The Repeated Meme! It's the new Recylingwatch!

And now, the Doctor Who Repeated Meme. Sort of like the Sarah Jane Checklist, but more detailed, and indeed like Recyclingwatch, but shorter. It can also be used as a bingo game, or drinking game, or the basis for limericks.

The Eleventh Hour

Idea Proposed but Not Used During the JNT Era: Nothing this week, but just wait.
Central Premise Recycled From: "The Time Traveler's Wife."
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: "The Girl in the Fireplace" (Doctor meets a girl, then meets her again as a grown woman)
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: "Fry something."
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Actually, Amy nearly screws up the day with Wuv, as her Wuv for the Doctor causes her to imagine Prisoner Zero into his form at the end of the story. But fortunately the Docotr manages to straighten things out.
Tennant Line: "Geronimo," "No, no, no," etc. Though give him time, he's regenerating.
Star Wars Bit: Not this episode.
Nostalgia UK: Leadworth is a chocolate-box English village with a cute post office and no Tesco's.
Teeth!: On Prisoner Zero, whatever form it takes.
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: The sonic screwdriver's already in our local Tesco's (yes, *we* have one; we live in reality not Avengerland).
Something Gets Redesigned: The Doctor, the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver...
The Crack in the Universe Is: Right in the middle of the story, why do you ask?

The Beast Below

Idea Proposed but Not Used During the JNT Era: The Space Whale (or Wail, depending who you ask)
Central Premise Recycled From: "The Ark", or possibly "The Starlost."
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: The Smilers are another creepy quasi-human stalking thing in the tradition of the Clockwork Robots, the Empty Child and the spacesuits from "Silence in the Library."
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: They've split off from the rest of the UK and started their own spaceship.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Awww, wasn't that a lovely sweet ending? I cheered.
Tennant Line: "No, no, no, no, no!"
Star Wars Bit: "You're my only hope" plus garbage-chute antics, plus heroes finding out they're actually standing in a mouth.
Nostalgia UK: Future London is an EPCOT-centre version, with bowler hats, punks and cockney market traders all hanging out together in a corridor full of bunting and red telephone booths.
Teeth!: On the Smilers, and the Whale.
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: The Smilers are the most obvious, though a gun-toting Sophie Okonedo would be just the thing to liven up a Barbie collection.
Something Gets Redesigned: The UK, apparently
The Crack in the Universe Is: In the base of Spaceship UK as the girl recites the little poem.

Victory of the Daleks

Idea Proposed but Not Used During the American Telemovie Era: Redesigning the Daleks
Central Premise Recycled From: "Power of the Daleks."
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: The Empty Child (WWII setting) and "The Girl in the Fireplace" (Doctor has backstory with historical figure)
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: "Oi, Paisley boy."
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: By going all Buzzcocks and asking Bracewell "ever fall in love (with someone you shouldn't?)"
Tennant Line: "Bwilliant" and "Churchill, yow beeeauty!"
Star Wars Bit: Dogfights in space, plus the Dalek ship's Milennium Falcon bit as it zips off into hyperspace.
Nostalgia UK: Disneyfied Blitz, with loads of stiff-upper lipped chappies, cheery cockney air-raid wardens, and the only sign that anyone's suffering at all is Breen's little moment of sniffles over her boyfriend/husband/whatever's demise.
Teeth!: None, but a lot of stiff upper lips.
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Go on, guess. There's five of them, they come in a collectable array of colours, and they look like they'd fit right in to any Duplo set.
Something Gets Redesigned: The Daleks
The Crack in the Universe Is: In the wall behind the TARDIS as it dematerialises for the last time. Also, apparently, somewhere in Amy's memory.

Sneezy and Doc

Grumpy Old Men: Starts off as a biting, witty story about love, friendship, sex and mortality among the over-sixties, with Ann-Margret as a kind of angel-of-death figure to Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and their buddies. It ends up completely punting that in favour of a sentimental and kind of rushed ending. Worth watching the outtakes over the credits, though, just to watch Burgess Meredith talk dirty for two solid minutes.

Movie count for 2010: 35

War of Babylon

Lord of War: Rather like Casino and Scarface, in that all three relate to amoral men who take advantage of a specific human weakness, who prosper, but who then find events overtaking them and are, one way or another, let down or betrayed. Nicholas Cage is not entirely forgiven for "The Wicker Man," but the healing is beginning.

ETA: Just found out Nicholas Cage is a Coppola. Don't know if that explains anything but it's interesting.

Movie count for 2010: 34

What about Recyclingwatch?

You may have noticed that the new Doctor Who season has begun, but I haven't done a new Recyclingwatch yet. This is because I want to try something different, now that there's a new production team, new Doctor, etc., but I haven't quite settled on what it will be yet. Give it a couple of episodes, I'll be back.

Four films about writing and two not

Croupier: Despite the title and storyline, a film about writing, and the question of where the character ends and the author begins. Writer, lacking inspiration, takes a job in a casino, finds his old gambling addiction awakening, but also finds it channeling itself into a character who is at once someone he is writing about, and someone he is.

The King of Comedy: Close-to-the-bone black comedy which starts off being about obsessive fandom and unjustified ambition, and then, at the end, takes a left turn into the culture of celebrity for its own sake. Also proof of how scarily versatile De Niro is as an actor.

Bamboozled: Token black TV writer, fed up with being told to pitch "black" TV series, pitches a minstrel show, which turns into a smash hit. It's been compared to "The Producers" but goes much further, taking shots at television, the concept of race, anti-PC humour (which is continually evoked to justify the minstrel show to its critics), and at supposedly more positive conceptions of black identity. Rarely shown, because people are scared of it.

Farewell, My Lovely: The Robert Mitchum version this time. Less euphemistic than the 1944 version (acknowledging racial prejudice and prostitution) but less starkly beautiful (looking like, well, a telemovie, and with Mitchum giving Marlowe a weariness which seems out of character to me).

28 Weeks Later: Sequel to 28 Days Later. Lives up to the first film in being largely a biting satire on the American inability to maintain order in Iraq, but let down by the continuous presence of two unbelievably annoying children. I'm not even sure what's so annoying about them, I just can't stand them. Nice twist at the end, though.

Terminator: Salvation: It's not a movie, it's a two-hour-long video game. The so-called plot twist is also spoilered by the back of the DVD box. Doing a film about John Connor as an adult is a dodgy idea to begin with (even the TV series had the intelligence to leave most of the future-backstory to the viewers' imagination) but when it's difficult to tell which of the main characters is Connor and which is the Terminator, you know you're in trouble. Co-starring some CGI which is inferior to the Harryhausenesque stop-motion of the first Terminator film, and featuring the least probable post-apocalyptic society ever.

Movie Count for 2010: 33

Dogs and sons of bitches

The Go-Between: Takes two hours to tell a plot which could be summarised in one line: Noblewoman has affair with farmer, is found out, farmer shoots self, noblewoman has trouble telling the offspring of the union about it. Harold Pinter wrote the screenplay, which just goes to show that even genius surrealists can have off days. Between this and "Darling," I'm beginning to think that anything that stars Julie Christie and won a BAFTA is guaranteed to be terrible.

Heaven's Fall: Telemovie about the Scottsboro trials. Ok but straightforward; my own understanding of the situation was that the lawyer knew there was no way he was going to get his black client acquitted of the charge of raping two white women, not in 1930s Alabama, and was consequently going for the Saddam Hussein option of making it so utterly obvious that the trial was a trumped-up sham that at the very least the government would be embarrassed about it, but unfortunately the director has the cast play it as if they think they really can get an acquittal. There are worse ways to spend an evening but there are also a lot of better ones.

Crimson Tide: The opening scenes were worryingly contrived and simplistic (I suspect the movie had spent a while in development hell, and "Russians attack us! Bush Sr. calls out the army!" had to be hastily rejigged as "Post-Soviets attack us! Clinton is forced to bow to the wisdom of the neocons and call out the army!"). Once you get past those and into the story, though, it's a great drama about the sort of tensions which emerge under pressure. The crew of a nuclear sub get an order to fire missiles, followed by what might be an order to stand down, but the latter is cut off in transmission: Gene Hackman, a Commander Cain-style eccentric wardog whose instincts never let him down, wants to fire, Denzel Washington, his strait-laced by-the-book XO who has never seen a battle but knows right from wrong, wants to hold off till they get confirmation. The situation deteriorates as the crew take sides in a complicated mutiny and counter-mutiny. The ending, not to spoiler it, concludes that both men acted rightly, but one more rightly than the other. Hugely influential on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

Hachi, A Dog's Story: Based on the Japanese movie Hatchiko Monogatori. Massively cute and massively sad; you have to be totally insensitive not to find the titular dog irresistably darling and not to cry at the ending. Richard Gere is officially forgiven for "The Cotton Club" for this, and I'm now deeply tempted to look into owning an akita.

Movie count for 2010: 27

Cry havoc

Slumdog Millionaire: Subtextually, a story about the rise of the developing-world information service sector. No, seriously, bear with me. From a 1980/90s childhood in abject poverty, picking rags, fleecing tourists and trying to steer clear of beggar lords who would scare the hell out of Charles Dickens, young Jamal finds himself in the post-milennial information world, in legitimate if poorly-paid employment in a call centre catering to the UK (in which the employees have to familiarise themselves with continuous streams of trivia about British culture in order to pass as locals), and, finally, is able to use his encyclopedic knowledge of global information to strike it rich on a programme with a format imported from the UK and sold all over the world, as the police and his local gangster brother both realise that India's place in the global information sphere is bigger than them, give up hindering him and help him to win. The mobile phone runs through it as a symbol of globalisation, information and social connectedness, enabling him in the end to win the girl and gain the confidence to win the game.

