Updates

So, I checked up on Glee. The new episodes will be shown on E4 on Mondays, if I recall correctly, then the following Sunday on Channel 4. After that, they'll be uploaded to 4oD, where I'll be watching them, since I work Monday and Sunday nights.

Being Human, on the other hand, will be up on the BBC iPlayer immediately, and the first episode of the second series is up now.

I'm ashamed to say that I've yet to use my shiny Unlimited Card. Admittedly, I don't have it yet, but I could use the code on the email they sent me if I really wanted to. To be quite honest, I don't fancy going out in the snow unless I have to. I'm sure I'll make up for it once my bus pass kicks in, on the 1st of February. I'm really looking forward to Disney's latest, The Princess and the Frog. That's out on the 5th of February in the UK, and you can see the official trailer here. I grew up on Disney films, and I much prefer the traditional style to Pixars.

Perhaps unusually, I have no interest in Avatar. I'll watch it on DVD. I feel happier about having to sit still for over two hours if I have control of the pause button.

TV Shows!

I don't usually watch programs on TV. I prefer to rent the DVDs, and watch every single episode in one long marathon. It's been a while since I've felt the anticipation of waiting for a new episode every week.

The last time was with the repeats of the first series of Being Human on BBC1. I'd missed the first showing on BBC3 (in my bedroom I can only get the five main channels - I'm thinking of getting Sky Plus in here soon, if I can afford it), so it was pure luck that I spotted the description. I don't recall exactly what it said, but the show's about a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a house. How can that possibly fail to be interesting?

Being Human is slightly more dramatic than you might expect just from that description, but it also has a hilarious kind of gallows humour, and really likeable characters. The three leads are played by Lenora Critchlow, who played Sugar in Sugar Rush, Aiden Turner, who appears in The Tudors and Desperate Romantics, and Russell Tovey, who starred in The History Boys. I'm very much looking forward to the second series, which starts on BBC3 this Sunday, the 10th, at 9:30pm. I'm hoping they put it up on the iPlayer right away, since I'll be at work then.



Another show I'm going to miss is Glee, which starts this Monday at 9pm on E4. The pilot's already up on 4oD, so I'm praying the other episodes go up too. It reminded me of nothing so much as a cross between High School Musical and Teachers, only much better than either. I am enthralled.

You can see a trailer here.

Good Times Are Here Again

I have another Unlimited Card. The price has gone up a bit - it's now £13.50 a month, with an extra £1.30 charge for 3D films - but, getting back into my old habits should mean that, once again, they'll be losing out on this deal.

When you get an Unlimited card, you're contracted to keep it for a year. You can choose to pay monthly (£13.50, as I said), or annually (£162). To save you doing the maths yourself, I'll just point out that 162/12 = 13.5. There's no difference in price, however you pay.

This may not be the best time to get a card - I'm just catching the tale end of the Christmas releases, and summer isn't for a while - but it's now that I feel like watching films. Two or three a month and it will easily pay for itself, and I love the freedom of just popping in on my way past, and seeing if there's anything on.

You can apply for an Unlimited card here, if I've caught your interest.

Because I like statistics, I'm going to keep track of what I use it for in the table below. I may put each month in a separate post, I may not. We'll see.

'Number' is just to keep track of how many I see, 'Name' is the name of the film, 'rating' is the (BBFC) classification, 'date watched' and 'directed by' speaks for itself (one would hope), and 'price' is the price I would have paid without the card.

January

Number	Name of Film	Rating	Date Watched	Directed by;	Price
1	Sherlock Holmes	12A	13/1/2010	Guy Ritchie	£6.10
2	Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel	U	21/1/2010	Betty Thomas	£4.30
3	Up in the Air	15	27/1/2010	Jason Reitman	£4.30
4	Edge of Darkness	15	31/10/2010	Martin Campbell	£6.50

..so, I'm £7.70 up. Score.

17 Again and Sherlock Holmes

17 Again is about as cliched as you might expect. And I still loved it.

17 Again is about a man who, having given up his chance at a scholarship in a sudden decision to run after his (just revealed to be) pregnant girlfriend, in what is, incidentally, an extremely well-played and directed scene, then holds it over her head for the next twenty years.

