Ridiculous News Round-Up

This is going to be another decent length blog post, as I catch up on several small stories that I felt all deserved to be looked at through the eyes of Brawny, beginning with an idiot, moving through some more idiots, and ending with... well, you'll have to read all the way to the end to find out won't you! (But I wouldn't rule out it being more idiots...)

So apparently there's an American Professor called Sidney Perkowitz has been making suggestions to Hollywood. He says that he is "... not offended if they make one big scientific blunder in a given film... But after that I would like things developed in a coherent way."

Yeah. Because that's the problem with most Hollywood films today. The science is wrong. Never mind all the re-makes, re-imaginings, returns and re-boots populating the release schedules (and yes, I know a better word for return would have been sequel, but then I'd have lost the rhythm of the writing using the prefix 're' in each word in the list. So there.) if we get the science right then that's the way forward.

What an idiot.

Whats worse is when you keep reading through the article, the films he cites are Starship Troopers, The Core, and Angels and Demons. His issue with the Core is fairly reasonable from a scientific point of view (although I still don't think it should stop people from making such films), as it's about the geology of the earth. With Angels and Demons he bemoans the use of a small battery powered forcefield to keep safe an anti-matter bomb. Would he have been happier, one wonders, if they had just made up a new name for the bomb, so that it didn't relate to any scientific reality?

But the one that bugs me the most is "Perkowitz said he liked Starship Troopers, but criticised its giant insects, saying if you scaled up a real bug to that size it would collapse under its own weight." Yes, this is probably true. But bear in mind that the insects in Starship Troopers are not earth bugs, they are ALIENS! With a physiology that no-one knows about! SO IT DOESN'T MATTER!! Talk about picking on a pointless reason for films being bad nowadays.

Oh and the other thing that made me laugh hysterically. This man who is suggesting films and TV should be more scientifically realistic has apparently had an impact as the article states "the exchange has advised on the Watchmen movie and the TV series, Heroes."

Let's for a moment ignore the bad grammar, wondering how an exchange can have advised on something, and just laugh outright at the concept that Heroes obeys any form of scientific law. Other than the law of diminishing returns....

In other recent news, the Tories got in trouble for misplacing a decimal point, and therefore proudly announcing that 54% of teenagers in deprived areas are pregnant. 54%. That's more than half. I live in a deprived area, and work in an all-girls school, and if half of them are pregnant, then they're hiding it very well! What makes me laugh more is that this error wasn't someone reading it in a speech, it was published. Which means whoever proof read the report thought that it was an accurate representation of the truth... Out of touch much?

Talking of idiotic teenagers (well we weren't, we were talking about idiotic Tories believing that all teenagers are idiots, but it seemed like a good link at the time) there's a scandal going on in Germany at the moment around the teenage author Helene Hegemann. Apparently, her cult teen bestseller Axolotl Roadkill contains passages "that are plainly lifted wholesale from another novel, Strobo". However, the writer of the Guardian news article (Robert McCrum) seems to think that she "a child of the internet age, simply does not understand, or recognise, the charge of plagiarism. To her, coming from the cut-and-paste world of blogs and Facebook, what she's done is no more than "mixing"

Um, OK... except I come from the cut and paste world of blogs and Facebook, and I understand right from wrong... I'm not passing judgement because I haven't read either book (as I don't read German. I can say the word for Pedestrian Zone and claim to be a doughnut, but that's as far as my German education in year 9 went) but if the plagiarism is as obvious as Mr McCrum states, then she deserves to be brought up on whatever charges are suitable. And don't say she didn't know it was wrong, I bet she did. (Oh look at that, I said I wasn't going to judge, and now I'm being judgemental. Oh well, that's my right as an internet blogger, I can criticise anything I want, and who will stop me? No-one!! Hahahahahahahahah..... (Continues evil laugh for a while, realises I am alone, and stops, sheepishly) )

And on a final, slightly lighter hearted note, I watched the first episode of The Bubble on BBC iPlayer the other day, and while it was a perfectly respectable time-wasting show (made all the funnier this week by having the brilliant Reginald D Hunter on it), there was a point in it that made me laugh.

