin. Dermot Morgan, Ardal O'Hanlon, Frank Kelly and Pauline McLynn are fantastic throughout.

Music

Pulp: This Is Hardcore
Those expecting the band's sixth album to be Different Class II may be surprised as anthems mostly give way to songs about getting everything you ever wanted and discovering it wasn't worth the effort. Opener 'The Fear' sets the tone spectacularly, the title track is a masterpiece and tracks like 'Dishes', 'Seductive Barry' and 'Glory Days' show that every one could have been a fantastic single. Lyrically and musically the album is an absolute triumph.
Stand Out Tracks: 'The Fear', 'Dishes', 'Help The Aged', 'This Is Hardcore', 'TV Movie', 'A Little Soul', 'I'm A Man', 'Seductive Barry', 'Sylvia', 'Glory Days', 'The Day After The Revolution'

Eels: Electro-Shock Blues
Inspired by the deaths of E's family and friends, the band's second album was more dificult than most. It is the sound of grief at its most tender. The lyrics are almost mostly about loss and tragedy, set to beautiful music. This album is spectacular.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Elizabeth On The Bathroom Floor', 'Going To Your Funeral, Part 1', 'Cancer For Your Cure', 'My Descent Into Madness', '3 Speed', 'Hospital Food', 'Electro-Shock Blues', 'Efil's God', 'Last Stop: This Town', 'Climbing To The Moon', 'Dead Of Winter', 'The Medication Is Wearing Off', 'P.S. You Rock My World'

Gomez: Bring It On
The debut album from Gomez is a fantastic slice of blues rock and sounds like it should have come straight out of the American deep south, not the UK's Southport.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Get Miles', ' Whippin' Piccadilly', '78 Stone Wobble', 'Tijuana Lady', 'Here Comes The Breeze', 'Love Is Better Than A Warm Trombone', 'Get Myself Arrested', 'Bubble Gum Years'

The Supernaturals: A Tune A Day
The band's second album is fun and playful even when it's being morose.
Stand Out Tracks: 'You Take Yourself Too Seriously', 'Monday Morning', 'Submarine Song', 'I Wasn't Built To Get Up', 'Country Music', 'Motorcycle Parts', 'Sheffield Song', 'VW Song', 'Idiot', 'Magnet', 'Still Got That Feelin', 'It Doesn't Matter Any More', 'Everest'

Books

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett
The twenty-second Discworld novel sends Rincewind to EcksEcksEcksEcks, the Disc's allegory for Australia and the results are very, very funny. Crammed full of references to (and at jokes at the expense of) the likes of Antipodean culture, Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett
On one level the next Discworld novel is Lancre versus Überwald and Vampires versus witches, but its so much more as well. It's full of ethical dilemmas, common sense wisdom and pastiche of Vampires in literature and films. Carpe Jugulum means "Seize The Throat" in Ankh Morpork's dead language Latatian and the narrative does just that, but more importantly it does it with style.

Comics
Doctor Who: Tooth And Claw 4; The Final Chapter; Wormwood; Happy Deathday
The last part of Tooth And Claw sees an infected vampiric Doctor defeat the Cucurbite but apparently at the cost of his own life and Izzy and Fey return him to Gallifrey. Once there he is saved by Shayde and encounters The Final Chapter in a surreal dream within the matrix that references several elements of past strips that culminates in the boldest of cliffhangers as the Eighth Doctor regenerates into a Ninth (but not that Ninth). The new TARDIS crew visit Wormwood, in a strip that brings a complex story arc to a close with the Threshold running an old western town on the moon, outer space ceases to exist, Fey and Shayde becoming 'Feyde', Izzy with Ace's baseball bat and a Doctor that isn't a Doctor: the Eighth Doctor's return is glorious. The strip celebrates Doctor Who's thirty-fifth anniversary with Happy Deathday, Roger Langridge's caricatures of eight Doctors and hundreds of monsters are wonderful, while the dialogue between the pairs of Doctors is great.

Recommendations welcome.

Three Today

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

No, not me.

It's three years ago today that I started this blog.

I initially planned to use it to showcase my writing, but found myself writing more about acting and then along the way I got into a routine of posting Carruthers Cameras, Pulp videos and These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things which have made this a bit of a random place. Random is not necessarily a bad thing. I've had an idea for another regular feature that I should be starting soon, which will take this already random place even further away from my original idea.

I'm looking forward to it.

P.S. I finished my tax return.

Outland Revenue

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I'm having all sorts of problems with my tax return. Not with the traditional setback of working out how much I should pay, that's relatively simple. Instead I'm struggling to log on to the HMRC website in the first place. It's a long, complicated and boring story and one that I'm confident I'll have resolved before the deadline at the end of the month, but it's frustrating that I have put in a day and got nowhere.

I will be spending at least some of today telephoning automated helplines and getting irritated in the hope that I can get to the bottom of User IDs, Passwords and Activation PINs that don't seem to work.

So while I'm sorting out my taxes again and by way of another distraction, here's a portion of script for a barely relevant scene from the Red Dwarf Series II episode, Better Than Life:

Lister: Smeg! Outland Revenue!

Rimmer: Oh, oh, oh, oh! Outland Revenue!

Lister: 8500!

Rimmer: 8500? That's a lot of tax, isn't it, Listy? How on Titan are you going to pay for that?

Lister: I'm not. It's yours.

Rimmer: What? This is wrong! This is dead wrong!

Lister: Relax, it doesn't matter now. Not gonna catch you now, are they?

Rimmer: What? Just because we're three million years into deep space and the human species is extinct? That means nothing to these people. They'll find us.

Her Beauty Was Her Only Crime

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Once again, being busy on my part has lead to being lazy on my part and posting a live Pulp performance from yesteryear. This is 'Sylvia' from the 1998 gig I attended in London's Finsbury Park:

How To Sell A Banksy

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

My friend, and talented filmmaker, Alper Cagatay has recently released his latest film, made with Christopher Thompson: How To Sell A Banksy.

"Banksy's work reportedly changes hands for millions, and yet he puts up his street art for free. Have you ever wondered what would happen if you got your hands on one of these? Does it mean you've found a winning lottery ticket or just scraped some worthless crap off a wall?

Going up against the Art Establishment, Critics, Auction Houses, Gallery Owners and Authentication Boards in a quest for the elusive meal ticket, two filmmakers unwittingly gatecrash the murky and protective world of Banksy.

How To Sell A Banksy raises questions of ownership, authentication and the true value of art itself. Through all the chaos and incompetence comes a modern-day, true-story, crime-theft, comedy-caper.

Featuring an original soundtrack by Howie B."

Carruthers Camera #21

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Five more photos that I took for the Carruthers blog:

Window Shopping is a ripped covering of ASDA's window in Southgate, North London.

I took East Meets West while out walking with Mark and Brogan on a camping holiday.

Curry Favour was the eclectic menu at the Indian restaurant we ate at on the same camping holiday.

The sign featured in Buy With I was mounted near Seven Sisters tube.

Back Seat Barber was taken outside a hairdresser in Islington, sadly no longer there.

Zombie Rabbit Award

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

The new year got off to nice start for me, because Jeremy of the izombielover blog has awarded me a Zombie Rabbit Award. I'm very flattered.

Here it is:

But it doesn't end there. I have to choose some other blogs to pass on the award to as well. A blogging Pay It Forward with Zombie rabbits, if you will. Hopefully they will pass it on as well...

The blogs I have chosen to give a Zombie Rabbit Award to are:

Alex J Cavanaugh

Ellie Garratt

Building Castles On The Beach

Resolute

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

So this time last year I made a new year's resolution to read the complete works of William Shakespeare. I can't really say that I kept it. I managed to read one of Shakespeare's plays. One. I would hesitate to call it an absolute failure, because I haven't given up. Let's call it a qualified failure, but at this rate it'll take another 37 years and I'll be 67 by the time I'm finished.

So I'm making a new year's resolution, but it's the same as it was last year.

I'm making a new new year's resolution as well. I've decided that when I am between work (which has been a little too often of late, but might not be in 2012), that I will treat writing like a day job. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean a twenty-hour-shifts-of-coal-mining-with-your-teeth sort of a job. I mean a start at nine, break for lunch, finish work at five type job.

Come rain or shine, I will write.

Happy New Year.

Twentyleven

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Twentyleven was a word I coined at the beginning of the year for use on the Carruthers blog and in the absence of a better title I've used it here as well at the end.

2011 was the year that Osama Bin Laden and Colonel Gaddafi were killed, there were riots across England, a devastating earthquake in Japan and the world's population is reported to have reached seven billion.

Personally, Sarah and I moved in together and I took part in Holly Lodge - A Celebration, Topsy And The Bard, Frankensteining, Lenin’s Lunch, Lenin In London and Monitor among others and FistKrammer finally saw the light of day.

These are a few of my favourite things from 2011:

Film
Attack The Block
Aliens invade a South London block of flats in Joe Cornish's directorial debut. The cast are great, the monsters are amazing and the slang in the dialogue gives a real sense of authenticity. The film is incredible. The trailer is here.

