I Have Loved Casanova...
Casanova is quite possibly the best BBC series that I've seen in forever. Sure,
Pride & Prejudice was good (Colin Firth in wet clothing... mmmm), but this totally takes the cake.
It's the perfect mix of utter hilarity and total seriousness. His constant reinventions of self are wonderful, although his sullen child is slightly irritating. And the only sound he's made so far is screaming while running away from a dog *lol* He'd make Robspiere look like the life of the party.
Such a lot of hilarious lines, and the guy introducing Casanova to the English court saying about how frightfully racy it is - people drinking tea with lemon, men wearing britches cut above the knee...
Then duels, banishings, more loss, more seduction, gossip, scandal, gravy and whatnot. And then Rocco dies, which is tragic (why do they always have to make the nice characters pass on??)
Oh, and the series makes you think, which is good. All sorts of things about love, extremity, loss, chasing happiness, scandal, raising children, sex vs love, not losing your heart at the cost of losing your heart, the difference between using and loving, exile and all of those sort of things...
Greater loves, growing up, friendship... Hmm.
Thank God for the BBC.
Although damn you for making me cry! *shakes fist* I must be becoming a sentimental old fool in my old age...
Oh, if you want to check out an amusing
Casanova promo site, click
here.
Includes such gems as:
If you are seeking erotic fulfilment, then perhaps you have come to the right place. With a touch like that it may remain 'virtual' - so if your confounded computer goes down on you, I'd make the most of it.And:
You should get about more - for while love may be another country, sex is a whole new continent. Which is why I've always been a keen advocate of European Union. I suggest you vote yes, yes, yes!*bwahahahahaha*
Can We Say, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"??
Holden to replace BertAccording to The Daily Telegraph, the local television industry is abuzz with speculation that Australian Idol judge Mark Holden is being groomed to host a program that will replace Bert Newton's Good Morning Australia from 2006.
It is rumoured that Newton's contract with Network Ten has been in doubt since his program began losing viewers to Nine's Mornings With Kerri-Anne.
Holden temporarily filled Newton's shoes when the iconic presenter was hospitalised earlier this year. "I tried it out and I must say I really enjoyed it," Holden told the Daily Telegraph.
Ten has not confirmed the supposed substitute nor the matter of Moonface's future. Holden also denied he'd been approached by the network, stating: "Ten sees me as the guy who does Australian Idol".
The former teen pop sensation has publicly expressed his desire to do other things in television in addition to Idol, or when the series ends. His inspiration may have been drawn from Ian "Dicko" Dickson's successful departure from the talent show to My Restaurant Rules on rival network Seven.
http://www.yourtv.com.au/news/index.cfm?i=67389
Ewww! Ewwww! That's just WRONG! You can't replace Bert, especially not with a man who has all the wit and sensibility of a lobotomised monkey.
Australian Princess is something that I'd avoided until the
Food Lover's Guide to Australia had finished, and it was sad to see that the Etiquette Bitch was worse than ever.
She picks on people who aren't stick-thin (describing one woman as being "stones overweight"), is about as friendly and welcoming as a polar ice-cap manned by psychotic polar bears and is just generally horrible.
There is nothing wrong with relaxing at times and being pleasant, or with treating people like they're decent and worth something regardless of who they are. This lady alone is putting me off of the show, as if it's not bad enough just by itself!
*sigh*
If you sent the Etiquette Bitch to Iraq at least, all of the insurgents would surrender immediately for fear that she'd personally bite the heads off of their children.
Ahhh, Channel 9... You Embarrass Yourself!
Thank-you Media Watch for bringing up how Channel 9's A Current Affair used old footage from the Bali Bombings in 2002 disguised amongst current footage with no dates, file footage identification or anything like that on there.
Heh... Channel 9 is sadly starting to *really* become an embarrassment.
TeleVixen asks...
If anyone reads this blog... are there any?... I have to ask you these following questions. And you know you want to answer them! *teehee*
1) What's your favourite show on TV and why?
2) What's your most hated show on TV and why?
3) What ad do you love the most on TV?
4) What ad do you hate the most on TV?
5) What do you think would be good for Australian television in terms of local content - what could be done to improve it?
