The Golden Globes that almost was, but wasn't

As someone who has such an interest in TV and film that I have a blog that features both of these areas as key topics, it seems fairly obvious why the Golden Globes would be important to me. The Golden Globes is like the slightly more fun version of the Oscars (I do love the Oscars, the Globes are just kinda different) and a lot of this is down to the fact that television is also incorporated into the awards, creating an interesting mix of different people.

I enjoy the whole thing, the red carpet, the awards show and the staying up until 4am to watch it. So you can imagine my annoyance this year when I found that not one UK channel would be broadcasting the Globes.  My first port of call was E!, who always reliably broadcast the red carpet. And it was there, starting at nine PM. Assured by this, I began to rifle through the TV guide, looking for the actual ceremony. Pages and pages went by and still there was nothing. I looked to twitter, doing a quick search to see if anybody knew which channel it would be on. I was met with hundreds of disgruntled tweets from people who seemed equally as confused as me, all saying that no UK TV channels had picked up the show.

Now, I'm all for variety of entertainment and TV appealing to multiple audiences and such, but it seems absolutely laughable that UK television will gladly broadcast an oversized fishtanks full of people who barely scraped the title of "celebrity" a decade ago (never mind in 2015!) living together (looking at you, "Celebrity" Big Brother) and endless loops of reality shows, game shows and documentaries about people who have seven foreheads, but they will not broadcast the Golden Globes.

Perhaps the worst part about it all is the fact that so many British people were nominated this year. It's a big year for British film, a part of the film industry that often struggles to make impact worldwide. So it seems like if the UK were going to broadcast the Globes (which they have been doing for several years now) it'd be now. But instead, I was left trawling the internet for streams at 8:57pm and missing the opening monologue by Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, which is perhaps the greatest injustice of all.

I know it seems like I'm just kind of bitching at British TV networks here, but then again...

New photos!

 Just added 3 rolls worth of film to flickr! 

The Faculty (1998) - Robert Rodriguez Interview

Episodes I love of shows that I love: Absolutely Fabulous - Poor (1994)

At the tail end of the second season of Ab Fab, "Poor" is one of (in my opinion) the strongest entries in the shows 39 episode run. It's a showcase of everything that is hilarious and ridiculous about the series. The performances of the whole cast are great (they're never anything less than that though) with Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumely giving one of their strongest performances in the series. Edina (Jennifer Saunders) goes erratically from subdued to completely insane in a moments notice and it is HILARIOUS.

The dialogue throughout the episode is fantastic, with the court rant by Edina at the end being a particular standout moment. It's a prime example of the sense of comedic timing combined with dramatic-ism that Jennifer Saunders has. 

Journey to the Past

Aaliyah on the Oscars Red Carpet & performing "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia.

Episodes I love of shows that I love: Friends - The One Where Rachel Finds Out (1995)

A month or so ago, I finally decided to splurge and buy the complete box set of "Friends" (the "extended, exclusive & unseen" edition to be exact) after years and years of contemplating buying it. It's not like Friends is inaccessible or anything to me, as I still own a tonne of VHS tapes from the original home video releases, a couple of seasons on the super old DVD releases and Friends still enjoys morning and night coverage on Comedy Central here in the UK. But the promise of unseen extras and extended episodes proved too tempting for me. 

So, over the last few weeks I've been flying through the episodes at hyper-speed and it's been a real blast fro the past in some cases. As a previously mentioned, Friends still runs in the UK every single day on Comedy Central & before that E4 (and before that it was on it's original run on Channel 4!) but due to the fact that the episodes are often shown in a "best of" format, it can be kinda hard to follow plot lines and as a result of this, there are a handful of episodes I haven't seen for a seriously long time. 

An episode that has really stood out to me during my marathon of the series is the season one finale, "The One Where Rachel Finds Out". I've watched season 1 more times than I can remember and this episode has always been one of my favourites but this time around it really hit me how well executed this episode is and how solid a performance the cast gives (Jennifer Aniston in particular) in conveying the emotional roller-coaster that is the season finale. For me, this episode is a testament to how well the series could mix in more dramatic elements to the comedy of the show and pull it off. The humor is still very much there but it doesn't take away from how genuinely emotional the ending of the episode is. 

The final scene where Rachel is stood in the airport waiting for Ross while we see this paralleled with footage of his plane landing & then getting off the plane with Julie while Madonna - Take a Bow plays in the background seriously gets to me EVERY SINGLE TIME. WHAT THE HELL ROSS. 

Despite airing almost 20 years ago, this episode still seems fresh and is pretty much a blueprint of "how to do a sitcom season finale really really well."