Rage Against Cowell

Well, we did it, Xmas no1 of 1009 was “Killing in the Name of” by Rage against the machine and not “the Climb” by…. Come on, what’s his name, you know, hingmy off of that thing.

That is a little cruel, but hells, we’ve earned it. Year after year of dreary X-Factor winners, or pop idol etc, and finally, a good song. I’m tempted to get all choked up and start talking us all up, how we did the impossible and that makes us mighty, or indeed point out that governments should take heed, because there are more bright independent people out there, we just rarely move like a herd, but I’ll leave it for the moment.

Naturally, there have been naysayers, smart alecs talking about how its funny that a whole load of people bought a song with the chorus “I won’t do what you tell me” because they were told to, and of course that both songs are on labels owned by Sony, so whatever wins Sony makes a big heap of money (And some said by that reasoning Cowell)

To address the second first, yes, it may well have been a marketing stunt by Sony, possibly off the back of cowell’s clever move last year of releasing a weak and lifeless cover of “Hallelujah” prompting online campaigns to get one of several alternative versions to No1, the advantage, he has a stake in the rights to Hallelujah so probably got a fair chunk of money from that. However someone likened him getting money from RATM sales to JD sports getting money from M&S sales because they share the same shopping centre.

The First, well, I’d disagree, yes we all bought the song on a specific week for the purpose of getting it to No1, but I’m betting if you asked 50 people you’d get at least 20 different reasons. Me, I like the song and don’t own it, plus I really liked the idea of every pointless light pop TV and radio station having to play Killing in the name of, and indeed have enjoyed seeing the gritted teeth approach most of them have to playing a storming rebellious hit. In fact one criticism is that many pop stations have since carried on regardless, in a review of 2009 one station played an excerpt from Killing, only to play the whole of the climb. Great, so here’s a clip of the winner, and here’s the whole of No2.

My other reason is a stupid one. See, I have a small confession, up until my late teens, music didn’t really interest me. In fact most of my CD collection was film soundtracks. Thing is I blame a lot of that on opportunity. When I was younger most of the people I hung around liked “What was in the charts” basically through primary school I was around people who were content to be told what they liked. I just couldn’t bring myself to agree, so I generally accepted that, aside from the odd flash of something I liked that chart music wasn’t for me. As I grew up obviously my horizons expanded. This is the crux of the matter. While my rock taste was developing if I hadn’t been to rock clubs and talking to rock fans then many bands wouldn’t register. I often think that if a good rock song could get up the charts and get the radio play then more people would realise how awesome rock is. Its stupid but there we are. And that’s my final reason. If one person who has been content to listen to the manufactured drivel gets inspired to Rock from this, then it’s been a success.

XMas TV

Yes, all these posts will be behind schedule, but I reckoned Xmas TV was worth mentioning this year, why? Because it was a mess.

Now Xmas TV isn’t what it once was. In previous years (read, when I were a lad) the Xmas schedule was mainly about big film premiers. This was the tent pole to every channel’s schedule and I’m sure many of us remember sitting around marking off films in the radio times arranging who got to see what. The prevalence of Sky Movies and cheap DVDs now means that people are more likely to have seen the big films at home before a normal channel gets them; this takes a lot of the power out of these films. The thing is Xmas TV is hard. For close to two weeks you have to act as if everyone now wants to watch TV all day, not just between 6pm-11. People are on holiday after all, you can’t get away with Diagnosis Murder here. A good few premiers fill up hours of schedule, but now a film premier is less of a ratings guarantee the main terrestrial stations have been a bit confused.