Seriously though, that scene's great. It assumes that the audience has seen the trailer, and so doesn't fuck about spelling out things we already know. It just jumps right in there, and it's just so clean and edgy...

In some ways, that scene could have been the end of another kind of film - and this is what happens after happy-ever-after. 37-year-old Mike O'Donnel, as played by Matthew Perry, is disappointed and miserable in his life, and he blames his wife for that. It's no wonder she's divorcing him.

His transformation back into a teenager is one of the most cliched things I've ever seen (complete with the wise old janitor), but the first meeting with his ex-best friend was funny, original and a bit insane (there was an axe and some lightsabers. It was awesome).

So far, I've only seen Zac Efron as Troy Bolton, the basketball-playing male lead of High School Musical. This role is, in some ways quite a departure from Disney. He says "douche" for a start. And his hair isn't stupid (at least, not until it gets slicked down again). Matthew Perry, I'm more familiar with as Chandler Bing.

Alright, I'll be honest here. I started writing this review about six months ago (maybe longer - how long has this film been out?), and I'd gotten as far as what's written above...and then I stopped. For no apparent reason.

I did get 17 Again on DVD for my birthday. The film could be described as, in many ways, bits of awesome interspered with plot. This is not a bad thing. That isn't to say that it isn't sweet and touching (it is). Just that light sabers, swords, basketballs and the word 'pwned' makes everything better. Everything.

Incidentally, I might be going to see Sherlock Holmes in a few weeks - it depends if Mattie gets his act together or not. You can view the trailer for it here.

I'm intrigued. I like the things they've included, like the boxing - canonically, Holmes is quite a good amateur boxer - and references to violin-playing at 3am. It's clear that someone involved has read the originals, and that's a start. I can live with the steampunk victorian streets, too. They're very shiny. There seems to be quite a lot of action in this, and while Holmes was quite fit, I seem to recall that he was rarely involved in direct fights. More often he was running away.

This brings me to Irene Adler. Although I do love Rachel McAdams, as I recall, Adler was a woman Holmes deeply respected because, yes, she did get the better of him. They certainly never kissed. Holmes was asexual. If they had to include a love story, why not Watson's? I found the description of how he met and married his first wife quite romantic, personally.

Speaking of Watson, Jude Law doesn't look like him. I realise that I may well be thinking of film portrayals of Watson, rather than the actual canon, so I'll let that one go. I'm also willing to give Robert Downey Jr a chance. The man is a fine actor, and he has much of the voice and manner of Holmes 'right' to my mind, even though I always pictured him as being rather thinner and better shaved.

I wonder if they're going to include the cocaine abuse, the shooting practice at the walls of their flat, or that time Holmes decided to beat up a corpse?

Wife Swap and Beauty

So, today I'm watching Wife Swap USA on channel 4.

This time, one family consists of a self-proclaimed "short, fat" motorcycling rocker, with a tall blonde wife. His wife, Gloria, does all the work in the house. She says at the beginning that she entered the program because she wants her husband and son to appreciate her more. Later, she criticises her current husband, by saying that real men let women take care of him. She insists on taking on her previous role as house-slave.

Her husband constantly proclaims himself to be 'the King'. To him, his wife is a status symbol - he likes having the tallest, sexiest blonde on his arm. She's had a breast enlargement, and a tummy tuck, and does all the housework - and she does all the housework - wearing weights on her feet.

Their child, who is nine, spends up to five hours a day playing videogames. Generally, he seems to be a good kid. He's polite, and quite intelligent. He knows that too, and comes across as quite arrogant. The way he expresses his anger is very disturbing. He wants people to "burn", for annoying him. He's extremely offended by anyone who makes him do anything he doesn't want, and despises them for it. He says he has no objection to hard work, but wonders why he would want to do anything nice for someone who "tortures" him.

Later in the show, the swapped-wife, Jill, has him take part in a debate, over whether videogames or chores are more useful. He handled himself very well there, considering he was debating with people who are older. However, what struck me the most was the way his dad was looking at him as he talked.

This family does love each other. Gloria isn't classically beautiful. She's tall, with large breasts, and she's quite slim. However, the blonde dye has made her hair look very dry, and the make-up ages her. When she's forced to remove it, she comments on how she feels unprotected and unattractive.

