Sky is doing a big shuffle of its entertainment line up from February 1st. One change is that they're switching the HD and SD equivalents for HD subscribers to make the HD channels easier to find. Another difference is that Living is being rebranded as Sky Living after Sky bought the channel from Virgin back in June, and some flagship shows such as Chuck and Bones have a new home there. They're also moving around a lot of the entertainment channels while they're at it to cluster the best Sky channels on the first page of the TV guide. But the change I'm most excited about is the new channel Sky Atlantic.
Sky have signed an exclusive deal with the pay channel HBO from the US so that all the top shows will be on Sky Atlantic and available to all Sky subscribers without any extra fees as part of the variety mix. This starts with new shows Boardwalk Empire and Blue Bloods on the opening night as well as the new series of Entourage on Thursday. They are also going to repeat several classic shows from the start during the daytime line up such as ER, The X-Files, and Six Feet Under. Now I just need to find time to watch everything while still leaving enough time to blog about it!
The only drawback I can see to this new line up is that Channel One (formerly Virgin 1) has disappeared and I was watching Supernatural from the start on it. However that and Chuck were the only things I ever watched on it, and they did at least stop at the end of a series so I'm sure can pick it up again from the start of season 3 on another channel in future. This downside is more than made up for by the fact they also cancelled Bravo so I no longer have to sit through UFC matches with my husband.
Monday 31 January 2011
Sunday 30 January 2011
Extract
After we got back from seeing TRON:Legacy we decided to watch the rental movie Extract. I didn't hear about this movie at all when it came out, but I added it to my rental list without really knowing anything about it because it's a Mike Judge movie and Office Space is one of my all time favourites.
It turns out Extract is about a group of workers at a factory that makes food extracts. The setting really isn't that important to the story though, it would work equally well with any mundane job, it's just observations about normal people which is what Mike Judge is known for
The story mainly follows the owner of the factory who has built up the company from nothing. He's unhappy in his marriage and an attractive new employee tempts him into having an affair but he doesn't want to risk the financial loss of a divorce. That's until his bartender friend (a hilarious return to form for Ben Affleck) dopes him up on ketamine and convinces him that he should pay a gigalo to seduce his wife first so she wouldn't have a case. However this backfires when the gigalo falls in love with the wife and won't stop seeing her.
Meanwhile the owner of the plant is trying to sell it but that's put at risk when there's an accident in the factory (one of the idiot employees loses a testicle), and there's the risk of a major lawsuit bankrupting the company. There's also a number of petty thefts from the employees which causes further unrest. All this comes to a head in comic fashion at the end of the film when the owner realises one person is causing all his problems.
Rating: 7 out of 10: Original and amusing movie with some laugh out loud moments and interesting characters, it's no Office Space but it's a major improvement over TRON:Legacy (yes I really hated that movie and here's why if you missed my earlier review).
It turns out Extract is about a group of workers at a factory that makes food extracts. The setting really isn't that important to the story though, it would work equally well with any mundane job, it's just observations about normal people which is what Mike Judge is known for
The story mainly follows the owner of the factory who has built up the company from nothing. He's unhappy in his marriage and an attractive new employee tempts him into having an affair but he doesn't want to risk the financial loss of a divorce. That's until his bartender friend (a hilarious return to form for Ben Affleck) dopes him up on ketamine and convinces him that he should pay a gigalo to seduce his wife first so she wouldn't have a case. However this backfires when the gigalo falls in love with the wife and won't stop seeing her.
Meanwhile the owner of the plant is trying to sell it but that's put at risk when there's an accident in the factory (one of the idiot employees loses a testicle), and there's the risk of a major lawsuit bankrupting the company. There's also a number of petty thefts from the employees which causes further unrest. All this comes to a head in comic fashion at the end of the film when the owner realises one person is causing all his problems.
Rating: 7 out of 10: Original and amusing movie with some laugh out loud moments and interesting characters, it's no Office Space but it's a major improvement over TRON:Legacy (yes I really hated that movie and here's why if you missed my earlier review).
Saturday 29 January 2011
Back by popular demand!
Well OK one demand, but that's enough for me! I've had a request for more diagrams so I thought I'd try to link the show No Ordinary Family to itself in as few steps as possible (avoiding one off appearances). Please post a comment if you've got any other requests for diagrams or if you can do this one in less steps!