TV

Eric And Ernie
It's refreshing to see a biopic that isn't an exposé, but rather a celebration and this story of the formative years of Morecambe and Wise is exactly that. Jim Moir and Victoria Wood are great as Mr and Mrs Bartholomew and the various Erics and Ernies are all wonderful. Stepping into Eric Morcambe's shoes was a tall order, but Daniel Rigby's performance is spot on and he succeeds brilliantly.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut & Day Of The Moon; The Doctor's Wife; The Almost People; A Good Man Goes To War; Night Terrors; The Girl Who Waited; The God Complex; Closing Time; The Wedding Of River Song; Death Is The Only Answer; The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe
Matt Smith's second season opens with the fantastic and intricate two-parter The Impossible Astronaut and Day Of The Moon which sets out the store for the year to come with the death of a central character, the Silence are a brilliant concept and Smith, Arthur Darvill, Alex Kingston and Mark Sheppard are great. Suranne Jones plays the TARDIS in human form brilliantly in the risky, but as it turns out absolutely perfect episode The Doctor's Wife, and Adrian Schiller and Elizabeth Berrington are wonderful. The Almost People is another approach to a multi-Doctor story, Rachel Cassidy is great and the cliffhanger is phenomenal. The season's first half ends as A Good Man Goes To War with a cast of thousands, an epic feel, revelations about River Song and the hilarious reveal of the title of the next episode. Smith and Darvill go from strength to strength as the season's second half rallies with the very creepy Night Terrors and the thought-provoking The Girl Who Waited which gets a great performance out of Karen Gillan. The TARDIS finds itself in The God Complex and fear itself is put under the microscope and Anara Karan is fantastic as Rita. Smith, James Corden and Stormageddon make for a great comedy trio in Closing Time. The season concludes and time stops and unravels as all of history happens simultaneously until The Wedding Of River Song in another epic tale that revisits the death that has haunted the Doctor all season, the Silence are terrifying and Frances Barber is great as Madame Kovarian (particularly in her last scene) and as the universe's oldest question threatens to be asked it spurs the show ever on. Death Is The Only Answer is a nice little runaround featuring Einstein and the Ood. The connotations of a title like The Doctor, The Widow And The Wardrobe are obvious and this Christmas special definitely lived up to them, Claire Skinner, Maurice Cole and Holly Earl are fantastic and brought out the best in Smith.

United
David Tennant, Dougray Scott, Kate Ashfield, Ben Peel and Brogan West are fantastic in this dramatisation of the events of the plane crash that nearly spelled the end of Manchester United, but was arguably the making of it. This film succeeded where so many others have failed because it concentrated on characters and their passion for football rather than relying on a presumed passion in the audience. For ninety minutes United made me care about football in a way that nothing else ever has.

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
Adam Curtis charts the causes of the credit crunch and subsequent financial meltdown from Ayn Rand's philosophy to Alan Greenspan's overconfidence in market forces and the revelation that people believed that a model based on the balance of nature would create self-regulating systems that could prevent boom and bust economies is a hugely flawed principle. I don't know if Curtis is right about any of it, but he makes it all sound so plausible and his choices of stock footage are inspired.

Psychoville
The second series of Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith's mystery sitcom picks up where the first series cliffhanger left off and takes no prisoners. Ruthlessly bumping off established characters, introducing new ones and twisting and turning to keep you in suspense. The cast of thousands: Pemberton, Shearsmith, Dawn French, Daniel Kaluuya, David Cann, Mark Bonnar, John Landis, Daisy Haggard, Christopher Biggins, Jason Tompkins, Sheila Reid, Vilma Hollingbery and Jason Watkins are all fantastic, but invariably Imelda Staunton gets all the funniest lines. I really hope we will see more from Psychoville...

Torchwood: Miracle Day
Torchwood goes stateside and yet loses none of its Welshness. Miracle Day arrives and people stop dying. Job done? Well, no because the planet's resources are being used all the quicker and healthcare provision is becoming more and more stretched by the day. The problem increases in scale episode by episode. This is topical SF at its best, asking tough questions of healthcare just as the USA is talking of reform and Cameron is threatening to sell the NHS down the river. Eve Myles and Kai Owen are as great as ever, Bill Pullman, Lauren Ambrose and John de Lancie make fascinating character studies in the face of such overwhelming odds. The ten part story ends on a great cliffhanger that is hopefully not the end for Torchwood…

QI
The H and I series saw the panel show look at subjects as varied as Hypnosis, History and Hallucinations & Hysteria and Imbroglio, Inland Revenue and Inequality. There is at least one question each week to which the answer is unknown (by humanity at large not just by the panel) and the Nobody Knows card is a new recurring element that allows panelists to score points anyway when played correctly. It rewards humility.

Alan Davies' Teenage Revolution
Alan Davies looks into the events of his youth that made him politically aware and reveals a fascinating journey through the protest movements of the eighties.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky; The Curse Of Clyde Lander; The Man Who Never Was
The fifth season was sadly curtailed by the death of the wonderful Elisabeth Sladen, but the three serials that were filmed are fantastic. The first story riffs on the series pilot as Sky arrives as a baby left on Sarah's doorstep and Sinead Michael is great as the grown up new arrival in a story that is all the more bittersweet because it was clearly meant to set a new format for future years. Daniel Anthony and Lily Loveless are fantastic in The Curse Of Clyde Langer which deals with homelessness incredibly well for the target audience. The return of Tommy Knight in the final story, The Man Who Never Was reunites the family and somehow provides a grace note to end on, everyone is given a decent slice of the action, features some very funny (and very risqué) dialogue, Luke and Sky's scenes are very touching, the Mr Serf puppetry scenes are a lot of fun, Peter Bowles and James Dreyfus are great, Anthony and Anjli Mohindra are wonderful together in all their scenes and the "Clani" storyline feels as if it is left moving in the right direction and the series ends with a beautiful montage, the wonder of Sarah's monologue and a caption that just hits the right note: "And the story goes on...forever."

Holy Flying Circus
An incredibly absurd, inventive and varied TV film about the furore surrounding the release of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian culminating in the famous interview with Malcolm Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark. Darren Boyd, Charles Edwards, Rufus Jones and Steve Punt are all fantastic as their respective Pythons (and often their wives and mothers), while Mark Heap, Simon Greenall, Michael Cochrane, Roy Marsden, Tom Price and Stephen Fry are all wonderful.

Hattie
Ruth Jones is fantastic as national treasure Hattie Jacques in a biopic that concentrates on her home life as she moves her lover in under the same roof as her husband, John Le Mesurier. The sequences of filming for Carry On Cabby and Hattie's episode of This Is Your Life are beautifully realised. Marcia Warren is wonderful as Esma Cannon and her swearing is particularly impressive. Graham Fellows, Jeany Spark and Lewis Macleod are great.

Black Mirror: The National Anthem; 15 Million Merits; The Entire History Of You
Charlie Brooker's trilogy of terror is very dark, very stark and very funny. The National Anthem sees a Royal Princess kidnapped and a Prime Minister held to ransom by her abductor, not for terrorism or money, but for a very different cause. The demands for her release are simple, he must commit 'a sex act', on a pig, live on television. Rory Kinear and Lindsay Duncan are fantastic as a put upon PM and spinning home secretary in a witty script which cuts through the tension with phrases like "trending on Twitter" that would have meant nothing just five years ago. The episode wraps up with a neat ending that is also a very rewarding one. 15 Million Merits is a cross between Facebook, The X Factor and THX-1138 and sets its sights on the crass commodification of reality TV and opinions for sale with a great central performance from Daniel Kaluuya. The final episode The Entire History Of You is a cautionary tale in which implanted "grains" which record memories for review are as commonplace as iPods and Toby Kebbell and Jodie Whitaker are phenomenal as a couple driven apart by the instant access to the digitised truth the grains afford.

Radio

Jarvis Cocker's Sunday Service
Eclectic musical choices, well chosen readings and interesting guest interviews, Jarvis Cocker has successfully made a very niche radio show into a very inclusive one. Endearingly assembled and often shambolic, but exactly the sort of show the BBC should be making.

The Bob Servant Emails
Brian Cox is wonderfully deadpan in these epistolary conversations with spam scam artists from across the globe.

Adam and Joe
The duo return for a criminally brief run of shows with all the usual features, plus a new Taffin obsession.

Doctor Who: Cradle Of The Snake; Hornet's Nest: The Stuff Of Nightmares; The Dead Shoes; The Circus Of Doom; A Sting In The Tale; Hive Of Horror
Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Mark Strickson and Sarah Sutton are reunited as the Fifth Doctor, Tegan, Turlough and Nyssa come to radio. Cradle Of The Snake pits the TARDIS crew against the snake-like Mara once more with great success and with each of them getting a decent slice of the action. Tom Baker reprises his role as the Fourth Doctor now paired with Richard Franklin's Mike Yates for Hornet's Nest, a season of five linked two-parters. Halfway between a full cast drama and a talking book, they are filled with Paul Magrs' florid prose and it is clear that the leading man is having a ball. The first story, The Stuff Of Nightmares, is aptly named, sets the scene for the rest and draws Yates into the action with an interesting device, albeit more as the Doctor's audience than as his companion. Despite the horrific imagery of The Dead Shoes is a romp that makes great use of the Doctor's housekeeper Mrs Wibbsey. Stephen Thorne is great as embittered dwarf Antonio in The Circus Of Doom which sees the Doctor stick his head into a lion's mouth and complicates the Hornet's story. A Sting In The Tale plays with cause and effect in a timey-wimey fashion in an adventure largely set with the TARDIS. The Doctor and Yates finally share an adventure as they enter the Hive Of Horror in a season finale that utilises the former Captain far better than any of his television appearances.

Torchwood: House Of The Dead
Set before the events of Miracle Day, seemingly an investigation of "the most haunted pub in Wales" this story cleverly plays with the audience expectation created by the previous two episodes and deepens into something very special indeed. John Barrowman, Gareth David Lloyd and Rosalind Ayres give lovely performances in a beautiful, macabre and bittersweet tale by James Goss.

