The Friday Irregular

Volume 5, Number 9
1 February 2002

TFIr #113

Edited by and copyright ©2002 Simon Lamont

To subscribe or unsubscribe, or to discuss how to contribute articles or ideas, mail TFIr@gizmo1.demon.co.uk.

Back issues and Irregular goodies can be found at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/

WORKS IN PROGRESS

The Irregular Archive Project - all issues of The Lamont Times through TFIr plus goodies, on a CD-ROM with an HTML/raytraced graphical interface (which may bear a superficial - and purely coincidental - resemblance to a onetime-real office):

Still missing Lamont Times #5 and Irregular #12.
Graphical interface: development status page last updated 23 Jan 2002
http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/wip/archive/office/

Text adventures:

All at Sea: - planned release: Jul 2002
The Night Before Christmas: - planned release: Nov 2002

 

TFIr ONLINE

You can also read TFIr in its enhanced online version, with links and graphics where appropriate. The latest online version will always be available at http://www.gizmo1.demon.co.uk/li/tfir/latest.htm

Who is the Editor? So far as we know there's no Malkovichian portal into his brain, but there is the Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) file, the UndeadCam and the Film/TV archive list (the latter is now only available as a zip file due to its size):

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Friday 1 February   -   Rene Descartes, philosopher, stopped thinking and ceased to be, Stockholm, 1650
Saturday 2 February   -   8 of the 9 planets aligned for the first time in 400 years, 1962. It's Groundhog Day - will he see his shadow?
Sunday 3 February   -   Lizzie Borden, film director/producer, born, Detroit, 1954
Monday 4 February   -   First Winter Olympics held, Lake Placid, NY, 1932
Tuesday 5 February   -   Jennifer Jason Leigh, actress, born, Hollywood, CA, 1962
Wednesday 6 February   -   Ronald Reagan, former actor and US president, born, 1911
Thursday 7 February   -  

Charles Dickens, writer, born, Portsmouth, England, 1812

 

THE WISDOM OF...

This week's guest speaker - UK Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, showing a firm grasp of his portfolio:

"Most motorists use roads rather than the Underground or railways..." (BBC Radio 5 Live, quoted in Private Eye)

 

FILM QUIZ

Mixed bag of quotations this week; answers next issue or from the usual address.

Last issue's Michael J Fox films were:

WEIRD WORLD NEWS

Strange stories from around the world, some of which might be true...

WHEN BROWNIES ARE BAD... After Raymond Jastrzab of Johnstown, Pennsylvania kept finding his lunches stolen he sought revenge by baking a batch of laxative-enriched brownies and leaving them on a table in the staff canteen (company policy was that any food left out was free for anyone). Unfortunately the plan backfired and he was fired, and is being sued by John R. Anthony Snr who ate some of them while Jastrzab stood by and watched, and subsequently suffered the "pain and embarrassment" of the ensuing nausea, diarrhoea, cramps and dehydration.

AND FOR DESSERT... After two teachers and a student complained of breathing problems brought on by a foul smell their secondary school in Berkeley, New Jersey was evacuated and a hazardous materials unit sent in to investigate. The cause of the problem was eventually found to be a packed lunch that was rotting away behind a row of lockers.

DOG-TIRED... When they went on holiday, David MacKay and his girlfriend Margaret put his prize English Bull Terrier Monty into kennels, but thieves broke in through a skylight and stole the dog. Police initially suspected that he had been stolen to order for illegal dogfighting, but when Monty was found five days later, exhausted and suffering weight loss and a listless but restless temperament, vets decided that he had been taken for stud purposes instead. Mr MacKay told the Daily Record newspaper that he was delighted to be reunited with his dog and was "hoping he'll snap out of it soon."

WHAT A RUSH..... Italian bartender Ettore Diana, who already holds world records for the largest tea and cocktail, spent Tuesday mixing up 500 litres of espresso coffee and 1000 litres of frothy milk into a 7.5ft-high cup - with the help of 160 people and dozens of espresso machines - to produce a world-record-breaking 330-gallon cappuccino. Diana donated proceedings from the event to a charity supporting children born with Down's Syndrome.

DRUMMED OUT OF TOWN... The Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End may be forced to close the popular South African musical "Umoja" after nearby residents complained about the noise levels from the daily pounding of tribal drums. Producer Joe Theron initially thought that a council ultimatum to reduce sound levels by the end of the week or face a fine and be forced to shut down was a joke, but environmental health officers assured him that they were serious and would carry out noise level tests. Eileen White, who had lived next to the theatre for 20 years told the Telegraph newspaper that "the noise is driving everybody mad. With 'Napoleon' [a show previously staged at the Shaftesbury] there was a huge cannon. But when it went off we knew the show was almost over."

Following up last issue's item on the eBay auction of a 158-year-old 40ft-long humpback whale skeleton by a Canadian museum, the auction ended on Sunday with a high bid of C$460,591.76 (US$290,100.00) which this failed to meet the reserve price.

 

WEBSITE OF THE WEEK

From passengers on the Titanic wearing digital watches to Middle-Earth cars and clumsy Star Wars stormtroopers, this week's site celebrates those mistakes that make movies fun for all the wrong reasons...

http://movie-mistakes.com/

THE AMAZING NOT-QUITE-RANDOM LOTTERY PREDICTOR!

Madame Jennifer, our in-house psychic predicts the following numbers will be lucky:

9, 13, 22, 37, 41, 43

 

THE LAVATORY OF OTRANTO

Will be continued in a later issue.

