British Invaders 30 day challenge – Day 5

Your favourite show

I take it Doctor Who is off limit and if I have to be honest… I like it, like it very much, more than I ever thought I would but I would not have picked it as my favorite.

Well, as the title of the challenge is British Invaders Challenge I will not pick Firefly… ‘cos it ain’t British… so I will go with my beloved Being Human.

I really enjoyed the pilot that was shown on BBC3 and then waited eagerly to see if it was going to be picked up. O loved the first series and did not mind at all most of the actor changes from the pilot and the actual series.

I love the way Being Human blends so many different genres and think Toby Whithouse is just a very good writer, each and every episodes are filled with one liners and I can’t think of a single episode in the 3 series I did not enjoy. The three and then four main characters have been given a chance to grow, develop throughout out the 3 series and I always feel for them.

I can’t wait for the next series!

British Invaders 30 day challenge – Day 4

Your favourite character (non Doctor Who)

OK… it’s been a long… very long week and as I have done The 30 Day TV challenge earlier this summer I already have answered this…I will therefore take the lazy way out today and give you a link to my previous answer, because, frankly, I have not changed my mind since I wrote it.

To see my favorite non Who character, click here

 

British Invaders 30 day challenge – day 3

Your favourite companion

Well… I guess you could read this post from eamonn as what he said is basicaly what I would say, he just wrote it better than I would have…

Well.. I guess that would be cheating a bit but just like Eamonn I will go for 2 of them: one from the old series and one from the new.

As explained in my previous entry, I have yet to see ALL the companion so there are some I know by names and by sound (thanks Big Finish! ) but as I have not seen them I can’t really pick them.

I am tempted to pick Sarah Jane Smith, I really liked her both in the old series and in the new one as well as in her spin off show but not having grown up with her as many of my online DW friends I do not feel the same attachment to her… but she does come as a very close second to my choice!

I think I’m going to go with Leela.

The first time I “met” of Leela was in a Big Finish story and I fell in love with her: I liked her directness… and in a way I think I am a lot like her, mentally that is, I wish it was also physically but sadly not…

So when I first heard this Big Finish story with Leela I went home and asked on FB who Leela was, once I got the answer I went on to watch “The Talons of Weng-Chiang” and “The horror of Fang Rock”, even though it was ever so far from where I was in my watching of the series at that time. Leela did not disappoint in these stories and I was looking forward to watch more of her.

Big Finish did other stories and series with her, Gallifrey, Jago and Lightfoot  and they are just fantastic.

 

As for my new Who companion it just HAS to be Donna Noble. I have to say, I really REALLY did not like her in “The Runaway Bride” and was not looking forward to seeing her when she was announced as coming back as the regular companion but I very quickly changed my mind. Her character development has been stellar culminating in her becoming what has been foretold: Doctor Donna and I cannot help but well up when the Doctor wipes her memories.

This being said my all time favorite episode with Donna has to be “Turn Left” she was just brilliant in it.

I miss her, oh so very much…

British Invaders 30 day challenge – Day 2

Your favourite Doctor

OK… well… people who have read some of my blog will know by now that I am a fairly “new comer” in the DW universe and that I have been watching / listening to as many as possible of the Old DW, in order. So far I have reached the 4th Doctor and Leela as well as K9, of course I have seen some of the TV movies, including the 8th Doctor’s one and I have watch every episodes of the New DW and listened to many MANY hours of Big Finish’s DW stories!

So, now I have to decide who my favorite Doctor is… well so far it is quite easy(ish) and I boiled it down to 2: one old, the 2nd Doctor and one new: The 11th Doctor, I do like the 9th… I just have not seen enough of him to make him MY Doctor even though he is for all instance and purposes MY 1st Doctor!

So… 2 or 11?

Well I think I’ll have to go for 2, mainly because I really do not like one of the companion the 11th Doctor has chosen to travel with…

I have enjoyed all the episodes I was able to watch of the 2nd Doctor and loved all the audios I listen from the missing episodes, maybe in a way I have been lucky to “only” listen to some of his stories because I had my imagination providing the special effects and costumes which I bet may have just been better than the real thing… the fact that the 2nd Doctor was paired up with Ben and Poly, then Jamie also helps as I really like them three.

More over he is the Doctor in many of my favorite stories, so far:

“The Power of the Daleks” with the chilling / creepy “I am your servant”, I remember listening to it on my commute to work one winter, so I was driving in the dark morning and evening and it was perfect for it!

“The Faceless Ones”, such a great story and the 2nd Doctor and Jamie are so great in it, I just wished Samantha had stayed as a companion, she was such a great foil for Jamie…

“The Mind Robber” and finally the “The War Games” I was so gutted at the end of that one when Jamie and Zoe were sent back…

Yup all in all I really like the 2nd Doctor, for his quirkiness, his silliness and ruthlessness at times.