I found that quite sad. There's more than one way to be attractive. You can be sexy, pretty, cute, beautiful...perhaps not all at the same time, but you don't have to pick one and make that your "thing". You can be sexy one day, cute the next -

There's more than one way to be attractive. Just because you can't do one doesn't mean you aren't.

So, I'm watching Young, Dumb and Living off Mum on the BBC iPlayer. The program is about 6 or so completely spoilt 16-25-year-olds put in a house together, with no one to cook for them, or clean, or pay their rent.

In the first episode, they're put to their first real day of work. It's gone dreadfully.

One of them is the heir to a prosperous nightclub business. Never had a job, parents pay for everything. First day, he's meant to be cleaning a hotel room, with another spoilt brat. He fails to stock up certain things, such as toilet paper, biscuits, whatever, because he believes they're out of them.

The hotel manager, who's come in to inspect the room, asks if they asked the housekeeper, their immediate boss. They say yes, he offers to call her, and they suddenly realise the people they've been calling 'housekeepers' are chambermaids. It's a simple misunderstanding, not even their fault. If the other chambermaids say they're out, then they believe it. They didn't know to check, they can fix it. But, no, he chooses to throw a tantrum instead. He starts screaming at the manager, telling him not to raise his voice, that his parents would never hire him, and blahblahblahblah. Then, in a clip afterwards, he claims that the manager doesn't deserve his job, and that he, the nightclub heir, will be far more successful and make more of himself than "that asian" (I'm pretty sure the guy was Italian, actually).

It reminded me a little of some customers I had once. Seventeen-year-olds, at that stage in their life where they truly believe they're special and untouchable. Old enough to be out alone, but young enough to have mummy tucking them in every night and teling them how great they are. This kid told me that, by the time he was eighteen, he'd be earning far more than me (highly doubtful in this economy, since I'm on quite a bit more than minimum wage, and nowhere else is hiring). The kid also claimed that franchises didn't exist, at all, and that anyone who believed otherwise was an idiot who needed to go back to school.

So, I really feel for that manager. I hope the BBC compensated him well. Who is this self-centred, spoilt little brat who dares to look down on him, a man who works hard and does the best he can? Does that idiot really believe he'll ever get a decent job that's not bought for him, with that work ethic?

I hope his parents are proud of themselves, and realise they've raised a son that they wouldn't employ. I hope they have the balls to ream him out for his behaviour. But, then, they've let him get to this stage, so maybe not.

That might be a bit unfair though. The impression I have is that his parents are hard-working people, who probably didn't come from wealthy families, and so wanted to give their child the childhood they wished they could have had. Sad, really.

Then there's the 25-year-old who says her mum is her best friend - and yet, she complains about the things her mother is kind enough to cook for her, reckons her job is getting money out of her mother, and generally treats her like a slave. That's not friendship. She claims she doesn't work because it makes her stressed and tired. She seems to think this is somehow unusual.

I think what really gets me is that some of these people come from quite wealthy families. They don't have to work their way up from the bottom - they could go to school and study whatever they wanted at their leisure, and then grease their way into a job they really want, while I have to struggle my way through a job with no respect to pay for my degree, and then work even harder to get a low paying job as a teacher. It really isn't fair.

You know, when I was a kid, it was considered a bad thing to let tv raise your children.

Bugsy Malone and Heathers

The original ending of Heathers was quite different from the one it was released with. But perhaps I should backtrack a little, and explain the basic plot of Heathers. Or, at least, just enough to be relevant without being spoileriffic.

The original ending of Heathers involved everyone dying, and having a party in heaven. Here, they all got along, and different cliques were happy to talk to one another.

Bugsy Malone is a child-friendly gangster film. The actors are all around twelve-years-old, and all gun violence is portrayed with cream pies. And then splurge guns. Every character hit by cream is removed from the film, the other characters reacting as if they're dead, without ever actually stating that.

Now, more spoilers.

At the end of the film, absolutely everyone is creamed. After a few discussions, they start singing together, everyone getting along. Previously splurged characters return for this final, happy reunion.

Now, is that really so different from Heathers? It seems to me that it's a perfectly valid interpretation of Bugsy Malone, to assume that everyone died at the end and got along better in heaven.

Bartelmy; making child-friendly films mildly disturbing since 1988.