Board of Excitement 9th – 15th January 2011

By | January 9, 2011
29 Comments

And a bit:

  • Only Connect in an exciting late change which probably is designed to be some sort of intelligence test to see if people can work out when to find it, it’s the series three stroke four Champion of Champions. Is there going to be a Champion of Champion of Champions? Therein lies the possibility (provided the Epicurians win) of both Stainers going up against each other. INCREDIBLE BBC4 JEOPARDY! (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
  • Winter Wipeout – After enjoying last week’s episode, welcome back to the Board fo excitement for Winter Wipeout. (Thursday, ABC)
  • Total Wipeout – (6pm, Saturday, BBC1)
  • Schlag den Raab – This month, half a million euro rests on whether the contestant or Stefan Raab is better at tearing open shrinkwrapped packaging using only their bare hands. (7:15 GMT, ProSieben and naughty streaming hopefully).
  • Poll of the Year 2010 – The polls close for this next Saturday at midnight, vote if you haven’t done so already!
  • The Bother Series of Poker 2010 – Game 1 is next Sunday night. A picture of the trophies will be going up tonight or tomorrow night. this year, the more people involved the bigger the end of series jackpot. Come and join us! (8pm GMT, Sunday)

Show Discussion: Total Wipeout series 4

By | January 8, 2011
12 Comments

Lots of shows on tonight, probably the one that’s going to get the most attention is the new series of Total Wipeout which begins this evening, 6pm on BBC1.

Very quickly as I’ve got to go out, I watched the premiere episode of Winter Wipeout that went out in the States this week – an improvement on season three I think, a few cheap impossible obstacles in the qualifier which are funny the first few times, the Kki-lift round two was really good I thought, like an upper-body strength version of The Sweeper. The Seven-Letter Word I can take or leave, really like the new Winter Wipeout Zone, particularly the sinster snowflakes, which is like a real life version of something from Mario Galaxy. Good.

Show discussion: Penn and Teller: Fool Us

By | January 7, 2011
20 Comments

I wanted to get a ticket for this, but unfortunately was unsuccessful.

However, Friend Of The Bar Geek Comedian Tom Scott managed to sneak in and send us a report which I thought I would put up as an unspoiler-iffic preview:

– There really was no camera trickery – not even any pick-up shots of the magic tricks, save for one (and that was after the reveal, not during the trick itself).

– No female magicians at all, save for a couple of glamorous assistants. I tried searching for “female British magicians” on Google, and it asked me if I meant “female British musicians”. Damn. A few of them do exist, but apparently none of them made the cut for the show.

– One trick stalled half way through due to technical problems – a sound issue, apparently – and couldn’t be repeated; it won’t be in the final show. Now, I could have sworn that Jonathan Ross said ‘nine magicians’ in his introductory spiel, and that wasn’t reshot after they dropped to eight. It’ll be interesting to see how they edit round that. (Flawlessly, no doubt.)

– The recording was long. The setup for some of the bigger tricks took a while! Stuart Goldsmith did an excellent job as the warm-up guy, though – although I was vaguely disappointed that, when he asked a child in the audience “what’s the rudest word you know?”, the answer wasn’t “kettle-head”.

And a review? At 90 minutes it’ll be a bit of a stretch, but if the BBC thinks there’s an audience for an hour of magic a week with ‘The Magicians’, ITV can certainly pull of a one-off 90 minute special – particularly with Penn and Teller’s own tricks in there as well.

Oh, and if there’s a shot of me dropping my jaw in astonishment during one of the close-up tricks, that’s real as well; I didn’t notice the camera until it moved away and I realised how wide open my mouth was…

So there we go, quite looking forward to this. Cheers, Tom

A quick plug

By | January 6, 2011
0 Comment

I’ve just had a lovely phone call from http://www.trophystore.co.uk enquiring about one of the medals for the upcoming Bother Series of Poker having a different year to the others, and do I want it changed. Therefore I recommend them wholeheartedly for all your trophy and medal related needs.

Pictures to come after delivery (they are different to last year’s!). And don’t forget! The first round of the Bother Series of Poker 2011 is next Sunday night (that’s the 16th) – this year, the more people who play the bigger the end of series jackpot. You don’t have to be very good, and you can play as few or as many games as you like (although if you’re serious about winning the entire thing you’ll want to be playing more). The chat is fun at least.

Plug over.

Can you feel the power of a Gladiator?

By | January 6, 2011
6 Comments

OK, here’s a question I like to ask everysooften. If you have any sort of answer you can back up with fact I’d be interested, or any sort of answer at all really:

Q: What is the celebrity value of a Gladiator in 2011? Have the new Glads lost all their value already? Has Shadow opened a supermarket recently?