Ben Paddon

[Ben Paddon]

There may be an actual, logical reason for that, mind. Unless, when you bring it up, Doug just sort of goes “Er” and then hides behind a potted plant in the hopes you think he’s vanished from the room.

I’ve been asked a similar question about Jump Leads on a couple of occasions – “Does the Flurry materialise in the exact same spatial co-ordinates in every Universe, or does it appear in an entirely random location? If it’s the latter, why did their first attempt to jump away after Lucas died bring them to a parallel version of the Universe they were already in?” – and I actually have an answer that I’d quite happily insert into the comic if I thought it would move the story along. Which it wouldn’t. Maybe I’ll write it down sometime.

[Ben Paddon]

Clawing forth from the depths of Hell itself, Jimbotfu opened his gaping maw, and he spake…
***SPOILERS***

I’d be very interested in hearing your source for this. I may well find myself calling some of my contacts at Paramount this afternoon to see if there’s any credence to it.

[Ben Paddon]

Add them to your Amazon Wishlist, and then tell people about it so they can promptly not buy them for you.

[Ben Paddon]

Yes, that’s it.

[Ben Paddon]

This is a prequel. It seems to be set before the original series, but isn’t strictly speaking a “reboot”. Not if my information is accurate, at least.

[Ben Paddon]

I tried to turn a mutton vindaloo into a chicken vindaloo using a DNA machine, with hilarious consequences.

[Ben Paddon]

The MySpace thing was definitely there last week.

[Ben Paddon]

Seph sez…
I?m kinda glad if Jigglypuff?s gonna be gone from brawl, the amount of times I sat staring in utter confusion at the screen during matches with Jigglypuff and Kirby.

One is bright pink. The other is a pale pink. One has squinty little black eyes. The other has big blue eyes. One has red shoes on. The other does not. It’s not a huge problem spotting the difference between the two up until the point where Kirby eats Jigglypuff.

Oh, and Jigglypuff is in Brawl :)

performingmonkey climbed out of his hole to say…
Wind Waker doesn?t get slagged off half as much as it used to. I think that?s because people eventually realised there WAS a good game behind the ?kiddie? graphics. I always liked the graphics anyway, in many ways they?re still better than Twilight Princess?s visuals. Speaking of that game, in the end I don?t think it holds up as well as TP, or as well as Ocarina of Time and Majora?s Mask of course.

Wind Waker was the butt of many “ZELDA MORE LIKE CELDA OLOLOL” jokes for a while. Some of the people on the Penny Arcade Forums have already taken to calling Wind Waker Link “Retarded Link”, which is a bit unnecessary if you ask me. I really adored the visual style of Wind Waker, though. Absolutely incredible. That said, I don’t think it would have worked for Twilight Princess.

I’m of the opinion that Zelda doesn’t quite work as well in 3D as it does in 2D. A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening and Oracle of Ages will always be my favourite Zelda games, and having listened to the SSBB soundtrack it’s really good to hear these three games get some kind of representation in the game.

[Ben Paddon]

Nope, it was broadcast in widescreen (which is 16:9, if memory serves). I distinctly remember watching the second episode on a spiffy widescreen TV at a family friend’s house when it first broadcast.

[Ben Paddon]

Series One is the only series of the lot so far that I think doesn’t have a single bad episode in it. Series Two has “Fear Her”, which is an interesting story but it moves forward at such a slow pace that I have no interest in watching it again. Series Three has “Daleks in Manhattan/Evolution of the Daleks” which is an interesting idea poorly executed. I can’t think of a single episode of Series One I wouldn’t watch again.

For some reason, Series Two’s “Love & Monsters” has grown on me. I think I would have enjoyed it more without Peter Kay.

[Ben Paddon]

The entire character roster has been posted on Kotaku a few times. Pretty much everyone from SSBM is in it, although one or two have been relegated to Secret Character status. Perhaps the best discovery so far as I’m concerned is that Young Link has been replaced by “Toon” Link from Wind Waker/The Minish Cap/Phantom Hourglass. I loved wind Waker, and it’s a shame it gets as much flack as it does.