Right now, my favourite show is
Drawn Together, I hate a lot of shows but
Australian Idol has to be the worst of them all, the best ads are the Continental 'expectations' ads along with the Farmer's Union Iced Coffee ads (which have to be the most hilariously clever ads ever), there's just too many ads that suck and I don't think that anything can be done about improving Australian content on TV until major TV stations do more to produce shows that *aren't* trying to be American.
Shock & Awe And Home & Away
See, this is what I was meaning about
Home & Away...
For the coming week, the episodes are described like this:
Monday: Tensions between Alf and Josh reach boiling point, as Josh's sinister plan for Summer Bay is put into action. As Irene's mental health deteriorates, her loved ones are devastated by a heart-breaking diagnosis.Tuesday: Amanda is shell-shocked when she discovers the truth about Josh's secret plans for the Bay, while Flynn's day of exhilaration ends with a crushing reminder of his mortality and Leah and Dan's struggle for a baby continues.Wednesday: Josh goes to desperate lengths to keep the truth from becoming public knowledge, while Flynn reacts badly when news of his condition spreads through the community.Thursday: Irene's return home is marred by conflict as her delusions continue to haunt her, while Robbie's attempt to cheer Kim up in the wake of the aborted wedding takes a surprising and revealing twist.Friday: Scott and Hayley are finally reunited, leading to an explosive act of violence by Amanda, while Hayley is forced to make a heart-wrenching decision about Irene's future.Nothing like a few tensions, heartbreaks, shell-shockings, struggles, desperation, explosive acts of violence and hauntings!
Channel Nine's Most Embarrassing Moments
Too many to count in recent times? Well... who knows.
But on Thursday, Channel 9 debuts their new show,
20 to 1, starting off with most embarrassing moments or something like that.
The program is described thusly:
Bud Tingwell counts down 20 of the funniest unscripted and unplanned moments ever seen on television, with a little help from some of Australia's favourite celebrities. The Living Legend gleefully serves up 20 of the best embarrassing moments guaranteed to have you squirming in your seat or laughing yourself silly.I wonder if it'll be as much of a flop as
The Alice, which never had an opportunity to get to be popular with its constant rejigging of timeslots (is on Monday? No? Wednesday? No, it was going to be but now it's on Tuesday? No? Not there? Well, where is it!?). Although it never was a good show to start with anyways.
And they complain that there's not enough Australian content on TV. If Australian content was
better, then there mightn't be so many issues of people avoiding it like the plague!
Australian Idle...
I would have watched
Australian Idol for review purposes, except that I flicked over during a break in the cricket and the 35 seconds of it that I saw made me want to jam a fork into an electrical socket.
So of course I'm now watching the cricket.
Honestly, I would have thought that I'd be brave enough to watch
Australian Idol. I mean, I managed to slog through
Australian Princess. But no. No, it was not possible. The hosts are just too stupidly pathetic, the contestants are scary and Kyle Sandilands should be pushed under the nearest bus. Marcia Hindes and Mark Holden aren't that much better.
Stupid irritating show.
Sex, Drugs and Hormonal Rolls In The Hay?
Sex & Pop - Spice Up Your LifeBoybands represent a piece of meat... and now I know who to blame for the Backstreet Boys. Some lady who wears a polka-dot top and pink trousers, a fat, toady-looking guy and some individual who I haven't seen yet. Damn them to the depths of hell!
It's rather painful, but in a way it reminds me of a few articles that my friend Ben sent to me about boybands, sex and teen girls - the boybands represent everything the teenage girl would like (which they actually said at the beginning of this show! So that's rather an admission... but then who knows, does it matter any more?).
So the music isn't the most important thing... Faces with practical value, which help you to prepare for your first boyfriend. Yikes. Howie D says that it helps because women can choose out someone they relate to and that helps them do something... which just frightens me. Fettes Brot are on with German hiphop, so I'll have to have a look for them - I'm a sucker for German things. And all of those delicious German men!
TEENAGE Hormones are the target of this all. Wooo! And I just saw Robbie Williams in only a shirt, which just frightens me a bit too much for this time of night. Maybe I don't have teenage hormones any more, but as I recall, I never liked the Backstreet Boys or anything and was always into Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, etc
Boyband video clips are the equivalent of a lap dance? Yikes! That hurts my mind! I mean, boybands hurt my mind enough to start with, but please... "Boybands are only over when God stops making little girls," says ToadyMan.
