Archive for August, 2007
Friday, August 31st, 2007
[Extracts from liveblogging the last night of Big Brother 2007 for MediaGuardian.co.uk…]
8.10: We’ve just had the family and friends putting the case for their housemate. And then they were asked what their family and friend housemate would spend the money on if they won. “A pink car” said the twins mother. “Charity”, said Carole’s daughter. “An ocelot” said Liam’s brother (who looks like a fat photocopy of Liam). “What?” said Dermot. “An ocelot” Said Liam’s brother. I think.
Does he really want an ocelot? Isn’t that illegal?
(more…)
Television, Minute by minute reports |
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
… “This”, she sings, “is my face.”
Ha ha ha ha ha! Well, of course it’s your face, you dozy prat! This is your video. Who were you expecting? Barbara Windsor?
Actually, to be fair, we realise at this point that the very look that Ms Nash is currently wearing very well is that of a “beautiful Girl Next Door from a mid-70s Carry On movie” look! It is great! So what we’re seeing here is a homage to the age of great British film comedy by one of the leading exponents of whatever the new age of great British music is called this week. Brilliant! Up the apples and pears, for the dog and bone is ringing, etc!
“This”, sings Kate, “is my mind.”
No. no, no, sweetheart… You’re having a laugh, int ya? That’s your dressing room! A ha ha ha ha. You! You’re a joker! Tell you what, though, it’s not very glamorous being star of a LDN scene, is it? Your star may be on the rise, but your dressing room’s still a scuzzbucket….
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
Humour, Pickard of the pops |
Friday, August 24th, 2007
[Extracts from my live blogging of the Big Brother 2007 evictions for MediaGuardian.co.uk
… And then those two get thrown out onto the cold, hard streets of semi-fame. So it’s really ‘When a dozen or so become some number closer to twenty, on and off, and then become or perhaps 8 or ten depending on how many people the twins count as, who then become three nominees out of whom two leave’, but I keep getting told off for long post titles.
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Television, Minute by minute reports |
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
The camera pans around the tops of great big beautiful brownstone buildings somewhere, we guess, in the USA. It is a dizzying view and one that you would only be able to get, we realise, from lying in the middle of a great big American road, which, we cannot help thinking, is a great big dangerous place to begin a video, as there is always a fair chance that a great big American car is about to come and run you over.
That, however, doesn’t seem to bother our Lil’. For here we discover our dear Ms Allen, again, this time not animated, but in the middle of the street.
Stop it, Lily! For it is dangerous there! Look left, look right, and get out of the dashed way!
She does not seem to hear us, distracted as she is by singing and possibly by being out of earshot and having filmed this several months ago. Either way, Lily is as usual immaculately dressed, but with something odd about her outfit that I can’t quite put my finger on.
Oh, yes, you’re right there. Perhaps it IS the 18-hole Doc Martens and the scuba mask. …
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
Humour, Pickard of the pops |
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
[for The Guardian, 380 words, G2 television pages]
Dirty Cows
9pm, Living
Take 10 vain countryphobic city women, Tara PT and a “single, macho and minted” member of the landed gentry, and you get this. And no, no matter how many times they repeat it, referring to the 10 female contestants as “the Dirty Cows” doesn’t get any less jaw-droppingly dreadful. By the time you reach the elimination stage, where women who will muck out the stables for another week are accepted back into the welly-booted whinger sorority with: “You … are a lucky cow!” and presented with a Best-in-Show-type rosette, you realise that, in fact, this must really be a complex and brilliant satire of sexual politics and the reality genre. Please God.
(more…)
Television |
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
[for The Guardian, 380 words, G2 television pages]
Jamie At Home
8pm, Channel 4
Regardless of the fact that this year the British summer is about as pleasant as spending your birthday sitting in a puddle, the pre-planned onslaught of normal fair-weather fare rumbles on. Thus, Jamie rocks up with a barbecue special full of fresh and flame-griddled deliciousness - very useful to anyone who can remember it all until next year or who happens to be moving abroad.
