Thursday, November 30, 2006

Feltz: Raven.

Not Raven-Symone, KC Raven. He was a longtime Yahoo! member who maintained a number of excellent groups devoted to female forms (Raven's Young Stars, Raven's Beautiful Models, Raven's Beautiful Buns, etc); he always delivered both with quality and quantity, unlike all too many Yahoo! groups (including the one I started for Cindy Crawford and Laetitia Casta stories), and seeing his multiple postings in my inbox was a guarantee that something lovely was waiting for me.
His real name was Ed Robinson, and he passed away yesterday. This sucks... he may have gone quickly and mercifully, but it still sucks.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Well, it took them long enough.

Fact: Christopher "the ninth Doctor Who" Eccleston joins the cast of Heroes. Fact: BBC2 announces buying the terrestrial rights. Coincidence? I doubt it.
But this is great news for those folks who were wondering when an FTA channel would pull their fingers out and get it. Not so great for those who recall BBC2's treatment of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (6:45pm with appropriate snippage anyone?). Or their legendary treatment of Seinfeld. Or Monk, Arrested Development, American Dad!, Family Guy, etc... but we'll see.
9pm in primetime, schedulers - nothing less will do.

I didn't mean it, Jen.

Me: Joanna Levesque. TURN 16, DAMMIT!
Jen: She's not 16 yet? *checks Wiki* Apparently not
Me: Not till next month.
Jen: ...OH MY GOD I THINK SOMEONE BORN IN THE 90'S IS HOT!!!! *feels old*



Saturday, November 18, 2006

Save the cheerleader, save the world... save my soul...


Cindylover1969 (hereafter called "Me"): I can't do websearches for Hayden any more. :(
KMB2476 (hereafter called "'76") : why not?
Me: Because I don't want to get any more Heroes spoilers. It starts here in February, and...
'76: ahhhh
Me: So until then, she's offlimits. (Except in picture forums, natch.)
'76: an excellebnt point. i just hope shes not offlimits in stories
Me: Oh no, that's another matter.
'76: i wouldnt want you not to read her debut in Harem. i promise no spoilers - save for an occasional teasing remark about "save the cheerleader, save the world"
'76: which I dont even know what it means ;)
Me: That's a great tagline. I love it.
'76: at least not yet...Monday is supposed to change all that :) NBC works it into EVERYTHING
Me: I saw it at the base of a print ad for Man of the Year. (That's corporate synergy for you.) Best TV tagline in years. Even if NBC Universal's logo sucks.
'76: that it does. its a great tagline. its actually a line of dialogue, one you know is killer the second its spoken. all ill say is this; i cant ever think of a show ive looked more forward to each week and i dont even read comic books
Me: Neither do I.

And with the ninth Doctor Who on board now, the chances of it getting the terrestrial berth denied it in the UK thus far in favour of surer things like, er, Vanished, Kidnapped, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Six Degrees, 3 Lbs and Runaway must have increased. Surely? (Note to the BBC - it would make up for Robin Hood.)

Hi diddle de dee...




So good to see Laetitia in a comedy. And a female pirate more alluring than Keira Knightley. :)
And as for the link:
KMB2476: pardon my ignorance, but who is that?
Cindylover1969: Katharine McPhee.
Cindylover1969: You're pardoned, don't worry. I forgot I wasn't talking to Evil. :)
KMB2476: very nice :)
KMB2476: got some good plans in store for her
Cindylover1969: Don't we all.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Thank you so much, Ken.

Mayor Ken Livingstone, that is.
So anyway, this is the day I went for my flu jab (every winter those of us in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland more prone to flu than others have to get vaccinated against the flu, and diabetics fall into that category. Luckily, us diabetics also don't have to pay for the privilege of having a bacteria-flooded needle stuck into our upper arm for a few nanoseconds). Unfortunately, this is also the day that a whole load of bus drivers decided to go... you guessed it... on strike. Including the majority of the ones that take me to and from work.
And it's not like I live five minutes away from DMWorks either, otherwise I could have gone back to work after the jab - no, it's an hour's bus ride to and fro changing buses twice. So the diversions make the journey even longer... okay, I do get to go home early because by the time I got vaccinated it would have taken too long to get back to work and I would have had to leave not too long after getting back.
But dammit, bus travel in London is crap enough as it is without fucking strikes! And threats of more next week... cheers, Mr. Livingstone. Real nice bus system you've got here, real nice.

