The Voice Of Reason

Provincial election day today. I forgot my voter card but i have ID so that'll be ok. Poll station is convenient, on the way home from work. I'm going to vote, are you? I don't even care how you vote (well, yes i do but it's none of my business!) but make the effort!  I overheard a young woman on the bus this morning saying she wasn't going to bother, it didn't mean anything to her. It does though. People don't realize how much that a government does that affects your daily life. Our bus fares are going up. One of the reasons is the higher cost of fuel, and aside from the world price of oil, one of the other reasons fuel is so high is the amount of taxes on it, taxes the government sets.

I haven't posted too much, not a lot to say really. We had a family birthday for my nephew on Sunday and this weekend there's a flat warming party for one of my cousins that i may go to and a graduation party for another relative. I don't know him really but it's a good reason go get together and see family that i don't see too often. A former coworker is visiting Halifax in a couple of weeks so there will be an after work drinks do to catch up with her for those of us that knew her when. She decamped to the balmy breezes of Florida and loves it there.

Season 2 of Ashes to Ashes finished last night in the UK. ( here be spoilers and speculation )

It's payday. Always a good thing.
I have back to back meetings later this afternoon with almost the same groups of people, one meeting is a bit more technical and one is a status update meeting. Attendees to the first one are bringing me tea. :)
Ugly Betty on tonight and the debut of US Life on Mars. Looking forward to that. Am hopeful that it will be much improved over the initial dismal and rather flat pilot. I know it will be different from the UK version but i'm ready for that. So many US remakes of UK shows are bad (and, to be fair, vice versa). I suppose producers feel if something was a huge hit in one country, they could remake it with their own actors. People that haven't seen the excellent original series wouldn't know the difference and the percentage of people that were able to watch both is pretty small, even in this day and age of downloading. What annoys me sometimes is when they use almost the exact same pilot script, even down to almost the same dialogue other than changing some cultural references. Now, i realize, for a show like Life on Mars, you're going to have to use some of the same to establish the premise. If they end up using the same scripts for the whole series, i'm just going to be bored but i don't think they will. Mainly because, in LOM case, the UK season was just 8 or 9 episodes and the US one will be at least 13, probably closer to 20. That might also end up dragging it out too long, too. We'll see. I'm going to give it a fair chance since they've recast and relocated it. And i'm going to be open minded about Harvey Keitel being about twice the age of Philip Glenister as Gene Hunt because HK is a very good actor.

Sometimes an actor is so good and so famous, that the role becomes more about the actor than the role. Like DeNiro. Now, it's never a character, it's DeNiro playing a character. Same with Meryl Streep. Harvey, while quite famous, doesn't have as iconic a face and it's still about the character that he becomes. I'm a bit hesitant about Jason O'Mara who plays Sam Tyler. He could possibly be the Weakest Link but i'm basing that on the other pilot and he didn't have any chemistry with anyone and ...well... none of them did really.

Don't touch that dial.

Anyone that's a fan of Life on Mars (which aired in the UK but also has been on Showcase here in Canada and possibly BBC Canada too, not sure), may know there's a US version debuting on ABC on October 9. Here's the ABC official site. It had a rather icky start in life back in the spring, they aired the pilot episode and it was pretty bad. They had Colm Meany as "Gene Hunt" which I thought might have been ok but i've seen the pilot and he really didn't suit the part. They also didn't include the roles of Chris and Ray which was mystifying. Apparently they have seen the error of their ways and have recast it, relocated it from LA to NYC and ... best of all, cast Harvey Keitel as Gene Hunt. This is excellent! He is a tad old for the part but he's so good it won't matter. Also, they're reinstated Chris and Ray and have cast someone from the Sopranos as Ray Carling. Better and better! It might actually be worth watching. I really loved the UK series so it's got big shoes to fill. I'm lukewarm on the actor playing Sam Tyler in the US series but with a good cast to support him, he'll probably warm up to the role in time. There are photos and other blogs on it here at TVScoop as well with a gallery of the new cast.

( Original cast pic )