Diane Spencer - All Pervading Madness

Di opens my Fringe for 2011 in the Gilded Balloon (Teviot). She has a well constructed storyline as she tries to describe an epic journey trying to get home, which ends up being her own "ferret is out of the box" moment.  Her style reminds me of Celia Pacquola however I must admit that Celia comes across as more polished and resists the need to throw in some mild-shock moments for a cheap laugh.  There were one or two moments of smiling from some interesting concepts and I left with the feeling that maybe someone else could have performed the story in a bit more of an engaging way (and made it more of a compelling show).  It was a preview show (though she didn't seem to mess anything up) and it was the first show of the evening, and of this year's Fringe, so Di has the potential to tighten this up to 7/10 (3 stars) but as it stands it is just 6/10 (or 2 stars) as it wasn't particularly funny.

Sophie Black - A Sketch Show

So the re-arranged first show this year is a woman (just like last year).  Let's hope she does better than the damp start to last year...  Sophie Black comes out to 3/4 full room (50-ish capacity) with a bizarre permed wig on in character as a street sketch artist.  Yes, opening a sketch show with a sketch about sketching is mildly interesting on paper, but that's the only thing that's actually vaguely amusing throughout the long hour in the Attic.
She performs her characters with relative proficiency and wraps up the last 15 mins with callbacks and closure to earlier stories but by this point the audience just didn't seem to care.  It took 10 mins for me to start looking at my watch and wondering why I had gone to see another humourless show like Nick Mohammed, whilst someone left after the second scene (about 20 minutes in, which is about the same time I stayed for Nick Mohammed's show two years ago).  Was there anything of any note in her show?  Sadly not.  If you are interested in seeing someone do an average job of pretending to be characters that are slightly exaggerated and follow stories peppered with silly statements in lieu of jokes, then I'm sure you can pick from many others in the same category as Sophie.  6 out of 10, aka 2 stars, which is sadly the same disappointing start to this year's Fringe as last year!

Trash of the Titans - Release the Krap in 3D!

I've been thinking for a while of how to summarise this bad remake of a bad movie (that's not a double negative by the way) and then, the most talented man on TV, Sir Dr. Stephen T. Colbert D.F.A., summarised it perfectly: "they made this film in 2D and then transformed it into 3D but, here's the clever part, all the characters stay 1D". Another bad film "starring" Sam Worthington. It is official, he is the new Christian Bale (like the world needed another one!). The torch seems to have been passed (or maybe the disease spread...) and another "leading" man who apparently can act (Sam won praise for his early roles, apparently) is now stinking up the screen like a piece of wet wood. The paper the script was written on should have stayed as trees, much like Terminator Salvation (where the infection happened) and even Avatar (overly long, poorly scripted, acted and directed and an offence to have it mentioned on the same list as The Hurt Locker). The disease even affects genuine actors around them like Liam Neeson and Sigourney Weaver who seem paralysed by the black hole sucking all ability out of the shot. Expect more years ahead of lifeless movies with Sam (and/or Christian) cast as the "hero". Please put me out of my misery and let me look into Medusa's eyes (the one part of the story that was authentic to the myth!)...