Monthly Archives: September 2011

“Bazinga!”

20/09/2011 – 11:19

You know when they say that you should never see a film after you have read the book from which it has been adapted, because in your mind no director or producer or writer can convert to the screen how you have imagined your beloved protagonists and characters to look and feel; how they will appear, act and talk is just completely different to what your imagination has created for you and more often than not, you are left disappointed. As much as I think Rene Zellweger was magnificent in Chicago, I was somewhat reserved in her casting as Bridget Jones. Such an opinion is not complete folly, and of course there are rare exceptions.

Les Miserables at the O2 last year

However to this end, my head came crashing down onto my keyboard a few days ago when I learned that Russell Crowe has been cast in the iconic role of Inspector Javert in the film-of-the-musical adaptation of the stratospherically-popular Les Miserables. Cameron Mackintosh’s musical masterpiece, which some might argue has been long overdue a proper silver screen treatment has all the great ingredients so far, including production input from Mackintosh himself and the original score and lyrics from the musical. Also keen to shed his mutton chops, white vest and giant claws is Hugh Jackman, who has been cast as Jean Valjean. This I’m not too worried about because Jackman comes from a background of musical theatre before he became an actor, but although he can sing, can he live up to the likes of stellar actors such as Alfie Boe whom have made the role of the bread-thief their own on-stage? I don’t know, but I really do hope so. I’m waiting to see the biggest transformation since Charlize Theron played Aileen Wuornos in Monster when I see Russell Crowe as Javert.

And you can go to the DVDs & Blu-rays page to see some more musicals we’ve selected this week for your entertainment, including the seminal 25th Anniversary concert of Les Mis, shot last year at the O2.

Now out in paperback

Last week saw the annual tribute to possibly the greatest children’s author of all time, Roald Dahl, and his wonderful works that he gave to us. We’ve a Roald Dahl selected products page here, where you can find his books, eBooks and DVDs listed. Which ones are you missing? I’d like to think you’ve read all his books – the children’s ones at the very least! I won’t tell you the title of my personal favourite, but I’ll give you a clue and say that it’s the tale of a young, her genius often-overlooked, misunderstood girl and her powers of telekinesis. If you know your Dahl, you’ll know which book that is. However if you’ve read all your Dahl and are looking for something new, we recommend the newly-published Storyteller: the Life of Roald Dahl now out in paperback. Select to pick it up from favourite local indie and enjoy learning just what went on in the greatest children’s author of all time’s mind as he concocted up his stories of fantastic foxes and dyslexic vicars.

Hark! For 'tis Twitter in all her bestowed glory!

And staying with even more literature, (I will go onto film & DVD shortly!), I guffawed to myself when I was sent this little titbit a few days ago about the best 10 literary fakes on Twitter. The list is comprised of ten accounts pretending to be masters of history and literature and what they would be tweeting if they were alive today, or indeed if Twitter had been around in ye olde days. Ye Twitter! You can find the list of chuckle-some spoof laureates here, and my personal favourite is undoubtedly number 9 and this:

Can just picture Joseph Fiennes declaring his love to her instead of Gwyneth Paltrow.

Tintin in modern CGI...

...and in 2D from our childhoods

So… going onto films, my failing-miserably-to-deny-excitement is increasing begrudgingly whenever I see new screenshots from Steven Spielberg & Peter Jackson’s first Tintin adaptation The Secret of the Unicorn, due to open in cinemas next month. The pictures I saw today have not helped one bit in my trying to divorce myself of emotion towards the adaptations. I consider myself a Tintin purist, loving the comics and the small-yet-perfect TV series that was made of Herge’s Belgian journalist and his faithful fox terrier in the 1990s… and so when I learned that Tintin was going to be given some kind of Star Wars-treatment where the merchandise would be everywhere and the – gasp, shock! – the entire film would be in CGI, it did make my heart sink rather dramatically. As much as I love Tintin and Snowy and Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus in plain, flat, bright 2D form, I might just be being pessimistic and I guess at the very least it will keep the legacy of Tintin alive for the future for new generations. As these new screenshots show, one can’t deny just how exciting and stunning the movie looks and it’s a superb cast they’ve got too to play the beloved characters. Ah I think we’ll be fine; we have the creative minds on board who gave us Lord of the Rings, Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones. Just no-one mention The Flintstonesfrom 1992.

Nominated for 11 Emmys, picked up six of them!

Rather fabulously it was the prestigious Emmy Awards two nights ago, with British talent doing very well indeed. Our own British rose, Kate Winslet, triumphed winning Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Mildred Pierce, so well done to her. Congratulations also to ITV’s not-just-another-period-drama Downtown Abbey, being nominated for 11 awards and winning six of them, and scooping the coveted Outstanding Miniseries or Movie award by battling off strong competition from American shows.