Movie count for 2010: 23

Going West

My Darling Clementine: Engaging retelling of the gunfight at the OK corrall, though they really have to twist themselves in knots to make the title fit (and even then, it doesn't; the Clementine of the film, a nurse from Massachusets who goes West in pursuit of a man who doesn't want her, is nothing like the girl in the song). Its main point of interest is actually a strong homoerotic subtext between Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and Doc Holliday (Victor Mature); forget all the gay-cowboy cliches, this one really does read like a Forties tale of forbidden love between men. Watch the director's cut if you can get it; the studio cut's not so interesting.

Once Upon a Time in the West: Actually, what impressed me most this time around was the sound design. The way whole minutes can go by without a single word of dialogue, but with meaning and atmosphere fully conveyed in the background noise. Also the sheer grimness and squalor of it all; Leone did more than most to stamp firmly on the myth of the West as a beautiful land full of beautiful heroes bent on taming it, and showing it instead as a strange, eerie place full of criminals and desperate people, whose heroism is achieved through their sheer determination to survive.

The Wild Bunch: Redemptive religious allegory disguised as an ultraviolent "Western" (the quotes are because it's set in 1917, reminding the viewer that life went on after the West was supposedly won). A gang of outlaws are forced to leave one of their own (tellingly named Angel) in the hands of an evil bandit; they can take their lives and money and leave him, but instead choose to go back and save him, knowing it will be at the cost of their own lives, and take down the corrupt bandit forces as they do so. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but what I'm saying is, watch it with your "allegory" hat on rather than your "straight drama" hat on and you get more out of it.

Young Guns: A Brat-Pack take on the Western genre, and surprisingly good at that; OK, the characterisation and storylines are based on Western archetypes rather than deep character explorations and innovations, but the film is self-aware enough to play around with these, turning the Hero-Finds-Himself storyline into a lunatic drug trip and making it plain precisely how out of their depth the young gunslingers are against more experienced criminals. Mainly let down by the now-horribly-dated thrash-guitar soundtrack.

The Magnificent Ambersons: Orson Welles' complicated portrait of a selfish man who sets out to ruin his widowed mother's chance at a happy relationship, and, in doing so, winds up ruining his own life and those of everyone around him. One of these films that bears repeated rewatching, though it's blatantly obvious that the "happy ending" was tacked on against Welles' wishes.

The Hours: A story about same-sex relationships and suicide. Virginia Woolf has incestuous feelings for her own sister, and kills herself; Julianne Moore, a 50s housewife, has feelings for her own neighbour, contemplates suicide, and instead kills herself socially, fleeing to Canada and rejecting her own family; Meryl Streep, an out lesbian in 2000s New York, obsesses over a gay male ex-lover who commits suicide, reversing the sexual and gender taboos of the earlier iterations of the story.

In the Loop: Basically a triple-length edition of The Thick of It; if you like the sitcom, you'll like the movie. The message was essentially that British politicians become all obsessive and starry-eyed over Washington, but that Washington is really just a better-funded version of Whitehall, with all the same petty rivalries and nastinesses. The best Malcolm Tucker moment for me was the pornographic rant on the subject of costume drama, but there are plenty of great Tucker lines throughout.

Movie count for 2010: 22

Terminally cute

The Terminal: Another Spielberg I like (when he's good he's good, but when he's self-indulgent I just want to scream), being an extended swipe at Homeland Security disguised as a gentle comedy, and with a surprisingly poignant resolution (or lack of resolution, as it were) to the romantic subplot. As someone who lives near Heathrow and goes through periods of spending a lot of time on airplanes, and as a result quite likes airline terminals with their weird mix of connection to, and detachment from, the rest of the world, I found the setting quite enjoyable. The one thing I didn't like was the climax, where it seemed like the team was trying to ratchet up the tension unnecessarily when the movie was generally at its best when it was quiet, bittersweet and low-key (as when the protagonist finally achieves his goal for visiting New York). Also the fact that everyone had pagers and nobody had mobiles made the whole thing seem rather retro for a 2004 film.

Movie count for 2010: 14 (I know, but I've been eyeball-deep in TV series lately).

Psych on Mars

The problem with the American "Life on Mars" crystallised itself recently when I saw an episode in which Sam visits a police psychiatrist. In 1973. The problem is that American policing hasn't changed to the extent that British policing has. Whereas in a British context, a police psychiatrist in 1973 seems unthinkable, there it's natural; having Annie act as a real police officer rather than a glorified tea-lady is fine, even expected, for the Americans (what with their Charlie's Angels and all) but not for the Mancunians. In the British version, nobody except Sam follows correct forensic procedure; in the American version, Sam only comes across as strange if he blurts out something about obtaining DNA. So basically, it's hamstrung from the start. Still, gets some good lines in, and their Ray is better than ours.

Survivors thoughts

If they're so keen on bringing the remake of "Survivors" into the 21st century, why haven't they renamed Abby "Santander"?

Two Noirs and a No-no

They Live by Night: Another unusual film-noir, focusing on a young couple on the run for a crime one of them did commit (the man, though the woman was complicit); while they attempt to set up a normal household in the wake of all this, getting married, renting a cottage and getting pregnant, the media are, in the background, sensationalising the whole affair, to the point where armed squads of police marksmen are sent out to apprehend a 23-year-old with a Saturday Night Special. The portrayal of small-town squalor is positively Steinbeckian, and Cathy O'Donnell as the girl looks scarily like Summer Glau.

Gilda: A more conventionally noirish film, and one aimed at a more commercial market, as Rita Hayworth gets two pointless song numbers, clearly intended as a hit tie-in single and a B-side. Don't let that put you off though, as it's actually a complicated plot about profiteering which is filtered through the story of one man's obsession with revenging himself on the woman who left him and married someone else; the setting, Argentina in the immediate aftermath of WWII, has the right mix of glamour and fascism.

The Wicker Man (2006 Remake): In and of itself, the idea of reimagining the population of Summerisle as "pagan Amish" who fled persecution to the New World has potential. What would such a group be like? How would they relate to modern-day neopagans? How would you convey the seductiveness of such a lifestyle, which was crucial to the original film? Why would they want to burn Nicholas Cage, who is plainly no virgin? Unfortunately, this take turns them into po-faced historical reenactors, with none of the original pagans' humour, music and sexuality, and never really answers the question of why they would want to burn Nicholas Cage (there's some brief guff about having to sacrifice someone connected to them by blood, but if that's the case, why him particularly?). There are far too many logical holes in the story to cover in a capsule movie review (just as an example, why would a community which actively repels outsiders have what seems to be a comfortable multi-roomed hotel? What was the point of the vignette at the start where Nicholas Cage fails to save a girl in an automobile accident?), but the stupidest aspect for me was that the whole thing came across as the kind of clumsy, awkward rant against feminism one might expect from a right-wing 1970s TV show. The Summerisle pagans are re-envisioned as matriarchs who oppress their men, seduce innocent outsiders to get pregnant and then deny them visits to their children at the weekend, and, from the look of the jars full of foetuses in the doctor's office, have lots and lots of abortions. I'm sure this is a popular movie with the sort of men who climb Buckingham Palace dressed as Spider-Man and unfurl "Fathers4Justice" flags, but give me Christopher Lee romping around in drag with Britt Ecklund any day.

Movie count for 2010: 13

Fired

Crossfire: A PTSD-afflicted recently discharged American soldier is accused of the murder of a Jewish acquaintance, but naturally the truth turns out to be far less simple. Another application of film-noir techniques and tropes to a subject normally outside its parameters (see last review), with soldiers as its protagonists and mental illness and prejudice as its themes. Contains one truly excellent scene where a soldier and a mysterious man meet at the apartment of a dancing girl, and conduct a beautifully Pinteresque conversation which could stand on its own as a minimalist theatre piece, counterbalanced by one truly dire scene where the detective character has to stand up and explain why anti-Semitism is wrong and hurts everyone. Since the dialogue otherwise is full of clever allusion and subtextual insinuation, I suspect the studio ordered its insertion just to make it clear to the idiots in the audience what the story's about. Worth tracking down anyway.

Movie Count for 2010: 10

Very much encapsulated movie reviews

Too busy to write much, so:

The Reckless Moment: Unusual film noir in having the hard-bitten dame as the hero, moreso when the dame in question is a suburban housewife doing everything possible to keep her daughter out of trouble. Guest starring a very, very young James Mason.

The Deer Hunter: Not sure which is more nightmarish, life in a 1970s steel-working town, or Vietnam; certainly all three of the central characters seem to choose a slow, elaborate form of suicide, and only Christopher Walken actually succeeding seems to bring them out of it. Unusual to see a Russian-American community depicted fairly unproblematically-- the existence of the Cold War is only even hinted at briefly, despite the context.

Catch-22: Valiant attempt to film an unfilmable novel. Partly successful. Co-stars Art Garfunkel as you've never seen him before.

The History of Mr Polly: The message is that you can change your life, whatever it happens to be. Which is ironic since this film isn't sure if it wants to be a kitchen-sink drama or a slapstick comedy. Stars John Mills, who was contractually required to appear in every film from 1945 to 1960.

Journey Into Fear: Would have been a film-noir classic with a bit more money and a better soundtrack; as it is, it's worth watching for the witty dialogue, occasionally enchanting set-pieces (the monologue of the French Communist who only joined the party to piss off his wife, for instance) traces of brilliant acting and Orson Welles as the Head of the Turkish Secret Police, in a hat which renders subtlety impossible.