Books

Mother, Brother, Lover by Jarvis Cocker
A book of selected lyrics from the man who has always included the "n.b. Please do not read the lyrics while listening to the recordings" on the sleeve notes to his every album. Cocker is quick to point out that lyrics are not poetry. He asserts that they are merely one part of a song and not necessarily a particularly important part at that. His introduction is practically begging you not to buy the book. Ignore him. The lyrics are, of course, fantastic featuring not just Pulp songs but also those written with Barry Adamson, Relaxed Muscle, The All-Seeing I, Marianne Faithfull and Charlotte Gainsbourg/Air. The notes at the end provide a great insight into their writing, performance and context. This book is beautiful. (n.b. Please do not read the lyrics while listening to the recordings.)

Music

Cornershop, featuring Bubbley Kaur: And The Double-O Groove Of
The band's seventh album features a new vocalist and lyricist in Kaur and with her they achieve a very different sound and an inspirational quality. The lyrics are largely in Punjabi and I haven't got a clue what she's singing about and it clearly doesn't matter because it sounds great. The musical accompaniment of Tjinder Singh and Ben Ayres still blends from many and eclectic styles often drawing even more attention to the vocal.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Topknot', 'The 911 Curry', 'Natch', 'Double Decker Eyelashes', 'The Biro Pen', 'Supercomputed', 'Don't Shake It'

The Hoosiers: Bumpy Ride
Essentially a re-release of The Illusion Of Safety and a fine album it was, but now with the excellent 'Squeeze' on board as well.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Choices', 'Bumpy Ride', 'Who Said Anything (About Falling In Love)?', 'Unlikely Hero', 'Made To Measure', 'Squeeze'

Comics

Doctor Who: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night; Apotheosis; The Child Of Time; The Chains Of Olympus 1
Jonathan Morris' storyline for the Eleventh Doctor and Amy continues with Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a one shot with a lovely story and beautiful artwork from David A Roach. Apotheosis has a fantastic first cliffhanger, nuns with guns are inherently funny and the strip sets up the 'season finale' very well. The Doctor and Amy tangle with Chiyoko, The Child Of Time, various threads from earlier strips are tied together in a very timey wimey fashion, a version Alan Turing that is the embodiment of the Turing Test itself is a great concept and Morris clearly had a lot of fun with the gun-toting Brontë sisters and Martin Geraghty‘s art is wonderful. Scott Gray’s script for the first part of The Chains Of Olympus finally introduces Rory to the strip proper and the Doctor's underwhelming meeting of the minds with Socrates is very funny.

Star Tigers: The World Of The War-King
Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer and his motley crew return with a Dalekless one-shot story written by Steve Moore thirty years ago and finally brought to life by Martin Geraghty, Adrian Salmon and Roger Langridge in fanzine par excellence Vworp Vworp!. The artwork and colours are fantastic, the violence well choreographed and the last page has not one, but two great shocks for the reader.

Games

Back To The Future: Get Tannen!; Citizen Brown; Double Visions; Outatime
I haven't completed this game, but what I have played so far has been great. The story gets more intriguing as the timeline gets more intricate and I look forward to seeing how it ends.

Online

Mid-Morning Matters With Alan Partridge: Episode 7, Episode 8, Episode 9, Episode 10, Episode 11, Episode 12
The cracks in Alan Partridge's regional radio career become all the more apparent as his relationship with Sidekick Simon deteriorates and then he becomes embarrassingly enamoured with Simon's replacement, Zoe. Alan's ideas for phone ins get worse every episode and his guests are brilliant as he interviews himself, a survival expert turned hypothetical RSPB anti-insurgency assassin and a fantastic section with an agony aunt.

Carpool
Robert Llewellyn's taxi chat show made its transition to TV, but I didn't really manage to catch it on the box, so I've remained a viewer online. Highlights include interviews with: Ross Noble, Stephen K. Amos, Jason Manford, Rufus Hound, Chris Addison, Arthur Smith, Rob Brydon, Tim Minchin, Craig Charles, Phill Jupitus, Doon Mackichan, Dr Sue Black, Jim Jeffries, Jason Byrne, Toby Williams, Richard Herring and Cory Doctorow.

This Guy Has My Macbook
A MacBook was stolen from an apartment in California and using an app called Hidden the owner could capture photos of the thief that lead to its subsequent recovery. Surely this is the best possible advert Hidden could have hope for.

Art
The Time Machine by George Shaw
I first became aware of George Shaw when he was nominated for this year's Turner Prize and I was immediately taken with his style and later I found his medium to be fascinating and very endearing. I don't know whether the painting below, The Time Machine, is from 2011 or not, but it's one that really appeals to me for obvious reasons. Shaw uses Humbrol modelling paint to create beautiful romanticised views of unlikely and often ignored subjects, which makes him feel like the Jarvis Cocker or David Hockney of painting. He was robbed.

Recommendations Welcome.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 00:01:00 +0000

I thought I'd take the opportunity to look back through my posts for These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things, and focus on the Christmassiest elements.

So firstly, it's Christmas 1999 and The Santa-Land Diaries (below) makes for a great eclectic festive read with David Sedaris turning his wry eye on the crass commercialisation of the holiday. On television Futurama features a Christmas episode that shows us that in the year 3000 Christmas has been replaced by Xmas and Santa Claus is now a robot to be feared in the very funny Xmas Story.

- - - - -

After the success of their second series, the year 2000 saw the broadcast of The League Of Gentlemen's Christmas Special (below). Taking the form of A Christmas Carol with the misanthropic Bernice cast in the role of Scrooge hearing confession from three other characters with their stories shown in flashback. Their tales melt her heart just in time for her childhood horror to be realised. It's fantastic.

- - - - -

Futurama returned to an Xmas theme in 2001 with A Tale Of Two Santas (below) as Bender takes over Santa's reign of terror and Coolio makes a great cameo as the voice of Kwanzaa-bot.

- - - - -

No less than three Doctors celebrated Christmas in 2005, although technically none were actually in 2005 if you catch my drift. The Ninth Doctor encountered Charles Dickens in 1869 at Christmas in The Unquiet Dead as Doctor Who returned to our screens earlier in the year as a roaring success. Two of the effects of this renaissance in the fortunes of the good Doctor were more appearances on radio and a Christmas special on the big day itself. The Eighth Doctor heard The Chimes Of Midnight at Christmas in 1906 on radio and the first real adventure of the Tenth Doctor was broadcast on television as he foiled The Christmas Invasion a hundred years later (below).

- - - - -

In 2006, the now-annual tradition of a Doctor Who Christmas special became a more regular occurance with as the Doctor and Donna, The Runaway Bride prevent the Racnoss from destroying Earth and Torchwood produced the beautiful Out Of Time which saw a plane from 1953 deposit three unwitting time travellers in the present day at Christmastime and followed their struggles to comprehend the modern day. While an adaptation of Terry Pratchett's twentieth Discworld novel, shows us what happens to Hogswatch, a Christmas-like festival, when Death is forced to take over from the eponymous Hogfather (below).

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Two years later, Doctor Who introduces The Next Doctor in an epic yet character driven Christmas special set in Victorian London with some wonderful central performances (below). Adam and Joe's Song Wars Volume One gave us Adam Buxton's 'Christmas Country Party Time', a raucous and rambunctious Christmas song that I'd welcome over many of the other Yuletide staples.

- - - - -

David Tennant was everywhere during Christmas 2009, QI, Hamlet and naturally his Doctor Who swansong The End Of Time was event television of the highest order. Tennant, Bernard Cribbins, John Simm, Timothy Dalton, the Master race cliffhanger, four knocks, the epilogue: this two parter was brilliant (below). A Child's Christmases In Wales is a great little story about traditions within one family over the course of three Christmases.

- - - - -

Another year, another Doctor Who Christmas special. 2010's A Christmas Carol is set in a pseudo-Victorian future which unashamedly borrows its theme from Dickens, but shakes it up enough to make it feel completely innovative. Matt Smith's first Christmas special was the first episode that secured him as the Doctor for me. He is at his best when acting alongside children and his scenes with Laurence Belcher are a joy. Michael Gambon and Katharine Jenkins are great.

Here's to Christmas 2011...

I Had To Watch Them Try And Get You Undressed

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Here's another song from the Pulp gig that Sarah and I attended at Brixton Academy earlier this year.

Carruthers Camera #20

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Five more Carruthers blog potos that I took:

Trash Talk was taken in Hammersmith on the way back from a rehearsal for The Tables Turned.

Free Cameras was a conspicuously empty glass case in the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Swannage is a photograph of a piece of artwork by Kim who works at Caledonian Road tube station in London. I met her once and she was very embarrassed that I liked her efforts.

Bin Bomb would have been taken during another rehearsal period for the New Factory Of The Eccentric Actor on Torriano Avenue, but I forget which play the rehearsals would have been for.

Greenbelt is one of the many derelict houses on Bowes Road, near Arnos Grove tube.

Rolled Up, Blown Out

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

“I sat down opposite a scruffy looking young man rolling a cigarette. He held his little carcinogenic work of art so gingerly and carefully as he sculpted its form, and more importantly, its contents. He licked his finger and dabbed at a loose seam, his task complete he looked around as he patted his pockets, searching for what turned out to be a lighter. He found it, shook it and poised to set fire to his creation, but nothing. The wind was blowing the well-used lighter out before it could deliver its spark, he tried a number of poses all to shelter it and all to no avail. Finally, in what looked like a desperate act of self immolation he hoisted his t-shirt up over his face with both cigarette and lighter together underneath: success!”

This is another set of six sentences that I posted on Six Sentences.

Uncertainty

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of time there was nothing. Suddenly a bang filled the silence, but there was no one to hear it. In an instant, nothing was replaced with everything. Everything grew exponentially to a size so far beyond man's understanding of infinity that it seemed impossible to comprehend. The nothingness was rudely consigned to a history no one could possibly remember. As he stared out of his kitchen window, Gary took solace from all of this as he failed to open a carton of milk.

