The Masters return

Fango has a nice write up on the next season of Masters of Horror.

To summarise:

John Landis directs Family - starring George Wendt (Cheers). Wendt is superb in Stuart Gordon's King of the Ants; I'm looking forward to this one.

Dario Arengto directs Pelts - starring Meat Loaf. Dario Argento directs Meat Loaf? Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write.

Tobe Hooper returns.

John Carpenter directs Pro Life.

Ernest Dickerson joins the masters for the first time. I'm a big fan of Demon Knight, so this could be good.

Joe Dante returns - same scriptwriter as his last episode. I've heard bad things about Homecoming, so we'll have to wait and see on this one.

Stuart Gordon directs Poe's The Black Cat. Gordon does Poe, rather than Lovecraft; that makes a nice change.

Mick Garris returns.

Brad Anderson joins. Session 9 is a superbly creepy little film; I have high hopes for this one.

Tom Holland joins. The man that brought us Child's Play and the oft-forgotten vampire classic Fright Night takes his rightful place at the master's table.

Doctor Who: 2 - 2: Tooth and Claw

Episode two of the new series starts badly. The "Crouching Tiger meets 28 Days Later" (the director's words, not mine) intro sequence is terrible. Even though a sick little part of me is quite pleased that the "unique way in which the BBC is funded" (my license fee) has given birth to a set of crimson-clad prancing monks performing wire-fu, it's still pretty bad. It's badly shot, the monks don't look terribly convincing and it just feels too cliched to be true. That, and it looks like one of those intro clips that the BBC show before programs.

Thankfully, things get better. Much better. This, I would say, is probably the best stand-alone Davies' episode yet. The script is spot on, with just the right amount of joking at just the right time ("got any silver bullets?" "Not on me, no"). The Torchwood carrot is nicely dangled once again (this is one of the things I like best about the episode, actually), and the concept itself provides a nice take on the Werewolf mythology, even if The Doctor's solution is characteristically bonkers.

The performances are great here too. Tennant seems far more comfortable than last episode, as does Billie (who's far better when she's just Rose, entertaining as last week's performance was). Pauline Collins' brilliant turn as Queen Victoria is consistently entertaining throughout the episode. Interestingly, The Doctor has changed his costume slightly here - he's expecting to land at an Ian Dury concert and has swapped shirt and tie for a less formal t-shirt ensemble - and I don't recall him doing that before. The suit and sneakers remain, but it's interesting (and quite cool) to see a Doctor that can vary aspects of the costume as it suits him.

The real star here is the Werewolf itself. It's clearly CGI, and the transformation sequence isn't likely to give Rick Baker or Rob Bottin any nightmares, but for the BBC on a Saturday night this was cracking stuff. The creature was nicely animated, well lit for the most part, and should provide the obligatory kiddy scares for this episode.

Another great night's telly. Next week: Antony Head(Master), K9, and Sarah-Jane. 

Doctor Who: 2 - 1: New Earth

The Doctor has returned!

Saturday nights haven't been the same since the last season of Doctor Who ended - the triumphant return of The Doctor last year (thanks to Russel T. Davies and the team at BBC Wales) proved that the BBC were more than capable of producing good Sci-Fi and raised the bar for Saturday evening TV. I have high hopes for the second season, and will be posting my thoughts as episodes air. Note: I know this isn't technically the second season of Doctor Who but for a large number of new fans, it is: I'll be referring to it as season two. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum too - I don't like having something ruined before I've had a change to watch it, and I'll try not to inflict that on anyone here.

Episode one kicks things off nicely: It's nothing earth-shattering, aiming only to provide enjoyable, light-hearted Saturday evening TV, and along the way prove to be suitably scary for younger viewers (something which Who should, ideally, always strive to achieve). David Tennant somehow seems to be slightly less effective here than in the Christmas special but still manages to be entertaining, and I have no doubt I'll become increasingly enthusiastic about his take on The Doctor as the season continues. Billy Piper has quite a lot to do: As the single common thread linking Eccleston's Doctor and Tennant's it's important for Billy to put in a good performance for the first few episodes, and in this one she does. It would've been quite easy for New Earth to be rendered unwatchable by a terrible performance, but Billy pulls it off. Performance aside, Billy's cleavage also makes more of an appearance here than ever before, and I'm sure fans will consider this a positive. I'm impartial of course, my job is simply to state the facts…

New Earth is, by and large, a success. Admittedly, it steals ideas from both the Matrix and Night of the Living Dead (but provides an entertaining new explanation of the zombie's reaching arms), features a race of feline nurses (that are far less ill-advised than I expected), and makes jokes about Chavs and body/gender-swapping. And while none of this is ever likely to be accepted, enjoyed, or encouraged by the armies of hard-core Doctor Who fans, the Saturday night audience attracted by the BBC last year will no doubt find much to enjoy again this time.

