- Comedy World Cup
Source: David Tennant On Twitter
Here is the official Four On Demand link to watch episode one of Comedy World Cup.
The Arts Desk has a review of David Tennant hosting Comedy World Cup last night
Details about the second episode of Comedy World Cup, which premières on Saturday 22nd at 8.15pm, are here
Source: David Tennant On Twitter
- Lords of Time convention
Matt Holden has added over 100 great photos of David Tennant onto Facebook. GingerFoxy has posted 59 photos of David Tennant at the Lords Of Time convention here.
Three photos of David Tennant at the Lords Of Time convention have been posted onto Tumblr.
Talk:
The main points that David Tennant mentioned during his panel at the Lords Of Time convention are here
Source: David Tennant On Twitter
- The Spies of Warsaw
David Tennant returns to BBC America to star in this show based on the book by Alan Furst, master of World War II-era spy fiction. Tennant is well known to BBCA viewers as the original title character on "Doctor Who." He co-stars in the new series, set in the years leading up to World War II, with Janet Montgomery, who was in "Black Swan" and is also appearing as the lead character in the new CBS drama "Made in Jersey."Source: SFGate
-- Not yet scheduled
- Chris Moyles show
Source: David Tennant On Twitter
- DVD review: The Pirates! Band of Misfits
U.K.: Peter Lord, 2012, Sony Pictures
Pirates! In real-life, most of them were probably scurvy gangs of sea-going psychopaths, but in the irresistible world of Aardman Animations, they're cute and funny and as lovable as a hungry pussycat. Aarrh! Myarrh! Utter contentment. Such is the effect of the latest stop-motion feature cartoon from the company that gave us Wallace & Gromit (good deed enough for one lifetime, you might think) and that here pleasures us with a new, feature-length stop-motion animated wonder called The Pirates! Band of Misfits -- a yo-ho-ho voyage based on one of the amusing Pirates! book series by author/screenwriter Gideon Defoe.
Ostensibly a movie for children -- and one that most children should love, even the potential sea-going psychopaths among them -- it is also marvelously crafted and delightfully scripted and scrumptiously acted by the kind of high-class British players who usually pop up these days in Harry Potter movies. It's not as good as the Aardman company's inimitable Wallace & Gromit cartoons, but what is?
Lord, primarily a producer, has overseen much of the Aardman output, long and short, since the '90s -- including the Nick Park-directed Wallace & Gromit classics, the studio's masterpieces. More occasionally, he's directed (Wat's Pig) or co-directed (Chicken Run, with Park). Here, working from a script by Defoe, with Aardman hand Jeff Newitt as co-director, Lord comes up with yet another jewel of stop-motion, that dauntingly ambitious and painstaking animation process, in which little clay puppets on small constructed wooden or clay backdrops are photographed one deliciously funny frame at a time, with a little CGI tossed in now and again these days for ocean waves and such.
The story, in the usual Aardman manner, is whimsical and literate and -- the word has never fit better --droll. The story's main character, The Pirate Captain (voiced by Hugh Grant), is a boastful, flamboyant, criminally ambitious but basically harmless dude of a buccaneer, with an immense red beard in which he hides parrots and other piratical objects, and a whimsical and oddly named crew that includes his Second Mate, The Pirate with a Scarf (Martin Freeman) and such other amiable privateers as The Pirate with Gout (Brendan Gleeson), The Albino Pirate (Anton Yelchin), The Surprisingly Curvaceous Pirate (Ashley Jensen) and The Pirate Who Likes Sunsets and Kittens (easy-going U.S. weatherman Al Roker). They seem a fairly contented lot, except for Pirate Captain himself, who is rankled by the fact that he's never won a Pirate-of-the-Year award, in competition with his main rascally rivals Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and The Pirate King (Brian Blessed).
Pirate Captain thinks he's found the key when his ship, which has been coming up empty in recent sea-sweeps and sea-attacks, happens upon no less than The Beagle, and its scientist-explorer, young Charles Darwin (David Tennant) -- or "Chuck," as Pirate Captain likes to call him. Eureka! Chuck excitedly identifies Captain's strange, lumpy-looking parrot, as no parrot at all, but probably the last living example of the thought-to-be-extinct dodo, a discovery that Chuck convinces the Captain will reap "untold riches" if they exhibit Polly at the next scientist-of-the-year competition in London.
So it's off to England -- where scientific fame and riches supposedly await the daffily dauntless P.C., along with streets abustle with famous Londoners and such literary and historical allusions as Jane Austen (who proves priggish) -- but where the Captain must also contend with the woman he calls "Vicky": pirate-hating, dodo-coveting Queen Victoria (played by that supreme character actress Imelda Staunton). Troubles at court and a sea-going fracas are obviously in the offing, and Lord and his Aardman armada don't disappoint.
Like many of the best cartoon features of today, Pirates! is so much brighter and wittier and more entertaining than most of the current live action films for adults, it's almost embarrassing. Everything is classier and better-done, especially the visuals and the dialogue. The fact that The Pirate Captain is being played by Grant -- who would usually be cast as some sort of fop -- indicates something of the the sheer joyous playfulness of Lord's film, which is neither bloodthirsty nor psychopathic, save for the moments Vicky has Polly in her queenly clutches.
Grant's charm sits well on The Pirate Captain, especially matched against the bellicose roaring of Black Bellamy and The Pirate King. Tennant is a properly prim Darwin; his constant companion is a frisky, literate chimpanzee, whom he resembles. Staunton, who played intense outlaw goodness in Mike Leigh's great period British soial drama Vera Drake and, just as well, establishment evil in the Potter series, pilfers a lot of the movie here, and against formidable competition.
But the scripting and voice acting is only part of the secret of Aardman. Much of the magic comes from their incredible, painstaking but exuberant craft, the way they can make us relate so well to a dodo or an angry queen, the sense in their movies of playthings-come-alive, the little worlds they create with such effortless-looking art and beguiling wizardry. Not many movies these days are genuinely lovable. But the Aardman movies make you happy in ways that mostly haven't been available to us since childhood, and that blessedly revive the spirit of youth and the joys of childhood as we watch, entranced. Pirates! (Extras: Peter Lord short films; Lord's "Pirates" film So You Want to be a Pirate?; filmmaker's commentary; featurettes.)
Source: The Daily Page
Also reviewed by Cine Vue and Inside Pulse
The DVD was released on Monday 10 September
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