Tagged: BBC

Doctor Who 50th anniversary special to be simulcast globally

  • News
  • July 27, 2013

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Initially reported by UK tabloid The Sun and quickly verified by the BBC, the 50th anniversary special episode of Doctor Who will be broadcast simultaneously across the world, touted as the largest simulcast of a drama ever.

The special has been sold to approximately 200 countries, so the amount of timing and cooperation required will be quite high.  Sources say the move was done to eliminate any chance of spoilers for people in countries who traditionally receive the episodes after the initial broadcast in the UK.

This would put the broadcast spread across four hours of the early afternoon (depending on time zone) in the United States, and in the early hours of the 24th of November on the far side of the world like Australia and New Zealand.

The special will be broadcast in both 2D and 3D.  Complete details have not been released on which version will be broadcast in which markets.  The special features the return of David Tennant and Billie Piper as The Doctor and Rose Tyler, as well as classic villains The Daleks and Zygons.  At San Diego Comic-Con, showrunner Steven Moffat claims he’s been “lying through his teeth” about what and who is in the episode, resulting in the resurgence of rumors of other unreported cameos, including Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, making only one on-screen appearance, in the Fox-produced TV movie.

When the 20th anniversary episode The Five Doctors was produced in 1983, it did not receive a similarly-coordinated release.  Indeed, American fans got to see the special BEFORE the UK.  The network of public television stations who were broadcasting the series got permission to show the special on November 23 exactly, which was a Wednesday.  The BBC didn’t show it in the UK till that Saturday, the traditional day of broadcast for the series in England.  By  a wonderful coincidence, November 23rd falls on Saturday this year, allowing the anniversary to take place on the day it originally aired with no schedule-juggling.

This plan is not only a huge PR coup for the BBC, it’s also a wonderful example of life imitating art.  In Last of the Time Lords, Martha Jones walked the Earth for nearly a year, spreading the tale of The Doctor, in preparation for everyone on the planet to think about him and chant his name at a precise day and moment, the resulting wave of psychic energy intended to give the Time Lord the power to undo the actions of The Master and save the day.  With the BBC setting up to do the very same thing, one can only wonder what the real-world wave of power might do.

Personally, I’m hoping it’ll provide the power to jump-start the working TARDIS that the BBC Radiophonics Workshop has secretly been working on for years.

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New Who Companion To Be Selected “Idol”-Style

  • News
  • April 1, 2013

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Riding the wave of major West End productions being cast by popular vote on television, the BBC announced today that the next co-star for the popular science-fiction program Doctor Who will be selected on a new reality show talent competition.

The show, “No Xenon Impact” (An anagram of “Next Companion”) will be executive produced by Caro Skinner and Andrew Lloyd Webber, based on the format of his reality show “How do you solve a problem like Maria?“, which cast the lead of the Sound of Music revival. The show will be co-hosted by John “Captain Jack” Barrowman and long-time Doctor Who fan and guest-star David Walliams.

DW Showrunner Steven Moffat admitted he was first “hesitant” at the idea, but admitted “It gives the show a mad new challenge – The Doctor never knows who his new friends will be, and now neither will we.”

The show will premiere on May 25th, a week after the second half of the current series of Doctor Who ends, and will run for six weeks.  Contestants (eight female, four male) will be drilled weekly on their acting and improv skill, their knowledge of the program, and what Walliams describes as “A whole lot of running.” Contestants will be voted on weekly by the viewing audience, and a different “guest alien” who “Exterminate” one or two hopefuls live on the program. Matt Smith and current companion (already confirmed to be returning for the eighth series) Jenna-Louise Coleman have agreed to appear for the series finale, where Matt will present a key to the TARDIS to the lucky winner.

Filming for the new eighth series of Doctor Who has yet to be scheduled; it is believed by many that this competition has been in the planning for some time, and the eighth series production has been scheduled to accommodate it.

A Doctor a Day – “Dalek”

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Using the new Doctor Who Limited Edition Gift Set, your noble author will make his way through as much of the modern series as he can before the Christmas episode, The Snowmen.

