The Return of Bits and Bobs

I haven't done a news post in a long time, so here's some stuff I wanted to share.

• The Times questions the future of British cinema post-2009 Oscars haul.
• A Times (NY variety) interview with Buzz Aldrin on the 40th anniversary of NASA's moon landing and his upcoming memoir. I met ol' Buzz once at NASA. Very nice guy.
  
• Time (magazine variety) asks if genetics can help you find love. No.
  
• Toby Stephens takes a few to discuss his latest - A Doll's House, the Doctor, and the birth of his daughter.
• The King and I West End revival, starring Maria Friedman and Lost's Daniel Dae Kim, gets a royal thumbs down.
• The Guardian's depressing look back at how the moon landing killed space exploration.
  
• Holden Caufield loses his allure. Eh, yet another book I successfully avoided in high school.
• Damn. I could have been CIA and maybe crossed paths with M1-5 per the proposed ROTC-like spy program.
• Shanghai celebrates gay pride, sort of.
• Beijing's air still sucks, and that's not the only thing.
  

The New York Asian Film Festival landed on Friday. Some of the Hong Kong movies making the cut: Donnie Yen's Ip Man, Plastic City with the 'endearingly grizzled' Anthony Wong, and a PTU spinoff in the Tactical Unit series featuring Simon Yam, Maggie Siu, and Lam Suet (of course) called Comrades in Arms. There's also a Lau Ching Wan movie called Written By, which I can't find a record for. The only completed and yet unreleased movie I know of is Overheard, which has finally been posted on the theatres' upcoming lists (release date 7.30).

Spotted a new movie called Telstar about 1960s British record producer Joe Meeks, also featuring Kevin Spacey. The buzz is low, but I'm interested as James Corden rears his cheeky head as the cardigan-wearing drummer. We'll see if this outing redeems him from his Horne and Corden debacle.

Bits and Bobs for 3.30.09

Watching: n/a (Lent)
Listening: Here Come the Irish by Cathy Richardson
Reading: AfroAsian Encounters, eds Heike Raphael-Hernandez and Shannon Steen

News of the Day:

• Nutt-y woman's house invaded by squirrels.
• Speaking of nuts, Glenn Beck is crazy in every language.
• Pay for your tv shows. (But please let me keep watching Comedy Central for free!)
• Dominic West says UK tv sucks. But you guys gave us The Office and Life on Mars!
• Chicago doesn't want the Olympics. Which makes sense because they already have Barack Obama.
  

TVLand:

Despite having largely given up television for Lent (read: youtube and youku), I managed to sneak a peek at a few shows. Two more weeks of swearing off the hard stuff in the name of God, many more months in the name of my still sparse thesis.

The Wire starts its BBC run this week. Television snobs turn up their noses at the plebs who are just now discovering this masterpiece of corruption, violence, addiction, and general ineptitude. An American tragedy, indeed. **Okay, I confess I have not seen it. But I've also been abroad and HBO-less. (For the record, Dominic West has been on my radar since that odious Midsummer Night's Dream adaptation, an effort sullied by those occasional American 'actors'.)

Horne and Corden - shitteous!!! A opus of inanity. The penis on the roof is funnier, and more mature, than this assault on the eyeballs. All you need to know is that James Corden is fat and Mathew Horne is slightly effeminate. I forced myself to laugh one time because of my now very residual affection for James Corden from History Boys. Lesbian Vampire Killers, their new flick? I'd rather watch Tom Cruise. Happy Lent, boys - I will absolve them of their sin if they watch their own show 100x and promise never to venture into sketch again.

Robin Hood returns not so merrily. When we left them in the Holy Land, Guy of Gisbourne had just plunged a broadsword into Maid Marian's tum. Ouch. But she still hung on long enough to cough up some marriage vows and sweet nothings. But now Robin is pissed and Guy needs to get himself to an AA meeting, and a barbershop. Basically, Locksley sucks. Will the arrival of a few hot chicks and a black Friar Tuck liven things up?? 12 more episodes to find out. Re the criticisms over our improbably kick-ass Friar Tuck - get over it because y'all didn't complain when the Holy Land looked like Tatooine. It's a bloody tv show about a guy who, in past incarnations, wore green tights and was a FOX (the animal, not the woman).

The Great Sperm Race is the first show I've watched narrated by Richard Armitage (see above, Guy of Gisbourne). What can you say about a documentary that inflates the Gherkin (the bullet building in London) into a giant testical, casts thousands of actors in white sweats as human-size sperm, and compares the female reproductive parts to various natural terrain? Entertaining, but not quite as romantic as say Richard Armitage expounding on trade and production in North and South.