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| No Ordinary Family to No Ordinary Family in 5 steps, can you do better? |
Friday 28 January 2011
No Ordinary Family
A new show called No Ordinary Family started a few weeks ago, and it looked very promising. I was over in the States at the start of the Fall season and I saw billboards for it all over Times Square that made it look really exciting, so I was disappointed when it didn't start showing in the UK as soon as I got back. And I was surprised that when it did start showing in the UK it was on Watch, a channel I've never actually watched anything on before and an unlikely home for a hit new show. However after watching a couple of episodes I can see why.
It stars Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as the parents of two teenagers in a typical middle class family. The Mom is torn between her successful career in scientific research, spending enough time with her children and working on her marriage. The Dad is unhappy that his career in art peaked as a sketch artist at the local police station and resents the lack of respect he gets from other men for being the main carer for his children. The daughter doesn't want to lose her boyfriend because she isn't ready to sleep with him, and the son is about to be put in the 'special' class because he keeps failing tests despite his best efforts.
But that all changes when a freak plane crash into some radioactive water leaves them with super powers. The Mom can move at lightening speed so she has enough time for everything now. The Dad gets super strength, super high jumping and super tough skin. The daughter becomes psychic and the son starts to see The Matrix and ace all his maths exams.
Now so far so good, but unfortunately the show fails to capitalize on the innate coolness that comes with super powers. The script spends most of its time focusing on the relationships between the family members which is just dull. Every now and then we're given glimpses of a deeper plot involving more people with powers and an evil plan by the company the Mom works for, but it's moving so slowly it makes Lost seem pacy. Basically it suffers from all the same problems as Heroes but it only took 2 episodes to make that obvious. The start of a new series should be gripping enough to see you through the next few episodes when the writers start saving their best material for sweeps. So given the amount of competition in my current Sky+ planner I think I'm going to have to give the rest of this show a miss.
Rating: 3 out of 10 - Not at all original and doesn't even pass the time that well. I found myself looking at my watch after the first 20 minutes and the 2nd episode didn't improve on that.
It stars Michael Chiklis and Julie Benz as the parents of two teenagers in a typical middle class family. The Mom is torn between her successful career in scientific research, spending enough time with her children and working on her marriage. The Dad is unhappy that his career in art peaked as a sketch artist at the local police station and resents the lack of respect he gets from other men for being the main carer for his children. The daughter doesn't want to lose her boyfriend because she isn't ready to sleep with him, and the son is about to be put in the 'special' class because he keeps failing tests despite his best efforts.
But that all changes when a freak plane crash into some radioactive water leaves them with super powers. The Mom can move at lightening speed so she has enough time for everything now. The Dad gets super strength, super high jumping and super tough skin. The daughter becomes psychic and the son starts to see The Matrix and ace all his maths exams.
Now so far so good, but unfortunately the show fails to capitalize on the innate coolness that comes with super powers. The script spends most of its time focusing on the relationships between the family members which is just dull. Every now and then we're given glimpses of a deeper plot involving more people with powers and an evil plan by the company the Mom works for, but it's moving so slowly it makes Lost seem pacy. Basically it suffers from all the same problems as Heroes but it only took 2 episodes to make that obvious. The start of a new series should be gripping enough to see you through the next few episodes when the writers start saving their best material for sweeps. So given the amount of competition in my current Sky+ planner I think I'm going to have to give the rest of this show a miss.
Rating: 3 out of 10 - Not at all original and doesn't even pass the time that well. I found myself looking at my watch after the first 20 minutes and the 2nd episode didn't improve on that.
Thursday 27 January 2011
Stranger Than Fiction
I saw the movie Stranger Than Fiction on TV over the Xmas period. I'd already seen it on DVD a couple of years ago, but I made a point of seeing it again because I really enjoyed it the first time. It's a Will Ferrell movie but don't expect another Blades of Glory. This is his attempt at branching out of his stereotype much like Jim Carrey's The Truman Show and Adam Sandler's Punch-Drunk Love, and he possibly does a better job of it than either of those two.
