Tag Archives: TV

Reviews

15 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by in Reviews

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This is a basic, general information post I am putting up because there seem to be some issues with writers communicating with me in order to get their books reviewed. Rather than repeat myself countless times, I thought it prudent to have a page that I can link people to when they ask and this is that page. If you have anything you would like me to review, please read the following as it will make both our lives that much easier.

Your friendly, neighbourhood reviewing team....

Your friendly, neighbourhood reviewing team….

So yes, I do reviews. I post said reviews on a number of places.

Self Published and small press ebooks

If you have a self published ebook you would like reviewed, I will review it for epublish a book which is a site dedicated to the ebook format and is specifically geared for the self or small press author. They will also cover small press ebooks but will not cover any paperback or similar hard copy versions since the purpose of the site is to promote the ebook.

My preferred ebook format is Kindle but .pdf is also fine. You can email the appropriate file to my email address given below.

Hard copy books (Trad, small press and self published)

The majority of my book reviewing is for epublish above and therefore mainly concerned with self published ebooks. However, I have done some reviews of paperback books which were shown on the Cult Britannia website.

Books reviewed on Cult Britannia need to be somehow linked to the UK Geek scene. Either sci fi, fantasy or horror in a UK setting or written by a UK author. If you are interested in having your hard copy book reviewed, then you will obviously have to be prepared to send me a copy and I will have to talk to the Cult Britannia team to make sure it is fine to post the article there.

In theory I will also review hard copy books that are not UK linked. However, I cannot post them to Cult Brit or epublish due to the rules those sites have. I will, however, post them to my own blog.

I can provide appropriate address details if you contact me via one of the methods below.

TV Shows

I have done reviews of films and TV shows for Cult Britannia too, though these are usually because the site team have asked me to do them. If there is a UK based geek show or film you think is being overlooked by Cult Britannia that you think deserves some coverage feel free to let me know and I can suggest it to them.

I also do my regular GQ blog posts which measure the geek quotient of non-geek shows. I am always open for suggestions as to which shows deserve this treatment. So far, I have done Downton Abbey and Hawaii Five 0.

Anything else

Yeah, if you want to send me stuff to review I will review it – roleplaying games, chocolate, theatre, computers, microwaves, sports cars, Faberge eggs,… I am happy to accept them all. If you have something more unusual than a book or TV show you want me to look at then contact me and I will consider it. Again, any reviews of such things will likely end up on this blog rather than epublish or Cult Britannia but if you think it may fit the ruies of either site then feel free to pitch an idea to me.

Contact

It seems that some people have had trouble contacting me about reviews so here are the best ways to achieve that:

Email – any email to dalascelles-writing@yahoo.co.uk will reach me easily and that account is checked regularly. This is by far the quickest and easiest way to contact me about reviews.

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/DaLascelles?ref=stream is my shiny new facebook page and it is always hungry for likes. Again, a message sent to that account will likely get dealt with fairly quickly as will posts on the wall

Twitter – https://twitter.com/areteus you can send me a DM on there or post a Tweet to me @areteus and I will get wind of it and reply as soon as I can.

Finally, leaving a comment on this blog will also get through to me (as some have already found). Though this is a less efficient method than some of the others it does still work.

Time

One warning I do give to all who ask reviews of me is that I can’t always get round to them in a particularly timely fashion. It is not so much the time taken to write the review but rather the time to read the book that is often a problem. So, if you do want a review, please be aware that you might have to be patient. I will get round to it as soon as I can. There is also sometimes a delay between my writing the review and it being posted on the sites. This is something I cannot control. Be assured that I do try to get through them as quickly as possible.

The GQ of Hawaii Five – O

13 Sunday Jan 2013

Posted by in Musings

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A few months back I did a post on Downton Abbey and analysed its ‘Geek Quotient’, that being defined as the number of characters played by actors who have starred in films or shows which have some form of ‘geek cred’, specifically something with overt sci fi, fantasy or supernatural elements. I said this may be a regular feature and so here is the second in the series… the newly regenerated Hawaii Five-O series which is currently in its third series.

Hawaii Five O – a lot more buffed and wet than Downton Abbey

So, as for Downton, I looked at the IMDb cast listing for the series and counted up the total number of cast members (77 at the time of writing). Then I counted up the number of those who have starred in fantasy or sci fi shows and divide this number by the total cast to get a number between 0 and 1 which indicates how geek heavy the cast is. By my reckoning, there are 45 cast members who have geek credentials making the GQ of Hawaii Five-O (2010 version) 0.584. This is lower than Downton Abbey’s 0.633.