[Ben Paddon]

That works for me!

[Ben Paddon]

The annoying thing about the R&H(D) reboot is that the first series, which was filmed in widescreen, is cropped to 4:3 on the DVDs. The second series DVDs are widescreen, though. There was a box set of the two series released in 2006, and I bought it hoping that the widescreen issue would be fixed. I was very disappointed to see that it wasn’t.

[Ben Paddon]

[Ben Paddon]

Did you know that while the reboot series didn’t make it to the US, the original did – albeit under the name My partner the Ghost? The DVD boxset for the original run includes the American titles as a bonus feature.

[Ben Paddon]

I live in Los Angeles but goh lah wee veh!

[Ben Paddon]

I rather like Charlie Higson. I was devastated when Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) wasn’t renewed for a third series, and apparently so was he. I’d love to sit down and have a chat with him about it one of these days.

[Ben Paddon]

Cliffhangers have been a part of Doctor Who since it began back in the 60s. It did start out life as a serial, after all. All but one of the six stories in the Key to Time series from 1978 were made up of six 25-minute episodes, and the last story was made up of eight. Doctor Who and cliffhanger-endings go together like peas and carrots, so to bring back the show and not have them in some capacity would be criminal.

My major gripe with the cliffhanger at the end of “Aliens of London” was that they showed the “Next Time…” clip immediately afterwards, diffusing the tension and rendering the entire point of the cliffhanger pointless because… well, you know what’s going to happen now. Apparently when it aired Steve Moffat lept to his phone and called RTD to get him to make sure it didn’t happen in future episodes. And it didn’t.

Don’t mess with the Moff.

[Ben Paddon]

According to the Star, performingmonkey was reported as saying…
Phrases I often use –

?Tee hee hoddle ha.?

I tend to use this when I want to fake-laugh at something, usually expanding it by tacking on part of another Dwarf quote to the end. “Tee hee hoddle ha, chuckle guffaw giggle.”

[Ben Paddon]

We should probably register on the DVDTimes forum and link to this thread.

[Ben Paddon]

As someone who has often been implicated as a Journalist, I have to say that this review is exceptionally poorly written. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had been penned* by a twelve year-old.

____________________________________________________
* Interesting sidenote: If something is written on a computer, is it then “Keyboarded”?

[Ben Paddon]

I liked a lot of the Holly dialogue from VIII. What ruins the lines in most cases is Norm’s delivery. He seemed much more enthusiastic than he did in the first two series, it didn’t really work.

If the film ever gets made, I’d vote for Hattie to come back. I think she’s probably the only one of the two still capable of playing “their” Holly effectively.

[Ben Paddon]

I am reminded of a friend in High School. He was a bit of a moronic yob, but he was a Red Dwarf fan. Anyway, he got caught smoking a joint behind the Sports Hall and, as he tells it, the teacher actually asked him where he got the joint from. “I want names, places and dates,” the teacher supposedly said.

“Arnold Rimmer, his locker, this morning!” said my friend with a cheeky grin. Allegedly.

The teacher didn’t get the reference, it seems: he asked who Arnold Rimmer was, and then proceeded to ask the school receptionist to pull up his file and find his locker.

Possibly much of this story was embellished by my friend, as in all likelihood he was a little high when it occurred.

[Ben Paddon]

Arf.

[Ben Paddon]

Sky are going to bring back Gladiators.

This isn’t surprising really, considering how successful the revival of American Gladiators has been here in the States, but is it necessary? I think not.

[Ben Paddon]

That review is about as reliable as a plumber’s estimate.

[Ben Paddon]

I’m fairly sure I’ve seen torches used.

[Ben Paddon]

If you go the whole hog and rent a tank, then Thumbs Up.

[Ben Paddon]

Jimbotfu, he say…
… ?See you in ten minutes?? …

DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL. DO A BARREL ROLL.