They're all rather replacable, really. I mean, they're all basically the same and vacuous. And it's insulting for the record companies to say that all girls are into this sort of thing, because I know that those sort of things always made me want to projectile vomit on the TV when clips came on. The only thing that the Backstreet Boys were good for were parodying after all...
So rock is for guys, they say. Although now that's tending towards hip-hop/r'n'b/etc.
Women act as fetishes for the masses in video clips... Well, duh. Some female singer, pegged as the next Britney, talks about how a teenage boy stole some of her underwear from her tour bus. WHich will teach them to lock the bus, I guess.
Lust and yearning along with feelings mean boybands offer a safety net for all of those sort of things, because they're so distant that they'll never be the disappointing boyfriend. So you get to fantasise about some guys on TV they say. Ewwww. That hurts my mind!
Talking about words and identifying feelings - how time's progressed and how we're more blunt about those sort of things (like back in the 60s where they used metaphors for sex and so on) when now more aggressive words are used, which ToadyMan says makes the fans truly fanatical. WOnder about what sort of truth there is in that? A sexologist talks about it as an extreme crush, projecting desires onto the boybands in a parasexual act. It's an interesting concept. People always talk about loving the guys from the groups... hmmm...
Aww, the Monkees! I loved them and their show. Davey Jones was just a babe!
Why the desire? Why the feelings? I don't know. If someone can explain to me why people like boybands who are fluffy and stupid, who knows...
"The message is that you strip off and you fuck..." - says a German guy. The first time is going to be fantastic, your bodies will be gorgeous, you won't be nervous... but wait! That's not real! They miss the banalities of sex and the nerves and the weirdness, says the German guy, who says sex is never like H&M ads.
The music of our teens stays with us for life. That make people happy and excited right through to retirement age. Much like the Monkees I suppose, which they're using as an example.
Thank God Justin Timberlake never entered my mind.
Girlbands aren't fluffy and froufrou. Example of the Spicegirls, who were in-your-face and bold. Came out around the same time as the Backstreet Boys and stuff, and the focus on girl power. Ahhh, girl power... those were the days! But girls are more emotional than men, which means that they don't give up grudges or arguments... ooooh... shocking. And do you remember the Spice Girls Impulse perfume? That actually wasn't too bad. And I did like the Spice Girls, shameful as that might be ;)
Dominant girls to do their own thing, being aggressive in getting what they want, no waiting around for the guys any more. Oh and I'd forgotten about the bound man in that Spice Girls clip..! Nothing like being spread-eagled, I guess o.0
Britney appeared at the end of the 90s, and that is described as a paedophile's dream. She was the one who made fluffy pens scary to use - they'd been my trademark at school and then Britney came along with the fluffy things in her hair for the Hit Me Baby One More Time clip. Grr! I would have been glad to RIP them out! The German guys are saying she slept her way up to the top just like they did. Girls are hanging Britney posters in their rooms, not the boys so much. The reassuring message about being as sexy as you want and exploring eroticism, but never having to have sex if you don't want to. You don't have to have any real thoughts, you don't have to write your own tunes, you just get to follow these instructions, say a retro kind of guy in a retro kind of shirt. Hmmm.
Ugh.
Virginal image is gone by the third album. Because women can't be non-skanky in the music industry, which is a bit tragic.
Madonna shows the world that it's better to have sex than just talk about it. And there's some Jean-Paul Gautierre bra thing involvment there again. Yikes. Audience growing older means that you go with more sexuality into your music, they say. THe way Christina changed from being wholesome to being whoreish... good point. She was really sweet, but then went totally bonkers. I mean, I know that they say that image shouldn't matter, but it so does make a difference. People don't respect you the more skin that you show if you're a female. The problem is the market where the skin is being exposed to, apparently.
The Mickey Mouse club. It's like being in the Playboy Mansion, apparently. Disney likes to keep it clean - the boys who are like church-going lads and looking sweet and wholesome while singing about wholesome, family morals things. Whatever family morals are. I dunno, if I was a parent now, I'd rather that my children got into Marylin Manson, Rammstein and Triple J stuff than anything with the boyband/Britney/Xtina thing involved with it. They're all a bit too fake and I don't know that they influence people in the right way. Who knows. Nothing like telling people to love themselves between breast implants and nose-jobs. To be respected and feel good you have to get surgery? Oh please...
