Monochrome is making a comeback

A curious trend has taken place, the rise of black and white versions of coloured films. The trend began by accident when a black and white print of Mad Max: Fury Road was sent to composer Junkie XL, the film's director George Miller was impressed by how the film looked that he asked the studio Warner Bros if the black and white version could be released and it was. Now news that Logan is set for the same treatment. It is curious to think that once upon a time black and white films were colourised to much fury.

Book review: A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly

A Game of Ghosts is the latest in the Charlie Parker novels that exist in both the crime and horror genres, other novels featuring Parker have been nominated for awards in both genres. Parker finds himself on the trail of an another private eye due to being on the unofficial payroll of a FBI agent. What then follows is the uncovering of an evil going back centuries. Connolly builds up an atmosphere of evil as Parker and his cohorts Angel and Louis as they delve deeper into the mystery. The supernatural has a prevailing atmosphere over the novel in the particular the plot line concerning Parker's 2 daughters, one who is living and one who is dead. There is one shock for long time readers of the Parker novels that I will not go into for those who are new to the novels. With A Game of Ghosts John Connolly maintains his reputations have rich atmosphere, suspenseful plotting and vivid characters that makes him on of the best thrillers working today.

The death of the E-book

Figures released recently showed that sales of E-books have fallen 17% in contrast sales of print books have risen 9%. The prevailing idea is that people are just tired of look at screens throughout their week and are going back to more proven means for their reading matter.

UK General Election 2017 update 27/04/2017

Now Jeremy Corbyn has said he will not appear on any leaders though his reason given is that Theresa May would not be appearing in any that would be held during this election. This is a bit of a turn around since the first held in 2010 had some experts saying that they had become a fixture for future elections.

New worst answer for Pointless

In a round in which contestants were asked to name a single named musician, one said that Boy George was a Greek-American keyboard player. For many reasons it was a wrong answer. For the record the correct answer was Yanni

A Tale of Two Peters

One of the curious things to have emerge from the calling of a snap UK General Election is the diverging reactions of 2 journalists who happen to share the name Peter, Peter Hitchens and Peter Oborne. Peter Oborne writes for the Daily Mail, perhaps best known for his rabid loathing of Tony Blair. Oborne wrote an article this week in which he called the election a chance to bury the Labour party for good even though he has praised Jeremy Corbyn in the past. Prior to joining the Daily Mail Oborne was at the Daily Telegraph where he wrote articles giving fulsome praise to David Cameron in the early days of his Premiership. Oborne left the Telegraph over what he believed was the burying of stories concerning HSBC. Since he has been at the Daily Mail Oborne has pretty much written unflattering articles about Cameron. You can not write about Peter Hitchens without mentioning his late brother Christopher. the 2 were complete opposites of each other with Peter Right wing God fearing man with Christopher being a Left wing aggressive atheist. While you may call Peter Hitchens right wing he is no fan of the Conservative party having been scornful of Cameron ever since he became Tory leader. In his latest article Hitchens calls the surprise announcement by May as an attempt to bury news about campaign spending at the last General Election. If it is found that the spending that is being srcuntised has broken the rules they may be criminal charges. It curious to think that Obrone left one newspaper because of what he called the burying of news story only to join an another where he has praised some thing that has been called by Hitchens the burying of another

TV Review: The Hospital People

Starring Tom Binns

9:30pm BBC1 Friday


Starring the comparatively unknown Tom Binns, The Hospital People is the latest in the long line of spoof fly on the documentaries (Come Fly with Me being the best known of them) that takes a pot at the type of programme that seems to dominate the schedules. Binns takes on 4 roles, Hospital Radio DJ, Chaplin, Herbal Medicine specialist and a female Administrator. It is the Herbal Medical specialist provides Binns with the biggest laughs as his rejection of conventional medical thinking comes back to haunt him. But the show is stolen by the week's guest star, Alex McQueen  best known for The Thick of It plays the star of a medical drama who believes that he is a real doctor and only is snapped out of this whenever someone a real life medical TV drama which launches him into a rage. The Hospital People has a few laughs that make you tune for the rest of the series which includes a guest appearance by (love him or hate him) Russell Brand.

Shock moments

Every now and again a TV show has to resort to sock methods to gain attention. Here are 3 examples.


