Category - Movies & TV

I just glanced at the TV and there is a cooking programme on called Jamie’s Christmas With Bells On . For some unfathomable reason, he is outside cooking Christmas meals on a campfire.

I won’t go into the usual pretentiousness of his chocolate gloop served in mugs, and dishes that only people desperate to appear hip would ever prepare, but what caught my eye was the fact he is wrapped up in a huge coat and scarf next to a river with what looks like Arctic-scale frost everywhere.

Except that the pale green leaves on the Weeping Willows just behind him (and the lack of any visible breath mist) suggest that the temperature might just be a little higher than the minus 30°C suggested. The continuity people must have used a hundred bottles of Snow-in-a-Can to create that illusion.

Between lessons I turned on the TV and caught a programme on Animal Planet (Sky) called My Cat From Hell. It’s hilariously entertaining. Obviously, it’s American – where else would you find someone making a living as a “cat behaviorist” (US spelling)?

I caught the tail-end of one show and only saw the cat in the “after-treatment” mode. There were a few flashbacks to how it used to be, and those were pretty funny. It reminded me of one of our cats who I think was part vampire.

But the second show started and it was brilliant. This ginger tomcat they were featuring was incredible. To start with it was clearly not a normal cat – it had long legs, tigerish stripes and patches, and its paws had thumbs almost as big as mine. It could jump from the floor to the top of the glass shower door in a single bound. It repeatedly attacked its owner on any part of her body it could reach, and it wasn’t playing. There was a shot of it attacking their other cat, and if the owner hadn’t intervened with a spray-bottle of water it looked like it was actually trying to kill – it grabbed the other cat, sank its teeth in, and just wouldn’t let go. It was serious mauling.

But the funny thing was that as the owner chased it with the spray, she was shouting “bad kitty”, bad kitty”. It cracked me up – she needed a SWAT team.

If you like cats and get a chance, watch the programme on Sky channel 525 (Animal Planet HD). Great fun.

I was sorry to hear this morning that Larry Hagman has died at the age of 81.

Most people will only remember him in Dallas – a TV show that now looks so dated that it can never be shown seriously as a re-run on TV. It was the one about an evil oil baron, done Hollywood-style – and began the trend in the 80s for huge shoulder pads in womens clothing.

But I will always remember him in the sit-com, I Dream Of Jeannie, with Barbara Eden (from the same era as Bewitched – in spite of searches finding this blog to that effect, I don’t think he ever appeared in that show, and he was certainly never one of the main male leads in it).

I grew up with that show (and had a teenage crush on Barbara Eden), and apart from the fact that the subject matter isn’t what people go for these days, the show itself is still funny when it gets an occasional airing on one of the satellite channels.

When he was cast, he was an upcoming new actor and regarded by many as “a young Jack Lemmon”.

Interesting programme being shown on BBC 4 at the moment, called The Joy Of Stats.

I can think of a lot of people out there – driving instructors included – who could do with watching it, but I doubt that they would be able to pick it up on their current equipment. Instead, they’ll continue to copy-and-paste their favourite line about “lies, damned lies, and statistics” whenever they want to push their latest propaganda.

The only problem with any sort of statistic is the grey matter between the ears of the person trying to interpret it.

As a scientist by training it annoys me when people who don’t understand something become the ones who talk about it the most, and end up propagating lies and misinformation to other people who don’t know – but who might be in a better position to understand if they were fed the correct information.

The show will undoubtedly appear on iPlayer shortly.

I’ve talked about annoying adverts on a number of occasions, and ones like the Lucozade or Heinz ads, where the agency involved has just got it soooo wrong.

But then one like this comes along. It’s for Southern Comfort, and it’s brilliant.

(YouTube link dead)

You wouldn’t think that a fat, middle-aged guy on a beach would work, but it does. And that dog makes it better. The soundtrack just glues it together.

Incidentally, the song is apparently called Hit Or Miss, by Odetta (c. 1970). It fits in, because I thought the warm colour in the ad gave it a 70s feel.

I’ve mentioned before the doomed advertising Heinz employed to market its Tomato Soup. I thought they’d listened – it hasn’t been on for months – but it seems I was wrong. Partly, at any rate.

What Heinz failed to appreciate was that the fault lay with the advertising agency it was using. You see, when an advertising company gets an idea into its head, it milks it dry. To make matters worse, others often copy it, and before you know it you’ve got people whistling tunelessly in every bloody new ad that comes along (whistling is unfortunately still in vogue, particularly among the lesser advertising agencies who have caught on to it last and who are busy trying to market third-rate products for lesser retailers). Or you get annoying whispering adverts like the Secret Escapes one – whispering has been picked up by a number of companies as a way of selling crap in greater quantities (although it has to be said that the Army did it first a couple of years ago in an attempt to get people to sign up in order to increase their chances of being killed by going into active duty*).

A certain high street retailer has pictures of ugly people on the side of its lorries – wearing face cream, or blowing their noses. It seems Heinz is now milking that one dry itself. In its latest ad it has an ugly woman doing all kinds of childish things, and then slurping a spoonful of tomato soup – which is then stuck all over her lips.

When will people get it into their heads that wearing food only appeals to weirdoes who do internet searches on XXX sites, or women whose brains have turned to jelly as a result of childbirth, and who think that babies covered in pureed vegetables is “cute”?

* For people out there who weren’t in the queue when senses of humour were being handed out, this is a joke and not a criticism of any of our forces personnel.