He plays a serious tax auditor called Harold Crick, who leads a boring and routine life. However one day he starts hearing a narrator describing everything he does down to the number of times he brushes each tooth and whether he'll miss the bus or not that morning. As you can imagine this is extremely disturbing for Harold, especially when the narrator predicts things that haven't even happened to him yet. But then he hears the narrator say that he's going to die and his whole life is thrown into turmoil. He starts meeting English professor Dustin Hoffman to find out what sort of story his life is and if there's anything he can do to avert his fate. Meanwhile we find out that the narrator is actually a reclused writer played by Emma Thompson. She always ends her books by killing off the main character, but she can't bring herself to do it to Harold, so Queen Latifah is sent in by the publisher's to help her clear her writer's block and finish Harold off.
Rating: 8 out of 10 - Very surreal, but if you can suspend disbelief you'll enjoy a very original and moving story.
He plays a serious tax auditor called Harold Crick, who leads a boring and routine life. However one day he starts hearing a narrator describing everything he does down to the number of times he brushes each tooth and whether he'll miss the bus or not that morning. As you can imagine this is extremely disturbing for Harold, especially when the narrator predicts things that haven't even happened to him yet. But then he hears the narrator say that he's going to die and his whole life is thrown into turmoil. He starts meeting English professor Dustin Hoffman to find out what sort of story his life is and if there's anything he can do to avert his fate. Meanwhile we find out that the narrator is actually a reclused writer played by Emma Thompson. She always ends her books by killing off the main character, but she can't bring herself to do it to Harold, so Queen Latifah is sent in by the publisher's to help her clear her writer's block and finish Harold off.
Rating: 8 out of 10 - Very surreal, but if you can suspend disbelief you'll enjoy a very original and moving story.
Wednesday 26 January 2011
Sunshine Cleaning
I watched the movie Sunshine Cleaning last month on blu-ray. It's an independent movie about a domestic cleaner who needs to earn some extra money to pay for her son to go to private school, so she goes into business with her slacker sister and starts cleaning crime scenes instead of toilets. Predictably it all goes horribly wrong mainly due to the aforementioned slacker sister, but also because they have no idea of the laws they're supposed to follow when dealing with bio-hazards or the equipment they'll need. They get some assistance from a friendly one-armed cleaning supplies store owner (disappointingly you never find out how he lost his arm though). And there is a somewhat happy ending, but it wasn't particularly entertaining or satisfying to watch. There were some funny moments, mainly due to the oddball father who's always looking for creative ways to make money but he's lucky if he breaks even with any of them.
Rating: 4 out of 10, most of the points are for originality rather than entertainment value though.
Rating: 4 out of 10, most of the points are for originality rather than entertainment value though.
Tuesday 25 January 2011
One Tree Hill
I've been spending a lot of time lately catching up on old episodes of One Tree Hill because E4 have been repeating it from the start at 6am every weekday (don't worry I have sky+ so I'm not actually getting up at 6am to watch it!). I wasn't interested in it when it first came on the air because the commercials made it look like a show about basketball, but that's actually a very small part of it. It's just a general teen drama with added grown up drama from the parents, much like The OC and 90210. What's weird is that I was never interested in this type of show when I was a teenager (you couldn't have paid me enough to watch Dawson's Creek), but I seem to find them totally gripping ten years on. I guess it takes a while for the rose tint to develop on our high school years so we don't mind looking back instead of running away as far and fast as possible.
But anyway, I digress, the plot of One Tree Hill focuses on the complicated relationships between a small group of characters in a small town called Tree Hill in North Carolina. At the start of the first season we meet Nathan Scott, the star of the high school basketball team and a typical jock jerk. Dan Scott is his overbearing father trying to relive his glory days through Nathan when he's not showing off the money and power he has as owner of the local car dealership. Lucas Scott is Dan's son from a previous relationship who is just 2 months older than Nathan. He joins the team and threatens to steal Nathan's glory and girlfriend, but he's actually a really nice guy and the narrator of most of the episodes so you're hoping he'll come out on top. Peyton Sawyer is Nathan's girlfriend and a cheerleader whose mother died when she was younger which left her troubled and consumed with arty angst. Brooke Davies is Peyton's best friend and captain of the cheerleaders who also has her eye on Lucas. Haley James is Lucas' best friend and a tutor at the school who Nathan starts seeing to get at Lucas. Keith Scott is Dan's brother who's been a surrogate father to Lucas since he was born, he's also tantalisingly close to starting a relationship with Lucas' mother and Dan's ex-girlfriend Karen Roe, but it's unclear why they haven't gotten together over all those years. Karen is also a business partner with Deb Scott, Dan's wife who hates him but is too weak willed to leave.