Emmerdale

Once known as a cosy soap opera that went by the title of Emmerdale Farm, the show courted fury by having a storyline in which an airliner crashed in to the village of Beckingdale. Some viewers expressed concern of it having similarities to the real life Lockerbie disaster.


Eastenders

In 1989 Leslie Grantham's Dirty Den Watts looked to have died in a gangland shooting. 14 years it turned out that Den had survived and was living in Spain before making to Albert Square. This time he was killed off for good.


Casualty

In the days of when it ran in limited run number of episodes the long running medical drama finished one episode in which the A&E department was burned down by a group of hooligans. There was some talk the storyline was concocted to justify set changes though when you see what the A&E looks like now it is very different thanks to a production move to Cardiff.

UK General Election update 19/4/2015 2.0

Both the BBC and ITV have said that they intend to have leaders debates with or without Prime Minister Theresa May. If she does not turn then the broadcasters will adopt an empty chair policy with a space to indicate where she would have been. Given that for months she had said she would not hold a snap election will she perform an another u-turn?

UK General Election update 19/4/2017

An number of current MPs have announced that they will not be standing for their seats again in the forthcoming election. Without a doubt the most famous of these is George Osborne the former Chancellor. Osborne will now be able to concentrate on his new job as editor of London's Evening Standard. Taton will find itself with an new MP. It is said that Osborne was sacked from his role as Chancellor because Theresa May disliked the clique that Osborne was associated with.

UK General Election update

There will be no Televised debates. Apparently Prime Minister Theresa May does not like them. The British public will have to decide who to vote for by other means.

UK General Election is called

Theresa May has months after taking on the mantle of British Prime Minister has called a General Election for June 8th. The following weeks will see the various party leaders will travel the breadth of the UK in the aim of securing votes. No word as yet on whether there will a leaders debate, this would be interesting as neither Prime Minister May not Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn can be said to be polished media performers.

TV Review: Doctor Who

Starring Peter Capaldi , Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas

BBC1, 7:20pm, Saturday


So after the last full season of the show saw dwindling ratings and the news that both star Capaldi and Showrunner Steven Moffat would be both leaving the show after this season had ended there was some concern about Who's future. The Pilot the first episode of the new season was described as a soft reboot, yet there various references to the shows past. For one example there is a montage sequence that introduced us to Billie Piper's Rose in the episode of the same name. As for the episode itself, Moffat has cut out his usual overly complicated plotting to give us a simple chase story that spans space and time with a cameo appearance for the Daleks. As for the regular cast Capaldi injects both humour and gravitias in his Doctor that makes us wish he had been in the role longer Matt Lucas manges to stay on the right side of wacky and Pearl Mackie as new companion Bill makes a strong impression that might makes some people who hated her predecessor Jenna Louise Coleman's Clara Oswald glad of the change. As this is the start of a new season it is too early to tell if Capaldi and Moffat have ended their respective tenures in style but on the basis of this episode there is some hope.

The fall of Kelvin

Kelvin Mackenzie the one time editor of The Sun and now columnist for it has been suspended from the newspaper. This follows a column in which he said that anyone from Liverpool who were earning the same as him were most likely to be involved in drug dealing. This is not the first time Mackenzie has provoked the ire of the city, during his tenure as editor of The Sun he run a front page in which Liverpool FC fans were blamed for causing the tragedy at Hillsbrough in which a large number of them were killed but this theory has since been disproved. There have been calls for MacKenzie to be sacked outright whether he will be probably depends of the owner of The Sun Rupert Murdoch and if he wants to save face.

Eurovison latest

News has broken that Russia has pulled out of this year's Eurovison Song Contest. No solution could be given to ease both the Russian and Ukrainian concerns over the Russian delegate (for full details check earlier entries) hence the withdrawal. This year's contest has already gone down as one the most memorable for the wrong reasons.

The return of Cleese

It has been announced that John Cleese will be making his first sit-com for the BBC. Edith will see Cleese playing a character who hooks with an old flame after 50 years only for her grown up son to move back into her home. Alison Steadman (who played Clesse's wife in the 1986 film Clockwise) will play the old flame while Jason Watkins plays the son. Edith should be hitting UK TV screens by the end of the year.