Everybody have fun tonight!

Blimey, reality TV did something good for a change.

The other night I had a bit of an 80s inspired drive home - I found Rick Springfield's great album Tao on iTunes and gave that a play through for most of the journey. It's every bit as good as a I recall (this was one of my most favourite albums growing up) and is a delicious slice of slightly camp pop-rock. After coming to the end of Tao, I slid the iPod around to Wang Chung's Greatest Hits and had a blast of Everybody Have Fun Tonight and Dance Hall Days. Whilst my favourite Wang Chung album is the To Live and Die in LA soundtrack, EHFT and DHD are quite frankly, awesome. And I don't care if anyone agrees with me or not on this one (I can feel a wave of abuse heading my way actually).

Anyway, I digress: Reality TV. It appears that the mighty Wang Chung appeared on the US version of Hit Me Baby One More Time (in which the artists of yesteryear perform recent pop hits). As a result, they've recorded a new album which due out this year! Their myspace site has a version of "Hot in Herre" by Nelly which should be unspeakably awful but somehow….isn't. I assume they performed this on the show.

I look forward to the album. And remember kids: Everybody Wang Chung tonight!

Don’t fear Sky?

I'm not afraid of Sky, I just really don't like them very much.

Ashleigh brought to my attention an article on The Register called Don't be scared of Sky. It's an interesting read, and contains these gems:

"Churn (cancellation) levels are higher than ever, and the cynical majority in the industry reportedly believe the new portfolio of services is a cunning ruse to improve its subscriber statistics as it seems to have reached a difficult commercial plateau in customer acquisition. When you phone Sky to announce your intention to leave, the company's desperate customer support staff will do virtually anything to keep you (word to the wise: if you want a few months subscription free, or to bump up your package, call them up and tell them you're getting Freeview or NTL instead). The UK isn't quite the same dynamic as the US, with its hundreds of millions of households. The reasons for the slow down are simple - it costs too much, the content is getting worse by the day, and you can get better elsewhere."

"What do I want to watch? Probably less than 10 per cent of what Sky's dismal, failing waste of a platform has to offer."

It would appear that I'm really not the only one getting rid of Sky, as I suspected (and hoped, to be honest). I've heard tales of digital aerial installers being busier than ever as more and more people decide that chucking £45 away on a raft of channels you're never going to watch is pretty dumb. The one thing Sky have got that makes their position particularly potent at the present time is Sky+; It's just so damned convenient. "Punters" love it. It's really, really easy to use (even my 9 month old son has inadvertently recorded TV programs before), and you don't even need video cassettes!!!

Media Center: Moving forward

So the aerial install is done and my Media PC has existed quite nicely for the last week, recording random crap whenever I asked it to. I had one tense moment when the machine rebooted itself overnight, but a quick check of the event log showed that this was "intended functionality" - thanks Windows Update! (Which makes me wonder, if I've got something scheduled to record at 3am, and Windows decides to reboot, will it? Or will it wait?)

I bought a nice, capacious 300gb Seagate drive, and have transferred the contents of my 120gb IDE drive across (currently my Dell has a 160gb SATA and 120gb IDE drive in it) with the intention of harvesting the IDE drive for my Media PC. While 120gb isn't ideal (a recording of Freebie and the Bean the other night takes up 4.2gb) it'll do. If all else fails, I'll stick a USB2.0 card in the Media PC and hang an external drive off the back. My newly installed piece of Ethernet cable lets me do two things: copy content from the Media PC to the Dell in less than a day, and frees up the slot my wireless card was in for the aforementioned USB2.0 card.

I've also taken the opportunity to back my iTunes music folder off onto another drive (a 120gb drive I've got in a USB2 caddy) which will now be placed in a drawer and never used again.

So what's next? Stick the 120gb drive in the Media PC, move it back downstairs, and show the wife how to use it, that's what. I need to start using this thing to replace my SKY+ box now that the aerial work is done. I may well pick up another card for the Dell too.

Oh, and if anyone knows of a decent tool to convert dvr-ms files into something more agreeable, let me know