Movie Count for 2010: 9

Last movie of 2009/first movies of 2010

The Stranger: 1940s movie featuring Orson Welles as an escaped Nazi war criminal taking up in a small town as a teacher, and being hunted down by Edward G. Robinson. Some nice if fairly obvious noirish directorial touches, but overall I think they were a bit too close to the subject to do it really well-- whereas later treatments (e.g. Apt Pupil or Kessler) have focused on the disturbing fact of ex-Nazis integrating themselves into postwar society just like ordinary folks, suggesting that maybe there's less to differentiate ex-Nazis and ordinary folks than the latter would like to think, Orson Welles has to be a complete psychopath with no real redeeming features. Which, given that he spent The Third Man playing a character who can mingle charm and amorality in equal measures, is a real missed opportunity.

Darling: 1960s Julie Christie film that won a lot of Oscars and Baftas, but from a modern perspective it's hard to see why. At the time it was probably daring in its portrayal of homosexuality and abortion (i.e., actually admitting these things go on instead of relying on subtext and euphemism), but it comes across as very right-wing, essentially conveying the message that the bright, swinging young media darlings of the day are really just amoral little tramps who sleep around, abort babies on a whim, and make friends with (horrors!) pooves and (double horrors!) Italians in order to get on (it's not inappropriate that this copy was a Daily Mail free-DVD). You can just hear the Little England housewives of the day consoling themselves with this movie: "see? They may be beautiful and rich, but they're Not Happy, no they're not..." Dirk Bogarde plays a heterosexual, and does it badly.

The Simpsons Movie: A lot of fun and some good laughs to be had, but I'm still glad I didn't spend money for it, as it was basically just a triple-length episode of the TV series. They never explained what happened to the pig, either, but I'm not sure it matters.

Movie count for 2009: 111

Movie count for 2010: 2

Doctor Who Recyclingwatch: The End of Time, Part II

The End of the World (also The Long Game, The Sontaran Strategem, etc.): Character looking down on the Earth from a space station/ship orbiting it, and being amazed.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: The Doctor stalks Rose before she's met him.

The Parting of the Ways: the Doctor absorbs a fatal dose of radiation to save his companion and then regenerates. Also the Doctor faced with a moral choice which involves the possibility of killing one's enemies.

The Christmas Invasion: the Doctor's hand is the first bit of him to start regenerating.

The Satan Pit: The Doctor miraculously survives a fall from a great height.

Doomsday: Participant group in the Time War, believed extinct, turns out to have been hiding itself someplace improbable, and thanks to someone activating the trigger are now coming back in force. They are then sent back to a place the Doctor likens to hell, via the usual machina.

Voyage of the Damned: Ship falls into the Earth's atmosphere, pulls up just before hitting a stately home, while the Doctor shouts "allons-y".

Smith and Jones: the Doctor again absorbs a fatal dose of radiation, though this time he shakes it out through his shoe. Martha Jones' married name is apparently Martha Smith-Jones.

Gridlock: the Doctor jumping through a hatch at the bottom of the ship (though it made more sense in Gridlock; why the hell does a ship like the Hesperus have a hatch at the bottom, which could let in the vacuum?)

Human Nature/The Family of Blood: Device which can rewrite Time Lord DNA.

Last of the Time Lords: The Doctor being wheeled about in a wheelchair, plus getting lots of gay emo moments with the Master.

The Sontaran Stratagem: People saluting the Doctor.

The Doctor's Daughter: the Doctor pulling a gun and then not shooting people with it = "The man who never would" speech.

The Stolen Earth/Journey's End: Planet mysteriously appearing in Earth's sky; when it disappears, one of the companions' mums rushes out into her garden and looks up at the sky. The Doctor sits around in space not knowing what to do. Extended self-indulgent ending involving every single Tennant companion ever, except the ones Stephen Moffat wrote. Bad Guys have a crazy visionary among their number.

The Waters of Mars: The Doctor going on and on about who's important and who isn't.

Torchwood: Glove-based technology.

Who's in the Star Wars Cantina: Hath, Judoon, Adipose, Slitheen, the Graske, a Sycorax, the red-skinned and white-skinned people seen in "New Earth" and "Gridlock", Murray Gold (the song "My Angel Put The Devil In Me" from "Daleks in Manhattan"). And that werewolf fellow from "Being Human," can't think why.

Old Skool Who: "The Ribos Operation" (the Time Lord psychic). "Planet of the Spiders" and "The Caves of Androzani" (both of which involve the Doctor dying through absorbing fatal radiation or other toxin). "Logopolis" also featured a fall from a great height, and it and "The Caves of Androzani" both have visual nods to all the era's companions. "The War Games" (sinister Time Lords, plus the youthful Master's outfit in the initiation scenes). Faction Paradox (the nature of the Time War as described in the opening scene). Vengeance on Varos (the original story featuring the Doctor sitting around for ages not doing anything). The woman in white appearing randomly to Bernard Cribbins = The White Guardian (while speculation as to her actual identity continues, the fact is, she *acts* like the White Guardian does in the relevant stories) or possibly the Watcher. "The Ark in Space" (yet another iteration of the "homo sapiens" speech in the Doctor's conversation with Wilf about the value of the human race); "Pyramids of Mars" (the human race compared to insects). The Seeds of Doom (the Doctor jumping through a glass skylight). The Tenth Planet (planet appearing in Earth's sky). The Five Doctors (appearance by Rassilon). "Silver Nemesis" (cameo by world leader impersonator). "The Twin Dilemma" (villain being attacked by having a vial of fluid thrown at them).

Everything Else: The Space: 1999 episode "Brian the Brain", ironically guest starring Bernard Cribbins (two people in sealed glass booths, one of whom must sacrifice their own life for the other to escape); Star Wars (the "cantina" scene, plus the Time Lords stalking through Gallifrey at the start, plus Wilf's Milennium Falcon laser guns bit, plus see remarks last episode.) The cactus people's ship is called Hesperus, referring to the Longfellow poem, and looks like the offspring of Red Dwarf's Starbug and Battlestar Galactica's Colonial One. Macbeth (a prophecy coming true but not quite in the way its referent expected). The scene where the Doctor points the gun from the President to the Master is too much like the old joke along the lines of "you're stuck in a room with a gun, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher; the gun only has one bullet, who do you shoot?" to pass comment (although one hopes Wilf would have put more than one bullet in), Pennies from Heaven's line "the song is over but the melody continues." Babylon-5 (prophecies, plus the Doctor falling from a great height is rather like Sheridan at Z'ha'dum). Matt Smith's speech at the end as he figures out what crashing is, is straight from The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (and the whale falling to Earth).

Doctor Who Recyclingwatch: The End of Time, part one

This one's kind of work-in-progressy, so check back over the next few days as I'll be putting things in as they occur to me.

Rose: Another zoom-in on Earth/UK/London (see also Smith and Jones, etc. etc. etc.). Dropping a phial of Essence of Whatsit into the menace destroys or disrupts it.

Aliens of London/WW3: A pair of normal human beings are in fact green aliens with a secret agenda, and finding their human disguise uncomfortable.

Dalek: The Dalek is healed by a brief contact with Rose's DNA, just as the Master is brought to life through a brief contact with his wife's.

The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances: Alien medical device fetches up on Earth, which uses whatever's in it as a template to "repair" the rest of the human race, and so winds up turning everyone around it into a copy of one particular individual.

Bad Wolf (and later "The Stolen Earth"): Army of chanting Daleks rising on hover platforms = army of chanting Time Lords rising on hover platforms.

The Christmas Invasion: Mind-controlling a certain percentage of humans on Christmas Day.

Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel: A menace which preys upon the homeless.

School Reunion, also Doomsday, Journey's End, The Sarah Jane Adventures etc.: Apparently once you've had Gallifreyan, you never go back, as Donna's perfectly functional relationship with an evidently sweet guy is described as "settling," just because he's not the Doctor.

The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit: Ood whose eyes glow red in the presence of evil.

The Idiot's Lantern: Woman who talks to certain people through the television. Oh, and "Hungry!"

Love and Monsters: The Silver Cloak are basically a pensioner version of the find-the-Doctor club in this story, plus the whole "I'm not a Slitheen, I'm a related species" bit is echoed by the two cactus-heads to explain why they're nothing like Bannakaffalata.

Army of Ghosts/Doomsday: the whole setup with the Eternity Gate, down to two technicians who keep finding contrived excuses to run off with each other. Plus figures from the series' past, believed dead, but actually about to burst out of some secret hiding-place and take over again.

The Shakespeare Code: The Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I have a, shall we say, history together.

Last of the Time Lords (if only): Time Lord restoring self to normal through the concentrated belief of people.

Voyage of the Damned: Gratuitous cameo from a Queen Elizabeth II impersonator = Gratuitous cameo from a President Obama impersonator.

Planet of the Ood: They've got a functioning civilization now, apparently, although they're still carrying their brains around in their hands.

The Sontaran Stratagem: A deleted scene has the Master complaining pedantically about the phrase "merry Christmas" and how it should be "happy Christmas," like this episode's running gag about acronym pedantry.

Journey's End: Timelord reincarnated through plot device and comes back naked.

The Waters of Mars: The Doctor turns up at the start in full tourist mode, then rapidly gets more serious.

Torchwood: Rifts/gates in time; corrupt politicians about to take on more than they can handle with aliens; find-the-Doctor clubs.

