Aliens vs Wizards

What to do when your lead actress dies, but you still have the opportunity to do a children's series? Keep the same production team, get a new cast of kids, write a thin and ridiculous premise, and go for it again!

In WvsA, the new series from Russell Davies and Phil Ford, there are Wizards. Because there are. And there are aliens. Because there are. And aliens like to eat magic (because that's a thing). And so you have the epic battle that will be played out on our screens... which so far involves about three aliens and two kids... and of course the aliens are incredibly stupid, and overly incompetent. And, for some reason (and there is a reason, it's just not a good one, but remember that RTD doesn't give a rat's ass about actual plot explanations, just hand waves everything, and seems even antagonistic towards science here), wizards can only cast three spells a day... Oh, and the aliens are led by Boss Nass. (Seriously, the obvious puppet looks like Boss Nass, and is voiced by Brian Blessed, so yeah).

Interestingly, unlike in SJA, there are just two male kids, played by Scott Haran and Percelle Ascott. The main female presence is the grandmother played by Annette Badland. Dan Starkey is also present, as the hilarious hobgoblin, hob hob. The two lead aliens are played by Jefferson Hall and Gwendoline Christie (a bit of a change I suspect to be under all that latex after her role on Game of Thrones). And as the production team is the same (I'm guessing) the look of the series is exactly the same as SJA.

Can't say that I'm impressed, but I might just keep my eye on it...

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Moonster Hoose

Wow, that's actually a rather creepy kids movie... although I would have more respect for it if it wasn't for that ending... but they had to have that ending in a kids movie of course...

Across from DJ's house is a house... a house that eats people! And after he kills the guy living there, it's up to him, his fat friend, and love interest he just met, to deal with it.

Not a complicated story line, but it works. There's a lot happening, with the babysitter, and the cops, venturing into the house, and then the house is alive! All that with overtones of actual death, it's a rather dark picture to enthral the kiddies with.

Most of the recognisable voices are the adults, with Steve Buscemi, Fred Willard and Maggie Gyllenhall lending their voices. The bulk of the work is by Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner and Spencer Locke, and they are not irritating.

Good movie all up, with a decent story line to carry you through.

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Jackhall on Whiteboots

Puppet animation movie! Since I'm also watching Robot Chicken at the moment, this was entirely coincidental.

This movie relates the true tale of how Germany invaded England during World War II, and took over London. Churchill is forced to flee to the Land of the Scots, a savage place. Fortunately, the hero of the movie, a man named Chris, manages to unite the peoples against the Nazi menace...

Yeah, slightly satirical. As ever, the humour is a little strained at times to get the satire in, and I probably missed some. Still, everyone gets smacked at, English, Scottish, Indian, German, French and American. The funniest moment was the introduction of Braveheart, but other than that it was mildly amusing.

Voice wise, we tick off Ewan McGregor, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Timothy Spall... so some decent names here. The puppetry is good as well, with some decent mouth music considering the most known British puppetry is from Gerry Anderson.

So, funny-ish, but not brilliant.

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Tintin-itus

I got the Tintin Collection a while ago, and have just finished reading through them all. And... wow... they (more so the earlier one) are incredibly racist. Yes, prevailing thought of the time, modern eyes, etc... but by modern eyes, incredibly racists. Particularly towards black people, but anyone in a foreign country was up for being made fools of.

The first book in The Land of the Soviets is interesting in that no only are the Soviet military made out to be complete idiots, but every page is filled with coincidence and violence to fuel the plot, and Tintin is more of a fighter here than in later stories. (Interestingly, although he is a reporter, we never, in any story, ever see him report anything, and any newspaper feature related to him is about his exploits, not about any article he is writing.) Then in The Congo... well... yeah, modern audience... but also here we see Tintin being able to over come any problem, and pretty much single handedly clean up an entire country on his own. In America, he gets to take out Capone in the first ten pages, although this isn't believed by the police (nor us really), and spends the rest of the book recapturing the gang.

Herge definitely likes his repeat villains, with plenty of the early enemies turning up in later books. Although I'll take the footnotes' word for it that they are indeed the person from the story. But lots of continuity for those who like it.

Certainly not helped by the movie is the idea that Haddock turns up in Secret of the Unicorn, when in fact he first appears in Crab with the Golden Claws. And the friendship is slow in blossoming, although we start in early with the Captain's attempted to give up the booze... or at least appear to...

