Month: October 2006

  • A story in exactly six words

    Hemingway could do it. Your turn.

  • What do you mean, Flash Gordon approaching?

    Let it be said here and now: I have a deep and abiding love for the Republic Serials. Republic serials (and those of other companies too, but Republic is the best-known name) were shown in 20-minute instalments at the cinema. A serial would last perhaps twelve or fifteen weeks, sandwiched somewhere between the A-movie, B-movie, […]

  • Nothing but music

    Callaghan asks the question “What’s your all-time favourite moment in a TV show?” Spoilers for Ultraviolet follow. That’s the 6-episode TV series written and directed by Joe Ahearne, not the film of the same name. There are vampires. You can’t record a vampire on video or audio tape. An elite team has been set up […]

  • Storytelling at Pixar

    Andrew Stanton is a writer at Pixar. At this year’s Screen Expo he gave a keynote talk. Fortunately, someone in the audience was taking notes. And putting them on the Internet. Part One and Part Two. Have a read – there’s loads of good stuff.

  • You can’t take the sky from me

    Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve watched all of Firefly again. Plus the commentaries. It’s still utterly brilliant. (It’s a Western. In space. With horses and six-shooters. Get over it.) And suddenly it seems that others have independently had the same urge at the same time. Like English Dave and Alex Epstein. Is it […]

  • And lo, there were ventilation ducts

    Let’s talk about The Outsiders. 90 minutes long, and a backdoor pilot if ever I saw one. The whole thing was done with a gusto and brio that I haven’t seen in an ITV drama since – well, since the 1970s, truth be told. What we had here was a production that echoed the classic […]

  • Bad Science

    You may or may not recall that earlier this year Patrick Stewart and Ashley Jensen were in a show called Eleventh Hour for ITV. It claimed to be an exciting new concept which would use the latest science news-stories as a what-if to spark intelligent human drama. It wasn’t terribly good. So what happened? Writer […]

  • Locks are so, like, last century.

    You’ve probably not heard of a bump key. Here’s why you should care: A Yale-type, or cylinder, lock has a cylinder that rotates. The mountains and valleys, the dents cut into the top of your key, push small pieces of metal (known as pins) within the lock up and down. Most of the time, they […]