Who has the world’s largest collection of Daleks?

I have never been a fan of Dr Who, which is weird, since I love all things sci-fi, from Star Wars and Star Trek to the utterly phenomenal Galaxy Quest. I know that time travel is best done in the Tardis and the Daleks are best avoided at all costs.

But still, apart from the episode with Kylie Minogue a few years back, I am pretty much out of the loop. However even I knew today was a big day – the screening of a 50th anniversary episode, The Day of the Doctor, which was enough to send many of my friends/devoted fans – aka Whovians – racing from their FB accounts lest spoilers sneak through.

Their behaviour got me thinking, about how devoted and obsessed fandom can be. So I decided to take what I knew and build on it, by discovering who in the world has the largest collection of Daleks. And I found him – of course – in the UK.

The person’s name is Rob Hull, and in 2011 he smashed the Guinness World Record for the biggest collection of Daleks, with 571.

But back then he was only getting started. And when Yahoo! News UK caught up with him in September, his collection had grown to 1202.

Why? Well he’s probably best placed to answer that question….

I started my collection 24 years ago and have been a massive Dalek fan since I was seven – I’ve never actually been a big follower of the show. I really wanted a Dalek when I was a young boy but my mum said no – I always said that when I was an adult that I would have my own Dalek and now I have the biggest collection.

Turns out though, his wife is not the biggest fan of his work. In his own words: “My wife would prefer if all of them were in the garage rather than inside.”

And honestly? I don’t know who’s side I’m on. Although it might have to be the outside, since my life-sized Boba Fett already has a monody on the inside.

Why did they recast Buttercup in The Hunger Games: Catching Fire?

In the true form of a movie junkie, I headed to the cinema at midnight on release day to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

I’ve been waiting for it to open since the day I finished reading the book, and nothing like commonsense or the need to get a good night’s sleep was going to get in my way.

Anyway, I’m not going to talk about it too much, because I know the pain spoilers can cause.

But one plot point that did catch my eye, and I think is OK to mention, is Buttercup.

As fans know, the Everdeen’s cat is very obviously described as yellow in Suzanne Collins’ involving trilogy, but in the first film he had become black and white for some reason. This time around though, authenticity prevails.

So I decided to find out what prompted new director Francis Lawrence – who took over from Gary Ross and is pictured above with stars Liam Hemsworth and Jennifer Lawrence – to make the change.

He revealed all in an interview with Meredith Woerner on io9.com

The first big change I noticed from The Hunger Games to Catching Fire was you recast the cat. Why did you recast the cat?

You know what that was actually, and I was happy to do it, that was a request from Nina the producer and Suzanne the author. That they thought the cat from the first movie was not the way he was described in the book. And that had annoyed a bunch of fans, and things like that. But it also just kind of bothered them that Buttercup was not a black and white cat. So I was happy to get one that felt like the Buttercup of the book. It’s funny because now people are split. Some people think we should have continued on with what happened in the first movie. And some people are really happy. You never win.

Personally I think the right move. I can totally understand why changes have to be made to make a book filmable, but a cat colour doesn’t seem to much of an ask to get right.

How long did the Titanic take to sink?

I’m busy packing up to move at the moment, which unfortunately means shoving carefully placing everything I own into cartons and boxes. And as it turns out, a good proportion of everything I own are movies (and, of course, the books I can’t be parted from).

As I’ve packed and packed and packed, I’ve come across the good (Garden State), the bad (Mammoth, starring Tom Skeritt) and the ugly (Vanilla Sky, which I can’t discuss without gritted teeth).

Then there’s the blockbusters.

I am definitely a girl who likes big action on a big screen. So over the years I have picked up everything from Independence Day to 2012.

And in among such gems I found Titanic, which I loved – and still love – right up until the moment that daft old woman throws the necklace into the ocean.

Anyway, the discovery got me thinking about what it would have been like to be on the ship when it hit the iceberg and how long it would have taken to sink.

I turned to the official Titanic website for the answer. Here’s what they had to say…

Titanic collided with the iceberg about 11.40 on 14th April. She sank below the water at 2.20am the next morning. A ship which had taken three years to fully construct was sunk in less than three hours.

Within half an hour of the collision, Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect, was dispatched to assess the extent of the damage and to work out how long the ship would take to sink. His calculation was “an hour and a half, possibly two, not much longer.” At this stage, Captain Smith gave the order to uncover the lifeboats.

So there you have it. Less than three hours all up, but still enough time to see the waters rising and feel the absolute terror of knowing you were going into the freezing Atlantic Ocean.

If only the lifeboats had taken their full load.

Who created supercalifragilisticexialidocious?