The genius that is The Big Bang Theory

My personal favourite award winner of the night I was so pleased to see went to the thoroughly-deserving Jim Parsons for his role as the highly-strung physicist Dr Sheldon Cooper in The Big Bang Theory. He won Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series for the second time running, and if you watch The Big Bang Theory, you’ll see why it just had to go to him.

Be sure to check the DVD section next week as we’ll be doing a feature on the winners & nominees of the Emmys on DVD & Blu-ray, so you can keep yourself entertained and see why they won their awards!

And I leave you now for another short while with this piece I came across on the world wide web entitled: X Factor finalists & winners: where are they now? You will chuckle.

Laters!

By hivenetwork | Posted in Hive's Blogs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

A tale of two genres.

12/09/2011 – 16:05

While I will obviously say to impress people that I am big lover of Classics-adaptations on television and enjoy nothing more than being immersed in and challenged by political thrillers on the big screen, never let it be said that I do not possess the unbelievably guilty pleasure of watching trashy television too. And so what glee I found myself in when a couple of weeks ago I spotted the trailer for a show currently being screened on Discovery Real Time, Extreme Couponing. Until I sat down and watched my first episode I must confess I had no idea that it was set in the US, but oh – what fun it was to sit there with a cup of tea, made from tea bags, sugar and milk I had bought and worst still, paid full price for myself, whilst watching a show where money-savvy-to-say-the-least women were spending literally days scrounging and ferreting around every piece of commercial literature published in America like vultures to get their Edward-Scissorhands-hands onto the valuable coupons printed inside. For these aren’t just women who save a few coupons here and there in the odd copy of Woman’s Weekly to get ‘buy one, get two free’ on bottles of ketchup, we are talking women who have multiple A4 binders of hundreds of every coupon known to man, where they spend their time on Excel calculating and drawing up tables and spread sheets of how they are going to spend their coupons on – and this is of no exaggeration, by all means watch it if you don’t believe me – hundreds and I mean hundreds, of bottles of ketchup, or indeed any foodstuff or household item that is on offer. The sheer number of hours that some of these women spend in the week cutting and saving the coupons could arguably be spent having a real job, but it is if anything, undoubtedly impressive. There are tales on the screen of women spending as little as four dollars on a food bill of over a thousand, just so they can take it all home and store box upon box, bottle upon bottle, packet upon packet, of food, drink and household items in their store cupboards and basements. One can only sit there in awe as the long-suffering cashiers in the supermarket have to scan upwards of three hundred coupons into the register and watch the sum total numbers just drop off like something out of The Matrix.

And as you’re thinking whether you could do this, have a look at the money saving books I’ve researched for on Hive on the Books page, and see if you can be just as savvy as these girls.

Speaking of controversy, I found it interesting to learn Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s thoughts on the influences texting, Facebook messaging and tweeting have had on our current generation’s writing skills and the art of writing poetry. In the interview, Ms Duffy argues her case for the long debate about how the afore-mentioned three mediums of communication have affected the ways younger people write, and surprisingly champions the texting / tweeting / Facebook-styles of “writing”. She states the styles in which poets would write in so very few words, the equivalent of what a novelist would write in several pages when describing the protagonist in his novel for example, is akin to the “writing style” of sending a tweet in 140 characters – meaning that you are trying to convey what you are feeling in so short an amount of words and space. Given that Twitter’s main function, other than publicising products or following news & celebrities, is that it is enormously used as some kind of emotional soundstage by people either just seeking attention or wanting a faceless world behind a sheet of glass to know what latest woe life is unjustly throwing at them – all this in the comfort of knowing they don’t have to respond should someone challenge the constant tweeting of their misery – perhaps Ms Duffy may not be wholly off the mark in her opinions. This is the sort of therapy money can’t buy. If you want to read more about the interview and Ms Duffy’s argument you can do so here on The Guardian website.

Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong

Sex & the City - happily residing in 'Women's Fiction'.

I had to laugh to myself at the irony of the story about two women who went into a well-known high-street bookstore last week and found to their offence and distaste that the “Women’s Fiction” section in the shop consisted of nothing but “very light fiction, [with] lots of pink fluffiness and no classic authors.” I can understand from these ladies’ points of view, one being an English teacher, that upon seeing the female-fiction-equivalent of Salman Rushdie was Candace Bushnell in this controversial section they were slightly narked and felt the need to complain to the chief executive of the store’s company. Is this the calibre of what British women are reading? Or is this what was just being marketed to them, because of the success of shows such as Sex & the City? Is it to be believed men read titles such as Birdsong, when women don’t exert themselves any further than finding out whether Bridget chooses Mark Darcy or Daniel Cleaver? Must they be segregated this way, and surely a woman can read an Edward Rutherford book? It’s a very interesting point and not exactly a flattering comparison. But the ironic part of the whole story is that on the other hand, sales figures of Sophie Kinsella’s Mini Shopaholic, no doubt a firm resident on the “Women’s Fiction” shelves, are herculean compared to the figures of the Booker-nominated title The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes. Perhaps what needs to be addressed more here is why women are reading what they are, as opposed to what was upsetting to learn what they aren’t. Still, there’s always Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall or Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. Presumably they were in the in the general “Fiction” section, safely being disassociated with anything of a similar ilk to Serena Mackesy or Jenny Colgan. Just no-one mention Mike Gayle.

