READING, WATCHING, LISTENING TO

Find out what has been entertaining the Entertainment Manchester staff this week...

THE EDITOR

WATCHING: I've mostly been watching Dexter over the last few weeks, cramming in all of the first series on DVD just in time to start watching the second on Sunday on FX, which has started very well. Now I'm on another race against time to watch the fourth series of The Wire in time for the fifth to start later this month. Filmwise, I saw Prince Caspian at the cinema last weekend, which was pretty dull and and long-winded. At least Warwick Davis got to be in it as he was in the TV show too, though playing a different character. Not sure the Narnia series can keep on going all the way to the end on the big screen...

READING: Having bought myself a box-seat of Sherlock Holmes books ages ago with a post-Christmas book voucher, I've finally got around to reading them, and am currently most of the way through the third one, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. They're great, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of them, particularly as they are quite easy to dip in and out of whilst on the tram...

LISTENING TO: I'm on a classic rock tip at the moment, with Motley Crue and Whitesnake both very popular. Dr Feelgood and Kickstart My Heart by the Crue are just awesome rock anthems and have been very useful in the last week to help kick Rock Star by Nickelback out of my head (thank you very much to whichever generic sofa company have that awful song in their terrible advert). And finally, there's Ronald Jenkees, the YouTube legend (look him up) and his ace version of the Rocky theme...



THE WRITER

WATCHING: Doctor Who. This season of Doctor Who has been the best since its return in 2005, and it got a suitably epic finale on Saturday. Well, according to me anyway. Many others found problems with the season-closer, complaining that the lack of regeneration and metaphorical rather than literal death of the assistant were cop-outs. Nonsense. The regeneration sidestep was perfectly legitimate (come on, this is sci-fi), and the ‘death’ of Donna was one of the darkest, most bleak endings to a mainstream TV show I think I’ve ever seen, offering up something far more tragic than a simple, straightforward death. There were minor issues, of course, with the Daleks being defeated a little too easily and Rose settling too quickly for the cloned Doctor. But when the episode also threw up a bonkers Davros threatening to destroy reality itself, the sight of the Tardis hauling a kidnapped Earth back to its original place and, best of all, German Daleks it just seems silly to nitpick. This was Russell T. Davies’s last season as show-runner, and he leaves the series, Saturday night telly and science-fiction as a whole far richer places.

READING: Indiana Jones comics. To coincide with the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Dark Horse have recently published two anthologies of their 1990s Indy comics, much to the delight of myself and geeks everywhere. It‘s not all good news though. With George Lucas preferring to set many of the established movie characters aside for future cinematic outings, these adventures sadly seem separate from Steven Spielberg’s films, and sometimes even from each other, with the use of different writers and artists for each tale making it difficult to build up consistency from one story to the next. The limited length of comic books also proves a hindrance, something not helped by the exposition that the complex, globe-trotting plots lumber each story with. However, they’re still rip-roaring entertainment, with the writers capturing Indy’s voice perfectly and the MacGuffins being unique enough to make sure these aren’t just nostalgic retreads of the films.

LISTENING TO: Radiohead: LIVE!!! Ok, this is a bit of a cheat considering the Editor and I went to see The Mighty Head (as absolutely nobody calls them) two Sundays back, but as I’ve listened to nothing of note since then it still counts. As was mentioned in the review, the casual-fan crowd was often unresponsive, but the band themselves were on top form, playing a perfectly-judged set with a fine balance of pre and post-Kid A tracks. As good as the likes of Paranoid Android, Just and Fake Plastic Trees were though, the gig really came alive for me when they played the more obscure stuff. The Gloaming, Bangers and Mash and Myxamaotosis are all more interesting tracks live than they are in album form, and it’s quite a sight watching Thom thrust all things thrustable and shoot the audience with an imaginary gun during the latter song. All in all, a fantastic experience…even if I did have a dirty hoodie thrown at me during the first encore.