News: August 2007 Archives
Bernard Cribbins is going to appear in the 2008 series of Doctor Who (along with it seems everyon other British actor who hasn't appeared yet). Cribbins was in the Doctor Who film Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD but most people remember him as the narrator to The Wombles.
This morning BBC Breakfast had on Heroes stars Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia, who play Nathan and Peter Petrelli respectively. Whilst Hayden Panettiere (the cheerleader) had to suffer Chris Moyles letching all over her on the radio, but was quite entertaining. They played "Shave The Cheerleader". Then later on, Jo Whiley has Milo on her show. Nothing major revealed, because the BBC is only mid way through the first series.
"absolute tish and tosh"
How about using Technorati to watch for blog posts, videos and photos?
Or following a random LiveJournal selection?
Or just subscribing to a gazillion blogs?
Or screw up your face really hard like Hiro and hope you can teleport?
I think it's time for a Simon Pegg / Edgar Wright set-in-space-SF film.
Lost and Night Stalker seem to be the only SFish shows. (I've never seen Night Stalker, is it any good? Supernatural crime thriller doesn't sound appealing to me.)
There's South Park, Greys Anatomy, Ugly Betty... Basically all the US stuff that Channel 4 buys. It does mean that you can watch the "Make Love, Not Warcraft" South Park episode, if you haven't already on YouTube.
It's better for kids: Dora The Explorer, Handy Manny, Avatar, American Dragon, Kim Possible, Spingebob Squarepants and Disney's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
So they've signed up Disney then?
It's still rubbish.
"Variety is reporting that Keanu Reeves has agreed to star as Klaatu in Twentieth Century Fox's upcoming remake of the classic 1951 sf film The Day the Earth Stood Still."[Via SFScope]
"The producers say the story will be updated for the new film."
Argggghhh!
I love that film. I will not see the remake. Are you listening Hollywood? The Boycott starts here.
Talking about WarGames, Tony says that after he first saw it he was sitting in his bedroom with his VIC-20 wondering if he could hack into the US Government defence department, but instead all he had was magazines with code that you type in, that never worked. Oh how true. I wanted to get a modem and access to Prestel for my BBC Micro to do the same.
[Via Yatterings]
William Gibson says something to the effect that SciFi peaked in the 60s and that now seems so futuristic it would have seemed crazy 25 years ago, and implies that he can't think of anything more futuristic than now. I don't quite believe him.
If you've seen all of Heroes season one then there's a trailer for Season 2 out, which doesn't show much except which characters will be in the show. [Via SFSignal]
"Star Wars couple Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen have been voted as having the least plausible on-screen chemistry by film fans."
It was a survey done by Pearl And Dean. Although only of 3000 people so it's statistically irrelevant.
Personally I really love Attack Of The Clones, and anyway how do those naysayers know how they would react if they were about to be put to death in an alien arena by large monsters, and the bloke was a slightly psychopathic genius level jedi, and the woman was a child genius queen and senator in the galactic republic? Do they know what real should be like?
Also in the top ten, Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom, because they were too English.
Ken the Elvis Trooper is celebrating 30 years since the death of the King Of Rock''n'Roll. (Which seems a strange anniversary to celebrate, but there you go.)
The next season of Torchwood starts in "the new year". Suitably vague. I suppose I will have to watch it, which does not fill me with excitement.
"...expect to bump into some familiar alien enemies from Doctor Who.."Doing it on the cheap again? Or continued lack of imagination? Or playing it safe? In other news, Shaun The Sheep is back too.
The Edinburgh International Book Festival started on Saturday. If you know who you're looking for you might be able to navigate the website to find if they're speaking (no filter by genre!).
Iain Banks is on tomorrow night, but the event is sold out. If you're going, please ask lots of questions about The Culture to annoy the literary types.
Comics Britannia season launches on BBC Four
Starts in September. Some detaills from the press release:
"Narrated by comedy writer Armando Iannucci (The Thick Of It), Comics Britannia will feature comics legends who wrote and drew the original strips, comics experts and a range of celebrity fans who re-live their favourite comic strip moments and characters.""Bash Street Kids, Dennis the Menace, Roy of The Rovers, Fat Slags, Watchmen, V for Vendetta and many more are brought to life using a special graphics style that allows the audience literally to step inside the comics."
Here's a compilation of episodes from the classic series of Doctor Who
Via SFSignal
There's plenty more Who on YouTube, how about all the onscreen regenerations?
Oooh, pretty.
Via The Genre Files.
And the Orbit blog has some of the new spaceship names.
You’ll Clean That Up Before You Leave.
Indeed.
CrunchGear talks about the rumours of a Doctor Who videogame, including what they would and would not like to see. They then go on to talk about other BBC TV series that they would like to see as games: Life On Mars? Red Dwarf.
The two for me that sprang to mind are Spooks and Hustle. Charles Stross has a game in Halting State called Spooks and pretty much covers the logical evolution of that game...
I don't really know anything about XFire, but they emailed me (and probably every other SF website in the universe) to say that they're having a Sci-Fi week, which is five days of Live Chats with a selection of authors, artists, and creators. I have no idea what a Live Chat is (their captilisation), I assume it's a text based browser thingy.
The guest list is: Charles Stross, Vernor Vinge, Peter Watts, Dan Abnett, Jim Butcher, Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, James Patrick Kelly, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, R. Stevens and Michael Whelan
Which is rather impressive.
Unfortunately you have to sign up for XFire to take part, so I won't be doing it, I'll wait for someone to scrape a transcript and blog it. The timings however quite sensible for us who live in The One Timezone To Rule Them All (GMT), starting at 9pm BST.
Paris Hilton has joined the cast of futuristic musical film “Repo! The Genetic Opera.” Which apparently requires her to pose naked bar for some boots and a microphone lead.
The film is about the survival of the human race after a mysterious epidemic develops:
"The movie will tell the tale of a time when human organs, ravaged by the future plague, could be replaced by expensive man-made counterparts. The new organs could be paid off in installments. Just don’t get behind on your payments, or the Repo Man (or woman) will pay a gruesome visit."
Musical. SF. Paris Hilton. Erm.