By hivenetwork | Posted in Hive's Blogs | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Baileys & cherryade.

02/09/2011 – 17:14

A rather belated hello to you all this week, but as they say, better late than never!

That's fabulous, darling.

I was grinning from ear to ear this week when I learned the fantastic news about two of the most iconic characters in the BBC’s classic comedy legacy, Edina Monsoon and Patsy Stone, are returning to our screens for a three-part twentieth anniversary special of Absolutely Fabulous. I am so excited; I grew up with the drunken and hilarious antics of Eddy & Patsy when they first came to our screens in 1991, in a Vogue-infested ball of Stolichnaya, Marlboro Lights and Christian Lacroix. The great news is that all the original cast are returning for the show, including Julia Sawalha as Eddy’s long-suffering daughter Saffy, June Whitfield as Mother and Jane Horrocks as Eddy’s bizarre-but-loveable secretary Bubble. The episodes are being set in the present day, and as Absolutely Fabulous never let us down with its spot-on social observations of the times it was filmed in, it will be so wonderful and interesting to see how Eddy and Patsy are living in a world of smartphones, Facebook and YouTube. I just can’t wait and I’m very happy to know that Jennifer Saunders will be back on our screens after her successful battle against breast cancer last year.

Well that’s just fabulous, sweetie.

And there will be an Absolutely Fabulous section on our DVD homepage next week in tribute to this news, so make sure you check it out for some extra-fabulous prices.

" 'Viva France' as they say in Rome, Rodders!"

Staying with BBC comedy and legendary characters for the moment, I was alerted to some even more pukka news this week about a competition that was being run by satellite channel G.O.L.D. and in conjunction with the thirtieth anniversary of Only Fools & Horses. The prize was for anyone who fancied renting a night in a specially-made replica of Nelson Mandela House, where Del, Rodders, Granddad and Uncle Albert lived, for 1980s prices – £18 a night! All you had to do was email a registration to enter but sadly I only found this all out at the eleventh hour so was unable to enter myself. But hey ho, you can still enjoy the thirtieth-anniversary celebrations and take advantage of the best comedy the BBC ever created by checking out the Only Fools & Horses section from next Monday on our DVD page. Quite frankly you’d be a plonker not to. Lovely jubbly!

Finally I got to see Super 8 this week, the latest offering from LOST-creator J.J. Abrams and produced by I’m-not-worthy Steven Spielberg. If you haven’t seen it yet you should still be able to find a few showings as your local cinema such as I did, and it’s well worth it to go and see on the big screen, but I have to say in all honesty, it didn’t quite blow me away like Cloverfield or Star Trek XI, J.J. Abrams last feature did. I won’t put any plot spoilers in here for you but suffice to say I thought the children and the opening story were excellent, but the conclusion of the film… not so much. Sorry Mr Abrams, I think you can do better. Still the prospect of Cloverfield 2 has most definitely got my attention…

And finally this week I was rather tickled to learn what the most sought-after out-of-print book is. US-based book search engine BookFinder.com has totalled up all its searches of the past year and found that Madonna’s rather risqué to say the very least, Sex book is number one. I actually remember seeing reviews on it just after its release in 1992, and from a graphic point of view how interesting it was to see a large book encased in metal and being spiral-bound; it did look very naughty. Of course I would’ve been much too young at the time to read its contents, but I’m kicking myself slightly now because a local shop in the town I live had a copy in their window last year for a very reasonable price. Oh, in the bath when opportunity knocked. I will console myself then with the much more friendly-to-the-eyes The Marzipan Pig by Russell Hoban and illustrated by Quentin Blake, which I do have and is out-of-print.

If you’re interested to know if you are in possession of any of BookFinder.com’s most sought-after 100, you can see the entire list here.

The number one character features in all seven stories.

And speaking of lists, Harry Potter fans will be excited to learn who was voted the most popular character from the Harry Potter stories this week. I won’t spoil it for you, but if you want to know then just click here to see the full top 40 list. Personally I’m delighted to learn who was voted number one, and very deservedly so. It’s a great list and it’s only when you look at all the names there in the list that you realise just how phenomenal JK Rowling, her imagination and her writing really is.

And on that note, I shall see you all next week!

‘Laters!

By hivenetwork | Posted in Hive's Blogs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 4,760 other followers