Sherlock October 17, 2010
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There’s a new TV show that started showing on Channel 7 tonight called Sherlock. The premise is it’s modern day London, but we have the familiar characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. I really enjoyed the first episode. Though I partially spoilt it for myself because every 5 mins something happened that reminded me of another TV program or film!!!
- Lead guy, brilliant deductions, grumpy, and no friends…. reminds me of Dr House
- For some reason Martin Freeman kept reminding me of Bob Mortimer, and once that happened I couldn’t help but think of that dodgy remake of Randall & Hopkirk Deceased
- The whole taxi cab serial killer thing … wasn’t that an underlying subplot for a whole series in CSI:NY?
- The final 2 pills scene… reminded me of that bit in The Princess Bride where Wesley is taking on The Sicilian in the iocane poisoned chalice test. I kept expecting the cabby to start doing The Sicilian’s monologue of deduction!!
- Watson sniper shooting across the courtyard really reminded me of the film The Wanted (though no bullet bending required!!)
Vincent & the Doctor June 20, 2010
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Well it’s been ages since I last blogged about Doctor Who. We’ve got into a bit of a tradition now. Come back from church and put the heater on in the lounge. Cook and have dinner. Then watch Doctor Who on the big screen in the lounge whilst the dishwasher is going.
This week’s Doctor Who was great. I wasn’t that keen on the preceding double episode with the silurians – especially at the end with Rory getting killed. Yeah you’ve only got 1 minute to stop the drill exploding the place so let’s fanny about wasting time. Considering that they are obviously in a hurry and the crack is appearing seemingly wherever they go what’s the need to stop and reach in now? It was one of those “shouting at the screen” rage moments for me 
Anyway, I’ve digressed. I just wanted to blog about how great tonight’s episode was. Vincent and the Doctor was witty, dramatic and rather beautiful. I even liked the smaltzy starry night bit. The accents were really peculiar – west country serving wenches and Scottish sounding Van Gogh (though I guess the dig at the similar accents with Amy and being from Holland must have been the TARDIS translating for Amy???). I also wondered why the Doctor would allow Van Gogh to see his life’s effect on the future and hoping that he wouldn’t kill himself. Surely meddling with his life would cause some kind of knock on effect. The remark about haystacks was hilarious (lately I’ve been reading this book about Kandinsky and how he just couldn’t “see” the haystack and that spurred him into the art world himself).
Doctor Who – Victory of the Daleks May 2, 2010
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Tonight we watched Victory of the Daleks. I really didn’t enjoy this episode at all. It felt like just another old excuse to dig/wheel those ole Daleks out. As the Doctor said himself he’s always defeating them. They’re as annoying as a coldsore that just keeps coming back!! The beginning was looking good – interesting mix of Dalek “inserted” into history…. oh hang on this seems familiar. Oh yes just like Daleks in Manhattan. Unfortunately once the Daleks got their testimony the whole episode descended into farce and involved lots of shouting at the screen in our household. It’s like those James Bond films – why don’t they just kill him when they have the chance instead of thinking of elaborate stalemates etc. Pah – Daleks are killing machines?? So many times the Doctor is in their sights and they don’t even fire off a shot. Let’s see, there’s 5 new hypercolourglobalmegamart Daleks and there’s 3 Dalek abominations + 1 Doctor (that’s 4 Daleks with an efficient shot each, 1 Dalek to set off the Oblivion bomb thing and they’re back on their path of universe domination faster than they can smoke a kipper before breakfast!!?!!). Speaking about the new colours too – was it just me or when they all lined up I thought the BBC had accidentally started playing “Over the Rainbow” promos over Doctor Who again? Oh look, there’s the orange DorothyDalek, there’s the one in blue (oh she’s my favourite) – I half expected them to burst into a rowsing rendition of If My Friend’s Could See Me Now.
Also the whole lighting up London ultimatum made no sense when they suddenly decided “oh, we forgot, yes we are killing machines and we’ll put the lights on for a bit in a piddly City on piddly old Earth” rather than “why don’t we set our oblivion continuum time bomb thing and time shift outta here to go about our bread-and-butter universe destruction”!!!
Oh dear I seem to have turned myself into the ranting Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons (… worst episode ever! hee hee)!! I do have these strange deathmatch daydreams occasionally; daleks~v~ewoks, daleks~v~bender, daleks~v~vogons reciting poetry (hey bit of wiki trivia, the actor Ian McNeice who played Churchill in tonight’s episode was in fact the Vogon Fleet Commander in the latest HHGTTG film), oh dear I appear to have geeked myself out.
