Last month I did only one post and I guess I have nobody else to blame but me. Okay, my brother has started DC ONLINE which means that there have been some weeks where I couldn´t get to the internet. And there have been some days where I have been busy. But there were other days were I could have posted something and I didn´t because I opted to do other things or didn´t know what to write about.
So I guess the best thing would be to start with what I did since my last post. One of the big things I´m into right now is Dr. Who, the british tv series which keeps impressing me the more I see of it. And I have to apologize for the comments I made in my last post about the subject. Dr. Who´s assistant is not a little schoolgirl ( although sometimes she is but that´s too complicated to go into right now ) but who is also not a policewoman. Amy Pond is a very capable, smart, brave and funny woman and I´m sorry I ever said anything bad about her. I just hope she never finds out because she could definitely kick my ass.
Now the reason why I have changed my mind is that I had the good fortune to find the finale of the last season with David Tennant and the first new season with Matt Smith on the internet ( as well as some older episodes but more about that later ). I have to give the writers of the Dr. Who series credit because I have to say I wasn´t the biggest fan of David Tennant I prefered Christopher Eccleston. Okay, Christopher just wanted to do one season so it´s not like they kicked him out but he was my first Doctor and he was on the same wavelenght as me. David Tennant ? Not so much.
But in the final episodes they manage to turn Dr. Who into such a tragic character and David Tennant is really playing his heart out that when at the end he´s saying : I don´t want to go. " that´s exactly what you are thinking. I was sitting there, choking up and thinking : " Not again. I don´t want to loose him again. " Man, I tell you. If you can sit through the finale with dry eyes you are.....well, tougher than me. And I won´t spoil WHO they managed to get for the finale but WTF !!! No really, the first time I saw him that´s exactly what I said.
And not like in my mind or quiet to myself. No, I sat there at my computer and yelled WTF ( exactly these three words ) really loud although there was nobody there and even if there had been he would have probably not understood what I wanted to say. It must be like somebody said, Dr. Who is somehow encoded into the british DNA and everybody just remembers the show fondly. Really.
But in the end you know that the Doctor has to go and the Doctor has to return. The Doctor is dead, long live the Doctor. Which in itself is a pretty genius way of bringing new actors to the show. You just set up from the start that the main character regenerates when he´s deadly wounded and that he completely chages his appearance and personality. That way there are no incontinuities and no inconsistencies.
And Matt Smith may be the best Doctor ever. Or at least till the next Doctor comes along. He´s somewhat of a cross between a rockstar ( or at least a formerly famous memeber of an 80s pop band ), an absentminded professor, Mac Gyver and a time - travelling Indiana Jones - with a bit of Dr. Strange thrown into it if Dr. Strange was all about the universe instead of magic.
Hmm, I guess that really doesn´t help very much as explaining why he´s so cool. I guess you just have to see them for yourself. Me, I´m just a sucker for stories that involve time - travel so Dr. Who is just right up my alley.
If you live in a real european country like England, Italy and Spain it´s probably already on tv. And if you live in some third world country like Germany - well, we are only three or four seasons behind so we will get to see them in 2018. Or you can watch it on the internet.
Another thing I wanted to mention is that there is an episode of DR. WHO CONFIDENTIAL for every episode on the new season. I don´t know if we were gypped or there were not that much in the first season but there are only three episodes of DR. WHO CONFIDENTIAL on the DVD set we bought of the first season. I mean, it´s really interesting to see how they make all the special effects and how they do the readings but for a Dr. Who newbie like me the really interesting part - the beef and gravy part - is when they go into the rich Dr. Who lore.
As somebody who wasn´t there from the beginning I love to hear about the older episodes, how certain characters have evolved and how they transport old characters into the new canon. Another great part is seeing the promotion tour they do to get people interested in Dr. Who, going into cities, meeting fans and so on. I mean, some of the best episodes are the Christmas special ( which introduced me to the fantastic voice of Katherine Jenkins ) and the Dr. Who at the Proms special.
Seeing the kind of effort these people put behind promoting their tv series you wonder about comic artists who expect their comics to sell without any promo work.
So I have already watched the first new season with Matt Smith but right now I´m watching the episodes with Tom Baker ( he´s the Doctor with the long scarf and I heard that when he was on the show really long, colourful scarfs were all the rage in England ) and tonight´s episode will be part 6 of GENESIS OF THE DALEKS.
