The fame monster

I accidently mistook Big Brother for a post-apocalyptic film where an atomic bomb kills everyone except cunts.

In this blog post I will be reviewing and discussing the two main reality television shows that are on at the moment. With Big Brother finally ending in a way that makes you breath a sigh of relief how you would when someone you dislike has just finished a boring conversation with you, and The X Factor (feat. auto-tune) starting for the billionth time, the true meaning of ‘fame’ will come under examination by those who ask: “Who the fuck are these people?”

Big Brother

Like Chlamydia or that thing you did one summer, Big Brother keeps coming back for more – no matter how much you want it to go away and stay hidden. I haven’t watched Big Brother for about two years yet I know about it because it’s impossible to get away from; with the media a la The Sun reporting everything from the foundations of the house to ‘How to get the Paul look this summer’, (I don’t know if there is a contestant called Paul, there’s probably not as it’s too normal a name; I’ll go for Famalam instead). The Internet doesn’t escape it either, from trending topics on Twitter to poorly misspelt groups on Facebook; everyone, somewhere, is inadvertently exposed to harmful rays of abysmal television – and there’s no escape.

Actually I did tune into Big Brother by mistake for a few seconds when waiting for The IT Crowd to start but instead I mistook it for a post-apocalyptic film where an atomic bomb kills everyone except cunts. I wonder why anyone would watch this show on purpose to be honest; it just seems to make you angry. If you want to watch television to be angry, just watch the news and look out for the news stories about mass shootings; that’s what you should get angry about, not someone you don’t know not deboning a fish before grilling it or whatever it is they do to past time. Probably passing time in cardboard boxes the lazy bastards.

As of 25th of August 2010, Big Brother is over… Oh wait, no it’s not, because we’re being treated to something called Ultimate Big Brother which sounds more like a cult more than anything else; as I did with the usual show, I tuned into Channel 4 at the wrong time and mistook the spin off show as a live stream of a VIP section at Nandos. In fact, it’s not a cult but where they get the ‘best’ housemates, (which is like choosing the best gun shot wound in your partners corpse you’ve got to identify), are locked up into the house for two weeks. With a cast you’d be more likely to find on Celebrity Love Island, including Preston from Never Mind The Buzzcocks and John McCririck who appears not to own a mirror, this spin off is set to be one of the biggest disappointments on British television this year, other than Live Abortions which sadly never made it to air, it was a miscarriage of an idea.

After ten years on the air, eleven series, however many celebrity editions and countless spin off shows this franchise has churned out; some good must have come of it? Some may argue that it defined a genre. But what genre? A genre including classics such as I’m a Celebrity, Strictly Come Dancing, Celebrity Fit Club and Somewhere Over the Rainbow. What possible good are any of these shows? I know, I know, escapism, but surely people can find something better to escape with. If you’re using these shows as means of escapism, how depressing must your life be. A life like mine, for instance, but happily not this depressive, yet.

The worst thing about Big Brother the housemates which are usually ugly, idiotic, shameless, disgusting, self promoting, selfish and tiresome. If their platform to get famous is this show, why are they fucking bothering? Why is it so important for them to become famous. We know that how they act in the house, isn’t how they’re portrayed on screen once the editing is done. Their relationship with the public isn’t moulded by them, it’s moulded by the producers.

Now because I haven’t watched Big Brother for a very long time, I may be being a bit harsh on it, reviewing my own shrouded memory; but an opinion is an opinion and this is mine.

The X Factor

If reality shows were a two course dinner, the unfulfilling starter Britain’s Got Talent has been and gone and we’re treated to the main course: The X Factor. After the triumph of Joe what’s-his-recently-gay-face’s win last year, (who got to ask Michael Buble a question as an audience member at his show, who says the winners get no-where… He got a Christmas number two lest we forgot), the ITV have decided we need a new supreme singing overlord amongst us.

This year The X Factor appears to take place and various oversized blue NHS waiting rooms around the country – this time however, there’s a trick: auto-tuning. Auto-tuning so obvious the producers may as well dub over the ‘good’ contestants with actual fucking singers. If auto-tuning has been used to make some acts sound better than they are – who’s to say that they aren’t using deauto-tuning technology to make the bad acts sound abysmal. It would be less embarrassing for the poor fuckers to have a rectal examination in these NHS style hubs.

