Posted from a festival in Glastonbury, posted this past Sunday, Matt Smith took the stage with Orbital, introducing the theme to his own TV program and revving up the crowd. According to Suite 101 the control panel Matt then ran was a sampler interface, which pretty much makes Matt the only Doctor to play the Who theme himself at a concert. There was the A Capella version of the theme proformed by David Tennant and John Barrowman on the Brit TV program, so it is not completely unique, but very close. The video contains strobe lighting in the laser show, if you are susceptible you might want to give it a skip.
Word is that the director of Splice, Vincenzo Natali, has been signed up to direct Neuromancer. I have been waiting for decades to see this movie, and played the hell out of the game in the 80s and early 90s (which I still own in cherry condition). The book was the first of Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, with Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive rounding out the set. This William Gibson book was also the first to ever win all three major Sci-Fi awards; the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Campbell. Pretty impressive considering it was his first novel, with only short stories before that. Now if only someone would do Snowcrash in movie format, we could have the greatest cyberpunk movie marathon ever; Blade Runner, Neuromancer, and Snowcrash!
Possibly one of the best Doctor Who reviews I have read lately comes from the LA Times, in the Doctor Who midterm checkup story. It is nice to see that some folks (meaning Robert Lloyd in this case) are paying attention and can express themselves in a way that helps others understand where we are in the series.
This simple and sad video caught my attention over at SF Signal, so I wanted to share it here.
MARS! from Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham on Vimeo.
Earlier this week it was confirmed that Torchwood Season 4 is a go, and it will include John Barrowman and Eve Myles to head the cast, with Russell T Davies heading up the creative team. New episodes will be airing on Starz in the US starting in the summer of 2011, appropriate since this is a joint venture with that channel. While it is totally unrelated, I find it amusing that Wil Wheaton received a Tardis birthday cake this week.
After watching how brutally American TV trashed and tanked the brilliant British Life on Mars, not to mention how the US version of Red Dwarf was made into pilots twice, both times so bad they were never optioned into a series, I am a bit concerned about the coming rebuild of Being Human. The folks at Broadcast Magazine have the basic details, but SFX has the questions about how this might turn out. The good news is it is a Syfy Channel TV series, with a solid budget, and with TV shows like the various Stargate series, Eureka, Sanctuary, and Warehouse 13, as well as miniseries like Alice and Riverworld, they have shown a solid level of production quality (sadly not shared by their made for TV movies). So this one could go either way; here’s hoping they get it right.
If you haven’t had a chance to see the new Doctor yet, tomorrow night BBC America is running a Doctor Who Marathon. They will be playing all 6 of the so-far released Matt Smith/Karen Gillian episodes in order starting at 8/7C.
This has been a week for multiple Doctors. We just had the wonderful rollout of Matt Smith as The 11th Doctor on BBC America in The Eleventh Hour, and I had already commented on how BBC7 was running Tom Baker reading classic 4th Doctor stories. Starting yesterday, just before the Tom Baker reading BBC7 started running Wally K Daly’s Before the Screaming Begins, which has as one of the voice actors Patrick Troughton; the 2nd Doctor. If some of the older incarnations are unknown to you, io9 just put together a great article called Everything you need to know about Doctor Who. And while it is not very Doctor-like, I should also mention that Smith and Jones signed up to come back for one more Men in Black movie, this one in 3D.
There is only one title worth noting at the movie theaters this week: Kick Ass. The critics are going nuts, and the trailers are excellent, so this movie is on the top of my watch list for the big screen this weekend. Except for Saturday night of course, when I will be watching the US Premiere of the New Who. In fact, over at TOR, they are doing a week long countdown to Who with a new nifty posting every day, and a friend just tweeted this Who-Inspired Picture that has nothing to do with the official program, but I didn’t mind. Hey, there is even an official countdown clock:
