8 posts tagged “2006”

This was from 2006 but still: damn, they look good! From Richard & Judy.

   Glynis Barber and Michael Brandon recall their first kiss and what their son thinks of the two-hour pilot on the series where they met, Dempsey and Makepeace.
   A later interview with Glynis Barber appeared on This Morning, where she discusses the prospect of a TV reunion special.

For Judge Bob, who mentioned he would like to see more bloopers. This wasn’t the Doctor Who collection I saw—in fact, it may be better, especially some gag footage. You can see some of the footage pre-CGI, which explains why Billie Piper’s face is marked in the three-take sequence where David Tennant is cracking up. Sophia Myles, Tennant’s then-real-life girlfriend, also appears as Mme de Pompadour.

   I just want to see Tennant break into his normal Scottish accent.

Quite a lot of the f word in this following segment of bloopers from the 2006 series of Life on Mars, but some of these are very funny. The first, and the last three, are among my favourites. Liz White’s bloopers are rather adorable.

I learned quite a few things about Dan Chan at his funeral last Wednesday in the eulogy delivered by historian Dr James Ng.
   Dan was born in China in 1907 but was educated in Australia, where his father worked, from 13—both at a state school in NSW and Scotch College in Melbourne. This was, as James told us, unusual in its day as most Chinese fathers of Dan’s era would have sent their children back to the old country.
   This foreign education meant that Dan was bilingual and a very well versed and philosophical writer. He had returned to China and Hong Kong to set up a business there but the Japanese invasion meant that he and his family had to flee to the antipodes.
   His education meant that he could stay in New Zealand because his work was needed in editing a magazine for expatriates here and Dan also helped members of the diaspora get money back to the old country (one of his proud accomplishments being the mastering of a code to aid the transfers).
   However, his business in New Zealand, as I knew it, was in the restaurant trade—back in those postwar days it was rare to see anyone other than Anglo New Zealanders in white-collar professions.
   This did bring his family some security and Dan was a great benefactor in the old country, even having a high school built.
   His contributions to New Zealand society were awarded with a Queen’s Service Medal and he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, which I understand equates roughly to an OBE.
   His driving licence was apparently still valid at the time of his passing. He was so alert and capable that instead of having an annual renewal—which is necessary for people at his age—he was given his for two years at age 99. He gave up driving voluntarily.
   As I said in my earlier tribute, he had a better memory for faces and people at age 100 than I do today.
   When you hear this history you come to realize that men like Dan, whom I knew more as being active in the Chinese New Zealand community, were actually the trailblazers who bridged the gulf between the émigrés and mainstream Kiwis.
   He was respected in legal circles, a recent conference only being funded because someone had made a large donation in his honour.
   The Otago University library holds Dan’s papers, a collection of writings between 1939 and 1999, often dealing with philosophy, not just Chinese issues.
   At his funeral, even former restaurateur and City Missioner Father Des Britten attended, along with engineer, blogger and historian Steven Young.
   Without his contribution and his readiness to work with institutions to help Chinese people in New Zealand, we would have been much the poorer. Dan was a great advocate.
   Although Dan had made it into the MSM when his ONZM was bestowed on him with the 2007 New Year honours, I found it a great surprise that the media missed his passing and a well attended funeral at Old St Paul’s.
   It may be a slight exaggeration to say that we would still be expected to run Chinese takeaways, laundromats and groceries—when you think about it, those days were within the lifetimes of many of us reading this post today. But certainly the idea of the well versed, professional Chinese New Zealander might not have been as well cemented, because the cultural gulf would not have been bridged as successfully.
   Those of us who enjoy professional positions today owe a debt of gratitude to men like Dan Chan. God bless you.

Ashes to Ashes’ final-episode viewing numbers were down, sadly, though the series average was still high enough for the BBC to commission a second series.
   They are logically down on Life on Mars because viewers didn’t expect there to be any surprises on Alex Drake’s predicament this time round. (Boy, did we get a big surprise.)
   I believe as word of the final filters out—that Alex Drake’s situation is different from Sam Tyler’s and raises the possibility that Gene Hunt and his team are real—the second series might do slightly better, especially its final.
   Reports are coming in that Ashes “only” scored 5·4 million viewers, still a healthy 23 per cent share, though it is down from the 7 million of the première.
   Compared with Life on Mars, this isn’t too bad given that people thought (and the producers allowed us to think) that there was less novelty to the premise.
   Some figures may help put this into perspective:

• Life on Mars’ first series average: 6·8 million
• Life on Mars’ first series final: 7·1 million

but:

• Life on Mars’ second series début: 5·7 million—despite heavy promotion and YouTube trailers
• Life on Mars’ second series, third episode: 4·8 million
• Ashes to Ashes’ first series début: 7 million
• Ashes to Ashes’ first series, second episode: 6·1 million
• Ashes to Ashes’ first series, fifth episode: 6·6 million

   While the final’s viewing numbers are poorer than episodes during the preceding seven weeks, the series has averaged well and now that there is an apparent twist, those who watched Life on Mars for a mindbender might just tune in to the second series of Ashes to Ashes. The BBC made the right call to renew.

 
We haven’t linked this publicly yet, but readers may enjoy a preview of an article on actress Ashley Scott, whom I interviewed last year. We didn’t get to use all the pictures by Andrew Matusik, and there was an error in the print edition on attribution, so the online one fixes these issues. In addition, we’ve updated the article slightly to reflect Ashley’s work on the TV series Jericho, currently screening on TV3 in New Zealand.
   That means we have had three Lucire profiles this year on the website about celebrities with connections with the Carolinas. Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Brooklyn Decker has North Carolina roots, while Miss New Zealand Laural Barrett and Louisiana-born Ashley have South Carolina ones: Ashley was raised in Charleston, SC, and still believes the Holy City to be one of her favourite places.

One reason we love Gene Hunt, as played by Philip Glenister, in Life on Mars is the stuff he gets away with saying on prime-time TV. The excuse: it’s set in 1973 and he’s a mean-bastard cop. The reality: probably a backlash against political correctness. Here’s something no 2007 character could ever say, especially as it makes fun of gays:

He is a bum bandit, a poof, fairy, a queer, a queen, fudge packer, uphill gardener, fruit picking sodomite.

Or when attacking Sam, also with the usual homophobic comments:

You great, soft, sissy, girly, nancy, French, bender, Man. United-supporting poof!

In fact, anything blue seems to get a laugh:

I’ve come at this from more angles than Linda Lovelace.

Or the use of brand names:

What have you been eating? Pedigree Chum?

Or just famous people:

Wouldn't Nixon notice a van parked outside the White House?

   Then, the other characters get their own back, like Sam:

Listen to me. I can just about handle you, driving like a pissed-up crackhead and treating women like beanbags, but I’m going to say this once and once only, Gene: stay out of Camberwick Green!

Or, in summarizing Gene Hunt:

An overweight, over the hill, tobacco-stained, borderline alcoholic homophobe with a superiority complex and an unhealthy obsession with male bonding.

   But I still think Dirty Harry has the most politically incorrect line, despite Gene Hunt:

Harry hates everybody. Limeys, niks, hebs, fat dagos, niggers, honkies, chinks, you name it.

   And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the American version of Life on Mars has a chance.
   I will miss this show when it finishes on Tuesday night in the UK.

These photos, caught off TV, are interesting: in Romania, Lucire was covered on a 24-hour news channel during prime-time, with guest and former cover girl Monica Gabor. Here, Monica discusses her shoot with us. The pages from the magazine were perfect for Romania, especially since Monica is known there. However, the style is quite different from what appears in the master edition here. For readers’ interest.