Masi Oka: For some reason not able to time travel in this

Now, the thing about Hawaii Five O is you have several obvious big hitters in the line up. While neither of the two male leads have any Geek cred in their filmographies, you have three huge hitting Asian geek actors in the form of Battlestar Galactica’s Grace Park, Angel’s Daniel Day Kim and Heroes’ Masi Oka. Daniel Dae Kim has also put in time on shows like Lost and the TV show version of Avatar: The Last Airbender as well as putting in an appearance in Spiderman 2.

And Lost is fairly important here as many of the cast have had a role in that at some level, including Terry O’Quinn who is recognisable as having had a fairly major role in it. Lost did cause me a little concern because it is difficult to decide if it qualifies as ‘Fantasy or Sci Fi’. I am opting here for the ‘Lost is Sci Fi/Fantasy’ theory but, to be honest, I do not think it makes that much difference as most of the actors who were in Lost also have another Geek credit to their name.

Reviewing the cast list it seems as if the  main reason Hawaii Five-O scores less than

Terry O’Quinn and his Teddy

Downton Abbey is because of the much longer cast listing on IMDb. There are actually many on the list with Geek credits, including many small voice roles in superhero animations and bit parts in film like the X-Men franchise and various Asian cinema movies. However, there are also many more who seem to have this as their only acting credit or who have never done a geek thing before which is, I suspect, the real reason for the lower score.

Overall, it is interesting to see the difference between Hawaii Five-O and Downton Abbey in the type of actors used. Obviously, just as Downton makes use of many traditional english actors, Hawaii Five-O also uses local talent and this changes the sort of things they are involved in. Instead of Doctor Who and Harry Potter you have American TV shows and Asian cinema and one actor whose main claim to fame before becoming an actor was being a sumo wrestler.

Guest blog blues…

20 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Guest posts, Musings

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A while back I was asked to do a guest blog for the amwriting community. I put together an article comparing being a published writer for the first time to being a teacher for the first time. I enjoyed writing it, I assume some people enjoyed reading it (the comments were all good anyway) and it was clearly so successful that they asked me to come back and do another one… I agreed and was given a date when it was due to be posted.

Then I realised I did not have a blind thing I wanted to talk about.

Oh, I have ideas. A reasonable number of ideas. Every now and again I think of something and part of my brain pops up with a little note saying ‘You could do a blog post about that’. Recently, I have had thoughts about British Urban fantasy and what it means, the Christmas Number one phenomenon and how it seems to have turned into a battle between the X factor winner and whatever alternative and inappropriate tune we can think of (currently seems to be Nine Inch Nail’s Hurt), things I have noticed about Dr Who plots, things I have noticed about education and the teaching of history*, and many other subjects. Trouble is, the more I think about some of these ideas, the less interesting and novel they seem. I get less and less motivation to actually sit down and write about them.

So, yes, this is the ultimate irony – a blog post about how I cannot seem to write blog posts 🙂

Part of it is some form of quality control system in my brain which seems to be at work. Any idea is faced with a barrage of questions along the lines of ‘is this worthwhile?’ ‘Has anyone else ever written about this before?’ ‘Will anyone care enough to read?’ Now, for my own blog here these questions are often soon silenced. It’s my blog, I write what the hell I want, and if there are issues I am sure readers will let me know… However, when it is a guest blog for someone else, I often get greater angst about it. It is not my domain I am befouling with my stench, it is the domain of someone else. This adds a whole new level of concern about the relevance of what you are saying. The result is often me chickening out and posting another photo of a cute dog.

So, while I am still pondering the dilemma of what to write for #amwriting I would ask you, the readers of this, to answer me some questions:

– What subjects do you think I should talk about on this blog? Which posts have you liked the most?

– What current issues do you think face writers and/or readers which may be blog worthy for the #amwriting blog?

– If I were to post my PGCE essay on why History is an essential subject, would anyone bother to read it?

Answers on a comment form below, please 🙂

 

*That was one I had today, there was an article on Radio 4 about it and I once wrote an essay about how important History is as a subject. I may still blog about this one at some point… I may also still do a post on Nine Inch Nails and the Christmas number one at some point soon…