I recently posted this on Six Sentences, which asks people what they can say in six sentences.

A to Z Blogging Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Next April I am going to take part in the A to Z Blogging Challenge. "Next April?!" I hear you cry. "Then why are you banging on about it now?"

Well, Arlee Bird has asked those taking part to promote the challenge well in advance of the event itself and so here is my effort. I've been aware of the challenge for a while but it has usually only occurred to me to write something about halfway through April. So I'm happy to have the early reminders I've seen on other sites and hopefully this will work in a similar way for someone else.

The A to Z Blogging Challenge invites people to post something pretty much every day of April:

26 days
26 posts
26 letters of the alphabet.

One post beginning with each letter. Since I started writing this I've been aiming for a post every three days or so and this will be the most I've posted for a particular month. I'm looking forward to it.

Dave Of The Dead

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I was wondering if I'd regret posting a photo of my screaming boat race, but it's already been worth it because Jeremy of iZombie fame has seized the opportunity to induct me into his army of the undead.

More Zombies here.

Thanks Jeremy.

The Face(s) Of Evil

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I've mentioned Big Finish on here before. They are a company for whom I have a lot of affection. I've included several of their efforts when writing These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things and failed to interest them with a proposal for a script and a short story that I wrote.

So when they requested that people send in photographs of screaming faces for the cover of a sequel to a Doctor Who spinoff called Graceless, I duly obliged. I recently discovered that my fizzog is one of those pictured below:

Can you see me?

If it helps, the original photo is here:

Yep.

Graceless II is available here.

"Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1999...Again"

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

So says Philip J. Fry in Hell Is Other Robots (see below) referencing Prince's 1982 song '1999'.

1999 was the year that the first elections of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly took place, the Earth was circumnavigated in a hot air balloon for the first time, the Columbine High School massacre took place, Slobodan Milošević was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo and the world worried unduly about the wrath of the Y2K bug.

I spent 1998 studying for my A-Levels, appearing in Kiss Me Kate and turning eighteen.

These are a few of my favourite things from 1999:

Film
Magnolia
On a random day, a tangled web of intertwined lives are shaped and reshaped by coincidence. P. T. Anderson's masterpiece features fantastic performances across the board and not one, but two very surprising shifts in tone. Here's the trailer.

Being John Malkovich
Andy Kaufman's continually surprising script is brimming with ideas: the 7½ floor, Malkovich inside Malkovich, the resurgence of puppetry, the chase through Malkovich’s subconscious. The film takes twists and turns and becomes the most extraordinary love story ever told. Puppetry, comedy, metaphysics and existential ennui. John Cusack, Catherine Keener, Cameron Diaz and John Horatio Malkovich himself are wonderful, while everything Orson Bean does is absolutely sublime. Here's the trailer.

Sweet And Lowdown
Sean Penn stars in Woody Allen's biopic of the world's second best jazz guitarist (after some gypsy in Europe), the arrogant, childish and kleptomaniac Emmet Ray. Samantha Morton steals the show in every scene she has and the descent of the crescent moon is fantastic. Here's the trailer.

Star Trek: Insurrection
The ninth Star Trek film concerns "the forced relocation of a small group of people to satisfy the demands of a large one" and that larger group's quest for a fountain of youth. It feels like exactly the sort of Star Trek that Gene Roddenberry would have approved of. As with the other Next Generation films, Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner get the lion's share of the action with the other characters getting only moments such as Michael Dorn's Worf reluctantly singing Gilbert & Sullivan, LeVar Burton's Geordi seeing a sunrise with his own eyes for the first time, romance between Riker and Troi being rekindled and F. Murray Abraham makes a wonderfully chilling villain as Ru'afo. Here's the trailer.

Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Mike Myers is hilarious in his trio of roles in this spy spoof sequel which exploits time travel, "how much England looks in no way like Southern California" and running gags from the first film with very funny results. Mindy Sterling, Seth Green and Rob Lowe are all wonderful and Heather Graham is a Bondgirl par excellence. Here's a fantastic trailer.

The Straight Story
Based on the true story of Alvin Straight's six week journey across rural USA on a lawnmower. This beautiful off road movie explores themes of mortality and family and Richard Farnsworth is fantastic as Straight. Here's the trailer.

Galaxy Quest
SF fandom is a great concept for a comedy and Galaxy Quest doesn't disappoint. The cast are uniformly impressive. Here's the trailer.

Go
Doug Limon's tangled web of a weekend has a great cast, a Tarantino-esque sscript and style and forms a black comedy triptych aas its plot threads interweave.

TV

Spaced: Beginnings; Gatherings; Art; Battles; Chaos; Epiphanies; Ends
The first episode, Beginnings, sets up the dynamic of this slick and stylish flatsharing sitcom perfectly. Daisy meets Tim and they move into a flat at Marsha's house masquerading as a Professional Couple Only, but it's the rapid editing, pop culture references, great music and surreal elements that make this the most inventive sitcom of the twenty-first century a year early. The introductions of Marsha, Brian and the getting to know you sequence for Tim and Daisy are brilliant. In order to avoid work Daisy throws a party in Gatherings which gives Mike and Twist proper introductions and features fake sex noises, Daisy singing 'Hot dog jumping from almond cookies' and Brian to the rescue. Brian takes Daisy and Tim to see Vulva's Art and highlights include zombies, Cassandra's phone number and "It's not finished. It’s finished." Brian's literal tribute to the self reflexivity of Rembrandt, the colourful tale of Pom Pom, Paul Putner, Mike's 'death' and Peter Serafinowicz is great as Tim Battles Duane Benzie while paintballing. Between Gramsci's politics and Colin's kidnap, Chaos ensues and the rescue attempt is great and Twist running comes into her own with the DK urban warfare range and "Is Jabba the princess?" Michael Smiley is wonderful as Tyres in Epiphanies and his mood swings are inspired as are the Scrabble fight, the clubbing scenes, the glorious remix of The A-Team theme tune and Tyres' exit. The first series Ends beautifully with Mike returning to the TA, Brian and Twist on a successful date and Tim realising life with Daisy is better than it was with his ex. Simon Pegg, Jessica Stephenson, Mark Heap, Nick Frost, Julia Deakin and Aida the Dog are magnificent throughout. It should be required viewing.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Gingerbread; Helpless; The Zeppo; Bad Girls & Consequences; Doppelgangland; Enemies; Choices; The Prom; Graduation Day; Earshot; The Freshman; Living Conditions; The Harsh Light Of Day; Fear, Itself; Beer Bad; Wild At Heart; The Initiative; Pangs; Something Blue; Hush
The slayer's third season (and senior year at high school) continues with another great metaphor episode, Gingerbread is about mass hysteria, which proves that paranoia is often far more dangerous than the problem at hand. As usual it's a terrifying concept that is dealt with intelligently and the episode is chock full of funny like Willow's "A doodle, I do doodle. You too, you do doodle too", Cordelia's "wake up in a coma" and Oz's "We're here to save you" lines. Buffy turns eighteen and is made Helpless in an episode about how disempowering reaching adulthood and realising that your parents are flawed can be with great opening and ending scenes. After the briefest (and therefore probably the funniest) Previously On… sequence, Cordelia declares Xander The Zeppo in the first episode of Buffy that redefines what the show can do, the inversion of the A and B stories reduces the apocalypse to the background, raises Xander's quiet night out to epic status and Nicholas Brendon gives a fantastic performance in Buffy's funniest episode. Two-parter Bad Girls & Consequences introduces Wesley, gives Mr Trick a great exit line and is the turning point for Faith. Buffy turns to another SF staple, the 'Evil Twin', with the return of Vamp Willow in Doppelgangland and once again deals with it better than anybody else. Naturally Alyson Hannigan is fantastic in both roles and also as both characters impersonating the other, the hugging scene and Percy's Roosevelt papers are hilarious. Buffy capitalises on its own mythology in Enemies and sets up the showdown between the Slayers in the season finale. Hannigan gives great hostage in Choices and Oz's silent decision making is great. Angel's dream and Jonathan's Class Protector speech are wonderful as Buffy saves The Prom. The Class of '99 goes to war on its Graduation Day in an amazing two-part season finale which has great character moments for everyone, the Mayor is probably TV's most enjoyable villain, the students disrobing is triumphant (though not for the reasons you might expect), Oz's final line shamelessly spelling out the show's metaphor is a great touch. Scheduled to be broadcast the same week as the Columbine High School shootings, Earshot was understandably delayed, but it was worth the wait. Buffy's temporary telepathy gives great insights, especially into the inner thoughts of Cordelia and Oz. Veering from comedy to tragedy and back again with incredible skill. Probably the best standalone episode in the entire run of the series.
After high school comes college and The Freshman shows Buffy not out of her depth, but unsure of it and is a great 'mission statement' episode. An episode about irritation is not an easy thing to pull off, illustrating annoyance without just being annoying is tough and yet some how Living Conditions manages it. The Harsh Light Of Day sees the welcome return of James Marsters, Emma Caulfield and Mercedes McNab, and proves you can learn more in college than you realise. Fear, Itself is a classic, as magic causes the Scooby Gang's fears to manifest it demonstrates the strength of the ensemble, despite spending most of the episode separated. Beer Bad replaces the usual intelligent dialogue with caveman grunting and the result is a bad episode of Buffy, but what it shows is that a bad episode of Buffy is still much, much better than a good episode of a great many other shows. After a great cameo from Spike, Wild At Heart features great performances from Hannigan and Seth Green as Willow and Oz's relationship is tested and the latter leaves Sunnydale. He will be missed. The introduction of The Initiative in The Initiative is really impressive, but it's Spike's promotion to the regular cast and his scene with Willow that make this episode great. Buffy attempts to fend off a vengeful spirit whilst preoccupied with cooking the perfect thanksgiving dinner in Pangs unaware of Angel's return. Protecting her from the wings he interacts with pretty much everyone except Buffy and the subsequent awkward dinner conversation is great. Something Blue is just fun. The almost-silent Hush is a phenomenal piece of television. Watch it.