There are many twists and turns in the plot after that point, new relationships form and others fall apart in spectacular fashion. The main constant seems to be that Dan is evil and always looking for ways to screw up everyone's lives. He's very convincing in this role, and I always dread what he's going to do next when he appears in a scene. I also get nervous any time all the other characters are happy because I just know that's screaming out for a disaster of some sort. I'm nearly at the end of season 3 now and so far we've had 2 car crashes, a fire, a boat lost at sea and a school shooting. There's also been 5 marriage proposals, one ditching at the alter and a pregnancy scare, there's annulment and divorce papers that never seem to quite get signed too.
I'm not really sure why I enjoy the show so much. Part of it is probably the fact that I can watch it every day or several episodes back to back which really helps me get into the storylines. It's also encouraging that the show is in its 8th season now, so I know there's plenty more good stuff to come. After this season they jump the storyline forward 4 years in the future too which will definitely help keep things fresh (and stop them having to come up with a lame way of keeping all the characters together in one town like they did in Buffy). But I think it's just generally well written with believable characters. I also love the soundrack and the fact they get real bands to perform on the show in the club and cafe that Karen and Deb own.
Rating: 9 out of 10 - a rollercoaster of emotions but well worth watching for the characters and general escapism, their problems always make mine pale in comparison!
But anyway, I digress, the plot of One Tree Hill focuses on the complicated relationships between a small group of characters in a small town called Tree Hill in North Carolina. At the start of the first season we meet Nathan Scott, the star of the high school basketball team and a typical jock jerk. Dan Scott is his overbearing father trying to relive his glory days through Nathan when he's not showing off the money and power he has as owner of the local car dealership. Lucas Scott is Dan's son from a previous relationship who is just 2 months older than Nathan. He joins the team and threatens to steal Nathan's glory and girlfriend, but he's actually a really nice guy and the narrator of most of the episodes so you're hoping he'll come out on top. Peyton Sawyer is Nathan's girlfriend and a cheerleader whose mother died when she was younger which left her troubled and consumed with arty angst. Brooke Davies is Peyton's best friend and captain of the cheerleaders who also has her eye on Lucas. Haley James is Lucas' best friend and a tutor at the school who Nathan starts seeing to get at Lucas. Keith Scott is Dan's brother who's been a surrogate father to Lucas since he was born, he's also tantalisingly close to starting a relationship with Lucas' mother and Dan's ex-girlfriend Karen Roe, but it's unclear why they haven't gotten together over all those years. Karen is also a business partner with Deb Scott, Dan's wife who hates him but is too weak willed to leave.
There are many twists and turns in the plot after that point, new relationships form and others fall apart in spectacular fashion. The main constant seems to be that Dan is evil and always looking for ways to screw up everyone's lives. He's very convincing in this role, and I always dread what he's going to do next when he appears in a scene. I also get nervous any time all the other characters are happy because I just know that's screaming out for a disaster of some sort. I'm nearly at the end of season 3 now and so far we've had 2 car crashes, a fire, a boat lost at sea and a school shooting. There's also been 5 marriage proposals, one ditching at the alter and a pregnancy scare, there's annulment and divorce papers that never seem to quite get signed too.
I'm not really sure why I enjoy the show so much. Part of it is probably the fact that I can watch it every day or several episodes back to back which really helps me get into the storylines. It's also encouraging that the show is in its 8th season now, so I know there's plenty more good stuff to come. After this season they jump the storyline forward 4 years in the future too which will definitely help keep things fresh (and stop them having to come up with a lame way of keeping all the characters together in one town like they did in Buffy). But I think it's just generally well written with believable characters. I also love the soundrack and the fact they get real bands to perform on the show in the club and cafe that Karen and Deb own.