Glee is Back!! April 29, 2010
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Yay – Glee (Season 1 – vol 2) finally started on Channel 10 tonight. I think we’re now 2-3 weeks behind the US show (in vol 1 I’m sure we were only 1 week). I’m not sure what has happened to their voices (or maybe I’m just noticing more) but they’re sounding more “tweaked”. Last year I only really noticed it whenever Finn sang as it was such a comparison between his tweaked voice and Rachel’s not so tweaked – even Rachel’s voice seemed higher and tweaky-squeaky (like they do in High School Musical). I don’t know why they would do that as her voice is lovely already. Nevertheless I still love it (I know I’m so sad). I thought the character Jesse St James reminded me of someone and eventually decided he looked a little like Kenickie in the film version of Grease. Idina Menzel’s addition to the cast is interesting (I wonder if she will actually be singing at some point and utilising her broadway credentials) – the fan forums are so correct when they say Lea Michele looks like she could be her daughter. I do wonder if the writers will give in to popular demand and we’ll discover she’s Rachel’s biological mother at the end of the series. Looking forward to the Madonna episode next.
Bit of a disaster though for me as now Thursday nights are going a bit square eyed as there’s Glee at 8, SVU at 9 followed by Medium at 10 (though most times I don’t see the ending as I’ve dozed off already). Thank goodness I can actually get on with ironing clothes or something else at the same time or I could easily lose those 3 hrs of my mundane life each week.
Watching UK TV April 25, 2010
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Tonight it was UK TV overload for us!! We’ll admit that yes we are sci-fi geeks. After going to evening service at church we rushed back to enjoy an evening of telly on the BIIIG screen (90″ diagonal) for a change (rather than the 42″ we usually watch). This was mostly because hubby wanted to watch Doctor Who in HD. First up an hour of Merlin. We’re only just getting the second series now (even though it screened in the UK last year and for some reason in 2009 Oz had Merlin season 1 screened 2x in a row). Then quick switch over the ABC for Doctor Who. The new season (1/5/???) started last week so we got Beast from Below tonight (which was a bit creepy with the twisty head things). Am quite enjoying the new reboot. It was always going to be compared to the previous incarnation and assistants but just watching it as it comes it’s still Doctor Who in essence and in some ways reminds me of the Doctor Who episodes of my childhood (I can’t quite put my finger on what it is that makes me think that though).
I really can’t be bothered with most UK TV though so haven’t tried using internet based/fake proxy methods of getting Eastenders or whatever else. I do have a secret vice though …. every Monday morning I look on youtube for MissAVUK channel and watch Over the Rainbow (oh dear I just know it’s twosh but I can’t help but keep watching it each week).
Thurs we get Glee end of season 1 too. Oh dear – my eyes are going square!!
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince July 22, 2009
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It was our 3rd wedding anniversary today. Wow – 3 whole years. I’m ashamed to say I don’t actually remember what we did on the other 2 anniversaries. I’m pretty sure in 2007 we probably went out for dinner and last year I was the size of a balloon awaiting the arrival of Evie 3 days later. We decided that we’d drag my brother in to babysit the squeakface (Evie) whilst we went out for dinner and a cinema date. It was boiling today (well for a Winter’s day it was 23deg) and we decided rather than go out for a meal it would be lovely to have a BBQ at home. Went out to get some food for the barbie and when we got home it was grey outside. By the time we BBQd it was actually raining so hubby was doing it on the veranda!
We pre-booked our tickets online for the Greater Union at Hurstville. A few weeks ago we got a flyer to join the Cinebuzz Club in the post and it included a code to get all movies for $10 (apart from Fri/Sat nights) so we utilised our cards and also got to pick our seats for a $1 booking fee online. We went to see the latest Harry Potter installment. It was really dark in tone and although I had read the book I kept wondering what was going to happen. In my mind the last 2 books pretty much seemed to blur into one story and I kept thinking things were going to happen that didn’t. Also Slughorn was nothing like I had imagined him to be – I had thought he was older and more rotund for some reason. It seemed rather depressing and everything was in either sepia or a greyish-blue tone. I wasn’t sure if I enjoyed the teenage romance bits or not. They were awfully bleurghsome, but they did provide relief from the doom and gloom – likewise the dark parts of the story provided relief from all the Won Won, dodgy looking at the floor parts. The other thing I was surprised with is Emma Watson (Hermione) she was far less hammy than in the previous movies (they showed them in order on telly over the last 2 weeks). Considering the book and movie is called Half Blood Prince, there was actually very little about it in the movie other than the inscription in the book and the bit at the end with Snape. I can’t quite remember, but I thought that this book had more about Tom Riddle’s beginnings (i.e. his parents, Gaunts etc). Malfoy’s character was much better too, less Dick Dastardly snarling/grimacing and more to him. Even Gollum and his relatives appeared for a cameo (ha ha). Overall I enjoyed the film and would recommend it.
