Andy and I watched the pilot of J.J. Abrams’ (producer of Lost) new TV show last night and annoyingly enough, it’s really rather good. I say annoyingly because the last thing I want to do is get into yet another TV series that will no doubt end up running for 5 series - I mean, I haven’t even watched the whole of the second series of Heroes yet.

 http://www.fox.com/fringe/index.htm

Anyway, the program’s called Fringe and it’s a Sci-Fi cop series that can pretty accurately be described as kind of cross between X Files and Lost with conspiracy, pseudo-science, action, and suspense all dealt out in equal measure. As is usual, there is a hot woman lead character (sorry ladies, it doesn’t look like the hunk will be a regular character), a mad scientist, a corrupt big corporation, and it’s even got that bloke from Dawson’s Creek (Joshua Jackson - he’s not a hunk, right?) as well.

Presumably it will settle into the usual flip flop episode pattern that all these series seem to fall into with alternate weeks dealing with the big overarching conspiracy story and the humdrum everyday wierd happenings - think Lost with it’s annoying back story episodes. In which case, I’ll almost defnitely get bored with it and just wait until the whole series is done with, when I’ll just watch the lot at once.

Here’s hoping they do something sensible and make it a short and sharp series like Life On Mars.

Oh, and how is it that one bottle of Stella can give me a hangover? One god damn it. One!

I happened to catch Million Dollar Baby on Film Four last night. It was the first time I’d seen this Oscar winning  film and, well, to say the least it was rather underwhelming.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a joy to watch with Hillary Swank in particular putting in a stupendous performance. Moreover, on the whole and particularly during the latter parts of the film, your heart strings are plucked in just the right way. It’s just that scattered throughout the film, and particularly during the opening training sections, there are just too many cliches.

Whether it be the caricature bastard family of Maggie Fitzgerald playing the hick family up to pantomime levels or the overt and tiresome gruffness of Clint Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn. Too many of the characters felt simply unbelievable, as did many of the situations they found themselves in - a seventy year old man beating up a twenty something year old. Please…

The film does for the most part redeem itself by having a full enough story that is driven along at a good pace  with enough variation in humour, smulch, and action to keep you glued to the screen - especially on first watching - but there’s no getting away from the fact these little issues grate.

Had the film not been Oscar winning I could let these things lie and simply praise it as a decent film but with four Oscars, inlcuding best film, under its belt I couldn’t help but call it out on its flaws.

Put simply, definitely one to watch for the story but don’t expect anything too special.