If YouTube closed down for the night...

Brilliant web comedy from Dr Who writer/producer Eddie Robson, looking at what happens when YouTube goes off the air at night. The suggested search terms are utter genius...

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Why you should be watching Burnistoun

Craig and Iain pimped it on the Podcast last week, but if you haven't been watching, here's a clip to show you what you're missing.  Listen carefully, you might hear them in the audience...

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Johnny Depp IS Johnny Depp in a Johnny Depp film (directed by Tim Burton)

There was a point, and it wasn't that long ago, that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp equalled quality.

Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, even Sweeny Todd.  Spooky, gothic fables that showed visionary directorial flair and engaging performance alike.  

The two seemed to work as a team, or perhaps even Depp was Burton's muse, drawing the best of the director.

In more recent times, however, we've had to suffer through leaden, turgid crap like the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake.  And now the pair have turned their attentions to a reimagined version of Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.

They needn't have bothered.

The Alice tale has been done before.  Much of what we know to be Alice in Wonderland comes from the somewhat filtered Disney adaptation from 50 years ago, rather than the books themselves.  And this version, which picks over the concepts from the books, films and stage versions, then grinds them up and tries to recreate something from the dusty remains through a Return to Oz shaped sieve, offers very little.

Its one clever conceit is to reposition Alice's age from young girl to teenager on the verge of womanhood and emerging into Victorian society, where the pressure of an arranged marriage and societal mores place more pressure on her already troubled psyche.  Here her visit to Underland (no, that's deliberate) is posited as a return, rather than an arrival, by everyone except Alice herself.

The world she arrives into bears scant resemblance to the nonsensical one created by Carroll, instead resorting to typical Burton-esque gothic tropes around which a basic quest narrative has been built.  Burton himself said he wanted to restructure the tale since he found the original book to be just a collection of random events, apparently missing entirely the point.

And he's directing with a concrete touch.  WIth heavy CGI and greenscreen, plus the need to make the film 3D, the reality is distorted further - not by the effects, but because of the effects.  Some work subtly - Helena Bonham Carter's massive heid, for example - but many others fail spectacularly.  

Crispin Glover, looking and sounding remarkably like Neil Stuke while playing the Knave of Hearts, is supposed to be 7ft tall, so has been digitally stretched and his head recomposited onto this elongated body.  The resulting effect is jerky, jarring (watch when he gets on and off his horse at the Tea Party, for example) and looks too much like a special effect to work.

He's not helped by some godawful acting.  Mia Wasikowska is balsawood in a blue dress, while Depp reaches new levels of Jack Sparrowness as the Hatter, who goes between Scottish and Mockney quicker than David Tennant. There's one moment between the Hatter and Alice that's wonderful to watch, when you get a glimpse of the idea he suffers from multiple personality disorder, but it's blown out of your grasp before you can react, swept away in a new tide of gurning and dancing.  

And that's the biggest problem with Alice.  It's not, by any stretch, a bad film.  It's just bland.  On IMAX it utterly fails to blow you away visually, and lacks any subtlety to engage the viewer on an emotional level.  It's just there.  A painting by numbers exercise by Burton and Depp.

Perhaps the most charitable thing you can say about Alice in Wonderland is that it's a great pension top-up for British character actors of a certain age.  Burton's anglophile nature means we get everyone from Christopher Lee to Frances De la Tour popping up at some point, either in the background or on voice duties.  Who'd have thought you'd get Peggy Mitchell voicing a character in a Disney blockbuster?

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Posted 4 days ago by Iain Hepburn 

Exclusive: Street Hawk latest 80s classic set for remake treatment?

 

Anyone who listened to the last episode of The Thumbcast knows how much love I've got for Street Hawk.

Which is why I was very hyped to get the chance to interview the show's star, Rex Smith, the other day as part of the day job.

The interview's now live here, but among the titbits from it is the news that Rex, along with his son, is working on a reboot of the series - 25 years after it was cancelled.

He said: 

"I am currently developing a script for a new re-envisioned Street Hawk along with my oldest son Brandon, called Street Hawk Resurrection'."

"Universal Studios has shown interest in the project and I would like to ask all the fans of Street Hawk to e-mail me so that I may show the executives at Universal just what kind of support I have for a new series."

Which may just be about the best news I've heard in years.  So everyone, get emailing Rex and let's get the man and the machine back on the street.

In the meantime, kick back and enjoy some Tangerine Dream...

 

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You know all those horror stories about the American pilot of Spaced being shit? Well, now you can judge for yourself...

And it looks like they were right.

As flagged up on the Twitter of the original co-creator, here's a glimpse of what McG's McSpaced actually looked like.

These are some of the scenes featuring Federico Dordei, who played Christian - the US version of Mark Heap's masterful Brian Topp.
I wrote last year, on the 10th anniversary of Spaced debuting on C4, about how much I loved the show and how much it means to me.  
So words can't really describe, watching that vacuum of wit and comedy in Dordei's YouTube vid, quite how glad I am the remake died a painful death.

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Posted 7 days ago by Iain Hepburn 

The Daily Mail on Kick-Ass: Now hands up who didn't see this one coming?

Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman causes outrage with film featuring a foul-mouthed 11-year-old assassin

By Anny Shaw
Last updated at 1:20 PM on 28th February 2010


Jonathan Ross's wife has caused outrage with a film she has written featuring a foul-mouthed 11-year-old assassin.

