I thought I’d mention a few other things I’ve seen or read in the last few days:

[For some reason I can’t add a cut to this post, so if you haven’t seen The Next Doctor, skip the second para].

I saw Slumdog Millionare with Jules on X-Mas day. It is really is fantastic film – a love story with a very dark edge. It was shot totally in India (an hearing the director Danny Boyle talk about the company he had to hire to pay graft to officials to allow them to film was very interesting) and doesn’t shy away from the countries poverty or even its human rights and racial issues. It’s also about Who Wants to Be a Millionare – a show I normally loathe, but here is used as beacon of hope. The performances are all great as well. And I especially loved the… well… wait for when the credits roll. It’s a hoot!

The Next Doctor, on the other hand, wasnt as good. (Well… actually, that’s an unfair comparison, but I needed an easy segway). Don’t get me wrong, there was something more subtle and mature about this episode, and I liked that Marrisey’s character was given an arc – even if it does fall a bit flat towards the end when he basically becomes secondary to the Doctor (I think Morrisey should have been the one in the balloon, using the last remenants of the Doctor’s residual knowledge to save the day… a final heroic act from an ordinary person). And the acting was superb. And I’m not sure why fans get all upset at the Transformer Cyberman which is easily the coolest and least cringe worthy idea RTD has ever had. So yeah, I liked it. But it’s directed without any verve or pacing and just feels a bit boring. Which is a shame, because I think this is one of RTD’s stronger X-Mas script. It just needed a bit of life pumped into it.

And I just finished Just After Sunset – Stephen King’s latest short story collection. Rob, you were right. The stories, for the most part, are mostly a bit average… and don’t seem to really go anywhere. King, in his introduction, bemoans the fact that in writing novels he’s lost both the energy and the time to write short stories. The stories in Just After Sunset were an attempt to get his short story mojo back. But other than a couple of the pieces, most of them fall a bit flat. (Probably the only exception is King’s story about 9/11, which is very heartfelt and creepy to boot). They’re all readable and each has some extraordinarily good writing, but for the most part Just After Sunset is an indication that sometimes when you’ve moved, you’ve moved on.