Angel: City Of…; Lonely Hearts; In The Dark; I Fall To Pieces; Rm W/a Vu; Sense & Sensitivity; The Bachelor Party; I Will Remember You; Hero; Parting Gifts
Angel forges out on his own, but only gets as far as Los Angeles. The pilot City Of… sets up our hero as an atoning dark knight with equivalent Batcave and Batmobile, and with Cordelia as his secretary and Doyle as a messenger keeping his destiny on track. The episode sets up Tina as a damsel for Angel to save and Russell Winters as Angel's big bad and then neither of these things comes off quite as we expect. Initially a monster-of-the-week detective show the series seeks to establish its own identity and Lonely Hearts brand of almost sexually transmitted possession is definitely a step in that direction. Conversely it's the link s to the series we know and love that make In The Dark such a success as Spike and Oz crossover from Buffy. I Fall To Pieces is Angel at its creepiest. Rm W/A Vu is a great Cordy episode with a B-story that gives us a glimpse into Doyle's life and introduces Phantom Dennis. Sense & Sensitivity is good example of an idea that is allowed to work better here than it might in a lesser TV show, rather than simply being oversensitive there is far more scope in having the affected characters unable to control their emotions and reveal more about themselves. It's also another opportunity for Wolfram & Hart to emerge from the shadows. We learn a little more about Doyle in The Bachelor Party and Carlos Jacott puts in another great performance. When Buffy arrives in LA the ante is upped and the resulting I Will Remember You is the best love story that never happened. Hero is fantastic, a great send off for Doyle and all the more poignant after Glenn Quinn's death. Setting the pattern for the next couple of years Parting Gifts gives Cordelia the link to The Powers That Be and brings Alexis Denisof's Wesley back into the fold.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prodigal Daughter; The Emperor's New Cloak; Field Of Fire; Chimera; Badda-Bing Badda-Bang; Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges; Penumbra; ‘Til Death Do Us Part; Strange Bedfellows; The Changing Face Of Evil; When It Rains; Tacking Into The Wind; Extreme Measures; The Dogs Of War; What You Leave Behind
The final season continues with an interesting twist on the semi-annual 'O'Brien must suffer' episode with the return of the Prodigal Daughter as Ezri investigates the Chief's disappearance on her homeworld. Another semi-annual tradition are the episodes set in the Mirror Universe, and The Emperor's New Cloak is a lot of fun with Quark and Rom’s theft of the cloaked cloaking device, Rom’s attempts to understand the differences between the alternate realities and realisations of the Mirror versions of Ezri, Brunt and Leeta are great. Field Of Fire is a forensics-style whodunnit in the vein of CSI and another great use of Ezri. Chimera presents Odo with Laas, another Changeling who isn't part of the Dominion and J.G. Hertzler plays his feeling of superiority over the 'monoforms' wonderfully, Quark gets a great speech about genetics and Nana Visitor deserves a special mention for the palpable sense of guilt that she gives Kira about the possibility that their relationship is holding Odo back. Badda-Bing Badda-Bang isn't just DS9's version of a heist movie, it's DS9's version of the original Ocean's Eleven, it's mostly frivolous, but great fun. William Sadler makes a welcome return as Sloan in Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, a well told espionage story which makes Section 31 seem even more complex. Setting up the next eight episodes of the epic end of the series, Penumbra is the calm before the storm and shows that the show is going to go all out as Ezri rescues Worf and they are captured by the Breen, Sisko proposes to Kasidy, but is subsequently told by the Prophets not to marry her and the sight of a Dukat surgically altered to appear Bajoran is very shocking. In spite of the Prophet's warning Sisko and Kasidy are joined in marriage 'Til Death Do Us Part, the political wrangling continues as the Breen and the Dominion form an alliance and Ezri and Worf are handed over as gifts, but topping Dukat as a Bajoran, is Kai Winn unwittingly becoming romantically involved with him. Winn and Dukat make Strange Bedfellows as the Pah Wraiths send her a vision and she struggles with her faith and as the Cardassians begin to be victims of the Dominion's plans for the war, Damar is increasingly uncomfortable as puppet leader. Louise Fletcher and Casey Biggs are phenomenal as their characters each undergo an about face. The Changing Face Of Evil sees both these characters finally switch allegiances as Winn turns to the dark side, in scenes which another great performance from James Otis as Solbor, and Damar's resistance turns the Cardassians against the Dominion, shown as a broadcast witnessed by all the major players at the same time. The space battle at Chintoka is great and the destruction of the USS Defiant is a hell of a blow. When It Rains… it pours., this episode is packed with developments: Odo, Garak and a now Starfleet Kira aid Damar's resistance, Gowron takes over the Klingon deployment seeking glory, Bashir and O'Brien discover Starfleet deliberately infected Odo with the morphogenic virus and Dukat is blinded and shunned by Winn. Tacking Into The Wind keeps all the balls in the air and the "something has to be done" scene between Sisko and Worf, Garak lurking in the shadows, the scene between Kira, Garak and Damar after the latter's family has been killed, Ezri's appraisal of the state of the Klingon Empire, O'Brien and Bashir's 'devious' scheming, Gowron's death, the Mexican standoff aboard the stolen Jem'Hadar ship are all excellent. Bashir and O'Brien take Extreme Measures to find Odo's cure and Sloan is determined not to make it easy for them in the most SF episode of the last nine, A Tale Of Two Cities being the key to realising they've been duped is a lovely device and it's great to see these two friends get one last adventure together before all hell breaks loose. The new USS Defiant arrives at DS9, Odo is cured of the virus killing his people, Damar becomes the champion of the people of Cardassia, the Emissary's wife discovers she is pregnant, The Dominion retreats and the Alpha Quadrant alliance decides to go on the offensive and press home the attack in The Dogs Of War, but the big picture of the Dominion War has largely left Quark on the sidelines and so the penultimate episode redresses the balance somewhat and is a wonderful last hurrah for the Ferengi: Armin Shimerman, Max Grodénchik, Wallace Shawn, Chase Masterson, Cecily Adams and Jeffrey Combs (in both his roles) are all as great as ever. The finale, What You Leave Behind, is astoundingly good: Ezri's reveal in the first scene, O'Brien resisting telling Bashir about his post-war plans, Broca's uselessness, the Female Changeling's dismissive reaction to Weyoun's offer to give his life for her own, Bashir and Garak's final scene together, Worf's weird repetition of "Minsk", Vic's farewell song, Sisko's toast, Dukat getting everything he wanted, Winn's reaction to the disappearance of the Kosst Amojan, Sisko's ascendance, Odo and Quark's lack of goodbyes, the last line (and the fact that it's Quark that gets to say it), the beautiful last shot are all amazing. It's an achievement that the end of the Dominion war doesn't completely dominate this episode and the tying up of loose ends and the separation of O'Brien from Bashir, Kira from Odo and Sisko from Jake and Kasidy leaves the viewer with a satisfactory sense of closure without being sentimental. Avery Brooks, Rene Auberjonois, de Boer, Michael Dorn, Cirroc Lofton, Colm Meaney, Shimerman, Alexander Siddig, Visitor, Marc Alaimo, Biggs, James Darren, Fletcher, Hertzler, Salome Jens, Penny Johnson, Juliana McCarthy and Andrew Robinson are all excellent throughout. So ends the best of the Star Trek series and one of the best television series ever made.

Star Trek: Voyager: Latent Image; Bride Of Chaotica!; Gravity; Dark Frontier; Think Tank; Someone To Watch Over Me; 11:59; Relativity; Equinox; Survival Instinct; Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy; Riddles; Dragon's Teeth; The Voyager Conspiracy; Pathfinder
From memory loss to conspiracy via a Sophie's Choice dilemma, Latent Image is great and Robert Picardo is fantastic as the Doctor attempts to discover what happened to him and then to resolve it with his ethics. Bride Of Chaotica! is incredibly camp, but also great fun. Gravity is excellent and Tim Russ and Lori Petty are fantastic together. TV movie Dark Frontier is epic, brings out the best in Kate Mulgrew, Jeri Ryan and Susannah Thompson and the flashbacks to Annika’s childhood are great. Jason Alexander is suitably eerie as part of the Think Tank, an episode that is incredibly simple and all the better for it. Someone To Watch Over Me is a delightful romantic comedy with an very sad ending. The millennial flashback scenes of 11:59 are great and the Y2K bug prediction is bold (and as it turned out largely accurate). Voyager's encounters with the USS Relativity revisits earlier episodes and complicates them with a fascinating temporal paradox. Voyager discovers the USS Equinox, another Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant which has travelled the same path, but abandoned its ethics along the way. It vindicates Janeway in a season that saw her questioning the decision that marooned her crew.
The second part sees the two Captains switch positions as Janeway tries to get revenge by any means possible and Ransom has a change of heart and repents, but once again it's Picardo and Ryan that rescue the story. The sixth season continues with Survival Instinct, which forces Seven of Nine to choose quality or quantity of life for three of her peers. Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy is great fun and the Doctor's daydreams are all wonderful, especially his operatic diagnosis of Tuvok's medical condition and Seven as his muse. Ethan Phillips and Tim Russ are wonderful in Riddles, a great Neelix and Tuvok episode. Dragon's Teeth features wonderful CGI effects and some great scenes for Neelix. A little learning is dangerous thing and an overabundance of information causes Seven to theorise The Voyager Conspiracy and sets Janeway and Chakotay at loggerheads, it's a little late in the day to convince but compelling nonetheless. Dwight Schultz is as wonderful as ever in Pathfinder and his scenes aboard the holographic USS Voyager are particularly poignant and this episode manages to bring the real one a step closer to home with being cloyingly sentimental.

