By Roy Mathur, on 2014-06-29, at 2014-06-29 00:15:04--00:15:32 BST, for Roy's Rocket Radio
Stretched too thin this week to do the Doctor Who marathon, but rest assured, it will return next week with Galaxy 4.
Mirror.co.uk recently ran an article about how the "BBC announce diversity committee with Lenny Henry, Tanni Grey-Thompson and Jason Roberts named as advisers" and "BBC say the Independent Diversity Action Group will "advise and support the BBC on diversity", after Lenny Henry spoke out about the current lack of diversity in entertainment, media, and elsewhere too. Nice One Lenny!
Gary Oldman went on a highly unpleasant and offensive rant during a recent Playboy Interview, and then later made an abject apology.
There are a million brilliant actors out there ready to step into the shoes of a disgraced celebrity who are paid, in no small part, because of the great PR their presence in the movie will generate. Celebrities are not irreplaceable, so no prizes for guessing the reasons behind that apology.
The other thing is, if you read the media press blogs (Variety etc.) and check out some of the comments, Gary should be really happy at the calibre of his new supporters.
I was really tired after the last novel (that you can read about on my blog) and I am now in the process of editing it into a first draft prior to sending off to agents and publishers. You can guess that I'm again playing catch up, but by the time you listen to this show, things will have, calmed down. Churning out a rough draft every 40 days is no mean feat. At least for me, anyway. Hopefully, it will get easier. Please let it get easier!
Why am I doing this? Because I've got a lot of catching up to do with other authors who have been at this steadily for years. AND I want to get published AND turned into a screenplay, which is, incidentally harder than it looks, but then everything worth doing is hard until you get good at it and even then...
Started on the next novel a big, entertaining space opera, but then couldn't get into the right headpsace and I have started writing the sequel to the first. I think it's because I like the characters of the first book so much that I want to find out what happens next. Whatevs, on with the show!
This is a new US TV series from Universal. It's an entertaining hotchpotch of post-apocalyptic dystopian SciFi, mixed with horror and fantasy based on the so-so film Legion (2010) starring Paul Bettany. Basically god has buggered off and the bad angels, led by Gabriel, have declared war against mankind (who are aided by the 'good' angel Michael). Great premise for a tired old Abrahamic trope, but hard to pull off.
Not sure how the series will pan out. The sets are good with SA locations in Cape Town standing in for a fortified Las Vegas, Nevada. I get a bit of Reign of Fire (2002) vibe with this mixing of genres too. And, yeah, this was made for SyFy.
From the Independent 25 June: North Korea has threatened to reap "merciless" retaliation on the USA if they do not ban Seth Rogen and James Franco's forthcoming comedy, The Interview."
You cannot pay for publicity that good. Let's hope this Kim Jong-un assassination spoof comedy actually delivers.
Karen Gillan and bro battle demonic mirror in this Hammeresqueish horror.
Generally panned by critics, but I have to say that I quite enjoyed it. I also think that the flavour of the film would have worked better set in the UK, with UK actors because of the aforesaid wonderfully Hammeresqueishness of this kind of silly, but entertaining horror. Definitely one for a vid/pizza night. Good stuff.
Synopsis: the plot begins in the future, and it's a bit like The Terminator, but instead of Skynet we have mad scientist Doctor Bolivar Trask, ably played by Peter Dinklage. Thus follows a chain of events that leads to the genocidal culling of anyone displaying the slightest sign of mutation. Terminator-like Sentinels then attempt to destroy the last vestiges of resistance led by the X-Men. But there's a plan to must send Wolverine into the past to prevent a key event in history from happening which will inevitably lead to this nightmare future.
Bad: scenes lifted out of The Terminator (1984), Groundhog Day (1993), Watchmen (2009) and X-Men: First Class (2011). The incessant, never-ending, background music that build-ups, but frustratingly never quite reaches a crescendo.
Good: fantastically well-done woven in real-life events like the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War and Nixon's paranoia. I also liked the overly colour-saturated TV news coverage typical of the time. My favourite aspect of the movie was easily the, all-too-short interpretation of teen super-speed superhero Quicksilver AKA Pietro Maximoff by Evan Peters. His fun performance eclipsed all the other performances and just begs for a spinoff.
Great imagery in James Herbert's Creed.
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Thanks everyone for the RTs and thanks Wired UK for the plug.
Doctor Who Marathon Returns Next Week with Galaxy 4.