I'm not a vampire-werewolf-ghost fan, so Being Human appears on my radar only because of Russell Tovey (the werewolf), another History Boys alum. I'll offer some cerebral praise. Spot-on acting, engaging characters, wide appeal bereft of obvious pandering and appeals. There are enough plot twists (episode and series) to push the story forward but never in ways that compromise the organic growth of the characters.

Holiday television I

Watching: Robin Hood S02E02
Listening: Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt
Reading: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill

News of the Day:

• Harold Pinter...dies.
• New Wallace and Gromit!! And it's toasty.
• China's melamined milk trial opens. Let's hope the judges' bubble teas aren't tainted.
• Recycle your mobile, or die.
• Spider ancestors.
• China v Pirates (of the Aaargh, matey variety).
• The Pirates (of the Pittsburgh variety) sign two Indian pitchers after reality show performances. Expect a Bollywood version soon!
• The Times asks: Are de luxe CDs a rip off? Yes.
• Board games and Christmas are as sure as passing Go and collecting $200, or landing in Jail.
• Baby born on floor. Scary.
• Another Rupert Penry-Jones article to celebrate this Sunday's 39 Steps. And pictures, just for good measure. (A 'posh totty' indeed.)
  

Christmas television. We don't have Christmas specials in America because our television seasons are twice as long and usually run through the holidays. Instead, we have A Christmas Story marathons. Well, marathons of all sorts and lots of football. (Hail, Notre Dame!) Anyway, I managed to get bits and bobs of UK Christmas programming. Mark Gatiss's Crooked House freaked me out proper, and I only watched one episode. I caught part deux because my favorite History Boy, Samuel Barnett, did another effeminate turn, this time as Billy, the main guy's good chum. The show comes in three episodes and the spooky stories are linked by a haunted house and the discovery of an old door knocker. I'll spoil the surprise and say a ghostly, or ghastly, bride haunts another bride-to-be. This in and of itself is not too scary - except her eyes are gouged out!! Bridal apparitions freak me out more than clowns (although I'm also watching Ashes to Ashes at the moment).

My second taste of BBC Christmas was Gavin and Stacey. I'll admit this is the first episode I've seen in full. (The one with the History Boys at the bachelor party doesn't count because it's chopped up on Youtube.) The Barry clan head over to the Shipmans' for Christmas, and everyone kind of gets more than they bargained for - except for dear Smithy (James Corden) who finds himself increasingly squeezed out of his son's life by bus driver Dave. Ehhh...it was endearing, the way you're family is endearing after overdosing on Christmas ham, eggnog, green bean casserole, and one too many stories from crazy uncle. Which means I managed an emotional attachment to the characters but none of the cozy, fleecy embrace I was hoping for considering how much people adore this show; there were some smiles but no healthy laughs. I like that the tension between Smithy and Nessa (Ruth Jones) rubs the heart like a Brillo pad at times. Corden and Jones's script is fantastically muted, allowing some real acting for a change. Anyway, it's all a great set up for the third season where we'll see Gavin and Stacey transplanted in Wales for his new assignment and more uncertainty for Smithy, Nessa, Neil, and possibly fiance Dave. Ahh, love, marriage, and that messy bit in between.

My final Christmas treat, and my only present to myself, was the latest Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death. Fantastic! I could amuse myself with plasticine animation for hours, days. This short is a simple story of love, murder, bread, and dogs. The two run a bakery with an adorable assembly line (if one can be called such) that pops out golden lumps of bread. But there is a cereal murderer on the loose, and they could be next! Anyone who doesn't warm to this story should be made to eat stale bread and drink from a hose for the whole of 2009.

There is a post script to all of this, one involving pre-war Britain, spies, and Rupert Penry-Jones, always a fine combination. 39 Steps airs this Sunday so my holiday isn't over yet.

Bits and Bobs for 12.21.08

Watching: State of Play S01E01-02
Listening: This Christmas by Vonda Shepard
Reading: North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill

News of the Day:

• Project:Possibility puts very smart engineering minds to work on very good causes. A capital way to spend money, time, and energy, and beats many of our current priorities.
• Barack Obama: Senator, President, Model
• Sock and Awe lets you throw shoes at Bush. It's like whack-a-mole, but infinitely more gratifying.
  
• OilyBoy: a) Japanese magazine aimed at older men; b) the kid who replaced the grease monkey; c) something not fit to print.
• Revenge of the Checkout Lady - a tell-all about the shitteous life of a cashier. I will vouch for that. (The musical adaptation is a bit unnecessary.)

TV News of the Day:
Gavin and Stacey return for a 3rd season!!!

Word of the Day: Harmonious Demolition
Only in China....I picked this one up from a BBC Documentaries report from White Horse Village in China. They are razing this hamlet and forcing it to grow into a city. How is this done, you ask? No one knows; it doesn't even work on paper. In any case, part of the plan includes knocking everything down to make way for something bigger, better, and more Marxist with Chinese characteristics.