Sex sells. Yes. But there's no way anyone would want to have sex with that guy, is there? o.0
*gag*
*shudder*
Are you old enough to have sex? Are you old enough to make the decisions? Who's teaching the kids about those issues? Parents aren't paying attention to their kids, so it's down to the industry, isn't it?
Escaping from reality is such bollocks. But it's necessary. People should make a change if they want to get away from sad things if they want to not have to deal with a certain reality, I guess... hmmm... Who knows. It's a strange kind of thing, really.
Clean-cut boys gives some sort of other escape. Not quite sure what yet. Bizarre.
I do remember the end of Take That, actually, and the brouhahaha that there was after Robbie left.
When you're a boyband, your female friends are your girlfriends... yikes. And Robbie Williams with his hands down his pants... yes, there goes my sanity right out the window.
"It's about the money," says Donna Wright. "It's not about being a man."
Growing up. All about growing up... And there's a guy in N'Sync who looks oddly like my old bio teacher. Yikes.
*LOL* Nipplegate!
And now the fifth episode is for the last remaining taboos in music... so that may be interesting next week. Or it may not. I guess if they mean about taboos in the mainstream music world.
Origami will never be as exciting...
I cannot be bothered to comment on an entire movie, but I have to say that the sword fighting in the dark during the lightning storm in
Aragami was amazing.
The sparking from metal striking metal, flashes of lightning, the impartial face of the lady highlighted by moments of light, such elegance and like fighting in a rave or something with light effects. Pretty spectacular.
Off on a tangent, the fight scenes are always so elegant in Japanese movies. It's like, "I'll now slice your limbs off, but pose dramatically whilst doing so in an harmonious way called the Stance of the Tiger..."
*sigh* No wonder I love them.
Oh Rex, ich lieb' dich so!
Tonight's episode of
Kommissar Rex is about a lady who was murdered in a beauty salon... except that the killer got the wrong person! And we get to have lots of close-up, lingering looks at gloves and various people who own gloves, as the killer used gloves in the attack.
I love my
Kommissar Rex, and I actually don't think I've seen this episode, which makes it hard to pay attention to writing about it and watching it. Still, the crimes are always ingenious and it's exciting to discover how they're solved in a totally non-
CSI way.
Of course, this episode has all varieties of delicious intrigue... was it the friend who murdered her, or was it her lover who was also doing the friend, or was it some random person? Oooh, or was it the son, who also owns leather gloves and tried to run Rex over?
And now Moretti and the lady he'd invited over to dinner are arguing over Rex, even though she's a vet and should be used to the way dogs behave... Pfft. But now he's worked out about the murder possibilities due to her handbag, which is handy... boom boom!
Mistaken identity, of course! The murderer was after the lady who has asthma and also has the same bag as the lady who was murdered did. The plot deepens... But we're down to Herr Baumann or the son, Sascha.
And what a snazzy waistcoat Moretti has on today! And the guys in the office have figured out the date with the vet and his hangover and Rex being in a bad mood... Ahhh, happy days. He says they're on first-name terms, which makes sense when you work with German and the 'Sie' (formal and polite) and 'du' (friendly) forms of 'you.'
*LOL* Stockinger dressed up as a woman to go into the beauty salon is the funniest thing I've seen on TV in a long time!
And they've worked out that the killer was a man after all. Now the lady is out riding and I suspect that something nasty will almost happen to her, but won't because Rex will save her just in time from her evil nasty son, who is hiding in the barn with a thing to kill her. And yes he does! Hurrah! Rex to the resuce!
He didn't want the money to be taken from him. Something unusual... oh well. People will kill for the strangest of reasons.
Anyways,
Rex Seasons 1 and 2 are also out now on DVD, by the way. Both of those series star Tobias Moretti, who is quite delectable. That man made waist-coats hot. Although his character is killed off in one of the series... I don't know which one... but that just traumatises me, so I hope I never actually see the episode. I hate getting attached to TV characters!
Home and Far, Far, Far Away...
I would watch
Home & Away, but can't bring myself to do it.
It's the descriptions in the TV guides of the episodes that will be coming up that have put me off, not just the low-quality acting and moronic plots that seem to be mounted on each other like a poorly stacked multi-scoop ice-cream (which you don't want to go anywhere near in case it falls on you).
They just sound so desperate and in need of some direction before everyone is killed off or something like that. Maybe that's the point (we should be so lucky).
Anyways, some examples are required... and we thusly have...
"...faces the devastating reality..."