As a child, I can well remember entering some sort of competition run by a milk company. I’m not sure what the link was, or even what the prizes were, but I do know it involved making as many words as you could from the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Now, it would be fair to say I poured my little heart and soul into the task. I literally went through the dictionary word by word, finding ones that matched. And yes, it took as long as you might imagine. So long I actually missed the deadline for entries. And was somehow still surprised I didn’t win.

Anyway, this chunk of history came to mind when I noticed the movie Mary Poppins listed in the TV guide.

I’ve never seen it – and am less likely to do so the more anyone tells me I ‘have’ to – but I do know it unveiled the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. So I decided to find out its origins.

The answer lay in an laist interview with Richard M Sherman, who wrote the score to the musical with his brother, Robert. Here’s the relevant bit…

How did you make up the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious ?

That’s a word we sort of concocted from our childhood when we used to make up double talk words. In the screenplay version of Mary Poppins we wanted her to give the children a gift they could bring back with them from inside the chalk drawing when they came out into the real world. If it was a tangible thing like a seashell or pine cone it would disappear. So we said “Remember when we used to make up the big double talk words? We could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids.” And that’s where it started. Obnoxious is an ugly word so we said atrocious, that’s very British. We started with atrocious and then you can sound smart and be precocious, we had precocious and atrocious and we wanted something super colossal and that’s corny, so we took super and did double talk to get califragilistic which means nothing. It just came out that way. That’s in a nutshell what we did over two weeks. All together you get supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Great explanation. Now, who feels like a spoonful of sugar?

Could a Sharknado really happen?

I don’t drop the word ‘glorious’ into conversation all that often.

In fact, I’m pretty sparing with its usage, saving it purely for such moments of awesomeness as the shirtless scene in Thor and Thor 2.

But every so often a piece of entertainment comes along that is so exquisite, so unique and so innovative that no other word will suffice. And so it is with Sharknado.

Now first, I should offer a disclaimer, which is that I am naturally pre-disposed to like this film.

I am obsessed with/terrified of sharks, am noted for my love of B-grade animal monster movies and am slightly famous for loving things other people consider crap. Plus, it has the ultimate in B-grade acting pedigree by way of Iain Ziering and Tara Reid. What’s not to love?

Anyway, while the nuances of the plot are non-existent would take far too long to explain, the official synopsis goes something like this: “When a freak hurricane swamps Los Angeles, nature’s deadliest killer rules sea, land, and air as thousands of sharks terrorise the waterlogged populace.”

And when they say terrorise they mean terrorise, with sharks appearing everywhere from helicopters, highways and manholes to living rooms as they bite people clean in half. At least until Iain – playing Fin Shepard – starts fighting back with a chainsaw.

In short, it is gory, blood-spattered, mind-blowing, ridiculous and glorious. With a subtle plot that points out a punchline from about 1km away and then smacks it right in the face. Like when the man says “My mum always told me Hollywood would kill me” literally a split second before he is crushed by the Hollywood sign. See what they did there?

Like I said, solid gold.

Anyway, I had to know who was responsible for writing this work of art. And as it turns out, his name is the equally glorious Thunder Levin, who did a great interview with iO9.

You can read the full Q&A transcript here – including the inspiration for the movie and whether alcohol was involved – but first, the burning questions that came to my mind as the DVD ran its course…

Is there any scientific basis, however tenuous, for Sharknado?

Yes. There are numerous confirmed reports of fish falling from the sky, sometimes even on a clear sunny day. We just took it to the “logical” extreme.

How are the sharks cognisant enough to keep biting people while they’re flying through the air?

If you were a shark and you found yourself flying through the air, wouldn’t you keep biting? I think you’d be pretty pissed about being plucked out of your nice familiar ocean where you’re king of the predators, and you’d probably take it out on whoever got in your way. Honestly, I don’t understand why people are so perplexed by this concept. The logic is undeniable.

Well sure, if you say so. Now check out the best scene from the movie…

How did the Spice Girls get their nicknames?

As a singer Victoria Beckham makes a great fashion designer. And I’m not just saying that to be snarky.

Just look at her fashion label, which is beautiful, stylish and goes from strength to strength. The praise is well earned and her designs are a favourite among celebrities. As for her singing, well that’s another story.

While Victoria was a founding member of ‘90s girl power group the Spice Girls, you only have to watch one of their videos to see how little of the singing she did. But that’s OK. That’s what Emma Bunton and Melanie Chisholm were there for. Posh’s role was to add a bit of class to proceedings, something I’m sure played heavily into her choice of purple thrones for her wedding to footballer David Beckham, who is famous worldwide for his enormous, err, footballing skills.

