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Paul Alexander Mudie

[	website	\|	Paul Mudie - Illustrator	]
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Vintage Funnies!

[Jun. 9th, 2011|11:35 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	silliness	]
[	mood	\|	amused	]

I've just come across this wonderful archive of old newspaper and magazine ads and articles, and it's full of great stuff.

The following piece of advice from 1891 had me chuckling, and would look great on a t-shirt (particularly if worn by a long-haired gentleman):

It is conceded that artists and musicians may wear their hair long if they choose, but it is imperative upon all other gentlemen to cut their hair short. Long hair on a man not of the privileged class above named will indicate him to the observer as a person of unbalanced mind and unpleasantly erratic character – a man, in brief, who seeks to impress others with the fact that he is eccentric, something which a really eccentric person never attempts.

There's some medical advice too, from 1615:

For Frenzy or inflammation of the cauls of the brain, you shall cause the juice of beets to be squirted by a syringe into the patient's nostrils, which will purge and cleanse his head exceedingly; and then give him to drink posset ale in which violet leaf and lettuce hath been boiled, and it will suddenly bring him to a very temperate mildness, and make the passion of frenzy forsake him.

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More tampering with Doctor Who next year?

[Jun. 8th, 2011|11:02 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	anxious	]

It's not very specific, but this article seems to suggest that we may not be getting a full season of Who next year.

The BBC has always said that chopping this year's series in two was not done for financial reasons, but I have to wonder if it was an experiment to see how people reacted, and next they'll try and cut the series length down to six or seven episodes a year, or three feature-length specials, like Sherlock.

It's amazing to me that they'd want to muck about with such a winning formula. I hope the popularity of the show is solid enough to withstand this kind of tampering. I hope this doesn't lead to a drop in ratings, which in turn will give executives an excuse to trim the budget even further.

UPDATE - Steven Moffat has said the following on Twitter:

14 eps + Matt DEFINITELY. I've got a plan and I'm NOT TELLING YOU WHAT IT IS. Now hush or River shoots you with her Spoiler Gun.

He doesn't say whether we'll be seeing all 14 episodes next year, but I'm somewhat reassured that this is some plan of his, and not something that's been forced upon him by the powers-that-be within the BBC.

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Doctor Who - A Good Man Goes to War

[Jun. 5th, 2011|03:43 pm]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	satisfied	]

That was great fun, and was a suitably climactic mid-season finale to tide us over until the Doctor returns in the excellently titled Let's Kill Hitler!

I liked the steampunk lesbian duo (my Mum phoned at that point so I missed the bit about the Silurian having eaten Jack the Ripper, but thankfully picked up on it during Confidential) and I loved the Sontaran nurse. He got all the best lines, I think. I was very pleased to see the return of the space spitfires, although they were in it all-too briefly.

Great stuff, and I can't wait to see how all this is going to wrap up. We still don't know what's going on with the Silents, the girl in the space suit or the Doctor's death. There's quite a lot of explaining to pack into the remaining six episodes, and if this is just a taste of what we can expect from the season finale, it should be a belter.

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Doctor Who - The Almost People

[May. 31st, 2011|09:31 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[

Tags

doctor who

]

Hmmm. That was a mixed bag. On the whole, I'd say it was a better than average conclusion for a New Who two parter, but it was a shame about the dodgy CGI monster. Matt Smith did an excellent job of playing the Doctor and the Ganger/Doctor, and I loved the jelly babies moment.

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3D Meat Futon of Paradise Treasures!

[May. 25th, 2011|12:46 pm]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	films, silliness	]
[	mood	\|	amused	]

I was recently introduced to the wonders of Google Translate, which has opened up previously unexplored areas of internet weirdness to me! It seems that Google can translate some languages more easily than others. In particular, it seems to mangle Chinese to great comedic effect.

Take this Chinese film website, for example. It seems to suggest that there's a film out there called Meat Futon of Paradise Treasures, and that it's in 3D!

These may also be mis-translations, but I really hope it's true that in China, Thor is known as Raytheon Fairy and James Bond is known as Iron King Kong!

By the way, if I ever start a band (and this is a very remote possibility) it's going to be called Meat Futon.

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Doctor Who - The Rebel Flesh

[May. 23rd, 2011|08:55 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[

Tags

doctor who

]

Hmmm. I rather liked that. It had quite a nice Old Who feel to it, with the atmospheric castle locations and lots of people running along corridors. It felt a bit more like "proper" science fiction than the stories we've had so far this series. The tone felt quite different from last week, almost as if this was an entirely different show. I suppose that's one of the joys of the programme, that it can make those tonal shifts from one week to the next.

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Doctor Who - The Doctor's Wife

[May. 16th, 2011|10:48 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	pleased	]

That was another fun episode, with some very nice acting from Smith and Suranne Jones.

It was a lovely idea to have the Tardis take on human form, but I would like to have seen a bit more done with it. I was also slightly disappointed that all we got to see of the Tardis interior was a bit of corridor. I hope there will be further exploration in future episodes. I want to see the swimming pool!

Still, it was nice stuff with some lovely moments and was a definite step up from the previous episode.

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Doctor Who - The Curse of the Black Spot

[May. 9th, 2011|01:51 pm]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	disappointed	]

Well that was reasonably good fun as a silly romp, but it certainly wasn't up to the standard set by the first two excellent episodes.

As with last series, it looks like Moffat the script editor is not very good at fixing the wonkier scripts by other writers. I suppose that's understandable, given the complexity of the stories he's trying to tell, but I had hoped he would have learned from last year that he needs to take tighter control of the series as a whole.

It wasn't bad exactly, it just felt like a filler, especially after the ending of the previous episode. We want to know what that was all about, so stop wasting our time with this pirate fluff! I was actually more entertained by the episode of Confidential which followed, because it featured lots of lovably goofy Karen Gillan and her enthusiasm and sense of fun are so infectious.

Hopefully next week's episode will take us back on course.

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Doctor Who - Day of the Moon - further speculation

[May. 6th, 2011|09:41 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	contemplative	]

Since I am a colossal geek, I decided to watch the episode again last night on the iPlayer, and I spotted an interesting thing. The lady we see briefly with the eyepatch turns to someone out of sight and says "No, I think she's just dreaming."

Hmmmm. This makes me wonder if the Dream Lord might be involved again in some way, and if so, could all that we've seen be a dream? That would obviously be a neat way for Moffat to get himself out of any plot corners he paints himself into!

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Doctor Who - The Day of the Moon

[May. 1st, 2011|10:24 am]

Paul Alexander Mudie

[	Tags	\|	doctor who	]
[	mood	\|	happy	]

Great stuff once again. It was cracking entertainment, laced with lots of twists and surprises, and has given us plenty of questions to chew over as this year's over-arching plot unfolds...

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