[Ben Paddon]

The SciFi Channel are editing out bits of the show to fit in more of their really irritating promos. I don’t watch much TV since moving to the States, but even still it’s just bad. They also edit their own shows – SciFi cut chunks out of Battlestar Galactica too.

Morons.

[Ben Paddon]

I always wondered why the line “Please be upstanding for the cutting of the cake” was so quiet. A mixing problem, perhaps?

[Ben Paddon]

“Maybe we can get it to eat some roughage!”

[Ben Paddon]

Don’t say things like that, Dave! Joe might take it seriously!

[Ben Paddon]

Apparently Season 2 takes a while to get going but now it’s Really Good.

[Ben Paddon]

I am reminded of a story from a few years ago. I was living with my Mum at the time, and a friend of hers had popped by to visit. He’d brought one of his friends with him, who was probably the singularly most boring individual I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. So there’s me, another family friend, and this Incredibly Boring Guy sitting in the kitchen. And the Incredibly Boring Guy is, apparently, a plumber. A plumber with a criminal record.

He was talking about this abandoned house in his neighborhood. He was talking about the Boiler in this house, and how he wanted to nab it. So he paid some kids to break into the house and get the Boiler. It was not an interesting story, and he spoke with such a strange inflection (pauses in the middle of sentences, broken vowels and so on).

Frankly, I’d had enough. I stood up, said, “Will you excuse me? I think I’ve left the oven on,” and walked out.

To add insult to injury, I had been sitting on the (switched off) oven during the conversation. The family friend who was left with the Incredibly Boring Guy later said that the move made me a “magnificent bastard.”

[Ben Paddon]

Profanity, really, appears to be going the other way. You know the BBC have gone through all of the old episodes of Only Fools and Horses to remove “politically incorrect” dialogue, such as “nip down to the Paki shop” and the like. Now, that’s not a word I’d ever use, but you don’t go back and edit old shows just because the current generation finds their content objectionable. That’s the sort of shenanigans that’s preventing The Sound of Music getting a DVD release.

[Ben Paddon]

Too many Mother ‘uckers, ‘uckin’ with my shi’.

[Ben Paddon]

While waiting for a bus in Luton Town Centre a couple of years ago, I heard a girl shouting.

“Oi!” she said. “I like you! Giz’ ya phone number!”

I pride myself on my ability to see a person’s Inner Beauty, and I could tell from her mannerisms, her speech and her dress sense that she was a person whose Inner Beauty was in dire need of thousands of pounds worth of cosmetic surgery. She seemed to have just recently stepped off of the Chavette production line. Her tracksuit was the most peculiar shade of pink, and I was blinded by the sun glinting off of her ridiculously large golden hooped earrings. She had that stupid “bumpy hair” haircut a la Mark Lamarr circa 1992, and I seem to recall that dental hygiene was not high on her list of priorities.

“You’re not subtle, are you,” I replied.

“So you gonna give me y’number, or wot?”

I raised my eyebrows. Mercifully, my bus arrived, and as I stepped on I called back, “Sorry, I’m taken.” I severely hoped someone would take her, too – preferably to some sort of Asylum for the Chronically Wrong In the Head.

(I have a horrible tendency to assume that any girls who expresses an interest in me must be mentally ill, largely because any girls who expresses an interest in me must be mentally ill.)

[Ben Paddon]

Great, thanks Phil. Now I have to be funny. You know how much pressure that puts me under? Eh? I can’t just pluck Hilarity out of the air, y’know. I don’t excrete Humour. Mirth does not drip from my armpits. It takes time and effort to craft a seriously funny post and now I’m terrified I won’t be able to live up to expectation.

Stop testing our love.

[Ben Paddon]

I’m still firmly of the opinion that we need to see the return of Whose Line is it Anyway?. Cracking show, that is. I’ve just discovered that the UK version has been released on DVD here in the States.

[Ben Paddon]

The penalty for using the word “Guesstimate” (and/or its variant spellings) is vaporization. Please stay where you are. The Vaporization Bot for your region will be with you as soon as possible.

