theoddsock.com

We have so got to find ourselves a baby-sitter for May.

I’ve just seen the trailer for the new Indiana Jones movie and I am bouncing about as jazzed as I was when my dad brought me home from seeing Last Crusade and I proceeded to reenact the entire movie for my mother in the dinning room.

Even though Jon and I watch a fair number of movies, we haven’t in fact been to the cinema since we saw Revenge of the Sith. No, it wasn’t a case that that put me off the cinema, but nothing has really clicked enough with us that we had to have the “In the Cinema” viewing experience.

However, this film, we must go and see, and with a brand new baby, we will probably welcome an evening/day out and all you can eat Chinese buffet. I’m also hoping that our local Cineworld in Stevenage will run a marathon of thee previous movies. When the deplorable Nemesis came out the only good thing to come of it was that they did a special where for one day they showed all the even-numbered (read, great and less crap) Star Trek movies, and you got a free ticket to see Nemesis. In the end we weren’t well the day our Nemesis tickets were for, but it didn’t matter, we’d had a great day watching movies with a small number of equally-hyped people and the atmosphere was fantastic.

I’m just now hoping that I don’t have to wait for too long before John Williams’ sound track is released…

I’m known as a bit of a film nut, although anyone who has seen our living room dvd nook and then the two piles behind the chair and finally the overspill in my workroom will know that both bit, and nut are rather tame.

Also our collection runs at a number of strange tangents, I say tangents because they do overlap some actors and sad person that I am I can given you those tangents

However, I also adore listening to the radio, its easier when beading, and until we got the MythTv set up to record digital radio my best friends in the world where BBC’s Listen Again and MPlayer.

At the moment while I’m eagerly awaiting the next Lindsay Davis’ novel to be serialised as a Radio Play; the previous four were very well done, I’m trying to make an effort to listen to some other shows, that I might have overlooked but now have the time to listen to.

At the moment I’m very much enjoying Tomorrow, Today! which is currently in it’s second series on Radio 4. Set in 1962 it sees a somewhat beleaguered radio producer and writer trying to produce a show set in 2008, the 2008 as expected in 2008. The show deals more with the cast and crew than then actual stories they are trying to air but you get some hilarious snippets. My favourite was mention of the villian “Dr J Chaotica, bachelour of Science” which reminded me a great deal of Dr. Science, who if you are not familiar with him and his radio show where he gives the more incredible explanations for everyday things: “Knows more than you do” despite the fact that “He’s not a real doctor. I have a Masters degree. In… Science”.

Of course podcasts are great, but so far BBC radio doesn’t podcast much of its (proper)comedy, neither Russell Brand nor Chris Moyles are my cup of tea, but at the very least they do roll The News Quiz and the Now Show in to a single podcast subscription.

But yesterday after discovering that the SciFi channel have removed the Seeing Ear Theatre archive form their website, boo hiss, I did find another podcast of OTR shows at Pirate TV Theatre Classic Radio Drama . Alas, not all the shows seem to bee still in their podcast directory but there were a good 70 or more available when I set my iTunes on it yesterday afternoon. The website SFFAudio is a good source of sites which collect OTR shows, but I’ve not investigated much further, as I don’t want to deluge myself with more than I can listen to quite yet

Also, for those mourning the passing of the Seeing Ear Theatre into apparent oblivion, before I managed to capture their archive, and as far as I can tell they only every released some of the plays on tape ( I’ve got volume one which my uncle bought me many years ago, I can blame him for many things including my MST3K fixation which has since been caught by my husband) , I discovered that they are recreating the classic Twilight Zone shows as Audio Dramas, they’ve been at it for a few years now, and while it seems to only be broadcast int he US they have a number of CD sets out, at around $39 each, which gets you about 10 episodes. I’ve ordered a couple and can’t wait to hear them.

However, Amazon have just provided me with Diana Wynne Jones’ Charmed Life, abridged(alas) read by Tom Baker(wh00t!) which should provide at least 3 hours of fun.