Many thanks to Anneza for making stabbing motions to my blaring out of The Omen: The Deluxe Edition this morning, by the way. It might have put notions of Psycho in her mind (and others'), but at least no turning down was done...

Sorry to Jen for not entering choices in the league this week. I just plain forgot. Won't happen again.

Oh, and a slap on the wrist to Sci-Fi for sitting on Heroes until February. February. And people wonder why folks download.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

That was the week that was. It's over. Let it go.

So winter's setting in. Technically it's not winter yet but it does feel like it more and more every day. It should have been a wonderful week (the midterms, Britney's splitting up and looking more like her old self, my copy of 100 Rifles that I won from FSM finally arriving, and a new shoot from Her in the December issue of UK Esquire).
But this is also the week Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes, Jack Palance and Basil Poledouris (as noted elsewhere here) left us. So very, very mixed. Happy trails, folks.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Thanks, Basil: 1945-2006.

I may have mentioned earlier that things were going pretty well for me news-wise, but I had a feeling that something would happen. And something very much has.

Lukas Kendall posted this on the Film Score Monthly board this morning (UK time):



Friends,

I'm very sorry to bring the sad news that Basil Poledouris has died after his battle with cancer. He appeared at the Spanish film music concert only a few months ago which is remarkable as he was quite sick at the time. I am sure the official obituary will be posted soon.

Basil was a really lovely man. He was genuinely warm and friendly and kind in addition to being so talented and productive over the years.

I'm still in shock as I knew he was sick but it is always hard to process this kind of news. So, I have more to say, but I'll do it later.

Terribly sad,

Lukas

The Hunt For Red October. Conan The Barbarian. The Blue Lagoon. Lonesome Dove. Red Dawn. The first two Free Willy movies. Big Wednesday. On Deadly Ground. Robocop. Amerika. Starship Troopers. And this is a man who also had the kind of backbone to step back from scoring the kind of movies that he didn't feel anything for; not that I can blame those who do, but you don't get much of that integrity. He was a class act, and today's a black, black day for film music fans.

Shit.

Read Christopher Lennertz's touching eulogy here.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Icky for so many reasons

Okay, so this post by veteran Comic Book Guy animators' model and one-time Sky Movies employee Harry Knowles has already been on 8405 blogs. Just call this 8406 and be done with it...

I don't watch much TV. I hate commercials and I hate being chained to a date and time by some corporate programming. However, I don't begrudge downloading from iTunes a single show a week that I'm addicted to. Currently, this show is HEROES. I never can remember that it is on... on Monday nights... at some time or another. It just slips my mind.
Anyway - I've got a moral quandry about the show.
Hayden Panettiere, born August 21, 1989, now 17 (legal in Texas, which is important, because her character is in Odessa, Texas) as the character, Claire Bennett. She's adorably cute, constantly in her cheerleader uniform.
Ok - now never mind that she fulfills the underage cheerleading limber blond virginal demographic. That's pretty delicious.
But they gave her the ability to regenerate and resucitate from any and all injuries.
This power has decided to manifest itself before she's lost her virginity.
Which means - everytime she has sex, she's a virgin as her hymen will repair itself. Meaning that everytime she's fucked, its like she's being fucked for the very first time.
OK - that's WAY WRONG.
NOW - add to that - that she's at the age where cellular growth is complete. This is it. No wrinkles. No sagging breasts. If she has a kid and it pushes the hipbones out... they'll straighten back and she'll be fine.
Of course - that's even if she could get pregnant. Would her eggs allow an invading sperm to fertilize? Is that possible?
OR - is she simply doomed to enjoy threat free sex for life. Now - here's the scary part. She'll never know non-hymen blocked sex. Cuz even if it gets pushed through... on any withdrawl and cycle back in, the hymen will have grown back. SO...
It's my theory that do to the constant discomfort of virginal sex with men, her character will prefer the kind attention of her fellow sex. MEANING - she'll be a hot, underage, cheerleading lesbian... for life.
ALSO - she could have sex with ANYONE. Any disease - unprotected and be perfectly ok.
The people behind this show are sick. Either that or they have singlehandedly created the most deviantly awesome fanboy sex object in the history of SUPERHERO FICTION.
And she's from Texas.
Claire... you rule!