Mr. Henry Van Staaten owns the Internet.  He also has a museum of alien artifacts under Utah, including a Slitheen claw, a Cyberman head, and a…

DALEK  
by Robert Shearman
Directed by Joe Ahearne

“Broken…broken…hair dryer…”

The TARDIS lands in 2012 (!) in Utah, or more precisely, under it.  They’re in the personal horde of Henry Van Statten, an impossibly rich American who obtains alien artifacts, reverse engineers their technology, and sells it for profit.  The Doctor picked up a distress call from his one living exhibit, a mysterious creature that Van Statten calls a Metaltron.  Only when The Doctor sees it does he realize what it truly is – a Dalek, which somehow survived the Time War and fell back in time to Earth, damaged and alone.  The Doctor immediately tried to destroy it, but Van Statten, not wanting his most valuable item damaged, stops him.  But when Rose tries to reach out to the creature, touching it, the Dalek is able to user her DNA, charged with the energy of time travel, to restore its systems.  In seconds it breaks free of his chains, absorbs the power grid of the western United States, and downloads the Internet, searching for information about his people.  Finding nothing, it resorts to the primary command of all Daleks: exterminate.

Pretty much as soon as the new show was announced, questions came up as to when the Daleks would appear.  The show was shot into the stratosphere once the Daleks appeared, and they’ve been linked inextricably ever since.  The Daleks almost didn’t make it to the new series of Doctor Who, and it was all Steve Martin’s fault.  When he was to appear in the film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, he insisted they include a Dalek in a madcap scene full of old movie aliens.  He was a big fan of the series, and thought it’d be a nice tip of the hat.  Permission was asked, but the estate of Terry Nation, who controls the rights to the characters, was not.  This caused offense, so when the BBC asked to bring them back for the new series, the estate originally refused.  When Steve Martin heard about it, he wrote a personal letter to the estate explaining the situation, and apologizing personally.  This calmed everyone down, and the proper paperwork was signed to allow the characters to appear.  But for about a month, Robert Sherman was forced to work on a draft of the script with another alien.

The new Dalek was designed to match the height of Billie Piper, so she could look it in the eye.  Similarly, the New Paradigm Daleks were designed to match Karen Gillan’s eyeline.  But in a recent interview on the BBC website, Steven Moffat wonders that making them too big was a mistake. “They’re scarier when they’re wee”, he says.  The scene of the Dalek at the bottom of the stairs was a clear reference to the classic gag about not being able to climb stairs. But of course, in the original series, Daleks had found a fix for this long since. They had anti-gravity mats in Planet of the Daleks, but the big reveal in Remembrance of the Daleks as the Imperial Dalek slowly floats up the stairs was the scene that had fans laughing and squeeing.

Nicholas Briggs, the voice of the Daleks, got his start working on fan productions and the Big Finish audio dramas.  He’s also provided voices for the Cybermen, the Nestene and the Judoon.

Eccleston played the episode as positively bloodthirsty.  After several episodes of offering the aliens a chance to leave in peace, he does not hesitate to try to kill it.  His rage at the Dalek, and later at Van Statten is a sight to see.  Billie Piper has equally good scenes against the Dalek from the other side of the spectrum, trying to help the unstoppable tank who is trying to get the hang of feelings.  This could have been a perfect final Dalek adventure, but as you’ll see, they’re far from gone.

There are a lot of parallels between this episode and the first of this season, Asylum of the Daleks.  Both this Dalek and the tragic prisoner in Asylum are kept in chains, and both are more than a little conflicted by being a mix of human and Dalek.  Both are capable of amazing destruction all on their own, even as far below the surface of their respective planets.  The idea of human and Dalek hybrids has been a theme as far back as Evil of the Daleks, where The Doctor introduces a “Human Factor” into a number of Daleks to start a civil war between factions.

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REVIEW: The French Connection

french-connection-blu-2012-300-2506419The escapades of New York Police detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle was well known even in the early 1960s and attempts to tell his story fell through until he was captured in print in the best-selling Robin Cook book The French Connection. William Friedkin helmed a film adaptation that made Doyle the poster boy for brutal but effective policemen for the next decade and catapulted character actor Gene Hackman into leading man status. The French Connection is very much a product of the 1970s as filmmakers were shaking off the restrictions of the now-dead studio system and a new wave of filmmakers were stretching their muscles, trying things that were new and fresh in terms of structure, production, and performance.

