John Barry RIP

I was sad to read today about the death of John Barry. He was responsible for the soundtracks for eleven of the first fifteen James Bond movies plus a bunch of other movies. I was listening to some of his stuff on YouTube and thought I'd put a few on here...

OHMSS is one of my favourite Bond movies, based on my favourite Fleming novel, featuring one of my favourite Barry soundtracks... You get the idea...



Here's a favourite piece of music from Moonraker to accompany the space battle near the end of the movie. It has some unmistakable Barry sounds.



Here's a track from his last Bond soundtrack, The Living Daylights. This music accompanied a sequence early in the movie where Bond helps a defector escape across the iron curtain.



The Black Hole was a Disney movie that came out in 1979 to cash in on the Star Wars SF craze. It ticks a lot of the usual boxes, e.g. cute robots, laser battles, etc. It also had a great cast including Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins and the voice of Roddy McDowell. However it had a very unexpected ending. I must have been eight or nine when I saw the movie in the cinema and to this day I'm still not sure what it means. Check out the creepy visuals along with Barry's magnificent score.



And I forgot he did a great score for Enigma, the move based on the Robert Harris novel. Now I want to watch it again...

X-Men: First Class

As a kid I was never into the X-Men comics as Spider-man was more my thing. I knew who the main characters were but that was about it. However I am a big fan of the X-Men movies. It's the one superhero franchise that gets me excited.

I've been pretty much avoiding reading too much about the new movie, X-Men First Class, that is due out this summer. I knew that it had young Magneto and young Xavier but that was about it.

Last night I did allow myself to read the following Entertainment Weekly interview with the director, Matthew Vaughn, and the movie does sound interesting. For example I didn't know that it was set in the 1960s and the focus on Magneto's character looks promising.

Check out the article at http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/01/22/x-men-first-class-matthew-vaughn/

Just four-and-a-bit months to go!

Lucy Brown back in Primeval

The reason I started watching Primeval when it was first on was the presence of Lucy Brown as Claudia/Jenny. After she left I still tuned in but it just wasn't the same.

I've only seen bits and pieces of the new series and have been pretty much giving it a miss. But I'll be keeping a close eye on the next episode as Lucy is back!

George got in touch with these photos he found on a Primeval site. Apparently she is in the next episode (number six) this coming Saturday 29 January 2011.

Photographic proof follows!

Outcasts on BBC

Trailers for a new series called Outcasts have popped up on the BBC lately. It seems to be an expensive-looking science fiction series dealing with settlers from Earth starting over on a new world. There are a few familiar faces in the cast including Liam Cunningham, Hermione Norris and Jamie Bamber, formally of the remake of Battlestar Galactica and Law & Order UK.

Looking at the cast list I also noticed Amy Manson is in it. She played one of the pre-raphaelite models in 2009's entertaining Desperate Romantics. Although it took me a while to regonise her because in that she was a redhead and now she looks very different with dark hair.

It's nice to see the BBC doing some original science fiction. Lately I've been watching some Blakes 7 for the first time since it was on way back when. It got me thinking that the time is right for British TV to try something like that again.

By the way, Outcasts seems to be eight episodes long. I'm shocked! After Sherlock, Upstairs Downstairs and Zen I thought the BBC was only doing three episode series from now on!

There's some basic info and video clips at www.bbc.co.uk/outcasts

PS Here's a picture of Amy as she will not appear on an alien planet.

Alien prequel or not

I decided to do a Alien prequel news search tonight and discovered that it's just been announced that the Alien prequel that Ridley Scott had been working on will no longer be an Alien prequel.

Huh?

It seems that they will be filming the script they have but severing the contunity with the existing movies. The new movie will be called Prometheus and will be released in March 2012.

I don't know if we can expect face-huggers or chest-bursters in the new movie but I do hope we're 'going on a bug hunt'.

Find out more here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jan/17/alien-prequel-ridley-scott-prometheus

Amy Pond in police uniform revisited

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that there was an Amy Pond in police uniform action figure, but bemoaned the fact that it was only available with a Tardis and Doctor figure, setting you back almost £30.

Well, the toy people have seen sense and Amy is now available as part of the Pandorica wave of figures. Each figure in that wave comes with a side of the Pandorica cube containing a CD audio adventure from the Doctor's past adventures.

They sell for a considerable £9.99 each but at least it's an improvement from having to spend three times that.

Rebecca Hall in Harper's Bazaar

It's a while since I've seen Rebecca Hall in a magazine so it was nice to spot her on the cover of the February 2011 issue of Harper's Bazaar.