[Ben Paddon]

A while ago, Andrew, you gave us a link to a comedian drunkenly singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. I can’t find the link now… any chance you’ve still got it floating around?

[Ben Paddon]

Reading this review has reminded of me just how much I enjoyed the UK version and has prompted me to actually buy the DVDs. Shocking, I know.

[Ben Paddon]

Nuts have their own network now?

Right, that’s it. I’m catching the next boat off of this planet.

[Ben Paddon]

I blame more the change in writer than change in directors for the disastor that was X-men 3, David Hayter actually seemed to know how to write decent plots and characters (maybe i?m just biased towards the idea of Solid Snake writing the x-men movies)

I seem to recall Ratner requesting a different writer, or something.

[Ben Paddon]

I?m not sure you can call it a decline when the genuinely great entries in this genre – on TV anyway – can pretty much be counted on one hand.

This is true, especially when you take into account that, specifically in terms of quality British scifi-comedy, you’re looking at ten years between H2G2 and Red Dwarf (and, if we’re counting it, fourteen years between Doctor Who and H2G2). But my concern is taking into account modern practices in marketing, which are mostly very very nasty and focus more on genre/setting/style than writer/cast/quality.

The channels, it seems to me, know there?s an audience out there. It?s how Hyperdrive was commissioned. But there are maybe three people who could do it WELL.

So the BBC/ITV/Sky/whoever need to get those people involved, then. Or at least try to.

I see the webcomics, videos, scripts and ideas out there and I?m rarely left impressed by the genius; usually I?m disappointed by either the SF, the comedy, or both.

I’m hurt, and I think I’m going to cry.

In TV great SF comedy is rare. just as a good musical drama show is rare. The lack you?re pissed off about, Ben, seems to me to be the standard lull between periods of luck and inspiration. This is ?normal?. It?s a tiny sub-genre. (It also requires us to be pretty draconian about what constitutes SF comedy. Do we really need to exclude shows like Buffy or new Who, both of which are superb TV?)

Buffy and Who are fantastic shows, both containing real moments of wit and humour, but they’re not strictly speaking comedies, are they? You can find Red Dwarf in the ‘Comedy’ section at HMV, but Buffy and Who tend to be in the ‘Drama’ section.

I may bleat about cinematic SF/fantasy comedy not being as good now as in the 80s – Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, how spoiled we were! – but back then we had lousy comic book adaptations. Now we have some cracking ones – Sin City, Spider-Man, Hulk (yes, Hulk, deal with it), Batman Begins. ?Tis just ebb and flow.

It appears comicbook movies are in decline again, though – Spider-Man 3 was a disaster, neither of the Fantastic Four movies impressed, Superman Returns was a disappointment, and with X-Men 3 Brett Ratner single-handedly undid all of the great work Bryan Singer had put into the rather awesome first two films. Alright, we’ve had the films you’ve mentioned, and also 300 (incidentally, apparently this is Sparta. Who knew?), but we’re looking at more misses than hits at the moment. he only comicbook movie I’m not worried about right now is The Dark Knight, because having seen the first six minutes last month I fail to see how that film would possibly suck.

I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent here.

[Ben Paddon]

?dimaond”? Bugger. I should of proof-read that bad boy before I clicked “Post Comment”.

Edit: oh look, I found an “Edit” button.

[Ben Paddon]

Incidentally, I’ve been contacted by Larry Hyrb, who’s Director of Programming for Xbox Live, and he says he’lls ee what he can do to get my problem sorted in the next few days. Huzzah!

[Ben Paddon]

I’ll be putting a YouTube vid up next week, most likely. I would do it this weekend but I’m off to Houston.

I already have pretty much every major system at the moment, so I’m not left out in the gaming department.

[Ben Paddon]

Yes. Everyone who doesn’t do exactly the same thing as everyone else is lazy. That’s it.

Tonguetied’s rather idiotic closing comment aside, I’ve really enjoyed following Making Do these past few months. Cracking stuff.

[Author]

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