The Bubble (for those of you who don't know) is basically a comedy show where they lock three guests away for the week so they don't see the news, and then they show them various news reports and newspaper headlines and the guests have to guess which are real and which are made up. So far, so humorous (I particularly liked the news article about introducing a gay character into Thomas the Tank Engine. That's right, a gay engine. That was made up, but still amusing) . However, this BBC-produced, BBC-aired show has been told that they cannot use any BBC reporters to create the fake news reports, because the BBC don't want to undermine them.

So the news reports on this BBC show are being provided by their direct competition, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News.

Seriously, could the BBC be any stupider?

Angry Heroes Rant - SPOILERS!!

OK, I warned you in the title... this is angry, ranty and very spoiler-heavy, so if you don't like this, I suggest you back away quietly...

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I mean it. Don't read on if you don't want to know...

I just watched Heroes Episode 16 (It's called Episode 15 on screen, because they counted the two hour premiere as one episode.. so maybe it's episode 15. This doesn't really bother me.) It's the one that aired in the US yesterday. And I would just like to say that the last ten minutes of it have just completely RUINED all the good that the episode did.

Started watching it, it's a pretty average episode, but it picks up. Sylar and Claire actually have some form of interesting conversation, Mohinder (who has been missing for about 11 of the previous episodes) decides to fuck off back to India again (which is always a good thing), and Hiro becomes the defendant in a wierd, tumor-based hallucinatiory trial, where he is tried for using his powers for his own personal gain.

By far the best thing in this episode is the return of Adam Monroe (granted, as a figment of Hiro's imagination, but anyway...) who gets all the best lines, and reminds me of why he was the only thing worth watching in Season Two. His best being, while Hiro is defending his decisions "Objection your honour, he's reciting the opening to Quantum Leap"..."

Sadly, we also get a plot about Samuel and his lost love, Vanessa, which takes us exactly nowhere new, because she leaves him at the end of the episode, so there's been bugger all in the way of development between that and the end of the previous episode, where she wants to go home.

But what is this ending that's got you so angry? I hear you ask...

Well...

Hiro, after being found guilty of using his power for personal gain, walks down a corridor towards a white light. Then he gets challenged to sword fight Adam. Then he wins. (Bear in mind that this is all IN HIS OWN HEAD). Then his mother appears, he says he's ready to go, she says "There are some things more important than science, like destiny", and cures his INOPERABLE brain tumour with a kiss.

Yes, that's right. A kiss from a figment of his imagination has cured his inoperable brain tumor.

Even for Heroes, who I know are reluctant to actually kill anyone, that's a new low.

Oh, and now Samuel's really angry and has made a town collapse (because Vanessa doesn't want him) and Sylar has turned up at Matt Parkman's house for no reason other than they need to bring Matt Parkman back into the story.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. And I wish I could say I would have no part in any more of the season, but I know I'll watch it. Just to see if it can get better. Or alternatively, to see if it gets even worse .... I just hope there aren't many episodes left...

Television - A Poor Man's Gold

In case you didn't know, I like to watch quite a lot of TV, both home-grown (Dr Who, Torchwood and many many comedy programs) and imported (Lost, Chuck and a lot of other US episodic drama), and I watch some of them on actual TV, many more via DVD, iPlayer and some .... other internet methods.

And recently, with the start of the new US TV Season, I've been going back to old favourites, and I also thought I'd try a new series, Flash Forward, which is currently airing here on the cultural wilderness known as Five. (On reflection, I'm being too hard on the poor channel, it does occasionally show good things - the current exception to it's "if it's not a procedural or a film, it has to be a rubbish documentary" rule is Ross Noble's Australian Trip, which IS a documentary, but not one of their usual ones with titles such as "The Giraffe that taught English as a Second Language in an obscure Antarctican Village", or "My Mother, the Top Hat". Whoops, I appear to have digressed a little, back to the point)



So, having sat through a few Flash Forward episodes, I'm sure you are all wondering what I thought of it. Is it, as some say, the new Lost?

Well no. Because there's no island, polar bear, obscure scientific research organisation or (so far anyway) Jim from Neighbours. (But it probably won't be long, he does turn up in just about every U.S. Drama Series at some point). But it's also not that because, unlike Lost, which started with an event that was unexplained, and has at every turn thrown up new events to be explained, Flash Forward's event was documented. And that is (for now, anyway) the ballgame. The event happened, this is the aftermath.