The 2017 BAFTA TV Awards - a year of major snubs

The nominations for this year's BAFTA TV Awards will perhaps will go down in history for the programmes that were missing. These are the 3 major losers


The Night Manager

The adaptation of John le Care's novel was a ratings hit, won awards in the US and sparked talk of star Tom Hiddleston being the new James Bond. However only Tom Hollander has been nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for his role as Hugh Laurie's right hand man.


Coronation Street

Soaps may no longer be the genere dominating the British TV ratings Charts bur Corrie still rules the roost among British soap Operas. However it has been shut out of the best (posh term for soap opera) Continuing Drama award.


The Line of Duty

The Cop show that has them investigating themselves and is filled with twist and turns. Because of this format it was a huge ratings smash for BBC2 and therefore transferred to BBC1 where it continues to be a hit. However it is missing in all the major categories.

The most radio ignorant contestant in British TV quiz show history?

In today's  edition of Tipping Point a contestant called Andy was asked the question which Radio 4 programme did Kristy Young took over from Sue Lawley as presenter. Andy said in his defence that his car radio was not set at Radio 4, had not heard of either women and therefore gave the answer as Blue Peter! The answer is of course Desert Island Discs which has been broadcast since the 1940's, when Andy told of the long running status of the programme he just had a blank face. The most amazing thing was that this in the head to head round and needless to say he lost with the winner going on to win the 10 thousand pound jackpot.

Britain's Got Talent but does it last?

Next Saturday sees the start of the new series of Britain's Got Talent and the big question is will there be an act to make lasting impact. The only one that could be said to have done this is Susan Boyle and she did not even win. If you were stop people in the street and ask them to name 5 winners and they might get Paul Potts, Diversity and that dancing dog that was in the badly reviewed film, other than those 3 you might struggle to get an answer. Will this series provide someone with a lasting career?

The scribes are about to strike

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) has announced it's intention to take action over a dispute with the various entertainment organisations (TV networks, movie studios etc) over pay. If the action does go ahead it will see writers not on any project they may be working on, for example if a currently in production film needed script changes then a WGA member can not make those changes so therefore they may have to be done by a cast member or an another non WGA member. This is not the first WGA strike, the last was nearly 10 years ago. The seventh season of 24 was not seen until 2009 after the sixth had been shown in 2007. Another show affected was Heroes which saw a large number of plot lines lift hanging due to the strike, this included one which saw a character standard in an alternate reality only never to be refereed to again.. The strike may be called off and there a large number of people who hope it does.

Prime Minister May speaks or does she?

For those who were disappointed by Tracey Ullman recent show and her obsession with Scottish First Nicola Sturgeon and nothing on British Prime Minster Theresa May will be glad of a video on Youtube. Jan Ravens best known for her work on both Spitting Image and Dead Ringers where she impersonated the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, Judi Dench and Kristy Wark to name just 3 provides her take on the current occupant of No 10 Downing Street. I can not go into much detail in case I spoil the enjoyment of watching the video but when talking about her Grammar School policy 'May' makes a jibe about of one of her political opponents. As stated above you can find the video on Youtube.

Eurovison troubles rumbles on

The ever ongoing furore surrounding continues, the Ukrainian organisers have refused the idea of that the EBC proposed in which the banned Russian entrant  would perform via satellite, but to no avail. There is talk of Ukraine being from future contests. The world is watching to see what happens next.

Second chance on a talent show?

They have been many cases of performers using TV talent shows as a second chance at the big time. One of the most intriguing examples being Max Bacon, in 1987 he appeared on New Faces yet the year before he had been part of GTR. For those who have have not heard of GTR it saw Prog Rock guitar gods Steve Hackett of Genesis fame and YES's Steve Howe coming together to form a band with Bacon providing lead Vocals. The band enjoyed some modest success in particular the single When the Heart Rules the Mind making the US top 20. However due to that old proverbial creative differences the band broke up. The song Bacon performed? When the Heart Rules the Mind. Bacon finished runner up in his heat to none other than squeaky voiced comic Joe Pasquale though he did perform vocal duties on 2 Mike Oldfield albums. Bacon nowadays runs a pub.

You can see Max Bacon New Faces performance on Youtube.