"...emotional torment..."
"...heartbroken..."
"...manipulative powers..."There are some more, but I can't find the site that I usually get my TV guide off of, so I can't go into more wild details about just how devastating or heartbreaking or manipulative things can really become.
*shakes head*
Poor, poor
Home & Away. You used to have dignity once... back a long time ago.
Debuts of all kinds!
Television's a big-ish part of my life, so I've decided that I shall blog about it. Australian television, you are no longer safe from the tapping fingers of TeleVixen!
Anyways!
I'm watching the debut of
Australian Princess on channel 10. It's hosted by Jackie 0, the irritating blonde radio lady who reminds me of Malibu Barbie, except that Malibu Barbie drowned in the dam on the farm).
And so we meet the ladies, all 14 of them. They seem to be a pleasant enough variety of thin women with the occasional token non-size 8. Learning how to hold a champagne glass, how to eat canapes, how to be thin, a bit thinner, a bit more blonde and a bit more elegant.
We meet some interesting people.
Paul Burrell, Princess Dianna's former butler, who seems to have gone so far up himself that he has actually appeared out of the other side. However, as the show progresses, he proves himself to be rather amusing, so I can forgive him.
The Australian etiquette lady. She makes harsh comments about women needing to lose weight whilst looking like a partially melted wax-work herself. Hmm.
And of course, Sarah Ferguson's sister, who has a gorgeously syruped British accent.
And now we get to meet the Prince Charming. Oh please let him look like royal men really tend to look (ie: Prince Phillip). Real royal husbands so rarely seem to look like Princess Mary's delectable husband! Anyway, the prince is from Kiev or something like that, and his name is Marek. He has ancestors that look frigheningly like my great grandparents. But he looks pleasant and amusing and has a large nose.
Now the lady who's the Etiquette Bitch (I shall call her that from now on) is saying that Kristi has "zero personality." Mmm, I can taste the bitchiness from here, and they're all the way up in Sydney or something. So she takes them off to do needle-work. Is that a punishment or a reward? Not sure yet... Oh, it's to "teach the art of patience."
"The problem with Veronika is that she always has a frown..." says Etiquette Bitch, which is total rubbish.
Blubbering about Princess Di. Hmm.
Ooh, the cocktail party challenge coming up after the break, and then... down to ten! Shock! Horror! And now for lots of ads for makeup, hair stuff and anorexia. Oh wait, I'm joking about the last one... I think.
*flick to
cricket and appreciate it because I think that
Australian Princess was starting to melt my brain*
Paul Burrell talking about the Queen scheduling everything by hour for the whole day, lunch and how to use your forks properly (to perhaps stab each other?).
Now getting ready for the cocktail party. Hurrah! Lots of makeup, dresses, 1980s hairdo's and it makes me think that I'm never going to be a princess. Thank God. But I should do something about an image change for the sake of it sometime, though.
And the party! Some of the women look excellent, some not quite so exellent. Some are scary. Especially some of the hair-do's that some ladies have. Nasty. And curtseying? Hmm. That Etiquette Bitch is really awful. The way she receieves people in greeting is far from gracious and perhaps she should have a look at her own etiquette advice. What a rude old baggage!
The 19 year-old from Canberra thinks that she is automatically a princess, but is also ignorant and has hair that is too big. Way too big. I agree with Paul Burrell about wanting to knock her block off. She thinks she's a princess EVERYWHERE. Please do not let her be the only child... she'll give us all a bad name :(
Amen to Zanna about wanting to say that if she gets kicked off she's going to deamand to know whether it's because she's not a stick! You go girl! *dances* I'm hoping she wins already *lol*
Oh Etiquette Bitch, you are so horrible. Which just goes to show that although you might know the right fork to use from a selection of 12 for your salad, you can still be a horrible, unpleasant and not that good a person.
So the kicking out. Who's going tonight? (Yay! Not Zanna!)
And now after the break, we find out who's leaving. The pretty red-haired lady, two blondes and a brunette are going. Never knew their names.
And it ran over time and made me miss the first nine minutes of
Spicks and Specks on the ABC! Dammit! Although running over time is a feature of Channel 10 this year... *shakes fist*
Casanova is quite possibly the best BBC series that I've seen in forever. Sure, Pride & Prejudice was good (Colin Firth in wet clothing... mmmm), but this totally takes the cake.