Since there is not much on tv in Germany when I got time I watch ( I started to watch VERONICA MARS on Swiss tv but they didn´t show it the last three days ) at least one episode a day. Now I have to say I would probably not buy a DVD set of the episodes ( unless I won the lottery and money would not be a consideration ) but they are kind of interesting to watch. The special effects are really crude by today´s standard but the stories are interesting and the bbc people have always inventive ways of making do with the limited resources they have.
Unlike the german tv people who seem to spend a lot of money to produce crap the british tv guys make the best of what they don´t have. Like faking a helicopter in a scene because they neede one but could afford one. That´s really cool.
But of course I didn´t spend all my time since I did my last post on Dr. Who - I also re - immersed myself in the uncanny ( I always wanted to use that word in a sentence ) world of horror that is JOHN SINCLAIR. And with that I mean the audio dramas.
When I was in school I read - at least - one JOHN SINCLAIR pulp - a day and I continued for at least ten years. But now they got me hooked again. Two weeks ago I was at one of those big multimedia shops which is always dangerous for me. I almost never buy CDs, DVDs or other hightech stuff anymore so whenever I go there I can find at least 10 items at really ridiculous prices. This time I found the audio drama of the 50th episode of JOHN SINCLAIR - Zombie in Manhattan. Not only was the price ridiculous it was also the steelbox that included a big flag and was going for only half the price you have to pay for the normal version that just includes the two audio CDs.
Which is because some people don´t like the steelboxes and the shop can´t sell them and then they have to give it away at half price or less. It´s the same with DVS. Always compare the regular price with the steelbox price and you may end up saving a few bucks. Now the thing with the John Sinclair audio episodes is that when they started they got really well known voice actors. Yesterday I listened to THE BEGINNING ( which was the first special episode that even managed to be in the german charts ) and you have the guy who is the german voice of Robert De Niro, of Patrick Steward, of Buffy.....etc, etc.
The whole cast is like a who´s Who of german voice actors and the guy who speaks the part of John Sinclair is also the german voice of ex - James bond Pierce Brosnan. so after listening to the 50th episode special I found a CD with NIGHTCLUB OF THE VAMPIRES
for a buck as well as a six episode collection for ten bucks that includes THE BEGINNING and BLOODY HALLOWEEN, which is one of the best audio dramas of john Sinclair. If I would have been the producer of the german John Sinclair tv show this would have been my first episode. It´s one of the creepiest stories and till the end you never find out if the bad guys really had demonic powers or if they were just crazy. This would have been one hell of a pilot - no pun intended.
So I have still five audio dramas to listen to and when I´m finished with them I can try again with THE RETURN OF THE BLACK DEATH ( Die Rückkehr des Schwarzen Todes ) which is on the 50th episode as a bonus feature. When I first listened to it I was finishing a drawing for a meeting of the old course ( of course the guy for whom I made it didn´t show up ) and didn´t really pay attention. After the first part it said : continued on disc two and I thought " Okay, you have to buy that one to find out how it ends. " Yeah, that´s what you think. Immediatelly afterwards disc two started and then disc three and by disc four I threw the towel. It was late, I was tired and I had no idea how many discs there were still to come. So I´ll try again when I have finished with the others.
And speaking about being tired it´s once again time to wrap things up. In my next post we will come to part two of what I have been up to since my last post in January which will probably include a lot of pulp stuff, a lot of western and why the new french LUCKY LUKE movie was everything JONAH HEX wasn´t.
Today´s clip is one of the coolest things I´ve seen on the internet ( or anywhere else ) lately. From the description :
Have you ever been watching something, and you’re like “Holy crap that was amazing!” and then 10 seconds later something more amazing happens, and then 10 seconds after that something more amazing than that second thing happens? That’s what this video is. It’s a 10 minute excerpt from the Kollywood film Enthiran ( or Robot ), and IT. HAS. EVERYTHING. A brief rundown:
- guns
- car chases
- Aishwarya Rai ( she´s so hot !!! )
- explosions
- both the original Tamil dialogue AND Russian dubbing, at the same time
- a giant ball made up of guns and robots that explodes and each robot shoots out and wrecks the cops
- a giant snake also made of robots that shoots bullets out of its tongue and swallows police cars
- AND MORE
It’s like if Michael Bay had a baby with Michael Bay, and that kid had a baby with Nic Cage, and THAT baby became a trust fund, coke - addict, film school dropout who financed a movie on his own.
Couldn´t have said it better.
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