Old Skool Who: Deep breath. "Logopolis" (the Doctor meets up with a secret order of aliens who tell him the universe is being disrupted); "The Keeper of Traken" and "The Deadly Assassin" (skull-faced Master); "Meglos" (cactus-headed aliens). "The Talons of Weng Chiang" (partly-formed villain who must consume people to survive). "Inferno" (well-intended large-scale scientific experiment goes hideously awry). "Shada" (villain who turns the whole world into him) plus "The Leisure Hive" (similar, only in that case, the whole clone army turns into the Doctor temporarily). "Image of the Fendahl" (ritual in which the thing being summoned makes itself out of the life energy of believers). The True History of Faction Paradox (plot in which the biodata of a deceased alien is reassembled in a ritual, to bring back said alien, but somehow he comes back wrong) and Kaldor City (mystical being informing protagonist that there are no coincidences; conversation with person invisible to everyone else through the television; dead cult figure who made provisions for his "return", plus see Fendahl above; the homeless charity is called Steven's Point). "The Stones of Blood" (a crypto-lesbian named Mrs Trefusis who's into pagan rituals). "Silver Nemesis" (the ritual, plus an unexpected image of the Doctor's companion in a painting/the Doctor's Tardis in a stained-glass window).

Everything Else: Harry Potter (a secret order determined to resurrect a dead baddie, which they do through a magic ritual; use of magic potions and secret books; a hero reluctant to meet his destiny). Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (lightning bolts from hands fighting), The Phantom Menace (the Time Lords apparently live on Coruscant) and Attack of the Clones (erm... pass). Being John Malkovitch (or, in this case, Being John Simm). Right-wing conspiracy theories about Obama (plausible black politician who's secretly doing some rather evil things). For Your Eyes Only (gratuitous insertion of contemporary, recognisable politician into story, played by an impersonator). The Satanic Rites of Dracula (the ritual to bring back the Master, plus the Doctor-Master relationship parallelling the Van Helsing-Dracula one). Jacob's Ladder (the shaking-head bit). Buffy the Vampire Slayer (character returned from the dead comes back wrong). The Matrix (everybody turning into Agent Smith, plus high-flying martial arts in an urban wasteland). "Stargate". "Ghostwatch" (newsreader possessed by external force). Timothy Dalton's spit-laden speech keeps reminding me of the video for Coolio's "Gangster's Paradise" for some reason. Prisoner Cell Block H, also House of Whipcord (sado-masochistic lesbian prison wardens). Silence of the Lambs (as has been repeatedly pointed out in the media, though they usually just mention the heavy bondage scene and not the fact that the Master eats people). Life on Mars (people sending messages through the television that only one person can see). Battlestar Galactica (armies of identical people aside, there's also a Head Person who appears to one specific character).

Dirty Shame

Hunger: Feature-length docudrama following Irish political prisoner Bobby Sands as he goes first on dirty protest, then on an ultimately fatal hunger strike. A difficult subject, made compelling and eerie by director Steve McQueen (the Turner prize winner, not the other one); it's an almost wordless story, so when you finally do get a long conversation, it grips you completely. The film plays subtly on the idea of hunger, not just for food but as desire in general, showing the lengths the prisoners will go to not just for political recognition, but also for letters and smuggled-in crystal radios. The prison sequences are, of course, brutal, but you come out of it all full of admiration for the people who withstood it.

Movie count for 2009: 110

Begin again

Batman Begins: I'd missed this one first time out, but really, really, liked The Dark Knight, so thought I should catch up. It's probably just as well that I saw The Dark Knight first, as this has the power to put one off the franchise forever. The story was simultaneously boring and improbable, and amazingly managed to make even the fight/car chase scenes dull as dishwater. It features the world's hardest bats (capable of punching their way through glass windows), some bloke incapable of blinking (him versus the Weeping Angels; who would win?) and Michael Caine (clearly in Shadow Run mode rather than Get Carter mode). Morgan Freeman appears to be playing a genie, as he apparently develops and constructs prototypes for all this cool experimental gadgetry without any staff whatsoever, as well as having enough knowledge of pharmacology to whip up a quick antidote for a previously-unseen poison. There's also a curious continuity error, or something, when Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that his father had been involved in philanthropy during the Depression, which means either the film is set in the 1940s (in which case what is everyone doing with mobiles, etc.), or (arguably) that this takes place in an alternate universe in which the event in question held off until the 1990s. Still, the public transport system is pretty cool-looking.

Two observations:

1) Ever notice how these reviews are always longer when I don't actually like the movie? and

2) Much as, in London, you are never more than nine feet from a rat, on the BBC this fortnight you are never more than nine minutes away from David Tennant.

Move count for 2009: 109

My taste in holiday movies and music

Casino: Really long, but compelling, partially-true story of the rise and fall of a Jewish casino manager and his Italian mob-boss friend in 1970s Vegas. Forget the mafia antics and the breathtakingly tacky glitziness of polyester-era Nevada, this is actually about love and betrayal, as DeNiro loves his wife (carnally) and his friend (platonically), but is betrayed on the personal and economic level by both, and walks away from the experience alive (which is more than can be said for most of the film's characters) but diminished as a person. Equivalent on my holiday playlist: "Walking on Broken Glass" and "Fairytale of New York."

Inglorious Bastards: Not the Tarantino one, but the film also known as Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato (which my limited Italian translates as "that damn armoured train"). Arguably a masterpiece of clever irony, mixing Blaxploitation tropes and subverted war-film cliches to create a knowing wink at European images of gung-ho American imperialism. That, or just the Italian sense of humor at work. I can see why Tarantino liked it, and Tarantino's is the cleverer film, but the original has an exuberance which Tarantino's version lacks. Equivalent on my holiday playlist: "Killing in the Name" and "Walking Round in Women's Underwear".

Jacob's Ladder: Hallucinogenic, terrifying and poignant portrayal of what appears at first to be a Vietnam veteran, his life in pieces after the war, stumbling shell-shocked through a bewildering system, then to be a thriller involving a cover-up of the use of experimental drugs in Vietnam, and finally something rather more Dante/Hieronymous Bosch influenced. For all its horrific imagery of war and madness, I defy anyone with a heart to watch the ending without tearing up. Features the only non-annoying use of Macauley Culkin ever. Equivalent on my holiday playlist: "Mad World."

Movie count for 2009: 108. Number of songs on my holiday playlist: 53.

Two very different Eighties movies

The Cotton Club: Richard Gere plays a mean trumpet, is a hit wit the ladeeez, and too much of a gentleman to take advantage of either. In other news, black people found it hard to break into the mainstream dance business in the 1930s, and New York had a number of ethnic mafias who carried out hits on each other. You'd think that with Francis Ford Coppola behind the camera and Larry Fishburne and Bob Hoskins in front of it, it would be a damn sight more interesting movie, but as it is, it's outclassed in all departments by Bugsy Malone.

Flight of the Navigator: Cute, if not terribly deep, 1980s sci-fi piece about a preteen boy who wakes up after a fall to find out that eight years have passed for everyone else but not for him; this turns out to have a connection to an alien spacecraft picked up by NASA, for which he, it seems, is the Navigator. The effects are variable (the spacecraft is good, the alien animals kind of puppety-looking), and the 1980s pop culture is either charmingly nostalgic or annoying, depending on how you feel (there's a gratuitous robot, a continual awestruck worship of NASA, a sub-Pet-Shop-Boys electropop tie-in single, and the protagonist's brother, as a teenager, punctuates his conversation with "dude", "rad" and "totally" to the point where one suspects Tourette's) . Keep an eye out for a teenage Sarah Jessica Parker.

Movie count for 2009: 105. Meaning I now average 2 movies a week.

Fly Away

Grave of the Fireflies: Tragic story of two orphaned children in wartime Japan, abandoned by their family, the authorities and the system. Really, it's a story that could have been set in any war, any place, any time; however, the delicate charm of the usual Studio Ghibli animation style lends it an extra poignancy and sense of fragile innocence, and arguably the repeated motif of the traditional Japanese houses, of wood and paper, going up in flames adds to the idea that life is transient and easily destroyed. Watch it, absolutely watch it, but be warned: you will cry buckets.

Movie count for 2009: 103

RIP Richard Todd

...ironically, with this still on my frontpage.

Cassandra wept

The Cassandra Crossing: Really too bad to summarise without going into a lot of detail, but my main problems with it boil down to three areas (warning: spoilers).

1) The plot is solid 1970s disaster movie: a train heading from Geneva to Stockholm turns out to have a man on board infected with some experimental American military virus as well as the World's Greatest Doctor (Richard Harris); cue high-speed shenanigans as the virus spreads while the train hurtles through Europe. This isn't a bad thing in and of itself, as that format has lead to some really great movies. But the films which make best use of the genre are those which don't focus on the disaster, so much as on its impact on a variety of little but powerful human dramas: The Towering Inferno, for instance, is less about the fire than about the woman about to make a mistake in marrying Fred Astaire, the woman unhappiliy married to the psychopathic architect, the businessman having an affair with his secretary who gets trapped with her in the burning office... et cetera. There is almost no human drama of this sort in Cassandra, barring two subplots, one about Richard Harris' character getting back together with his ex, and another involving OJ Simpson as an undercover policeman hunting down Martin Sheen (you can read that phrase again if you like). Neither of them are interesting enough to sustain the movie.

