Author: Tom Coates

Good news for film buffs and industry notaries, Screendaily.com has come online once more a mere three weeks after being scrapped. The whole story is available on the BBC.

My family live in Norfolk. Norfolk is the flattest county in the UK. My family live in an area known as ‘Belaugh Hills and Hollows’. We live on top of one of the biggest hills in the area. It can take as much as four minutes to walk down to the river… This mountainous region is set to be the setting for a new American film, being filmed in Ireland, about huge mountain dwelling dragons: Americans are amusing people.

International Buffy Day continues with news from the BBC that the show is to switch networks in the states [BBC News]. The series is to move to UPN for purely financial reasons for at least two more seasons. There is speculation that Angel will swap networks at the same time. If this doesn’t happen, we may have seen the last of crossovers between the two series.

Eight episodes in one night. It’s almost inhuman devotion. Noam and Nick C arrived around seven with pizza, drink, cream cakes and muffin mix to find Mella and I ready and waiting for the first of the evening’s screenings. We started off with the rather startling Passion from Season Two before skipping to the final, traumatic episodes, Becoming Parts I & II. Noam looked a bit shaken afterwards, so we reassured her that Buffy would indeed return to Sunnydale by watching the first episode of Season Three: Anne, even though it isn’t actually that good. Before the episode I pointed out to all present that Anne was also in the episode Lie to Me, as well as having appeared in several recent episodes of Angel. This earned me the Buffy Geek Of The Night Award. Shortly afterwards Noam and Nick departed, leaving Mella and I with a stack of new episodes of Buffy and Angel peering up at us lasciviously. It didn’t take long before we had marched our way through the two episodes of Angel, and while I ducked out so that Mella could see I was made to love you, which I had already seen, I returned for The Body and Forever. Asleep by 3.30am.

Thanks to Ralph for finding me the IMDB‘s list of Cool Buffy Quotes.

Time and need are connected in some strange extravagant way with one another. The more desire you feel, the longer seems the time you have to wait to see it fulfilled. The harder you exert a pull, the further you seem to have to strain. Relationships between people can be measured by their perceptions of time. “I haven’t seen you in ages,” he cries. “I seem to see him all the time,” she complains.

If anyone knows where I can get a copy of Fireball without paying the extortionate trans-atlantic shipping costs, then could they please mail me?

It’s true. I give up. I accept my fate. I am become (geek) god. How else can explain the cravings? Why else would this fill me with such drooling awe? For what other reason would my tongue moisten at the mention of #include <beer.h>? And Oh My God, look at all the pretty caffeine. It’s like the mothership is calling me home. [Tom also enjoys the theatre, novels, music, films, contemporary culture, philosophy and ancient greek tragedy. If you would like Tom as your sexual partner, please e-mail a photograph and (small) MP3 of your voice to: tom%40plasticbag.org]

I’ve talked about Grant Morrison‘s theories on the relationship between sunspot activity and youth rebellion several times before – but here is another article connected with it: “The Sun Does a Flip”. Again the eleven year cycle is mentioned, as is something called ‘Solar Max’, which we can only assume is a deity associated with rebirth and bloody irritating revelations. Hail Solar Max.

I confess. It was I that thought that Dan was a funny bastard. I do not, however, wish to rip his arms from their sockets. I have someone else in mind for that particular treatment.