Rating: 9 out of 10 - a rollercoaster of emotions but well worth watching for the characters and general escapism, their problems always make mine pale in comparison!
Monday 24 January 2011
What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?
OK you may have noticed that I haven't been posting as frequently lately. It's not that the novelty of having a blog has worn off. In fact I'm liking it a lot more than I anticipated. However I am a natural procrastinator, and even more so when it comes to writing, so I've decided to try an experiment where I just start typing and see what comes out. So apologies in advance if the quality of my writing declines rapidly, but at least you'll have something new to read! I'm also going to try to post shorter entries more often so it won't seem like such a daunting task starting a new post, but I also tend to ramble once I start so we'll see how that works out too!
Wednesday 5 January 2011
TRON: Legacy
I went to see the movie TRON:Legacy last month and it was absolutely awful! In fact it was so dire that it's taken me until now to calm down enough to articulate exactly why it was crap.
They clearly only made it to cash in on the legacy of the first movie, leaving a generation of fans feeling cheated. The disappointment started before the opening credits when a message was displayed saying that only certain scenes are actually 3D but you should keep the uncomfortable glasses on for the whole movie anyway. (And I didn't even notice the 3D scenes when they did occur!) It continued downhill from there with the blatant Nokia product placement, predictable plot that shamelessly ripped off movies like The Matrix and Hackers, mediocre CG (the young Jeff Bridge's looked about a natural as Data in Star Trek), 2 dimensional characters that were poorly acted, innane dialogue, and monotonous soundtrack.
Watching this movie reminded me of foreign films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because the character's motivations weren't clear and the plot wasn't always coherant; it was like something got lost in translation. The dialogue was also complete gibberish a lot of the time, like someone had flicked through a computing dictionary and put random terms together into a sentence. The movie threw around some grand concepts like isomorphic programs being created from nothing, but none of them were properly explained, and the leap from that to being able to cure cancer with them was just ridiculous. It reminded me of Lost trying to explain away all the mysteries of the island by saying it was electromagnetism; just because you say it's science doesn't make it so!
Now don't get me wrong, I like Daft Punk and the sound track did add a certain atmosphere to the movie, but all the songs blended into one instead of highlighting specific scenes. It felt like watching one long music video at times, especially during the scene in the club where the band is in the background as DJs. The Matrix had a far better soundtrack with a mixture of artists and genres to add variety too.
Rating: 2 out of 10, don't bother paying to see this movie, save your money and watch the first one again instead. As usual the 3D is a total gimmick and I've heard songs with deeper plots. This movie makes the Matrix 2 and 3 look good.
They clearly only made it to cash in on the legacy of the first movie, leaving a generation of fans feeling cheated. The disappointment started before the opening credits when a message was displayed saying that only certain scenes are actually 3D but you should keep the uncomfortable glasses on for the whole movie anyway. (And I didn't even notice the 3D scenes when they did occur!) It continued downhill from there with the blatant Nokia product placement, predictable plot that shamelessly ripped off movies like The Matrix and Hackers, mediocre CG (the young Jeff Bridge's looked about a natural as Data in Star Trek), 2 dimensional characters that were poorly acted, innane dialogue, and monotonous soundtrack.
Watching this movie reminded me of foreign films like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon because the character's motivations weren't clear and the plot wasn't always coherant; it was like something got lost in translation. The dialogue was also complete gibberish a lot of the time, like someone had flicked through a computing dictionary and put random terms together into a sentence. The movie threw around some grand concepts like isomorphic programs being created from nothing, but none of them were properly explained, and the leap from that to being able to cure cancer with them was just ridiculous. It reminded me of Lost trying to explain away all the mysteries of the island by saying it was electromagnetism; just because you say it's science doesn't make it so!
Now don't get me wrong, I like Daft Punk and the sound track did add a certain atmosphere to the movie, but all the songs blended into one instead of highlighting specific scenes. It felt like watching one long music video at times, especially during the scene in the club where the band is in the background as DJs. The Matrix had a far better soundtrack with a mixture of artists and genres to add variety too.
Rating: 2 out of 10, don't bother paying to see this movie, save your money and watch the first one again instead. As usual the 3D is a total gimmick and I've heard songs with deeper plots. This movie makes the Matrix 2 and 3 look good.
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