Shopping

TV "The Narinder Kaur I knew died in that house. I tell people I'm three-years old because that's when I was reborn. It's funny because my mum said, in typical exaggerated Indian fashion, that my eviction night was like attending a funeral. Being in the house, I was blissfully unaware of the backlash against me and when I first heard about the anti-Narinder campaign, I must say I wasn't particularly fazed by it. It was only weeks afterwards that I realised -- what have I done? My sister couldn't go to work without people laughing about some picture in the paper that was taken to make me look stupid. My mum couldn?t go to the gurdwara without people coming up to her saying your daughter gave a blow job to a stranger in a lift. For the record, that never happened. Ask my husband -- he knows I don?t like doing that!" -- Narinder Kaur from Big Brother II talks about the after effects.

Cycling

TV " Elizabeth looks forward to her onward journey to Lithuania and remembers - with fondness - the fantastic Polish hospitality." -- Elizabeth Woodcock from Big Brother II once submitted videos to the BBC Video Nation project.

Laughing

Comedy "Bono on stage in Glasgow, talking about African poverty, clapping his hands together dramatically as he says: 'Every time... I clap my hands...a child in Africa... starves to death...' Glaswegian voice: 'Stop fuckin' doing it, then!' " -- Guardian podcast about heckling spawns other reader submitted examples.

Reading

Books For Keris, in particular. Website collecting user submitted book covers. This one's lovely. [via]

Eating

Film "Look, Piper [Perabo] and Jonathan [Bennett] are eating again. I could never figure out anything else to do with them. I guess I'm really uncreative." -- Adam Shankman, director of Cheaper By The Dozen 2 (from an AV Blog review of the DVD audio commentary)

Lookalike?

TV I somehow ended up watching some of this year's Big Brother earlier and I was struck by how much Aisleyne reminds me of the actor James Spader.

Aisleyne




Spader


Just me then?

Marvel?

Comics Someone has attempted to write a biography of The Doctor, trying to rationalise his appearances in the Marvel Universe. Seriously, there is more text than anyone could read in a lifetime, but see if you can keep up with paragraphs like:

"Another thing worth noting is that the first time the Doctor met Death's Head, he dumped the cyborg in Earth 8162. That Earth contains Dogbolter, who is 1) a Earth-Who character, and 2) doesn't have access to interdimensional travel technology. So this would suggest that Earth 8162 is the future of Earth-Who, not of Earth-616. Taking this into account, the only time we have actually seen the Doctor in the Marvel Multiverse is when he drops Death's Head off after their second encounter, onto the top of Four's Freedom Plaza. And if the Merlin he met wasn't CB's Merlyn, then the only time we actually see him meeting Marvel Multiverse natives is at Bonjaxx's party, and the only ones he actually talks to are the Minion version of Death's Head, and Tuck (the original Death's Head isn't a native of that Multiverse, though he is a native of the Marvel Megaverse). "

Yes, the 'real' Seventh Doctor once appeared in the same comic book as the Fantastic Four. Watch out too for implied crossovers with Captain Britain and Power Man and Iron Fist ...

Make Mine ...

Comics This list of universes from the Marvel Comics Multiverse is interesting, but really you should see the appendix. Peter Parker -- sheep!

1906?

Film "Liverpool City Council's Film Office - part of North West Vision - organised a total of 240 filming days between January and the end of March compared to 74 last year. The number of productions also trebled - up from 21 to 61 in the first quarter." -- James MacGregor @ Netribution

Good survey of the projects that are being produced in Liverpool, although there is only one feature film, there's a mass of television, including the bizarre sounding Casualty 1906 which sounds like it'll do for the Holby City branch of the NHS what Neil Gaiman's comic 1602 did for the Marvel Universe. Expect someone called Charles who's been around for years. It's good to see that companies are still choosing the city as a backdrop for their productions.

U2ube?

Music YouTube plan to show 'every music video ever' Will they pull it off? Who knows. But really I can forsee a time when commercial organisations will automatically upload all of their publicity content, from film trailers to promo videos to advertising to YouTube or something similar as part of their campaign. Seriously, I'm not sure why they don't have a profile set up there, just for this purpose, already.