(more…)
Television |
Friday, August 17th, 2007
Extracts from my live-blogging the Big Brother 2007 evictions for MediaGuardian.co.uk
8.23: Welcome one, welcome all, to this, the “special section of [the GU] website devoted to the comings and goings in the Big Brother house” (Private Eye) Yes, my friends. Special section! Devoted!
(Otherwise known as one post in several hundred, on one blog out of several dozen, on one section of a site housing in total hundreds of thousands of pages on every subject you can possibly think of.)
But seriously, we are, thanks to Private Eye, officially a special section DEVOTED to the subject. It says so in a posh-boys bog-read, so it must be true! I’m totally putting that on my CV.
Full live-blog can be found here.
Television, Minute by minute reports |
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
We are presented with a dark and empty stage. Empty but for a strange contraption. And a guitar. Oh, and KT Tunstall. And it might not be a stage, might be a room. Whatever. It is a bit dark though.
KT picks up the guitar, and with the air of a seasoned professional, plugs that baby in. “Baby” in this instance meaning “the guitar”. There isn’t a baby onstage. Nor should you ever plug one in, now I come to think of it.
Whatever. She’s plugged the guitar in, and for some reason, the physics of which escape me, this causes the strange contraption (amp, perhaps, then?) to flicker into life. We can tell because the lightbulbs come on. It’s an amp with lightbulbs, then. Odd.
Suddenly, PAF! With a slight blurring of the screen, KT is transported back in time! That’s no amplifier; it’s a time machine, and my god, that time machine’s turned up to 11! No, hang on, not 11, but 88mph. That time machine’s turned up to 88mph! Or 1.21 gigawatts! Or something.
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
Humour, Pickard of the pops |
Friday, August 10th, 2007
Liveblogging the Big Brother 2007 evictions for MediaGuardian.co.uk
10.02: …. We catch a look at the house for the last half hour.
Nothing much has happened.
We fall off our sofas in shock.
10.04: Having been told she has thirty seconds to leave, Amy hugs her goodbyes.
“Love you!” “Yeah, bye”
“Love you!” “Bye!”
“Aw, sweetie!” “Bye.”
Heartfelt, it clearly is.
10.05: On leaving, she gets booed. A lot.
Clearly, she is EVIL.
I must have missed that hightlights show where she set fire to a nest of puppies.
But that, we now discover, from the level of crowd intention, is the case.
OR you can’t come out and NOT be booed nowadays. Which again, seems to beg the question, what’s the…
10.07: ANOTHER advert for breakfast cereal! Seriously, what is it with advertising cereal this time of night? Is it the hope that people will make a note on the back of their hand to run out and get it first thing?
Or that tomorrow, while eating their usual, they suddenly think “You know what? I don’t want this! I want that thing I saw during Big Brother last night!”
Whatever, they employ too much crunching for me. Whoever decided that the best way to sell food was by making people listen to the sound of it being loudly masticated was a cruel, cruel human being. Oh, we’re back.
Full live-blog here
Television, Minute by minute reports |
Wednesday, August 8th, 2007
(For proper effect, the portions of this review in quotation marks should be read in the deep, booming style of legendary American film trailer voiceover artist Don LaFontaine. Thank you)
“Coming to a music channel near you…
In a world where life is cheap…
In a time when singing in a high, duck-like voice is not considered an emasculating feature…
One moody singer with the looks of a matinee idol … and one woman with a face like two spiders asleep on a fish … will find themselves in a whole new world of trouble.”
Thanks, Don! Yes! That’s right! It’s everyone’s favourite genre, the music video as movie trailer. But if this video really WAS a feature film, what kind of film would it be, we are wondering?
Well, from first glance, it is the kind of obscure indie film with an obtuse title, like ‘M’ or something, that opens with a shot of five louche LA rock stars standing in a storm drain. Brilliant…
[Find the full deconstruction, with pictures - the only way it makes sense, really - here]
Humour, Pickard of the pops |