This is very, very wrong. Not so much because of the basic sentiments (face it, I can relate to being attracted to her), not even because of the perverted extrapolation. (As anyone who's read "Man of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex" will agree, he could have gone a lot further.)
What turns my stomach is the image this conjures up. Picture Harry Knowles. Now picture him on Hayden Panettiere.

Sorry.

This is too good to be true...

Britney Spears giving K-Fed the heave-ho, the Bush Administration getting thoroughly served in the mid-terms (even if the Democrats don't get Senate control it's still one in the eye for Commander Smug), the epitome of loathsomeness that is Donald Rumsfeld resigning, and one of my friends on Guardian Unlimited is lending me a DVD of the first six episodes of Heroes on Friday.

Life is good.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

World's Worst Biographer.

If you think you get some flak for being a perv, spare a thought for David Thomson. Then again, he gets paid for it, so don't. The Daily Telegraph's Catherine Shoard reviewing Nicole Kidman:

It's not uncommon for a biographer to fall for their subject. But it's rare they declare their lust as frankly as David Thomson. His book about Nicole Kidman is, he says, 'a testament from a fan, a love-letter, from someone in the dark to one of those beauties in the light'. Others may feel this is putting it mildly. If I got a letter like that I think I'd take it straight to the police.
Barely a paragraph passes without Thomson setting new records in dribbly critical candour. On page six he tells us that the curve of Kidman's bottom is as familiar to him as his own child's brow. She has 'a very lovely supple body' that 'shines like a lighthouse in sex scenes'. Her breasts are 'tidy', her legs a treat, her face is one of 'wondrous impassive depravity'.
'Millions of us could recognise the sweet curve of her bottom in the dark,' he writes. 'Millions more have had that palpable illusion help them make it through the night.' Thomson, already one of the world's most respected film writers, establishes himself here as one of the world's leading lechers.
But let's get one thing straight. This is not a role he wants. It has been thrust upon him. Nicole is, frankly, asking for it. That look she gives the camera? Definitely a come-on. 'Actors make love to people they will never meet,' he explains. 'It is their passion.' I mean, what's a man to do?
At first glance there's nothing wrong with an approach as passionate as this, for all its perviness and delusion. But Thomson's crush is not the type that makes him desperate for all the info on Kidman he can find. Rather, he shows an almost complete lack of curiosity in his subject. This does not make for the most gripping biography.
There are no facts here that couldn't be gleaned from the most rudimentary Google search. There's some strange, wild speculation about who Kidman's favourite sporting heroes might be, or what her take on American overseas intervention is, but Thomson answers none of the key Kidman questions: why did she and Tom Cruise divorce? Did Stanley Kubrick really feed them malicious stories about each other on the set of Eyes Wide Shut? Why did they adopt children just two years into their marriage? Has she had botox (he spends seven pages fretting without conclusion)? What's she actually like?
Rather, he devotes most of the book to the one thing that interests him more than Nicole: his own opinion. In discussing her films, one after another after another, he doesn't even attempt to be comprehensive (wilfully abstaining from any discussion of Far and Away – an interestingly awful movie if ever that was one); he tries still less to be concise.
But the acres of plot and endless digressions are nothing to his habit of weighing in with how he'd have done a better job had he been in charge – casting William Hurt rather than John Malkovich in The Golden Bowl; adding an illicit affair to the script of The Others; giving Birth an especially horrid rethink. And he doesn't stop with movies that have actually been made. He tells us, too, about films that only exist in his dreams – usually starring Kidman, generally in some state of undress.
Thomson may be a first-class fantasist, but he's still never less than an elegant writer, and there are some lovely lines here: in The Human Stain, Kidman (playing a down-at-heel cleaner) looks 'about as dowdy as a sunset over the mountains'. He makes a few sharp points about the links between acting and prostitution, though one can't help feeling they'd carry more weight if he weren't quite such an interested party.
But as the book progresses so Thomson's hold on reality seems increasingly wobbly. Could it be that, rather than just being content with his role as 'someone in the dark', he's really a frustrated participant? One anecdote implies he thinks he could have slept with another one of his favourite actresses, Tuesday Weld, one night (she was 38, he was 42, he was giving her an award 'and my wife was out of town'). He brags, too, about knowing the location of a couple of houses Nicole 'prefers to keep secret' and that he has 'no wish to divulge' – shades of Paul Burrell, here.
Most damning, though, is his huffy disapproval of Kidman's recent boyfriends, none of which seem to him to be 'especially substantial or rewarding' – including new husband, Keith Urban. If only she could find a man worthy of her, eh? A man who really understood her, who wasn't afraid to shout his love from the rooftops. Watch out, Nicole – he only wants you for your body.