Red Dwarf: Back In The Red; Cassandra
Series VIII begins with epic three-parter Back In The Red which sees the Starbuggers return to the small rouge one to find it bigger than ever before and amazingly with its long dead crew resurrected. After seven series of being the last man alive, Lister is suddenly back at the bottom of the pile. It's great to see him reunited with Rimmer, how Cat and Kryten react to their new situation and Mac MacDonald makes a welcome return as Captain Hollister. Cassandra is an intricate locked box of an episode reminiscent of Dwarf circa Series V, with some nice jokes in it and it's nice to see each of the characters reactions to learning their future.

The League Of Gentlemen: Welcome To Royston Vasey; The Road To Royston Vasey; Nightmare In Royston Vasey; The Beast Of Royston Vasey; Love Comes To Royston Vasey; Escape From Royston Vasey
Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith prove themselves to be three of the country’s best actors as their sketch show meets sitcom comes to television. The dark comedy world of Royston Vasey is brilliantly brought to life in Welcome To Royston Vasey: from its fantastic opening joke with the wonderful Frances Cox, Benjamin visiting the Dentons, Tubbs and Edward at the Local Shop, Barbara, Chinnery, Pauline and her jobseekers, Geoff, Mike and Brian telling "Mau Mau", the characters are more than mere grotesques but have a real depth to them, the visual gags are brilliant and the horror movie references are very rewarding. The first series is made up of groups of sketches which for the most part only have the town in common, but with the construction of The Road To Royston Vasey as an overarching storyline, the introduction of the "special stuff", Henry and Ally's video selection and Pop's son(s). Aqua vita, "there is a Swansea", the roundabout zoo, Bernice's sermon and egregious are among the many highlights of Nightmare In Royston Vasey. The series takes on an epic quality with the discovery of The Beast Of Royston Vasey and turns darker still with Farmer Tinsel's scarecrow, Charlie and Stella's date and Legz Akimbo Theatre Company gives Theatre-In-Education a bad name with its unfortunately accurate portrayal. Gatiss is excellent during his monologue as the Stump Hole Caverns tour guide while Geoff uses his speech as Mike's best man to settle old scores and Barbara misunderstands Benjmin’s advances as Love Comes To Royston Vasey. Things culminate in Pauline's dismissal, Geoff finally firing his gun, the return of Tubbs and Edward's son David, the reveal of the contents of the towns postboxes, Barbara's operation and Benjamin makes another attempt to Escape From Royston Vasey.

Futurama: Space Pilot 3000; The Series Has Landed; I, Roommate; Love's Labors Lost In Space; Fear Of A Bot Planet; A Fishful Of Dollars; My Three Suns; A Big Piece Of Garbage; Hell Is Other Robots; A Flight To Remember; Mars University; When Aliens Attack; Fry And The Slurm Factory; I Second That Emotion; Brannigan, Begin Again; A Head In The Polls; Xmas Story
Matt Groening and David X. Cohen's vision of the future gets a solid start with Space Pilot 3000. The characters of Fry, Leela, Bender and Farnsworth arrive fully formed and the trademark cruel humour is already in place. Amy joins the Planet Express crew as they make a delivery to the moon in the both touching and funny The Series Has Landed. I, Roommate is I, Robot meets The Odd Couple and the flathunting montage is great. Introducing Zapp Brannigan, Kif and Nibbler, Love's Labors Lost In Space, is a step into a more adult arena and the Vergon VI fauna are great. The demonisation of humans in Fear Of A Bot Planet is great and best summed up in the It Came From Planet Earth B-Movie line featured within: "Relax Wendy, humans will never come to our defence less little town. It's perfectly safe to let our guard down, even for a second." As extinction tales go, A Fishful Of Dollars is funnier than it has any right to be. The episode introduces Mom and her assumption of Fry's plan for the last tin of anchovies is as terrifying, as the last scene is funny. My Three Suns is a more sedate, but no less brilliant episode featuring a unisex robe. The Planet Express crew go up against A Big Piece Of Garbage that threatens Earth in an episode which highlights the show's interesting take on environmental issues. Hell Is Other Robots compares religion with addiction and hilarity ensues. The Robot Devil is a great character and the episode features the first of many wonderful original songs.
A Flight To Remember sees Leela and Amy both pretending to be dating Fry aboard the starship Titanic, what could possibly go wrong? The episode's highlight has to be Hermes facing up to his past as a limboer. Mars University is Animal House with an actual animal as Guenter the monkey with the Electronium Hat bests Fry who enrols in college to become a college dropout. When Aliens Attack is wonderful, the Monument Beach scene, the Single Female Lawyer scenes and the reassuring-everything-back-to-normal ending. Fry And The Slurm Factory is reassuringly disgusting. Bender is forced to feel Leela's emotions in I Second That Emotion which the episode exploits brilliantly, whilst introducing the sewer mutants very successfully. Brannigan, Begin Again is wonderful: the Neutral planet, "I'm going to allow this", Fry's "Woooooh", the Midnight Cowboy parody, Bender looking back and laughing. All of it. As a treatise on political apathy A Head In The Polls is very funny, Billy West's Nixon is a triumph and its The Scary Door opening is excellent. Introducing Robot Santa and Tinny Tim, Xmas Story gives us a terrifying vision of the Christmases of the future and features some great yuletide gags.

Farscape: Premiere, Thank God It's Friday, Again; I, ET; DNA Mad Scientist; Jeremiah Crichton; A Human Reaction
If Firefly's Mal Reynolds is Han Solo done right, then Farscape's universe is the Mos Eisley cantina writ large. For obvious reasons most of the first season concerns Ben Browder's fish out of water Crichton, but Virginia Hey's performance as Zhaan deserves a special mention.

Doctor Who And The Curse Of Fatal Death
Featuring no less than five Doctors and a fantastic performance from Jonathan Pryce as the Master, Steven Moffat's Comic Relief spoof is a loving tribute that pokes fun in all the right places.

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends: Swingers; Wrestling
Wife swapping is your future, and Louis investigates the world of Swingers, finds it difficult to fit in and exposes cracks in a relationship. Louis tries his hand at professional Wrestling and discovers that while it isn't fake, it is predetermined and the WCW's Sarge trains him hard enough to prove the distinction. Rowdy Roddy Piper, Pistol Pez Whatley and the AIWF come out of it very well.

Journeys Into The Outside With Jarvis Cocker
An excellent three part series following the Pulp frontman around fascinating artwork created by people with no formal training. The documentaries take in Les Rochers Sculptés, La Maison de la vaiselle cassée, Jardin d u Coquillage and Ferdinand Cheval's Palais Idéal in France, the Coral Castle, Miracle Cross Garden, Beer Can House, Bottle Village and Watts Towers in the USA, Las Pozas in Mexico, the Tower of the Apocalypse in Belgium and the Chandigarh Rock Garden in India. Cocker's insights are great and his French is very impressive.

Now And Again
The first ten episodes of this excellent and criminally unavailable TV show were broadcast this year. Eric Close, Dennis Haysbert, Margaret Colin and Gerrit Graham are fantastic in the story of Michael Wiseman, a man whose brain is transplanted after his death into the perfect genetically engineered body and resurrected as a tool for espionage. Wiseman is given a new life and trained to be a spy, but is unable to leave his old life, wife and daughter behind. The show was a great mix of action and comedy

The Flint Street Nativity
A class of schoolchildren attempt to tell the story of the birth of Jesus as they understand it. Tim Firth's Christmas tale sees the children played by a great cast of adults on an oversize set. The misunderstandings and logical leaps of the children, both about the nativity story and life itself, are very, very funny and sometimes heartbreaking.

Music

Supergrass: Supergrass
The band's third (and eponymous) album, also dubbed the X-Ray album, is fantastic from start to finish and consistent throughout. Musically it is mature and assured, but the trio have lost none of their sense of fun.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Moving'; 'Your Love'; 'What Went Wrong (In Your Head)'; 'Beautiful People'; 'Shotover Hill'; 'Eon'; 'Jesus Came From Outta Space'; 'Mary'; 'Born Again'; 'Mama & Papa'

The All Seeing I: Pickled Eggs & Sherbert
This electronic album which feels like it came from an astral conjunction of a Sheffield supergroup. Jarvis Cocker's lyrics are fantastic and the vocals by Tony Christie, Phil Oakey and Stephen Jones from Babybird are all great.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Walk Like A Panther', '1st Man In Space', 'Stars On Sunday', 'I Walk', 'Happy Birthday Nicola', 'Plastic Diamond'

Blur: 13
The band's sixth album moves further away from their Britpop roots with a baker's dozen of tracks largely about love and loss that stretch them musically.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Tender', 'Coffee & TV', '1992', 'B.L.U.R.E.M.I.', 'Trailerpark', 'No Distance Left To Run', 'Optigan 1'

Ultrasound: Everything Picture
The sole double album release from Ultrasound is an epic and sprawling beast of an album with layers and layers of sound. Every song feels like a big hitter, the anthemic 'Stay Young' builds into what I'm sure would have a crowd pleaser given half a chance, while songs like 'Cross My Heart', 'Floodlit World' and 'My Impossible Dream' show the enormous musical ability of band. The unassuming 'Sentimental Song' is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard and the title track is a 21 minute symphony that revisits the first ten songs expertly and is at turns triumphant and discordant and then a hidden track like a delightful lullaby. This is a bittersweet beauty of a record as sadly their inability to remain in the 'Same Band' denied us a follow up.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Cross My Heart'; 'Same Band'; 'Stay Young'; 'Suckle'; 'Fame Thing'; 'Aire & Calder'; 'Sentimental Song'; 'Floodlit World'; 'My Impossible Dream'; 'Everything Picture'

