As a follow-up to Desert Island Discs, the team at work have been doing our top ten films, and this week was my turn. The only condition was that one of the ten had to be set in London. Once again, I’ll be buggered if I’m writing all this lot up and not turning it into a blog post.
( My Top Ten Films... )
Posts Tagged ‘star trek’
Klingons!
Posted on in TV.Via SFXmagazine on Twitter.
Very True Mood: 
amused
amusedHeresy Expanded
Posted on in Media, TV.To describe someone as “the best actor in TNG” obviously falls into the category of damning with faint praise. 
What prompted my previous post was going to see Waiting for Godot on Wednesday, this production has a very impressive cast list: Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Ronald Pickup and Simon Callow. And it struck me that Patrick Stewart looked a little uncomfortable and stiff, in particular with the physical comedy aspects of the production.
Basically, what Linnie said.
I would sit down and watch Patrick Stewart in almost anything (but I gave up on Eleventh Hour after one episode ‘cos it was just dull) but there’s a certain type of part he does very, very well and outside of that he’s still good but not the greatest.
Very True Mood: 
mischievous
mischievousHeresy
Posted on in Media, TV.We only think of Patrick Stewart as a really good actor because he was the best actor in TNG.
Discuss.
Very True Mood: mischievous
mischievousStar Trek
Posted on in Films.The new Star Trek film rocks.
Everything that mattered was right, and many of the things that didn’t matter as well (they even did the sideburns).
However, I have a problem with Scotty, it’s quite simply that Simon Pegg + scottish accent = Wee Hughie from The Boys and that brings to mind all sorts of very strange crossovers.
Very True Mood: cheerful
cheerfulStar Trek
Posted on in Films.Seen the pics from the new Star Trek film yet? Spoilers ahoy ‘cos here are the treknical ones…
Hands up who thinks that this ship looks like it should be an intermediate stage between the movie-era Enterprise and the Ambassador class? I can hear the fanboys screaming…
So this is the USS Kelvin, destroyed some time before the main timeframe of the movie. NCC-0514. Hmm, I want to see more. And, on the really pedantic level, how does this fit into the same registry scheme that includes the NCC-638 USS Grissom form ST III?
And has it really been four years since I updated my Star Trek ships web site? Ouch.
Mammoth tosh
Posted on in Dinosaurs, Doctor Who, Films, Science.Went to see 10,000 BC this afternoon. Oh boy, history, biology, geography, astronomy – they all get a hammering in this film. I can’t be bothered to even start listing everything that was goofy here.
It was one of the most by-the-numbers renditions of (the easy to understand bits of) Joseph Campbell’s monomyth that I’d seen in a while. I smiled at the bemusement when hunter-gatherers first came across the evidence of agriculture, but of course in Campbell’s scheme there has to be a ‘boon’ to take back home at the end (sorry, that was a spoiler). There were also bits lifted from the Bible, Stargate, Conan and 300, just in case the mention of Campbell misled you into thinking there were highbrow sources being used.
The action and CGI were very good, the actors managed to keep straight face. It’s not a bad movie in the sense that it’s exciting and visual, but it’s certainly one to watch with the brain switched off.
Oh, by the way, the Doctor Who and Star Trek trailers look amazing on the big screen.
Very True Mood: 
sleepy
sleepyBook Meme
Posted on in Books, Doctor Who, Memes, My Life.I was tagged by Jack on the grounds that I’ve “not done a meme for a while”.
Total Number of Books Owned
According to my LibrayThing profile, 858. I know I have at least one more to add to that list and I’d also need to subtract the 27 tagged as !borrowed or !sold. So 832. Minimum, as there may be more hiding somewhere that I haven’t added yet.
Last Book Bought
A couple of out of print role playing games from eBay. Last ‘real’ book would appear to be Clarissa Oakes by Patrick O’Brian which I found in a bookshop in Amsterdam and made Lettice buy because I’d only just bought something else there and the shop assistant was a bit on the scary side.
Last Book Read
I finished re-reading Human Nature this morning. I’ve been wanting to refresh my memory since the TV version came out. The book is bloodier and does a better job of creating the historical context. However it does have a number of elements that are really superfluous and which the TV version correctly ignored.
Five books that mean a lot to me
In reverse chronological order in my life:
-
Life by Richard Fortey
I bought this whilst on holiday in Tennessee visiting
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
gleet and littlebun so it reminds me of a great time as well as being a great book. Fortey takes a look at the history of life on Earth from the moment if started to the dawn of human history. Richard Dawkins did the same trip backwards in The Ancestor’s Tale but for me Fortey’s book is more engaging. -
Ships of the Star Fleet, Volume One
Very, very geeky. But as well as being one of the best Treknical fandom works ever it’s also the first book I bought online.
-
Thieves’ World
I could have listed several works of fantasy or science fiction that I read during my adolesence – The Lord of the Rings, Dune, the Pern novels and The Colour of Magic prime amongst them, but this collection of low fantasy stories set in a seedy city at the arse end of an empire is the one that stuck in my mind the most.
-
The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
I was the pefect age for this when it was first published. And from this book sprung my interest in RPGs and wargames. It has a lot to answer for.
-
Read About Me and the Yellow-Eyed Monster
A childhood treat – a book with me and my family and my friends in it.
Four People You’re Tagging With This Meme
- Chris at The Virtual Stoa
- gleet
- pink_weasel
- Tony and his Random Thoughts
Best YouGov Survey Question, Ever.
Posted on in Films, TV, The World.Which of the following characters from the following science fiction movies/ programmes do you think is the most attractive?
- Seven of Nine (Star Trek Voyager)
- Princess Leia (Star Wars)
- Rachael (Blade Runner)
- SuperGirl (SuperGirl)
- Barbarella (Barbarella)
- LeeLoo (Fifth Element)
- Padme (Phantom Menace)
- TX (Terminator 3)
- Lt Uhura (Star Trek)
- Sil (Species)
- Don’t know
- None of these
Having watched Vengeance on Varos last night I read Sil and had a very different image leap to mind than the one they intended. Has anyone see if there’s an equivalent question about the boys?
Sign up with YouGov and get paid to do dumb surveys.
Very True Mood: amused
amusedStardates via RSS?
Posted on in Blogs, Computers, My Life.Got a short e-mail today about my StarDate Converter:
Have you considered making the current stardate available via RSS?
Hmm, interesting. First of all I’d have to translate the calculator to PHP or whatever to do the calculations on the server, but after that making the output available via RSS would be easy enough.
But would it be practical: the second decimal place represents a period of little over five minutes, so if someone wanted this to create a stardate ‘clock’ they’d be hitting my server at least that often. Not a disaster on its own but something that would need keeping an eye on if it proved popular.
Maybe I should test it out with the French Revolutionary Calendar first (I really need to convert that to PHP anyway so that the dates on this blog aren’t reliant on JavaScript). Hmmm, let’s see where this leads.
Very True Mood: 
curious
curious