Soniq QPi600B DVD Player June 23, 2009
Posted by graciek in Computing, Life in General, Television.Tags: soniq QPi600b
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So, our 11 month old has shown us her supreme technology skills by knackering up our old Wharfdale DVD player (it was brought over from the UK and had a DVD recorder and freeview integrated – but neither were useful in Oz anyway). She’s obviously seen those testing machines at Ikea and decided to repetitively test the drawer open/close mechanism. So hubby popped to JB Hifi in search of something fairly el cheapo off-the-shelf with the best specs he could find We ended up with the Soniq QPI600B DVD player at just a smidge over $80. It has HDMI and also a nifty iPod dock that pops out at the front (hmm not sure this is a good feature or not with the “DVD Destructo” around). Annoyingly the DVD was locked to region 4 – rubbish if all your DVDs are UK region 2!! Hubby couldn’t find a hack online for unlocking it and was going to take it back to the shop. I however said let’s just try a few off the internet, and yay, one of them worked. So if you’ve bought one that needs to be unlocked here’s the instructions:
Switch on the unit
Open tray
Press 5168
Change the region code to “Test 0″
Exit
Hubby is delighted as now he can watch his Sharpe DVD marathon!!
Star Trek @ IMAX June 6, 2009
Posted by graciek in Going Out, Life in General, Sydney, Television.Tags: IMAX, star trek
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Went to Sydney IMAX to watch the new Star Trek. It was bloody fantastic. Later doing our sums and conversions we worked out we were watching on a screen 120ft wide or ~1200 inch telly!! At first it was a bit strange as I found myself actually having to move my head around to see what was going on. Some of the space scenes where you marvel at the magnitude of the vista were spectacular. Being at the IMAX meant we also got very HD close ups and in particular we noticed Chris Pine/Kirk was a bit stubbly and spotty on his neck ha ha!! I’m no Trekkie but I have watched a few of them and did enjoy this latest one (I have vivid memories or should be nightmares of watching Wrath of Khan when I was about 10 and being scared to put my cycle helmet on). It was fun playing guess the crew member when they appeared on screen and comparing them to my memories of the earlier incarnations in real time (or later incarnations in Star Trek history). The new style transporting was kinda cool too – reminded me another show where they had nanobots repairing something (can’t remember what that show was). It cost $20 to watch it at the IMAX (with a Sydney Guide 20% voucher) and $16 at our local normal cinema. It was def worth the extra 4 bucks to see it in larger scale.
Since when did Bunnings sell TVs? April 5, 2009
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Hubby went out to Bunnings (big DIY place) today to get some stuff to fix the downstairs laundry sink leak. He came back 2 hrs later with a 42″ plasma TV. He got it for our new house’s rumpus. Actually it was on offer at KMart for $799 and is the Telefunken one. I’d say the picture quality wasn’t particularly high end and the edges were a little blurry when viewed from right in front of the telly. But seeing as it’s going in a room where the sofa is 4m away from the TV it’s gonna be fine. Mostly it’s for everyday telly watching (not DVDs, cinema experience) and probably playing Wii (which isn’t particularly high resolution anyway). The brightness and contrast are good though as we managed to watch in bright daylight without having to close curtains or strategically position chairs/coats etc For just shy of AU$800 it’s pretty good. Half the time it’ll prob just end up having “In the Night Garden” on it when Evie works out how to work the DVD player. She’s 8 months old and she’s already worked out how to open the “secret” control panel of her uncle’s VHS player. She’s an engineer always taking things apart (just like her Mummy) ;
News in Australia January 21, 2009
Posted by graciek in Australia, Life in General, Musings, Television.add a comment
Well seeing as today is consumed pretty much by the inauguration of Barack Obama in the US I thought I might blog about the state of the news in Oz. The news seems to be pretty dire here. No not bad news, but the lack of topics really. A glance on most paper’s front covers on a normal day would be full of pictures of sportsmen and women. It’s also very optimistic – not much about the economy other than specific stories of hard luck businessmen. Such a change from the UK newspapers 6 months ago where it was all doom and gloom! I’m also finding it hard to not laugh when you read some stories about some poor sod who got “bashed” – yes they do actually print it as “bashed” rather than “assaulted”. In fact the International news is pretty awful too, the whole of the Gaza issues were summarised in 3 sentences in a box about 2inches high near the bottom of the page. Well, at least it made it to the news! Today’s newspapers are full of the Inauguration which goes to prove that things do actually occur outside of Australia.
Equally the TV news is terrible too – so much sport and entertainment. In fact telly is a bit naff here in general – feels a bit like watching Channel 5 (proliferation of US sitcoms/shows). Well that should encourage me to be not so much of a couch potato , except it’s so bloody hot outside I can’t bear to spend more than 15 mins in the sunlight (keeeeergh – vampire noises). Neighbours starts next week – that will be entertaining as it will be like watching a movie (albeit a dodgy soap opera) but missing out the middle section.