In the vacuum caused by this state of affairs, the BBC has definitely done the best. This is despite the tabloids normal BBC bashing announcement about the number of repeats on over Xmas; this is despite calling ITVs higher number of repeats “Classics”. The BBC has risen to the challenge with a variety of Xmas specials. In fact, on Xmas day it was BBC1 all evening. The mainstay is of course now the Dr Who Xmas special, which brought me out in fanboy delight this year, because such a big deal was made of it. David tenant was in everything and the Beebs Xmas idents were Dr Who themed. This year Dr who was Xmas. We also had specials from programmes for all tastes, a Catherine Tate special, more Gavin & Stacey, strictly come dancing, plus on other days we had Xmas specials of QI, Russell Howards good news, a 2 part mini-series of Day of the Triffids and the Top Gear South America special. In fact the BBC should be praised. They filled a hole normally occupied by films, new or repeats, with new, self made programming. So what did they do wrong? Well, on the run up quite a few shows got mucked about in the schedules, specifically for me Defying gravity and James May’s Toy Stories. Second, there were some very odd repeats, such as the Top gear special being on two consecutive days. Finally there was a missed opportunity, the big film this year was Pirates of the Caribbean 3, shown on Boxing Day. However, later that week they showed Pirates of the Caribbean 2, when they could have shown 1&2 on the run up to Boxing Day making 3 a bit more of an event.

Still, like I said, the BBC was odd, but overall good, if still messy. ITV, C5 and C4 were worse. ITV and C5 just outright failed to have anything worth watching at all neither did Sky 1 or Virgin 1, the former showing the two Discworld minis on a loop (not a bad thing but not great for anyone not wanting to watch Hogfather twice in one day) and the latter just not changing its schedule at all. In fact only C4 had anything, mainly the Big fat quiz of the year, along with all quizzes from yesteryears repeated. C4 however was rather confusing as they had 2 films that could have been big over Xmas, The Simpsons movie and Slumdog Millionaire, however bizarrely they chose to show these after the Xmas period.

Overall other stations could learn a lot from the BBC on this one.

Defying Gravity & Virtuality

In my preview of this years TV I may have mentioned Defying Gravity as a show I was interested in seeing, well its been and gone and I’ve managed to catch it thanks to BBC’s IPlayer and no thanks to BBC’s bizarre roaming schedule.

Defying gravity was made as an international co-production, loosely based on a BBC Drama doc about a more realistically themed tour of the solar system. Defying gravity ditches some of the hyper realism of its documentary predecessor, a technobabble nanotech idea explains gravity in most parts of the ship (Although they are very consistent in showing the “Gravity Suits” under clothing) and eventually uncovers a mystery surrounding what is in Pod 4, however for the most part the Antares is a realistic ship, its slow and low tech. This meant that the series would mainly focus on the crew interaction and the dangers inherent to space travel. This is added to with some focus on mission control and the politics there, and with flashbacks to the training and selection process.

I really warmed to the characters, both in their training and on the mission. This I think was the show’s strength or weakness; basically if you don’t click with the characters you won’t enjoy the show as a lot of it is people in a tin can naval gazing.

I will agree with the critics on one thing, the Final episode was fantastic, the show’s critics say this is how it should be. I say it showed what something like Defying gravity could do where other SF would have a space battle. They really highlighted the risk of landing on Venus, a very hostile place and still managed to advance several plot threads in the process.

Perhaps DG was a little slow, but then so is the Antares on her grand tour of the universe. Shame we won’t see the rest of the solar system, however for those who want to know where it’s going an interview with the creator exists here.

A quick aside, It may have been a couple of years ago, Ronald D Moore made his attempt at a similar idea. He even also lumbered it with a duff title, Virtuality. It never made it beyond pilot, and I won’t say how I saw that.

Virtuality follows the crew of the Phaeton, an international mission to find a habitable planet outside of the solar system. The reason, because Earth is dying. However, in order to keep funding the mission is also a giant Reality TV show, with cameras on the ship recording the crew’s conflicts. In fact two of the crew serve as director/producer and presenter. This leads to some nice asides, like some of the food supplies being donated by a ready meal company, the crew having to wear different clothes, depending on that day’s sponsor.

The virtual bit comes from the way the crew get to escape from their tin box. Each crewmember has access to a VR module, however, there is a ghost in the machine and he seems to be intent on doing cruel and nasty things to the crew while they’re in VR. However the twist at the end of the pilot could reveal something more.

Overall Virtuality is grittier and less sanitised than Defying Gravity, and many thought more interesting. I can’t judge, Defying gravity had many hours for me to bond with its crew while virtuality had a pilot, still it’s a shame it never got commissioned.