Except.... it just doesn't grip me. I tried my best, I sat through all the standard character types, assuming that at least one of them would develop, or that the plot might take an interesting turn, but I ended up actively switching off mid-way through episode 3 (I think), because I had completely stopped paying attention. I have no desire to watch it, and unless anyone that I know tells me that it gets better (as many people did with Heroes when I originally gave up a similar number of episodes in), then I probably won't give it a second shot. Although I will want to know the explanation behind the event and, more importantly, if it gets re-comissioned for a second season, I will want to know how they're going to continue as they will have passed the flash forward date by that point...

So for the moment, that's off my schedule. Which leaves me down to just two US shows that I am regularly watching as soon as I can after they air (being as Lost and Chuck don't re-start till after Christmas), one of which is the aforementioned Heroes.



Heroes and I have a intricately weaved past. Every time I try to give up on it, something happens to pull me back in. In the first season I watched a few episodes, and gave up until, towards the end of the season, a friend advised me to watch, and I did, watching the vast majority of season one in one sitting. At which point I grew excited for the finale, and then disappointed when I actually saw it. Still, a show that good must get better in Season Two, right?

Wrong. Season Two was just messy, lazy, and to be honest, only had enough plot (yes, I said plot, people travelling to see someone else for 8 episodes is NOT plot!) for about 4 or 5 episodes, and introduced some of the most annoying characters. Ever.

So Season Three? Tim Kring, creator, stated they'd learnt from the mess of Season Two, and had a new plan...and it sort of worked. In bits. But we got ANOTHER dystopian future (the third in three seasons) that needed to be stopped, we got characters completely changing their minds on things just for the sake of the plot, we got convulted Time Travel plots, Ali Larter playing a different crazy blond woman, Peter and Sylar both becoming way too powerful.... And Nathan being an ass. As always.

And I'm now a few episodes into Season Four, and I still don't know whether I want to stick with it. Of course, I will, because I'm hooked. And I have to know what happens. And its almost as if the writers know that, and are just twisting us along. For every good moment (Peter/HRG team-ups and Matt/Sylar mind battles), we get multiple bad ones (Sylar with Amnesia, A random selection of carnival villains, ANOTHER potential love interest for Peter (who has a frankly useless power), HRG moping, Claire entering a bisexual relationship (and that wasn't done for ratings at all was it??) and Angela Petrelli - just generally being as useless as she has been for three years). But this is where Heroes has got me, and Flash Forward hasn't. I cared about them at the start. And I'll therefore take all the crap, just to see how it ends. But Flash Forward? I'll just read about what happened.

"But Brawny, what's the other show you are regularly watching?" I hear you all yell. (Well I don't. But I can imagine that might be what you're yelling. Or at least that you might be gently mumbling under your breath as you peruse this blog. Or maybe you don't care. Well stuff it. It's my blog, and I'll tell you). It is, of course, the wonder that is House M.D.


By all rights I shouldn't particularly like this show. I'm a big fan of high-concept TV, which it isn't. I'm a big fan of sci-fi, which it isn't. And I usually can't stand procedural shows. Which it is. But it's just so damn good. Hugh Laurie is outstanding, and flanked by a superb support cast. And the writing is good, and funny. And it breaks with procedure JUST enough that it feels different, and you do often feel that an episode could not follow the schedule of
Mysterious illness - Ideas - Patient gets worse - More Ideas - Patient nearly dies - House has random thought that he connects to Patient - Patient saved - Interspersed with a subplot either involving Cuddy or Wilson, depending on who is less involved in the actual medical case.
And this season particularly (Season 6) has been outstanding, causing genuine changes in the Status Quo, (and yes, I'm aware I've capitalised that as if it was the band, but I like it. And as I pointed out in an earlier set of brackets, it's my blog. So if you don't like it, tough!) and I have no knowledge whether they are permanent changes, but it's a show that's never been afraid to do that before, so who knows?

To conclude : Watch House - Avoid Flash Forward - Put up with Heroes.