new review at 100 Films

Pushing on with yet another review this week at 100 Films...

The Apartment (1960)

It begins almost as a farce, with Jack Lemmon playing up the near-misses inherent in lending your apartment to adulterous men, and though this comedic vein never goes away the film also develops a dark side. Alongside the affairs and underhand dealings — in which our hero is closely involved — there’s an attempted overdose, discussion of other suicide methods, and respectable men getting divorced.

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

The Armstrong and Miller Show
2x03 Episode 3
A brilliant return for "kill them".
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross
17x09 (30/10/09 edition)
It seems that Christopher Walken makes for an awkward interview, but his spoken word rendition of a Lady Gaga song was TV gold.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

House
6x05 Instant Karma

How I Met Your Mother
2x18 Moving Day

The Sarah Jane Adventures
3x08 The Eternity Trap Part Two
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Films

Avatar Trailer 2
I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the first Avatar trailer -- as were many, despite the media's insistence that it was the best thing since someone invented moving pictures. This, on the other hand, actually looks quite good... but you have to ignore the hype. The CGI doesn't look completely lifelike, as we've been repeatedly told it will, but it is very good CGI; and overall it looks like a potentially entertaining sci-fi action/war movie, but not The Greatest Most Important Movie Ever Made Ever, as some are still insisting. So if you ignore all that -- don't take it on its own terms, as it were -- it looks like it might be quite good.
Still keep thinking of this though.

Exiled (2006)
[#68 in 100 Films in a Year 2009]

Sherlock Holmes Trailer 2
Feels less like a trailer and more a semi-randomly assembled series of clips. But they're really cool clips. No, it's not 'proper' Sherlock Holmes, but it does look like a great big entertaining action/adventure film, and that's fine by me.

Articles

How Scary Should Kids Movies Be? by Helen O'Hara
(from the Empire Blog)
An excellent point -- essentially, that a bit of a scare is good for kids. It's certainly the ethos that Doctor Who operates on, and that's just one of the reasons it's so good.

Ian McKellen has read The Hobbit! by James White
(from Total Film)
The screenplay, that is, not the book. Though he's probably read the book. But that's not news, is it. Of course, this is barely news, because he can't actually say anything about it. Still, it's exciting that it's getting closer.

Kick-Ass Character Posters Now Online by Chris Hewitt
(from Empire)
Much coolness.

Collection Count

It's the third week of Collection Count, tracking my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics. If you don't know what this is you can read my initial post here.

Another week of increases here, and a very adult statistic of the week...

Number of titles in collection: 1,072 [up 6]
Of which DVDs: 1,037 [up 6]
Of which Blu-rays: 35 [no change]

Number of discs in collection: 2,633 [up 8]
Number of films in collection: 1,117 [up 15]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 3,653 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Number of titles rated 18:
171
(15.9% of the collection)

Any particularly anal readers may like to note that as my collection includes discs from around the world, I have 154 titles without a BBFC classification, some of which are/would be rated 18 if I had the UK edition.

See you next week, faithful reader.

new review at 100 Films

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

so imbued with the recognisable calling cards of noir in its cinematography, characters and plot points that it feels more like an entry in a well-established genre than a formative inclusion. At only just over an hour it is, on the one hand, too brief to dig into its characters or complicate its story, but on the other, it rattles past quickly enough that the good bits impress and the weak bits are only briefly registered

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

Argumental
2x10 (3/11/09 edition)

Defying Gravity
1x04 H2IK
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

How I Met Your Mother
2x16 Stuff
The episode I accidentally skipped. Not that it matters, and it seems this links more directly into the next one anyhow.

The Sarah Jane Adventures
3x07 The Eternity Trap Part One
Ooh, spooky! Some kids'll be having nightmares tonight.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Buffy creator bids for Terminator
(from BBC News)
Ah Joss, funny as ever. It's sometimes hard to tell if the journalist writing the article has twigged it's a joke...

new review at 100 Films

Babel (2006)

The quickest way to assess Babel is to say that it is about something — or, About Something. The plots, such as they are, aren’t really the point; nor is how they connect, or what chronology they actually occurred in... Naturally, because it is About Something, the Something it is About isn’t made blindingly clear, though there are many contenders

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 17 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

Charley Boorman: By Any Means - Sydney to Tokyo
Part 1 (of 6)
No detail on the preparation? No running vehicle count? No Russ accompanying? Have to say, so far, series two is lacking some of the first's charm.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Generation Kill
Part 5 A Burning Dog
[Watch it (again) on 4oD.]

Never Mind the Buzzcocks
23x06 (4/11/09 edition)
Winkleman's a poor host, of course, but this episode did manage to pick up once it got going.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Ross Noble's Australian Trip
Part 6 (of 6)
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

Spooks
8x01 Episode 1
Over-written, over-directed, over-acted, and over-wrought -- makes for a distinctly underwhelming return for the spy series. Must do better, or the whole show should be retired.
(Incidentally, with episode titles now turning up on Wikipedia, I've updated all my entries for series 7. And, as predicted here, this is the first time I've watched an episode of Spooks on its first broadcast since 1x02 in May 2002.)
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Gibbons Gabs
and
Gibbons Galore
(from WatchmenComicMovie.com)
Nice interview with Watchmen co-creator/illustrator Dave Gibbons. In part one he discusses the film, its reception and the various cuts, while part is a general grabbag of broadly related topics.

new review at 100 Films

Eastern Promises (2007)

director David Cronenberg widened his appeal somewhat with the excellent crime thriller A History of Violence. Here he reunites with star Viggo Mortensen for another grim tale, switching the bright searing heat of the American Midwest for the rain-drenched nighttime streets of our fair capital. But despite some similarities in plot and theme, Eastern Promises failed to engage me in the same way as the earlier effort

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 18 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.

TV

The Impressions Show with Culshaw and Stephenson
1x01 Episode 1
As hit and miss as sketch shows always are, but with a good enough hit ratio. There are too many wonderfully accurate impersonations to mention, but Stephenson's uncanny Davina McCall takes the biscuit. A decent impression show has been missing from the schedule for a while -- this fills the void nicely.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

It's Only a Theory
1x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Russell Howard's Good News
1x02 (29/10/09 edition, extended repeat)
[You can only see the shorter version on iPlayer.]

DVD Extras

Deleted Scene on Hilary and Jackie
It's a shame this doesn't come with a director's introduction/commentary, because it's a beautifully shot little sequence that looks great. Perhaps that's why, though -- the swish camerawork distracts too much from the point of the scene?

Articles

A-list stars honour Jonathan Ross
(from BBC News)
What the headline misses out is that Ross was given a music award. "What?" I hear you say. "He's not a musician!" Don't worry, it all makes sense (pretty much...) when you read the full story.

new review at 100 Films

For Your Consideration (2006)

The team who basically invented the spoof documentary finally taking on their own industry? Brilliant! But it feels like they felt the same way and rushed into production without properly thinking it through. Which, in its own way, is rather ironic.

Read the full review at 100 Films.

There are currently 19 films in the review pipeline at 100 Films. As ever, updates here as and when they're posted.