I know this is on, but I haven’t had time to watch it and even if I had time to watch it I almost certainly wont.
That means I am missing out on the antics of Claire Richards, Frankie Dettori, Gillian Taylforth, Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, Lacey Banghard, Paula Hamilton, Neil “Razor” Ruddock, Ryan Moloney, Rylan Clark, Sam Robertson and Tricia Penrose.
Although it can be argued that the term celebrity is being used in an extremely broad sense, I still feel I need to do something to rectify the situation.
Step forward the legendary comedy duo French and Saunders. They provided a must watch summary of this and pretty much every season of Big Brother going. The best thing about it? It last 3 minutes rather than running on for weeks. Happy Days!
The thing I find with Denzel Washington is he exudes earnestness. Pretty much any film he has been in he’s earnest. In Cry Freedom he was an earnest Steve Biko, in Crimson Tide he was earnest Commander Hunter, in Training Day (bloody great film BTW) he was an earnest Lt. Alonzo. Sometimes he plays an earnestly good guy, sometimes he plays an earnestly bad guy, but earnest he is.
So we come to the Book of Eli, guess what? He is earnest. The film is a bit of a curiosity. Denzel’s character, Eli, can best be described as a mash up of the post-apocalyptic ruthlessness of Mel Gibson in Mad Max, the bible quoting menace of Samuel L Jackson in pulp fiction and the determined spiritual mission of Elijah Wood in Lord of the Rings. Bizarre isn’t it
Eli was a man living in an America reduced to rubble in the aftermath of a nuclear war, He was commanded by a higher power to head west where he will deliver a book, the last bible in the world and it holds the key to man’s redemption.
Eli is not just an iterant bible nutter he is also a ruthless fighting machine, as an assortment of villains find out as they are ruthlessly dispatched. His main nemesis Carnegie, is played by Gary Oldman, Mayor of a town along the route going west who realises the power of the book and wants it for himself.
Carnegie initially entices Eli to stay in his residence with hospitality but Eli realises the danger and after a lot of mayhem escapes taking along Solara (Mila Kunis) a girl who lives in Carnegie’s home. Carnegie chases him down to a homestead in the middle of the desert where the showdown happens.
The homestead was occupied by an elderly couple, and lady of the house was none other than Frances De La Tour, who some may know as Mrs Jones from the 70’s TV comedy Rising Damp. She was a bit of a man eater in the show back then, and it seems not much has changed as in this film she was also a man-eater except in a very literal sense. Her husband and she are machine gun wielding cannibals.
They team up with Eli to try and thwart Carnegie attempts to steal the bible. It all goes wrong Eli is shot and left for dead, the elderly couple killed, the bible stolen and Solara seized. Had the bad guys won? Get real, this is Hollywood.
The Bible was in braille and useless to Carnegie, it turns out Eli was blind. Carnegie died from the injuries he had sustained. Solara escaped went back to homestead and revived a badly injured Eli and together they journeyed to San Francisco which apparently is the Promised Land.
It turns out Eli had memorised the entire bible and he lived long enough to recite its entire content to a commune of monks with a printing press who produced thousands of bibles and presumably saved the world in the process.
I have already nailed my flag to the post on this one, I really like Person of Interest. I initially loved it because the show took its dramatic licence jumped into a Ferrari and stretched it to its max. I don’t mind a show doing that, as long as it is not pretending to be anything other than what it is.
The plot was interesting but formulaic, but in the last two episodes it has taken an interesting turn and veered away from the formulaic. Mr Reese who has all along been the hunter, suddenly in a dramatic turn of events has become the hunted. The CIA, his former employers, wants him and it seems they prefer dead rather than alive.
At the end of tonight’s episode he was caught in a trap by the CIA and only a last minute rescue by Mr Finch and, in a last minute change of heart, Detective Carter saved him from being taken out by the folk from Langley.
This set the show up for some very interesting forthcoming episodes. What does Channel 5 go and do? They decide to take a “mid-season” break till January. January!!! What a way to kill momentum.
Trivia of the day: James Caviezel who plays Mr Reese in this show, also played Jesus in the Passion of Christ, probably explains a lot of the miraculous escapes in earlier episodes.
The Easter weekend of 1997 saw the launch of the UK’s fifth terrestial Channel, tapping in to the zeitgeist of the time it was launched by the Spice Girls.
After the fanfare and publicity of the launch the real work started and this meant fighting for audience share with the four existing terrestrial channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4) as well as an ever increasing number of satellite and cable channels.
The battle was fierce, their well-funded terrestrial competitors with a customer base built up over decades were not going to be dislodged easily and the initial audience figures showed this with Channel 5 languishing with only 2.3% of the viewing audience.
In the chase for audience share the channel gradually morphed into what the tabloids christened Channel Filth or as a programming executive of Channel 5 was quoted when describing their programming output as three F’s, football, films and what can be best described as the present continuous tense of the f-word.
The style of programming reached its zenith in 2000 with the infamous reality TV show ‘Naked Jungle’ which introduced us not only to totally naked contestants but distressingly a totally naked host, Keith Chegwin. The show almost ended Chegwin’s career and unleashed a wave of moral outrage against Channel 5.
Channel 5 has moved on from those dire days the football is still there occasionally, there are still films, but the third F is now F for Foreign TV shows and good quality shows as well. The CSI franchise, Law & Order, House MD, The Shield, Breaking Bad, The Mentalist have introduced great US TV shows to the UK and have seen a solid and sustained rise in Channel 5’s audience share.
Are you a fan of Channel 5? What’s your best programme?
The plot has often had more holes than a truckload of polo mints, and more cliched than a panel of X-Factor judges but you know what? I love this show.
The show taps into the huge growth of powers available to government in monitoring its citizen post 9/11, but against this back drop it throws up an old school action hero.
It introduces the mysterious Mr Finch who has a access to a system which processes vast amounts of data, phone calls, emails, cctv footage etc and predicts when serious crimes are about to occur and feeds these to the US government but it also predicts crimes that may not affect national security – so called “irrelevant” crimes.
Enter John Reese, an ex-CIA special operations agent recruited by Mr Finch to prevent the occurrence of irrelevant crimes predicted by the computer.
Each episode he follows up on an irrelevant crime passed to him by Mr Finch and in the process blasts his way through an assortment of Russian Mafiosi, ruthless security guards employed by dodgy pharmaceutical firms, Iraqi war veterans turned bank robbers and more.
John Reese is stern, generally humourless, troubled but most importantly a seemingly invincible all action hero. Whether its a gang of Brooklyn arms dealers or dreaded terrorists from eastern Europe, it takes more than being simply outnumbered to get one over John Reese.
It is good fun but was getting a tad repetitive till this weeks episode. With strong undertones of the film the Usual Suspect, John Reese ends up rescuing a victim who it turns out is less victim, more maniacal homicidal gang kingpin. Fortunately even though he has John Reese at his mercy in the final scene like many of us he has enjoyed his all action no nonsense persona and respectfully allows him to live.
Good news for the rest of us as well, cos it means John is back on our screens Tuesday next week (Channel 5 9pm)