2) The scenario is just too unbelievable. The plot twist is that the American military, having discovered the virus is loose on the train, plan to divert the train over a faulty crossing in Poland (yes, in the middle of the Cold War) so that it will crash and they can claim the passengers were all killed in an accident, eradicating the virus and destroying the evidence/witnesses. Um, sorry, but have they thought this one through? Leaving aside the fact that any train crash of this sort would have investigators all over it-- from insurance companies, the train operators, the grieving relatives-- who would immediately expose anything remotely fishy to the press, a whole lot of infected corpses out in the open are a considerably greater risk to public health than a containable train full of sick people (particularly since it's established in the story that the virus is transmissible to animals, so any scavengers would become carriers). Why not just inform the world that the passengers have something rare but plausible-- bubonic plague, swine flu-- and isolate them for three months?

3) Finally, Richard Harris is not a good leading man. He's a good character actor (Harry Potter); he's a good man at playing the leaders of interestingly diverse ensemble casts (The Wild Geese). But he's just not a good leading man (and no, Camelot doesn't count; the whole point of the story is that Arthur is a good leader but just uncharismatic enough that you can understand Guinevere falling in love with Lancelot), and having him as the leading man here is just asking for the camera to go drifting gently off in the direction of OJ Simpson.

Movie count for 2009: 102

Life on Mars USA: the halftime verdict

Life on Mars USA's run on FX is halfway done now, so perhaps I'm premature in offering a verdict, but it's still worth offering some preliminary comments.

Firstly, it's actually got more to recommend it than I thought. My expectations were pretty low based on the fan grapevine, but I thought, give it a chance. And I have to say that there's some snappy dialogue, some good performances, and some takes on particular episodes which can be better than the original (the episode where Sam meets a younger version of his black colleague came across to me as massively patronising in the British version, but not so here). I also find that, having spent my Seventies childhood in a big North American city, the imagery has more resonance for me than the British version (although interestingly, I find that the imagery of Ashes to Ashes has powerful resonance for me despite the fact that the Eighties portion of my childhood was spent in the same city; perhaps it's a big-city thing, since Ashes to Ashes is set in London, not Manchester). For me, the Seventies was about New York style, big afros and flowing dresses, Three Dog Night, and hot summers with picnics in the park, not about strikes, test pattern girls and football games.

Where I'm finding it falls down is in the relationship between Sam Tyler and Gene Hunt. As Sam, John Simm had a kind of trustworthy, sensitive-man quality, where Philip Glenister played Gene as a bluff, blustery man who was clearly compensating for some kind of inner pain; these, coupled with the heterosexual chemistry between the two, made it perfectly understandable why Gene would be willing to go along with Sam's crazy hunches, and/or why he would sometimes unburden himself to Sam at times of trouble. However, the American Sam is too much the classic strong-jawed, blank-faced hero to seem like the sort who inspires confidences from macho superiors, and Harvey Keitel, while lovely, plays Gene more like a bluff, spunky old man refusing to change in a transforming world than someone with any kind of interior turmoil. As for the heterosexual chemistry, there's more between Gene and Ray than between Gene and Sam.

Poor old Chris is just completely marginalised in all of this, coming across as a non-character rather than as a prototypical sensitive man forced into a macho mould.

Upon a spider's web

The Elephant Man: Another one which is brilliant, but it's hard to find something to say that isn't trite. I suppose what I liked best was, first, the complicated moral problem: the doctors may have been giving Merrick a better life than he had at the freak-show, but it was still exploitation, and yet, was there any situation in Victorian Britain that Merrick could be in which is not exploitative (the real-life Merrick joined the freak-show voluntarily, the reason being that he couldn't get any other kind of work)? Secondly, though, was the triumph of the human spirit: faced with such a no-win situation, Merrick rises above everyone else in the story, finding good even in the people who come to sneer at him. What a hero.

Movie count for 2009: Room 101

100th Movie

Taxi Driver: One of the all-time best movies ever, in my opinion, but one which I haven't seen for about ten years, so it's worth revisiting. There's not much I can say that hasn't been said already, but what I particularly like about it is the way in which, viewed objectively, Travis Bickle's life is nightmarish, and yet the way Scorscese directs the film you find yourself drawn into it, finding it normal and his reactions natural. At the end of the film, Bickle achieves closure, but not redemption; having gone to Vietnam as a teenager, he is now an adult operating on the principle that problems have violent solutions, and his firearms spree, however grateful Iris' parents may be for the outcome, has done nothing to move him towards a more normal view of the world.

Movie count for 2009: 100 (goal reached!)

A Decade of Nyder

I've been running the website "Nyder's Dyner" for ten years now, and have had the domain www.nyder.com for almost that long. Round about 2002, I opened up a blog as an annex to the website, eventually called "Nyder's Takeaways". As with all such websites, gradually the site became more and more motheaten, while the blog became more and more the focus of attention. So, for the tenth anniversary of the site, I've amalgamated the two, including links to bits of the old site which are antiquated and Nineties, but which I still don't want to lose (like the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs page, which seems to have a steampunky little fandom all its own) into the blog menu, and redirecting the main page of the website to the blog so visitors to it aren't immediately put off by the antique interface. Happy anniversary to all our readers!

Germany calling

The Holcroft Covenant: Fortunately the last bad Michael Caine film I have to watch for a very long time. A highly improbable thriller incorporating every single 1980s spy-movie cliche available: Nazis, Swiss banks, a plan to "establish the Fourth Reich," incest, jet-setting between European cities, MI5, and black and white flashback sequences. It does contain two good lines: one is "Assumption... is the mother of f*ckup," and the other is "High on my list of things that I am not going to do with [a $4bn legacy] is start a new Nazi party, I'm pretty sure on that one; neither am I going to finance the redesigned Edsel or a broadway musical, or shave my head and give it to the Moonies."

The Lives of Others: On the other hand, we have a film about social redemption and observation, in which a Stasi officer tasked to eavesdrop on a playwright finds himself compelled to question his own activities even as the playwright comes to question his own support for the system which has nurtured him but arbitrarily condemned many of his colleagues. The portrayal of how bureaucracy furthers the development of shallow, petty-minded bullies, and of how easy it is to fall into compliance with a totalitarian system, is frighteningly accurate. Recommended, particularly for social science students needing a case study in professional ethics.

Movie count for 2009: 99

SJA Checklist: The Gift

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: No, though there's crowds of plant spores floating through London under alien influence. Also, crowds of people being driven through London in ambulances under alien influence.
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: Distantly, as it's part of the cycle of Slitheen-featuring stories taking over the Sarah Jane microverse like a stand of rackweed. There's also an oblique "Children of Earth" reference in Sarah Jane's line "My son is dying just to feed your addiction."
Rani's Mum is annoying: Rani's mum is absent. So is Rani's Dad, at a convenient "headteacher's conference," or are they trying to rebuild their shattered relationship?
Star Wars reference: No.
Mobile phone as plot device: Yes, along with every other electronic device in London.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: No, mainly because he spends most of the story unconscious and thus unable to do so.
K9 interprets a figurative English expression literally: Sort of-- his overgeneral interpretation of "test" as being a way that one human proves intellectual superiority over another means that Clyde can talk him into helping him cheat (on the grounds that figuring out a way to do so is also a means of proving intellectual superiority).
Sonic lipstick: Check, and yet again as a sophisticated lock-pick cum offensive weapon.
Wristwatch scanner: Check, and it's a serious plot device as Sarah Jane's scan of the Blathereen's teleport coordinates enables her to track them down.
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Luke, for most of the story.
Sarah and/or companions acts like a selfish cow: Clyde's attempt to cheat on exams using K9 (how the hell did he reckon this one would go unnoticed?).

And, because it's the last episode of the season:

Wide-eyed speech by Sarah Jane about the wonders of the universe and how great it is to be in her gang: Check, also including quick arse-covering section to the effect that not all aliens are evil, just in case they get accused of racism for their constant portrayal of non-humans as criminals, idiots and/or chavs.

Next year, I'm going to include "Somebody says 'maximum [something]'" in this checklist, because I reckon it happened at least once per serial this year.

Also: Simon Callow appeared in this?!

Busted

The Dam Busters: Contains many elements of the typical 1950s Brit-warflick (genius inventor persisting in the face of widespread rejection, stiff-upper-lipped airline pilots who never actually question what all the killing and dying is for; lots of black and white aviation techno-porn), but rises above the herd by being actually funny in places (normally these things are so po-faced you have to go watch some comedy with lots of swearing afterwards to cleanse your brain), and, in its first half, being remarkably pacy. Bizarrely, this is the half with all the inventing and planning in it; the second half, containing the actual raid, is much slower and best viewed on fast-forward. Having watched a lot of Armstrong and Miller lately, I kept expecting the pilots to break into chav-speak. The final irony is that although the film has cemented the bombing of the Ruhr dams in the British psyche as a moment of national pride to be brought up by any petty right-winger wanting to point out how great we were before the advent of the EU and the demise of empire and all that, the raid itself was actually a bit of a disaster; not as much damage done to German industry as hoped, and most of the casualties being Allied POWs and forced labourers.

Movie count for 2009: 98.

Doctor Who Recyclingwatch: The Waters of Mars

The Unquiet Dead: The Doctor meets, and bonds with, a historical figure despite knowing that something really tragic is shortly to happen to them.

Father's Day: Messing with causality so that someone who should be dead survives, only for them to kill themselves voluntarily.

The Parting of the Ways: The imagery of the Dalek hovering slowly up in front of a window, watched by a girl or young woman. Solar flares interrupting communications.

The Girl in the Fireplace: The Doctor meets, and bonds with, a historical figure despite knowing that something really tragic is shortly to happen to them.

The Satan Pit: Base full of multiethnic people in sensible clothing who are sitting on top of some long-buried nightmare which is about to start slowly taking over and/or killing the crew.

42: Spaceship full of multiethnic people in sensible clothing, who are floating on top of some long-buried nightmare which is about to start slowly taking over and/or killing the crew.