Gomez: Liquid Skin
The second album is another slice of hazy pseudo-Americana in the same vein as the first, but with a more refined production this time around.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Revolutionary Kind'; 'Bring It On'; 'Blue Moon Rising'; 'We Haven't Turned Around', 'Rhythm And Blues Alibi'

Kula Shaker: Peasants, Pigs & Astronauts
The band’s second album is a grand soundscape heavy on the psychedelia and eastern mysticism, but it's the rockier tracks that impress the most.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Mystical Machine Gun'; 'Shower Your Love'; '108 Battles (Of The Mind)'; 'Sound Of Drums'

Mr Scruff: Keep It Unreal
Breakbeat programmer Mr Scruff has excelled himself with this diverse collection of tracks.
Stand Out Tracks: 'Spandex Man'; 'Get A Move On'; 'Midnight Feast'; 'Shanty Town'; 'Blackfoot Roll'; 'Fish'

Books

The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
One of the themes of the Discworld series is the conflict between tradition and progress and the twenty-fourth novel pulls in both directions as the Ankh Morpork City Watch expands and modernises. Vimes briefly becomes the city's ambassador to Überwald, the disc's allegory for Transylvania, where he investigates the theft of the Dwarf's Scone of Stone and becomes embroiled in Vampiric intrigue. A crime thriller set against a fantasy backdrop that is as funny as it is scary. References veer from Dracula to the plays of Chekhov and back via the Diet of Worms and The Italian Job.

The Science Of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Cohen & Jack Stewart
Alternating between a Discworld story featuring the creation of a universe of 'Roundworlds' by the wizards of the Unseen University and scientific explanations of the creation our universe, the Earth and the beginnings of life. This book is a great literary contribution to popular science and the two halves compliment each other and made up for shortcomings in my own knowledge of science.

The Boy Who Kicked Pigs by Tom Baker
This story of a misnthropic boy who takes a perverse pleasure from the kicking of pigs is an escalating morality tale with inevitable (and horrific) comeuppance. The novel is wonderfully macabre and the accompanying illustrations by David Roberts are just as unsettling.

Santa Land Diaries by David Sedaris
These six short Christmas stories are hilarious, from the titular tale of the trials and tribulations of being one of Santa's helper elves in a department store to 'Season's Greetings To Our Friends And Family!!!' is a great parody of the traditional American holiday newsletter with a touch too much honesty in it.

Comics
Doctor Who: The Fallen; Unnatural Born Killers; The Road To Hell; TV Action!
The Eighth Doctor is reunited with Grace Holloway in The Fallen a story that riffs extensively on Paul McGann's TV movie and the fantastic final panel makes it obvious to the reader that this is the beginning of another epic story. Adrian Salmon's simple storyline and stark artwork for the Doctorless strip Unnatural Born Killers reintroduces Kroton the Cyberman with a soul, as he takes on a pack of Sontarans and loses his home. The Road To Hell is paved with good intentions as the Doctor and Izzy arrive in 17th Century Japan during an isolationist period, Lady Asami being driven mad by images of Japan's future from Izzy's mind is great and the concept of forcing immortality on a Samurai who try as he might cannot give his life and therefore his continued existence dishonours him is fantastic. The TARDIS lands at BBC Television Centre in TV Action! which is a nice little comedy strip that shows a snapshot of the BBC's output in 1979 and features a guest appearance from Tom Baker of all people.

Recommendations welcome.

FistKrammer

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

This is a Carruthers sketch that we filmed in 2008 and has been languishing on a hard drive somewhere, until now...

Michael Everhard plays the eponymous store detective, Gi Lewis wrote the script and also plays the shoplifter, while I'm playing FistKrammer's boss.

Once again it was filmed by Dan the Cameraman with sound by Mark Skilton and directed by Jake Cardew. Thanks again to Objective Productions.

Andy Cartwright has done sterling work getting hold of the footage and Michael has finished the edit.

Portmantwho

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Today is the 48th anniversary of the first broadcast of Doctor Who.

A while ago and with too much time on my hands I came up with a game that uses the titles of Doctor Who stories. I called it Portmantwho, which is probably the cleverest thing about it.

The idea is to link multiple (prefereably unconnected) stories of Doctor Who and its spinoffs by name alone, with the end of one name being the beginning of the next. Then come up with a story synopsis of your newly created mongrel moniker. It's more difficult to explain than it is to play.

Here are some examples:

William Hartnell and Tom Baker star in this tale inspired by The Manchurian Candidate set near Manchuria. The Master frames one or more of the Doctors for the murder of Kublai Khan in…

The Deadly Assassin At Peking

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Guerrillas from the future come back to 2011 to prevent a future dominated by the Daleks by accidentally creating it in the past. You heard me. Captain Jack Harkness returns to Earth and his arm hurts. The Daleks scream "EXTERMINATE! EXTERMINATE!", but no one dies in…

Miracle Day Of The Daleks

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The TARDIS visits the planets Florana, Metebelis III and Barcelona while the Doctor and his companions aren't looking, only to return just in time to pick them up at the end of their story in…

A Holiday For The Doctor's Wife

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Luke Smith and Clyde Langer are recruited to fight in a war by the Martians, meanwhile the Second Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith investigate their disappearance in…

The Ice Warriors Of Kudlak

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Fleeing the Movellan war the Daleks use a time corridor to New York City, Rodney Bewes can't stand the confusion in his mind, while Tegan, Turlough and Tallulah (three l's and an h) run up and sewer tunnels and it takes the combined efforts of the Fifth and Tenth Doctors to get them off the planet in…

Resurrection Of The Daleks In Manhattan

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The apocalypse ends with a tautology in…

The End Of The World's End

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A whistle blowing documentary showing the true story of the Sixth and Seventh Doctors run-ins with the enigmatic Rani starring Kate O’Mara as The Rani as Melanie Bush as Bonnie Langford in…

Real Time And The Rani

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Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without Amy Pond turning into a terrifying wooden doll and a visit from a threatening landlord in…

The Chimes Of Midnight Terrors

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Feel free to play along...

Carruthers Cartoons #4

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

More alterations to somebody else's hard work for the benefit of the Carruthers blog:

Once again at the centre of the Sitcom Porn posts was a piece of adjusted DVD cover art Phoenix Nights & Rising Damp, The Day Today & Gavin & Stacey and the christmas specials of both Gavin & Stacey & The Office

I added a 'U' and a 'P' to a photograph I took in the National Media Museum in Bradford to create the Caress Of The Daleks.

Not content with simply adding letters to photos, I made Nil By Moustache out of the Nil By Mouth DVD cover and two halves of Mr Carruthers' moustaches as drawn by Gi.

Am I Talking Too Fast...?

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

...Or are you just playing dumb?

Here's another track from Pulp's performance at Brixton Academy earler this year that I hadn't seen live.

I have now.

The Noughties Blogfest Debrief

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

I'm going to declare The Noughties Blogfest a success since of the twenty-five people that signed up, nineteen posted a list.

I hadn't really thought about the research element involved. Working out what happened in a particular year might not have appealed to everybody. Sorry about that. If I did it again I'd probably keep the 'rules' the same, but give a suggestion that vagueness was permitted.

Tastes in music, comics and games were more varied and individual titles were all listed just once across the whole decade.

I thought I'd do a run down of the most popular suggestions:

2000
Film
In each year, film was the most hotly contested medium. In 2000 the runaway leader, appearing on no less than six lists was X-Men while Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Titan A.E. each appeared twice.

In TV there was generally less competition, which I found quite surprising. The Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode Restless was mentioned on two lists.

Fewer books made lists than I expected. Less surprisingly Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire by J.K. Rowling made three lists.

2001
Moviewise The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring made it onto six lists. Ocean's Eleven was on three whilst Shrek, Moulin Rouge and Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone/Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone* were each on two lists. (* delete as appropriate).

2002
In cinema, The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers continued to dominate again with six appearances. The Pianist, Equilibrium and The Bourne Identity were all two lists each.

The only TV show to get a look in this year was Firefly, posted no less than four times.

2003
In film, surprisingly The Lord Of The Rings: The Return of the King got less love than its predecessors getting onto four lists, with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl just behind getting three mentions. Bad Santa, Big Fish and Finding Nemo were all on two lists each.

Bookwise Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix by J.K. Rowling appeared on four lists.

Regarding online phenomena, surprisingly Paris Hilton's Sex Tape was mentioned twice.

2004
After The Lord Of The Rings movies had subsided the field was more open, with Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Spiderman II both appearing on three lists, while The Butterfly Effect, House Of Flying Daggers, The Incredibles and Shrek 2 got two mention apiece.

2005
After the success of Firefly it isn't a surprise that its movie sequel Serenity won out with five mentions, while Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith got three and Batman Begins was on two lists.

On TV, Doctor Who was on three lists and Bones was on two.

In books, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling got four mentions.

2006
Bond prequel Casino Royale topped this year's movies with three listings, while The Illusionist, Little Miss Sunshine and Stranger Than Fiction all got two.

2007
In movies, Transformers received five mentions and Shrek The Third got two.

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling appeared on four lists.

2008
Superhero movies came to the fore this year as Iron Man was on five lists and The Dark Knight was on four.

The book The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins was posted three times.

The online musical Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog garnered two mentions.