With obvious nonlinear editing such as the classic can-only-hear-a-pin-drop reactions from the audience cropping up every so often to further humiliate the hopeless contestants, I wonder how long it will be before we’ll be shown a message where we’re allowed to pause the television and draw penises and swastikas over their exploited little faces.

It’s the classic fairytale story of rags to riches, however, the audience are the lynch mob trying to scare the ogre out of town; but the ogre isn’t ITV or the producers for literally throwing shit into a fan that’s pointing directly at us, oh no, it’s the contestants who we despise; who although probably stupid, are more than likely tricked into being leered at by the public, (or the mob if we’re still going with this fairytale analogy which I’ll now drop). If a show depends on its supporting cast for reviews, then we’re obviously going to hate the contestants instead of the producers and therefore the show itself – and this is, of course, wrong of us.

Then we move onto the judges who sit about as obtuse as the grim reaper reading a short story outside of an old peoples home – apparently these four are the most talented people in Britain, so talented two of them decided to fuck off half way into the series, (a fact the ‘next time’ trailers have been referring too (i.e. Cheryl Cole) like it’s something to advertise, what cunts). This week we had Simon Cowell who looks like a burnt out cigarette in a shit T-Shirt, Cheryl Cole who may as well have a speech bubble with ‘you’re a little star’ taped to her mouth all the time to save her from talking, Geri Halliwell who appeared to have a book of let-down/inspiring clichés hidden under the desk and Louis Walsh who looked like someone trying to part of the ‘cool gang’ at school by edging on the end of the panel. Apparently these people are good enough to judge the rest of Britain and therefore they do, being as mundane and predictable as ever.

From this you may think I hate The X Factor, well I don’t, I enjoy watching it to disconnect myself from all of the serious stuff I have to deal with. If you’re too ignorant to enjoy an hour of shit every now and again you may as well be dead, (besides Big Brother, which is hard to enjoy).

Finished

John Updike once said ‘Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face’, this is very true, however in today’s culture, I believe not only does fame become someone’s personality, but that the public are warped too because we believe anyone we see on television enough must be a celebrity, a fact the media contribute to. Maybe that makes us idiots, I just don’t know anymore.

If the world is a stage, then reality television is the intermission where nothing happens.

Steven Knight, Administrator.

End of the Universe

There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior. A nameless terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies – the most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.

On 26/06/10 the Pandorica will open and silence will fall.

The Eleventh Hour

Amy Pond, there’s something you better understand about me because it’s important and one day your life may depend on it: I am definitely a mad man with a box.

Writing the first episode a new series of Doctor Who can be very tricky to get right. Writing the first episode of a new series when you’ve got introduce a new Doctor, a new TARDIS, a new companion and a new primary location can seem like an impossible task. However new series producer and head writer Steven Moffat ticks every single one of those boxes to set the standard for the rest of the series.

Like everyone else, I’ve been waiting for a new full series of Doctor Who for two years. So an awful lot was riding on Steven Moffat to make this episode perfect in order to keep both the media and public on his side like previous head writer Russell T Davis had done for four years. I’ve been reading some of the reviews that have been published on the Internet and there seems to be overall positive praise for Matt Smith; and that’s exactly how I feel too.

Although basically everything has changed such as a new Doctor, a new companion, a new opening sequence, a new theme tune, a new TARDIS, a new primary location, a new set of reoccurring characters, a new head writer, a new producer and a new show runner it still feels like the same show that has been building up its now-adored reputation after being trampled on by the media and viewers alike in the late 80’s.

Of course you’re still going to get the occasional David Tennant fan-boy who’s going to say Matt Smith has changed everything and that he’s changed it for the worse; but what they probably don’t understand is that Steven Moffat knew there would be some people expecting a Russell-David Doctor Who series, which is why I assume he decided to change everything, so people would now expect something different and this was a very smart move.

First episodes of a new series haven’t always been brilliant, such as the lack-lustering series two opener New Earth. However The Eleventh Hour was a brilliantly written and directed episode that has set the bar high for the next 12 episodes – and judging by the trailer we were treated two and the end of the episode it’s going to be fantastic.

