Since we’re on the topic, a couple of nights ago I dreamt that I persuaded everyone to get become a Priest online in time for Jamie Hawkey‘s ordination in June. When it came to the ordination all of his friends were in the congregation wearing dog collars and birettas and basically upstaging him. He was furious.
I’m still half tempted to do it, and having made a few enquiries I find that other people are quite up for it and at least one of them had already had the same idea.
I dreamed we did a show where I sang a song about the romantic impact of Google search. Then my lover turned from a man into a woman, and we resolved the remaining plot points by doing the entire show again in a minute.
Truly my mind is a strange place to be right now; on the plus side I watched the first five episodes of Grey’s Anatomy last night (in my usual behind the times way) and loved every minute. So strange but contentedly full of medical jargon. I haven’t felt like this since 1995.
Did I have a conversation about martial arts on film with someone last night, or did I dream it?
So next week’s Radio Times, in all newsagents now, features a big picture of the mutant Dalek that will, apparently, be the cliffhanger ending to Saturday’s episode. A pithy headline also makes it quite clear what the nature of the mutant is.
Can anybody see why it might not be such a surprising cliffhanger moment any more?
Russell T. Davies (who judging by last week’s offering can write a beautiful 45-minute episode after all, just not very often) explains the cover thus: “It isn’t revealed until the end of the episode, and we don’t want to give away too much. But we love a Radio Times cover – how could we not?”
To which the answer is, “by being a bit less of a media whore and trying to salvage the occasion surprise for the spoiler-obsessed youth of 2007”.
Oft-maligned producer of 80s Doctor Who John Nathan Turner was offered a Radio Times cover featuring the Cybermen when he unexpectedly brought them back at the end of the first episode of “Earthshock”. It is very much to his credit that he turned it down, sacrificing a significant amount of publicity for a shock revelation that (perhaps for the last time ever in the show’s history) genuinely took everyone by surprise.
Mind you, restraint has not exactly been the watchword for Russell T. Davies. One fears that “how could we not?” is pretty much the attitude behind his every decision. cf Torchwood: “But we love an unexplained, meaningless, badly-realised computer generated pterodactyl – how could we not?”
This is a disastrous party political broadcast.
It shows lots of different people voicing their worries, linked together by a taxi driver explaining what she’d say to Tony and Gordon if they were in the back of her cab. Finally we see that Tony and Gordon are indeed in the back of her cab, looking somewhat embarrassed to be sitting there driving inexplicably through suburban London listening to somebody moaning, but they’re not so embarrassed that they actually answer any of her questions.
Perhaps they’re both worrying that it wasn’t such a good idea to pull their ties out from under their seatbelts in that wanky way.
Tony leaves Gordon to pay the £5 taxi fare (out of our taxes?) and he says “keep the change” – which must either be an absurdly generous tip (out of our taxes?) or is a mean-spirited joke as he hands over a fiver.
Oh, but Tony does reassure us that he wants to hear our views, so get online now and start asking the questions as you’ll almost certainly be invited to Westminster.
David Cameron’s party political broadcast is a bit twee, but he comes out of it a lot better because he actually talks to people. And he gets my vote because he tells off a schoolgirl for being naughty and gives a BNP voter a bit of a bollocking.
Dear actors,
Royal Mail now have a system of pricing in which large envelopes (a category which includes A4 size) require a special stamp costing 44p to post.
Actually this is not a very new system any more and it was widely reported and publicised at the time of the change, way back in 2006.
If you post an A4 envelope containing your headshot and CV to me with an ordinary first class stamp on it you will save yourself 12p. Ooh yes, a whole 12p, you crafty thing. You will, however, cost me £1.16 to retrieve your envelope (which I will do, in the vain hope that it is a large sponsorship cheque from a business).
I particularly resent this happening now that auditions for the show in question have already been held.
If you have not had any work recently, could I suggest you start a) using the correct stamp and b) sending your CV to people within, say, a month of the audition notice being put up.
Best regards,
James
So about six weeks ago the company I work for was bought by DoubleClick, probably the largest technology company in our particular niche industry (digital advertising and marketing). On Friday, it was announced that Google has agreed to buy DoubleClick (article chosen because it is a reasonably good non-corporate background for anyone who has no idea what I’m talking about but is interested).
I’m not actually concerned in the slightest. I have no idea what it all means, but I’ve spent seven years in an industry where the entire focus of a technology company can change in under a month, so I’m used to that. I just hope it stops now, so I don’t have to keep on re-adjusting my list of things to think about. (No one is likely to buy Google, so I’m pretty safe there.)
Anyway, I’m off to enjoy the sun for a bit. Shower some pity on James, who has spent most of this weekend inside, running auditions for Tony Blair the Musical.
Dear bus drivers,
When you overtake a cyclist only to swerve into a bus stop just a few metres ahead, it’s a little bit like if you were walking along a pavement and a fat person jogged past you then stood in your way. Except that if you walked into the fat person it wouldn’t take your teeth out.
Kindly stop it you morons.
Best regards,
James Lark
Just to let you know that the latest film from Talk to Rex is now finished and up on the internet. Yes, we did finish it a lot quicker than our last one…
Go and have a butcher’s here.
You may not have noticed my quiescence, because frankly James’ is much more of a shock. I’m amazed he’s been able to hold it in this long; entire weeks have passed with no post from him at all. Incredible.
However I have also been quiet, and probably will continue to be so for a while. I’m currently in New York, sitting in someone else’s office (where the lights are on a motion sensor, so every so often they turn off, leaving me in darkness until I flap my arms around). This is “head office”, the nerve centre of DoubleClick, my current employers. In some ways it’s much like the London office I’m based in (which was until recently a separate company); the people are passionate, generally have a good sense of humour, all good stuff – but there are a few key differences…
Damn, the light’s gone out again. Off to flap.
Talk To Rex 