British Invaders 30 day challenge – Day 1

Your first programme/earliest memory

 

Ok.. I thought this was not going to be easy for me and then I woke up around 2:30 this morning and while I was trying to go back to sleep I started thinking about  British Invaders 30 day challenge (as you do…) and I remembered! Actually I took a trip down memory lane, it’s was quite nice, bitter sweet but quite nice. I remembered how “La piece au feu” the big room with a seat in chimney in my parents’ house used to be in fact two rooms when I was in my younger years (less than 10 years old I would say) I remembered how, some saturdays, in autumn, we would go and collect (or buy) some “chataignes” (chestnuts) then would roast them in the fire and eat them while watching our black and white tv, drinking cider! yup… I was allowed a “fond de verre” of cider .

So, you may ask, what were we watching, as, it is the point of this challenge… well, I think one of my first memory of a programme we used to watch regularly is “Thierry la fronde” I guess you would call it: “Thierry the sling”

When I realised this last night I was struck by how adequate, in a quirky kind of way, it was that “Thierry la fronde” would start my “British Invaders 30 day challenge”, as the whole concept of the series was to tell the story of Thierry of Janville, a young lord, fights gallantly against the English occupation in 1360 during the Hundred Years’ War, when France was occupied by the English ( the British Invaders!!!) and the Black Prince ruled France with an iron fist.

I just checked Youtube for something to share here and found this… I now have a big grin on my face

British Invaders 30 day challenge

Yes… I know… be off the grid for a while but I’ll try to do this challenge… I may need more than 30 days but… it should be fun!

I’ll start tomorrow…

Thank you to eamonn from The British Invaders for having posted this

Thank you to British Invaders 30 day challenge

1. Your first programme/earliest memory
2. Your favourite Doctor
3. Your favourite companion
4. Your favourite character (non Doctor Who)
5. Your favourite show
6. Your worst show
7. The show that really needs to be released on DVD
8. The best DVD set you own
9. The most underrated show
10. The show you don’t get but everybody else seems to love
11. Your favourite Gerry Anderson show
12. Your favourite spin off from a TV show
13. Which missing Doctor Who story would you really like to be found intact?
14. Your favourite audio drama
15. Your favourite writer
16. Who was the best Professor Quatermass?
17. The show that should be rebooted/remade
18. The show that should not have been rebooted/remade
19. Favourite adaptation of a novel
20. Favourite title sequence
21. Favourite theme music
22. Favourite villain
23. Sexiest character
24. The scariest or spookiest show
25. Favourite SF comedy show
26. Favourite children/family show
27. Best spaceship
28. Which missing show would you most like to see restored to the archives?
29. Favourite alien race or planet
30. Who would you like to play the 12th Doctor?

Captain America

So today after a spot at the gym some swimming, a slap up meal and a wander around Broad Street we went to see Captain America, in 2D please 3D doesn’t do it for us!

Did I like it?

Yes, very much so, the movie has a great pace, not time is wasted and all round well acted even though Hugo Weaving on his first scene in the movie was a bit too much like Agent Smith in The Matrix and I expected him to utter his famous “Mr Anderson” line, thankfully this was just a fleeting feeling.

I still can’t fathom how they turn Chris Evans into a wee guy for the first part of the film but the effect is really, I mean REALLY, good. Chris Evans is superb as Steve Rogers and I really felt for him.

Hayley Atwell was also very good and I loved her first scene but I just want to know one thing: how does she keep her make up spot on, all the time!! She ain’t human or it has been tattooed on her! I know this is not a big deal but it did annoy me…

Another scene I also love was when Captain America is recruiting “his” team, I loved the French guy and what he said… but I was the only one who laughed in the cinema at that point… oh well… maybe they could have translated it but I guess the effect attempted there was to make the audience feel what Captain America and all the others round the table felt: they didn’t understand so neither does the audience… it works for me.

Now there was one scene that brought a cartoon to my mind fairly early in the film and this “tainted” the rest of the film for me, nothing bad, really, just funny… so I’ll share it with you and once you’ve seen the film you’ll have to tell me if you agree or not. There is a scene where Johann Schmidt (not yet revealed as Red Skull) and Doctor Arnim Zola are talking about what they are about to do and bang Pinky and the brain jumped in my mind! I mean look at Dr Zola… doesn’t he remind you of a human “The brain”??  So later on of course they became Reddy and the Brain for me… oh well…

The Brain

Reddy

See what I mean?

OK I’m leaving you with the trailer, just in case you’ve not seen it yet!

My summer of music: All I wanna do

Hey there!

Yes I know I planned to write a blog every day this summer but… hey I am having far too much fun to be at my computer all the  time!