As part of 20th Century Home Entertainment’s Signature collection of classics now on Blu-ray, this film is a reminder of just how good a movie can be when all the right elements fall into place. When first released in Blu-ray back in 2009, Friedkin was intimately involved in the transfer and touted its improvements. Overlaying a saturated color print over a black and white print, Friedkin obtained a washed out color palette that he felt properly represented his vision and while purists howled. This new version is also approved by both Friedkin and Cinematographer Owen Roizman and looks good, certainly better than the original DVD. The transfer captures Manhattan at a time when it teetered on the brink of grime and bankruptcy.

Why did this win the Best Picture Award in 1971? It’s a story of good versus evil, drugs, an immortal car chase and terrific performances by an ensemble that featured Roy Scheider as Doyle’s partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, ex-con-turned-coffee shop owner named Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), and French shipping executive Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), who is trying to brink 120 lbs. of heroin into the city. The core story is the attempt by Doyle and Russo to find out when the shipment will arrive and arresting Charnier, but getting the facts and then executing the arrest propels the movie with the tempo of a finely tuned race car. Doyle is the center, profane, racists, crude and mesmerizing.

Speaking of races, the car chase is a class as Doyle commandeered a civilian’s Pontiac LeMans and chased an elevated train carrying an escaping hitman. Shot in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, it followed the BMT West End Line (now the D and B lines) until the subway collided with another. The front mounted cameras was undercranked so the speed appeared higher than it was but was an adrenaline-pumping sequence that elevated the film to the upper echelon of action pics at the time.

The disc re-presents the 2001 DVD’s extras including two audio commentary tracks – one from Friedkin, the second with Hackman and Scheider. The deleted scenes are accompanied with Friedkin’s interesting commentary and there are two documentaries: the BBC-produced The Poughkeepsie Shuffle and Untold Stories of The French Connection – 30th Anniversary Special. New to Blu-ray are seven new pieces: Anatomy of a Chase; Hackman on Doyle; Friedkin and Grosso Remember the Real French Connection; Scene of the Crime; Color Timing The French Connection; Cop Jazz: The Music of Don Ellis, and Rogue Cop: The Noir Connection, with historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. Like others in the Signature series, it comes with a glossy booklet with tons of information on the film.

Tom Baker To Don The Scarf Once More?

  • News
  • July 10, 2012

If this is true, the hearts of well over a million Doctor Who fans worldwide are about to beat just a little bit faster.

According to Slice of Scifi, Tom Baker will once again put on his mile-long multicolored scarf to reprise his role as the fourth Doctor in a 50th anniversary episode of the show, teaming up with eleventh Doctor Matt Smith. This is according to “a source close to the show.” Hmmm…

When Baker left the show back in 1981 as the series’ longest-running lead (a record held to this day), he said he wanted to put the part behind him. He was the only living Doctor who didn’t return for the 20th anniversary story, The Five Doctors. However, recently Baker came back to the role in a number of original full-cast audio adventures produced both by the BBC and by Big Finish Audio. The BBC episodes were set in contemporary time, and all co-starred other Doctor Who actors who had worked with Baker.

Is this the truth or is some well-placed hoser just jerking us around? Personally, I wouldn’t put the latter past show runner Steven Moffat – that seems to fit his whimsical public personna. But doing so would pretty much ruin the chances of Baker’s return to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and the BBC has confirmed they, and Steven, have “big plans.”

I hate to say it, but… only time will tell.

 

 

 

SONAR ENTERTAINMENT AND ECOSSE FILMS JOIN FORCES TO DEVELOP AND PRODUCE NEW ACTION-ADVENTURE SERIES "QUATERMAIN"

  • News
  • April 2, 2012

Reports indicate that a new 10 part series is based on H. Rider Haggard’s classic swashbuckling adventures is on the way from Sonar Entertainment and Ecosse Films.

PRESS RELEASE:

CANNES, APRIL 2 – Sonar Entertainment Inc. and Ecosse Films have joined forces to develop and produce Quatermain. The new 10×60 action-adventure series is based on the classic swashbuckling stories by iconic Victorian-era author H. Rider Haggard. The announcement of the project, which is being introduced at Cannes during MIPTV, 2012, was made today by Stewart Till, CEO, Sonar Entertainment and Douglas Rae, Founder, Managing Director and Executive Producer, Ecosse Films. Rae will serve as executive producer on the project. Richard Kurti and Bev Doyle (Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal) are the writers.

Allan Quatermain, a rugged expedition leader based in the busy, wild port of Durban, has recently turned his back on the lucrative but bloodthirsty practice of game hunts. He is approached by Baron Henry, a wealthy German noble, and Clarice Good, the beautiful but disgraced daughter of a US Governor, to help them find Baron Henry’s brother, who’s been missing since embarking on a dangerous attempt to locate the lost diamond mines of King Solomon.