Okay, this is getting freaky.

Yesterday I had on the Sing-Along version of High School Musical. This morning I actually dreamt about the movie; my own personal sequel, in which I went to see it in cinemas (it actually did get shown in cinemas in some parts of the world), the large girl who loved hip-hop dancing did an MC Hammer impression on stage and went crashing outside, and I went out there to console her on making a mess (for some reason I said that if I went to her place and did something like that, I wouldn't go and leave it - what kind of advice is that?).
The exact plot details, it being a dream and all, escape me now - but it involved a massive huge swimming pool, the school being linked to a mall, and most importantly me consoling Gabriella (I actually found myself in the film somehow) after it looks like she and Troy won't get to the callbacks. Anything involving me kissing Vanessa Hudgens repeatedly can only be a good thing... scientists, hurry up and invent that thing from Brainstorm that can record dreams and play them back. NOW.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

It is time to get geeky: The Ten Commandments.

Not the classic one with "So it is written, so it shall be done," but the recent TV version from the folks who used to be called Hallmark Entertainment (and who used to be reliable, but after Dinotopia... well), with Sayid from Lost, Salman Rushdie's missus, Sydney Bristow's sister and Omar Sharif. Since we haven't had any Bank Holidays for a while it hasn't turned up on British TV yet, but it's only a matter of time before it arrives on Sky One or Hallmark or whatever.
But Randy Edelman's music turned up a lot sooner, on Varese Sarabande, and it's... lacklustre. Hallmark (okay, RHI) projects generally have fine music (Anne Dudley's The 10th Kingdom, Michael Convertino's Snow White, Trevor Jones' Gulliver's Travels and Dinotopia, etc) and Biblical tales are traditionally a gift for composers - The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Prince of Egypt, The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth... even Bugtime Adventures has a catchy theme song. Plus Elmer Bernstein's music for The Ten Commandments is so stirring that anything done since then for the story of Moses can't really be expected to automatically be on the same level.
Be that as it may, it's still unmemorable. Maybe Edelman's brief was to keep from going for the epic approach, but other than a solo violin theme (heard best in the last track) in that respect it's not exactly The Passion of the Christ. I'll give it another listen and maybe update this entry, but Edelman's done far better for TV, let alone film. As Ashley Tisdale would say, not Jessica Alba-tastic.
1. The Ten Commandments, Main Title (1:59)
2. Desert Passage (3:59)
3. The Greatest Sorrow (1:09)
4. Return To Egypt (1:54)
5. Moses Starts A New Life (2:18)
6. Chosen Ones (1:19)
7. The Burning Bush (3:27)
8. Lost And Found (1:19)
9. Call To War At The Red Sea (2:22)
10. Destruction Of The Calf (1:41)
11. Purification (:59)
12. Palace Farewell (2:27)
13. Becoming A Family (2:33)
14. A Bond That Never Breaks (2:19)
15. The Secret Prince Is Born (2:12)
16. No Miracles Today (1:58)
17. Nothing Stays The Same (2:31)
18. Passover (2:21)
19. Murder And Escape (2:01)
20. The Promised Land (1:38)
21. Trouble In The Old City (2:04)
22. Ascending The Heights (1:40)
23. In Front Of The Pyramids (1:28)
24. A True Gift (Shaya) (1:44)