On Tuesday evening Jon and I finally sat down and watched North by Northwest. Given that I am a huge Cary Grant fan and vastly enjoy Hitchcock movies it was rather odd that it had taken us about 2 months to get around to watching the dvd which we had bought when I was last in Dublin.

The film itself is, of course, brilliant. Plus it meant tat Jon, a long time Eddie Izzard fan finally actually got to hear and see James Mason. However what struck me more was the theme music. The opening title sequence, designed by Saul Bass is wonderfully striking but the music was so similiar to that of V (for Victory). Back in the day, when the day was 1983, V was a big big tv event, or at least it was for us in Dublin. For me at the time I just equated it with my mum having to go to hospital because she got chicken bone stuck in throat and I had to go next door where they were watching V, it was rather late in the evening and I remembered people who were really lizards and someone having a lizard baby. Later on when I watched it properly the baby-lizard sequence wasn’t quite what I remembered but I was 4 at the time and probably watching it in the approved Dr Who/Dalek position (i.e. from behind a sofa). Still it has aged reasonably well and another sequel mini-series is seemingly in the works for next year.
Of course I had to get the CD (Bernard Herrmann) and when it arrived, I listened first to the title music and then the theme for V which I have on a rather good two cd sci-fi themes compilation set (called Next Generations - it has a good mix ) I think they sound a like, I need to get Jon - who although deaf and wears hearing aids its a rather good control subject for whether something is similiar.

I’ve now listened to the whole soundtrack cd which is a great edition with all the music including restored cues, and besides the understandable similarity to passages from Journey to the Centre of the Earth ( same composer, released in the same year) I’ve managed to pick out Men in Black, and various Star Wars like sequences ( very short some of them, a particular orchestration for a chord progression) and ET.

Its well worth a listen and a watch.

So they are rebooting Star Trek, it would seem.

Now call me a militant die-hard trekkie of the first water but the news is about as palatiable to me as rebooting Tolkien. With the guts of 40 years of canon, and particularly in the case of ‘The Final Frontier’ some misfires, this just gives me the heebee-jeebees.

Not withstanding the fact that I have not, through boycotting TV alot recently, seen anything J.J. Abrams has output I am rather wary and may very well end up taking a Greedo-shot-first stance to all this.

So, will we be treated to a complete reworking of Trek, a ‘Jim Kirk’s Academy Days’ where every one turns up, only younger? I do hope not, since it will jar very much with the version of events we know and anything of that ilk would smack hugely of a Trek Muppet Babies. What would be interesting would be to fill in some of those tantalising threads that the show dangled before us. Kirk and Carol Marcus’ inital relationship - was she the blonde lab tech he almost married. It would be nice to see the well known friction between Spock and his father owing to Spock’s decision to attend the Academy rather than the Vulcan institution Sarek favoured. How about seeing Ben Finney before he got all grumpy and suicidal. Or the famous Kobyashi Maru test - how did it really go down, I’m sure some of classmates were a bit miffed. Or the events alluded to in The Concience of The King. (Yes! marvel at my trivia-fu - I own a uniform so am not one to be triffled with!)
Now, don’t get me wrong, I not against exploring things in the life of the younger Kirk and Spock, and the others if it works, because there is plenty sketched out loosely to play with, but what does worry me is that the established events will be tossed aside to create some trite akin to the current high school adventures we’ve been seeing but in the future, oh and with space ships, oh and a Gorn too. Oh don’t forget the Borg!

The Borg episode aside which was a little on the verge, I felt Enterprise managed to fit things along the established line of canon regarding first contacts with races while still getting us to see some old favourites - The episode with the Feregine stands out here as a gem of an example. And the episode with the Romulan ship was good as well.
As Spock is fond of saying, anything is possible, but I for one feel alot like Dr McCoy when told about the Genesis Device.

Establised over 40 years, now watch out here comes Abrams, we’ll do it for you in 90 minutes!

And I think we all remember what happened that time. All I can do is hope that he adds to things and doesn’t rewrite things too much.

Granted I was not at all happy with Nemesis (to be addressed in another post) anyway so I am not against XI. Just very wary.