![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexsarllIt can't be good for Camelot that the week the price of Euromillions goes up by a third is also the week after the biggest UK wins ever (and why on Earth did the winners all go public? Surely they gain nothing from so doing, while making themselves targets for begging letters at best and kidnappers at worst?). Obviously, when you look at the maths then that extra 50p is a negligible investment and the prize is still more than ten million pounds. But, if you look at the maths, you don't play the lottery. It's all about what seems like a tiny enough sum of money to drop in order to take the chance of the fates smiling on you. And two quid, I think, crosses that line, especially in a week when the fates look so stingy compared to last week.
E4's 'young offenders get superpowers' show Misfits is off to a promising start; between this and No Heroics it looks like, on TV as in comics, it needs us to show the Yanks how to do superheroes properly. Though worryingly, the two shows look set to semi-crossover next week with an appearance by Nathan Barley/The Hotness as a rapey policeman. If the police getting younger is a sign of ageing, how much more so when it's TV police being played by the erstwhile epitome of youth foolishness? Like No Heroics, Misfits also looks to have a nice line in in-jokes, with the first episode based around the Wertham Community Centre.
Inez Holden "became a great friend of George Orwell, whose first meeting with Anthony Powell she engineered in 1941. A dinner party involving Orwell and HG Wells, in whose shed she once lived, was less successful. Wells afterwards sent Orwell a note urging him to 'read my early works, you sh1t'."
- from the end credits of Bright Young People
Good Night, And Good Luck: good film. In its loving (and very cigarette-heavy) recreation of the not-so-distant past it has something of Mad Men about it, as well as sharing one cast member - but a lot less of the moral ambiguity. The story of Edward R Murrow's campaign against McCarthyism is one of those rare, straightforward tales of a hero, a man who was in the right place at the right time, did the right thing, and succeeded. A brilliant cast, not all of whom I expected (it was George Clooney's project so I knew he'd be there, but Robert Downey Jr surprised me, and lots of the others are people you recognise as having given good work before but can't quite place). It did leave me wondering, though, how McCarthy ever managed to be taken seriously enough to start his reign of terror - they use archive footage rather than an actor, and he comes across as an unhallowed blend of Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Fred West.
The story of Murrow's triumph is framed by a speech he gives when winning some award or other, in which he expresses his fears for the future of television, worries whether information will survive or whether consolation and distraction will prevail. Which made it rather awkward that it screened at the same time as Generation Kill, a show whose truth I think he would have loved if he'd been able to follow it, meaning I had to use the bugginess that is 4OD to soldier through my weekly dose of Iraq clusterfvcks.
The one upside to the demise of the Observer Music Monthly (reported on a CMU update which doesn't seem to be on their website) is that at least it's taking Observer Woman Monthly down with it.
E4's 'young offenders get superpowers' show Misfits is off to a promising start; between this and No Heroics it looks like, on TV as in comics, it needs us to show the Yanks how to do superheroes properly. Though worryingly, the two shows look set to semi-crossover next week with an appearance by Nathan Barley/The Hotness as a rapey policeman. If the police getting younger is a sign of ageing, how much more so when it's TV police being played by the erstwhile epitome of youth foolishness? Like No Heroics, Misfits also looks to have a nice line in in-jokes, with the first episode based around the Wertham Community Centre.
Inez Holden "became a great friend of George Orwell, whose first meeting with Anthony Powell she engineered in 1941. A dinner party involving Orwell and HG Wells, in whose shed she once lived, was less successful. Wells afterwards sent Orwell a note urging him to 'read my early works, you sh1t'."
- from the end credits of Bright Young People
Good Night, And Good Luck: good film. In its loving (and very cigarette-heavy) recreation of the not-so-distant past it has something of Mad Men about it, as well as sharing one cast member - but a lot less of the moral ambiguity. The story of Edward R Murrow's campaign against McCarthyism is one of those rare, straightforward tales of a hero, a man who was in the right place at the right time, did the right thing, and succeeded. A brilliant cast, not all of whom I expected (it was George Clooney's project so I knew he'd be there, but Robert Downey Jr surprised me, and lots of the others are people you recognise as having given good work before but can't quite place). It did leave me wondering, though, how McCarthy ever managed to be taken seriously enough to start his reign of terror - they use archive footage rather than an actor, and he comes across as an unhallowed blend of Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Fred West.
The story of Murrow's triumph is framed by a speech he gives when winning some award or other, in which he expresses his fears for the future of television, worries whether information will survive or whether consolation and distraction will prevail. Which made it rather awkward that it screened at the same time as Generation Kill, a show whose truth I think he would have loved if he'd been able to follow it, meaning I had to use the bugginess that is 4OD to soldier through my weekly dose of Iraq clusterfvcks.
The one upside to the demise of the Observer Music Monthly (reported on a CMU update which doesn't seem to be on their website) is that at least it's taking Observer Woman Monthly down with it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 04:44 pm (UTC)By the way, have you ever won anything? I have won a tenner about twice when I was at university, and that was split three ways, and that's it. Although that was 2 pints worth, so not bad at all.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 05:24 pm (UTC)One of the earliest jackpot winners was a friend of a friend. Well, I say 'friend', this fat kid at school had inexplicably dumped the girlfriend who had already seemed way out of his league, and the next weekend she became a millionaire. Poor timing there, Doug.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 05:29 pm (UTC)The danger about the lottery is the creeping thought in the back of my mind that I should be "upping the stakes", getting 5 lines a week and some scratchcards. The road to ruin, basically. I limit my scratchcarding strictly to when I'm with Katy and Emma. We sometimes win.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-13 11:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-14 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-15 02:12 pm (UTC)I very much liked Misfits too, though I only got round to watching it last night.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-15 09:57 pm (UTC)