The seventh series (of the revived Doctor Who) begins in the autumn, but the first episode, Asylum of the Daleks, is due to premiere at the BFI London later this month, (I’d love to go over for it). What do you think of the new trailer? I CANNOT WAIT!!! Also, check out this cool new desktop background:
There was a big interwebby brouhaha when Netflix launched in Ireland in January. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t particularly interested at the time. No one was raving about it. Many people said that the price was great (at just €6.99 a month, that seems a fair comment), but that the content was seriously lacking. The range of movies was very limited and the TV shows that were available were far from up-to-date. I gave it a miss. Six months later There’s more
Mad Men returned to our shores (albeit courtesy of an imported UK channel) this week and I now find myself with a week in between to mull the complexities of the episodes. In the spirit of embracing US TV terminology, the season premiere took a moment to catch on; I felt uneasy reacquainting myself with the characters, worrying for a minute that in Season 4 the sheen might slip. I was always catching-up, courtesy of box sets and had inhaled the episodes at pace and re-watched with anyone willing to road test the series. There were never any suggestions that quality had faded - what if now that I was to watch and discover along with the rest of the baiting TV audience and find the stories were stretched, the characters exhausted. The pace seemed off in early scenes - period details are being observed, civil rights are on queue to … There’s more
“Once upon a time there were three beautiful girls who went to the police academy and they were each assigned very hazardous duties. But I took them away from all that and now they work for me. My name is Charlie….” Now you stop that eye rolling immediately. I know for a lot of you Charlie’s Angels conjures up vile images of Cameron, Lucy and Drew dancing around in their underwear and being thoroughly ridiculous in every way, but I’m here to put you straight. Those movies were spittle in the face of every true fan of The Angels. Jill Munroe, Sabrina Duncan and Kelly Garrett - the three women who inspired a generation of girls and aroused a generation of boys. Sure there were other angels - blow-ins to fill up space - but those three were the original and best. Each of them represented a different type of … There’s more
Prodijig won Sky1’s Got To Dance last Sunday night, and half of Ireland was bewildered. “Another talent show?” the Paddies frowned. “With dancing? When did this happen? Sure I was watching The Voice Of Ir… I mean, I don’t be watching that kind of shite.” As is right and proper, until a TV talent show actually uncovers something of genuine cultural worth. Not all TV talent show contestants are of the same stuff. Once every fifty insipid, disposable talent show tryhards, you might chance upon a Susan Boyle, or an Ashley Banjo. How these stars are managed is quite another story, and there are occasionally ominous rumblings from those in the know about this casualty, or that binding contract, a cover-up here and a smoke-screen there. The fact remains that sometimes TV talent shows come up with the goods on every possible level. Got To Dance is one of those … There’s more
Over the past week we’ve been trying something new. The Format, our pop culture web TV experiment, is the result of many hours of planning, filming and editing. As it is a pilot, filmed in Culch Towers (AKA Darren and Sinéad’s apartment), we would really love to hear your feedback. How did we do? What works? What would you change? Should we keep it up? What would you like to see us covering if we do? Any and all thoughts would be appreciated - we’re on a learning curve and we want to be better able to produce a show that viewer’s can have input on and look forward to. Oh, make sure you look out for the great viewer competition from Meteor. We wanted to bring together all of the many topics we cover on Culch.ie, present them to you in a different way, show you what we look … There’s more
Comedy rockers Dead Cat Bounce have been on the scene since 2008, touring the circuit and regaling audiences with tales of ‘Overenthusiastic Contraceptive Lady’ and ‘Good Touch, Bad Touch’. A full band, with vocalist Jim Whalmsey, drummer Demian Fox and guitarist Shane O’Brien, the first few seconds of any of their shows will lull you into a false sense of musical security before they launch straight into lyrics such as ‘like a chimpanzee in a buffet car they’re grabbing at things before they know what they are … and trying to put them in their mouths’ (‘Christians in Love’) and ‘Me and my instructor tearing down the autobahn, doing ninety in a Mazda with the handbrake on’ (‘Switzerland’). Having caught them live a number of times, we can only say that comedy and rock go incredibly well together and their show, Howl of the She-Leopard, hits Vicar Street on the … There’s more
This has been doing the rounds over on The Facebook, with good reason. Encompassing some of the greatest presenting skill the nation has ever known as Uncle Gaybo deals with a truly difficult situation; the good old days when the Late Late Show guests used to stay on set for the duration and interact with each other for the night; the old postal quiz, and a few words from the ever-watchable Brendan Kennelly - this was broadcasting.