2009
Avatar was listed four times, Sherlock Holmes and The Hangover three times each and Moon twice in films.

The posts should you wish to find them after the Linky stops working: me, Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh, Laugh Quotes, Patricia Lynnes Journey Through the Pages, Tasha Seegmiller, A Daft Scots Lass, Rics Reviews, SciFi Media, My Pet Blog, PepperWords, Two Thumbs, Vive le Nerd, Rooikat back in France, Jennee Thompson Local Celebrity, Building Castles on the Beach, Confessions of a Watery Tart, Donna Hole, Pensuasion and ZA to CH - Born in SA, living in Switzerland.

Hopefully I'll see you here in eleven months time for
The Nineties Blogfest...

The Noughties Blogfest Today

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:01:00 +0000

Today, is The Noughties Blogfest where I invite you to tell me your favourite things from the Noughties.

It's not too late to join in. Choose one thing from each year from 2000 to 2009, be it a Film, a TV show, a radio show, a particular episode of a TV or radio show, a piece of theatre, a book, a comic, a piece of artwork, something online or something else entirely, and then tell us what you love about it.

Here are my favourite things from the Noughties:

2000
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Restless
Every season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer ends with an epic season finale, with one exception. The fourth season ends not with a bang, but ostensibly with a whimper. And what a fantastic whimper it is. The clash with the Big Bad is taken care of in the season's penultimate episode and the actual finale Restless is more of a coda. Having combined their energies with the essence of the first slayer in Primeval, she takes her revenge of Willow, Xander, Giles and Buffy and tries to kill them in their dreams.

The dream sequences are phenomenal, taking in Sapphic poetry, the oddest version of Death Of A Salesman, the first episode of Buffy, Oz and Tara flirting, overexposure, disjointed images, the most conspicuously off camera lesbian kiss, Anya's emphatic steering, starkly colourful lighting, French dubbing, Principal Snyder as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, continuous shots across neighbouring but disparate sets, black and white, 'the exposition song', claustrophobia alongside huge spaces, disconnected speech, "Be back before Dawn", Joyce living in the wall, Adam as a human, Surgeon General Riley's pillow fort, images in negative, a beautiful desert vista, a borrowed Tara, a false awakening and the cheese guy.

I’ve never seen dreams shown better on screen. A masterpiece.

- - - - -

2001
Spaced Series 2
I nearly wrote about another Buffy episode, The Body, here as well, but the quirky twentysomething flatsharing sitcom Spaced meant so much to me in 2001 so I had to include it. I love this show. I love each and every character. I love 23 Meteor Street. The second series reunites our favourite characters, but stretches their friendships to the limit. Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson's scripts are wonderful and the dialogue contains a plethora of film and TV references are a gift to the viewer. The editing style compliments them brilliantly and really marks this show out as different. Intelligent, surreal and always very, very funny the show manages to be both epic and intimate at the same time.

Tim and Daisy’s relationship deepens as Brian and Twist’s relationship gets shallower. Marsha gets more involved and is all the more hurt when things fall apart. The return of Tyres and Duane Benzie are welcome and the addition of Sophie tests fan loyalty. We watched the fifth episode, Gone, over and over and over again and it never got old.

It's a shame that there wasn't a third series, but if it had to end here, at least it ends on a beautiful note.

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2002
Firefly
Shamefully messed about by the broadcaster, Joss Whedon's space opera western (with Chinese swearwords) is the best missed opportunity in TV. The story of a spaceship carrying nine people, each with different loyalties and different reasons to stay aboard, somehow becoming a family. The dialogue, the characters and the Verse are all equally compelling: the Alliance, the Reavers, the smugglers and the colonists with a pioneer spirit were all brilliantly conceived. The crew are outsiders and this perspective was key to the success of the show. Everybody loves the underdog, except Fox apparently.

Each of the characters is a beautiful contradiction. Nathan Fillion, Gina Torres, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Sean Maher, Summer Glau and Ron Glass are uniformly fantastic and it would have been a joy to watch their adventures unfold over seven seasons or so, but it wasn’t to be. Cut down in its prime, we were left with fourteen really great episodes. Fourteen episodes that are better than any fourteen consecutive episode run of any other TV show, ever. I was beyond happy when they returned in the excellent movie Serenity, but out of necessity that is one story and we deserved hundreds.

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2003
The Station Agent
Tom McCarthy's debut film is a comedy tinged with sadness and a confident sense of modesty. Peter Dinklage, Bobby Cannavale and Patricia Clarkson play three characters who for one reason or another are isolated until they reluctantly find each other and then begin to enjoy each other's company. The hopeful hermit Fin and grief-stricken artist Olivia are drawn out of their chosen mundane lives by the gregarious Joe. Nothing makes me happier than when the trio are together. Every performance in this film is outstanding and has a depth beyond the dialogue. The music is wonderful and the scenes of walking, and there is a lot of walking, are beautifully shot. When the credits rolled after I first saw this film, I wanted to watch it all over again straight away.

I don't just love this film, I adore it.

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2004
Y: The Last Man
On one day in Brian K. Vaughn's post apocalyptic comic book every mammal with a Y chromosome died, with two notable exceptions. One man and his monkey are left alone in a society of women attempting to rebuild and surrounded by male corpses. At this point the comic had been running for two years, but this is when it takes on a more playful and sinister tone. The almost manless world grows increasingly complex and cruel in this period, as the comic asks bigger and bigger "what if?" questions, takes more chances, increasingly plays with its format and is bolder with its take on gender politics. From the comedy and tragedy of Comedy And Tragedy's play within a play, via the sadomasochism of Safeword, to the big theological questions of Tongues Of Flame, a sidestep to witness Hero's Journey, before the plot surges forward in Ring Of Truth…At a point when many ongoing comic starts to flag Y: The Last Man just got better and better and better.

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2005
Doctor Who's triumphant return
Fantastic. Doctor Who never really went away, but by crikey in 2005 it was back. It was back and it was great. The first new season in fifteen years was as good as we knew it could be: Bad Wolf, anti-plastic, bitchy trampoline, Charles Dickens, Harriet Jones MP for Flydale North's Port etiquette, the Metaltron, the Doctor's response to the question "Is a slave, a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?", the Tylers in the Eighties, "Are you my mummy?", Blon, Lynda with a Y, Barcelona and the new Doctor's new hand.

Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke, Simon Callow, Penelope Wilton, Simon Pegg, Shaun Dingwall, John Barrowman, Annette Badland, Jo Joyner and David Tennant are all magnificent in excellent scripts, beautifully designed and brilliantly realised. Why did we ever let it go away? It proved that Doctor Who made by fans wasn’t the inmates taking over the asylum, it was the way it needed to be and caused a boom in British SF programming. Thank you Russell T. Davies.

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2006
Jarvis by Jarvis Cocker
I was devastated when Pulp went "on hiatus" and so when 'The Jarvis Cocker Record' was released I was one of the first in the queue. The new sound is more relaxed, the lyrics are as great as ever and featuring former band members Steve Mackey, Mark Webber, Anthony Genn and Richard Hawley it could be argued that this is a Pulp album in all but name. There are pop songs like 'Black Magic', 'Heavy Weather' and 'Fat Children' with a real momentum behind them, but it's the more introspective tracks with ballsy lyrics like 'I Will Kill Again', 'Auschwitz To Ipswitch' and 'Running The World' prove why music needs Jarvis.

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2007
The return of the Master in Doctor Who's Utopia
I managed to avoid any spoilers during David Tennant's second season and so I had no idea that one of the best villains on television was about to return. I was completely fooled. Professor Yana seemed like nothing more than a delightfully amiable fellow wearing a pocket watch. Derek Jacobi had previously played a version of the Master in Scream Of The Shalka and so I put any thoughts of the Master appearing here out of my head, because that sort of joined up thinking just doesn't happen. And then it did and it was fantastic. I doubt my reaction was as explosive as this, but it gives you an idea. Thank you again, Russell T. Davies.

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2008
Son Of Rambow
The coming of age story of two very different boys who try to film a tribute to Sylvester Stallone's super soldier. The Plymouth Brethren, the French exchange programme and an inattentive brother all complicate their efforts. Bill Milner and Will Poulter are fantastic as the two boys and give the film a genuine youthful zeal. Inventive and nostalgic in equal measure, this film is beautiful, imaginative, charming and full of the wonder of childhood. A very funny and very intelligent feel good film.

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2009
Moon
This movie is amazing. It's brilliant to see a return to the claustrophobia and traditional movie making techniques of films like Alien. Sam Rockwell is fantastic, the tone of the film is wonderful and the twist in the tale is incredible. The twist is also something I'm really glad I didn‘t know about when I first sat down to watch the movie and so I'm not going to reveal any more about it here.

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Here are the details on how to take part:

• Leave your name and link on the linky below.

• Feel free to publicise the blogfest on your blog, facebook, twitter, etc and post the above image on your blog if you wish.

• On the 14th of November post a favourite something for each year 2000-2009, and tell us what you love about each of them.

• Leave a comment here, so that we know that you have posted your efforts for all to see.

• Visit as many other participating bloggers as you can on the list below. Compare, contrast and comment on their choices.

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The Noughties Blogfest Tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (Dave) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 10:00:00 +0000

After an unfortunate posting mistake yesterday revealing everything I'd written for the 14th (let's call it a sneak preview), here's one last reminder that The Noughties Blogfest is taking place tomorrow. Here are the details on how to take part:

• Leave your name and link on the linky below.

• Feel free to publicise the blogfest on your blog, facebook, twitter, etc and post the above image on your blog if you wish.

• On the 14th of November (that's tomorrow) post a favourite something for each year 2000-2009, and tell us what you love about each of them.

• Visit as many other participating bloggers as you can. Compare, contrast and comment on their choices.

Join Us...