Daniel Radcliffe tells the world that he really is Harry Potter.
Bridesmaids Review
I’m going to avoid rants on this blog as much as possible but decided to write a review of Bridesmaids for one simple reason; to balance out the reviews it’s been getting so far.
Let me start by saying that I have a lot of time for Kristen Wiig. I think she’s a great comedy performer and an amazing writer. For me, she’s the highlight of Knocked Up (another Judd Apatow-involved comedy I dislike) and her brief cameos on HBO’s Bored to Death are hilarious. Going by the rave reviews Bridesmaids has been getting – (even better than The Hangover) – I was looking forward to seeing this. I just left the cinema an hour ago and I couldn’t be more disappointed.
The Hobbit – First Glimpse
Here are the first glimpses of The Office star Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings prequel, ‘The Hobbit’. According to director Peter Jackson, he got quite a shock when he saw the schedule for the adaption. ‘I felt a terrible drop in my stomach when I saw that we’d be shooting for 254 days’, he told Entertainment Weekly, ‘We’re only 12 days short of The Lord of the Rings even though we’re only doing two movies!” Jackson went on to say that he warned returning star Ian McKellen (Gandalf) that ”this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”
Coffee
I got a new camera recently (the Nikon D3100), which I’m loving playing around with. So I made a very short film about making coffee to test the camera out. Here’s two versions.
Werner Herzog reads foul-mouthed childrens book
Werner Herzog, for those who don’t know, is a great director from Germany. He’s made some genuine masterpieces down the years as well as being known for eating his own shoe. Anyway, here he is reading ‘Go the F**k to Sleep’ by Adam Mansbach and illustrated by Ricardo Cortes. If you don’t like bad language, don’t watch.
Stuff I Like #1: Doctor Who
On the 26th of March 2005, I settled down to watch the TV. It was a sunny Saturday evening and the television was tuned into BBC One. An ad came on; ‘Coming up next, the new series of Doctor Who.’ Doctor Who? I thought. Interesting. I’d seen the TV movie a few years previously which had cast Paul McGann as the time travelling Doctor and set him off on an adventure in America. And I had fake recollections of seeing the odd seventies episode on UK Gold or some other satellite channel when I was younger. But that was as far as my knowledge went so I figured I’d leave the Beeb on and check out the new series.
Christopher Eccleston was the Doctor, Billie Piper played Rose – his new companion. I learned what the TARDIS was and that you didn’t call him Doctor Who. You simply called him the Doctor. It was a fun adventure with shop mannequins coming to life. Not the greatest piece of Saturday night television I’d ever seen but fun nonetheless. At the end, there was a trailer for the second episode. The Doctor and Rose would travel to the end of the universe to watch Earth blink out of existence. There was a character featured briefly in the teaser called Cassandra. She consisted of a face on a piece of flesh stretched across a frame. And she was the last human. This simple but ingenious character is what got me hooked on Doctor Who from that moment. Cassandra – although she’s long been disposed of – still signifies most what I love about the show.
Introducing the A-Book…
From BBC’s Horrible Histories…
Books I like #1 – Neil Gaiman
If you like fantasy fiction and you haven’t read Neil Gaiman then I question your devotion to the genre. In fact, scratch that. If you like a good story full stop and you haven’t read Gaiman, then you’re missing out.
He’s an English author who spends most of his time in the States and a lot of his time on Twitter. He’s most well known for The Sandman series of graphic novels as well as the prose novels American Gods, Stardust and Coraline but he’s written so much in his ever-expanding career that it really would be surprising if you haven’t touched on his work in some form. For instance, he wrote the amazing recent Doctor Who episode entitled The Doctor’s Wife.
Why do I like him? Well, I could go on for a while, but my favourite thing about Gaiman and his writing is that he clearly loves stories. He has such a wealth of knowledge about myths, legends, fantasy and just pure story that his own work is infused with a sense of magic that you don’t find from many other authors. He is not just a great fantasy writer; he is the greatest living storyteller we have today. So rather than waffle on anymore I thought I’d just pick out a few of my favourite examples of his work…
Viking invasion coming to town
via The Irish Independent
The producers behind The Tudors and Camelot look set to shoot another historical fiction in Ireland called Vikings.
The TV series is expected to have a budget of about €28m. It will follow the exploits of the Viking warriors from the late 8th to mid-11th Century. Filming is likely to begin in Ireland next year.
Read the rest
The Next Harry Potter
So what with the Harry Potter series of film adaptations drawing to an end next month – (although ‘drawing to an end’ doesn’t sound right for something that’s going to be so huge, dramatic and make hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide) – Total Film magazine had a look at 30 books that could be the next big kids fantasy series. Nice to see Irish authors featuring in the top two. Although I think they missed one by not including Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. I know they made a film based on the first three books – which I loved! Which is exactly why they should continue with them.
Also, they could have at least waited until Arthur Quinn comes out to write the article ;P