Tag Archives: david mamet

Midnight – David Mamet meets Doctor Who

So it’s Episode 10 (Season/Series 4) of Doctor Who, it’s pretty much a Doctor Who only episode, Donna Noble hangs back at the spa so we see her about a total of 60 seconds. The episode “Midnight” is written by Russell T. Davies, the man who revived the Doctor Who series four years ago and is still executive producer for Doctor Who and does the same for spinoffs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures (occasional writes episodes for both).

The conversation is cRaZy and and has a bunch of people talking and no one listening and when they are, they aren’t paying attention. It made me think of a David Mamet story multiple times, the conversations seemed so much like that of Oleana and other things he’s written, if you don’t know what I mean I’m not sure how to explain it. It was an interesting episode, if you watch the show you’ll see what I mean, if you know agree with me please let me know. Actually, it was a great episode, but it certainly wasn’t a “regular” episode.

Oh, and Rose shows up on the monitors again. No big surprise there…

I’ve got some spoilers (labeled with “SPOILERS”) but I’m going to talk about the next 3 episodes: previews, rumors and conjecture (some might consider the next few paragraphs spoilers too, so stop at any time). Generally Doctor Who seasons have 13 episodes and several times that last story has spanned the last three episodes (even if you didn’t realize there was more to come after episode 11) and generally the final episodes aren’t too much of a cliff-hanger since the Christmas Special (actually broadcast on Christmas between seasons of the show) has generally been meant to sort of stand on it’s own. Continue reading

The Unit

TheunitSo I’m watching the pilot of The Unit, which sucked me in, it wasn’t my plan. I’m tired and I’m on call for the shelter tonight (until 8am) so I was going to hit the sack in case I go called. But I’m really liking this show. I like the cast (Dennis Haysbert, Scott Foley and others I can’t think of) and then after a few minutes I realized it was the David Mamet show I heard about, I hadn’t heard anything about it (I think I saw it on the front of the entertainment section but then missed the article). He usually does theater or movies, I’m guessing this is his first series. The one thing I remember hearing about him is that if he does something and didn’t write all it he uses a pen name for producing (or something like that). So back to the show, it’s a group of military guys in a unit, a unit that has no name, a unit that gets things done. I like it so far. (a lot)

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Oleana

small-imagesSo the other week I got one of the London papers, wanted to see what was going on… Oleana (a David Mamet play) was playing and was one of the things I circled. Picked up a local theater magazine when I got here flipped it right open to the ad for Oleana and it turns out she’s played by Julia Stiles, I’m sold. At the same time I notice she’s on the cover of this week’s Time Out (the Metro Times). So I proceed to get more info to get tickets and it turns out it stopped playing last week! I’m sure I’ll find something else, I was just pretty excited for a bit…