Many weeks ago I found myself craving the familiar and upbeat tones of Ray Park Jr’s ‘Ghostbusters’. Nothing unusual there I hear myself say. 4 weeks later, and I have been watching as many versions of the song as I can FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER. It almost broke my intimate and life long relationship with the whole franchise. Especially the irritating vintage console versions of which I’ve heard so very many. I really don’t know why. I think I’ve used the internet to stalk a song.

But don’t fear, dear reader, as I have come through that dark obsessive patch a better person, and offer you some of the better findings that I ever managed to find… including electricity, children, a dead popman and a girl with whom I have fallen in love with and married in my dreams…

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Yeah. Thought we might be topical here on the moon for a rare moment. Check out this great short cartoon summing up the first debate between the three major parties. Don’t worry, it’s funny. And no, it’s not the BNP/marmite debacle, which i must say was deliciously satisfying.

Creator of Star Trek and therefore one of my all time heroes Gene Roddenberry finally gets a documentary. To add to the intrigue it is made by his son, so it has that human touch of a child discovering his dad through others. Or Something. Shut up it’s Star Trek!

via Topless Robot. As always.
 

I thought I had dreamt this (because this is what most of my dreams are like) but it is real people! William Shatner and some other person (the Taiwanese Susan Boyle? Really?) sing ‘total eclipse of the heart’. Gold dust.

If this actually happened in Iron Man 2, then it would be on track to be the best film ever.

via Toplessrobot

Here’s Telly what may keep me from doing my important things, like updating my assbook profile…

Castle

Despite sounding like a cheap sword ‘n sorcery show for the SyFy chanel, this is in fact a pretty cool looking take on the old ‘cop & special person’ genre which may be an oversaturated genre at the moment. Did I mention genre? It stars Nate “captain tight pants” Fillion as a lechy crime novelist (not a million miles away from Jessica ‘letcher’ fletcher) who, as far as I can tell from the below trailer, has Droopy’s ability to appear anywhere much to that wolf guys chagrin…

Human Target

Watched the first episode last night, and I dunno. It stars that guy from Boston Legal  who was also in some other TV shows I have tried to watch, and now he’s in this. It reminds me of the Rockford files combined with Danger man combined with cheese. It is fun nonsense action, and if you’re like me and will watch anything to avoid your responsibilities as a human being it definitely looks like one of the better shows you can burn off your existence with. I wonder if this guy will find film gigs soon, or whether he will just become a TV mainstay. Oh, it also has Watchman’s jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) playing a small creepy dude. As usual. WARNING: the below trailer shows everything that happens in the first episode. You don’t really watch something like this for surprises though. Also, not shown is a random and unnessicary cameo by Danny Glover. Oh shit, I just spoilt that for you as well. I like it!

Cougar Town

Don’t get me wrong, I think this show about one of my least favourite Friends (Joey gets number one on my hate-mometer) (I don’t have a hate-mometer) (I don’t know what a hate-mometer would look like) (what is hate??)…don’t get me wrong, I am probably not the target audience for this show, but I shall try to watch it so that I can find a way of discovering ‘hate’ and then creating a ‘-mometer’ to gauge my disdain. Maybe I’m to judgemental of things that don’t have explosions in them…
 

Some genius has taken the comedy music from the great Songstowearpantsto and have made a neat music video to accompany said song. It is called ‘Robot Pirates’ and is about robot pirates. Yaar

Songstowearpantsto if we remember, boys and girls, is a cool site where you can email the guy with lyrics to a song and he creates it. Sometimes. He never made my song about a dinosaur librarian who doesn’t know the Dewey decimal system… but hey….I’m over it.

I’ve been marvelling much at a book I bought this week ‘10,000 Years of Art’, a mind-bogglingly long time I’ve been thinking (5 times as long as between Jesus and me in fact). But this has been put into sharper perspective by the latest ‘Where is Werner’ update… He is making a documentary about the earliest known some of the earliest known pictures anywhere; Chauvet cave in France. Using the latest cutting edge technology to bring us closer to the oldest art than we can ever get (the cave is shut to the public but Herzog ‘talked his way in’).

