Place of Stuff

All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel. Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.

These words opened every episode of the series.  Sapphire and Steel aired on, what was then, the third channel on UK television.  At the time there were only 3: BBC1, BBC2 and ITV.  Channel 4 was still a few years off and ITV was the newcomer to the UKTV scene.

Continue reading ‘Sapphire and Steel - UK TV Series’ »

The PC is becoming ever more ubiquitous - as well as games, you can receive radio channels, listen to various types of music, watch DVDs or other movie files, upload, download, share and do all sorts of other things. Television, though, has always seemed a little trickier - at the very least you need a TV card of some description.

We have a main TV in the house, but with 4 people and differing requirements, scheduling time to watch can be difficult. Especially when one half of the household only want to watch at particular times. Watching on the PC or laptop is, of course, possible. But because I don’t watch more than one or two hours per week, even the relatively low cost of TV tuners for the PC is more than I want to pay. The BBC iPlayer goes some way to resolving the problem, but maybe I want to watch the programme when it’s on rather than after it’s finished.

Zattoo solves that problem - for me. It’s a free to download program which uses peer to peer sharing to stream channels over the internet. Sign up, give far fewer details than most other services, download the program and install it and you’re good to go. It uses Adobe Flash to handle the viewing, but otherwise is pretty self contained. There are a number of channels available for it - in the UK this means the 5 terrestrial channels and a number of satellite/cable only channels, effectively all the Freeview ones.
Continue reading ‘Zattoo - Real TV On Your PC’ »

I really enjoyed “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” and I am happy to say that the next movie
“Prince Caspian” is due to be released on 27 June 2008 in the UK. If you enjoy fantasy films and
have kids (so you have an excuse to go), definitely book seats to go see this film. The Disney
film site has a widget, no idea what you get, but the widget is below. Apologies, the first time
you load it it takes a while to load up and it needs Flash(and messes up the page a little).
Continue reading ‘New “Narnia” Movie - Prince Caspian’ »

Every time the media mentions some sort of surprise runaway bestseller you can almost feel the palpable shock that something succeeded on it’s own merits. As an example, look at Disney’s High School Musical. Disney put out a number of low (for Disney) budget films every summer. These films have little advertising and use the Disney stable of actors. See also Wendy Wu Homecoming Warrior with the excellent Brenda Song.

Despite the low key introduction, High School Musical was massively popular. So popular that Disney released a sequel with the same cast, more money and far, far more advertising and hype. As one would expect, High School Musical 2 was also hugely popular. But how much of that was down to advertising and how much down to the fact the first one was so enjoyable?

The fact is that the media and media companies absolutely do not trust us to know what we like. This is why so much is spent on annoying the life out of us with incessant ads. But when left to our own devices we, the public, know what we want to see and what we don’t. That’s why many big budget films fail despite the ads and why a simple, enjoyable musical with catchy songs and a fun script do so well. And, by the way, if you’re wondering why a grown man is watching this sort of thing, well, I have a daughter who is 10 tomorrow. It’s hard to avoid them.

I love watching decent, well-written fantasy films. As a fan of Neil Gaiman’s work, I was very excited to see the book “Stardust” translated to silver screen. And I have just returned from watching the film Stardust at my local cinema.

The film is rated, accurately in my opinion, as PG. There is mild peril, no bad language and lots of romance. This is a really magical film; a real fairy tale with good guys, bad guys, a damsel in distress and some wicked witches. Oh, and a destiny unrealised.

There is some excellent acting: Michelle Pfeiffer plays a wizened wicked witch, Robert De Niro plays a sky captain who is on a ship harvesting lightning (and puts in a wonderful performance). I hadn’t realised what an expressive face Claire Danes, the female lead, has. The romance is realistic and never tacky - take your other half, take your kids, there really is something for everyone in this film.
Continue reading ‘Stardust’ »

Dead Like Me is back on TV. Us UK types can catch it on the Sci-Fi channel. This is a very blackly funny show about the daily lives of a team of grim reapers. The team help certain people pass over to the other side.

The humour comes because they have to also live their daily lives - have jobs, love lives and so on. The deaths are often gruesome and always unexpected. And the stories are often touching.

The tales are largey told from the perspective of Georgia - a young woman killed when a toilet fell from the Mir Space Station and then recruited to reaperdom. They are all very cynical and dry and always funny. More info from Wikipedia and from a fan site.
Continue reading ‘Dead Like Me’ »