And we end on Alph-Art. Which isn't complete, but it does have the script of what's there, and a copy of the initial page sketches. This also shows up another tendency of Herge to have lots of random events happening. In one page, the only panel is the top one of Tintin driving along on a scooter, and the next page has him encounter the bad guys. No doubt there would be some hilarious escapade of him running into something, or swerving into a ditch, or cut to Snowy getting away for a few panels... I wondered why we get these panels, and they look to be opportunities for mild amusements... or padding. Either way, they do break up the more linear story, if only momentarily.

This is one of those sets of books that people come to time and again. And it's easy to see why... and it's also easy to see that most people only go for the core known books. Give the others a go, even if just to round out your knowledge.

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Mystery of a Cab Handsome

It's Australian, so you know it's going to... meh, stick your own completion here. This is a telemovie based on a book, and... well... it has problems.

So, this dude, like, gets killed in a cab (this is set in Melbourne in 1886), and it's totally bogus. The obvious dude is obvious, but, of course, you know he totally didn't do it. It's all about the wealthy class doing things and getting away with it because they are wealthy, and there's this lower class woman who is completely the one we are supposed to root for to get somewhere, and everything hinges on her, and finally the mystery is revealed all over the place...

And if it seems like that recap is rushed, it's because the story is rushed. It's supposed to be this big depiction of the social class divide, but there is one token representation of the bottom class (a doss house, I think) and the upper class people have their house and dresses... and that's about it. A lot of the other class cliches are brushed over quickly, and the plot stampedes on, regardless of how believable some elements are. (The audience is left to assume a lot of what happens between scenes.) While this might be considered good in some ways, such as not wasting time, but since it already sweeping on to the next scene, even when the people are explaining things, there are a unsaid explanations people have to work out.

Actors... decent performances. No-one I recognised, but they might be popular Australian actors. Decent costumes too, but I'm not sure why the picture was in period colour, in that everything was basically in sepia tones (perhaps the picture I had was just badly coloured?). Made everything very drab.

I haven't read the book (never even heard of it before this), but can only imagine it comes across better than this adaptation does.

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DW: The Dalek Project

The BBC continues to throw out the odd story, this one being The Dalek Project graphic novel, written by Justin Richards and art by Mike Collins. And I'm very surprised this story got told.

It's the first World War, and the Doctor lands near a house and soon talks to a few people about odd goings on, and ends up talking with the master of the house, and find out he is helping to create Daleks. Thinking that he is going to help end the war, and - wait... what?

While not a repeat, given how many similar stories get turned down, how did this pass the check again Victory of the Daleks? And this doesn't even have the new Dalek design. Were they working on this for several years so that they started before Series 5 and were allowed to continue? And partly because of that, and partly because this isn't Justin Richards in good mode, this is not a great story. Just repeated running around, fighting the Daleks, running away from the Daleks, then fighting the Daleks again. Sigh. It basically goes on too long.

The art is mostly decent, although there are a few pages (such as page 38) with weird designs. Once the Daleks are in full fray, we get some great splash pages and interesting new looks to them (although, as said, it's odd not seeing the big booty models).

On the whole, a rather low grade Dalek story.

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Enter Wildthyme

While I have no interest in Paul Magrs work in general, I decided to check out his Iris Wildthyme novel... which I'm guessing is part of the reason he wrote it, to get people in from the Doctor Who side. (Still don't want to read his other books.) The book in general mixes in The Blue Angel, with Mad Dogs and Englishmen, and liberally sprinkles in The Scarlet Empress... which is really making me suspicious that this is a cash grab for Doctor Who fans as that reads as a Greatest Hits... but I would think that Paul Magrs would be better than that...

The plot of this is...not a hell of a lot, now that I think about it. Marvelle gets the damn Pinking Shears (because we needed to be reminded of those) and then it's a chase sequence as they head towards Hyspero. It's mainly about character interaction, which is quite good. Marvelle is suitably smug, Simon is just this side of wet, Barbra is just tolerable, although Panda could do with a rethink (but still classic Magrs). We get Jenny and ever and continual references to her getting runs when travelling through time (is that funny, Magrs, that we need it so constantly?). And Iris herself is in full Katy Manning form. [Fortunately, no harping on about how the Doctor is her love...]

But then there is the full on Magrs camp. We have the Pinking Shears and the Very Fabrix, the Objet D'Oom, the Dreadful Flap, I'm sure Dii h'anno Doors is a reference to something... [and there is tons of references to his previous works, it seems]. That really does not chime with me, and why I never like his books.

That said, I will probably read the next one, partly because of the tangential Doctor Who link, partly because it continues the story. But that's the only reasons...

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