REAL TO REEL
This not a warning of an impending asteroid impact, nor is it confusion about the nature of comet 67P—this is a tale about an asteroid and a duck. But not any old duck, rather one particular auld Pekin duck: the absurdly wealthy and characteristically cranky adventure capitalist Scrooge McDuck, the character created by Carl Barks …
From the opening moments of Goliath Season 4, the legal drama starring Billy Bob Thornton that never abides by the rules, one thing is clear: ever notice how something you've anticipated is nothing like you expected when it arrives? What is clear from previous seasons is that while the legal content is about tort, most …
Like the captain of the Rocinante, I never skip my morning coffee—and The Expanse title sequence is like a shot of espresso. It might seem as though the protocol for dealing with the one minute interruption and seemingly unintelligible theme song is to hit Skip Intro, but there's something you should know… The content updates …
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"The whole world will weep with gratitude when the big day comes because Mr Happer has got his comet!" What Mr Happer really wants is to find a comet. If he does, he'll call it a Happer comet or Happer's Comet or…Comet Happer. Sadly, Happer never gets his comet but he does eventually get an …
When I first watched The Expanse, I didn't get on board right away. Yes, the science sounded good, but like a Belter from Ceres trying to survive in Earth’s gravity, trying to fit together the pieces of this puzzle was literally crushing me. I needed to find my Rosetta Stone…and not just for the dialects. To …
The opening ceremony of Tokyo 2020 made a massive impact when seemingly out of nowhere a rogue planet appeared in the sky over the Olympic stadium. A shimmering ring gate made of hundreds of drones had morphed into a slowly rotating Earth, like something straight out of a sci-fi movie. In tribute to the drone-made …
Mr Benn may have good reason to dress up in costume this year, because 2021 marks 50 years since the bowler-hatted British businessman's adventures in a fancy-dress shop first aired on TV in 1971. The now celebrated antics of Mr Benn were first introduced in a series of children's books in 1967, followed by an …
From titanium, helium-3 and sapphire, to pergium, tylium and opus, whether nudging an asteroid too close to Earth, cloning lunar miners to save costs, or mining the outer reaches of the Solar System, here are some movies and TV shows about mining in space. This list is presented in no particular order and the results …
Having been treated to an uncharacteristic flurry of snow during a February cold snap in London, made worse by the sedentary lifestyle imposed by the coronavirus lockdown, I was looking forward to opening the door into spring. Instead, I chanced upon the trailer for The Door into Summer, the first ever film adaptation of the …
Feeling somewhat frustrated during UK lockdown 3.0, I picked up Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, to read again. In the Intermission, Excerpts from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long, Heinlein's character sets out a list of skills of the competent man — what he thinks a human being should be able to do. If I …
Inspired by five words, or is it six, in the 1998 blockbuster Armageddon, a movie about an asteroid the size of Texas on course to impact Earth in eighteen days and the team of deep core drillers sent to break it up, I wondered whether there were any quantifiable clues to support the statement that …
In 2020, Amazon announced that its legal drama Goliath starring Billy Bob Thornton as troubled lawyer Billy McBride had been renewed for one final season, then coronavirus arrived. This article was written to fill the void while we waited through the pandemic for Season 4 to arrive. It provides a recap (precap) of what you …
Compiling a list of every asteroid and comet disaster movie ever made is no easy feat. First, you need to identify potential candidates. Then you have to watch them all, which can be somewhat harder than finding them. Much like asteroids and comets themselves, there's a whole spectrum of content in these dramas, from the …
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Having watched all five seasons of the Amazon police drama Bosch, I was excited to find Season 6 arrive during the lockdown imposed on us due to the coronavirus pandemic. Ten minutes into the first episode and Bosch is called out to the Overlook at Lake Hollywood Park on a murder case. An abandoned 911 …
It's the end of the year and one particular tabloid newspaper is again warning us that it could soon be the end of the world — yes, asteroid 2019 AE3 is in our vicinity and the apocalypse is coming. In keeping with the tabloid drama, below is a link to a list of all the …
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Amazon TV's Goliath is back for a third instalment and after the two previous diverse offerings, no-one knew what to expect in Season 3. When Billy McBride in Season 1 said, “Ever since I took this case, weird shit is happening to me…”, well, that kind of weird has nothing on this. In 2016, we …
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More than 100 years have passed since the first film was shown in movie theatres that depicted a rock from space wreaking havoc on Earth—although in that case it was a comet rather than an asteroid making an impact. That movie, a silent black and white film called The End of the World released in …
Continue reading "Making an Impact: Lights, Camera and Asteroid!"
When Season 2 of Amazon's gritty TV series Goliath was released, some viewers were at a loss—a different type of loss to some of the characters. Some viewers were gripped, while others were up in arms, while some of the characters were unable to hold onto theirs. Once I was able to uncover my eyes …
As part of my scriptwriting aspirations, I was interested to understand how a hugely successful TV show knows right from the start what people will watch whilst making content unique. This led me to read drafts and pilot episode scripts of TV shows and I soon realised that those making these shows often don't get …
Continue reading "Rewriting characters: The Big Bang Theory"
This article looks at Season 1 of Goliath, Amazon's tremendous legal drama starring Billy Bob Thornton as Billy McBride, a struggling lawyer who is pitted against the powerful. The discussion compares the third draft pilot script for Goliath Season 1 entitled Trial dated 20 July 2015 and the pilot TV episode entitled Of Mice and …
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