 

DVD REVIEWS

THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Eight months after the death of Douglas Adams, and 21 years since its first broadcast, the 1981 TV version of his most famous work has come to DVD. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGttG) is the story of Arthur Dent, the last surviving earthman, his best friend Ford Prefect, and the search for the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything, the answer to which is 42.

This release comes on two discs - the first contains the actual series in it's original six-episode format (episodes two, four and six are slightly extended) with a digitally remixed stereo soundtrack (the original mono audio is also included). The viewer has the choice of episode/scene selection or viewing the whole thing straight through (an option sadly lacking on some DVD releases of TV series). There is no audio commentary, but production notes can be viewed as subtitles throughout the episodes.

The second disc contains the extras, and a very worthwhile collection they are. There's the hour-long "The Making of HHGttG" documentary originally released on VHS in 1993, "Don't Panic" a 20-minute extension of the documentary, the whole of Peter Jones' introduction to the series used when it was screened to an audience at the National Film Theatre, a BBC Education segment on the making of the radio series, the BBC2 trailer and continuity announcements, a short deleted scene from episode 2, the full Tomorrow's World segment on the then-state-of-the-art animatronic second head, the full Pebble Mill At One interview with animator Rod Lord and director/producer Alan J.W. Bell focussing on the "computer" graphics, out takes, a photo gallery and the highly exciting studio footage of the late-night overtime shooting of one scene; can they get it in the can before the lights go out? There is also a couple of rather hard-to-find "easter eggs", one on each disc.

For a series that is now 21 years old the picture quality is good, but some effects, such as the destruction of earth and Zaphod 's second head look badly dated. Others, the book animations in particular, still look great, and with the benefits of DVD still-frame and slow-motion the detail in these can really be appreciated. The stereo soundtrack benefits things immensely. Picture quality is more variable in the extras, some of which were sourced from off-air VHS.

Like all BBC box sets HHGttG comes in a cardboard slipcase, and this is really the only criticism we have of it; something a little more durable might have been better.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


FUTURAMA SEASON ONE

Matt Groening's follow-up to the phenomenally successful The Simpsons, Futurama is harder-edged, more cynical and aimed at a more grown-up audience, especially where the robot Bender - a metallic cross between John Belushi and W.C. Fields - is concerned. Rounding out the main cast are Fry, a delivery boy who was frozen for 1000 years, Professor Farnsworth, Fry's 105-year-old great-great-etc nephew (and boss) and Leela, the alien one-eyed female spaceship captain. Like The Simpsons, Futurama is full of subtle background details, sharp one-liners and knowing parody of everything from sci-fi staples like Star Trek to National Lampoon's Animal House and Titanic. If you are a fan of The Simpsons, science fiction and more mature animation, you will love this.

This set contains all thirteen episodes of the first season, on three discs, each in a plastic case, all slipcased together in card with a plastic slip-over jacket. Extras comprise audio commentaries, a handful of deleted scenes across all three discs, the trailer, a stills gallery, animatics and storyboards for the first episode and an all-too-short making-of featurette that gives little more than basic information on how an animated series is put together (We would have liked to see more on the use of 3D graphics software). Each disc also has a hidden movie poster picture "easter egg". Unfortunately the menu system is cumbersome and annoying, and there is no option to play all the episodes together.

Futurama Season One box set


BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2

How do you follow The Blair Witch Project (BWP), a documentary-style feature about three missing students who went into the woods near a small American town to discover the truth about a local myth and the deaths of a number of children? The BWP, a film made on the cheap, with the actors shooting their own footage on handheld cameras and improvising much of their action and dialogue was a surprise hit, fuelled by a marketing campaign that utilised the Internet and word-of-mouth to the full, creating an immense back story that left some people wondering whether it really was fictitious after all (even the revered Internet Movie Database was tricked into listing the actors as "missing" for a time).

Sensibly, Book of Shadows does not attempt to replicate the documentary style of the BWP, but opts for a more conventional approach. It builds on the reaction to the first film by centring on the fan hysteria generated by The BWP to tell the story of a group of people on a "Blair Witch Hunt" led by a local man who became obsessed with the film after being released from psychiatric hospital. Camping out by the ruins of alleged serial child-killer Rustin Parr's house (where The BWP footage was allegedly found), the group wake up in the morning to find several hours unaccounted for, their equipment missing and their campsite trashed, although mysteriously their videotapes have been left. Returning to town they seem to have taken something evil with them, something which leads to more deaths. Or have they?

The use of flash-forwards to police interrogations spoils the plot and takes some of the fright factor out of the film, and ultimately it fails to answer all the questions it asks, but the higher production values do provide some genuinely scary moments. Unfortunately they also alienated many fans of The BWP. A short feature "The Secret of Esrever" (work that title out for yourself...) which follows the film claims to unlock some subliminal ghostly images in the film, but this adds little for all but the most obsessive fan.

This release comes on two discs; there's a very frank director's commentary with the film on the first disc; the second disc contains two trailers, a background "documentary," cast and crew interviews and biographies, a music video and the Burkittsville 7 "documentary" about Rustin Parr. We're especially pleased that this was included here; it was noticeably absent from The BWP DVD release. A competent follow-up to The BWP which is a lot better than its poor box-office results would indicate, but not worth watching unless you are familiar with the mythos and hype of the original.

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 - Special Edition

 

AND FINALLY...

A couple drove several miles down a country road, not saying a word. An earlier discussion had led to an argument, and neither wanted to concede their position.

As they passed a barnyard of mules and pigs, the wife sarcastically asked, "Relatives of yours?"

"Yep," the husband replied, "In-laws."

...end of line