Anyway, while watching the video for 2 Become 1 in a nostalgic moment tonight, I started wondering how all five girls – rounded out by Geri Halliwell and Melanie Brown – got their Spicy nicknames of Posh, Baby, Scary, Sporty and Ginger. I figured it was the brainchild of their manager, but turns out it was a bit of inspiration from Top of the Pops editor Peter Loraine, who broached the subject over lunch. As he remembers…

“I simply said it would be a good idea if they had some nicknames. The girls liked the idea, so I had an editorial meeting back at the office and about four of us started thinking of names. Posh was the first one to be thought up because Victoria looks pretty sophisticated. The rest were pretty easy really because the girls’ characters were already really strong. The names jumped out at us. We laughed the most when we came up with Scary. Jennifer Cawthron, who was also from Leeds, came up with that one because Mel B was so loud and had tried to take over our whole photo shoot. We ran the names for a couple of issues and the first time the girls saw them they thought it was funny. Then the newspapers started picking up on the names and they cropped up everywhere until they were fully accepted by everyone.”

Now let’s watch the video..

BTW, did you know that for their group auditions, Mel C sang I’m So Excited by the Pointer Sisters, Mel B sang The Greatest Love Of All by Whitney Houston and Victoria sang Mein Herr from Cabaret?

 

Does adamantium really exist?

Some days when I write this blog I want to discover something useful that will enrich my knowledge base. Other times, I just want to find an excuse to run a photo of a naked Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.

Today was one such day, and fortunately I had a justified reason at the ready, as I’d always been curious about a key plank of the X-Men mythology. And that is whether adamantium really exists.

As anyone who’s seen Wolverine or another X-Men film knows, this is the metal Colonel William Stryker has grafted on to Wolverine’s bones in a bid to make him an indestructible killing machine who can be used/manipulated for evil ends. Doesn’t sound like something our goodie would sign up for, and it’s not. He’s tricked into the surgery when told it’s the only way he can become strong enough to avenge his supposedly murdered girlfriend. Of course when he discovers she was alive all along, and he’s been played, all hell breaks loose. Only now he isn’t just a powerful soldier-turned-logger with unchartered healing powers – he’s an indestructible metal man hell-bent on revenge. You can imagine how that ends for everyone involved.

Anyway, the metal sounded pretty impressive so I wanted to know if it was drawn from the world of real science. And the answer is no. It’s simply another fantastic creation from the superhuman-minded brain of Stan Lee and his team.

You can read more about it at the Marvel Universe. But for now, let’s see some of Wolverine in action here and also below. You’re welcome.

Did Queen Elizabeth I have smallpox?

Anyone who’s studied history knows that when Hollywood comes calling it often takes ‘liberties’ in transferring personalities and stories from the archives to the big screen (see Braveheart et al).

Sometimes it’s for reasons of dramatic tension, other times through poor research and other times just because they wanted a different ending and felt emboldened to pursue it by simply adding a disclaimer ‘inspired by true events’.

So when I came across TV mini series The Virgin Queen and it showed Elizabeth I being struck down with smallpox, my first thought was to wonder if her life had been given an extra dash of drama.

I mean I’ve studied English history, I know all about the Tudors, about Henry VIII’s wives and about the monarch’s battles with Mary, Queen of Scots. But I had never heard she nearly died of this often-fatal disease.

However it turns out the storyline was real. She did suffer from smallpox, in 1562. In fact it’s said the resulting scars are what first prompted her to begin wearing her famous white make-up.

So there you have it. Another amazing chapter in the life of an extraordinary woman. Here’s five other tidbits I discovered . . .

* Elizabeth I attended the first performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
* Wars during her reign are estimated to have cost more than 5 million pounds (in the prices of the time).
* She thought to have died of blood poisoning.
* After Henry VIII’s death, she was taken in by his widow, Catherine Parr. However she was later sent away with rumours suggesting she had caught the eye of Catherine’s new husband, Thomas Seymour.
* Her motto was “Semper Eadem”, meaning “Always the Same”.

PS: While I was doing research on the website of the English monarchy I came across a section that noted Australia was a realm of the Commonwealth. Intrigued, I had to find out what constitutes a realm. And here is the answer…

“A Commonwealth Realm is a country which has The Queen as its Monarch. There are 15 Commonwealth Realms in addition to the UK: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Barbados, Grenada, Solomon Islands, St Lucia and The Bahamas.”

Is ‘e’ really the most common letter of the alphabet?

