In this case Anne's last name is Vyalitsyna (all the "V" business is instantly explained) and her real first name is a much more Russian Anna.
Anne on the catwalk for the Fall 2009 collections
A splendid end for 2009
A splendid end for 2009
The original UFO's opening sequence. One of the best title squences in the history of television!
Apparently plans are well advanced to make a film based on Gerry Anderson's paranoid classic UFO. Now, given the travesty that was Thuderbirds, this should fill Agent Triple P with dread but director Matthew Gratzner does seem to have a firm grasp on the essentials of the original. Gratzner is one of those special effects technicians turned directors which doesn't usually work as whilst they can handle the visuals they often have trouble dealing with those troublesome actor chappies.
"What I want to do with UFO is what Christopher Nolan did with the Batman franchise, or Martin Campbell did with Casino Royale.” says Gratzner “UFO is not a spoof, or a parody or a kids' movie. It's a pretty dark story, actually…it is not a show for young children.”
This is a pretty good sign. The film is planned to be the first of a trilogy of UFO films. SHADO is still going to be sited under a British film studio (talks are going on with Shepperton and Pinewood at present), they are going to use the original characters, vehicles and even the original theme music. All very promising.
“My biggest goal for this is, firstly, to not alienate the fans of the original show. We're not picking up where the series left off - we are starting from the very beginning. We really take the franchise seriously, unlike a film such as Thunderbirds, where they were saying 'here's a franchise that was great and everybody loved it, now let's put a whole new spin on it...'. We're not doing that. There's a reason UFO has a following, there's a reason that Gerry Anderson has a following, and for us to overlook that or take that for granted would be foolish."
Also currently in talks to play Col. Virginia Lake (the luscious Wanda Ventham in the original) is Ali Larter, latterly best known for cult TV show Heroes. There is a Dawson's Creek connection here too as she co-starred with Dawson himself, James van der Beek in Varsity Blues (1999).
The incomparable Gabrielle Drake
Agent Triple P is more interested in who they get to play Lt Gaye Ellis, portayed in the original by the incomparable Gabrielle Drake.
Grazner's special effects company, New Deal, encouragingly, has not moved lock, stock and barrel over to CGI. They still mix in matte paintings and miniatures with their digital work (as Weta Workshop did in The Lord of the Rings) which Agent Triple P thinks gives a much more organic feeling to the finished image.
It's good to hear that they will be using Barry Gray's original theme music although it will be in a orchestral version by Julliard educated composer Richard Sortomme. For Agent Triple P. though, nothing characterises Anderson's groovy vision of 1980 like Gray's original version with Harry Stoneham (later to be composer of the Parkinson show theme and musical director of that show) on the Hammond B3 organ.
Shooting is due to start in 2010 for a 2011 release. Can't wait!
Branson's original nose art
Now, however, it is the potential for a Playboy franchised nightclub or clothing line that has buyers interested. When Hefner's daughter Christie took over the management of the empire in 1982 she built Playboy Enterprises up into an intermittently successful brand diversifying into areas such as clothing. Recently, however, even this has had problems. Here in the UK there was a big campaign criticising stationers, WH Smith, for selling Playboy branded pencil cases and folders obviously aimed at young girls. The Playboy store on Oxford street, down the road from Agent Triple P's office, which sold clothing and other goods, largely aimed at women, has recently closed.
Last year Playboy sold off their loss-making DVD firm. Playboy DVDs were useless. Neither hardcore enough to compete in that market nor offering enough artistic content for those who wanted some tease and tantalisation from their women.
The real problem with the magazine now is that it doesn't know what it is. It's not a pornographic magazine like Penthouse (which is not now as explicit as it was ten years ago) and instead has tried to hunt in the waters latterly inhabited by FHM and Maxim.
Very few people seem to recognise this. One who does was being interviewed on TV here recently. Disc jockey Chris Evans, who has made enough money by being able to judge the public taste to buy the world's most expensive car last year, is taking over the hallowed BBC Radio 2 breakfast show from septuganarian Terry Wogan. How will all of Wogan's older listners cope with Chris Evans choice in music, wails the Daily Mail? Evans pointed out that teenagers in the sixties, when pop music really took off, were now in their sixties. These people were part of a generation that has continued to listen to pop and rock music, go to the latest films and not dress like old people as those from just the previous generation did.
Agent Triple P's aunt was born in 1945. She is aproaching 65. She does not look, act, dress or think like what our generation's idea of an old person should be like. Most people in their thirties, forties, fifties or sixties now dress the same way, like the same things and have the same attitudes towards sex. If anything the older ones are more likely to be liberal in this area than the younger generation. Yet this generation is largely ignored by the media.
On this latter point, however, there is a big disconnect between the visual images presented to them and what they were brought up to expect from erotic photographs. The average Playboy Playmate today has probably got a silicone bust (a big turn-off for most men of Triple P's generation), is photoshopped so much that her skin looks like she has been embalmed in morticians' wax and has no pubic hair whatsoever. This means that she does not look anyhing like the wife or girlfriend of the older reader and that older reader does expect some form of connection between his fantasy woman and the reality in his bed.
So, as it creaks towards its sixtieth anniversary in 2013 is there any way to save this venerable institution? Agent Triple P has a number of suggestions.