A little while ago on this I selected five scenes from films that proved that the world is a rather lovely and cuddly place. A bit like a rather over weight cat or that drunk person who just wants love outside Burger King on Grafton Street at four on a Saturday morning. Yes, my friends, the world is a pretty great place to be. However, I recently watched episode two of Derren Brown’s four part ‘The Experiments’ series where using his frankly rather dashing wizard like powers he attempts to show the true nature of human beings. Without getting too much into spoiler zone (don’t worry, there will be plenty of that to come) he allowed an audience to believe that they were taking part in a new game show, where they would be able to vote on what happened to one person. The audience were always given two options, … There’s more
Being that I’ve been in hiding for the past year, I hadn’t really planned on running a liveblog for this year’s Apprentice Ireland, but now that the first episode is only hours away, I realise that half the fun of watching the show was sharing it with you guys. So, here we are! Pull up a chair, have your PC, laptop, iPad, SmartPhone at the ready to help us to berate and congratulate, to cheer and sneer, to laugh with and laugh at this year’s hopefuls. The show begins at 9 o’clock this evening on TV3 and our liveblog will kick off a few minutes before that. For those of you who don’t know, the liveblog is just a chatroom on this site where we talk about the show while watching it. It’s all very informal and tongue in cheek, so if you don’t like one of (or all of) … There’s more
If I’ve missed a few X Blathers it’s because Gary Barlow’s scripted barbs are sending me to sleep. Rather than the usual dose of sarcasm and negativity, this week’s X Blather will actually list my favourite six auditions so far. Something positive? Yay! P.S. the people at X Factor won’t let you embed videos, so you’ll have to click through! My Top 6 are after the jump…
While the opening week of X Factor 2011 was all about the new judges, and showcased little or no talent, this week’s was…exactly the same. But rather than repeatedly highlight Gary Barlow’s scowl, they highlighted the fact that every man in the world loves Kelly Rowland. Yes, that came as news to me too! Sure she has great teeth, but what US celeb doesn’t? Her post-Destiny’s Child career kind of shows why she was chosen as a replacement for Dannii Minogue on this year’s X Factor. Forever in the shadow of a sister figure, who is more talented and more fancied (not by me, but in general). Kelly is Dannii Mk 2.0 if you will. It would be difficult for the show’s producers to highlight her musical talent as a reason for being on the panel. Go on, name one Kelly Rowland song without a featured artist. I’ll wait while … There’s more
There was a delay getting this week’s X Factor review up, as my mind was blown from all the fantastic acts we saw in week one. Yeah right. If you read any of the papers on Monday morning you would have seen that all the talk was about the new judges (only Louis is left from the original gang). That wasn’t because the new judges were so amazing, it’s just that Gary Barlow’s faux-Cowell performance, Kelly Rowland’s massive smile, and Tulisa Contostavlos’s urban inside knowledge were marginally more interesting than the acts. That novelty of new judges will wear off though, and next week, there better be actual decent talent.
The RTÉ Autumn schedule, launched complete with drumroll in Studio 1 out at Montrose last Wednesday, has some gems across the 110 shows in the new line-up. You can view it in its entirety here and handpicked below, for your reading pleasure, complete with some of Culch.ie’s own footage of the launch, are our top ten highlights.
The Rubberbandits appear to have rode their horse outside all the way to America and pitched up on MTV’s front lawn and the teaser trailer for ‘Rubberbandits in NYC’ popped into Culch’s inbox today. It’s not that good but presumably they thought it was because everything is better with a bag of glue. Too hash harsh? I’ll be honest, I’m over the ‘bandits. Base humour about gays, fat people and getting off your face isn’t really sustainable after the first half-hearted lol. Mind you, the million+ views on all their songs tell a different story so clearly I’m just ancient. Thoughts, learned culchies? PS I tagged this post under ‘comedy’ and ‘performance art’ - now that’s funny.