Critics are concerned Jane Goldman's film Kick-Ass, which will carry a 15 certificate,  blurs the lines between adult and child entertainment.

One of the characters in the film is an 11-year-old girl called Hit-Girl who slices people's legs off and shoots bullets through a man's cheek.

Hit-Girl from movie Kick-Ass by Jane Goldman

Jane Goldman has caused outrage with a film she has written featuring a foul-mouthed 11-year-old assassin called Hit-Girl

Chloe Moretz, the 13-year-old American actress who plays the role of the young serial killer screams at her victims: 'Okay, you c****, let's see what you can do now.'

In another scene the character tells her vigilante father that she wants a puppy for her birthday.

Jonathan Ross and Jane Goldman

Jonathan Ross and Jane Goldman: One of the characters is an 11-year-old girl who slices people's legs off

When he looks surprised she says: 'I%u2019m just f****** with you, Daddy,' and asks for a razor-sharp knife instead.

The film's extreme violence has earned it comparisons with the work of Quentin Tarrantino.

Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University, criticised the film industry for not distinguishing between what is suitable for children and adults. 

'This promotes the idea that infantilising adulthood is okay and that we are no longer expected to draw lines between us and kids,' he told the Sunday Times.

Kick-Ass, which is out in April, has already sparked a number of complaints in the U.S. after children were allowed to access violent trailers of the film online.

'These particular trailers are even worse than normal because they depict a child and so are more interesting to a child,' Nell Minow, a lawyer and one of the complainants, told The New York Times last week.

'Isn%u2019t there a limit to what we can ask children to do on screen?'

The film is based on a comic book series that is advertised with the slogan 'sickening violence: just the way you like it'.

Outrage over the film comes as a Government report last week highlighted the unsuitable images to which children are routinely exposed.

Aaron Johnson stars as Kick-Ass, an ordinary American teenage boy who decides to turn himself into a superhero

Aaron Johnson stars as Kick-Ass, an ordinary American teenage boy who decides to turn himself into a superhero

The report condemned the exposure of children to pornography and violence, and called for stricter controls on the increased use of 'sexualised imagery' in advertising.

Jonathan Ross was widely criticised in October 2008 after he and the comedian Russell Brand made obscene calls to Andrew Sachs, the former Fawlty Towers actor.

Goldman met Ross when she was a young newspaper columnist and married him when she was just 18 before going on to forge a successful career as a television presenter, author and screenwriter.

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Captain James T Kirk joins the General Election campaign

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Episode 8: Edison's wax disc podcasts

Craig and Iain return for a semi-drunken grumble through the last few week's cult film and telly. In news, we've got the Dr Who trailer, another outing for Scream, Glasgow's FrightFest, Twiglet's Kristen Stewart up for Lara Croft, and the return of 80s classic Street Hawk. Plus we cast a discerningly grumpy gaze over Avatar, Caprica, Burn Notice, Day of the Triffids and Unwritten, bring into question someone's parenting skills, and ponder what would happen if Lost went all Sliding Doors...

Apologies for the slightly dodgy audio quality this time out - Iain ended up recording his bits on the mic you get with Beatles Rock Band after it turned out the Behringer C1-U is an utter piece of shit.

Links this time out:

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Duncan Jones' BAFTA acceptance speech - who couldn't love Moon after that?

Seriously though, the only good moment of the BAFTAs - other than James Cameron getting royally shafted by the Academy - was seeing the former Zowie Bowie's acceptance speech after picking up the Carl Foreman award for best British debut.

Moon is a genuinely wonderful film that got nowhere near the awards love it deserved, and was clearly a labour of love for Jones. So well done - you deserve your award, not least for bringing a genuine moment of emotion to the usual night of 'ohmygosh' platitudes.

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AvP v C4

You probably didn't notice, but something very odd happened at the weekend, buried away in the TV schedules. At 12.50am yesterday morning, Film4 showed Aliens. Nothing particularly odd about that - it's a great film, James Cameron's high visibility at the moment thanks to Avatar and they often show horror in that late night slot.

Then last night, at 9.40pm, parent network Channel 4 showed Predator. Again, nothing particularly odd about that. It's a fun actioner, and they needed to throw something disposable on against the all-conquering might of the BAFTA film awards over on BBC1.

Except...

During the first ad break in Predator, just before 10pm, there was an advert. A very lengthy advert for British games firm Rebellion's new PS3 and XBox version of Aliens vs Predator, which was released on Friday.

The ad took up pretty much the entire slot, and was bookended by a specially rendered C4 logo, done out in the thermal imaging of the Predator's eye view, with THIS IS AN ADVERTISMENT in large white print below it.

Now, scheduling films on TV to cash in on high profile other films or TV shows is nothing new. C4 have a habit of sticking on one of the Peter Cushing films whenever Dr Who is due to start back on BBC One, for example. But did they really schedule these two films to cash in on the release of a video game? Or were they swayed by the fact there was presumably a shitload of advertising cash coming their way for that break TO schedule the films? An ad that length, in prime time, won't have been cheap for Rebellion and publishers SEGA, and if they had to tag that Predator-ised logo on the front, there must have been some hoop jumping along the way.

So is this an modern example of TV scheduling being dictated by entirely commercial requirements? Or just an almighty coincidence? Horseferry Road, over to you...

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