My brain seems to have recovered since yesterday, although not enough last night to actually be able to read my comics haul, so reviews will come later.
But my brain is overcompensating by floating all around the place, so this post will digress. You have been warned.
I watched Teen Wolf on the weekend. I didn’t go out of my way to; it was on television and I haven’t seen it since I first saw it nearly 20 years ago, and I didn’t want to watch anything specific while I concentrated on something else. Time is a strange thing, isn’t it? The first half of the film is quite enjoyable, as Fox discovers the wolf aspect but, once he does, it’s quite dire, with all that hideous ‘Being True To Yourself’ nonsense and excessive soft rock music to tell you exactly what emotion you are supposed to be feeling in the film at that moment.
And what sort of party with alcohol has arranged party games with the annoying Stiles dictating the juvenile fun? Ever so slightly embarrassing, especially for the writers, one of whom is Jeph Loeb, writer of many a comic book and consulting producer on Smallville. (An aside; how did he go from Joseph Loeb III to Jeph Loeb? Was it after Commando? Did his typewriter break?) The unintentionally funny scene was where the obvious body double for the ‘hot’ girl is removing her bra to seduce Fox in the changing rooms. All I could think of when I saw that scene was the line by Natalie Portman in Garden State when Large is being humped by the dog, ‘Uh-oh, here comes the lipstick.’ Come on, I’m not the only person to wonder if the wolf thing is confined to the hands and face …
(It was also weird seeing the husband of Lynette in Desperate Housewives as Brad, one of the players on Fox’s team – his name is Doug Savant, which I had to look up, obviously. Thanks, IMDb.)
In the world of television comedy, the BBC is showing The Two Ronnies again. The two chaps are both in their seventies but still the BBC will use them to get ratings, which is quite sad. I have warm memories of their show from a kid (I must have been around 12 or so when I last found it funny) with Ronnie Barker’s talent for word play and the silly sketches (like the Mastermind sketch where the speciality is answering the question before last) even though, even then, I knew that Corbett’s monologues were rubbish. They are mostly showing the old sketches, with some new linking material, but it still managed to pull in over 8 million viewers, which goes to show that people prefer wallowing in the warm, fuzzy feeling of nostalgia than finding something funny.
Talking of which, Ricky Gervais shows class [EDIT: link no longer works to Chortle news] by not taking the BBC ‘golden handcuff’ deal and retaining creative freedom for his new show, Extras. Turning down £5 million just so he can be proud of his work is quite something and my respect for him increases, even beyond the fact that The Office did so well in the States and he’s not afraid to speak his mind. This at a time when the Americanized version is soon to air, as reviews like this discuss. I still think it is a strange idea, but that never stopped people doing whatever the hell they wanted to do.
In the blogosphere, Marc-Oliver quotes something I wrote [EDIT: dead link], which is a rather lovely thing to do, so thanks for that. Check out his review site, Supercritical, which is very well written and has similar views to myself, only he expresses himself much better than I.
Finally, Harvey has the real deal on what happened to Malibu from the horse’s mouth, which also goes to show that blogs can achieve something positive.
EDIT: The BBC deny they offered Ricky Gervais a £5 million ‘golden handcuff’ deal.