But the man has the imagination and power to make 32,000 years jump before your eyes like a cut between scenes- check here (around 5 minutes in) when he’s talking about how he thinks the paintings would flicker cinematically on the wall in firelight and then swings time to Swing Time circa 1938 when Fred Astaire achieved equally mysterious greatness when dancing with his shadows. (Read this for Herzog on Swing Time);

Then watch THIS for more from Herzog on 3D! Fascinating stuff. (If I sound like I’m obsessed with Herzog, its because I am).

Looking forward to this creepy monster film starring Adrien Brody and some wierd rabbit/human hybrid (i’m referring to the monster, not his co-star Sarah Polley, who is lovley). Splice:

Nature is monstrous, shit is insignifikant, we are all alone, searching for truth. It has to be Herzog. Even though he didn’t write or direct, this short film is clearly influenced by the great man and has his wonderful hypnotic teutonic narration. It’s part of a series designed to explore possible future scenarios for the world. More in today’s Guardian.

Many of you will have already caught Professor Brian “not just a haircut” Cox (yes, he was the keyboardist in D:Ream don’t you know) on the wonder-full ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ recently on BBC;

OK, so that was a parody, but is does capture the charm (or annoyance if you’re grumpy) of the show; smiley charismatic northern chappy telling us how brilliant everything is in the universe is from lots of glamourous locations- only the real thing has a little more science and less swearing. It seems physics is the new rock and roll- or at least friendly 90s pop music circa ‘Now 26′. Mr Cox’s ‘in person’ appearance at Filmhouse Edinburgh this month already sold out (and I would be surprised if he has some groupies). But seriously, the man is very clever in deed, and importantly has an amazing talent for explaining complicated and scary things like they’re really not that scary or complicated at all. We all want to have a pint with him. Apparently, he’s already working on a new show ‘Universal’. Though you’d think they’d get someone from Blur to present that…

Here again are things on the Telly box that will distract me when I should be doing something useful like chlorinating the local swimming pools…

V

The lizard people are coming! Again! This could be good (the original mini-series way back when had it’s moments) and it stars Firefly’s Inara and the X-Files Alex (boo) Critchek. Holding my breath on this one. Could go either way. UK premiere on the 13th on the Sci-Fi channel. Let’s hope we get to see the beautiful Morena Baccarin eat a guineapig.

Thanks to Birdy Putt for the heads up.

You Have Been Watching with Charlie Brooker

The second series of this corrosive look at crappy TV returns and it’s about time. Some of you may not be fans of Brookers petulant style, but I think he always has a good point to make. It returns on Channel 4 on thursday 15th of April and it is worth a squint. Here’s a clip from the last season if you missed it;

FaceJacker

To be honest, I stopped finding ’hidden camera’ shows funny when Jermey Beadle returned to his planet, which is annoying because the characters in this sequel to ‘fonejacker’ all look fun. I’m gonna watch it, then might regret it. We’ll see… 

It’s on friday 16th April on Channel 4 and it better not be one of those shows where irritating people quote from it for the next 8 months of our lives before some new fad comes along.

Dr Who & Ashes to Ashes

just a reminder that Ashes to Ashes is on Friday nights 9pm BBC (tonight, for example) and Dr Who is on Saturday nights around 6ish (tomorrow, for example). They are both excellent.

I loved the first Free Willy movie as a kid. Boy meets whale, boy frees whale, boy discovers self = lovely! Yet the movie’s nice eco message was not fully appreciated by its producers, who thought it was ok to make a film about a poorly treated captive whale by filming a poorly treated captive whale and then had to fork out millions in PR money to try free the poor thing, which by now was too ill to cope in the wild.

And the ill-thought-out-ness didn’t stop there…

Free Willy: The Animated Series - where Jesse rides Willy to the ocean bed to fight robot men! Just like in the film! Oh and Willy can talk! Just like in the film!

R.U.B.B.I.S.H

It’s a very strange thing that happens when you watch this video of film KritiK and plastic haired human Mark Kermode as he makes the point against 3D films … you realise that the world doesn’t play with toys enough. Playing with toys makes everything fun and TRUE! Everything.

via cartoonbrew and my lovely BBC.