Pic by Leo Reynolds

As a very shy child, I was far better at collecting books than friends. So while I have few schoolmates in my list of Facebook connections, some of the novels I read back then have stayed with me. Among them is Which Witch by Eva Ibbotson, which remains a cherished favourite to this day.

Sadly, myriad moves have seen most of my other childhood books disappear. And I curse the day I decided to sell all of my original Enid Blytons to buy cassingles (yes I am that old). But occasionally they come to visit, through sections of plot or characters that pop into my head, driving me crazy until I can remember where they are from and what they are called.

So it is with one particular book at the moment. I have no idea who wrote it, or even what it was called, but in involved a treasure hunt in the jungle and a code that was built around replacing the alphabet with various numbers. Even to this day I can clearly remember the lead character explaining the key to unlocking it was the letter ‘e’, as it was the most common letter in the alphabet and would therefore be substituted for the most common number. And right he was, since the treasure was soon in their hands.

In true style, that random fact proved more than a passing sentence for a child who lapped up knowledge like it was chocolate milk. It has stayed with me ever since and has been put to good use in unravelling many a clueless crossword. I even shared it with one of my nephews this week as he prepared for a course in code breaking.

But as I did so, it suddenly occurred to me that I had never questioned it. As a long-time journalist I was certain it was true, but today seemed as good a day as any to double check.

So I turned to the Oxford Dictionary, which confirmed it was not only the most common letter in English text but also the most common letter in English vocabulary.

That goodness I hadn’t given him a bum steer!

And I did discover something else interesting. Despite, or maybe because of, its popularity, several authors have actually gone to the trouble of writing entire novels that deliberately avoid any use of the letter ‘e’. Sounds almost impossible, doesn’t it? But they did it. Which of course begs the question of why.

Read about some of them at The Writing Post.

Was Mark Wahlberg ever a member of New Kids on the Block?

Back in my uni days/early twenties, I was known to play the occasional drinking game. You know, the kind where you pick a topic – say a movie or TV show – work out its regular patterns of behaviour and then assign a certain number of shots everyone must do when they come up.

Take the move American Pie for example.

Here, ‘punishments’ were awarded for such acts as … Stiffler swears (1 shot), someone references Stiffler’s mum (1 shot), Jim’s dad tells an unwelcome and too-much-information anecdote (2 shots) or Jim embarrasses himself in a manner that involves his genitals (2 shots for an apple pie, 1 shot for a girl).

Anyway, those days are well and truly gone, but last night I decided the time had come to revisit them. And the inspiration was the New Kids on the Block/Backstreet Boys concert.

Now, somewhere along the line I have become one of ‘those’ people who help aging musicians continue on well past their prime by going to their concerts. In the last 12 months alone I have done (figuratively I should point out) Motley Crue, Heart, Def Leppard, the Choirboys, Duran Duran etc etc. But none had the sheer enjoyment/satirical possibilities of NKOTBSB.

To clarify, I was absolutely a fan of both bands in their time, although never to the level of obsession they enjoyed among so many girls. And I also have more than a few of their songs on my playlist. However I was more drawn to snap up a ticket by the tantalising promise of payouts.

And I was not disappointed. Which is where the drinking game came in.

Staring bemusedly at the stage while someone called Johnny Ruffo donned a Michael Jackson tribute jacket and grabbed his crotch repeatedly, I began thinking about all the ways boy bands used to entertain their fans – the synchronised dancing, the all-white suits, the falsettos. And suddenly I had all the elements for a great drinking game. Here’s just some of what I came up with…

Matching suits – 1 shot

Synchronised dancing – 1 shot

Synchronised twirls – 1 shot

Hat doffing – 2 shots

Serenading of audience members who’ve been dragged on stage – 3 shots

Matching white suits – 3 shots

Donnie Wahlberg shows off his abs – 4 shots

Backstreet Boys manage to keep a straight face while advising that ‘I want it that way’ – priceless

Tears of emotion – 1 shot

Needless to say I was spot on with my predictions, and would have ended up VERY drunk had my cup contained vodka rather than water. But even sober I thoroughly enjoyed the blast from the past, especially as regular updates kept me reassured Queensland was on top in the State of Origin.

Afterwards, as we wandered back to the car humming Step by Step, talk moved on from the show to brotherly love. Specifically, the question of whether Donnie’s little brother, Mark, was ever in the band. I’d heard someone in the row behind us make the suggestion and thought there was no chance. I mean, I just can’t picture Max Payne singing some of those syrupy lyrics.

But I was wrong. Turns out he WAS in the band. But only for a few months very early on before he apparently grew tired of the group’s squeaky clean reputation and said his goodbyes.

Paving the way, of course, for Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

Now let’s watch the video for my equal favourite NKOTB song…