Baby Fish Mouth.

Obituary I was very sorry to hear about the death of Bruno Kirby one of my favourite actors who hadn't seen recently and wondered why but who appeared in many of my favourite films through the eighties and nineties. I'm thinking particularly of City Slickers where his character Ed, gave the following speech about what his best and worst day ever was:

"Ed: I'm 14 and my mother and father are fighting again...y'know, because she caught him again. Caught him?...This time the girl drove by the house to pick him up. And I finally realized, he wasn't just cheating on my mother, he was cheating us. So I told him, I said, "You're bad to us. We don't love you. I'll take care of my mother and my sister. We don't need you any more." And he made like he was gonna hit me, but I didn't budge. And he turned around and he left. He never bothered us again. Well I took care of my mother and my sister from that day on. That's my best day.

Phil: W-What was you're worst day?

Ed: Same day."

Which I remembered when I had to do much the same thing in an acting class, and although mine was a obviously a different day, I learnt from the fact that you should just tease the information out. Although I never got to say 'same day'. I know the speech is there on the page, the work of Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel (no really), but in Kirby's hands it became one of the highlights of what is an extraordinarily underated film. Which I suppose was his fortay -- creating these moments that would in retrospect be the most memorable. He's almost unrecognisable too in Good Morning, Vietnam but his job's even harder because he has to make the gagging of Cronauer seem possible and viable. But of course my favourite performance from him is in When Harry Met Sally where he manages to be Billy Crystal's straightman but again brilliantly sympathetic and managed to score some of the best lines. Spot the number of times director Rob Reiner cuts out of scenes on his punchlines -- particularly:

"You made a woman meow?"

Bye Bruno. More great quotes appearing at Metafilter.

Freema's first

TV Freema Agyeman’s first television interview last night on The One Show is online and although we don’t find out too much about the new season, or her character, or that wasn't in the DWM interview, it’s interesting just to see that her part in the last series was hardly representative -- she's funny, bubbly and I think she and David should have some great chemistry. I think she'll be a cert for the convention circuit.

Map

Film The Tangled Web of Syriana. Excellent 'interactive' map of all the relationships in Stephen Gaghan's film.

Back again

Life I'm in Manchester today sorting out some administration which means I'll be able to graduate, assuming I get my dissertation finished. I took the bus in from the city centre and actually missed my stop on Oxford Road but that gave me a chance to walk somewhere I haven't been in months. As I looked around and saw all of the students, heard the sound of the bells from the church opposite the student union and the smell of the car fumes I was suddenly reminded of how I felt on my first day all those months ago, nervously wondering how I'd managed to get here and how I would survive it. Here I am nearly a year later, pretty tired, but pretty certain that I'm going to be OK.

X-disempowerment

Film "Instead of retaining all the wonderful subtlety and social commentary of the others, this movie throws itself headlong into the abyss of stereotypes and cheap lines and juvenile sexism. The point of the entire film seems to be a systematic disempowerment of the strong female characters, including Rogue, perhaps the strongest mutant of them all because she can pinch your power while she kills you. But in this movie, because she thinks her boyfriend might dump her over the fact that she can't touch (i.e., screw) him, she chooses to "cure" herself of her power and become a nice safe repository of physicality for him. Because of sexual jealously she castrates herself. I wanted to vomit." -- Shelley Rees

A touch late but I just wanted to applaud this brilliant feminist take on why X-men 3 was appalling. Yet another thing I've learnt during my university course is actually how disempowering to everyone the typical Hollywood-style film is.

They Might Well Be

Film Good Sunday. The Edinburgh Film Festival begins again tomorrow and this year the loss is even more keenly felt because of the amazing retrospective of 'lost' 70s New Hollywood films called 'They Might Be Giants'. These are films that have some got lost under the cinema seat during time because they didn't connect with the audience at the time. The majority of them haven't prompted a dvd release (yet) and actually look extraordinary. 'Lost' performances by Eliott Gould, Gene Hackman and Jack Lemmon. The title film seems to be the most exciting. George C Scott plays a man who believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes ...