Friday 5 March 2010

TV

Archer
1x03 Diversity Hire
[Watch it (again) on Demand Five.]

The Bubble
1x03 (5/3/10 edition)
I know, I actually watched something when it was on! Shocking.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Five Days
2x02 Day 2
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Friday Night With Jonathan Ross
18x07 (26/2/10 edition)
[Watch it (again) in HD on iPlayer.]

Only Connect
3x09 Archers Admirers v Exeter Alumni
Never watched this before, only went for it as the sole programme under entertainment/comedy on TV iPlayer that I'd not seen (plus, Exeter alumni). It's certainly Clever, and I managed a couple of points, so... that's nice.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Enchanting and mordant, but does it need an action climax? by Roger Ebert
(from rogerebert.com)
Ebert passes verdict on Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland. Though he focuses on the third act, this is my favourite part of his review:
Burton is above all a brilliant visual artist, and his film is a pleasure to regard; I look forward to admiring it in 2-D, where it will look brighter and more colorful. No artist who can create these images is enhancing them in any way by adding the annoying third dimension.

Mark Millar to helm Scottish superhero film by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
The article, surprisingly, has more details. They make it sound as good as that headline, er, sounds.

Passing Judgment on the SciFi Cred of Inglourious Basterds by John Scalzi
(from Notes From the Monolith on Sci-Fi Scanner at AMC Blogs)
It's an interesting point of discussion -- considering what happens at the end, is Inglourious Basterds science-fiction? I tend to agree with Scalzi's assessment of the situation. (If it's not obvious, this contains sort-of-spoilers for IB.)

Rome feature film moving forward by Simon Reynolds
(from Digital Spy)
Hadn't heard anything about this for years so feared it had stalled, so it's good to know there's still activity -- I liked the series, even if I still haven't seen all of it. Interestingly, though, last I heard it was going to be about Jesus -- correct me if I'm wrong, but he didn't go to Germany...

My letter to DWM

As promised yesterday, here's the complete text of my letter to DWM. Bits they cut are in red for the sake of comparison (I assumed they'd ignore everything before that first colon but they, er, didn't...)

Dearest DWM,

The shiny new Complete Specials Blu-ray set dropped through my letterbox the other morning, prompting me to compose the following missive:

Five years of revived Doctor Who, five excellent complete series DVD sets from 2entertain.

Sorry, did I say five? I meant four, because the Complete Specials set is something of a disappointment.
Full-length Confidentials - great! Video diary - fantastic! Deleted scenes - superb! Audio commentaries on every episode - marv--* Oh, wait.

After managing a thorough 55 tracks over the first four series - and some with video too - the ball has been severely dropped by only including commentaries for The End of Time in this set. There's no good excuse, especially when there are those podcast ones available for every episode, which have indeed been included in the past in lieu of a new track.

But hey, those are online, right? We can have them any time! Just gotta work out how to sync it up with the DVD - pressing play at the same time might work... no, one always takes too long to actually start...

So it'll take some effort, but at least we can conveniently download them to iPods or burn them to CDs. What do you mean they're streaming only? Guess I'll have to watch it on my PC then...

Except I've gone and bought the Blu-ray set - can't play that on my computer!
I suppose I could unplug my desktop, take all the bits downstairs, set it up again, then watch the stream and the Blu-ray at the same time...

Until halfway through it pauses to buffer, that is. Why aren't these just on the discs again?**

Poor show, 2|entertain.


* Here's a bit they added, turning my truncated "marvellous" into the full word.
** They re-wrote this bit ever so slightly, to make it sound better. Cheers, DWM.

(Just in case anyone misconstrues me posting this as bitterness cos they cut my oh-so-wonderful letter -- I don't mind, it's what magazines do, and I expected them to cut most of it... though, they didn't necessarily cut what I'd expected, which is interesting (ish). But what are blogs for if not posting your full and frank thoughts? So here they are.)

Collection Count

Collection Count tracks my DVD/Blu-ray collection via a number of statistics every week. Only a slight increase again this week -- in fact, it's numerically very similar to last week. Thrilling.

Number of titles in collection: 1,150 [up 2]
Of which DVDs: 1,079 [up 1]
Of which Blu-rays: 71 [up 1]

Number of discs in collection: 2,805 [up 4]
Number of films in collection: 1,215 [up 2]
Number of TV episodes in collection: 3,874 [no change]

Statistic of the week:

Number of titles watched:
406
(35.3% of the total)

This means titles where I've completely watched the main feature(s) on my copy -- so if I saw a film at the cinema but haven't yet watched the DVD, it doesn't count as watched. Special features don't count either; and if it's, say, a three-film set, I have to have watched all three for it to be counted (watching two means nothing).

Obviously, therefore, something like The X Files (with its 202 45-minute episodes) has more of an uphill struggle than, say, Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (just one 45-minute episode). Arguably this makes the above statistic meaningless, as a tally of how many individual films and TV eps I'd watched would be a more accurate representation of how much (or, rather, how little) of my DVD/BD collection I've actually seen.

Anyway, see you next week, faithful reader.