Quatermain resolves to take on the mission to pay for his young son’s schooling in London – a boy he hopes to give a life very different from his own. Using a rough-sketched map left behind, Quatermain and his African tracker Umbopa lead Baron Henry and Clarice set off across the scorching desert, where they encounter constant dangers and incredible, non-stop adventures along the way.

“Allan Quatermain is one of the greatest adventure heroes in all of literature. In the years since his introduction, he has subsequently inspired many hugely successful characters and franchises, including the Indiana Jones series,” said Till. “We are extremely excited about this opportunity to partner with Ecosse as we introduce Quatermain to a new generation and bring his timeless exploits into the 21st Century.”

“We are delighted to be developing this ambitious new international series with such an experienced and inspiring company as Sonar Entertainment,” added Rae. “Quatermain has huge potential for an international audience.”

About Ecosse Films
Ecosse Films is a multi award-winning company, specialising in high-quality drama for film and television, producing 11 films and over 300 hours of network television for BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Showtime, Starz Channel and WGBH. Credits include the hugely successful film Mrs Brown, starring Judi Dench, Charlotte Gray starring Cate Blanchett, Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy, Brideshead Revisited starring Emma Thompson and Michael Gambon, the global family hit The Water Horse and the BAFTA nominated film Nowhere Boy, the teenage biopic of John Lennon.
TV series include BBC1’s acclaimed long-running drama Monarch of the Glen and more recently the BBC 1 hit series Mistresses. Ecosse’s $50 million international drama, Camelot, a 10 part series for Starz Channel and Channel 4, stars Joseph Fiennes, Jamie Campbell Bower, Tamsin Egerton and Eva Green.

About Sonar Entertainment, Inc.
Sonar Entertainment, Inc. is a leading developer, producer and distributor of award-winning television series, mini-series and movies for the global television marketplace. Sonar owns rights to over 1,000 titles comprising more than 3,500 broadcast hours of programming. The company maintains strategic creative and licensing partnerships with producers and broadcasters throughout the world.

Jungle Jim’s African Adventure!

  • Uncategorized
  • October 30, 2011
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Treacherous mermaids in the Sargasso Sea, mysterious death in Accra, an alien race beneath Mombasa and Voudou sorcery in Haiti? All this and more inside….
Jungle Jim is a bimonthly African pulp fiction magazine featuring genre-based writing from all over Africa. This inaugural issue contains three stories and the first part (in a series) of The White Darkness – a real-life account of cult film-maker Richard Stanley’s extraordinary experiences in Haiti as recorded in his private diaries while filming a documentary on Voudou for the BBC.
Issues 1 – 5 are now available on Kindle through Amazon UK. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jungle-African-Pulp-Fiction-ebook/dp/B0055SW5NW/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1309464363&sr=8-10

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In the United States, you can purchase the Kindle edition for $2.99 at http://www.amazon.com/Jungle-African-Pulp-Fiction-ebook/dp/B0055SW5NW/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1320017518&sr=1-1.

The Jungle Jim editors are constantly looking for writers and illustrators to join their galactic quest. You can learn more about African Pulp Fiction by visiting Jungle Jim at http://www.junglejim.org/. You can also join them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pages/Jungle-Jim-Magazine/172831502768519.

CLASSIC PULP TODAY MAKING THE NEWS!

  • News
  • August 24, 2011

News reported by Joshua Reynolds, All Pulp Staffer

*PULP FICTION ON THE BBC!

bbc-5138172Starting August 20th on BBC Radio 4 Extra, the BBC presented readings of five stories from the classic era of pulp crime fiction, read by Peter Marinker!

Listen here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fy3lh

　

*19 NOCTURNE BOULEVARD PRESENTS…THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP!

19 Nocturne Boulevard: Your Address for Strange Stories

has just released an audio version of Lovecraft
’s pulp-tastic tale of body-swapping , “The Thing on the Doorstep”. Go give it a listen, then maybe cycle through the rest of the episodes…you won’t be disappointed!

Listen here: http://www.19nocturneboulevard.net/Episodes.htm

Direct link: http://traffic.libsyn.com/nineteennocturne/19Noc_Thing_on_the_Doorstep.mp3

　

*REH’S SPICY ADVENTURES UP FOR PRE-ORDER!

