I've been doing some intense media stuff lately. Partly as research for the podcast (which comes out next weekend) and partly because the temperature here in Melbourne has been pretty high lately and I can't be stuffed doing much else.
So what have I been hitting my retinas with?
The first three episodes of the second series of the tv series
"Primeval", which I highly recommend you watch even if you have to torrent it as I did. The premise of this one is simple - anomalies in time are opening up all over London and a team of scientists lead by Professor Nick Cutter (Douglas Henshall) have the job of returning whatever comes through the anomalies to their original time periods. His job is complicated by the fact that his wife Helen (Juliet Aubrey) who disappeared into an anomaly eight years before, has returned and seems to a) know how to predict where an anomaly will appear and b) is playing around with changing the time lines. Raptors, pteradons, smilodons, pre-Cambrian worms the size of large dogs and highly intelligent ambush predators from the future all come through and menace the team. It's a good solid adventure series with engaging characters, a story arc that hooks you in and it's a lot more fun than the nihilistic, virally-hyped shaky-cam of a movie like "Cloverfield" - which we also saw. A week after viewing "Cloverfield" (dumb name, why not call it Pastel Pony Wonderland Movie) my reaction is that it's a godzilla flick for youtube reality tv junkies. Nice monster but its' physics are all fucked. You can't get a tentacular calimari-textured thingie that big. The Inverse Cube Law makes even a muscular endoskeletal daikaju like Godzilla ludicrous. Someone should do a giant monster with carbon-fibre bones and muscles like braided ships hawsers. Gimme a pre-Cambrian worm anyday.
I've also been nibbling away at Series One of
Have Gun-Will Travel, the late 50s western series starring Richard Boone as Paladin, the knight-gunfighter who solves problems more often with his brain than his perfectly balanced 45 caliber Colt Single Action Army revolver. The episodes are slightly less than 30 minutes and the writing and acting are wonderful. Watching Boone carry a live rattlesnake at arm's length into an indian encampment was one of the greatest bits of tv actor bravery I've ever seen. The guest actors are pretty good too - Charles Bronson, Strother Martin, June Lockhart, Warren Oates, James Coburn. Can't wait until I can afford series two and three from Amazon.
I also got out to the cinema to see No Country For Old Men, the new Coen Brothers movie based on a novel by Mr Comedy, Cormac McCarthy. Excellent film, even when there's a microcephalic tosser sitting in the row in front of you talking all the way through it. Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin are all excellent in this one. Add it to your list. While watching it we saw the preview of There Will Be Blood, the new Paul Thomas Anderson flick starring Daniel Day Lewis. I'll have to check it out even if DDL is doing a note-perfect imitiation of John Huston's Noah Cross from
Chinatown.
That's all for now. Gotta watch some movies.
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