The thing I liked about The Eleventh Hour is that it doesn’t heavily revolve around the enemy, because that isn’t the point of this episode, in fact I’d go as far as to say that the enemy is largely irrelevant and that the driving force of this episode is in fact the Doctor’s new body and his relationship with Amy Pond. So I’m glad it focused more on this aspect that the alien enemy. I’m also relieved to see an episode where destruction doesn’t happen in London or Cardiff, but in a quiet English country side because it was becoming very much of a cliché to always see the former two under attack from aliens – why didn’t everyone just move after series one?

Obviously this episode was Matt Smith’s first full one – so it was important he showed the audience that his Doctor is still in the making and that there may be more to his personality than we’ve already been shown. Any actor taking over BBC’s flag ship drama that was previously fronted by universally adored David Tennant would have felt incredibly nervous, not only for the media and fans to like them; but to think that they are a good enough successor. However I did not feel like Matt Smith was trying too hard to woo over the media and fans alike; I instead felt that he was playing as his character, not knowing of anything beyond the show itself and that he was just fitted into the roll easily, and I’m incredibly excited about what he’s got in store for us.

The new companion of this series is feisty red head Amy Pond, (Karen Gillan), who meets the Doctor when she’s 9 years old in her back garden but gets let down by him for 12 years until he turns back up again after what he thinks is a mere 5 minutes. There’s a lot less riding on Karen than there is on Matt because companions aren’t usually compared to the previous companion because they are completely different characters and therefore would be unfair to do so. I feel like Amy is the Doctor’s human equal who won’t swoon over him like Rose and Martha did – but that she’d happily slap the Doctor if he steps out of line which is what I think he needs; which is why I liked Donna so much because she was independent from him.

Last but not least: the new TARDIS. For young fans this was their first time seeing a completely new set take over what they wished their bedroom would look like; so it was important for the design department to get it right. I feel they have achieved this by still keeping the old basic structure of having the hexagon shaped consol in the middle, with the time rotor spiralling up towards the ceiling while at the same time introducing new changes such as the introduction of levels which led to the under side of the consol as well as stair cases leading to yet to be seen rooms. The TARDIS has no concept of design, so it was good for it to be made out of bits and bobs that I think the TARDIS would have lying around in its many attics – my favourite additions are the type writer and the old fashion flip down clock. It’s simply beautiful.

It’s unfair to judge what you think an entire series is going to be like based on one episode – even if you think it’s going to be brilliant because if you set your heights up high you may be let down. However I feel 100% that I won’t be let down and that this is going to be the most beautiful and adored series of Doctor Who to have been made. Change is certainly welcome.

Doctor Who, Saturdays at 6.15PM on BBC One.

Steven, Administrator.

Yes, more Doctor Who!

Since my last post there have been three more promotional videos for the upcoming series of Doctor Who to have been released, so I thought I’d be good and share them with you.

The first video is the first 45 seconds of The Eleventh Hour which was released today at 6.25PM; I was then the first to rip it from the BBC website and upload it onto YouTube. The second video is a minute and a bit long clip from another upcoming episode called Vampires in Venice and the third video is another trailer for the series.

The latter two videos were first shown on Friday Night With Jonathan Ross which is why they’ve got a watermark on them for the first few seconds; sorry about that. Anyway, enjoy!

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Doctor Who returns to BBC One on 3rd of April 2010.

Steven, Administrator.

Latest Doctor Who promotions

Over the past few days; two new promotional videos for the latest series of Doctor Who have been released. One is a trailer that was screened a few days ago which includes things to expect including the Daleks in World War II, (which may mean we get to see Winston Churchill in Doctor Who finally). The second is a a 40 second clip from the first episode called The Eleventh Hour where The Doctor meets a young Amy Pond for the first time.

Anyway; enough of me describing the videos, please watch them below.

Update 26/03/2010: Thanks to Jordan Howell of iMediaMonkey I now have a higher quality version of the BBC America trailer which I was going to include and can.

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Please check back on Saturday where I will post another clip from The Eleventh Hour soon after the official website does. Doctor Who returns on 3rd of April for a one hour long episode.