Blink: "Don't drink the water!" as analogue to "Don't blink!"

Utopia: People in a sealed base with a rocket being afraid of some human-like people with funny mouths, one of whom gains access without people realising what she is.

Voyage of the Damned: Doctor attempts technological solution to save companion-figure, with Pyrrhic results; an "insignificant person" saved from the disaster by the Doctor rushes off into contemporary London.

The Fires of Pompeii: This one's so obvious even the programme itself mentions it.

The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky: Techno-obsessed tragi-comic American nerdboy-- they even look kind of similar, with black hair and goggle-eyes. Freeze-framing the obituary reveals this one's also a boy genius.

Silence in the Library/The Forest of Fear: Library full of multiethnic people in sensible clothing, who are sitting on top of some long-buried nightmare which is about to start slowly taking over and/or killing the crew. Plus the Doctor meets a woman he really, really likes, who then kills herself.

Midnight: Another small group of people trapped in a small ship, in the middle of a hostile alien environment, with one of their number taken over by an alien; they are suspicious of the Doctor, and the situation is finally resolved when one of them commits suicide.

The Stolen Earth/Journey's End: Technically a revisiting rather than a recycling, but still involves a riff on a past adventure.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Previously had the corner on people who are supposed to be dead getting a paradoxical reprieve and then killing themselves anyway.

Catchphrasewatch: Mostly absent, but Tennant does work a "Molto Bene" in there.

Old Skool Who: "Fury from the Deep" (People taken over by something that makes them go goggle-eyed, big-mouthed and exhaling); "The Wheel in Space" (Space station full of multiethnic people in not-very-sensible clothing who are being sat upon by some long-buried nightmare which is about to start taking over and/or killing the crew); actually, pretty much any of the "base under sieges" of the mid-to-late Sixties for multiethnic crews menaced by aliens; "Remembrance of the Daleks" (Daleks being afraid to mess with minor points of causality when concocting their reality-destroying schemes); Mars is getting pretty damn crowded between this story, "The Ice Warriors" and "Pyramids of Mars" (which also riffs on the whole "is time fixed or fluid?" question); K9 indicates the Doctor's aversion to cute robots is pretty recent; "The Aztecs" (character spared from death by Barbara kills himself anyway); "The Massacre" (it's not OK to save Anne Chaplet from the Massacre, but it's OK to remove her possibly direct descendent from the 1960s); "The Ice Warriors" (the Doctor trapped in an airlock with a person threatening to pump the air out); "The Reign of Terror" (start of the idea that there are fixed points in time which can't be altered); "The Tomb of the Cybermen" (crew debating which of many groups the mysteriously-arrived Doctor may be from); "The Power of the Daleks" (Dalek recognising the Doctor due to events which haven't happened yet).

Everything Else: "Silent Running" (space greenhouses, cute but useful robots and blissed-out hippie space gardeners who dig their veg both literally and figuratively); any zombie movie in which the zombies can run fast (principally "Dead Set" and "28 Days Later," though the "everybody dies" ending of the recent remake of "Day of the Dead" is also in there); "The Thing," particularly the John Carpenter version (isolated research base full of monoethnic people in sensible clothing who are sitting on top of some long-buried nightmare which is about to start slowly taking over and/or killing the crew; the base is blown up to prevent said menace from spreading); "28 Days Later" also is briefly homaged in the shot of the drop of water falling on Roman's eye; Terminator 2 (an explicit homage in the way the water zombies run); Wal-E (Gadget's appearance; Confidential makes it clear the resemblance was originally so strong as to be almost actionable); any anime series featuring a cute robot and/or catchphrase-repeating character (Ulysses 3000 and Science Ninja Team Gatchaman, I'm looking at you); cute robots with catchphrases also feature heavily in both Buck Rogers ("Bidibidibidi...") and the Star Wars prequels ("Roger-roger!"); any Joss Whedon series featuring a comic goggle-eyed nerd ("Dollhouse"'s Topher is the closest IMO); Life on Mars (bad David Bowie puns); 2001: A Space Odyssey (general design appearance, people calling up their kids on videophones).

Odd

2001: A Space Odyssey: "Stands the test of time" is such a cliche, and yet it does; the brilliant models, the minimalist decor, the use of slitscan to produce alien landscapes weirder than anything produced in the CGI era. In a way, the most alien thing about it is the brief scene where Frank receives a birthday message from his parents; they're the ones who look like creatures from another world. We had good fun afterwards discussing the motivations for HAL's breakdown. It's also fairly plain that both George Lucas and Gerry Anderson were sitting in the audience taking frantic notes.

Movie count for 2009: 97 (I'll make 100 by the end of the year!)

The Stolen Earth: Dalek Cutaway

[Recyclingwatch soon, but first, a few thoughts on one of the implications of "The Waters of Mars". Not that it wasn't a great story and all that, but following the implications of the Doctor's interpretation of the Dalek's behaviour through to its logical conclusion..]

(Scene: Davros' sanctum within the Crucible. A Dalek approaches)

Dalek: Um, excuse me, Davros?

Davros: Yes, what is it? Can't you see I've got a reality bomb to detonate and all of causality to throw into chaos?

Dalek: Um, well, you see, Davros... when I was down on Earth exterminatin' the population like you said and all... I saw this little girl. Name's Adelaide Brooks, and, um, it seems she's, like, a fixed point in time.

Davros: What are you talking about?

Dalek: See, if we kill her, then the future won't unfold like it's supposed to, and so we can't actually kill her.

Davros: Why the hell not?

Dalek: See, if we kill her now, then her death won't inspire her granddaughter to lead some sort of mission which will be the start of humans going out into space, and so the Daleks will never encounter humans and none of the events leading up to you and me being here will ever actually happen.

Davros: What?! But that means...

Dalek: Yeah, that this reality bomb scheme of yours is going to be somehow thwarted before it can do any lasting damage. Cos you can't destroy the Earth in 2009, otherwise Dalek history is screwed too.

Davros: And you've known this since when?

Dalek: Um, well, all along really. All of us have.

Davros: And nobody told me?

Dalek: Well, we sort of assumed you knew.

Davros: Ohhh.... Bollocks!

(Curtain. Davros wheels off to have a word with that little bastard Dalek Caan)

Film round-up

Quicksand: An interesting enough premise-- Michael Keaton as an auditor who goes out to Monte Carlo to investigate a possible case of money-laundering using a film studio as cover, and finds himself framed for corruption and murder-- let down by an unbelievable ending. Co-stars Michael Caine as a has-been film star making bad movies for the money, and includes, cheekily, a clip from the Michael Caine film Shadow Run as the film the bogus studio is supposedly making.

Fantastic Mr Fox: Every bit as good as the reviews have been saying-- cute and funny, with a bit of bite and lovely attention to detail.

In Which We Serve: It's not a title so much as a description of the plot, and the film is not so much a British war film as a Noel Coward vanity project. Coward writes, directs, and plays a dashing naval captain surrounded by a collection of jolly working-class stereotypes who love both him and his ship (one of which is a very young Sir John Mills), and various naval wives who never let their upper lips unstiffen as the casualties mount around them. A little unusual for the genre in having a non-linear narrative, but otherwise fairly undistinguished. Probably given more attention than it deserves due to the fact that David Lean co-directed it.

Movie count for 2009: 96

SJA Checklist: Mona Lisa's Revenge

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: No, again. Though the art competition judges have to be under some kind of alien influence, to have given Clyde's poorly-proportioned "Charlie's Angels" ripoff first prize.
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: As well as being a reiteration of "Fear Her" (and on the non-Doctor Who front, when are the writers of this series going to stop plagiarising Sapphire and Steel?), the presence of the Mona Lisa renders this one a direct tie-in to "City of Death." Imagine if all six Mona Lisas had come into contact with the demon painting....
Rani's Mum is annoying: Rani's Mum is yet again absent (is divorce in the air? Certainly Rani's Dad does look awfully pleased to see Sarah Jane), though she does give Rani's Dad an earful over the phone.
Star Wars reference: Clyde to Luke: "I hope you know what you're doing my young padawan; you've gone right over to the Dark Side"
Mobile phone as plot device: Yes, repeatedly so. I've been to lots of galleries where they ask you to switch your mobile off, but never to any where they actually confiscate them too.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: Right at the start, where he informs Clyde that art is just a matter of biomechanics and geometry. I'm surprised Clyde doesn't clock him one for that.
K9 interprets a figurative English expression literally: No, probably because the K9 we see isn't the real one, but an artisitic interpretation.
Sonic lipstick: Check, and used for breaking and entering again.
Wristwatch scanner: Check.
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Yes, if you count Sarah turning into a Hockney.
Sarah and/or companions acts like a selfish cow: Told to clean his room, Luke goes into a snit rivalling Rani's from "The Mad Woman In the Attic," similarly involving the switching-off of mobiles and assertions that he can solve the mystery on his own.

SJA Checklist: The Eternity Trap

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: No. Though we do get crowds of alien-influenced people standing on a staircase in a stately home.
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: No, though it rips off "The Stone Tape" and "Sapphire and Steel" shamelessly.
Rani's Mum is annoying: Rani's Mum gets another break this week, along with Rani's Dad, Luke and K9. Casting department has definitely suffered a budget cut.
Star Wars reference: No.
Mobile phone as plot device: Yes-- of course everyone has to switch off their mobiles when entering the haunted house, as mobiles interfere with the ghosts or something.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: Luke, as noted above, is absent-- but we do learn that he has mercilessly beat Rani's Dad at chess, and Rani's Dad is none too pleased.
K9 interprets a figurative English expression literally: No; there's no K9. Taking the role of guest annoying "smart" person and infodump machine this week is Toby, whose parents should have known that's a dangerous name to give any character in a nu-Who story, seeing as the last one got possessed by the devil and all.
Sonic lipstick: Check.
Wristwatch scanner: Check; Sarah uses it in episode 1 before bragging to Toby that hers is better than his.
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Yes, sort of-- it's Professor Rivers, actually, but she's a semi-regular.
Sarah and/or companions acts like a selfish cow: In spades. Sarah's recent encounter with the Doctor causes her to go into full Tennant mode, bragging continually and smugly to the guest stars about her space-and-time-travelling activities.

And I would also like to say that it really, really irritates me when I hear silly lines about scientists covering up paranormal activity because they "can't explain" it. In fact, scientists can explain paranormal activity-- it's just that the explanation is usually rather more boring and mundane than "ghosts exist."

On the guest star front, it seems Anthony Valentine is appearing in Coronation Street these days. I find this slightly depressing.

Rules OK

The Cider House Rules: The titular "rules" come in when the film's protagonist (Tobey McGuire) is working as an apple-picker; the establishment in question has a set of arbitrary rules of conduct for the apple-pickers, which the pickers reject, saying that they were made by people who aren't pickers and don't understand their situation, and that they will instead make their own rules and live by these. The entire film revolves around the damage done by arbitrary social rules made up by people who haven't experienced a particular situation and don't understand what it's like. The protagonist, a young man raised at an orphanage and trained in medicine by the institution's resident doctor-cum-abortionist, has strong anti-abortion feelings until confronted with a situation in which abortion is the only way of resolving it happily; the doctor who raised him (played by Michael Caine) is continually constrained in his running of a successful orphanage by the social-conservative moralising of its board of directors; his on-and-off girlfriend is faced with a terribly ironic situation at the end of the film which, not to spoiler it too much, is also caused by arbitrary social rules about sex, marriage and childbearing. There's lots of other aspects of it to talk about, of course-- it's a complex movie, and surprisingly pro-choice for a mainstream American film-- but it's worth seeing for the rules alone.

Movie count for 2009: 93

SJA Checklist: The Wedding of Sarah Jane

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: No. Still thinking the casting department's had a budget cut.
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: Well, it technically is a Doctor Who story, seeing as Doctor Who is in it, so yes.
Rani's Mum is annoying: Wouldn't you just know she'd be the sort to tell embarrassing stories about her honeymoon at other people's weddings? It's a wonder Rani's Dad hasn't sued for divorce.
Star Wars reference: Unless the title is an oblique reference to the novel The Courtship of Princess Leia, no.
Mobile phone as plot device: No, though a GPS does figure in episode one.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: “What do I call him? Dad?” Since it's Sarah and Peter's third date and he hasn't proposed yet, methinks he's jumping the gun a little.
K9 interprets a figurative English expression literally: Check-- practically every second line.
Sonic lipstick: Check. Had Sarah succeeded in blowing her own head off with it in episode one, we might have been spared Episode 2.
Wristwatch scanner: Sarah removes it as some metaphor for how she's so utterly sick of the lifestyle which she tells us is completely wonderful twice a season. I think she might have issues.
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Yes, kind of-- Sarah winds up under mind control via an enchanted engagement ring for a bit, but seriously, with Sarah deciding to chuck in her lifestyle every time some relative/boyfriend turns up (was this just “The Temptation of Sarah Jane” in reverse, or what?), who needs mind control?
Sarah and/or companions acts like a selfish cow: Apparently meeting Mr Right means you have to give up all your previous mates and everything you enjoy doing, and she winds up telling Mr Right to go kill himself, literally, when she realises this. I really think she's got issues.

Over on Dollhouse, Michael Hogan guested this week. I think the series is secretly set on Caprica.

Watchable

Night Watch: Familiar premise (people with supernatural powers a) exist, b) walk among us, c) are divided into Light or Dark and d) are at war, sort of) with a couple of interesting twists. First, the ambiguity between Light and Dark sides: both police each other, and both sides seem to have equal measures of being dodgy and being sympathetic-- indeed, the difference is less one of Good v. Evil than, as one character puts it, that the Light feed off the lighter, and the Dark off the darker, sides of human behaviour. Second, the fact that it's a Russian film gives it a very different tone to American and European fantasy films; overdecorated Soviet-era flats, nouveau-riche nightclubs, a general sense of slight hysteria, mosquitoes as vampire metaphor. Thirdly, the most original use of subtitles I've ever seen outside of the intertitles in Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler. Otherwise, it's easy to see that the creators of Heroes were taking notes during the screening.

Movie count for 2009: 92

SJA Checklist: The Mad Woman in the Attic

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: Well, four people walking through "Danemouth" under alien influence. Did the casting department suffer a budget cut this year, or what?
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: Flashbacks to the Pertwee and Baker eras, plus "Journey's End" (shudder), and a big naff-off repeated reminder that next week's ep is a crossover guest starring David Tennant.
Rani's Mum is annoying: Rani's Mum is absent, actually. But Grandma Rani with her gratuitous name-dropping in the final flashforward more than makes up for it.
Star Wars reference: No.
Mobile phone as plot device: Check; Rani punishing her friends by not answering her phone, plus Clive's showing off his mobile camera (how 2004) at the end.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: Not really, though dialogue in episode one indicates that Clive's been trying to train this tendency out of him.
K9 interprets a figurative English expression literally: His "Cheese!" interpretation is practically the second thing he says, setting us up for much more to come.
Sonic lipstick: Check. "Who needs the sonic lipstic?" Rani asks. The writing team, evidently.
Wristwatch scanner: Briefly in episode 1, to scan the derelicts on the fairground rides.
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Check. Love the red-eye effect.
Sarah and/or companion(s) acts like a selfish cow: Rani's friends are a little offhand with her, and suddenly she's off to the coast without telling them and not answering their calls? What a diva.

On a side, unrelated point, I did absolutely love that last week's epsiode of "Dollhouse" featured Karl "Helo" Agathon and Lee "Apollo" Adama kicking the crap out of each other. Hooray for casting cross-pollination.

SJA Checklist: Prisoner of the Judoon

Yes! It's the return of the SJA Checklist, now in single-story format!

Crowds of people walking through London under alien influence: No. But as for everything else...
Tie-in with Doctor Who story: Oh, yeah. "Smith and Jones" and "The Stolen Earth," and UNIT's usual meteor-investigating activities get a namecheck in ep 1 as well
Rani's Mum is annoying: Better make that Rani's Mum reaches new heights of annoying. Honestly, is that woman sane?
Star Wars reference: Check-- Clive calls Luke "my young padawan" at one point.
Mobile phone as plot device: Check, also the absence of mobile as plot device when Rani's Mum realises the security guard has confiscated hers.
Luke says something so daft that you have to wonder how he gets through life without being mercilessly bullied: Yeah. Cue more "I don't understand how the English language works" antics in episode 1.
Sonic lipstick: Check-- the possessed Sarah is so massively over-the-top with it that you begin to suspect something Freudian is going on.
Wristwatch scanner: Check, in ep. 1
One or more of Sarah's companions falling under alien influence: Check, also Sarah herself.
Sarah and/or companion acts like a selfish cow: No, but Rani's Mum more than makes up for it, with her total self-absorption all episode.

And since it's the start of the season:

Wide-eyed speech by Sarah about the wonders of the universe and how great it is to be in her gang: Check.

Stitched up

Lilo and Stitch: Still one of my absolute favourite kids' movies of all time. Much as I hate the corporate-behemoth aspect of Disney, I have to admit that when they get it right, they really get it right. Cute and funny, but also tearjerky and with a strangely adult premise at the heart of it: can a creature which was created to do nothing but evil become redeemed through love? Anyone who owns cats (particularly, and I speak from ongoing personal experience, part-Siamese ones), also, will emphathise with the poor animal-shelter lady's misadventures with Stitch.

Movie count for 2009: 91

Lawrential

Lawrence of Arabia: was a welcome respite after a week spent secluded with Battlestar Galactica, for the simple reason that the current fashion for wobblecam and relentless cutting from angle to angle starts to give one vertigo after a while and it's great to switch to sweeping shots through huge swathes of desert.* The plot and characterisation were fairly simple, it's true, but then one doesn't expect intricate complexity from an epic, one expects Jungian universals, and there were plenty here, with a Siegfriedesque hero, his pragmatic sidekick, his wise mentor, his romantic but doomed quest, etc. The decision to black up Alec Guinness to play Prince Feisal made me do a double take every time I saw him, but the performance was riveting nonetheless. Lastly, Peter O'Toole's take on Lawrence was simultaneously powerful and, well, feminine; again, there's something beautifully Jungian about that.

Movie count for 2009: 90

*The one contemporary series I feel uses wobblecam well is Firefly, and that's because they don't use it all the time; they contrast a wobblecam for the protagonists with a steadycam for the villains, creating different moods in the mind of the viewer depending on the setting.

Dead On

Dead Snow: A Scandinavian Nazi Zombie flick? That's three different 'sploitations already. Unfortunately the film doesn't really live up to its promise, most of it being a pointless retread of ideas from American horror films (oh, and note to scriptwriters: no, it's not OK to use a horror-film cliche if you then have one of the characters say "what a horror-film cliche!" I know Joss Whedon does it, but that' s no excuse). Towards the end, though, when the production team abandon any pretense of trying to stick to a plot and just engage in gory hack-and-slash like an extended video-game cutaway, it does gain some momentum and exuberance, but that wasn't really enough to save it.

Movie count: 89

Gettin' Cained (and Williamsed)

Shiner: An obscure Michael Caine low-budgeter, which is a shame as it's a fast-paced but poignant gangster flick about an ageing boxing promoter of dubious morals who has a shot at the big-time when his own son starts to show some promise, only to have everything go horribly, inevitably, wrong. Also interesting in that, having been made in 2000, it's now old enough to be retro (I can remember when those big black leather trenchcoats were fashionable). Guest starring a very creepy Martin Landau, and a not-quite-famous-yet Andy Serkis.

The Fisher King: Somehow I've avoided seeing this one till now, which is a real oversight as it's even better than the cast (Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Amanda Plummer) and director (Gilliam) would imply. Selfish misanthropic radio shock-jock plunges into the abyss after a career-ruining incident, only to be brought out of it through meeting a periodically insane homeless man with an obsession with Arthurian legend and a connection to the shock-jock which isn't immediately apparent. There's at least three Fisher Kings in the movie too; see if you can spot them all.

Movie count for 2009: 88

Hit, miss, miss, hit, hit, hit.

A Shock to the System: The presence of Michael Caine and no other star names made me brace myself for a bad movie, but this turned out to be a pretty deft black comedy of the 1980s "nice-guy executive snaps and starts murdering his corporate rivals" subgenre.

The Whistleblower: Another Michael Caine one, this time of considerably lesser quality. It's one of the paranoid-thriller Britpic genre that sprang up in the wake of Edge of Darkness, and like most of the genre it lacks the credibility and disturbing characterisation of the original. Nigel Havers is a man who Knows Too Much about corruption at GCHQ; Michael Caine is his father. Barry Foster, John Gielgud, James Fox, Gordon Jackson, Peter Miles and others lend far too much credibility to the venture.

Runaway Jury: A thriller about a jury called upon to judge a lawsuit against the American gun lobby? Sounds great, but in practice any anti-gun message is watered down and forced into the background of a deeply unbelievable vigilantism-cum-revenge plot. Gene Hackman does his best but ultimately gives up trying to make anything interesting of the villain.

Under Suspicion: Low-budget, set in Puerto Rico on carnival night, and starting off as a simple police procedural with Morgan Freeman as the jaded cop and Gene Hackman as the blustering local dignitary dragged in as a witness to a murder case, but ultimately venturing into territory exposed by the "Satanic ritual abuse" court cases and questioning the nature of memory and reality.

Malice: Fantastic medico-sexual thriller, which unfortunately I can't synopsise without revealing any plot twists. Suffice it to say that your initial impressions of every single character will be utterly transformed by the end of it.

This is England: Disturbing but credible and touching story about a young boy in 1980s England who falls in with a gang of skinheads, just as the movement is starting to tip over into racism. The performance of the main racist skinhead in particular is simultaneously lunatic and charismatic.

Movie count for 2009: 86

A change or two

Over the past couple of months I've become increasingly aware that while I've got less and less to say in the main blog itself, the sidebar, particularly the film sections, are just getting bigger and bigger. So, in the interests of continuing this blog outside of Recyclingwatch season, I'm trying out a new focus: making this blog more about capsule reviews of the various films I've been watching, with, obviously, periodic forays into Recyclingwatch/SJA Checklists when in season, and considerably more periodic forays into the usual self-indulgent stuff which is the nature of bloggage. We'll see if this works.

9 Britflicks and a Remake

They Who Dare: Why is it that every war film with Dirk Bogarde in it is so massively homoerotic? The additional presence of Denholm Elliot meant that it looked like everyone was going to start ripping the clothes off each other within minutes. Also celebrated for the line "Stiff? Mine's hanging out like a Ubangi's" (in reference to upper lips, but it's funnier out of context)

Return from the River Kwai: Another one with Denholm Elliot, as well as Nick Tate off of Space: 1999, and George Takei, who is surprisingly good as a sadistic Japanese officer. Unfortunately the rest of it is full of logical inconsistencies and plotlines that make you go "um... no, not believing that" (mainly involving an American officer and his Boy's Own Adventures in Southeast Asia).

Silver Bears: Substandard Michael Caine caper film, costarring a miscast Cybil Shepherd who seems to be channelling Goldie Hawn. An attempt by the writers to keep everybody in the film just on the right side of likeable and give them all a happy ending, and to avoid any hint of any sort of actual serious crime, hampers its ability to be an original Pink Panther-style dark comedy. Oh, and there aren't actually any bears in it, even metaphorical ones.

The Madness of King George: A complex film about leadership, responsibility and legitimacy of government. I remember seeing this on its first release, and it hasn't lost any of its power or significance.

Zulu Dawn: Not as good as it's cracked up to be, though better than I was expecting. Most of its drive comes from a Titanic-like sense that all these people are going to be dead by the end of the film.

The Narrow Margin (1990 remake): Good lines, good (if slightly predictable) twists, and fun to see Canada as the location for an American film (I suspect because only Canada still had sleeper trains at that point).

Rogue Trader: Not-bad retelling of the Nick Leeson story, which needs to be retold as often as possible so people don't keep doing this sort of thing.

Shadow Run: Just when you think Michael Caine can't be in any worse movies, he signs a contract, takes out a pickaxe and starts digging. Slightly enlivened by the fact that they filmed round Gloucester so people who know the area can play "Spot the A40 off-ramp."

Swimming with Sharks: Like The Player on a tiny budget, but if anything darker and more ironic. Starring a fantastically evil Kevin Spacey and Michelle "Cain" Forbes; features a brief cameo from a then-completely-unknown Benedicio del Torro.

Defense of the Realm: An attempt to cash in on "Edge of Darkness", with a great cast but a plot which makes no sense whatsoever. Apparently the Americans are murdering Brits to cover up the fact that an escapee from juvenile prison wandered onto one of their UK airfields and was hit by a landing airplane. Why bother? Stars Denholm Elliot, again.

Movie count for 2009: 80

Compare the (meer)kat

Baby meerkats! In Yorkshire!

In other news, if you're thinking of adopting a kitten, now might be a good time. These guys have a shelter near where we live, so this is by way of helping out the neighbours.

A Doll's House

It's an oft-repeated observation these days that the weird thing about the Doctor Who universe is that nobody in it's ever seen Doctor Who.

Well, I was watching Dollhouse the other day, and at one point Topher uses the expression "Frak." Which means that Battlestar Galactica exists in the Dollhouse universe. Which then begs the question of why, when meeting Paul Ballard, his first reaction isn't "Did you know you're a dead ringer for Helo Agathon?" As well as, does Buffy also exist in this universe, and if so, why Topher hasn't remarked on the strange resemblance between Echo and Faith.

A possible explanation is that only the original series of Battlestar Galactica exists in the Dollhouse universe, and thus that Topher is saying "Frack." But it's more funny the other way.

What I'm reading

In other news, I'm completely fascinated at the moment with The Left Behind Index. This is a page-by-page deconstruction of the Left Behind novels, which is particularly interesting because it doesn't take the easy route of just taking the piss out of them. The writer is an evangelical Christian himself (albeit not of the Rapture-believing kind) and a journalist, and so uses the books to discourse on what's wrong with mainstream American evangelism, and how the books reflect the darker aspects of American culture more generally. It's a long read, but absolutely riveting.

Torchwood: Getting It Right

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will have realised I'm not a massive fan of Torchwood. Well, that's changed, or at least partly. You can keep Seasons One and Two, but I'm now a massive fan of Torchwood: Children of Earth.

OK, so the whole thing is so massively Recycled from the excellent 1970s Quatermass serial that everyone in the UK can hear the spinning noise from a graveyard somewhere in the Isle of Man. OK, so it contains the usual bombastic RTD threat-to-Earth-thwarted-by-someone-using-the-Internet tropes. OK, so there are lots of children in it. It doesn't matter. It gets it right. I wish the whole series had been like this, but since it couldn't be, I'm happy that we've got this little bit here.

ETA: Torchwoodmania!

Watchmen: The Saturday morning cartoon

I could actually believe this could happen.

Well, *that* was pointless

This month, I signed up for paperless billing with my bank, thinking that it would be less hassle, make for fewer boring envelopes in the post, and save paper/trees/the environment.

Yesterday, I received a letter from my bank, informing me that my credit card statement for May was now online.

The logic escapes me.

Jim can't fix it

Watched *Tonight's The Night* this week, purely for the Doctor Who segment (I'm shameless), which reminded me of something that's been bothering me about John Barrowman's career lately.

On British TV, gay men are almost inevitably cute, campy hoofers who alternate between bitchiness and a kind of girl's-best-friend attitude, and who, while they may be gay, never really produce much evidence of their sexuality beyond a bit of innuendo: Larry Grayson, John Inman, Graham Norton (OK, he doesn't dance, but he's got the rest of it). Then along comes John Barrowman. He's gay-- but he's macho, looks like a taller Tom Cruise, he's not campy, bitchy or girl's-best-friendy, and he's willing to talk frankly about his life with his partner (and subsequently husband). Fantastic, I thought. Finally, we've moved beyond the stereotype and we can treat gay men as normal human beings who just happen to have a particular sexual orientation.

Fast forward to *Tonight's The Night*. Barrowman, dressed in a Nortonesque shiny suit, is all out there with the campiness, the girl's-best-friend attitude, a couple of dances to show tunes, and the real life with the husband is firmly out of sight. And then it's announced that Barrowman's playing the lead in *La Cage Aux Folles*. And it just feels like we haven't made any progress at all since the 1970s, and I'm slightly disappointed.