Lyra?? What was that you said about In Bruges??? It's fantastic!!! Four exclamation marks!!!! No, make that five!!!!! It's a minor masterpiece, in fact.

in protest at wingcos reprehensible use of exclamation marks i am posting in a crude way without use of the punctuation desired so as to resemble the idiot texts sent in by football fans to tabloid sports pages that go along the lines of hur hur you everton clods ar gunna get beet on satrday this is our yeer gerrard is god from jimbo

I've kept this quiet for a while but it's time to confess. I'm pretty much addicted to Gossip Girl. 95% of it is pure garbage but I can't stop watching.

Reed, no I wasn't being sarcastic. In Bruges is great.

Tonight, set your whatevers for True Stories which is all about Ali-Frazier's last fight, told very much from a pro-Frazier standpoint. It's fascinating.

Incidentally, have opinions been expressed here on 30 Rock? I saw the pilot and found the Tina Fey character a bit irritating, insofar as she seemed to be created simply to point up the obvious foibles of the other characters. Should I persist?

I saw a few eps and didn't enjoy them, but I seem to be almost alone in this.

Very much looking forward to the Frazier documentary.

QUOTE:
I've kept this quiet for a while but it's time to confess. I'm pretty much addicted to Gossip Girl. 95% of it is pure garbage but I can't stop watching.

The women on the show are nice to look at but I can't stand it because of the guys on the show, especially the one with the weird eyebrows. He creeps me out like a twelve-cylander, super-charged creeping-out machine.

We recently acquired that clever IQ gizmo allowing us to record series with a couple of button presses.

The good side is I am now able to record all episodes of (nerd alert) Voyager. I was also really enjoying NYPD Blues until the dickheads at Foxtel suddenly took it off air.

I have however, now discovered the Sweeney is on. I love that theme tune, love it.

On the down side the wife has a backlog of Medium and Dead Zone to get through so I might have to go on holiday.

Time Team's okay, but don't tell her I said that.

wingco wrote:

QUOTE:

Incidentally, have opinions been expressed here on 30 Rock? I saw the pilot and found the Tina Fey character a bit irritating, insofar as she seemed to be created simply to point up the obvious foibles of the other characters. Should I persist?

I absolutely love 30Rock. Fey's got a great line in self deprecating humour. It's quite an old fashioned sitcom in many respects but it's 'modern' and so brilliantly written. As you get to know the characters it gets better and better. I love Kenneth

Anyway I came on to see if anyone was talking about the new Screenwipe. Seems not so I'll start. Brooker spot on about the Brand/Ross debacle but the joke about him being a sad old man in front of the TV is wearing thin.

But the main thing I'm raising is the little interlude from Tim Key. http://www.timkey.co.uk/

Seems he's been on before but this is the first I've seen or heard from him. I didn't get it AT ALL. Complete shit. Seemed like wannabe, trying too hard BlueJam to me. Am I the only one? Can someone explain what's good about this to me?

Getting back to Terminator, the latest episode does some really interesting things with the time travel paradoxes.

QUOTE:
Anyway I came on to see if anyone was talking about the new Screenwipe. Seems not so I'll start.

Ahem.

Our Cineclub showed 'Taxi Driver' last night.

What a film that is. All the people present who had seen it before said it struck them differently this time. I think it's one of those 'anthologized' films, that clips get shown from a lot, or gets referenced a lot, but really does bear watching again.

I reckon I'd seen it properly twice before. The 1st time, the violence and the mohawk get the attention.

Can't remember exactly what I thought the 2nd time, I guess it struck me as more satirical/knowing than I'd thought as a teen, but last night i loved the sequences where he's cruising the night streets, with the Bernard Herrman trumpets rising in volume, like waves of paranoia.

I'm a sucker for neon at the best of times, but I really could've watched those sequences with the camera fixed to the cab all night.

24 is back this weekend.

I'd read Scorsese on Scorsese (and seen a lot of his other films) before I saw Taxi Driver for the first time, so my first impression was more analytical than visceral. Which isn't true of, say, Mean Streets.

re Terminator: yeah I'm really liking this series. I wonder if young Warren is now on the evil path rather than the good one... I also, damn it, fancy John now that he has short hair.

Galactica progress, end of series 2 and I am very annoyed about the very stupid Lee/Dualla story. Ugh. So wrong.

also I saw Max Payne which is pointless bollocks, and it has that murky grey look which seems so popular nowadays but actually just makes films look cheap and depressing. That Olga Kurlyenko has THE most amazing body ever though.

and Changeling which is not the sort of thing I usually bother with, worthy BOATS Oscar contending type thing, but it was that or Duchess and I love Angelina and I do not like Keira. It was OK. The story itself is mad and that's what kept me going; otherwise it was like every other earnest period drama about injustice and corruption and victimisation. albeit with a few neat little tricks.

And there was the trailer for Valkyrie which of course looks like the usual sensationalist WWII guilty fun bobbins, but Tom Cruise's hair and eyepatch are so splendid that they make it worthwhile. And Kenneth Branagh! It cannot go wrong.

Oh also - also! Six says, "Judgement Day".