However last Sunday I went out for a meal with Karle and somewhere in the MailBox we could hear some faint music and I as soon as I heard the first few bars I was taken 12 years back or so and more to the point I was taken back to a turning point in my life…

Back then I was working in a rather rough school (and I am being mild here) and my life was just work work work… then one day I decided to go and visit some people I had known when I was a ERASMUS student at B’ham uni. These were people I had met at the RPG society and had not seen them for 7 years or so but they opened up their doors to me and it was like if we last have seen each other just the week before. They promptly invited me to join their bi-weekly game, which I did. This changed my life, I got the fun of life back and Karle says he got his wife back!

The RPG Changlings will always be linked to this period in my life and All you wanna do reflect very much what life felt like to me at this time.

Listen to it and tell me what you think!

Hit it!
This ain’t no disco
It ain’t no country club either
This is LA!

“All I wanna do is have a little fun before I die,”
Says the man next to me out of nowhere
It’s apropos
Of nothing
He says his name’s William but I’m sure,
He’s Bill or Billy or Mac or Buddy
And he’s plain ugly to me
And I wonder if he’s ever had a day of fun in his whole
life
We are drinking beer at noon on Tuesday
In a bar that faces a giant car wash
The good people of the world are washing their cars
On their lunch break, hosing and scrubbing
As best they can in skirts in suits

They drive their shiny Datsuns and Buicks
Back to the phone company, the record store too
Well, they’re nothing like Billy and me, cause

[Chorus]
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
I got a feeling I’m not the only one
All I wanna do is have some fun
Until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard

I like a good beer buzz early in the morning
And Billy likes to peel the labels
From his bottles of Bud
He shreds them on the bar
Then he lights every match in an oversized pack
Letting each one burn down to his thick fingers
before blowing and cursing them out
And he’s watching the bottles of Bud as they spin on
the floor

And a happy couple enters the bar
Dangerously close to one another
The bartender looks up from his want ads

Chorus

Otherwise the bar is ours,
The day and the night and the car wash too
The matches and the Buds and the clean and dirty
cars
The sun and the moon but

Chorus

What to wear

Over the last couple of I have been unable to write for our writing group, there was just not enough time in my life… but today I did find the time to write as I did not feel well enough to do anything else. So the title given to us for this month was “What to wear”. As usual my brain looked for a way to twist this title…

I hope you’ll like it

“stars in my sky
The hot to my cold
And the black to my white
The way to my thunder clouds
And the truth in my lies”

urmph… time to get up… I do like Little Boots and it’s nice to wake up to her voice but I have not time to waste I can feel it in my bones, today I have to decide… I hate it but I must…

“So tell me what you want to see
Cause everything I want to be
Is stare at your reflection
Shining on right back at me”

I think my radio wants to tell me something…

come on! time to go! walking down the stairs I know I only have a couple of hours max… so I better go and see my guests, maybe they can help me decide… but first breakfast, today I’ll have the lot, I mean who cares? for the last 3 months I have taken care of my body but now… well I better make the most of it, so bacon, sausages all fried in butter for that extra yummy taste… I did like my body… what a shame… I hate that I have to do this every three months, four if I’m lucky… maybe the TV will cheer me up a bit…

“trace has been found of the missing school girl in Malvern. Her parents have flown from Hong Kong to help the”

<<click>>

nope that is not cheering me up at all… I guess I’ll have to wait for that one…

so what do I fancy today, Chinese? Asian? French? oh yes I have that French one, it’s been nearly two years now, it should be fine, they must have given up on finding him and being a young man is going to be fun for a while, I just hope I’ll be able to dance with him, I so love dancing…

ok time to go and see my guests they must be hungry and it must be time for their meds too.

<<creeeeeeeeck>>

I really should oil that door…oh I do hate they way they all look at me, so scared, asking to go home but I do treat them well… I mean they all were running away when I picked them up, they all wanted an out and I gave it to them… so now which one should I wear for the next 3 months? yes the French one, it will be fun to speak English with a French accent, I bet I’ll find a few more guests thanks to him…

“Hello Jean-Paul, time to come with me”

Reading 9

Hooray! I a now able to add one more book to my list!

I took my time (not my choice I have to say!) but I have finished Raymond E. Feist’s Magician. I had previously read his novel Faerie Tale which I loved so when my friend Mary offered to lend me Magician I jumped to the chance of reading more from him.

I enjoyed Magician but did find it hard going at times however I am not sure whether it is the book’s fault or just that my work life was so busy that reading was not easy to do…

Pug was of course my favorite character and I did feel for him when he first thought his friend Tomas was dead. The princess, a secondary character really, was well penned and again I felt for her when she loses the people she is in love with, not once but twice!  The story is in fact full of interesting characters and I would like to know more about them, so it is a good thing that I will soon be lent other of his books