The Robert E. Howard Foundation is proud to present their newest collection of hard-to-find REH work, Spicy Adventures! Available now for pre-order, the collection contains eight full-length stories as well as odd bits and bobs of miscellanea as well as a kick-butt cover by Jim & Ruth Keegan! For information:

http://www.rehfoundation.org/2011/08/13/pre-order-spicy-adventures/

Outcasts

“This isn’t about humanity! This isn’t about the future!”

So said a member of the Outcasts cast late in the show’s abbreviated run and it’s a shame because a story set in the future should be about that very thing. Creator Ben Richards wrote earlier this year,

“The inspiration behind Outcasts was the desire to tell a pioneer story, and the only place you can do that really now is in space.

“I wanted to explore second chances, most fundamentally whether humanity is genetically hardwired to make the same mistakes again and again.

“The stories that kick start the series are intense, and hopefully moving, but the world view is never cynical or willfully pessimistic.”

In other words, he was hoping for the critical success of Battlestar Galactica but told stories more worthy of Space: 1999. The BBC series ran eight weeks earlier this year while it came to America in June to meet the same dismal critical reception. Now, BBC Video releases the complete series on a three-disc set.

Never heard of the show? That says a lot about how poorly received it was on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a serious-minded SF series, a counterpoint to the more over-the-top SF from England including Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Primeval. Sadly, it may have suffered more from self-importance than bad production.

Set in the middle of the 21st Century, mankind has ruined the Earth and its survivors have been coming in drips and drabs to the world of Carpathia, a mere five years’ travel distance. The remnants of humanity are trying to forge a new society but they all come with such baggage that fresh starts seem impossible. We join them ten years after the first colonists arrived and long after regular contact with the nuclear-devastated Earth was lost. A ship, perhaps the very last from Earth, arrives as we begin the series. We then see how life tries to work with the Protection and Security team keeping the peace while the Expeditionaries goes foraging for foods and medicines while studying their new home.

Richards wrote five of the eight episodes and may have had good intentions, but his internal story logic and execution left a lot to be desired. There’s a sprawling, attractive cast ill-served by their individual storylines and they never really gel as an ensemble. His talkative scripts rob the show of momentum and its slow pacing, reminiscent of 1999, doesn’t help.

His characters all feel like ones we’ve seen before, in far better science fiction concepts. There’s the President (Liam Cunningham), the madman (Jamie Bamber), the better former VP (Eric Maibus), the man with a secret past (Daniel Mays), and so on. It’s an international group, trying to reflect humanity so there’s Maibus the American, Bamber the Brit, and the South African (busty model Jeanné Kietzmann). If only we grew to care about them.

About the freshest element in the series is the notion of the Advanced Cultivars, artificially created humans designed to survive in the alien environment and blamed for unleashing a virus that killed many of the colony’s children, threatening the humans’ future.

The thing is, each episode should be advancing stories and themes but there are a lot of retreads and flashbacks and no real sense that the society is settling in. Still, there’s something, some quality to each episode that keeps you watching, keeps you hoping things get better. By the sixth episode, things feel like they are finally coming together then the subsequent episode spins its wheels and the final episode ends on a less-than-compelling cliffhanger. One that will never be resolved because the ratings dropped so dramatically that the series was yanked from its high profile time slot after five airings and dumped on late Sunday nights when good British telly watchers had gone to sleep. The day after the finale aired, the BBC announced the show’s cancellation.

The episodes look fine in high definition and there was at least some interesting thought into the colonization of this alien world that is as bleak as the stories told on its surface. One of the set’s extras if a set tour for Forthaven, which details the thinking.  The other is “Reach to the Stars”, a featurette that has cast and crew try to convince you they’re doing something unique and wonderful.

You can judge for yourself whether this was a missed opportunity or hidden gem. Either way, these eight installments are all you’re ever going to see of this world and its dreary inhabitants.

BULLDOG DRUMMOND ON THE BBC!

  • News
  • August 10, 2011

Sapper’s BULLDOG DRUMMOND, ex-military man turned adventurer, is coming to BBC Radio on Tuesday, August 9th 2011. An adventure in six parts, read by Julian Rhind-Tutt, the episodes will air in chronological order all week, and will be available on BBC iPlayer for those of you unlucky enough not to be British.

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